Category: Blog

Founder’s Weekend Notes – Why Entrepreneurs Work on Weekends and Stop Apologising for It

My Weekend Has No Off Button
Founder’s Weekend Notes

My Weekend Has No Off Button

And I have stopped apologising for it.

By Dr. Mazlan Abbas · Reflections on founders, focus, writing, and FAVORIOT
© Dr. Mazlan Abbas · Founder reflections · FAVORIOT · IoT · AIoT · Writing · Strategy

My Weekend Has No Off Button — And I Have Stopped Apologising For It

Most people think a founder’s weekend is a time to rest. Mine is when the real thinking happens — about customers, strategy, leads, and the future of FAVORIOT.

It is 6:47 AM on a Saturday. The house is quiet. And I am sitting at my desk, coffee in hand, staring at a spreadsheet of potential leads I did not finish reviewing on Friday.

Most people would call this a problem. I call it my most productive hours of the week.

I did not plan to be this kind of person. When I left the corporate world after years at CELCOM AXIATA and MIMOS, after all the structured meetings and reporting lines, I told myself I would finally have balance. Work smart, not just hard. Take weekends off.

That lasted about three weeks.

Because here is the truth nobody tells you when you become a founder: the company does not pause just because the calendar says Saturday. The market does not wait. Your competitors are not resting. And that idea sitting at the back of your mind all week? It will not sit quietly forever.

What I actually do on weekends

Let me be clear … it is not random busyness. I have learned the hard way that unfocused hustle on weekends leads to burnout without results. What I do now is deliberate. I call it my founder’s thinking time.

Saturdays, I think about customers. Who are they? Where are they? What problem keeps them up at night that FAVORIOT can solve? I go through LinkedIn. I study industry conversations. I look at who engaged with our content, who downloaded our case studies, who asked a question at the last webinar but never followed up. I build a picture of our next ten potential customers.

Sundays, I think about strategy. Not operations — operations belong to the week. Sundays are for the bigger picture. Where is IoT heading in the next twelve months? What should FAVORIOT be known for? Are we too broad? Are we too narrow? What is the one message I want the market to remember us for?

It sounds exhausting. But these are the hours where I feel most alive as a founder.

The question that changed everything

Here is something I have never said publicly before.

In FAVORIOT’s early years, I worried constantly about leads. Where was the next customer coming from? Were we going to survive the next quarter? I carried that anxiety into every weekend like a bag of rocks.

But somewhere along the way, the worry transformed into something else. Curiosity.

I stopped asking “where are the customers?” and started asking “why haven’t they found us yet?”

“Where are the customers?” is a passive question. It puts the burden somewhere else. “Why haven’t they found us yet?” is an active question. It puts the responsibility squarely on me.

When I sit with that second question on a Saturday morning with no distractions, the answers actually come.

Maybe our messaging is not clear enough. Maybe we are targeting the wrong industry vertical. Maybe we have a great product but we are invisible to the people who need it most. These are not questions you can answer in a thirty-minute meeting between calls on a Tuesday afternoon. They need space. They need silence. They need a Saturday.

Why writing is part of the strategy

I also use weekends to write. These articles, in fact, are almost always written during weekend hours. Because writing is not just content creation for me — it is thinking out loud.

Every time I write about IoT, about smart cities, about the journey of building FAVORIOT, I force myself to clarify what I actually believe and why. And that clarity feeds directly into how I lead the company, how I pitch to customers, and how I talk about what we do.

Content is strategy — if you do it right.

I have seen founders who say they do not have time to write, to share, to build a visible presence. And then they wonder why nobody knows about their company. The market does not discover you by accident. You have to show up – consistently, visibly, with something valuable to say.

Weekends give me the time to do that properly.

This is not about glorifying overwork

I want to be honest about something.

Rest is real. Rest is necessary. I still take walks. I still have lunch with family. I still sit and do nothing sometimes — and in those moments of nothing, the best ideas usually arrive uninvited.

But a full day of deliberately switching off from the business? My brain will not allow it. And at this stage of the journey — building FAVORIOT, growing our IoT platform, trying to become the partner of choice across Southeast Asia — I am not sure I would want it to.

When you are building something you genuinely believe in, thinking about it does not feel like work. It feels more like tending a garden you love.

One question worth sitting with

If you are a founder reading this, I am not asking you to copy my schedule. Every founder is different. Every business has its own rhythm.

But I will leave you with the question I ask myself every weekend morning:

“If I had just this one day — no emails, no meetings, no interruptions — what is the one thing I could work on that would change the trajectory of my company?”

That question alone is worth sitting with. Even at 6:47 AM on a Saturday.

What does your weekend look like as a founder? Are you resting, or are you building and do you think the two are really that different? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Fake It Till You Make It — Or Fake It Till You Break It?

Have you ever walked into a room and felt like you had absolutely no business being there?

