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00:00:01
The Risks and Rewards of Being an Early Adopter
52 Plays3 years ago
Being an early adopter is not easy.
There is a risk to embrace a platform or product that isn't popular or perhaps not ready for prime time.
In 2017, Michael David Chapman walked away from his job.
With no backup plan, he started to post on LinkedIn - sometimes three or four times a day - about his personal and professional challenges.
This is way before LinkedIn emerged as a vibrant content platform.
As an early adopter, Michael capitalized on a huge opportunity by doing what other people weren't doing.
His posts generated huge audiences and Michael has attracted 276,000 followers.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, we talk about Michael's LinkedIn journey and how he sees the platform evolving.
We also do a rapid-fire session on all things LinkedIn.
Recommended
Transcript
LinkedIn's Evolution: From Job-Seeking to Content Community
00:00:03
Speaker
Hi, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. Over the past 18 months, LinkedIn has transformed from being a platform for job seekers and recruiters into a thriving community teaming with content and insight from people around the world. Personally, it's been a game changer for my marketing business.
Michael Chapman's LinkedIn Journey and Founding of Lead in Social
00:00:23
Speaker
Michael David Chapman was way ahead of the pack when it came to recognizing the power of LinkedIn.
00:00:29
Speaker
In 2017, Michael started using LinkedIn to talk about his personal and professional challenges. One thing led to another, a massive understatement. And Michael has established himself as one of the leading voices on LinkedIn with more than 250,000 followers. Michael is the founder of Lead in Social, a digital agency that helps entrepreneurs and business owners use LinkedIn to extend their reach and grow their businesses. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Michael.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hey man, thanks for having me. What a great, what a great intro. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Let's start with a loaded question.
Pandemic Impact on LinkedIn Usage
00:01:03
Speaker
What's your take on how people have embraced LinkedIn over the past 18 months? Last year in March or April, I kind of climbed on the platform thinking it was the same old, same old LinkedIn and was pleased and excited to discover it had changed. So I'm curious about your take on how the platform has evolved. Well, we've all been locked at home.
00:01:26
Speaker
over the last 18 months. Yeah, I've seen two polar opposites. I'll start with the first, starting with a pandemic. On this side of the pandemic, there's an interesting stat. I got to find the article, but there was a gentleman that wrote an article around, he was talking about coaches.
00:01:41
Speaker
If you would have done, like just talking about how coaches, you know, the coaching space is really saturated. There seems to be one behind every tree, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Little tongue in cheek there. But he had done like a keyword search prior to the pandemic and you would get like, you know, the word coach, you might got two and a half million hits. Meaning that word is somewhere in a profile.
00:02:02
Speaker
Now it's all new it's approaching 3x that so i think people that found themselves displaced because of things out of their control or even in some cases they had planned a digital transition or some to begin to start doing something in the digital space maybe they found themselves flat footed.
00:02:19
Speaker
in that space specifically, it just took off in terms of the amount of people, for sure. Then there's the polar opposite where like, you know, talk with people like the real estate space, the mortgage space, and other spaces, they just like, it's still just like, like it was for me prior to 2017. A great place to find talent, a good place to find a job perhaps, and read a Forbes article. It's just, they just don't care about it.
00:02:47
Speaker
I find that interesting because people like you and I, it feels like we're in the eye of the hurricane. We're creating content, we're leaving comments, we're engaging, we're doing what we think is just the right thing to do. It just seems natural to leverage LinkedIn in this respect. I find it surprising that 99% of the people on LinkedIn don't create content, don't leave comments. Some of them are lurkers that read comment. For the most part, there's a lot of people who are just not leveraging the platform. Does that surprise you?
00:03:16
Speaker
Not at all. I mean, I would say for people that are in positions where they do their own thing, they're not working for a specific company, or if they're an entrepreneur, they own their own business, that would be a surprising thing. Because again, with Little Under, what do you got, 800 million people, there's got to be a second of your market on the platform.
00:03:37
Speaker
But for people that are working your everyday W2 position with a corporation, I can completely get it. In fact, I always sort of have an opposing view. No shock there. People that drive personal branding for job seekers and buy my course, personal branding is the way of the pathways. I get it.
00:03:58
Speaker
on some level, you know, it used to be your personal brand was your resume and then what somebody would say about you when they picked up a phone and we're looking doing a reference check. So I understand the power of social media for a job seeker, but I think you have to handle that a little bit more careful. So I'm not surprised to see more, you know, people that hold, you know, your typical nine to five job, not doing content, but business owners, you know, people, entrepreneurs. Yeah, that's surprising because it's just, it's too easy to get attention on the platform. It's too easy.
00:04:27
Speaker
Before we ramble down the LinkedIn rabbit hole, I do want to circle back with you on personal brand because I see a lot of that these days and there's so much attention. And as you say, there are coaches and mentors and personal branding seems to be so important these days. And my take is with personal branding, do the right things.
