Jul 1, 2022
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Show Transcript
AJ Wilcox
Going viral on LinkedIn, it's easier than you think. We're talkingabout viral content on LinkedIn on this week's episode of theLinkedIn Ads Show.
Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJWilcox.
AJ Wilcox 0:19
Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics. I've said for years that LinkedInis the easiest network to go viral. And this is because so fewpeople post compared to how many people there are there. The laststat I heard, this is back from 2019. But there were only 4% ofmembers who post, but 100% of us need content full in our feedswhen we log in. So it's definitely in LinkedIn best interest toshare our content with those who aren't even in our network, I getasked all the time about virality, even though I'm the LinkedIn Adsguy, and I want to share my top information source on this so thatyou're hearing it right from the source. Mark Williams is the hostof the LinkedInformed podcast. And it's my main source ofinformation about the organic side of LinkedIn. He's known as Mr.LinkedIn for good reason. He's widely regarded as one of theworld's top LinkedIn experts. He lives in the UK so I know you'regoing to enjoy his buttery smooth accent. I love his fresh andunbiased attitude about LinkedIn. And I know you'll appreciate it,too. Let's hit it.
AJ Wilcox 1:25
Mark, I'm so excited to have you here. Just so everyone knows MarkWilliams is a close friend of mine, we actually got to hang out inthe UK last time I was there. We're both into cars. So we've got togo a tour of the Aston Martin factory because I'm a big AstonMartin fan, big exotic car guy. And it was great to get to hang outin person quite a bit. Mark, I would call you one of the topLinkedIn experts, especially on the organic side. I'm a huge fan ofyour podcast. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
Mark Williams 1:53
It's a pleasure. And I'm delighted to be here can't wait. Youreminded me of a time when we met at the Aston Martin. And I dolike cars, but not quite to the degree that you do. In fact, one ofthe things that we all love about you, AJ is your naturalenthusiasm for most things, really. But when it comes to cost,particularly Aston Martin's, yours goes through the roof. Idistinctly remember a conversation when this guy who clearly wasenthusiastic about cars, as you was talking about a camshaft Ithink it was. And I remember thinking, yeah, I like cars, but thisis perhaps pushing the limit for me. But you were trulyenthusiastic.
AJ Wilcox 2:38
I'll tell you, I do not own an Aston Martin. And I certainly hopeby the end of my life. Problems is I have young kids. And if any ofthem ever scratched that car that is pure art. I don't think Icould contain myself. But I will memorize the names and the zero to60 times and top speeds and stuff at the best of them.
Mark Williams 2:55
It's time to get an Aston Martin is when your kids are teenagers,because then you can take them to school. And you know, there'slots of benefits for them in that.
AJ Wilcox 3:02
Oh, totally. Yeah. Cool. Well, I'd love for you just to tell us alittle bit about yourself. All obviously in the intro, I've givenyou a full read of your bio. But tell us about yourself anythingcool that we should know,
Mark Williams 3:16
My background prior to LinkedIn training, I started doing sometraining in 2008. So quite a long time really. Coming up to 14years that I've been doing this, which is actually the longest jobI've ever had. Having said that I was in my career before that wasall in recruitment and recruiting. And so I was 19 years in thatindustry. But the longest time with any one company was 12 years.So 14 years working for myself now beats that. And I guess aninteresting story about me that perhaps tells more about me thanperhaps going through the factual bio stuff is that I was notparticularly well educated started in recruitment, which was a verysales orientated environment, a very high pressure, salesorientated environment when I first joined it, and it was survivalof the fittest, and it suited me well, because I was a bit of afighter really, you know, in that I could get out there and makethings happen and work harder than anybody else. And all of thethings that that were strengths of mine very much appealed orplayed into that kind of role. And I was hugely ambitious, workedand worked and worked and worked my way up through that industry toend up running a business. And it was a thoroughly enjoyable andhighly rewarding stage of my career. But by the time I left it in2008 I had completely lost myself and I have many faults, but oneof my biggest faults but also my biggest strength is I'm not aquitter, right. You would typically think that's a good thing, butit's not a good thing when you end up doing a job that you reallyhate. Because you don't want to give in and that's what happened tome. And probably the last four or five years of my time inrecruitment, I was a different person, deeply unhappy, went througha divorce at that stage as well. Not many people talked aboutmental health in those days. But if they had to do another been acandidate for being in a pretty bad state, and leaving that, andlong story, which I won't go into, but the company was taken over,the new people didn't want me involve a business that I kind of sawas being mine, but wasn't actually mine, was taken away from me.And like, my baby was ripped from my arms if you like. And thattogether with the kind of self esteem issues that happen whensomething like that happens to hit me really hard. But it was alsothe best thing that ever happened to me, because I had to dig deepfind myself, again, build a business from nothing. And I'm reallyproud of the fact that I did that. But more proud of the fact thatI came back to being the Mark Williams that I was many years beforethat. And the reason I'm telling you this is that I just think it'sjust an interesting perspective on how careers and you know,everybody's in a career listening to this can sometimes take overyour personality. And you can just get carried away on a certainroute and end up deeply unhappy. And if I had someone telling me astory like that before, it happened to me, I might have seen ithappening. But when you're involved in it day to day, you don't youknow, but I've thoroughly enjoy what I do. Now. I love working formyself, and I love working with LinkedIn. So that rather difficulttime my life turned out to be one of the best things that everhappened to me.
AJ Wilcox 6:30
Well, I definitely feel you there. I've been through a divorce.I've, I've been fired. I've started a company, all of those thingsI definitely feel for you. And I look back definitely with the samerespect and understanding. Of course, going through hard things isnot easy for us. But I wouldn't trade any of it. It made me who Iam. And I'm really grateful for it.
Mark Williams 6:50
Yeah, so I was listening to podcast recently with Bear Grylls. Andhe said that in life, we don't always do the things that are toughto do, because we want to protect ourselves from those toughthings, difficult things, awkward things. And also, sometimesthings happen to us that are unpleasant. But almost always, theyturn out to be highly rewarding when we look back at them. So don'talways take the easy route is kind of what he was saying. And Ithink there's a lot of truth in that as well.
AJ Wilcox 7:19
Yeah, Bear is wise. You may drink his own urine, but he's wise.
