LinkedIn Safari: Session 8 of 12

Hello and welcome to this episode. It's number 8, I think, Simon, isn't it, of the LinkedIn Safari?

It is exactly number 8.

Great. So that's Simon Chapazot in South Africa, me, Jim James, here in the UK. And we're on a journey to improve my LinkedIn performance as I try and market the book, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. And Simon, as the LinkedIn maestro extraordinaire, is helping me to get into shape. Simon, what are we going to cover today?

Well, let's, let's start with good news. And then after that, we're going to look into your previous 2 slideshows that you did. And then we're going to talk about how to post better.

Okay. So, um, first, I suppose if we look here at my LinkedIn, in fact, my impressions have gone down. in the last 7 days, but my followers have gone up. And so, you know, and I've actually got now 11,100. So it's actually gone up quite, quite measurably. I was under 11,000 before we started all of this. And so happy with that. Very happy with that. And in terms of, let's look at my impressions. I've actually Gone down the last 7 days, but I think also because I haven't posted as much, but the number of people looking at me has increased and the search appearance has definitely gone up. And apart from anything else, of course, um, I spent a lot less time. Um, and look, oh, that's interesting, isn't it, Simon? Look, we can see here.

Wow.

You know, impressions have gone up on Tuesday. Um, so whilst my impressions went down, it's a little bit misleading as a statistic, isn't it? Because if we look at the last, you know, 28 days, I'm sure that I have been going and getting better. So 20,000 impressions. Oh, still 49 down, but I've had a couple of really nice big spikes.

Hmm.

And, um, so if I This is still my number one post now with over 3,500.

Best performing post.

Yeah. And, um, the one with my sister, 2,500. So I'm definitely getting also much more engagement than I was getting before, Simon. So that's the other big, the other big issue because before I was getting next to no engagements whatsoever. And now we're getting, you know, much higher engagements. Uh, look at that with Shelley's net, 70, 25, 98.

Wow.

You know, I wasn't really getting kind of any engagements before this, and even our LinkedIn, we're getting some engagements there.

So, um, yeah, I mean, compared to where you were when we started, where you sort of averaged between 0 and 1 and 2, um, we have 10x that in terms of engagement.

Yeah. So I'm spending less time and, um, getting much more engagement with the posts that I'm doing and, and more impressions.

Good.

Net-net. So the ROI on this is, is fantastic.

And, and one, one little comment on the impressions and, uh, engagements. I mean, impressions is some sort of a vanity metric. Um, it's, it's, it's good to keep an eye on that, but it's not all. And I think in your case, coming from ground zero in terms of engagement, seeing where you are now with 10 likes on average, I think that's a huge win. And it's an important win because it shows that you are in the process of building relationships with people. I mean, it's nice to, to have impressions, but if there's sort of no It doesn't mean people really sort of want to engage with you. But now seeing 10 people like your post, you see who they are. And as a strategy, long-term, you can also send a connection request or thank them if you're already connected. And that helps to cement bonds that you don't have with pure impressions.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's, as we've learned, um, it is value over volume. You know, and, uh, as Dinah Kalkovich said, you know, it's really about getting authority, not followers. And she said on my podcast, so that's basically put.

You should do a post about that. That's a nice story.

Um, I've got lots of posts to do. I, I've got more posts to do than I've got time to do them. But that's, that's a nice problem to have, isn't it?

It is. Um, okay, let's get started. Um, I I said that we're gonna look at your slideshows. And what I wanna do here is to share the development that you've done, because I think you've done a tremendous development here. Slideshows are great because they give you great reach. They are interactive, and LinkedIn rewards people who get engagement and are interactive. So that's, that's why we love slideshows. Having said that, they always are more work to put together. I acknowledge that. And the trick here is to develop a system and a style that makes it very simple for you to be very fast with that. And we're gonna talk about this in future episodes some, some more, but I just wanna start by sharing the first one, which is That one was the slideshow that you did, I think, a week ago. Okay.

Share your screen there.

Oh, it's coming. So do you see it now? Nope.

Don't see that yet, Simon.

Yet. Oh.

Should I do a drum roll? There we go.

