#241: Lara Acosta — How LinkedIn’s fastest-growing female creator uses the platform

Summary

Creator Science Episode #241: Lara Acosta — How LinkedIn’s Fastest-Growing Female Creator Uses the Platform

Release Date: February 4, 2025
Host: Jay Clouse

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Introduction

In episode #241 of Creator Science, host Jay Clouse welcomes Lara Acosta, one of LinkedIn’s fastest-growing female creators. Lara shares her insights on leveraging LinkedIn for personal branding, content creation, and audience growth. Drawing from her experience of generating tens of millions of impressions, Lara delves into effective strategies, the role of storytelling, the nuances of using video on LinkedIn, and the importance of genuine engagement.

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Lara's Growth Strategy on LinkedIn

Networking at Scale
Starting with no job experience or connections, Lara emphasized the importance of networking extensively on LinkedIn. She likened the platform to "the biggest networking conference in the world that never sleeps" ([02:28]). This mindset allowed her to build connections and visibility despite having no initial foothold.

The SLAY Framework for Content Creation

Story, Lesson, Actionable Advice, You (SLAY)
Lara introduced her proprietary SLAY framework, which structures her LinkedIn posts to maximize engagement and impact.

• Story: Every post begins with a compelling personal story.
• Lesson: She extracts a clear lesson from her experience.
• Actionable Advice: Provides practical tips for her audience.
• You: Ends with a personal touch, encouraging reader interaction.

"Every single piece of content I ever write always has to have an ingrained story in it, because that's what always makes it feel like even if I'm saying the most basic type of information, it's mine, no one else's." — Lara Acosta ([07:00])

The Role of Visuals and Hooks in Posts

Crafting the Perfect Hook
Lara stresses the significance of the first line in LinkedIn posts, recommending it be 8-10 words to capture attention on mobile feeds. She compares hooks to YouTube thumbnails and titles, aiming to evoke specific emotions that compel readers to click "see more."

"The hook should look and feel like the thumbnail and title of a YouTube video that you want to watch. Think about it as a game of YouTube." — Lara Acosta ([09:13])

Importance of Visual Elements
Lara advocates for accompanying posts with high-quality images or videos. She believes that visual elements significantly enhance engagement and prevent posts from being overlooked.

"If a post on LinkedIn doesn't have an image attached to it, a good quality image as well, it's missing out on even performing better." — Lara Acosta ([14:22])

Views on Video Strategy

Video is Overrated for Growth on LinkedIn
Contrary to the current trend, Lara argues that video content is not the optimal strategy for growth on LinkedIn. Through personal experimentation, she found that photo and text-based posts yielded higher engagement compared to videos.

"Video for growth on LinkedIn is absolutely overrated and it actually doesn't do well for growth." — Lara Acosta ([26:25])

She attributes this to LinkedIn’s user base, which predominantly comprises professionals who prefer quick, text-based interactions over lengthy video content. Lara emphasizes that while video enhances personal branding, it does not necessarily contribute to audience growth on the platform.

Engagement and Building Relationships

Post-Publish Engagement Routine
Lara dedicates a significant portion of her day to engaging with her audience. After posting, she spends time responding to comments on her own posts and interacting with others’ content. This active engagement boosts her posts' visibility and fosters a sense of community.

"The more comments I get, the bigger that comment count gets, the more formal it attracts naturally." — Lara Acosta ([32:07])

Authentic Interactions Over Templates
Lara cautions against relying solely on generic call-to-action (CTA) templates. She highlights that genuine engagement and personalized interactions yield better results than automated or formulaic prompts.

"Just because you have a good call to action, like tag a friend below or like, tell me what you think, it doesn't mean that people are going to be incentivized to reply." — Lara Acosta ([44:56])

Utilizing Links and Call-to-Actions

Strategic Use of Links
While traditional wisdom suggests that links may reduce post visibility, Lara has successfully integrated them by ensuring her posts provide value and compelling reasons for followers to click. She uses links to lead her audience to free resources or specific landing pages, enhancing trust and conversion rates.

"I've gone viral with photos with link on it because the post is good and people are clicking on the link." — Lara Acosta ([48:02])

Effective CTAs
Lara emphasizes the importance of aligning CTAs with audience desires. Instead of generic prompts, she recommends directing followers to valuable resources or engaging them in meaningful conversations.

The Potential of LinkedIn Company Pages

Strategic Use of Company Pages
Lara discusses the role of LinkedIn company pages, noting that while they receive less visibility compared to personal profiles, they can enhance brand authority and serve as additional engagement channels when managed effectively.

"Company pages can still grow and add authority as a business or if I was just trying to grow it to then further push my own business agenda and trying to sell more." — Lara Acosta ([40:10])

She shares examples of successful company pages, like her friend Jake Wood’s "LinkedIn Creator" page, which effectively funnels engagement to their respective tools and services.

Common Misconceptions About LinkedIn Growth

Overemphasis on Viral Trends
Lara warns against chasing viral trends without aligning them with personal or business goals. She argues that sustainable growth stems from authentic content and consistent engagement rather than temporary trends or gimmicks.

"People get lost on the hype of video... they confuse their goals a lot." — Lara Acosta ([42:59])

Importance of Purposeful Branding
Building a personal brand should be driven by clear objectives. Lara stresses the need for creators to understand why they are building their brand and how it aligns with their long-term goals.

"If you don't know why you're doing something, then it's not going to work because your heart isn't in it." — Lara Acosta ([44:28])

Connection Requests and Personalization

Personalized Connection Requests
Lara highlights the necessity of tailoring connection requests to stand out amidst the plethora of generic invites. Personalized messages that reference mutual interests or show genuine appreciation significantly increase acceptance rates.

"If I'm trying to connect with Jay, I would say... 'I loved your podcast with Karen Drew. It was so good... Thank you so much for putting this effort into your podcast.'" — Lara Acosta ([52:16])

Building Genuine Relationships
Beyond sending personalized requests, Lara emphasizes the importance of nurturing those connections through consistent and meaningful interactions, fostering a network that is both supportive and engaged.