I have. More times than I care to admit.

I remember standing in front of a government minister, presenting a proposal for a smart city initiative. I had the slides. I had the data. But deep inside? I was thinking — do I actually know enough to be standing here? I said what I needed to say. I answered the questions. And somehow, I got the contract.

Was that faking it? Or was that faith?

That is the question I have been wrestling with every time someone throws the phrase “fake it till you make it” at me — usually with a confident grin, like it is some kind of life hack passed down from Silicon Valley.

Let me be honest with you. I have both lived this phrase and been burned by it. And I think it is time we have a more grown-up conversation about what it really means.

The Case FOR Faking It

When I first stepped into the world of IoT, nobody had a perfect playbook. The technology was evolving. The standards were being written in real time. The market did not even fully exist yet. If I had waited until I felt completely ready, I would still be waiting today.

“Fake it till you make it” — when understood correctly — is really about confidence before competence catches up. It is about showing up even when you feel unqualified. It is about taking the seat at the table before someone else decides you do not belong there.

Early-stage entrepreneurs need this mindset. When I was building FAVORIOT, there were many moments where I had to project confidence to investors, partners, and customers — even when the product was still being shaped. That is not lying. That is leadership.

The psychology behind it is real. Behavioural scientists call it “enclothed cognition” — when you act and present yourself as the person you want to become, your brain begins to rewire itself to match that identity. You stop feeling like a fraud and start becoming the real thing.

That minister I stood in front of? The contract we won helped us build something real. The confidence came first. The competence followed close behind.

The Case AGAINST Faking It

But here is where I have to be honest — and a little uncomfortable.

I have seen people “fake it” who had no intention of ever making it. They used the phrase as a cover for incompetence. They presented credentials they did not have, promised results they could not deliver, and left a trail of broken trust behind them. In the startup world, we call them “founders.” Sometimes investors call them something less polite.

There is a razor-thin line between projecting confidence and projecting deception. And when you cross it — knowingly — it is no longer a mindset strategy. It is fraud.

I have also seen the psychological cost of sustained faking. When you spend too long pretending, you start to lose track of what is real. Imposter syndrome becomes a permanent resident. You are always performing, never present. That is exhausting. And it is hollow.

In a technical domain like IoT, the stakes are even higher. If you fake your understanding of security protocols, edge computing, or data governance — and someone deploys a system based on your advice — people can get hurt. Systems can fail. And your name is attached to it.

Faking it in the boardroom is risky. Faking it in a hospital’s patient monitoring system is dangerous.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

I think the phrase needs a serious upgrade.

Instead of “fake it till you make it,” I prefer: “act as if, while you build the real thing.”

There is a difference between acting with confidence while you are learning, and pretending to know things you do not. The first is courage. The second is deception.

The best version of this mindset looks like this:

  • You take the opportunity before you feel fully ready — but you immediately begin closing the gap between where you are and where you projected yourself to be.
  • You project confidence in your vision — but you are transparent about what is still being developed.
  • You own the room — but you also do the work when no one is watching.

I did not fake my PhD. I studied for it. But I faked my certainty many times — in pitches, in negotiations, in conference keynotes — because I believed in where we were going, even when the road was not yet built.

That kind of faking? I can live with it.

The kind where you have no intention of doing the work? That one catches up with you. It always does.

A Question For You

So I want to ask you this — and I want you to sit with it honestly:

When you have “faked it,” were you buying yourself time to grow? Or were you hoping no one would ever look closely enough to notice?

There is no shame in the first. But the second? That is where it gets dangerous.

Tell me in the comments — where do you stand on this?

Nobody Prepares Founders for Emotional Exhaustion

All the books, the mentors, the pitch competitions — they teach you how to fundraise, hire, and scale. Nobody teaches you what to do when you’re sitting in your car, engine off, staring at nothing, with absolutely nothing left.

Do you know what nobody puts in the startup playbook? The part where you sit in your car in a parking lot, engine off, staring at nothing — and you don’t even know why?

I do. I’ve been there.

When I co-founded FAVORIOT back in 2017, I had a PhD, decades of corporate experience, a clear market vision, and what I thought was enough battle-hardened resilience to build something from scratch. I had survived corporate politics at CELCOM. I had navigated bureaucracy at MIMOS. I had lectured, researched, and published. I thought I knew what “hard” looked like.

I didn’t know anything.

Nothing — not a single mentor, book, conference, or MBA module — prepared me for what I’ll call the invisible weight of being a founder. It doesn’t show up on your pitch deck. It doesn’t appear in your KPIs. But it is always there, pressing down on your chest in the quiet moments between the meetings, the emails, and the social media posts where you look like you have it all together.

The Loneliness Nobody Talks About

There’s a version of the founder story that gets told over and over: the hustle, the pivot, the funding round, the growth hack, the exit. That story is clean and cinematic.

