How Charlie gained 110,000 LinkedIn followers in 12 months | #14

Transcription

Daniel: I had to turn down hundreds of people because I simply couldn't service them all. If you can't run a business without you being there, you've built a prison, not a business. And do not use bold in the hook, please. I don't know why people do it. It actually makes it harder to read. But I do this weird hack when I post at 11 a.m., I'll schedule my post for 11:15, and then when it gets to 11 a.m., I'll hit post now. Like LinkedIn is so far behind the other social media platforms. Matt: I always like to start with a bold statement and a contrasting second line of text that immediately intrigues the reader to click to see more. Other things that work well are numbers in the hook. At the very most, post three times a day, and leave around five hours minimum. But I did like 6 hours between the posts. It's a social media platform, so be social, it's not called e-mail. And whenever I use bold or italics, it doubles the amount of letters in there. I love that, I'm just kind of sharing my story and geek out at LinkedIn. It's good fun. Matt: Welcome to this episode of the Connection Accepted pod. Today, I'm super excited about today's guest, which is Charlie Hills. Charlie, welcome to the pod. Charlie: Thank you so much for having me, Matt and Daniel. I'm, yeah, super excited to dive in. Matt: Thanks again, Charlie, for coming on. I want to start in 2018 when you made your first LinkedIn post. What led you to joining LinkedIn and starting to post on this platform? Charlie: I mean, it's a good question. Daniel: It sounds like you were on the cutting edge of technology even before diving fully into content creation. So what was the moment where you realized, okay, this is it, I'm going to take the leap and commit to building this LinkedIn agency? Matt: Like, you know, one day I came to my manager and said, why don't we build a custom GPT? And she was like, no, Charlie, like, no, we don't have time for that, sorry. So I knew I had to find a creative outlet for like just, you know, all my kind of AI passions and, you know, tools that I was finding. I started posting on LinkedIn and that was around like end of 2023. I was very much posting and ghosting, as we say, and not really growing on the platform. Daniel: I love that term posting and ghosting. We've been actually trying to pick up on some LinkedIn lingo. And like one of the other terms that we've learned is LinkedIn lurkers. is like what we're calling people who basically are super active, but if you looked at their profile, you'd have honestly no idea because they don't engage at all. They don't post anything, obviously. And I was formerly one of those people in the past when I was looking for a job, only using the platform just purely for job purposes and to maybe stalk my interviewer before I had the job interview. But that's super cool. And so you were posting a little bit, but like, how did that turn into a full-blown business eventually? Matt: So yeah, after 2023, I remember I sat down on like Christmas day that year and said, okay, I'm gonna post every day to LinkedIn. These are my content pillars. These are my, this is my posting cadence, et cetera. Matt: And it was kind of like a new year's resolution and I just did it every single day, you know. At the first, it was cringe. It wasn't good quality content, but I learned every single day. And soon I managed to like get a grip of like, you know, I need to comment every day. I need to like reiterate my content. I need to repurpose it. And you know, it took me like three months to hit like 10K followers. And then nine months to hit 30K followers. And that 30K follower mark was like the point when I handed in my notice and left my full-time role because I signed my first client, you know, for ghostwriting and I was getting some good brand deals with some top companies. And that was kind of the start of it all. And that was literally only just over a year ago because it was in September 2024. You know, since then I've been on a crazy journey. I worked with like about 20 plus clients, you know, partnered with top brands like Claude. And then just scaled my presence to like a hundred and I can't remember, 60K or something, 160K. But most of that just came. I, I learned how I went because when I started the ghostwriting business, I had no idea what I was doing. I just had a Notion dashboard, you know, like a few freelancers I was working with and I was sharing all my expertise that I'd picked up along the way, like for my clients. Daniel: When you're ghostwriting, when you're learning and growing this fast, how are you managing your learnings as you go from 10 to 30 to 100,000 followers? Matt: Not sure, to be honest. I kind of, I guess the first stage is always to study, study what's working well for other people on the platform, how are they writing their hooks, how are they presenting their carousels and graphics? And that's probably stage one. Then for me, I treat every single post like an experiment. Like last week, I tried a GIF style post. It didn't do very well. So therefore, I'm not going to like invest more time into creating them. And that's how I treat LinkedIn every time, you know, I don't have a set formula. I'm always changing the strategy and seeing if it will improve results. So it's just been that kind of every single day learning experience. Daniel: It's so interesting too, Charlie, because it sounds like you said three months to 10K and then what, another six to get to 10K. Did I hear that correctly? So it almost took you, like, longer to go from 10 to 30 than zero to 10. But I, in my mind, intuitively, I imagine for most people, it's hardest to get that first 10K because, you know, you need to prove that you're somebody worth following almost and you need to start really like getting the ball rolling with content. But I don't know. Matt: In your experience, was the growth kind of linear or was it kind of like exponential based on what you were putting out at the time or generally, has it kind of like accelerated? What's the trend that you've seen? Daniel: Well, yeah, for me, I remember the turning point was like May 2024 when I was around like just about to hit 10K. I then started creating like these carousels with like my AI avatar on the front cover. And that's when it exploded, you know, because I had a very distinct personal brand. Like people looked forward to my content because there, I had this silly Pixar character on the front cover, which won't work for everybody. But for me, it made my personal brand more memorable. And I remember literally like the growth on those days where it was huge. It was like hundreds of followers. And that's when I really started to, it really started to compound. And yeah, over those summer months, it did kind of, you know, pick up and was pretty solid. But obviously it was very hard for me at the time because I was working full time. So it was kind of like managing the burnout and making sure that I had enough capacity for like my day job and then also LinkedIn content creation. So yeah, there was like ebbs and flows. And then after that, it kind of dropped off again until December. I ended the year with like around 50,000. So now it took another like five months or so to, you know, gain another 20,000 followers. But then from the start of this year onwards, it's been crazy. Daniel: I'm not sure exactly why, but I guess because I have such a vast library of content that I know has performed well in the past. And also plus, I'm just, you know, this is my full time job now. So I have a lot more time to think about it. Yeah. Matt: And man, I have so many questions for you, Charlie. I'm just like, I have to pick one. I guess, so