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The Copywriter Club Podcast
TCC Podcast #450: Finding Followers and Clients on LinkedIn with Matt Barker
01:01:49
Copywriters have been using LinkedIn to connect with and land clients for years. So why is it still so difficult to grow an audience on that platform? I asked copywriter and LinkedIn Strategist, matt Barker,
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- [00:00]
Rob Marsh
Looking for ideas for finding and connecting with potential clients on LinkedIn, you're in the right place. This is the Copywriter Club podcast. There are a lot of ways to find a land client. There's cold emailing, which allows you to choose the clients you want to work with, and if your pitch warms up your prospect and offers to solve the right problem for them, it can be really effective.
- [00:35]
Kira Hug
Incidentally, if you want to learn how.
- [00:36]
Rob Marsh
To cold pitch effectively, check out the copywriterclub.com lovenote beyond cold pitching though, maybe the most popular method for attracting clients is you posting content on social media. And for copywriters, Instagram or LinkedIn seem to be the go to platforms. And yes, there are copywriters using other platforms like TikTok or Threads or even Pinterest and seeing success there. Most of the action though seems to be on these other sites, somewhat older platforms. We've talked about finding clients on LinkedIn several times on the podcast, and in fact we're going to talk about it again in the near future. But because so many copywriters are using these platforms to build an audience, it bears repeating some of that advice from time to time. It's not just repeating the same stuff though. We're looking for new ideas that work now. The algorithm is always changing, so keeping an idea on what's working now is important. So with that as our preamble, I Invited copywriter turned LinkedIn audience building strategist Matt Barker to with me and you as my listener, what is working on LinkedIn right now? Matt has built an audience of more than 170,000 followers on LinkedIn. His posts get hundreds of comments and when he shares his programs or other products, the sales follow. Matt will be the first to say that Getting attention on LinkedIn is harder today than it was two or three years ago, but that doesn't mean that it's hard to stand out. In this interview, Matt and I talked about what works, what he's posting more of lately, and how sharing content to inspire and motivate can bring in than post pitching your services. And just a small spoiler alert, what Matt says about what's working differs from a copywriter to copywriter. I think you're going to like this interview. Before we get to the interview, just in case you missed this last week when I mentioned it, I have put everything I know about conducting research and using AI as part of my research process into a short course called Research Mastery. It includes the 420+ research method that helps copywriters like you Uncover the insights that you need to write great sales copy. More than 20 different techniques for capturing ideas and insight from your research. All of the questions that I use to find big ideas about my client, their product, their customers, and their competitors, as well as the documents that you need to capture your research. And several tutorials on how to use AI to speed up your processes and even to help with your research itself. But unlike other research courses that take hours to watch and implement, this one will teach you everything you need to know in a single afternoon. You can learn more about this unique resource@thecopywriterclub.com research mastery. Research mastery is all one word. I'll link to it in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can't type the URL into your browser. Right now, the copywriter club.com researchmastery and now my interview with Matt Barker.
- [03:32]
Kira Hug
Matt, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited for this conversation. Um, because you are. You've done amazing things on LinkedIn in not a huge amount of time. I think you've got 168,000 followers. When I looked this morning, I think you've had something like 45 million organic impressions. And it's probably even more than that. If you start including what you've done with your clients. You've, you've, you're kind of a big deal on LinkedIn, at least in the communities that you serve. So how did you get there? You know, how did you build this amazing asset that you have?
- [04:07]
Matt Barker
Yeah, thanks for having me on, by the way. I used to listen to this podcast a little bit when I was getting to learn copywriting and, and that sort of stuff three years ago. So thanks for, for what you do with your, with your episodes. It's helping people maybe more than, you know, appreciate that.
- [04:23]
Rob Marsh
Yeah.
- [04:24]
Matt Barker
But yeah, with my LinkedIn profile, it was. I started writing on there in January 2022. The main purpose for that was to get copywriting clients. I just left my, my job the about three or four months prior. I worked in marketing. I was in marketing for about eight years, B2B and B2C. So I kind of understood marketing pretty well. And coffeewriting was a, a small part of that. But I wasn't really sure how to be a really good copywriter. So fast forward to when I started Link writing on LinkedIn. January 2022. I was, yeah, I was using it primarily to try and get. Get clients for my new copywriting business that starting. I'd started. And it was pretty difficult at the start Because I just didn't. I had this thing that a lot of people experience at the, at the beginning when they start kind of writing content online that's from their own perspective and their own personal profile. Not through like a company logo or like through their work, through a brand where you just feel really kind of anxious and worried about what people will think of you. And you know, you're, you're putting yourself out there. And it was really difficult the first sort of two or three months trying to, you know, kind of get over that. But so glad I did because. And I kind of stuck to it. I would, I would read a lot of content about people who were doing similar things, writing content on LinkedIn consistently and the kind of the power of, you know, having your, your own personal presence on, on LinkedIn specifically and as well as just social media in general. So I could see that there was a long term benefit to it. So I, I kind of always had in my mind that I wanted to just stick to it and see what would come of it. And then after three months I kind of had that like there was a little breakthrough of like a post that done particularly well and that was enough for me to be like, ah, okay, this is, this is really, this like could be really be something. And it, I just kind of snowballed from there really. I, I'm very data driven. So I was always looking at like what, why did this post work? How can I do more of that and do it and just consistently get better and better and better? And so it, it became a bit of a, an obsession, a bit of a kind of, you know, competition. You're looking at other people growing and doing other things and yeah, just managed to be really consistent and constantly wanting to improve. I think is, is one of the.
