How to hire LinkedIn content services: scope, brief and compare proposals

Sell in Public → B2B LinkedIn content agency → LinkedIn content services

Start with the goal and the people who'll post

Vague briefs produce vague proposals. Answer two questions before anything else.

What should LinkedIn do for you in the next six to twelve months? Choose one main goal:

• More first conversations with a defined group of buyers
• Recognition in a category you want to be known for
• Support for a launch, a fundraise or a hiring push
• Staying close to existing customers ahead of renewals

Who will post? The founder alone, the founder plus two or three executives, or a wider group that includes sales, product or engineering. This drives price, process and how much coordination you'll need, so decide it yourself rather than letting each provider decide it for you.

Settle the scope before you ask for prices

Write down where you stand on each of these, even if the answer is "not sure yet":

• People and frequency: how many people, and roughly how many posts each per week
• Formats: text only, or carousels, graphics and video clips too
• Engagement: whether you want help with comment replies and alerts when prospects engage
• Raw material: what you can share, such as sales call recordings, customer stories, past talks and internal docs
• Approvals: who signs off each post, whether legal or comms must review, and how long their reviews take
• Out of scope: company page, ads, outbound messaging or anything else you'll buy separately

A one-page brief you can copy

Here's a made-up example for an imaginary software company. Swap in your own details and keep it to a page.

• About us: We sell staff scheduling software to hospital groups in the US. We're 150 people, Series B, with a sales cycle of about four months.
• What we want from LinkedIn: More first conversations with operations leaders at mid-sized hospital groups.
• Who will post: Our CEO and our VP of Customer Success, starting with two posts each per week. Our CTO may join after three months.
• Who we're trying to reach: Hospital operations directors and their finance partners. They care about staffing costs and shift gaps, and they distrust vendors who don't understand clinical work.
• What we already have: Sales call recordings, three customer stories we're allowed to share, the CEO's conference talks, and a roadmap we can discuss in general terms.
• What we want from you: Strategy, interviews, writing and comment replies, plus a heads-up to our sales team when a target account engages.
• Not included: Company page, ads and outbound messaging.
• Approvals: Each person approves their own posts. Anything that names a customer goes to our comms lead first.
• Budget and timing: Our monthly budget range, a start date six weeks from now, and a decision within three weeks.
• What we'd like in your proposal: Your process, who would work with us, a sample first month, how you'd report, price and terms.

Share a budget range. It lets each provider scope something realistic instead of guessing, and it makes the proposals far easier to compare.

What a solid proposal includes, and how to compare them

A strong proposal answers your brief rather than repeating the provider's sales deck. Lay two or three side by side and check each one on the same points:

Warning signs include promised follower or impression numbers, no mention of interviews, and a fixed post count with no word on where ideas come from. Don't mistake the longest list of deliverables for the best answer to your goal.

When prices differ a lot, the gap usually comes from scope: posts per person, engagement, design and video, or how many people are covered. For a sense of the market, Forj Media, an agency that sells this service, puts LinkedIn ghostwriting for founders and executives at $2,000–$10,000 a month in its pricing guide.

If two finalists still look alike, ask each for a sample post written from a short call, read the samples with the provider names covered, and meet the writer who'd actually work with you.

Contract terms to check before you sign

• Term and notice. Some LinkedIn agencies publish flexible terms. Stop The Scroll offers monthly, 90-day and 180-day engagement lengths and describes its plans as "month-to-month, cancel anytime," and BAMF says its plans are "month-to-month with no long-term contracts." If a proposal asks for a long minimum, ask what you get in return.
• Approval rights. The contract should say nothing is published without the named person's approval.
• Who owns the work. Posts, drafts, idea banks and strategy documents should belong to you, including anything unpublished when you leave.
• Confidentiality. Writers will hear about your roadmap, customers, pipeline and sometimes fundraising. Cover it in an NDA or in the main agreement.
• Your recordings and data. If you share sales calls, agree where they're stored, who can access them and when they're deleted.
• AI use. Ask whether drafts are produced with AI tools and whether your material goes into third-party software. Get the answer in writing.
• Account access. Agree how posts get published and who holds login details. Never send passwords by email.
• Price changes and extras. What triggers a price change, and what counts as out of scope.