A

Before we get started, I want to ask you something. Are you tired of feeling like AI is moving faster than you can keep up? Because I know what that feels like and I hear it all the time. Marketers keep telling me they're drowning in all the new tools and updates and features and must try frameworks and they got to do all this while they're also doing their job and trying to run their business. And that's why the AI Business Society was created. It's your personal curation team for AI. We tell you what deserves your attention and what you can safely ignore. And inside, you get live trainings from leading AI practitioners and interactive skill building sessions, bite sized learning libraries when you just have a few minutes and a community of incredible marketers who are just like you. Hundreds of them are on the inside and you can join right now and lock in an incredible special sale we've got going on. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI give it a shot. You got a 30 day money back guarantee, so you've got nothing to lose. Go to socialmediaexaminer.com AI and let's now jump back into today's show.

B

Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.

A

Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner and this is the podcast for marketers and and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. Today we're going to explore how to create content on LinkedIn that will attract your ideal prospects. And I'm going to be joined by Will McTighe. Also, if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Will McTighe, helping you to

B

simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.

A

Today we'll explore creating LinkedIn posts that attract your ideal prospects. My special Guest is a LinkedIn strategist and the founder of WM Media, a personal branding business for high growth founders. His software is called say what AI designed to help small business owners grow with LinkedIn content. His LinkedIn focused newsletter is called Level Up. Will McTigh, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

B

Thanks for having me, Michael. Delighted to be here.

A

I'm excited that you're here. Today we're going to talk about LinkedIn and I would love to learn a little bit more about how you got into LinkedIn. Share your story. What was your journey?

B

Yeah, so I moved to the US in 2020. I went to business school at Stanford. And I remember sitting there in a class on personal branding, thinking, ugh, why would I ever do this? No one's serious posts on social media. And fast forward then to now, I've built an audience of like nearly half a million people. And the way it really happened is that I graduated from Stanford and I started my first company. I ended up shutting it down, but in the process, I had a competitor who had a big personal brand. And this guy would basically walk into any meeting he wanted with prospects, with investors, while I was hanging around at conference booths trying to get people to talk to me. And so in early 2024, when I shut down that business, I decided, okay, well, for whatever I do next, I want one of those. And with that, I first started posting on LinkedIn. And the goal originally was that I would build a bit of an audience, so it would make it easier for me to reach out to chemical distributors and defense contractors who. Exactly who I was reaching out to at the time as I was exploring new business ideas. But what I quickly learned was that, wow, actually there's this huge opportunity on LinkedIn. And then in the next four or five months, I grew to 100,000 followers. And now two years later, I'm at 450,000 followers. And a bunch of businesses came out of that. But that was really the long and the short of how I got started.

A

So what is it about what you did? I know we're going to get into it in some more detail, but, like, what is it about what you did that maybe made the difference the second go round for you?

B

Yeah. So I just took it really seriously. I treated it like a job. And I think a lot of people who post on social media treat it like a bit of fun, like something they, you know, like. Like trying to start playing tennis. Like, you don't get good at playing tennis without really seriously playing it. And that's, I think, the problem with how a lot of people approach social media is they try a couple times and then they just. And then they just give up, or they just admit or they just decide, like, okay, I'm never going to be, like, really exceptional at this and I'll just, like, post occasionally. I think what I did is I got a few quick wins under my belt and I realized, actually, wow, there are formulas for doing this and, and there are Strategies that can help set you up to perform, to create content that is really effective. And it's really about understanding human psychology more than anything else.

A

I love it. And you get to talk to a lot of people who are obviously very interested in LinkedIn. And there's plenty of people listening right now that use LinkedIn all the time. But maybe they're making some of these common mistakes you see, or maybe there's some misconceptions they have in their mind about how LinkedIn operates. So from your perspective when it comes to LinkedIn content, what do you think most people are getting wrong?

B

I think the first thing that people need to think about is the man on the street test. So whenever you post a piece of content, you need to imagine that you are standing there on the street and there are strangers walking past and whether if you showed it to them, it would make them stop and talk to you. And that's a big reframe of how we think. Because most people post on social media like they're at a dinner party. Like you are a bunch of people who've all opted into sitting next to each other and to chatting. And so if you ramble a little bit, you tell a story that's not so great, then people will be patient with you because they've decided they want to talk to you in the first place. Social media is not like that. And that requires just a massive reframe of how you think. So you have to. And how you write. So you have to put your most interesting nuggets very much at the front and at the top, and. And that's in the hook. So that's the first thing. The other interesting things, particularly about LinkedIn, are the follower count doesn't really matter anymore. So with my software business, we do a LinkedIn report where we look at anonymized data of our users. And what we found was that some of the smallest accounts, accounts with 10 to 25k followers, were growing just as fast as accounts with 100k or more followers each month. And what's happened is that it's become algorithms. And LinkedIn's algorithm in particular has become better at pushing niche content. And it also makes easier for small accounts to grow. That's another thing. I can go on and on.