- [07:13]
Kira Hug
Big things when you say that you had that post that did particularly well. What, what was the difference? Or you know, what you were you bumping along with one or two comments and suddenly this one has, you know, hundreds or you know, what did, what.
- [07:26]
Rob Marsh
Did that look like?
- [07:27]
Matt Barker
It was, the difference was I was, yeah, I was posting every, now, every, a couple, two or three times every week for about three months. And I was just getting like one, like three likes, four likes, no comments. Took me ages to get even a comment, I think, which is quite funny, but I think that's what most people experience. But yeah, the difference between that, that post that kind of had that initial reaction was I think it got something like 80 likes or, and 20, 30 comments, I can't remember. But I think, I think there was a certain creator with about 60,000 followers at the time who managed to see it, catch it and engage with it. And I think that had a big impact. But the difference in writing of that post versus the other ones was kind of night and day when you look at like what works on LinkedIn, it was like there was a proper hook, like a real hook that actually like grabbed someone and talked to a pain point and was compelling someone to actually read it. It was concise, it was kind of formatted, it was easy to read. So it was. Yeah, I think when you look at that versus the, the stuff I was doing before that, it's, it's quite clear.
- [08:50]
Kira Hug
Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more deeply. You know, what is the best content to be posting on LinkedIn so that you're actually getting engagement and not just engagement from anybody, but engagement from the people that you want to work with, you know, people that maybe would hire you, you know, to do copy your content for them.
- [09:12]
Matt Barker
Yeah, it's, it's, it's an ever evolving thing. The, the way, because, because these social platforms we, they have their algorithms and that kind of dictates, you know, how much, how many impressions and how what reach your posts get. But so that can, that can be a bit of a minefield and that, that can kind of make things not so consistent as they should be. As opposed to like traditionally if you're writing a landing page or like a sales letter of some sort where you're just driving traffic to that, that piece of copy will just perform as it performs and you improve it or as, as you, you improve it. You know, the only variance is the, is the, is the visitors and on social platforms you're kind of, there's, there's external factors which are kind of out of your control. But typically the, the kind of the, the writing process is the, the big frame. The main framework that was, was the most helpful for me was understanding problem agitate solution. To start off by highlighting a big painful problem for a specific target audience. Agitate that problem, make it really feel real and kind of be able to, to under, to, to make the, the reader feel like, oh, this person really understands like the problem that I'm, I'm facing. They really, they truly understand me. And obviously that comes from the research that you put into understanding your target audience and then presenting a solution. So whether that's like a, a step by step process that you have or whether it's just a, a one line kind of motivational kind of sentence that's going to change their kind of beliefs. That was the main framework for me that has always worked well on LinkedIn because you're able to use it in so many different ways. You're able to tell stories with that kind of framework. You're able to educate your audience on problems that they're experiencing, but you're also able to use it to show off results and outcomes that you've driven for other clients and past clients. So it's such a helpful framework that I think just works across the board on LinkedIn and then the other kind of variants of that are like the formats that you use. Is it text only? Is it, are you adding some sort of visual to help illustrate the, the point? Or any. Or, or you know, some. There's a, a kind of a format on LinkedIn that that gets a strangely large amount of reach is the, are these kind of PDF guides called carousels that they call them on the platform and they're kind of these multi page guides. They're typically not really following that kind of problem agitate solution framework. They're more kind of in depth pieces. But those kind of pieces of content can do extremely well. And if you, if you hold someone's attention for that long and you really, and you really educate them and kind of dive into their, into their conversation, that's happening for them right now, that, that's, those pieces of content can really have a big impact in terms of kind of lead generation because they can get that really high reach but then they can also really deeply resonate because you can go into a lot of detail.
- [12:53]
Kira Hug
So when it comes to trying to talk to the right people, you know, potential ideal clients, dream clients we might have. Are you letting the algorithm do that work based off the content or are you doing anything specifically to target them beyond just knowing what your ideal client's problems are?
- [13:11]
Matt Barker
Yeah, so there's kind of, I'd say there's three, there's, there's three kind of areas of, of LinkedIn ultimately there's your profile, there's the net, there's your network and there's your posts. The, the kind of three kind of main things that kind of have the biggest impact within those is your profile where you have your headline, you have a very short amount of. You have a very short headline that when you post you, your image is there, your name's there and then there's a headline underneath which is, is essentially or should essentially be your value proposition. So what, who, who am I helping out of that, how do I help them? That can be extremely powerful because that's essentially your, you know, your, your advertisement. It's, it's at the top of all of your, all of your posts. No matter what your content is, that's going to be the thing that's there if that, if that, if that headline is very targeted and calling out your ideal customers, showing them how you can help them, showing the problems that you solve in that really concise like 10 or 8 word sentence that can have a really big impact if your, if your posts are then dialed in so we can come onto the posts part of that, that kind of trio now. So with your content, the main thing that drives ideal clients and target audience to your content is the hook. Because that's obviously the first thing that people see if someone's scrolling the feed. If your hook is, you know, calling out your ideal client, if it's talking to a past or current pain that that person is experiencing, if it shows a potential kind of outcome that they're looking for, if it includes any other words, phrases or kind of emotions that just trigger your ideal client and your target audience. So specifically it's, it doesn't matter what the format is, it, it's going to grab them if it, if it, if it gets into their feed and if it gets in front of them. So then that brings us onto the network side of it in terms of connecting with the right people. So you know, using the search bar to find, you know, founders, whoever your target audience is, using sales nav if you have it to, to go deep and really dial in, drill into those kind of demographics to find exactly your ideal client, connecting with them and then actually having conversations with them in the dm. So the dirt, your direct messages. So actually talking to them. Because what that does when you actually talk to them in the DMs, which is A, is a trick that a lot of people I don't actually think realize is when you talk to them in the DMs, it, it the next time they log into LinkedIn, the likelihood of your most recent post being top of their feed is extremely high. So if you're able to combine all that together, so connecting with the right people, talking to them, having a headline that is optimized to speak to that person and then having content going out that is also optimized speaking to that exact person, just all of a sudden your, your post is right at the top of their feed and it's something that they can't ignore essentially.
