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Marketing Against The Grain
The 4-Step Formula to Go Viral on LinkedIn (2025 Masterclass) | Hala Taha
00:42:01
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- [00:01]
A
Hey everyone, if you've got a business, an amazing place to grow, it is on LinkedIn. And today we are joined by one of the top LinkedIn influencers. Her name's Hala Tala and she has this incredible, and I mean incredible best. I have seen four step formula for going viral on LinkedIn and she is not only going to break down that formula for us, but she's going to give us all the kind of behind the scenes hacks and tips that most people don't ever talk about. We're talking DM strategy, engagement strategies, how you actually bucket time in your your day to make your posts on LinkedIn go viral. And of course, because it's our show, she's going to cover AI and how to use AI to do all of this. Let's get into today's episode. We'll be back to the pod in just a minute. But first I want to tell you about something very exciting happening at HubSpot. It's no secret in business that the faster you can pivot, the more successful you'll be. And with how fast AI is changing everything we do, you need tools that actually deliver for you in record time. Enter HubSpot Spring Spotlight where we just dropped hundreds of updates that are completely changing the game. We're talking breeze agents that use AI to do in minutes what used to take days, Workspaces that bring everything you need into one view and marketing Hub features that use AI to find your perfect audience. What used to take weeks now happens in seconds and that changes everything. This isn't just about moving fast, it's about moving fast in the right direction. Visit HubSpot.comspotlight and transform how your business grows starting today. Hey Hala, thanks so much for joining us on Marketing against the Grain today. We're excited to have you.
- [01:56]
B
Hey Kipp, super excited for this conversation as well.
- [01:59]
A
We're going to Talk all things LinkedIn today because you are somebody who has built an amazing following on LinkedIn. You've built your business from an amazing amount of success that you've had on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is a remarkable channel that I think most people underrate and under appreciate. You know, give us a little bit of background here for everybody. How do you look at LinkedIn? How did you decide to go all in on that platform?
- [02:26]
B
Yeah.
- [02:26]
A
And how's that worked for you? And then we're going to kind of get into the nuts and bolts of how we can help everybody do it themselves.
- [02:32]
B
Yeah. LinkedIn is an amazing underrated platform. LinkedIn is so amazing. For people who want to grow personal brands, who are entrepreneurs, who are professionals, who want to advance in their careers, and the thing that makes LinkedIn different from other social media platforms is for business. Number one, people are primed to be in sales mode on LinkedIn. So when they're on LinkedIn, they're trying to figure out how to solve their problems. They want to educate themselves. They're looking up sales reps that they might be speaking to. They are in the mode of wanting to figure out the solution to their problem. And so they're more responsive if you DM them, if you connect with them and you want to talk business and you want to be like salesy, they're more receptive to that. On LinkedIn, you've got to do it in a way that, you know, shows that you have common ground. And there's some ways that you can, can do it without being spammy, but you can sell really effectively on LinkedIn because people are really in the mode to learn how to solve their problems on LinkedIn. So that's number one. Number two is that it is really a platform that has low competition in general. So, for example, I'm an influencer on LinkedIn, I have over 260,000 followers, and on Instagram, I have about, you know, 150,000 followers. But the people that I'm competing with on LinkedIn are completely different than Instagram. So I'm getting as much visibility as Gary Vee and Damon John and Alex Hormozi on LinkedIn. I'm literally competing with the people that are at the top, top, top of my field on LinkedIn, because there's just less competition overall on the platform. Right. Where on Instagram I have a decent following, but I'm nowhere near competing, you know, the top influencers on Instagram, for example, it's just so much more competition. Okay. The other thing is that it's completely, in my opinion, a hackable algorithm. To a point.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah.
- [04:27]
B
Right. It's an algorithm that still has a lot of organic reach, that if you understand how the algorithm works, you can go viral. And it's basically a formula that you need to learn. You just need to learn the rules and you'll do really well on LinkedIn. So for these reasons, I really focused on LinkedIn when I first started my personal brand and my podcast and my company, I didn't worry about any other platforms. I knew that young professionals, my podcast is young and profiting, would be on LinkedIn, and I just focus there.
