Copywriting tricks & tips: going viral on LinkedIn w/ Jasmin Alic, copywriter and LinkedIn expert

(soft music) - Building a company from Nothing is freaking hard. Us entrepreneurs are expected to deal with unimaginable challenges and somehow keep a cool head through it all. This is the Art of Entrepreneurship and I'm your host, Jackie Hermes. I grew my company, Excality, from zero to seven figures with no partners and no funding. The Art of Entrepreneurship is a show where we cut through the BS and dig into what it actually takes to start and grow a company. If you give me your time, I promise it won't be wasted. Now let's get to work. - Good morning and welcome back to the Art of Entrepreneurship. A few weeks ago, I recorded an episode on copywriting and then I thought maybe I should expand on that episode with a guest. So today's guest is Jay-Elish. And if you've spent any time on LinkedIn, you've probably seen him there. Most of his posts go super viral, which is pretty incredible. Today we're gonna dig into kind of how he got started and his copywriting tips and tricks and his best advice on how to go viral on LinkedIn. Let me give a disclaimer that virality shouldn't always be your goal, but dang, it definitely helps grow your audience. So if you are looking to grow an audience on LinkedIn, stay tuned. - Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I've been following the law on LinkedIn. I saw a post recently that you said you had zero social presence at all two years ago, which is kind of, you know, most people are on social media just like screwing around doing whatever. You had zero presence and you somehow have learned to go super viral on LinkedIn in the last two years. Incredible. Talk to me about the process of learning how to write and how you show up in people's feeds. - Yeah, so writing on LinkedIn is actually very different for yourself versus for clients. I believe I had the unfair advantage of writing for other brands and other people for like templates years. So that kind of helped, it really did help. But as soon as you jump into the process of figuring out how you want to come across and how you want to sound and figuring out your brand voice, we talk about this thing called brand voice and branding a lot. So when you try to do it for yourself, it really is different. For me, I believe it was at the very beginning challenging, but just because I imposed this challenge on myself and it was super unfair. I was like, how do I want to come across? How do I want people to perceive me? How do I want to be seen by everyone new who comes to my profile or sees my content or whatever? And then I was like, wait a minute, why am I putting so much pressure on myself? Like I just need to show up as my true self because as vague as that statement sounds like show up as your true self, be your authentic self or whatever, it genuinely is the easiest thing to do. So I threw all of the thinking out the window, if that makes sense. I literally just started writing the way I would write a post, like really naturally, just basically a brain dump every single time I would start to write a post. And then I would optimize as far as like formatting, character and length, line length, things like that. But for me, the biggest thing was figuring out what to talk about wasn't necessarily about how I came across, it was about what I wanted to be remembered for. And the truth is, like, over the years, I've ever been good at, like I've good at a lot of things. I don't want to humble back, but I've been only like super good, like, like, add two things, which is copywriting and brand strategy. And the two of those kind of mesh really well together. I work as a creative director for a lot of clients because those two things, copywriting and brand strategy don't literally create a creative director has to like really own as far as skillsets go. So I was like, let me just talk about those two things. I was literally talking about copywriting everything I've learned over the years, brand strategy and brand messaging, you know? But the LinkedIn growth part of it, like strategies for LinkedIn, that was never a part of it. Like quite literally, I started doing LinkedIn just wanting to share my experiences over the years because mind you, I had 10 plus years of experience already before I even jumped into LinkedIn. I've been in this space a whole lot of years already. So my reasoning for jumping onto LinkedIn was just seeing other people do it. And I was like, if others can really do it, you know, younger people, less experienced people, I was like, surely I can do it too. I don't know if that's selfish or not, but that was really the reason why I wanted to do it because I saw people get, you know, so many rewards just for being active on LinkedIn. And I wanted it too. I knew I could do it better. So I was testing a lot of things out, you know, as a marketer, you test things out. Even to this day, I test things out and like whatever worked, I just shared with people. If I had an approach, I shared for like comments and how to write them really worked, I would share it with my community. If a certain post format was working, I would share it with my community. If I learned something about de algorithm, I would share it. So yeah, people naturally wanted to know more about my LinkedIn tips and tricks, 'cause the fact is, the account from day one was growing like at a steady pace. And then every now and then you would have these viral posts that would outperform everything I've ever published. I don't know, people just wanted to know more about it. So I got into LinkedIn growth as well as my like third content pillar. It was no longer just, you know, copy rating strategy, personal branding and inside all of that. It was really LinkedIn growth as well. So that's my like story pretty much summed up. Let's dig into the copywriting bus practices a little bit. I've noticed in your