Transcript
A (0:00)
This is where engagement goes to die. So it didn't matter if you had 500 followers or if you had 50,000 followers. If you are posting once a week or less, it's just not enough. So we're talking about 278% more engagement than video, 303% more engagement than images. And get this, you're a voice actor.
B (0:23)
You're an entrepreneur. You're a veopreneur. Welcome to the everyday Veopreneur podcast. Your guide through the business of voiceover.
A (0:32)
Marketing is where it's at. You've heard me say it a thousand times. You'll hear me say it a thousand more. Marketing is where it's at. This is how you as a voice actor, take control of your voiceover business and truly unlock your earning potential. If you want to learn how to market, that's where Voiceover marketing Playbook comes in. Playbook is going to be back in October. Get the details and get on the wait list. Check it out now@voiceover marketingplaybook.com Are you.
B (1:00)
On the edge of your seat yet? You should be.
A (1:03)
There's been some new information recently that's come out on posting strategies on LinkedIn and I think it's worth breaking down LinkedIn, one of my favorite platforms for sharing content, for being present, for finding new leads for voiceover, for nurturing voiceover relationships as well. And so I'm constantly on the lookout for what is going on on that platform because I want to be able to make it work for me. And so far over the years, I have been able to make it work for me quite well. So I recently came across an article on a new study that had been conducted by Buffer. A lot of people familiar with Buffer, it's a. An app or I guess a service where you can use to schedule out your social media posts, get analytics on those posts, et cetera, et cetera. And Buffer broke down some really interesting new information on LinkedIn as far as posting strategy is concerned and what your posting strategy should look like if you're trying to get the maximum engagement and the maximum reach out of that platform. And obviously that is something that we are all interested in. One of the reasons, I think why we get frustrated with social media is because we come up with this content, we share our content, and then we feel like nobody sees our content. I'll be the first to admit that this is exactly how I feel about Facebook. Now I've got the Veopreneur Facebook group with over 6,000 members in that group. And on average my posts. I own the group. Just to be clear, I'm the administrator of the group. My posts will often reach less than 200 people out of 6,000. And when you're getting that kind of reach, it can feel very frustrating. It can feel like it's not worth it. You put the time and effort into creating a great video that you're going to share on TikTok or Instagram and, you know, a couple dozen people see it or a hundred people see it, and you're questioning whether or not it's worth it. So the real question that is, are there strategies that you can deploy in order to get greater reach? And it appears like on LinkedIn this is absolutely the case, there are strategies that you can put into practice on LinkedIn in order to expand your reach. So what I want to do is break down some of the results from this new study that Buffer did and see what that means for your LinkedIn posting strategy and whether or not there are changes that you are going to want to make to your LinkedIn posting strategy. So, first and foremost, what they found is that if you are posting once a week or less, it's just not enough. And I know a lot of voice actors who are posting once a week or less, sometimes once a month, sometimes once every couple weeks. If that's what your strategy is, you are never going to see the true reach and engagement that you are hoping for. LinkedIn rewards consistency. LinkedIn rewards presence. All of the social media platforms ultimately are rewarding consistency and presence, but LinkedIn in particular. So if you move from posting once a week or less to posting two to five times a week, that is a game changer on LinkedIn. So according to this study from Buffer, this is where things really start to take off and your content starts to get spread more widely and you're going to start to see much more stronger per post performance at two to five times per week. Now, two times a week is not that hard. If you come up with a really great content strategy, and we're not going to get into content strategy in this one, right now I want to talk to you more about what you should be doing in order to get the reach on LinkedIn. I do offer a class called Content Compass that's available@veopreneur.com that walks through posting strategy more specifically. But right now we want to talk about what does it look like to get the reach. And what the study is showing is that two to five times per week is kind of the sweet spot where things really start to take off and you really start to improve your reach and your engagement. And it's not super overwhelming. Two times a week, I think is doable for any of us. So what did the data show? It showed 1,182 more impressions per post. That is not a small number. And a 0.23 percentage point lift in the engagement rate compared to just posting once per week. Something that you need to understand about LinkedIn is once you start to get engagement, engagement begets engagement. So the more comments that you can get on a post, the further that post is ultimately going to go. And if I look through my own LinkedIn history and my LinkedIn analytics, I can see