Recording

The speaker encourages deleting reposts on LinkedIn, as it doesn't affect one's profile. The rules for the LinkedIn audio event are discussed, including no recordings and raising hands to join on stage. The speaker and Richard discuss their beards. The official Insight of the Algorithm report is mentioned, revealing that reach has dropped 30-40%. Engagement and conversions have increased despite the decline in reach. The algorithm is constantly changing, and more users on the platform means reach is spread across more people. Engagement has increased for both the speaker and Richard. The speaker discusses the importance of engaging with posts and asks the audience about using PS questions in every post. Please feel free to delete your repost, it's not going to affect anything on your profile, your reach, your impression, nothing whatsoever. So make sure to use the second option, which is repost without thoughts, that's the easiest one, easiest way you can support it. That being said, I would like to dive into the event itself, guys. So as you know, if you've joined my events in the past, I have a set of rules that I religiously follow on these events. So I'm just going to walk you through some house rules. The way these LinkedIn audio events work is, A, there's no recordings. So if you're here right now, you're going to get all the juice, and if you're not, touche, because that's part of the exclusivity of LinkedIn audio events. If you're here, you're getting all the value, you can chat on stage with us, but as soon as it's over, no recordings, nothing. So thank you for being here, it is truly a pleasure to be speaking to all of you. Second thing, yes, Richard and I will be bringing people up on stage, so in the bottom right corner of your screens, whether you're on desktop, whether you're on mobile, you have this option that says raise hands. If you raise your hand, that is an indicator that you would like to join us live in front of thousands of people. Ask a question, chat with us. So rule number three is, if you get called up on stage, guys, please, you will be keeping it super short, and here's why. I like to keep these events fast-paced and really value-packed, and I don't like it if we just talk and talk and talk. If you have compliments to share, stuff like that, please don't take this the wrong way, but send those compliments in the comments, okay? Because while you're on the stage, we really just want to make it value-packed for everyone else on the stage. So you're going to get a chance to ask your question, and as soon as you ask your question, I'm going to move you off the stage back to the audience. So we're not going to be having this deep conversation that's going to last for five, ten minutes with just one person. No. A person comes on stage, they ask their question, maybe for me, maybe for Richard, maybe for both. We're going to respond, and then immediately we bring the next person on stage, okay? If this is clear, guys, could I get a reaction from you, a heart or a thumbs-up, if you're clear with the rules. So we'll be bringing people up on stage in segments. Right now for the next couple of minutes, I have a question to ask Richard, and right after that question, we'll be bringing the first person up on stage, okay? So we're going to be keeping it dynamic. Richard and I are not the only ones who are going to be talking. A lot of reactions, by the way. Thank you. Thank you for being clear on the rules, and thank you for respecting everyone's time here. So, Mr. Richard Vandervlot, I have a question for you that's really serious. Oh, boy. Yeah. Now that you and I have met in person, whose beard is better, objectively speaking? Definitely yours. Definitely yours. First of all, I told you I missed my barber's appointment. Secondly, you have this big secret that you have an on-the-go comb to comb your beard, which I don't. I'm going to gift you a wooden comb, okay? That would be really amazing. Yeah. No, definitely yours. So that's out of the question. That's easy to answer. That was a big question in the comments, believe it or not. When I first posted about this event, there was actually several comments about it, and I posted a pinned comment about it as well, and we had a lot of fun, a lot of chatter in the comments. So, yeah, man, thank you for that. But, big thing, I have a question for you. The official Insight of the Algorithm report is coming out next week, right? Yeah. February 6th, next Tuesday. So, guys, there you have it. February 6th. If you're following Richard, be there on February 6th on his profile, and if you're not, go follow him, because that Algorithm report is going to be super insightful, super detailed, and it's actually going to reveal some new stats, new data about certain behaviors on LinkedIn that we do as users, and it affects our reach, whether positively or negatively, or certain things that are just out of our control. Like, the Algorithm keeps changing. That's the beautiful part about this platform. I feel like a lot of people don't realize that it is constantly changing. Like, one thing that's true today, you know, could be completely different six or 12 months from now. The rules that we had last year on LinkedIn don't currently apply. So, I actually have a question for the audience, because I fall into this group. The group is called The Reach Is Lower. So, guys, if you can give us a thumbs-up reaction if your reach in the last, like, two or three months has been significantly lower on LinkedIn. Is that true for you as well? Okay, I see some thumbs-ups. And for those of you that feel like, no, this is not the case, can you leave us a heart reaction? Basically, no, my reach is the same or my reach is significantly better. Okay, there's a lot of hearts as well, Richard. So, we have a divided audience. What is your take? Like, you have all the data. You can just give us your personal take. You don't have to reveal anything from the Algorithm. How do you see it? Well, my personal experience is that my reach dropped somewhere between 30% and 40%, which I think is based on the data. But, again, data is average. And thank you for mentioning the Algorithm Report. I'm very happy that we could partner this year with Ivana from AuthorUp, which made the data much more... We have much more data. We have analyzed over 1 million posts from up to 36,000 different people. And, in general, also our own research shows that reach has dropped 30% to 40%, which, if you think about it, makes sense because LinkedIn is promoting, facilitating more and more people to create content. We have the collaborative articles. We have the easy repos, which makes you a creator. So, the more people that publish content, the less room we get in the feed. So, you need to work harder to stand out in the feed. That's the first thing. More interesting, because I still think view is an impression. I'm not going to lie, Jasper. It's food for the ego. It's food for my ego. But I'm more interested in the engagement and even more interested in the conversions incoming in by DMs, specifically for my target audience. And the interesting fact is that while reach for 95% of members has significantly dropped, engagement, for example, for me, has grown with 10% to 15%. So, 35% less reach still, 50% more engagement, and, in the end, also more conversion than the year before. Frankly, I don't care. And you're right. The algorithm will change. I always say people will also change. People who like your post today, if they hear something about you tomorrow, they might not like your next post. People make up their minds every day. So, it's not only the algorithm that changes. But I see people in my feed that are more successful than last year. They really tweaked their content strategy. They stepped up their game, which, congrats. I mean, if you go against the trend of declining reach, you must be doing something really good. But I wouldn't worry that much if your reach is down. It's more about getting the engagement from your target audience, getting the conversion, getting the N5s, the DMs. That's where we are over here, I guess. I feel like it also makes sense, just the way you've explained it. Here's what I understand from that. So, there are more users on the platform. Therefore, the reach, on average, is kind of spread across all these new users. So, on average, technically, let's say there are 200,000, 300,000, no, what am I talking about? 200 million more users on the platform. Reach is expected to be lower because there are all these new users now. Everyone needs their time to shine, right? It's no longer just us. There's 200 million people more on the platform. But because of that, what I understood you saying, and it's also the case with my posts, engagement has been higher because there are a lot more people. So, even though you technically are getting just by the numbers, if we're just looking at the impressions, even if you're getting less reach, technically, more people are able to engage with your posts and hang out on your posts. So, I feel like it's been the same thing for me, Richard. My reach has been crushed. It's still pretty much, like I would say in my case, even 4 or 5x lower than last year. So, it's been crushed completely. But the engagement has actually gone significantly up to a point where I feel like it's almost 20 to 30% up on my profile, which is saying a lot considering the type of engagement I already had. So, it's a good thing, but just on the surface, it may seem like a bad thing. And this is what I kept telling people at the top of last year, specifically in December. I had this post where I said, you know, the LinkedIn algorithm hates you. No, it doesn't. It's the same for everyone. It's just that now we need to realize that there are a lot more people on the platform and we need to figure out ways to sort of engage them with our posts. The posts should be the magnet. And I have some thoughts on that. The other day, you and I had a workshop. One of the things we touched upon was the magic of the PS. Yes. So, for everyone listening, I have a question, but it's a very specific question. Again, if you can leave your reaction, that would be awesome. If you can give us a thumbs up as an answer to this question. The question is, do you write a PS question in every single post? Not 9 out of 10, but 10 out of 10 posts. Basically, every