you said you were doing sponsors and now you have the agency as well. What was your thought process around, rather than just being like, okay, I'm going to go all in on just sponsorships and try to be like as big as possible on LinkedIn. I also want to like, what was your thought process behind also wanting to spin up LinkedIn agency as well? Daniel: Yeah, I mean, I think sponsors are good, but they're kind of like finite because you can only do a certain amount without damaging your brand reputation. So I tend to only work with like my core stack of partners. Anyone outside of that, unless I find the tool very, very cool, I'm not going to work with because I see some people just burn their reputation promoting every single tool, even if they're competitors. So I knew that that wasn't like a long-term sustainable revenue stream for me. And I love creating content and helping people. Matt: So like building up the ghostwriting content agency just made a lot of sense to me as a good way to secure MRR and also just to, you know, help people who simply don't have the time because the people I work with, founders, CEOs, to spend one hour creating content, then one hour commenting, then one hour like analyzing. It's just, it doesn't make sense for them. So yeah, I think that's kind of why, you know, I just love doing it and it's a great, you know, stream of revenue. Charlie, how do you get most of your leads? Is it like purely through inbound LinkedIn? Are you running like outbound campaigns? Tell us a little bit more about that. Daniel: So at the start of the year and towards the back end of last year, it was all 100% inbound lead generation. At the time, I was talking a lot about like LinkedIn content creation and then how to win on LinkedIn. Whereas like now I've kind of pivoted more towards like AI content. One, because I'm kind of a bit bored of talking about how to go on LinkedIn. And two, yeah, that's how I started, so I wanna continue talking about AI. And I found that brought in so, so many leads. Back then, the algorithm was a little bit more favourable, so I had more profile viewers. And secondly, I was talking more to their pain points. So, yeah, the leads were crazy back then. I remember I had to turn down hundreds of people because I simply couldn't service them all. Daniel: Now, the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorhythm has changed and I'm seeing less profile viewers. So I've started to resort to more kind of like lead magnets and, you know, filtering through my connection requests because that's something I neglected for a long time, you know. Someone might send me a connection request and I might miss them. So very much like kind of two pronged, the kind of inbound and lead generation, then also listening to those intent signals because someone might like softly raise their hand and be like, hey, I wanna work with you, but they don't directly reach out to me. That's what I've been doing because now I can service a lot, lot more people because I have the capacity and, you know, I partnered up with somebody to help me manage the agency. You know, back then when leads were coming in fast, I couldn't, I was just a one man band. Matt: What made you take that leap to hire someone else and give you that confidence to, to do that? Because that, that's a pretty big risk. Daniel: Yeah, I mean, I was literally on the edge of burnout. I remember around April time, I was working with like seven clients concurrently and I couldn't go on like vacation without something going wrong. You know, and that's what we say in entrepreneurship, isn't it? If you can't run a business without you being there, you've built a prison, not a, not a business. And that's essentially what it turned into. So I was literally going to close it all down. Matt: I was like, okay, I've had enough to go through writing business. I'm gonna focus on like community, brand partnerships and other kind of more passive revenue streams. But then my partner, who I, who I'd been working with to help me with like the operations and stuff, he, he reached out to me and said, do you want to, you know, partner up on this agency business? And it's lucky he did because otherwise we would have just stopped. So the thing is that I'd been working with them for a long time. So I had a high level of trust. And I really feel like our expertise complement one another. Like I'm more of a creative individual, whereas he's more of an operational guy. So, um, it works very well. Daniel: Yeah, I'm really glad I did it. That's awesome. I'm curious now going into more, if we were a client of the linked agency, one of our previous guests, Jason Cohen, one of his, you know, you know, a frustration is probably the wrong word, but you know, struggle with having a ghostwriter was the amount of time it took to get them up to speed on their life. How do you do that with your clients? Matt: Yeah, so I think it's very important to gather as much context as possible, you know, especially if you're using AI to write and to support you, then you know, Context is king. Daniel: And that's where we typically, you know, have a very comprehensive onboarding process of speaking with the uh the clients during the onboarding phase, having like an hour interview, you know, getting them to fill out a questionnaire. So therefore we can upload as much context as possible to a AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT. And with their projects feature, you can put so much information that when you do come to writing a design brief or writing a caption, it automatically captures that context. And obviously, you know, there's things that happen throughout the week that we can't pick up on, but that's why it's um so important to gather as much information as possible. Matt: Are you doing, and maybe I missed this, but are you doing weekly syncs with these clients or are you trying to get all the information upfront during the onboarding process after you've just signed a new client? Daniel: Yeah, it's, it's typically during the onboarding process. It really depends on like the package, but people on the higher tier, we do have monthly uh one-to-ones with to, you know, catch up on anything. Whereas yeah, it's all done in the onboarding process typically, yes. Matt: Okay, that's really interesting. Daniel: It's something that personally I've kind of been trying to figure out is what is the best cadence if you are a ghostwriter, for example, to meet with your clients, because obviously you want to be tapped in to the latest things that are happening with the business, but you also, part of the value prop is that, hey, I'm gonna take like X amount of hours off your time. So just being thoughtful there, but that's really interesting that you guys kind of do it like on a monthly basis with your higher tier clients and then mostly try to front load the info. Matt: Yes, exactly. And I think, you know, storytelling and personal insights are important, but my philosophy has always been very much like, I'm gonna focus on top of the funnel content that makes me, you know, stand out and unique because I know people don't care about. Stories a lot of the time, so I try to like weave them in a bit more, rather than just like, some ghostwriters just love to talk about like, hey, you know, this is what I did today, for example. And I don't find that too exciting. So it hasn't really been a problem, but yeah, ultimately, yeah, the more context, the better. Daniel: I kind of want to get in now into your LinkedIn, how you write LinkedIn posts and LinkedIn conspiracies you may have. So when, I guess let's first start with the posts. How do you come up with ideas for a post and what is your process like from idea to actually hitting post on