- [04:54]
A
Okay, so first of all, you just gave everybody a masterclass and the importance of focus too. I see so many people who try to be on every platform and just do a little bit everywhere. And you took the exact opposite strategy, which is the right one, which is like, hey, I'm going to go all in on one particular platform and be really successful there. But I know everybody watching is just like, wait, wait, wait a second. She just said that she has a viral content formula. I like formulas. I want to know how to make my content better. So maybe explain to everybody the LinkedIn algorithm, rules of the road and then how you use that to actually have a formula to be successful on LinkedIn.
- [05:32]
B
Sure. So really it's a four step algorithm and I learned about this algorithm through my own posting. I've been posting on LinkedIn for seven years. I also run like over 20 influencer accounts. I have the number one LinkedIn marketing agency and we focus on CEOs and influencers and celebrities. And I have a LinkedIn masterclass course where I'm constantly getting feedback from my students and I've had hundreds of students that have gone through the course. Now, the thing that you need to understand about the algorithm is that it does not change fast. Okay.
- [06:05]
A
Yeah.
- [06:06]
B
So it is a version of the algorithm that I was using seven years ago and it changes over time. And LinkedIn is like any other social media platform like Instagram and so on. There's people that are actually online LinkedIn looking for content. And I say this specifically because a lot of people feel like LinkedIn is a platform just to get a job, but people are scrolling and looking at content. There's 135 million daily active users on LinkedIn who are looking at content. And LinkedIn has an algorithm like every other social media algorithm. But the thing you need to realize with LinkedIn is that they have two different business models in the ways that they make money. So number one is through advertising. So they want to keep people on LinkedIn for as long as possible. And number two, they have a job functionality similar to ZipRecruiter and indeed, so they're trying to help people get jobs. So those are their two key priorities in terms of making money. And so they've designed their algorithm around that. Okay, so there's a four step algorithm. Number one is the spam filter stage. So essentially when you first put up some content, LinkedIn's tools spam, their machine learning, their algorithm is scanning your post and it's making sure that you don't have things that are considered spammy in Their eyes. So what that includes is profanity, nudity, things that might be offensive, like keywords that are flagged as like offensive. If you put your phone number, if you put your email, then there's some less obvious things like tagging more than five people, using more than five hashtags, putting multiple links in your post. Okay, in addition to this, there are other spam filters where basically LinkedIn has different categories of spam filters. So there's low, high and like medium. Right? So it's low quality, high quality and like medium quality. Right. In terms of how they're rating your content initially during the spam filter phase. So if you have nudity, profanity, whatever, it's just like low quality, you're going to get very low visibility. If you are in the medium quality, it's things like the over tagging, the over hashtagging, the too many links and things like big chunky paragraphs. Right? So that's why on LinkedIn you see this line by line style that a lot of the influencers use. Because you actually don't want to have big chunky paragraphs. LinkedIn knows that people are scanning their content. They want to be entertained when they're on social media, they don't want to be lectured. So if you have big chunky content, paragraphs that people don't want to read, and on social media, one or two sentences is a paragraph, right?
- [08:46]
A
Totally.
- [08:47]
B
So you just want to have line by line. So that's the spam filter, right? You get basically qualified as low quality, medium quality, high quality. So if you're in the medium to high, you move on to the next stage, which is the user flagging stage. And essentially this is just ensuring that LinkedIn didn't catch anything that like through their AI and their machines, that they didn't miss something. And so this is an opportunity for like 30 to 90 minutes where LinkedIn is basically testing your post. How many people are engaging? Are people reporting it? Are people flagging it? Is it getting fast engagement? Right. This is also called the golden 90 minutes of LinkedIn. And at this stage it's really important to get a lot of engagement. So you want to get as many people who are first connections who are liking and commenting on your post at this stage. Okay, got it. So that's why engagement pods still work on LinkedIn. So I know I'm talking a lot.
- [09:41]
A
No, no, but hold on. Engagement pods is a cool concept. Explain for engagement pods and how you get that engagement in that first 90 minutes before we go on to the next two steps. Because I know there are people out there being like, okay, I want to get this right.
- [09:53]
B
Yeah. And sorry, I'm talking a lot just like a complex algorithm. So I'm just trying to.
- [09:57]
A
You're delegate, you're nailing it.
