BONUS: LinkedIn Masterclass Session Four of Twelve

Right, we are live and welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed LinkedIn Safari with Simon Chapazzone, South Africa. Do you want to say hi, Simon?

Hey, Jim, good to be back and excited for, for the next episode that we're going to do now.

Me too. And me, Jim James, here. And so, Simon, what have you got in store? We've— last week we looked at posting, week before that we looked at my profile, and slowly but surely We're getting better. But what have you got in store for us today?

Yeah, I mean, I want to kick off with some good news. And the good news, I mean, the whole reason why we do this is to get you more views on your profile to promote your book. And so I just want to quickly share good news in the sense of the number of views that you have on your profile. And I think you should now be able to see the curve that I have presented as a screenshot. Do you see that?

Yeah. Okay. That's fantastic.

So here we are.

Thumbs up.

Those are the views of the past 7 days. And you can see where we started from like 500 views per day. And this is when we had our last call and you started implementing a few changes.

Yeah.

Which, uh, the main change was that you stopped posting, uh, 3, 4, 5 times a day in your channel. And you can see how this has already impacted the number of total views. So it shot up to almost 3,000 on the 22nd and, um, has continued to stay there. So that is good news. And, um, so I want to congratulate you on that. And, um—

Thank you very much. Thanks to you. And ironically enough, that doing less is more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always think you're like super active, but in the end, um, the core idea is quality over quantity. Um, but if you don't know what quality is, and it's, it's tempting to do quantity. So, with that out of the way, I wanted to then, uh, take a look at your feed and, uh, look at the posts that you've done over the past week and see what, what is what's happened and give you some live feedback on this. And as you can imagine, I was sneaky and looked at your feed before the show. So I'll just scroll back to a post from like 6, 7 days ago. And here we are. So, let me start with one post that I find is very, very interesting in several directions, which is the post here where you present the new book. I think it was February 23rd, probably.

Yes.

The day when the book was officially launched and you proudly present the copy here. And as you can see, that book did really well. You had 52 likes, 27 comments. And remember, before we started working and you posted daily, you had, I think, an average like on a good day, 1 like and no comments. So that—

Yes.

I think is amazing too, that many people like your posts and even leave a comment. So quick scroll down here, you can see a lot of comments from people from your network. Which is super, super cool.

Yeah, which is great. People from Singapore, from the UK, from America, from the— yeah, so global, you know, comments. That was wonderful too.

Yeah. I mean, what has happened, your network that you already connected with on LinkedIn actually saw you. People that you probably haven't seen in a long time because in Singapore and China suddenly saw you and it's like they met you around the corner at a bar or some convention, sort of bumped into you and remembered who you are and what you do. So, I mean, that's the whole point of LinkedIn, to have this visibility. So, yeah, I mean, quick feedback on this post. I think one thing you did brilliant here is the opening line because it's really sort of one thought that leads in the post. How does a middle-aged entrepreneur come out of the shadows and step into the spotlight when they've lived behind the Great Firewall of China for a decade, which I think is also like well written with the Great Firewall of China and alluding to your history. So you give a lot of interesting stuff here that leads me to do this one thing that we're aiming for, that is this little thing, see more, to click on that, which is—

Yep.

The only thing we want. We want people to click see more. And so our whole thinking should revolve around what do we have to write in first 3 lines to entice people to click this, uh, see more. And I think you've done a brilliant job, um, by, um—

Thank you.

Leading into this article. So I won't go through the article now. Um, I wanna look at a couple of other things that I found here. And, uh, after all the positivity, there is something I have to, uh, point you at, and which is, um, these articles that you've reposted. So here is Test Before You Invest. You reposted that in the EO members group that I'm also a member of, but no response. That is the original article? No, that's another one.

Yep.

Test Before You Invest in the digital marketing group. Again, 1 like, no comments. Where's the original post? I think it's further up.