post, a lot of it seems to be about format. If there were like three to five steps or bus practices and you could summarize your process, what would that summary entail? - 100%. I've shared this before in my post, but yeah, just to summarize it, so people don't have to look for it. Number one, I believe it's about length. I'll take my phone, just to demonstrate what I've been. See, when people write their posts, they typically focus on the information first. And the information doesn't even matter to tell you the truth in the first place. What matters is the visual signal. This is, again, we're not digging deeper into psychology. I recently shared a post about psychological tricks and copywriting. I teach copywriting at the university. So this is something that I really dive deeply into during my lectures with my students. But on LinkedIn, I can only deliver these micro-lessons. So hopefully during this podcast, I'll be able to deliver another micro-lesson. So when it comes to LinkedIn posts and the human psychology behind them, we don't read posts in the very first moment we see a post in our home feed. What happens is we just notice it visually. Our brains get this signal that either tells them this is visually pleasing therefore easy to understand, therefore easy to read or vice versa, easy to read and easy to understand. Or it's not. This doesn't look visually appealing. It looks like a clunky piece of content. Doesn't matter how good the information is, mind you, like this doesn't even matter at this point because our brains giving all this content we consume on a daily basis. Our brains are almost trained to register this signal perfectly and what it tells to our brain, what it tells it is it's either good or it's bad. And we're still not even at the point where we read the first word. So that's why for me formatting a text post in a certain way that's visually pleasing, it's number one. I believe people understate just how important visual formatting of your text matters. It's the same thing for, it's not even linked in posts anymore. It's the same thing when any sort of design, take packaging design for products, take your headline and your hero banner on a website. If there's one dangling word in that third line and it should have been two lines really, dead headline screams unoptimized, right? Or if there's like too many words on a packaging of a chocolate box, you're not gonna be focused on that. That's not gonna be your focus at all. That doesn't communicate the message that you wanted to communicate on that particular box. So yeah, all copy is visual. That's number one for me. So what I try to do is I've set a rule for myself. I shared this recently and people were just like, "Ah, you've really been doing that. "You've really been cheating on us the entire time." So what I've understood what needs to be done is, if my LinkedIn posts exceeds the length of a screen, of a phone screen, if I have to swipe more to get to the bottom, like if the post is really this long and it's entirety, it's too long, it's too long. At that point it's too long. I'd rather say-- - All mine are probably too long with that litmus test. (laughing) - That's just my rule. It doesn't have to be the rule for everyone. But I've tried it, I've tested it out. I've seen other people test it out now and it works. I can say confidently that it works, but here's the thing behind it. There's an even. larger influx right now of content on LinkedIn. There's like 150 million new users since last year. That's a huge jump from 800 million to 950. That's a huge jump. Meaning there's also a lot more content creators, people who post more consistently. So we have to take that into account. On average, like if we used to see 20 posts in our feed daily, now we see 60, like really good posts, posts that we actually register. That's a huge jump. That's a huge leap. Yeah. And because of that, I feel like length really does matter. And because of it, the punchiness of your copy, what you say actually matters. I believe we're kind of forced to train ourselves to write punch your coffee shorter, but punch your. So that's one rule I have. If the length of my post really exceeds the length of my screen, it's already too long at that point. But if you do have to include all of that information, like it's really not possible for you to just erase a certain chunk of your post, just make it a carousel. If anything, carousels are more inviting. They're much easier to consume, especially if you're going slide by slide. The benefit of carousels is you don't really need to include a whole lot of text on each and every page. Like it's actually bad practice to include a lot of text on each and every page. So that's another one of my rules. If to post again, exceed the length of a bone screen, it's too long. Another thing that I really like to do, I get, I shared all of these things before. I literally shared everything I know. Like Jackie, I did not emphasize this more. I don't hold back. Everything I know I shared. I legit do. And I shared this before. I said, take your last line of every post you write. Put it all the way to the top. There's also a psychological element to it. See, whenever we start writing posts, just because again, we've been trained. And I blame a lot of, you know, LinkedIn good content creators, popular content creators for doing this. Focus on the hook. That's what we've been told for ages, focus on the hook. So now what happens, the second you start writing, you're stuck focusing on that first line. Like you really put so much thought into that first line that the rest of your content, most of the time doesn't follow. Like the energy doesn't match. The hook is so good and so strong because you put so much thought into it. But now, depending on the length of your, the remainder of your content, the energy doesn't match. So what I do is I just write, I write what feels right. I start writing. But