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Conclusion

Lara Acosta’s approach to LinkedIn is a masterclass in authenticity, strategic engagement, and thoughtful content creation. By focusing on storytelling, genuine interactions, and aligning her efforts with platform-specific behaviors, Lara has carved out a significant presence on LinkedIn. Her insights serve as valuable guidance for creators aiming to navigate and excel in the competitive landscape of content creation.

Notable Quotes:

• "The hook should look and feel like the thumbnail and title of a YouTube video that you want to watch." — Lara Acosta ([09:13])
• "Video for growth on LinkedIn is absolutely overrated and it actually doesn't do well for growth." — Lara Acosta ([26:25])
• "People get lost on the hype of video... they confuse their goals a lot." — Lara Acosta ([42:59])

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For more insights and actionable strategies, tune into Creator Science each week and empower your content creation journey through evidence-backed methods.

Transcript

[Klaus]

As you start to reach more people, things start to feel more complex, there's more to do and more to keep track of and it starts to actually take time away from creating content. I felt this struggle personally. The more Creator Science grew, the more it felt like I was dropping the ball. So I did something about it. I built a set of rock solid systems all in notion to support the business as we grew and it worked like a charm. I built Creator HQ to be an all in one workspace designed to save you more time, create more content and drive more revenue. By leveraging Creator hq, we are publishing more than we ever have and we're nearing $1 million in annual revenue because of it. It brings all of your data and processes into one place with custom built dashboards to reduce friction in managing tasks, creating content and collaborating with your team. I've spent more than three years building this and now you can have the same systems that I use right out of the box. If you're new to Notion, don't worry. I've included a ton of specific tutorials to help you learn how to use Notion generally and Creator HQ specifically. I've never seen another Notion product integrate.

[Andrew]

Tutorials like we have here.

[Klaus]

More than 300 other creators are already using Creator HQ and I am not exaggerating when I say I would be lost without this system. As a podcast listener, I'm giving you my best price. You can get 10% off using the promo code podcast at checkout. Just head to CreatorHQ Co to watch the video and learn more. That's CreatorHQ Co and use promo code podcast to save 10%.

[Lara Acosta]

I was no one. I had no job experience, no connections, nothing. When you're trying to be seen for the first time, the only thing I could do was network at scale. My mental reframe for this is looking at LinkedIn like the biggest networking conference in the world that never goes to sleep.

[Klaus]

Hello my friend.

[Andrew]

Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science.

[Klaus]

My guest today is Lara Acosta. If you're publishing on LinkedIn, I bet you've come across a few of Laura's posts there as she's one of the fastest growing creators on the platform. Laura specializes in personal branding and teaching people how to tell short stories in their post. As a result of her Slay framework, that's S L A Y, which you'll hear about in this conversation. Lara has generated tens of millions of impressions on LinkedIn. In this episode, Lara teaches us her secrets to growth on LinkedIn. Her outlook on the future of video on the platform, how she thinks about the opportunity of company pages and more. I had a chance to meet Lara in person when I spoke at one Billion Follower Summit in Dubai last month. She was speaking as well and she's an inspiring, high energy person that I.

[Andrew]

Think you'll really enjoy learning from here today.

[Klaus]

I'd love to hear what you think about this episode. If you're listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment directly on this episode. Otherwise tag me Klaus on Instagram. I love to see who listens to.

[Andrew]

The show and I reshare those posts as well.

[Klaus]

Okay, let's dive in and hear from Lara.

[Andrew]

Lara, so great to have you here on the show. Been following you on LinkedIn for a long time. So today I want to get in the mind of Lara Acosta. You're showing up to the keyboard in the morning.

[Klaus]

What does your plan of attack for.

[Andrew]

LinkedIn for the day look like? Not necessarily today in particular, but in general, what does your plan of attack look like?

[Lara Acosta]

I absolutely love this question because the majority of people ask me what my content scheduling itinerary looks like and I have none. Only until like yesterday. Maybe I schedule content because I have to get ahead because of before Christmas, but usually I wake up and I kind of like just write. I like writing all the time. Luckily for me, I found a very big passion for writing. So then I think about topics that I could be writing about that would be valuable to my audience. So I always go into writing with the how can I help my audience today? What can I teach them? What did I learn recently? What am I going through? And what is that one keyword that I can use that could tie everything together. So having a very solid base of things that I can talk about, LinkedIn, writing, storytelling, productivity, entrepreneurship helps me guide my thoughts in the right direction so it can become content that is applicable to the majority of my audience.

[Andrew]

When you think about this like amorphous entity that is the majority of your audience, how do you think about that entity? Because it could be an author, it.

[Klaus]

Could be a coach, it could be a consultant. So when you're sitting down saying, how.

[Andrew]

Do I create something of value for my audience? How do you run that through a filter that you have confidence will work?

[Lara Acosta]

Honestly, I don't know. I am the biggest pain to any coach that tries to coach me because they always go in, who's your target audience? Was your icp? And I'm like, I don't know. Even when I had the agency full time, I started off running a ghostwriting Puzzle running agency. I never had an icp. I always just had a feeling, almost like a, like a vibe of person that I wanted to attract and I was like the go getter, the one that wants to improve themselves. Age doesn't really matter. Like I attract people that are 15 years old, 20 years old, 23, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60. The one thing they all have in common is that they want to grow and they are very curious about the Internet and they really like both a very professional style, but also quite relaxed in a way that the professional teaching, which is me, doesn't take themselves too seriously is still very tapped into the vein of what's going on with the Gen Z trends, but also understands how B2B works in a more corporate like level. And because it's so wide, I can't really define, but I just know they are innovative people who are excited to gain new knowledge but also really appreciate the core fundamentals of marketing.

[Klaus]

I think there's a couple ways that.

[Andrew]

You can like skin the cat when it comes to an ideal client Persona, right? You could have the demographic answer or even like the job title answer. You could have the outcome based answer. You could have the psychographic answer. So I think a lot of people get caught up like when they think oh, I need to come up with demographics, like who is my audience in terms of age, where they live, male, female, what's their job? But like you're saying, I think the more useful way of thinking about your avatar is what do they want? What does this person want? Because that can cut across any generation, any job title, it's more outcome based. And I think when you're known for specific outcomes rather than identities is better for you anyway.

[Lara Acosta]

It is more about what do they want to learn today that's going to make their life easier tomorrow.

[Klaus]

When you're writing, what type of benchmarks.

