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- [00:00]
A
What's up, y'? All? Welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity. So today we don't do guests that often, but I need to break into LinkedIn. I somehow miraculously have 14, 15,000 followers on LinkedIn and I don't publish content there. So I wanted to bring in one of the best writers, one of the best, has one of the best content agencies for LinkedIn and for founders in general who are, who are creating content on LinkedIn. And I wanted to kind of crack the code and understand some of the opportunities in the space on LinkedIn, what's happening, what's not happening, what's working, what I should be doing, etc. I'm using this as a whiteboard session for me and I'll give context as well. But the individual that we have today is Tommy Clark. Tommy, we don't really do big intros. Like obviously give, give an intro to yourself, let them know how I found you, moved you to Austin, all those great things, give a little bit of intro and then we're going to get right into the episode.
- [00:54]
B
Yeah, of course. Well, I'm honored that you're, that you brought me on to help you with the LinkedIn content. Quite the intro. We go way back. It's been like what, three, four years at this point. Yeah. You found me on Twitter, hit me up. I was still living at home. My parents after, like right after college, started writing a little bit for marketing, examined, and then ended up moving out to Austin for my job at Triple Whale. Fast forward a few years now I run Compound, which is a LinkedIn ghostwriting agency. Essentially. The short of it is we write LinkedIn content for B2B founders and help them grow their audience and get leads. That's really the extent of it.
- [01:27]
A
Some would say I changed your life. Is that Tommy Clark?
- [01:31]
B
We're starting the pod with really hard hitting questions now.
- [01:34]
A
Is that accurate, Tommy Clark?
- [01:36]
B
I'm gonna have to check my sources.
- [01:38]
A
But I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Look, so the reason I want to dive into this, and it's interesting to me is because I think LinkedIn is the, the open space that if you can crack, and if you have, I would say as well, if you offer services, if you can crack LinkedIn, it is a. You know, our good friend Robba would say it would make the money go burr or whatever. He'd say something along those lines. But like it legitimately can fill up a pipeline. Yeah, dramatically. And so, you know, predominantly with, with our agency, we work with eight to nine figure brands. The $2 billion brands that we've worked with and that we work with now came through LinkedIn through, you know, not that, like, I haven't published that much content. Brian, who has graduated from sweat equity, not from the sense of, like, he's not doing the pod, like, you know, Nibble got acquired that they found him on LinkedIn. So, like, that acquisition happened because of LinkedIn content, you know, like. And so it is interesting to see the dynamic of, like, it's. It's easy to think of, like, all the big fish are either living on Twitter or operating on Instagram and there's this whole nother world on LinkedIn that, like, I don't think people would know exists or how big it is. And that there's like this huge, huge opportunity. Because, like, the reality is it is cringe. Like, there's a lot of cringe. But I also think that is the opportunity is the fact that it's so cringe. Whereas, like Instagram, there's so much good.
- [03:07]
B
Content and so therefore the competition on IG is insane. You know, I'm trying to get it. I'm doing cut 30 this month and I'm trying to grow my Instagram and it's way harder than LinkedIn. LinkedIn. The bar for the quality, the quality bar for content that will hit on that platform is just objectively lower. So if you're pretty good at content and you can deal with LinkedIn being a little bit cringe at times, it's such a massive opportunity. And like you mentioned, all the big hitters are on that platform.
- [03:33]
A
So build my strategy for me. Look at everything I've done with the pod with my Instagram that I've done on Twitter and basically give me, hey, this is how you should approach LinkedIn and why.
- [03:45]
B
What's the one sentence overview of what you want to be known for on LinkedIn? If you had to pitch your why someone should follow you in one sentence.
- [03:51]
A
I'll give it to you. I pause. I. What? I haven't announced our rebrand yet. I don't think I've even told you about it.
- [03:59]
B
I'm hearing of it for the first time right now.
- [04:02]
A
Oh, man. Okay, I'll talk to you about it after. But for the sake of this, I want us to own brand Social. And so any content that we create or we publish, we distribute, etc, has to be related to brand social. And so when people think of brand social, not around like, you know, social for creators, nothing like that. Like, hey, you're, you're seven, eight, nine figure brand and you need to understand how to work social and how to win on social media, specifically around video content. It's us. Okay? So whether that's our media, the things that we're producing, the content that's going out on on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, the pod, or then the. The content that we create for brands. But the overarching sentence is the idea of owning brand social.
- [04:53]
B
Okay, great. So with owning brand social, what proof do you have in your career, your work, that would give someone a reason to trust you on that topic? Because from my experience working with founders on LinkedIn, the ones that have outlier success tend to have inherent social proof. So the ones that have a little bit slower growth or really struggle to grow on LinkedIn at all are talking about a topic they have no expertise or credibility in. Yeah. So it's hard to get someone to trust you. So what? Why should someone trust you when it comes to talking about brand social? As your friend, I know this, but for the.
- [05:25]
A
No, for sure.
- [05:26]
B
For sure.
- [05:27]
A
So I've been doing brand social for 10 years. I'll start to. To that degree where 2015, you know, is when I first started working on brand social and first started as a creator at that time. You'll laugh at this. I thought I was making money when a brand was paying me 500amonth to film content, edit content, come up with a strategy, publish on social, do the DMs, comment on everything. Right. Like you've been there. I, um, and I did that for. At that time, it was like I was at one point, and don't get me wrong, everybody was 500amonth, but like 12 to 15 brands at a time, solo. Right. And that was from 2015 to roughly 2020.
- [06:10]
B
Okay.