single post that you write, do you include a PS question? Okay, not a whole lot of thumbs up. There we go. Okay, the reason I'm asking this is because I've tested this out on my own post. I've tested this out on other people's posts. The magic of the PS, guys, it is truly underrated. Truly underrated. And here's why. A lot of people got scared when the reach started to sort of trickle down and it got lower and lower and lower. And there was this new sort of trend where at the end of every post, people would have a call out to sell. Like, DM me. And there was a keyword. Like, DM me LinkedIn if you want to learn more about my service. If you want to book this. If you want to download this. As a result, the posts didn't get enough engagement because you weren't inviting engagement. And if you don't ask people what you want them to say, if you're not inviting comments on your own, people don't remember to comment on their own because at the very end of your post, you know what you're doing. You're actually pushing them away from the post. You literally, if you restructure it, 95% of your post was the big message, the informational part. And the last 5%, you're selling something. Completely relevant to the post. You're selling something. What you've actually done now is you've pushed people away from your post. So it's natural that you're not going to get enough comments. And because of that, it's natural that you're not going to get enough reach. So the thing I started testing is I started including a PS into every single post. But the PS had to be super duper simple to answer. Again, step number one is you should include a question to invite comments. Because ultimately, if you want more reach on your post, that's the beginning of the complaint. Hey, I'm getting less reach. Here's how you fix it. By having more activity on your post, meaning comments. And it's very easy. Step number one, ask a question in the PS. Don't push people away from the post. Keep them on the post. This is what I was also talking about yesterday. You've got to figure out how to keep people on your post. As a result, if people are there, you're going to get more activity, more engagement, more reach. But step number two to that is the PS has to be super simple, guys. If you're asking a question where it requires the audience to think and think and figure out how to answer, it's not going to happen again. So if the question is something like, what would you say is currently the biggest challenge of B2B companies in the healthcare space, specifically when it comes to LinkedIn? I have to take, you know, 20, 30 seconds, maybe even a minute, to think about a valid answer so that I can write a comment. It's not going to happen. For the vast majority of the readers on your posts, it's not going to happen. So think of ways to simplify the question. Instead of asking all of that, right, you can simply rip that question into something much simpler. Into, let's say, are you currently experiencing lower reach? As simple as that. Instead of asking your audience to think about something, an answer, something that they're challenged by, you can present a challenge that's already there, and you can simply ask a yes or no question. And all the comments will start rolling in. You've made it easy, and it's purely psychological. There's nothing algorithmical about this. But the result, ultimately, is higher numbers and higher engagement. So whoever's listening, if you're not including PSs in your posts, you should. And, again, not everyone might want to have more comments and more engagement and more reach and all this, but if the complaint is, I'm not getting any reach, I'm getting less, here's your way out. Just try it, okay? Try it for your next several posts. Not just one, try it for several posts. Get people used to having conversations under your posts. But your last sentence was really on top of Justin, because I've had people and clients come to me and say, like, I don't care about the comments. I don't want the engagement. I want my posts to resonate with my target audience. And I told them, I understand that you're not there to, like, gamify the numbers, but every comment, every engagement, increases the chance that your target audience not only sees your post, but also starts to think about how they could benefit from your expertise. And I read a research that says, like, people see your post or some of your posts, they need to see it three or four times before they will click to your profile. And a click to your profile means your potential client is one step closer to getting into touch with you. And that's, for me, that's the, I think, primary added value of getting more engagement, that because of the algorithm, because of the human interaction, it drives your post into the feet of your potential client, increasing the chance that you get profile business from the right people and in the end get conversion. So it's not about the numbers, but you need to have the engagement. Exactly, exactly. And I have the same opinion as you. People often complain about, I wouldn't, I don't want to sound negative here, but the sentiment is, when people book my coaching calls and consulting, the question is, I don't want to do what you're doing, guess me. I don't want to have all the comments. I don't want to have this massive following and all that. I just need to get more clients. The problem is, you're not getting enough reach. And if you don't want to do cold outreach, if you don't want to use the in-mail or the premium system, if you don't want to use Sales Navigator, if you want to skip all of that, if you just want to rely on inbound, you've got to have reach. So it's this game where you have to choose. You might not want to have the comments, but the comments are a way to get your reach back. And that's just the reality of it. And clients and people in business who really want more clientele, they need to understand the importance of building relationships, not just privately in the DMs, because sometimes people are not available, and people feel, you know, if you're sleazy salesy, people are not going to want to respond. But if you're just chatting them up in the comments, it's much easier. So the real power of community building and starting those conversations, it is really, truly under your posts. It's not, you know, in those secret DMs and secret chats and inquiries and whatever. Sure, cold outreach still works, but for a lot of people, they don't know how to do it, they don't want to do it, they don't have the time to do it. Having the content work for them, while the reach is lower, is the way to go. So this is one way, guys. So just test your PSs, okay? Questions, very simple ones to answer, and that's it. Just for now, try testing that out. Obviously, there's more advanced strategies, we can talk about those, but for now, a super pro tip for everyone, just try asking a PS question at the end of every single post. Yeah. Richard, I have a question for you. Go ahead. Do you think we should bring the first person up on stage? We've been talking for a while now. Yeah, 23 minutes on the spot, so yeah, I would say bring up the first person. Awesome. So we're going to bring, by the way, there are so many people raising their hands, so if I don't pick you guys, it's nothing personal, okay? I'm clicking randomly, there we go. I do want to say something, guys. Thank you for all of your reposts and thank you for all of your reactions. So if you're just joining us, please leave a like on this event post. It's going to really help boost the reach of this event. And if you want to repost it, sure, you can easily delete the repost after. I do want to congratulate you, Richard, because we have just broken a record. Oh, wow. To my knowledge, this is officially the most attended LinkedIn Live ever. So we currently have, just after 23 minutes, we have three and a half thousand listeners. And at any given point, we have 1.3, 1.2 thousand people listening live. So I was trying to bring someone to the stage, they dropped off, so I'm trying to bring someone else on the stage, so let me try again. And let's see who picks up. So David Whipple is here with us on the stage. Mr. David, if you can unmute yourself and ask your question, that would be awesome. All right, thanks. So I create videos on my YouTube channel about health and fitness, and this year I'm focusing on making short-form verticals. And I'd like to post them on LinkedIn, but I'm not sure if videos are going to perform that well in addition to the content that I write about here, which is email marketing, basically. But my short-form vertical videos are about health and fitness. Is that a conflict of interest? So let me get this straight, just before you go off stage. You have essentially two verticals for content. You have the email marketing, but you also have the fitness. Yeah, and my ideal clients for my email marketing are health and fitness creators, so it makes sense to me, but I'm kind of new on LinkedIn, actually. I came into LinkedIn late last year, so I'm really new to all this. I would just say try to find a way to always incorporate the service part of it into the fitness video. So if you're doing email marketing, always try to incorporate your email into the video as well. So talk about how people can elevate their business, how they can talk to more clients, how they can increase their business revenue. Always try to include that in the videos as well, because if you're just talking about fitness, then it makes you look like a fitness guru, but your real service is actually the emails and the ghostwriting, right? So always try to find a way to include that into your service. So if anyone's listening, if you have any conflicting industries or if you have multiple things that you're doing, always try to find a way to collaborate between these two ideas in your content. So try to combine them. Yeah, to connect. I think that's a magical word. You need to connect, in this case email marketing, with the fitness, because otherwise you're going to confuse people. Like, do I need to pay this money for my copyright? Do I need to pay this money for fitness? So I think your tip is spot on, Jasmine, that there needs to be a connection that you can do. Furthermore, he also has a question like vertical video, and this will be, again, published in the algorithm