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B
Okay, so engagement pods, essentially, is any sort of platform off LinkedIn. Here's the key. It has to be off LinkedIn for it to be considered an engagement pod. It's actually against terms of service to do this on LinkedIn through like a group chat or something like this. So that's to be on like WhatsApp or a Facebook group or Slack. Right. And it's another platform that is not LinkedIn where you're sharing links with other users and you guys are basically using the law of reciprocity. I put my link you like and climate you put your link I like in comment. Right now a lot of people feel like this is cheating, but it's not. No, it is not against terms of service. And in fact, I've created amazing communities using engagement pods. And the key is you want to make sure that there's a reason why you guys are following each other, that you guys have similar audiences, that you're in the same niche in the same field, you guys actually are going to support. You're not using AI tools. It's real humans. As long as that's the case, you guys are first connections. It is not against terms of service and LinkedIn actually likes it because they want to bring people from Facebook onto LinkedIn, from Slack onto LinkedIn, from WhatsApp. They want to bring more users to their platform. Their goal is to keep as many users on their platform for as long as possible. So not against terms of service and very encouraged. So, for example, when I first started podcasting seven years ago, I was like, who else is talking about podcasts on LinkedIn? Why don't I invite them into a WhatsApp group and start an engagement pod? And so we did that. We all started liking and commenting on each other's links and then we started hosting clubhouse rooms together, going to conferences together, becoming friends, sharing notes, and helped us in multiple ways starting this community. So engagement pods are great. You just have to know how to do them. Right.
- [11:49]
A
Okay, love that. So to break it down, to start, for the first two parts of this, you want high quality, non spammy content, short paragraphs, well formatted, not too many hashtags. You want to get engagement in that first 90 minutes, an engagement pod or, and that could be a WhatsApp, a text thread, Slack group, anything to kind of get people engaging on your content early on. Like, if you're doing those things, you're probably already ahead of 95% of the people on LinkedIn are better, right?
- [12:20]
B
Yes, 100%. Something else that you want to consider in these two stages is also keywords. Okay. Now, so this is something new that has been developed with the algorithm over the last two, three years. Right. So all the social media platforms are really moving towards this. Interest based algorithms. Okay. Where every user basically has an interest cloud. So I'll give myself, for example, they have keywords associated with my account. Like these are the things that Holla talks about, these are the things that Holla engages with. And I've got keywords associated with my account and that allows LinkedIn to know what posts to serve me. Okay. So based on what I engage with, based on what I talk about, it also allows them to define me as an expert or not, which is a key factor in the algorithm when they're serving content to other users. Okay, got it. So if I talk about entrepreneurship all the time, and I've got entrepreneurship all over my profile, that keyword, and I talk about social media and marketing all the time, and those keywords are also infused on my profile. They're in my title, in my bio, in my job descriptions. LinkedIn will deem me as an expert on a topic. But now if I suddenly start talking about painting and I have no keywords and I've never Talked about it, LinkedIn's gonna deprioritize serving that post to other users who wanna see stuff about painting because they don't think that I'm an expert. So there's little things like this with the algorithm that I can go more deep on as well and kind of give you guys some more insight, but that also are a factor in these first two stages. Okay.
- [13:59]
A
Yeah. What you're also saying is kind of, kind of own your niche.
- [14:01]
B
Yes.
- [14:02]
A
Not only are you focused on LinkedIn, you're focused on one or a small group of topics that you're going to really own. Not just what your content's on, but who you're connecting with. The keywords on your profile. All everything is going to be around that, right?
- [14:19]
B
Yeah. And you want everything to connect. You want congruency, you want the keywords that you put in your posts to also be on your profile. And like you said, it doesn't have to be one specific topic, but it could be like just a couple different topics that you've trained the algorithm and your audience that this is what I talk about. Okay.
- [14:35]
A
Love it. Love it. Okay, so those are the first two points.
- [14:37]
B
Yes.
- [14:37]
A
Of the formula. Now let's. Let's do the other two.
