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

Well, show business, Simon. Show business. Can you hear me?

I can hear perfectly well.

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

Well done. Yes, we made it. We started in the middle of winter. And now spring is here.

And we've, we've managed to accomplish a great deal. And today we're going to talk about how I've managed to increase engagement by 42% on my LinkedIn but reduce my time from 3 or 4 hours down to just, you know, a couple of hours a week. And how we managed to increase the number of followers I've got, um, again without anywhere near the same amount of time. So amazing. So, Simon, we made a little bit of a presentation, haven't we? Shall we share that?

Let's do that.

And then people can see that presentation. Right. So here we go. And then people can see what we're talking about. Right.

Here.

Okay, so now then, and again, slight beginner's error. What we don't know how to do is to go on full screen at the same time as we are live. You know how to do a presentation. Maybe if I do that, we'll lose. Let's see what happens. Can you still see me? And still see the presentation?

Yeah.

Okay, so Simon, let's go through this. Session 12, How to Promote My Book. Um, what we've spotted on the LinkedIn Safari review. So what we're going to do is to go through some of the, you know, the, the charts, and then we will discuss what we've learned and what you've taught me in the last 11 weeks. So do you want to, do you want to first of all talk about modest, uh, my modest growth? Are you surprised by it? It's a bit up and down again.

Yeah, um, I mean, we have 3 key numbers that we are looking at, and let's start with the follower growth. Um, on the backdrop of how you change your posting rhythm and frequency. And given that, it is pretty good that you still had a slight growth of followers. So I think you added about 1,000 followers over those 90 days, and which is, considering the reduced amount of time that you invested into LinkedIn, a good, good result.

Okay, yeah, so again, it seems to be so spiky, I guess, because it shows also, I think, the weekends, doesn't it?

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

Yep. Okay, so next here is the post of engagement. So this is really the, for me, the hero slide, you know, 41.5% improvement in engagement, 1,465, which, you know, for an individual person to have that many touchpoints Feels good to me. But what do you think, Simon? Is that, as a coach on LinkedIn, should I be proud of this? Should I be disappointed? What do you think?

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

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I— and I'm a bit disappointed I haven't managed to get a more consistent sort of engagement level after March. But I think I've also not been posting as much. But those posts, ideally I'd have been, as I've got sort of 3 getting above 50, one nearly to 75. I wish I, well, I need to basically do more work on more consistently engaging content. We're gonna talk about that and how we need to do that later. Impressions, Simon. Again, you know, nearly 80, just over 80,000 impressions. You know, it's put in perspective. This is, you know, a person, one person posting to have, you know, a football stadium of eyeballs on content. Exactly. It's pretty amazing, really, if you think about the reach that LinkedIn gives us.

Currently for free. And I think that that's what it makes such an interesting platform that you get Amazing reach with a high-quality audience. I mean, all of these people are professionals. Sorry. And you have 80,100 impressions. And the interesting thing is that in comparison to the 90 days before, it slightly fell off. And as we shall see on the next slide, the time investment went down drastically. So with less time invested, you basically maintained Your visibility. Your visibility.

Yeah, and I think this is really the key, right? I spent, you know, I've done just 2 posts really a week, and then in between that I've been making comments on other people's posts, as you suggested. Whereas I used to post, you know, 4, even maybe 5 times a day, uh, you know, in with all sort of book, podcast, And general stuff. So we've gone from, you know, 22 down to 2. So, you know, 10% of the time. And also, I think the other key here is that rather than outsourcing it all to my very able VA team in the Philippines who were just using the automation tool to just kind of send stuff out, um, I've been spending time doing it myself. But because it's taking me you know, 10% of the time. It's not taking an onerous amount of time to create that content, but I'm saving money by not having the VAs create content that's not going anywhere. So I think that's a pretty, pretty amazing and impressive stat. So we've got nearly 80,000, or just over 80,000 impressions, but on, you know, on sort of 10% of the content. So that's amazing. So one of the things that you and I discussed was about the LinkedIn DNA. Do you, do you want to just share this, Simon? Because this was really your insight here.

