S4E50 - Why LinkedIn is NOT for Cold Outreach with Charlotte Lloyd

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What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Surf and Sales Podcast. I am Scott Lees, one of the two co founders of the Surf and Sales Summit and the Surf and Sales Podcast. Surf and Sales Summit is happening in a few short weeks, November 27th through December 6th. We got a couple spots left for the two sessions that are going on. Richard, you have assured me that you will make it this year. No sicknesses, no illnesses. Sequester yourself in your room. Do not leave between now and November.

Absolutely. I am not allowed to even talk to my kids. Like, it's just, you know, which, not that they want to talk to me. They're teenagers. So.

Yeah, they've passed that stage where they actually care about you and think that you're great. They've flown right by that into you're annoying. Leave me alone. I need nothing from you except for money.

Totally.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we are super excited for today's show. We have tried to make this show happen a few times and for a variety of reasons, it has not quite happened. But we're going to be talking today to Charlotte Lloyd who has recently gone out on her own. She is doing social selling and cold outreach made easy through Charlotte Lloyd sales consulting. And we'll welcome her all the way from I think Madrid, Spain here shortly. But Richard, first of all, tell everybody about the wonderful sponsor that is on your sweatshirt.

Yes, I am wearing the cool HubSpot YouTube network sweatshirt because we're not just on the HubSpot podcast network, we're also on YouTube. So check us out over there. Surfing sales on YouTube. The cool thing about our friends at HubSpot, they've got a thing called a sales hub, if you didn't know, ironically. And their approach is to understand that closing deals is really not a big deal when you put the right inputs in. Like everything else in life, the more you put in, the more you're going to get out. And in the sales hub, it's got everything from prospecting, workspaces, deal management tools, AI assistance. It can help you with your.

With with coming up with messaging for your teams and cold calling and closing deals. So please go check that out. HubSpot.com forward slash sales. So. All right, Scott, back to you.

Yeah. Without further ado, we welcome Charlotte Lloyd, founder of social selling and cold outreach made easy and multi time sales director. How's it going, Charlotte?

It's going good. Thanks for having me. I'm glad we got to record eventually. I know most of it is my bad.

So are you in Madrid Right now.

I am, yeah, I'm so. I'm British. You can probably tell by the accent. Although some people think I'm Irish or Australian, mainly Americans, so don't know why. I mean, definitely. I don't know. To me I sound British. Anyway, I've lived here now for. This will be 13 years in December.

Wow. 13 years in. In Spain. How did you end up in Spain? Perfect sales skills.

I came to Spain because of a man.

I've opened the wrong rabbit hole.

We're going down a bit of a rabbit hole. So yeah, it's interesting story here which sort of ties into to what we're talking about today with sales and certainly working from home. So I met my husband. So the man is, is now my husband. And actually Tomorrow it's our 11 year anniversary.

Yeah. And I decided. So I work with a major brand, Financial Times, which if you're American, you probably will think of the Wall Street Journal competes with the Wall Street Journal. I was there for 13 years and I was managing a team. And then I decided I want to go back. I wanted to go back to be an individual contributor. So I met this man, my husband, and I asked my boss, my husband had to move back to Madrid because he was working in London. And at the time I said, look, I want to work from Madrid. Is this possible?

You know, I'm going to work remotely, I'm going to work from home. I might go to a WE workspace or something like that. Didn't exist 13 years ago. And he said, yes, you can go, but I'm gonna have to. We don't have an office, we don't have a business set up in, in Spain. So you're gonna have to be commission only. Are you okay with that?

Yes, me, I'll do anything to move to Madrid. So I came here and this was what, 2010? No, 2011. So it was the. Yeah, end of 2010. And all of a sudden I have no base salary. It's just pure commission only. Whoa. So, yeah, I'm literally dancing for my dinner. And if I don't sell something this month, I'm gonna have to. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I need to invoice the Financial Times who I work for. I need to sell some advertising, I need to sell some event sponsorship. And there's another. We could go down another rabbit hole here with. Oh, but you, you, how did you manage to sell every month? The deal cycles were shorter, the sales are more transactional. And yes, I did some awful things like maybe offer a discount. Acted in my self interest. I mean it's different back then. So yeah, I did. Perhaps a lot of the things that are associated with. We dissociate now with a really bad salesperson and putting pressure.

I gotta, I think a lot of.

I think a lot of us have made all of those kind of mistakes over the, over the years. So I wouldn't feel too bad about it.