Yeah, the original one was actually where I talked about, you know, about how do you get an angry orange to save $50,000? And then, yeah, I saw that. In fact, what we did was we tried the post in 2 different styles, one online and one in the group, to see instead of some split A/B testing as it were. And as you rightly said, the groups, which took me about an hour because I have 86 groups, right? And I manually—

What?

86? And I'm sure there's a tool for that. I think that, you know, there's Waalaxy, for example, but I'm not sure. And for my VAs, it's not— well, so I was trying. I posted to about 20 groups. And I think as you've rightly pointed out, Simon, it takes a lot of traction. Yeah.

And so how much time did it take? take you to repost in these 20 groups?

Well, I just took an hour. I mean, I limited myself to an hour.

Okay, well, that's, um, that's—

but it's still an hour, right?

Yeah, it's an hour. It's a lot. And, um, yeah, you don't get like any, any views, any comments here. There we are, back to this group. And, um, yeah, and I had a little post before we went online, I asked in my network who has made what kind of experiences with groups because I didn't want to be too biased. My experiences with groups, it just doesn't— it just does not work.

Right.

I think one of the reasons is whenever we post, or sometimes when we post, we are invited to repost that post in a group. Since I'm still a part of a handful of groups. I get invited to invite— to post in the marketing group, and they make it really easy for me to repost. And if your group has 1,000 members and every member is invited to repost, you can imagine what is happening in the group. You have a lot of people who just dump their shit and run away. And I think that's one of the challenges with groups. And so if you spend an hour a day posting in groups. I think it is simply not worth your time. And, um, when we started this collaboration, we, we thought about like Zen and sort of like gaining clarity and, uh, simplicity. And, and the— and for the sake of Zen, um, I would strongly encourage you to just focus on one thing, which is delivering great content to your core target audience, which sits on your profile. And just ignore everything in any of these groups because it's just not worth your time. If you're investing an hour a day, I think that's crazy considering what you've gotten out here, like one like, and I guess the views on your site, you can see the ROI is not there. Yeah, it's not worth it.

Yeah. Cool.

So with that out of the way, Let's then look at a couple of posts. We already looked at one, which we have seen worked well. He had another post further down, which was beautiful. And one shift we did over the past weeks was also to get away from this purely promotional, advert— advertiserial content.

Yeah.

become more yourself and be natural. And I think this photo is the best testament to that shift. You've put yourself into the frame here with a photo and the book, and the post itself leads with a bit of background of you. So I've learned about you that you lived in China and sort of other things. that came out of the experience. So suddenly you become real as a person, as opposed to just promoting stuff. And I think the first rule on LinkedIn is to have personality that people can relate to, to build a relationship to. And once you have gained their trust, then you can talk about things that they potentially could get from you. But, um, I think that is a typical thing that I see a lot of people do, that they, um, promote without first building trust. And you've just done this shift away from just promoting what you do to talking about yourself. Sorry for scrolling down. Let me go to this one post. You had this one amazing post. Um, Further down, I can't see it. But this is another example of a rather impersonal post with a picture that feels like a stock photo. It might be the CEO of Dataclima. Is that right?

Yes, it is. It's Aaron Clymer, who's on my podcast. That's right.

Okay. But the feeling that I get from this post is it's a stock photo. And I think a lot of people have already developed a sense for a stock photo bullshit detector. So whenever they see something that looks sort of nicely styled with sort of graphs and blue colors, they sort of think stock photo. And the same here, it feels very much like a stock photo with this coffee cup and this photo.

Yeah.

And I think these posts didn't do very well. Probably for the photo, but also for the way you lead in. Compare that with the original photo you had, with the original post that we looked at. Do you add hashtags here? That makes it always hard to read.

Yes.

And without going too deep into a rabbit hole, hashtags are nice, but they're not really the game changer that decides your reach on LinkedIn. If you do hashtags, you can always do it at the end of the text, uh, at the end of the post.

