How to use LinkedIn without annoying your potential clients with Kate Merryweather

Okay, so welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm here with a very special guest today, Kate Merriweather. So I came across Kate on LinkedIn, I want to say maybe a year ago. And since I've been following Kate on LinkedIn, she has shared so much gold about how we use LinkedIn that I had to have her on the podcast. And I won't lie, some of the things she said challenged me deeply as well. So there's some things that I'm like, I didn't know that I don't want to change, but I really, deeply appreciate because she brings this energy of experimentation. I'm going to ask her all about that. So, Kate, before I wax too lyrical about you, I would love it if you would share your story with our listeners.

Hi, thank you for having me. I'm really curious to know what. What triggered you or challenged you. So we'll definitely have to discuss that. But yes, so I.

It was exclamation marks, by the way. It was exclamation marks. Oh, that was just this week. Kate has a theory that we need to remove the exclamation marks in our communication. Sorry, totally just interrupted your story then.

Absolutely. And I had. I have. And I'm still trying to wean down my exclamation marks. But it's funny, I said, you know, I don't use them anymore. And now I'm realizing I'm a total hypocrite because I do still use them all the time. Sorry. Don't listen to what a random person on the Internet says if you don't like. I like that.

I know. I will continue to use moderate amounts of exclamation marks, but I think it's because I do deeply know that this is a flaw in my communication. So I took it.

I was a feminine thing to be like, we want to talk to. Like, yes, it's smiley and happy and positive and agreeable.

Yeah.

And exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's just a habit like anything else. But yeah. So I was a copywriter for many years and I was totally invisible. I did nothing to promote myself. And in 2020 I thought I need to have a grown up business. And I started posting on LinkedIn and I did a few courses. I remember one course I did told me to post four times a day and I did it for a month and I think I spent two days a week creating LinkedIn content. This is ridiculous. So I quickly took what I liked from those courses and toss what I didn't like. And I had a bit of a formula for myself. And I kept posting on LinkedIn, promoting my copywriting services, and within about four months of showing up very regularly, I think daily on LinkedIn, I was starting to get leads coming to me, saying, yes, I want to book your writing packages. Sign me up. And then a few months after that, I was booked out, so I had to put people on a wait list to work with me. And what happened then was my clients kept saying, what are you doing on LinkedIn? You're doing really well. Like my accountant said, every time I open LinkedIn, you're there. How are you? How are you doing that? I said, it's just because I post a lot on LinkedIn. And so people kept asking me. And then I went into a copywriting group to present some training on something else. And then I said, right, any questions? And all the questions are about my LinkedIn. And I thought, oh, I think this is a sign that I can teach this to other people. So that was in 2022. I stopped copywriting and I became a LinkedIn coach. And now I help people with LinkedIn.

Oh, amazing. And also, I love that evolution, right? Because I think a lot of. So the listeners of this podcast are mostly executive coaches, right? So we go into the work because we want to have an impact. We want to work with people one on one. But often our journey changes. We might take on different offers because of the experiences that we have and the connection we make and the people who reach out to us. So I think there's a lot of alignment there. But I guess my first question for you really, is, why LinkedIn for business owners? Because when LinkedIn started, and I remember joining LinkedIn many years ago, and we didn't do anything at that point, you never posted on LinkedIn. You just sat there and, like, connected, maybe with a few people, but it was like I couldn't really see the point of it. Now, obviously, I know the point of it, but, you know, why do you believe LinkedIn is so effective for business owners? That was about five questions. I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but you get my gist.