- [06:10]
A
That I did that. And so I worked from that. I graduated from like working with like local coffee shops, I would say in Austin, to then some seven figure brands, eventually to some eight and nine figure brands and then getting to work within their growth teams and like really owning the social side. And then from there joined the hustle, which is a media company and really got to be a part of their growth team, lead their social strategy, lead their all their content creation. My first million then went to the collective cmo. The collective built a very robust creative team there and probably was very early on some of the larger things, some of the macro trends for social. Right. Like, I don't remember if you remember. I don't remember if you remember that. Like, do you remember us launching Cold Hard Truth?
- [06:58]
B
Yep, very.
- [06:59]
A
And like now social shows is Like a hot thing. And that was 2022, 2023, like when we were doing social shows. And so like a lot of those things, we took that company to you know, seven figures in, in revenue, purely off organic content. And I'm not going to take all credit for it but like the main driver, the main growth lever was organic and word of mouth.
- [07:19]
B
Right.
- [07:19]
A
Like that's how you became. And then from there launched another agency internally with the Collective which was rare Air, worked with all eight nine figure brands on and like the whole premise was to, to create it around repeatable scalable content social shows during that time building marketing examine, so building my own media outlets and then from there now we have this other layer of our company which is we develop content strategy for eight to nine figure and you know, billion dollar brands, but developing their content strategy and then going and executing that content strategy with some of the biggest, you know, some of them I can't mention. But some of the brands that people talk about every single day, you know, we've led their content strategy or we've developed their content. So it's like the social proof is there from an experience perspective and then also from hey, those hot brands that you're talking about. Yes, like I'm not gonna take full credit because they have creative teams as well. But like either A, we're leading charge with some people that you know that have 20 million followers or B, we are coming in producing the content for that brand. Perfect.
- [08:27]
B
So with, with each of those steps, even going back as far as you doing social and running everything for 500amonth up until now, working with some of the top brands in the, in the world on their content. Yeah, every one of those steps you're going to have stories in there that you can take and turn into content. This doesn't just apply with LinkedIn, applies on IG, any other social platform, but especially on LinkedIn right now with the rise of AI written content, really your only moat is your personal stories. So we're going to use that a ton and as we mentioned earlier, that gives you also a ton of social proof. Second part to what I usually think about when we're building out a strategy is what is your opinion or take that you have about your industry or category that others would disagree with you on. When I listen to you talk, I hear a lot about social shows and this being a really core component of what you guys do, is that like an area that you want to lean more into with your personal content on LinkedIn like how do you think about that 100%.
- [09:25]
A
I want to own the idea of that because, you know, I'm not gonna say we're the first ones to do it, but I would say we're very early and we were very early in that.
- [09:33]
B
Also. You don't have to be the first. That's a good point for everyone listening is that you don't have to be the first to talk about something, first to do something, to own the term 100.
- [09:42]
A
Yeah, I completely agree. I think you actually own the term typically by being the one that talks about it the most.
- [09:48]
B
Yep.
- [09:49]
A
You know what I mean? Like, ironically, everyone associates hybrid athlete with Nick barefoot. There was someone that like years before coined the term.
- [09:58]
B
That's. That's got to actually, that's gotta be, that's gotta sting to be that guy that coined the term hybrid.
- [10:03]
A
He coined the term and like he has a bigger, like not a huge following, but he's like a. Okay, a loyal following. Right. And people always talk about how like he's really the first hybrid athlete, not Nick Bear, but like Nick Baer has built a hundred million dollar company on the back end of like owning that term. But yes, there's a significant amount of content that I want to produce around that overarching idea of social shows or building essentially TV networks on social for brands.
- [10:31]
B
Okay, great, great. And then as far as cadence, this is pretty simple. I typically recommend five to seven times per week. Like I will typically post Monday through Friday and then once in the weekends. You can go as high as seven times per week. You can even, you can even go multiple times per day. With the amount of content that you produce, you could probably do that in most cases. I just recommend going once per day though.
- [10:55]
A
Okay.
- [10:56]
B
So within that, you want to break it down in what I call a content funnel. And when you're doing that, you want to make sure you're not going too far in either direction on, on that funnel. Right. So if you're going too far bottom of funnel, this is what most founders will do. You're very familiar with this. Everyone wants to talk about their product. Every social post turns into an ad. I'm cut 30 right now. One of the most common pieces of feedback I see that you guys give to people on their content with the IG is don't post ads. Like, don't.
- [11:24]
A
Were you on the last live session?
- [11:26]
B
I was, yeah.
- [11:26]
A
Okay, cool. Yeah, I think I had a whole bit on.
- [11:28]
B
I was. You want to rant about it? And then I've been seeing in the Slack channel You just keep like roasting people that the Post ads and the Slack channel. So very much similar applies on LinkedIn. You can talk about your product and your service and it's definitely not something you should avoid entirely. But you don't want to go too far in that direction. For most people just starting out, you want to focus on building that initial audience first. The way you're going to do that is through top and middle of funnel content. The way I think about top and middle of Funnel content on LinkedIn is that top of funnel content tends to be about broader topics that just really hit on the platform. This is usually work culture stuff. So like hi like remote versus in person hiring hot takes, company building opinions and hot takes. I recently had one that went pretty viral around how Claude does better copywriting than most writers that I would hire for less than $100,000 a year. And that popped off to this.
- [12:26]
A
You were just mad at your writers that day.
- [12:28]
B
I wasn't mad at my writers. I was.
- [12:30]
A
No, you're mad at your writers.
- [12:32]
B
I was down bad after searching through applications because we were hiring for a writer at the time and I was looking through my type form submissions and just wanting to bang my against the wall because the applications were horrendous. Yeah, but takes like that that are broad about hiring workplace culture also sort of like self help, personal development adjacent tend to be very top of funnel and then middle of funnel. I consider anything industry or category related. So not pitching your product but establishing you as a thought leader in your space. So for you that's going to be more around brand social, social shows, stuff like that. And then bottom of funnel when you get there. I probably wouldn't go too hard on that early on.