- [16:42]
Kira Hug
So this is A really interesting thing that I hadn't thought of and I want to make sure that I understand it correctly. So when it comes to commenting and appearing in somebody else's feed, does that happen when you're commenting on your post or does. So let's say you post something, I comment on your post, will that then put my content and we have a conversation in your comments? So it's not just oh, great post, Matt. You know, you know, those, those kinds of non comment comments, will that put my content into your feed or does that have to happen on my content that you would, that conversation would be on my content that you've basically opted in and said, oh, I'm interested in this because I'm commenting on Rob's post and now my stuff will show up in your feed. Does that make, does that question make sense?
- [17:28]
Matt Barker
Yeah. Yeah. So I would, for, for your post to show up in my feed or to my audience, I would have to comment on your post. So that's why, that's why, you know what I referenced earlier with that, that early post that blew up for me, there was that one creator who just had a big, a much bigger audience than me who engaged with it and that sent my post into their, their audiences, into his audience's feed. So.
- [17:57]
Kira Hug
Okay, that makes sense.
- [17:58]
Rob Marsh
So let's talk about how we get.
- [18:00]
Kira Hug
Our first followers and how we make.
- [18:02]
Rob Marsh
Sure that they're the right first followers.
- [18:05]
Kira Hug
Because, you know, like any audience, you know, it's great to have a hundred thousand followers, but if none of those are your potential clients, your potential buyers, it's really not that great. You're just creating content that's going out there and being enjoyed, but doesn't actually have any kind of real business impact. So what do we do to get those, you know, first thousand plus followers?
- [18:27]
Matt Barker
So the, the main thing is actually going out and finding them and pulling them in. So like we mentioned, actually going out and connecting with them. Obviously that is, that is quite difficult if you, if you are completely starting from zero because you, you would need to work on your profile and kind of build your profile out. So when you do connect with someone and that pop, that connection request pops up in there in their, in their inbox. If they click on your profile, they can actually see all the reasons why they should connect with you. Even if your connections are at one or two or whatever, there needs to be all the information on your profile specific to them and showing them how you can benefit them and why you're, why you're a beneficial connection. So that's, that's going to be really important for someone just starting out to, to make sure their profile looks really good, looks really strong and compelling and talking to a specific person. Because when you do that connection request, that's going to be essentially their, their only one of, their only kind of part one of the main parts of their thought process when they, when it comes to accepting or rejecting, obviously your content works with it as well. So.
- [19:54]
Kira Hug
I was, I was just trying to make sure that I understand this. So let's say that I want to work with supplement companies. You know, people who are making vitamin supplements, nutraceuticals, you know, that kind of thing. You're basically saying I need to go out and find 20, 50, 100 of these people, maybe they're marketing directors, vice presidents, founders, whatever, and start to connect with it. Like either put in connection requests or.
- [20:18]
Rob Marsh
Start to interact with their content.
- [20:20]
Kira Hug
Is that right?
- [20:21]
Matt Barker
Bit of both, yeah. Connection requests. The, the, the, the reason for the connection request is then if, if they become a first degree connection when you are then putting out content that is targeted for that target audience, it's going to be highly relevant to them and the likely, it increases your chances of them hopefully engaging with your content. And that's ultimately the goal because the, the kind of you want your, if you're, if you, if you want your post to perform well, there's this kind of testing kind of phase that the post goes through after you post it. And if your close connections aren't engaging with it at a high rate, then it's not going to be pushed out to any, anyone, it's not going to be pushed out any further. So want to keep your con. That's, that's the kind of good thing about LinkedIn these days, is that it is rewarding that kind of like people with really niche targeted audiences and people with really niche targeted content. Because it's just, it's making sure that those people are seeing the, the right, the right content.
- [21:31]
Kira Hug
That's kind of an interesting idea then. So, you know, let, let's say that I've got, you know, because I've collected these over the career, you know, several different jobs or whatever, co workers who are may my ideal clients, should I be unfriending them and friending people who are my clients to curate that really tight group of potential clients.
- [21:54]
Rob Marsh
I like.
- [21:55]
Kira Hug
I've never, I mean I've always just sort of thought the bigger the network the better. But it sounds like maybe having a more curated network is actually better on LinkedIn. At least if you want to use it for client acquisition.