very clearly the posts that have gotten 3, 4, 5, 6, 9,000 reach of 9,000. Those are the posts where there's a lot of comments and a lot of engagement. So just getting yourself to that two to five times per week posting strategy, that in and of itself is gonna lift your engagement and that's gonna start to see more eyeballs on your profile, which is what we're looking for. Now, if you are somebody who is very ambitious and you have an extraordinary amount of free time, I do not happen to be that person. The study also found that when you go from 2 to 5 per week to 6 to 10 per week, that pushes your gains even further. So now we're talking over 5,000 more impressions per post and a 0.76% point increase in the engagement rate. Now, I don't think that's probably realistic for a lot of people, but hey, if you're ambitious and you know what you're doing, it is a possibility. If you were gonna double down and say, I'm gonna forget all the other social media platforms, I only wanna focus on LinkedIn because I feel like this is where I'm gonna get the most value. Then maybe coming up with a strategy for 6 to 10 posts per week is entirely doable at 11 posts per week. And this is crazy, I have no idea who has time to do this, but at 11 posts per week, we're talking about nearly 17,000 more impressions and that's per post, three times more engagement, which is crazy. And 1.4% point jump in the engagement rate. So if you got the time to go 11 plus, you could absolutely turn yourself into a LinkedIn influencer. I don't think most of us are probably going there, though. But here's another thing that I thought was really interesting about this study, because one of the pieces of pushback that I know I'm getting And it might be you right now that is giving me this pushback is that your network is too small, so you can't reach anybody anyway. And one of the things that this study found was that this was universal across the board. So it didn't matter if you had 500 followers or if you had 50,000 followers. These posting strategies are what moved the needle, no matter what. And so growing your network obviously should be a priority. You should be making a point of sending out new connection requests every week. But you can also grow your network simply by growing your reach, because the more people that see your content, the more likely that the people are to follow you and to engage with you and to send connection requests with you. And so this was universal across the board. So if you have a small network right now, and you're questioning whether or not it's worth it, Absolutely is worth it. It can still make a difference, and it can still move the needle for you. So Julian Winterheimer. Winterheimer is the name of the person, the data scientist that did this research. Julian analyzed more than 2 million LinkedIn posts. So not a small sample size and over 94,000 accounts. So again, not a small sample size. And, and from all of that data, this is where all of this information is coming from, all of these stats are coming from, and it seemed to be consistent across the board. Something else that was true that they found was that you can't post too much on LinkedIn. That obviously the more you post, the more that the algorithm appreciates you, shows you a little bit of love, and helps you with your performance on LinkedIn. And so stepping up that frequency can certainly produce better results. Just for the fun of it, I went back through and I looked at my own analytics for the past three months, and I can see very clearly the chart goes, you know, like this. There's, there's triangles in the, in the chart. And I could see times where I posted once a week, and I can see times where I posted three or four times a week. And there is a very obvious difference in the amount of reach that I'm getting. And I can see that certain posts were spiking harder than others. And so it's stands true, at least from what I have gathered just from experimenting on my own. Something worth note here, though. We want to try to get to that 2 to 5. I think that's a realistic place for a lot of voice actors to get, is in that two to five posts per week. But you have to make sure that you're posting good content. So Focusing on quality content. Post frequently, as often as you can, get that extra engagement and love from the algorithm. But it has to be good quality content, low quality, quality content that is posted on a regular basis. No matter how consistent you are at this point, you're just not going to get the same kind of results. So what does that mean? How do we translate that? There are a few different content strategies that seem to work better than others on LinkedIn and so I think it's worth taking a minute to break some of those down as well. Text posts are obviously the easiest. It's a simple way to show up. A thought pops into your head. You write a little post, you write a little story. That can be a really effective and easy way to get on the platform. However, those are also consistently getting the lowest amount of engagement overall. Doesn't mean they're not gonna work, doesn't mean there's not good quality there, just means that they are traditionally gonna get a little bit lower engagement. Add an image though, and that changes things significantly. In fact, we're talking about 72% more engagement with an image post over a text post. So if you're going to write a really great text post, maybe you've got a really great story that you want to tell. Just make sure that you are including an image in that