How Bill rage baited to 20,000 LinkedIn followers

Transcription

Daniel: Let's get into it. Welcome to Connection Accepted. Today we've got Bill Yost on the pod. Bill, so great to have you here. Matt: Thanks for having me. Looking forward to this discussion. Daniel: So, Bill, for the people that have no idea who you are and are meeting you for the first time, tell us a little bit about you and your background. Matt: Sure. So, I'm Bill Yost. I am based just outside Boulder, Colorado. Currently, I am employed as a people analytics partner at Netflix in the talent analytics department. But I started my career for a company called Protivity where I was doing internal audit and financial advisory consulting. Might be some people who are familiar with that work. It's good work if you can, you know, enjoy that type of subject matter. But ultimately, audit is a lot of telling good intentioned people that they're doing something wrong. It doesn't really fit with my personality. I'm more of a, you know, I want to be friends with people type of person. So, during that role, I started to try to hash out some more data analytics-focused work. And so, the beginning of my career there was like doing what we would call Sarbanes-Oxley audits and other kind of IT controls testing. And towards the later part of my career, I was starting to, you know, actually get spreadsheets for clients, put them into my trusty Tableau license that I had at the time, and then start to make data visualizations, which was kind of my backdoor entry point into data analytics proper. And it was cool because I got connected with the HR function at the firm. And they were like, oh, it was this whiz kid who can do stuff with shitty spreadsheets. And I just started getting all of this data that I started to play with. And it led to the point that I became kind of the firm's first de facto people analyst, despite not even really knowing that that was a thing yet. I got married about three and a half years into that career, and we were living in Washington, D.C. at the time. It was very apparent that we were never going to buy a house or, you know, kind of live the way we wanted to in a place that was that expensive. So I asked Protivity if I could transfer out west. They gave me the options of Denver, San Francisco, or LA. So Denver kind of became the choice, given two of those cities are also really expensive, and I'd be facing the same problems. I transferred to that office. I was only there for like a week before it became apparent to me that it was not going to be a good fit. The culture was a lot different. Daniel: And to be totally candid, one day I walked into the office on like a Wednesday afternoon and I was wearing like a button-up shirt tucked into some jeans, and I got pulled into the managing director's office and he kind of gave me a little scolding because, you know, I need to dress professionally in the office. We don't know if clients are going to come by. Which, okay, fair, but also we worked in a closet. There were no clients that were coming to that office. We were going to the clients because that's how, you know, consulting typically works. So I kind of found it just, not in line with what I wanted to get out of my career. I went back to my computer, looked for tech jobs in the Boulder area, and I happened to find a people analyst role at Google that fit pretty much exactly with the resume that I was building out internally at Protivity. So I decided to take a shot and I applied for that role, and I got it. And then I ended up spending almost eight years at Google where I bounced around to five, I think, different analytics teams under the people analytics umbrella doing things like just ad hoc reporting, really cutting my teeth on how you pull data for a stakeholder or make that data useful for them. Getting my arms around the HR data infrastructure that we typically have in these different firms. And then I started moving into scaled analytic products. So dashboards, collectively, is the easy way to put that. But it's a number of different products that could range from automated reporting to web applications to even just having to answer a really complex analytical question that people, other people were kind of struggling to get the answer to. So that was all well and good until it, you know, turned a little bit. The ChatGPT came in November of 2022 and started changing the world significantly. And the focus of the analytics team there shifted in a way that didn't really align with what I was trying to get towards anymore in my career. And I decided it was probably time to take a look elsewhere. When I found, again, another Netflix role that fit my experience quite well, applied for that, I got it, and now I've been there for about a year. And so learned a lot over that time. I feel really ancient knowing that I've almost spent a decade now in people analytics in this space. But generally speaking, I also enjoy my daughter is turning three in a couple weeks. We have another one on the way in April. And so we're just kind of enjoying life out here in Colorado and having a good time. Matt: Love it. So, Bill, you're currently a people analytics partner at Netflix. And like you said, you've had experience also in this space at Google, another large tech company. What is the main role of people analytics at these companies? Daniel: It's a great question. So typically, you know, we're collecting a ton of information about both our employees and our candidates at every company. Daniel: Every company has Workday probably or some sort of HR information system that's collecting all of this info over time. Making good use out of that information is something that ends up being a little more difficult, right? And so people analytics function will typically work with a business intelligence function who's structuring that data in a way that makes it queryable, useful, actionable, able to build a dashboard on it, you know, kind of fill in the blank. And the people analytics team will step in and try to use that data to answer business questions and hopefully drive action towards whatever the company's goals are. Oftentimes, that goal is make work better for employees, but it could also be things like making work more efficient or in trying to measure employee sentiment or engagement or even just figuring out how our recruitment pipelines are looking and where we're hiring from, who we're hiring, the skill sets that are coming through, or even just statistics around interviewing themselves. Like, are we giving the optimal number of interviews is a common question that comes across to our team. People analytics spans, I would say, both operational and research arms as well, where we have descriptive and diagnostic metrics that are just trying to answer questions. Like what is our attrition rate or our exit rate? Like what is the rate at which people are leaving the company? That actually ends up being like really difficult to calculate sometimes, but that's where people analytics team will step in, figure out how to get the answers to those questions and then get them on a consistent basis through like scaled reporting products, which is where I really cut my teeth in this field. But we also employ a number of, you know, more proper academics, IO psychologists, organizational behavioral psychs, statisticians who do deeper research and analysis for the company-wide level. So that could be answering questions like what's the ideal location strategy that we should be aspiring for to both optimize for cost, productivity, and employee engagement. So it covers a whole lot of things is the short answer to that longer answer. Matt: No, that was really well articulated, Bill. And what I'm hearing is there's like the internal aspect of it where you're looking at the employees at the company and then you're also thinking like externally when it comes to recruitment and, you know, managing the pipeline of candidates. It feels like a very relevant role in this day and age, especially as, you know, we're seeing changes from the advancement in AI and companies trying to be more efficient. And obviously there's probably someone, I imagine, who's doing a bunch of work on the back end to try to understand like productivity and efficiencies for each individual employee and how that kind of factors into the hiring pipeline as well. Daniel: Yeah, definitely. I think it's an exciting field to be in. For me personally, I'm a huge data nerd. Daniel: So I knew, you know, even before I stumbled backwards into people analytics in my earliest days at Protivity that I wanted to play with data. I wanted to learn how to use it. I mean, there's the cliche, the data is the new oil sort of thing, which I It's kind of hate, but it's also kind of true as well, because companies are collecting all of this data all the time, but how do we make good