LinkedIn? Matt: So I've got a notes page on my MacBook and iPhone and yeah. Daniel: The classic. Yeah, yeah, it's so, it's so simple. Anytime, you know, an idea strikes, then I simply just put it in there right away. Recently, I've been leaning into like other social content too, like I'll just be on Instagram in the evening and I've really fine-tuned the algorithm to show me some like, you know, top AI content. So whenever I see something quite interesting over there, I'm just like, okay, let's just copy the link, put it in my notes, and then I will explore that later and put my own unique spin on it. So that's been working quite well for me. For clients, we have like an automation set up. Basically, it will scrape profiles from X, Reddit, Twitter, I mean, X, Reddit, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and then take like top performing content. Because that can be, you know, very powerful because it's pre-validated and you know it will work quite well. You don't, you know, just copy and paste it. You take the idea and repurpose it. So I believe, you know, it either has to come from you, the human, or from a pre-validated source. And then once I've got the idea, it will go into Notion and I'll, you know, strategize with ChatGPT to build out a design brief, essentially, just kind of like going back and forth with it. Then it's a Notion, the design team then picks it up and makes a graphic out of it. And then I've been using this tool called Stanley from the guys at Stan, if you know them, to write LinkedIn posts for me. Matt: I'm very familiar with Stanley. Yes, yeah, really. Daniel: Okay, Stanley is the goat. I love that tool so much. Prior to finding Stanley, I was using ChatGPT and custom GPT to write posts for me, but like nothing matches Stanley because it has the context from all of my previous LinkedIn posts. Before, I'd have to like export my posts, re-upload them to ChatGPT so it has the kind of the reference material. Now with Stanley, it's automatic and it does way more than just kind of write posts. It's also a content strategy. So yeah, best tool for writing posts, hands down. Are you able to use Stanley for like your clients or is this purely just your own account? Matt: So yeah, it varies. Sometimes we take as many posts from them as possible to provide reference material. But for some clients, yeah, yeah, I've been letting the team log into my Stanley account, which has been kind of skewing my own posts. Sometimes I'm like, that CTA is not my CTA. I don't know where that came from, but yeah, it's really a mix of like kind of using multiple references or Stanley. Daniel: Got it. And one other thing I wanted to ask you about, Charlie, is the mix of post types, both on your account and then also like clients. I took a look through your Substack article from, I don't know, maybe it was a year ago where you talk about like, you really break down LinkedIn for people who'd want to grow and you talk about maybe like 70% top of funnel content, 20% middle of funnel, and then like 1% or sorry, 10% being more of that conversion CTA focused bottom of funnel. Matt: Is that still how you think about LinkedIn content for your clients? Because I'm assuming most of them, their end goal is ultimately to, well, one, build brand awareness, but for the main purpose of eventually driving people down to Convert into paying customers in some way. So are you posting content for them in that kind of a mix or does it change depending on the specific client's needs? Say you have a client that's like, Oh, I only care about thought leadership and like I don't really need to be pushing my product. Do you do that or is there like a prescribed approach? Daniel: Yeah, so it is typically always the 70, 20, 10% split between top of funnel to bottom of the funnel. For me personally, I focus on like kind of 100% top of the funnel because I just want followers. I just want growth really because the wider the net, you know, the wider the, like the more followers, the wider the net to cast. Whereas like for clients, that is typically what I always prescribe. Um, some people just want leads now and some people literally just want to build out their personal brand. So yeah, it really varies. And I see that's a common mistake that people. Make when they start on LinkedIn. They treat it like a megaphone. They post about their webinar, their products, which no one cares about, like, until you've built up that kind of initial trust. So, yeah, it typically that split, but it's, it's flexible. Daniel: And, you know, one of the best ways we're seeing to actually generate a ton of leads for clients are lead magnets on LinkedIn. I'm sure you've seen them around, people saying, you know, drop automation and I'll send you my NFA automation. I think they're being a bit overdone, so, you know, for the, the top clients, we really um do one a month because I find that's a good way to generate a good amount of leads without kind of burning trust and overdoing it. When you write those posts, you know, drop a comment or something like that, I feel like a lot of the times it has a, a huge graphic, and, and that's one of your iconic styles. Matt: What has led to that large graphic versus a carousel, for lack of a better word, of, you know, multiple things you can click through, if that's even something you've thought about. Daniel: Hmm, yeah, I mean, I think for me, personally on my account, like the, the big graphic style works very well versus like, I'm finding with clients that sometimes this works better with like a carousel. When you give so much value that it can't, you know, be conveyed in one single image. So we find that sometimes a carousel really works well, and if you want like the additional kind of workflows and duplicatable templates, then you need to comment. Whereas for me, it's always kind of like a, a book style graphic, just to convey that there's a lot of value here if you comment, then you'll get access to it. Daniel: And I'm really playing on like my kind of own personal authority within, you know, LinkedIn and like AI. So every time I create a lead magnet, it's, it's always kind of centred around what I do rather than some random stuff. Um, so yeah, it really varies case by case. Matt: Yeah, I'm just, I was just, wow, you guys were talking. I was scrolling through your recent posts, Charlie, and I do think it's super impressive, like the quality of the graphics that you have on your posts. I think that also probably separates you from like the average LinkedIn post, definitely, because not everyone is going to have a design team to build out these like beautiful infographics and, and whatnot. Um, and I've also noticed with your hooks, you tend to keep the first one really short, like less than six to eight words, I think. Is that intentionally done? Like, curious what you've learned about hooks over the years, posting so much. Daniel: Yeah, so, I mean, hooks are actually really tough, you know. I run a community as well, and that's one of the biggest things we give people feedback on, is their hooks, because people just don't really know how to like grab attention in those first two lines. And it's very much been an iterative process writing hooks. For me personally, I always like to start with a bold statement, then a contrasting second line of text because that immediately intriges the reader to click see more. Other things that work well are like numbers in the hook. Daniel: For example, instead, instead of writing seven, you could just use the number seven and also, you know, stats and any kind of quantifiable metrics you can include. And they tend to perform very well because it immediately kind of stands out versus just text. So, I find that works very well. Also