The real story is messier. It’s the 2 a.m. moment when you’re looking at the cash flow projection and the numbers don’t add up — again. It’s the team member who leaves, not because of money, but because they lost faith. It’s the client who says “we love what you’re doing” and then goes silent for three months.

You can’t really bring these things home. You can’t load that weight onto your spouse, your family, your co-founder. So you carry it. Quietly. And quietly is where exhaustion lives.

I remember a particular phase at FAVORIOT — I won’t say exactly when — where everything on the outside looked fine. We were winning awards. We were speaking at conferences. People were calling us a promising IoT startup. And inside, I was running on empty.

The smiling at events while worrying about payroll. The keynote confidence while privately questioning whether we had made the right product decisions. The LinkedIn updates that said “excited to announce…” when honestly, I was just exhausted.

The Myth of Founder Toughness

We have built a dangerous mythology around founders. We celebrate sleeplessness as dedication. We romanticize stress as passion. We treat emotional struggle as weakness — something to be managed privately, not discussed openly.

I bought into that myth for too long.

I told myself: push harder, think clearer, be stronger. I told myself that feeling depleted was a phase. That the next milestone would reset everything. That once we crossed the next revenue threshold, signed the next partnership, launched the next feature — then I could breathe.

But the thresholds kept moving. They always do.

What I eventually learned — and it took me longer than I’d like to admit — is that emotional exhaustion is not a character flaw. It is a structural reality of building something from nothing. When you are the founder, you are the last line of defense. You absorb uncertainty so your team doesn’t have to. You hold the vision when everything around you is blurring. That is a specific kind of emotional labour that has no off switch.

What Actually Helped Me

I won’t pretend I found a perfect solution. But I found a few things that made it survivable.

Writing helped. Not writing for LinkedIn. Writing for myself. The messy, unfiltered kind that nobody sees — just getting the weight out of my head and onto a page. My blog, over the years, became my pressure valve.

Community helped — but not the kind where everyone performs success. The conversations that helped most were with other founders who were willing to say “me too” without flinching.

And faith. I am a man of faith, and in my darkest operational moments, returning to that — not as escapism, but as grounding — gave me something metrics and milestones never could.

But here’s what I wish someone had said to me at the very start: Mazlan, the emotional cost of this journey is real. Plan for it the way you plan for cash flow. Take it seriously.

We Need to Change the Conversation

We talk endlessly about founder mental health now — hashtags, articles, even conferences on the topic. But most of it stays surface-level. Founders still feel enormous pressure to project strength. Investors still reward founders who seem unshakeable. The ecosystem still subtly punishes vulnerability.

I’m not calling for founders to fall apart in public. I’m calling for something more practical: let’s create space — real space — where founders can say “I’m struggling” without it being read as “this startup is failing.”

Because those are not the same thing.

The startup can be growing. The product can be improving. The team can be performing. And the founder can still be quietly drowning.

Both things can be true at the same time.

I’m sharing this because I know someone reading this right now is sitting in their own parking lot moment. Engine off. Staring at nothing. Wondering if this is normal.

It is. You are not broken. You are just carrying something very heavy, and nobody warned you how heavy it would get.

So let me ask you this: who in your life knows you’re exhausted — not the polished version of you, but the real one?

If the answer is nobody, that might be the most important problem you need to solve today.

I Used AI to Write My Latest eBook. Here’s What Actually Happened.

Let Me Be Honest With You

The eBook you are looking at right now, Mastering IoT and AIoT with Favoriot, was built with AI. Not just assisted by AI. Built by it. And I think that is worth talking about honestly, because the story of how this book came together tells you more about where we are with AI than any think piece I could write.

Here is the confession: most of the infographics inside were generated through ChatGPT. The eBook itself was assembled using Claude Cowork. I pointed it at my folder of infographics, and it categorised them, selected the best visual style, and structured everything into a coherent ladder from awareness to mastery. And the post you are reading right now? Claude is pushing it automatically to this blog.

I did not type all of this. AI did a significant part of the heavy lifting.

So Why Am I Telling You This?

Because I think the dishonest version of this story, the “I wrote a book” version with no footnotes, does everyone a disservice. We are at a moment in technology where the tools are genuinely extraordinary, and pretending otherwise is a form of intellectual cowardice.

But here is the thing I want you to sit with: the book is real. The frameworks inside it are real. The five rungs, Awareness, Foundations, Methodology, Production, and Mastery, those came from twenty-plus years of watching IoT projects succeed and fail. They came from UTM, CELCOM, MIMOS, from REDtone IoT, from every Favoriot deployment where a client came to us six months too late because they had skipped Rung 2.

The AI did not invent the Build-Readiness Ladder. I did. The AI helped me package it.