Question on the mental side of that. Right. Like, so it's one thing to say sure, I'm gonna go do it and then there. And the reality and you know, I, you know, a great benefit is you have a partner there who's going to help support you emotionally and sort of, you know. I don't know about financially but I know so many people who'd be like, I'd never take that job. I'd never do commission, only I. And if I tried, I might give up in 30 days. Like yeah, what about Charlotte is like, no, you know, I don't know.

These call me the Shark. Spelled C H A R K. So it was like the first four letters of my name because I was always say on the prowl for deals. So I go to event, went to a lot more events at that point. What made me do it? It's a good question. There was one person within the organization who moved to Dubai and he was on the same kind of contract. So they said to me, look, we'll pay you. I think it was 25%. 20% for any advertising that you set and when you get to a certain level, when you sell like over 300k. Well, well, well, that was, it was 20%. We'll pay you 25 and then for events will pay you something between 10 and 15%. I had confidence in the brand. The brand was a great brand. And at that time it was, you know, selling very well. And I thought this is, this is a great brand to work for. Seemed like a great company to work for. And I traveled two times a month. The difficulty was getting used to working from home because nobody was working from home. So I remember going to events, having face to face meetings with, with prospects and they'd say, where's your office? And I would just invent, I'd say, oh, it's, it's just in the center of Madrid. It's not, you know, it's just me in the office.

I do. I couldn't say I felt embarrassed and ashamed to say that I work from home because nobody did it and people wouldn't take you seriously back then, you know, eight, 10 years ago, you said, oh, work from home. Like, well, you don't really work.

So do you feel, do you feel a similar.

Sense of pressure now that you're on your own? I mean, running your own business is basically working commission only.

Yeah.

You've kind of, you've almost gone full circle in a way.

I've gone full circle. I'm gonna say that the commission only, I did it for 10 years. It has helped me mentally, mindset wise, immensely in starting my own business a year ago. Well, let's fast forward to the whole LinkedIn story, but let's say 12 to 14 months ago, I had no idea that I would. It was kind of an. I was at an early stage. Yes, I want to do something. I, I monetize my side hustle only in March this year. And I went all in, in, in August, end of August, beginning of September. So I'm much more calm right now because when I was commission only, I was definitely more desperate. I felt that I didn't know enough about sales and I just wanted to get a deal and I just wanted to invoice. Whereas now going into this. Yeah, you would think, well, it's way more stressful because now you are so selling yourself, your services. You haven't got a big brand to rely on anymore. There is an element of, you know, this, this will get difficult and there are difficult moments, but I feel very, very calm. You know, I trust. And this is what one thing I was, you know, I was listening to your book. I trust the process, or the process, as you say, I trust the process. Whereas when I was on my own out here working for a big brand and commission only, it was completely different. It was. So just to sort of fill in the gaps, I left that company just as Covid started. And it would have been terrible if I'd have stayed because when Covid hit, no one was. No one was buying events, no one was really buying advertising or anything like that. So it would. So the job came to an end. I moved to a different company and then I started selling much bigger deals. So, yeah, I almost felt like I had to relearn and adapt and, you know, being 13 years working for the same brand, you get into a rock, you know, even though sales is evolving and changing all the time. So, yeah, I think now the mental stress of running your own business and not knowing how much money you're going to earn from month to month, it doesn't phase me. It doesn't worry me as much as it would have done it, did do. When I was commission only working for a big brand. And part of that is I built a presence on LinkedIn, and that is something that pre2021, I didn't have so much that's helped me knowing that, you know, there's a certain amount of inbound leads that I'm going to get from week to week. There's also my outbound process, which I still carry. You know, I'm still practicing. I'm still practicing. I'm still executing. I'm not, you know, waiting for all these inbound leads to come. They're great. You don't have to sell anymore. No, because I love selling. So I still, you know, like I said, trust that process. And, And I feel great now because I'm. I'm older, right when I was doing commission, only I was a lot younger. It was new, but, yeah, it definitely was a good prep. It was preparation for this that was coming. And like, like I said a year ago, I didn't know that I'd be in this situation where I would hand in my notice and say, bye, corporate world, I'm not coming back.

I just love the fact that it. It's taken her six months to get to the, you know. Oh, I'm not that worried about it. Where, you know, it took me about two years. And, And Scott worries about it every day, about when the next deal.

I'm worried about it right now.

So I'm worried about it right now.

I have a question, and I love the segue too. Like.

Because. Because you started it before. What was the final kick to make you go, all right, I want to do this stuff on LinkedIn. Was it. I need to build a brand. Was it? I want to see if I can start to attract additional customers. Not, not for your current business. Your previous role, like, you know, what was your final thing? Because I often hear.

Yeah, that.

That people are like, oh, I don't know. There's already so many people out there. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. Like, you know, but sort of all the imposter syndrome stuff.