then because it's human psychology, that we leave the best for last. Think TED Talks, think live presentations at conferences, think of those last three or five seconds, three, four or five seconds of speeches that demand your applause. Like when people stand up and give you a, you know, they give you a standing ovation. We typically leave the most powerful statement as the last piece of our content. We do the same exact thing in our writing. We do the same exact things in our LinkedIn posts. So what I do is I take that very same last line and I put it all the way at the top. Now you have no choice but to like when you read that first line and it's like super powerful. And it gives you this sort of boost. Like you're motivated to read my content. It's not like, oh no, here's another how to post. No, it's actually something that makes sense. Yeah, I do that. Absolutely. So when I'm writing where I will say, okay, this is the strongest line or this is the strongest line and move it to the top versus the focus on the hook. There you go. Brush cell is off moment. There you go. Yeah, it's genuinely a useful strategy. And I believe it boils down to human psychology just because we're like it's sort of innate to all of us. Yeah. To leave the best for last. And why would we leave the best for last when we have no guarantees that people are going to read our content to the very end. So just convince them all the way at the very top to read your post. And you're going to do that by taking your last line and putting it all the way up top. This doesn't necessarily mean just swapping to first and next line. I believe people misunderstand that part. And you you'll see people thinking that you have to add your PS to the very top or you have to add like a call to action at the very end to the very top. Like it just doesn't make sense. No, it really means taking the last line that you deliver. It could be the line before the PS or something and putting it all the way at the top. And sometimes you will have to tailor that line like edit it further more just to make it fit into the narrative of being in the first line. But that's another useful strategy. I use it. I genuinely use it in every single post that right. I kid you not every single post that right. I use this particular strategy just because I know it's going to make my writing doubt much stronger. Yeah. How many how many lessons that we just turn out here? Two, three or I don't know. Oh my gosh. I don't know. Do you have one more? I mean, I could talk. I mean, at a PS people underestimate the PS on a LinkedIn post. I'll I'll die on this hill. But people often complain about the lack of engagement they get. And I believe one of the easiest ways. It's not manipulative. It's not playing the game. It's not playing the I'll go. It's literally just playing the human game. Because if you just give people so much information in a single post, sometimes they don't know how to respond right away. Like they will have some thoughts about it in three or five minutes. But they will not have their exact thoughts formulated right now. Which is when you actually need them to respond, which is right now. So one of the simplest ways to actually train people to give you their response right away and to sort of like like, like, lead the way, like direct them in a you know, like push them in a certain direction as to how you want the conversations to go in your comments is to simply ask a question in your PS like literally invite people to comment. You don't have to say it out loud. But if your post is about the 10 rules of personal branding, like 10 must do's in your PS, you could just ask, how would you raise your personal brand? One to 10. That's it. Like super simple, but it gives people an immediate idea of what they could comment. Which a lot of the time, if they just read, you know, the top 10 like must do's for your personal brand, they would be thinking about, okay, do I write about number one, do I write about number seven? Do I, you know, people just don't have that immediate push to comment. So do the thinking for them, you know, don't make them think essentially do the thinking for them. I believe that's one of the easiest way to spark some engagement on your post. And for whatever reason, people avoid the PS, I have no idea why they think it's manipulative. They consider it love for something come on. I don't know. It's manipulative to to instruct people what they should be commenting. I mean, for a while, people were closing their posts with questions and then it was well, don't do it with a question. Just just end it abruptly. And now it's the PS. And I do see more people doing it. And I think it's very smart to guide people in in how they want to respond. I really appreciate you dropping so much knowledge that was a ton of information. And I feel like we covered a lot. If there's someone that's getting started on LinkedIn or with writing in general, what's your most important piece of advice or most important takeaway for them? Just write what you know. I see so many people try to copy what other people are doing, like blatantly copy, not get inspired. Like that's a different definition for me. But I see so many people who are just getting started on LinkedIn, try to copy what the big creators are doing. Try to copy someone they look up to. And what ends up happening is they become someone else. And two, three months down a line, they don't know how to proceed because they've been stuck in this loop of creating content as someone else. And it's simply not possible to maintain that over a long period of time. My advice is honestly, just be yourself. Talk about the things you know. Thank you so much for listening today. If you got value out of this episode, please share it with just one person who is looking to improve their copywriting skills or maybe hoping to go viral on LinkedIn. Thanks again, and I'll talk to you next time.