And I think that distinction matters enormously, not just for me, but for anyone trying to figure out how to use these tools without losing themselves in the process.

Every Buzzword Wave Brings the Same Temptation

I have been in IoT long enough to remember when “digitisation” was the buzzword that made executives nod without understanding. Then it was “big data.” Then “Industry 4.0.” Now it is AI everywhere. Each wave brings the same temptation: to let the tool become the story instead of the outcome.

What I tried to do with this eBook, and what I try to do with every piece of content I create, is stay anchored to the practitioner’s reality. Not theory. Not a showcase of what the technology can do in a lab. What actually ships. What actually fails. What the team on Rung 3 needs to hear at 11pm when their deployment is fighting them.

That is what I hope the five rungs give you. A ladder you can put your weight on.

Here Is Exactly How the AI Toolchain Worked

I want to be specific because I think the specifics are useful.

The infographics came first, from ChatGPT. I gave it the concepts, the frameworks, the key messages, and it generated visuals that I reviewed and curated. Some were brilliant on the first attempt. Some took five iterations. A few I threw out entirely because they were technically wrong, and that is the part that requires a human who actually knows IoT. The tool has no idea whether MQTT is correctly positioned in an architecture diagram. I do.

Claude Cowork then looked at the full collection, forty-three diagrams, and did something I genuinely did not expect it to do well: it read the logical progression across them. It understood that the Awareness diagrams should open the book, that the Production use cases belong after the methodology chapter, that the Data Storytelling infographic is the bridge between Rung 4 and Rung 5. It organised the ladder better than my first draft did.

Is that intelligence? I do not know. But it was useful, and I am not going to pretend it was not.

What AI Cannot Do

If you are an IoT practitioner reading this, the lesson is not “use AI to write your book.” The lesson is that your expertise, your hard-won, field-tested, scar-tissue knowledge, is the thing AI cannot generate. It can package. It can structure. It can format and distribute. But the rung-by-rung logic inside this eBook? That came from doing this work for two decades.

That is what I want to give you. Not a showcase. A ladder.

Now It Is Your Turn

Download the eBook. Start at the rung that makes you uncomfortable, that is always the right one. And if you want to talk through where you are standing, find me on LinkedIn or drop me a message through Favoriot.

The tools changed. The climb has not.

What rung are you on right now, and what is keeping you there?

How To Create Viral Posts with a Hook

I used to think the best posts were the most informative ones.

The ones with the most data. The most research. The most carefully crafted sentences.

So I would spend hours writing.

Editing. Rewriting. Polishing.

And then I would publish.

And wait.

Sometimes, nothing happened.

A few likes. Maybe a comment or two from people who already knew me.

But no shares. No new followers. No real traction.

Meanwhile, I would scroll through my feed and see someone else’s post — shorter than mine, less detailed than mine — getting hundreds of reactions.

How?

I sat with that question for a long time.

Until I finally understood the real answer.

It was not about the content.

It was about the first line.

Nobody Reads What They Don’t Click

Here is something that took me embarrassingly long to accept.

People do not read posts.

They scan them.

They scroll past hundreds of updates every single day. They are moving fast. Their attention is already somewhere else.

And in that tiny moment — that split second — they decide.

Keep scrolling.

Or stop.

That decision happens before they read a single word of your actual content.

It happens at the first line.

That first line is called the hook.

And if your hook does not grab them, nothing else matters.

Not your insights. Not your story. Not your carefully structured arguments.

None of it.

Because they never got that far.

The Moment I Finally Understood This

I remember posting something on LinkedIn a while back.

It was a detailed post about IoT adoption challenges in Malaysia.

Lots of context. Lots of nuance. Lots of things I genuinely believed people needed to hear.

I opened with something like:

“The Internet of Things has been growing rapidly over the past decade, and many organisations are now beginning to recognise its potential…”

It barely moved.

A few weeks later, I wrote another post.

Same topic, roughly.

But this time I opened with:

“I almost gave up on Favoriot in 2019.”

That post reached thousands of people.

Same me. Same platform. Same audience.

Different first line.

Everything changed.

What Makes a Hook Actually Work

I have been studying this for a while now.

Not just reading about it.

Actually testing it. Watching what works. Noticing what stops the scroll.

And here is what I have learned.

A good hook does one of three things.

It makes people curious. It makes people feel something. Or it makes people think “that is exactly my problem.”

The best hooks do all three at once.

Let me break it down.

Type 1: The Curiosity Hook

This is the classic cliffhanger.

You reveal just enough to make people want more.

“I made one change to my LinkedIn profile and tripled my inbound messages.”

“Nobody told me this would happen when I became a founder.”

“I was completely wrong about how viral posts work.”

See what those have in common?

They open a loop.

The human brain hates open loops. It wants to close them.

So it keeps reading.

The key is to tease the answer without giving it away. Enough to promise value. Not enough to satisfy without reading further.

