LinkedIn for Accountants

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast where we talk about marketing for accounting firms. It's pretty straightforward. It's in the name. And today I've got Ashley Leeds and we're going to talk about social media. LinkedIn, marketing on social media for accounting firms. And yeah, Ashley, thanks for being here.

Thanks ever so much for having me. It's great to get over the pond for a change. Your listeners probably. Hang on, where's this guy from? I'm from the uk, but I am not from Leeds. I live in the southwest of England where it's nice and sunny all the time. Except for today.

I suppose that gets. That does get a little bit confusing if Leeds is one of the few things us Americans can remember exists in. In England and your last name, but you're not there. Okay, so you're on the sunny coast and we were talking before we hit record about how accountants tend to not like marketing and you had some good thoughts on that. Why do accountants hate marketing and most of them don't like being on social.

Media because it's alien to them. I don't know if you know this, but in the UK several years ago, accountants weren't allowed to market. That was the rules of the institution. They were not allowed to market. So it's quite a new thing when you look at the history of marketing for accountants. But they never know what to say. They don't feel. They're discouraged from it because they don't know what to say. They feel what they're going to say is boring. They didn't set up their business to do marketing. They set up their businesses to help people with, with tax and accounts and stuff. And they think they've got to sound like an accountant. And then they see lots of other stuff from everybody else and are just put off and intimidated. And none of that is true. And hopefully we'll cover all of that today.

Yeah, you know, a lot of the firms, a lot of the owners that I work with, they would love nothing more than to retreat behind their business and not. And not have to be almost visible. They'd like to be invisible to their business, just bring in clients. Let's do the work, let's do the books, let's do the taxes and then we can get on with our day. They'd rather not have to be a personality. So. And I totally understand that. And you know, I guess long term, that's the goal of the business, right? Let it just run itself and it doesn't even need you. You can be on the beach and just checking in with your second in command at, at whatever point. But you know, from my perspective and in my seat as a marketer, I know that people like to buy from people. And so there's a real benefit when you can develop a bit of a personal brand. And I guess one of the ways I pitch it and you tell me if this makes sense in your world or if you agree as an owner you want to get more into the one to many space where you're talking to a bunch of people instead of the one to one space because your time is not scalable. If you're always meeting with clients, you know, face to face, one to one. But social media gives you an opportunity to bring some of that insight or some of the things that you, that you know about their business to the fore, but in a one to many sort of way on social media and it can help you build your business. Am I on the right track here?

Absolutely, yeah, 100%. The thing is, right, if I'm an accountant and you come in, you're a little bit worried about your business and stuff like that, I'm going to sit down with you, I'm going to spend an hour with you, I'm going to tell you loads of stuff. Well, all of that stuff I've just told you, if I write about it and put it out online, whether it's on my blog, whether it's on LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever, then a lot more people can see it. And what we forget is that once it's written down, it's always out there. And so if we use that content in lots of other places, someone's going to find it a later date. Which is why I love doing podcasts, because we're recording in August 2023. Somebody listening to this right now might have thought about using LinkedIn, found it on a search. It could be 2025, you know, but we've only done it once. And that's exactly the same with a great bit of content, you put a little video out there. I know of people in the UK that have done videos and have actually got business off the back of that one specific video. They can actually pinpoint that one video that's got them, that client which has got them a, you know, a decent recurring fee. And that person doing the video a year or so before wouldn't have seen, be seen dead on video, but now they're doing video regularly and it's just stepping over that barrier and realizing that if you do it right, business will come to you rather than you chasing business. Now you said people buy from people. I want to add a couple more words to that. They buy from people who they like, who they know who they like and who they trust. And if you use social media properly, then people are going to get to know you. If you do it well, they're going to start to like you. If you start speaking with clarity and credibility, they're going to trust you. And so what actually happens is people come to you rather than you chasing them. And that is the sweetest thing ever.

