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The Futur with Chris Do
The Truth About the LinkedIn Algorithm w/ Richard van der Blom | Ep 424
00:15:32
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Transcript17 lines
- [00:00]
A
I never mentioned that I used the data to see what I am going to post next because I'm actually more on your side of the spectrum. Really? Yeah, I am.
- [00:11]
B
Oh, no. The unfollows are happening now. I give you permission to speak as freely as possible. Speak your mind. Because I believe what I'm doing must be crazy compared to what you're doing. I just post because I want to post. I write whatever feels right in my heart and my mind, and it's something usually emotional, something that is bothering me about the world, an opinion I need to share. And I track nothing. I do no experiments, I look at no spreadsheets, and I don't even know what's happening. Like, I would say, like, I'm only using probably 210 of the features on LinkedIn because I don't even know what the other ones are. I only signed up for Authored up because our mutual friend Yasmin talks about it all the time. And I have it, I pay for it, I don't even open it. This is like how quick. And then here you are with 30,000 pieces of data and analyzing and crunching this and letting the data inform what you should post. It's very different approaches to creating content. I'd love to get your opinion as a LinkedIn expert.
- [01:09]
A
Well, this is interesting. And maybe people are now going to unfollow me because I say this, but I never mentioned that I use the data to see what I am going to post next because I. I'm actually more on your side of the spectrum. Really? Yeah, I am.
- [01:26]
B
Oh, no, the unfollows are happening now.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw it going down already. I hear it. Because I sincerely believe that LinkedIn algorithm doesn't punish bad content. It's your audience that punish bad content. It's not a LinkedIn algorithm. So if you say I purely Boast intuitively on LinkedIn, I do my storytelling, whatever comes up, I publish it. I don't care about hashtag tags. That's for me, the best way to publish on LinkedIn. But 99.9% of all LinkedIn content creators are not there or not there yet. They don't trust that instinct or that intuition. And they want to have some guidelines that make them feel more secure, more confident. Like, okay, if I tick some boxes, then maybe I see better results. So it's never my intention to put out the holy grail of LinkedIn algorithm. And you should not post anything that falls outside of that, because if you blame the algorithm, you've already admitted that you don't create value. That's how I see it. Blaming the algorithm means you are admitting you don't create value. Because if you create value, you see the result might not be in reach, might not be directly, but you will get some messages, some DMs, some people reaching out to you eventually saying, hey, Chris, really love your content. We have this amazing event. We want to have you as a keynote, as an example.
- [02:59]
B
The people listening to this. Well, yeah, it's working for you because you guys have large followings and it's not fair. I don't have a big following. And no one I've ever spoken to writes A post on LinkedIn thinks their post is not valuable, but they're blind to it, they can't see it. And then they put something out. And you said something was really interesting to me, which is they don't yet trust their instincts as what to write. And I read a lot of posts and they're terrible. So what is it that you've figured out or people that you've Coach have figured out that makes the content valuable? Putting the algorithm aside for a second versus people who just write stuff, I'm like, God, that is just so boring. What are you doing here? Why would you even write that? So what are you seeing? Because you're seeing it at scales in which I'm not looking at. Not even close.
- [03:41]
A
Yeah. Before I answer that, please allow me to ask you a question. What do you think is terrible content? What is your definition of terrible content?
- [03:49]
B
Okay, number one, let's just talk about the image. The photo that they put together has no connection to the story that they wrote. It's low quality or it's overproduced. Both will kill you, in my opinion. Number two is the image doesn't add to the story. Okay. It's related to the story, but doesn't make me think, like, wait a minute, that's a really interesting issue of semiotics, where the words say one thing, the image say something else, but the two together build a hybrid. Third, meaning which I really enjoy. Number four, the content itself, the hook, the headline. It's really boring. It's not interesting to me at all. It creates no curiosity. I'm like, what? What are you doing? And then this is, I think, the deadliest sin of them all, which is it's a post designed to sell me something, to convince me to persuade me to do something. And as. As soon as I see it, I'm like, I'm already. I'm turned off. I don't Want to read the rest of it?