- [13:13]
A
I wouldn't. Yeah, I probably wouldn't even touch it. I don't even touch on ig really? Like yeah, I touch it on IG just on IG stories. Really. Like if you look at my top of funnel, I mean, I'm sorry, my bottom of funnel content on IG like it literally is just stories typically promoting cut 30. You know what I mean?
- [13:29]
B
Yeah, exactly. And if, if, if you were so not going to do that right now, but if you were to touch bottom of funnel content on LinkedIn, it's like simple case studies and of work really well, you don't need to do anything super fancy there with the software companies that we work with. Just your typical classic case study format tends to do well for that purpose. But for you I'd go probably 50, 50 top and middle of Funnel just to get initial momentum on the platform. So the very first post I would start with, and we start with all our clients with this type of content is an origin story post. So essentially taking what you ran me.
- [14:04]
A
Through.
- [14:06]
B
Earlier in the show and formatting that into a long form narrative post on LinkedIn, pairing that likely with a piece of media that's like a picture from the early days when you first started. And we always see those overperform. So I'd start with that and then on a more ongoing basis again split about 50, 50 top and middle of funnel. And then for the middle of funnel content I do a balance between sort of polarizing hot takes and savable frameworks and checklists. LinkedIn just recently rolled out saves and shares as metrics. You're familiar with this on IG, it's been a thing for a minute now, but LinkedIn late to the party as always, just roll that out. So posting like savable infographics, carousel, stuff like that tends to be a good format to take advantage of that. I'll pause there, but how does, how does that sound to you?
- [15:01]
A
Yeah, walk me through. Because the thing I've always heard from, we were just actually talking about Nathan and one thing Nathan was telling me a long time ago and so I don't know if it's, it's entirely relevant still is. Like on LinkedIn you have to like it's going to take a little bit to get back into the algo.
- [15:17]
B
Yeah, right.
- [15:18]
A
Like if you haven't been publishing content at all and I haven't, you know, I haven't been like, I've go on every once in a while and I look at what things that people are posting, but I don't publish really, you know, really ever. And so if I'm looking at my first seven days right on the platform, let's say tomorrow I'm like I'm going to publish my origin story. You know, I going from doing selling services for $500 a month to like now let's say a 50. Like if we just want to use contracts like 50k right. So let's say origin, that's one. Now should I. Let's say actually I'll go to Instagram and look at, hey, these are my top videos. Should I take those top videos to start gaining traction and convert them into text or should I convert them into carousels? Like do do the carousel. Are the carousels still hitting on LinkedIn? Should I go more text heavy written as if it's like a long thread on or A long post on Twitter, like or X Sorry. Or should I post the video?
- [16:17]
B
I would do all the above as far as. Because you could take that same idea and repurpose it across all those different formats. And right now what we're seeing is the performance across formats is pretty balanced. So late last year, LinkedIn was pushing video really hard to where if you posted a half decent short form video that was like a simple talking head, even like a podcast clip or a green screen video, almost guaranteed 100,000 to a million impressions that has stopped. Even when that was going on, that might have been a little bit pumped up because they were trying to get people to use video. But now it's corrected in the other direction and video isn't really doing as well. But overall the media mix is a lot more balanced. So we're seeing like long form text only can work very well. Long form text with in real life photo can work really well. Carousels still do work. They're not as overpowered as they were two, three years ago. There was an era where they were just.
- [17:14]
A
That's how I got to the 15,000 or whatever 14,000 followers that I have was primarily through taking all of my top X content and then repurposing in a way that was like native to carousel. I mean, sorry, to LinkedIn through carousels.
- [17:29]
B
Yeah, so carousels definitely still work and executed well. You will drive a lot of saves and they can go viral. They're not like the cheat code that they once were. The takeaway is that the media mix is pretty balanced. So what I would do for someone watching this that has a preferred medium, pick whatever medium you're most comfortable with. Like if I'm more of a writer, I'll go more long form text. If I'm much better on video, on camera, I'll do more video. Even though it's not hitting the same way that it was, it'll still do well. If you're more visually inclined, you could do infographics or carousels with you, this can be pretty balanced. So I would just take those winning angles that, you know, worked on ig. And an interesting tactic here is if it hit on IG, it will likely hit on LinkedIn because of what we were talking about earlier with the quality bar for content on LinkedIn being lower. So if you have a winner on Instagram, you can likely take that same idea and move it over to LinkedIn.
- [18:25]
A
You know, for me, that hasn't been as true as it it was for Brian.
- [18:30]
B
Oddly enough, I love Brian. Brian posts the, the short form video and then has like a one line caption with like no hook in the caption. And that worked when video was just getting a bunch of impressions, they were pumping it. Now you have to make sure that actual post copy is on point. So you can't just like take your Instagram reel, put the video on LinkedIn and then not put any effort into the post copy. You gotta have both.
- [19:00]
A
So you, you're saying like if I, if I'm taking one of my top performing videos from Instagram and I bring it over to, to LinkedIn, the actual copy within the LinkedIn post basically has to be similar to like the script. Right. Like it has to be, I take.
- [19:14]
B
Your script, that's the copy.
- [19:16]
A
Okay.
- [19:16]
B
Maybe tweak it a little bit. Yeah. Depending on what the formatting is.
- [19:19]
A
But because the way I write scripts is so sloppy so that it feels like almost like an ongoing like sentence.
- [19:24]
B
Yeah.
- [19:24]
A
Obviously I'm not gonna do that for, you know, the text in this video.