Mark Williams 7:26
Yeah. Apart from in that sense.
AJ Wilcox 7:29
I mean, first of all, tell us because I personally probably know 50Organic LinkedIn experts. It's kind of a cottage industry oftrainers, how would you say your specialty is differentiated? Howdoes it differ from others in the industry?
Mark Williams 7:42
My expertise has changed over the time that I've been doing this,because you can imagine I mean, when I first started LinkedIntraining, content wasn't really a thing to me. I mean, there wascontent on LinkedIn. But it was so bad. Nobody was ever thinkingabout it. It was really just a load of job ads basically filledeverybody's feeds, you know. And so in those days, I was trainingcompletely different stuff and talking to people about completedand stuff about LinkedIn. And then of course, the platform reallychanged, I'd like to say it was about five years ago, was probablynearer to 10 days ago. Now think about it. Time flies, but it didstart to really change. And so you adapt with that. And I thinkactually the stage that we're at now, I enjoy this, more than I'veever done with any part of LinkedIn. And sometimes clients contactme and say, Can you do a workshop on searching or, you know, theyalways want to cover profiles, which I'm always happy to cover, buta bit boring, frankly. That's kind of old school stuff. The reallyinteresting stuff is all around content. I guess I'm I wouldn't sayI'm the only person that does this by any sense of the imagination.But what I like to talk about and work with people on is aboutgetting out there on LinkedIn, and becoming more influential, morevisible and more influential. Visibility comes first, but it has tobe allied to credibility. Visibility and Credibility when addedtogether gives you influence and its influence that allows you theopportunity to leverage that influence for your own success andyour business's success. No matter whether you work for someoneelse, or you work for yourself, that ability to have influence andleverage it. That's what I specialize in. That's where I've workedwith people who are good at what they do. And well known in smallcircles, traditional offline circles, and communities, and unsureabout LinkedIn for a whole host of reasons, sometimes sillyreasons, sometimes very profound reasons. And work with thosepeople to help them utilize this tool to allow them to show theworld actually how good they really are, what they do. And ofcourse, and we'll get into the some shows we talk more. But ofcourse the way to do that is not to tell the world how good you areat what you do. It's to show the world, how good you are at whatyou do, and that you're someone that you want to do business with.And so that aspect that I specialize in that kind of visibility.See how we use this platform to become a personality, a characterthat people want to do business with respect, but also like andwant to do business with?
AJ Wilcox 10:11
Very well said. So I guess my biggest question then because youspecialize in this, why be a creator on LinkedIn? Why createcontent? WhyPost?
Mark Williams 10:20
What is the best way? Nothing beats it yet who knows in the future,but nothing beats it. Yeah, of developing your brand's now, whetherthat be your personal brand, or your company brand or probablyboth. And making that more visible to a wider audience. Obviously,everything that you do on LinkedIn has the opportunity of doing itat scale, as opposed to other methods that are on LinkedIn oronline. And so it's the best way, if you can post successfully, ifyou can consistently show up in people's feeds, then they are goingto learn more about you. I mean that in the broadest possiblesense. So learn more as in who you are, right? So first of all, whois this guy? All right, okay, understand who he is, or who she is.And then educate those people in what you do, how you do it, whyyou do it, and who you are as a person. And all those elements arewhat makes someone want to do business with you, you know, it's notan overnight thing. But if you can post successfully, or producecontent for LinkedIn, that is seen by a wide range of people, thenyou have an opportunity to generate business from LinkedIn, withouthaving to push hard doesn't mean you work hard, you do have to workhard. But there's a big difference between pushing hard and workinghard. And you know, I'm always away from and against the kind ofphilosophy of knocking on doors, and pushing hard to win people'sbusiness, it makes you feel good. Because you feel like you'redoing something. You feel like you're acting something positive inorder to grow your business. But everybody else is kind of pushingaway from you, because people don't want to be sold to in that way.And so what you're trying to do, through being highly visiblethrough a successful content has become magnetic so that peoplewant to come to you. And you know, the analogy is that you arestanding still, and people are queuing up at your shop, as opposedto you having to get out there with a trolley and walk aroundpeople's houses, knock on their doors and say, hey, you know, I'vegot something to offer you. successfully getting a line of peopleoutside your virtual store, irrespective of what you sell physicalproducts or otherwise, is the name of the game. And the way toachieve that is through successful content.
AJ Wilcox 12:42
I totally agree with that. In one of your most recent podcastepisodes, you talked about kind of a case study where someoneposted the same thing, the same video on LinkedIn, as well as onTik Tok, they were talking about how much more viral how much moreattention they got on Tik Tok. And as I was listening to that, Iwas like, well, that's, that's great. virality is very, veryinteresting for a lot of reasons. But I look at LinkedIn as anetwork and go, where would I rather be viral? Where would I ratherbe seen? Is it the network where people are paying attention to whoI am professionally? Or is it a network that's really hard to builda brand? And you're just you're being seen by people who don'talready know who you are? And a lot of them might be kids?
