How I increased my Linkedin engagement 42% by reducing my posts by 90%

showbusiness. Simon showbusiness. Can you hear me?

I can hear perfectly well.

You're gonna hear me. Simon is in South Africa. I'm in a slightly disorganized, studio Wiltshire, the session today session 12. Of 12 weeks, we've managed to get through this whole series Simon. So fantastic.

Yes, we made it, we started in the middle of we were made. Now, spring is here.

And we've we've managed to accomplish a great deal. And today, we're gonna talk about how I've managed to increase engagement by 42% on my LinkedIn, but reduced my time, from three or four hours down to just, you know, a couple of hours a week, and how we managed to increase the number of followers I've got, again, without anywhere near the same amount of time. So amazing. So Simon, we made a little bit of a presentation, haven't we? Shall we share that, that stand out and people can can see that? Presentation? Right. So here we go. And then people can see what we're talking about right? Here. Okay. So now that and again, slight beginner's error, what we don't know how to do is to go on full screen, at the same time as we are live in our how to do a presentation. Maybe if I do that, we'll lose. Let's see what happens. Can you still see me still see the presentation? Okay, so some let's go through this. Session 12, how to promote my book, what we spotted on the LinkedIn Safari review. So what we're going to do is to go through some of the, you know, the charts, and then we will discuss what we've learned and what you've taught me in the last 11 weeks. So do you want to do you want to first of all talk about modest modest growth? Are you surprised by it? It's a bit up and down again?

Yeah. I mean, we've three key numbers that we are looking at. And let's start with a follower growth. On the backdrop of how you change your posting, rhythm and frequency, and given that it is pretty good that you still had a slight growth of followers. So think you added about 1000 followers of those 90 days. And what is considering the reduced amount of time that invested into LinkedIn, good, good results.

Okay, yep. So again, it seems to be so spiky guests, because it shows also I think the weekends doesn't care.

Yeah, I mean, the growth is definitely directly correlated to the to individual content pieces. So we always see that there are some outlier pieces, if they go viral, you have like, suddenly add hundreds of new followers. But if there is no content, you also don't really add a lot of people and I would bet that those spikes that we see directly correlate to posts that you did on those days. Yep.

Okay, so next, here is the process of engagement. So this is the really the, for me, the hero slide, you know, 41.5% improvement in engagement 1465, which, you know, for an individual person to have that many touch points. Had feels good to me. But what do you think, Simon is that? You know, as a coach on LinkedIn? Should I be proud of this? Should I be disappointed? What do you think?

Well, let's come back to what you said earlier, the amount of time that you have invested into LinkedIn before we started working together and the amount of time that you've invested over the past 90 days. So I think we're going to talk about that on a later slide, but you drastically reduced that time. And we see that at the same time, you were able to increase the engagement, which is the more interesting metric. Getting impressions is one thing, but getting people to actually like your post or leave a comment that show Was that your content really resonates to the point that people are actually happy to invest time into taking action on that content piece. So definitely, this is a hero slide or hero graphic. And I'm very proud of that you achieved that, while at the same time drastically cutting down your time and your other investments so that our eye has skyrocketed. In regards to the investment that you did in time that you did,

yeah, yeah, I think so. And I'm a bit disappointed, I haven't managed to get a more consistent sort of engagement level after March. But I think I'm also going to be posting as much with those posts, ideally, I'd have been, as I've got sort of three getting above 51, nearly to 75, I wish I what I need to basically do more work on more consistently engaging content, we're going to talk about that, and how we need to do that later. Impressions of Simon, again, you know, nearly at just over 80,000 impressions, you know, it's put in perspective, this is, you know, a person, one person posting, to have, you know, a football stadium of, of eyeballs on content is pretty amazing, really, if you think about the reach that LinkedIn gives us,

currently for free. And I think that's what it makes such an interesting platform that you get amazing reach with a high quality audience. I mean, all of these people are professionals, sorry. And you have 80,000 80,000 impressions. And the interesting thing is that in comparison to the 90 days before, that slightly fell off. And as we shall see on the next slide, the time investment went down drastically. So with less time invested, you basically maintained your visibility, your visibility,