So you mentioned like a psychological hurdle and I think that that's really the, the first piece. So an accounting firm owner, they believe. Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it. I should be on social media. I just hate it. Or I just don't want to. I don't, it's not me. I don't like it. What, where do you start with someone who. Let's. Okay, some of those maybe are self imposed barriers, but at very least they're not, they're not confident on social media or they don't feel like they've ever found a voice. They don't know. There's an issue with getting over that psychological hurdle to want to do social media. Where do you start talking with someone on that?

The bottom line is we don't like talking about ourselves. That's human nature. When you're a kiddie and your parents say, say something and the kiddie is just innocent and loving life and everything's amazing and I'm amazing and the world revolves around me. I'm amazing and I'll tell everybody. But all of this gets knocked out of us as we get older. It seems crass to say I'm good at this or I'm good at that and so we don't do it. And how on earth are people going to believe in us if we just stand there going, yeah, I'm a pretty mediocre cpa, you know, I get by with my taxes. You don't want to hear that. Oh yeah, I'm absolutely fantastic at doing tax. In fact, I've helped this person. This person, this person, this person.

Yeah.

And he's like, oh, that's amazing. If you've worked for them, then you're going to be really good. I was chatting to someone the other day and they've done work for some huge companies and rattled them all off, you know, Amazon, Apple, whatever. It's like, wow, you are good because you must be good because Apple are doing that. They're only that good because They've convinced whoever it is to hear that you can see my guitars on the, on the back wall. I'm a musician in my spare time, and people are sort of like, have a chat with me. They go, oh, you're in a band. I go, yeah, yeah. What are they like? I used to say. I used to say, yeah, we're okay, all right? No one, no one is gonna A, come and see my band or B, book my band if we're okay, all right? And so what I, what I say now is, yeah, we're really good. What we do is we engage the audience. People like what we do because I get people up singing and dancing. In fact, we played at Duke's during Folk Week and they've asked us back because we were so good. Yeah, you want to book me now? People are listening to this now, googling my band to see how they can get hold of us because they think we're good. But previously I would go, yeah, we get by. We're all right. I'm not very good. I'm not very good at guitar. But, you know, and we need to. We need to own it. Because the thing is, Matt, if you had invented a cure for cancer, okay? And I'm holding up a little pill here now, there it is. That is the cure for cancer.

Yeah.

You've your duty bound to tell people about it because you can save humanity.

Yeah.

All right? A few tax returns and a little bit of accounts and some bank wrecks isn't going to save humanity. But your poor business owner that's banging his head against the wall because he's got receipts coming out of his ears and he's not talking to his wife because he's stressed out. You're saving his marriage, and it's your duty to let people know that you can do that.

I often think that running a business, and this could be true for an accounting firm or any business, is really only maybe 30% being good at the thing that you're good at. And then the other 70% is learning things about business or marketing. And a lot of that is getting over some of your own kind of personal baggage. Right. So this idea that, oh, I'm supposed to be humble, I'm not supposed to talk about myself, can turn into not. Not humility, but can turn into, like, self deprecation in a way that's not beneficial for your business. You're good at what you do, and you should lean into that. The thing that you have is a valuable service for a life saving service in some way, or at least business saving service in many cases for your clients. And so pushing down your own, your own credibility, that's an internal struggle that you as a business owner need to get over. Not so much. I'm sure it's not. In most cases, it's not really an actual lack of skill or ability. It's really a lot about that. Psychological. How do I see myself and how do I approach the marketplace? We use the story brand framework with a lot of our clients. And one of the keys about that from a marketing perspective is you want to position yourself as the guide and the customer as the hero. But the reality is the guide is always the stronger character in a story. Right. The hero is weak. And so you don't actually want to position yourself as the hero. They're weak, but they have a lot of room to grow and get better and accomplish their goals. But the guide is the established one and you have to be able to speak clearly about the, the authority and the credibility that you bring. And if you're not willing to put that out there, no one is ever going to trust you. I think that's, you know, that know, like. And trust dynamic is so important.