Mark Williams 13:25
Yeah, TikTok is an interesting platform. I think what the pointthat guy was making is how the algorithm on TikTok is managing todistribute his content has so many more people, and that LinkedInwas much more restrictive, in whose content was getting in front ofwho's still getting decent numbers from LinkedIn to be fair, butnot on the scale that he was achieving with tick tock, and it's notthe size of the audience, per se. It's more the effectiveness ofthe algorithm to push something out. And I don't know what theanswer to that is exactly. But I do think he was making a validpoint about the fact that we could achieve more, should theLinkedIn algorithm work in a more effective way. Now, I'm notsaying that TikTok has got all the answers here at all. But I dothink that LinkedIn could and, by the way, are learning fromTikTok. I think, the very early days of LinkedIn, they looked toFacebook a lot. You know, they copied a lot of things fromFacebook, and they were clearly Facebook admirers, and that diedoff many years ago. For most of us, but definitely LinkedIn. Andsince then, they haven't really shown any evidence of sort ofcopying or following anyone else. Until TikTok, actually, and theydo seem quite influenced by TikTok. So you may have a point aboutthe algorithm. It may be that the algorithm with LinkedIn willimprove to give us better reach but without a doubt, you know, theaudience is the right place on LinkedIn. And there are frustrationswith lots of things to do with LinkedIn and you know, anybodylistening to my podcast will know that I can be very critical ofLinkedIn at times because always coming from a place of love, youknow, I love the platform, I love the community. I like thecompany, you know. And so it's a disappointment thing rather thanthat I'm angry with them as I want it to be better. And I want themto get better and all coming from a good place. And so you know, Ican be critical of LinkedIn, for sure. But at the end of the day,we have a hugely valuable platform. And it's important that thereare things in place to protect members of this platform that areusing it for the reasons in which its purposes, right, which isbusiness networking. Now, I'm not old school at all, despite thefact that we're doing this long time. I'm really not old schoolwith regards to LinkedIn. I love all kinds of content. And I thinkLinkedIn is a place for all kinds of content. But I do alsounderstand that essentially, what sets LinkedIn aside from othersocial networks is it is a business network. And if it becameTikTok, then it would lose its value, right? It would just becalled other TikTok. TikTok don't want to be LinkedIn, so whyshould LinkedIn want to be TikTok, right? So it has to keep itsidentity, but at the same time, learn things from other platformsthat, you know, have tracked certain things and done things better.And, you know, a frustration of mine is I just wish LinkedIn couldbe more innovative along those lines. They seem to follow otherpeople more than they do innovate and come up with ideasthemselves. I think they are getting a bit better at that. Butthat's certainly been a long standing frustration for me withLinkedIn.
AJ Wilcox 16:29
Oh, same here. All right, so we've talked about virality, aboutviral reach, I'll take a little bit of a step back here and say,Why is LinkedIn a platform where you can get that viral reach? Whatis making your content able to be seen by people who are not yourdirect followers and first level connections?
Mark Williams 16:47
So this cuts to good content should be all about the mechanism ofdistribution on LinkedIn. And there's different types ofdistribution. But if we talk about post distribution, the mechanismof post distribution is through engagement primarily actuallycomments, but reactions, and repost are also effective in terms ofnot reshares. But reposts, which is a slightly new thing. There arealso effective means of distribution. Of course, on LinkedIn, wehave these two sides, we have company pages and personal profiles.Company pages is where all the your stuff happens, all theadvertising stuff happens. And so there's not so much a conflict inthe sense that LinkedIn will not restrict personal content or don'trestrict personal content, organic reach in the same way that theywould do with company posts, organic reach. Company posts, organicreach, if they allow that the same level of reach and distributionas personal posts, then nobody buy ads right? Why would you? Butwith personal posts, they still allow great organic reach. Andalso, you know, another factor that plays into all of this is thatLinkedIn, have traditionally in their DNA, is there a subscriptionbased monetization model. Now, advertising has become significantlymore important to them, and continues to be and will continue tobecome bigger and bigger. But all those people that predicted manyyears ago, the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, who said, you know, get onLinkedIn now, because organic reach will disappear like it has donewith everyone else. Well, that was at least five years ago. I don'tget it, it's actually better now than it was then. So clearly,there's something different. And I think one of the things that'sdifferent is that LinkedIn still make the majority of their revenuefrom subscriptions. And there is no other social network that doesthat. So they are distinctly separate in that regard, and canafford to play this game of allowing people great organic reach.The mechanism of distribution for organic reach is putting outcontent that people are going to want to engage with, that thenbrings it to their followers, or their network, their connections.And that is the key elements to understanding what good content isreally, is that if you can put out content that essentially startsa conversation, then you're definitely in a position where you havethe opportunity of not necessarily virality. Virality is anunrealistic objective. That's like saying, you know, I want to be afootballer who plays in the Champions League final every year, youknow, it's not realistic for most people, but trying to get greaterand greater reach is important. You can't get away from that. Imean, there's always this debate about No, I don't care if it'sonly seen by 10 people so long as they're the right 10 people. Butthe problem with that is tha the whole point of this is that we'retrying to reach an audience that don't know us. But we are tryingto reach an audience that knows this as well. And that's adifferent thing. You want to be a reminder to those people and keepin touch with those people and through content as well as directmessage in another mean but we also want the opportunity to reachpeople that haven't heard about us. And to do that you do needreach. You do need to get beyond those people that are alreadyconnected with you. And the way to do that is to get people tocomment, ideally, engage with your posts.
AJ Wilcox 20:18
So what kinds of posts and content do well, on LinkedIn?