Type 2: The Emotion Hook

Facts tell. Feelings sell.

When you open with something emotionally real, people lean in.

“I cried after my first investor meeting. Not because it went badly. Because it went exactly as planned.”

“The day I realised I was becoming a human FAQ was the day everything changed.”

“I have given hundreds of talks. But one question from a student stopped me cold.”

Emotion creates connection.

It reminds people that behind every profile, there is a human being.

And human beings are drawn to other human beings, not information machines.

Type 3: The Problem Hook

This is my personal favourite.

You name a pain that your reader already feels.

Immediately.

Before they even know you understand them.

“Most IoT projects fail not because of technology. But because of this one blind spot.”

“You are creating content every day. But nobody outside your network is seeing it.”

“You have been writing posts for months. But your follower count has barely moved.”

When people read a hook like that, they stop scrolling because they think:

Wait. Is this person talking about me?

Yes.

That is exactly the feeling you want.

The Formula I Use Now

I am not going to pretend I have cracked some magic formula.

But I do have a starting checklist.

Before I publish anything, I ask myself five questions about my first line.

Does it make someone curious or create an open loop?

Does it touch a real emotion — not a manufactured one?

Does it name a problem my reader actually has?

Can it stand alone? If someone only read this one sentence, would they want more?

Would I stop scrolling if this appeared in my feed?

If the answer is no to most of those, I rewrite the opening.

Sometimes three or four times.

Because the rest of the post is irrelevant if the first line does not work.

The Mistake Most People Keep Making

The most common mistake I see?

People bury the hook.

They write a long preamble. They give context before they create curiosity. They explain the situation before they create tension.

Something like:

“As someone who has been in the technology space for over twenty years, I have seen many trends come and go. Today I want to share some thoughts about content creation and why it matters in the age of social media…”

By the time you reach the actual point, the reader is already gone.

Start with the tension. Start with the emotion. Start with the problem.

Then build the context.

Not the other way around.

One More Thing

I want to be honest about something.

Writing good hooks felt uncomfortable at first.

It felt like I was being dramatic. Like I was sensationalising. Like it was not really me.

But then I realised something important.

A hook is not manipulation.

A hook is respect.

It respects the reader’s time. It signals that what follows is worth their attention. It earns the right to be read.

If your content genuinely helps people, then writing a compelling hook is not a trick.

It is a responsibility.

So Here Is My Challenge to You

Go back to your last five posts.

Look at the first line of each one.

And ask yourself honestly:

Would you have stopped scrolling for that?

If the answer makes you a little uncomfortable, that is okay.

That is where the growth is.

Rewrite one opening today.

Just one.

See what happens.

I am curious to know.

What kind of hook has worked best for you? Drop it in the comments. Let’s learn from each other.

The Top 10 Things to Attract Readers on LinkedIn

By Dr. Mazlan Abbas

LinkedIn has changed more in the past twelve months than in the five years before that.

The algorithm most people are still using as a mental model no longer exists. The tactics that reliably worked in 2023 and 2024 are actively being penalised today. And the professionals who have not yet adapted are watching their reach quietly decline — often without understanding why.

I have been posting on LinkedIn for years. I have built a following, attracted speaking invitations, and grown FAVORIOT’s visibility primarily through consistent content on this platform. In that time I have watched every major shift in how the algorithm behaves.

Here is what I have learned — and what is actually working right now in 2026.

Why LinkedIn Has Become Harder — and More Rewarding

LinkedIn shifted its entire ranking model in early 2026. The old system rewarded you based on how many connections you had and how quickly a post picked up likes. The new system works more like TikTok for professionals.

It is now an interest graph, not a social graph.

What that means in practice: your content is no longer just shown to your connections. It is distributed to people who have demonstrated interest in your topic — whether or not they follow you. A well-crafted post from a smaller account can now reach further than a poorly crafted post from an account with fifty thousand followers.

This is actually good news for thought leaders who produce genuine insight.

But it also means that average content — generic advice, motivational quotes, promotional announcements — receives almost no distribution at all.

The bar has gone up. Here is how to clear it.

1. Start With a Hook That Earns the Click

LinkedIn shows readers only the first two lines of your post before they have to click “see more.”

Those two lines are your entire pitch.

If your opening line does not create curiosity, make a surprising claim, or signal clear value, most people scroll past. The algorithm also registers this behaviour. A post that loses readers immediately is pushed to fewer people. A post that earns the click gets rewarded with broader distribution.

The openers that work:

  • A specific, counterintuitive claim: “Most LinkedIn advice is designed for people who already have an audience. Here is what actually works when you are starting from zero.”
  • A direct provocation: “Your LinkedIn profile is losing you speaking opportunities. Here is what to fix this week.”
  • A numbered promise: “After 200+ keynotes, I still make this one mistake when pitching to new audiences.”