report, what we see is that if you do video, video is a great way to get really good engagement. It's the most engaging content at the moment. It's not the most reached, but people respond very quickly to video because it's almost like you made an effort, so they feel committed to make an effort, and at least leave a like or a comment. If you have video under, like, I would almost say one minute, data shows under one minute 20, because there is where you lose the attention span. People are scrolling through their feed. They do not have the time to digest or consume, like, content that is more, that will take more than one minute, one minute 30 from their time, so make it easy to digest, make it easy snackable, and if you do video content, don't beat around the bush, don't dwell, just get right to the action. I like that. I like that. So 120, guys, that's the sort of golden area or length for your videos. Don't go longer than that. If you do, obviously, your videos are still going to do something in the feed, and you're going to get some reactions, but on average, it's going to be much lower versus, you know, 120 and shorter. That's what you're saying, Richard, right? Yeah, and if you think, but Richard, I have the four trends in email marketing that I want to share, great, but don't do them all in one video. Create more videos and make a series, and you'll really keep people in the loop, you know, and you'll have every week people look for it, and you will get like up to 34% more engagement if you even have a video series, so it's like you said, Jasmin, like a text post or a written post, one post, one message, not one post, four messages. It doesn't come across. I love that. I love that. Thank you, man. I'm just writing my notes down as well, so thank you for that. Okay, we have Natalie on the stage. Hi. Thank you. My question is twofold. So, one, is there something that you two disagree on and have data to back up on? Because you post at 8, Richard, and Jasmin, you post at 12.30, so is there a reason for that? I can just give you my reason. I post at 12.30 because that's the only free time I get during the day. I could just as easily post in the morning or in the evening, but because my schedule is what it is, that's what I post. And at a certain point, people just got so used to it, it's 8.12.30 and I don't want to change it, you know? That's it. That's my answer. There's nothing scientific about it. I just do it because that's what my schedule permits. Cool. Richard, what about you? What about the morning posting? Yeah, so I post, I'm not that strict, so I'm not posting at 8 every day, Natalie. It depends, but I make sure I post somewhere between 8 and I would say 10 at the latest. I have tried a lot of things, and also in the data from the algorithm report, basically morning, like, it depends. First thing, everybody needs to ask him herself, like, is my audience very bound to a specific region? Like, for example, I live in Spain. Imagine that my target audience is all from Spain. Then research shows that morning posts perform like 30-40% better than if you do an afternoon post. That's the same with myself. I try to publish at 1, at 2, at 3 in the afternoon, and I get significantly less reach. If your audience is global, the time that you choose is less important because if I would publish, like, for example, in midnight, then my Australian audience or my Far East audience is already awake, so they can already, like, engage. And I see throughout the day, I see that my first engagement in the morning always comes from Asia, Middle East, then Europe, later the US. I think the most important thing, what we found out, we agree on that one. We don't agree on the specific time, but we do agree that I would call it, like, you need to train the algorithm and your human audience to be consistent. Like, we all know, Jeff, and you know, you wake up and you know Richard, his morning post is out. I know 12.30, Jeff's post is coming to the feed, and more people are going to get used to your timing of your post, and that leads substantially to more reach and more engagement, especially in the first 60 minutes. I could not agree more. Even though, like, we might post at different times, I do agree that picking a consistent time is really crucial to having consistent engagement as well. But it also speaks to your brand authority and the consistency overall of your content. Because if people can already expect when to find you, when to see you in their feed, it gets easier to have your content get more reach because sometimes LinkedIn might not send the bell notification. Like, remember the bell feature, guys, on the profile? I hit my bell. It just stopped working for a while. Now it's back to normal, now it works again, but it just might so happen, you know, there's a bug again. It's not back to normal, Jasper. It's still sick for me. No, it's 55% reliable. So, if you have a thousand people that ring your bell, then probably 600, 650 will get a notification, but with every post, some people will not get notified. I had a lot of people that were always like, my biggest ambassadors, reaching out to me saying like, Richard, we always get a notification in the morning because we rang your bell, but we haven't seen a notification last week. And I said, well, that's because it's not a reliable feature. And then two weeks later they would send me like, ah, it's back again, so it's on again. So, it's around 60, 65%. So, it's still good because it helps, but it's not completely reliable. I feel that. I feel that. And I've had the same messages from people. Hey, I'm not getting notified about your post. Can you tell me exactly when you post? And then I'm going to tell them 1230. You know, this and that. But I have a question in the DMs, Richard, so we don't have to bring someone on stage right away. We can wait for a couple of minutes. Guys, please stay here. Thank you. Thank you. Because I'm receiving questions in different places. Just so you guys know, here's why. There's people in the audience. There's DMs. Some people can't join. And there's the comments. So, I'm really trying to cover everything because some people have left their questions earlier like when we first promoted the show. So, bear with us, please. Richard, the question is do you think the value of the top voice badges has been diluted? I don't want to comment on this. Whoever sent this question, thank you, but I'm just going to skip this. This is the box of Pandora, no? Yeah, I don't want to open up this box, man. I would much rather we weasel our way out of it and we just put someone on page. We just congratulate everyone who has received the top voice badge and let's leave it at that. Yeah, that's very true. So, LinkedIn obviously because there's so many people and they've never had this many people on an event is buggy and they're not allowing me to bring people on. So, Richard, if you can please talk for three seconds. I'll just refresh and I'll get back into the event. Give me three seconds, please. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. So, I get a lot of questions about the timing, the frequency, and I think if people follow me and also if you follow Jasmine, I think frequency is not an issue because going back to the earlier question, I think from Natalie where you say do you disagree on some things? Of course, because I publish I would say six times a week, sometimes even seven days. And I know Jasmine has been publishing three or four days. He's not publishing on Friday and Saturday because he gets less reach. I do publish on Friday and Saturday. Saturday is actually one of my best days. And it's not about the frequency. It's again, it's about being consistent in everything you do. You need to train your audience and the algorithm both. Like I'm going to be there with like a high quality content for three or four times a week and maintain that frequency. If you say I'm going to be there every day, make sure you can maintain that without harming the quality of your content. Because in the end, it's not the frequency that will bring you conversion to clients. It's the quality and the consistency. So I think that's one of the most important I would almost say advices that I want to share this afternoon with our audience. I agree. Couldn't agree more. Quality first always, but you've got to stay consistent. Don't just boost for the heck of it. I feel like a lot of people are pressured into posting on any given day and sometimes the posts just don't resonate just because they feel forced. If you yourself guys feel that today you're forcing a post, simply skip it. I'll give you a fun fact. I feel like a lot of people do not know this. I currently, Richard included, we're almost at 200,000 followers, both of us. I have never once in the history of my usage of LinkedIn posted seven days per week. Not once ever in the history. So there's your proof that you don't need to post every single day. Even right now I'm averaging anywhere between four and five posts. I try to aim for five, but I'm okay with four. I'm okay with two. So as long as every post is quality, that's what your audience is going to appreciate. If every single time they see you, they hear something smart from you, that's ultimately all that matters. So before we bring Mr. Matthew Bowe up on the mics with us, I do have one ask for the new people in the audience. So guys, currently we have 1.3 thousand people listening to us live. To everyone who's here, thank you. I appreciate you. I would appreciate you even more if you liked this event. We have 1.3 thousand people, but the event only has 900 reactions. So please leave a reaction to the event. Let's let LinkedIn know that this is a great event. Let's help push it even further. Matthew Bowe, you're on stage with us. Hey, gentlemen, can you hear me? We can hear you loud and clear. Awesome. Thanks for the time here. So my question is about reach over time. I've noticed a drop in reach as well, but I've noticed a gain in reach over time. So the lifespan of a particular post seems to gain reach over a longer period of time. Have you guys noticed that as well, or am I hallucinating? If I can go first, yes, sir. Please, go first and go only. I know you're going to give a very complete answer. Yeah, because backed up by data, Matthew, it's true. It's true. I don't remember exactly the number. They're