- [04:38]
A
We're aligned on all of that. I remember that in our 2023 edition we accidentally mentioned, and I think it was written like this, that selfies on LinkedIn yield 2.8 times or whatever number 3.8 times more impressions than any other pictures. What we should have said that the selfie needs to be adding value to the post. I mean, if you put out a white paper, wrote sustainable energy and you're putting a selfie of yourself, there's no connection whatsoever. You know what I mean? But if you have a post about doing a keynote in Singapore and it's you on stage with all the energy, it creates this energy that you mean. Okay, My best performing post reaching around 3 million views was a post I made about my gardener in Spain. I put a picture out me with him. He's a 75 back then, a 72 year old, illiterate. He doesn't know how to read, doesn't know how to write. But he's such a great entrepreneur. How he did my garden, he upselled to being my pool man, he upselled to creating a vegetable garden, he did the price negotiation. And I used how he sells from his heart, how he is. I use that to compare it to how modern sellers are trying to sell and what they can learn from this guy. And that post was my best performing post ever because there were so many people relating first of all to the guy and then, yes, this is how real sales should be, you know, from the heart. So this is what I mean when personal story does. And then there is also a myth actually used by a lot of LinkedIn professionals who say, just get out there and post. For me, that's the worst advice you can give. Just get out there and post. You know, if people are procrastinating or they don't dare or they are like reluctant, they just say, go out there and post. You need to have at least a certain feeling about the impact you want to have on your audience. Okay? Because when people talk, for example, on personal branding, they say it's about who you are. I disagree. It's the impact you have on others. That's your personal brand. So we need to understand why AM I on LinkedIn, what is my potential goal? Who's my target audience? And from there on you can create posts. And if you look at all the successful content creators on LinkedIn, they all have that purpose and they all create impact. That's what they do, they create impact. So that also means that no one else can actually tell you what to publish. No one else can do that. Not a colleague, not a marketing guy, not a coach. Because you need to find your own space, your own tone of voice, your own way on how to impact your target audience. And then I can go into all stats, Chris, which is a very boring lie. Okay, what's the average size that you should mix your content? If people only do video or only do carousels, you get lower reach for LinkedIn. And if you have a mix, but that's more the technical things. And that's why we created a 250 page report. But I think it's most of all, it's just try to be the best version of you. Use some authentic storytelling, make people resonate with you as if they know you, as if they care, make them care about you. And then focus on how you can impact the decisions, the behavior of your target audience in the best possible way. So even if your main goal is selling, it shouldn't be. For me, I mean, a lot of people on LinkedIn, they like to buy, but I don't like to be sold to. You know what I mean? That's why you turn off the switch. If you see somebody with a hook where you know, okay, this guy's trying to sell me his templates or his scores or whatever we turn off. But if you do it implicitly by adding value, you create that buzz and people actually want to buy from you. They want to be in your community, they want to join your event or what's right because they know you consistently are adding value.
- [08:39]
B
I want to start to shift the conversation a little bit towards how you use LinkedIn to do social selling. Okay, because look, I love to create content, but sometimes that content doesn't convert into anything. And that's okay for me for a period of time until I look at a bank account and it's empty. It's like I want to be able to create content forever, but I need some money to be able to keep doing this. So I know you worked with a lot of people, over 200,000 professionals in almost a thousand companies, really big companies, to do this. Can you tell us what we need to know? And then we, I want to do a deeper dive on this.
