#286: Chrissie Zavicar on How to Gain More Exposure and Generate Targeted Leads by Leveraging Lin...

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, LinkedIn continues to be one of the best social media platforms, if not the best social media platform for connecting with potential clients and gaining valuable exposure to your target market. Especially when you're a marketing professional, writer, copywriter, going after business clients. And the good news is that the company has rolled out a number of key features over the past few months that, when leveraged well, can help you get better results than ever before. One of these new features is LinkedIn's creator mode, which enables you to launch a newsletter inside LinkedIn. Now, I have to admit that when I first heard about this through another colleague, my head hurt from the massive eye roll I did. I mean, newsletters, really, Another newsletter? What's so innovative about that? Well, my guest today is Chrissy Zavicar. And Chrissy is a LinkedIn strategist and consultant. And when she explained the potential of this new feature for writers, consultants and independent professionals, I saw the light and I actually got really excited. And that's why I wanted to bring her back on the show because I suspect you're going to feel the same way once you hear Chrissy talk about the different ways you can use this and other new LinkedIn features and why now is a time to give them a try. I had Chrissy on the show a few years ago to talk about LinkedIn outreach. That was a very, very popular episode and I suspect this is going to be another one of those. This is packed with, with golden nuggets. I urge you to give it a listen and more importantly, to apply what you learn inside. Give this a chance, play around with this. I think there's a lot of hidden potential in what Krissy is going to share with us today. Enjoy the conversation. Chrissy, welcome back to the show. Great to be talking with you today.

I'm very excited to be talking to you today.

Well, I remember the conversation that we had a while back with on LinkedIn and it's not only was it a very popular episode, but I really enjoyed talking with you about this and the practical approach you take to LinkedIn. And I guess a couple of things may have changed with LinkedIn. Since then, right?

Absolutely. To my favor. So I'm very excited about the changes that have been made. They're definitely putting a huge emphasis on content creation, which I personally absolutely love, which is great.

I mean, that's my odds. That's what we love. We definitely don't shy away from creating content. Before we dive into just some of the details, some of the changes, some of the new stuff, why don't you give us just kind of a brief summary of what you do, what kind of clients you work with.

Absolutely. So my long ago background is that I started out working in the NFL. Actually, I love sports and wanted to work in sports. So I ended up working for the Detroit Lions for a decade, decade overseeing the website and then social media. And when I started my own business in 2015, the question for myself was, okay, I have all these skills, what do I do with them? And what I was always good at was amplifying voices and helping influencers be seen. And when I have a purpose and when I have a story, I am one of the best at conveying it. So LinkedIn became a perfect platform for me to focus on because it is so content driven and because the algorithm is open to the point that it does reward good content. If people engage with something, then the platform will amplify it, which is wonderful. So from my vantage point, I looked at influencers of small businesses. So these were, you know, small businesses that had somebody at the top who was the face of the business. But especially over the last couple years, I've been focusing on more on enterprise level clients to try to put workshops together and trainings together for how to leverage the platform with marketing and sales teams. But then I'm still loving working with either solo entrepreneurs who are looking to really amplify themselves, or small businesses that are looking to amplify visibility, which is us, right?

People like us, who solo business owners in most cases. And we're looking to get our message and our name out there, you know, and I'm curious about something. You said that LinkedIn is really very good about amplifying great content that's getting engagement, you know, because when I hear that aren't all social media platforms basically built to do that? LinkedIn seems to be, would you say, much better at that?

Yes, LinkedIn is much better. I think it's the only platform that I know of that's one of the bigger platforms that's really focused on letting people express themselves and push it out there from the sense of if you say something that people are reacting to and there's a conversation being built. The post is going to have legs. So things that you post can still stick around for up to a week. You know, I have posts that I put up a while back and didn't think they were going to do well and then I'm getting reactions on them a week plus later. Whereas other platforms like Facebook is a good example that it quickly turned from being a content platform to a platform that was pay to play. Where you are purchasing they're cost effective ads, but you're basically purchasing ads to serve to people who are on Facebook for a different reason. Not really doing much with business. So it's more of a consumer focused platform. Whereas LinkedIn is really heavy with B2B and so you get a lot of business opportunities there.