Okay. Okay, cool. So there you go. There we are. Okay, cool. So that is your slideshow. And I'll just go through the slides and give you feedback on the individual slides. And let's start with something nice. The nice thing that you've done Is that you have tied into the, the visual brand that your book has because the background here is the same dark color that your book has, the COVID of the book. So you've built a bridge to the book and because it's a slideshow, you can evoke the sense of like, this is also a book.

Yep.

So that's, that's really nice. The other thing that I see here is the font or the capitalization, which is something you'd want to avoid because we are trained to read lower key letters. And if we have capitalized font, it's just harder for the eye to read. It helps if you enter the United States to write in capital letters. I get that because it's easier for them to read it. Because you don't have to decipher people's bad handwriting. But in this case, it, it's just harder to read. And we see it on a later slide where you have both fonts and you can, yeah, you just see it's easier to read a sentence that's lower key.

Yep.

So that's, that's one point of improvement that I would make here that, um, that you do that. Um, then the, the image, I mean, dogs, animals, children, and yeah, animal children, always good. We love that. So it's sort of like something that you can. Yeah. Emotionally connect with. That's good.

Yeah, I thought the dog was cute.

Um, so same thing here. You've capitalized that. And here I think it's even more pronounced where the, the, the letters are smaller in, in, in terms of, um, the, um, the font size. And you can already see it's sort of harder on the eyes. Now imagine you are on the London subway. The train is moving as you try to read that on a phone. Yeah. Um, some people might have problems with that.

Yeah.

This is the— That's one thing. And, uh, the other thing, and I know it's a complicated subject, um, how to choose images and, um, coming from film, there's one simple rule. You try to not show what is being said. So. If an actor says something, ideally he would do something different than he says because that creates dynamic tension. And if you show exactly what you say, it's kind of boring. And in this case, this, this is such an example cuz you talk about stress and here's an image of somebody apparently being stressed. And, um, so it's not really, it's, it's not really adding any additional informational value or an emotion that would make this more accessible. So, um, now the big question is what would've been a better image? Maybe an animal. We love animals, but okay. Kids, a stressed baby. Oh, but you get the point.

But it's, yeah, it's a good point. We have to, we have to create dynamic tension so the picture doesn't reinforce the text. It It, it creates a tension with the text. Yeah.

And what that means, maybe sort of a very quick example. Imagine in film a scene, somebody sobbing and then another character saying, oh, are you sad? Are you crying? And the, the character says, yes, I'm very sad. This is totally flat. But the, the other character upon being asked, are you sad? Would say, no, no, I'm fine.

I'm happy.

All is good. Then we would immediately sense there's sort of something off. This person doesn't wanna say something that we can't see. Um, so suddenly there's dynamic tension and then this whole scene becomes much more interesting. And, um, the same principle applies here. So we try to find something that, I don't know. Um, now I need to come up with a better example, but I can't.

Anyway, I get, I get the idea. You want some dynamic tension in there? Okay. Point taken, Simon.

Thanks for letting me off the hook here. Okay, let's move on. And, um, yeah, same thing here, big font. And the other thing is this image does not really add any information. And in that case, I would rather do no image. What you could do, um, just add your headshot, bottom left, bottom right to sort of keep a visual contact with you as a person. Um, it's neutral, but it sort of helps to build your brand. Um, but this image is sort of like, what is, what, what, what do I get here? Nothing. So, sorry.

Yes, it's a good point. It's, it's not about putting images for the sake of nothing, right? So.

Exactly. Every, every image. And it's, it's, and that's another rule from scriptwriting. Every scene in film has to have meaning. It has to drive the plot forward. And if it doesn't, it has to go. So no matter how brilliant a scene is, it has to go. And I think the same applies here. If we don't have an image that drives the plot forward, then it doesn't, there's no point in having it. Or if we have a slide that doesn't drive the plot forward.

Yeah.

It has to go. Okay. So next slide. Um, you're introducing Mason Harris, who is the guy that you interviewed in the book.

Yep.

Um, and, uh, I think it would've been helpful to know who he is if I haven't read the post.

Um, right. Yes.