00:04:48
Speaker
You know, be a good person and then in time your reputation will will start to build in a positive way. But do you think the focus is there's an over exaggeration on personal branding these days? Yeah, I don't I wouldn't say over exaggeration. I think it's more of maybe a lack of understanding. I mean, again, I'm it's a it's a fair question, but perhaps a bit broad. And so I'll give it a broad answer. You know, I would say
00:05:16
Speaker
I'll give you an answer. If I was going to hire somebody to help me with personal branding as a job seeker, they would be somebody that has got some either experience, evaluating experience or influence. In the hiring game, they've hired somebody. Perhaps they've let someone go slash fired someone. They've worked in talent acquisition or talent development and or had influence in that space because
00:05:42
Speaker
those aren't silver bullets, but those are those are going to be people that are going to bring what I think a more holistic view to a more practical view to saying, hey, you know, anybody can go out there with a cell, anybody with time and a cell phone can get out there and get attention. But is it is it the right thing? For example, when I was when I quit my job, I quit my job without a job. And at the end of the day, some of the stuff about what you started with this intro, I mean, I think it ran potential employers off. I wasn't talking
00:06:11
Speaker
anything bad or anything disparaging about a previous employer or holding any one position or another. But I found LinkedIn at a time when it was really easy to not just gain followership but drive viewership. And so, you know, you got a guy
00:06:28
Speaker
that's looking for a job in sales leadership in New England that's got 100,000 views on a post talking about leadership stuff. It's good stuff. But maybe that's, you know, maybe we don't want someone with such a perceived personal persona. I mean, like, it's just, you've got to handle it. So I don't think it's over exaggerated. But just think that like,
00:06:47
Speaker
The marketing that I see around it, I don't see it all. But I don't see enough of the balance as opposed to job seekers. For entrepreneurs and business owners, no excuse. I don't think it is. When I see people say, look, if you're a business owner, entrepreneur on LinkedIn, and you're not working on your personal brand, your company's brand, you're missing the boat, you know, in general, I get that. But for job seekers, it's oftentimes, it's not delivered with the right level of balance, in my opinion.
00:07:15
Speaker
Over the last year, what has surprised you most about LinkedIn and what has disappointed you? I think some of the surprises, I mean, it's, you know, with what happened, like all social media platforms, I think they get the least amount of this sort of, not accusation, but claim that, you know, they've taken positions in subtle ways in terms of how they've handled some people's content. And I'm not talking about,
00:07:43
Speaker
And we saw some things last spring that were just very, very, not only just disheartening and disappointing, but just really scary in terms of how things can get out of hand really quick in a law enforcement situation. I saw the platform, like a lot of companies,
00:08:03
Speaker
take positions that they didn't hold before in ways that they're not in that same position. So I've been disappointed in seeing that. I'm kind of being a bit cagey of what I'm saying there, but I think the difference is clear. I've not appreciated some of
00:08:21
Speaker
of the approach that they took to supporting some voices in that space and not other voices, whether you're having a balanced narrative and we can really talk about workable solutions. I've not appreciated that. What I've really liked is they've continued to ask questions on how they can make it more of a creator platform because, you know,
00:08:45
Speaker
There's people that create a whole lot more than me, but back then, four or five years, four years ago, I was creating two, three times a day. And so people like myself and people that have done much more than me made it a creator platform, a non-creator platform or creator platform. So I like what they're trying to do, what's been disappointing. So that's good. What's been disappointing with that is it doesn't look like
00:09:15
Speaker
they're always really canvassing and seeking out input from the membership of people that, you know, have been around and done it. And that doesn't have to be me, but you know, like when's the last time you got an update from LinkedIn that said, this is what we just did, you know, this is what we're doing. And oh, by the way, you know, it came from, you know, not these people, but this is what we did to really listen to our members and really give them what they want. That's, that's been probably my biggest frustration.
00:09:45
Speaker
But again, that's such a small thing. I mean, it's a great place to be. They make it, like I said, very, very easy for you to not just find people to do business with or...
00:09:56
Speaker
to hire or to be hired by. I mean, what other platform has, I mean, this is a great thing to give a huge, but what is, what is, what other platform has a sales navigator, right? Where, while yeah, Facebook's got to, how many, what is it, 3 billion? How many people on Facebook? 3 billion, yeah.
00:10:16
Speaker
yeah they don't have anything like sales manager you can't you can't find people and niche down to a very narrow target of potential prospects like you can only do they do a terrific job with that with all its imperfections.
00:10:29
Speaker
What I find interesting over the last year is that all of us have been working from home. We've been masters or mistresses of our own domain. Pretty much as long as you do the work, no one's watching you, there's Zoom meetings. But you can be pretty flexible on your time. And I think it's allowed a lot of people to multitask, have LinkedIn on one screen, do their work on the other, be connecting, leaving comments.
00:10:53
Speaker
But what happens when people start going back to the office in September? Because I know in the States you guys are already working in the office in Canada. We'll get there in a couple of months. But how do people's use of LinkedIn change when you're not at home anymore and that you're working with people and there may be less time to leverage the platform? Do you think we'll see a discernible change in people's usage of LinkedIn?