I do get it. So I'm going to point to this little story that came to my mind, which is, and I can't remember who, but years ago in the Old west, in America, this bank robber was on trial. And they, you know, the judge said, why do you keep robbing banks? And the bank robber said, because that's where the money is. Love it. And that's answered LinkedIn, because that's where the Money is. There's people with money on LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn helps you reach them. Like, LinkedIn has a very powerful search tool that you can use to find the people that you want to find. Like, if I wanted to find all your audience of executive coaches, I could type that in to LinkedIn and I can specify where I want them, how connected they are to me, and I could find probably 100 pages of results of executive coaches who I could then potentially reach out to or connect with. And that is really powerful. So anyone Wanting to use LinkedIn can use those search tools to build their own network of the right people, the people they want to sell to. Basically, I'm quite a evil capitalist, really. Someone called me that once. So that you can attract leads to you. There's a lot of issues on LinkedIn with DMs, so a lot of people send bad DMs, and a lot of people teach. You know, like, I follow a lot of other LinkedIn coaches who are all great in their own ways, but this one is teaching, you know, literally saying spam the DMs, like, that's the approach that they're teaching, which I grimace a bit because we've all been on the other end of those DMs on LinkedIn. So that's one thing that I don't teach. And I have alternative ways of showing up on LinkedIn without sending annoying DMs. So that's a long answer to your.

Question to why beyond LinkedIn. I think that's exactly what, you know, I teach in a different way. Right. Which is we need to be in places where our ideal clients are, and we need to have ways of talking to them and reaching out to them and having them be drawn to us. And what I'm hearing is that your strategy and the things you teach are all about how do we attract those people to us, rather than, you know, feeling like we're pushy and we're salesy, which is something that most coaches I work with are absolutely terrified of.

Absolutely. And with coaching, it's a very personal relationship that you have with a coach. So you want to feel like you know your coach, you want to feel like you trust them, you want to feel like you can safely open up to someone and you can have that kind of intimate relationship that you need with a coach to get the outcomes that you expect from a coach. So I think in any of those kind of relationships where it's quite personal, like I always say, you know, divorce coaches or any kind of coach where you're just really relying on someone to, you know, work on mindset and limiting beliefs or whatever it might be. Yeah. You really need to trust them. And LinkedIn can give you that likability factor where you can show up. And my clients, you know what, come to me and I want, I want them to get the outcome where people are saying, I've been following you and I really like you and now I'm ready. And that's a really lovely way to have that initial conversation where the buyer is the one getting in touch with you when they're ready. And that, like I always say, and that's none of my business. When you're ready to work with me, these none of my business. But I'm here in the DMs, just DM me and we'll have a chat. And so they already trust you because you're not pushing them.

Yeah.

In the executive space. Like, these are pretty busy and like my husband's in corporate and he's a decision maker with a big budget company and he says, I get all these dms of people trying to sell me finance tools and do you want to demo this and do you want to that and do you want to, you know, I will be your recruitment people or not. Says, I just get harassed. So those executives that your listeners are coaching, they're going to be, they're going to be experiencing that like my husband is. And the last thing they want is another a coach saying, hey, do you want some coaching?

It's interesting because actually outreach is something that we do. You know, it's an approach that I talk about, but very much not cold outreach. Right. So we have like, what's, what's the difference between having conversations with people who are already communicating with you in some way? Right. People who are engaging with your posts. Like that being a different process to those, those salesy, you know, awful. Like, yeah, check out my demo. And I saw on your website this phrase that I quite liked and this, I might have to tag this with an explicit podcast episode now. It says, get leads without being an annoying dickhead. Right. And so, you know, sorry if you had kids in the car with you, but I think that is really tapping into a very de fear that a lot of us have, particularly when it comes to promoting ourselves and visibility and which is that, you know, we don't want to be annoying. We don't want to be the person who is, you know, this example you shared, right, about your husband receiving these horrific dms from, from people who are spamming Them, like, we really deeply don't want to be that person. So I think there's so much value in what you're sharing now.

Yeah.

What?

There's a huge difference. Sorry, you're talking about, you know, warm DMS is totally different. Like, if someone's commenting, you can just start at conversation. Say, thank you for commenting. I really appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I think there's ways to have those conversations. I hate the word, but authentically. Yeah. And like this coach I was mentioning before, one of the things he said was like, message people and then don't reply for a week. They say that you're busy. And I was like, it's all very dishonest. You know, it's all smoke and mirrors. So, yeah, I think the opposite of that is more genuine. So I message people a lot, but I don't. It's never like, hey, buy my thing. It's like, thank you for your support, or I saw your comment. You know, I can help you with if, you know, I'll give them a quick tip or something like that. Yeah, I think that's very different to the spammy DMS that I'm talking about. I think it's important. Just to clarify.