I should put the author. Maybe sentence saying Mason is this guy that I've interviewed. And he has this magic formula how to deal with the stress as an entrepreneur. And, uh, he, he sums it up as the Chutzpah formula. Yes. And now it's sort of, I don't know what, what Mason Harris. Okay. That's the guy, I assume. But what is Chutzpah is the answer. I don't know. Right. Um, so giving more context and, um, yeah. For example, 1, 2 sentences. Then moving on, and now I can just skim through it. Now you've, you've taken every letter of the word chutzpah and, um, spelled it out. So chutzpah, one philosophy, um, one skill, uh, one challenge. And you've always added the picture to sort of give a visual stimulant. Let's call it like that.

Yep.

But as you can see with all of these 7 images, you haven't really added any information that helps me understand what ambiguity minimization actually means.

Right, right.

So it's, it's, it's actually distracting because now my mind sees chutzpah, ambiguity minimization, which is in and of itself very complex. A very complex term. So I have to figure out what that means and I have to understand what this image, how does it relate?

Right.

What does it tell me? So it's sort of almost a, a, uh, was it cognitive overload?

Right. Okay.

So, yeah. So, and with all of these 7 letters, is it 7? Yeah. Um, 8.

Uh, 8 letters.

Yeah. You could have. It could have had just one sentence explaining what the idea is, sum it up, what Mason is trying to, to express with the formula. So very simple. You don't have to find 7 images. You can just sort of summarize it as a, as a mini, mini ebook.

Right.

So same here. And then, um, that is also a nice thing that you summarize this with. Or that you point at Gates, Huffington Jobs, and the dirt. This would have been maybe nice in the beginning to pull people in. Yeah. It's always good to have something that people can identify with. Everybody knows Gates, Huffington Jobs, and Bezos. I don't know who's Woodland, but, and Edison. Um, so having dropping names always helps to pull people in because it's easy to.

Yeah.

Identify and, um, then sort of get curious. So that, that one thing. And the other thing that I said in the beginning, here you can see the difference between capitalized writing and lowercase writing. And you can see that the lower, the bottom one is, it's just easier. I mean, it's a very subjective statement, but I think every, everybody who's seeing this agrees it is easier to read.

Yeah. The Bebas Neue is only available in, uh, Caps. And so I've used it as a headline, like in advertising, but that's, that's not right for this setting.

So. Yeah. Nice. Sort of like good, good statement. Don't stress yourself out. Um, and the other thing that you do very smartly, and it's been proven statistically, that having a shot of yourself on the last slide of the slideshow actually increases conversion rates. Um, and, um, yeah, helps people again to connect with you. One thing, I think this font here is pretty small.

Yes.

Coming back to the being on the phone and the way it is, I, I would probably struggle reading that.

Yes. There's a minimum font size.

Maybe I should adjust this. Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah. No, it's a good point.

Well, I have to.

A couple of pairs of glasses, this one and, and this one. So, uh, I had to get different colors so I could tell which one was for the computer. Um, okay, Simon, that, that's great. So some good learnings there. Um, keeping an eye on the time, we've got 16 minutes on the clock so far. So what do we do next?

Race through. Yeah. So now we got a new Dr. Tim slideshow. Uh, does it show? I switched the tab. Does it come through?

Yep. That, that shows this is, this is the one I did this week on the Monday.

Exactly. Okay, cool. So, so, uh, to give the good story, you have changed, you have implemented changes, which is good. And the first one that we can see, um, is that you've changed the font to lower case. And another thing that is good that you've done here is to use the Serif font or a serif font. Um, I think there's also some scientific evidence. Yeah. So the more common a font is, the easier for us it is to read because it's sort of more familiar to the eye. And serif fonts apparently are even easier to read because the eyes can attach itself to like the, the little—

Yes, that, that's right. Serif fonts serve as a Yeah. As opposed to sans serif. Yeah. So that's why I went with Times New Roman, which is the typewriter, you know, foundation.

Classic font. And again, a nice image. Again, having a face look at you is always good because we connect with human faces. And so I think that this is sort of a funny shot and it matches the message. Looking engaging is essential in the LinkedIn age. So. Well done. Um, also here. Well done. Um, nice shot. So I get what you're talking about here. And now you introduce the protagonist.

