Everything You Want to Know About LinkedIn with Nicole Marguerite Gray

Have you ever wondered why some offers become impossible to ignore while others get announced, promoted for a couple weeks, and then completely disappear? In my friend Kelly's new free private podcast, she's spending four episodes telling you why good marketing gets forgotten, why posting consistently doesn't necessarily mean you're making an impression, and how to keep your offers top of mind long after your launch week. It's made for business owners who want the way they're marketing their offers to feel more creative, more intentional, and effective without just adding more content to their beliefs. You can listen to all four episodes for free at kellypots.co/btl, and if you need the link, you can click it right here in the description of this pod. Welcome and welcome back to the Point of the Story podcast. I'm your host Sarah Noel, and you're welcome for giving you the only podcast you won't have to listen to on two-time speed. In Point of the Story, we're talking marketing, business, confidence, motherhood, everything in between. Point of the Story? I can't wait to eat with you. What's up, squirrels? Welcome back to the Point of the Story podcast. Today, I have the lovely Miss Nicole Margaret Gray, and yes, I do say her government name every single time, and she tells me that we have a reason, like she did that on purpose. So, Nicole, why the hell do we say your government name every time? It was strategic. So, I, when I first got started in business, I was like SEO, SEO, SEO, and I was like, I don't know what that means. This is like eight years ago. But I knew that if I googled my name back in the day, if you googled Nicole Margaret Gray, it was like, there's millions of us. There's so many of us. And my surname is spelled G-I-Y. Still tons of us. I thought I was quite like niche and unique. I'm not. So, there's one Nicole Margaret Gray, and it's me. Tea. So, there's a lot of Nicole Gray's, but only one Nicole Margaret Red. Yeah. And they all seem to work in like the sexual pleasure space, which I'm very pro, but that's not my space. So, I'm like vibes, but I don't want to get confused. Honestly, I'm kind of understanding. The name Nicole Gray is giving like Christian Gray a bit 50-shade darker if you're picking up what I'm putting down. A lot of fun lore about me. I actually know the niece of the woman that wrote those books we used to go into. No way. 50-shade books and to get signed by her aunt. No way done. That's so funny. That's so Nicole Gray of you. Yeah, fun fact. Oh my God. Okay. So, we had a squirrel about that for a second before we could get into. I need the girlies to guess what you do. So, describe what you do without saying what it is. Mmm. This is such a good question, actually. My mum needs to hear this question because she still doesn't fully understand what I do. I make people look trustworthy on the internet. That's true. So, she makes people look trustworthy on the internet. Adrian, hit us with the whole music here. Girls, guess what she does. If you guessed, LinkedIn specialist, Drumroll, please, you are correct. Nicole Marguerite Gray is not in fact a sex-positive LinkedIn worker. She just happens to teach business owners how to be better at LinkedIn. And I'm lit for this conversation. Let me just tell you. You were like number one in my podcast guest request. People want to know about LinkedIn. And I'm so excited to talk about it. Something I personally do not do. I'm not tapped into the LinkedIn world. I feel that it's very common. What I'm about to say, people are going to have the same experience. LinkedIn, in my experience, I have like my business information on there on the profile, like when I started the business a million years ago. Probably haven't logged in since. And it's just updates. People would know that I don't work at a hotel or a law firm anymore. And the only people who look at my LinkedIn are like weird people from college that like have a business degree that means nothing. And they like work at enterprise rental car or past bosses that are stalking me to like hope for my demise. But I actually make like 10 times what they do. So that's my LinkedIn experience. We're going to get into all of that. But naturally, we need to know, Miss Nicole, what is your nut? What would you gather like squirrels gather nuts? It's probably people. I love it. Truly. Collect people, their stories, like their back stories. Something that not a lot of people know about me is that I grew up in military brat. So we moved around a ton. And I met a lot of people and I always found it so interesting learning about their like law, their back story. Even when I was a kid, I'd be running around like my parents parties being like talk to me. Tell me what's going on. You want a child? No, I am eldest. Oh, okay, eldest daughter and only child. I do feel have a lot of similarities and get along. I just saw a video and take talk the other day. This girl was like talking shit about people who talked shit about only child. And she was like, eldest daughter, you know, I have the life that you could have had. And you're just jealous. And I was like, wait, I never thought of that. Like you could have had an only child. And your parents like, let me add more. But the reason I asked that is because as an only child, I was always talking to the adult because that was my only option. So I feel like that gave me a foundation for, you know, the job that I have now. So it's interesting that you say collect people because that is an answer of mine as well. I would say collect friends. And it is because