Yeah. So I think we're probably on the same page because I think a lot of people think when I talk about outreach that I'm going to be like, yeah, you got to spend 10 messages to a cold lead on LinkedIn and.

Ringing up, you're like, get the phone book out and ring.

Well, you know, I often tell a story of I went into recruitment early in my career after I left being a lawyer, and fair to say, I was not very good at it. But one of the reasons was that we had literally this green book of all of the lawyers in Australia and New Zealand, and we just had to work our way through one by one and just cold call them and just hope for the best. So if anyone is worried that I will teach you cold calling or cold messaging, I have so much deep trauma from that. It will never happen. So. No, you're safe. What another thing that I was wondering and would love your insight in, is it different in terms of how you show up and how you post if you want to be selling to businesses versus individuals.

Yeah. So people have this idea that like B2B, like, has to be corporate and professional because it's a corporate and professional space, but they're still humans. Like my husband, the accountant, like, he's still a funny guy who likes personality. And those that audience is actually really tired of the same stuff they're saying. So they're really, I was gonna say like not vulnerable, but they really. It's really easy to stand out.

Yeah.

From the crowd, with, to stand. It's really easy to stand out from the crowd in that space by just having a little bit of more humanity, more humor, more personality. I think that can be your secret weapon in that if you're trying to reach that market. Because everyone else is so beige.

I love that.

So the more. And especially for your audience of executive coaches, again, they want to work with you, they want to know you. So they don't want to hear any, you know, in today's digital driven technology era, blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah, they want real human stories and human connection. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. Even though they're a corporate audience.

Yeah.

They're still, they're still people.

Yeah.

And I think it's easier, like it's easier if you are just a little bit brave about the way that you show up on LinkedIn, that you can steal all the attention so easily because everyone else is boring.

What's your take on like being provocative? Right. So I've noticed a lot of people post on LinkedIn and it can almost seem like they're being provocative for the sake of it.

Well, you know what I'm really tired of is that the post that starts with unpopular opinion, blah, blah, blah, or I'm going to get a lot of hate for this blah, blah, blah, and then the opinion is so vanilla. I'm like, that's not an unpopular opinion, that's the common opinion. Yeah. So people can try to, you know, use those attention getting techniques. Think, look, I used to be a publicist and I'm like, yes, be controversial, you'll get all the attention. But I think if that's not your natural personality, it's going to cause you anxiety and stress. If you're going to deliberately, you know, be really critical or controversial, you will get a lot of, you know, what's the word? Like potentially negative attention.

Yeah.

So I think like one of my clients is very interested in disrupting her industry and she's not afraid. And when you meet her, she's very ballsy, she's very direct, she's very blunt. That is her personality. So she's not afraid to call out the bs. We've already sworn, so I guess I can say bullshit. And she does that. And that's. If you met her, that's what she would be like. So it correlates.

Yeah.

Whereas if you're timid, and pretty mild mannered.

Yeah.

Then I wouldn't suggest courting controversy just for the sake of it. Because if you get any kind of negativity that stresses you out, you. You'll never put your head out up. You know, LinkedIn's pretty nice though. Like everyone has their personal name and their personal profile, so you're not going to get like trolls. Like I was talking to someone who's on Tick Tock and she goes like, the trolls are just, you know, people like, you're ugly. You know, fix your tape or something horrible that's not going to happen on LinkedIn because it's your, it's your photo next to your profile and your name and your job, your employee or your business. People are really not going to. But they will disagree. Like they will.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then, like, I think you mentioned, like one of the things we're doing when we're posting particularly is we're sort of trying to build this likability in this sense that people know us and that they can connect with us. How is that different to thought leadership, for example?

Right.

So wanting to position ourselves, like, do we do both? Should we do focus on one? How do we decide what to post really is what I'm asking?

