From DJ to $10M/Year CEO (His LinkedIn Strategy) | #12

Transcription

Daniel: LinkedIn is by far, hands down, the most effective way to get people to get on the phone with you that I have ever seen. The strategy with LinkedIn is you are basically building a media company so that you can advertise on that media company to your would-be customers. And if you can execute what we'll talk about right now, you will get more people on the phone with you than in any other outreach model that has worked in human history. People are weirdly supportive on LinkedIn. Reality is, LinkedIn has placed the garbage that I spent on Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. It's the same dopamine hit, but I can rationalize it because it's helping grow our company and grow my career. Matt: One of the mistakes I see a lot of people make when they start posting on LinkedIn is either one, they have no idea who they're posting for and they're just posting all over the place, or worse, they're just f***ing. Your posts are going to suck first. No one's going to read them. The idea of that is super embarrassing until you realize that if no one reads your posts, the only one that knows about that is you. Daniel: There's no one trade publication that if we got an article in this, everyone would read it, but they're all on LinkedIn. Matt: I don't agree with that. Welcome to this episode of the Connection Accepted pod. I'm super excited. Today we have Noah Greenberg on pod. Daniel: Noah, thanks for coming on. Noah: Glad to be here. Daniel: Awesome. Daniel: So Noah, just to kick things off, for the audience's benefit, would you mind just giving a quick high-level background on who you are and what you're working on? Noah: Yeah, I'm Noah Greenberg, currently founder and CEO at Stacker. I founded the company about eight years ago. We do about $10 million in revenue now helping brands distribute their editorial to news outlets. I just passed $10 million in revenue and have the past two years really been playing around with LinkedIn as a way to drive business for Stacker and found a lot of success there, a lot of value there as well as kind of unexpected value, as we can get into. Matt: Can we like go back to maybe like right after you graduated college? Tell us about like that experience and how that eventually led you to even deciding, hey, I want to start. Noah: Definitely. So I always enjoyed starting things. In high school, I started a DJ business. We weren't making music, but we basically borrowed 3000 bucks from our parents, bought a big speakers and two CD players, and we're doing like high school dances, sweet 16s, etc. I knew I was eventually going to start a business, but I got an internship my junior year of college at a startup. The startup started blowing up. I got a full time offer there when I graduated when we were about 20 people. And I knew, look, I'll eventually start something, but I didn't have the idea then. So I started working at that startup. It was called Find the Best and then rebranded as Graphic. Daniel: I got to spend about six years there, which was an incredible experience. Just, I think the best jobs for people fresh out of school are either working at a really small startup or in management consulting. Just because in both of those, you are given way too much responsibility. And a couple of years later, if you dive into it, you learn more than I think you would kind of somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. So I went the startup route, but actually one of my co-founders went the management consulting route for his first two years, and I think we actually complement each other very well. But I worked at that startup for six years, can get into specifics if you want, but I was, you know, thrown into the deep end, learned a lot, made a lot of really incredible relationships that again, I don't think I would have if I joined at 500 or 5000 person company. That company got bought in 2017 by Amazon and my team was deprecated. So basically, yay, we got bought. My team was called into an office and said, hey, you don't work here. A, three other people on my team decided to start Stacker and that was in December of 2017. Matt: Wow. And were those three other people also... Daniel: They were. They were all at Graphic. So it was nice. We all worked together. We all knew each other's kind of strengths, weaknesses. We had a little bit of chemistry already, so it definitely helped us get the ground running. Daniel: What were some of the skills and relationships you've learned at Graphic that helped you build Stacker? I think first was selling to people 30 years older than me and being comfortable in a room with people way more senior, way more experienced, way more executive. I was 22, 23 in a business development role, basically tasked with like go work with, you know, X type of company. All of those companies were in New York. So I was a 22, 23 year old. I was calling out to New York, convincing, you know, people in their 50s to sit down with me and take a meeting and then sitting down with them in my, you know, Nordstrom rack blazer and, you know, playing adult basically. And I think you do that enough and you A, start to gain confidence, B, start to gain just like some presence and C, start to gain just like kind of the know-how of what it's like to sit down in person. I think like one of the biggest shames of people, we have people on our sales team that have came of age, if you will, during COVID and they just don't have the in-person muscle. And I think, I think that's a really important muscle as we get farther away from COVID. So the first thing was just kind of taught me how to, and gave me the confidence to pitch to people way more experienced than me, way more senior than me. Two is, I think it helped me understand how to operate in a company or how to operate a company. Right. It's so funny. Daniel: I had a friend who started a company right out of college, and I was at this 20-person startup that, you know, over the next five years, he grew his company to 20 or 30 people. Really incredible. The company I was at grew to about 100 people because we were venture-backed. He was constantly calling me saying like, how do you convince people what time they should come to the office? Like, you know, just like as a 22-year-old, you've never worked in an office, and there's all these things that I think I was just taking for granted of like, oh, I'm learning how office culture works. I'm learning how to set goals and how to, you know, manage a team. You know, I got to, at like 24, I was managing a team of five interns. And then a couple years later managing a team of, you know, I have a 22-year-old. So I learned, you know, I got to learn how to manage people, how to set goals with the team, etc. and, you know, learn by making a lot of mistakes. So when I started Stacker, I just, I had a lot of know-how, like, oh, this is how a company is run. This is what I liked about how that company operated. This is what I didn't like about how that company was operated. That would have been much harder if I'd started at 22. Matt: The more you're talking about your startup experience, the more it sounds like a management consulting experience too. Like, I'm sure you can talk more about this, Daniel, the way even like you're managing an intern or you're traveling a lot. Daniel: This same experience, I'm sure you went through at BCG. Yeah, I mean, no, and I also, I saw your recent post about like the different stages of a career and sort of like what you think people should be focusing on. And I think it was like maybe ages like 20 to 24, that early first job out of college stage was either, you know, join a stage startup or get experience working at a management consulting big company. Just like getting thrown into the deep end with way more responsibility than you deserve, I think is what you said. And completely agree. I think back when I was in school, I definitely saw people who also tried to start companies right out of college. And some of them, granted, are very successful, but for me personally, definitely wanted to get some of that hands-on training, just learning from people who had been doing it for so much longer and getting thrown into those tough situations. So I think it's definitely set me up really well. And I've learned a ton about managing people and dealing with teams and things like that as well. Yeah, I think like in both, you know, one of my co-founders, he did two years at Deloitte before kind of entering startup world. And from what I've heard from friends that have worked at Deloitte, at Bain, from friends that have worked at startups, you know, less than, let's call it like less than 50-person startups is in both roles at 22, 23, you're basically just told, like, go figure this out. Matt: You get a lot more training in management consulting, but in kind of both environments, yeah, you get way more responsibility than you should be given at 23. And it's a little bit of like fire, die. And two years later, you have learned a lot if you decide to stick your head down and figure it out. Daniel: 100%. I do think one thing that's interesting about the startup environment that's different from, say, management consulting is I do feel like at a startup, you're probably getting more exposure to like very chaotic, unstructured situations where you kind of have to like almost come up with your own approach or your own solution. Whereas the work in consulting could be more scoped out. Matt: And I've heard from friends at maybe more early stage startups that like you're wearing multiple hats because there's no like, there's many different jobs that need to be done. And so people will. Daniel: It's a good call out. I mean, I think one of the things you probably learn if you spend a few years at a startup is like there are ups and downs. And, you know, in management consulting, assuming you work at a really big management consulting firm, you know, you see ups and downs in other people's companies, but like you're never stressed if we don't hit this goal, I may not have a job in six months. And so I do think, you know, in Stacker's eight years, we've had a lot of ups and downs. We've had incredibly fun times. We've had incredibly hard times. Matt: Probably easier to weather those because I saw it happen at other companies. So I think that's a good, yeah, that's definitely a good call out. The reality is though, I am awful at PowerPoint and spreadsheets. Everyone that goes through management consulting is incredible to my knowledge. And I do, you know, there's something to be said for being able to tell a story and look really professional because if your Excel and PowerPoint skills, again, I'm really glad I