A

I love it. I love it. And we're going to get into a lot of this in a little bit. If people do what we're about to talk about today and they pay very close attention to what you're going to share, what are some of the benefits or upsides that they could potentially achieve if they try some of these things we're about to talk about.

B

Yeah, well, the first thing I'd say is it's content is a long game like anything else. So I'm not going to come here and tell you it's like get rich quick, because it's not. It takes a long time. In my position, my business is in now, just coming into my third year of posting online, will do more than $2 million a year. And all of that has come from LinkedIn. It's come from brand partnerships on one side. It's come from lead generation for both my software business, which helps small business owners, and also my marketing agency, which helps CEOs of pretty big companies to build their brands. And pretty much all of that has come directly from posting on LinkedIn.

A

So basically, yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is that, hey, if you pay attention to what Will is about to talk about today, and you've been struggling to have a lot of the ideal prospects that want to work with you, or you've been struggling to get in front of the right people, this strategy we're about to talk about kind of opens up the floodgates. Is that what I'm hearing you say you're about to say something else there as well?

B

Yeah, this is. This is the strategy. If you apply for a long period of time, will work.

A

Love it. Okay, so where do we begin when it comes to LinkedIn content? When it comes to your strategy, where. Where do you recommend we get started?

B

Yeah, I think the first challenge that people run into is they get scared actually just posting in the first place. And so they tie themselves into mental knots around, like, what should they be posting about? And the reality is, is that you figure this stuff out as you are posting. Like, if you go back to some of my earliest content, remember I posted once about crypto, and that's because I used to work in the crypto space. I posted about how I had a great experience with Delta Airlines customer service. Again, just some, like, random thoughts that came into my mind. And I wouldn't have got where I am without making all those mistakes and experimenting along the way. And so you need to have that messy period at the start. And it's hard because you have to make mistakes in public because your people in your network will see what you're posting. That said, when you're posting bad content, it doesn't get shown to that many people. And so if it is that bad, not many people will see it in the first place.

A

Got it. So what I'm hearing you say is we gotta get our reps in a little bit, and for some people it's just posting anything. When we were prepping for this, you said something to me which I thought was really intriguing, which is content as a funnel. Talk to me a little bit about what that means and how people can think about their LinkedIn posts through that kind of lens.

B

Yeah, well, if your goal is to grow your business using social media, there are really three parts to your funnel. And the first job to be done is building awareness and helping people just know who you are. And really I just call this awareness content where you're trying to grow your followers. The next part of the funnel is building trust. So, okay, these people know you maybe because you've educated them in some way, but why will they trust you? Why will they buy from you? And then the third part is actually lead generating content, which is really, it's around showing them proof that you can deliver results for them on the topic that they really care about. And it's once you have those three parts together that you have a funnel that brings in new people into your audience, builds trust with them, and then proves to them that you can deliver on the promise that. That your services provide.

A

Love it. Okay, let's dig into each one of these. Let's start with this awareness content. Talk to me a little bit about, like, what does it look like? How do we craft this kind of content? And let's dig into that.

B

Yeah, absolutely. So to start off, the goal of awareness content is to grow your followers. It is. So you people see this, see you post things and go, okay, I need to follow this person. And people do that when they think they're going to get something from you. It's maybe you're going to educate them, maybe you're going to inspire them. But the goal here is you need to think about delivering value in every single awareness post that you create. And once you flip into that mindset, that is the first most important thing to do. Okay, how do you do that? Well, one of the easiest ways that you can get followers in your niche is, is you can educate them. You can educate them on topics that they care about. And so an example of a piece of educational content could be a reaction to some news in your niche. For example, if you are targeting founders, Anthropic yesterday or a few days ago released a list of startups that they'd like to see build built. And you could post that, particularly if it's breaking news with your opinion on where some of the biggest opportunities are. And so if I was an aspiring founder, I'd be interested in reading that because it gives me some value. It helps me figure out, okay, here are some potential business ideas that I would not have seen otherwise. And if you do that enough times, that person reading that thinks, okay, this is the person I go to when I want to Breaking news for founders on AI. Not just AI in general, but breaking news for founders and you know something I probably should have started with is whenever you're building a funnel, you need to think about who am I targeting in the first place? Like what are their pains? What are their wants? And then you fit your content around that.