use of it is a whole other question entirely that takes a lot of tact to try to address, frankly. And for me, my dad was a car salesman my whole life, so I grew up going to the car lot, my mom ran a Walmart, was the store manager of a Walmart for years. So I've always, like, been a people person and been interested about interested in how, like, employees can really shape a company and ultimately lead to its success or failure. So every company, of course, they want to hire the best talent, they want to retain the best talent, but there's really gaps in trying to understand how we can actually do that. And I think that's where people analytics helps considerably because it helps close that gap in trying to understand how we can just make our company work better, make our employees happier, kind of a number of of things that it leads to. So you mentioned the AI stuff. It's a very exciting time because, of course, everybody is looking at AI and being like, let's have, like, data is hard. AI can make it easier for us. And, like, that's true to an extent, but I think the people analytics teams across industries sit in a very interesting place right now because we are also acutely aware of the limitations of data. Like, it's rare that I take some data, make a pivot table, and then I get this, like, screaming green answer that's like, go do this thing! And, like, we can get directionally there. But ultimately, we apply this level of human judgment and apply our knowledge of the business, the business context, over top of what we're looking at. And that's where you still, I think, this might be copium for me, you know, trying to preserve my own job, but that's where an analyst, a good analyst, really will be able to thrive is working in tandem with these new technologies to try to understand how it can both make our jobs easier and bring clear value to the business. Matt: Yeah, that that's fascinating to me. And I do agree with you. I think that You know, there's a tendency for people to think that AI is going to completely eliminate any kind of data analytics type of job. But at the end of the day, I think that it's the reality is probably going to fall somewhere in the middle because you're always going to still need humans somewhere along the way to use their judgment. And, I think the AI can be a very helpful tool for you to do your job. But when it comes to, like, actually deciding what the right decision is based on what the data is telling you, that's still going to be a human with experience and the judgment to be able to make that call. Daniel: Totally. Matt: And even delivering the messaging is still a very, very human element that's required to land that successfully. Because as analysts, we don't go into a room with business executives and be like, yeah, we ran a regression and here were the p-values. And, you know, all that stuff. You're going to lose people really, really quickly. You need to go in with a compelling message that's simple, easy to understand, but ultimately is going to resonate with that end user, that business stakeholder, whoever it is. Oftentimes in my role, we're talking, like, you know, the c-suite of the company or, like, senior HR business partners is who I'm typically interacting with. And knowing how to land that is something that takes a lot of practice and, frankly, doing it wrong often. I'm a pretty big champion on LinkedIn. I get a lot of haters on this sometimes of being like, you got to screw it up a number of times before you actually know how to get it right. Like, that's learning in a nutshell. To use a basketball analogy, like, you're going to miss a shitload of free throws before you start hitting them consistently every time. And it's the same thing with writing a SQL query that gives us like, data output. Sure, you might get to the right answer after some, you know, elbow grease is applied or whatever, but I guarantee you there's always a way to write it better, do it more efficiently, do it so you reduce your chances of being inaccurate. And so it's this constant learning journey that I think only comes with time. Where I make people mad on LinkedIn is because you have people who pretend they've done everything perfectly out of the gate, and I'm just like, no, you didn't. Stop lying to us. Bill, speaking of LinkedIn, you've got 26,000 followers and you have a pirate, you have a pirate flag next to your name. I have a lot of questions. Sure. But let's start with, why did you put a pirate ship flag next to your name? It's both a satisfying and a totally not satisfying answer. Daniel: So, I think it would be helpful to, to back up to about March of 2025, this year that we're talking. Don't know when you're listening to this podcast. Maybe it's in 2045. Hope you're doing well out there in the future. But I was like two or three weeks into my new role at Netflix. I logged into LinkedIn, as I had been for a very long time, looking at the feed and just feeling completely underwhelmed at everything that I was looking at. The discourse in my industry specifically was just so dry and just, like, pound your chest, thought leadership stuff, very at odds with what I was kind of saying earlier where this I think it's better to be honest and kind of learn in public and and just have frank discussions about some of the challenges that we sometimes face. And so, I just started posting silly or real stuff that kind of came to mind that I hope would inform, but also I wanted to make people laugh. Daniel: I wanted them to have a good time, like, reading my posts, because I wanted them to come back and engage. And kind of, I thought that if I threaded this needle right, I could communicate to analysts in a way that resonated with them. And so, this timing kind of coincided with lots of people getting weird on LinkedIn at the exact same time. There was just lots of, like, the push to kind of be more human on the platform. You were seeing creators like Nick Power start to pop with some of his posts that were completely shattering the mold of what LinkedIn posts look like. And there were also, I noticed a lot of people who were doing funny things with their names, all caps, low caps, you know, yelling at you kind of up and down kind of capitalization. And so I put up a poll that was like, how should I capitalize my name? And the proper capitalization actually won. But Nick Power, who I, you know, just mentioned, he commented offhand and said, I don't care what the capitalization is, but you should add a pirate flag. And he puts the pirate flag emoji in there. And I'm just like, that's so off the wall and hilarious. I'll do it. Sure. You know, maybe I'll do it for a week. Maybe I'll do it for a month. Who knows? Like, I'm just gonna put this in my name. And then I put it in there and people just start associating me with the pirate flag very, very quickly. I mentioned earlier that I, you know, have made some people mad on LinkedIn. It gets to the point where people are like, you know, trash talking me in comments and only referring to me as the pirate flag. It just became this accidental brand overnight, even to the point here, this will be a messy camera slip, but someone Someone sent me a pirate flag, like in the mail. It's hanging up here in my office. And so it just kind of stuck and it became this accidental thing that now I'm terrified to get rid of because so many people so strongly associate that with me that it feels like almost too good to be true. But yeah, so the short answer to the question is it was just a simple suggestion that I giggled at, and then the rest is history at this point. Matt: That's incredible. And I can't believe someone actually sent you a pirate ship flag. Bill, why do you think doing something as small as adding that little emoji in your name, why do you think that had such a large ripple effect on just, like, the people on LinkedIn and in your network? What is it about that? Daniel: It's visual. It's actually, it goes back to my first big realization when I was cracking into data analytics is that, let me tell you that story about, like, my very first win way back in Protivity, when I just got a Tableau license, which is a data visualization software for, you know, listeners out there who are like, what the hell is he talking about? It takes data and makes charts. Dashboards, more specifically. Daniel: And I was able to beg my managing director at the time to get me a license because I wanted to fool with some of this work for a client that I had. And this client that I was working with, I was a co-sourced resource to their internal audit department. I was working with a fraud manager who sent me this data file, just a spreadsheet of T&E spend. So number of credit card swipes and the amount and, like, where those dollars went or whatever. And I took this file that he gave me, I put it into Tableau, I made a very simple