- [14:40]
B
Okay, so the next stage is the really exciting stage. So the third stage of the algorithm is content scoring. Okay, so essentially this is when your post is doing really well. You got engagement in the first 90 minutes. You didn't get flagged, you went through the spam filter. And now LinkedIn is really trying to see, like, do I want this post to go viral? And you are getting judged based on the amount of engagement that you're getting on your post. Now here was the big aha moment for me, is that I realized that every single engagement on your LinkedIn post is weighted differently, and every single engagement has a weight associated with it every click. So if people click. Read More. That has an engagement metric tied to it. If people click the like button, that's counted as one point. At Yap Media, a comment is two points. A long comment is two and a half points. A share is four points. A share with caption is four and a half points. So all these different engagements have different weights, and basically the higher the weight, the more that LinkedIn will push your content in the feed. Okay, so your goal on LinkedIn, the highest viral action is actually to get a share with a caption, and then the second highest is a share. So your goal as a content creator is to get as much shares as possible. If you want to go viral and you tell people to comment, you're not going to go viral because that's actually a pretty low kind of action. It's just couple points to get a comment, but shares are worth so much more. Okay. And also LinkedIn is still like an organic platform where LinkedIn actually shares content with users based on their interests and based on their connections. Kind of like how Facebook was back in the day. So if somebody likes or comments or shares your post, their first connections might get a notification like, hey, Mary liked Holla's post. They're more likely to see that if the user shared it, because LinkedIn has deemed that a higher viral action. So if you share something, they're like 80% more likely for your first connections to see that you shared that post, and that's why shares go viral. Okay, got it. So your goal in this stage is to just get as many high viral actions as possible. So to be successful on this stage, this means that your following has to take viral action, has to be interested in what you're doing. And you've got to also understand DM strategy at this stage, because by far on the post, the highest viral action is a share. But on LinkedIn itself, the highest viral action is a DM. Okay. So if you DM somebody and they DM you back, they're 85% more likely to see your content the next time they log on. Okay.
- [17:15]
A
That's huge. That's huge. I don't think most people know that.
- [17:18]
B
No. So, like, that's like the secret sauce at Yap Media is that we do DM funnels. And for example, on LinkedIn, we're doing DM funnels 247 on my account, I literally have people 24 hours a day, virtual assistants who are in my account who are doing DMs, 24 7, driving people to my podcast, to my webinars, whatever we have going on. And same thing for my clients. So DMs, there's a lot to go through that. So we can table that after we go through the algorithm. But that's also important in this stage. If you want to go super viral consistently, you've got to have some sort of DM strategy going on. Okay. I will at least help you. You can go viral without it, but it can help you. Okay.
- [17:56]
A
Yeah. I mean, with that type of content surfacing rate, it's just going to be a huge boost.
- [18:01]
B
It's just a boost.
- [18:01]
A
It's going to make it much easier to happen.
- [18:03]
B
Right? Yeah. There's also some things at the stage, like basically like engagement hacks that you should be aware of. Right. So, for example, you don't want to over comment on your post. LinkedIn will consider that spammy. So if somebody is commenting on your stuff, you actually want to leave the new comments unanswered and you want to just start with the old comments and always have like, at least 30 to 20% of the comments unanswered. Okay. Also, psychologically, when people go on your page and they see all the comments, have replies back to them, they think the conversation is over. So if you want to make it look like the conversation is not over, you don't want to answer the new comments. Okay. All right, so that is content scoring. Basically your goal is to get as much engagement and the highest viral actions as possible. All right. The last stage is the stage where LinkedIn's editors are actually reviewing the top content of the day. All right, now you can basically hack LinkedIn to a point where you're getting 2,000 to 3,000 likes on every post. And this is like something that you have control over using all these publishing engagement hacks, understanding the algorithm, you've got control to basically get every post to go from 1000 to 3000 likes, maybe 300 or so comments. You've got the control to do that.
- [19:25]
A
You're saying literally everybody with the first three steps you shared could make that happen.
- [19:29]
B
Everybody can do that. Like my students do that. Okay.
- [19:32]
A
Yep.
- [19:33]
B
Now, the last stage of this algorithm is that you need to align to LinkedIn's editorial agenda. So LinkedIn is actually the one that pours gasoline on all this super massively viral posts that get 30,000 likes, 50,000 likes, a hundred thousand likes, and usually they have to do with hiring, recruitment, promotions, internships, graduation, anything that aligns with their editorial agenda of being a top job site that competes with Indeed and ZipRecruiter and so on. And so strategically, you want to think about what are the keywords that intersect with what you want to Talk about and LinkedIn's editorial agenda, recruitment, hiring, and so on. The other things that can be in their editorial agenda sometimes might be, like, news stories, especially if they're positive and not controversial. Women's History Month, Black History Month, sometimes they're prioritizing mental health. Right. So, like, certain topics might be pushed by LinkedIn because that's what they want to be known for. But really, the only way that you can go super massively viral at this point on LinkedIn is by aligning with their editorial agenda. And they literally will like, turn the gasoline on your posts, and your post will go viral for weeks because they've decided that's the post that they want the most visibility with.