Yep.

The Marcus Ahmed gives advice for free. That's cool. What is it? Tell me more. And then you come with the nugget, authenticity affects customers. And, um, you, yeah, start unraveling what that actually means. You give photo tips from the conversation. It might've helped if you would've given some, again, context, like, okay, Mark Azamata, I had him on the show. These are the things that he says you can do to get better pictures.

That was okay. That was in the post. I put that in the post at the beginning, actually. So that was explaining the post. Yeah.

So what I found is that people usually Um, first go through the slideshow and then probably read the post. And I tried to sort of have them independent so that the slideshow could stand independently of the, of the post.

Okay.

Yeah. Well-chosen images. Um, again, I think having a bit more context as to what this means and how this applies to me in my quest to have better images would've helped. So maybe sort of one more sentence. What does it mean for you? Yep. It was always almost self-evident.

And actually that's Nick Hemms, who I should have actually given a credit to cuz he's in the book as well.

Okay.

And then this, this point here, your personal brand is in the eye of the beholder. So. Um, I should have given a shout out to Nick, I realized afterwards. And then this was the point here was that someone will Google you and they're going to find pictures of you.

Okay.

So I was probably a little bit cryptic with that. The personal brand is in the eye of the beholder. That was the point, right?

That— I mean, it's great, uh, that you don't go overboard because what I see a lot of people do with slideshows. That they sort of like take the text from the post and cram everything on a slide, and then you end up with this 8-point font and you can't read anything. It's just too much. So maybe you've gone the other extreme. You've sort of, you've, you've minimized a little bit too much. So a little bit more contrast.

Yes. We'll get the balance. Yeah. We're working on getting the balance right between having too much. And this time I didn't put the text in.

Yeah.

I just put You know, I mean, Marcus took my shot.

That, that is a great closing statement because, I mean, it is a great photo of yours and I can now experience firsthand the difference between a good photo and a party shot that I can use. And I can definitely say this, this is a good choice that you've taken. Um, so well done.

Thank you. Yeah. And we've got 6 so far, you know, sort of engagements with that over, over a short period of time. So let's see whether we get more interest in it. I haven't seen Markus yet repost it. I need to send it to him then next.

Yeah, that on the, on the engagement note, I think what we will see, and I have to ask you for some patience here because we, you've introduced a completely new format on your profile. So the few people that come and engage with you sort of have, um, have to embrace that and they have to form the habit of, they, they have to form an expectation and they get into the, the habit of wanting to follow you. And, um, right. I think I've shared a couple of examples with this guy who does the speech analysis, uh, in German. And he's a very consistent poster. Every Monday he has one analysis and now he has, um, like in the high 3-digit, uh, likes every week. He does nothing else.

Wow.

Just this one slideshow. But he has conditioned his audience to expect this one drop of wisdom every week. And, um, that is something that we have to do with you now.

Yeah, and I think, I think As a reflection, it's taking much more time to do one good deck. And I'm sort of conscious that I'm doing one good deck and getting much more results, but I don't think I can then do as many decks because it's taking so much time. And what you do realize is that if you don't put in the time, you're not giving your, you know, your community value. And so then there's that equation of, you know, you've got other jobs to do. I want to, I'm running masterminds and the podcast and so on. So this is really useful, but we're getting to that place where now I need to think about how many times am I going to put that much effort in? Um, so that's the ROI. So we'll get to that level now, I think, Simon, where I just have to think through when I post. And also, as you rightly pointed out, this post went out at like 9 o'clock. night because I'd had my full day of podcasting and masterminds. Um, and, uh, so I need to schedule in when I'm going to post. So there's an expectation of when people are going to get something as well.

Exactly.

So we're moving to another sort of, well, I guess the next level up on, on, on LinkedIn.

Exactly. And nice introduction. And the other, the next level on LinkedIn, um, definitely is, is a thing that a lot of people don't really see and ignore. Um, and that is that the way you publish has a huge impact on the engagement that you get. So what we see a lot of people do is just sort of dump and run. So trusting the algorithm to give them the reach and hoping that the quality of the writing will sort of save the day. And, um, yep, the quality of the writing is important, but LinkedIn is, um, very conscious in trying to turn this into a knowledge platform. So everybody who helps to enhance the knowledge on the platform He gets rewarded. And the way you do this is by, uh, engagement and action. And, um, so that is a very logical thing, but how to do this is not that straightforward. And I've created a little, um, thing here. Let me share that.