[Andrew]

Do you have to know this is done? How do you know when like okay, I had an idea and I've written it and now it's good enough.

[Lara Acosta]

At the start it was very complicated because writing on LinkedIn is very fluffless. People that are actual copywriters hate LinkedIn content because it avoids the majority of the nuance which is where the majority of storytellers thrive because it's all the little elements that would make a story great or like how direct to consumer would work, which is very salesy. A LinkedIn post that for me feels done is the one that has a compelling hook, arrived to the point very quickly and then has a last finishing line that summarizes everything. I created this framework called the Slave framework, and I am known for saying slay because I'm just so Gen Z it kind of hurts. But over time I was. My friends were asking me like, do you have a framework to write the way you do? And I'm like, not really. But I always start with the story, lead with a lesson, have some actionable pieces of advice in there, and always end with a you. And they were like, lara, that is literally slay. And so from that, every single piece of content I ever write always has to have an ingrained story in it, because that's what always makes it feel like even if I'm saying the most basic type of information, it's mine, is no one else's.

[Andrew]

And why is that important?

[Lara Acosta]

Online writing has become such a massive thing. Over the last two to three years we've seen a boom. Right now LinkedIn has over 1 billion users. Maybe like 2 to 3% are posting weekly, etc. And so even on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube knowledge has become a true commodity for most people. And so how you differentiate your knowledge between you and chatgpt is you turn the how to into a how I. And the only way you do that is through storytelling things that you've only experienced yourself.

[Andrew]

I love that I'm going to come back to that for sure. You mentioned the hook being one of the most important points of this writing effort on LinkedIn. How do you define the hook on LinkedIn? Is it the first line is everything before the read more. How do you think about it?

[Lara Acosta]

So the hook is the first line and on LinkedIn you have two lines, maybe one before you get to the see more. Right. So the first line is inequivocally the most important one and it should always be around 8 to 10 words long. The reason why is because when you're scrolling on mobile, which is where the majority of people read the LinkedIn content, it is statistically proven about 60 to 70% of LinkedIn users scroll LinkedIn on their mobile. So having that 8 to 10 word benchmark for the hook allows you to communicate what you're saying without it spilling over in your phone. So people can see exactly what you're trying to say within the first line without having to wonder what it is. The idea is that the hook is so compelling that they feel like they should click on see more and then read the entire post. The second line is called the rehog. And ideally this would be like almost like either bait and switch so you'll say something like, here's how to grow in LinkedIn without spending thousands of hours writing content. That is something like, you get them to bite into the hook and then you switch them up. Because most people would think that in order to grow, they will need to spend thousands of hours on LinkedIn, for example, and then you can use that to then further compel someone to keep on reading your content on LinkedIn.

[Andrew]

I know a lot of this is probably second nature to you now, so this may be difficult to go back and say, like, okay, how do I think about this? But the word compelling is interesting because I think intuitively we know something needs to be compelling for us to take action on it or we won't do it. But how do we actually engineer something to be compelling? How do you think through, Okay, I.

[Klaus]

Have a little bit of an idea.

[Andrew]

But now how do I make that compelling?

[Lara Acosta]

So I'm lucky enough that I teach a course. It's called literally Academy. And I have to go through this every single time. And I have to remind myself of where I started. And I'm such a child of the Internet. I grew up watching YouTube, and for me, I always try to Compare it to YouTube videos and thumbnails. When you go onto the YouTube discovery page, all you see is two things, thumbnails and titles, right? So all of us, either with Netflix tv, we know the title and we know the thumbnail. Every single hook should look and feel like the thumbnail and title of a YouTube video that you want to watch, right? So if you think about it in your head like a game of YouTube, and you think, this is the thumbnail I want to click on, because what is it making me feel? And you need to connect it back to emotions. So how do we do that? With words. We illustrate the emotion that we want to compel to our audience to read. Are you trying to make them curious? Are you trying to make them excited? Are you trying to educate them on something? So if you're trying to educate them, for example, we're going to leave with how to do ideal thing that you want to do, right? It doesn't have to be something crazy like, I just made a million dollars in two days, because obviously that's very unattainable for the majority of us. But if you're teaching something to someone that doesn't know how to do that thing, but they do want to know how to learn, then you do just that. How to decide outcome. Or if you're trying to tell a story, I did amazing thing while not being as amazing as I thought it was. So I just made $10 in one hour by cleaning cars on the street. That's interesting enough for someone that might be going through something like that. So we're trying to reframe it from just words into emotions and using psychology to write. And for me, it's obviously now quite easy to find, but I kind of had to teach myself that through reading Influence by Robert Cialdini and just having more conversations. I'm known for going to networking events, but I don't do any networking at all in order to, like, exchange cards and like, oh, let's exchange synergies. I go there to test out ideas and see what words people like to react to. That is my favorite way of finding stories and actually creating compelling hooks. Because then in real life, I get to test different emotional things that people get to react to.

[Andrew]

That's interesting. So you're saying in real life you'll talk to people and you'll tell stories and you'll gauge their physical reaction to say that story did something.

[Lara Acosta]

Yes, yes. That's how I've become such a better storyteller. I used to have stage fright, and I remember five years ago when I wanted to be nominated for social media head of my powerlifting society. My throat shut and I couldn't talk and I felt like I wanted to cry. And since then, I've been making an active effort to expose myself to speaking more, because the more I speak, the better I write, because the better I can communicate my stories. Everything's communication, right? From storytelling to writing to public speaking. So that's a cute little trick I've picked up over the last year.

[Andrew]

I like that. I like the unlock of thinking about your first line, your hook, as if it was a YouTube title.

[Lara Acosta]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

When you're talking about thumbnails, are you implicitly saying that the majority of your posts also have an image as the post type?

[Lara Acosta]

Yes. Yes, 100%. Everything's about the packaging. And people forget. YouTube is the best like sample for that is the biggest platform. I think it's the top of. Top of the social chain on social media. And for me, if A post on LinkedIn doesn't have an image attached to it, a good quality image as well, it's missing a shot of even performing even better. A lot of people like to write text only just because they either don't have photos to post or they just don't like it, or they just have this whole Persona around just text post. I just feel like it's a waste of time and energy to not give your post that extra boost. Obviously on YouTube, we've seen it. There's so many anomalies where the thumbnail is literally just a screen grab of the video itself. And it does well because either the person does the carrying for the video or the title. But usually for beginners and even me, I rather have a great thumbnail and a great title and have them both do the work together and not just alienate each other.