adding like a, a colon at the end of your second line of text because then you know if you press see more, then you know it's immediately going to be value after that. And yeah, that's kind of like the formula I use. Also brackets. I love brackets. They work very well too because again, it kind of breaks up that typical reading pattern. So yeah, hooks, hooks really vary, you know. I've, I've never been the best copywriter. That's why when AI came onto the scene, I was like, hello, you know, this is going to change, change my, my entire world. And I literally just spend like a few minutes writing a hook versus a year ago, I'd spend like half an hour sometimes. Like refining the hook and then it still wouldn't do well. So that's probably the most important, important part of your, of your entire post. Matt: Yeah. I've never heard the, the colon hack. I love it. Yeah, it just jumps straight in and being like, listen, if you click see more, then you will get something good here. That's what I think it conveys. About the bracket one too. I think that's the first time I've heard that using brackets can help the hook. Daniel: Can you just say more about that? Matt: Sure, yeah, I was actually looking at one of my posts from like nine months ago. And I don't know, it's been weird. People have been liking my old posts for some reason. I'm not sure what's going on with the algorithm. But essentially, I used this hook for a post that got like 200K impressions. It was like, how to write in brackets, good, a good newsletter using AI or something was the second line of text. And I think if I just wrote like how to write an AI newsletter, it would have flopped. Like it wouldn't have been um a good post. But because I put like good in brackets. And that's kind of like contrasting to what some people think when writing an AI newsletter. It really stood out. And that's why I think the post did well. So that also works for like, you know, resources style posts, like if you're giving, if you're posting about free AI courses, which I've started doing recently, I always put like in brackets, links below. So it's just one way to be kind of tighter in your writing and to keep the word count lower. And also, then people can just see it instantly and be like, okay, cool. Because people scan, don't they? They don't read like the entire line of text. I almost see this as like a bold text or in italics where it brings more focus to certain words and things like, like bold is, I feel like it's sometimes getting overdone right now on LinkedIn and something like these brackets may be the new meta. Daniel: Yeah, I really dislike the rich text formatting people use, especially that bold. Do not use bold in the hook, please. I don't know why people do it because obviously they think it makes it stand out more, but it actually makes it harder to read, without a doubt. Matt: Yeah. What about italics? Italics, no. One, it also doubles your word count because I use authored up to preview my posts and whenever I use bold or italics, it doubles the amount of letters in there. So, and it also just makes it harder to read. I think personally, you're better off using like symbols and one, two, three lists, check boxes, dashes, but not M dashes. Never use M dashes. Yeah, I find that that just makes it way more digestible and kind of easy to read. Daniel: What about emojis? The only emoji I ever use is the recycle emoji at the end when I say like repost. Besides that, very, very rarely. I was gonna say on the M dash point, it's gotten so bad that like now, even if I am writing something, either for myself or for a client, I'll like deliberately remove any M dashes, even if it's like, I added it in there. It wasn't AI, like I'll still remove it and replace it with like a comma or a colon or something else. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I'm not even sure how you add M dashes when you're writing. Like, do you just hold down the, or shift then the kind of shorter dash, I guess. But yeah, I've never used them previously. I still use the short dash, but the M dash, I'm just like, no, no, no. That's a clear giveaway. Daniel: I agree that that's sometimes my one piece of feedback for a Stanley. I'm like, you got to remove all the M dashes in here. Yeah, of course. I mean, I use AI in like every aspect. Sometimes even when I'm like replying to DMs, I'll just like put the DM into ChatGPT because I just can't be bothered to read it. I get hundreds. And then I'm like, you know, collaborating with AI to kind of really refine it. And also, like I said, I'm not, I've never been a great copywriter. So yeah, I'm always, always, always removing it, but then also sprinkling in that, that human touch. What's your DM game like on LinkedIn? We had Mitchell Tan earlier on the pod and I know you're an ambassador of that. Matt: I'm curious how you're using Kondo and also DMs to grow your business and also grow on LinkedIn. Yeah, it's something that I've been exploring more and more, you know, I find social selling kind of a bit of an art and there's no kind of clear cut way of how you should do it. So we've been really playing into those warm intent signals like connection requests, commenters, et cetera. And typically we'll just start the conversation with curiosity because a lot of people will dive into the pitch and be like, Hey, I run a LinkedIn agency. You want to be my client? It's like, no, thank you. So we always start with a question and build some rapport first. And then obviously using Kondo, we'll then use the label features, which is really powerful. Daniel: You can have like clear, clear labels of who's a lead and where they are in the buying stage. And yeah, once we've asked them a few questions, then it might kind of unveil a pain point or a symptom. If they show a symptom, then we'll just ask them a few more questions to try and cover, uncover that pain point. Or if it's a clear cut pain point, it's our opportunity to pitch. So that's kind of the approach that we've been following without kind of coming across as too salesy. Matt: Yeah. And for the audience listening, Kondo is like superhuman for your LinkedIn DMs. If you don't know what superhuman is, it's just like an improved version of your email inbox. And so essentially Kondo, Mitchell Tan's the founder, as Daniel mentioned, it just improves the whole experience of the DMs, which I think the native LinkedIn DM functionality is really not that good, if I'm being honest. And on the point that you're mentioning, Charlie, about your DM strategy, I think that's honestly the way to go right now. Personally, for me, I've also tried some social selling in my DMs and the ones where I've been able to actually get people to book calls have always started with like a question of, Uh, yeah, like, hey, thanks for connecting or thanks for, you know, I saw you commented or liked my post earlier. By the way, like you're killing it on. on LinkedIn if they are actively posting, or like, love what you're doing with whatever company they're building. Daniel: Curious, like, how the LinkedIn posting's been going for you. And then usually they'll say something around, like, oh yeah, it's going well, or, you know, it's okay. Like, like trying to basically either reveal the pain point, or if they don't have an issue, then maybe it's just something that I'll let it sit and I won't push the pitch. But if they do say something around, it's, you know, it's taking up a lot of time, for example, then I can, that's like my cue for the soft pitch of, hey, by the way, like, I help people just like you to write on LinkedIn without having to spend hours online. If you're interested, like, feel free to to book a call. Matt: Yeah, it's all about having conversations. It's a