scatter plot. Meaning, like, on the x-axis, it's the number of times they swiped the card. And on the y-axis, it's the number of dollars, right? And the dots were the people. And so the reason you make a scatterplot is so you can look at the chart and see like, oh, somebody's spending a lot or somebody's spending a little. And there's this dot all the way up and to the right. And so all I do is make this simple scatterplot. I didn't even know what I was doing at the time, but maybe it took me 30 minutes. I emailed it over to the fraud manager, and within 10 minutes, I hear his door swing open. It's like, Yo, yo, get in here. Get in here. And he's all hushed about stuff. So I'm like, OK, man, what did I do? He gets me in the office. He shuts the door. He spins the monitor around me all dramatically, and he's like, Do you see this? He's using his pen. He's like, Do you see this point? I'm like, yeah, man, it's the one all the way up and to the right. It's like the whole reason you use a scatterplot. He's like, I think this is real. I think this is a real fraud. I'm going to look into this. And like two weeks later, it turns out it is. It's like an executive assistant of a C-suite executive who was just like running their personal charges through their corporate card. And the exec was just too busy to care and was just like, Yep, approve, approve, approve. They even put their wedding on their freaking corporate card, dude, at a venue in New York City or something. It was expensive. And so it becomes this lightning bolt moment for my career. And honestly, it's something that many data analysts could hunt for for years and like never actually achieve. Like there's a there's a luck element to this, right? And the big realization for me is, you know, the meme where like the guy's holding the trophy and just like looks freaking confused because, I don't know, he doesn't deserve it or whatever. I felt like that because I didn't do, in my opinion, anything. But I did do something. Right. I made it visual. I made that data actionable for a person who wasn't going to be able to make it useful otherwise because he was sitting on this file the whole time, but had no idea what to do with it. And that to me was this light bulb moment of if you can make something visual for somebody, it can resonate with them in a way that text or numbers or data never, ever will. And so to tie it back to the pirate flag, that's a visual indication of me. Daniel: Sure, everybody has a name on LinkedIn, but an emoji adds color. It adds picture. It adds context to it. And it helps people really identify you right out of the gate. And at this point, I think if someone sees people in my circle see a pirate flag, they're probably going to be like, oh, yeah, that's like the pirate flag Bill uses in his name. So I that's why I encourage people. Do funny emojis in LinkedIn until they take them away, you know, which I think they're actively trying to do. It's useful to just stand out and be a little more unique on a platform that historically hasn't valued such a thing, but it's shifting that way. And I think that's a very positive shift in the platform. Bill, Matt, can you guys hear me now? Matt: Yeah, you look good now. Daniel: Awesome. Thank you. And I definitely, with this shirt, cannot be hired at your previous employer. And sorry for wearing the blue floral on at this hour on a Sunday. Matt: That's a nice shirt. Daniel: Thank you. I wore it to to the derby last year. But going off of your point, Bill, about the emoji and the personal in your name, I think having that stick out and hook is the same reason that my post about having a punchy personal title stand out. And I think that's also probably why you have a different personal title, because if you have a title that says CRO or VP, everyone's just going to scroll past that. And it's not a unique brand for you. But if you have a pirate emoji in your name or if you have a punchy personal title that says cookie CEO, that makes someone want to click and learn more about you just like the pirate emoji does. Matt: I 100% agree. And that's why I love when I see your posts come through the feed and people are, people are getting angry. I love when people are like, oh, they have so many followers. They clearly know what they're doing. And it's just like, you're missing the point in entirely here, friends. But I mean, LinkedIn people and missing the point. Name a more iconic duo. That happens all the time. But totally, right? It just, it brings personality. And I know if, look, I have like 2,000, I'm not trying to brag, because it's actually quite annoying. But I have like 2,000 connection requests just sitting there right now. Just even opening up is just overwhelming. I swear if I like searched for founder, it would pop like 500 of those hits, right? It's like everybody's a founder. Everybody's a CEO. Like tell me something unique. Tell me something special. And to be honest, if I do see an emoji in a name, I'm definitely more likely to be like, all right, you're in. And I hit accept on that request. Daniel: How have you thought about your content through this lens? Because, you know, at the start, I think it's been more people analytics side for you. And you've shifted now to more funny content and not necessarily people analytics focused content. So how has that shift been for you in making content on LinkedIn? Matt: Yeah, I don't know what my content pillars are anymore. Matt: It's just like an ever-changing, ever-changing target for me. I think fundamentally, I want to write stuff that I would want to read, right? I want to put content out there that I hope collectively lifts the LinkedIn ecosystem, which is typically pretty just curmudgeony and dry and very, very boring. As I said earlier, that was kind of the motivation to get started just back in March. I mean, I've only been at this for like nine months or something, which it seems crazy because it's both a short amount of time and a LinkedIn lifetime simultaneously. But for me, the content started shifting to more funny as I started realizing how just dry people analytics topics are in general, combined with the fact that like there's other people doing that stuff, right? Like there's lots of people analytics influencers or, you know, thought leaders out there who are happy to just wax poetic about what people analytics is all day. And I see those posts and they don't do very well often, right? Granted, they don't have the same reach of like my account at this point or whatever. But people who are working in people analytics all day long, I don't think want to go onto LinkedIn and read more about people analytics. I actually equate it to the same as like a podcast. Like people have said to me before, you should do a podcast about people analytics. And I'm just like, dude, I've worked with hundreds of people analysts at this point. You know, at Google, there was, I think the function was like 120 people strong or something like that. I don't know very many of them who at the end of their day, eight hours doing their job or whatever, want to like start driving home and fire up a people analytics podcast. Like they want to go somewhere else, right? And do other things with their time. Or at least I do, right? And so you're definitely right that the percentage of my content that is specifically about people analytics has dwindled over time. I still try every now and then to throw a post in to kind of like keep my bona fides, if you will. And like, you know, because I am, this is the challenge with being funny on LinkedIn is people will also think that, you know, perhaps you're not very good at your job or you're using that to mask using the humor to mask that reality. But like, I don't want to toot my own horn too hard, but like I'm pretty good at my job and I've been doing it for a long time. So I do have insights and stories to tell, but I reserve it for when I can couch it in a way that I can also use humor and make it resonate with people in a similar way that a pure comedic post will do. But ultimately I'm chasing reach here. That's what we're all doing when we make posts is like, we want eyeballs to see them. Nobody says, yeah, I want, well, some people do, but like nobody says, oh, I want to go viral. But in the heart of hearts, we would love it if all of our stuff went viral. Matt: Like there's a feeling of, oh, it's a good time investment or this has resonated with people. And the reality is the purely comedic stuff or when I'm poking at LinkedIn, you know, just making fun of whatever new stupid policy they put in place or algorithm changes or whatever. That content does well because it reaches further. Like, you know, it's applicable to way more people than just like industry specific stuff. And it's just more enjoyable for me personally to write. Daniel: I also think what resonates a lot with the audience