[Klaus]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because some people have different viewer behavior.

[Klaus]

Right.

[Andrew]

Some people, they are more text based where they'll read the first hook and that's what hooks them. Other people are scrolling for some sort of scroll stopping image.

[Lara Acosta]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

When you say that you lean on.

[Klaus]

Images, do you specifically mean the image.

[Andrew]

Post type or are you also lumping in like carousels, the document upload style, things? Videos?

[Lara Acosta]

All of them. All of them. I do text posts, photos, carousels, videos, everything. If you guys go and look at my LinkedIn profile right now, maybe 99% this year has been accompanied with some sort of like video or image. Naturally, because I have this rule that I will only create content that I consume. I will never create content that I would never read myself. And I am a visual learner first. So why would I not accompany that with my own content? And I'm so glad you mentioned carousels, because a year ago, carousels were the big thing nearly two years ago. And that was the single thing that scaled me up so quickly from nobody to sort of like an authority on LinkedIn.

[Andrew]

So when you say that carousels over the last couple of years are one of the biggest points of inflection for your growth, you're kind of saying that in like a past tense. Has the time passed for carousels to be as effective as they once were?

[Lara Acosta]

Yeah, LinkedIn goes on. Faces is a very. I would say it's a platform that has the most mental crisis that I've seen. It goes on like very quick cycles. So two years ago, carousels took over the entire LinkedIn platform. If you upload a carousel and it was sort of like at 7 out of 10, it would make you go viral like crazy. My friends went from like, I don't know, 50,000 to maybe half a million in a matter of months. I went from about 10,000 to maybe 80,000 in a year or maybe on the. Just because of my use of carousels and obviously my ability to explain things very visually, my visual capacity, my visual storytelling and design skills accompanied everything became one. But then suddenly they sort of stopped working. LinkedIn has this thing and we can get into the video boom, right? Like after, where they push certain things just because they want to create some sort of environment on LinkedIn that is of learning, of exploration, of getting new people into the platform that may make it easier. LinkedIn realistically, is a very low friction platform, if you think about it. In comparison to TikTok, Instagram and all the other video platforms, even YouTube, on LinkedIn you could grow just by posting text only content, right? So there's very low friction, very easy gains. So then when you're trying to appeal to more people and trying to get more customers, because obviously LinkedIn is a business, then you incorporate more elements that may make people stay on the platform for longer. That is the idea of every single social media platform. TikTok does it with like this algorithm that is so addictive, it's in an endless for you page and with Instagram and now for LinkedIn, because their only goal, realistically and has always been, is to help businesses and employers have a better experience at work. Then they push these features out to test and attract more people that have similar values.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's interesting. I would agree with you that LinkedIn changes frequently and yet innovates on the product very, very slowly. So many aspects of the product itself are not impressive. Like the newsletter feature.

[Lara Acosta]

I've never ever used it.

[Andrew]

No, it was amazing because I was in the beta for its launch and I would pick up like 500 new subscribers a day and anything that you publish in the newsletter, it would send to their inbox. It would send them a push notification in the app. And it was like this incredible aggregator of attention. But it didn't even have basic analytics. I think it still doesn't have basic analytics. You can't see what links people click on or how many times. And so you can't make any type of real decisions strategically for content using that tool. I think part of it comes from they're owned by Microsoft and so their goals really have to be aligned with Microsoft's goals, which are pretty much just driving revenue to Microsoft. They don't have to compete the same way that most social platforms compete, because they have like a very sound business on the back end. But it's such a weird place because of this, like, amalgamation of stuff.

[Lara Acosta]

Yeah, that just sums LinkedIn up very well. I can't complain though. I love it. I love it.

[Klaus]

After a quick break, Lara tells us why she's not sold on video as.

[Andrew]

A growth strategy for LinkedIn. So stick around. We'll be right back.

[Klaus]

I am once again inviting you to join our membership for professional creators, the Lab. Of course I am biased, but Andrew is not. Andrew has been a member for about two years now and this was a testimonial he sent me unprompted.

[Andrew]

Joining the Lab has been the single best investment I have made in my business and in myself since I started doing this, going solo since 17 years ago.

[Klaus]

If you benefit from the conversations here on the podcast, you'd love the things.

[Andrew]

We talk about in the Lab.

[Klaus]

In fact, some of the past guests of this show are members themselves. The Lab helps you keep a finger on the pulse of what's working and what's changing for creators right now. I could tell you about all the things that are included, like all of my courses, including build a beloved membership podcast, like a YouTuber, the newsletter masterclass. You get a complimentary copy of Creator hq, our operating system built in notion. But the best thing is the people incredibly generous, incredibly kind, incredibly smart and accomplished people are in the Lab. I could go on and on about this, but just know there is nothing more important to me than continuing to make the Lab the absolute best community for professional creators. You can join the basic tier now, which is an absolute bargain, or you can apply to join our standard or VIP tiers. Just visit creatorscience.comlab to learn more and get started. That's creatorscience.comlab. it's in the show Notes. I hope to see you there. If you know me, you know I'm obsessed with branding. A clear, unique brand is such a differentiator in an attention economy that's getting more competitive all the time. Your brand is in everything you do, including your domain name. But when creators start selling products, they often get stuck behind some long, awkward URL like courses.creatorscience.com it's hard to say, hard to remember, and ultimately it weakens your brand. And that's where store domains come into Play. A.com domain can be anything, but when you hear DudePerfect store, you know it's a store. I picked up my own store domain creatorscience Store, so I can quickly tell people where they can buy some of my most popular products. It's my name, my brand store. And I'm not alone. Store domains are used by more than 1.5 million sellers, including top creators like Mr. Beast, Colin and Samir and Zach King. It does not get more direct than your brand store. And it doesn't just sound cool, it.

[Andrew]

Actually helps you sell more.

[Klaus]

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[Andrew]

And now back to my conversation with Lara Acosta. So is video something that you are particularly putting a lot of emphasis into right now?