What does not work: “Excited to share some thoughts on…” or “I have been reflecting on…” These tell the reader nothing and give them no reason to stop scrolling.

2. Optimise for Dwell Time, Not Likes

The 2026 LinkedIn algorithm measures how long people actually spend reading your post — not just whether they clicked a reaction button.

A post that someone reads for thirty seconds now outperforms a post that collected fifty quick likes. LinkedIn calls this signal “dwell time,” and it has become one of the most important ranking factors in the feed.

What this means for how you write:

Keep paragraphs short — one to three sentences each. Use white space generously. Structure your post so the reader has a reason to keep going line by line. Write posts that are long enough to hold attention but tight enough that no sentence feels wasted.

The optimal post length for maximum dwell time tends to be 300 to 400 words. Long enough to build an argument, short enough to finish in a single sitting.

3. Use Carousels for Maximum Reach

Of all the formats currently available on LinkedIn, document carousels generate the highest average engagement — roughly 6.6 percent, compared to around 2 percent for text-only posts.

The reason is structural. Carousels force the reader to swipe through multiple slides. Each swipe extends dwell time and signals genuine interest to the algorithm. They are also highly shareable and saveable, which are the two engagement actions LinkedIn now values most.

What makes a carousel perform well:

  • Lead with a slide that makes a specific claim or promise
  • Use text-oriented slides over image-oriented ones — stories are easier to tell with words
  • Keep each slide focused on a single idea
  • End with a clear takeaway or call to action on the final slide

If you write long-form posts regularly, almost every one of them can be repurposed into a carousel. The content already exists. The format just makes it more discoverable.

4. Build Saves, Not Just Likes

LinkedIn added Saves and Sends to post analytics in late 2025. That was not a coincidence. It was a signal about what the platform now rewards.

A save tells the algorithm: this content is valuable enough to return to later. A send tells the algorithm: this content is worth sharing privately with someone else. These two actions now drive significantly more reach than a standard like.

The implication is clear. Create content people want to bookmark.

That means frameworks, checklists, step-by-step guides, data-backed insights, and lessons from real experience. The question to ask before posting is: would someone save this to refer back to later? If the answer is no, the post probably needs more substance.

5. Write for Your Niche, Not for Everyone

LinkedIn’s algorithm now identifies what it calls your “topic DNA.”

It distributes your content based on demonstrated expertise in a specific area, not based on your network size. A post about IoT platform mistakes reaches IoT practitioners and enterprise decision-makers — regardless of whether they follow you — because the algorithm recognises the topic and the audience that engages with it.

The practical consequence: broad, general content performs poorly. Specific, niche content performs disproportionately well.

Write for one person — the specific professional who would benefit most from what you know. A post written for IoT startup founders will outperform a post written for “anyone interested in technology.”

The more specific you are, the further the algorithm pushes your content into the right hands.

6. The First 60 Minutes Determine Everything

When you publish a post, LinkedIn initially shows it to a small sample of your network — roughly two to five percent of your connections.

How that sample responds in the first hour determines the total lifetime reach of the post. Research suggests that only five percent of posts that underperform in the first hour recover to reach a broader audience.

What this means in practice:

  • Post when your audience is most active, typically weekday mornings
  • Respond to every early comment quickly — this signals active conversation to the algorithm
  • Do not post and disappear immediately after publishing

The first hour is not just a window. It is the window.

7. Never Put External Links in the Post Body

This is one of the most commonly ignored rules on LinkedIn — and one of the most costly to break.

Posts that include external links in the body see approximately 60 percent less reach than equivalent posts without them. LinkedIn actively suppresses content that drives users away from the platform.

The workaround most people used — putting the link in the first comment — has also been penalised as of early 2026.

The better approach: make the post complete and valuable on its own. If you want to reference an article, a report, or a website, mention it by name in the post and let interested readers find it themselves. Or put the link in a comment, but do not lead with it or frame the post around it.

LinkedIn rewards content that keeps people on LinkedIn.

8. Personal Profiles Outperform Company Pages — By a Wide Margin

One of the clearest findings from 2026 LinkedIn research: personal profiles now generate five times more engagement than company pages.

The algorithm is built to surface authentic human voices, not brand broadcasts. A post from you as an individual — sharing a lesson, an opinion, a real experience — will reach further than the same content posted from a company page.

For anyone building a personal brand alongside a company or startup, this is the most important structural insight on this list.

Invest in your personal profile first. Let the company page support from the background.

The most visible founders and executives on LinkedIn are not posting from their company accounts. They are posting as themselves — and the company benefits from the credibility that follows.

9. Engage Like You Mean It

The 2026 algorithm has become very good at detecting hollow engagement.