- [19:28]
B
Yeah. But take, take that body of text that you use for the script, clean it up a little bit. That's your post copy. That's gonna be much better than just posting the video with a simple one liner.
- [19:37]
A
Run me through then. How do you think about frameworks for writing very good copy for LinkedIn? Because there are nuances there for, you know, it only shows you this many lines, so you should have X amount of words here and there and then you should have a curiosity gap. What, like how do you think about it?
- [19:53]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a very clear anatomy to a winning LinkedIn post. So there's three main parts. The hook, the body CTA. The hook is by far the most important. Pretty classic advice across all social media platforms at this point, but especially on LinkedIn, because as you said, there's a certain amount of characters before you run into the see more button. And the entire game with getting someone to stop scrolling and read your content and therefore get your content pushed out more, is to get them to care enough before they click See more and get them to click that.
- [20:23]
A
Yeah.
- [20:24]
B
If you can't do that, it doesn't matter how great the content is in the rest of the post. There are so many great pieces of content that die because of a terrible hook. So if you're going to spend any of your time trying to learn the LinkedIn game, I would spend most of it on topic selection and hooks, similar skills, they're distinct things. Um, but if you have a great hook, but the topic just is not Compelling. It's not going to hit. If you have a great topic and the hook isn't formatted in the, in the right way for LinkedIn, it's also not going to hit. So you want to make sure you're writing about the right things and then taking that and packaging it the right way.
- [20:58]
A
I think one of the bigger opportunities on LinkedIn as well is how you write from a personality perspective.
- [21:04]
B
That's, that's aside from stories, that is your moat at this point. Because all these AI models, whether it be GPT, Claude or any of them, the LinkedIn content writing tools, I founded one called Bluecast. You can train.
- [21:16]
A
Do you still grow it?
- [21:18]
B
Not really trying to actively grow it right now. It exists.
- [21:21]
A
People are on it.
- [21:23]
B
I'm real. I can't give you the answer. Top of my head.
- [21:25]
A
Like a hundred or more?
- [21:28]
B
About a hundred.
- [21:29]
A
How much is it?
- [21:31]
B
Like 29amonth.
- [21:32]
A
Okay, so it's, you know, covering your coffee bill. It's doing okay how much coffee your ass drinks. It's more. That was more so a joke around how much cold brew you drink, not how much money the software is making.
- [21:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, but with all those, like, with all those tools, right? Like, you can train AI on the tone of voice, the writing style of popular creators. And what happens is there's a winning hook format, there's a winning writing style, and everyone starts copying it. And it's just so much easier to copy it now that we have all these tools. So very quickly it becomes saturated. And the only way you can stand out is if you have real credibility in stories that you can write about, or if you have a very distinct, unique writing style that you claim first, people might copy it eventually. For example, Adam Robinson has a very distinct post format that he would do and still does, and it really worked for him. But now everyone tries to do it, but it doesn't hit the same for those followers because it's not them. Like, there's, there's no, there's no distinct tone. It's very clearly copied. So you want to have a distinct personality. And oftentimes this will actually mean making the post appear less optimized or scrappier or having intentional mistakes and grammar and formatting, or going against previous best practices for the sake of making it look real.
- [22:56]
A
That's something, you know, when I, when I did my 50 threads over 50 days on Twitter, like I had that period of. I was optimizing every aspect of the thread and at some points I sounded robotic because I, like, was just optimizing for the virality factor now. Dude, if there's a misspelling in my. I just send it.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah, it either doesn't matter or it will help you.
- [23:20]
A
Because I think it helps me more than anything because it's like, it does feel like it's just top of dome where when you. And I think you could do that a little differently when you've already built the audience, you know, like, you could kind of like do that, you know, and, and it doesn't affect you as much versus the latter of like when you are trying to grow and you're trying to optimize every, every aspect. I think you could do, you know, you could grow both, of course, but.
- [23:41]
B
Yeah, you got to start by copying the templates and doing what works. That will get you some momentum. But eventually you're going to hit a wall where you start to sound robotic, you start to blend in with everyone else. You don't really enjoy it because it's not really you. Like, I, I find this a lot with video content. Sometimes where like, I know kind of how to play the game, but sometimes it doesn't quite feel like me. And that can come across in the content versus if some, if you watch someone who's really good at yapping on camera like that, it just sounds like them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
- [24:12]
A
I mean, that comes back to though, like just reps, because Mr. Beast says it all the time on, you know, if you go watch his first few videos like it's Niagara Cringe. And then now he's. I mean, he's basically an actor. Right? Like, he's nailed that very version of it. Walk me through building out a LinkedIn flywheel or a content flywheel. Like, I know it's, it's, it's. There's probably a lot of similarities that go with, with, you know, creating content.
- [24:37]
B
Before we do that, I want to hit on more of the stuff with the, the hooks. Oh, that's gonna, that's gonna be super important. Yes. Very easy, quick wins that people and you can use on your LinkedIn content to immediately make the content perform better.
- [24:48]
A
Hit me with it.
- [24:49]
B
So at Compound, my agency, we train all of our writers on using very specific levers in the hooks to make them as compelling as possible. So for example, one would be a narrative hook. As of right now, using, like stories and hosting, like how I did something versus how to do something tends to work better. So if you can lead with a story, that's one lever that you could use. Another is specific numbers. This is a classic Let me put.
- [25:16]
A
These in an example. So, like, we had an event that we created content for probably two months ago. Right. Generated 5 or 10 million views that in one weekend for a brand.
- [25:29]
B
Yeah.
- [25:29]
A
So, like how I generated 10 million views in.
- [25:32]
B
Exactly. So you. You. You would use that.
- [25:34]
A
And that's a one hook format.
- [25:37]
B
Yes.