Interesting. So that would be the difference is the ads ad based model that Facebook has, which they, I mean that's really what their whole business is built around.

It is. And they're very good at it. Because I'm guilty of purchasing a lot of things through Facebook ads. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, they're very good that they're targeting.

Let's talk a little bit about and I want to get to some of the. You know, there's a specific feature that LinkedIn released recently that I think we should all be aware of and leverage. But you know, give us some examples. I mean I know I can take an article, right. That I saw in third party publication and share it and maybe include a comment, hey, I love, you know what this guy is saying here, but what are other ways that I could be using that? And then we'll get to kind of like the new way and by the way, on LinkedIn and let me be more specific, how can I leverage my own ideas and content on LinkedIn in a way that's going to be effective? It's going to have legs, like you said. What are the kind of the critical success factors there?

Well, my first question for you is is this content that is living on a website or is this content that you're looking to plug directly into LinkedIn?

I guess either way. But I was thinking about the second one, plug directly into LinkedIn.

Okay. So the great thing about what I've seen happen with LinkedIn is that it is becoming more small business friendly. The company pages are being built out. They used to just kind of be a placeholder where you put your company page information up there so the logo would show up on your profile to make it look prettier. And so that People could click through and see that you had a legitimate business. But the way that they are now, you can really start to develop traction with a brand that isn't just a person and it's not synonymous with a person. So there's one way that you can really generate content for your business if you aren't a solo entrepreneur, is that you can start to funnel into your company page, whether you're inviting people that you're connected with or you're just posting articles on your company page, because you can actually post native articles on your company page now. So if you're looking to put up a company article, you can do that directly on the platform. When you're looking for content for yourself, the platform has definitely continued to evolve. One of the things that I always keep as my rule of thumb is you need to look at what the platform wants you to do and think through your strategy that way. So, for example, LinkedIn Semi recently rolled out polls and they are injecting a lot of visibility into polls. If you put one up. So you don't want to put one up for the sake of putting one up, because people can see right through that. You've got some really interesting polls happening on LinkedIn right now. But I was always someone that enjoyed asking questions to engage. And so it's a good way to ask questions to engage. You have up to four options that you can put in there. And LinkedIn is going to push that poll out with more visibility than it would push out anything else. So you can play around with that. You can kind of do market research. That way you can have fun with it to ask questions that have nothing to do with business. If you have a particular service you're looking to sell, you can form questions around that and see what people say, because you can see how people vote, but the public cannot. So as the admin of your own page, you can see who votes for what. So, for example, if you were to put out there and this probably wouldn't be a very popular poll, but for the sake of conversation, if you're targeting corporations or CMOs, you could say, as a CMO, do you write your own copy or do you hire out a freelancer to write your copy? If people voted on that, you could see who says that you hired a freelancer and who says they don't. And then you could also put like an other option in there and they could vote that. So it's an interesting way that you can play around with to amplify yourself on the platform.

Now with Polls, they can't see who responded to what. But can they at least see the results so far? Once they've answered the question, yes, they can see results. They just kind of like on Twitter. I think Twitter does that. You know, you don't see the results, but then you go ahead and select the response and then automatically it will give you a little bar chart.

Yes, you have to vote to see the results. Yeah, but as the person who created the poll, I could see what you voted for on my poll.

Interesting. Which I see all kinds of possibilities, right. It's like, wow, this lady said X, maybe I should reach out to her. And by the way, can people see that poll? People whom you're not connected to see the poll or only people in your network?

Oh, yeah, anyone can. And what I've told people is unless you create a post that is absolutely horrific and a bunch of people flag it, you are automatically going to reach your second level connections, which are people you're not connected with, but who have a connection in common with you. So you should 100% always be reaching, at the very least, your second level of connections with every post.