[Lara Acosta]

I got very lucky with the video boom on LinkedIn because it was just the natural transition for my content creator journey. So I've always been good at video, I'm not gonna deny it. Every Gen Z that I know would be good at video because we grew up with it. Ever since I was like a little kid, I had a camera on my hand and I've always wanted to be a blogger and I've always delayed that because I put more emphasis on learning how to write and communicate my skills better through content. I have just natural rules when it came to building my business. I didn't want to just be seen as a face, I wanted to be seen as an intellectual mind. And with that, I hid behind the keyboard for like a year or so, trying not to show myself too much because I really wanted to hone in on my skill set of writing, personal branding strategy, all of these things. But then as I grew and my business grew and I could naturally afford a camera, setup, lighting, table, all of these things, it just made so much natural sense for me to progress onto YouTube. I wasn't even trying that hard to do LinkedIn video. Most of my videos now are either podcasts or YouTube clips. But in one day around this time last year or October last year, a guy from Nepal reached out to me and he created this beautiful video, very highly edited. I was familiar with highly edited videos that look very good from like Alexis Musi, Imangadi, all of these people that have high quality editors. And he took this podcast that I made and edited it. And he was like, he posted on LinkedIn, I saw it, I was very grateful for it. And then he sent it to me on an email, which is one of those email style dms on LinkedIn that you kind of have to have credits for. And then he sent me the Google Drive link and he was like, here you go, Queen, I hope you like it. And I accepted the message and I was like, thank you so much. And then he said something like, I paid for LinkedIn Premium just so I could message you. I would love to work and grow your LinkedIn, your YouTube together. Another time I didn't have a YouTube channel, I had no interest. But he saw that I was good at speaking in public, or at least better than the average LinkedIn user who is mostly introverted and they just don't like speaking on camera. So he saw that chance. But I wasn't ready to commit to the investment time. And it wasn't just a priority. I have this thing where I'm always focusing on one platform at a time. First it was LinkedIn, then it was Twitter, then it was newsletter. And I wasn't really going to try and get beyond that because I wasn't interested in video. But then I got very jealous of one of my friends who blew up on YouTube because of a LinkedIn video and he wasn't even a LinkedIn expert. And so jealousy created this entire thing, which was my video. Boom. And here we are.

[Andrew]

So if someone is getting started on the platform today, do you steer them towards video or do you say start with images? Do the slave framework in your post, what's your go to? Like here is the path of least resistance.

[Lara Acosta]

I think video for growth on LinkedIn is absolutely overrated and it actually doesn't do well for growth. Most people come on LinkedIn and they want to grow. I did a challenge for 20 days, I posted video only and I tracked analytics from DMs, leads, growth, followers and unfollowers. And in contrast between my typical growth journey with me posting photo and copy and copy and video, I grew more posting photos and text than videos. So I would always recommend people to start with copy and video because realistically and always culturally, LinkedIn as a platform will always be a text based platform. It's just the culture of how we see LinkedIn and I think people ignore that so much and it's quite frustrating because we're getting all the TikTok influences, creators, entrepreneurs, Instagram, entrepreneurs, YouTube, seeing this LinkedIn video boom going on. But it is hidden in fake views and impressions that LinkedIn is artificially boosting to kind of curate this new video environment that they want to create and generate from scratch. But if you think about the typical LinkedIn user, and I always say this, what are they doing and where are they checking their phone at work, where they don't have headphones, where they can't really watch a video and where they're not really interested in watching a video anyway. If people were interested on video, they will go to TikTok or Instagram where there's subtitles and all these really experienced creators. So I think people are missing the mark that video, it is good for a personal brand regardless of the platform. However, for growth purposes, you need to make it easy for the person who is using that specific platform to get to know you. And that is through text and photo.

[Andrew]

I love that take because I've had a similar experience. I haven't tested video as rigorously as it sounds like you have, but it's been wild to see how high the impression numbers are in these posts. But they don't get any more actual engagement.

[Lara Acosta]

It's so annoying. It has been the most annoying thing to see, especially six months ago when people kept on asking me like, oh my God, is video the future? Is video the future? And just because video works on all the other platform and has grown so much. The thing that makes LinkedIn and even platforms like Twitter so unique is the ability that they attract the introvert. The one that is a deep thinker, that doesn't require it doesn't want to have a setup, that doesn't need to have a mic. They just want to write. Like take people like Naval, he's a great speaker, but he's also a prolific writer. And people like the written form on Twitter because that's what they go to Twitter for. It's the same on LinkedIn. They go to LinkedIn for analytics and like deep data research and very deep thoughts or like very concise explanations that do not require this algorithmic viral video creation with effects and subtitles that realistically that audience doesn't want. And I appreciate it so much. I understand it and I love it. I can create video for it for days. I love YouTube, but as someone that loves LinkedIn and the reason why I chose to grow on LinkedIn was that it allowed me to create a safe space without having to over rely on all the tools like a mic or a camera or a script. It was just me and my keyboard and I think that's very precious.

[Andrew]

Yeah, there's something about if you're able to build an audience through writing rather than video, it just tends to attract a different audience, it seems. A friend of mine posted on Twitter yesterday. He shared a screenshot of his Instagram account and then a screenshot of his Twitter account. And his Instagram account had 1.4 million followers. His Twitter account has like 30,000 something. And he said, I have 1,360,000 fewer followers on Twitter, but if I were to keep one of these, I would keep Twitter, which is insane, right? But it's like, the platforms have different audience selection and even mediums have different.

[Klaus]

Audience selection a lot of the time.

[Andrew]

And I think people miss the point in this in multiple ways. It's not even just about video versus text. I see a lot of people who see, like, oh, I can take an image from Reddit that went viral and post it and then write something fairly generic.

[Klaus]

But because that image has already proven.

[Andrew]

Successful, it will get impressions, it will get views, I will get followers. But what has that done for actual association or relationship building with you since this didn't come from you? I think people chase impressions blindly a lot of the time.

[Lara Acosta]

I love that. I love that you mentioned that. It's so true. And the culture as well. Like, there's a platform for every single archetype of personality and creator, and I think that should be more widely respected and known that people think people just use it as like, oh, this is going viral right now. But what is virality going to do to you if your personality isn't showing? I've seen so many times all of these accounts on Twitter, Instagram, that will post a story about Stephen Bartlett or the guy that wrote Atomic Habits, and it'll go viral, but then they're just known as that person that told that story about that other person.