social media platform. So yeah, be social. It's not cold email. So don't treat it like that, for sure, for sure. Now, I feel like we've got to move on from DMs to comments. Charlie, how do you approach comments and following people and using that? Because that's a huge growth level for us and I'm sure you too. Daniel: Yeah, so comments have been interesting for me. You know, when I was working full time, I used to post in the morning, comment before work and do as many as kind of possible, even during my lunch break, you know, I'd spend that commenting on LinkedIn. It was actually ridiculous. And yeah, not a smart strategy, because, yeah, I almost burned out from that. Yeah, lots and lots of comments in the early days, just trying to engage and connect with anybody. Daniel: And ultimately, the goal really is to build up that kind of like reciprocation between each other. You know, I'm quite cynical. I don't know if that's the right word, but I will literally remove someone from my engagement list if they don't reciprocate engagement on my posts. Because, you know, there's some posts I do genuinely find inspiring and want to comment on or funny, but a lot of the time I'm building up these relationships with other creators who will then, you know, support each other's work. In the early days, around like, you know, a year ago, I had a list of a hundred people, which sounds crazy because that's a lot of comments and takes hours per day. Now I have a list of kind of like my core, let's say 20 odd people who, they're good friends and I want to support them. Outside of that, you know, I try to introduce myself to as many new people as possible just by commenting on their posts and showing some appreciation. And it's crazy because now on this size, when people see my comment and then they're like, Oh my God, Charlie Hill just commented on your post, which is, which is crazy to me because I'm just me. Like I'm no one's special. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest kind of hacks is that I always support smaller creators of any size of any location. And I think that was really helped kind of like spin the growth engine is that then people from everywhere will support me because I, I spread that support, you know, elsewhere. Matt: It's not kind of just fixated on a small group of people. So what do you think makes a good comment as you're, as you've done so many during your lunch breaks and now and what makes a good comment? Daniel: So I think the best kind of approach for me personally is I love a bit of humor. I love a bit of like silliness. That's just kind of my personal brand kind of with sprinkles of that in. So I like to keep it fun and playful. I think if you're a bit more like professional and serious, then ultimately you want to, as much as I hate to say it, just add value rather than kind of regurgitating the post. Because one, that's like a very AI kind of approach. If you just simply say, you know, love this take. You know, AI has really changed the game, then it's just so bland. It's so vanilla and you won't build any relationships that way. Versus, yeah, adding value, being curious, asking questions, or yeah, just really kind of conveying your thought leadership. I feel like that works for most people, but for me personally, I love the humor angle because humor on LinkedIn really, really stands out versus like just something generic because B2B and LinkedIn generally has been quite a boring, a boring place for many years. So that's why I really think it punches through. Matt: It's so fast that you say that because I think humor and you know, Matt had just had a post that went viral about vulnerability. Daniel: And I think it's these human emotions that are doing really well on LinkedIn right now because no one else is posting about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like LinkedIn is so far behind the other social media platforms. I mean, that's why I think we mentioned earlier, you know, just like I have relatively quite nice graphics and designs, and that's really helped me stand out. Matt: Versus like Instagram, TikTok, the videos and reels people are making, they're so advanced and it's so competitive over there. Whereas like LinkedIn, if you just show a bit of personality, have good content, you can easily win on the platform and that's why I think I've done quite well on there because I've done both of those things. Daniel: And your formats are crushing it. But have you ever thought about doing video? Matt: Well, not the video debate again. Go on. Well, yeah, it was like towards the end of last year, the video feed was implemented by LinkedIn, and I know people who got millions of impressions on their videos, which most of the time they were just like soulless empty impressions because they were being put on the featured for you section. So I think it was kind of a bit like complete vanity, those metrics. Whereas for me, I tried those like vertical style videos, and they did okay. Whereas now, now I know for a fact, if I post a vertical video, it's gonna flop because one, LinkedIn renders it in a very weird way. It's kind of like embedded into the feed. Matt: So when I do create video content, it's always horizontal, which kind of goes against all advice that I always give, you know, always have 1080 by 1350 pixel dimensions to take up maximum space in the feed. But for video content, yeah, I do create it, but it really struggles to perform well. I try to keep it as like actionable as possible. You know, here's how I do X, rather than me just talking to the camera. Daniel: Yeah, that's fascinating. I actually, I have a ghostwriting client that I, he is also really big on short-form platforms. And so he wanted to test just posting one of his reels. And I was like, like, yeah, go for it. Let's, let's see what the data shows. And then like, it did not, it did not perform as expected. So it's interesting that you say that horizontal video tends to perform better because I do feel like when you see a startup do a product launch video or some sort of big announcement video, it tends to be a horizontal video. And granted, they probably did invest like tens of thousands of dollars into like a professional video agency helping them with it. But those videos, I think, get a ton of engagement and they're always horizontal. I don't, I can't think of an example of a vertical one. This may just be like the content that I've been seeing lately, but I, I can't think of like a vertical style video that really went viral. Daniel, I don't know if you've seen anything like that. Matt: No, I haven't. Daniel: I, I saw a similar thing to you, Charlie, with some of the other creators I've talked to where in that golden era of LinkedIn video starting, I mean, like we're talking 20 million plus impressions from video that were, as you said, mainly just empty though. Matt: Mm-hmm. No, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I still think there's a place for video. It's one of the best ways to build trust because one, you're actually showing your face rather than just kind of hiding behind your profile. And so there's definitely a place for it, but I wouldn't rely on it for, for growth or going viral. One of the a really good creators to follow in that space is Lewis Butterfield. He's like teaches people how to create ungeneric business videos. That's his whole angle. And his, his stuff's really good. And he still hasn't kind of given up on that trend. And yeah, really recommend following him if you want to kind of learn how to make fun vertical videos. Daniel: Oh, Daniel, we gotta try to get this guy on the pod. Matt: Yes. No, he's a great character. He would be the perfect guy. No, he's funny. Who are some other creators, Charlie, that, that