B2B LinkedIn Content Strategy: The Fan-vs-Customer Framework

Date: July 23, 2026

Reading time: 9 minutes

Key takeaways

• On LinkedIn, your fans and your customers are almost never the same people. and most B2B content is built for only one of them.

• Customers lurk. Fans like, comment, and share. You need both, but you need to talk to them differently.

• Your website should target customers. Your social content should target fans. Mixing the two is why so many B2B posts underperform.

• The real value of LinkedIn Sales Navigator isn't demographic data — it's finding out who's actually active on the platform.

• Your fans matter less for their own purchases and more for who they know. Their network is your unpaid distribution channel.

When's the last time someone commented on your brand's LinkedIn post because they wanted to, not because they needed something from you? If you're drawing a blank, you're not alone, and you're also not doing anything wrong. You're just aiming at the wrong audience with the wrong content.

That was the premise of a recent episode of Strategy Talks, where I sat down with Jason Patterson, founder of Jewel Content Marketing Agency, who grew his own LinkedIn following from about 4,000 to 22,000 — not by chasing customers, but by chasing fans first. It wasn't a hare's race, either.

Jason got serious about LinkedIn in late 2021 and built this slowly, post by post, connection by connection. As he put it on the show, "it's been a tortoise process, not a hare."

I've been doing this work for a long time, and I've never heard anyone name this principle as cleanly as Jason did: B2B needs fans, not just customers.

Once you hear it, you can't unhear it — but almost nobody says it out loud, and even fewer small B2B teams build a real content strategy around it. So let's fix that.

What's the actual difference between a B2B fan and a B2B customer?

Jason's definition is refreshingly simple. A customer is someone likely to inquire or buy from you. A fan is someone who engages with your content — likes it, comments on it, shares it — but is far less likely to ever become a customer. In fact, in most B2B niches, your fans are your competitors, or people who do adjacent work to you.

If you're a content strategist like Jason (or like me), your fans are other content strategists, copywriters, and marketers. Your customers are the heads of marketing, demand gen leads, and founders who actually hire people like us. And crucially, these two groups behave differently online.

"Customers tend to be lurkers. They read your posts, they look at it, but they don't engage openly. While your fans, they're the likers, they're the commenters. They're the ones acting more openly."— Jason Patterson, founder, Jewel Content Marketing Agency

This tracks exactly with what I've seen in my own work. My customers usually hire a content strategist precisely because they don't know what to do next — they're watching from the sidelines, maybe they'll connect with you if you send a request, but they're rarely the ones leaving comments. And that's fine. There's real value in a quiet audience getting to know you through your content over time. But if that's the only audience you're building for, you have a problem.

Why most small B2B teams build their LinkedIn content strategy backwards

Here's the uncomfortable part. When I'm in the room with stakeholders, the questions are almost always the same: Did we get any clients from social media? Are we driving people to connect with us? They want the content pointed directly at the ICP, every time — and in the process, they forget the fans entirely.

Jason has a great way of naming why this happens, and it's not usually a conscious choice:

"If you just focus on customers, basically you are creating a funnel that's all bottom. You're not getting that wider reach that you need to build your brand, get found by more customers. You're just focusing on that tiny little bit at the bottom."— Jason Patterson

A funnel needs a top. Fans are the top. Without them, your posts don't travel, because engagement is the currency of social media — and if a post doesn't get engagement, the algorithm doesn't show it to anyone else, customers included. Stakeholders often blame "reach" or "the algorithm" for underperforming content, when the real issue is that they've been building a content strategy with no fans in it at all.

This is exactly the kind of foundational mismatch I talked through in Content Without Strategy Is Just Noise, you can post consistently and still get nowhere if the strategy underneath it is pointed at the wrong goal. The fan-vs-customer split is one more layer of that same problem: it's not enough to have a content strategy. You need a content strategy that accounts for two different audiences with two different jobs to do.

Building a B2B LinkedIn content strategy that speaks to both audiences

So how do you actually write for both groups without splitting yourself in two? Jason's answer surprised me — it's not really about clever hooks. It's about "bait."

"It's not necessarily a matter of analyzing data. It's more what kind of bait you use."— Jason Patterson

The LinkedIn algorithm routes posts based on interest — if you write something aimed at customers, it's more likely to reach customers; write for content people, it reaches content people.

According to Jason, the algorithm studies roughly the first 200 characters of a post — about four lines — to decide who should see it and where it should travel. That opening matters enormously, but the whole post still has to deliver, especially for the readers who click through for more.

For fans, that means content built to be shareable: bite-sized, a little raw, and definitely not over-polished. Jason was blunt about this — audiences are getting faster at spotting AI-generated content, and once that "detector" goes off, people stop sticking around. For customers, the approach flips: it's less about performing for the algorithm and more about speaking to them directly, answering the exact questions they're already asking Google or ChatGPT.

Jason uses two metaphors here that I love:

1. Content for customers is like paving roads —> you're building and maintaining a journey, updating old material, not just posting something new every day.

2. Content for fans is more like making popcorn —> quick, bite-sized, shareable, meant to travel fast and get demanded by others.

How to find your fans and customers in your own data

I asked Jason directly: if a small B2B team wants to look at their own LinkedIn data, what should they actually check to tell a fan from a customer? His answer reframed how I think about Sales Navigator entirely.