So I can see some great possibilities for this to increase your exposure. I mean, if you're now exposed to second level connections, you have a great profile with a great headline, you could potentially gain a few connection requests automatically.

All right, so I will give some free strategy because I just had an idea that could be fun because I'm one of these people. You could totally create grammar police polls and ask people, like, what is the proper way to use a word? Or what is the right form of a particular word. We could do fun stuff like that.

I like that. I like people are always curious and then people always want to, you know, show others that, oh, I know which way I know which is the right way.

Exactly, exactly.

They want to show off that they know. All right, so that's really cool. That makes a lot of sense. I can see the differences there between LinkedIn and some of the other platforms now. There's a pretty cool new feature that I know you're super excited about regarding newsletters. So what's all this about?

Yeah, so a while back, when they launched LinkedIn Live, they launched it to people at random and people were applying and rejected and they had no idea why they were being rejected. And I wanted to do LinkedIn live and I got rejected and I haven't heard back. And there's a lot of confusion around who got it, who didn't. Is anyone even using it? I Remember that what happened recently is they launched something called LinkedIn Creator Mode. And so now you turn creator mode on. This does not automatically mean you receive the tools, but it kind of puts you in the running again. They still are just bestowing people these, these tools however they see fit. But they will tell you if you search, there is no way for you to actually petition to receive these tools. They'll give them to you when they're ready. But you turn on Creator mode and then when you receive it, you're able to create a LinkedIn newsletter and you're able to use LinkedIn Live. And so LinkedIn Live still exists. LinkedIn newsletter is new and I personally love it. And I've actually found, with my own experience and others have confirmed that this is true from their end as well, that what's happened with LinkedIn newsletters is that because these have rolled out, people are starting to actually read articles again on LinkedIn. And those long posts that used to be so popular that, you know, I was pushing for a long time because that's what was good. People aren't really responding to these long form posts as much anymore. They're actually clicking through to articles and they're engaging more with the shorter posts. But to get to the question about what a newsletter is, you can create one LinkedIn newsletter for your personal profile. You can upload a specific logo for that newsletter, it has its own description. And then when you go to create an article, you can still create non newsletter articles, but you have the option to toggle and create something that goes into that series. And when you launch your very first one, you have the option of sending it to everyone you're connected with to ask to opt in. If you're on LinkedIn, you've probably received about 2,312 requests to join a LinkedIn newsletter. Couple more. Yeah, yeah. So you have that option of sending that out to everybody within your network. And then for the people who do choose to subscribe to your newsletter, every time you post they are served up a notification that you've posted a new piece of content. So it gives you this opportunity to put together something that falls in line with an idea or a brand message. Just anything that you know you're passionate about or that you want to share about, you can put into an all encompassing newsletter brand. And I've been really excited about it. It's the initiative that LinkedIn's been taking to really make this a creator platform. They actually just did an incubator or they're doing an incubator with 100 LinkedIn creators that are officially bestowed LinkedIn creators. So they're really making this effort to make it a content heavy platform and that's one of the ways they're doing it.

All right, so a bunch of questions have come to mind. Okay, first, kind of a clarifying question here. You mentioned when you get into LinkedIn creator mode automatically you get LinkedIn live. Just I don't want to assume, can you describe LinkedIn Live what that is?

So you don't automatically get it, like I said.

Oh, you don't. Okay.

So you actually have to toggle your. There's a spot on your profile that you can go and it'll say creator mode and you have to switch it on and then you may or may not get it. And LinkedIn will give it to you when they're good and ready. But when you do receive it, you get LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Newsletter. So LinkedIn Live is the opportunity to go live on LinkedIn just the same way that you can on Facebook and Instagram and you can sort of go live on Twitter, but it's not really the same. But you have to get a third party streaming service, which they're pretty cost effective. It's not that tough. And you can get these providers that actually allow you to go live across multiple platforms at once, which is cool. But when you go live on LinkedIn, what it automatically does is it creates an event on the LinkedIn platform that says when you're going live, you can upload a thumbnail, so there's an image that goes along with it. And then people have the opportunity to RSVP to that LinkedIn Live event. And you can also tag people who are speaking at the event as speakers. So and then you go live and it allows people to join and comment and all that good stuff. And then once you're completed with your live spot, it archives it for you.