didn't go into management consulting, but it's been phenomenal having a partner that spent the first few years of their career being, you know, becoming a slideman. Daniel: That's hilarious. Yeah, we are very familiar with slides and Excel. It's a really valuable skill. Like I make fun of it, but it's incredibly valuable. My preferred medium, of course, LinkedIn posts as opposed to, but that may not be, but before we get there, I think it's a good point to transition to Stacker. So what is Stacker do? Matt: So today Stacker is a platform helping connect brands who are producing content and looking for more distribution for that content, and news outlets that are looking for great vetted content that they can fill coverage gaps. So we source content from hundreds of brands, charge a flat rate, contribute that content into the platform. We compile all that into what we call the Stacker newswire. Matt: If you think about Reuters, for is a wire for financial content, Associated Press is a wire for breaking news, current events, you know, content. We essentially have built a wire of data-driven features, and we compile all of that and relicense that out to thousands of news outlets across the country. So a real-life example is maybe square from their POS systems has all of this data about how people are tipping. They might write a story on comparing all 50 states by how people tip at, you know, for lunch. We'll take that story, make it available to thousands of news outlets. And when the Miami Herald needs an additional story on Sunday because they have a slow news day, they can run a story that shows that Florida ranks number whatever out of states when they tip, and they don't have to produce that story themselves. So we run that platform between the two. Daniel: That's fun. So, and yeah, before this, I was like drawing a bunch of diagrams on my notebook, but you explained it perfectly. You're serving as almost like a middleman in between the brands and the organizations, nonprofits, what have you, that want to put out a data-driven piece, and then news outlets that they probably want to get in touch with, but maybe don't have all the relationships or the know-how, sort of like blending those two together. Matt: Is there a reason behind the more data-driven pieces that you guys tend to focus on, or is it something that, you know, from your background, you guys more experienced with? Curious about that. Daniel: Yeah, so for one, readers like data. There's not a lot of trust in media right now, and data-driven content tends to break through the fluff a little bit. People like data one because it's interesting, and it's facts, and it's statistics, but also because data helps people compare themselves to other people. So you read that story, you see that headline on ranking all 50 states by how much people tip for lunch, and you want to know, where does my state rank? You want to know, where is that state that I went to college in rank compared to, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think data just allows people to add context to life. Beyond that, you know, again, going back to our example, Miami Herald gets hundreds of pitches from different brands saying, take our story, take our story. And one of the value adds that we have for publishers is that we are taking in hundreds of pieces of content and vetting which of these are actual editorial versus which of these are just ads for that brand. And I think for the Miami Herald in that example, data-driven content tends to lend itself to not just being an ad for Square, because it's actual interesting information that only Square has. Matt: And I think that's really the trend we're playing into is we're seeing that any kind of company does have really interesting data that they can tell stories from that they are the only ones who could tell that story. So we talked about Square. We work with Instacart, who has really interesting data on like what types of groceries people are buying and when and in what locations. And, you know, they can tell trends about how Americans are shopping. And, you know, I could give a hundred examples of companies that have realized, oh, we're sitting on this trove of data that no one else has and let's hire journalists or statisticians and tell interesting stories from that. Instacart's sitting on this trove of data. Are you helping them create the graphics that they're going to send to the media outlets or are they hiring someone themselves to do that? Daniel: They're hiring someone themselves. We do help them understand what topics might be interesting to publishers. So as you can imagine, when we're distributing hundreds of stories every month to thousands of publishers, we have really interesting data on this type of story is getting picked up. This isn't. It seems like people are really looking for health and wellness content right now or health and wellness content is no longer popular. And so we're passing that back to brands to help kind of guide some of their content strategy if they want to use it. But no, we're not producing the content. Matt: I think what we found is this huge trend where brands are going out and hiring the very journalists that used to cover their industry or the economists that would normally cover their industry and just saying, actually, we can be the news source. Love that. And Daniel, I could sense you also jumping in here because we, we recently talked with Peter Walker, who head of insights at Carta, love his content. Very, very data-driven as you know. Daniel: And we're also, we're also going to be, be having a conversation in the future with Ara, who's the chief economist of the platform. Matt: Yeah. I see that popping up left and right. You're absolutely right. Yeah. I could give you a hundred examples. It's, it's really been incredible. I don't think this concept of every media, you know, the concept of every media company, every company is a media company is definitely not new, but this trend of brands coming out and hiring someone like an Ara or a Peter and really investing in, we are going to be a media company and we are going to invest in really putting out a ton of really original and unique research has definitely gained a ton of steam in the past few years. When you started Stacker, what was your strategy to get the ARA's, to get the Peter's to put their stuff on Stacker so you can help them distribute it? Daniel: Cold outreach. I think, you know, no matter what type of business you run, like you're going to need to sell. Daniel: My background was in cold outreach and sales again, like at a young age, I had to figure. How do I convince other people to take a meeting with me in New York? And we invested very little in marketing the first few years and invested very heavily in just us reaching out to a ton of people, getting them on the phone and figuring out how to get them to work with us. And that's, I'd say, you know, I have a lot of weaknesses, but one of my superpowers is probably customer development, product research, and thinking about how do we, through talking with a hundred people, figure out not just what the product should be, but who the customer should be. And so, yeah, you know, a lot of conversations with people and a lot of kind of opportunity spotting and going after it. Matt: Did you target the publishers with Peter's first or the Miami Herald's or both at the same time or how are you managing that? So as with any marketplace, kind of got a, it's a chicken and egg problem. Daniel: We decided to go for the demand side first, you know, McClatchy newspapers, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, et cetera. So the publishers that we were distributing to. What we actually did to kind of seed the marketplace is we built out a newsroom at first. So we realized that we needed content. Daniel: We built out a 10 person newsroom and started making data driven content and then went to publishers and said, do you want this? And then over time, once we had gained the trust and kind of built authority of a place that knew what good content, what engaging content looked like, we then went and started sourcing content from brands, brought that back to those publishers and said, if we were to integrate this other type of content produced from third parties, would you be interested in that? And they more or less said, can't promise you we're going to publish it, but happy to take a look. And then once the content was great, they said, yeah, I would love to publish this. Matt: Can you talk a little bit more and for the audience's benefit too, like when you say we started with building out our own newsroom, like what does that entail? Are you hiring like your own journalists? Daniel: Yeah. I mean, you know, for better or worse, journalism is one of the few industries where the best talent tends to work freelance or some of the best talent tends to work freelance. So, you know, out of all businesses you could start, starting a newsroom is probably, you know, one of the less cost intensive businesses. So we started with freelancers. Daniel: As we started to make money, we started to bring on full-time people, but it was a very gradual process over, over a while of, yeah, going out and finding freelance editors, freelance writers, working with them on what types of stories we thought would be interesting. And then once the flywheel gets going, it's easier to start upgrading to better talent. Matt: So you're doing all of this cold outreach. It seems like it's pretty successful. At what point are you like, okay, we should start thinking about LinkedIn or content, you know, generating more inbound, not just us going out and reaching out to people. Daniel: It was about two years ago. So basically we were at a point two years ago where every time I got on the phone with someone, they would say, holy shit, I did not know this existed. We've been looking for something like this, but no one had heard of us. And that was partially because we didn't do any marketing, partially because we have been bootstrapped the whole time. And one of the times that you tend to get press is when you raise money. Also, a lot of journalists in media and tech tend to only cover companies that have raised money just because it's kind of a stamp of approval. For better or worse, we had not gotten any press and no one had heard of us. And I was really frustrated with that. Matt: And I think the realization that I had in October of 2023 was basically every one of our would-be clients is on LinkedIn every day. Daniel: There's no one trade publication that, oh my God, if we got an article in this, everyone would read it. But they're all on LinkedIn. Maybe not every day, but definitely every week. And I think that's