Most people assume Sales Navigator's value is deeper demographic detail on who's engaging with your posts. It's not, really. Its real value is telling you who's active: something the free version of LinkedIn simply won't surface. Plenty of people are technically "on" LinkedIn but barely show up: a few minutes a month, no posts, no visible signal. Sales Navigator helps you find business leaders specifically, who often deliberately keep a low profile so they don't get pitched to constantly.

If you're a scrappy small team without a Sales Navigator budget, the workaround is simpler than it sounds: watch behavior, not job titles. Who comments unprompted? Who shares without being asked? That's your fan list, and it's sitting in your notifications right now.

It's not just about the fans but rather who the fans know

This is the part I pushed on during our conversation, because I think it's the piece most B2B teams miss entirely, and it's worth saying plainly: it's not just your fans' engagement that matters. It's their network.

Your fans are often your competitors, or people adjacent to your work, which means when they amplify your content, they're pulling in an entire audience of people who look a lot like your actual customers. Jason agreed with this instinct: fans amplify your voice and your visibility, but only if the content is genuinely shareable, which is why infographics, short videos, and other easy-to-pass-along formats matter so much, especially early on.

Where to start this week if you've only ever talked to customers

If you're realizing right now that every piece of content you've created has been aimed at customers and none of it at fans, Jason's advice for this week is specific: don't start with plain text posts. Start with something built to travel — useful infographics, carousels, or other "glamour content," as he called it, designed to help you attract fans from a standing start. Once fans start following you, you can simplify: more direct, more text-first, less performative.

Content pillars help here too, especially at the beginning. Jason pointed out that the LinkedIn algorithm actually prefers when you stay focused on two or three core topics, it's an auto-complete engine at heart, and predictability helps it understand and distribute your content. Pillars also solve the very real problem of idea paralysis when you're just getting started. Once you build the habit, new ideas come more naturally and you can loosen the structure.

That mirrors how I run my own content, for what it's worth. My content pillars, the posts that go out every single week, like Strategy Talks itself and my Monday newsletter, are aimed squarely at my ICP. Everything else I post is for my fans: what I'm learning about AI, behind-the-scenes of my content process, conferences I'm attending. Both halves matter, and neither one replaces the other.

A brand that's already doing this well

During the live episode, I pointed people toward Social Insider as a team that fully embodies this framework — they consistently create fun, trend-driven content on LinkedIn that serves their fans, while their core value proposition still speaks clearly to their customers. It's proof this isn't a theoretical framework; it's working in public, right now, for a team you can go watch.

If you take one thing from this: stop asking whether your LinkedIn content "worked." Ask who it was actually built for. A funnel that's all bottom will always feel like it's underperforming, no matter how good the writing is. Build the top of the funnel on purpose — with fans, in mind, before you ever get to the pitch — and the customers show up because the room is finally full of people paying attention.

Watch the full episode

Catch the complete conversation with Jason Patterson right now!

Frequently asked questions about B2B LinkedIn content strategy

What's the difference between a fan and a customer on LinkedIn?

A customer is someone likely to buy from you; they tend to be lurkers who read your content but rarely engage publicly. A fan is someone who actively likes, comments, and shares your content — usually a peer or someone in an adjacent role, not a buyer. Most B2B accounts need content strategies for both, because fans drive the reach that gets your content in front of new customers in the first place.

Should B2B companies target fans or customers on LinkedIn?

Both, but not with the same content. Social media content, including LinkedIn, should mostly be built for fans, since they're the ones who make posts travel through engagement. Your website should be built for customers, since that's where they go to get answers to specific questions. Treating LinkedIn like a direct sales channel for customers only is one of the most common reasons B2B content underperforms.

Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator worth it for a small B2B team?

Its biggest value isn't extra demographic data on who's engaging with your posts — it's identifying who is actually active on LinkedIn, including business leaders who deliberately keep a low profile. If budget is tight, you can approximate this manually by tracking who comments and shares unprompted; that behavior is a strong signal of an engaged fan.

How does the LinkedIn algorithm decide who sees a B2B post?

LinkedIn's algorithm routes content based on topical interest, studying roughly the first 200 characters (about four lines) to determine the subject and audience. Content aimed at a specific group — customers or fans — is more likely to reach that same group. This is why the opening lines of a post matter more than most people realize, though the whole post still needs to deliver once someone clicks in.

What kind of content attracts fans versus customers on LinkedIn?

Fans respond to shareable, bite-sized content — infographics, carousels, short videos, and posts that feel a little raw rather than overly polished. Customers respond better to direct, straightforward content that answers the specific questions they're already searching for elsewhere, like Google or ChatGPT. Trying to force one format to do both jobs usually waters down the result.

Should I use content pillars for my B2B LinkedIn strategy?

Yes, especially when you're starting out. LinkedIn's algorithm favors accounts that stay focused on two or three core topics, and pillars remove the paralysis of deciding what to post next. Once you've built a consistent posting habit, you can loosen the structure and let more spontaneous, timely content fill in around your pillars.

Why does it matter who my LinkedIn fans are connected to?

Your fans' networks often contain people who look a lot like your actual customers, especially since fans are frequently competitors or peers working adjacent roles. When a fan shares or comments on your content, their engagement introduces your brand to their own network — extending your reach well beyond your direct following, at no additional cost.