Got it. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware what that was because, you know, we kind of glossed over that one. But the Other one is LinkedIn newsletter. So let's get back to that. A few questions. One is you mentioned that there was a point where the long form posts were pretty hot and you said that that's kind of gone away. It seems like if you have long form content now that you want to share, it's not going to be a post. Years ago there was what, like LinkedIn publisher where you could publish articles there. Now it's really. They're taking this to the Newsletter. Their newsletter, platform or service?

Yes. And what's interesting, I feel like it's been multiple reasons that the long form post is starting to get a little difficult to read. And I found that my behavior has changed. And so of course I took it to a LinkedIn poll because where else would I take it? But I asked people, how are, you know, are you reading these insanely long posts? And I think that one of the things that actually happened with it is LinkedIn increased the character limit. So the character limit is either unlimited or it's over 3,000. I mean, I never reach it.

It used to be really short.

It used to be 1300 characters. So when you're talking about long LinkedIn posts, they are getting long to the point that I see someone. You see the first three lines of a post, which I always say, it's your journalism lead, so make sure that it's eye catching and that it pulls people in. But I'll see something. And it's kind of, oh, that's interesting. And I click on it and immediately I'm just like, no, I do not have time to read this entire thing. And it's just not readable and it's just crazy and it's just not, you know. No, I mean, there's some that people put. If it's quality content and it's engaging, yes, I will look through and read it. But I've noticed that because of the way people are leveraging it, I'm less likely right now to actually read through a post that literally takes up my entire screen from top to bottom.

So what makes a newsletter different than same size content?

Well, I think, you know, something that should resonate with your audience is that it's an article, it's written with paragraphs and it's more readable, it's more digestible. What was interesting is that when I put that poll up, a couple people actually commented that because they have dyslexia, the way that people are posting now with like three words in a line and stuff like that is actually very, very difficult for them to follow. So it's just interesting. I think there's some readability in there that's making it easier to digest something that is formed like an article, as opposed to people have this new style, and it's not really a new style, but they're really adopting the style of like they're writing these short bursts of 3, 4 words in a line and they're just making it extremely long, putting in some emojis and all that kind of Stuff and it's just not as easy to read as somebody that's writing like a flowing story the way that articles are meant to be written.

Got it. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. The next thing that I was wondering is, okay, well, wait a minute. I either have a newsletter already, but you can sign up through my website, or I've been looking to launch one. You've just thrown a whole new decision here for me. So, you know, how do you guide your clients through that decision making process? Whether they already have something existing when you know they own that list at that point, if you want to, you know, express it that way. Now I'm giving, you know, I'm looking to go to LinkedIn and start one there as well. But, you know, I don't really have control over that list or I don't have one. I've been looking to launch. Should I launch there? Should I launch in mine? Should I launch in both? I know there's a lot of questions in one, but your thoughts there, that.

Is a lot of questions, but that's okay.

No, I think that my mind is racing.