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

Yep. Yeah, so that's a real aha moment for me, uh, which is brilliant. And I think we sort of got to that place after about session 4 or 5, didn't we? And so that was a really, really good insight. Okay. So another thing for me was really about know thyself or no one will. And I think this was a piece of work you did with me at the very beginning was, you know, what are you selling? Or, you know, and who is your avatar? But then turning that and working on my bio so that it's about, you know, the personal profile is, you know, what you do, not just who you are. So LinkedIn might have been seen as a sort of a giant resume directory in the sky when it first started. You know, everyone basically putting their job resumes on there. But now what you've really shown me is that you need to be saying how you help people. Right? Not what you, you know, not just what you do, but how are you going to add value to other people? So now I changed my profile entirely. I've changed my about me story. So instead of it being, you know, I've done this, I've done this, I've done this, now it's I jumped out of an airplane at the age of 18 and discovered how publicity can power a business. And this is what I can do for you. So I think this personal profile review Again, I think by week 3, 4, I needed to redo that. And that's been fundamental. So the personal profile is what you do, not just who you are. I think, I hope I've, have I summarized that? Do you think?

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

So then golden rule. Um, is for me about consistency. We're going to talk later on about the format of the, of the content. Um, we're going to deal with that as well. But consistency in the style, consistency in messaging, and the consistency of when we turn up— really, those are 3 key elements of the consistency. And you mentioned people like Justin Welch, you post You know, on the same time, same day, same structure of content and so on. They get like a, they get like a, into a metronome frequency. So Simon, this has also been absolutely key, hasn't it? I think the need to show up consistently.

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

Yeah. And then the next thing, you know, posts must do one of these 3 things. You'd mentioned 5, but It seemed to me maybe we could bring them down to sort of to inform, to educate, or to inspire. Is that fair to summarize them in 3, or do you think we need to add more in there, Simon?

Well, I think you can summarize it in 3 points or 5, or I think the main thing is to differentiate that from the typical post we see, which is promotional in nature or completely empty. And, um, I think anything that sparks curiosity or sparks people's interest legitimately, and that is not your invitation to the next free workshop to promote your product, um, so anything that sparks interest and curiosity, um, is, is good content. So if it informs, if it educates, if it inspires people that's good. Um, if it tries to sell and promote yourself, that's not good. And I think that's the big dividing line.

I think that's absolutely— so top performing posts. Um, this is one— this is the one place self-published authors can't reach. I learned from you about doing a headline that's above the fold, for example, on mobile phones. Um, this is the post that has got the most impressions, nearly nearly 5,000, 4,500 impressions. Um, this is where I did a video using the Rode Capture app that has a picture-in-picture, uh, me, you know, canoeing in Singapore. And but I really made it about how self-publishers, um, can promote their book, but also how publishers like Wiley that publishes my book help, what difference that makes. So I tried to make it informative But using my own story, and that really resonated. And then the other one here was the East West PR where we— I talked about selling my business, and but also the pictures was of the 2 new people coming in, um, you know, Raymond and Naveen, rather than talking about, you know, me. And, and the 3rd one, which is quite different, was about Simon Sinek confessing he's a lousy listener. This is where I used a big brand name in Simon Sinek. Um, and I use that to reference one of the articles in the book by Oscar Tromboli, um, and made a slideshow of that. So those are 3 of my best performing, and I think each one of them falls into the inspire, educate, and inform. Anything you wanted to share on that, or shall I move on?

No, I think you've perfectly summed up as an example of the 3 post types.

Okay, so the next thing there was content matters. So people want to see experiences because that gives it some authenticity. Um, the sharing value insights that others can use, that, that seems to be one of the key, um, elements of content, Simon, is that we must add content that gives someone else a takeaway. And that's been a guiding principle for me. I keep the post short, as you've picked me up on that, and I'm still in danger of writing too much. And I use the@ now of others in the post. Anything you wanted to add to that?

Well, with the point of sharing value insights, others can use Definitely spot on. I think the question is always, what is a valuable insight? And maybe to some of the listeners out there, the more you start following a certain area of interest or something, the more you might notice certain echo chamber content, people repeating stuff that they've read online. And I think the fine line here is to find things that are really unique, um, and that are valuable outside of like what you can find elsewhere. And, um, so the more unique you become and you start sharing your own experiences, because that is something that nobody else can steal— or they can steal, but it's not authentic— the easier it is to come up with, uh, your unique value and Valuable insights. And maybe then one more thing, because I realized we have forgotten about that. It's hashtags. You have mentioned @others. Um, hashtags. My personal— my personal— um, I hate hashtags. So hashtags, usually overrated. Um, and I think also we cut down on the number of hashtags you use. And it is a topic of not even contention, but a lot of people spend a lot of time finding hashtags. They're practically useless. And so don't waste time on hashtags. Have 3, then you're fine.

Don't put hashtags in.

Yeah.