And I think, yeah, and I think some— it's a really good point. And I think that what's happened is hashtags have sort of become almost— looks like you're being sort of trendy and young, um, but actually, as you rightly say, it interrupts the flow. So that's another really good tip, isn't it? To— and also, I think we need to share that with, with our VAs because I use a VA team And, um, it's easy, um, to sort of get carried away with those things and not work with the VA team on what's, what's really gonna look, uh, authentic and, uh, and solid. So that's great.

Yeah, absolutely. So you hit on something here with authenticity and, and with, with being real, uh, not being trendy. Um, so definitely that, that plays into this whole idea of having clarity around who you are, what you stand for, your brand. And then there's another aspect to hashtags. I mean, the idea is that you are being found through these hashtags for a topic that is relevant to you. And so what I would rather recommend is that at the end of the post, you can have 3 hashtags that signify what your topic is. areas of expertise are. So in your case, it could be PR. It could be maybe the hashtag for your book. I don't know. What else could it be?

Yeah.

Or streaming podcasts. You have them here, I think, but you don't have them under the post and under the text.

So interestingly, there Yeah, and interestingly there, Simon, we put Riverside, for example, as a mention, and yet they didn't share that again. Um, one would— so is that because, yeah, should you bother with putting a, you know, a mention, an@, for example, in that case riverside.fm? Should you bother with that, or does that not make a difference in posts?

It definitely makes a big difference. Um, it makes a big difference If Riverside responds to that. And again, the idea here with LinkedIn is LinkedIn wants to promote high-quality content. So what they do not want to do is that everybody who has just a link included like that gets a boost. So what they want to see as a proof, a social proof for that you create content that is really valuable, what they want to see is that Riverside responds to that and says, hey, Jim, thanks for the mention, or great post, or something. So, in this case, I can only assume, and I think it's very common with Riverside and a lot of other companies and people, that it just gets lost that they were mentioned.

Yeah.

So, the one thing that we do, or that I do, is whenever I mention somebody in a post, I ping them before and agree that I will do that and that they will respond. so I can be sure that I get the response. Because the other thing, if you imagine you would sort of include 50 people in your post just to get reach, LinkedIn doesn't like that. And what they do, if you have too many people not responding to their mentions, you will be downgraded because it looks like you are seeking attention and you are not enjoying the trust of other people. So if you have a lot of—

Yes.

things linked, but these organizations or people don't respond to that, that will downgrade your reach.

Oh, how interesting. That's really interesting. So that's something to really think through then, isn't it, in the future?

Yeah.

And probably also then to have the contact person, not the corporate account.

Exactly.

As well.

Yeah.

Because the corporate accounts often, you know, they don't have someone manning those. They normally just often have sort of a publishing Absolutely. Rather than— yeah, okay, right. That's another good tip to find the person in the organization rather than just the organization.

And it could also be that you find the person who mans the corporate account and then tell them, hey, if I mention the company, please respond. But often we don't know. I don't know whether you know this, who that does at Wiley. So let me scroll.

Yeah, no, I, I, I don't— Nick, Nick Mannion is, um, at Y, but I think the corporate account is run by the team in New York. So that's, you know, what we need to try and then do if we're doing something with a, a brand is to try and, as you say, let them know and get them to participate rather than just copying them on them. Okay, that's also really good Really good example. Okay.

Let's look at another post. And I think the big guiding principle with every post and everything writing on LinkedIn is always to aim for simplicity, for clarity, and to make it as easy as possible on our eyes to read something. And, uh, as we were just talking about hashtags, um, here you don't, you didn't do that further down the other post. We just looked at, you had words set as a hashtag. So you would have like a hashtag here at sessions, which makes it harder to read the whole piece. And, um, right. So this is another example of a post that, um, is sort of hard to read on the eye because it's, you are posting something that somebody else posted. So, I first have to check out, okay, it's Jim with all the titles here, then that's what you write. And then it's another person with all the titles of that person with just one sentence. And then I have to click see more. And imagine again, you stand here or you are riding on the London subway between 2 stations. You have 30 seconds.

Yes.

Wi-Fi is bad.

It's worse when you've only got a screen this big.