Yes, it's exciting stuff. No, I think that the key is you need to look at the overarching strategy and there's a number of different factors. So I'll use myself as an example to start. I do not have a newsletter. I do have an email list. It's relatively small and I, you know, I'm sorry if anyone listening is on that list, I've neglected you. But I do have a small email list, but my focus has 100% been on the LinkedIn platform and I wanted to launch a specific newsletter there. My newsletter is called first and Sober and it's actually about sobriety from alcohol. And, you know, it overarches sobriety in life and presence and trauma and a lot of different things. But I specifically wanted to launch it on LinkedIn because a core target of mine is people who drink who are very functional. So people who look like everything is just fabulous on the outside, but they are struggling with addiction behind closed doors. And so for me, an audience I know not only do I have influence on LinkedIn, that's obviously a quick definitely look there because I have quite a few followers. But that's also my target is people who are in business who maybe struggle with addiction. So looking from an audience perspective, that was where I wanted to start. That being said, I will be launching a website that will have a newsletter option and I do plan on sending my content out through there as well. So I will be posting the same content both through a newsletter that is going to be created under that same brand and through LinkedIn. So that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is because the newsletters are specifically with the personal or individual profile and not the company pages. You have an opportunity to create a newsletter that is specifically geared to you as an individual, not necessarily your business. So I have clients who have a business or consumer facing newsletter that has quite a few subscribers to it. But we took the newsletter and made it more of an influencer piece. So I have someone who has a newsletter that focuses on moms, but for her newsletter we're focusing on passion in business, passion in entrepreneurship, in her industry. And so we made it more about something that covers all areas of her life instead of just her company so that she can talk about all of it. And so that it gives it a little bit different of a spin. So, you know, there's multiple ways that you can do two different things. You know, a newsletter through email and something different on LinkedIn, or you could duplicate it because people are going to consume content in different ways. But I will tell you that when LinkedIn does, when you do post a newsletter, it will send out an email message to the people who are following the newsletter.

Okay. So from LinkedIn, LinkedIn will send an email message to those people. So if you're duplicating what you're doing with your own newsletter, which people have opted in for. So if Joe opted in for my newsletter and then he also subscribed to my newsletter on LinkedIn, he's going to get two emails with a notifying of the same article.

Yes, he will.

Yeah.

So you can do that. So one way I would get around that personally as the strategy person, is I would schedule your email newsletter to go on a different day. So if you publish it on LinkedIn, they're going to send out their automated alert immediately. So you can send out because you're not going to have everybody overlap. You know, for me personally, I plan on doing a newsletter on a website because I'm planning on getting followers from other platforms or that are not in that business audience, but just send it out differently in a different day. So then you're basically almost doing a retarget for people that didn't see it on LinkedIn or if they did see it on LinkedIn, you know, they'll either opt out and they're still on LinkedIn or they'll just, you know, ignore it. One or the other.

Got It. Or I guess another way you could go about it is, you know, like, I got years worth of content. Most of it is evergreen. Right. I could just kind of draw a line somewhere and say, you know what? I'm going to start my LinkedIn newsletter with the content from January 2017. All of it still applies. So I'll have that role going while I have the, you know, kind of my current role with new content. But there's no zero overlap. Nobody's going to remember, you know, stuff from back then, everything. You're following me back then, right?

Exactly. And it's all going to be a matter of what is the purpose for the content you're sending out. For me, I am writing these posts or these articles the week of, and they're very current. So for me, I don't want to be not being in the moment with it, and I do want to hit as many people as possible. To me, I don't really care if people get it more than once, especially because the content that I'm doing, there's a lot of eyeballs on it that don't want to acknowledge they're reading it. Sure, I'm fine with that. But if you're definitely. If you're looking at it from that standpoint where you're posting something like tips and tricks, or you're posting, you know, structure, you know, ways to write or different, you know, best practices and things like that. Absolutely. You can just change up which content you're sending out where, and then you won't have that overlap issue.

Well, I'm glad you said that. Hey, listen, there's no right or wrong here. The most important question is to ask yourself, what do you want to accomplish here? Because that really, I think too, especially with this kind of stuff and new features and new stuff and shiny objects, people want to just kind of dive right in without thinking about their objectives and the right strategy. And you're right. That's the right approach. So I'm curious, let's go back to your newsletter. You said it's first and sober.

Yep.

Okay. So that is a very personal topic. And is there an overlap like with the other example you showed me, where this lady, this client, had this audience and she's writing to that audience about X, but her newsletter is about passion. But there's an overlap there. Right. Because she's showing kind of a different facet of herself and what she helps people with. In your case, is there an overlap with your core business with LinkedIn consulting?