Yeah, but.

But you did it. You know, Scott and I have done it for seven or eight years now. But you did a couple years ago, like, in 21 post Covid, like, what made you finally go, I'm doing that.

Yeah, that's. That's another great question. Wow. And you've been doing it seven or eight years, so I'd love to hear what you've seen change. Because before 2021, I just, you know, my LinkedIn was like a business journal business book. It was just boring. What made me want to post it was the job change. So I went from a very, you know, transactional role working for a big brand, having been there for 13 years, to then, oh, I'm going to sell a completely new solution to. This didn't exist. Well, it kind of was in a test mode, a Martech solution, creating content, target your audience, generate leads, which I ended up doing on LinkedIn myself. And I, you know, it was relearning. I felt like I had to relearn or not relearn, but learn more about sales, selling bigger, like mid market enterprise deals and yeah. This time. So when I started.

So was it, so was it that you were like, okay, I'm going to spend more time here to learn.

Yeah.

And I'm going to get, I'm going to maybe lead the witness. And then you realized, wait, I actually have some stuff to contribute. I'm as smart as the rest of these people.

Yeah. And it started with, exactly. It started with I thought, hang on a minute, I've got like 18 years back, two years of experience in sales. I'm cold calling in my 40s and I've been, you know, I've managed teams. I'm now back to being an individual contributor. I started posting conversations, so it might be I had a cold call. So I post what I said on the cold call and what the prospect said back to me or I've been on a demo, I said, I just got hung up on, on a demo. How does this happen? What did I say? What did I not say? And it gradually sort of built momentum and I'd be putting these conversations out.

But what made you be vulnerable? Right. Like, because so often I think that's a piece too, like to not do it and then go, well, I'm just going to put what I put out there. Was it you're just confident in your, like again, you're totally.

Your point.

You know, you've been around a little bit. You're not 25, you know, like a kid out of college who, who is just trying to figure out how to, you know, Adult. Right. Like, was it just sort of. That's always been your personality anyway, I've.

Always been confident, but I wasn't confident in my voice and my experience. So when I changed roles and I started having success and I was adapting to something new, I just decided to post and I followed other sales leaders as well. And I, you know, listen to podcasts, would connect with them And I thought, I've got something that I can, I can just put content out. My goal was to just help other salespeople. And another thing was because there was Covid, people weren't going to events. So the only way to get suddenly LinkedIn seemed to me to be different. I don't know, you guys might have a different opinion, but everyone was on LinkedIn and it was like a big oh, here's my virtual trade show, or here's my virtual office. This is like, you know, I'm going to the water cooler when I put my post out and people are going to comment and like, and I'm gonna make connections not just with prospects, but with other people, like other sales people or the sales leaders. And then I'd start going on discoveries and the, and the person would get on the discovery and this would happen. This started happening maybe. When was this? About a year ago.

And two to three times a week the person I'd be on a meeting, they say, oh, I saw your post the other day. I really liked it. There's me sitting there thinking, well, you didn't like or comment on it. And then this would happen, you know, and then I'd start going back to events. People say, oh, it's you from LinkedIn. Yeah, I see your posts, they're really helpful. I tell my team to follow you or, you know, we talked about your post the other day in a meeting. So suddenly you're, you're on disco calls or you're out at an event and people are talking about you and your post. I think definitely I want to go back to this sort of confidence thing I worked with. So I sold journalists content basically because it was obviously, you know, financial times, a big news brand and they were the writers. You know, I was never doing any writing apart from writing really bad emails. Hope you're well. Just circling back, you know, all the terrible things that sales people did. So posting on LinkedIn for me was a way to, I don't know, it's almost prove that I could write something and people would. People started reading it and people liked what I put out there and the writing part. And I think this is something really important. You know, you feel fear. Six months ago, the stuff I post now, some of the stuff I post now, I wouldn't post like six months ago now. You're crazy to post that. A year ago I would have said, ah, I wouldn't. Why did you put that post out, Charlotte? That's terrible. So this is something that, you know, some people find their voice very quickly. And you know, you have these people, oh, grew a personal grand in nine months from 0 to 50, 000 followers. Hardly anybody does that. Right? Hardly anybody does that. And I think a lot of salespeople feel pressure to post and they don't have to have a personal brand anyway. You know, it's just, it's not all about that. But the writing part, the being consistent helped me to find my voice. And then I stepped into this. Oh, I feel like a completely different person. I'm me now. And, and that has an impact. And it kind of went, it sort of snowballed from there really. But it took me two years to get to where I am now.