true of pretty much any B2B company and a lot of B2C companies. Depending on who your customer is, is the people that, you know, you wish would read the press you got are on LinkedIn weekly. And so basically said, you know what? Screw trying to get press. I'm just going to start writing on LinkedIn. And that was kind of the genesis of realizing we need to get out there. And there's actually this mechanism that we can just play around with for free instead of trying to get established journalists to write about us. Matt: You decide to go on LinkedIn. Did you think about Twitter or Instagram or Facebook? Or were you just set on LinkedIn from the start? Daniel: I was pretty set on LinkedIn. I think, you know, hindsight is 20-20 of why that was a good decision. At the time, my gut was just telling me. I think at the time I realized, like, the thing is, people have their job title on LinkedIn. So I could see, wait, all of my customers or would-be customers are on LinkedIn. Like I can see their name and their title in the company. On Instagram or Twitter, like not every VP of marketing says, I'm the VP of marketing at this company. So I think at first it was probably just kind of obvious, like this is where the people are. Daniel: In hindsight, why I think, you know, as founders, if founders want to use social media to build more authority, more sales and pipeline for their brand, why I think LinkedIn makes sense is one, your name and job title are attached to it, right? So like it is a place where people can see when you're reaching out, like I'm from this company. But more than that, I think when people are on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, they're in business mode. Like when people on Twitter, if you reach out to someone on Twitter about a sales call, it can come off as straight, just like people are not in work mode. Whereas I think on LinkedIn, people are just kind of like mentally in that work mode. Matt: You're so right. I think we all just when we're on LinkedIn, probably at the desk a lot of the times, we're in a different mindset than when we're scrolling TikTok or Instagram. So once you start posting on LinkedIn, what's your strategy there? Are you trying to connect with a bunch of people? Are you trying to post? Are you trying to make videos on LinkedIn or post on Stacker's account? Daniel: What's your strategy? So my, I guess, to take a step back, what my strategy is, is I am trying to build an audience of my would-be customers so that over time, I can advertise to them a la more posting on LinkedIn about Stacker. Daniel: So I think one of the mistakes I see a lot of people make when they start posting on LinkedIn, if their goal is to drive awareness and or business for their company, is either one, they have no idea what they're kind of, who they're posting for, and they're just posting all over the place, or worse, they're just posting ads for their company. And they're going out and saying, this is what we do. Look how impressive our product is. Here's a new feature launch. And everything that they post is about their company. And to take a step back, I guess, like the strategy with LinkedIn is you are basically building a media company so that you can advertise on that media company to your would-be customers, right? So you are the media company. Like in my case, Noah Greenberg is the media company. The audience, a.k.a. my followers, are hopefully people that one day would buy from me, the people that I'm trying to get on the phone with. I'm eventually looking to advertise to them. But if any media company just started advert, if it was all ads, no one would subscribe to that media company, right? And so I think what you have to remember is you need to put out content that buys you the right to then advertise your company. And so my strategy is put really valuable content out there that's both interesting to me and interesting to my followers, but put actually valuable and interesting content out there. That's why people would follow me. Daniel: And then once they follow me, then I have the right to advertise to them a la Look How Great Stacker is and get people to then inbound. Because I'm pretty just registered in my mind that that's essentially what you're doing for companies like Square too. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of crossover between those two strategies in that, I think, you know, what's happened in the past 10 years is the traditional advertising models have become really saturated. So Facebook advertising, Google advertising, there's just so many competitors out there. And people have just gotten really efficient in Google and Facebook advertising that it's become really hard to compete in those spaces that 10 or 15 years ago you could find new customers and brand has become really important. Brand being, do people know who you are? Do they have a positive affinity and trust who you are? And do they respect you and look at you as an authority? And there's a million ways to do that. One of which is making it so that when you're reading the morning paper, people read about how your brand did really interesting research and are an authority for Square in the restaurant space. You know, we talked with Lyft, who's a customer, and Lyft puts out really interesting content about, you know, where people are commuting to and at what time and trends across all that. Daniel: And I asked him, like, why are you investing so much in this? At the time, Lyft's editor-in-chief actually had been a journalist at Wired magazine for 10 years. They invested in a really impressive newsroom. And he said, look, we know that everyone has both Uber and Lyft in their phones. And if someone is reading their morning paper and they read an article that sources Lyft data, if they're 5% more likely to hit that Lyft button 10 minutes, you know, when they need to go to work instead of the Uber button, it's just like, we just need mindshare, right? And so to your point, exactly, I think, you know, whether it's me posting on LinkedIn to build authority and affinity for me and a la Stacker or Lyft and other public companies putting out journalism out for free so people read it, it's all in the name of building a brand and building trust with potential customers. And I think what makes LinkedIn really special is just there's so much data that shows that people buy from people and that whether you're the CEO or founder or anyone else, you could be an SDR at a company, the people are just much more likely to get on the phone with you and buy your product if they know you, are familiar with you and like what you have to say. Matt: I just wanna go back to that thing you said earlier, Noah, about how you have to almost like earn the right to pitch someone these days, especially with how much traffic and information is being dumped onto people through all social media channels at all hours of the day. Curious, if I or someone listening was a founder and they're just getting started out with content, they know they need to do it, maybe they've picked LinkedIn as a channel, what would be your advice for them about how to think about the content and the mix of that? Daniel: Just to make sure we can be as tactical or practical as possible, what is this person's goal? Let's just say that their ultimate goal is to get people to... from them, but they don't need this to happen immediately. They want to, obviously, warm up the audience, demonstrate some thought leadership, so that when the time does come to make the pitch, the sell is a lot easier. It's really important to consider who your audience is, right? And so that's why I wouldn't advise just, I'm going to build an audience. Because like you guys have thought about, okay, for this podcast, who is the person listening to this, right? Who would this be valuable to? And I would say, you know, obviously, if you are the founder of a company, then your goal is to meet, you know, find those potential customers. Daniel: But there's also examples of people who I've talked with people who, kids just graduating college, and like their job or their goal is to find a job, right? And so their audience is potential hirers, right? And not just any hirer, they know that they want a job in this industry, in this role. And so let's just say I'm graduating, and it's a dream for me to work in product at a tech company, right? Not even just any tech company, I want to work in product at a Series B-sized tech company, right? Then I think you should think about who are the hiring managers at Series B tech companies, and what are they interested in, and post about that. So I think it's, you know, if you just go on and you start posting, the same type of content is not going to be interesting to both of you, as well as my potential customer, as well as the hiring manager for an engineering role at Google, you know, as well as et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, maybe a different person is saying, I'm never going to want to get a job, but one day I'm going to start a company, I'm going to run a raise venture capital, right? Let's just say you're 19, you're like, that's going to be my goal, is like I'm eventually going to want to raise $100 million. Maybe you're building content saying, I just need like venture capitalists to follow me, right? But that's the content that's going to make a venture capitalist say, this kid's really interesting. Matt: It's very different than all the other types of content we've talked about, right? So I think that's the most important first step, is getting really specific with who you're trying to get to be your audience. Daniel: 100%, and I feel like it's, that's like universal content creation advice, whether it's on LinkedIn or YouTube or, and any other platforms, it's like if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. Whereas if you have that very specific ICP or persona in mind, then the content that you make is much more likely to actually find those people and resonate with them. Matt: Yeah, and look, this is a very, this is a very specific strategy, right? So one of my favorite podcasts, My First Million, he talks about all the time of, I'm actually just creating content that I want to make. And the followers and audience I'm looking for are people that like what I like. And that's a really good strategy if you're trying to build a media company about things you are interested in. But if you specifically have a goal in mind of, I'm trying to raise money or I'm trying to drive business for my startup, et cetera, I think you just need to be more specific. So I do think, you know, there is a, there's plenty of room for, I'm going to create content about this thing that I'm interested in, or I'm going to create