- [25:37]
A
For you.
- [25:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. You would use that in the hook versus saying here's how to get a lot of views or here's how to go viral on social media. Like, starting with the story immediately gives you more credibility. Also, humans just like consuming content and stories better, so that's one very effective lever that you could use. Second, and this is also in that example you laid out. But specific numbers. The more specific you can get with the metrics. So saying 5 to 10 million views versus again, just saying how to go viral. Yeah. Two very distinct, different outcomes there. You're going to get a lot better results giving more specific numbers. This is why a lot of times, even like in your content, IG, if you say so and so is like $50 billion marketing playbook. That often works better than just saying marketing playbook.
- [26:21]
A
No, 100% like. And there's so many proof points I have for that for my content.
- [26:25]
B
Yeah, that will apply.
- [26:26]
A
This is this Brand's content playbook versus this brand's $20 million content playbook, bro.
- [26:32]
B
It's.
- [26:32]
A
It's lights out.
- [26:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. So specific numbers. The more specific specific you can get, the better. Third and fourth, these are kind of paired together. Credibility jacking and trend jacking. So credibility jacking is when you use a popular figure or company's name in the hook to sort of borrow their attention. So, for example, I might use, like, here's Alex. Alex Horosi's $50 million marketing and playbook.
- [26:59]
A
Gross. Sounds a lot like my hook, Tommy. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say. I wouldn't say Alex Hermosi, but sounds a lot like Tommy's done stolen my. My hook before.
- [27:11]
B
I like to do it to get a reaction out of him.
- [27:13]
A
That's a good excuse. That's. That's what I would say, too.
- [27:16]
B
And they work, too.
- [27:17]
A
They work. Yeah, I know they work, bro.
- [27:19]
B
What. What y'. All. Y' all talk about copy work in cut.
- [27:22]
A
They're not copying. That's just coffee. Copy works.
- [27:26]
B
Practice.
- [27:26]
A
That's homework. We talk about the game, Tommy.
- [27:28]
B
I'm trying to get the reps in on short form.
- [27:30]
A
So, you know, we ain't talking about practice flipping this Allen Iverson script.
- [27:34]
B
We're talking about we're talking about different AI right now.
- [27:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, there you go. I love all the AI memes, bro. All the AI. But Allen Iverson memes are so funny to me.
- [27:46]
B
But no, like you could use specific like names in the hook to sort of borrow their attention, like Alex Hormozi for example, or just popular names in your industry or category. And then related is trend jacking. So this, there's some overlap here, but trend jacking is more specific to current events. So there's like a news story or popular story that's going down. I can't think of one off the top of my head this week. But if, I don't know if open AI the robot.
- [28:12]
A
Like the robot.
- [28:12]
B
Oh yeah, like the robot thing. You might use that in your hook to. Again, you're borrowing attention from this thing that people already care about because they, they're not going to care about you yet. And a lot of people get very precious and think that their audience should care about them or people that not even their audience, people that haven't seen them before, should care about their take and give a shit about what they have to say. That's often not going to be the case when you're first starting out. Yeah. Especially on LinkedIn. So what you can do to get around that is you use these popular names, people, companies, events. And then once someone's in the content already in the body and they've already committed, by clicking See More, you can give your take in your expert opinion and then by the end you want to give someone a reason to trust you and actually listen to what you have to say and follow you for more. You don't want to turn into like a news outlet. Yeah, that's a common mistake that people can fall into. But you could use that credibility jacking and trend jacking to get people to get past that, that See More button.
- [29:13]
A
Where do you think the platform's going? Because LinkedIn's one of the platforms I do see has a ton of potential because they've been one way for so long. Right. And they're now trying to evolve by adding video, adding saves and shares and kind of making it more of a social platform than like a career driven platform.
- [29:30]
B
Yeah.
- [29:31]
A
Where do you see the platform going so that then we can dive into where you think there's some opportunities?
- [29:37]
B
Yeah, it's something to keep going in that direction. The video thing is interesting. They really want to make it happen. I see mixed reactions from people actually on the platform, both in terms of what people say they want and how the video content actually performs on LinkedIn right now there's this weird dissonance because you'll often see people at LinkedIn saying how video is the future. And they've been running a bunch of ads promoting how video is working really well. It's the same set of three ads you just see over and over and over again. But if you look at the performance of video content, it's not really hitting in the same way that a single Instagram reel can literally change your life and change your business if it hits. Or a single TikTok and do that as well. That's not really happening on LinkedIn right now. It might in the future. The one of the trickier things about LinkedIn is that their communication about where the platform is going is not as sophisticated or good as a platform like Instagram. Like you have Mosseri doing. I would say Moss area videos like communicating. Hey, we're rolling out this thing. Here's what it means, here's how to test it. Here's what we're looking for to make your content do well. You get none of that on LinkedIn.
- [30:50]
A
I love that he does that.
- [30:51]
B
Agreed.
- [30:52]
A
You know, like the fact that I think it's like every weekend he just sits down and answers people's questions to me is pretty, pretty awesome. And he gives a lot of free game to like. Oh no, no. Like if you are trying to grow your audience then like the metrics you should be looking at are blink blank. Oh, you should be paying attention at 3 second view rate because of blink. Like I think that is. That is so awesome. LinkedIn does not do that.
- [31:12]
B
No. Their community around where the platform's going is just not good. And that's one.
- [31:15]
A
I feel like they're just telling you what. Where they want it to go. Hoping that you.
- [31:19]
B
That's the problem with video right now. They want it to work so bad. But whether it's because of user behavior or because of the platform itself, it's not working in the way they want it.
- [31:30]
A
So I think they feel like they'll be left behind if they don't get video to work. Because I don't go on the platform and consume video. Really?