- [20:45]
A
So you're saying you can do really well. But if you want to be like a total game changer and get millions of views on a post, you've gotta understand that the LinkedIn humans are trying to surface a very specific set of content that reinforce the LinkedIn core business model.
- [21:03]
B
Exactly. And every post has a purpose, right?
- [21:05]
A
Yeah.
- [21:05]
B
Some posts are made for sales, and you want to just get comments, and you want to engage your first connections. Some posts are made to go viral, and you want to get a lot of second and third connections looking at your posts, you want new eyeballs on your post. Those are the ones that you might want to think about. Okay, how do I leverage the algorithm, this four steps that Holla just talked about? How do I talk about recruitment and hiring and careers and entrepreneurship so that my post is more likely to get picked up? Right. So every post has a purpose. I wouldn't do that for every post because you still want to have something that you talk about, you need to sell. But every post has a purpose.
- [21:39]
A
I love that. And if you're watching or listening to the show, you know, we talk about AI a ton on the podcast. One of the things I would just say holla. Based off of what you said, it's very easy to go onto LinkedIn and get some of the articles that are above that kind of 3,4000, like threshold, as well as any of the articles created by the LinkedIn editorial staff. You could add those to Claude or ChatGPT and basically build a little grader and say, hey, I'm about to publish this post. Do you think based on everything that all the context I've given you, it would be interesting to the editors on LinkedIn and if that gives you a good grade, then you know you've got a better chance. And if it doesn't, then you could kind of reassess and ask it questions as to like, is the topic off? Is how I'm framing the topic off? Things that you might want to do to adjust that. But I know folks who watch our show are used to using AI a ton, and that's like a quick way you could use AI to do one of the core steps in your content formula. Okay, so you just shared that amazing, incredible four step content formula of how you go viral on LinkedIn and you shared like a bunch of hacks along the way, which was really awesome. And one of those was the DM strategy. And I want to go more into DMs because I think when people think of LinkedIn DMs, they think of like, oh man, somebody's just trying to sell me something. And I'm just getting a bunch of spam in my LinkedIn inbox. I never look at that thing. And I think you're here to tell us that that's actually not the case and it's a much more valuable tool than most people realize.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah, DMs are amazing on LinkedIn and we use them every single day to drive all of our different initiatives. And you have to do it in a way that's going to get the user to be receptive to what you're saying. Right, right. And so there's a couple things that you need to think about. You need to establish common ground, and usually you do that by the way that you found them. So if, let's say, I'm looking to target people to listen to my podcast, my podcast is an entrepreneurship Podcast. Let's say I just interviewed Alex Hormozi. I might go on his page and see who liked and commented on his recent posts. Those are people who are interested in entrepreneurship. They also take viral action. So they're the perfect people to invite to my network. So I'll send them a note. Hey, I noticed that you follow Alex Hormozy. He's amazing. I just interviewed him on my podcast. I think you'll love the episode. I'd love to connect, provide value on your feed. Then they can respond back. Oh my gosh, you interviewed Alex. That's so cool. I love him. I'd love to get a link to your episode here. Thank you. Here's the link. And they might say, oh my gosh, your episode was awesome. I learned so much. Great. Can you copy and paste this as an Apple podcast review? Right. So you can start these little drip campaigns for all of your DM messages. Now I've brought in a person who takes viral action, who likes my content. I had a conversation with them. They feel like I gave them value and now they're a fan. You know what I mean? I brought this person into my ecosystem and the way that I found them is how I establish common ground. I noticed you liked Alex Hormozzi. I found them from Alex Hormozzi's page. Another example is like let's say I'm sell a social media course and I just go on LinkedIn and I search titles. Social media manager. And it's somebody in the U.S. i just, I'm targeting social media managers in the U.S. hey, I noticed that you're in the social media space like me. You look like a really like minded individual. I'd love to give you access to a free webinar I have coming up. I'm giving them something of value, giving them something for free. I'm establishing common ground. We're both in the social media space. I might give them a compliment. Right. So you're doing things to kind of warm them up, using the laws of likability, I call them. So some of those laws include people like other people with shared interests that are part of the same communities, that speak the same language, that have the same like identifiers. Right. They like compliments. So you want to use all those different types of strategies to kind of warm people up and establish common ground.