content, you know, as Mr. Daniel: Beast has done of just like, I'm going to make the most engaging content possible, and I'm just going to follow wherever will get me the most views, right? So there's different ways to do this. I think it's probably an important call out that if we get into what I would recommend as a kind of content strategy on LinkedIn or elsewhere, that this is the, I have a goal in mind, and I'm going to, my goal is to get, you know, those types of people following me so I can eventually get on the phone with them and have them, you know, respect me, which is not necessarily the one size fits all strategy, but it's probably what you want if you're a founder or if you have a specific goal in mind. And I love that you started with asking me what this person's goal was instead of just like jumping into it. Strategy would be, and so, I mean, we can definitely, we can talk about it more generally, but that is, I think, the first question that everyone needs to ask themselves before they dive in. I'm ready to dive into the specific LinkedIn task. What about you, Matt? Matt: Yeah, let's get into the juicy details. But I guess, what do you think is the best way to go at this? So are we talking to someone that is starting from scratch and thinking about how do I build a following on LinkedIn and or like leverage the value that LinkedIn has to offer? Daniel: Yeah. Okay, so we are, it doesn't matter what the goal is. We're just going to go step by step. Daniel: So I will start off by why I think this is important is one, as we talked about, all of whoever you're looking for, whether it's venture capitalists or hiring managers or customers, they're all on LinkedIn. Beyond that, I have been in go-to-market outreach roles for probably 15 years now. And LinkedIn is by far, hands down, the most effective way to get people to get on the phone with you that I have ever seen. If you think about like outreach 1.0 was cold emailing someone and you're just a random name and email address trying to convince someone to get on the phone with you. I'd say outreach 2.0 was like just DMing someone on LinkedIn. And you're no longer just a random email address, you now have a face, you have a title. Someone's much more likely to get on the phone with you, let's say. But outreach 3.0, I think is, you've posted on LinkedIn. That person has followed you, they know who you are, and then when you reach out to them, you're not even just a random face and name. You're a person that they say, oh, I know and trust what this person says. I would love to get on the phone with them. And if you can execute what we'll talk about right now, the right way, you will get more people on the phone with you than in any other kind of outreach model that has worked in human history, I'd say. Okay, so how does that work? First is figure out who your audience is. Matt: And if I were walking someone through this, and when I do coach people through this, like, you got to get really fucking specific to like, who is one person? So what I recommend is literally picking a person, an individual, pick their LinkedIn profile of, if this person DMed me and said, I'd like to get on the phone with you and learn more about what you have to say, you'd be like, I did it. Like I figured it out, right? So you literally pick that person, print out their LinkedIn profile or, you know, put it up on a screen and brainstorm what does this person care about? Okay, so you're literally thinking about like, what is the type of content that they would be interested in, right? So maybe that's, you know, prompts or like, what do they want to learn more about, right? What are they curious about? What are they concerned and unsure about? What are they excited about? Like, what are the topics that if they saw content on this, they'd say, I'd like to read that, right? So, you know, I think a really good, you guys, you said you talked with Peter. Daniel: Yeah, yeah, okay, so like Carta and Peter is trying to get in front of startup founders, right? Peter is making content that is really interesting to startup founders. It's about, you know, how much money to raise. It's about how much equity to give your employees. It's about companies that have gone out of business and why. Matt: It's like all this really interesting data that if you're a founder, you want to know those things, right? So that's a really good example of Peter said, what's the type of content that founders would want? And he's going to create that type of content, right? So you're really thinking about what would be interesting to that person whose LinkedIn profile you just printed out and come up with a list, right? And start to think about what are topics within there that would be interesting, right? So hopefully now you have what is the inkling of some topics you might want to write about, right? What could be the start of a content strategy? What I would start doing then is start posting once a day. Why do you need to post once a day? Because your posts are going to suck at first and no one's going to read them. And at first, the idea of that is super embarrassing until you realize that if no one reads your posts, the only one that knows about that is you. So it's fine. No one is like, oh my God, did you see that post that Daniel posted that no one saw? Because no one saw it. So, you know, so don't worry about that. Worst case scenario is people actually see what you're writing. So I would start posting once a day. And what you're going to do at the end of 30 days is look back and you're going to sort on LinkedIn by what got the most engagement and you're going to see what worked and what didn't. And then the next 30 days, you're going to do it all over again. Daniel: And you're going to say, it seems like this topic is really resonating. I'm going to try a bit more content, you know, with that topic, right? Or you're going to say, it seems like this kind of hook or this type of post did really well. I'm going to try more in that area, right? And you're just going to iterate. And the reality is, because when I talk to people, they say, you know, is it fine if I just post once a day? And just the reality is if you post once a, or sorry, is it okay if I just post once a week? And at the end of a month, you're going to have four posts to look at the data. And if you post once a day, you're going to have 20 posts to look at the data. And the reality is just like the rate of learning is going to be much quicker if you're posting once a day. Does it actually have to be once a day? No, but you're trying to kind of throw enough at the wall so that you're learning can be more rapid. So you're going to start posting once a day. Where do you guys want to, you guys want to get in the actual content strategy? Like what would be helpful? So I'd say in terms of the types of content, again, how I think about this is I think 70% of your posts should be value add, right? So like 70% of your posts, people, if you're a founder, they shouldn't know what company you're a founder of because of the content, right? It's not about your company. Daniel: If you're looking for a job and you're trying to establish yourself, you know, for potential interviews, it should not be about, this is my experience. Here's this story, et cetera, et cetera, right? 70% of your content should not be about you. It should be just interesting shit, right? What does that mean? That could be your take on a current event. Hey, this thing just happened in my industry. And here's my opinion on that, right? It could just be like, something you learned and are teaching to other people. So right now, you know, this year, a new topic that everyone's trying to learn about is GEO or SEO for LLMs. My customers specifically really care about that topic and are trying to figure it out. So I've spent a lot of my time learning about that and then teaching people via LinkedIn posts. And that's gained me a ton of followers. It's my customers who want to learn about GEO. And so they're following me because I'm posting about that topic, right? So those posts have nothing to do with, hey, here's how Stacker impacts your GEO. It's just, here's how GEO works more or less. Matt: So 70% of your content, just value add. 20% of your... Content can be more what we'll call like milestones, more kind of subconscious advertising for you, right? So if you're a founder, this is, hey, we just reached this milestone. Hey, we brought these new customers on. Daniel: Hey, we just launched this product, right? If you're looking for a job and you're in the job market, this is a story about, here's a time, you know, that I did this, whatever it is, right? And then I think if you have done the 70% of your content being actually adding value, then you've bought yourself the right where 10% of your post can just be blatant advertising. Like, you know, I'll do a post once a month. It's just, here's what Stacker does. We're looking for customers. If this is you, reach out. If I had just done that post out of the blue, it would be disgusting, right? People would unfollow me immediately. But because I've earned myself the right to do that. So I think when it comes to content strategy, posting frequently, constant iteration, looking back at what worked, looking back at what didn't, and just continuing to test, and making sure that you are over-indexing on content that adds value. No one has ever struggled on LinkedIn because they did too much value-add content. People have definitely screwed themselves by over-indexing on sales-y content. I want to get even more technical and ask some of your thoughts about other stuff on LinkedIn. So the first one is commenting. You are a serial commenter. How has that been for your growth, and should others be doing that too if they want to grow on LinkedIn? Matt: Yes, you have to comment, and I'll tell you a couple reasons why. Selfishly, commenting has been an incredible way to figure out stuff to post about. Matt: So a lot of the time, I'll go, I'll comment, and I'll say, oh, that's actually a pretty interesting thought I have, and I'll turn that into a post, right? So being out there and commenting has been like a really good brainstorm tool for seeing what thoughts and opinions I have. And later, we can talk about interesting ways to figure out what you should write about and what's in your head that you don't even realize you have opinions and thoughts and expertise on. But commenting can be one way to figure out what you actually have opinions on. The next is, the way that the LinkedIn algorithm works is, when you comment on people's posts, it makes your posts more likely to get more reach. So you're contributing to the platform. You are gaining, you know, what Reddit would call