Yeah, good question. So I think the likability can just be little. I always say funny, but doesn't have to be like just little personal bits. Like if you've got, if you're saying, you know, I'm happier, you might say a cliche is I'm happier than a pig in mud. So you might change that to, you know, I'm happier than a girl with a box of barbecue shapes or something. That's one of my little things I mentioned barbecue shapes. Nice. So you think of those little bits about yourself that are true, that you've got lots of dogs or you love 80s movies or, you know, you're. They're obsessed with skiing or something. Whatever those little things are that you work in, I call it like essence of you, you work that into your posts. Really important with ChatGPT and other AI tools that they can't give that. So I like to, when I write a post for myself or I write posts to my clients, I think, does this have enough of them in it? And I try and put just little, not always just little aside. So that's kind of your personality likability factor. Whereas thought leadership is more, you know, opinions that are genuinely different, new, clever, thought provoking. So I think a lot of people talk about thought leadership, but they're not really sharing True thought leadership. LinkedIn is great for thought leadership and sharing, you know, really questioning like the client I mentioned before that is really like, I don't like that she's in, you know, the marketing space and she doesn't like the agency model is kind of her enemy that she talks about. So she's really questioning this agency model and positioning herself as an alternative. So her thought leadership is to say, you know, this is the way things are done and are they the best way anymore? And here's some of the flaws of this model and the clients get charged an arm and a leg for bugger all and all that sort of stuff. So I think thought leadership is harder to do genuinely, like if like I say, you're a web developer and you develop really nice websites and you use WordPress and you're really good at your job and you know WordPress inside out and you make great looking websites, do you really need thought leadership around that? Like, are you really? Yes. You're really good. Yes. You've got a great portfolio, you can show up on LinkedIn without using thought, you know, amazing ideas and things like that. Whereas if you've got like a software tool that is really disruptive, it says this tool takes over six tools you've already got and we're asking you to change your ways and try a different approach then that kind of person. Maybe thought leadership could be really beneficial because you're asking people to drastically change the way they do things or you know, say forget zoom, you know, we're going to, we've got something else or whatever it might be. So that's the difference for me. But a lot of like, as I said, if you're that web developer or in your case like your executive coach listeners, how dramatic and controversial and opinionated do they need to be? Not very.

Not, Not. Not very. Yeah. So then in terms of like, for executive coaches, for example, they want their ideal clients, usually often HR decision makers or sort of owners of business functions or small business owners. They want them to see that they are credible. Right. That they are coaches who have experience, who understand the depth, they understand their challenges of their clients, that coaching would be a solution for like, what would, what should they be posting to attract those leads? Right. So there's something about personality showing themselves, there's something sort of not quite thought leadership yet. How do they decide what to post?

So the things that I, this is kind of my go to strategy is like problems, goals, fears, so thinking of your audience and I think anyone can Kind of do this exercise with themselves and put yourself in the mind of your audience or your ideal client and have that sentence. So you write down, I don't know, know, and then you finish the sentence. So I don't know how to empower my team to be better managers. I don't know how to bring the best out of my leaders. I don't know how to fix a team that's not cohesive. And then their fears. I mean, I'm afraid I'm going to spend all this money and get no result. I'm afraid that, you know, the HR director will be banging on my door, the CEO is going to hate it. And then the next one is, I want. What do I want? I want. It's quite often the opposite of the fears, of the I don't know how. I want to have a great solution that makes me look good or whatever it might be. So if you think about, you can have a little brainstorm with yourself using those, you know, I want. I don't know how and I'm afraid. And then you can talk about. So are you afraid that you'll spend a lot of money on a coach and you won't. You'll just get a lot of fluff. Here's what I say. Or are you afraid that your coach really won't understand your specific circumstances? And here's what I say about that?

Yeah.

So you can use those prompts. I think if you focus very much on your audience and solving problems, helping them reach goals, you can say, you know, if you want to, blah, blah, blah, then blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

So sharing what I call value content is an important part of the strategy where you're showing off, giving free advice. We all follow people because we want free advice.

Yeah.

So I give very generously free advice on LinkedIn and my clients do as well, and all sorts of topics. And then people come to you saying they start to believe. Well, they really know what they're talking about because look at all the free stuff they're giving. And then they also think, wow, this person gets it, this person understands it because they are talking to my fears, my problems and my goals. So they feel very understood by you when you talk to those things.