I want the more. Yes. I want the tea, which feeds me into my other nut, which is actually secrets. My other nut, my other nut. My other nut is like genuine, these secrets. So I collect people. And then I collect all of their like deepest, darkest secrets. And I just sit on them. Yeah. I love it. That's so funny. Okay. I don't know if you listened to my episode where I answered the scrollbrain questions. But it's pretty recent. It was in maybe like, I don't know, six episodes before this or something. If my lovely listener, you want to go listen to it too. But I had all my friends answer these questions for me. And one of my best friends said my nut was gathering people and friends. And then my boyfriend said something that I used to ask different world questions. So my boyfriend said that my skill, like what I would win an Olympic gold medal in was collecting people's deepest, darkest secrets. I love this for interest. We need to be talking a lot more than we are. I think I think that's right. I agree. I agree. I feel a lot of my listeners are witnessing me becoming best friends with the person I'm interviewing. It's happening again. I can feel it. Like did we just become best friends? Yes. Yes. That's us right now. Okay. If you had to get one phrase tattooed on your face, what would it be? Oh, the thing I probably say the most is gorgeous. I'm like, oh, it's gorgeous. It's gorgeous. It's linked in post-gorgeous. That work. I love it. I feel like for me, I say Gorgina, which has morphed into Gorgina. But I need to bring back the Gorgis, I think. It's a bit more appropriate. I love it. That's what you'll find in like my coffee dogs most of the time. Gorgis. Okay. If there are a museum about you, what would be in your gift shop? Rocks. Excuse me. Are you a rock collector? I specifically crystals. I had a bit of a like early court life crisis cracked on at like 26, 27. It was like none of this is working. I've been running my business for a while, but like was also working. A job that I kind of hated was in an apartment that was beautiful, but like wasn't the right environment for me. Relationship that wasn't working, and I've kind of got a bit like spiritual and woo-woo in that time. So now when I travel places, I will either get, and I know that you are a shell person or like shell-ish. I will get a shell, a rock, or like a piece of jewelry, and I like collecting things from wherever I travel. And I think that comes from when I was growing up when we traveled so much, we couldn't have very much. And I used to have to do that Marie Condo thing where you'd like hold onto something and be like, does this part go in and bin it. But I love a knickknack. So I think if I had a museum, it'd be full of probably all of the knickknacks I've ever collected, but they would be treasures. They wouldn't just be like museum tats. It would be, yeah, golden treasures that I would be like an empty shell like museum. Yeah. Love. I am a shell girly myself. If I look around this room that I'm in right now, there's probably like 40 shells. Just chilling in my office, I have a shell addiction that's a problem. So I am feeling very aligned. At first I was like, rock as in pet rock, like where are we going with this? I'm like more aligned now that I know the rocks have a purpose. I was going to support you either way, but I was getting a bit nervous about that rock. I'm just going to have one like on my left right now. It's on the screen. Wait, let me show you my shell. Hold on, wait. Side character moved my shell when he was using my chair in my office. Anybody else side note, make their boyfriends sit next to them while they do stuff. Like I, if you are here, which he always is, because he lives here, he must be in my presence. Like, what do you mean I have to work? Like, you have to sit in my office to that elite room of body doubling when you get to do the poll and it's like the best of us. Yes. This is my shell. You guys can't see, but I'm holding up a shell jelly cat and it's pink with a little waist or pearl and it's so precious. It doesn't really count. It's not from the earth, but it is from the paper store and that counts to me. Thank you so much. Okay. Final question before we get into the LinkedIn lore of it all. If you had a walk out song, what would it be? Yes. Oh my god. She's like, I finally get to give my walk out song. All right, let me get to talk about this. I talk about this with my friends and like after business events all the time because I love this question so much. I've had this since I was at university, truly, because I kind of accidentally fell into it because I was applying for my very first job at university and I was sat in this little, like, waiting room at university, waiting to go into this interview and I was so nervous and granted I didn't need to be turns out the guy was like, he had no idea what he was doing, but I didn't wait out the time. So I'm sat there and I'm scrolling through Spotify and I'm like, what do I need in this moment? I need, like, kind of affirmations, maybe a tiny bit. I need something that's going to pump me up. And what I settled on was DJ Khaled, all I do is win. Oh, obviously. And not led me astray. It's what I listen to if I'm like speaking, hosting a workshop for a big brand and I'm nervous or like about to do an online session that I'm kind of like being my pants about hasn't failed me. It's good. Well, it's every time. Oh my god. I think you were the first person that I have interviewed that has a walkout song. Like, of course, this is not you walking out onto a stage song. But you have a song that you're listening to to pump you up. I