- [22:07]
Matt Barker
Yeah, this is where it kind of gets a bit tricky and I think, I think a lot of people disagree and a lot of people would agree, depending on how you kind of go about it. So the, the strategy that I've always approached with LinkedIn is it kind of looks a bit like a traditional marketing funnel with your top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel content. And that top of funnel content is really, I guess and more what I've been kind of leaning towards recently with it is it's more showing your identity, like who you are, why I should trust you as a human. You know, because ultimately we're just speaking to each other through screens. And now especially with like AI and how much just copy paste content there is out there, it's, it's kind of got to this weird position where the more human you are, the more you can stand out. So there's almost this kind of battle to just prove that you're human and that has, that can have a really big impact on your sales. Right. Because you know, obviously that building relationships at scale is what the kind of game is on LinkedIn. So there's that element of it where you, you actually just want to put kind of human, humanized content out, which isn't necessarily always educational or targeted towards that target audience who you would, who would be your ideal client because you kind of just want to let people know like, hey, I'm, I'm human. I'm just doing like normal life things. You want to kind of get, you want to kind of tap into like these different, the different emotional side of, of your audience to help them kind of believe in you as a person. And that is in turn gonna then help when you're posting this kind of middle funnel content where you're showing off like your expertise and the skills you have around the service you provide. And then the bottom funnel content when you're showing like, you know, client results, outcomes that you've driven specifically for clients. So it's a really important part of it. But that's where it gets a bit shady because you don't want to, you don't. It's good to have a niche audience, but it's also, you need a reason to, for people to trust you as a person. So it's, it's difficult.
- [24:36]
Kira Hug
Yeah, that, I mean, I guess that's worth thinking through. It might be worth, you know, somebody setting up some accounts to really test, you know, a super, a super dialed in profile that only follows potential clients versus one that's, that's got maybe a more a general application and just sort of. I may not be a real tab or a real way to, I mean, might not be scientific because, you know, setting the profiles up for two different people or, you know, the connections that you would get. But yeah, it's just kind of an interesting conundrum.
- [25:12]
Matt Barker
I think it really depends on, on your, on how you ultimately want to approach it, like long term. I think for me, I always wanted to approach LinkedIn long term as a place of. I want to attract clients to me, which long, long term would mean I have to do a lot less outreach. I don't have to spend as many as, as much time sending DMs and doing all, or doing outreach. I can leverage my audience post, get a, a lot of reach and attract people to me. But early on, right at the start, that, that just doesn't work. So you have to do all the outreach to, to, to get things going. So you can kind of, you can do it at the start just by DMing and having conversations and, and doing the outreach, but the effectiveness of your profile in, in the early days of when you're doing that, it's not gonna, it's not gonna show as much social proof, you know, because you don't have as many followers. You may not have the content that is getting all the engagement. And whether we like it or not, that does have an impact on people's kind of psyche, you know. So, yeah, I think early on you can, can definitely get clients on LinkedIn by really going heavy on outreach and just being really targeted with it. And then if you get those conversations going, then if you're good at sales, then you can, you know, get, get on a call, you can show all the, all this work that you've done. If you're, if you've got all that experience and you're an experienced business, then you just need to get them on that call and show them what you've done. But if you're someone like me, who back in 2022 was just kind of just starting out, you need to really build up that, that portfolio and give people a reason to trust you. So it's. Yeah, it's kind of two different approaches, I guess.
- [27:13]
Kira Hug
At what point are you trying to move people off of LinkedIn and into, you know, a freebie or a product or get them to your website or some other kind of engagement? Or are you looking at and saying, hey, as much of this as I can get to happen on LinkedIn, I'm happy to have it there on the platform.
- [27:32]
Matt Barker
I'm, I'm very regularly plugging like I guess I call it, you'd call it a lead magnet, but lead magnets, that phrase is a bit overused now, isn't it?
- [27:45]
Kira Hug
But everybody hates them, right?
- [27:48]
Matt Barker
For me, I kind of, I'll rotate between different types of ebooks or email based kind of courses to give them some. Give, give my audience something for, for free to then get them onto my, to my email list and then I can send them regular emails. So that's, that's something that I've been doing pretty regularly in my content. There's a, there's a bit of a, it's a. I, I'm, I'm not sure whether we could class it as a myth or not, but putting a, a URL into your LinkedIn post can, can typically can destroy the reach. So if you, if you write a post, put a link saying hey, go here and grab this thing. LinkedIn doesn't like you sending people off platform obviously. So then the, the algorithm catches it and says no, no, no, you're not, you're not doing that. But sometimes it can be really effective if you, if you kind of disguise that link in a kind of educational piece of content and, and attach you know, like pictures or, or PDFs or something like that to kind of disguise the link you can and, and word it properly, then you can kind of bypass it a bit. And yeah, that, that the, the conversions you get from just plugging the link straight in the post to send them to a lead magnet or another resource to then take them off platform massively outweighs. If you kind of, if you just, man, if you just type go to my bio and download this thing, it's an easy one click versus finding something else, clicking to your profile, finding the next clicking again. It's just a lot less clicks. But yeah, the conversion rate or the amount of clicks you can get by just putting the URL straight in the post can be, can be really good.