[Andrew]

Actually, they're not known at all. Yeah, no, they were seen, but they're not actually known at all.

[Lara Acosta]

Yeah. And then they gain all these followers and they post a story about themselves or like an offer and no one listens. And it's, again, it is frustrating. It is the game as well, how you choose to play it. But I truly believe that the people that build their brands from the ground up, with their own personality as a forefront, will end up winning the game at the end.

[Andrew]

I got really far away from my original question and I kind of want to go back here, which is, okay. Lara shows up at the keyboard.

[Klaus]

She's writing.

[Andrew]

That's thing number one. She's writing because she's not necessarily scheduling and getting ahead. But I've also heard you say that you spend a lot of time engaging afterwards. So talk to me about the post publish experience of you at the keyboard.

[Lara Acosta]

It's a whole routine. I need to preface this. It's not sustainable, it is not glamorous. It actually was very hard for me to grow because I was no one. I had no job experience, no connections, nothing. I had zero skills. I was literally just looking for a job on LinkedIn, wanted to get a master's. So when you're trying to be Seen for the first time when you have nothing, no network in real life or online. The only thing I could do was network at scale. And my mental reframe for this is looking at LinkedIn like the biggest networking conference in the world that never goes to sleep. Right? So I knew I had. Well, I was unemployed at the start, so I had all this time to spend networking. And so before it was about five to eight hours connecting with people, DMing people, creating content, engaging with people's content and making lists of people that were like either my top hundred, my dream hundred. I think I heard that from Richard Branson maybe, and made a list of people that I wanted to connect, engage and maybe be seen by. And nowadays it's way less time. Maybe around four to five hours a day where I'll post a post at 12:30 and then for the next hour it's time blocked on my calendar, it's been time blocked for two years and a half. And from 12:30 to 1:30 I'll be engaging on my comment section on my own posts. The reasons for this can be varied. One of them is obviously to boost my own engagement. The more comments I get, the bigger that comment count gets, the more formal it attracts naturally. Almost. Again, back to the YouTube video. If you see a YouTube video, it's the same, but you see one of them has 10,000 views and the other one has 10. Which one are you going to take on? The one that has 10,000. Then again, I applied that to my content and I try and boost my own content by replying to comments, comments by commenting on my own posts. I'm my biggest cheerleader. I have no problem saying that. And I also use that as a chance for people to get to know me a little bit better. And then after that hour, for the next two to three hours, if I have time or on and off, I'll be engaging in other people's content.

[Andrew]

I want to flag something that you said because I can hear people's pencils scratching in their notebook. You said every day you post at 12:30 and I bet a bunch of people were like, oh, 12:30 is the time to post. But I'm wondering if that is related to your time zone and where you live and whether people should hear that differently.

[Lara Acosta]

12:30 in the UK, that could mean like 5am in the US, right?

[Andrew]

It would be 7:30 Eastern.

[Lara Acosta]

Yeah, but I know people that do wake up this early in the morning to post around the same time. Why does this happen? And why did I choose this time before it was 2:30pm because I used to wake up very late because I was at university. But then I was like, this is too late. It's making my day start very late. So I was like, what is the earliest but latest time that I can grab people at the right time? So 12:30 is the time people at work go to eat. And what do people that are eating do? Usually they look at their phone and my ideal customer or client or audience will be looking at their phone and being on LinkedIn. Also in the U.S. if it's 5 to 7am in the morning, what are they doing? They're on their morning commute, they're on the train, they're having breakfast. So I get to kind of like capitalize on both of these people having some free time. And I kind of know that they'll be able to at least see my content and then it increase my likelihood of them seeing me. However. However, when I'm selling, I will push my posting time to around, let's say either 6pm or 4am in my morning. Why? Because the audience with the most buying power is the U.S. naturally, there's a lot more people on LinkedIn in the U.S. so I capitalize on that by posting at those times as well when it comes to sales content because I know that those people are also active. Maybe they just got off work, maybe they're going to work, coming back from work and I can then make them see me more and push my product up. Someone I learned this from was literally Justin Welsh, who I analyzed their keys, content time and posting schedule and I realized that he was posting sales posts in the later end of my day, so it would be around my 6pm or even 4am so then I tested that out and it was true. And some of my friends who are also LinkedIn nerds, we've tested that theory out and it works because it hits the US audience at the right time.

[Andrew]

I like that. I like sharing the context because the context is more important than the specific. Because the specific may change based on the context of where you are. How much have you pushed frequency on your page? Have you thought about posting four times a day?

[Lara Acosta]

No. Never? Never more than twice. I've only posted twice when I launch a product. That's because I have obviously have to promote myself a little bit more than usual. The maximum I've done is seven posts a week for a period of time, maybe month, maybe a month and a half. I started with three posts at the start and the reason why was I wanted to prioritize Quality over quantity, which is a very unheard of thing when you come from the Gary Vee land of like, quality, bro. And I just push content and just do it, do it, do it. Like post, post, post, like just post it. Just fucking but. And I'm like, actually I would really like to maybe not post as much, but create this good experience on my reader that they actually enjoy the content. And it doesn't feel like I just wrote it just to post it, because I feel like if you're disrespecting your audience with a shitty piece of content, they're not going to come back. And I hate that because I can feel like I'm a marketer just inherently. And so I've always posted three times a week at the start because I was again, quality. And now I can post more because I have like a content schedule. Maybe ideas are already validated, the Twitter screenshots that I use, videos that I can create. So I've got more bandwidth for creating content at scale. But if I was starting all over again, it will be three times a week.

[Andrew]

If you could maintain the same quality and double your output, do you think that would double the outcome from your posts?

[Lara Acosta]

Yes, because obviously frequency matters. We'll see people like again. Justin Walsh posting twice a day and it does help because you are maximizing the chances people see you. Right. I haven't been able to nail that at the skill that he has because I don't think that I can create content at scale at that quality that I would like to position myself as. I have a lot of pride on how I write and how concise it is and how clear it is and how fluff free it is. And I feel like if I push myself to do that twice a day, it will start creating some sort of lazy content or like, oh, I just got this done, get it out of the way. And I hate that.