Mark Williams 20:22
Well, I have five types that I usually talk about in my sessionswith people. And this information is based on observing this foryears and years, on my podcast, I have a feature called post of theweek, which is really popularized, it's become a problem, Iactually have to admit, because I find it really stressful. Eachweek, choosing posts of the week now. It used to be back in theday, that half of them would come from me, right, because nobodywas nominated. And he posts and so I'd go looking for a good post,and then just, you know, put it in as opposed to the week. Now Iget so many nominations, and also so many good nominations, it'sreally hard to pick the winner. The beauty about that feature forme is you really keep an eye on the stuff that does really well,right. And that has been seen by a wide audience, and then you canstart to analyze, the reason proposed to the week isn't just to,you know, give praise to people have done a good job, it's actuallyfor us all to look at it and go, What can we learn from this, youknow, and that's what I do with that feature every week. And that'sallowed me to get a feel. So I have these five things that arebroadly categories of posts that tend to do well. So the first oneis, I call it challenging and debatable. So putting out somethingthat kind of polarized his opinion in some ways. So it doesn't haveto be, you have to be careful with this one, obviously. But youcould put something out, there's going to upset a lot of people,and you perhaps don't want to do that. But at the same time, itallows you to demonstrate elements of your character andpersonality that people will really buy into or not. And I alwaysthink that's quite a good thing. I mean, you don't want to goaround, you know, obsessing people for the sake of it and justbeing controversial for the sake of it, that doesn't reflect wellon you. But being authentic, and actually putting something out,that kind of, you know, put your flag in the ground on on a pointis a good thing. Because those people that agree with it are thepeople that are more likely to do business with you. So it's no badthing that your crowd your audience, your people that like you aregonna respond well to that. But it's also a good thing in a post ifpeople disagree with it, right. So quite often post that do thebest you see the common thread as it created a lot of debate andopinions on either side. It's what we call something that's notvanilla. That's very much what we call a marmite post. I know youdon't have marmite in the States. But it's a spread that you eitherlove or you hate, right? I'm a fan, right? So I'm very much on theside of loving marmite, but a lot of people absolutely detest it.There's nothing in the middle. You can't have a vanilla opinion onmarmite. So something like that. That's that's the first typechallenging, debatable gets people talking. A second type, thesearen't in any particular order, by the way, equally as powerful ishelpful. So you're putting out content that is really helpful tothe majority of your target audience. What I mean by that is thatthe kind of people that you want to reach are going to receivesomething in their feeds, that actually, when they consume it, theyactually feel that it's helped them in some way. Now, you have tobe careful with this one because if they believe that even thoughit may have been helpful to them, that you are using it as a way ofpersuading them to do business with you, then that might destroyits effectiveness. If it could be perceived before being properlyconsumed as being promotional. That's a problem. So I always say topeople, the best way to do this actually, is to really know youraudience, like really know these people well. You can't know themall I know, but get an intimate understanding of the things thatthey find challenging and difficult. And when you understand that,then try and find solutions to those problems, and then post aboutthose solutions, which are helpful to them. Now, you may have foundthose solutions on LinkedIn or anywhere you want doesn't reallymatter. Always obviously, quote where you found that solution fromand make sure everyone's tagged that should be tagged, so they getfull credit for it. But your job is to make people's workingenvironment easier and easier. And if you're putting out contentthat they find helpful to them, then those type of posts typicallydo very well. Third type is sort of a type and sort of not becausethis kind of permeates all of the types really. But the third one Iwould stay is personal posts. Now. I don't mean necessarily,intimately personal. excuse the pun, that's a personal decision.But so that's up to you. Yeah, how personal you want to get with itis entirely up to you. I'm not not that. I'm not talking about thefact that you talk about your divorce on a, on a post, or I talkabout my dad having dementia on a post, I'm not necessarily talkingabout that. I'm talking about whatever subject you are approaching,you take a personal perspective to it, you bring your personalityto it, your opinions to it, your sense of what's right and wrongabout it, or your confusion with it, or something that allowspeople to feel that you're not A. preaching at them, and B. thatyou're just sharing something in a very real human way. And whenpeople see content like that, they relate to it, and they respondwell to it. And, you know, look, this is not something that I wouldhave said, six, seven years ago, but you can't deny it. I mean,just you look at LinkedIn every day. And the posts that do well,are those posts that are in some way personal. And they always say,it's difficult to show this as a visual thing. But imagine twocircles that overlap. It's a classic kind of diagram of two circlesthat overlap. And the circle on the right is business content. Andthe circle on the left is personal content. And when I say topeople is not so we have business content on LinkedIn, we havepersonal content on LinkedIn, let me tell you now, the vastmajority of content on LinkedIn is the business circle, right? Thevast majority of people that post on LinkedIn are posting businesscontent. Now you find that hard to believe, because you think it'spersonal. But here's the deal. That's the content you seeing.There's a difference between the two. But the vast majority isbusiness, the vast majority that you see is personal. What is thattelling you?
AJ Wilcox 26:44
Good point.
Mark Williams 26:44
Yeah, that's the reality of what we're dealing with here. Now, thereason why those circles crossover is that's the sweet spot, right?So if you're approaching a business subject in a personal way, thenyou're hitting the sweet spot. So that's good advice, I think overfinding how to be personal in your content on LinkedIn. So that'sthe third time personal. Fourth is, I call this something cool. Andwhat I mean by that is something innovative, new, different,exciting, don't care, what it is really doesn't matter, right?Doesn't have to be related to what you do probably better is notrelated to what you do. But something that you found or somethingshown to you something that's excited you and you've gone Wow.Right? You know, someone shows you a feature on the iPhone, and youdidn't know about it, and you go, Oh, right, I didn't know aboutthat is amazing, I could do that. I think if you've seen thatthing, TikTok is great for this actually TikTok, we can learn a lotfrom TikTok. People post off and you go out now you could do that,right. And there's a thing that I've seen during the rounds, wherewhen someone plugs in a charge as their phone, it speaks to them,and they can say what they wanted to say. So they get it saying allkinds of rude things, right? So they unplug their phone thinkingit's someone else's phone. Anyway, what I'm saying is that whensomething like that happens, if the effect to you was excited youand you thought wow, that was amazing, then share it and talk aboutit, because other people will as well. People will love somethinginnovative Do you different.
Mark Williams 28:09
And then the final type is, which is a really obvious one, buthighly topical. And sometimes you can use highly topical content orsubject matter to express something or talk about something thatyou want to talk about. And the example I always give for this isyears ago, there was a band that I'm sure you know, AJ, becauseyou're younger than me, called One Direction, right? Hugelysuccessful, won The X Factor, etc, One Direction were going anabsolute storm and taking over the world. And then one of themembers left, Zane left. And it was big, big news, like all overthe papers and everything big news. And this guy who was a coachand HR consultant, and he did a post with a picture of Zane, just apicture of Zane on LinkedIn. Anything can work. And then what hetalked about was how do you manage a situation when a key member ofyour team leaves unexpectedly? Brilliant, right? Just because hegot people's attention with a topical subject. But related, it'ssomething that he knew what matters to them, because he's audienceof people that manage people, right. So that was a great post. AndI think that's the kind of stuff that I'm talking about when I talkabout highly topical, not just for the sake of it, but because youcan relate it to something and it's interesting. So they're thesort of five types that typically do well.
AJ Wilcox 29:32
Well, what about formats then for posts? If you have those fivekinds of posts, the topics, the aim of them? Are you going to tryto shoehorn those into a specific post, for instance, if you'veheard that text only does really, really well. Do you go all in onthat, like how do you think about the format?