I love that. And I think in my mind that's what I've been thinking of as thought leadership content. But you're right, what it really is, advice and tips and strategies and yeah, reflecting that deep understanding of the context of your client, which is a little bit different to thought leadership, which is more, you know, Actually this is something new or different or, you know, cutting edge in the field. No, that's super helpful and I think so. Like, would you say, like I could imagine with that model, like I want, I don't know how, I'm afraid, like if people put themselves into their ideal clients heads and they did like a big brainstorm, like they could easily come up with, you know, a month of content.

Right.

Really simply just by going through a brainstorming activity.

Make sure like if you can't think of those, then you don't really know your audience that well.

Yeah.

So one thing I did at the start of the year, you know, Denise Duffield Thomas, she had like an end of the year challenge that was like write down. I think it was 50, like amazing things you've done.

Yeah.

And I did that and you know, I got to 10 and I was like, oh, what else? You know, and then eventually you start getting on a roll. And so that inspired me and I wrote down 50 questions I could answer my clients. So similar kind of exercise in the one I mentioned was, and I was forcing myself to get and I think I got to 55 and I said, just keep going. What can you answer? So executive coaches can answer, you know, how do I get, how do I get to the C suite? How do I, how do I hire the right leadership team to work under me? How do I empower that team? How do I delegate to them? How do I. Yeah, and you can quite easily get this huge bundle of questions that you can answer. And then if you're posting once a week and you've got 55 questions, then yeah, you're good.

Sweet. So how often should people, people be posting? Like, what, is there a magical number?

No, I don't like prescribing because. Why don't I like prescribing? Because I think everyone has to use LinkedIn for their, the way that suits them. And it depends on your time, energy, motivation. If you've got clients knocking down your, on your door, but you still want to be a bit present on LinkedIn just to have a bit of visibility, that's totally different to someone who's like, I need to get attract leads and I'm, I'm in this growth phase of my business. So the goals are completely different in that space.

But so this is, let's say we're in growth, let's say we're in two.

To three would be what I would say. Yeah, it's often more than you want to and more than you think you should.

Yeah.

Because no one. Like, I remember my neighbor came over for a consult and she's like, I'll post once a month. And I was like, no, that's great. Once a month. No, please, no. She was choked when I said no. I mean, I post every day. There's a huge benefit to getting into a routine of posting really often. And there's ways that you can do it that make it doable, sustainable and repeatable for you. But people feel really nervous about that. So I say, like, start with twice. Get that going. The thing is with social media, with any social media, that the reach is 5% is considered good. So if you're posting twice a week and you're getting. And say you've got a thousand followers and you. I don't know what the maths is, but, like, you're not getting huge visibility. So it's. The more that you post, the more people will see you and the more quickly you'll achieve your goals. If you're wanting to attract leads to you. Like, I had a client who joined my membership and she posted every day. And within seven weeks she got started getting leads coming to her and she got two on the same day. She was like, really excited, like, oh, my God. So, yeah, for seven weeks, but she was posting every day.

I love that reality check, though, actually, which is you can't post every day for a week and expect the same results as someone who does it consistently for seven weeks. Right.

And it took me four months, so she did it a lot faster than I did when I first started. And as I said, you can't control when people come to you. There's no guarantee with anything like that. But if it depends how urgently you want the results, how much time you have, like, if you're super busy, you just don't have time. Like, it takes time to produce all that content.

It does.

And when you're a beginner, you don't have the skills to write a post or, you know, your production systems aren't smooth and seamless and fast. So it might take you all day to write a post. Yeah, hopefully not.

Oh, hopefully not. And I do. I'm always encouraging people to, like, actually have that mindset of experimentation, which is do something, have some boundaries around time, get it out there, see what works, see what doesn't.

It. Yes, definitely.

And so that, I mean, you, obviously, I've seen you go through a few experiments now over the time following you, including video, and I think there's been a few others. Tell me about your approach to experimenting with different strategies on LinkedIn.

Well, I test everything and I feel like it's my job to test these things because I'm a LinkedIn coach and I want to say I tested it. I. I know. So one thing I did around late last year was I did. I posted twice a day for six weeks and I called that, like, my sprint.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I really like. It's obviously a lot of content to produce.

Yeah.