00:11:21
Speaker
I do, I do, man. I think, I think, you know, again, I mean, what did you do if you were, I think I'll answer all these, what did you do if you were a senior level leader at a marketing agency? What did you do if you were, you know, summarily displaced because of the pandemic?
00:11:37
Speaker
If you were in a position financially to take some time and weather the storm great, but a lot of people aren't and weren't, but you have these skills. And so a lot of people went into, got on LinkedIn and started obviously looking for jobs, but also you saw the open to work.
00:11:55
Speaker
I think that LinkedIn started where you're making it in your picture very obvious to job seekers that you're available, right? Well, a lot of consultants and coaches and intangible service providers did the same thing. And so I do think you'll see a follow-up. I think it's the intrinsic question, like, because, you know, companies now, I mean, we're hearing it, depending on what report you look at and what news outlet mean, people are struggling to find people for various reasons. I mean, we can go down that path.
00:12:22
Speaker
And that same leader, worker, isn't trying to be an entrepreneur. They're not trying to be a business owner. They're trying to ride out the next 15 years or whatever their career, working for an organization where the culture is good, the pay is good, they can have a good life, et cetera, et cetera. So the disruption with the COVID created where, okay, now I got to get online and find something. And LinkedIn is the
00:12:46
Speaker
one of the, probably one of the, if not the natural outlets for that. I think we're going to see, I mean, we're, I'm seeing it. I mean, for sure, as people have gone back to work. I don't know if I answered your question, but yeah, I mean, I think that, that, and then there's some people that got on that they're there to stay. I mean, there's a lot of new friends and creators since the pandemic that put out great content every day.
00:13:09
Speaker
Sure. One thing I wanted to ask you about because you focus on helping business leaders and entrepreneurs leverage LinkedIn is your thoughts on CEOs being active on LinkedIn because there's one school of thought suggesting that it's a great place to build thought leadership and a personal brand on the other side of the coin.
00:13:29
Speaker
There's some people who are, some CEOs that are afraid of LinkedIn. They're afraid of putting themselves out there. Everything has to be vetted and that it's almost not worth the risk. And I'm wondering where you sit. Obviously, I think I know the answer, but do you think that CEO should be active on LinkedIn and should be engaging for both their own personal brands and for their own company's branding?
00:13:55
Speaker
Not as a general point, not without some. Because someone said that and there's opportunity, no. I would say if you're in a, for sure, if you're in a, which most businesses are, if you're in a business where it really matters to get a sense of what it's like to work with not just the CEO, but the organization and
00:14:22
Speaker
you have the time, and again, we're talking about, let's just talk about a privately held company, right? Because I think the dynamic is a little bit different when you're publicly held and some of all of it comes with that. And of course, I've never been a CEO. I'm just having worked with CEOs in both spaces in what you're talking about and something to work with now. A lot of times they choose to,
00:14:47
Speaker
Sit in the backseat the part of the creative process or the energy on that side of the marketing side but they but they really want. They want to be doing other things alright and so what i say to you is not so much should you be out there but you know at the end of the day. Whether it's you or your team or whatever if you're not there here some you know some some numbers right i mean like there's almost eight hundred million people.
00:15:13
Speaker
on this platform. It's still, here's a fact, it's still an algorithm while they're changing it all the time. You don't need ad spin to get organic reach.
00:15:25
Speaker
You need to, somebody on your team needs to engage your potential prospects or your audience in meaningful ways on their content. And that naturally brings energy, positive energy, engagement to quote unquote your content. Maybe not from the company page because those are oftentimes ghost towns. But if you have your senior director of marketing, put it this way, if you're a $25 million company that's got 70 employees, whatever it is,
00:15:52
Speaker
and you've got a marketing person that's not doing something on linkedin and you're in the roofing business you're missing out whether it's your ceo or not whether you're the ceo or not so does it need to be the ceo now you can argue listen what's a ceo doing sitting around putting out content on linkedin i mean it's just
00:16:09
Speaker
You're not going to make everybody happy. What I would rather say is whether it's a CEO or somebody marketing or a frontline account executive, somebody needs to be out there holding the flag of your company brand and going up the hill with it because your competition is doing it. Your competition is cracking it and figuring it out. I mean, so you're hearing that all the time for sure.
00:16:29
Speaker
I would say one of the keys to my success and enjoyment on LinkedIn over the last year has been conversations. So I have reached out to, I probably had 150 conversations and I don't mean that to boast. I just say that because I've taken the initiative and I enjoy the conversations and people have been open to having conversations with me. I would think that there's a leap between connections and conversations. It's easy to make connections and everyone talks about the fact that they have thousands of followers and 500 plus connections.
00:16:59
Speaker
What's your advice on taking the next step to moving taking a relationship to the next level and reaching out to somebody and saying hey I would love to connect with you and not coming across as too salesy or opportunistic.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we create messages for our clients. So I don't think anybody's entirely, you know, analysis for your audience, and this is gonna be a probably a little dogmatic. I don't think anybody's totally cracked that. I mean, at the end of the day, I'll definitely tell you some tactics, but I mean, at the end of the day, I always liken it to, you know, what would it look like if I walked up to you at a very loud football game in the concession stand? Or let's just say mutual and friend.