Mark Williams 29:48
Yeah, I mean, people overestimate the power of formats, nothinglike as important as the content itself. So getting the subjectright is far far more important. And I find people get reallyobsessed with you know, I'm into video or I'm into text posts. Justlike honestly, don't worry about that. Worry about getting yourcontent, right. But that said, when you've decided what it is youwant to talk about some things will suit one format better thananother. So for instance, let's take that example I just gave you,that probably was more suitable for an image post, right? Becausethe picture of Zane would stand out, people would notice it and go,what's this about? Right? So that kind of makes sense. Buthonestly, if I looked at the numbers and said, Well, what you know,which posts typically when posted the week or post of the year,which is the most successful one of the year, out of all the postsof the week, it's normally an image posts, but they don'tconsistently do well image posts, because a lot of people postimage posts that are just awful and don't do very well at all. Butif you get it right, with an image post, they are phenomenallygood. They stop the scroll, people notice them, the next bit has towork, though, you still got to be a good hook, you've got to getpeople to read it, click on the See More, and then action it sothey can work. But they can suffer from poor dwell time. So meaningsomeone sees it quickly goes, Oh, that's nice move on, or quicklike and move on. And therefore they don't do as well. So onaverage, they don't do great, but they tend to be the mostsuccessful of all. Text only a fantastic for comments. Becauseyou're not distracted, you know, you've just got the text. And soyou read it, you take it on board, you understand it. And if it'ssufficiently well written and formatted, then you're more likely tocomment. Whereas all other types of content, video document postsand image posts, you can be distracted by the content, so much sothat you don't comment, you see you like it, you move on type ofthing doesn't engross you as much as the text only posts, they'veall got their advantages. Video is best for personal branding,because you're talking to your audience, you're within the scene,the whites of your eyes, all the things that you know are importantfor personal branding, work really well with video. And documentposts are great for views because people have to click on them tomove to the next page. And every click is telling the algorithmHey, I'm actually looking at this post, you know, is appear on myfeed, I'm actually actually paying attention to it. So they're allgood in different ways. I'm never a fan of getting obsessed withone type of format, you know, all posts work, provided the contentsgood and suitable for that type of format.
AJ Wilcox 32:12
Ah, beautiful. So what pitfalls have you seen? Obviously, we'vetalked a little bit about if you're too business, it's not going tobe seen. What are some of the pitfalls as people are coming to yousaying I want to start creating content on LinkedIn, and they goand do it. And then they come back and say, it didn't work? Whatare they doing?
Mark Williams32:29
Yes, well, don't say too much business. Also too much promotionalor too much self serving. Self serving, promotional is perfectlyfine. I wouldn't avoid it totally. But he context needs to be thatyou've built an audience, and that they're invested in you. I'veseen people post about winning an award and got fantastic amount ofcomments, because their audience genuinely pleased for them. Butthey're genuinely pleased because they got to that position byworking really hard at building a relationship with that audience.So it's not a no, no, you just need to make sure you concentrate oncontent that is, you know, focused on your audience rather thanyou. So that's an interesting one to discuss with you. I alwaysthink a marketing mindset is not helpful. Until the mindset here.When you producing content, if you're thinking about kind ofmarketing sense, it's not helpful. But if you think about contentin an engaging and networking sense, then you tend to do better. Sosort of mindset needs to be I'm looking to talk to people here,start a conversation, not marketing, I think people tend to postcontent that they would want to see, or that they want people tosee, as opposed to what people want to see. And that seems likesuch an obvious thing to say. But quite often, particularly whenI'm working with clients, one on one, and we talk about what kindof things they want to post. Typically, they come out withsomething and I go, so what's interesting about that, and they tellme lots of things, and they go back to me not to I was asking youwhat's interesting to you. What is interesting to me? What touchpoints does that have that's going to generate some interest in me?So I think people will naturally tend to gravitate to things thatthey are interested in themselves, or they want to say. This is apoint I want to mak. Well, that might work but you need to thinkabout your audience. And then the final one thing that I do comeacross a lot is people especially when they first start out, theyjust start posting by all right, I'm just going to post. That's it,I'm posting. But actually, that's like going to a networking eventin person, you know, and there's all these people talk in this roomand you walking in and going, can I just stop everyone? I've gotsomething to say. Right? And this is what I'm gonna say and thenwalking out again. And it's people are looking at you and go, Whathappened? Who is that? I don't even want to know who that was,frankly, because that's not human interaction. So you've got to getout there and start commenting on other people's content before youcan even think about posting yourself. And the ratio of comments toposts should be at least five times the amount of comments thanposts, at least I mean, some people saying it's 10 times thesedays, but it's at least five times in my view. So they're thetypical kind, there's lots of things people get wrong, and you canpick out things and change things specifically. But broadly, thekind of common things are those I would say.
AJ Wilcox 35:31
Beautiful. What tipsand tricks can you share, as we're thinkingabout creating posts to go viral? To get better reach? What aresome of those things we should be trying to do?
Mark Williams 35:42
Yeah, some practical things, things that we haven't mentionedalready will be things like when you post, it's not as critical asit used to be. But it's still important to think about when you'reposting. I always think you want to give a post a bit of airtime.So better to post in the morning. Again, it depends where youraudience is in the third same time zone or not. But bearing in mindwhere your audience is you want it to land in their feed in themorning, ideally, and give it time so that people have a chance tocomment on it, and then it distributes from there. I tend to avoidFridays and Saturdays as a result of that. I personally don't poston a Sunday, but I know people that do and particular Sundayafternoon stroke evening actually can be more successful than youthink, believe it or not. But just think about the timing and, youknow, learn from what happens to you. Because, you know, no onesolution is right for everyone. But broadly speaking, I thinkMonday to Thursday in the morning is a good time to post whenyou're writing particularly a text only posts but other posts aswell really concentrate on your hook. Right? The first part iscritical. They got to see it, it's got to grab them, they've got towant to click on See more, they got to want to read the rest. So ifyou get nothing else, right, get those first few lines absolutelyspot on. That's really important. A little bit of what I saidbefore, but image posts and document posts, you need clicks onthem, it's quite important that someone interacts with your postphysically. So don't just read it, they do something with it. Nowthat could happen with video, but it's less likely to with a videoand it's harder to achieve. That video has strengths in otherareas, as I said before, but if you want more views, and moreinteraction on an image or a document posts, there needs to be areason to click so bear that in mind, you'll have to interact withyour posts and actually click on it. Videos, keep it short mistakepeople make videos is that they let them go on too long. But if youkeep the videos nice and short and snappy, I used to say maximumthree minutes, it seems ridiculous to say that now that's like,that's an age three minutes. So I would say less than a minute nowpossibly even less, definitely the whole world is getting shorterand shorter. In terms of attention span. So bear that in mind. Isaid before relatable content, you know, can people relate to it,that's critical. And also something I've already mentioned. Butjust to reiterate, really is personality and personal posts revealmore about you. Don't be anonymous, don't be a brand, be a personalbrand, be a real person that people can understand and learn tolike, and trust. And, you know, that means you have to give a bitof yourself. But that's normal human interaction. If you want todevelop a relationship with someone in person or online, you can'tleave the conversation at a very basic level, you have to at somepoint start opening up. And when you open up, then they open up.And then that's how you develop warmth. And it's exactly the samecontent on LinkedIn. So don't necessarily do that to start with.But be prepared to open up and show a bit of who you are. And yourcharacter that's important I think for content.