post and right off the bat it's going to help your reach go even further. Want to take it a step beyond that video. LinkedIn is pushing video hard in some senses. They are competing directly against Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all of these platforms are pushing short form, vertical content, right? That is entirely what TikTok is. That is pretty much what Instagram has become. YouTube. Doubling down on short strategy so LinkedIn is doubling down on video as well, but posting the video natively. So what I mean by that is if you create a reel and you're going to put that reel on Instagram, that's fine, load it to Instagram. But do not link the Instagram reel from LinkedIn. Instead, post the video natively to the LinkedIn platform as well. Video content on LinkedIn generates about 84% more engagement than text and slightly outperforms images. Video gets love on LinkedIn. Carousel posts are incredibly popular on LinkedIn. In fact, according to the data from this buffer study, that's the winner. That's the winning strategy right there. And so I'm not saying that you should do every post as a carousel post, but I'm definitely saying you might want to factor that into the decision making process when you're planning out what is my social media going to look like? Carousel posts should definitely be a factor in there. So we're talking about 278% more engagement than video, 303% more engagement than images, and get this, almost 600% more engagement than a text post. Their swipeable nature is what makes them interactive. It makes them more fun to, you know, we're fidgeters, right? When we're on social media, we're scrolling with our thumb and so if it gives us something to do to swipe, we feel like we're interacting with it. That makes a big difference. But a really good carousel post is often going to be savable because usually there's good information in there if you're taking the time to write out a well thought out carousel post. So something to keep in mind. And then of course, the one that you have to watch out for, which is the one that a lot of us use LinkedIn for, is posts with links. This is where engagement goes to die. LinkedIn is not going to show you any love whatsoever if you are sharing posts with links. And this is true across the board for any social media platform. The goal of these social media platforms is simple. They want to keep you on platform. The longer that you're on platform, the more ads that they can push you. The more ads that they can push you, the more revenue they can generate. So if you are using their platform to push people to another platform, they are obviously not going to want that to happen. They are not going to reward that content. So if you're consistently linking back to your website, if you're consistently linking to a blog or a podcast or something like that, just know that those posts are not going to get near the reach. And I can speak as someone who has done this and experienced this, because I do share a link to my podcast every week on LinkedIn and I do see where I can write a really good text post with an image and get 2,500 or 3,000 impressions with minimal effort. And then I link to an episode of my podcast and that post might only get a couple hundred impressions at the most. And so I've seen this consistently over and over again. Now, couple hundred impressions is still better than nothing. If a few people click through and listen to my podcast, it's absolutely worth it. But just keep this in mind as you're trying to map out what is your content strategy going to look like on the platform. You want to make sure that you are trying to do the things that are going to get the most reach. The most reach comes from the most engagement. And so the more people that see your stuff, the higher the probability that you are getting in front of those prospects, clients and leads that you've connected with on LinkedIn, the higher the probability that people outside of your network are going to see the content and start to get familiar with you. And maybe they're going to follow you, or maybe they're going to send a connection request with you. So you have to be very intentional about the strategy for the type of content that you're creating. That's the medium. We'll call that the medium. So the medium is going to be, is this a link? Is this a video? Is this an image post? Is this a carousel post? Is this a text post? Let's talk about what we actually talk about. What are you supposed to put into a post on LinkedIn? I can tell you from a lot of experimentation over the last few months that there are two things that work for me consistently over and over and over again, better than anything else that I'm doing. Number one, by a wide margin, is personal relatable stories. If you are going to share personal relatable stories, they still need to be relevant to the audience on LinkedIn. So always keep that in mind. On LinkedIn, you are still talking to an audience of professionals. These people are here for professional purposes. The personal story that you tell on Facebook is not going to land the same way as a personal story that you would tell on LinkedIn. So you have to make sure that you're still writing those personal relatable stories from a professional standpoint, tying it back to work, tying it back to career, tying it back to on the job, whatever that looks like. But being personal and relatable, and I think that's perfect for voice actors because isn't that what we're supposed to deliver in every single audition