karma, if you will. And I'd say, you know, if you just go on LinkedIn and you post once a day, and a second person is posting once a day, but also commenting on five different people's posts, the second person's posts that they're writing are going to do much better. And this is not just, smart idea, really love this post. Matt: This is like actually writing stuff that is engaging, right? The third of which is, commenting is a really good way to get onto the radar of the people that you're trying to turn into your fans and followers, right? So imagine I'm trying to get on the phone with the CMO of Wells Fargo, and they post something about kind of how they think marketing has changed over the past 20 years, making this up. If I go in and I give kind of a hot take, not disrespectful, but just like, hey, here's another way of thinking about this, et cetera. They're going to say, that's interesting. This guy Noah Greenberg, kind of an interesting thought there, right? Not like going to reach out to him the next day, but now he knows who I am, right? And then two months later, he says something else, and I comment. And in the same way that, you know, kind of in the glory days of Twitter, people just like became Twitter friends. If I can become LinkedIn friends with the CMO of Wells Fargo, eventually he's going to say, wait, what the hell does Noah actually do? And he's going to look into my company and he's going to hopefully reach out. Or when I reach out to him, he's just going to be much more likely to get on the phone with me. Similarly, let's say you're looking for jobs. If the product manager at all these companies start posting and you're commenting saying, that's a really interesting take, but have you thought about this, et cetera. You're just on their radar. Daniel: And so, you know, commenting is a great way to insert yourself onto people's radar and come off as, hopefully, if you know what you're doing, a smart, thoughtful, interesting person. And people talk about advertising. They say it takes, you know, seven or eight or nine or whatever the number is, times to close the deal. And it's similar. Like it might take seven or eight comments, and this is one more rep of you getting in on the employer or on the potential customer's radar. Have you, moving on from comments, have you experimented with new newsletters or LinkedIn lives or stuff like that? Matt: I have not. I don't do newsletters. I don't do LinkedIn live. I don't really do video content. I think that there could be value in all of those. I think at the end of the day, probably rule number one, if you're going to get on and start engaging with LinkedIn, is to do what you're comfortable with. Everyone says you have to do video or, you know, a lot of people say you have to do video. You have to do video. The reality is I'm not super comfortable posting a ton of video content. It's just not the brand I want for myself. That's nothing wrong with other people doing it. But I think you need to do what you are comfortable with. Otherwise, you're just not going to have longevity on this. And much more important to be consistent and do this over the long term than it is to have a flash in the pan of, oh my God, I have to do this type of content. Daniel: And I will say, I have posted one video in the two years that I've been on LinkedIn, and I have gotten a ton of value out of LinkedIn, so you definitely do not have to do video, but you can and should if that's something that interests you. Writing these posts, I'm curious because there's, it's hard to come up with a lot of post ideas. Are you scheduling posts at all or is it just you read something and you're just going in and writing right then and there? Matt: I used to schedule posts. I don't schedule posts anymore because I no longer care what time of the day I'm posting. I used to, you know, maybe it was six o'clock and I had an idea and I wrote the post and I'd say, got to schedule this for 9:07 tomorrow. Now I just post it. But, uh, I do sometimes write, sit down and write three posts or two posts or one and a half posts in a sitting. I'd say when I started, I had a 9 a.m. reminder on my calendar every day that just said post and it was just a reminder of like, you're going to do this every day. And did I post every day at 9 a.m.? No, but like it was a, it was a check mark every day that I had to get into the habit of doing. But to, you know, to answer the heart of your question, there are some days where I wake up and I say, what am I going to post about today? But there are other times when I, you know, I have a, I have a Google doc called Noah's LinkedIn Sandbox that I'm just throwing ideas into when they come up. Matt: And that Google doc has four or five posts that I've actually written, but I'm not in love with them, so I haven't, you know, posted them. It has one sentence that came to me in a meeting and I said, oh my God, I should do a post on this one day. And I've, I've added that to the doc and one day I'll go in there. So sometimes when I'm feeling uninspired, I will go into that doc and see an idea I had two weeks ago or, and you know, again, we can get into all the ways I come up with content to write about. Sometimes I'm writing it in the moment. Sometimes I'm writing it beforehand. Daniel: I love that you have like a repository and Dan and I, we both also have our own sort of like Google Docs with a bunch of ideas. Daniel's probably got like three times as many posts written on there as I do, but that's fascinating. And the one thing, do you find that the, a lot of the ideas that you get come from just like, like you said, being in a meeting or an interesting conversation with someone, you think of something and then immediately you put it down and then maybe later you revisit it and write a post on that. Daniel: So I think what's really magical about having that repository of places, a place that you throw ideas is it helps you get into the habit of identifying that could be a post that could be a piece of content, right? So what started happening as I was keeping this doc and I was brainstorming, what could I write about, uh, is all of a sudden I would be in a meeting with someone on my team and I'd say something and I'd say, oh, that was actually kind of an interesting thought. I just had, I'm gonna write a sentence like I could flush that out into a post later on. Right. Or I'd be on a sales call and I'd just be bullshitting with the person about the industry, etc., etc., and they'd ask me, like, what do you think about this? And I'd answer and I'd say, huh, like that's actually kind of an interesting thought. I just said that could be a post later, right? So I think you do just get into the habit, you know, I'll be reading an article and I'll text a friend and say like, this is so wrong how they're thinking about this. And then I'll say, oh, like that's an interesting take that I have that could be worth sharing and, you know, adding a little bit more color and thought to, right? So I think throughout your day, you do have a lot of really interesting, unique to you thoughts, takes, things that you actually are an expert on already and you just take it for granted because you've been an expert on it. And so I think the trick is figuring out how to pull that stuff out of you. Matt: Again, commenting is one way to do that. If you go comment on other people's stuff, you'll realize like, oh, I actually have all these like hot takes and interesting thoughts that I'm commenting with. But I think you just need to find how do you pull this stuff out of you? And having that, in my case, Google doc has been a helpful way to to prime my mind to identify those. So you've got the Google doc and you're ready to write a LinkedIn post. What's your workflow from taking one of those ideas then to LinkedIn posts? Like are you just going right in a LinkedIn text editor or using something else? Daniel: If you Google LinkedIn preview, there's a bunch of free websites that just show you how it actually would appear on LinkedIn. It's really important to think about what shows up above that more button and just like how it's formatted. So I usually work out of one of those, but yeah, I'm just like raw writing. Like I'm not using ChatGPT. I'm not, I'm not using AI to write content. No, I think, I mean, we can, that's a, we could talk for an hour on that, but uh, no, I'm not using AI to write content. I'm just kind of going and having fun with it. And after that first draft is done and you just hit post. Matt: Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of people have said, like, as I have gained a following, as you can imagine, a lot of people have given me advice that I should now start a newsletter. And I think the thing that scares me about a newsletter is just, it needs to look more polished. Matt: And there's something about LinkedIn that like, it's okay if it has a typo. It's a little bit more ephemeral. It's a little bit more casual. And I do post things with typos. Like do I proofread them? Yes. But do I proofread and miss some typos? Definitely. So yeah, I'm, I mean, sometimes will I write something and say, this is a great post not for today though, for one reason or another. Maybe it's because I have something else that I want to post about that day. Maybe it's, you know, I have some opinions lightly on certain content does better over the weekend versus on a Monday versus on a Wednesday. And so maybe it's like, this is a great post, but today's not the day for it. But for the most part, I'm writing it, I'm reading it once, and then I'm shipping it. I'm gonna send you after this. There was an interview that Steven Bartlett did, Diary of a CEO with the CMO of LinkedIn. It's unlisted on YouTube for some reason, but it was fascinating and I was just doing some posts about this. Steven Bartlett is now pretty much putting typos in his posts. He's like the typos are back and it's one way to. Show people you're not AI. I mean, to go back to your question, I mean, the reason I don't use AI is partially just because I, it feels kind of gross to me and I'm not super happy with the output. I also have fun writing. Like posting on LinkedIn has become a little bit of a creative outlet. Matt: The reality though is there's so much just clearly AI-generated content that I think part of your job when posting on LinkedIn is to stand out and not look like all the other content and that, you know, having typos in there is one way to, you know, have people know you probably didn't just type a prompt into ChatGPT. It's pretty funny because when I'm reading your content, you'll break a lot of rules that some previous guests have, whether it's mentioning a bunch of companies that won't react to your posts or having typos. And