It's all what's in our head. A lot of businesses like mine, I work from my shed, and if I'm having a down day, I'm calling myself all the names under the sun. And you've got to remember that. Hang on a minute. I've done this work for this person. I've done that work for this person. Someone wants me on their podcast. Somebody wants me to go and talk to them. You know, I. Brilliant. Because people are paying me for it.

Yeah.

And there's, there's a million and one LinkedIn trainers out there, and there's enough work for all of us. And we're all totally different. You've got male and female, you've got old people, young people, you've got all kinds of different mixes. And we've all got our own unique skills. And here I am, I'm this bouncy guy wearing a yellow T shirt, always smiling, always happy, that's great. But, but to some people, that I don't want to work with somebody like that, and that's fine as well. So if you're, if you're a bouncy, happy accountant, embrace it. If you're a grumpy cpa, embrace it. Because we'll all find the right people. Marketing is all about, you know, attraction. It's using magnets.

Yeah.

But magnets also repel and if you repel the right people, that's good for your business, too.

Mm.

So why LinkedIn? Why aren't you on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter? Why are you on LinkedIn? Why do you believe in LinkedIn? And why do you think accountants should be on LinkedIn?

Okay, that's a great question. Because, yeah, there's other platforms. Facebook, Twitter, X. Is it Threads, Pinterest. I didn't say Instagram and TikTok. Obviously, there's loads out there. My philosophy is be a master at one. Okay. You've got lots of different software packages out there. Xero, QuickBooks, and there's loads of others. I'm not sure what you guys use in the States. My method is just be a master at one. Let's just say we're going to choose QuickBooks. If someone comes to, you say, oh, I need Xero. Sorry, that's not what I do. I refer all the people to the movie, the founder, which is Ray Kroc and McDonald's. When Ray Kroc found McDonald's, they were selling hot dogs and chicken wings. Now, they only do burgers. They do a few other things, but, you know, their core business is the burger, and so you know exactly where you are. So my core business is LinkedIn. That's what I'm really, really good at. I delve deep into it. But why do I like it, Matt? I like it because you cannot hide on LinkedIn. You put your professional Persona on LinkedIn. You have to put your name, your address and all that. When you hide all of that information, phone numbers, your business, where you are, your previous business. So if you comment on my post, I know exactly who you are and where you live, or roughly.

Yeah.

I also know that you used to work at XYZ and. Oh, hang on a minute. LinkedIn is saying that we both work for the same company 17 years ago. You know, I've got something in common with you now. I don't know if you've ever been on holiday. Let's just say that you're in France, right? And you're on a bus in France in the middle of Paris, and you hear an American accent in the seat in front of you, two people chatting to each other, and you go, hi, you're from. You're from the States. And you probably can guess what state they're from. But if they're in the same state as you, oh, my goodness, it's great that we. Oh, isn't France lovely? Oh, yeah. And we've got this bond. These are Two people that you've just met in a foreign country, but you've got something in. In common, and you're now friends. If you met them back in your hometown, you'd walk past them.

Yeah.

And so. So because we used to work at somewhere 17 years ago, there's, there's some commonality there. And I'm not going to troll you, because you can see who I'm connected to. You can see where I work. You've got my phone number. So I think people on LinkedIn are much more grown up, more businesslike, and what that's doing is that is attracting more professionals, people with more money, people who want to do things. And I did a poll recently on one of my posts, why are you here? And a lot of people were there for connectivity and to learn stuff. They weren't there to sell their wares, whereas that's what Facebook is and Instagram is. So that's why I like LinkedIn.

Well, so let me dig into that a little. You don't have the same level of anonymity as you do on some of these other platforms. That does elevate the conversation because people are there posting under their real name. And so it helps, you know, keep things more professional. But you also mentioned magnets attract and they repel. What do you say to the person who says, I don't want to say anything that could rock the boat on LinkedIn because I don't have that shield of anonymity. Is there a risk to LinkedIn?