Okay. Yeah, we've got 5 minutes left.

What?

Time is left.

Time flew by.

Okay. Yep.

It is what I call the LinkedIn sandwich. The LinkedIn sandwich.

Okay. Great. You sharing screen?

Yeah, it's coming up. So the LinkedIn sandwich, essentially, if you're hungry for more followers, um, you have to, to feed them and there's a way how you feed them.

Okay. There you go, Simon.

I've done a drum roll for you.

Okay.

We have this on screen. Cool. So that is the LinkedIn, our daily LinkedIn bread. And as you can see, top layer, bread, lettuce, tomato. This is what you do before you get to the meat of your LinkedIn engagement of the day, your posting of your, your own post. So before you post, you wanna engage on other people's content with bread, lettuce, and tomato. Then after you've done that, you've warmed up your profile, leave 3 to 5 comments. You actually publish your own post and then you don't just run away. You have to stick around. And ideally people start commenting on your post and you respond to these comments. You try to sort of Pull them into a chit-chat, into a conversation on your post in the comments. And as you wait for people to comment, you can continue your engagement on other people's posts to keep the profile warm. And same thing, 3 to 5 profiles, comp posts from other people before publishing, after publishing. That's how you warm your profile up. And that's really sort of a very high-level view. You can become very sophisticated, but let's run with this for now. The main thing is to not just dump and run, but to show your love to other people. Let's do this before you post, after you do, after you post. And also keep in mind that everybody that you engage with, he sees or she sees your post and, um, sees you as a, as a person or as a, as a human. So you start building relationships. So this engaging on other people's posts is not just a way to sort of trick the algorithm to get more reach, but it's a way to socialize. I mean, if you go to a cocktail party, you speak to people and you bump into random people and you form bonds and start conversations and whatnot. Same on LinkedIn. And the best time to do this is around you publishing your post because the algorithm likes it and people like it if you show love to them.

Simon, here's a question then. Is, is one strategy to post, for example, twice a week, which I believe you know, some key entrepreneurs and influencers do once or twice a week, but then on other days go in and comment, but not actually try and post.

Um, you can do that. I mean, you, you definitely want to comment on post. On the days when you're not post, you can still comment. And this is then now the strategic bit. Um, you can grow your following by commenting on the posts of specific people. And there are mainly 3 groups. Um, one is influencers for people in the industry that you want to be seen in. So in my case, Justin Welch, the LinkedIn uber influencer, he has a lot of people who want to learn about LinkedIn marketing. So if I leave a comment on a post of Justin, This comment will be seen by other people who have the same interest and they start following me. It works. I reached hundreds of followers doing that.

Okay.

So that's that. The other group is, um, target market people. So if you're a company, you want to engage with companies and do business before just cold calling them, cold emailing them, drop some love on their posts. They will see that. They will get accustomed to your name. And when you call them, they will say, hey, Jim, your name sounds familiar. So that's the second target group. And the third one is influence multipliers from your network. People that like and love you, ex-colleagues, friends, whatnot. They help you to keep your profile warm and engaged. And they will probably come back if you show them some love. So that's a very simple reciprocal thing.

Simon, and you've managed to get all that in within our 30-minute slot. Here you go. I'm gonna give you an applause. There you go.

Right.

Hopefully that will even, uh, work. So Simon, Chappazown, South Africa, thank you. I'm learning so much. Uh, we've had 8 weeks and I think transformed my presence on LinkedIn. So thank you so much. Any last Parting words after session 8?

Keep, keep, Jim would say keep communicating. I would say keep commenting.

All right. With that, thank you to Simon Shepherdson in South Africa for all his guidance and all his input today. And thank you for joining Simon and I on this LinkedIn safari. Same time next week, session 9. Let's see how we're getting on. And until we We meet again. Yeah, I do encourage you to keep on communicating.