in the report that you can access on Tuesday, but I think it was something that a year ago, 80% of your reach would be in your first day. And I think it was like 50% on your second day, and every, like, from your third day, less than 5%. What we have seen now is that your reach on your first day has dropped from 80% to 65%. So that means that one-third of your engagement comes from your second, third, and so on and so on. So yes, backed on all the data we have, it seems that LinkedIn gives a longer lifespan to your post. There is one thing that you can do to kill a longer lifespan, and that's if you have a good post, a post that gets, like, a fair amount of traction, or that is very successful, you get a lot of likes, you get a lot of comments, even the second day, sometimes it might be worth not to publish too soon, because whenever you publish a new post, LinkedIn will prioritize your new content over your previous content, literally stopping a lot of engagement on your previous post. And you will see this. When I publish, Tuesday morning, the algorithm report, which is probably my most successful post of the year, I will not publish. Definitely not on Wednesday, maybe even not on Thursday, because I want to have the lifespan continue as long as possible. So, yeah, definitely. That's awesome. By the way, I wouldn't add to that. Vanessa, please stay with us for a couple more moments on stage. Richard, I have a question in the DM that I feel like directly relates to this one, which is the lifespan of the post. Jerry Gibson just asked me in the DMs, Yasmin, I was wondering if you could explain your self-repost strategy a little bit. Does it help if you engage, or you're already warming up the algorithm, or do you take advantage of it? Is it still a test, or do you have data on this? So, funny enough, yesterday, Richard and I were sitting together at a cafe. We were having burgers, really tasty burgers, 8 out of 10, great, really tasty, yummy. So, as we're doing it, I was saying to Richard, hey, Richard, I got two more minutes. It's going to be 6.30, and that is precisely six hours after I had posted yesterday. And he was like, yeah, so why does it matter? And I'm like, well, I'm just testing. I have a lot of audiences in the U.S. region, and they don't necessarily get to have a lot of engagement on my posts because LinkedIn doesn't serve that content when they're finally online. So, what I do is, after six hours, this is just me, guys, you don't have to do this. You can do it after two, you can do it after seven, you can do it after 24, but my strategy is, and something I've been testing, but only, only, because I post at 12.30 European time, and then at 6.30, six hours, that's precisely on the nose, I repost my today's post. I will repost it every single day only because I see a significant boost in the reach, in the likes, in the comments, in the leads, in the DMs, the followers, everything. But here's the deal. I have a lot of audience, a huge chunk of audience in the United States and in those regions. For those of you that don't, this repost technique might not work. So, just be mindful. Let's say you have 30, 40 percent of your followers in Australia and Southeast Asia. Then it makes sense that you post super early in the morning, and you repost around noon, because then it's going to be super late in the night for them, like 11 p.m. or midnight. They're going to sleep, they're winding down, and they're using LinkedIn, just scrolling and seeing what's new. So, then it makes sense for you to repost as well. So, if you're reposting your own content during the day, my strategy is just be mindful of where your audience lives. Again, I'm in Europe. I post at 1230. A lot of people engage, a lot of people engage from all over the world. And I know for a fact, because I've been testing it, a lot of people in the States, they will not see it, because by the time they're finally online, having their lunch breaks and everything, my post will be six hours old. LinkedIn will not be distributing it as frequently. Yesterday, Richard said, I got double my reach. Yeah, it was impressive. 57,000 up to over 100,000 just because of the repost. I saw it happen. So, it was very impressive. I do think, Jasmin, you're spot on, because LinkedIn tries to offer in the feed the most relevant but also most recent content. And your posts for the US audience, being already like five, six hours old, will not be prioritized. Not directly, that is. And a repost brings it back to the attention. It literally kickbacks your post in the feed. It's worth a try. I never did it, at least not in such a consistent way as you did and showed me yesterday. It's definitely worth a try. It's also definitely something I'm going to do with the algorithm report, definitely. Awesome, awesome. So, anyhow, guys, there's the answer. Why do I repost my own content? That's why. Because I'm bringing it in front of new audiences in other regions of the world. That's literally why. And it always works for me, because I know I have audiences in other regions of the world. If you don't, it's probably not going to work. So you're just going to waste the repost or something. Anyhow, Vanessa, you're on the stage with us. Welcome to the show. Hello. Thank you for bringing me up. I kind of have two folds. One was inspired by the conversation you were just having, but the first is I work for a larger corporation, and so all of my activities are company or showcase pages, and I wanted to know if all of the best practice and insights that you both share is relevant from a company perspective as well as an individual kind of personal page perspective. That's my first fold. And the second fold is kind of building off of what you were just talking about. We're finding that our first post of the day is in our APAC region, and it's outperforming, say, our last post of the day, which is in our U.S. region significantly. So we try to limit maybe three to four posts maximum per day over the course of a global company. Do you have any insights on how the algorithms may be favoring our first post of the day versus the last post of the day? That's a really good question. Let me get back to the first question. We have a specific chapter in the upcoming report on company pages. If you look at the rules of publishing, nurturing your post, I would say that 80%, maybe 90% of all the rules apply both for individual profiles as well as company pages, but there are also some important differences. One of the differences is that company pages can publish multiple times a day without harming the reach of the previous post, whereas I would strongly disadvise individuals to publish more than once a day. Your total reach might go up because if you publish three times a day, in total you get more reach than if you publish one time a day, but your average reach per post will really sink, and that's harming your long-term content performance. My question would be if you are using the targeted audience, which I think you are, because on a company page, the targeted audience post, so a post where you say, we are targeting a specific region, let's target only the followers in the US, let's target only the followers in APAC, is never harmed by the algorithm, whereas if you have multiple posts on a company page that are either targeted or either all-to-all followers, they interfere with each other, which again, makes your morning post probably the most powerful. So, when we discuss a company page, make sure that you have one post max a day to all followers, and that you target all the other ones. That's the most important tip I can give you when it comes to a company page and the algorithm, in terms of spreading the reach of your post. I love that. I love that. I'm not going to add anything to it, because for me, the way I see it is just that company pages, they just don't get enough reach, like not even close when compared to personal profiles, so you do have that luxury of posting multiple times per day, but again, from a personal profile, maximum one time per day. And to give the exact numbers, because that's not a secret, to give an exact number, 1.8% on average of your followers of a company page will see your post. 1.8%. Mind you, three years ago, we were still at 9%, so I always say, and LinkedIn doesn't like me to say that, but I do, organic company page reach is almost dead, nonexistent. So that's why you need your ambassadors, that's why you need your individuals, that's why you need thought leaders. The average reach amongst your followers on an individual page is just below 10%, so we're talking like almost like six, seven times more reach, organic reach, from an individual compared to a company page. Well, there you have it, guys. Company pages, they're suffering, it is what it is. It's a challenge, yeah. Yeah, it's a new challenge. And definitely, ads, that's one way to do it. Thought leader ads, it's like a good mixture between personal profiles and company pages. I actually love that new feature. Yeah, it is. A couple months ago, thought leader ads, that's awesome. Okay, Lovesong is with us on stage. Mr. Lovesong, the guy who's in every comment section, every single post, welcome to the stage, good sir. Good to have you here. Hello. Hello, people. Thank you for this. So, my short question would be, what do you think are some of the best practices to not get shadow banned? Because I've already gotten shadow banned a few times now, and I would like to avoid that in any case. So, love your insights on that. Thank you. I'll give you a quick answer, and it's going to be, I think Richard's going to pretty much agree on all the points. So, by the way, Lovesong, thank you, man. And thank you for all this on LinkedIn. You are just super supportive of everyone. I see you. I see you building your brand. I see you building your presence on this platform. So, keep doing what you're doing, man. You're doing amazing. So, to answer your question, how to not get shadow banned, I'm just going to give you like a one, two, three list, guys. So, please pay attention. Do not criticize LinkedIn. Do not criticize the platform. Okay? Just, don't ask me why. Do not criticize the platform. Second thing, stop talking about political stuff. Anything political. Anything. Stop talking about it. And the third thing is, stop insulting people. Even if you're trying to sound