Jay Schwedelson (3:13)

Yeah, and I do think that that last point is super important, that there's going to be a lot more availability for you to be able to sponsor people's LinkedIn newsletters and brands. LinkedIn newsletters. Now there's metrics about performance. And the ultimate irony to me is that everybody has said the open rate is dead for so many years, which I never believed. I think open rate is a very important metric. Directionally, it's not an absolute metric. And here's LinkedIn kind of double downing on the fact that they're going to share email open rate. And they even said in their announcement, we know email open rate is not 100% accurate, but directionally it has value. So I love the fact that LinkedIn's going deeper in email. Let me hit you with the next one and I'm super curious about your take on this. So the other announcement that LinkedIn rolled out this week was that you're now going to be able to see the impression counts on comments. So you go on somebody's post, you leave a comment, you're going to be able to see, oh, that comment got, you know,612 impressions or views. Is that something that's going to matter?

Daniel Murray (4:20)

I've always been a believer comments equal content. So I think that if you're starting out or commenting is a strategy to grow on LinkedIn and it's proven that's one of the key strategies we use at the market. Millennials like LinkedIn page is we grow through comments. So now seeing impressions would be a great way for us to say this post is good to make a, a regular Post versus a comment. So it's a way to test content ideas so you can use it as social content for the future, or newsletter content, podcast content, blog content, whatever content. It's good to directionally to know what is getting views and what's not getting views, in my opinion.

Jay Schwedelson (5:05)

Okay, let me ask you a question about that, because I agree with you. If you put a comment on somebody's post and it gets a bunch of likes, like, oh, this comment might be worth making content around it. I get that. But let's say you put a comment on a post, okay, and it gets a bunch of impressions, but it gets no likes. Does that just mean that post got a lot of impressions and your comment kind of stinks? Like, no.

Daniel Murray (5:29)

I think it's proof that you're getting seen in the feed as a person who's trying to grow their network, trying to grow their following. It's proving that they want people to comment. So I get why they're doing it. I. I just think commenting is a good strategy. But if it get. I think that's just like every metric out there, that's one signal. I think the other signal is, did it get impressions? How many engagements did that post get? So you need to tailor that with like two different. Because if my comment got a thousand impressions and 0 likes directionally I just say I got more impressions for myself or my brand, but it doesn't mean anything. But if it gets a lot of likes and impressions, then I'm doing something right. I'm putting signal content out there.

Jay Schwedelson (6:19)

I've been mean to ask you something and I'm. I. It's gonna be hard to articulate this over a podcast, but I hope you can. I'm seeing when you comment on stuff, you. You're like spacing out your comments in a way that there's like a lot of like, lines. Like you're hitting return, return, return, and you're making space between the actual words that you're writing in the comments on LinkedIn. I see you do that a lot. What are you doing? Like, what is that? Should I be doing that?

Daniel Murray (6:47)

It's just testing things. I mean, that's all I'm doing. But whenever I could take up more real estate in a feed. That's why images are good on LinkedIn, posting images or videos, because you take up a full scroll instead of being a text post. You're competing against three other posts. You're the only post, so you're competing against other comments too. So I'm trying to see if like If I do that, am I taking in more real estate than other people commenting?

Jay Schwedelson (7:18)

See, there you go. You always have a cool hack going on. I never thought about that. All right, the last one, which I think is super important, is everybody that's posting videos on LinkedIn. When people are looking at videos on LinkedIn on mobile, specifically the words that people are writing to go along with those videos, the captions on those videos, they've really been relegated to nothingsville, meaning, like, they barely, barely see the words. So what a lot of us are doing, myself included, is we're putting graphical labels on our videos because we want people to know what the video is about, because the words that you're writing with the videos are not being seen really anymore. Are you on that same train?

Daniel Murray (8:04)

I mean, if you look at IG reels, TikTok YouTube shorts, that's a good thumbnail with a call to action in the front or letting people know what it's about is how you hook someone. So unless you're really good at creating wow factor in the first three seconds, which us millennials and older have that pause. So we, we tend to have a pause when we do videos. I just, it's just a way to signal like, this is what the post is about. And then when you look at the, when you scroll in the feed, you just see, hey, does this interest me or not? So this is the best hook. Writers will be able to stand out in this technique you're doing.

Jay Schwedelson (8:50)

Yeah. And I'll tell you, for us, when we were posting, once they switched to the big heavy video feed in LinkedIn and we weren't kind of labeling our videos with some sort of graphical label on the video. And then we switched to labeling our videos, we saw exponential increase in engagement because people like, oh, that's what it's about. I'll check it out. And to your point, you really have to frame your mind. Kind of take the TikTok brain and apply it to LinkedIn, because that's where we're at.

Daniel Murray (9:14)

There's another thing that's happening on LinkedIn too. And I want to get your opinion if you're seeing this, but if you make anything with AI and you don't, like, strip, like meta tags out, damage, it will flag your post as made with that AI, which will downgrade the post. So if you're making things with AI, you have to make sure that you strip the back end of a post, otherwise you're going to be downgraded in the feed.

Jay Schwedelson (9:42)

I'm happy about that. By the way, because there's so much garbage out there. I want them to downgrade comments that are using AI. Also, they're always so funny to me. When you see an AI comment, it's like somebody talking like they're like, from Masterpiece Theater in England or something. I'm like, nobody talks like that, dude. You can't, like, don't. You can't post that comment.

Daniel Murray (9:59)

I mean, if. At least if you're trying to do that, like, edit the comment, you can get ideas, like, what should I comment on this post? Like, give me ideas. But if you're going to just copy paste, it's not. It's never a good strategy. But again, what you said, it blends in. So if you want to blend in, blend in.

Jay Schwedelson (10:19)

There you go. All right, well, we've crushed another episode of the Bathroom Break. Everybody go follow Daniel's podcast, the Marking Millennials. And if you're really bored, you can follow, do this. Not that. That's my podcast. Daniel. Let's do it again next week, man.

Daniel Murray (10:33)

Sounds good.

Jay Schwedelson (10:36)

Daniel. Come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Daniel Murray (10:53)

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break. We talk about marking tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email subject line to any marking tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a. A shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Jay Schwedelson (11:15)

Later.