yeah, and I think this is really the key, right, I spent, you know, I've done just two posts really a week, and then in between that I've been making comments and other people's posts, as you suggested. Whereas used to post, you know, for even maybe five times a day, you know, in with all sort of book, podcast, and general stuff. So we've gone from, you know, 22, down to two. So, you know, 10% of the time. And also, I think the other key here is that, rather than outsourcing it all to my very able VA team in the Philippines, who were just using the automation tool to just going to send stuff out. I've been spending time doing it myself. But because it's taking me, you know, 10% of the time, it's not taking an onerous amount of time to create that content. But I'm saving money by not having the VAs create content that's not going anywhere. So I think that's a pretty, pretty amazing, an impressive stat. So we've got nearly 80,000, or just over 80,000 impressions, but on, you know, on sort of 10% of the content. So that's amazing. So one of the things that you and I discussed was about the LinkedIn DNA, do you do you want to just share this, Simon? Because this was really your insight here?

Yeah. So going back to what to what you what you said just a second ago, the shift that you've done over the past 12 months, or 12 weeks, is to go away from a dumping place of content. And we see a lot of people do this, basically just hit and run, dumping the piece and not engaging on other people's content, not responding to comments. And if you understand LinkedIn as a learning community, that doesn't work that doesn't go down well with the algorithm and with other people. And the idea, really, and I think that is something that you've come to realize is that LinkedIn is a community of people. And that the content that works best is content that helps other people to learn and understand things. And if we random leaves scroll through a feet, you will notice that probably 80% of the content we see of the posts are promotional in nature. And that has nothing to do with learning. And I think that that is the key takeaway that the DNA of LinkedIn is not promotion, and promotion will not get you any reach. But if you share your learning and see elite and as a community and our marketplace, yep,

Yeah, so there's a real aha moment for me, which is brilliant. And I think we sort of got to that place after about, you know, session four or five, didn't we? And so that was a really, really good insight. Okay, so another thing for me was really about Know thyself. Well, no one will. And I think this was a piece of work you did with me at the very beginning was, you know, what are you selling? Or you know, and who is your avatar, but then turning that and working on my bio, so that it's about the personal profile, as you know what you do, not just who you are. So LinkedIn might have been seen as a sort of a giant resume. directory in the sky, when it first started, you know, everyone basically putting their job resumes on there. But now, what you've really shown me is that you need to be saying how you help people, right? Not what you know, not just what you do, but how are you going to add value to other people? So now I changed my profile entirely. I've changed my about me, story. So instead of it being, you know, I've done this, I've done this, I've done this. And now it's, I jumped out of an airplane at the age of 18. And discovered how publicity can power a business. And this is what I can do for you. So I think this personal profile review, again, I think, by week three, four, if needed to redo that. And and that's been fundamental. So the personal profile is what you do, not just who you are, I think, I hope I've summarized that, do you think? Yeah,

absolutely. It's not a CV. And as you said, LinkedIn started as a CV platform. And a lot of people still treated as that. And as you Yeah, I mean, in the CV, you try to try to show all your successes and achievements. And on LinkedIn, you'd rather lead with a good story and have a profile that is yourself. So know, thyself is a good headline for the challenge that we face here.

So then golden rule is, for me about consistency. We're going to talk later on about the format of the of the content, we're going to deal with that as well. But consistency in the style, consistency and messaging and the consistency of when we turn up. Really, those are three key elements of the consistency. And you mentioned like Justin, well, it's you post, you know, on the same time, same day, same structure of content, and so on, they get like a, they get like a into a metronome frequency. So Simon, and this has also been absolutely key, hasn't it? I think the need to show up consistently?

Yeah, absolutely. It's about building expectations with your audience and sticking to a an unmet promise. But we are creatures of habit. And we like to have a consistency to recognize a certain pattern in terms of not only when we post what we post, but also how we post with a style. So absolutely, yeah.

And then the next thing, you know, posts must do one of these, these three things, you'd mentioned five, but it seemed to me maybe we could bring them down into sort of to inform, to educate, or to inspire. Is that fair to summarize in three, or do you think we need to add add more in there, Simon?

Well, I think you can summarize it in three points, or five, four. I think the the main thing is to differentiate that from the typical post receipt, which is promotional in nature, or completely empty. And I think anything that sparks curiosity or sparks people's interest legitimately, and that is not your invitation to the next free workshop to promote your product. So anything that sparks interest, and curiosity is good content. So if it informs, educates inspires people, that's good. If it tries to sell and promote yourself, that's not good. And I think that's the 99.