00:17:43
Speaker
A mutual friend, right? Your brother, we both know your brother or sister or spouse, whatever, invited me to a football game where you knew I was a potential client for your marketing business. You're in the marketing business and you know by hearsay or by word of mouth, whatever, whatever, that I could be a potential client. So you and I are there. Where are you located by the way, Mark? In Toronto, Canada. Okay. So it's not going to be a football, it would be a hockey game.
00:18:10
Speaker
The hockey game, yeah. We've got a football game if you're down here in New England. Let's say we're at a New England football game, because I'll do what Americans do, where we make it sound like it's all about us, right? In the third quarter, by that time, you and I have built rapport. You haven't tried to, you know my name, you know I've got kids, but like, you haven't really started talking to me about the business. Now imagine a scenario, I'm like, hey man, let's go get a refill.
00:18:33
Speaker
And I'm like, hey, now what do you do again? That would be your three to six seconds of time to get my attention. That's how you need to treat outreach, right? I mean, that takes a lot of thought. And I know that's like a very, probably not so likely example that would happen in real life, but that's the best metaphor I've come up with that's helped us increase our convergence with our clients. Because what's happening is, first off, everybody's sending everybody messages on this side of the pandemic.
00:19:02
Speaker
more, less so now, presumably, but, and they're not all, but people are trying to get appointments to talk about their service and talk about them, how they can solve that person's problems and close deals. I get it. I totally get that. I think one of the best ways is to just remember how do you want to be talked to? And that's not going to fit everyone.
00:19:23
Speaker
You know, we've got campaigns where we don't send a, you know, the conventional, send a personalized message. I mean, that's been around since the beginning of, that's been around since Reed Hoffman started the platform. I mean, my God, people are still preaching that without a lot of data. There isn't data out there, but it's just changed. People, because everyone said, okay, I'll send a personalized message. And then, you know, hi, I was looking at your profile and they said a terrible one, right? Like, it's like,
00:19:49
Speaker
So the more defined answer I'd say is building your approach and outreach around your client is the key. That takes time. It's not a one size fits all. If you say to me, hey, listen, your target
00:20:04
Speaker
is C-suite executives in big pharma. We talk to them like that. Mid-level leaders in e-commerce, we talk to them like that. And frontline leaders in manufacturing and transportation, we talk to them like that. Well, you can boilerplate some of that.
00:20:21
Speaker
But at the end of the day, the best way is to just be direct and honest as you can. People don't have a lot of time, in my opinion. People don't want to sit around and chat. I'll speak for myself. If you want to chat with me, I'm going to be like, let's get on a call. I don't want to sit there and text all day. But again, that's subjective. Some people, that's all they do. So it's about knowing your client. I will say one thing, and just around that success, you got to try things and measure it. One of the reasons why people will preach
00:20:46
Speaker
ad nauseam about direct outreach doesn't work on LinkedIn because a lot of times they're not measuring anything.
00:20:53
Speaker
You know, if you're not measuring each conversion or response rate, conversions and response rates on every single touch, you're really not saying that with anything empirical. So I think at the end of the day, treat people like you want to be treated. Sometimes coming right out and saying, hey Mark, thanks for connecting. You know, a little bit about me, I am a blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. And in that blank, blank, blank, that touches on your pain or presumed pain. Hey, would you like to have a call? That still works, depending on what you're selling.
00:21:27
Speaker
I love the football game analogy because I think that in some cases directly messaging someone after a connection request makes sense, but in a lot of cases it's about relationships and building rapport and coming across as
00:21:42
Speaker
Sincerely being interested and you make a contribution and you're offering insights. There's there's you've got street cred and you've got some points and you can cash those points in to You know request a conversation and that that that's a natural way of building relationships No, again, if I walked up to you and your spouse at a football game and I said, hey, I just want you to know I really think and paid you a compliment. How would I say that? It's the same transferable point. That's that's so aggressive. I mean who's doing that?
00:22:14
Speaker
We treat people with care and respect. Should I send a message, not a message? That's all that should be driven by not just your approach, but what converts from a numbers perspective.
00:22:27
Speaker
One final question before we get into the rapid fire round, which is always a lot of fun.
LinkedIn Strategy for Newcomers
00:22:32
Speaker
If you're not one of the 800 million people that has jumped on the LinkedIn bandwagon and you suddenly dawned on you that maybe LinkedIn is the place where I need to be, what's your advice on getting started? Because it can be intimidating when people are saying, you got to create content, you got to leave comments, you got to be connecting with people. And all you want to do is just sort of dip your toe in the water.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, this is, I've had, I've had, um, man, I've had some really interesting debates, borderline arguments with people on content posts on this topic, right? What should happen first? Um, so I'll give you, I'll give you some, I'll give you the opposite of what I think a lot of people say, look, just start putting out content. There's nothing wrong with it, but turns into it's sort of a, it's a, it's sort of, um,
00:23:19
Speaker
Not always, not always. It'll be fair to people out there that, because we inadvertently are, our business has to brand you. I mean, basically when we build a messaging campaign, the last thing we looked at is your profile. Because we want to make sure the profile supports the outreach. We do the process, most people build the profile and then they build the outreach. We build the outreach in the profile. So I understand personal branding. Enough to sound smart at a networking event when I say this, okay?