A

Love it.

B

So for example, another easy topic is is burnout. This is more of an awareness play rather than an education play. Burnout is a topic that basically everyone in the world can relate to, but you can apply it to your specific niche. So for example, if you sell to chief Information Security officers, you can talk about burnout, but their lived experience around that. So it's not just like being burnt out at work, it's about specific ways that you get burnt out as a ciso. And in that it could be, for example, the number of security breaches you're dealing with, how it's very high stress work rather than this like broader, broader phenomenon. The second way is just pure educational content. And so what we see on LinkedIn is a lot of infographics and carousels. These are a very effective top of funnel, which is what we're talking about here with awareness content, visual ways to get people to save what you produce and then decide to follow you. And so what you can do here is you can look, just scroll your feed and create a little Google sheet with a few headings like post link, number of likes and whenever you see a post that performs really well relative to the other things on your feedback and also to the average for the poster in the first place, you add it to your Google sheet and then you look at it and go, okay, is there a way I could apply this topic to my audience of going back to our example, like Chief Information Security Officers, for example, you may see a post that says where the title is something like Harsh career truths. This is like a very popular topic across all social media. And you could replace the word career with harsh truths of being a CISO or harsh truths of working in cybersecurity. And what you're doing there is you're taking a theme that has performed really well, and applying it to your niche. And this is a really important concept in content creation is finding topics that have worked before for other people and adapting them to your niche and your audience. And this isn't to say. And this isn't to say copy, but this is to say, look at what performs well and apply it to your target audience.

A

Okay, cool. Yeah. I've got some questions. And first let me tell you what I've heard you say. I heard you say that we can take educational content, which, for example, could be my reaction, your reaction, the listener's reaction to something that happens in your niche. Like, here's some new news and here's what I think it means. Right. For your ideal target audience. You also spoke about awareness. I want to get a little distinction between awareness and education, just because some people might think that, I mean, it's all under this category of awareness, right? Which is we're trying to attract more followers to us. And, and you mentioned this burnout example versus this reaction to the news example. Is this one in the same. I would love to get a little distinction whether there's multiple forms of awareness content here.

B

Yeah. So with the burnout example, it is more focused, that is more awareness. And what I mean by that is it is a topic that is broadly relatable, but it is slightly less educational. And so you're tapping into something that performs well because a lot of people can relate to it, but it's less likely to drive follower growth. And I see these education and awareness, like being on a spectrum where you can give someone talk about something that a lot of people are mildly interested in. Like a really simple example would be like, kindness. Like, if you say something like, everyone should be kind on social media, it will get a bajillion likes because everyone agrees with it. But it's not necessarily going to get people to follow you.

A

Got it.

B

But it may get some, some people may choose to follow you from that, that kindness post. But the conversion of views to followers is going to be a lot lower than if. Than a piece of educational content. Like, for example, here's the topics. Here are the things that you can build as a founder with AI, or here's a playbook for personal branding.

A

I'm curious what your thoughts are on. For some people, they feel like chasing, you know, news and educating has a limited amount of reach for them. And others might feel like, okay, I would, I would love to tell stories. Right. So maybe there's a way that I could talk about. Let's say I'm Targeting entrepreneurs. Maybe I could talk about that. That the challenge entrepreneurs face is burnout is real. You know what I mean? And sometimes we. We work really long hours and here's an example of a story. I was just experienced something that I just experienced. And sometimes we say to ourselves, why am this? But then we remember what our real reasons are, blah, blah, blah. Does that kind of stuff work or is that just more going to be for like a different category, not necessarily for growing followers? Is that kind of what I'm hearing you say? What's your thoughts on that?

B

Yeah, I think that that fits more into trust building.

A

I see.

B

Okay. I would say that, you know, these categories aren't like totally discreet.

A

Right.

B

Like, you can have a post that is a. A post that will attract a lot of views and may also get some followers, but also builds a bit of trust. And there are educational stories that can fit into that category. But yeah, it really depends. Those posts tend to convert less followers per view.