funny, if you're, like, I've seen this happen with a lot of accounts. People were trying to be sarcastic, and they were sort of mocking the other person, but because you get reported and the LinkedIn team will see it, they will put you on a list. Even though you might have meant it sarcastically, they will take it seriously. So, those three things, if Richard has a fourth, fifth, sixth one to answer for me, just to summarize, don't criticize the LinkedIn platform. Don't talk about anything political. It's risky. And number three, do not make even the slightest, even sarcastic remarks or do not mock people. That's it. Nothing to add. I think most things are common sense. I think the one about not criticizing LinkedIn is maybe underrated by a lot of people. They think that LinkedIn is actually a free place to tell whatever you want about everything. It's not. It's still regulated. If they don't like the things you're posting, you either see a huge drop in your reach, or you're getting shadowbanned, or you're even getting restricted. Just use your common sense and avoid the things, Jasmine, you just said. Well, there we go. Before we dive into the next question, Susie, can you just stay for a quick second with us? We had a follow-up question to our repost one, which was when you repost, do you add a comment? Do you add some notes? Do you edit stuff? No, no, no, no. No. I don't do anything. Repost, and that's it. When the new comments are rolling in, just engage with the people. If you're reposting, make sure you're there for 15, 30, 60 minutes, however much time you have, and that's it. Just engage with the people. Don't edit anything. Don't add anything to your original post. That's it. Just don't. The answer is no. People don't understand it, Jasmine, but it's actually two completely different actions you do. Instant repost is telling LinkedIn, hey, bring this post back to my network. Just bring it back. Take it back to my network. That's the instant repost, which performs, again, the example that you did yesterday showed it performs really well. It also performs really well on other people's content. If you want to help your colleague, your client, your company in getting more reach on their original post, hit instant repost. As soon as you hit repost with thoughts, because you feel obliged to give your own views and you're writing one sentence, three sentences, five sentences, which is on social media, the thing we are trained to do. If you reshare something, you write your own. It's now a complete new post with copied content, the original post. LinkedIn treats it almost as duplicate content, and just imagine this. Take a very big company. Let's say Microsoft. Imagine that Microsoft publishes a post on their company page and tells all their employees, 300,000, 400,000, to repost with thoughts. Our feed would be flooded with Microsoft posts. What LinkedIn does, as soon as you start to write your own thoughts, they go like, hey, okay, that's great. You create a new post, but you have borrowed the content that was already in the feed, so we're going to squeeze the reach, and it's not more than 10% to 12% of your normal reach that this post will get. Instead of amplifying the reach, you're actually harming your post. Instant repost, that's the only thing you do. I love that. I was just muted for a second. I didn't realize. Guys, one question. Susie's still here. Susie, thank you for being a good sport. One more thing. We have just shattered another record on this live event. We have crossed 4,000 listeners. This is, to my knowledge, never ever happened. Not even 4,000 listeners on one event, and consistently we're keeping it at 1.2, 1.3 thousand at any given point. This is a good event. I'm glad that everyone is finding it useful, so thank you, guys. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and we're going to make sure that we still dish out so much value. We're going to stay here for a while. Susie, you're on stage with us. Welcome. Thank you, Hazmin. Buenos dias, Richard. I know you're in Spain. Thanks for bringing me back up. I got knocked out. I am a solopreneur who is looking for private one-on-one coaching clients. My question for you both is what are three things that I should be focusing on, and what are three things I shouldn't be focusing on, because there's quite a lot one could do. Based on where I am as a solopreneur looking for private one-on-one coaching clients, what are your thoughts? Do you want to do the pros and I'll do the cons, or do you want to do it the reverse? I can start with some pros. First thing, and probably you're not going to like this, Susie, so please apologize up front. LinkedIn is flooded with trainers, coaches, people that try to help entrepreneurs take the next step. That's an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage is that there is a huge market on LinkedIn. Disadvantage, there are many people. The first thing you need to do, make sure you get your unique value proposition across. What differentiates you from all the other people? Why should I work with you when I have a lot of alternatives? Unique value proposition, for example, last week I had a one-on-one consult with an executive coach and he had a slogan that was more like executive coach for an impactful career change. I was like, okay, there's nothing unique on that. Executive coach for an impactful career change. What changed? Are you going to create people from being a CEO to being a consultant? Are you changing people to retire? Are you giving them a five... I don't know. You need to be more specific. We did a session and it appeared that, no, they only work in tech. They only work with financial CFOs. Now it becomes more unique. That's the thing that you need to get across on your profile and your content. Build authority. Show numbers. Show client referrals. Show testimonials. Preferably, co-create some content also with your clients because if I hear a client talking about how he or she benefited from you, the next thing I'm going to do, I'm going to check you out. And the third one is an open door. We've mentioned already, be consistent in everything you do. I'm not talking just about content but if you put out content, make sure that you have the time to scroll through the likes, to scroll through the comments and every potential client that has made an effort to like your comment or to comment and you're not connected yet, reach out. Just reach out and say, hey Jasmine, thank you for commenting on my post. I appreciate you making an effort. Let's connect and see how we can inspire each other over the next few weeks because people liking or commenting on your content from your target audience, it's just literally taking them a first step. And don't expect your clients to take three steps at the same time. They're not going to like your content, send you an invite and book a call. You need to show that you have actually noticed their engagement, that you value their engagement and that's how you start your first relationship with potential clients. So those were three things Jasmine from my side. Awesome. Well, my three things and I'm going to keep it really quick. By the way, I agree on every point you said. I would just like to add this main thing that I always preach about which is clarity. Clarity, clarity, clarity. I'm going to give you three things where people miss their clarity and places where they actually should have clarity. One is the offer. You kind of explained it right now. Basically, I need to understand what you do. If you're telling me, I'm a coach helping you unlock the best version of yourself, like respectfully what the hell does that even mean? I'm not clear on what you do. The other clarity element is clarity on the details. So what is your offer? Is it a program? Is it a one-on-one? Is it a newsletter? Is it a course? A lot of times people just say, book a call and I don't know what the call is for. Like is it a discovery call? Is it a strategy call? Is it a one-on-one consult? Give me the details. Give me the pricing up front. Everything you can unless your pricing is really dependent on the needs of your client, on the length of the program, on the conditions, then no, you don't need to give it up up front. You need that call, but at least tell me in advance what the call is for. A lot of people are missing this part. Therefore, they're missing conversion. They're missing those clicks and the third part is clear next steps. I feel like this is the biggest roadblock on a lot of LinkedIn profiles that I see. Tell me what to do and tell me in three key places. In the banner, in the main link right below your headline and in the first featured link. If your main offer is book a one-on-one, tell me that you have one-on-ones in the banner. Tell me that you have one-on-ones in your main link right under your headline and get me to that one-on-one page. Don't get me to your website. Get me to that one-on-one page specifically. Also, in your featured section, if you don't have one, you should have one. Tell me there as well. One-on-one, one-on-one, one-on-one. Make it clear what you do, what is included, what do I do next, how do I get all of that. Clarity, clarity, clarity. Esma is here with us on stage. Esma, welcome to the show. Esma, if you could unmute yourself in the corner, that would be awesome. Hello? Are you here with us? Okay. We're going to move to Christopher really quickly. Christopher, you're with us on stage. Good, sir. Is Christopher here at least? You might be having some bugs on LinkedIn. Yeah, we are having bugs on LinkedIn. We are having bugs on LinkedIn, Jasmin. Yeah, that's new. By the way, Christopher, if you're here, if you can unmute yourself, that would be awesome, just so we can make sure that the issue is not on our end. Guys, whoever jumps on stage, you need to unmute yourself in the bottom right corner. Hi, Jasmin. Hey, there you go. There you are. Hi. I just had a question about the regular marketing part, how you translate it to LinkedIn. Awareness, consideration and decision. How do you translate this into LinkedIn posts? How do you divide those LinkedIn posts during the week? How many posts are awareness? How many posts are consideration? How many posts are decision? How do you make sure that the content that you write is set to attract the right audience during those phases, attract the