00:23:49
Speaker
People will say stop putting out content and people will just show up well there's some merit to that there's a lot of merit to that specially if it's tailored to the right target and and it's authentic you know authentic which is or genuine authentic and you're very nice and all of these things to talk about. At the same time there's something about and these are the two analogies right.
00:24:09
Speaker
You know, content marketing is like you driving by, you having a product and you driving by my house and throwing, you know, whatever it would be. Let's say you're, you know, you're, you throw a newspaper, you throw an advertisement in my front yard, you hang it on my door. There's a reasonable chance. And let's say it's folded up in the center of something. There's a reasonable chance that I'm not gonna read that.
00:24:31
Speaker
Number one, there's a reasonable chance that I may not even see it for a week. When I open it, I may not see what you want me to see, et cetera, et cetera. That's content marketing, all right? Direct outreach is, high mark, there's probably a 50, I don't know the odds, because I'm not a mathematician, but I'm just going 50-50 to make more. There's a 50-50 chance that's either going to go bad or go dormant or go good. So direct outreach, when people,
00:25:01
Speaker
One of the constructive points I have around just people that are heavy, heavy content, content, content, content marketing, it's not as direct and it's not as measurable as direct outreach because direct outreach is a literal knock on someone's digital door.
00:25:18
Speaker
So to answer, so I'm just, that's a huge preface. I'm sort of just putting a landscape. You need to have both of those clubs in your bag to be successful in my mind, or not to be successful. You can be successful while direct outreach, but to me, it's too good of an opportunity if you're not out spamming people and you, if you can make friends.
00:25:38
Speaker
at a bar, you can make friends, you can do direct outreach. If you're good at making friends in the real world, you're going to be good at doing direct outreach. It's the same transferable attitude and spirit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's just, it's a different way of doing it on the front end until you can shoot a video and audio. So what I'd say to people is if I was going to do one thing first is to really be thinking about the end game and working backwards. Who are the people
00:26:04
Speaker
Let's say it's somebody who's gonna sell something. You didn't really frame the who, but let's just say it's a solopreneur who's just left a company. They got one year of financial runway to figure it out. They don't need to work and they're building something. They're gonna do an online course. They're a coach. It doesn't really matter, whatever they're gonna do. To me, they need to be thinking about the who. Because once you know who the who is, even if you're not 100% sure, you can start knocking on those doors and you can start building those connections, which inadvertently,
00:26:33
Speaker
most assuredly, even at 35%, is building the audience. So now you're building your YouTube channel audience. Now you're building, who's gonna read that content? Don't get me wrong, you will, if you just start putting out content and start getting new levels of virality, you know, I start commenting on Mark, and Mark Kirk's on mine, and I've got a thousand followers, he's got 500, well now my thousand followers see the fact he's commenting, they've got it interlocked like that. But that's less reliable than a, hi Mark,
00:27:03
Speaker
Notice you're in Durham, New Hampshire, looking to connect with other people there, whatever you would say. So the content thing I'll address, but putting out, starting to talk to people, having a plan for that in tandem with building your content strategy. Because again, a lot of people quit the content game because they don't get the right attention. Even if it's for vanity metrics, not even for a business, they don't stick with it because they're not also building the audience on the outreach side.
00:27:31
Speaker
Don't get me wrong. When I started going viral, people came to me. At one point I was getting 600 to 700 followers a day after I got past 30,000. I get that, but that's different. That's a different time. We probably won't see that on LinkedIn again. That was 2017 and 2018. People need to have a plan to do outreach for sure. Let's do the rapid-fire round. I'll ask you a question and you can answer it for as long or short as you like. You ready for this? Ready. Does LinkedIn launch a Zoom-like service?
00:28:01
Speaker
Yes. Does it launch a clubhouse like service? Yes. Why are you hesitant? They just need, see the Zoom thing would make total sense because where did you go if you didn't have Zoom? You had Skype, you had Google Meets, and I think those are two. I'll probably get trouble. There's double, you know, not double, but substandard Zoom. I think they missed an opportunity, but definitely Zoom. Clubhouse only, yeah, definitely Clubhouse, but only like go talk to people that did Clubhouse early on.
00:28:32
Speaker
and bring them in and talk to them and say, Hey, how do we do it and do it better? Go ahead. Will groups be as be as good as Facebook groups? Never. No, no, not never. Um, not unless they decide to be really good at some things instead of trying to be, you know, average at a lot of things, which I think is a lot of the problem right now. Will LinkedIn offer analytics for personal accounts or will it allow shield.ai to dominate the market?