AJ Wilcox 38:47
Well, that's sure a lot easier to do personally. What about sharingfrom company pages, you can tell us about my experience is companypage content doesn't engage the same way, it doesn't get the samereach and virality as personal posts. But we also know that whilewe're advertising, the company page is the whole base of all of ouradvertising. And so a lot of our clients, a lot of our listenersare going to be thinking about okay, what can we post from thecompany? And you know, what fits in well, so that we get someadditional reach from the company?
Mark Williams 39:20
Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is that if you have an expectation ofgetting great reach from a company page post that isn't sponsored,you're not going to get there, right? So it's an unrealisticobjective. Don't get me wrong, I've seen posts that do well, butthey are so rare, and it's just doesn't happen. So it's the wrongobjective to have. That doesn't mean that you can't make yourcompany page content better. It's just that you won't necessarilysee a huge dramatic difference, right? Because they're never goingto give you fantastic reach. Without a doubt. It's the same kind ofstuff really. But what you do is use the personality of youremployees. So you maybe feature people, talk about people, what aretheir backgrounds? But I had a client once who actually did thisfor a short while and it worked quite well for them. And you knowWe're Humans of New York. Yes, yeah. If you think about what theydo, and how they describe people, they show people and tell theirstories. Every company has external employees, and each of themhave got a story. Now, if you wanted to put out great company basedcontent, why not tell the stories of the people that work for yourbusiness? I think that'd be such a powerful technique to use veryfew people, either brave enough as employees or as a company towant to do that. But that's the kind of content that would do wellon LinkedIn, because people love that. As I said before, people areinteresting in people. It's a people to people network. That's thekind of content that could do well, if people are brave enough todo it.
AJ Wilcox 40:40
Great idea that makes me want to start doing that for ourselves.I'm gonna definitely let my content guy know. Do you know if anycompanies out there who are doing particularly well on their posts?Which company pages do you look to and say, Oh, they're actuallydoing pretty
Mark Williams 40:52
Well, not that many. I'm trying to think now. A bit of a falseanswer in a way, there's an ads one. You probably know this. Theypost ads, they've seen that done really well. It's like a, youknow, this is great advertising. And that does well. Very visualposts, followed by obviously lots of marketing people that areinterested in ads that do well. I don't know if it's a true examplereally, because it's a relatively unique situation, I think. Ialways remember, they were a quite good one. And LinkedIn bringsout a list every year of company pages that they think areparticularly good. And I look at the numbers, you just think, well,they're not doing that well, really. So I'm not quite sure why youthink they're so good. It's quite hard finding good company pages,but you do come across them occasionally. Honestly, right, themoments on my head, I can't think of one that I could give you,that would be a great answer to that.
AJ Wilcox 41:45
One that really caught my attention several years back is a companycalled Cheddar, they might be called Cheddar News, I'm looking attheir company page, right? A lot of what they do on all theirchannels, this isn't just a LinkedIn specific thing. But a lot oftheir videos show some new innovative product at some invention.It's something cool, that's going to change the world.
Mark Williams 42:06
Now remember them now you've said it, I remember them. Yeah. Whichis that something cool posts. No, absolutely right.
AJ Wilcox 42:11
And they've done a very good job of that. Because they're a newsnetwork and that's what they concentrate on. I think that's reallyrepeatable for them. For me to go out and find something innovativeand changing the world in the ads world, not quite so easy, butit's a good example.
AJ Wilcox 42:27
What are some of the keys to having a great presence on LinkedIn,if someone is just getting started, and they say, I want to knockthis out of the park, what's the advice you're giving them?