What, what are some of the things that you teach in your, in your practice now? Right. You teach social selling, cold outreach utilizing LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Give us a couple things that you, you go in, you talk to companies and their sellers and you're like, oh boy, here's the couple things that everybody's doing wrong. One or two things and maybe what's one or two things that you are coaching people on to. To fix and to start doing?

Yeah. So one of the things is the way that salespeople use LinkedIn and they tend to talk to every prospect in the same way. And that's a big mistake because everybody uses LinkedIn differently. Different types of prospects will use LinkedIn differently. So if somebody is a C level who's hardly going on LinkedIn at all and what I'd call a lurker, or what I call a tier three, you can't have that same conversation that you would with somebody who's more active. So I see a lot of. They see LinkedIn as something separate to the whole. It's part of the cold outreach system. Yes, salespeople need to prospect on LinkedIn. They need to focus on that. But they also, what I see them not doing is not posting an off. So they might post one week or they'll just repost, or they'll take their company's marketing posts and just write a version of them and they're terrible. And what I'm trying to teach them in, in my sort of, when I coach sales teams is you don't just use LinkedIn as a cold outreach tool. You also need to show up, and I say like, not build a personal brand because that's not for everyone, but that you need to show up and drive some kind of inbound. Right. You need people, your prospects need to know you. That's what cold outreach. You even, you know you were talking a while ago or even now about, is it near bounding? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Near bounding. And cold outreach is cold outreach. Is it, you know, is it. Is it dead? Is it gonna die? Don't know. But we can make our salespeople, we can make our lives much easier if we're already known how much more business that's on my LinkedIn headline would you get if your prospects already know who you are? And what I see with a lot of teams is it's so. It's like, here's the cold email and here's the. There's this kind of awkward use of LinkedIn. You know, there's only. How many people are using LinkedIn now still? Three million, isn't it? And there's like half a million people check it regularly, but only 3 million people post, and that's massive. So there's a big gap to fill. And that's what part of my training helps with.

What do you do?

Because I, you know, I, I have my ideas, right. So, yeah, it's easy for the three of us because our prospects are on LinkedIn, right? Like, you know, sales.

Yeah.

Sales leaders, etc. Let's say you're selling to, you know, developers or IT or security, and those personalities generally aren't as active on LinkedIn. Right. So does that mean the channel is dead? I mean, everybody's got to see, everybody's got a profile, right? And you can even tell that, like, you know, they've never done anything with it in a million years. So do you, do you ignore that when your prospects aren't there? Do you post, obviously, content related, know, important content, because someone at that company is on there? Like, what is your thought around that? Because I, I hear this one all the time.

Yeah. Prospects don't use LinkedIn. The thing is, is they still could be checking LinkedIn. So, you know, it might be that or there could be another channel. Maybe they're big on Instagram. Some of the governments that I used to sell to were quite big on Twitter. So, you know, it made sense to contact them on Twitter rather than say LinkedIn. You can't neglect the fact that, you know, one day it's going to become important or more important for these kind of people. But this is why you need the cold outreach system as well, because if these people aren't checking their LinkedIn, if, you know, if they really are the, the people, they've got like the graveyard or gravestone, I call it gravestone type LinkedIn. There's just nothing there. You can't even personalize anything. They will, maybe these people will pick up a cold call. These people will respond to an email. You've got their cell phone. Right. You can text them or WhatsApp them. There's different people work different ways.

I just trained a real estate team in Dubai. They don't use cold email, they don't really use LinkedIn, but they use other channels like TikTok, because they're showcasing properties. Right. So a lot of their prospects pop on there or they pop on Instagram. So every, I say everybody is somewhere. If they're not on one channel, they might then be on another channel. So they say, you know, focus your efforts on one social media channel that you do well, but also don't neglect the fact that you can repurpose your content, for example. So everything that I put on LinkedIn goes into a TikTok video or an Instagram reel or an Instagram post or on Twitter. So you can't afford not to be everywhere but you want to focus on the channel, the social media channel that makes the most sense.

It's hard, I find, at least trying to be everywhere and grow on all platforms when, when your job is actually not a creator. Because, because you, I think you would call yourself this, like, myself.

Yeah.

I don't call myself a creator. I'm an operator who happens to create. I'm a business owner who happens to create stuff. I'm a creator slash operator or operator slash creator.

Yeah.

So the amount of time it took me, the number of years that I put into building.

A large community and a following on one platform, it's very daunting to think like, oh my God, I gotta do that on all these other platforms. I think it's gonna be easier if you're just starting and you're at ground zero from all of them.

Yeah.