- [29:40]
Kira Hug
So I see a lot of conflicting information about the kinds of posts that work on LinkedIn. You know, I've seen people say you always have to have an image. I've seen people lately saying video works really well. You mentioned the carousels and I seem to engage, I seem to be seeing a lot of carousels in my feed and I tend to engage in a, you know, a few of those at least go three or four pages deep. What's the best content right now in your opinion on LinkedIn what's working and you know, what should we be thinking about doing more of.
- [30:14]
Matt Barker
It completely depends on your goals. You know, if you, the format that I found that works the best for, for follower growth and impressions has been these carousel posts, specifically educational, step by step carousel posts. So if you say, for example, here's how I write a LinkedIn post, start to finish, I'll then show you screenshots step by step. What I do to do that process that, that specific type of content for me and that it's been consistent over the last three years has always been the piece of content that has really big spikes in follower growth and, and gets a lot of impressions. So that's, that's, that, that's for that kind of outcome for posts where I'm looking to drive inbound leads because I'm not, not necessarily looking to do that from every post. When you kind of look at a strategy as a whole, it plays a part of it, but you need to kind of be fairly, kind of softly, softly with it because you don't want to kind of, you know, annoy people and being, being too salesy and that sort of stuff. So if there's a particular post where I'm trying to drive inbound leads from it and really trying to pull in that ideal client, it can be text only or it can be text with a really clear screenshot or image of, you know, proof of a client getting a result, like a happy message saying I just got this result, thanks so much or, or a testimonial or something like that, or, or even a, even a video. Whatever that, whatever the format of the thing you're attaching is, it just needs to show social proof of a customer or a client happy and you, and the text is, is you documenting kind of how it happened and talking about that, that, that win. So the, the format, it really depends, you know, on what your goal, what your goals are. But, but equally there's, there's people who, and, and, and it's been the same for me. I've written text only posts which are, you know, 2, 500 characters long and they have completely blown up, which typically isn't the kind of optimal, you know, kind of format for, for explosive growth or, or kind of a viral post, if you want to call it that. So it kind of ultimately comes down to how good is your copy. In my opinion, if your copy is, is, is really good, really interesting and, and talks to the right problems and the right person, then that's always the main thing and you can go text only if you really get that dialed in.
- [33:16]
Kira Hug
When we first started talking, you mentioned how you kind of like to look at the data and see what's performing, what's not performing. How do you look at that now? Do you kind of keep an eye on the baseline? And if you have a post that is above average, are you still breaking that down and saying, what did I do differently here? Or if one performs below average, are you still looking that saying, you know, where's the mistake here? Or have. Does it just kind of come so naturally now that you, you just know what's going to be an above average post? And, and it all still works?
- [33:50]
Matt Barker
There's an element of that. Yeah. Because it's got to a point now I've written probably 5,000 plus LinkedIn posts, so there's a bit of that kind of ingrained in the process when I'm writing and creating. But I actually just did my kind of my quarterly review where I sit down and I open up my analytics and I filter by either impressions or reposts or reactions, depending on it. Can I think when I just did it, I looked at impressions. It's not too important which one you look at, but impression looking. So looking at impressions as a, as a metric can be a little bit misleading because of what we were just talking about with the algorithm. It can, it can. You can post the same thing today, you can post it again next month and it will be wildly different, but with reaction and engagement rate. I see that as someone has intentionally clicked like, or they've done something to, to say, I like that that's been in someone's control versus like this mythical algorithm. So, yeah, you can sort your post by either either of those metrics, whatever you, whatever you want. Um, and I'm looking at, I'm looking at the top 20 or the top 10% of, of posts that I put out and I'm putting them in a, in a collection. And then I'm copy and pasting the hooks into a kind of document so I can see all the best hooks and kind of analyze what the, what the structures of those were, what the topics were, what the topics of the posts were that performed very well, what kind of pain points they were touching on. And I'm essentially looking at that every quarter or. Yeah, every quarter normally. So I'm kind of making sure that I'm using the right kind of hooks that are working well on LinkedIn for my audience right now. And I'm talking about the right topics that my audience are Caring about right now and responding to right now because these platforms can change so much, it's almost not worth looking at what worked last year. Sometimes that can, sometimes they can work. If you take a post from last year, for example, this time last year and kind of rehash it, there are the odd posts that can work, but people, what people want to consume and what people want to read about just changes so much on social media. I think LinkedIn is a bit slower than, than other platforms I think because just naturally what it is, it's, it's a professional place. Not necessarily like a kind of quick, twitchy trend kind of platform. But yeah, if looking at, looking at the last three months data and just trying to find what those top 10% with posts were so you can take them and say, okay, how can I create more content around these specific topics? How can I create more content that is using these kind of hook structures and these, these, these formats of content I've used and just really dial in on those specifically because I think when I looked at my data it was something like 45% of the impressions I gained in those three months came from less than 10% of the posts, which to me sound is crazy. And I think that was out of something like 180 posts. So it's, it's something like 2018 posts that contribute to almost half the impressions. So it's, it just shows you how much of a game it is of like consistently posting things that you think are good and just seeing, and just waiting and see which, which one kind of pops, you know.
- [38:03]
Kira Hug
So you just went through this process of, of analyzing these. Aside from the PAS formula we already talked about, what did you see? What other trends did you see in your high performing content that people seem to be reacting to?