Yeah, it's a smaller screen. How much mental energy do you have to sort of read this thing and figure out sort of what is the thing about? And then to get them to click the see more thing to then read the post to— and on top have some graphics that are very colorful. Let's put it this way.

So Simon, what should one do if, for example, In this case, I'm hosting, I'm one of the hosts on the Prowly PR platform webinars. Should I not reshare that or do I need to cut and paste that and make it into my own post?

Yeah, I mean, great question. I mean, I think the first principle from which to operate from is to always think, what is this something that is of interest to my audience? And if yes, then how can I best present that thing that I can assume is of interest to the audience? And very often we see that what is being shared is of interest to the person who shared that, but not to the audience.

Right.

Talking about myself, I mean, I have a lot of things that I'm very passionate about that I love reading about, and I have to hold myself back to not reshare that because I know for my audience, it's probably nothing that they really associate with me or that they would understand. So, I really rarely repost something, only if it's really on topic for what I speak about.

Okay.

So that's one thing. The other thing is that you can help your reader by having a longer introduction. That is something that also LinkedIn likes very much. So what you could have done here, instead of just having this 2-thing sign-up here, you could have basically written a whole piece talking about what is happening here and how that is relevant and important to your audience and what they will get out of this. What you do here is you say, I'm excited to host a session on the upcoming PR episode hosted by Prowly PR Software. Sign up below. I don't know, first time I hear about the Prowly PR Software podcast, I assume. If I don't know what it is, if I'm not a fan, I don't know why I should listen to this.

Right.

So you could have said something along the lines of why this is a good podcast and why this episode with you particularly is going to be insightful to me and why it might be worth my time joining.

Okay.

Sort of do a proper post that could sit in and on itself without having to leverage a second or third-party post to explain the context.

Okay, great. That's really good guidance. I think As you say, there's a— it's about not being lazy, isn't it, Simon? Because you can reshare things easily.

Exactly.

It's tempting to do that, right? But, but actually we, we mustn't, right? Okay, so that, that's also really good, a really good learning.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's, it's about 5, 6 minutes left, Simon. So as you know, we like to try and keep this all just in, in 30 minutes. So we've got about 7 minutes left.

Okay, let me look for the other post. Oh, this is us. We are live here.

Um, is that— yeah, we're live.

Exactly.

Was that this one where I did the chart?

Uh, this is the last post here.

Yeah, I thought I might have got a bit more off of that. Um, yeah, with the events which could be used as triggers. But, um, because Ant Cousins asked me about that, uh, from Fact Matter, and I thought I'll write a response to his question to me on LinkedIn, but I thought I might get more uplift on this. Yeah.

So anything I didn't— One reason why I think this thing did not as well as you would hope for is that the graphic distracts from what is being written here. Can ChatGPT tell you how you should pull the trigger on PR today? Maybe. But can it make the answers into a snazzy mind map. Then we have the mind map here. I cannot really read this here. I mean, this is impossible for me to read.

Okay.

So I don't really know what this thing is about. This I can read, events which can be used to create public relations activities. Okay. But if we think again, come back to the mental load that we create here, With everything that I cannot really easily recognize and read, I create mental load that is wasting the audience's attention.

Yes, absolutely.

Everything that I can't see is doing exactly that. Also, PR triggers. Jim James, can barely read that. Yeah, I noticed. So, you have a lot of things here that take away my attention. I'm trying to make one simple decision. And the decision is, is this going to be worth my reading time? And if I cannot make an instant decision on whether it's worth my reading time or not, I'd probably just skip and move on.

Yes. Okay. So I made a mistake there by— I created something in Simple Minds as a mind map, and I should have gone into Canva and built that out to be a better graphic.

Okay.

But is it worth reposting that or do I— is it worth reposting that or is it dead once you—

Yeah, that's a great question. So because nobody's really seen that, you can easily repost that. A thing we should also not be embarrassed to do because especially if a post didn't do well, nobody saw that because LinkedIn doesn't show it to a lot of people. So doesn't hurt to give it another try, improve it, um, and see how that works. So definitely, if you have a, a better idea of how to present that, try that and just repost it. Um, that is, I think, one of the secrets of the big influencers, that they are not afraid to just retry and reuse things that didn't work with a new thing.