Okay, so here's the bottom line, all right? When I teach LinkedIn, I tell people to think of LinkedIn as a networking event, okay? So think of the networking event that you last went to. Maybe it was a breakfast. Okay? So there's 20 people in a room, all from different walks alike. We've got a plumber, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, a CPA, a LinkedIn trainer. And we're all in this room. We've come, we're having coffee, we're eating bacon sandwiches or egg McMuffin or whatever it is. Oh, hi, Matt. How are you? Good. Did you find somewhere to park today? It was a real nightmare. Parking. And we start talking about parking, which then gets me onto when I was at this theme park. Oh, you've got kids then, have you? And we start talking about kids. We haven't talked about marketing or LinkedIn or CPAs or anything else that we're there for. We're just making a connection. Okay? Now, if I was there, I wouldn't turn around and say something, I don't know that was racist or political or religious because I don't really know you, I'm not gonna, I don't want to upset you, but I might turn around and say, hey, they're really cool shoes. Or I used to have a pair of those, don't like them or whatever. And it's that sort of thing. So whatever I say might offend you, but it wasn't meant to offend you. And I can see from your body language whether or not I've overstepped the mark or something. But I'm not like that. That's not me. But there are other people that come in and go, yeah, why are you wearing a black jumper today? Or something like that. Just behave like that on LinkedIn. So if someone says something to you at this networking event and you sort like, oh, I don't really agree with that, but I'm not going to say anything. That's exactly how you should be on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Instead of, you know, grabbing hold of your keyboard and so like, oh, I've got something really important to say.

Just right.

Yeah, just. And the other thing that I talk to people about, especially my daughters. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? You know, I was in a car with somebody, with one of my friends, a really, really lovely, laid back guy, but when it got behind the wheel of a car, he had serious road rage. And it's sort of like, what, what good are you doing getting angry because someone's a little bit close to you or they didn't overtake or whatever. What does it matter? Just, just be happy. Just be happy. So, yeah, it's, it's all about, would you say it in person? Would you say it to somebody you've never met before? And if you would, then write it. If you wouldn't, then don't. I'm quite a cheeky chappie and so I'll say things that are quite funny face to face. I could say something to you that might be a little bit below the belt, but I'll say it with a smile and you can see that I'm just having a laugh or I'm being funny.

Yeah.

So you're not going to take offense if I wrote that down. You would read that in a different way and think that I was being rude. So I use the smiley emoji. A little laughing, little laughing.

Got to get those emojis in there.

Well, yeah, look, a adds a bit of color but then you can see because I've put that emoji on there. You know that this last line that I've just written is, is a bit of fun, a bit of. We call it banter in the uk, you know, when you. When you just have a little bit of fun with each other. I don't know what you call it in the States.

Yeah, we say. We say banter.

I love having banter with people. And when you're really, really close to somebody, like your best mate or your wife or something, you can get away with some really rude things or funny things. But I would never say anything like that online unless I really knew the person. And then I'd put a little smiley emoji so they, oh, that's ash being ash, you know, that sort of thing. So, yeah, don't worry about what you say. And, you know, I post every single day. I comment on loads of posts. I comment back to people who've been on my post. I don't know how many times I hit the keyboard. So many people have messaged me and said, you're really rude, or I don't like what you've done, or they've taken offense by what I've said. Do you know, many people have come back to me, Matt.

I'm guessing it's a small number.

I don't think it's any. I really don't think it's any. And if it is, they've messaged me and I've got. Oh, my goodness. I really didn't mean it that way.

You're in a.

Go ahead.

I was going to say, if you're. If you're an accounting firm owner and you're worried about that sort of feedback, the facts that you're worried about, it makes it incredibly unlikely that you're going to, you're going to post anything online.

Absolutely. I don't think there's a CPA out there that is going to use LinkedIn as much as me. The percentage chances of them having any comeback is going to be pretty much zero.

