Learn how Ville Tolvanen increased his LinkedIn reach fivefold and built a visible voice around board work with Haamu’s interview-based thought leadership process. 👇
Executive summary
Ville Tolvanen is a Finnish entrepreneur, strategist, and professional board member who has spent decades working with digital business and growth companies.
While Ville had been active on LinkedIn for years, the platform had not yet become a systematic channel for communicating his thinking about board work, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Together with Haamu, Ville began building a consistent LinkedIn presence designed to:share practical insights about board workreach younger entrepreneurs and growth company leadersposition himself as a reformer in the field of governanceshow more of his personality alongside his advisory work.
Instead of requiring more effort from Ville, the process reduced his workload while increasing his impact.
As Ville explains:
"The surprising thing for me is how little time this actually takes. My time investment is probably one fifth of what it used to be. I spend an hour in the interview and after that I basically just review and approve the posts. That’s it.”
Within months, the results were visible across reach, engagement, and inbound conversations.
Key Results
5 months with Haamu vs. 5 months period before us
Starting point
Before working with Haamu, Ville had already been active on social media for years. He had written extensively about digital business, leadership, and entrepreneurship. But his communication had not yet been structured around a clear narrative about board work and governance.
One of the key goals was to bring more visibility to the topic of board work and help a wider audience understand what actually happens inside a boardroom.
At the same time, Ville wanted to shift how he himself was perceived professionally.
The goal was not just visibility, but positioning:
👻 Strengthening his role as a professional board member
👻 Reaching younger entrepreneurs and growth company leadersbringing his entrepreneurial and investment experience into the conversation
But like many experienced professionals, Ville faced a familiar challenge: time.
Running companies, working with boards, and advising organizations left very little room for consistent content creation.
Discovering Haamu
Ville first came across Haamu through another well-known Finnish entrepreneur.
He had noticed a clear shift in the LinkedIn presence of Sami Lampinen from Growberries.
The content was suddenly more active, more engaging, and more consistent.Ville decided to ask how it was being done.
"I noticed that Sami’s LinkedIn had changed quite a bit. His posts were interesting, funny, and there seemed to be a clear rhythm to them. So I asked him about it, and the first thing he said was: this takes almost no time from me.”
That insight was what convinced Ville to try the Haamu model!
For him, the key question was simple: could this approach increase the impact of his communication without increasing the time required?
The answer turned out to be yes.
Approach
The collaboration with Haamu is built around a simple process: a monthly interview where ideas, experiences, and observations are explored together.
Those conversations then become the raw material for LinkedIn content.
For Ville, the biggest surprise was how much knowledge surfaced through the discussion itself.
“When someone asks you questions about your work, you suddenly start explaining things you normally take for granted. You realize you have a lot of knowledge that isn’t in your active memory – it’s just part of your experience. The questions help bring those ideas out.”
This process also helped translate highly specialized topics into more accessible communication. As Ville points out, experts often struggle with this themselves.
"When you work deeply inside a field, it’s very easy to speak at too high a level. You assume everyone understands the same context that you do. What Haamu does well is turning those ideas into something that people can actually relate to and understand.”
Another key element is experimentation. Not every post needs to be perfect, and it’s often impossible to predict which ideas will resonate the most.
“If you look at my ten most successful posts, they were all surprises. There’s no way you could have predicted beforehand that those would be the ones people respond to.”
The process is therefore designed to learn continuously from the data.
“Most marketing is still based on internal opinions. What’s interesting here is that the approach is data-driven. You look at what works, learn from it, and adjust.”
Results
Within months, the impact of the new approach became visible in the data.
Ville’s LinkedIn content began reaching significantly larger audiences, generating more engagement, and creating more conversations around board work and leadership.The growth was visible both in overall visibility and in the consistency of performance across posts.“
The numbers are honestly quite incredible. Even doubling the results would have been a good outcome. Seeing this kind of growth in reach and engagement is fantastic.”
But the numbers were only part of the story.Ville also began to notice a clear shift in how people approached him in professional situations.
Prospective collaborators and companies were already familiar with his thinking before the first meeting even took place.
“I’ve had situations where I walk into a board interview and someone tells me: I’ve read all your posts from the past three months. At that point the discussion is already very different. The conversation is no longer about who you are – it’s about what you’re going to do together.”
In other words, the communication had already done part of the work before the meeting started.The content had created familiarity and credibility long before the first handshake.
Key Results in five months vs. 5 months period before
👻 Posts: 108 → 135 (1.25× volume)
👻 Impressions: 205 k → 1.06 M (5× reach)
👻 Reactions: 3 749 → 11 852 (3× engagement)
👻 Comments: 416 → 1 751 (4.2× conversations)
👻 Multiple viral posts (50k+ views), including one reaching over 200k people on LinkedIn
Want to try it, too?
For Ville, the collaboration ultimately came down to something very simple: impact.
"You could say that Haamu helps translate expertise into communication that actually works. The ideas are mine, but they’re presented in ways that are often more interesting, more visual, and sometimes even more daring than what I would come up with myself.”
And for someone with decades of experience in business and strategy, that translation turned out to be extremely valuable. 🤝
Ready to build your own LinkedIn growth story? Let’s have a chat!