00:29:02
Speaker
I think the question is, will they mimic what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing? I'm still surprised that they're not, you know, and I've used S.H.I.E.L.D., I have clients who S.H.I.E.L.D., are they, are they have approved, I'm still surprised they're not approved vendor. They haven't figured out to help take that to another level. They got the views, likes, comments, and shares, but.
00:29:18
Speaker
I just don't think, I think that's the long-winded answer. That's an example, and again, I don't know, I don't work there, but SHIELD's been around for how long now? That's an example of obviously people want it, people like it, they want to understand things, and if you're an analytic geek like me, you're getting into, you did 500 character posts on Monday at two o'clock, you get another 500 character posts on Monday, but a different topic, and you're tracking that, and you want to understand the conversions,
00:29:45
Speaker
That's an example of them not listening. No, I don't think they'll, I don't think they'll do that. I just find it very incredible that people talk about shield. People love shield that the, you know, the power users love shield and LinkedIn seems to be ignoring that. And I don't know why. Again, I don't think they would ignore, I think again, they're, you know, I think, I think, uh, the data, the viewpoint, this is an anecdote. They're more interested in other things like ad spit, what they're going on with their ad business. And I mean, like, you know,
00:30:13
Speaker
You and me caring about how many likes, comments, and shares. Look, you got enough. Figure it out with that, dude. That's what it feels like. Right. 300 characters in post. Good or bad.
00:30:24
Speaker
300? 3,000, sorry. 3,300 would be bad. Well, at some point, I need a post today on my phone. I think I found a hack. I don't have the update or something, but it didn't let me go past 1,200 on my phone. I think it's good because I've had many posts I've had to pare down. So I think it's a good thing. Just again, it's really going to, that's why they say short form posts the best. I don't entirely agree. I used to say it all the time. I used to preach that from the mountaintop. I think when you're a compelling writer and you can keep somebody in 1,300 characters,
00:30:54
Speaker
It's something to keep them at the 3,000 level. So no, I'm happy that they did it. Do you ever publish articles as opposed to posts? I haven't done one in over two years. It's sad. I did one on New Year's Eve 2019 going into 2020. Creator mode, meh or interesting? And if so, why? Creator mode, like stories, I'm gonna put them together is the Ryan Leaf.
00:31:20
Speaker
I remember Ryan Leaf. He's the Ryan Leaf of LinkedIn. If your audience doesn't know, Ryan Leaf was, I think, considered the number one draft bust. It's 1998. So it's not, I mean, intrinsically, I know what they were trying to do.
00:31:35
Speaker
But I, you know, and again, people have sworn like I'm getting more views, I'm getting this, I'm getting that. But then when I hear them say that they're not comparing, you know, they're comparing a highlighter to a pen in terms of the post style and time and day and all that. I haven't seen a compelling thing before. I like that they're trying to do things better for creators. But again, just looks like they, not sure who they, who their subs, who their sample set was to look at and who they talked to. LinkedIn stories, a bust, a complete bust.
00:32:01
Speaker
I don't think it's a bust, it's just like how do you, you know, tell me how to, I mean I like, what I really liked about it, like I like with polls is where it seemed like once you would post a story, you know, they're pushing it outside your network. So whereas like a regular text post would go,
00:32:16
Speaker
you know i think used to be they would they would you know the algorithm would send it to the first 10 maybe 25 percent of your first degree network stories were going to total opposite was like 80 percent to the second and third degree i loved that but the problem is you can't get analytics you can't download the information like if i put out a story about you know the next best water bottle
00:32:35
Speaker
You know, in a commoditized environment, people are all going crazy about it. I got new screenshots to see you engaged it and viewed it and whatever. Same thing with polls. It's just like, that goes back to your shield analytics thing. I mean, they have a huge opportunity. My question back to anybody, would you pay $25 more a month for better analytics? I would. I'd probably pay more than that.
00:32:54
Speaker
Publishing a post every day. There are evangelists who say that it's absolutely necessary and others suggest that as long as you're consistent, maybe one or two a week, that's good enough. What's your take?
00:33:06
Speaker
I never liked that discussion without, well, what are you trying to accomplish? I mean, I know I beat that horse like I did on Clubhouse. I used to post at the height I was doing three to four times a day. It had a direct relationship and followership. When I got to probably 130, 35,000 followers, more post drove more followers. There's no doubt about it. Because intrinsically, I'm communicating relevancy
00:33:31
Speaker
in the algorithm, no matter who's engaging. So again, if you're trying to get more followers, I'm a fan of it, because you're just going to be in the feed. And you know, I've seen the ones that got a couple million, they get like, you know, and I love these new people that come on, and you've heard them. Oh, I get more. I get more engagement than guys got people with millions of followers, like those people, a million followers do not care about that statement. They're not trying to get a lot. They've been down the path of, Hey, I remember when I had my first beer, too, like,
00:33:58
Speaker
I remember when I had a thousand likes too. Like they're over that. It's a totally different game for some of those people. I know that because I know some of them personally. So you have to ask, what are you trying to accomplish and work backwards? For the most part, the more you're in the feed, the more you're going to get attention. You may not get the same amount of attention on this first versus that post because there's a preference at that point.