you love following on LinkedIn? Daniel: Hmm. Oh God. Okay. Well, I mean, two big inspirations are Yasmin, Alec, and Laura Acosta. They're huge. Obviously in the space, it's been around on the platform for a long time. And I don't know how, how they do it. Like they post three times a week. They get more engagement and than my like 14 posts a week. Daniel: So it's, yeah, it's really impressive from those two. Ruben Hasse's been a big inspiration for me kind of along the way, him being in quite a similar space to me. And then I have like a core group of people who are my good friends now, like um Daniel Correnbloom, Nona San. God, I could go on all day. These people, but they've been a big kind of motivation and inspiration for my own content. Even sometimes when my friends don't post for a day, I'm like, what's wrong? Are you okay? And it's really nice to kind of keep everyone accountable and motivated to keep posting because it's not hard whilst also building your business. I mean, it is hard. Post cadence is such an interesting conversation because I'm someone, I mean, Charlie, you post what, like three times a day? Matt: Yes, twice a day. I was testing three times a day. Daniel: Okay. Twice a day. I, this summer, when I first got my first LinkedIn itch, I was posting four and a half to five times a day. I was crazy, but, but I learned a lot from it and I actually gained, you know, like 3 million impressions and learned so much from it. And my engagement didn't really have an issue. But I'm curious how you think about post cadence. You know, you're posting more than some of your other friends who have a lot more followers. And I think it's such a hot debate and topic of conversation. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I always advise starting with three posts a week. Daniel: When you say the algorithm changed, what do you mean by that? Like, is there any proof for that? I mean, I have so many conspiracies and there's no proof for that. Matt: Haha, yeah, it's one of those things where you just start to notice the shift in how your posts are being received. There's no official statement from the platform, of course, but you can tell from the engagement metrics. All of a sudden, what was working so well starts to level out or even decline, despite maintaining the same quality and frequency. So you're left sort of piecing together what's happening based on those changes. It's definitely something that keeps you on your toes, and it's interesting to adapt to. Matt: So I'm just curious, like, how you learned that or figured that out that, you know, now you should be posting two times a day. Daniel: Yeah, I mean, so someone who does quite an interesting report on this is Richard Van der Blom. I don't know if you've seen it before, but every year he does an algorithm report and he's got actual kind of like backed up data in there in partnership with Authored Up. And they found some interesting insights about reach. But ultimately, from my own experience, you know, when I first started posting on the platform, it was really, really good in 2024. I'd post some, you know, basic carousel and it'd get like, you know, 50,000 to 100,000 impressions. Whereas like now, that same basic carousel won't do as well. Sometimes it might struggle to get more than 20,000, which to me used to be so low. 20,000 was a bad post for me. Whereas like now I'm like, oh, yes, it passed 20,000 impressions, which is absolutely wild. And that all started in June. It was really, really weird, you know, I was crushing it up until May from one post a day. And then suddenly June came and it literally went down. And I blame that on like the summer period. People are away. People are, you know, got other things to do other than be on LinkedIn. But then actually in September, at the time that we're recording this, it's, it's kind of got even worse. Daniel: It leaves me to think like, you know, where are we heading? Like what's next for the algorithm? So yeah, that's just for my own kind of personal follower goals is that I really wanna hit 200,000 by the, by the end of the year. Matt: So that's the increased post. I love it. I'll, I'll for an increased post cadence. Yeah, I mean, I think as long as you can manage your content without burning out. I mean, Buffer also did a recent study and they found that people who post, I think 10 plus times a week, saw twice the amount of engagement and twice the amount of follower growth. And it makes sense because you're gonna be more experienced and know what works if you post more. But ultimately they did caveat saying, as long as it's good quality content, you know, don't post twice a day if it's going to be a half-assed attempt. Daniel: A hundred percent. And I think also like we've noticed that the high, like the high quality posts are living longer on the feed. And I don't know if you've seen this as well, Charlie, but I'll see a post from 3-4 weeks ago. Pop up on my feed. Matt: Yeah, so that was something that they implemented, I believe during the summer months. And could be the reason why we're seeing like less impressions on like posts now, is that I heard it was due to the fact they were trying to like filter out some of that AI content because, you know, people would post kind of like, I mean, it's, it's bad because a lot of people in the same kind of niche as me, it's, it's such bad content. Daniel: And yeah, they started showing posts from three weeks ago, which is weird. I'm not sure why, but I think, yeah, it's definitely a thing. And I think that's ultimately the reason why the algorithm has changed yet again. Yeah. I also had a random question for you, Charlie. Have you seen the LinkedIn Top Voice badge that some people have? Do you, I, I guess thoughts on that? Do you think like it's something, I, I think it's like an invite only badge as well, right? Like you can't just pay for it or, or apply for it. You have to kind of like, someone has to reach out to you from LinkedIn. Matt: Yeah, so it is invite only, that's correct. Uh because they got rid of like the gold top voice badges that used to be a thing. You could just contribute to articles and then get like a gold version, which was quite cool. Um, but it ended that towards the end of last year. Whereas like this Top Voice program, it doesn't really make sense. Some people are super credible and I'm like, of course, you deserve to have a top voice. Whereas like, I look at some accounts with it, I'm just like, wait, why, why do you have this? Like, what qualifying factors are they looking at here? And ultimately I hear it's the fact that it's based on your experience. Um, if you have like top respectable companies in your experience section, then they'll give it to you. And I also know that there's like kind of some geographical, um, distribution with it. Daniel: Most of the top voices are in the U.S., but they do try to like give people from Asia, Africa, Europe, a spread of the voices as well. So yeah, we need more transparency there um, because it doesn't really make sense. Matt: Agreed. And the other thing... Daniel: Yeah, go for it, Daniel. Matt: I was just gonna say, Charlie, I'm curious, you know, we've talked a lot about the algorithm. And if you had any other LinkedIn conspiracies or rules that you really abide by that might not be super intuitive, like, you know, your post cadence now or something else like that. Daniel: Mm, I mean, one that's really weird is scheduling. So there was a lot of hearsay going around, people saying, don't schedule your posts, it hurts your reach. Like top, top voices were saying this. I was like, really? Like, surely, surely not. Because there's a built-in native scheduler to LinkedIn. Like, why would they damage your post reach for