I think that's absolutely so top performing posts. This is one this is the one place self published authors can't reach I learned from you about doing a headline that's about above the fold, for example, on mobile phones, this is the post that has got the most impressions, nearly nearly 5004 and a half 1000 impressions. This is where I did a video using the road Capture app that has a picture and picture me, you know, canoe Euro Singapore, and but I really made it about how Self Publishers can promote the book but also how publishers like Wiley that publishes my book, help, what difference that makes. So I tried to make it informative, but using my own story, and that really resonated. And then the other one here was the East West PR, where I talked about selling my business and but also the pictures was of the two new people coming in, you know, Raman and Naveen rather than talking about, you know, me. And, and the third one, which is quite different, was about Simon Sinek. confessing his allows the listener, this is where I used a big brand name in Simon Sinek. And I use that to reference one of the articles in the book by Oscar Trimboli. And made a slideshow of that. So those are three of my best performing. And I think each one of them falls into the inspire, educate and inform. I just wanted to share on that, shall I move on?

No thank you perfectly summed up as an example of the three post types.

So the next thing there was content matters. So people want to see experiences, because that gives it some authenticity. The sharing value insights that others can use that that seems to be one of the key elements of content, Simon is that we must add content that gives someone else to take away. And that's been a guiding principle for me, I think keep the post short, as you you know, pick me up on that. And I'm still in danger of writing too much. And I use the app now of others in the post. Anything you wanted to add to that

was with the with the point of sharing value insights others can use definitely spot on, I think the question is always what is a valuable insight, and maybe to some of the listeners out there, the more you start following a certain area of interest or something, the more you might notice certain echo chamber content, people re repeating stuff that they've read online. And I think the fine line here is to find things that are really unique, and that are valuable outside of like what you can find elsewhere. And so the more unique, you become, and you start sharing your own experiences, because that is something that nobody else can steal, or they can steal, but it's not authentic, the easier it is to come up with your unique value and valuable insights. And maybe then one more thing, because I realized we have forgotten about that. It's hashtags you have mentioned at others, hashtags, my personal, my personal. I hate hashtags. So hashtags, usually overrated. And I think also we cut down on the number of hashtags to use. And it is a topic of not even contention, but a lot of people spend a lot of time finding hashtags. They're practically useless. And so don't waste time on hashtags have three, then you'll find that

brass tacks in Yeah. And don't put hashtags in the text that was another learning from you as well. So under under Format, so we're talking about content now we're talking about format matters. slideshows seem to gain the maximum engagement. Right? Absolutely that especially ones where the content is evergreen. So if you know a guide that someone can use, that they can take away and study later, top 10 LinkedIn profiles or guide to XYZ those things that aren't necessarily specific to the individual who wrote it or shared it, but that anyone can use that videos with a good story and a personal angle, but they must create context. So you know Have a video of you just walking your dog is, is nice, it might get a lot of might get a lot of likes. But you need to use the text above the video, unless the video tells a story to create to create the learning for people. So that was another key point, I think Did you want to share in the on that you're happy with that?

Well, a little tangent here. As we are here in Cape Town at the GFC, the Global Leadership Conference of EO today I was watching a talk of somebody who got bitten by a crocodile. Nice story. But as he was talking, I was wondering how many times he's probably shared that story. And the connection that I want to make here is that as we create content for LinkedIn, let's think about this content as a library. If we write a post, it's not a once off, we should be able to recycle that pose four months down the road basically reposted again. So as we go through the weeks and create more and more content, that content should basically be a library that informs who we are, what we stand for what people can expect from us. So that we can, after a while basically re repeat like good speaker, the same post time and time again, which helps cut down the time helps to build a brand and helps us to think and focus on who we really are.

Key tool content calendar, again, comes back to consistency over time, Simon, so I think you know, you've, you've talked about that, and knowing what you're going to post days, weeks, and even preparing in advance. Really, really another key tool that we went over that I think in session nine on the videos, we talked about Trello I think was the platform that you're using, but even just a spreadsheet. And I've also got some tools that I've been sharing, they're happy to share again with people. And then the LinkedIn BLT. This is yours really Simon? Do you want to just and I'm mindful of the time it's 34. Now we started a bit late because the technical but if you want just talk about your strategy for

now. So it's it's been proven that and coming back to what we said earlier with not just hit and run, dump your content and not be seen anymore. Best practice that has been proven statistically, is to engage in other people's posts. Ideally, thought leaders, people you want to engage with prospects before you publish your own posts. And then also keep commenting and other people's posts after you've published your post. Plus, make sure you always comment on the comments that you get or thank people for the comments you've received on your previous posts. Because that is what LinkedIn wants to see that you engage with people and not not not just a tamper to brands wants to post this public.