A

Right. And I think the lesson I'm hearing from you is, hey, people follow people because they feel like they're going to gain something from those people. And if you want to increase your followers, which will ultimately lead to moving them down the funnel towards trust, which we're going to talk about next, then you should probably pick something that you know for a fact your audience is interested in. So, for example, AI. You know, I have a podcast on AI. If I wanted to, I could for sure talk about the latest news coming from Anthropic and OpenAI and Google and talk about what I think about it. If I did that, I would probably grow people that are interested in following me for AI. That would be an example of something like what you're talking about. Is that correct?

B

Yeah, exactly. And I think where people go wrong on this is then they just chase any trend.

A

Yeah.

B

And they'll just do, you know, what you described? Whereas they'll sell something that is. Maybe they're. Yeah. Selling to. Let's go. Going back to the example of like chief investment security officers. They're selling to this audience when they just start talking about, here are the latest courses from Anthropic on how to use AI. And that's just like not relevant for their target audience.

A

Love it.

B

Unless it is. Here are the courses that can help you with cybersecurity. Here are the AI courses that can help you with cybersecurity.

A

Love it. Okay, so we started with this top of funnel. Right. Which is this educational content or awareness. What comes next?

B

Yeah. So maybe the final Point on that top of funnel content is that if your goal primarily initially is to grow followers, then you can lean into that. And do say if you're doing seven days a week, you can do four out of seven as that post format.

A

Love it.

B

The next bucket, as you mentioned, Michael, is trust building content. And the way that you create posts like this are typically story driven. But let's just unpick what a story actually is and what it isn't on social media. So the mistakes I see people, a lot of people make with trust building content is they will either tell a story that is like very painful and personal but without adding a lesson on the end or something that makes it easy for the reader to understand what they, what they can take from this. Because your story is a vehicle for a message.

A

Love that.

B

And most people where they go, oh I should tell a story, let me just think about insert traumatic experience and they just write about it. And you know, I've seen posts where you read it and you're like, oh that's really sad. But there's no like it's one hard to digest the so what? And it doesn't leave the reader with like a clear takeaway and isn't necessarily relevant to their business as well. Like you can obviously tell stories that are a bit more about you and a bit more personal, but trust building content often doesn't matter as much until people have chosen to follow you in the first place. Like if you think about the famous people that you follow and your interest in their lives, you're interested because they have already delivered value, value to you in some other way and then you get curious.

A

I love this by the way, and I just want to throw something in here. I feel like I almost exclusively write this kind of content, the trust building content. And it's probably because I've been in this space for a long time. I've got a lot of loyal followers, you know, who have been following me across the social platforms for a while. And I'm kind of of the mindset that I just want to establish trust. So I share stories and I almost always like, like I love what you said, that there's the story is the vehicle for a message. So every time I share a story there's something sewed in the middle of it, right? Which is probably a product or a conference or something that I'm working on. And if there isn't one, then I don't tell the story. So I would love you to share a little bit about your wisdom and insights and how we can actually accomplish this? How can people actually build trust? Because this is, you know, maybe more important for those people that have an established audience, but nonetheless, not still important for the funnel. Right.

B

Yeah. So maybe one additional caveat is like, I also, I agree, Michael. Like, for me as well, like, I now post more trust building content than I did in the early days. And what a lot of people starting out do is they see a big account and they go, oh, I should just do what they're doing now. When actually what they're doing now may be very different to what they did when they built their following in the first place. And, you know, to your point, like, you have an audience that knows you and is interested in what you have to say, and so what you care about is going deeper with them. So you have a pod, you have podcasts, and you're posting stories, but that isn't necessarily the right. Always the right advice for the person starting out when no one, you know, really cares about what you have to say in the first place.

A

Love it. So what kind of stories should we be sharing?