Explain how you're defining overlap in the question.

So with first and Sober, you're talking about, you know, issues related to addiction, but you have a business where you're helping people with LinkedIn strategy. Right. So is there, like, if I subscribe to one, could that lead me to the other, or does that not matter to you? These are two separate audiences for you. You're just trying to express yourself in different ways for different people.

There's 100% overlap. For me, I believe that I didn't create first and Sober as a business strategy for my LinkedIn consulting, but it definitely I noticed an uptick in new business because it injected visibility into my platform. So because I am getting the reach and the attention with what I'm doing with the newsletter, people are noticing what I'm doing on LinkedIn and reaching out for that reason, which, interestingly enough, is what my strategy has always been with every client I've worked with. It just hasn't been necessarily that extreme of a difference. But for me, the strategy has always been you want to post things and write things that people are going to want to engage with, regardless of what it is you're selling, because that's going to build the relationships with your audience, which is going to lead to individuals knowing, liking, trusting you, and then wanting to work with you in whatever capacity you're providing. So developing that relationship with people always provides the opportunity for business if you're playing in the same space. So I'm in the same space of where my target audience is, so that potential is always there. Now, when I put that brand onto Facebook for the sake of reaching a different group of people with first and Sober, I have zero expectation that will lead to any sort of a business lead. Just because that's not where my audience is and not why they're ingesting the content. So from LinkedIn and from a B2B standpoint, anytime that you're doing something that generates positive attention or the visibility, it's going to open up the possibility of business leads.

Got it? That makes sense. I think you just have to. Again, going back, you need to be clear about what you want to accomplish, what you want to communicate, what you want to show the world and have realistic expectations, too. You're not going to be able to accomplish everything through one message. Which leads me to a related question. If I am in a place where I've been meaning to launch a newsletter, my whole thinking was, this whole time, it's going to be through my website. People can opt in there and, you know, I use mailchimp or whatever, and I'll send it to them. Should I maybe reconsider that approach? Should I maybe start with a LinkedIn newsletter?

The questions I would ask you, if you were coming to me as somebody looking to work with me, or to get my assessment as to whether you should do that, I would start by asking, are you active on LinkedIn right now? And if you're not, if you're going to a cold profile that you haven't touched in years, you don't even remember your login, you're probably best going the email route or just making a decision of which you think you'll pay more attention to, because that's just going to be where's your consistency? What's the easiest and where's your audience? Like, if you already have people you know will join your email list, maybe you have an active website where you're getting visitors and you want to use, you know, the freebie opt in method and you have that, that's easy for you to put together, then that probably makes more sense. If you're active on LinkedIn and you do generate engagement there, and you know your audience is there, then definitely consider the LinkedIn option, even if you are needing to change it up a little bit, like you said, and make them staggered in terms of when you're posting. What? But if you're already on, you're already generating engagement and your audience is there, it 100% can't hurt you to put out a newsletter because as I said before, when the platform is looking to promote something, you want to jump on that bandwagon to title this thing because everybody and their mother is coming out with a newsletter right now and we all have only so much bandwidth, right. Of the people that we're going to subscribe to and really pay attention to. So if you title your newsletter, you know, B2B writing tips, I don't know how many people are going to pay attention to it. So you want to make sure that whatever it is that you title it is distinctive and something that's going to jump out at people to where they're going to be curious about what it's about and then make sure that first newsletter really lays into what they're going to get with it. So like my first post was what is first and sober? Because I wanted to really teach people what they could expect from the newsletter going forward. And just so you know, I launched it December 21st and let's see, January, like a month and a half in, I have about 4,000 people following it, which is equivalent to, I think about half of my connections. I have way more followers, but I'm connected to maybe about 8,000.