Well, that's, That's a great segue. CPAs are not going to use LinkedIn as much as you. So the psychological hurdle is probably the first one, yes, you should do it. I want to do it. The next one is, I just don't have any time. I can't be on LinkedIn as much as Ashley is like, how. How is this, is this even worth it? If I don't have, you know, a couple hours every day to put onto LinkedIn, I kind of know where your answer is going on this one. But like unpack that. Like, how much time do we need to be spending?

You're going to know because I'm the 15 minute guy. But that's not the point. The point is. Right, exactly. We can find time for absolutely anything. Okay, so CPAs, if you're listening now, do you play golf? If you play golf, you can find time for golf. Okay, do you like spending time with your partner? Going out for a nice meal?

Yeah.

Can find time for that. We can find time for the things that we really want to do. Okay, so how do we find time for LinkedIn? Because it's horrible, it's clunky, I don't know what I'm doing. All right, you love your golf, you love your partner. I love my music and my guitars. I can find time for things that I love. So what you need to do is start to love LinkedIn. That's the secret. And so what I teach is 15 minutes a day, okay? That's why I'm the 15 minute guy. So basically I got a workshop and it starts on a Monday and we do 50 minutes every single day, Matt, for that one week, it's just one week. So that's 75 minutes. And in 75 minutes I can get you loving LinkedIn. And if I don't, you can have your money back. But because we do it in just 15 minutes a day, you can find that 15 minutes. So what I say to people, you might want to write this down if you're listening. What I say to people. If you block out 15 minutes in your diary for this week, that we're going to do the training, alright, and then block out 15 minutes for the rest of your life, alright? Every year you will be doing 65 hours of free marketing on LinkedIn. Who doesn't want that?

I mean, I want that. I think I found myself to be more of a. When inspiration strikes, I'll have like six posts in a row that I think about and I'll write little ideas for all these different things and then I might have a week and a half before I have another great idea. I'm sure there's other great ideas, but before I have those ideas that translate into LinkedIn posts, I think that, you know, consistency is such an important part of, of LinkedIn, of any social media, like being able to figure out a way that you're not, you're not just showing up once a month and commenting a bunch. And I think to your point, if you're only showing up every, every so often, it might feel like a chore, something that you have to check off your list, whereas if you have that built into your routine, you find out what you like about the platform. I play guitar as well, and I've taught guitar lessons. And in my experience, there's really two types of students. There's the ones I've taught mostly kids. The parents are making them go to class and they never practice and they don't really want to. They don't really want to learn is the reality. But they're supposed to learn guitar, so they do a little bit of it. They never get good. It doesn't matter how many years of lessons they take, because they never really learn to enjoy it. Then there's other kids who come to lessons and basically I'm almost immediately like, well, you don't need lessons. You like playing all the time, just play all the time. And they do it on their own. So, you know, maybe LinkedIn's a little bit like that. If you learn to like it, you're going to get good at it. If you continue to think of it as a chore, it's really hard. It's going to be hard to ever turn it into a true marketing channel for you.

I did a gig last night, so I was up on stage. I'm the main singer in the band, and now and again I pick up my guitar and there was a young kid in the audience, I guess six, seven, eight, sort of age. And he's. We were up on a stage and he was staring up at me and he was. He was absolutely transfixed. It was probably the first time he's ever seen real live music. Not on tv, but real. With a real man standing up there doing stuff. He could see that I was thoroughly enjoying myself and you could just see his face. He was. He was staring at me. All right, I am guessing that he's probably stood there thinking, that is amazing. I want to be like that.

Yeah.

That is the guitar student that you want.

Yeah, yeah.

Not. Not the kid at the back of the room playing Minecraft or whatever.

Yeah.

And so that parents say, yeah, you got to learn some music.

Yeah, absolutely. But. But that kid is probably staring up at me thinking, oh, I want to do that, I want to do that. And he's probably badgering his mum because he wants a guitar. And I've walked past a couple of charity shops today and there's guitars in the. In the charity shop. So, you know, this guy could get a guitar and start learning, but his goal is to be like that. Guy that I saw at that gig that night.