B

Yeah, so I think there's. There's a few different ways you can share stories. The first is an authoritative story where you are leaning into in your text hooks the first three lines of your post. Some experience that makes people be like, oh, I should listen to this guy, for example. 20 years of marketing experience in 60 seconds is something that you could write. And effectively, the trade off there is that someone goes, okay, he's got 20 years of doing this. If I bother to spend the next 60 seconds reading what he has to say, I'm going to learn something. And you can shape that then into a story. You could also do it as like a numbered list, but you could also do that as a story. You can also lead with a highly emotive moment that's like more of a personal story hook. Like, for example, I saw a post recently that was written by a guy who was Jewish. And the hook was, my colleague delivered me a biryani to celebrate Eid. He's Muslim, I'm Jewish. This is why I love Silicon Valley. And it was a story about bringing together groups that have conflict right now with love. And that just went berserk. And it was like a picture of a biryani curry. And so that is an example of a story where you tap into an underlying piece of psychology, which is that we want more love in the world, but you wrap it in a story from your life. Another example of a story that I've told is how that ties in my business. Is that so? A bunch of my audience is small business owners and what they want is freedom in their lives. And so I wrote a story about how because of my businesses give me flexibility, I can go to the UK whenever I want and spend time with my mom and how she gave up a lot for me. And having that flexibility is really valuable to me. And that story was a vehicle for the message, which is build your backup option. Build flexibility in your life. And, you know, part of way to do that is building your personal brand. So those are a couple specific examples. More tactically, what you can do is if you're talking to clients all the time and you have call transcripts is you can dump all those call transcripts into Claude or ChatGPT and you can say, okay, give me powerful stories, like 20 or 30 powerful stories from these called transcripts, and then go through that list of 30 and pick out the ones that you think are the strongest. The second thing you could do is also just record, also ask the AI, what have I said and what stories have I shared in those conversations that are impactful too, because you'll have, in your own businesses have shared stories that have helped you make points that you'll have forgotten about. And that's also great fodder for writing stories. And the framework I use is story lesson. It also has in brackets, application at the end. But really the goal here is to just make sure that, that you, you tell your story. You don't get distracted by going off on tangents, because that's a big mistake people make in content, is they think, oh, I'll add this detail and that will make it better. But actually you distract the reader and then you tie it back to a lesson at the end that the reader can apply themselves. And often you want your stories to follow an arc. So an arc is where there was some adversity and then there was a turning point. And that story structure really performs well for people.

A

Love it. Okay, so just to add clarity, the story lesson application is something that you could give to your AI and basically say, hey, make sure that this story that I'm writing here is following this particular model. And those that don't know AI knows all these different models, these frameworks. So that's kind of cool. I love that. Hey, before we get back to the show, I want to talk to you about something I've been thinking a lot about lately. You already use AI, and if you're like me, every single day, you're using it. And you're not someone who needs to be convinced that it matters. But here's what I've learned from working with hundreds of marketers inside our AI Business Society over the last two years. The problem is almost never AI. It's trying to do it all on your own. You're testing tools that you're likely not using again. You're rewriting prompts because they don't sound right. You're probably watching tutorials that give you lots of ideas, but you have no idea what to do with it. And you're working harder with AI, not smarter. And that's exactly why I built the AI Business Society. Every live training is led by an expert practitioner who uses AI in their marketing all the time. And I'm personally there on every single one of these training sessions to make sure that nothing gets too crazy or abstract. You leave with something you can implement that very day. Plus you're surrounded by a community of marketers who are just like you and they're all there to support each other. And you get to be part of this awesome community. The investment is $497 for the full year. And if within the first 30 days you decide it it's not for you and you join, then just ask for a refund. We're not going to ask any questions, but at least you gave it a shot. Head over to social media examiner.com AI that's socialmediaexaminer.com AI and now let's get back to the show. Okay, so I want to ask a clarifying question before we move on to the next one. It seems as if everything we're talking about is written content on LinkedIn. Does this also apply to other mediums and styles of content? I heard you talk about carousels a little earlier, but what about video as well? Talk to us a little bit about the medium. You understand what I mean when I'm asking?

B

Yeah, yeah, of course. So LinkedIn is a platform. The users have a pattern of behavior where they consume text and image based content. Like that is the natural way that people have consumed content on LinkedIn in the past. And so I would have that as the core of your content strategy. And video is something they've introduced recently and it's very helpful for building trust. So my videos don't tend to get anywhere near as much reach as my. Yeah, my videos don't tend to get anywhere near as much reach as my text plus image content. That said, when I get on calls with people, they remember me from my video and so what does that mean for you? That means if you're just starting out, I would not just do video, but have a video a week as part of your strategy as you start to migrate more into trust building content. And don't get beat yourself up when it doesn't get a ton of views and know that you're investing in this so people feel like they know you better.

A

You said something intriguing, which is my text plus image content. Some people like me just write pure text because I don't feel like I have a good image to go with the text. Have you experimented with text on its own? And text with images? That's non carousel. Because in my mind I'm like, okay, I only have a couple of lines before that more button shows up. Right. Or whatever, what I see more. Right. And if I put an image in there, then maybe they'll see the image but not the copy. What's your thoughts on and on text and image instead of text or image?