- [25:38]
A
I love that. And you talked before like that you have people helping you manage the DMs. Because the last question I'll ask on DMs, people are like well, how the heck do you do this? Like, I could spend literally 20 hours a day doing just that.
- [25:51]
B
Yeah. So DMs is a big part of it and it does take a lot of bandwidth. It just depends on, you know, if you have a team. If you don't have a team now, technically it is against LinkedIn's terms of service to have anybody in your account but yourself. So I do want to say that off the bat, you do not want to use automation tools. You'll get your account flagged. Just stay away from automation tools. Unfortunately. I hope there's a day where it's allowed, but it's not allowed right now. But essentially LinkedIn understands that a lot of people are busy and they're going to have assistance, right? So the key is that the person has to be logged in from your city or state. So long as that's true, you can have somebody access your account and manage your dm. So it could be an intern that you have locally, it could be an assistant that works at your office, or it could be somebody international who's using a residential vpn. So long as those things are true and you don't have sessions opened up in different cities and states, LinkedIn is going to be fine. And if, if you ever get flagged, you just explain, I have an assistant, I'm running a business and I need somebody managing my messages as if it's not automation. You're not going to really get in trouble.
- [26:59]
A
Yeah. One last follow up. Let's say that somebody's just getting started. They don't have an assistant or even the ability to have an intern. What would you advise them in terms of like, let's say they're all in, they're focused on LinkedIn, like how much of their weekly schedule would they spend focused on DMs versus like, you know, writing the posts and maybe creating a pod for engagement, like a couple of the other parts of the formula, whatever.
- [27:23]
B
I will give you an example of what I did when I was working a full time corporate job. I used to work at Disney Streaming services and Hewlett Packard when I first started my LinkedIn profile and I had a podcast and a full time job, so I was a very busy girl, right? So I just told myself I was gonna post every single morning on the train. Okay. So I had a 30 minute commute to Disney every morning from Brooklyn to New York and I said okay on this train ride and I would batch beforehand. In terms of this is something we didn't talk about yet. That we should in terms of the asset. I was posting. So I'd have like pictures banked, I've had quotes banked, I'd have videos banked so that when I was on the train I could just focus on the caption and like what I was gonna write. Okay. So my job was to put up that post on the train ride every single morning. The times that you wanna post are anywhere from your local time. If your audience is mostly in Your area, from 8am to 10am is the sweet spot to post. You wanna post in the morning typically and you don't wanna over post on LinkedIn. So just once a day max. Right. It actually hurts you to over post. So once a day in the morning. So my job on the commute at 8am was to get my post up before 9am in the morning. And that was I did every single day. Then I would do engagement during lunch. So I would let my post rock and not do comments again. You don't want to over comment as the author. So I'd let it rock, get comments and then I'd do engagement and I'd respond back to my comments. I would if I was in any engagement pods. This is something that I didn't mention. At the time we didn't have engagement pods. But now that I have engagement pods. As soon as you post, you don't want to post and ghost. So as soon as you post, you actually want to go engage on other people's stuff.
- [29:08]
A
Yep.
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B
Okay.
- [29:09]
A
Why is that? Help people understand why.
- [29:11]
B
Because LinkedIn also is judging author stickiness. They want to know that you're not posting ghosting, that you're actually spending time on the platform. Okay. This is why you don't want to actually use like a hootsuite or something to like auto post your stuff. At YAP Media, we hand post everything because we want LinkedIn to know that we have author stickiness. Okay. There's so much. I have like a whole like deep dive. You can do a course on this.
- [29:34]
A
People obviously can track you down and take the course and everything if they want the deep dive. But if you're just trying to get a handle of where to get started. This is a masterclass on where to get started.
