The standard every build is held to
The rules every build follows, and the checks that hold it to them. The core is the same on every account; your profile adapts the benchmarks, the buyers, the voice and the offers to your market.
Rewritten the day reality breaks a rule
# The working standard, in part
SettingsAudience expansion off
TestsCut by leads, then form opens
LaunchRead back after every write
The rest is kept in the working standard
Twelve years of LinkedIn accounts, written down
What worked was kept, and what cost money became a rule. When a rule fails in practice, it is rewritten the same day, and a check is added where a script can run it.
Who wrote it$20M
In LinkedIn ad spend, over twelve years
Dozens of accounts
In-house, agency-side and fractional
Every placement
And every objective, across verticals
Source · Asher Yiftachel, 2015–2026
Every part of a LinkedIn account, a few rules shown in full
The working standard stays private: it is what every build is checked against, and it changes as we learn. Here is what each part is for, with a rule from some of them.
Settings
LinkedIn's defaults are set up to spend; these are set up so each ad and audience gets enough data to judge.
Shown in full
Audience expansion off
Expansion serves outside the targeting and makes a campaign untestable. Left on across four audiences, it ended the test.
Checked by scriptTest design
What is tested in each round, when it is read, and what is cut.
Shown in full
Cut by leads, then form opens
Never by click-through, recency or how much someone likes the concept.
Checked by scriptCopy
What an ad may say, and where every number in it comes from.
Shown in full
An ad only sells what exists
And what it promises arrives within minutes of the form being sent.
Checked by a personLaunch and verification
How a build reaches your account, and how it is checked once there.
Shown in full
Read back after every write
The account is read again after each change and compared with what was sent. A success code is not proof.
Checked by scriptWorking with you
Who approves, and what nForce must say it inferred.
Shown in full
One named approver
Theirs is the only go that counts, and what nForce inferred about your buyers or brand is labelled until you confirm it.
Checked by a person
The other parts
Account structure
How groups, campaigns and ads are laid out, so every result can be read.
Audiences
Who is targeted, how each audience is sized, and how campaigns are kept from bidding against each other.
Creative
Images, documents and video in your brand, and when an ad has tired.
Forms
The form behind the ad, matched to what the ad offers.
Formats and objectives
What changes for each LinkedIn format and objective, from budgets to bids.
Reporting
How results are read, and what may be concluded from them.
The rest of each part is kept in the working standard
A failing build is fixed or refused, never shown
Every rule has one of three kinds of check, and the brief you receive lists the result of each check on your build.
Checked by script
A script checks the plan and the account before you see anything, and again after every write.
Checked by a person
Someone reads what a script can't judge, such as whether the ad's promise matches the form behind it.
Kept by habit
Where nothing can check a rule yet, it is part of the routine on every build, written down until a check exists.
One standard, set to your market
The core rules don't bend. The numbers they are measured against, and what they are applied to, come from your profile, which you can read and correct.
The same on every account
- How the account is structured
- The settings LinkedIn's defaults get wrong
- How tests are designed, read and cut
- Built paused, and every write read back
- The checks every build passes
Set by your profile
- Benchmarks for each kind of offer, marked provisional until your own forms have enough opens
- Budget floors for each objective
- Your buyers, your markets and the companies to exclude
- Your voice, and the words your brand never uses
- Your offers, and which customers may be named
- Your targets and your budget
Start with a free audit
Add nForce to Claude, sign in with LinkedIn read-only, and type “audit my LinkedIn account”. The report is ready about three minutes after you answer its questions.