B

Yeah. So I include an image on basically every post. When we did our algorithm report recently, we found that, and it's been the same every of the five times that we've done it, that text posts, the median text post does worst of any formats. That said, they can go viral just like the others, but they tend to do so at a lower frequency.

A

So what kind of images should we include in these posts?

B

Posts?

A

What's your wisdom or feedback on that? Because I think a lot of people have an opportunity here, including myself.

B

Yeah. So the important thing about an image is that it matches the first two lines of text, not that it matches the whole post. Because people are evaluating whether to click on your post based on the combination of those first two three lines and the image. And a mistake I see people make is is they will add an image that ties in with line 17 of the of the post. And so when the reader sees the image and the first two lines, they don't immediately understand what's going on and so they just scroll by.

A

What kind of images are we including here? Because are we talking AI images? Are we talking about just beauty shots of you, like help everybody understand? Kind of. Kind of. Because you know, on Facebook and Instagram it's all beauty shots of the person. You know what I mean? I don't know how it is on LinkedIn.

B

So infographics and carousels are the two formats that consistently go most viral. LinkedIn is a platform that started with education and so that's a format I lean on pretty heavily. So I do probably four infographics or carousels a week. But that doesn't necessarily build trust. That fits into this follower growth top of funnel bucket that we talked about at the start. The format that builds trust is pictures of you.

A

Okay.

B

Typically.

A

So what do you recommend? Do you just like take some selfie shots with your, with your camera or whatever? I mean, like, you know, or, or do you have to hire a photographer or use AI? Well, like, what's your recommendation?

B

So it really depends on your goal. If you're a new account starting out, you have a deficit of authority. People don't know why they should listen to you in the first place. And so pictures that signal high authority can perform very well or can be useful for you. So for example, you're on stage, there's a picture of you, because implicitly, when people see that, they go, oh, some people are listening to Will on stage. Maybe I should bother to read his post for 10 seconds here. And you signal that you are high status. Because people, when you're starting out, people don't, if they don't know you, they assume you have no status. And so don't bother read what you're having to say. So microphone on stage. I obviously I wouldn't recommend staging these. I'd recommend doing the work to get. Get those opportunities. Similarly, I wouldn't use selfies too often because selfies do the opposite. Selfies signal low status unless they are with like someone notable or there's something like some real reason why you're taking that. Because a selfie says, hey, I'm bothered enough to take a photo right now. And that implies low status. Okay.

A

So when you're telling a story about something happening in your life, I mean, I would have an old photo. An old photo. Okay. Or maybe even just a team picture. Okay, got it.

B

Like, yeah, so it really depends on the story.

A

Yeah.

B

But if the story is, for example, related to your business, it could be a picture of you and a colleague or a picture of you and the team. That is not necessarily a selfie. I mean, you can. Again, these rules aren't like totally hard and fast, but the general principles I'm describing are, are correct.

A

Oh, this is really useful because then I think what I'm hearing you say is like, hey, if you're working from home like I am, you might not have these pictures unless you happen to be at a conference, like my conference, Social media marketing World. And I got a bazillion of those shots, so I probably just need to pull some of those out of the arsenal, you know, What I mean, and, or me smiling with some sort of celebrity standing next to me or something like that, and use those kind of shots in my stories. And it's fascinating because I don't ever add images and I would imagine if I did, I would probably perform better.

B

I would say it will at least double the performance of your post.

A

Wow. Okay. That was a fun little diversion. Thank you. Okay, so let's just go over what we've talked about so far. We're talking about a funnel here with your LinkedIn content and we're talking about how on LinkedIn most people are text focused. It seems to be like the predominant place. But we also addressed how having an image with your written word is helpful. Now, real quick, when you add an image, do you get less of the copy that shows up or is it about the same amount of copy, image or no image?

B

The same.

A

It's the same. Okay.

B

Yeah.

A

We started with awareness content, which is where we were talking about mostly creating content that has value in it, that will get people to follow you. And then the next step is building trust. And the reason you want to build trust, we didn't really state this, is that people like to work with those whom they know like and trust. So you mentioned at the start that four out of seven articles in a week or posts in a week are going to be awareness posts. How many of them are trust posts before we get into the next thing?

B

Yeah, I would say two.

A

Okay.