“Great post!” and emoji-only comments no longer generate meaningful algorithmic benefit for you or the person you commented on. LinkedIn’s systems can distinguish between genuine professional conversation and automated or low-effort interaction — and they reward the former while increasingly suppressing the latter.

When you engage with another post, write a response that adds something. A different perspective. A follow-up question. A relevant experience. A specific disagreement.

When people comment on your posts, reply with the same quality. Conversations that go two or three levels deep generate far more reach than posts with fifty single-word reactions.

Engagement is not a vanity activity. It is how the algorithm learns who you are and who to show your content to.

10. Be Consistent — But Make Every Post Count

The algorithm in 2026 rewards depth and authority over posting volume.

One valuable, well-structured post per week consistently outperforms five forgettable ones. If you publish more frequently, make sure each post earns its place. Content that performs poorly — that loses readers quickly, generates no saves, and triggers no real conversation — signals low quality to the algorithm and can suppress the reach of your subsequent posts.

The professionals winning on LinkedIn right now are not posting more. They are posting better.

Build a sustainable rhythm that you can maintain for months, not weeks. Decide on your core topics and stay close to them. Let your “topic DNA” build over time. The algorithm rewards consistency within a niche more than it rewards volume across many topics.

Putting It Together

LinkedIn in 2026 is harder to game and more rewarding when you do it right.

The platform has moved decisively away from rewarding connections, follower counts, and quick likes. It now rewards demonstrated expertise, genuine engagement, content people save and share, and consistent presence within a defined niche.

That is actually good news for practitioners and founders who have real knowledge to share.

The tactics above are not shortcuts. They are the structural conditions under which LinkedIn now distributes content. Understanding them is not about gaming the algorithm — it is about making sure the algorithm can find the people who would benefit from what you already know.

If you have been posting on LinkedIn and feeling like the platform has stopped working, revisit these ten areas. The platform has not stopped working.

The playbook just changed.

Dr. Mazlan Abbas is the CEO and co-founder of FAVORIOT, an AIoT platform company. He has been listed as a Top 50 Global Thought Leader in IoT, Smart Cities, and GovTech. He writes about technology, startups, and personal brand building at mazlanabbas.com.

HOW-TO Grow Your Threads Social Media Playbook

By Dr. Mazlan Abbas

Most people who join Threads make the same mistake.

They treat it like Twitter. They post content, drop a link, and wait for followers.

That approach does not work here.

I have been observing social media platforms long enough to know that every platform has its own culture, its own rhythm, and its own algorithm logic. Threads is no different. And right now, in 2026, it is one of the most interesting opportunities available for anyone serious about building a personal brand or thought leadership presence.

Here is why.

The Window Is Still Open

Threads now has 400 million monthly active users. In January 2026, it surpassed X in daily active mobile users for the first time. That is a significant signal.

But more importantly for creators and thought leaders — organic reach on Threads is still unusually high.

On Instagram, a typical post reaches 5 to 10 percent of your followers. On Threads, a well-crafted post regularly reaches two to five times your follower count. Your content gets pushed to people who do not follow you yet.

That is the growth mechanic. And it will not last forever.

Platforms always start open and gradually close as they mature and introduce advertising models. We saw it with Facebook. We saw it with Instagram. We saw it with LinkedIn.

The creators who move early win the most. The ones who wait until a platform is saturated wonder why it no longer works.

What Makes Threads Different

Threads is not Twitter. It is not Instagram. It is not LinkedIn.

It is a text-first conversational platform that rewards authenticity and genuine engagement over polished broadcast content.

Think of it this way. Instagram is your portfolio. Threads is your coffee shop.

The algorithm on Threads is built around conversation. Posts with genuine replies outperform broadcasts. This means smaller accounts can compete with established ones. If you can spark real discussion, the platform will push your content further.

This is exactly the opposite of what most social media platforms do once they mature.

The Playbook

After studying what actually works on Threads in 2026, here is the playbook I recommend.

1. Optimise Your Profile First

Before you post a single word, make sure your profile is working for you.

Your bio needs to answer three questions immediately:

  • Who are you?
  • What do you talk about?
  • Why should someone follow you?

A weak bio says: “Entrepreneur. Speaker. Husband.”

A strong bio says: “IoT founder building FAVORIOT. 40 years in tech. Daily takes on AIoT, smart cities, and what the industry gets wrong.”

The difference is specificity. Give someone a reason to hit follow before they have ever read your posts.

Also connect your Threads account to Instagram. Your posts can surface on Instagram, and your existing Instagram followers can discover you on Threads. Cross-platform discovery is built into the system. Use it.

2. Post With a Strong Hook

The first line of every Threads post is everything.

If you lose someone in the first sentence, they scroll past. The platform does not give you a second chance.