are there some rules on LinkedIn that you like absolutely follow and like swear by? Whether proven or not, they could be conspiracies. Daniel: I think the algorithm, like any algorithm, like Google, like TikTok, like Instagram, like the algorithm is constantly changing. And so what works really well today may be wholly different a year from now or tomorrow. But in general, things that I try and I think about are, I'm fine adding links to posts, but I try and never have the thumbnail show up at the top of the post. So, you know, to get like really technical, you add a URL into the LinkedIn draft and it automatically pops up a thumbnail. You can X out of that. I always X out of that. I think that this is not proven with scientific data, but I think LinkedIn suppresses content that has that thumbnail. Whereas if you were to take a screenshot, let's say, of that thumbnail and include that, I think it would do better. A versus B. Matt: Peter Walker had the same thoughts, by the way. Great. I'm in good company there. I think, you know, kind of coming off of that because there obviously is a lot of debate over should you not post content with links in it. I think the reality, my reality is LinkedIn just doesn't want content where to get the value, you have to click out. So, you know, if you're just, let's say you're posting a job, if you're just like, here's a job and it's a link, not going to do well. Whereas if you are posting, here's a job and here's a bunch of interesting things about this job and here's what this job, like the fact that this job is being listed, here's what this says about the industry. I think that will do really well. Why is that? Because at the end of the day, LinkedIn is rewarding and by rewarding and sharing and spreading content based on engagement. And the reality is most a job listing and it's just, here's a job listing. One in 10,000 people maybe actually is interested in that post, right? Just it's a very small percentage of people who are going to see the content and say, Oh, this is interesting to me because all it is a job listing, right? So you got to be looking for a job and the job has to be relevant to you. Whereas if you post that job listing and you say, here's what the fact that this job listing, the fact that it exists, here's what that says about what's going on in my industry. All of a sudden that's interesting and relevant to a much wider group of people. Daniel: And when people see it much more likely to engage with that content, they're going to click that more button. They're going to read it. They're going to spend time on it. And LinkedIn is potentially, you know, they're showing a post to a hundred people. They're showing a bunch of other posts to a hundred people. And they're looking at what are people engaging with and the stuff that people are engaging with, they're going to show more people. And the stuff that no one's engaging with, they're going to say, this is not interesting. Like I'm going to bury it, right? And so at the end of the day, you're thinking about how do I get a wider group of people to engage with this? Matt: And I think that's why I don't include links in just as links. Yeah, that's really interesting topic of links. And we've asked a few of our previous guests about it as well. Some people, I think there's more of a consensus that like you, if you really want to include a link, obviously make sure the post itself has some value in it that people would want to read. And also you maybe just include the link as a comment that's pinned under the post as an option to not have it directly in the body of the post. Because I think the way I think about it is LinkedIn obviously wants to keep people on the platform as long as possible. And so if there's a direct link or anything in the post, then they probably... Daniel: I don't agree with that. Again, I think, I don't think they're trying to keep people on the platform. Matt: I think they're trying to show people content that people are engaging with. And if there's just a link, less people are engaging with it because they're just clicking off, right? So if it's just a link, maybe you're on that post for three seconds. Whereas if it's a link with a bunch of text, maybe you're on that post for 30 seconds. And when they're comparing that three seconds versus... This is 30 seconds of engagement time with the post versus all of the other content on LinkedIn, that three seconds is nothing, and LinkedIn just assumes this is a useless post. Daniel: I see. So for you, the main metric is the time spent on it. It's how much, or are people commenting? Are people liking it? Are people spending time on it? But are they engaging with it, which has a broad meaning. But that's the only thing LinkedIn has to go off, right? Are people interacting with this content? And if people are spending very little time on it, or again, just seeing a link and having no reason to interact with the post besides clicking on the link or not, I think they're just more likely to just scroll past it. Matt: Noah, if you were the CEO today, like, what is something that you might want to change about the way that the platform is? Daniel: You know, I come at this with a very specific perspective, uh, a founder of a B2B company. Daniel: You know, I think there's, I think there's an opportunity to, there's a lot of companies that have popped up that basically help you scrape LinkedIn, help you, like, automate messages on LinkedIn. I think there's an opportunity to kind of produce like a CRM in LinkedIn. There's a lot of people using LinkedIn more or less as their sales channel and third-party software companies have popped up to basically be your CRM for LinkedIn outreach. And that feels like a huge miss for LinkedIn, both because those are shitty experiences, and B because I'd rather do that in LinkedIn. So that feels like a really big opportunity. The other piece, selfishly, is I would not let video take over the platform. I think that, you know, the past couple years, we've seen video kind of, is it gonna be really big? Is it not? Is, you know, it's kind of waxed and waned. Fear is that video content is going to monetize much better than any type of advertising or any other type of content. And that's a really slippery slope because once you get that advertising revenue, it's, it's a hard thing to turn off. I think that what's really special about LinkedIn is that it's not just all video content and that it's a place that people are sharing interesting thoughts and writing. So I would not kind of be buy video advertising. Daniel: And then third is just really thinking about how do you make this a place for building your career and continuing to lean into that? I think, especially with video content, like there are plenty of like more classic influencer style content of just like stuff that selfishly I'd rather just keep on Instagram. And LinkedIn just not need to be a place where you're selling your business or, uh, you know, but I think it just like anything that has a bit more of that professional angle, I would try and keep it in that, in that realm. Talking about monetization, I think it's like a very controversial and interesting thing about LinkedIn. Matt: How do you think about monetizing your content as CEO of Sacker and founder? Like, it's very hard to track. You can't just say this post got me lift as a customer. How do you think about tracking it when, you know, there are a million other things you can do in a day, but it's obviously reaped so many rewards. Daniel: Yeah. So, I mean, part of it is I'm not just posting and then waiting for people to reach out and say, hey, can we work with you? I'm posting and then I'm pairing that with, you know, a lot of DMs and or just like kind of engaging with the people that are engaging with my content. The reality is we have driven hundreds of sales calls or demo, you know, booked hundreds of demos over the past year as a very clear result of LinkedIn. And that started by me kind of actively reaching out and saying, hey, I saw you engage with this post. Daniel: I'm from Sacker. Would you want to hop on the phone? It's very clear. There's ROI there. Over time, you know, I was doing posts where I'd see like 10 of our ideal customers would comment on my post. And it was like, okay, like this is, you know, we would be paying money to do this in another marketing method, whether it be to get press or et cetera. So like people are interacting with Sacker content and the brand, and that's really valuable. And, you know, again, three months later, getting on the phone with that person and saying, there's no way we would have gotten on the phone with them if they hadn't engaged with that post. I think, you know, what you can do is you can set up a, when people fill out a demo form on your site or a lead form, have an option. Like, where did you hear about us? Right. Have your sales team when they get on the phone, just ask, like I will tell you, you know, if you ask any of our salespeople, they, once a day are slacking me and saying, like, just got on the phone with someone. They follow you on LinkedIn. And I think you can just ask, right? And look, the reality is if you start asking in the first three months you're posting, no one's gonna say, well, I saw you on LinkedIn, but I promise you that if you do this daily in a year, people will start saying, I follow you on LinkedIn and that's why I wanted to get on the phone. So I think one is asking. And then the reality is over time, you will start to get inbound if you're doing this right. Matt: And that initial message isn't the hard sell, it's more of a value-add or asking for their feedback on something or offering a free resource. I think that's key, right? You create this connection where it's not just about a transaction from the get-go. Daniel: Absolutely. The approach is to nurture that relationship. And, Matt, you know, it really builds that trust. When you're not immediately diving into a sales pitch, they're more open to engaging in a conversation. So, do you typically have your sales team automate this process or is it more manual? Matt: It's mostly manual at this stage. I think that personal touch in the initial interactions can really set the tone for the rest of the relationship. We do have some templates or guidelines, but we encourage personalizing each message based on who the person is, you know, their role, the content they've engaged with, that kind of thing. Daniel: Why? When you get a new LinkedIn connection, LinkedIn tends to show you their content, right? This happens on all the platforms, right? You follow someone new on Instagram, all of a sudden your entire feed is just, you know, their last 20 posts, right? So when you have a new LinkedIn