- [29:43]
B
Yeah. So you put up your stuff in the morning between 8 and 10am Then you drop your link in your engagement pod if you have it. If you don't have an engagement pod, you go on like all the people who you believe have similar audiences, like lookalike profile as I call them, and you drop comments on their stuff. So for me, I'd be like going on Gary Vee stuff and Layla Hermosi and Cody Sanchez and I'd be dropping comments on their posts and getting some engagement. Community and just being part of the community, essentially. Okay, makes sense. Then during lunchtime I would just spend like 10 minutes responding to some of my comments. Not all of them, but just like juicing up my post. So author comments are basically worth some points as well. So. Right. It's every time you engage on your post, you're like juicing it back up. Okay. And you want to just do this every couple hours. So it's like every couple hours. If I had like a break, I'd just go try to juice up my post. Right. And just keep doing that. Now another little hack is that if you like and comment on your shares, you like Turbocharger posts. So another thing that I'd be doing at this point would be going on my shares and liking and commenting on my shares to try to turbocharge my stuff.
- [30:51]
A
I want to repeat this in a way that I want to make sure everybody gets. If somebody reshares your original post with or without a comment, you're taking a little bit of your time to go and make sure that you're liking comment on their reshare to give that more gasoline to spread further.
- [31:08]
B
Exactly. Because essentially I'm increasing the content scoring of that share.
- [31:13]
A
Exactly.
- [31:13]
B
Especially because I'm an influencer. So the bigger you are as an influencer, the more that your stuff is weighted as well. So if I like on somebody's post, it's like weighted more heavily than somebody who just started on LinkedIn, for example. Especially if I like something that's like entrepreneurship based or social media based that I have expertise in. Okay.
- [31:30]
A
Yeah.
- [31:31]
B
So there's so many little factors that go into it. Then on the way home from my commute, I would do all my DMs and I'd respond to my DMs and I'd retarget people in the DMs, so something that we didn't talk about that's important to mention related to the DMs is that you know, when you're really advanced on LinkedIn and when you're taking it really seriously, every post basically should have a retarget message. So literally every single post that I have on LinkedIn has some sort of retarget message that we DM people, especially if they're new. Right. If they're like a first connection that has like not engaged in a while or their second and third connection. We send them an invite with a new DM and we send them a message. So if it's about my podcast, we're sending them a link to my podcast. If it's about social media, we're sending a link to like a free webinar to then convert them to the course. So every single post has a DM message associated with it that you can retarget somebody with.
- [32:28]
A
I love that we only have a few minutes left, so I want a couple other topics I want to make sure we cover. One is I want to talk video for a second because I'm seeing short form video all over LinkedIn. It's clear that they care a lot more about video than they used to. And tell me where video fits into this.
- [32:46]
B
Yeah. So video is something that LinkedIn is definitely prioritizing. I've got some insider information. I have a podcast network and they are sponsoring our network for this, like LinkedIn video push. Right. So they're definitely investing in it. And basically you need to train LinkedIn that you're a video creator. So for example, on my account, videos still like, aren't doing that great. For me, the highest performing asset is a photograph. Right. A vertical photograph of me performs much better still than a video. But there's other creators that are only posting video and training LinkedIn's algorithm and their audience that they're video creators. And I believe that LinkedIn is doing something similar to the last stage of the algorithm where they're reviewing the posts and they're trying to find really great video creators to kind of push. Right. So that LinkedIn can be positioned as a video platform. So I think that if you have really great video content and the key is to stand out in the feed. So that means don't just do like talking head podcast videos, but if you do something unique like day in the life videos or something that's like really.
- [33:52]
A
Meaningful and really helpful, good visual effects, like it's. It's got to like pop is what you're saying, right?
- [33:58]
B
Yeah, okay, exactly. So I would say you want to stand out on the feed and LinkedIn is pushing certain creators, so I don't think it's going to just pop off for everyone. But I do think that if you train LinkedIn's algorithm, you can be pushed as a video creator.
- [34:12]
A
Do you think there is any type of video hooks that work better on LinkedIn than maybe like YouTube or TikTok or if somebody's thinking about those videos, what's the hook.