about your funny content specifically is that when we had Kevin Baker on and he had that viral Costco post and he said that there's a little aspect of it where the audience isn't totally sure if you're joking. Like with your email sign off, like it starts kind of believable. And then it's like, okay, this is obviously satire and this is hilarious. So when you're writing these posts, what is your process like all the way from, you know, maybe you're on a walk, you have the idea all the way to hitting post on LinkedIn. Matt: So back burner or just write down a quick note in my, I have an Android, don't don't roast me. But like in my like keep notes folder, I just have like a bunch of just half-baked ideas that I'll write down. And then mostly I work out every morning, you know, just trying to fend off death or whatever. And so I'm on the treadmill or I'm doing weights. And during that time, like my head is really clear to just kind of think about this stuff. So that email signoffs one specifically, I can remember molding that while I'm watching tires on Netflix. I recommend it. It's a good show. I'm watching tires and I'm just thinking about some stupid email where that someone else wrote where the signoff like didn't really fit the tenor of the email itself. Like it was just like, that was a weird choice. I don't know if I would have used that signoff. And it made me think like, do we ever know what the right signoff to use is? Like, I could kind of shoot holes at any single word specifically. And so I just started building this in my head. After my workout to cool off, I'll go over to my computer and that's when I'll open up LinkedIn, respond to comments from the previous day's posts, um, look in my messages, but I'm, I'm pretty shit at answering them, to be honest. And then I'll start drafting up the, the post itself. So I'll typically, this is where people can roast me if they want. I'll twit the whole, the whole idea, right, into ChatGPT, and I'll be like, frame me up a post around this topic. And for the email signoffs, it was just like me just quickly putting each sign-off and then my little bit about each one. It spits me back in more of a formatted list that then I'll move into a Google doc and then put back into my voice. Cause like ChatGPT does stuff that like I just would not ever say, but it is useful for like getting to that, like, I'd say taking it from the 25% to the 50% is using the, the AI stuff. Matt: Typically I'm using ChatGPT. Sometimes it's Gemini. Gemini doesn't really, doesn't really get me or what I'm trying to do. So I, I end up going back to ChatGPT often. And then I'll refine it for no more than 10 more minutes, because this is the other thing that I've realized is the more time I spend on a post, ultimately the worse it does. I don't know how, but I feel like people can tell, you know, like if you spent a lot of time trying to make the picture perfect viral LinkedIn post, it flops every single time. And so I, I both don't want to spend too much of my life writing LinkedIn posts, but also in the face of that reality that I personally think taking too much time is going to result in like not great results. I'll try to just get it to a point where I'm like, ah, it's 90%, 90% of the way there. Like, let's just fire it and see what happens. And then those posts are often the ones that, that do the best in my, in my experience. Daniel: Bill, first of all, I love that you're so upfront about how you're leveraging AI to write your content. And I think there's probably, there's two groups of people, right? There's the group that is absolutely anti-AI at all costs. And whenever they see any post on LinkedIn or, or X that has a semblance of AI input in there, they are very quick to be like, oh, this is AI generated and write it off. And then there's this, you know, there's this other group, right? Or, right, like what I was saying basically is there's those two groups and you sound like you fall in the group of the people that see AI as more of a positive tool when it comes to content creation. So you've incorporated it into your process. Something that I've personally noticed that I'd love to get your thoughts on is, like, where, at what point is? Let me, let me take a step back here. You can tell I've got like a lot of thoughts on this, but. Matt: Sure. Daniel: You know, AI is basically trained on vast amounts of written content on the internet. So in a way, it kind of does know how to write well if we're thinking about it from like a structure standpoint or just how to build an argument. It kind of understands how to write better than some people. Some of us are not the best at organizing our thoughts. And so I think like those people could very much benefit from having an AI help them review their content or even like how you use it, you know, use it as a thought partner to help you structure something out to work with, give you a little bit of clay that you can then obviously mold into the end product. But what are your thoughts on, on people who are completely anti-AI when it comes to content? I, I respect their commitment, but I think, you know, I think they're ultimately punching in air, right? I mean, it's, it's the genie is well out of the bottle at this point. This is something that every company is running headspeed or headfirst into implementing it everywhere that they can possibly find it. Matt: I think, you know, early on, I definitely personally had a bit of resistance in, I think the way many people felt about it. But as I, I came to see it more as a useful tool and, and one that could benefit me in specific swim lanes. Like I mentioned earlier, I don't think it's going to fully replace analysts. The human element is still going to be required. Putting the LinkedIn content lens on top of that, like the ideas are always still mine. I'll be totally honest. If you go to ChatGPT and say, give me an idea for a funny, hilarious, viral LinkedIn post, they suck because those posts haven't been written yet. There's no, there's no training data on like my posts, right? Or, or Daniel's roasts of people's headlines. I mean, yeah, eventually, of course, all that content will be in there. Um, but I'm still not convinced that the original idea generation is something that this generative AI LLMs really excel at at this point in time. And so when I realized that I could plug it into my work stream and make it work effectively as an editor for me, because prior to doing this stuff, you know, I wasn't posting on LinkedIn very often, but if I was, I would probably send it to a friend, right, and ask it the same questions, ask the friend the same questions. Like, what do you think of this? Could you help me edit this? I'm also like not a very good writer. So even just like putting it into, um, like good grammar or formatting or getting it ready for human consumption is something that even if I was to write a book, I would still rely on an editor to do so. So I see these tools as a scalpel for sure. Like I think the challenge becomes when people want to use it as a sledgehammer and think it's going to do everything for them. Like that's, that's not the case. But when you can figure out where you can specifically use it to enhance your workflows and whether that be LinkedIn content generation or, you know, I'm using it at work in a similar fashion where, hey, I know exactly what I need to do for, let's say some SQL code. I explain using my own expertise and judgment of what I'm looking to achieve. It gives me code. I pop that code in, review, make sure everything is working. Sometimes it's perfect, sometimes it's not perfect, but in both cases, it saved me a lot of time. And I think recognizing it as a valuable time-saving tool is something that it would benefit you to lean into instead of run away from. Again, I'm going to catch some hate on this. I really, I really, really know it. But I challenge you, if you, if you think you can do what I do content wise fully with ChatGPT, try it. I, I think you're going to be a little disappointed. Like this, we still bring something that's very unique and um important to the table when it comes to this stuff. But if, if someone's, if someone's going to give me a car, I'm not going to say, no, I'm walking. You know, I'll still, I'll use the tools at my disposal and I do see it as, as a useful tool at this point. Matt: 100% Bill. I mean, I think people in general are generally resistant to change. So when you see something as powerful as AI come into the picture, there's always going to be, at least in my view, a group of people that are anti whatever it is. Um, and they'll sort of fixate on the negative aspects of it. Daniel: Yeah. But it's never as black and white as they make it seem. One of the, just a random thought that came up as you were talking about that was just like, how now if you're a good writer, you almost