Yeah, so it's a really good a really good strategy. I'd never thought about finessing my activity there. So we also talked about tribes. And we talked about really the fact that these groups on LinkedIn, I was member of, I think 96 groups, and we were posting things to those groups. They only work if there is a leader, they are like a tribe don't post the leaderless groups, right. There are some really good ones do like Joe Pulizzi. With the Content Marketing Institute, for example, he's driving there. So one of the learnings that I had from you was, you know, reducing the time on posting to group so I went from posting to 96 groups to posting to two groups. And I still get some really good pick up. When I post something relevant to a relevant groups, I posted something about the self publishing to the author group, and I got good traction. So it's not about not using them at all. But that group is well LED. So I think that was a really another key learning that groups are like tribes, and it's okay to be a member of them. But you do need to have a tribal leader. Indeed. Okay. Now, and then here, we've got a slide about the algorithm and Simon are watching this on my I'm watching our live stream on the on my phone while we're talking here. So I can see there's a sort of a three to four second delay. But the algorithm is now up on LinkedIn, the algorithm. So what we really I think, found and I learned from you was that the algorithm rewards consistent sharing of useful information. It's it The way kind of makes sense, doesn't need to do all this work go. Well, that makes sense. But it perhaps explodes the myth, doesn't it? You know, it's it's there to manipulate or it's there just to sell actually, it does reward. Consistent sharing of useful information.

Absolutely. And it's, I mean, that's the same with SEO content, you can deliberate endlessly about what is the best content for in terms of like SEO, or Google is trying to do with the search algorithm and all LinkedIn is trying to do with the algorithm is to make sure people get what they want. And people want quality. So if you give them quality, the algorithm will play in your favor. And if you don't have quality, and you try to game, the algorithm to get in front of people's eyes, those eyes will not reward you for being served, because you're not giving value. So it's easier to think about how to be better writer how to give more interesting insights than trying to hack the algorithm.

And so we put the law of LinkedIn planes just along with the so far idea, but there really are no rules. You know, as far as I can see, everybody posting does it differently. But there are definitely some common habits of success. So it's not the case that if you're watching this, or learning or listening to this, at some stage that you think I've got to do it, like Jim does it like Simon does it, you can do it your own way. It's your own LinkedIn profile is your own personality. But there are some common habits on success to LinkedIn. That'd be first to say, Simon,

absolutely principles of good story, and compelling content, telling storytelling content.

And then the final point was, you know, follow the signposts, you know, Simon, and I've shared over 12 weeks my journey of working to get better. And as with any journey, a guide can help to find the right path. And I'm grateful to you, Simon for helping me on my LinkedIn journey. It's been amazing.

It's great fun.

And I think we've learned as well about using LinkedIn live. And now we've got a slideshow, which is, I think, you know, the preparation that we should have done earlier. So we've got some learnings, there as well. So some are going to stop that slideshow. And you and I, then will be on screen just to say thank you to everyone, for watching this, Simon, if there's one key takeaway that you'd like to leave with people before we close out our 12th and final session?

Well, maybe the key takeaway that I took from our collaboration is that it's not about only the quantitative output, but also the time input that you do. And I think in that regard, you are, you're a very interesting student, in the sense that you drastically reduced the time that you invested into LinkedIn while increasing the output.

Thank you. Well, I did that, thanks to your insights, really. So Simon, chapters out of South Africa, if you want to get a hold of you, of course, they can get your LinkedIn,

absolutely easy to find, and

easy to find a course. Simon's details are all the show notes. And we're going to put this on YouTube on the unnoticed entrepreneur YouTube channel. It'll also be on the unnoticed entrepreneur, podcast. And of course, you've got my details. Jimmy James on LinkedIn. So if you've enjoyed this, too, please give us a comment somewhere on LinkedIn, for example, right to Simon and I and if they have any interest in doing something like this with me or Simon, do, please reach out because this has been a bit of an experiment. I think it's been an amazing journey. But we're looking to do more of these kinds of projects where we build in public, and share what we learn as we go along. And we're trying to get better at how we do that, but hopefully the outcome has been a value to us. Thank you so much for watching. Simon nice, I'm gonna say goodbye, sign off.

Thank you and goodbye.

Thank you so much. And until we meet again, just encourage you to keep on communicating