that we submit? Aren't we supposed to be genuine, authentic, personal, relatable, conversational, all these things? So letting people see you, letting people get to know you and connect with you on that level on LinkedIn, that stuff works. One of the best posts that I've shared in a really long time was a post that I did on the boo going to school for her first day. And I shared a picture of the two of us and, you know, hugging when I was saying goodbye to her on her first day of school. That post hit hard. And it hit hard because pretty much everybody who saw that picture has that same story. They have that same story of sending their kid to school for the first time, whether it was kindergarten or sending their kid to college, that was relatable. And I tied it back to how I was going to miss her popping into the office throughout the day and jumping in on my zoom calls and, and, you know, not having my, my little office assistant around anymore. And so it was a completely personal and relatable story that still had a relevance to work. It still had a professional nature to it. But it hit so hard because everybody could connect with that in some way. So that's number one, personal, relatable stories, hands down, my best performing content. Number two on that list is we're going to put it under the blanket of educational content. But I don't want this to mislead you because I think sometimes when we think about educational content, we're thinking, I got to be able to be a teacher, I got to be able to be a coach. You know, I have no business coaching, voice actors or whatever. And I don't think, I think that's too narrow of a definition of educational content. I think every one of us has things that we can teach each other. And those things that we can teach each other are things that we've picked up throughout our lives, throughout our careers, throughout all of our experiences. Going to school, getting a job, working in this place, working from home, whatever it is. We've all picked up lessons and tips and tricks and advice along the way that we can share with other people that's going to benefit them in some way or that's going to add value to them in some way. And so that I think is kind of the broad definition of what educational content is. So, yeah, sometimes I share marketing tips because I'm a marketing coach and so I talk about marketing. And so when I learn right now, when I learn about what's going on on LinkedIn and I'm sharing this content with you, I mean, I'm teaching right now, this is, this is educational content. But I shared a post recently on LinkedIn where I took a picture of my stream deck, which is sitting right here with me, my stream deck on my desk. And I talked about how I had bought this stream deck to use for doing live streaming and allowing me to change from different scenes and putting in easily putting in overlays and things of that nature. But then I discovered that the stream deck can be used for a lot of other things. And so now I actually have it set up so that when I'm just working, just sitting at my computer working, I have it set up to open some of my favorite and most frequently used apps so I can quickly and easily just push a button. I've got it programmed for some of my most frequently used documents so I can very quickly just push a button and it opens up those documents. I've created shortcuts using Apple shortcuts. And now, for example, when it was time for me to record this podcast, I pushed the podcast button on my Stream Deck. It closes out all my other apps. It puts my computer into Do Not Disturb. It dims certain lights in my studio, it turns off other lights in my studio, it turns on other lights in my studio, it opens up my browser to Riverside, and it does it all in a second as opposed to me having to go through and do all of those things manually. And so I shared a post talking about how I'm using Stream Deck as a, as a productivity assistant in my office on a day to day basis. And that resonated with a lot of people. That is a form of educational content. That's something that I've picked up along the way that I'm able to share and help people with. And so think about that. Don't think about it through the lens of I have to teach other voice actors about voiceover. That's the wrong lens. That is absolutely the wrong lens. Think about it from the lens of I'm a small business owner. I'm a parent with small kids, and I'm trying to find balance between spending time with my kids and going to work every day. I work from home and I'm trying to figure out how to make my time more efficient when I'm working from home, when I don't have a dedicated office. Here's a productivity hack that I've used. Here's something that I've done in my workflow that has made me more efficient. Here's a tool that I use that I couldn't live without. Here's an app that I access on my phone every single day that helps me to get more done. There are so many different things that you could lean into when you expand your definition of educational content and get yourself out of the voiceover box. Please get yourself out of the voiceover box. But hands down, personal relatable stories and educational content are my two best performers. Consistently. Consistently, my two best performers. Here's something else that I picked up, and I don't know if this is just anecdotally just because of the lens through which I'm looking at it, but if I look at all of My top performing posts from the past three months go through my analytics on LinkedIn. Almost every