But I liked that I got a lot more visibility in that time and it was really interesting. I thought I'd get, like, more followers, which I did. But what I really got was a lot more engagement from my existing followers. So I really reminded them that I exist. So that was really useful.

That's so interesting because I'd always heard, oh, you can't post more than once a day on LinkedIn. Like, the algorithm will punish you for that. So obviously not.

Well, look, if you follow the algorithm, you just don't know. Like, there's so many factors that could influence it, like if you posting good stuff. But realistically, the more you post, the more people see it. So.

Yep, okay.

That was when I came with the idea of a Sprint, which is just, we can't keep that on sustainable level. But you could do it. Say you've got a big launch. Say you've got a course coming out and you've got. You're launching it in, you know, in a couple of months where you can go hard for a short period of time to serve. To build excitement and serve you for that launch. And then once the launch is over, then don't just stop completely, but dial it back. So I really love the idea of dialing it up and down. Like, one of my clients is a professional organizer and she said December, forget it. No one wants to talk about organizing in December, but January is massive. Everyone, like, right, I'm gonna get my diary organized. I'm gonna declutter my house. And she's there in January with all her decluttering and time management and sort your life out stuff, because that's the time that her audience is open to those right opportunities.

So if I is a great way.

To do it with the asterisks of. It doesn't mean go completely quiet for three months because you don't want to get the reputation of, oh, this person only posts on LinkedIn when they've got a launch or they want to sell something and then they go quiet when they're not selling. Like, that's the last thing you want.

But yeah, I like that. Energy of sprinting as well, which is that, you know, like, I'm going to give it a crack, really lean in, and then afterwards go into a more sustainable rhythm until. And it doesn't have to be. I mean, often most executive coaches don't have like a launch cadence. Right. We're not. It's not that sort of work.

Or group coaching programs, potentially. Yeah.

But what they might do is say, okay, well, it's coming up to budgeting season. Right. For corporates who are planning out their budget for the next year or the next financial year. What I might do is work on my visibility around that point or something like.

Yeah, end financial year. Like, oh, copyright. I used to get. I'd be so busy in June, so we've got money to spend. Quick throw money at you. Yeah, it's really good. So I'd be there in June and then July, I'd be busy doing all the work that I delivered.

Yeah. Yeah.

My income doubled in June, but then in July it was nothing. So, yeah, it all worked out too.

Busy working.

Yes. Yeah. I've also experimented with, like, images.

So I was noticing that less images later lately. Is that. Am I saying that?

Yeah. So I have opinions on images on LinkedIn, but I did an experiment where I posted a selfie with every single post and my reach and visibility went up 15%, which is pretty good. Very good. That means every post is working harder for you. I'm not very photogenic or good at taking selfies and I don't as this awesome LinkedIn creator that I follow and she shares lots of selfies and she's always out at the beach or at some amazing event and looking gorgeous. And Ellie will testify like, I'm just here at my desk looking pretty scruffy. So it's not.

Not at all. But I do. I find that is like, I'm always like, oh, whenever I think about taking a selfie, I'm like, I'm walking the dog. It's the same every time. And I'm like, didn't put any makeup on.

You know, walking in a do look half decent. I never think of it. Like, I'm not.

Yeah.

I think people who are Instagram natives are just used to documenting themselves and just do it organically without thinking.

Yeah, I'm just.

I just don't think of it. But.

But it is effective.

Images. With regard to images in general, very often I think the image detracts. So selfies are the exception because selfies are showing your face and there's something about. I'll just make up this without having any, you know, source. I think that. I think there's something about seeing people's eyes and the way that people see someone smiling in their face, that they feel a connection or something like that. Very scientific evidence I've presented for that.

I'll accept it.

Good selfies aside, I think sometimes the images tend to detract from the post. You want people to click that. There's a little button called more and that is assigned to the algorithm. If people click that, then the algorithm knows everyone's clicking. If all the information is in the image that you don't need to click the More, then the image is actually reducing the reach. That makes sense.

That is so interesting.

People, like, people who are. They're creating content for Instagram, may as well just post it on LinkedIn as well. And it has to have an image with Instagram, a post, and they're just, yeah, we'll put it on. And it's got, you know, here's my amazing thought, like, you know, how to fix this problem, blah, blah, blah. And it's in the image. There's no reason to click the more button. So it's going to take.