Mark Williams 42:38
Well, you're not going to knock it out of the park to start with,that would be my first set realistic expectations, it's unlikely tohappen. You've got to slowly build your presence. But you'll getthere a lot quicker, if you're open and authentic about what youdo. So don't play to the audience in the sense of this is what theywant me to be like, be yourself, but talk about things that theywould find interesting. Don't mistake those two things, right.There's content that they would find interesting that is for them,but delivered by you as who you are, right. And when you combinethose two things, that's a very powerful thing that gets you towhere you want to be quicker. You wouldn't expect that to happenovernight, it takes time. So we've talked before about commenting,genuinely, you must comment far more than you post and spend timethinking about your comments. And look for opportunities, don'tjust go, the classic thing people do on LinkedIn is they open uptheir homepage feed, there's nothing there. What am I supposed todo? It's like, well, there is a lot there, actually. But it's noton your page. Okay? Now you can improve your page in two ways. One,you can start unfollowing people that put rubbish on your page. Butmore powerful than that is you can start finding good content,commenting on it, following those people, and then you will findthat your feed will start to improve because the messages thatyou're getting is what I want to see, right. But more than that,what you're doing by doing that is you're starting to build yourvisibility through your commenting, right. Everyone else thatcomments on that post will notice your comments. And if you spendtime thinking about what you can say not things like congrats orgreat post or rubbish, like they're just kind of written likes,really they have little value, but something that adds value insome way. And also maybe shows a bit about you does two things.One, it raises your profile amongst the audience of people that arealready engaging with that post and obviously the person thatposted it, but also those people that are connected to you thatwill see that post in their feed and your comment that's all theysee. You know, if you think about your homepage feed, a postappears there from a second or a third tier connection. You thinkhow did that appear? And then it says well because AJ commented onit and then all you see underneath it is AJ is comment. It is 200comments, but I only see yours. But because I'm following you, notfollowing you connected to you and because of that, I see yourcomments, then I'm starting to learn more about you. And again,when we talk about building a relationship, there's visibility isone thing and reaching a new audience. But there's also building arelationship with your existing audience. And commenting achievesthat. And that's why that is so important for you to do that. Soauthenticity of said, adding value, think about adding value toyour audience every day, you know, my job is to add value to myaudience, my job on LinkedIn is not to get them to buy somethingfrom me, it's the me to add value to them, them to see me as avaluable connection as a valuable person on LinkedIn that they wantto see that they want to interact with. They want to develop arelationship, as a result, they'll be queuing up to want to dobusiness with you. But if you're too brutal about it, and you onlythink in terms of I want to win customers, I want to win business,then it's really pushing water uphill, and so you won't succeed,but that you will eventually get somewhere. But it's slow and hardand difficult, much better to spend your time building. I wastalking to someone about this the other day when we've been veryspecific about their content. And I said, the problem with yourcomments is that and your posts as well, actually, is that you'rejust not showing empathy. You've got to be helpful and empathetic,you know, always looking to add value, we need to do something thathelps people along the way, as a good networker. And you know, ifwe go from these days, back in the day, when people were offlinenetworking, there were people that were absolutely phenomenal atit, and they were always more interested in you. They're alwaystrying to help you, you know, that's very obvious face to face, andvery obvious to do face to face, I think not always easy to do, butsomething that you can do. Online, people hesitate from doing that.And I think if you can do it, it makes a big difference. So thereare things, you have to say the comment thing, but commenting withpurpose. All of that really, really helps.
AJ Wilcox 46:57
Perfect. Well, thanks so much for sharing. I feel like there's beena ton of value here. I hope we have you back at some point as well.Obviously, this is a very ads focused podcast. But I get askedabout the organic side all the time, I thought I would bring in mytop information source. Who and what are your top informationsources? Obviously they're all going to come and follow you? Who doyou pay attention to to learn more about extended reach and contenton LinkedIn?
Mark Williams 47:23
Oh, wow. I mean, less so much subject matter experts. Quite likethe word that Richard Vanderblonde is doing with his research. It'sfunny research, because I toyed with doing it myself in the past.It's a lot of work, a lot of work. And I really admire the factthat he goes to the effort to do it. But the reality of it is, andthis is no knock on Richard at all, because it's really valuablethat someone's doing that. But the truth is that if you know thisplatform, well, there's no surprises. I could have written thatresearch just by making it up. To me, it's just so it's one ofthose things, I think he adds massive value into my feed becausehe's pulling it from that kind of smart, slightly more scientificperspective, which I think is really good. I love Andy Forte,because I find him entertaining and challenging as well. He has anatural, kind of Scottish, challenging aspect to him, you know,intelligently challenges you on things. I like that aspect. I mean,he's a lovely guy that makes it sound a bit like he's not he's alovely guy. But he also has that slightly quirky kind ofchallenging way about him. And I really admire that. But outside ofkind of LinkedIn people are Bryn Tillman is another one. I wouldalways say on the sales side, I just love her. Like the things thatI go, Oh, you could never do that. And then she puts it in a waythat makes you think, oh, yeah, could Yeah, you just incrediblyinfectious. And I love her energy and just such a positive person.But outside of those sort of people do I learn the most from justordinary people on LinkedIn, who are just doing great content. AndI wouldn't know where to start with that. There's so many peoplethat I follow on LinkedIn. And sometimes it's not always thatthey're doing great content. Sometimes they're doing stuff, they dosome good content, and they do something that really fails and I goall right, what can we learn from that? You know, that justabsolutely bombed and I don't have the emotional attachment to likethey do. But and I can look at it objectively and go right? Well,probably this and probably so, you know, studying and observingwhat happens in my feed and searching for content that's doing welland posts of the week and all that kind of stuff is the greatestteacher to me. You know, that's the greatest way of learning Ifind. Nobody has all the answers right? Of course they don't.That's obvious, but I think we're in a world where people like toattach themselves to gurus you know, I follow this personbecause... You know why it's not as simple as that, you know,everyone's got value to add, lots of people do things in differentways and try things in different ways. And, and so I learned for awide variety of people on LinkedIn, and I'm a keen observer ofwhat's going on.
AJ Wilcox 50:05
I absolutely love that. Thanks so much for sharing. All right, sojumping into a different topic here, right before we close, whatare you most excited about right now, either personally orprofessionally? Just what your mind is playing with what you'rechasing what you're excited about.
Mark Williams 50:17
I'm most excited about Liverpool in the Premier League next year.That's probably the number one. Number two is I'm very excited tosee how well Darwin Nunez does. Who's our new striker that we'vesigned. You weren't expecting this for your age, but you probablywere actually. I'm starting with a personal stuff. I'm very excitedto be seeing Coldplay at Wembley this year. I've seen them threetimes in the past, and they said they would never tour again. And Iwas absolutely gutted. I mean, some people just don't like him. Buthonestly, anybody that has any slight kind of Oh, yeah, they'reokay. Go to a concert. They're just amazing experience. And soyeah, we're going on the my fiance's birthday in August, believe itor not. We both loved Coldplay, but we met after they stoppedtouring. And I thought we'd never get the chance to do it togethet.It's one of those things that just be such a wonderful sharedexperience. Anyway, so I'm very excited for that. And the finalpersonal one is we are planning a trip to Vietnam next year. AndI'm very excited about that as well. It's out of our comfort zonefor us, we tend to do slightly more comfortable things in thatnormally. But we kind of take the view that we're not getting anyyounger, and it's the right time to do it now. So yeah, we're quiteexcited about that, we're at the planning stage of that. Yeah. Butmoving on to more business related stuff. You know, from ourLinkedIn point of view, it's always an exciting platform, you know,the thing I've learned over the years is you never know what'saround the corner, there's always something exciting happening onLinkedIn, very rare, you get into those stagnant periods where verylittle happens, it does sometimes happen, but very rare. But thebigger picture with what's going on with LinkedIn is creator modeand what they're doing with creator mode, and, you know, they comeacross this idea, they are going to be more successful if theyencourage people to create better content and smart move. And whatthey're doing with it is interesting, but I don't think we haveseen anything of it yet. I think it's so much in its infancy. Andit's going to develop and develop and develop. And I think it'shugely exciting for people what they're going to be doing there.And they won't get everything right. And there'll be lots ofhiccups along the way. But just the fact itself that they now see.And it's taken a long time to open their eyes to this, but they nowsee that the platform will succeed because of what we do not whatthey do that they should support us. For years and years, theyalways wanted to dictate our behavior. And they still do a bit butI'm now seeing a change in mindset. That is more about how can weencourage them to get better at what they want to do. And I thinkthat's a very positive move. And I'm very excited to see how thatdevelops in the future.