run the risk of people accusing you of using AI in some instances, if, for example, I'll just throw an example. A very common tell for AI generated content is, is parallelism when your sentences are, you know, maybe you have two or three sentences and they follow the same sort of rhythm and structure. Matt: Yeah. Daniel: What if you're just a really good writer and you happen to understand that really well? And so you're writing a post or you're writing, maybe it's not even on LinkedIn. Maybe you're writing for something else and you just happen to use that. Or maybe you just happen to be really good. at using rhetorical questions in your writing. So you're like, you know, what's the lesson here? Or, you know, what's the result? You almost run the risk nowadays of people accusing you of using AI for your content, even if I'm sure there's folks out there that that are not using it and are just very good writers. But this is such a niche thought that I had there, but what you said sort of reminded me of that because I think that AI is a very powerful tool for content creation, but we're still in a phase where people are getting comfortable with the idea that content leveraging AI can still be original and can still be authentic to you, right? Like, build your content, even if there's some sort of like AI assistance and editing, doesn't necessarily make it the same as someone else's. Matt: Yeah, so to answer the first part of that question, if you're a really good writer and you're using parallelism and M-dashes and rhetorical questions well before AI, I'm sorry for you because that does suck, truly, because it is a really big, because there's a lot of people who are dumping an idea into ChatGPT, taking the output wholesale where it does use a lot of those good writing techniques, and then pasting it. The problem is not the parallelism or the dashes or the whatever. It's the content still feels very AI generated, right? So I will be honest, I've definitely told the AI to like knock it off a little bit. Matt: You know, like this feels too AI, even though if it's grammatically correct or whatever, because I think it's still important for credibility purposes that the content is in your voice, right? And if you're a good writer and you've always been a good writer and you're using, you're not even using ChatGPT and just putting those, that content out into the world, it does suck now because you're now surrounded with a sea of other people who are writing content that sounds suspiciously similar to you. So it's even more paramount that the message underneath all of the words and the formatting and everything is rock solid, unique, and communicating something that people can resonate with. I think when you have both a bad message and all of the AI tells, that's the perfect storm of people being like, oh man, what are you doing? This is just the absolute worst. But I don't think that, you know, people should shy away from all of these techniques that AI is making popular because they're typically the right things to do. In fact, I've been trying to learn how to use M-dashes properly. I never really used them before. And you know, everybody started slamming. I always just used the short one, whatever the one on the keyboard is, like that's the dash. I didn't even realize there was different dashes, to be honest with you. Was not good at English in school. Never really paid much attention. More of a numbers guy. Um, but I don't think it's right that ChatGPT can just claim the M-dash from us and now everybody can just like cry foul whenever they see one. So you'll see me use it when appropriate in my posts. And if someone wants to call me out for using AI, I'll just go back to the original. Okay, well you make ChatGPT write this then because I bet you don't have the original ideas that it's going to require to kind of bring this off the ground to begin with. It does remind me of a post I had a few months ago. I did this bit where I said ChatGPT invented the M-dash and it's a government psyop to make you believe it's always been around for all of these years. And I had people commenting like, Emily Dickinson was writing with the M-dash in the 1700s. And I would just like, holy commit to the bit and be like, no, no, no, no, no. They went into the Library of Congress and they rewrote all of the copies of Emily Dickinson's work to place the M-dash there to make you think it was around. And like, people were getting really, really, really mad. And it reminds me of Daniel's post when he's roasting headlines where you just, you can, you stick to it, you commit to it, like, no, I don’t think that the M-dash was created by ChatGPT, but leaning into the humor around that made for a pretty funny post. I did get a lot of, a lot of hate mail for that particular one. Matt: But to answer the question succinctly, I would keep writing in your own voice, right? If you didn't use AI tells before AI, don't, right? If you do, if you did, then continue to write as you do because the organic human element still shines through. I will say that if I see a post I don't like and it has a bunch of AI tells, it makes it very much easier for me to like not like it even more, but that's just, you know, me being a curmudgeon. Daniel: Love that. Let's talk a little bit more about people getting upset on LinkedIn. Matt: Let's do it. So generally the trolls on LinkedIn are far more tame than on other platforms like X or, you know, other social media. But Daniel and you are both, it seems at this point experts at putting out content that, you know, most of the population probably sees as, okay, it's just like all in good faith and good fun oftentimes. But then there's always this percentage of, of people who get really, really upset. Why do you think that, that is? Daniel: I wish, I wish I knew succinctly. I have, I have theories. I mean, there's obvious ones like it's, it's a tough job market and this is a professional platform. So you have people, or who pretends to be a professional platform. And you have people who just feel really raw in the moment. So if you see somebody who's like very transparently clowning around, then it can be off-putting and they might just have a tendency to lash out. Um, for me, I, I find my trolls manifest most often. And sometimes I'm, I'm baiting them because I find it funny when I say anything conclusive about data or specifically like SQL, structured query language is the bread and butter that we all use to kind of, um, ask questions of data. And the one that brings out trolls. So often is I will conclusively say something like, like three months ago, I did a post that says like, SQL is pronounced sequel. I, let me back up. I pronounce it like that. You could pronounce it SQL. That's another very common way of, of approaching it. I've heard it both ways. I care not how you actually pronounce the thing. I just think it's funny that we have this like divide of even how to like communicate the most common uh data language that we use to interact with stuff. And so I make a post that's like, SQL is pronounced SQL, not SQL. And I just, you know, made a bunch of jokes about why that's the case. And I, and I maintained the bit and I held like really firm, uh, to people who were coming in and be like, well, actually, it started as structured English query efficiency, whatever. Like it's, it was originally like SEQEL or whatever. So it's SQL is, is apparently the canonically right one, but sequel just kind of came over time. And so people will get really, really mad about that. And it's bewildering to me because one, it matters not in your life what I think of how you should pronounce a specific word. Matt: But just the fact that people see it in their feed, get enraged, and will just start commenting really, really mean things that then I'll of course continue to lean into and be like, no, you're wrong. It's pronounced sequel. And so I've now made this a, a bit where like, I'll wait two or three months, but like just two weeks ago, I posted the exact inverse of that where I was like, SQL is pronounced SQL. And anyone who says it's SQL is a liar. And even, even in my comments, I linked the prior post and said, this guy's a liar. And I still, even with all of that transparency, had people jumping into the comments just incensed that I would say something as conclusive as, this is how you pronounce a word. So if people are ready to fight over the pronunciation of a word, the bar is really, really low. So I, whenever I make a post, regardless of the content, whether I'm trying to, you know, bait trolls or not, it's almost guaranteed, Daniel, I'm sure you've seen this too with your posts. Once you hit a certain number of impressions and that reach starts to hit like the second and the third degree networks, it's hitting people who like aren't familiar with your style or your posts, and they read it