- [31:37]
B
No.
- [31:38]
A
And like I don't.
- [31:39]
B
I don't want to.
- [31:41]
A
You want to stay consuming written content.
- [31:45]
B
I think a good combination or images.
- [31:46]
A
Right.
- [31:47]
B
Or images written content. I'm personally biased towards written content as a writer, but I think having a balance would be ideal. I don't go on LinkedIn to consume short form video content if the short form video content gets served in feed and it's good and it's valuable. Awesome. But I don't want to scroll a TikTok feed on Instagram or Instagram Reels feed or on LinkedIn. That's just not what people want to use the platform for. So it'll be interesting to see. To see how that plays out.
- [32:18]
A
It more so even reminds me of like in a bit like Facebook, like for adults, like the feed. What I mean by that is like, yeah, they. They're using it from a perspective, like updating, but through very like just real visuals. Right. Like just images of almost like a photo dump, but like a more mature photo dump. You know what I'm saying?
- [32:39]
B
100 people are definitely using a lot more like Facebook these days, especially with like memes and humor and even just sharing personal interests and personal.
- [32:46]
A
That's what I'm saying. Like the personal part of it, because I see it, you know, like, as legitimately as I scroll here, it's just.
- [32:52]
B
Yeah, that type of stuff does work. I would be careful about going too far in that direction because you can kind of fall into the trap of. It's. It's easy to build an audience that way, but it can be a bit fluffy. And if you're trying to sell agencies, agency services, for example, and you're. You managed to build an audience off of like sharing your fitness journey on LinkedIn. Yeah, there's kind of a dissonance there. You'll have some overlap and I think there's value in sharing your personal interests and hobbies, but I don't think you should go so far in that direction.
- [33:24]
A
Yeah, I'll tell you the names, like Athletic Greens is one of the brands that hit us up through LinkedIn and just gave us a bag and was like, just go. Go do your thing. Like we just want to in. And again, that came through LinkedIn and I'm missing those moments. And I think one of Brian's biggest brands as well, like, came through LinkedIn. You know, I'm saying, like those. There's certain type of people that.
- [33:49]
B
Are.
- [33:50]
A
At a C suite level, you know, at these brands that they hate social. And so the only place they really consume content is LinkedIn.
- [33:57]
B
That's actually a really good point. I know there are like, there are executives and decision makers that consume Instagram content, obviously. Of course, of course, no one's denying that, but there is a subset that doesn't really want to be online. They have these roles where they make very key decisions for the companies, but they're not scrolling Instagram reels, they're not on TikTok. They might go on LinkedIn once a week or a couple times a week. And that's where they get their content, where they get their industry news. Um, and if you are one of those sources that they go to, you're just so much better positioned to get those opportunities.
- [34:33]
A
Agreed, agreed. And, and that's where I think it's such a. No, I think Oren does a good job of, of bringing his content over from Twitter and Instagram to. Yeah. To LinkedIn. Trying to think of who it really else in like the marketing or content space brings. Does a good job of bringing over. I don't, I don't think many do like, and that's where I think it's such an awesome man.
- [34:55]
B
I feel like I'm just waiting to do it. I think there was a wave of it during that short form video craze on LinkedIn.
- [35:01]
A
Yeah, because we just saw, we all saw the opportunity. We're like, oh, I gotta take advantage of it. And then like once that advantage, like once that opportunity was closed, we were all out. Because during that time, bro, I had one month and I got like, quote, unquote, 10 million impressions. 10 or 12 million impressions.
- [35:15]
B
Yeah. The opportunity, in my opinion, I am biased, but like the opportunity is still there. Yeah, it takes a little bit more work now, but if you took all the content, everything you're doing for LinkedIn for Instagram right now and spent an extra two hours a week on it getting over to LinkedIn, it'll do pretty well. You'll grow an audience and over time you'll start to get more inbound from these bigger companies and not really need to spend a whole lot of time filming or recording or even writing that new content. You already have it all there. There's no point not to take that and put it on LinkedIn.
- [35:47]
A
Another thing that I noticed was, and this was an interesting thing for me at least, was my more highly produced content performed better on LinkedIn than it did Instagram. And even my green screens that would pop on Instagram wouldn't pop on LinkedIn.
- [36:02]
B
I'm not surprised by the first observation. I am a little bit surprised by the second.
- [36:06]
A
That's what I was saying was like Brian could post something that was a green screen that ripped.
- [36:11]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:12]
A
And it would rip on LinkedIn for him as well. But I think Brian, you know, I think Brian's done a better job of growing his audience on LinkedIn on the back end of his Instagram content than I did. I grew my LinkedIn on the back end more so my Twitter content, which is so different than what I'm focusing on now. Right. Like on Twitter, I was so more. I was more focused on general marketing content. Right. I was focused on like growth marketing as a whole, which could be me talking about email one day and then like paid ads another, then SMS another and now it's like, look, I only talk about brand social media and I don't do that. And I didn't. That's not how I grew my audience on.
- [36:51]
B
You could, you could dominate that on, on LinkedIn using the stuff we talked about earlier. And then especially with just taking brand, kind of like how you do on ig, taking brands who you think do a good job on brand social and using the credibility jacking hook that we talked about turning that into a LinkedIn post. Run two of those a week in addition to like a personal story, like the origin story or other stories from earlier in your career. And then mix in two other like savable frameworks with like an infographic and a carousel. You do that for the next 90 days, LinkedIn will be a much stronger channel for you.
- [37:29]
A
I'm impatient. That's. That's the one thing I am with like a platform like, like LinkedIn. I'll. I won't get traction for three days of like puzzle. I'm out. This ain't for.
- [37:39]
B
That's how I feel about ig.