AJ Wilcox 53:04
Oh, so cool. I'm not big on soccer for us, football for you. But Iam curious to hear your reaction on the show. Ted Lasso. Have youwatched Ted Lasso at all? Yeah.
Mark Williams 53:14
Oh, yes. I've seen Ted Lasso. Oh, yeah. Not the recent series. Butthe first two things series. Yeah, I've seen.
AJ Wilcox 53:19
What is that, like, from your perspective of someone who lives inthe UK? Have they nailed it? Is it still funny? Or is it too closeto home?
Mark Williams 53:27
Oh, it's funny, very much. So now, it's very amusing. And what Ilike about it is that it takes this kind of aspect of which I thinkis an important lesson for us all to learn is that we can all getvery carried away with our if you know, you've got to know this.You got to know what you're doing. You got to be born and you gotto done this for years. You know, I could easily turn around to alot of people in LinkedIn and go yeah, I've been doing this for 14years, don't tell me I can I learn anything from you. But I don'tthink that way. And that's the Ted Lasso kind of lesson in that TedLasso knew nothing about football, but understood people, right.And I think, you know, people were very skeptical. He was obviouslytaken on as a joke. Anyway, people were very skeptical aboutwhether he could be successful, but he was because he understoodpeople. And funnily enough, there is a real Ted Lasso, so you know.The manager of Leeds United is a guy from the US now he obviouslydoes know football, he's managed lots of clubs before. He'scharacter is that he's quite a big sort of character and quiteenthusiastic and gets really into it. And I was looking at him andthink I just can't get away from these just like Ted Lassos. But Ithink that's the appearance I mean, as a character, and again, withany program, it's all about the characters. The character is areally good character, isn't it? So when you can really buy into asa character, I just love that aspect of going. Yes, this is a verytraditional sport. It's, you know, the biggest sport in the world.It's like, and these people that play it think that nobody couldteach them anything. And that's fine. But I'll just be Ted Lassoand I'll just do my thing and we'll see. And it works good. Oh, andI love that.
AJ Wilcox 55:07
Same here. It's a touching show. I know this isn't a media podcast,but pretty awesome. Alright, so for those of us who want to followyou want to hear more from you? How would you tell us to do that?How do we follow you? Tell us about your podcast, all that? Yeah,sure.
Mark Williams 55:21
I mean, the two main places that LinkedIn and my podcast really, Idon't read much social media outside of that, really. So onLinkedIn, easy to find, should be surprised there's plenty of MarkWilliams is on there. But if you search for Mark Williams or Mr.LinkedIn, you should find me fairly easily. My URL islinkedin.com//Mr. LinkedIn, but the podcasts which were now in the364th episode. The next one will be, which is this week is the mainway that people follow me and is my biggest audience. But it's mymost engaged audience have a say. And that's called LinkedInformed,which you can find everywhere. That is the most enjoyable thing Ido every week. I absolutely love my podcast and do it because Ifeel it's important to do. It feels important to do is probably thebest way to put it. And I do it because I enjoy it. And I feellike, like I'm chatting with friends every week. It's not likeother podcasts. It's not an interview show, do occasionallyinterview people, you've been kind enough to come on, but notoften. And only when I think it's someone that can really addsomething extra and add value to the audience. But mostly, it'sjust me chatting about LinkedIn each week with friends. And that'sthe way I would always want it to be.
AJ Wilcox 55:42
Well, I have not missed an episode of all of them. All the 360.
Mark Williams 56:44
Really?
AJ Wilcox 56:45
Yeah, absolutely. When we met, I think you were 100 and somethingin I went back and binge every one that I could get really some ofthe early ones like I couldn't get to for whatever reason, but I'ma huge fan. I would encourage everyone here listening, make sureyou go and listen to the LinkedInformed Podcast. It is sincere likeone of the best podcasts. I'm subscribed to probably 25 differentshows. And this is one of the three that I get really excited aboutevery time I see it. There's a new episode.
Mark Williams 57:11
Well, fantastic. Thank you for that. That's lovely of you to saythat.
AJ Wilcox 57:15
Absolutely. All right, everyone, go follow Mark. Mark, thanks somuch for coming on. I'm so thrilled to call you a friend and anexpert in LinkedIn. We'd love to have you back at some point, butwanted to give everyone a little taste of virality on LinkedInorganically. So thanks so much for joining us.
Mark Williams 57:30
Thanks, buddy. It's been great fun.
AJ Wilcox 57:32
All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up.So stick around
Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry formore? AJ Wilcox, take it away.
AJ Wilcox 57:53
All right. So like Mark mentioned, his LinkedIn profile is linkedright in the show notes. So go check that out, go connect with him,go follow him, whatever. Also go right into your podcast playerright now. Or maybe pull over if you're driving, but go look up theLinkedInformed Podcast. I'm sure you'll enjoy it just as much as Ido. You can also check out his website LinkedInformed.com. If youor anyone else you're training or you know is looking for a courseon LinkedIn Ads, I point them towards the link in the show notesbelow. For the course that I did on LinkedIn Learning aboutLinkedIn Ads. It's by far the highest quality and the lowest costtraining out there, last I checked. Please remember to subscribe ifthis is your first time with us. And if this is your second orgreater time listening to the show, please do rate and review us. Iwould love to shout you out live on the show with questions,suggestions, anything about the podcast, email us here atPodcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you backhere next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Adsinitiatives.