B

Typically.

A

So we have two left.

B

Yeah, well, we have, we have one left. So we have four, four, two and then one. But, but I think it's worth also talking about the circumstances when you know you can, you can, you should deviate. Like this is a spectrum based on whatever your goals are. So for example, if I just wanted to build trust and was like, I don't care about growing followers anymore, then I could just post six or seven trust building posts a week and I would build more trust. And similarly, if you have a program launching, so for example, in your case it might be okay, I've got my conference coming up. You can do seven days a week, like for a week of promotional content about why people should go, it's just over a longer period of time. You can't just do promotional content.

A

Well, first of all, I love the quantity here because I am only posting one day a week and it's only because I am a busy CEO, you know what I mean? And I, and it's hard enough for me to write one thing a week, but I love the fact That I could write more and I would imagine I could help me do this for sure. So I'd love to, to talk about lead generation because, yeah, that's like the next thing. But before we get into it, not everybody is generating leads. Some people are direct selling and they don't have like a lead nurture kind of thing. So does this also apply for people that are direct selling? You know, this lead generation stuff we're about to talk about, or is that a whole different category?

B

When you say direct selling, what do you mean?

A

I mean like let's say tickets to my conference, right? Like let's say I don't have a sales team selling it. You know what I mean? I just want.

B

Oh yeah, 100%.

A

Yeah, okay.

B

Yeah, 100%.

A

Okay, cool.

B

So, yeah, the final bucket, as you mentioned, is really lead generating content. And the, the point here is that, okay, you've attracted followers with your educational top of content. They now feel like they know you and trust you a bit. And now you need to de risk their investment because you've, you've built authority on your niche area. And so they know, okay, you've told me some things that have changed how I thought about whatever it is your zone of expertise is. But now my question is like, how do I know if spending money in your conference is going to be a good use of my money? And so the buckets of content that we talk about now are to help de risk people's fears around spending money with you. So bucket number one, transformation case studies. When you see a testimonial on most websites, it says, Will was a great guy, love working with him, can't recommend enough. This is not helpful lead generating content because when a buyer is looking to make a purchase, they are trying to find people like them with the problems they have, get the results that they want. And so a transformation case study needs to follow an arc. It needs to describe as big a result in a shorter period of time. So it could be, if you take an example of like follower growth, it could be Jimmy grew 10,000 followers in a week. And I give you that example just to say big outcome, short period of time because people want, people want as great an outcome as possible and with at least work and with as high security as possible. And then what you do, once you've made it very clear in your text hook, you then go into describing the problems they have when they started. Which, let's go back to the case of Jimmy. It could be Jimmy had been posting for three years and he had grown 10 followers. And you'd read from that. Oh, wow. Jimmy had been trying for ages. I've been trying for ages, too. But with going to Michael's conference, Jimmy learned all these new things that then allowed him to grow 10,000 followers in. In a week.

A

Got it.

B

So you had a hook that shows social proof. You have a section on the problems in the relatable language as possible. You describe the results, and then you need a little bit on what changed how you work together. I remember the person you're describing or the business you're describing is the hero of the story, not you. You can't be like, I did this for them and they wouldn't have got this without me. It has to be more like you helped them because you did. Because they wouldn't have got it.

A

Or they made the decision to invest in themselves at Blank. And as a result of that decision, they were able to transform. Right?

B

Yeah, Something along the lines of that, with a bit of specifics around what they did. So it could be like they followed my program and they, you know, and maybe there's a sentence as well around. They worked really hard to implement everything and, you know, couldn't have done it without the hard work or something that, you know, puts them on a pedestal. And then at the end, you have some call to action that tells people what they can do, take a next step. And ideally, there's some authentic urgency in there. So if we go back to the example of your conference, we know it has a date, so, like, the conference is on this date. And so you naturally have some urgency built into your product.

A

Is that going to kill our reach?

B

Because of the algorithm, I include links in every single one of my posts that I have posted in the last year.

A

Really? Okay.

B

Yes.

A

Oh, interesting. So talk about that a little bit.

B

Yeah. So I think this is A. On LinkedIn, yes, there is a slight negative impact of including a link. But when we looked at our data from more than 100,000 posts, we found that posts with a lot of links actually did a lot better than posts without links. And let me explain why. It's not because links. It's not because links make your post perform better. It's because the content in those posts with links was so fundamentally valuable that so many people clicked save or dwelled on it or sent it to someone that. That overcame any negative impact of external links.