Oh, that's me. Kate and I have been doing that recently and noticing numbers go down when I've got like those sort of almost like a graphic, as with writing on it.

So I think the graphics should. So if you can post that post without the image, then do so. Obviously selfies serve a different purpose.

Yeah.

Particularly for your audience.

Yep.

You know, infographics and things like that can work really well. But they're. What's the word? They're supporting the point or they are the point. Like they're showing a flowchart or they're showing a process or like, carousels work really well.

Yeah.

And they're very clicky. So every time you click, it's like a signal to the algorithm. So carousels can go very well, though they take more effort to create and produce, obviously. But if you can post that post without the image and it makes sense, then probably best not to. Obviously. Screenshots of testimonials are great. You know, here's my email that says, I'm awesome. You have to have that for the post to work. So those images totally make sense. If the image is just for pretty decoration, I would not bother.

Okay.

And, yeah, that's less work. Hey. And I'm telling people to post on LinkedIn a lot. The last. You know, so I enjoy those opportunities where I get to tell people don't worry about that. This is so much I'm telling people to do.

I love it and I recall. So I'm going to ask you if it's all right, some sort of some fast, fast questions to go through it. But before I really. This one's like a semi fast one. I remember you saying a little while back that it's not as crucial that we have a note with our connection requests anymore. Is that still.

Yes?

Yeah, that's. I mean, that's liberating. Yeah, just add away, get the connection.

I get a lot of connection requests and I very rarely get one. So they're not. If you like, oh, it's so rude to not send one. Not at all. Like, I get loads. LinkedIn is limited on the free as well, so that has really killed them because if you only get to send.

A few with the notes.

I have been building my connections proactively and I reckon about 80 to 90% of my connections have been me sending connection requests for five years without. And if people don't want to connect, that's fine.

Yeah, I love that. So, okay, that's a tip to everyone. Don't labor over your connection request messages. And that will open up that you can do more if you are not a premium subscriber. Okay, so first, you know, rapid round question is LinkedIn Premium Sales Navigator business, Is it worth the investment?

Oh, start with Sales Navigator. It is very much. If you're a sales team and you're doing a lot of outreach and you need to have, you know, lists and you can put people in groups and these are the people we want to talk to and these are people we have talked like. It's really complicated and clever. So I always think Sales Navigator is for sales teams. Like one of my friends is the head of sales for like a home builder and, you know, display homes and she uses it and they have a lot of corporate relationships and things and it's really good for that. So it's very complex. So for your typical executive coach, I would say no, it's good for outreach. And that's not, as I said, cold outreach is not something I usually recommend. So premium is good. It gives you some extra features. One thing that I like that it gives you is on every post it has a link. So if you look at my post, it says visit my website. So that can drive people to your website, which is great. Yeah, I love that it gives you things like a carousel banner so you can put at that. It gives you a bit more visibility, I think like, it promotes, you know, like it's going to suggest you're going to appear as suggested connections as a LinkedIn, it's going to look after you. Basically.

Okay.

If you're like, right, I'm getting into LinkedIn and I, you know, log in, you're like, I've only got 180 connections because I've neglected it fears. It would be really good to join Premium, pay by the month and spend three or four months really building, sending connection requests with no invitation, of course, and building up, you know, your following and then you could, you know, do it for a few months. So if you're really in a growth stage of growing connections, the free platform will limit you. It will limit the amount of searches you can do and it will limit the amount of connection requests you can send. You know that coach that I was working with who sold me to post four times a day also said, send a hundred requests a day.

Oh, pretty sure you get banned if you do that now.

Yeah. And then she ended up changing that advice because all her. All her audience was sending a hundred a day. And LinkedIn literally limits you now, so you're not going to be able to send as many. So Premium will be let you go a bit nuts. So if you just want to go on it, or even if it's not that you've got, you don't have a good number. But the, like, one of my clients, he's moved industries, so his connection, he's got like 6,000 connections, but they're all finance guys. Yeah. And now he's in food, the food industry. So he's using it to just go nuts and build his connections.

Yeah.

So that he can be better known in the sector that he's now in.