very, very directly and will come in and just like start getting mad. It's at the point now where I'm just like, I'll make a post. I'll wait, you know, an hour to see how it's clocking and be like, yeah, maybe in like seven hours, I'll see my first troll. And I'm almost always right. Like they just, they come out of the woodwork all of the time. And there is just like this, this underbelly of angry people. Like, not unlike any other social media platform. I just find it much more surprising on LinkedIn because your actual name and your photo and your employer are all associated with your account. So the stakes are a lot higher, which is why generally speaking, the trolls are tamer, but they're still there. And sometimes people just don't care, right? I've been, I've been called some like pretty nasty stuff in my comment sections and made me go, oh, okay. That was, that was further than I would have taken it, but clearly you're very, very angry and it just, it happens, right? And so I find the fun in, again, baiting people. The M-dashes are a government PSYOP was just trying to bait people and it like worked in spades at that point in time. But I think it just comes down to the internet's the internet and people are angry. And so when you combine those two things, like you're going to find them on your posts whenever you hit a specific amount of reach. And I think the, you know, the ultimate, the omega level of this is once you get on the LinkedIn lunatics, which I've been on there a couple of times, like, boy, that's now you're on Reddit and all bets are off. Like people are fucking mean on that platform. And so I always giggle when I see someone reference that they made it to LinkedIn lunatics because that's just like, yep, that's the end run. Daniel: That's as you think, you think you've gone viral. You haven't gone viral until you've made it to lunatics and you have a 500 comment Reddit thread all just like calling you the worst person in history or whatever because those people are all, you know, hiding behind their usernames and don't actually have risk associated with what they're saying online as we do on LinkedIn. Matt: Why do you guys think the trolls do it? Daniel: Well, I was going to say, Bill, you know, back to the original point, these posts get a lot of impressions. So trolls are not, they are getting seen by a lot of people. And if that's your goal, these posts are great at that. Matt: I even just had an idea. I think there's something you can do with remote work and somehow making fun of it, saying like, you know, there's huge productivity loss. It's awful for society. Just making fun of it in so many ways, like to the extreme, because I think that's what really draws the emotion out of people. When you say crazy stuff like that, like something that's just inherently black and white, that's really just not. Daniel: Absolutely. People do hate it if you take a conclusive stance on anything because you get, you get a lot of the like, but actually people. A good example of this is many months ago, I did like my top 10 data visualization rules, similar to the email sign-offs one. It was rooted in some sort of truth, but like it was all very definitive and conclusive and left no room for asterisks or anything like that. And I've been in this field a long time. I know very well that every single one of those rules that I stated, like could be broken for very good reasons. They're generally decent rules of thumb. Like if you were to just take that post at face value and follow those rules, like you probably wouldn't hurt yourself doing so. But like, certainly there's reasons, you know, depending on this, the audience that you're presenting to or the nature of your data or whatever that you would break them. And I had this guy send me a message that was like a page and a half Google doc refuting each point one by one. And I'm just, and I'm like, dude, I'm not going to read this document. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not even going to engage in this discourse. Like you clearly missed the point that I'm just writing satire and trying to rile people like you up mission accomplished, but nobody wants to, nobody wants to learn that they've been baited, right? That's not going to make anybody excited at the end of the day. But, but yeah, say anything conclusively and you're going to have the like at least two, but actually people showing up within minutes, maybe, maybe dozens if the post gets a lot of reach. Matt: Now I'm now my brain is turning on, like, what can I conclusively say to go piss people off on LinkedIn? So maybe I, maybe I'm the problem. I'll admit that. That's I'll take that. So I, this is really interesting, Bill. Daniel: Personally, I think that, and maybe I'll get hate for saying this too, but in the spirit of this conversation, the ability to see something on your feed and then to suppress whatever initial emotional gut reaction you have when you see it and not be reactive to it in, in that kind of a way, but really to like take a step back and think about, all right, first of all, not everyone, it's okay for, for someone to have a different opinion than me about something. I don't need to lash out against them because they hold a different opinion than maybe I disagree with. Uh, but second of all, I also don't need to respond to it in a negative way. I don't need to actively comment or DM them. Uh, you know, a hateful comment or message. I think it kind of reminds, it kind of makes me think that there's also an element of personal satisfaction in sending that kind of a message or making that kind of a comment. Of course, there's the repercussions aside, but I think for them in the moment, that's not what they're thinking about. They're not thinking about like second and third order consequences of maybe your boss seeing that you left a hateful comment on someone's post. And I say this because I've been creating content for a long time as well on LinkedIn starting this year, but on YouTube for the past two or three years at this point. And I've gotten lots of hate comments as well. And I, it's just something about human psychology, uh, when you see something that you disagree with. And the more, the more deeper the disagreement with whatever statement it was, especially if the statement was made in a very conclusive manner, like you were saying, the more likely it is that someone is going to want to impulsively react negatively to that. At least that's what I've observed. Matt: Absolutely. 100%. I, I don't even know what to add onto that, to be honest with you, because I just agree with it so sincerely. There's, there's an instant gratification element for sure. Right? Where it's just like, ah, I'm gonna tell this guy, he's wrong and he has to know about it. And then you, you know, I've, I've, I have had instances where people, people don't often apologize for their stuff on LinkedIn. They typically just delete the comments and like, I never hear from them again. But I have had very rare instances where people are just like, uh, you know, I thought about it and like, my reaction was a little strong. Sorry. It's like, yeah, it definitely was a little strong. Also you were, you were reacting strongly because I said the word SQL is pronounced sequel. It's like in the grand scheme of life, it's not really a big thing to get upset about. And that's, that's the other part that always strikes me as, as funny is my posts are always like low stakes, man. It's just like, it's just stupid stuff like this. Daniel: That's primarily aimed at getting people to have a quick chuckle that really, really fire up some people up, but you kind of just take that in stride because the, the, the law of large numbers dictates you're going to find some people who, I mean, just out of the gate, not every single person on earth is going to agree with you about everything, right? Even, even very, very popular opinions like, I don't know, I could, I could probably post, Hey, you should not smoke cigarettes on my feed. And I bet you within some time, you'd find some people who are ready to give a full-throated defense of why smoking cigarettes is a fine thing or whatever. It's just, everybody has their perspectives on everything and we are very, I think tribal in trying to defend those perspectives because we internalize these perspectives as, as pieces of ourselves. And then when somebody is coming and attacking the idea, you're also by virtue of how they've internalized this, attacking the person as well. And again, when you hit this, you just got to laugh and let it roll off your back because your following is large enough. Even you have one post go viral, you're going to find these people. It's not very hard to, I do. I do find they're always like third-degree connections that they're never like in my network because people who have, I've connected with or have