I'll feel daunting. You're like, hey, let's just go and see which one kind of takes off. So how do you, how are you balancing this juggling act of like LinkedIn is the main thing, but I, I have to try to do stuff on these others.

Yeah.

And, and, and you know, coupling that with like, oh, you've also run a coaching and training and consulting business.

This.

It's not like you're sitting around all day making nine hours worth of tick tock videos. Right.

No. And, and the reality is, is that it takes me, I do my content every Friday or Saturday morning depend, like, so I, I allocate time. It takes me two to three hours A week to build, to write. So I write seven LinkedIn posts. That's my primary focus is LinkedIn. So I, I do those posts first because that's my most important platform. And then one, I take those seven posts and I'll make three Tick Tock videos. So I usually go back to the week before, see which posts that perform well on LinkedIn, and then make them into TikTok videos. So again, doesn't take me very long. Those same videos will go on Instagram. So I'm not, I'm just, I'm not creating all this new content. And then the posts that I do on LinkedIn I've done well the previous week will go on small short form on Twitter. And I use a scheduler called Hype Fury, which allows me to just drop everything into Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and then the tick tock. Yeah, I just upload three videos a week onto Tick Tock.

I just love the fact that you can do all that in three hours. Yeah, be like three days. For me.

It would be three days because you can't generate the ideas because you overanalyze and overthink them before pushing publish.

Probably, probably focus. Right. You know, like, like I, I just went through this yesterday. I had like these three or four things I needed to do. I put them on the calendar and I got two of the four things done. Right. But I certainly felt better. And then I often have this. I don't know, Charlotte, if you ever have this, or Scott, you have this is like, sometimes I feel like there are other things I need to be doing and not sort of realizing like, oh, it's okay to go make this content, it's okay to spend time on that. Even though I do spend time on, like, I, that's. I don't know when you only turn into a Richard therapy session, but that's.

Yeah. How many times a week do you post on LinkedIn, Richard?

Oh, daily. Daily. So, and I, and I go through stats like, like this morning I sat down for 45 minutes and I've scheduled a bunch of stuff for next week. Right. And I now, I now have a company that's, I'll speak with them on Friday and they'll go cut two or three videos for me to do and they're helping to write. So I'm getting to that space where I'm actually having someone help me do it in terms of creating the content. But I, I just, the idea of like recording myself on my phone and doing something and just, I don't know, I'M Gen X.

Hey, I'm. I'm Jen. Yeah, I'm Gen X too. It's no excuse, damn it. Yes, hello. I think you don't have to be. This is the thing. In the last, I would say six months, it's made, it's just become a lot easier. I save all my posts on LinkedIn since in January last year, since January this year. So every single post I have it on a spreadsheet. I know exactly what type of post it is, how many impressions it got, how many likes, what I'll say if I'm stuck one week. And it does happen sometimes I think, oh, I've got so much going on, I've got to create this con. But I block that time off and it's usually on the weekend because then I don't feel guilty because I don't have to be prospecting or you know, doing sales related activities. And I enjoy it more doing it on a, usually on a, I try and do it on a Friday, but when I was working in my previous role it would be Saturday morning. So Saturday morning, that's it. Do the content. It used to take me longer. It does get faster the more, the more you form that habit and then you're literally just repurposing, maybe using a different hook when you're putting it on different platforms. So you, you really creating for that one platform, LinkedIn. And then I think really, oh, I got it.

It's just a, you know, it's a commitment. Adhd, Richard being Richard, like it's, I.

Think it's also, it's also frustrating a little bit. In Charlotte you can pick this up after Richard does the second advertisement here for HubSpot in just a second. But I think it's also challenging because you don't get the same dopamine hit, you don't get the same response or reaction on platform 2, 3, 4 and 5 that you do on the first one. So you do LinkedIn and you get, you know, a thousand likes or whatever and you're like, hey, that was good. That really resonated with people. And you spend another 10, 15 minutes posting on all these other places and you get all as a response and it's like, what do we do? So maybe you can talk, maybe you could talk to that after Richard does the mid roll right here.

Yeah. So I want to thank HubSpot and HubSpot podcast network and even the YouTube network and share that our good friend John Barrows is actually on the network. If you don't know John Check them out on Make It Happen Mondays. Gives away amazing sales tips, has amazing guests. Scott, you were just recently on a live session. Do you know if that's going to go on to the Make It Happen Mondays? Do you know if he recorded it to do that?

They did record it. I don't know if they pushed that the same way or not, but we'll find out.

Yeah. And certainly go just Google Scott Lees, John Barrows and AI. I think you're talking about AI and sales. So.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

It'll. It'll be a good one for sure. All right, Charlotte, so what's your. What's your thoughts around what Scott suggested with the.