So it sounds like it may have spread to second level connections as well.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, I go through and actually, because I created a company page for it and have invited people, because you can do up to 100 company page invites per month. And so I actually look through the newsletter to see who I'm connected with, who subscribed so that I can invite people who've already subscribed to the newsletter to the company page and there's majority are not first level connections that are subscribed to it, which is humbling and wonderful.

Yeah.

So yeah. And then the other way, I have not done much in terms of promoting it outside of the weekly post. They give you the option when you do publish it to denote whether it's going to be monthly, bi weekly or weekly. Mine is weekly, so it's very consistent. So I don't promote it too much. But yes, if it's something that you're looking to get more people to subscribe to, definitely create a post about what it is and then tell people it exists. I pin every post, every most recent post to my featured section on my profile so that if someone goes to it, the most recent post you will see is the most recent one that I've done on the feature.

So if I'm not subscribed and I saw that you just posted one, it's pinned, I can actually read the latest issue and then there's a call to action where I can subscribe at that point.

So I put the most recent article on my Featured but what LinkedIn does is any article that is within your newsletter, a header is included on that article and they have a button on top that says subscribe. Or if you're already subscribed, it's already checked as you are subscribed. So that's one of those things I was talking about where jump on the bandwagon of something LinkedIn is really pushing. LinkedIn clearly wants people to join these newsletters. So if someone's going to read an article and they're not subscribed, the first thing they're hit with at the very top is the banner. So they know they're reading a newsletter and. And the button is right there. If they're not subscribed, they can go ahead and subscribe.

Gotcha. But I can see the entire article or no, I have to click on the button. Okay, gotcha. So I can preview it.

You can See the whole article. Okay, absolutely.

That's very cool. Wow. Okay, so that's great stuff and I'm with you about you know, giving your newsletter a compelling title because we're not really looking for more newsletter subscriptions, but we are looking to solve problems. So if it sounds like it's something that will help me right now, that that's going to be attractive. I'm curious about do you do anything or do you advise clients to, hey, try to peel off or divert whenever possible some of those newsletter eyeballs to your site or to something that you're doing. So not everyone is just staying there. On LinkedIn you're building credibility, which is great. You're providing great ideas and guidance. But how do we kind of take some of that traffic and take it to your site, take it to an offer, take it to even just an opt in on your website so you can capture some of that audience internally.

Yeah, that's definitely going to be a strategy that you could use across the platform as a whole. So when you have the company page, they give you. LinkedIn gives you the option of creating a custom button, although they do have maybe five different options that you can choose from. So you can put Contact us, learn more, Register. And the button on the company page always leads to your external site and they actually don't count it. They won't register it as a custom button if you're just using your base level URL, which is interesting. So you actually have to have a subpage or a unique URL for them to count it because you know how they'll bug you at the top of your page that you still have a step to complete. They don't consider your custom button completed unless it's not just your homepage. So they want you to dig beyond just your homepage and put that in there. So that's the way that LinkedIn really connects to your external. The other is that featured section I was talking about that I have my most recent newsletter pinned to. They really upgraded that section. It used to be where they only had the opportunity to link externally within the sections. Like so you could put it at the end of your about or your summary, you could put it at the end of your company page experience. And they were these little teeny tiny thumbnails that people probably were not engaging with. Well, they rolled out what's called the featured section. And if you don't have the featured section, you just need to go to your profile. And when you go to it, I want to make sure that I Direct people correctly here. When you're up at the top of your profile, there'll be a button up there that says add profile section. And if you click on it, you'll have that opportunity to add featured. And when you have featured, you can hit the little plus sign and it gives you the opportunity to add a post, which would be from LinkedIn. So if you have a post that's just done amazing, you can actually pin one of your posts. You can pin a LinkedIn article, but then to what you're speaking to, you can add an external link as one of your featured. So I actually have a free LinkedIn checklist that I provide to people and I have that as one of my three featured links within my profile, so that when people go to it, they see download free checklists and they can click to it right from my profile there. And it has a nice thumbnail and everything.