Yeah.

If you want to be good at LinkedIn, you've got to have that goal.

All right?

I want to be like this person or that person, because there's some amazing CPAs and accountants out there doing some amazing stuff on LinkedIn and winning business regularly. Absolutely regularly. I had Rachel Harris on my show a couple of weeks ago. She is one of the fastest growing accountancy firms in the UK. She has got 700 clients. She's got, I think she said she just hired her 18th member of staff. All of her business comes from, from a lot of her business comes from what she's doing on social media. And she has a waiting list, Okay. A waiting list of 99 members of staff who want to come and work with her because they see what she does online and just want to go and work with her. Okay, you tell me how many CPAs and accountants have a list that long of people who want to work with them? You cannot find staff at the moment. But that's all because of what she's doing on social media. This young lady, she's under 30, she's just absolutely smashing it on the park. So find her and make her your guitar playing guy on stage. And if, like, I want to be, I want to be like Rachel, because if you've got that goal, then you're going to make LinkedIn work. All of my business, Matt, all of my business comes from what I do on LinkedIn. I do a little bit on TikTok and a little bit on Instagram, but it's. People are seeing me on LinkedIn, they're coming to me. I had a chat with a chap yesterday and he said, you're this amazing personality on LinkedIn. I've been following you for ages, I want part of it. And he's now joined my mastermin. And I caught up with somebody today that I spoke to 18 months ago because we were talking about her baby and I said, well, you know, how old's the baby now? 18 months. And I said, all that time, that's changed. She said, yeah, but I've been watching your content. She's hardly ever commented on it, but she's been watching it. She's been seeing what I've been up to.

Yeah.

So she sees me now as an expert on this platform. So she's talking to someone and someone says, oh, I really need to up my LinkedIn game. Who's she going to recommend? All right, who are people going to recommend when they want an accountant? Oh, that Rachel. Rachel Harris. She's amazing.

Yeah.

Why can't other CPAs be the same?

Well, let me, let me ask you a question. CPAs tend to be connected with a lot of other CPAs on LinkedIn. And I think one of the struggles a lot of people have when they get started is they don't feel like their audience is composed of anyone who might be a customer. It's mostly, it's mostly other people who do the same job as them. So, you know, I'm mostly connected. At least when I started I was mostly connected with other marketers who are in some ways really competitors. They're great people, you know, collaborative, you know, we help each other, generous. There's, there's a lot of great benefits from having that kind of community of like minded business owners. But my assumption is most people, if they're thinking of LinkedIn as a marketing channel, also want to be connecting with or finding their way into the feeds of people who are not also CPAs and accountants. Do you have any advice or what does that process look like to kind of expand your reach or build your audience?

Yeah, so one of the things I teach in my workshop is actually finding your tribe or the people that you need to follow and seek out. So if you're a cpa, you're looking for small business owners. Now who are small business owners following? They're going to follow recruitment companies, they're going to follow bankers, they're going to follow marketers, they're going to follow HR consultants, car hire companies, hotels, all kinds of different businesses that they're following. And so if you start following those businesses and getting in touch with those businesses, they, then those are the people that are going to refer you the leads or you know, start talking to you. So let's just say nearby there's a recruiter that is doing great content on LinkedIn. What you do is you go onto their feed, go onto their posts and start commenting on those posts. Let's just say there's a recruiter down the road from you who is getting typically 20 to 40 comments on their post most days. Those comments on those posts are going to be small business owners, they're going to be your target audience. And so if this recruiter is adding an awful lot of value, then you're hanging around that. And then what you need to be doing is find other businesses like that. So find a recruiter, find an HR person, find a data security guy or a bitcoin guy or whatever it is, because all of these people are talking to small Business owners.

Yeah.

And then, and then once you start finding that, then it makes it an awful lot easier. One of the things I like doing is working with accountants and bookkeepers. So I follow people that work for QuickBooks, people that work for Xero, people that work for Sage, people that are influences in the space. Like Rachel, for example.