The hooks that consistently work are:

  • The specific number: “I made this mistake in 3 out of my last 5 IoT projects.”
  • The pattern interrupt: “Stop building dashboards. Build outcomes.”
  • The curiosity gap: “The one thing we changed at FAVORIOT that reduced churn by half.”
  • The contrarian take: “Everyone is talking about AI in IoT. Most will fail for the same reason they failed before AI existed.”
  • The story opener: “Five years ago, we almost shut FAVORIOT down. Here is what happened.”

Notice the pattern. Every hook is specific, creates curiosity, and makes a promise that the rest of the post delivers on.

Generic openers like “Some thoughts on IoT today” or “A few tips on personal branding” get ignored.

3. Choose Your Content Format

Unlike Instagram, where video dominates, Threads gives different formats genuine opportunity.

The three formats worth understanding are:

Text-only posts. Simple and easiest to produce at volume. When the idea is strong, text alone performs very well. This is the native format of the platform.

Photo posts. Strong for personal storytelling and adding a human face to your content. A photo of you at a conference, at a whiteboard, or behind the scenes of your work adds context that text alone cannot.

Short video clips. Higher production effort, but worth it if you are already creating video for other platforms. Repurpose a keynote clip or a 60-second camera talk and post it natively.

The mix I suggest: 60 percent text-only, 30 percent photo, 10 percent video. Adjust based on what your own analytics show after 30 days.

4. Engagement Is Not Optional

Here is the single most important thing most people get wrong about Threads.

It is a conversation platform. If you treat it like a billboard — post and disappear — the algorithm treats you like a ghost.

There are two engagement obligations that matter.

Reply to your own comments within the first hour. When someone comments on your post, reply. This signals to the algorithm that your post is generating active conversation, which triggers more distribution. It also builds real relationships with people who took time to engage with you.

Spend time engaging with others in your niche. Not lazy comments like “Great post!” or “So true!” Those do nothing. Add genuine value. Share a different perspective. Ask a thoughtful follow-up question. When your comment is more insightful than most people’s posts, the creator’s audience notices you.

I would suggest spending 30 minutes daily on meaningful engagement with others. That time investment returns far more than simply posting more content.

5. Post Consistently — But Do Not Disappear After Two Weeks

The most common Threads failure pattern I observe is this: someone joins with enthusiasm, posts for two weeks, gets minimal early engagement, and quits.

They blame the platform. They say Threads does not work.

The problem is rarely the platform. The problem is they stopped before the algorithm had enough signal to know who to show their content to.

Consistency is the compound interest of social media. It takes time to build momentum. The creators who post daily for 90 days — even imperfectly — almost always outperform the ones who post perfectly for two weeks and disappear.

A sustainable rhythm beats a perfect one.

6. Use Topic Tags Strategically

Threads has its own version of hashtags called Topic Tags.

The approach that works is writing posts with natural-language, searchable phrasing rather than just tagging with labels. Think about how your audience would search for the topic, not how you would categorise it internally.

A post titled “How to avoid the 3 most expensive mistakes in IoT platform development” will surface in search and explore feeds far better than a post labelled “#IoT #tips #platform.”

Think of every Threads post as a small SEO document — clear, specific, and searchable.

7. Track What Works — Then Double Down

After 30 days of consistent posting, review your analytics.

Look at which posts generated the most replies, reposts, and profile visits. Look at which formats performed best. Look at when your audience is most active.

Then ask the right questions:

  • Was it the hook?
  • Was it the topic?
  • Was it the format?
  • Was it the time of posting?

Once you find a pattern, replicate it deliberately. If a contrarian take about IoT got ten times the engagement of a how-to tip, that is your signal. Create more contrarian takes.

Optimal posting time, based on data from millions of Threads posts, tends to be weekday mornings. But your specific audience may behave differently. Trust your own data over general advice.

The Mistake That Will Kill Your Growth

The biggest strategic mistake on Threads is treating it as a broadcast channel.

Post. Drop a link. Disappear. Repeat.

That is not how this platform works.

Threads rewards people who show up as humans — who share real perspectives, engage in real conversations, and build genuine community around specific ideas.

The creators growing fastest on Threads are not the ones with the most polished content. They are the ones who are most consistently present, most willing to share a real opinion, and most genuinely interested in the conversations they start.<br>

A Final Observation

Every time a new platform emerges, the majority of creators wait too long before taking it seriously.

They watch early movers build audiences and wonder what the secret was.

The secret is usually just timing and consistency.

Threads in 2026 is still in that early window. The organic reach is real. The opportunity is real. The platform is actively investing in creator features and expanding monetisation options.

But windows close.

The question is not whether Threads is worth your time. The question is whether you will show up consistently enough and early enough to benefit from it.

I hope this playbook gives you a clear starting point.

Now go post something.

Dr. Mazlan Abbas is the CEO and co-founder of FAVORIOT, an AIoT platform company. He writes about IoT, startups, smart cities, and personal brand building at mazlanabbas.com.