- [37:41]
A
But then you cracked it. It wasn't within the category. You wanted to crack it, but you. Yeah, you'll get what, 1 million views?
- [37:48]
B
Yeah, I think I had like a one week run where I had like a million and like 700k another million. And then I just decided to stop.
- [37:55]
A
It was the Zuck video. It was the poop in your pants video during a marathon, which I don't know what category that exists within.
- [38:04]
B
That was like marketing social because it was, it was talking about dude wipes community. It wasn't like saying it wasn't reporting on like that happened. That that happened. It was more this happened and then this was.
- [38:14]
A
I was like, I know there was some kind of social angle or content angle on it.
- [38:17]
B
Yeah, I did one about actually Gymshark CEO's LinkedIn.
- [38:23]
A
Yeah, he did. And that popped, right?
- [38:25]
B
That video popped on Instagram, which I was surprised about because it was a video about LinkedIn on IG and those tend to like not hit as well. But I think it was because of the credibility jacking because I used Ben Francis. Ben Francis gymshark Lot of green screen. The imagery in the green screen video was very recognizable. So that ended up getting, I think 300 to 500k. I forget what the exact number was.
- [38:48]
A
Yeah, you got my wheels turning. You got my wheels turning. Really thinking about can I spend, you know, if I put a timer for two hours a week, can I put down a good amount of, a good amount of content from like the, the content that I'm already producing and see how that, how that performs.
- [39:03]
B
Speaking to you, you don't have to create any new content. You already have enough content. Even past podcast episodes, there's. You could never create net new content again and have enough to grow to 50k on LinkedIn over the next year.
- [39:18]
A
I don't even care about the LinkedIn's one of the ones that I don't care about the size of my audience. Yeah, I, I really more so care about the legion that I could get from it. And I, I also think it's a platform where like, if you on that.
- [39:30]
B
Point, not to interrupt you, but in addition to the content itself, one of the more powerful things on LinkedIn is that you can really control who you get in front of and who's seeing your content. So along with actually posting the content, you want to be sending connection requests to all of these decision makers at these seven, eight, nine figure companies that you want to do brand social shows with.
- [39:54]
A
Oh, because if you have a target.
- [39:55]
B
List, just send them a connection request. Odds are you're going to have a good amount of mutuals with them just given your connections. So given that, and if you're posting content consistently, they're going to be pretty likely to accept that connection request. They set the connection request. They're pretty much guaranteed to see the next piece of content that you post. Whenever you set someone's connection request, it's a mutual follow and the algorithm will almost certainly surface that next piece of content.
- [40:23]
A
Never thought about that.
- [40:24]
B
And then now they're in your flywheels. Talking about a flywheel earlier, that's how you create the flywheel of.
- [40:29]
A
I think this is the most powerful thing you've, you're, you've. And I just interrupted it.
- [40:33]
B
So. No, no, you're good.
- [40:34]
A
But I think this is the most powerful thing that you just described. The idea of like making a hit list, connecting with the hit list and then having content that's probably strategic to get in front of that hit list.
- [40:44]
B
And then you could do like sort of all sorts of hypothetical content where it's like, if I was doing.
- [40:48]
A
Yeah.
- [40:48]
B
XYZ for this brand that I want to work with. Here's exactly what I do. You see this crush on Instagram and TikTok too. It's nothing new, is just much more targeted on LinkedIn and it's much more predictable to get in front of someone. If you have a semi decent sized audience and you make a video or even a long form written breakdown going over a hypothetical strategy you would use, I can almost guarantee it will get in front of that decision maker.
- [41:14]
A
It 100 will. Because one of my top pieces of content on LinkedIn was me talking about this. I don't know if it's like a toothbrush brand or something like that. I was like if I was running social for this toothbrush brand, if I was changing their growth, I don't remember what it was. Something along those lines. And I ripped it apart on LinkedIn. Boy, everybody from their team was on that, that thread and not thread but like that, that post, it works.
- [41:37]
B
So I mean that's going back, going way back. This is more on Twitter than Instagram or Twitter than LinkedIn. But this is how I built my audience at first and how I got into marketing in the first place. I would just do all these case studies of stuff that I liked in marketing and what I would do differently or what I like didn't like. I'd tag all these companies and the goal was never to go viral. It was to get on the radar of these founders, CMOs, people that at the time could help me get a marketing job. Now it's more for getting clients. That same thing applies. So if you're trying to do Legion, it's much more effective to do that than send a thousand cold emails and hope for the best.
- [42:15]
A
I agree. I definitely think there's a, an opportunity for my video content to. Especially now that we're producing higher end content. I do think there's a larger opportunity for my, my content to work well there just. I think it stands out in that, in that crowd. You know, like I, I don't think the green screen stands out as much within the LinkedIn crowd as like a highly published or polished piece of content for sure.
- [42:39]
B
And on LinkedIn what I find is going back to sort of the authenticity piece we were talking about earlier is because there are so many templates and like content styles that work. One of the best things you could do is having a very distinct style that is actually you and a more raw, authentic video. That's all. That's not not raw. And then it's like unedited, not highly produced. No. Something that's more like you.
- [43:10]
A
Yeah.
- [43:11]
B
Will be much more likely to get on someone's radar than another green screen video that literally anyone with Cap Cut and an iPhone can produce. And then when you start posting and start getting some momentum, you can take your winning organic posts and boost them as thought leader ads. That's one trend that they're really pushing right now on LinkedIn is taking your organic personal brand content and putting some ads in behind it.
- [43:33]
A
And it doesn't affect your reach because on Instagram it will.
- [43:36]
B
From what I've seen.
- [43:37]
A
No, on Instagram, if you boost a piece of content, even if it's already performing amazing, like, you're ruining the chance of getting reach in the future.