using the native feature? Yeah, I mean, that's how I stay consistent. Like, I'm not gonna like load up my post every single time and then hit post now. It's ridiculous. Matt: So I schedule, but I do this weird hack when I post that at 11:00 a.m. UK time, but then I'll schedule my post for 11:15, and then when it gets to 11:00 a.m., I'll hit post now, which I don't know why I do it. It's just kind of like this weird, you know, psychological thing because obviously I'm around engaging with people at the time, so it shouldn't make a difference. Daniel: But I'm like, just in case it does, I'm going to follow this odd hack, which, you know, I've started posting twice a day and some of my second posts are scheduled on the dot at 4 p.m. And they do very, very well. So I don't know why I keep doing it, to be honest. I love how we all have our LinkedIn conspiracies. Matt: I have not tried that yet, but I may have to in the future, just to see. Daniel: Yeah, give it a go. Matt: Yeah, definitely A-B test it because it's, yeah, it's a big kind of topic. Daniel: Besides that, I'm not, I'm not sure what else there is a lot of weird kind of conspiracies on LinkedIn. But yeah, that's probably the top one for me. Matt: Well, I'm curious too. So you have a page for your linked agency and your own page, and your page is partially, you know, there is no linked agency without your page right now. But how do you go, do you think about posting a lot on that linked agency page? I mean, we've seen that, you know, we believe if you're posting on a company page, it's like, no one's gonna see it. But what do you think about that? Daniel: Yeah, I mean, I've got this post in kind of like drafts, which is titled company pages aren't dead. Because that's kind of been the thought behind it, it's like personal brands, personal brands, don't bother with company pages. And obviously it works if you're a big, big company. You can just share updates like Microsoft, they'll get good engagement. But if you're just a small or medium-sized business, it's so hard to scale that company page on LinkedIn. Daniel: So a strategy that works quite well is actually treating your company page more like a top-of-the-funnel content ecosystem. And then ultimately, you just want to share like, it could be memes, it could be anything that aligns with what you and your company do. For me personally, I scaled my, I've got two company pages, I've got a few more in the pipeline. And I'm basically repurposing all of my content and then posting it on my company page. Because then people see it and they actually follow the page. And I've actually seen quite a few company pages grow fast. One, because they have like a catchy name that makes people want to follow them, but two, they're just creating content from other people and then sharing it. And then they're automatically getting followers. So I think that's kind of like a smart hack you could follow if you want to grow your company page. As long as the content aligns with what you do and you know, everybody doesn't mind you kind of posting that stuff on there because it's not, it's quite kind of, it's an unorthodox approach to scaling a company page. Matt: So you're basically saying for the company page, if you do want to post, try to maximize top of funnel content and also repurposing of other people's top of funnel content, essentially. Daniel: Yeah, exactly. But you should always credit them, ideally at the top of the post. Because yeah, it happens to me all the time. Daniel: I'm probably tagged in the company page post once a day just because they've posted a piece of my content. So yeah, I think that ultimately works quite well and will bring additional visibility to your company page. And the good thing about doing that is that you can always repost your content from the company page and that automatically gets more eyeballs on your personal brand content. So it's kind of like a ecosystem that feeds one another. Matt: Agreed. If you were the CEO of LinkedIn right now, we've talked about, we've hit a lot of features, but what are some things you'd want to see? Would you want to, you know, update the newsletter, the video? I don't know, whatever it is, but what would you wanna do if you're the CEO of LinkedIn today? Daniel: Yeah, I mean, I'd be really looking at what other tools are doing well. For example, we mentioned Kondo before. First fix that inbox because it is very bad. I'd also think about, you know, looking at Substack and seeing what they're doing with like a social media network and newsletters and how that could actually encourage people to post more on LinkedIn because I love Substack. It's amazing. You can just post content on there, get actual newsletter subscribers. Whereas on LinkedIn, you know, I grew my newsletter for like a year and I got like 30,000 followers on there, but no email addresses, zero data capture there. So it's really, really pants. Daniel: Yeah, I just kind of like improved the whole social selling system as well, because Sales Navigator, it's very good as a database, but as kind of a sales tool, it's not very good. It's, I mean, I'm not here for automated DMs, etc., but if you could allow people to do some like sequencing with DMs, that would be quite cool, for example. And ultimately, I think it would be really cool to have impressions visible in posts, like you see on... Matt: I totally agree. Yeah, because I know so many people are cheating the system and they've got high engagement, but then their impressions are going to be like, so, so low down. I think that would give, it'd be better for everybody, you know, brands, creators, just even general users, just knowing if this post is artificially inflated or whether it's got genuine... Daniel: And I'm curious too, I mean, you are obviously a super talented content creator. Why do you spend so much time on LinkedIn as opposed to any other platform? Matt: Oh, I mean, for me personally, I've tried. I've tried on all the other platforms, to be honest, and it never, it never stuck. I'm not sure why. I think I was doing the posting ghosting thing that we mentioned at the start. But also with LinkedIn, it felt different. LinkedIn, you have that kind of clear network and connections. Like I've got my first degrees. I can actually see real humans versus with like X, Instagram and TikTok. It all just felt like kind of a a dice roll with those ones. Matt: Whereas I know on LinkedIn, it's like, I need to warm up my network. I need to build relationships, because it felt more human to human. Whereas with the other platforms, yeah, one, I think they're a bit more advanced with, you know, typically reels being kind of the main content focus on TikTok and Instagram. And I'm not amazing at those. I actually promised myself to make three reels this week and really try to grow on Instagram. But it's just, I find it so much harder than just putting together a carousel or a cheat sheet, something a bit more static. So yeah, I really, really tried. Daniel: And thank you for, uh, calling me a great content creator because sometimes on those platforms, I definitely don't feel like one. I mean, you definitely have the qualities of someone who would succeed on social media of like, you know, being able, the bias for action, I think is probably the massive, the biggest one Matt and I always talk about is like, a lot of people just don't even want to post to begin with. And then if they do decide they're going to post, then they overthink what they're going to post, not really seeing it as almost like what you were saying earlier about like each post is a piece of data. So whether it flops or it performs, it's still teaching you something so valuable. That's going to improve your content later. Also just, I