00:34:21
Speaker
But in terms of name recognition branding, more can be good. The unfortunate side of that is more that's like terrible is not a good thing. So this is what people are probably that are listening to waiting for me to say. If you're putting out like click bait stuff, stuff that, you know, you know, a fifth grader with a cell phone and time could do.
00:34:41
Speaker
That's not a good thing. So if you're in-game, you got to understand you're in-game and if you have relevant, you know, and I don't like saying quality, because what's a quality post? I don't even like that. What's a quality post? What's good content? Quality and good content is going to be the content you know that your audience wants to hear and see, among other attributes. If you're doing that and you're serving them, I don't have a problem with more than once a day. Do people underestimate the value of comments?
00:35:09
Speaker
This isn't quite a rapid fire. They do. Yeah, I mean, I took some time off. So me anybody's follow me was like, Oh, what's he talking about? Like I built my that that I built more of that follower base on my comments than I did my content, even though I was posting that much when you show up.
00:35:28
Speaker
to a popular person's post that gets a lot of engagement and you provide a lot of value, and not just to do it, but you're bringing a lot of value to the conversation, you can see the result. People have said, and I agree, it's a giver's gain algorithm. There's some type of relevancy improvement.
00:35:50
Speaker
an algorithmic score, magic thing behind the scenes. I've never seen it that goes on when you're giving to other people. Whether you believe that's an algorithmic thing or not, I just think it's a good thing. People want attention on their content. They want the right attention, but no one's putting out content to get zero attention. That's called journaling. People underestimate it because they don't see the immediate ROI, but people that have been doing it
00:36:17
Speaker
And I know that people that do it, they get it. They've seen the increase, not just in their followership, the increase in engagement on their content. And if they're doing it for their business, you know, some type of indirect, maybe about five, six, seven degrees of separation ROI on their business. Final question. And this may not apply to you because you've been on the platform for four plus years and you have a huge following, but should people accept every connection request? No. Why not?
00:36:47
Speaker
This is the only time I was going to give you a one word answer. I really think I'm going to give you a word word answer. Well, I did that. I mean, I did that, you know, when I, in 2017, I was at like a thousand connections. I didn't know anything about anything. And I started getting all these people coming in. I accepted everyone until I got to like 20, 22, maybe even like 25,000. And that was a mistake because, well, let me rephrase it. That wasn't a mistake. That would have been a mistake had I had a plan. I was just trying to find a job.
00:37:17
Speaker
I wasn't trying to be an entrepreneur. I wasn't trying to be a thought leader. I was just looking for a job, which again, goes back to the personal branding. I did have, in that period, probably 10 or 11 opportunities that didn't work out for whatever reason. But again, I was in the feed all the time and I'm sure I was communicating, God, does this guy ever work? My gosh, who knows? Or people were thinking that.
00:37:39
Speaker
So I accepted everyone. The typical response to that is, no, don't accept everyone. You should spend time vetting everyone and it should be people that you would do business with or would hire you and this and that and that, which always say, I don't entirely disagree with that, but that's where you are today.
00:37:55
Speaker
I have clients that I still have and then I have them worked with and didn't work with again for whatever reason that I connected with in 2017 that were in my network just sitting there as consumers saying, man, I've been seeing your content for years. I had no idea you did this and that. Can we have a call?
00:38:15
Speaker
But who can predict that? I mean, how do I look at your profile and say, oh, that's going to happen with Mark in 2025? So it's a painful thing because it takes a lot of time to vet a profile. And especially if you're a skeptic like me, it's like, OK, oh, wow, another coach. And I'm beating coaches up because I am one.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, I don't need coaches. I am one, right? I'm looking for the synonym to replace that word. I think if I come up with a word, I'll be rich. There's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't. And there's some reasons why you should. If it's just about the numbers, then yeah, go right at it. But the end of the day, it's a whole lot easier to accept one than it is to disconnect for someone and just the basic functions on LinkedIn, except versus
00:38:58
Speaker
disconnect is easier versus harder. I didn't really give a good concise answer to that, but do what's right for your business now and what you're doing as a professional. A lot of people are still close to the best. I used to say, connect with everybody, blah, blah, blah, but as I've looked at it, I know some of that's not entirely right.
00:39:19
Speaker
Well, you have been a fantastic rapid fire player. So thank you for that. And one final question. Let's talk a little bit about your story. You spent a lot of years in B2B sales before jumping into LinkedIn in 2017, curious about what you were thinking, why LinkedIn, you know, what were your thoughts in terms of using the platform? Provide some insight into how your business has evolved and grown over the past four years.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'll tell you one thing. I'll start with that first person more rapidly. One of the things we haven't done is embrace the traditional approaches to scaling. I mean, I had the blessing or the opportunity to work close to individual owners, specifically the last one I worked with and saw what it looks like firsthand to not be the business owner, but to see business owners are driven by scale, scale, scale. Again, nothing wrong with that.