connection, it shows you that person's content, right? So what's happening is you're sending a connection request to this person that eventually you would like to get on the phone. Hopefully they're accepting. Over the next week, your posts are showing up and they're being kind of socialized with who you are, right? They've now seen your content a couple of times. Now when you reach out, you're not just that asshole who sent a connection request, you accept it and they're like, thanks. Would you like to get on the phone with me? You are, you've built credibility, right? You know, best case scenario is you're actually waiting a month, right? You're like sending a connection request. Now they're just in your ecosystem and they're seeing what you have to say. And then one day you're reaching out and saying, by the way, I think like our product would be really interesting for you because I've been following you and I see what you're doing, right? So there's definitely kind of levels to how much you're going to finesse this. Daniel: I kind of go both ways, right? So I do probably once a quarter, I will have a week where I just say, this week, all I'm doing is dedicating my time to how many calls for our business I can set up on LinkedIn. The week before that week, I send a ton of connection requests, just cold connection requests, because again, a week later, once I'm in outreach mode, hopefully 50 of them will have accepted my request. And then that week I'm just DMing. And I'm not automating AI messages because you are going to get a really good response rate if you actually write the messages and you personalize them a little bit. I get about a 25% response rate when I send, when someone has accepted my content or sorry, accepted my request, and then I wait a few days and then I send a DM, about one in four times that person will say, sure, I'll get on the phone with you. Which is again, just like I have never in my career had numbers or seen numbers like that. There are certain people where I'll say, you're a perfect customer. You're not getting the same kind of mass treatment for the 50 people I reached out to in that week. And I'm playing the long game and I'm saying, you are the SVP of marketing at Yelp. I know you would be an incredible customer. And I don't want to blow it on a cold DM three days after you followed me. So for that person, I'm commenting on one of their posts. I'm posting and maybe tagging their company. I'm commenting again. I'm seeing that they liked one of my posts. Daniel: And then when I feel like they are ripe, I'm sending them a DM and I'm much more likely to get a response than if I just cold DM. So to me, the follow, follow back thing in connection almost reminds me of Instagram in like the early days where everyone followed you on Instagram would follow, you'd follow them back. And I'm curious because, I mean, you've had some periods now where you're heads down on LinkedIn and it's really paid off. How much time are you spending on LinkedIn now per week? Matt: So I'd say I'm at least spending 30 minutes per day. And that's, that's, I'd say I put 30 minutes towards like drafting a post slash commenting on, you know, a few, a few posts, right? Is that a 30 minute block? Sometimes is it 10 here, 10 here, 10 here, sometimes. But then I'd say there's days where I spend an hour because I'm sending a bunch of DMs. There's days where I actually spend zero time because I was really busy. Like this isn't like a religious, I cannot spend a day where I don't post on LinkedIn, but I'd say for the most part, I'm spending at least a half hour a day. And the reality is like LinkedIn has to an extent replaced the garbage time I spend on Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. It's the same dopamine hit, but I can rationalize it because it's helping grow our company and grow my career. So I'm, the reality is like, I used to spend 45 minutes a day on Instagram and now I'll spend like 10 or 15 minutes a day on Instagram. I've moved that 30 minutes over. Matt: And so I'm actually probably spending an hour or an hour and a half on LinkedIn because when I'm on my phone, sitting on the bus, maybe I'm like commenting on some LinkedIn posts or I'm like responding to a DM. It's become a little bit of just throughout my day, but I'd say I'm spending between 30 minutes to an hour a day. That's so funny because Daniel was texting me the other day saying that his LinkedIn usage has pretty much replaced a lot of his Instagram short form usage. Daniel: Yeah. I mean, the reality is I had not really posted on any social media for many years before I started using LinkedIn, but very quickly, it was the exact same emotion or again, dopamine hit as when I used to post on Instagram and how many people liked my content. Oh my God, like that person liked my content. And you just get into that same addiction, it's just easier to rationalize the addiction when it's like, like for me personally and other people would feel may feel differently, like I much prefer that people are liking what I had to say than I would feel about like a hundred people liked my shirtless pic at the beach. And so it's, it's kind of fun saying, oh, I get the same dopamine hit, but it's actually for like an intellectual reason. Matt: Right. And there's like impact. Daniel: Yeah, and I can rationalize this because at the end of the day, we've driven millions of dollars in business for Stacker through it. Matt: I mean, when I started, definitely had a lot of, like a lot of people that I'd, you know, you connect with someone on LinkedIn in high school and you forget that they follow you. And I had people, you know, I went to a wedding and this guy I went to high school with was just like, dude, you're posting on LinkedIn a lot. Like what's going on there? And at first I was self-conscious and then I just realized I'm not posting for him. And I told him, I was like, actually, I'm, I'm just not doing it for you. So like you could, you should unfollow me unless you like what I have to say. Um, I think the reality is there's people in my professional world that I wouldn't want to see what I posted on Instagram, because it's not for them. And there's also people in my personal life that, it's not that I wouldn't want them, but it's like a little cringe if they saw what I'm posting on LinkedIn because again, it's not for them. And I think this goes back to thinking about who is the audience that you are posting for is really important. That brings up a, a pretty interesting topic and I'd love your thoughts on just like authenticity because when it comes to content that I think really stands out on LinkedIn, humor is one that I've noticed kind of pops out on the feed because not many people are posting jokes. Super high value posts, uh, also stand out, but then authenticity I've noticed as well, tends to perform or at least get a lot of engagement. Matt: What are your thoughts on that? And it was probably a spectrum, right? Of like what's acceptable. What do you mean by authenticity? Posts are more about personal things, maybe not specifically personal life, but maybe like the inner thoughts of a founder. Um, not just highlights, but also some of the, the challenges, things like that. Like I think your post about being a DJ, I know this is like a throwback one, but like that was authentic to me, if like, that's what you're going at with that. Daniel: I mean, look, for one, I think people are interested in stories, right? People are interested in getting to know people. Same people, same reason people like social media, same reason people watch reality TV is people are just like curious about other people's lives, right? And people's lives is broad. It's the job I had in high school. It is this problem I had at work, right? But, you know, there's one piece of content which is like, this is what's going on in our industry. And there's another one that's here's a story about a really hard time I had with a boss. People are kind of genuinely curious about other people's lives. And you know, there's a spectrum of voyeurism to genuine interest, uh, or healthy interest, but I think that's one is people just, you know, are interested in people's stories and people's lives and getting to know people. Um, the second is, I will say, people are weirdly supportive on LinkedIn. Matt: Uh, we just like Twitter obviously had a stigma of just like trolling and negativity. And people are strangely just there to cheer other people on. It almost seems sycophantic. Like I get, like yesterday, I kind of, I did a roundup of all the customers that Stacker brought on in Q3, right? This was one of my, it's a 20% milestone post, if you will. That post got 20,000 views. And I added 50 followers yesterday because of the post. So through the new tool where you can see like how many followers because of a post and that blew my mind. And that happens all the time where I'm just like, why do these people care? Like these are people that are not in my industry and they're just commenting and they're like, good job. Awesome to see you guys are still crushing it. And that happens all the time on LinkedIn, right? Like you'll, I think you'll often see like there's posts, like whenever someone says I got a new job, hundreds of people will like that post. Blows my mind. Again, it's like if there's, there's worse things to be strange and unexplainable than that everyone's just really friendly and supportive. But what do you think that's one thing that drives into it? Yeah. Matt: So would you recommend as part of the content strategy that we were talking about, if, if I were a founder looking to build my, my business, is it advisable to be posting a fair amount of that personal authentic content or maybe it's just like one post? Daniel: Again, I think it goes back to doing what you're comfortable with. So people have definitely advised me, Noah, you should be making more personal content. And I would say I under-index on, you know, versus a lot of people that have gained tens and tens of thousands of followers in terms of the amount of personal content. I think that's one, because I'm less comfortable with it. And there's been certain things where I drafted a post trying to be more personal and then I looked at it and I was like, this isn't what I want as my brand. At the end of the day, you have to remember that like you are building a brand and every single post that you put out there is one, you know, grain of sand towards that brand. Now, something might get a thousand views and maybe that's a few grains of sand. Towards your brand, but essentially everything you're putting out there, that corpus of posts is you, and you need to think about what are you comfortable with having be you. Do I think