So, yeah, I mean, focus on LinkedIn and then think about video, because video, having a video strategy as part of your social media is the next important thing.

I just started a YouTube channel, but I haven't put too much effort into it. But what I'm doing is just using a lot of my podcasts and tick tocks to put onto that channel.

You can. Yeah. I mean, for me, for example, Twitter just is. It's just fake and phony. I haven't managed to figure it out.

I just keep trying with it. I keep trying. I started it in November last year and, well, I had like a dormant account. I had like 167 followers and I've got like 843 now. I've had a few newsletter subscribers. I can't say I've had any leads from it.

But that's the thing. It's like, it's tough for people.

To spend time and energy there who have already made it one place because you feel like, yeah, getting nothing, no traction whatsoever. You don't feel the progress or the impact.

Right, yeah, no, I get that. And it's the same in a way with me on Instagram because I'm a failed fashion. Hate the word influencer. But yeah, fa. I, I started out with. I got like free clothes, sports clothes. I made some terrible reels where I look awkward and just don't.

Maybe you should re. Share those and combine those with what you do now. And it's like lessons learned from my first go as an influencer. Right. And then you could throw up those old things as like a kind of.

Comedy real and that you got to start anywhere.

It's all the mistakes that the actors make and stuff.

Instagram's hard because it's so. There's. There's so many people on it and it's the, the, you know, there's over, what, billions. There's more than a billion users. LinkedIn is much easier because there's less people and there's hardly anybody that posts every day. When you, you know, the ratio of people that post every day compared to total users.

Instagram is very. Yeah, it's difficult and it depends on your niche, or niche, as you call it. So the more niche you can go on Instagram, the better. But I do think, for me, I like the video. So a platform that has a video element, TikTok, for example. Yeah, lots of. You might get a lot of views on your video, but again, no leads.

But I think it's interesting as an experiment, as long as you just don't spend too much time.

You know, again, people say, oh, focus on. Yeah, focus on one platform. That, that's obviously good for you, the best for your business, but don't throw out the fact that another platform, and potentially a platform with video, because people need to see you, they need to see you speaking. They need to see that you're real and that you can't just hide behind text posts on LinkedIn. So, yeah, focus on one platform with video. One platform like LinkedIn.

Yeah. Me on video scares the hell out of me.

That's a whole other confidence. That's a whole other.

When you master the whole. I don't. I quite like writing copy and I like hooks and what works and what doesn't work. And I think this is when. Since I started posting on LinkedIn, you know, when I first posted, my posts were terrible. And I'm looking back six months ago, and I think I wouldn't write the post that way now. I'd format it better. So there's always things that you can be learning. I think you've got to really love what you're doing. So I wouldn't outsource my content to a ghostwriter because I was going to ask, have you.

Have you gone down the path of having someone else write your content or using AI?

No. No. So sometimes I might, with a post, I might take my best post and say, can you rewrite? Like, I've done that with Chat GPT and experimented a little bit, but I. I know I don't like posts that are written by Chat GPT because you can tell. Like, when I see somebody's post on LinkedIn and I think, oh, that's chatgpt cotton paste. I like to use it for ideas. The same with, like, when I'm looking at a particular Persona, what are their challenges? Of course, everybody's Going to use AI in some way, but just writing a post that's completely AI. You can tell who would do that?

Not me. I worry about doing anything. Not from myself, because it. I worry about it not feeling authentic and not really and potentially breaking some element of trust with my audience or followers that I worry I could never get back.

Yeah. The only thing I. I have right. Yeah. Because I get long winded. I. I have taken my ones to get really long winded and said, okay, chat GPT, shorten this to 500 words and then I'll go in and re edit it. So it sounds like me. But I don't necessarily go look for that. I might, I think I've. A couple times I've like, I just couldn't think of something to say today. I'm like, chat GPT, tell me like six topic sales people are struggling with and it'll just give me the topics and then I'll go write about it.

Yeah.

So I sort of use it for. I prompt it to help it prompt me for lack of a better phrase. Yeah, I agree with you. I would, I would never just like post it and go, oh, that's chat gbt or, you know, and not recognize it. So.

Yeah. And you. And one, one of the things I did a year ago was I asked people in the DMs, like, what makes my post different? This is another thing that I wanted to find because I was thinking, well.

That'S a good question.

I'm going to start a side hustle. But how am I different to other people that are on there in the same space? So I asked 200 people. I put all of the answers into a spreadshee. Yeah, I was mad. This was like last November and there was this common thread. You know, people said, you are, you're the real you. You know, you're authentic, you're doing everything. You're on the battlefield. You're quite raw in your posts. You're. And I thought, yeah, this is exactly who I am. So, yeah, I wouldn't want anyone else to write my posts.