Yeah, yeah, perfect. And I think that is.

I was meant to be a quick fire and I wasn't.

No, no, no, no, no. It's great. All right, here's a ra. Is it still bad to put links in your post?

It does reduce the reach. So if it's ever like an optional link, like you're just linking to some research, but you obviously want to include links because you want to sell.

Yeah.

So, yes, your reach will reduce with the link. So there's a few things you can do again, you can put it in the comment, it's probably one you can do. But what I generally do is I just take the hit. I think it's easy for the audience to just click the link within the post. That's best for the audience and that's you Always want it to be best for the audience. So I think just take the hit. And the workaround of that is you post it again. You post as. You take that post and you post it again within a week. Or, you know, don't post. You know, if you're like, hey, my, you know, book my offer or buy, you know, book a call with me. Here's the link. Just post it twice and then.

That is so sensible. And I have never thought about that. Is there any detriment to deleting old posts?

But there's no reason to.

No.

Unless you've said something, you know that I love Donald Trump and you no longer agree, for example, but then you're embarrassed. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Perhaps if someone is really stalking you, they can scroll back through your post. But who's. Yeah, I don't see why you would. No, there's no reason to. Unless it's embarrassing to you.

Yeah. Okay. Hashtags in post, yes or no.

No, no.

Ditch them. Okay, that's good. Scheduling tools.

Yeah. So the best One is the LinkedIn native scheduling tool.

Okay.

Technically LinkedIn doesn't like third party scheduling tools. If you're not sure, I would test. So post your LinkedIn content for a week with the native tool and then post a similar frequency type style of content the week after with your scheduling tool and pay attention to the results. Yeah, I've heard that scheduling tools can reduce reach, but you have to test it for yourself because everyone uses different tools. So the LinkedIn native tool is the best one to use.

Do you schedule your posts?

Yes, I do.

Okay, fantastic.

Who's gonna. There's no way. You have to plan and schedule because otherwise it just doesn't happen.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've fallen off the scheduling bandwagon and it just sometimes doesn't happen. So I. Yeah, getting back on that bandwagon. Kate, thank you so much. Before we wrap up, I would love to hear how do you work with people? How can they find you? You know, who were the sorts of people who could get a lot out of working with you?

Well, yes, thank you. So my favorite offer is my membership, which is super affordable. It's 47amonth and I have a little bit of training in there, so you can join up. And some people do, they join up, they pay 47, they do all the training and then they cancel. And that's a little bit heartbreaking, but it's fine. That's what it's for, to create something really useful and helpful. And so I have lots of you know, events every month and a Facebook group, people can ask questions and I have accountability there. So every Monday I'm like, what are you going to do this week? Nice. And then I'm like, okay. Did you do it?

Yeah. And what's that called? Sorry?

It's called the Show Up School membership.

Perfect.

And I can't give it a LinkedIn name because LinkedIn doesn't like products called LinkedIn something. Even though I'm encouraging people to use LinkedIn, I'm technically profiting off LinkedIn's IP. Got it. But yes, it is a LinkedIn membership and I really enjoy helping people in there. And as I said, the, the woman who posted every day and started getting leads in seven months, she is a member. Yeah. And then I obviously, if you just say, look, I don't want to learn, I just want you to do it for me, then that's something I can do as well. I can write your LinkedIn content for you or write your profile for you. I do a lot of that. Or you can just have spend some time with me, one on one and work out what the hell you're doing is the other thing. So I do that from time to time as well.

Okay. And where is the best place for people to find you? I'm assuming it's LinkedIn, but there might also be a website.

Yes, I do have a website, which is a little. Ellie, very nicely pointed out that it's. My about page has gone to heaven. So I'll go and fix that before this episode comes out. But yeah, it's katemariwether.com Brilliant.

So we are going to link to all of those things in the show notes. And look, Kate, I'm so grateful for your time today and that advice because I know that executive coaches are asking me these questions and I'm often having a crack, but to have someone who is an expert really give some useful information is so valuable. So thank you for being with us today.

My pleasure. Any chance to talk about LinkedIn, I'll do it.

I know, I know. Me too. All right, thanks. And everyone else, I'll see you next week.