- [38:18]
Matt Barker
It was, I mean I post a lot of educational content so it's hooks that are kind of, you know, how to, or calling out a kind of specific problem in the hook. But then there was also stuff like I posted a, I posted something about how my dad, he's 64 and he's retiring soon and that post got a lot of engagement. So there's this kind of, it was a real mixed bag to be honest, but it just kind of shows where the platform's at right now with kind of, you can, you can, it likes the educational content so you know, kind of showing people how to do stuff, how you do stuff works. But then there's also this kind of human side of it that still works where you know, I'm Talking about my dad who's retiring. And there's, there's those sorts of things that, that, that still work. And there's no, there's no real kind of set formula, I don't think. There was hooks that are four or five sentences long, you know, over 30, 40 words long, that worked very well. There was hooks that were less than 10 words that worked very well. Carousel's done well. Text only did well. There was such a mixed bag. It's actually, it's quite hard to just say, okay, this is the, this is the one thing, but, but ultimately it's, it's, it's more a case of kind of listening to what your, what your audience are signaling to you. It's going to be completely different for everyone. So it's almost, you almost can't say, like, this is, these are the topics that work really well because it's, it's completely dependent on what your audience are telling you. My, the topics that performed really well for my audience and what I put out might be completely different to someone else.
- [40:27]
Kira Hug
Yeah, that makes sense. So I have a question that I want to ask. I do not mean this as a criticism or to be cheeky, um, but there are a lot of people on LinkedIn who are doing really well and they are selling a lot of the same things that you do, which is how to do well on LinkedIn. I'm curious, you know, what you're seeing outside of that. Hey, follow me, you know, and I can show you how to grow on LinkedIn, but rather what you're seeing other people accomplish with LinkedIn in other niches. You know, so maybe it's people you've worked with or people that you're seeing on LinkedIn and the things that they're doing to grow. Obviously these ideas that we're talking about could work in other niches, but how are you seeing it being applied elsewhere, you know, to land clients, to grow audience that's, you know, beyond this while I'll help you grow your audience on LinkedIn.
- [41:16]
Matt Barker
Yeah, it's a, it's an annoying one because you don't, you don't want to be the person who's talking about growing on LinkedIn on LinkedIn or, you know, writing about writing on LinkedIn on LinkedIn. You know, it's a, it's, it's a weird one. But yeah, clients that I work with, I've just, I early parts of this year, I've been growing a group called Copy Builders, where we're all writing posts together, helping people write Post quicker, more effectively getting better engagement and attracting clients to their business or new opportunities, what, whatever their, whatever position they're in. And some of the, the range of people in there are quite interesting. There's, there's one guy who's an offshore driller, you know, completely not, I wouldn't.
- [42:11]
Kira Hug
I wouldn't imagine seeing that on LinkedIn.
- [42:13]
Matt Barker
Yeah, not part of like, you know, your typical business world on LinkedIn at all. But he's just been absolutely like crushing it. Like, I don't like the word crushing, but he's been, he's just been doing so well and what he's been doing really well is so he, the position he's in right now is he's still working in offshore drilling, but he just has this passion for photography. So he's mixed the two things and what he's been doing is kind of posting observations and opinions on the offshore drilling industry, stories of an, experiences of his, you know, his experience in that industry as well as some educational content around it, which almost feels weird to do for offshore drilling, but he's done a bit of that. But mainly it's been the stories, observations and kind of opinions on the industry. And he's pairing that up with really nice photography of, you know, people on, on, on the, you know, working the drills, people who are working. And it's just been doing really well. He's grown to, I think, eight or nine thousand followers now. I think he started out, I think he only started on LinkedIn a few months ago. And yeah, I think, yeah, that's, that's a really good, I think that's a great example of kind of how you can apply it for, for a niche that just isn't anything to do with the platform. And then there's other, other kind of niches like, you know, marketing agencies tend to do particularly well on there, whether it's web development, advertising, branding, they don't, they tend to do very well in terms of. It's a great place to show off their projects that they're working on. They can, you can, you can post videos and images. So if you're, if you're very design focused, you're able to use that, that kind of visual element to really show off your work and that really works well to attract clients, whether it's, you know, completely not LinkedIn related at all. So, yeah, they're kind of the two that kind of spring to mind.
- [44:42]
Kira Hug
How big does an audience have to be to, you know, really start to support a freelancer in their, in their work? In their business to bring in enough clients, enough prospects every month.
- [44:55]
Matt Barker
It's tough to say, but from, in my experience it was, it took me, it took me about five or six months to really start seeing lead, consistent lead flow. And that was starting from scratch. And I, I was a freelancer, just start freelancer starting completely from scratch, business from scratch, audience from scratch. I think my audience at, at the six month point was at something like 8,000 or 9,000, maybe, maybe 10. But you don't, I really don't think you need that many. I think that I've, I've, I've seen people who have taken my courses and people who I've worked with who are, you know, newer freelancers and they've got 2,000 followers and they post fairly pretty niche content and they're able to attract clients and use the content they put out as kind of, you know, partners to their outbound and outreach that they do. So yeah, I really don't think there's a, there's a minimum. I think it's, it's how effective you are with your copy and your content and how effective you are with your outreach and how, how well your profile is set up. Kind of like how we were talking about. Yeah.
- [46:26]
Kira Hug
To me it seems like one of the big challenges that a lot of us have on LinkedIn is this idea that we need to self promote, especially I think copywriters, maybe designers, freelancers. A lot of us are introverts. We like working alone. We don't love being out there. And so it can be really difficult, you know, talking about successes or talking about our own expertise. How did you overcome that? And do you have, you know, advice for people who are sort of struggling with that, saying I don't really want to talk about myself in that way or I, I'm uncomfortable telling people how awesome I am.