I like that idea. That's interesting. Yeah. Customer feedback, right? Like, just like all the rest of us. What do our customers think of us? All right, we're getting close to the end. So this is the part where we turn around and let you ask us a question or two. What do you want to know?

So I want to ask, since you've been on posting on. You guys are posting what, for seven years? Every day?

Yes, yes. More or less every day.

How is it so how is LinkedIn changed to. Let's. Let's go back six, seven years. What's been the big difference that you see from then to now?

Well, the first thing is I had more followers than Scott and now it annoys me that it's flipped it. But no.

There. Well, obviously there's more noise. It's harder to break through.

You were able to find the connections easier and get those connections a little faster.

You know, I'm not afraid to admit that I used bots back in 2017 to, to send out invites, but now you're limited.

And so I think that's different. I think you can get way better data, though, than you used to be able to. Like, you can, you know, I use SHIELD app. I think Scott does too. I don't know. Which will help you measure your engagement and your times and stuff so that we can try to figure out, as you said, how do I keep giving good content? Right. You know?

Yeah.

And. And I also think what hasn't changed, it is my hope that people are like us and like you, is that, you know, the goal of it was to help other people. Sure, there's this, hey, this is my business and I can drive leads and of course. But that's not the primary reason we do it. We do it because we like it. We want to help other people. We appreciate when people tell us it's raw and authentic and real.

Yeah, that can be ego driven. And that's okay. So I think that's the thing. I think there's. I think there's too many ads in the freed. I think the pacing of the algorithm has always existed and everybody still complains about it. I think that because of who I am and who I think Scott is.

It can feel annoying that it's the same kind of content all the time, but that's really my own fault because that's the little kingdom I built. Right?

Yeah.

Like I said earlier, like, I don't have a ton of IT people in there. I don't have a ton of, you know, security specialists and stuff. It's all sales and salespeople. So sometimes I just get frustrated by the noise.

On stuff. So that I'll let Scott answer from his point.

Well, I think that good content used to win out, and I don't feel that way anymore at all.

Really?

No. I think it's a total lie that we're being told that if you just.

Create good content, good things are gonna happen. I don't believe that because there are countless bad actors who have spoiled it with all of their gamesmanship of the algorithm, and you see people who get hundreds and hundreds of likes and comments in the first 45 minutes, first 30 minutes of posts, and you're just like, okay, this content must be amazing. And it's like, optimize your profile, use a real picture. And it's just like the most basic dumb stuff you can possibly think. And you're like, that's not good content. That's somebody completely gaming the system. And unfortunately, the algorithm is rewarding this kind of bad behavior.

And you see dozens and dozens of people capitalizing on this. And, and so, you know, it's tough to stay motivated when you feel like you've done things the right way day after day after day, not trying to cheat the system, really trying to be yourself, trying to help people. And then, you know, a flick of the switch and the algorithm changes and you're like, shut off. Right. So I think you used to be able to get away with being kind of big on one platform and. And I don't think you're going to be able to get away with that moving forward. Which spells bad news for people like Richard and I who have put all this time into one platform and have not put time into others. So we sort of have to, like, diversify our platform or join into the gamesmanship or find something else to kind of do. So I. I don't think that the best content wins out anymore. And I do think that it used to. Yeah, it is a lot noisier. It used to be very reliable to send somebody a DM on LinkedIn and get a response one way or another if it was sensibly put together. Now, I actually don't think that people are purposely ignoring you. It's just everybody's inbox is full of spam and total. And it's like, hey, Charlotte, do you want to run a franchise? Hey, Charlotte, are you looking to offshore it work? It's like, no. And everybody's inbox is full of all these things that are irrelevant. So a lot of people just don't check that inbox at all. And they haven't done a great job of making that user experience.

Easier and better. So you really do have to almost like, warm up the connection and the relationship before sending somebody a DM and trying to get to know them. Right. So that part has changed quite a bit. I think there's a lot more diversity in the type of content that's out there, and I think that's a good thing. Yeah, there's really humorous and funny stuff. There's snarky, witty stuff. There's sort of whistleblowing stuff where people are calling out some really bad actors at a corporate level and, you know. Yeah, like, I'm on blast and, and whatnot. And I, I think some of that transparency is really good.

Yeah.

Those are a few things that I would kind of call out.

Yeah. LinkedIn kind of holds people accountable, but yeah, I'm a not a fan of these kind of posts where somebody will write a post and there'll be no.