one of the, we'll call it the top 10 performing posts have a picture with me in it in some way. And as those words are coming out of my mouth, I'm thinking, wow, aren't you a raging narcissist? I don't mean it like that, but I think that ties back to the personal and relatable. Isn't it nice to be able to attach a face to a name when so much of what we do is done in an almost anonymous online environment? Email, right? Email is so impersonal. How many of your voiceover clients are you working with on a day to day basis? Or leads or prospects that you're emailing back and forth with on a day to day basis and you have no idea what they look like? If you ran into them on the street, you would have no idea because email is so impersonal. And so when you get a chance to see somebody's smiling face, it helps you connect with them on a different level. I've created a lot of really cool branded content on. Not Instagram, sorry, on Canva. And I use that branded content a lot of times. And it's not that those posts don't do great. Some of them do very well. They just don't seem to do as well as those posts where there's a picture with me in it in some capacity. And it's not because I'm whatever, Brad Pitt over here or whatever. I mean, look, I got fuzzy hair right now. But it's just because people can see my face and they can make a connection. One of the biggest, most important lessons that I learned in business was that we will do business with people that we know like and trust. Social media used properly gives people the ability to get to know like and trust you through the content that you share, through the stories that you tell, through the language that you use, through the images that you share, through the videos that you post. It gives people the ability to get to know like and trust you. And it's easier to know like and trust someone if you actually know what they look like. So those are a couple of things to keep in mind. I've been running a 30 day marketing challenge for September and I've been encouraging the participants. One of the recent posts in this 30 day marketing challenge was encouraging them to go back and say, okay, we've done some social media challenges now. You've had to share several posts at this point in the challenge on Social media. I want you to go back and look at those posts and try to identify the themes from those posts. So was I talking about a specific topic? Was I speaking to a specific audience? Did I share in a specific style? Was it a fact based post? Was it a story based post? Was it a little bit more personal, a little bit more professional? Was it image? Was it video? Was it branded, graphic? Was it carousel, whatever? But I was encouraging them to go back through and really look at the data and see, okay, here were my top two best performing posts and here's what I can draw from those top two best performing posts that say, lean into these themes for your next post. So if you're going to start posting two to five times a week on LinkedIn, which I would encourage you to do, following some of the things that we've talked about in this episode, leaning into image and video and carousel and stuff like that, writing personal, relatable stories, leaning into some educational content, letting people get to see you and get to know you on a slightly different level, Whatever it is, whatever type of content that you're sharing, make an intentional point every once in a while, maybe at the end of each month to go back and look at everything that you shared, see what worked really well and what didn't, discern why, and then use that to inform your content strategy for the next month going forward. This entire episode is based on data that came from a study that Buffer did. And following that data can help us to create better content, get better engagement, and, you know, ultimately, hopefully produce better results from LinkedIn. And so that doesn't happen without a little bit of reflection and analyzing those numbers. And so I hope that you will do that as well. I am very much looking forward to seeing some of you popping up in my LinkedIn feed on a more consistent basis. Now, though, because you're gonna take the information that you've learned in this episode and you are gonna start putting it to work so that you can start growing your own LinkedIn presence. Why not make a point of putting a push on for the fourth quarter of 2025 so you can build the year strong. Be consistent in your posting strategy, be consistent in your network strategy, making an intentional point of sending a certain number of connection requests every day or every week and see if you can't turn LinkedIn into a moneymaker for you. Because I know that LinkedIn has absolutely been a moneymaker for me and that has come as a result of showing up consistently with good quality content and doing some of the things doing some some of the exact things that I talked about in this episode. If you want to dive into this study a little bit deeper, I will put a link to it in the show Notes from Buffer so you'll have an opportunity to read that. If you want to dive into LinkedIn a little bit more deeply, make sure you head to veopreneur.com, check out my Making Money with LinkedIn masterclass and if you need content help, what do I post? That is exactly what the veopreneur Content Compass course is all about, and that one is available in the Veopreneur store as well. So if you just go to veopreneur.com and click on the Store button. Here's to watching your engagement grow on LinkedIn.