that personal content can be super helpful for expediting or accelerating everything we've talked about? Definitely. Daniel: People like to buy from people that they feel like they know, right? It's the reason that anytime a Kardashian launches a product, people buy it, right? It's not because it's like, oh my God, it's the best product ever. It's like, I like that person. I know them. I want to buy their thing, right? And so, and it's partially because for a decade, people have just been like looking, you know, again, like voyeuring into their lives via a TV show. So do I think that you can accelerate these strategies by being a person that people know? 100%. I think it's just important to call out that it can equally work the other way, right? So there is also stuff that you could post that is personal that turns people off and make someone say, God, I thought I liked that guy, but that's kind of weird, right? Or like, it's just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, right? And there's a million that could be political, that could be just posted a shirtless pic on LinkedIn, like you see every now and then. And it could be that you're just that person that's like posting way too much, way too personal, you know, without getting into it. And so I think it's just important to remember that it can go both ways. Matt: It's so funny because the more you say this, it describes to me almost what like a local journalist does. Like they don't get that personal. They're just putting out the content. And that's a lot of what you see. Matt: Do you see as Stacker evolves, and I haven't done the most research into local news, but is local news still growing? Do you see a future where there's like a stacker for, you know, distributing on podcasts or even LinkedIn posts and other newsletters like that? Daniel: So local news is definitely facing a lot of challenges. And we could have, again, another hour on that. There's a lot of people trying really interesting solutions to save local journalism, to try and make local journalism work and be sustainable. And there's also unfortunately a lot of local news outlets that have shut down, are shutting down, may shut down over the next 5-10 years. I don't think local journalism is going anywhere. I think people are making it work with different models. Is it going to look like it did 20 years ago, 5 years from now? Definitely not. But as many kind of bummer stories there are that are saddening about what's going on with local journalism, I think there's also a lot of reason to be optimistic of people making it work even just at kind of hyper-local scale. With that said, if you think about stackers distribution, since most of our distribution is today via digital online news, whether that be local news, whether that be sites like Yahoo or MSN, etc., I think if you fast forward five years and that's the only place we're distributing your content, we will be heavily behind the eight ball. Matt: You know, where people are getting news today is YouTube, TikTok, not really LinkedIn, if I'm being honest. But the reality is, like, people in their teens and 20s are not reading as much online news. It's not just local news. It's that they're getting their news from a YouTube broadcaster. And I do think, and we are thinking already about how we help brands take their research, take their editorial journalism, get in front of those people. Daniel: You go back to that square piece we talked about and how much people are tipping. There's plenty of YouTubers talking about small business, talking about the restaurant industry, talking about a lot of things that would be really interested in saying, Oh my God, Square just dropped this report. You won't believe which state tips the least compared to everyone else, etc. And it's our job to figure out how to help Square get that research into that person's hands. Just like today, it's our job to help Square get that research onto the Miami Herald. Matt: Yeah, I honestly think even another, like, almost ancillary product you could do is, I don't know if you've thought about this, but almost like an ad network, too, for these local journals, maybe. I don't know what it would be like, but like, that's a, I feel like an upside. Like, you know, you write about this and maybe you can write an ad about them too, even for the content creators, because these journals and content creators probably need more streams of revenue. Daniel: Yeah, definitely. Matt: We're going to ask you about being a top voice, what that was like, how you got it, and then we'll wrap it. Daniel: So Noah, you're a top voice on LinkedIn, which means you got like the fancy blue badge. For the audience's benefit as well, you can't just get this badge. I believe it's invite only to get the badge. So tell us how you got it and, yeah, more about that product. Matt: Yeah, so someone on LinkedIn reached out to me and said, I've been following you and I'm giving you the badge. It was that quick. It was not something I was going for by any means. And I, probably a year, year and a half. I think that, you know, if I were, it wasn't even candidly on my radar and I don't think it's really changed anything besides, I guess it looks legit, but I don't think I'm like getting more reach because of it. If I were to try and manufacture how to get that for someone else, like if your goal of... Daniel: I think you need to get on people from LinkedIn's radar, right, because they're the only people that can do that. How do you do that is post about posting on LinkedIn. Matt: So, you know, I just, again, because I've been doing this and because I'm interested in this and because I'm curious, I do occasionally post about like, I've been experimenting with the platform in this way, and this is what I found, right? Or I have this product and feature idea for LinkedIn, and you know, what if it did this, right? And I'm tagging LinkedIn, and like LinkedIn product managers will engage with my content, right? And over the past year, I've both gotten a lot of people that work at LinkedIn now follow me, but also I've gotten on the phone with like three or four different people on the product and product marketing team at LinkedIn because it's their job to make LinkedIn better for people like me using it. And so like, they want to get on the phone with me as well. And I think, like, to become a top influencer, you know, there's way too many people on the platform where they're just like sorting. Let's look at people getting a lot of engagement and give them, you know, I got the badge when I probably had 17,000 followers, right? So like, I had a serious following, but plenty of people with a hundred thousand followers that don't have the badge. And you can't just do it by having a certain amount of engagement. Matt: And so what I would probably recommend if you really want that is you need to think about both how to be a top voice, quote unquote, also, how do you get on the people that work at LinkedIn's radar? Why do you have it? Daniel: I have it because I spend so much time on it and it like allows me to see more profiles. You know, if you're using it for sales, you kind of got to have LinkedIn premium. I don't know if it helps me with my posting whatsoever, but it helps a lot with, you know, the kind of sales and DM pipeline. Like I said too, some of the previous guests think that your posts get more engagement if you have premium. I'm not sure about it, but interesting thing to think about. Matt: Have you seen your reach go up a lot more now that you have the blue badge? LinkedIn reach is so volatile that, you know, I definitely did not the day after I got it or the month after I got it say, here's a bump. So no. Daniel: I don't know if it was you that posted this, but it was interesting to see some poster recently saw about, you know, how you should track your growth is taken out the top third and the bottom third posts and seeing how those middle do. Maybe it wasn't you. But I agree. I think, you know, the reality is, like, I have a post that got 700,000 views and added a few hundred followers. Would I like to replicate that? Definitely. Am I trying to replicate it? Definitely. Daniel: But like, if I judge my success by how many of those posts that I've been super unsuccessful because I've only had one in two years. I definitely think it's about that middle because again, this is something you're doing every day. And I think, you know, this is kind of general, this is true of all media, right? It's not just, oh, I had that one thing that did incredibly well. It's being able to show up consistently and have the average of your daily be good. Matt: Is that your most feed post to date, 700,000? It is. I'm thinking, I feel like for 20,000 followers, I'm shocked nothing's popped more for you. I don't know, 700,000 is a lot of people. I think it's the largest one we've heard yet of 3.3 million. Daniel: Yeah, that's insane. I mean, to me, 700,000 is a lot of people. I've never, I've never seen that many people. Like to me, it's wild that many football stadiums of people saw that 2,000 words that I wrote. But, you know, again, compared to other social media platforms, that's a drop in the bucket. But yeah, that is a, that is the best performing post to date. And it was actually more or less 3,000 words on what we just talked about. It was about how the, the post was about, it was, and there, you can learn a lot from this. It was a product we launched two years ago, just hit 3 million in revenue. If I were to just start over, here's how I would get the first 10 customers and build the machine to get the next hundred, which then I talked about that. Daniel: But I think that as being above the more button, there's a lot you can pull from that around building authority and credibility. I built a company that, you know, did 3 million in revenue and then just people are interested and wait a second, how do I do this? And that posted phenomenally well. It's amazing. Matt: Last question for you then, Noah, is there anything we haven't talked about today that you want to tell the audience or that you want to chat about? Daniel: No. I mean, well, I guess I said no and then yes. Obviously, you know, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Noah Greenberg, but also stacker.com if you're interested in learning more about the business and really appreciate this. Matt: This was fun, guys. We didn't cover that I should have said from the start, and that's that Noah and I are not related. Probably shocked a lot of the audience. The same great last name, but are not related. Daniel: And although it would have been really cool if Noah was from Louisville. No, not related. I'll make that out soon. Matt: Thanks, guys. Cool. That's a wrap.