Yeah.

There's an amazing organization in the UK called the Six Figure Bookkeeper. They've got a Facebook group of about 14,000 bookkeepers and it's run by Joe and Zoe. Well, I'm commenting on Zoe and Joey's posts regularly. I'm on their podcast regularly. So that community now know who I am. And so it's just finding your Joe and Zoe and, you know, befriending them, adding comments on their post, adding value. Yeah. So the recruiter will write something about, I don't know, might have done something at the weekend or something. But you can add value to that post without saying you're a cpa, without saying that you do tax. You know, you could turn around and go, oh, these are the sorts of things that I find with working with recruiters or whatever.

Yeah.

Just the fact that you've said that is fine. If your profile is optimized, you've got a decent profile picture and you've got a decent headline, people are going to know who you are. But if you've added value, they're going to go, oh, that's interesting. Who is this guy? They're going to click on that, find, find your profile, and from your profile they see exactly what you're doing. Oh, interesting guy. Oh, writes lots of posts. I'm going to start following or I might connect.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's just finding those right people and that takes a little bit of time. But once you see how it works, then you'll soon start having a pool of other business referrers rather than all of your CPAs. That was a really long answer, wasn't it?

No, but I think that's exactly right. You know, I've told people, if you have, if you have a niche that you're focused on or some industry specifics, find. Find out the conferences that your, your industries go to and then find out who the speakers were at the, at the last one or the ones that are coming up. Follow those people.

That's a brilliant one. Yeah.

And.

And the organizer, organizer of the conference as well, because the organizer of the conference, there'll be a couple of people in that team that are doing an awful lot on social media. And so all the People that want to be at the conference will be commenting on there as well. So. Yeah, great, great one, Matt.

The key isn't just to go and connect with every person you see on LinkedIn, but the key is really to develop more of an organic reach by following the people you want to be working with, follow the people that they're paying attention to, commenting and interacting with that content. So you start showing up in the feed, you, in the comments, probably first, and then if you get some followers through that, you're going to start showing up in their feeds as it grows. Well, Ashley, we've, I mean, we could talk about this forever. I know that you run courses on LinkedIn, so it's not like we're going to cover everything that you have to teach us about it, you know, in a, in a 30 minute podcast. But maybe if we could leave it with what are, what are one or two tips for an accounting firm owner who wants to get started on LinkedIn? What are the things you tell them to start with? And then maybe you could kind of tell us a little bit about your program and how people can connect with you.

The first thing, Matt, is to actually work on your profile. Okay? If you're a cpa, you wouldn't turn up to a business meeting in beachwear, okay? And so therefore your LinkedIn profile needs to be appropriate. So the first thing is a decent photo. Make sure you've got a decent banner behind you so I can read it from my mobile phone. Make sure you've got your headline and then just underneath that, it's got your contact details. Make sure they're filled out. The amount of people that I, you know, connect with, oh, they're interested, I give them a better. I phone them and there's no phone number, there's no email address, or the email address is going to personally email or, you know, Bob Smith at Hotmail or something, you know, and so Those are the four fundamentals. And on my LinkedIn profile, I've got a sheet there that will give you how to do all of that. So there's resources to help you get all of that. I do all that for free. That's the first thing. The next thing to do is be consistent. Now, that doesn't mean post every day, it just means turn up regularly. Now, if we go back to when we talked about the networking event, all right, let's just say there's a networking event in your town on the first Monday of every month, but you only go three times a year, that's not consistent you need to be going every single Monday.

Yeah.