00:40:17
Speaker
However, for me, I saw some of the downside and dark side of that, that we could go into if you want. And so that's had a profound effect on me on continuing to stay, what's the word, close and maybe, can I use the word faithful to some of my why that I found in 2017, which was, listen, one of them was,
00:40:39
Speaker
I'm not going to take the work. If I can't work close to my kids, both geographically and emotionally, I don't do the work. The geographical point speaks for itself. I want to work from home until my oldest is old enough, unless I could work from home with a company fine too. But the emotional part is just taking on good business.
00:41:00
Speaker
It's one thing when you're a business owner, you have no business, you sort of got to take this, I get that, but there's something that's happened. I think the decision to say no to relationships that just are obviously not a good fit no matter what the pay is from a
00:41:18
Speaker
from a contract perspective, that decision has been honored. It's allowed me to create the life for my kids that I couldn't do before, not just financially, but to be here, to be here and then to be able to cut work on and off. Why did I do that? I didn't plan on doing it.
00:41:41
Speaker
I quit a job in 2017 that was toxic. It was a huge step of faith because I did the total opposite of some other people in my life that were like, you're crazy. I mean, you're a single father, you're four kids, you've just come out of a marriage. You cannot quit a job without a job. And that's exactly what I did. It was, and it took me about a year to get there. So, and for me, the reason I did is I just wanted, there was something in me that I can't entirely explain. I didn't want to look for a job on his time.
00:42:10
Speaker
I had always done that. I'm not casting shade on that, but for me, it just was this place you get to where you're like, no, I'm going to do it different. Something else is calling me. And that's exactly what it was. I got on the platform. I mean, like the first week I got on the platform to look for a job, I just saw the feed and it was like seeing all these, there were some pretty, what are now big names putting out this like,
00:42:33
Speaker
They were all pulling from Peter Drucker and, you know, leadership, good to great Jim Collins. I'm like, Oh man, like I've got and I had like I had written on my phone. I have a newer phone now, but in the cloud I had 2000. I don't know how many it's about 2000 plus journals that I had written about the loss of jobs, the loss of a child, two marriages, moving four times, going up fatherless. I had all these journals. And so I just I didn't start sharing the journals while I was looking for a job, but I started to share
00:43:03
Speaker
some of the learnings while I was looking for a job and it just I just took off I mean I remember
00:43:10
Speaker
December 2017, I remember a five, 600, 700 character post. A bad day was anything less than 100,000 views. They were handing views out, and this was right about the time. I think video came out. You could do video, this is way before live, but you could do a native video, I want to say October of that year. I wasn't doing any video yet, but I was just doing heavy textbooks under 1,300 characters, sometimes one-liners.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I just took off and I was like, hey, you know, started getting some coaching business, started working with guys on men's issues. And then I started, hey, can you show me how to write content? Can you do this? And how does LinkedIn work? And I was like, oh, I'm not about to be a LinkedIn coach, expert guy or whatever. I don't have that. I've done my best to like not have that. Again, there's nothing wrong with that.
00:43:57
Speaker
But I've seen the ugly side of that where people really push that and oftentimes, not always oftentimes, sometimes don't know what they're talking about. So it just evolved. At some point, I met my now business partner who was doing direct outreach with no automation for clients and we just put those two services together in 2019. It just evolved.
00:44:20
Speaker
It could have been anything. It could have been consulting. It could have been anything that would have allowed me to stay close to my kids, being in my kids geographically and emotionally. It could have been anything. It could have been working in a brick and mortar. It just didn't work out that way.
00:44:35
Speaker
Just as a note to people who are listening to this conversation and you may be curious about how Michael and I connected, it was through a comment. Somebody posted something that both of us recognized as so self-promotional, it was outrageous. So I commented on it.
00:44:52
Speaker
Michael commented on it. He sent me an audio message. I sent him an audio message. One thing led to another and here we are talking to
Building Personal Relationships Through LinkedIn
00:45:00
Speaker
each other. We have a personal relationship and I think that's the power of LinkedIn. That's the power of comments and being engaged on the platform. You know, it's amazing to talk to people from around the world who are
00:45:08
Speaker
so good at what they do and have such great insight. And I want to thank you for coming on the podcast and really offering some great insight and some guidance on how to, how to use LinkedIn and how to get the most out of the platform. One final question, where can people learn more about you and lead in social?
00:45:25
Speaker
Yeah, we're at leadinsocial.com or just, you know, I put David, the reason people say, why did you use your middle name? Because isn't that the guy that shot Lennon, Mark, David Chapman? I always get that from the trolls or whatever. I said, no, I put the word David in there because typically automated bot outreach doesn't drop the middle name. They haven't figured it out because no one would call me that. So I'm like, only my mother calls me that and usually when I'm in trouble. So Michael David Chapman or leadinsocial.com is the best place.
00:45:53
Speaker
Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. If you'd like to learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor and coach, connect with me on LinkedIn or send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you next time.