- [09:15]
A
There are a few steps or a few elements that influence how successful you're going to be. And the first, obviously is your profile. I mean, that's where it all starts. If people like a post, they never heard of you, they click on your name, they go to your profile and there it is. So we did an extensive research, 200 salespeople and we saw that 91% of all their profiles, so I'm talking about 180 plus people were not optimized for that target audience. So imagine they have things in their about section about, I'm responsible for upselling, cross selling, increasing market. I mean imagine that your clients read those kind of things. One of them even had I'm a pit bull. If I bite, I don't let go until my client buy from me. I mean, imagine this guy sending out an invite to a prospect. No one wants to get bitten, you know what I mean? Nobody's going to accept that. So that's the first thing. Make your profile about your target audience, but also emphasize your authority, emphasize your knowledge. Second is obviously your content strategy because if you don't put out content, nobody's going to notice you. It's not that people are going to like fill in your name on LinkedIn and then go to your profile. Your content is one of the biggest driver of graphic to your profile. So we have the branding, we have the content, then the third one and this is going to be music to the ears of Jasmine. This is your engagement strategy. You need to comment on your prospects. You need to be visible with your peers. Because if you put publish even once a day, LinkedIn shows you once a day. If you add 10 to 20 comments a day, strategical comments, LinkedIn shows you 10, 20 times a day. So there's a huge accelerator. If you have an engagement strategy next to your own content strategy and then the fourth one, conversion strategy, it's a myth that people convert themselves on LinkedIn. Some of them do, but it takes them so much time. You need to be proactive in your conversion. So if you see that a potential client has liked two or three of your posts but he hasn't sent you an invite to connect, he hasn't sent you a dm, reach out and say, hey Chris, I just saw you turning on my post two, three times. I really value your engagement. Let's connect and see more of each other's content.
- [11:38]
B
As I'm talking to you, my whole brain is like, oh my God, I just pulled up my profile. Oh my God, I have some work to do. So I love that it's so practical what you're saying. Let's get into the content strategy here. So you have already pointed out no one's checking out your profile, no one's going to type in your name because first of all they don't know you exist. That's the thing People are delusional that, oh, my profile is good, I'm done. No, you make content as a way to generate interest and so that somebody will then check out your profile and then you can then establish your authority and do your selling there. Okay, what kind of content have you found either for your clients or for yourself, that hits the hardest, that is the most likely to drive traffic to the profile? Which ones have you noticed that really outperform the others?
- [12:27]
A
If you want to grow your network, if you want to humanize your brand, you need the personal storytelling. The disadvantage is that some of that content will not actually make people convert because if you tell about yourself, about what you're doing, it doesn't necessarily dip into the challenges or needs or some people don't see through your content, they don't get why you publish that. So what I've seen is that if you combine the personal storytelling with what I call leadership content, which is basically how to content. Okay, if I share, for example, a carousel and I say eight facts, that will give you four times more reach because they're based on the algorithm, how to use the algorithm in favor. That's the content that gets you a lot of new followers because people are going to refer to that, people are going to repost the content, people are going to forward the content. But also it's the content that makes you stand out as professional. So people become curious, like, hey, this guy who's sharing all this algorithm insights, does he have a service? Can I benefit from the service? Does he do coaching, for example? So those are the two that for me, that really stand out.
- [13:37]
B
I wanted to do this with you because you've been on the platform for so long. You've written and done the research and the analytics, you've coached so many people. Let's get into the crystal ball mode. Let's look into the future. What are the top five things you think we need to do or be aware of that's coming down the line, or things that are shifting that'll help us achieve more? What we're trying to do on LinkedIn,
- [14:02]
A
everybody's jumping on like the AI wagon. You know, I see a lot of people sharing AI prompts that literally copy paste from somebody else. So the risk is that we lose our own voice. We cannot lose a voice to AI because people know and I think at this moment, and maybe that's tip one. Don't underestimate the intelligence of your clients because they know. If this post is written by Chris do or this is AI pretending to be Chris do second. So a lot of people are now going for shortcuts. So they are, for example, using pre written post template books. They follow templates, they follow hooks, they follow viral hooks or coaches. And as a result all those posts and all those people start sounding the same. The only KPI that matters is conversations. If you get less reach but you still have conversations in your DMs, in your inbox with potential clients, you're doing fine. Another one, I think people should really be aware that if you want to be successfully part of the ecosystem of LinkedIn and successfully grow your business, your engagement strategy, the comments you leave, the reposts you do, even the DMs you send are heavily important.
- [15:16]
B
I know there's a lot more stuff I want to talk to you about, but my excitement is now at peak. I need to go do some work. I want to apply what you're talking about and I want to teach others the same thing. Richard, thanks for being our guest today.
- [15:29]
A
Thank you for having me, Chris. It was amazing.