Okay.

So I—

okay, that We've got about 4 minutes left in there, or 5 minutes left, Simon.

So I don't want to leave you with all this criticism. I also want to sort of show examples of how things can be better. And there are for sure people. So Eugene is a great guy. And he's also from Singapore by accident.

Yeah, I heard him on your podcast. Yeah. And I connected with him on LinkedIn as a result.

So, see. So, That's why I wanted to share his posts. And as you can see, his style is very simplified, very sleek and clean. So, if we compare this post to the last post in terms of mental load, you have 2 lines, easy to read. You have the slide deck.

And then a banner and a poster.

And a poster. You have a clear value proposition, 10 steps that got me to 10,000 followers. If I'm interested in getting to 10,000 followers or gaining a lot of followers, I can instantaneously make a decision on, hey, this is interesting, let's check it out. So compared to your post that we just looked at, this one here, which is a— Yeah, yeah.

So I got the point. Yes, I need to make a post. Yeah, it's no contest. And then I don't have premium and I don't get to use a carousel. Are those connected? Do I have to have a premium account to have a carousel?

As far as I know, you don't have to. So the two are one thing. Carousels, I think, is the native format of LinkedIn that you can create within LinkedIn. I honestly have never used them. When I do a slideshow, and I think Eugene does the same here, that is something that is created outside of LinkedIn. It's just a PowerPoint presentation saved as a PDF. I use Google Slides. I've set it up in a way that I have squares and then I work on these squares. It's like a presentation. Once I'm done, I save it as a PDF, upload it as a document, and then you have this slideshow effect.

Oh, is that how you do it? I was wondering how to do it because I didn't want to have all of those 30 PR triggers as a mind map, but I couldn't figure out how to make it as a slideshow. So maybe that's a way of— that's another little video we can make on how to do that as a tutorial.

Let's do the following because also the other thing that I would love you to dig into are slideshows because they have an above-average reach. The reason is LinkedIn rewards people for engagement, and engagement is measured by, as the word says, the engagement of the users. So if you have a slideshow and you have to click see more, see more, see more, see more, every click is an indication to LinkedIn that this is a good post. Engagement. Okay. So why don't you take the 31 PR triggers that you post it as a text and rework it as a slide deck. Maybe you break it up into 3 decks because 31 slides are a lot, but you could do like 10, 10, 10, and then you can present 10 PR tricks, and then you have the next one with another 10.

I'll happily do that. Okay, I'll do that with your guidance, figure out how to do that. Okay, Simon, that's great. So, we've got one in our last minute because we just keep this to half an hour. And of course, what we'll do is we'll put this onto YouTube afterwards, and you can connect with Simon or I to get the link for that, but we'll put that in our feeds. So, Simon, any last words then of wisdom before we sign off for the week?

I think we've already created high mental load here with things to do and things to do differently. So, I don't want to burden you more, but it's, in the end, it's really a simple principle. Just try to keep it as simple as possible in terms of visual style, information, and language. And I think that's the key to everything.

Simon Chapso in South Africa, thank you for helping me with my LinkedIn. And thank you for those of you that have been watching. Yeah, it's great learning so much, um, from LinkedIn. The other good thing is that now my numbers have grown to just over 11,000, Simon.

So yeah, I saw that you have 11,000 followers. Congratulations.

So thank you. Yeah, so, um, this sort of building in public is something we're having some fun with. Lots to still learn. If you've got any questions, do put them in the messages below. Reach out to Simon, Chepiso, or myself as well. We're happy to answer. And we'll be back same time, same place next week, and we'll put another link to the next event, uh, on LinkedIn as well. So thank you for joining us and hope that you've got some value and You know, find better ways to use your time on LinkedIn. Thank you, Simon. Thank you for showing me that less is more.

Thank you.

All right, cheers. Bye-bye.