You start making an infographic by opening Canva.

Yeah, that's the problem.

I sat down with Vince Pierri last week, and within the first ten minutes of chatting he said something that changed how I think about visual content entirely. Vince went from zero to 30,000 followers in about a year, almost entirely through infographics.

But Vince barely talked about design. He talked about filtering.

Here's what most people do when they decide to post an infographic on LinkedIn:

They think of a topic. They find a template. They drop their text into boxes. They hit publish. Then they wonder why it got 47 impressions and zero saves.

I've seen this happen with clients who have strong ideas, real expertise, and audiences that genuinely care about their work. The process is backwards.

You're starting with the container when you should be starting with the content selection. It's like choosing the frame before you've painted anything.

Vince put it more bluntly. He's seen people copy the exact visual format from a post that got thousands of likes, plug in their own content, and completely flop. The visual itself is worthless. It's stale milk in a beautiful glass.

Vince runs every infographic idea through four filters before he opens a single design file. If the idea doesn't pass all four, he doesn't make it. Period.

Filter 1: Does it hit a real pain point?

Are you taking about a specific problem your reader (or even better, your buyer) is actively trying to solve right now. The difference between "content strategy tips" and "how to write a landing page that actually converts" is the difference between a scroll-past and a save.

Filter 2: Is it immediately actionable?

Can someone look at this infographic and do something different today? Not next quarter. Not after they read three books. Today. Vince worked with Tas Bober on a landing page infographic that hit 1,600 likes and drove 700 new followers in a few days. The reason it worked: someone could screenshot it and use it while building their next page.

Filter 3: Is it a less saturated solution?

If twenty other creators already posted about this exact thing this month, your version needs to be significantly different or you're just adding noise.

This filter is the one most people skip because it requires you to actually look at what's already out there before you create.

Filter 4: Is it dense?

This is the save-rate filter. High-density content packs so much usable information into one visual that the reader can't absorb it all in one pass. They have to save it. Vince tracks this obsessively. His threshold: 3% save rate or above means the content is working. Below that, something in the density is off.

Vince had a post that he thought would perform well: "How to turn expertise into viral content." It got 150 likes and a 2.6% save rate. Decent by most standards, but it failed his density filter. The topic was too broad to pack enough specific, usable information into a single visual. It passed the first three filters but missed the fourth.

That specificity in tracking is what separates a system from a guess.

The four filters tell you whether an idea is worth making. But where do the ideas come from in the first place?

This is where most people rely on random brainstorming or whatever topic feels timely that week. Vince does something different. He builds what he calls a mind map of the founder's (or creator's) entire body of knowledge. A complete architecture of how someone thinks about their industry.

It starts with the broadest categories of their expertise, then nests deeper and deeper into specific subtopics, frameworks, and micro-level tactics. Once the map exists, creating content becomes a selection problem, not an invention problem. You zoom in to a specific branch for a high-density infographic. You zoom out to a broader branch for a POV text post. The map tells you what to make and at what level of specificity.

I love this approach because it solves the "what should I post about" problem permanently. You're not starting from scratch every week. You're navigating a map you already built.

And here's where it connects back to the four filters: once you pick a branch from your mind map, you run it through the filters. Does this specific subtopic hit a real pain point? Is it actionable today? Is it less saturated? Can I pack it with enough density to force saves? If yes to all four, you make it. If not, you pick a different branch.

If you're thinking about creating visual content on LinkedIn, here's what I'd suggest trying before you open any design tool:

Map first, filter second, design last. Spend 30 minutes mapping out the major branches of your expertise. What are the 5-7 big categories you know deeply? Under each one, what are the specific frameworks, processes, or tactics? Get it all down.

Run the four filters on your next three ideas. Before you make anything, ask: real pain point? Actionable today? Less saturated? High density? Be honest. If an idea fails even one filter, shelve it and try the next branch on your map.

Track your save rate. Most people track likes. Start tracking saves. It's the closest signal to whether your content is genuinely useful or just agreeable. The 3% threshold is a good starting benchmark.

Another quick tip: animate it. Vince says animated GIF infographics perform the best. Try using Jitter for that.

I'll be honest, I tend to jump straight to "what does this look like" before I've done the hard work of filtering. This conversation with Vince made me realize filtering IS the work. The design is the last 20%.

Most of us start with the container. We pick the template, the colors, the layout. And then we try to make our content fit inside it. Vince flipped that completely. The content selection comes first. The filtering comes second. The visual comes last.

And that's why it's so much work. That's also why it works.

Next time you sit down to create something visual, try running the four filters first. If the idea survives all four, it's worth the design time. If it doesn't, you just saved yourself hours on something that was going to underperform anyway.

Stay caffeinated,

Christine

Where to go next?

Or just reply to this email to say hello!

Vincent Pierri: “So the first one, the graphic has to be solving an actual pain point. ... The second one is it has to be something they can take action on immediately. ... It has to be a slightly less saturated solution. ... then lastly, high density. ... Those four things, every single time, if you can really hit those four, it will explode.”

Vincent Pierri: “the density meaning people can look at it, skim it, get the basic idea, but there is too much information to fully internalize it in one setting. So you have to click save. The saves are what drive the virality most of the time.”

Vincent Pierri: “I basically have to make a mind map. And that mind map is not just random ideas, it is the complete architecture for how they [founders] think about their industry. ... it guarantees that everything you post is not just random crap, it's your actual thinking as the founder, it's what you actually do for clients or the actual things that you most believe in actually lead to real outcomes so you know it's gonna be valuable”

Vincent Pierri: “If the whole image has one primary shape that often will perform better. ... there's basically 10 to 20 basic shapes that are infographic shapes ... any of them can work for anything so a step-by-step process you can visualize as a pyramid just put step one on the bottom ... you can do it as a funnel and put step one at the top”

Vincent Pierri: “if you have the perfect infographic and you don't write a good hook in the text post, it doesn't even matter. ... it's gotta be here's an outcome you're after and then here's some kind of tease of how this post will help you get to that outcome. ... hide the POV of the post. ... I try to go five or six lines in before I actually tell anybody what to do.”

I'm Christine Orchard. I host Marketers Do Coffee to learn how LinkedIn actually works from the people who do each part best. I also run Orchard Strategy, a LinkedIn strategy and content agency. We handle the whole channel for B2B founders, executives, and consultants, from positioning through to publishing.