- [47:05]
Matt Barker
Yeah, it is really hard. It's weird, isn't it? Especially I'm British and we have this thing of kind of self deprecating and putting ourselves down.
- [47:15]
Kira Hug
It may even be worse for you right there.
- [47:17]
Matt Barker
I'd love to see the stats on that if we could somehow figure it out. But yeah, it's really hard. I, I definitely have that, that kind of streak in me. And even now it sometimes gets a bit like, do I kind of feel, you know, confident putting this, this result out? I think it, it's definitely a lot easier now. But yeah, I think at the start it was the, the turning point was just being more comfortable and kind of absorbed with the idea that every, that the piece of content that I put out today could just be completely forgotten tomorrow. And I think for me, that's, that's quite reassuring. It's, it's a bit, it's, it's kind of depressing, but it's reassuring at the same time, I think, because it doesn't matter how many followers you, you have, you, you could put a bad post out and it doesn't do very well. It can, it will deflate you and it will kind of knock your confidence, but you can just do another one tomorrow and you can do another one the next day, another one the next day. And the likelihood of someone seeing all of your post is just extremely slim because, you know, there's a very small percentage of people who are logging into LinkedIn every day, same time, looking at the same person, checking for the same person's posts. So it was, it was kind of coming around to that idea really, that not every post is that important. And I'm kind of playing this longer, longer game. Um, so when I, when I do promote myself, it doesn't feel like that much of a big deal because if it bombs or it doesn't do very well, it's like, ah, okay, well, I'll have another go next week.
- [49:13]
Kira Hug
What part do pods and other groups play in LinkedIn? Growth. Growth today. And these are these groups that, sort of invisible to, you know, anybody who's just kind of scrolling through the feed, but obviously groups of friends are colleagues, co workers that hop on, like each other's posts, promote each other's posts. Is that still something that you need to be involved in to jumpstart the stuff, or can you get around that?
- [49:40]
Matt Barker
So, so for me, at the start of when I was growing my profile, I wouldn't, it wasn't a pod, but just naturally through meeting people and connecting with people and kind of finding these guys who I really got along with who were kind of on the same kind of trajectory as me of kind of wanting to grow their profile. We were, we were putting out posts every day as well, and we were kind of doing the same things. So we would create this WhatsApp group and we weren't sending posts in or kind of, you know, just chucking the URL in and saying, hey, engage with this. We were just engaging with each other's content anyway. But by creating a WhatsApp group where we could actually just talk, share ideas, share what's working, and kind of collaborate in that way and kind of keep pushing each other, that was the biggest kind of growth driver for Me, because I was able to kind of grow alongside other, a small group of other people. And it was all organic, it wasn't forced, it wasn't manufactured. Because the problem with these, these kind of big engagement pods that, that seem to run is the content can be just complete trash. But if it's thrown in these pods or whatever, then because there's so many people going and liking it, it can, it can, it can blow up. But the minute you stop using that, all that engagement just goes away because your content is then not very good. So then you're just left with, you know, so you end up, you, I, you would end up being stuck in this kind of perpetual loop of needing to use this, this pod, which is just a bit of a kind of sad reality really, because you're never, you're never truly kind of growing your, your own skills if, if, if, if it's, if it's a profile that you're writing content for yourself. But there is definitely, there's definitely a point of, when you, when you grow on LinkedIn. I was talking to someone about this the other day when obviously there's not many people who would, who would hit this mark, but when you hit the 50,000 follower mark, I've spoken to quite a few people about this and it's. As soon as you hit that mark, your engagement just seems to just drop a bit and plateau and you really struggle to get going after that. So you really have to have a, a really engaged audience and really, really get your community, your, you know, your, your community kind of side of things and your networking side of things going. You really have to keep that going. But then what happens is you either do that or some people then say, damn, I need to try and manufacture this, this engagement back. And that's when they start going to pods.
- [52:42]
Kira Hug
Yeah, I mean, it's, again, it's another challenge that I guess you have to decide if it's worthwhile or not. It's. I'm not sure that, I mean, I've been in groups where people have definitely shared each other's content, but I'm not sure that I would want to play in a pod the same way for the reasons that you, that you mentioned. What would you say is the biggest mistake you've made as you've grown your audience posted on LinkedIn, you know, basically turn LinkedIn to the, into the platform where your business lives?