A

Well, I'm imagining you're pulling out the open graph data that it wants to pull in naturally when you put a link in there. Right. Like, or if you're including an image, it won't do it. But you know, if you just have a text post and you throw a link in there, LinkedIn is going to want to try to pull the thumbnail of the link, you know what I mean, into the post.

B

Yeah. So typically these posts that perform really well with a lot of links are educational resources.

A

Got it. Okay, cool.

B

So it's like the marketers 10 resources a marketer should read.

A

Yeah.

B

Or something like that.

A

So it's a call to action for something that is super valuable within its own right? Typically, yeah.

B

And anyway, the thing I say to people is that you are on LinkedIn because you're trying to grow your business and that growth typically happens off platform. So you should just take the hit.

A

Love it. What other kind of transformational or lead generation stuff could we do?

B

So the one final thing I'd say about what I just described is the visual really matters. I often talk to creators who are like, hey, I've been trying to get leads and like it's not working. And I'm like, oh, let's look at your feed. I look at the feed and I don't see a single case study. And they say, oh, that post was a case study. I'm like, yes. But I couldn't tell from the first three lines in the visual. So it's really important to have things like a text message screenshot or an imessage or a slack community of someone being like thanks so much for your help Michael or that conference was so good. Thank you so much. I got insert benefit, insert benefit, insert benefit from going. And what a lot of people do is they incentivize these messages. So they tell people you'll be put into a raffle for a special prize if you submit your feedback. And the reason is most people are busy so it's hard to get reviews from people because they have other stuff going on. So that's one format that's just part of the transformation case study. The other one is video testimonials. Again, raw and unproduced the better. So you could get a client talking about their experience working with you. That's a usual and effective post format. Another one is logo posts. So logo posts is where you put your company logo along with a well known brand's logo on just like a block of solid background color. And what you're doing there is you're associating your brand with, with this well known brand. So if someone hits your feed, if someone hits your profile and they see it they go, okay, well, Microsoft worked with Michael, so maybe I should too. Because they're a well known, reputable brand and so you're borrowing their brand recognition. The next format is video demos. So if you have a product, like a software product, showing how someone can use this to get to a specific goal. And this isn't features, so it's not like, hey, we released new feature, it's working through a specific pain point and workflow that they have to show them how they're going to solve their problem. And the thumbnail for that video needs to be very clear on what that is. So what I've seen from the CEO of ZoomInfo is how to find in market buyers in your territory in four minutes. And so if you're a salesperson, you see, oh, I want to find more buyers in my territory in four minutes. And so they'll watch it and then maybe they'll sign up for a demo.

A

Wow. Will, this has been super, super helpful. If folks want to connect with you on the socials, presumably LinkedIn is where you want them to go. How do they find you? And then if they're interested in working with you or checking out your software, where exactly do you want to send them?

B

Yeah, so my profile is just willmactai W I L L M C T I G H E And if you heard me on this podcast, make sure you send your connection request with that because then I'll actually see it. And then to check out my software, go on, say what AI. Just say what AI? That's small business owners. And then, yeah, if you want to work with me on, on your company's personal branding, then send me a DM on LinkedIn. That's the best place to find me right now. We don't have a website.

A

Tell everybody what your software does.

B

Sure. So say what gives you the tools to build a brand on LinkedIn. So really what that means is finding top performing content. It means helping you to comment more efficiently, helping you to write posts, helping you to design infographics. It has all that in one place.

A

So all the stuff we've been talking about today, your software can help with essentially is what you're saying, right?

B

Yeah, exactly. Like I built this because I had problems doing all this stuff and I tried the tools and I didn't really like them.

A

Check it out at SayWhat AI Will. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom with us.

B

Awesome. It was great to be here. Thanks for having me.

A

Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com 7:2:1 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a little while, we'd love a review. And do let your friends know about this show. And do check out my other show, the AI Explored Podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Before you go if you're tired of figuring out AI all on your own and testing tools that don't seem to work the way you want them to work and constantly rewriting scripts and prompts because they don't sound like you, the AI Business Society was built for you. Every week we cut through all the noise. Every training is led by expert practitioners and you're surrounded by marketers who are just like you. And right now you can join for $497, which is our special sale price, and your rate is locked in for life. And you got 30 days to ask for a refund if it's not for you. So what have you got to lose? Check it out@socialmediaexaminer.com AI and I'll catch you on the next episode.