feel like everyone else is thinking about it in a hypothetical of like, oh, well, you know, if I were to go speak in front of a million people, if I were to like run onto the field, like you have a real one and I am obsessed. I feel I was not knowing where you were gonna go with it at any point in that story, but I was loving the story. - I like the idea that you feel that way about most of the answers to my questions 'cause I feel like that could have, I mean, most of my answers at this point have been like, where's she going with this? What's the vibe? - Literally, what is the vibe? And I also feel like we didn't discuss this at all prior, which is the best part. Like, I love when that's my scenario where I'm like, I don't know what the fuck you're about to say. (laughing) - But I don't like when I'm like, no matter what, and you know what that is? How I feel about this lovely interview about LinkedIn 'cause I don't know what the fuck you're about to be talking about because like I said, I'm not using LinkedIn and I am so excited to learn these are the best interviews. So, let's say I gave you the mic. All I do is win is playing in the background, okay? You're hearing DJ Khaled's voice. Loudness can be, everyone's clapping. I push you out under the stage. You have to have about something. What are you giving this speech about? - Probably LinkedIn. It's probably LinkedIn. - It's like talking to anybody that feels like they shouldn't be on LinkedIn, or they should, but they don't know how, but like they feel like they don't belong. I'm dressing them directly. I'm like right up in their face with my phone being like, we need to have a serious conversation. - You're down on the stage. - What did you do Khaled? - I'm locked in. So yeah, that's my, that's my like, hyper-focus topic for the last like four years. - Let's you it. Let's pretend like this is happening right now. So I'm gonna look you in the face and say, I don't know. I think maybe I could be on LinkedIn. Maybe I should. Maybe I shouldn't. Like, are you gonna convince me? What are you gonna say? - Are you a person with a point of view? - Yes. - Are you a person with a good personality? - Yes. - Okay. Then you follow, and are you a person that likes making money? - Yes, absolutely. Five capital and placement over here. Three for three. Okay. So that's basically what LinkedIn does. Like, I've seen work for so many different people. It's evolved as a platform and we love growing. Am I allowed to swear on this? - Yeah, absolutely. I think I swore like 16 times already. All of your podcasts are like explicit and I'm like, perfect, this is my five. - Literally. - We fucking love growth and LinkedIn has grown. It's not perfect. It's still in its like teenagers. She's not like in her final form. That's fine, that's acceptable. But it's evolved so much from where it used to be, where it was like this awkward middle-aged man vibe and like only for people with suits and you couldn't connect with someone unless you knew their email address. It's evolving into this really cool social media platform where you're getting younger generations that are joining. You're getting really amazing writers that are joining. And so it's not just people being like, I read this article last week and I learned these three bullet points. You still have that. But you're also getting like a woman that started a boxed wine brand that is sharing the behind the scenes of her going door to door on people's streets and trying to sell her wine door to door and is blowing up her business because of it and getting booked in like Sainsbury. She's getting placements and Sainsbury's for her wine brand that she would never have got without the power of LinkedIn. You're getting consultants that have been picked up by journalists who have then been featured on like really big pieces in British media because of an article they posted on LinkedIn or a newsletter they posted on LinkedIn. Because it has that really cool thing of you know this concept that you're only ever like one person away or like X amount of people away from someone really cool. - I thought it was six people, but I like the one person better. - Well LinkedIn, I kind of feel like makes it one person. Most of the time you're like two. It really brings that much, much smaller. So there's so much opportunity on there. There's so much potential. You just need to know how to write for it. And that as a barrier for entry I feel like is kind of doable. So it's kind of sniffing. - Okay, so let's say you've convinced me, right? You just told me I'm gonna make money. I'm gonna grow. I'm gonna have opportunities that I would not have if I did not post on LinkedIn. What do I do now? - So where are we stalking from? Are we stalking from like, why are you on now? You haven't posted them. - Yeah, we're starting from absolutely fucking nothing. We're starting from the fact that I have a LinkedIn account that I've had since college. Okay, so probably 2016. No wait, when did I go to college? I'm graduated college in 2017, bye. Probably has since 2013. And all that's on there is my work history and the connections that I made at my professional positions and my random friends from college or wherever work. And I do have a business account page with the fuck knows what's on that. And that is where we're starting. So literally ground zero. - Amazing, that's my favorite place. We love a plank slate. First thing I get everybody to do all the time is spring cleaning. I'm like clean the shit out of your home. If your LinkedIn is your home and you're choosing to build there with your foundations, great, you need to remove the