- [34:21]
B
Yeah. So I think actually thumbnail covers matter a lot on LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, there's actually a static image that goes on your video. And I've noticed that, like, the better that looks for us, having it be like a real screenshot of what's in the video or that it looks like really bright and welcoming, people are more receptive to that. Also, Most people on LinkedIn have a job. They're scrolling on LinkedIn without the sound on. And so you want to make sure that you have captions and things like that. But nowadays, like I said, I think LinkedIn's just like, like pushing certain video creators. So some of these rules are kind of out of the window. So long as you have, like, awesome content.
- [34:55]
A
I love that. So just a few minutes ago, we were talking about when you got started on LinkedIn and kind of your work that you would do basically on the train to and from work, on some breaks. It looked to me that was basically you were spending probably 90 minutes to two hours a day on LinkedIn when you went all in on LinkedIn. Is that. Is that fair?
- [35:14]
B
Yeah.
- [35:15]
A
If somebody's out there and they're looking to do something similar, but they want to do it even better or faster. Now, in the world of AI, what AI tools that do you use now? Would you recommend to help basically, maybe do that faster than you? You had to back in the. In the day when there was. We were pre AI.
- [35:34]
B
Yeah. AI is amazing. So something that I would do is I'd go look at all the people that have lookalike profiles that are your lookalike profile. So essentially it's people who aren't necessarily your competitors, but have an audience that you want. Okay.
- [35:47]
A
Yep.
- [35:47]
B
So you go to their page, get a bunch of their posts, and use something like ChatGPT to create posts based on your expertise that follow their similar format. So you would need to upload to ChatGPT either something like a story journal, which is something that I create for all of my clients, for example, which is like a chronological version of their life with every single story that they tell and every meaningful milestone that they have. We upload that to ChatGPT. You upload some example posts and tell ChatGPT, leveraging the content from this story journal, create, you know, 10 posts using this framework. And the thing is, is that AI is like a really good assistant.
- [36:24]
A
Yes.
- [36:24]
B
So you want to take that content and actually perfect it, because it's not going to be perfect, but it will generate ideas and will help you produce things like much, much faster. Okay. Number two is right now the highest performing asset generally is a photograph. So take a couple photo shoots, but then now you can use AI and use something like Insta. I think it's like Insta Headshot or something like that. It's called Insta Headshot, I believe. And we use that and we create like AI generated images that look like real photos that are just. And now I've been doing way less photo shoots because we're just using AI to create more photos based on all the different photos that I have. So you want to batch your different photographs that you have and then you can use AI to create more photos, which is just really convenient if you're strapped for time. In terms of videos, we love to use Opus Clip. So if you have a podcast, long form content, if you are documenting your journey, which so many influencers like Gary Vee recommend and so on. Right. So like you're just constantly videotaping yourself, you can upload that long form content on Opus Clip and then Opus Clip will actually find the most exciting parts and you'll be able to search Opus Clip for certain things like find where I laughed, find where I was sad, find where I. You know, you can like basically have it search all your different long form videos, which is like super cool. And so we use Opus Clip as part of our video development process. And yeah, those are just some of the ways that we're using AI on social media.
- [37:49]
A
Okay, so there's a couple of quick ways right there that with those few tools you can probably do a LinkedIn strategy in an hour a day or so instead of the two hours a day kind of pre AI. But at the same time, I think you're telling everybody that if you want to be great on LinkedIn, it does take a commitment. And you are probably going to need to set aside an hour a day for a while, for a year, two, three years, because I'm sure it took you a few years. So you really shot off and got the distribution you were hoping for when you started. Right.
- [38:20]
B
I would say one year of focus, you'll become an influencer on LinkedIn. Okay, one year of focus, couple hours a day. Again, to your point, the content creation can be accelerated through AI, which is awesome, but the actual posting and engagement still needs to be you on LinkedIn. And it will also help you understand what's working, what's not working, so that you can improve your strategy. So you being hands on I think is really important, especially when you're first starting.
- [38:45]
A
And I loved how you outlined how you integrated it into your day and just kind of made it a habit. And I think that's what we're advocating for everybody here. Okay? We could obviously go on for hours, but unfortunately, we are out of time. Holiday. This has been so amazing. I feel like there's so much I want to go do on my own. LinkedIn now. Now. I've learned so much from you. Thank you so much for joining us at Market against the Crane today.
- [39:05]
B
Thank you, Kip.