right audience to the business that you have on LinkedIn? Thank you for having me. That's a great question. Thank you. Richard, we're probably going to have two completely different answers here. We are. We can show people that there could be two, three, fifteen approaches and they all can work. This question that Christopher just asked is highly dependent on your business, your current following and what you're trying to achieve for the short term. Let me explain. If your short-term goal, and not everyone has the same short-term goals, is to get as many newsletter sign-ups as possible because in a month you have a launch of a course or you're launching a new product, a new channel, doesn't matter what it is. If your primary goal right now is to get as many subs as possible, then you can write as many what we call bottom of the funnel posts. Let me explain. If you don't know what a funnel is, here's a quick lesson. Picture a triangle upside down. The wider part is up, the tip is down. The top of the funnel is literally what it's called. Tofu. Top of the funnel. This is where you have everyone and their mother. Everyone in the world. You're targeting everyone with your posts. In the middle of the funnel, you're kind of more targeted. For example, the first version of this is if you're posting for everyone in the world, you could be posting about LinkedIn growth. That relates to every single user on the platform. That top of the funnel content. LinkedIn growth. But, if you're going down into a more specific audience, middle of the funnel could look something like LinkedIn growth for those looking to scale their newsletter. See, that's more specific. But if you want to go all the way to the bottom of the funnel where it's only your super specific, super targeted client, then you can say, if you're a digital marketing agency looking to scale your newsletter on LinkedIn. All of these posts in their nature are going to be different. The content will be different. But if you ask me, and this is just my answer because that's how I've been doing it always. It works. We're always booked. Last year we were fully booked months in advance. The year before, again, fully booked months in advance. I have a pretty good mixture of middle of the funnel and top of the funnel. I never do bottom of the funnel content. I never do those conversion style posts. That's the most important thing, Jess. I never do that. I've never done that and I don't want to do it. You want to know why? Because mathematically it doesn't make sense. And I know a lot of the sales guys, a lot of my marketing friends on LinkedIn are going to scratch their heads right now. Here's the math. If you want to target a very specific audience and you keep talking to a very small pond, every time, that pond is going to dry out. That pond is not expanding. It simply isn't because you're always in the same place, always speaking to the same exact group, same exact group, same exact group. But if you're speaking to a larger group, you will find those specific clients in that larger group anyhow. You will still find them. As a bonus, you will also get followers, you will also get engagement, you will also get all these different bonuses. But you will 100% find your ideal client still. You will find them anyhow. So to me, it doesn't make sense. Unless you're really promoting something and you want to hone in on the messaging. To do this all the time, to me it doesn't make sense to do bottom of the funnel content consistently. So those super, super duper specific targeted posts where I'm saying if you're a fitness coach who would like to grow their newsletter and you would like to use LinkedIn as your channel, like just dropping off the example we had earlier in the show, that's not resonating with a lot of people. Not everyone's in fitness. Not everyone has a newsletter. Not everyone even understands LinkedIn marketing. So you're not speaking to a whole lot of people. So how can you expect your reach to expand, to reach more clients if you're constantly speaking to the same small group? To me, the math ain't mapping. So if you ask me, the answer is a healthy mixture of middle of the funnel and top of the funnel content. This way you can always attract with the middle of the funnel content and you can always expand with top of the funnel content. Richard, are you still here? Yeah, I'm still here. No, I think you made a great point. I want to just highlight two examples that totally agree with what you have said. So first, I had a session a few weeks ago with a very an authority in the US that his target audience is multi-branch restaurant owners. Okay? Multi-branch restaurant owners. We're talking about owners from restaurant chains. And his content and his insights are very valuable. His engagement, his reach on LinkedIn is non-existing. And he said, Richard, have a look at my content. Have a look. I know what I'm talking about. I like it. And all this post started with, in your multi-branch restaurant, do you see, do you have this challenge? And I said, stop. You're niching down your content. How many multi-branch restaurants are there in the US? Owners. And he said, well, I don't know. Around 1,000. How many restaurant owners are there in the US? I'm not talking multi-branch. How many restaurant owners? Well, 300,000. Aim for those. Aim for those. Go bigger. Because if you niche down your content too much, you will not see reach. You will not see conversion. Because you're simply not reaching your target audience. Second one, an example from Holland. I did a training with salespeople from a telecom company. And one of the sales guys, he targeted leisure parks. Holiday parks. So parks where you can rent a bungalow, you can stay there for a week. And he said, I created a poll asking leisure park, holiday park owners if they are aware of the huge request for high internet speed on their parks. Because they get families there, families bring a device to the family. And it didn't work. He said the poll worked. And I got like six answers. And I said, well, I'm even surprised positively that you got six answers. Because how many owners of leisure parks, holiday parks are there in Holland and Belgium together? He said, well, about, I don't know, 60, 70 I'd say. So that's not a poll. Now reverse the poll. If you are going to visit with your family a holiday park or a hotel on average, how many devices are you going to connect to the internet? I said, do that poll. Because now your target audience is like everyone who goes on holiday with their kids. And with the answers, with the insights, you now go into DMs to your holiday park owner and say like, are you aware that on average like seven devices blah, blah, blah. And he did it. And it was a huge success. So I think like, I agree, top funnel, middle funnel, stay there, low funnel. Low funnel for me is like in the DMs. Well, thank you, Richard. I'm glad we agree somewhat on something. If you would have asked me to answer first, you know, I'm well aware of the awareness consideration and purchase phase. My content strategy is not around those phases. I have five pillars, personal storytelling, thought leadership content, event content, unit value proposition content, and industry related content. And I make sure that I have all the five pillars in my weekly content strategy. Because personal storytelling makes people really connect with you. I think we agree on that. People really connect by heart with you so they give you a follow, they give you a like, they give you an engagement. Thought leadership content is what sets you apart from your competitors. Event content is giving the people the opportunity. Just like this event, you publish it on LinkedIn, huge success. So it gives people an opportunity to follow you, to meet you, to speak to you. Unit value proposition, that's a very important one. Do not forget every now and then it's very, I do it one out of every 25, maybe 30 posts, but every now and then you need to remember your audience, your new followers. How can they buy your services? Because if people follow you and you're giving away all the great insights but it's not clear what you have to offer, you will not convert. So every now and then I'm saying like, hey, do you want to pick my brain? Go there, 200 euros, you have 25 minutes and it works, it converts. And the last one, industry related. So what's going on in the landscape of the email market? What's going on in the landscape of executive culture? What are the new trends in copyright? What are the new trends in social selling on LinkedIn? You need to have them as well to build your audience. So I'm using those five pillars. We also teach those five pillars to our clients and they do really well with those five pillars. Thank you, Richard. And we have Cyndal on stage who I want to apologize to because she's been waiting here for a while now. So Cyndal, welcome to the stage. Thank you, thank you. And no worries. Thank you guys so much for putting this on and for having me. So my question is for people with smaller followings or maybe just starting to try and build their following. I really like the commenting strategy that you talk about all the time, Jasmine, and even posting multiple threads, if you will, under your own post. However, for people with smaller followings who don't get that many comments because they're just starting, how do you avoid kind of looking like a psychopath and just looking at yourself? Or is that just something like growing out a bad haircut? You just got to go through it until it catches. You've basically given the answer. You got to go through the motions. So the question was, by the way, Cyndal, thank you. Great question. I felt like this was coming. So for everyone listening, the question was, how do you get more comments at the very beginning of your journey or simply like even down the line? You simply currently don't have many comments. And if you're posting those question comments under your own post to sort of further the conversation to get more comments, like if you don't have comments to begin with, should you do those? How do you get comments in the first place? So Cyndal basically answered the question by telling us that you've got to go through the motions. You've got to go through this very particular stage where you're just out there building relationships. Everyone has gone