And don't put hashtags in the text. That was another learning from you as well. Yeah. So under format, so we talked about content. Now we talk about format matters. Slideshows seem to gain the maximum engagement, right?

Absolutely.

Especially ones where the content is evergreen. So if, you know, a guide that someone can use that they could take away and study later, you know, top 10 LinkedIn profiles or guide to XYZ, those things that aren't necessarily specific to the individual who wrote it or shared it, but that anyone can use. And that videos with a good story and a personal angle, but they must create context. So, you know, a video of you just walking your dog is, is nice. It might get a lot of, might get a lot of likes, um, but you need to use the text above the video, uh, unless the video tells a story, to create, to create the learning for people. So that was another key point, I think. Did you want to share anything on that? Are you happy with that?

Well, a little tangent here. As we are here in Cape Town at the GLC, the Global Leadership Conference of EO, today I was watching a talk of somebody who got bitten by a crocodile. Nice story. But as he was talking, I was wondering how many times he's probably shared that story. And The connection that I want to make here is that as we create content for LinkedIn, let's think about this content as a library. If we write a post, it's not a once-off. We should be able to recycle that post 4 months down the road, basically repost it again. So as we go through the weeks and create more and more content, that content should basically be a library that informs who we are, what we stand for, what people can expect from us, so that we can after a while basically re-repeat like a good speaker the same post time and time again, which helps cut down the time, helps to build a brand, and helps us to think and focus on who we really are. And focus on who we really are.

Key tool, content calendar. Again, comes back to consistency over time, Simon. So I think, you know, you've, you've talked about that and knowing what you're gonna post days, weeks, and even preparing that in advance. Really, really another key tool. And we went over that, I think, in session, uh, 9 on the videos. We talked about Trello, I think, was the platform that you're using, but even just a spreadsheet. And I've also got some tools that I've been sharing there. I'm happy to share again with people. And then the LinkedIn BLT, this is yours really, Simon. Do you want to just— and I'm mindful of the time, it's 34 now. We started a bit late because of technical, but do you want to just talk about your strategy for LinkedIn?

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

Yeah. So it's a really good strategy. I'd never thought about finessing my activity there. So we also talked about tribes and we talked about really the fact that these groups on LinkedIn, and I was a member of, I think, 96, uh, groups, and we were posting things to those groups. They only work if there's a leader. They are like a tribe. Um, don't post to leaderless groups, right? Um, there are some really good ones. Um, we'll talk about Joe Paluzzi with the Content Marketing Institute, for example. He's driving that. Um, So one of the learnings that I had from you was, you know, reducing the time on posting to groups. So I went from posting to 96 groups to posting to 2 groups. And I still get some really good pickup when I post something relevant to a relevant group. So I posted something about, you know, the self-publishing to the author group and I got good traction. So it's not about not using them at all, but that group is well led. So I think that was a really another key learning that groups are like tribes and it's okay to be a member of them, but you do need to have a tribal leader.

Indeed.

Okay. Now, and then here we've got a slide about the algorithm and Simon, I'm watching this on my— I'm watching our live stream on my phone while we're talking here. So I can see there's a sort of a 3 to 4 second delay. But the algorithm is now up on LinkedIn. The algorithm. So what we really, I think, found, and I learned from you, was that the algorithm rewards consistent sharing of useful information. It's in a way kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Do all this work, go, well, that makes sense. Um, but it perhaps explodes the myth, doesn't it, of, you know, that It's there to manipulate or it's there just to sell. Actually, it does reward consistent sharing of useful information.

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

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

Absolutely. Principles of good story and content telling, content telling, storytelling content.

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

It was great fun. Great fun.

And I think we've learned as well about using LinkedIn Live. And now we've got a slideshow, which is, I think, you know, the preparation that we should have done earlier. So we've got some learnings there as well. So Simon, I'm going to stop that slideshow and you and I then will be on screen just to say thank you to everyone for watching this.

Simon, if there's one key takeaway that you'd like to leave with people before we close out our 12th and final session, Well, maybe the key takeaway that I took from our collaboration is that it's not about only the quantitative output, but also the time input that you do. Um, and I think in that regard, you are, you are a very interesting, um, um, student in the sense that you drastically reduced the time that you invested into LinkedIn. While increasing the output.

Thank you. Well, I did that thanks to your insights, really. Um, so Simon, Chappazown, South Africa. If you want to get a hold of you, of course they can get you on LinkedIn.

Absolutely easy to find.

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

Yeah, thank you and goodbye. Thank you and goodbye.

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