[Klaus]

After one more quick break, Lara shares her take on the potential of company pages on LinkedIn.

[Andrew]

So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

[Klaus]

And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Lara Acosta.

[Andrew]

Where do pages live in your strategy? Because I've seen some folks who they also have a LinkedIn page they'll post to. I see you have like Lara from Literally Academy as a page that you'll post on your own posts.

[Klaus]

What's the upside of having a LinkedIn.

[Andrew]

Page at this point?

[Lara Acosta]

Okay, so it depends on your strategy. Honestly, the Lara but from Literally Academy page is run by one of my admins and it Helps me just create this even further nurturing cycle with my audience. But we don't really post in it. Company pages can still grow. My friend Jake Wood has done it very well with his page, the LinkedIn creator, where it's a content creation page that then leads to a tool, which is amazing. But the reason why I've not been so intentional on it is naturally, by default, LinkedIn company pages are seen 40% less than a personal profile. Which means that the only reason why I would start building my company page would be for more authority as a business or if I was just trying to grow it to then further push my own business agenda and trying to sell more. Right now we're just using it as a hey, we're here type and like as an engagement mechanism where people kind of see the brand everywhere, but it's not the main focus. The focus is me. So that's what my strategy is. But it depends on the business.

[Andrew]

If I create a company page and I comment on my own personal posts.

[Klaus]

Do you think that comment has the.

[Andrew]

Same weight as a third party or even my own profile?

[Lara Acosta]

Yes, it adds, I feel like it really does add that luxury of community that people sleep on a lot. I learned this from obviously Duolingo, who has had the most amazing growth on their page. And I've seen them grow over the last three years from TikTok and seeing how a company can engage in such a engaging way, new, more like up to date, actually conversational, less professional. Adds that security feeling that a lot of my customers are looking for. Many people are scared of buying things from professionals on LinkedIn because they feel like it's too professional or too scary, too rigid, needs a blueprint, needs a specific strategy. And when you're doing that from your company page, you're actually just allowing people to familiarize themselves with you and your brand and kind of see them as a conjunction. So I've seen this with one of my other friends, Jake Wood, who started doing this as well with his company pages, I think is like content growth. And every time I would see it I would just smack because I knew it wasn't the company page. It was probably like one of his assistants or something doing it. But it just, it adds a smile to someone's day when they see the trick. Or like it's just like, why is this company page talking like a 20 year old Gen Z or like a 30 year old millennial? I don't know. And I like it. I find the little plushes on social media the most enjoyable.

[Andrew]

What do you think most people are getting wrong when it comes to LinkedIn right now?

[Lara Acosta]

They're getting lost on the hype of video. They get lost in the hype of everything. They get lost in the hype of templates and any single thing that people see that's working and they confuse their goals a lot. So I run an agency. I know this fast hand where people will come to me for growth and exposure. We'll give them growth and exposure. And guess what? They wanted lead generation, obviously, and they're not clear on what that really looks like. Social media has this thing that does to people that people feel like because they're going viral, it means that they're becoming millionaires at the speed of light, which is a problem that it's been very ingrained in the industry for years. It's no one's fault. It's just natural how people think. And so I feel like people don't go into social media knowing exactly what they want and how they want to achieve it and who they want to become. My thing is LinkedIn personal branding. So people don't even know why they want to build a personal brand. They heard Gary Vee say, they heard me say they had someone else say, build a parcel brand, but they don't know why. And if you don't know why you're doing something, then it's not going to work because your heart isn't in it. I'm big on energy and if it's not aligned, it's not going to happen. And you end up copying someone and you end up going in this endless hamster wheel of like, copying this person and templates and strategy and video and then it all works and you're burnt out because you're following all of these things that don't work for you until you find the thing that actually ends up working for you, which is probably the thing that you wanted at the start.

[Andrew]

Something I've noticed a lot of people do who are good at this that I don't do because I'm not good at this.

[Klaus]

They'll end their posts with a line.

[Andrew]

That'S basically like an explicit call to action, like, hey, repost this if you want more stories and less infographics.

[Klaus]

That was on your last one.

[Andrew]

Or, hey, repost this if you agree or something. And then it'll even have a P.S. like, tag someone in the comments. How much does that move the needle? Is that something that more people should be doing with their posts?

[Lara Acosta]

I think yes and no. I was recently roasting content for my course and we have weekly calls and someone was literally using every single one of my templates and having the good post, call to action. Good post, call to action. It looked exactly the same as mine, but it wasn't getting the same effect. Why community? Just because you have a good call to action, like tag a friend below or like, tell me what you think, it doesn't mean that people are going to be incentivized to reply. And so a lot of social media for me is logic and feeling. And logically, do you think that for you, audience size, can you actually push someone to give you an honest reply, or should you be better off using that PS to actually direct them to something else or using that time to be engaging so people can come when you choose to do a ps? So a reason why I get so much engagement from this PS is because I spent two years building an audience that actually wants to start a conversation with me. And this is so underrated. People see the framework, but they don't see the work that went behind the framework for it to work better. They'll take a viral post template, it'll go viral, and then they'll do it again. It won't go viral, and then they'll blame the framework, but not the work that they're doing behind the PS works. Of course, a call to action works, of course, if the call to action is enticing enough for the audience that you have at the time. So it's a little nuance that most people will skim past because they believe that social media is very simple and easy. It isn't. It looks simple, it looks very easy. But there's a lot of other needle movers that go into the work of it. And so yes, call to actions will always work if you have an audience that is interested. And to do that, you have to be interested in other people.

[Klaus]

Right?

[Andrew]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. People do what they want to do. If they're not doing a thing that you want them to do, it's because they don't want to do it. So you need to do the work to figure out, well, why would they.

[Klaus]

Want to do this?

[Andrew]

It's not good enough that I've asked them to unless I've already built a relationship. And the reason they want to do it is because of that relationship. So I think that's really important nuance that if people aren't taking the actions that you want, it's because they don't want to. And you need to figure out why don't they want to? Probably because if they've done it in.

[Klaus]

The past, they have not gotten a.

[Andrew]

Good experience on the other end of it. When somebody does the thing that you're asking them to do, tagging a friend or commenting, they probably get a reaction.