- [43:45]
B
Yeah, I wouldn't be worried about that. What you do want to do though, is let the organic content run its course before you go and go and boost it. And then if you are going to run a Thought leader ad, one super simple thing you can do to get more out of it is before you put spend behind it, go in and edit the copy and then add a PS line with a CTA to a newsletter, a lead magnet, or even a straight to your homepage if you don't have that set up. And that will essentially serve as your call to action button on the ad. Because with the thought leader ad unit, you can't. There's no, there's no direct cta. So you can only boost the content, but you can kind of get.
- [44:23]
A
You're literally just paying for reach at this point.
- [44:24]
B
You're paying for reach, but you can kind of get around that and have a CTA button by adding that PS line and you can get a pretty good amount of like newsletter subs or lead magnet downloads. It's a pretty good tactic, dude.
- [44:36]
A
That's because that's another thing where the people that I've talked to, Nathan was one of them that was like, he would give me some ridiculous numbers where LinkedIn would drive him like 8000 subs in like 2 weeks. Which is crazy because for Twitter, my best month was when I did the 50 threads over 50 days. And I added it was like 9 or 10,000 subs in a, in a month or something like that. But it took me 50 threads, which is a lot. Like, that's probably, let's just say two hours, you know, for everyone. Three hours for everyone. It's a lot. So for him to get 8,000 subs or 10,000 subs for like a few pieces of content, Nothing insane is wild to me. Absolutely wild to me.
- [45:19]
B
Yeah. And I mean, the good thing with LinkedIn too, with driving newsletter subs, if that is a goal of yours, is because written content can still do very well on LinkedIn. It's pretty easy to repurpose newsletter content into a carousel or a long form written post and then have a CTA that transitions very naturally into that newsletter. So you can, so there's like a, there's a level of congruence between the post and then the landing page and the actual newsletter they're getting. So you can, you can drive a good amount of email subs from it.
- [45:50]
A
I think I'm doing well on Instagram. I'm not publishing enough. McCoy, you gotta help me publish more. But I'm not. That content's not existing anywhere else. You know, we filmed a YouTube episode yesterday that I think is going to be an absolute banger. But at the same time, like, we're not creating enough content. And a lot of times it's not even just creating enough content, it's getting all your content on all the platforms.
- [46:12]
B
Yeah.
- [46:12]
A
For repurposed platforms there is the risk.
- [46:17]
B
Of, I know people will record a podcast or YouTube videos and just take a bunch of random clips and toss them on LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok, whatever and hope they, they perform well. That usually just doesn't work very well unless the POD is, is really, really good. But I think your content is high quality enough and there's enough like clippable moments where with a little bit of work you can take all that and just distribute it across all these platforms. And LinkedIn on LinkedIn, that can definitely still work because the bar for content overall is still not that high relative to an Instagram or a tick tock. So there's really no reason not to do it.
- [46:57]
A
All right, so what we're going to do is come back on in like three months.
- [47:01]
B
All right.
- [47:03]
A
And we'll, and we'll rip apart what I've been doing.
- [47:05]
B
Okay.
- [47:06]
A
This is if I do.
- [47:07]
B
Yeah, this is great. Because I'm hoping, hypothetical, this is all, this will all work if you actually go and do it and listen to what we're talking about. And then if you actually do it, you can come back in three months and look at, okay, this is the hooks that work. This is where you can improve.
- [47:20]
A
There's a lot more that I come back. We're doing 20 million in ARR.
- [47:25]
B
If that happens, I'm definitely using that as a case study on my agency site.
- [47:28]
A
I'd allow it. And then you could thank me again for just continuing to to bless you. It's so dramatic, guys. I've done nothing for Tommy.
- [47:37]
B
No, he just makes me drive an hour out of Austin to come record dramatic.
- [47:41]
A
Here we go again, bro. Dude. What? One, I appreciate you coming on. Two, I appreciate you giving me free game. Three, if people want to find you, if they want to work with your agency, if they're trying to turn up on on LinkedIn, where can they do so? Where can they find you? How can they hire you?
- [47:55]
B
Yeah, well, this is great. I think the one last thing I want to leave people with is a lot of this stuff likely doesn't sound super complicated or that complex. It's because it's not. A lot of it is very simple. It just takes like we've been talking about time to actually execute. So if you actually watch through this and apply everything we talked about consistently over the next 60 to 90 days, I would be shocked if you don't grow consistently on like that. As far as where they can find me LinkedIn. No surprise. Just look up Tommy Clark and you'll see my profile come up. I post there pretty much every day talking about how to grow on LinkedIn.
- [48:28]
A
Yeah.
- [48:29]
B
And then my YouTube channel also look up Tommy Clark. I post once a week, sort of longer, more in depth playbooks sharing what we're seeing work for clients right now. Examples of how to grow content to contents to try like anything you possibly need to grow on LinkedIn. And last thing is the newsletter Social files. Read social files.com again longer form breakdowns of how to grow on LinkedIn and do founder led content in your agency. Plug it the agency Compound content studio. So compoundcontentstudio.com and you can go there to sort of check out our work. Get on the waitlist.
- [49:03]
A
Is your email Tommy Compound.
- [49:07]
B
Now my email I'm gonna open myself up to a bunch of cold emails and potentially and whatnot.
- [49:12]
A
But we have cool listeners.
- [49:15]
B
Tommy. Tclarkmedia.com so Tclark Media was the name before I rebranded to Compound.
- [49:22]
A
All right dude, I appreciate you. We're about to get this workout in.
- [49:25]
B
Let's do it.
- [49:26]
A
Peace. Thanks. Y' all like subscribe and help Tommy.