Could you do that inside an article as well? You know, at the end of the article or within the article? And by the way, this checklist that I've been talking about, you can get a copy here?

Yes, yes, you can.

Okay, so can you do this even if it's your personal instead of a business newsletter? If it's your personal profile, yes.

Featured is on your personal. So you'll put that on there. And so the one thing you want to make sure is that you have an image, a featured image associated with that URL so that the featured section can pull in that image. Because if you just create an image and then do a description, LinkedIn doesn't give you the opportunity to add a dynamic link, if that makes sense. So you need to make sure that your page that you're linking to has a featured image associated with it so that it'll be nice and pretty when it's uploaded to LinkedIn.

Got it. But just to be clear, you know, in an issue, when I publish an issue, even if I don't have it as one of my featured items within that issue, I can link to something within my site.

Absolutely. You can definitely add links. Yep.

Okay. Perfect. That's very cool, man. This is quite a bit. I mean, as we. And I know this is constantly evolving, but this is very exciting as we wrap up here. Chrissy, anything else that we haven't talked about related to newsletters that you may be seeing some of your clients, not really kind of getting in terms of the potential or anything people should know before they kind of explore this route.

I will say that something I'm seeing or that I'm pushing my clients to do and that they are rising to the occasion is to think a little bit outside of the box when you're looking at a newsletter and make it a little more human, because that's what people want to read, period. Anytime human interest stories are posted, people gravitate toward that. And so if you can make it something that has a theme that allows you to be diverse with what it is that you're speaking about, that can be a great way to build relationships on the platform, to build followers on the platform that can funnel into what it is that you're selling, whether it's services or, you know, you're looking for new client relationships. So definitely think about what it is that you want to talk about and make sure that you have a very clear plan for that content. You know, don't just say, okay, I'm just going to do marketing newsletter. You know, really think through. Okay. Even if you do want to niche down heavily and say, okay, I do want to do marketing content, I don't want to talk about anything personal. How can you make that marketing content something specific to. To what you provide and make it stand out from all of the other ones, you know, so just think through how you can brand it, how you can make it to where it's something people don't want to miss.

I think that is excellent advice, especially right now in a world where, I mean, there's certainly no shortage of content. Yeah, that's what people will gravitate to. Chrissy, thank you. This has been very insightful. Again, my head's spinning here. I got notes. I want to make sure folks know where they can learn more about you, connect with you, find out what you're up to and all the good stuff you're putting out there. Where can we send them?

Absolutely. So first of all, please find me on LinkedIn, which is LinkedIn.com in forward slash. Chrissy Zavicar. And I know you'll have that link, so I won't put it in the.

Show, nothing of it.

But in terms of my business, what my business has been for the last four or five years is E link consulting, but it's actually going to be evolving. Absolutely. So first of all, please find me on LinkedIn, which is LinkedIn.com in forward slash. Chrissy Zavicar. And I know you'll have that link.

So I won't put it on the show of it.

But in terms of my business, what my business has been for the last four or five years is Elink Consulting, but it's actually going to be evolving to stack brands. So by the time this show airs, you should be able to go to stackbrands.com to find me there, which is nice and easy to say and know how to spell.

Yeah, okay, well either way we'll include the links in the show notes. Make sure to connect with Chrissy, check her out. Definitely connect with her on LinkedIn. Look what she's up to, Check out.

Her news stack brands. So by the time this show airs, you should be able to go to stackbrands.com to find me there, which is nice and easy to say and know how to spell.

Yeah. Okay. Well either way we'll include the links in the show notes. Make sure to connect with Chrissy, check her out. Definitely connect with her on LinkedIn. Look what she's up to. She's Check out her newsletter. Subscribe 1 the best ways you could really learn what to do and how to do it well is to check out what a master is doing. And you know, I know you're constantly experimenting with different approaches and ideas and you'll provide the best examples of this. So thank you again, Chrissy. Appreciate you coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Burn More and Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance Writer. You can get your free copy at bpwanz, where you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.