Or every fourth Monday. And turning up and you go there, oh, it's Matt again. Hi, Matt. How are you, Matt? I see you're talking to Sally. Can you introduce me to Sally? And then you start seeing Sally, and then Sally introduces you to somebody else. So by the end of the year, the 12 times that you've been there, you probably know absolutely everybody in the room, but more importantly, everybody in the room knows you. And if you're a cpa, that's awesome news. And that's what you've got to be doing on LinkedIn. So if you come in onto LinkedIn 15 minutes every day and do the right things, then people will start seeing you. And those right things doesn't mean writing content every day. Once a week is when I want to teach it. We don't get five days. Right. The first day it's the basics. The second day it's all about commenting. The third day is optimizing your profile. The fourth day, the Thursday, we start looking at creating content. Okay. It's getting all the basics ready first before you start writing. And again, think of the networking event. The creating content is the creating the content is you being the speaker at that networking event. All right? You're not going to go to your first ever networking event and then be a speaker. You need to build up to it. And that's exactly the same with content.

Well, hopefully that is a little. That's an easier entry point for folks who are looking to dip their toe into LinkedIn and social media. You don't need to jump two feet in creating amazing content. There's all kinds of other little stuff that you do to start.

I've heard of people that they do a quick course with somebody. The challenge is to do a hundred posts in a hundred days. And, like, why would you put yourself under that much pressure? That's like the kids coming to you because their parents have said, and teach them to play guitar. Yeah, it's never gonna happen.

Just get up tomorrow and run a marathon. It should be easy.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then do another one the next day.

Yep. Well, Ashley, this is. This is great. Where can people find you? And let's say someone heard this and said, okay, I believe. I believe in this. I know I got to get going on LinkedIn, but I'm going to need some help. Maybe. Maybe I should. Maybe I should connect with someone who can help me. Do you know anyone that could help? Well, and accounting firm owners, LinkedIn?

Sure. I'm not sure just find me on LinkedIn. It's Ashley Leeds, and I'm the 15 minute guy. If you Google that, I'll probably come up anyway. I put a lot of content out there to help people. I also run the accounting community, so go and join that. And if you go to my, my profile, on my profile is a big banner and it says free resources. And if you follow the arrow down, there's a big link and it's free resources. And in there, everything that I've just talked about, you can get it all for free. I even do a free profile review. And what I'll do is I'll video myself looking at your profile. All right? I'll be honest and give you some pointers. And basically you can watch that video back whenever you want to. And all I ask is you sign up to my newsletter. And my newsletter, I call it the Monday nudge. And I call it the Monday Nudge because every single Monday, I give you a nudge to create some content. And in that nudge, I give you five ideas on what you can write about this week. So because it's all very well, knowing all this now, what do I write about? So I give you those ideas every single Monday, too.

Yeah. Well, that's great. I don't think I have anything else. This is, this is fun. I'm going to, I'm going to follow you. Well, I think we're already connected on LinkedIn, but I'm going to be paying attention to your content and watching for that Monday nudge. I know that. I know that there's a lot that folks that I work with and that I've connected with can learn about LinkedIn. I, you know, this is the Marketing for Accounting firms podcast. I 100% believe that LinkedIn is the best place for accounting firms if you have to pick one channel. Well, I should say. Let me, let me, let me rephrase that. If you're working with professional services, it's especially the best place. There are some communities. If your niche is roofers, maybe you need to be on Facebook or Instagram or some other places. But for most accounting firm owners, LinkedIn's the place to be. And so you should be following Ashley. You should be figuring out how to level up your own LinkedIn game. And I, I encourage you to take it seriously because it's an incredibly powerful marketing channel if you get it up and running. But you're, you're not going to see the results if you just post once a month, hoping that someone might see that and give you a call. It's going to take it's going to take you about 15 minutes a day.

Is what I'm absolutely. Like I said, that's 65 hours a year, Matt. Yeah.

Yeah. That's not so bad. All right. Well, thanks. Thanks for being on the show today, Ashley, and we will catch you on the next one.

Thanks for having me, Matt. Really nice to meet you. Cheerio.

All right. We'll leave it there. Thanks. This podcast, marketing for Accounting Firms, is brought to you by Benchmark Grant Growth Marketing, a marketing agency that helps accounting firms get more calls booked through their website. You can find us@benchmarkgrowthmarketing.com Connect with me, Matt Banker on Linked.