Like, no context and a selfie with it. I've posted two selfies in my LinkedIn lifetime, but I hate them.

And it's like, probably performed really well, though.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's the frustrating part is like, the algorithm and the people at LinkedIn can control.

Whether th. That type of content, like, blows up. Yeah. And so is that really what we want as users in the experience? Is that really what they want the platform to become?

I've never talked to anybody who says yes, that's what I want LinkedIn to become. So it's confusing, I think.

Right? It is. I do. Yeah. And we're seeing a lot of this, you know, people posting photos, very random, which have nothing to do with what they're posting about. Like, how does this help me to see this kind of photo? That's a lot of the gaming that you're talking about as well.

Yeah. And so, you know, you play the game. Do you rage against it? It's what do you do? And that's, that's the dilemma for, for some folks. And I think it's discouraging some people to get started, unfortunately, I think it's discouraging some people who've, who feel like they've done things the right way and they see other people being quote, unquote, rewarded for this type of stuff. And it leaves you in a weird place of like, what do I do? Right. So.

I don't know. I don't have the answer other than, you know, I, I think you were right when you said earlier you can't just be on one platform and you've got to try to, you know, find ways to break through the others. You can have one primary one, but it's probably a bad idea to completely ignore the others. Right. And that's good advice, I think, for all three of us on this call and probably most people who are, who are listening at home.

Scott, what's your tik tok handle again? Just so I can go find you.

It's at the Scott, lease you really?

Oh, I was, I didn't know you had one.

Yeah, I, I, I do. I, I have failed thus far in being very consistent.

Yeah, you've got one.

I have to find you. But you know, at least the one thing I will say with TikTok is, and even with Instagram reels, if you're posting the same ones on the same platform, you only need to write like two lines and that's it. It's not like you're writing a really long post. So that makes it easier. Once you get into the rhythm, maybe pick a video platform, it gets much easier to do it. You just, you start to boom, boom, boom.

It does start to encourage you if you're trying to optimize things. It does start to encourage you to do more video.

Yes.

Yeah, right. Because for years and years and years, five, six years maybe, I didn't do any video on LinkedIn at all. So I didn't have the ability to like repurpose content. I felt as easily. Right. But now, now that I've dabbled a little bit here with Instagram and Tick tock and whatnot, I am noticing that it's like, okay, I've got this video clip that, you know, I did a podcast, somebody sent me a video clip. I can repurpose this on three or four different places and let's kind of see what happens. So that does make it easier, but it, it starts to skew my brain towards, well, the content that I should make for LinkedIn should probably be more video. So I can repurpose it on this other stuff because if I just write copy, then I'm hosed on all these other platforms. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. It's just an observation.

Yeah, you can. And also with your text post on LinkedIn, you can just make that into a video. So say exactly what's what, what you're saying in the post.

That's next level. That's next level. I haven't got there yet. I haven't got there yet.

That's the three hours on Saturday.

So then you download. So there's a, there's an app called Captions which does the captions for you for tick tock. And it's so quick. You, you record the video in tick tock, you save it, download it to your album, stick it in captions. What Captions will do is, well, it will write the captions for you, it will then trim the video. So any Ms. As or when you're, you know, with TikTok, you often creating a very short. Here's, here's my sales tip for the day. Boom. And you. So it will remove everything from your hand movements and make the video much shorter. And then you just save that and upload it straight to TikTok and it will actually AI in captions will suggest a hook that you use.

There you go.

I got it. I'm gonna end five minutes, I'm gonna end up having to do this.

Takes me 15 minutes to do three tick tock videos. So I record the all three. You take a post, save them and then stick them in captions and then they're all ready and then I just, then I draft them. So I draft the caption on TikTok. On Instagram, you're hired.

You will now run the Serpent sales, tick tock, Instagram, LinkedIn. You run all the socials for us now?

Yeah.

You're hired.

Yeah.

Next year, if you invite me back next year, I'll say, well, now I've had to outsource it. I'm so big.

That would be a great, a great thing to have happen. We appreciate you spending some time with us. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Get in touch with me on LinkedIn. Charlotte Lloyd.

Imagine that.

I'm not really. My Instagram's kind of the stuff on there that I'm embarrassed about that I need to archive. So I'm not gonn give you my Instagram handle. Tik Tok is Charlotte Lloyd's. No Charlotte self tips. Twitter is.

Charlotte H. Lloyd.

I think we don't even know. We don't even know our own, our own, our own handles. This is how you know that we all have work to do. Thanks so much, Charlotte for spending some time with us. And we'll see everybody next time on the surf and sales podcast.

Thanks, Charlotte.

Thank you.