connected with me, they're kind of in on the joke at that point, right? And so your reach goes further. You're getting to those farther extended networks. Like, yeah, you're going to, you're going to hit more people who just don't see the world the way you do. And that's okay. I would just say, be nicer to people on the internet, you know, there's, there are actually humans on the other side of these keyboards. And I have been mean to people myself, you know, sometimes when I'm in a back and forth with people, I've absolutely said things that I've, that I've come to regret. I do try to apologize when it's warranted. Um, because I think that's, that's something that I hold very dearly is the, the ability to apologize. Like the, the full-throated, like I fucked up that you can give somebody is, it moves mountains in terms of like developing rapport and a relationship with people. If you want to develop a relationship with them. I ha I have had people who are just like drunk and flailing on my comments and just saying all kinds of awful things that I'm just like, yeah, and the block button is probably better suited for you in this particular circumstance. But I don't aspire to block most of LinkedIn, right? Matt: Bill, before we get into good idea, bad idea, I want to shift gears a little bit to ask about some of the other ways you've grown on LinkedIn. Literally from How else have you used comments and stuff outside of posts to grow your following and grow your impression count? Daniel: Oh, for sure. Commenting is probably my preferred way to grow the network. There's two main swim lanes, I think, for comments. Daniel: It's when a big account posts something that I think is funny or resonates with. It's a great way to make a comment on that post and get a ton of exposure that you would never, ever get through the post alone. I had a comment on Becca Chambers' posts many months ago. I'm trying to remember the full content. It was about how she was passed over for a role at Google because she was told she wasn't Googlely enough. Matt knows, but Googleliness is one of the four pillars of interviewing that they're measuring against where it's, to me, it's kind of like the classic airplane test of like, I'd want to sit next to them on an airplane for eight hours, but it's, like, are you naturally curious? Are you open minded? Like, would you fit well kind of in general with the vibe that we have going on in this company is just kind of Googleliness under a big umbrella. I interviewed a lot at Google for the people analytics function. It was probably in triple digits by the time I left. And so my comment was quite simple. It was, I've interviewed hundreds of people for Googleliness. Your interviewer was full of shit. That's all I posted. And it was one of my most engaged with and viewed pieces of content of all time. Maybe even the most impressions. It was like over a half million impressions the last time I checked on it, like 800 or 900 likes or something like that. And it brought a huge wave of followers and connection requests to my account that just wasn't going to happen otherwise. So part one is piggybacking bigger accounts is how commenting is how you're going to achieve that. And then the other side of it is I really enjoy this side effect of my expanded reach now that I make a comment and it's going to show up in a lot of feeds. I try to use this power responsibly, right, and not just like completely you bring crap to people's feeds. But if I see something that is super funny, I'll always say like, this is thought leadership. Send. And just it's never thought leadership. You know what I mean? It's like it's a funny joke or something, but it's just, you know, it's my meta poking at this whole LinkedIn machine and also trying to bring visibility to the content itself. And so one of my favorite things to do is like before bed, scroll the feed quickly, see if there's anything interesting, but also very low engagement, make a comment on it, and then go to bed and wake up and see. It doesn't always work, but oftentimes, like that post blows up overnight and I'll have like a nice message from the author being like, wow, I went viral after your comment. Thanks a lot, man. And it makes me like feel good in a like giving back to the LinkedIn community sort of way because everybody again, wants to go viral. They want to grow their followings. And if me just making a simple comment can do that, it often doesn't result in a lot of impressions or engagements on my comments specifically, or even people coming back to my profile. Matt: But it's like my way of sharing the love with people. So comments are a great way. And I also use polls a lot. Like I see polls as kind of different than the actual posts because I don't think very hard about polls. Like the other day I just was like, what's the worst number? And it was just like, 6-7-3-44, 996 or Catalyst. And that has like 600 votes or something right now. And it's just something. It's just another way to make people laugh that I don't think you, sorry, I'm turning off this discord. It's another way to make people laugh that is not often well-utilized. Some people will throw polls up every now and again, but I don't see that happen very often. And I think it's a format that people could lean on more. You don't get a lot of engagement or sorry, a lot of impressions, but they do get a lot of engagement from people, both from voting themselves or like leaving comments, leaning into the joke and what have you. So yeah, comment often. I probably comment, I don't know, 10 or 12 X more than I post, right? I'll go onto LinkedIn, scroll, leave 10 or 12 comments each time I'm on LinkedIn. I'll only make, you know, maybe one or two posts a day. So I'm commenting order of magnitudes more. And I'm also, of course, commenting my own posts when people are replying. Liam Dormody says, you know, he considers himself the host of his post. I'm Bill Yost, the host of my post. I like to kind of abide by that rule as well. And just if people are coming into my feed to leave any sort of comments, I want to engage, make them feel welcome and just give a response to those things. Comments have been a huge growth lever for Matt and I. No one can comment as much as Liam. I mean, I think I went crazy last week doing like 300 comments or something, but Liam had like 500 or something. Like, he's just a total beast with the comments. It's insane. Steve Pedro is active on my posts very often. Super nice guy. He like got put in LinkedIn jail last week because he was commenting too much. I didn't even know such a thing was possible. So I apparently have to up my comment game to the point where I'm getting called a bot and getting banned, but hopefully you haven't hit that yet. Daniel: Are there any of the things that you've done a lot recently that are doing well on the LinkedIn growth side outside of posts, comments and polls? Matt: Yeah, I host a live LinkedIn Live that's semi-regular called Dashboard Confessionals with my friend Morgan who worked at Google People Analytics for years as well. We both since left. We joked about doing a live for kind of months over text message. And then for some reason, probably in like August or September, just decided to go for it. And it worked really well. Like I did not expect that a lot of people were going to log on to LinkedIn on a Friday morning to watch two data nerds just yak it up about data stuff. Daniel: But it's worked in a way that we're definitely thinking, you know, we need to continue this into 2026 and figure out how we can be more consistent and use it to really build a data analytics community in this space that we're proud of. Because ultimately, we're still community building. And even if, you know, we're shitposting and making jokes on LinkedIn, it's still in service of trying to bring people together, inform, and create kind of this group of folks who can lean on each other across industries. And so, yeah, do LinkedIn Lives or be guests on podcasts. It's really come full circle for you, Bill. You know, it started as posting a lot of people analytics, then more into the funny content, the polls, the comments, and now it's circling back with the LinkedIn Lives to more data content and building a community. And I forgot to mention, but I have done two comedy-based LinkedIn Lives. We called it The Funniest Hour on LinkedIn. I did it with Nick Power, Brianna Brook, Brooke Sweetar. We are awful at scheduling and getting things going. So I don't know when the next one would be, but that was like kind of the dashboard confessionals equivalent of bringing the weirdos on LinkedIn together to have a little fun. We did a late night live a couple of months ago that did like pretty crazy view numbers given it was like 10 p.m. Eastern, I think when we went live and we made some jokes for an hour and logged off. And it got like a lot of plays even through the weekend and a lot of good feedback around that. So it doesn't always have to be thought leadership lives either. Like you can just do it to have some fun. Matt: Awesome. Well, I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, but I have some ideas prepared for you. I'm gonna grab my computer and hope my jank setup doesn't fall apart here or the Wi-Fi doesn't go out. And I have some ideas that I thought about for you. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. So the first one is making your experience section sound like a resume. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Daniel: Bad idea. I don't want to read resumes when I'm supposed to read resumes. Matt: I agree. Okay. The next one is what I call the anti-feature. And if less than 10% of your users use it for a product, whether it's Netflix, whether it's Google, whatever it is, it auto-deletes. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Daniel: Oh, I mean, I immediately applied my dashboard lens to this where I think that would be a tremendous idea if it just deleted itself from existence because nobody is using it. I'll go good idea with that one. Matt: Next one is something I've started to see mainly a lot in e-commerce. And within these dashboards, a lot of ads have started to come up. I mean, Rocked has done, or I may be pronouncing that wrong, but you know, they're a billion dollar company doing ads after checkout in e-commerce. And I've noticed some companies like AppLovin are starting to do ads in other e-commerce dashboards. Daniel: So do you think having ads in, you know, one of your people analytics dashboards, is that a good idea or a bad idea, or what do you think? Matt: Oh, that's... I think it's a good idea if it led to other products, right? Because the problem that we have in general in people analytics is the proliferation of data tools. You've got a dashboard over here, a dashboard over there, a website here, and it can be very hard for an end user to discern where they need to go to get what they need. Ultimately, everybody aspires for like one tool to rule them all that does all of the things, but that ends up being, that's a fool's errand because if you make something that does all the things, it by definition does none of the things. Like you have to have some focus on what these products are actually doing. So if my dashboard had a little advertisement for like, hey, you're trying to do this other thing, go here, that's actually something I might chew on, to be honest. I think that's a good idea. Daniel: Posting multiple times per day. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Matt: It's a good idea if they're... Let's say above three. Above three. If they're good posts, I would say go for it. You should be aware of the trade-offs that are happening where you're burying the reach of the earlier posts in the day. But I definitely have violated the one post a day rule many times if I feel like later in the day something comes to mind and it's something quick that I want to post. Just go for it. You never know who's online at any point in time, and trying to put yourself into the rather arbitrary swim lanes of, well, one post a day is best for reach. I don't know if the numbers, the data, the hard data actually supports that. I will say somebody posted a comment on my poll the other day that was like, is this poll based on my poll that I posted a couple of days ago? And it wasn't, but I was just curious what he was talking about. So I opened his page and I started scrolling and he had posted like 18 times the prior day and the poll was not one of them. And I was just like getting tired of scrolling. So I was just like, I don't know, man. I'm just going to have to tap out on this one. So there is an upper maximum. You know, I think we could all agree 18 times in a day might be too many, but if you have three good ideas in a day, I say go for it. That's, I've actually posted something equivalent to that on Nicole Ramirez's post a couple weeks ago. And that became a pretty highly engaged comment because people were liking that idea. Daniel: What about posting at 8 p.m. on a Saturday? Matt: I've done that and gone viral. So it's, it's less likely, I think, for you to post at 8 p.m. on a Saturday and going viral than let's say 8 a.m. on a Monday or Tuesday. However, there's still people online at any given point. And the algorithm favors posts that happen in the first hour or sorry, engagement that happens in the first hour or so. Matt: And so I think if it's a good idea and, you know, you have people online late at night, what's working in your favor by posting on weekends is there's less people posting stuff period. So you're gonna, I think you have, so let's say you're at 100% of people posting and viewing Monday 8 a.m. I think Saturday at 8 p.m., you might have maybe 75% of the people online, but only 50% of the people are posting, right? So that gap there actually benefits you significantly in the number of eyeballs that are probably gonna hit at that point in time. Daniel: That is such a good point, Bill. It's not something that I've thought about previously. I generally do hold the view that it should not matter what time or day you post. If the post is genuinely a high value or like a post that is going to go viral, I believe that it doesn't matter if you post it on a Saturday or if you post it on a Thursday. Because at the end of the day, we're trying to speak to humans. And if the humans are online, which I certainly am online checking LinkedIn on Saturday, maybe I'm an exception here, but I know that there's people there, then yeah, it should get picked up. And then like you said, there's less people probably also posting, so you could argue the competition is less, which also compensates for the lack of traffic, if that is the case. Matt: Yeah. This actually, just last weekend, it was around Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern time. I noticed everybody posting the exact same, Hey, who would you sit next to on an airplane post? And it's like a bunch of politicians and celebrities, and there's like numbers on the seats and you're supposed to pick your number. And I saw like four or five versions of that post in the feed in quick succession. And so I just, I was at my in-law's place. I went up to my laptop. This took me about five minutes, grabbed the image, grabbed my profile photo, put my picture over top of everybody's face. And then I posted, which number are you going to take? That popped off immediately. And so I was going viral, very viral by the time I woke up the next morning on Sunday a.m. Daniel: Sunday a.m. I look at the feed and I see every marketer I'm connected with is posting that wall street journal story about like companies are looking for storytellers and everybody's all excited about that. And so I just had this quick idea to fire up the editor mode or whatever in Chrome, change the word storytellers to LinkedIn shit posters, screenshotted that and then posted it while my other airplane post is still going viral and that thing lifts off immediately as well. So then I had two posts, both posted at inopportune times that were doing quite well because the content held up. They were, they were convenient jokes. In fact, the, your face over the air, every seat on the airplane thing that that was like getting knocked off by people within the day. I was getting copycats doing the exact same thing. Matt: Which, you know, it's a good post if people just start blatantly stealing it. 100%. Daniel: Bill, I've seen that airport post all over. And the reason I ask this good idea, bad idea is because my post last night, the one of Sean of DeepWipes was posted at 8 PM on Saturday and everyone would have thought, Oh, there's no way this can't get views. And now it's at like over a hundred thousand impressions. Matt: Is it? Is it doing well, dude? I saw Sean linked into it. That's awesome. He's, he's cool. He didn't put emojis in his name yet though. Daniel: I'm going to start harassing him about that. You should. I'm putting the toilet paper one. That'd be so funny. I told him to do X toilet paper X. Sorry, I didn't, I didn't comment. I didn't tag you. Matt: Go look at the thread. I responded to that in your post. Daniel: Okay. I'm going to go look right now. Um, I will. Um. Amazing. Bill, is there anything else we didn't hit on that you want to tell the audience? Matt: I have a cookie company that I run with my mom. That's the cookie CEO part of my headline. So that's a www.cookiesworthsharon.com. If you want some delicious cookies made by my mom and delivered to your door, go hit us up. She would love to take your order there. If you want some funny LinkedIn content, follow Billy Yost. Thanks for coming on the show, Bill. Daniel: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. This was a blast.