think a lot of people maybe don't understand that it's a power law for most content. Daniel: So like, I don't know if you've seen this in your data, Charlie, but personally for me and some other creators I've spoken with, it's like 10 to 20% of your content is driving 80 to 90% of the growth. Like you've probably had one or two like mega viral posts that driven like thousands of followers. Matt: Yeah, no, no, no, 100%. I really like how you frame those, Matt. It's for sure. Definitely. Like a few kind of viral topics and formats continuously perform very, very well for me. And I think, you know, the whole thing with the other platforms is that I probably gave up on them too soon. You look at people like Mr. Beast, etc, content creators who absolutely crush it on other socials, you know, they've been doing it for like eight plus years at this point. So let's just say with LinkedIn, you know, those first three months probably will be quite dry and quite hard to get any attention. But you know, give it six months, a year, then it just suddenly all compounds. So yeah, I definitely agree. Daniel: Yeah, and and one other thing I just want to add on about the previous question of things to add to LinkedIn. Matt: Yes. Daniel: A/B testing of hooks, I think would be massive. Maybe not just hooks of it, even like A/B testing like image versus like a video attached with the text. And then also better analytics around where the, like, if you get a million impressions, who are those impressions coming from? Audience segmentation data around your impressions would be huge for brands and for creators. Matt: Yeah, they recently updated the analytics, which was quite nice. You can see like sends, saves, links clicked and posts. But 100%, I think, you know, I don't know what LinkedIn are doing. I guess, obviously, I factor in the fact it's Microsoft. I guess they're just quite slow to implement and do these things considering it's like a 24 year old platform. Maybe it's older than that. But yeah, that would be dreamy. Totally. Daniel: I just thought of a random stat too I thought I'd throw at you too, Charlie. And that was that I was writing a post on this last night, but LinkedIn has 20 times more Google search interest than Substack. And I think it was like five times more than Pinterest. So they're actually crushing Substack and even Pinterest, which is kind of crazy for me to see. Matt: Interesting. I mean, I know LinkedIn does appear in search results. I think that's probably one of the only benefits of using the newsletter article feature is that it does actually appear in SERPs. But yeah, besides that, that's why it's very important to think about like um alt text and like, you know, social media SEO, because I'm not sure which AI is being fed a lot of LinkedIn content. I think it's like perplexity. That's the one. Daniel: Then, yeah, no, no, I mean, that's a really interesting stuff though. I didn't know that. Daniel, should we move to the uh good idea, bad idea? I think it's a good time to do that. Matt: So Charlie, we, we've got a new segment we're, we're trying out on the podcast now where I'm gonna throw, I have seven ideas ready for you, and you're going to tell me if they're a good idea or a bad idea. You can either say, good idea, move on, bad idea, move on, or add your commentary. Daniel: So the first one is putting your middle school on your LinkedIn. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Ultimately, I think it's probably a bad idea unless you're super proud of your middle school, but for me personally, it was just some, you know, random town or village where I grew up. So yeah, I think just stick to your college or university, as we say, for this idea. I got this idea from Alex Hermosi, who put his high school, not middle school though, on LinkedIn. And then I saw one of my other close friends went to the same high school, which is kind of crazy. Number two is posting eight times a day. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Matt: That's definitely a bad idea. You should, at the very most, post three times a day and leave like around five hours minimum, but ideally like six hours between your posts. So yeah, bad idea. Now I've got some ideas for you and the LinkedIn agency. The first one is a viral predictor, which is somehow trying to predict, using AI, the likelihood of it going viral with a, you know, maybe call it 50% degree of accuracy. Daniel: Yeah, that's a brilliant idea. I mean, I, someone used Stanley for that. Daniel: Like you can actually ask it to like score your posts on the hook, on the likelihood that it will outperform, etc. So, it's not perfect, but yeah, I'd love to have that, you know, built into LinkedIn or elsewhere. Okay, I like it. The next one is the LinkedIn Olympics. So you host a competition where agencies or creators create to generate the most viral impressions and engagement in 48 hours off of a random prompt. I mean, I was going to say LinkedIn is the like a marathon slash Olympics anyway, but oh my God, yeah, if LinkedIn were like paying out for that, then great idea. 100%. Okay, here's another one. A viral post pack. A pre-bundled set of 10 templates of stuff that's done well and then you sell that. I see it. I see it quite frequently. People will offer out these as like lead magnets and they tend to do quite well. So I think maybe for like a one-off lead magnet, good idea, but to buy it, to actually pay money, I'm not sure about that. You can use tools like, there used to be Clio, CreatorMatch, Favicon. They can all analyse like creators' past posts. So yeah, bad idea to pay, good idea for free. And the last one is the comment empire. And this is a service where your agency doesn't write posts, but instead comments on a lot of posts in an effective way for clients. So there's no posts written, it's just comments. Just comments. A separate service that you could add. I guess maybe an add-on service. Daniel: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's good for like, yeah, I think it's a good idea for people who are too busy to write their own comments, but if you can, then write your own. So definitely, I totally understand it in specific cases, but if you can find the time, then do do it yourself. Matt: Okay, that will conclude this segment. Thank you for for playing Charlie here and giving your thoughts. Matt, do you have any other good ideas or bad ideas to throw out? Did that spark any creativity? Daniel: None that come to mind immediately. I think you honestly hit it out of the park with these ones, Daniel. It's funny, like every episode, I feel like the ideas, the good idea, bad ideas get better and better. So these were the best so far. I really liked the LinkedIn Olympics idea. I feel like that could be a nice idea for a LinkedIn marketing team if they're watching this. Matt: Yes, please. That'd be so cool. But they're so focused on like kind of job seekers, etc. more than like fostering that creator ecosystem they've built up. So yeah, I think there's a fat chance of that actually happening. Daniel: Well, Charlie, we can't thank you enough for your time. Is there anything else we, you want to hit on or that we should have asked you that we didn't in this podcast, either LinkedIn or not LinkedIn related? Matt: No, no, no, no. I think you covered everything, to be honest. It was very comprehensive and you clearly done your research. Daniel: So, you know, thank you for the awesome questions and yeah, just, yeah, appreciate it. Matt: Okay, like I know it's early for you guys, so I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. Appreciate you coming on. Daniel: Of course. Matt: No, happy to. I love just kind of sharing my story and um geek out about LinkedIn. It's, it's good fun.