- [53:14]
Matt Barker
Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's, there's probably two, there's kind of two moments where that, that come to mind. Um, one of them is, is pretty much right at the start. Um, it took me, I think it took me two or three months to actually comment on anyone's posts or dm anyone. I was just. Because I'm, I'm naturally introverted. I was just so kind of scared of commenting and engaging with people. That was the thing that was kind of holding me back in those early stages. And as soon as I started doing that, everything, everything grew because my content was, was decent, but I just wasn't doing the, the other, the networking side of it and the engaging side of it to make friends and, and, and find, you know, make new connections that would, would then come and visit my content and give me some more engagement. So there's, there's kind of that element and along with that, not, not seeking help, like, not try. I wasn't looking for, I wasn't finding enough resources and I wasn't taking the kind of, the leap on any kind of courses which would help me accelerate my, my LinkedIn writing skills, my LinkedIn, you know, skills in general, you know, copy networking approaches, you know, content strategy. I was figuring that all out myself and it just took so long for me to really kind of get to a point where it was working. It took probably sort of six or seven months really, which for, for a freelancer just starting out who's trying to curse business, that wasn't too helpful. So there was definitely that. So I think looking back, I would, I would definitely get help at the start and just try and find that, that kind of, either that course or, or that, you know, something that purse, that coach or someone who can just help me skip all that horrible start bit and just say this is what you need to be doing from the start because I think that would save you so much, so much time. And then two, there was, there was a moment and this, this is really kind of a mistake around audience growth. Not business related, business related. It was, it was great. But if we're strictly talking audience growth on LinkedIn and content related, there was a period around the start of, I think 2023 where a friend of mine, another copywriter on LinkedIn, we were having this kind of race to grow our followers and try and get to a hundred thousand followers. And it was great for us. We were competing and our content game really leveled up and we were kind of really understanding how the platform worked and what was, you know, what content was best for our audience a lot quicker because we were competing against each other. Not the best for business. I'M not endorsing that as a, as a strategy, but I built up so much momentum in that period of where we were growing. I think I went from something like forty thousand to a hundred thousand in about five months. So it accelerated really rapidly. But then once I hit that, that a hundred thousand, I, I completely changed my approach and I went from, I was posting kind of broader writing, copywriting kind of content and then I really changed that, that approach to being very strictly kind of content strategy for founders and agency founders. And that, that, that shift just completely took the momentum that I'd built and, and I was all of a sudden neglecting a very large part of my audience. So that engagement dropped and I did that for a few months. Business wise, it was great because I was able to start signing, you know, high value clients, more clients. I launched a course in that period which performed extremely well for me and I was able to kind of attract much better clients for me. So business wise, it was fantastic. But audience growth wise, I would have kept that momentum going because by now that it could be something, you know, like 3, 400,000 followers or more.
- [58:07]
Kira Hug
Yeah. And imagine how much bigger your business could be if you had.
- [58:11]
Matt Barker
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [58:14]
Kira Hug
This has been really interesting, Matt, and obviously giving me a few things to think about that I've never considered with LinkedIn before. If people you know, are still here listening, want to get in contact with you. I know you have a free book on your profile at LinkedIn, but where should they be going to follow you?
- [58:34]
Matt Barker
Yeah. So if you go to. So, Matt Barker on LinkedIn, my headline is I make LinkedIn posting fast, easy and fun. There's a how to build your LinkedIn audience ebook right at the top of that page. So if you click on that, you can download that for free and I'll give you some kind of tips and show you through some mistakes and stuff that I've made along the way so you can help build your audience. That's the best place to find me and can follow my content. And if you enjoy it, then you can get engaging and reach out.
- [59:11]
Kira Hug
Thanks, Matt. This has been, like I said, interesting, giving me a lot to think about. I appreciate your time.
- [59:16]
Matt Barker
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [59:22]
Kira Hug
Thanks to Matt for sharing how he.
- [59:23]
Rob Marsh
Grew his own following on LinkedIn, starting with struggling to find clients for his own business to helping dozens of clients build their own followings there. You can Follow Matt on LinkedIn as he mentioned, I've put a link to his profile in the show Notes for this episode. You can also check out Copy Builders, the program that Matt is building that works for just about any niche. I've linked to Matt's site in the Show Notes as well, so you can find that there. Matt's advice on how to write content that resonates with potential clients should feel very familiar to copywriters as it has a lot in common with writing copy. He mentioned how research uncovers the beliefs and emotions that you can use to tap into in order to entertain and educate your audience. These are the kinds of insights that you can discover with Research Mastery, our short course that will help you find the ideas that resonate with your audience. We didn't create this course specifically for posts aimed at your LinkedIn audience, but if you're posting on LinkedIn and it will help you find the ideas that will connect with your audience. So get that@the copywriterclub.com researchmastery Clearly, LinkedIn is a great environment for connecting with clients specifically because it is entirely focused on business. People are there looking for work, looking for resources for work, and trying to connect with people who might help them do their work. But it takes time, so you're going to want to get started now. Follow Matt, Post once or twice a week, but more importantly, connect with with potential clients and post comments on their content. You can start doing that right now, today. Success happens when you connect with others more often than when you capture someone's attention temporarily with your own content. As Matt shared, the topics and content types that will work for you may not be the same as what works for someone else. So in order to make LinkedIn work for you, you need to be trying new things, different things, or some of the same things you see others posting. You just need to figure out what's going to work with the readers in your audience. That's the end of this episode of.
- [61:18]
Kira Hug
The Copywriter Club Podcast.
- [61:19]
Rob Marsh
If you like what you've heard, please share it with someone you know. Simply copy the link from Spotify or Apple Podcasts, drop it into a short email and let your friend know that you were thinking of them as you were listening to the Copywriter Club Podcast. I promise when you share the Copywriter Club Podcast, your friends will thank you and I'll see you next week.
- [61:51]
Kira Hug
Strips listos paraventurace en la mescla de Mayo Ketchup la barbecue Quequeton el fondo de la cajita Hot fudge sundae en la Nueva Creamy Chili McCrispy Strip Dip Los Nuevos McCrispy Strips Hour and McDonald's.