[Klaus]

From you in that two hours after you post.

[Andrew]

And that was a good experience for them.

[Klaus]

They said, oh, wow, I did the.

[Andrew]

Thing Laura asked me to do. I got a message from Laura that made my day better. Probably subconsciously that's going to push them to do it the next time, the next time, the next time. You also end some of your posts.

[Klaus]

With a link, which I think is.

[Andrew]

A wonderful thing about LinkedIn, in that if you don't have a link preview but you have a link in the post, if the post itself is doing well enough, you can get a lot of traffic to a link. It also strikes me that it's probably not feasible for accounts that are just starting.

[Klaus]

But I'd love to get your take on this.

[Andrew]

When does it make sense to include a link?

[Lara Acosta]

100%. I didn't include links until six months ago because there's this theory and I've disproven it, proven it. I am a LinkedIn nerd, by the way. I spend 12 hours a day on LinkedIn testing things out with my friends who are also LinkedIn nerds. The first thing with links is that like any other platform, the platform doesn't want you to leave the platform for another. So naturally it just would make sense that LinkedIn would strike your post with a link like minus points and it will show it less reach because you have a link leading people out. We've sort of disproven this theory because I've gone viral with photos with link on it. And the reason why it works is because a post is good and people are clicking on the link. LinkedIn may think that the link is spam if no one's clicking on it, right? So you have to think, how do I entice more people to click on that link? You have a very compelling call to action, like grab my free 7 day template here. People like free stuff, right? So that's why lead magnets work very well. That's why newsletter articles that are specific and actionable enough and you're leading them to something work very well. But at the start, I wouldn't have done it even when I had around 80,000 followers because I didn't feel like I'd gained enough trust from people to go and click straight into a link. I was listening to your podcast with someone else that does courses. I can't remember her name now. And it's the same with her offer. It was like you can't just sell a course from just an email. To sell, it has to be another mechanism like the planning page, webinar email and then sale. And it's the same kind of funnel when it comes to a link. So it's like you build a trust, you retain the trust and now how are you going to convert that trust? And it's a longer process because with Parcel run is exactly that. You get them to like you, then you get them to trust you. So I wouldn't have done that. The only way I've done links before it was through comments. So I'll be like, hey, by the way, I have this free seven day guide. Grab it here. Or I'll have it on my profile, which a lot of people don't know. But it's also a landing page that you've got a banner, you've got a profile picture, you've got your links, that you've got your feature section. So for me, worked as a very good landing page. I didn't have a website until this year.

[Andrew]

Wow.

[Lara Acosta]

Ran an entire social media marketing agency, personal branding agency on LinkedIn without a website that was functioning. We've had that just for the looks, but it didn't say anything. So I think that is very much underrated too, that just because you're not adding a link and a call to action to your post, it doesn't mean that you're not selling. It just means that you have to direct them to the right place, which is your profile.

[Andrew]

We've covered a lot of ground here. Thank you for being so open and sharing so much.

[Lara Acosta]

Of course.

[Andrew]

What do you think is the 8020 if somebody leaves this and makes one thing better with the way they show.

[Lara Acosta]

Up on LinkedIn, send more connection requests to people that you think are going to move the needle for you. Again, LinkedIn is the largest networking conference in the world that never sleeps. Right? So always make sure you're wearing your best suits or your best dress. And what I mean by that is make sure that your profile is clean. Make sure that your content looks good and presentable. It doesn't have to go viral, it doesn't have to be the most engaging thing, it doesn't have to have the perfect hook, but make sure it looks good for whenever someone makes that click onto your profile, they have a great first impression of you. And in order to do that you have to be sending connection requests and to be engaging a lot, because the more you engage, the more you can be shown on that feed. Lara Acosta commented on J's post, and that is a comment that people will see. Just think about it as like you're making a first impression right every single day. So make sure that everything's clean and you're ready to go. Your content doesn't have to be perfect. Your comments do, and so does your profile.

[Klaus]

Okay, quick follow up on that.

[Andrew]

When you send a connection request to somebody who's legit, you want them to know you exist. What are you putting in that request box?

[Lara Acosta]

Always think about it like it's leverage when you're trying to build connections with your ideal desired clients or your ideal network. So there's always something that you have that that person may want or that person may know. So if I'm trying to connect with Jay, I would have said, and I think I actually said this to you, maybe not. Hey, Jay, I love your podcast with Karen Drew. It was so good. I specifically loved when he spoke about his launch. I actually listened to it before I launched mine. We ended up making 100k. Thank you so much for putting this amount of effort into your podcast. Speak soon. That type of personalization and also slight ego boost plus value add allows you to cut through the noise that your ideal client or connection. With a thousand connection requests that say nothing, you can actually push forward and be that person that actually stands out. The game is so easy. Just people are lazy. Just think about it a little bit. How can I appeal to this person? What do I have? What can I see? What can I actually go find out about this person? It's the same thing. I was reading another book. It was this guy who wanted to close a deal. I think his influence and the person that he was trying to close a deal with, he had a check of $1,000, his first check that his grandpa gave. And so that guy, before he made the introduction for the first time, he mentioned that check. No one had ever mentioned that check, but he did. And so he ended up getting what he wanted because of that single personalized thing that no one thinks about.

[Andrew]

That's so good, it worked. I accepted it.

[Klaus]

And I accept almost no connection requests.

[Andrew]

Because most of the time it's nothing or it's someone that I'm.

[Klaus]

I don't know.

[Andrew]

If you send me a connection request and I don't know you and you send me no context, I'm not going to accept that because just to give people some more insight. A lot of times people reach out to me and they'll say, hey, do you know this person? I see you're connected. And so implicitly, the connection request that people like me and you accept, people might see that we're connected to that.

[Klaus]

Person and take that as social proof.

[Andrew]

That we may not mean to give. So if you're gonna ask for a connection request, love this advice of actually giving some context, actually doing something personalized. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider.

[Klaus]

Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

[Andrew]

Those reviews go a long way in helping us grow the show. That's why I say it episode after episode after episode.

[Klaus]

And if you want to learn more about Lara, I've linked all of her.

[Andrew]

Social accounts and her newsletter in the show notes. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next.