through this stage. This is why you'll see the biggest creators on the platform, regardless of their following size, 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 followers. You know what they're doing? They're commenting on other people's posts. They're supporting other people's content because that's simply the way of the world. If you go out there in the world and support others, people will want to support you. And everyone has to go through this. You have to invest the time. This is what I tell people. Bare minimum 30 minutes per day. Simply commenting. Not on your own post. Not writing posts. Not DMing. Just commenting. Just commenting. So if you want more comments on your post, you have to generate that trust from other people. And the only way to generate it is by actually being supportive of their content in the first place. So Richard, I have a challenge for us. Because we're already over time, and I want to be mindful of everyone's time here, yours and mine included. So a lot of people have dropped off after the first hour. We still have almost 1100 people still listening. Thank you, guys. Whoever is here, I just want to thank you. Here's a heart reaction for you. Thank you for still being here. So I want to have a challenge for you and me. So let's try to keep every answer under 10 seconds. This way, for example, in the next 15 or 20 minutes, however long we still stay, we can give as many answers as possible. Do you think we can do it? Go. Okay, awesome. So I don't know how to pronounce this name. Is it Bea? Is it Beata? How do you pronounce it? Please educate us. By the way, Beata, if you're on stage with us, you need to unmute yourself. There you go. Welcome. We can't hear you. So if you have a question, Okay, we're going to start with Sabrina instead. Sabrina, you're on stage with us. Do you have a question for us? Welcome. Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me both. Thank you so much. I would like to ask you a question. Maybe it may seem like a baby question, but just for getting verified in LinkedIn, does it work for anything that will help us reach more people? This is my main question. Thank you. Sorry, what was the question? I didn't get that last part. The question is related to getting verified by LinkedIn. Is that helping increasing the reach or no? I don't think anyone has data on this, but the thing with verification is it's still not available in every country. So that's still very much the limitation. So if you're getting verified by LinkedIn, I, for example, from Bosnia, I don't have that option. I know a lot of people from Mexico, Canada, they don't have that option. So quite a lot of people in Canada do, but some don't. So there you go. It's still not available in every country. Gerald, or is it Gav? You're on stage with us. If you could unmute yourself, good sir, in the bottom right corner, that would be awesome. Okay. While we're waiting for that, I'm going to bring another person on stage. So this is usually the part, guys, I've hosted a lot of these LinkedIn events in the past. This is like right after the first hour. This is usually when LinkedIn starts being buggy, and you sort of can't bring people up on stage, and people aren't... It's true. It's like the momentary adjustment. They go like, boom, get them off stage, get them off. Yeah, see, I was literally clicking on two, three profiles right now, and I can't seem to bring anyone on stage. So here's what I'll do, guys. I'll just, there we go. David is here with us. Sally, you see, everyone who I've clicked, all of a sudden is here. Let's go, let's be gentlemen, okay, and let's... Sally is here. Sally, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I was just grabbing my toast out of the toaster. I'm like, this is going to be the moment they call me up. Send it over here. We're hungry. I'll send it from New York. Thank you so much. This is so generous. I took so many notes. My quick question is, when you talk about that reposting because of different time zones, I'm just curious. I went and glanced at your profile, and I only see your posts appearing once. When I consider reposting my own posts, it sort of like stacks them, so if someone were to look at my profile, it looks like everything shows twice, for example. I'm curious how you don't have that happen. You can delete your repost afterwards. Keep the original. Yes, you keep the original post. Just make sure that you don't accidentally delete the original post. If you're reposting, for example, what I do is I'll repost at 6.30, and then in the morning, before I post my next one, I will delete the last one, the repost. The original one will stay. You are leaving it for a few hours to have it sort of stacked. I'm leaving it for half a day at least. That is super helpful. Thank you. Thank you, and enjoy the bread over there. I will. Take care. Okay, I don't have any bread, but I do have espresso. Wait a second. What kind of bread are we talking about? Are we talking food or are we talking bread bread? Both. I'm an all. I'm not an either or. I'm an and. I love you. I like you already. David is one of my favorite... I want to say new discoveries, although I've seen him on LinkedIn for a while, but recently we got connected and we've been at each other's content, so he's been one of my favorite discoveries recently. So David, welcome to the show. Do you have any questions for us? Absolutely. First of all, bravo to you both. Gold nuggets, and you're really being very generous, which I'm all about. As you know. My basic question is this. As you know, as you have some familiarity with my stuff and my content, I share a lot of content, a lot of value, and I bring decades of insights, and I try to do it in an engaging and entertaining way. One of the things that I have found is that if I look at the last year or so, I've really been hovering at probably somewhere around 57,000 or something like that. Really hasn't been a lot of growth commensurate with the amount of engagement and such like that. I have no idea to know whether that's a factor of in some way being shadowbanned or some other factor, and I'd love any insight that either of you could provide. Just so you know, David, I completely zoned out. I was responding to a DM, so Richard, if you can tell. Yeah. I did. It's a theory I have. It's not backed up by data, but I've seen this with many what I call successful content creators, even myself, but also a lot of people in my first degree connection, my inner circle, is that I have a theory that once you hit a decent amount of reach, engagement, basically audience, and you keep doing this in a consistent way, then in the end it's going to give you a harder time. It's like you're going to level up. It's like playing Pac-Man. You go to the next level and you really need to step up your game because otherwise your results will be less and less and less. I think that might be, again, it's a theory I have, but I see that a lot of people that say, I've been consistently growing until a certain point. I started at a point and now I see a downtrend. I think it's because LinkedIn says, okay, you understand the game of LinkedIn, so now we're going to make it harder for you to get the same reach. It's happened with me. It's happened with a lot of people. Basically, that's my take on it. I have nothing to add because I zoned out on the question anyhow. I know David's not going to take it to heart. All the way to almost the end of our show, we have someone. Guys, whoever's listening right now, this person who's on stage with us, just wait a second, please. She's one of my favorite people on LinkedIn. You want to know why? Because she's built one of the best tools for LinkedIn that I've been asking for for years. Every single thing that I wanted in a tool, they built it. It's called Authored Up. I've been nagging her in the DMs for the last two years. I've been one of those very demanding users where I'm like, when are you going to fix this? When are you going to do this? When are you going to add this? Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm not here to promote Authored Up or something. I just wanted to say hi to my two favorite creators on LinkedIn. I also wanted to ask a question by the way. This page is yours. Feel free to ask us a question. This is what I was thinking. What do you think, and I would like to hear both from you and Richard, how hard is it for people that are starting right now to build their personal brand than a year or two years ago? That's actually a very valid question. To me, the answer is, I'll give you a very short answer, it's not hard at all. I feel like the playing field has never been more wide open just because still to this day what the data shows us is that now a whole lot of people are posting. If you were to give me a list of the people you follow on a daily basis, I dare you to make that list longer than 50 people. The vast majority of folks who are listening right now, the list will not be longer than 50 people. The folks you see every single day in your feed. The reason is simple, people are not posting consistently and after a while a lot of people quit on posting. I feel like I've always said this, you don't have to be the best on LinkedIn in your particular industry, at your particular skill. You just have to do it longer than others and that's it. The playing field, guys, if you're just starting out on LinkedIn right now, the playing field is wide open. Just keep on doing what you're doing. Keep on testing new things out. Follow me, follow Richard, follow a lot of people on LinkedIn. I could give you names and everything but you can always find them on the post and just learn and apply the strategies that have already worked. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Just apply what's already worked and sort of adapt it to your own needs of your own business. That's it. It's not hard. There's still time, way more time, I'd say, for the new users than what we've maybe had. So Richard, feel free to add your own but I feel like I'm very positive and uplifting when it comes to this. I feel like everyone has all the upsides, everyone. Yeah, I agree with that. Actually, I think it has never been more easy but I think the timing now is right. If you manage to be consistent in whatever you do, I think the chance is much bigger now than let's say two years ago to really stand out because the more people that actually publish content also, this might sound more harsh than I mean it but the more rubbish is out so you can stand out by just like consistently putting like gig ass rather than insightful content. And like you said, learn from people around you. Analyze what they are doing. See what works. Don't try to reinvent the wheel again. Just multiply strategies, do A-B testing and find your own rhythm. I like that. And with that being said, Mr. Richard, I have a question for you. You and I have to be at an event tonight so do we keep this going for maybe five-ish more minutes, maybe one or two more questions or do we say hey, I got to go. I got to shower, I got to iron my clothes, I got to comb my beard. Do you still have five more minutes or do we top it off here? I want to be respectful to everyone as well, sir. Let's go for three more questions and then we top it off. Awesome. So I'm just going to do very random clicks, just so you know, guys. Nothing personal. Just so you know, guys. If I haven't picked you to come on stage, it's because at any given point there were between 70 and 200 people raising their hands so I genuinely wasn't able to pick everyone onto the stage. So we have Mr. Anirban on the stage with us. Welcome to the show, good sir. First we're going to start off with you and we're going to keep this very fast-paced, okay? Very pleasant. Thank you very much for picking me up. So first of all, I will very quick. So as you have said always that value, I mean always provide some value on LinkedIn. So when I started following you, after that I never promoted any book content. I always focus on the value. If I'm just getting 5 people, then I will provide the value to them. Just still, you know, I just want to reach more. Maybe, do you know anything like, I literally LinkedIn banned me for 6 times. Even I don't use AI or any tool, but still I feel like LinkedIn might suspect something fishy. So LinkedIn blocked me for 6 times. Do you think that's the reason that I don't get much reach? And yeah, thank you very much for bringing me up here and hope you're having a good trip. If you're being banned 6 times Anirban, now is the moment to really rethink your strategy because I'm going to be very honest with you. Every time you get banned or restricted it's like you get a mark, okay? Normally depends on the severeness of your, the thing that you did wrong, but normally if you get 3, the 4th one is a definite, like it's like your account is gone on LinkedIn. So if you have been restricted already 4, 5 times every restriction, every single restriction results in less reach. I have seen it myself. I was restricted early January 2023 because of a silly thing I did with my headline and it took me 2 months to get back on the same reach. Being restricted 4, 5 times means like one more penalty, you're out. So please rethink your strategy. I have nothing to add there. I'm just going to give you the example, guys, of my good buddy Luke Matthews. You might know him. He's one of the biggest creators on LinkedIn. He's been banned 7 times already and they say, hey, this is your last warning and ever since then he's completely changed content strategy, his engagement strategy, his lead generation strategy and he's been in, you know, good spirits ever since then and his business has taken, you know, a turn for the better. So whatever you're doing, whatever you've been doing that got you banned, just don't do it anymore. Regardless of your ego, your personal preferences, beliefs, whatever it is, just stop. This is a platform with rules. It's as if you come to someone's home like if you were to come to my home and you wanted to light a cigarette, feel free to leave. I don't allow smoking in my house. If you were to tell me, but can I go to the balcony? No, because those are my house rules. You have to respect them. I love you, but you have to respect them. Same goes with LinkedIn. If they tell you to stop doing something, you stop regardless of what you think is right. So there you go. Mr. Craig, you're on stage with us. Craig Davis. Hey, Yasmeen. Hey, Richard. How you guys doing? Good. Thank you so much for the LinkedIn event. I'm going to be short and sweet. Regarding for tagging, my question is this. What is the one thing about tagging that a lot of people should know about besides being careful what to tag and who to tag? There was a bit of an echo. I'll just say one thing. I left it in a comment this morning, and it got so many, so many reactions. A lot of people, if you've ever tagged someone in your posts and they haven't responded, yes, that post will get less reach. That's just what the data shows us. If you're tagging someone and they do not respond in the post, you've done something wrong. So here's a pro way to avoid that. Just let people know in advance. Just send them a DM. Hey, Richard, I have a post today about this algorithm thing that I found out. I'm going to tag you in the post. It would be really nice if you could engage in the first one. That's it. And if they don't respond, do not tag them. Just tag them in a comment. Do not tag them in the main text of the post. Tag them in a comment. That's it. So make sure that whoever you're tagging, they know, and you know that they're going to be engaging with your post. That's it. If you don't know, if you're not sure, if they haven't responded, don't tag them. Simple as that. Yeah, I completely agree. Like tag them in a comment. If people respond, you get an uptick in reach. If people don't respond, you're not penalized. So tag them in a comment never leads to a penalty. But it can lead to your own reputation being harmed if you keep tagging people only for the sake of reach. You need to tag people because you want to offer them a stage and not to make your stage look bigger. So that's my main rule. When I tag people, it's about them. It's not about me. There you go, people. So just be careful about who you tag. That's all. And the last question of the day, guys, we're going to wrap the show up. By the way, before we wrap it up, Tom and I, if you can just wait for a quick second, I just want to give people the numbers. So the numbers today. We have crushed every possible record on this event, guys. So 4. 3,000 have joined this event today. I just want to say thank you to all of you who attended. I've been getting, I don't know about you, Richard, but my DMs are blowing up with questions, with compliments. Just thank you, guys. Whoever's here, we're truly trying our best despite our schedule, despite our growing businesses and everything that we have in our lives to really give you everything we know. And I know you appreciate it, but I feel like it's just one of those things that has to be said. We're doing this for you. And I personally, I know Richard is very much the same, personally believe and I want everyone to win. That's just how I was raised. That's what I believe in in life. The more you give, the more you receive. So we're doing this for you and everything you've heard today. We could have easily charged good money for this. There's people running courses that have less information than what we've given you today. So whoever has attended, I just want to say thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting the content. You are amazing and best believe we're going to be back with more free events, more freebies, more everything. So just want to thank you for your support. And Tama, you're here on stage. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you guys today. Thank you for having me. So I'll be quick because it's been some time. So my question would be regarding the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. Because now I finally find my niche. And the niche is scaleups that need to build a brand. But I started creating content that is really made for that niche and people are writing me in DMs. But I have also middle of the funnel branding for businesses in general. So it's not only for scaleups. But I don't know what is my top of the funnel. Because I had wrong content till basically last week because I was also posting about personal branding. Because that's a part of building a brand. But I think people maybe confuse it and they're like a lot of ghostwriters that are talking about it too and that's not my niche. So what would be top of the funnel content for people that actually want to rebrand but their startup is for scaleups? What do you think I should post? I'll give you a very quick answer and Richard feel free to chime in as well. By the way, thank you for the question. This is going to be a very generalized answer because I wanted to apply to a whole lot more people in the audience. So whenever you want to write top of the funnel content, think about this one thing. Is this applicable to a lot of people? That's it. Is this applicable to a lot of people? So if you're talking to startups and scaleups, talk about challenges that everyone in the startup and scaleup world is facing. Talk about things that are commonly known in the startup and scaleup space. Basically the broader the topic, the better for your top of the funnel content strategy. Because you're going to be talking about something, and by the way, this is purely psychological. You're going to be talking about something that people are already familiar with because you don't have to educate them on it. You're just going to provide maybe 10% more information, maybe your own spin, your own opinion, your own insight. The psychological part about this is they already know and they're already relating to it. If they're scrolling in a feed and they see something that they know is happening already, best believe they're going to stay. And that's the beauty of top of the funnel content. The more people you can service, the more people you can speak with, the better it is going to be for the people who stay. Then you can figure out who's going to just be there to follow you, who's going to just be there to consume your free content, who's going to be there to maybe inquire about your services, and then for those groups who do inquire, you can filter out who is your target client. Just think about this one question. Is this relatable to many people? That's it. Amen. Amen. So, nothing to add for now, Richard. We're done. 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