people and the connections that don't feel right for you anymore. And that's not to say get rid of everybody because quite often as people that you really loved working with in the past and who's to say they haven't got off and started their own businesses and that's made them really relevant to what you do now. I've actually seen that happen countless times. I've had students that have said to me, none of my connections are relevant to me anymore. And so maybe I should just get rid of them and start fresh. And I'm like, actually, let's just start posting and see where we learn. Like do you hate them? And they're like, no, and I'm like, oh, let's keep them in the world then. So they started posting and they've actually been booked because some of their former colleagues have gone on to start their own businesses and they've been like, oh my God, I didn't know you did brand design or I didn't know that you did copywriting. That's so amazing. Can we talk and then they've been booked? Easy. So, would you recommend posting first? Yeah, that's facts because they already trust you and know you. A fun fact for anybody listening. My first ever paying client was that exact scenario. Sorry, I can't cite LinkedIn. Except I did get, you know, I did stay in touch with him via LinkedIn and then I emailed him but I will maybe, maybe I should be using this as a LinkedIn success story a bit more. I don't know why I'm just thinking of this now. But my first ever paying client was exactly that professional connection. Neither of us worked at the place that we met anymore. He started his own thing. I started my own thing. I reached out to him being like, hey, can I write a blog for you in exchange for a testimonial? And he was like, wait, this blog is great. Can you continue writing all of my blogs? And that was my first ever paying client, shout out Jason. I have the exact pitch I sent him on my blog. If you want to look at it, Adrian will link it in the description. But I'm curious to know if you should start posting first and like see the response and then remove people or remove people first. It's a bit chicken and egg. I think if you're somebody that is going you're really uncomfortable and it's going to hold you back from posting, then bin some people. One of the biggest things that people talk to me about usually is like, I don't want my boss to see. I don't want my old boss to see and all my old colleagues to look at what I'm doing. Yeah, like mute them or like block them. They probably won't realize and if they do, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, you probably haven't posted in years anyway. Well, they're going to be like, oh, where it was in Sarah posting? Like you haven't seen me post in six years. Exactly. They're not thinking about you as much as you're thinking about you. So remove them if you need to, block them. I didn't even consider removing them. Like this podcast is already worth it to me. 'Cause I'm like, wow, what a great tip. I didn't even remember that that was an option to remove the connections. It wasn't even occurring to me to start fresh. Objection addressed, consider it done moving on. Okay, so we removed them. Now what do we do? Okay. So once you've done your spring cleaning, I would get your house in order. So for me, that looks like updating on LinkedIn profile. That was one of the first things that I started teaching. 'Cause for most of us, especially like creatives, they're in exactly the same position as you, right? Like they might have updated their LinkedIn profiles to be like, hey, I run a business now. But their profile is not anywhere near as good as their website. Their profile is not nearly as good. It's like their sales pages, which are gorgeous, bought these and copied. And we're going to disagree on this, but I have evidence and proof. So I can back myself up. Oh my God. We truly believe, hot take, that you don't actually have to have a website, as long as your LinkedIn profile is really, really good. And I say that with caveat, once you grow, you do need one. But this might be our first fight, I think. Guys, I think Nicole just came on my podcast and said you don't need a website. Is that what you heard? Because that's what I heard. I heard that somebody just looked website girl in the face and said you don't need a website. No, I'm not going to brawl with you about it. I'm really not. Because I do understand where you're coming from. And if you're linked in girly, people can find the information that they need to have about you. And even you said this before, you said, oh, this person, maybe they started their own business. They reach out, they say, can we talk? That was what I clocked. The can we talk? Because now you have to have the conversation. I'm like, oh, this is my services. This is my pricing. This is everything blah, blah, blah. Discovery call blind. Whereas your website would answer the questions for you. So if you're a beginner, I'll let it slide. But if you want to avoid the convincing part that your website does in the can we talk conversation? Because the can we talk? If somebody messaged me, can we talk? I'd be like, here you go. Here's my link. Every single thing you'd want to talk to me about is right there. Book the call. By the time you book the call, you're already ready to work with me. So I think we're not fighting. But I think our two platforms can work together in harmony. I agree. I'm a big website girly. I started with a website. So I say that kind of, yeah. Yeah, me too. My website was the first thing that I did. I know I was like, I need a website to feel like I am the just in that. But I think it can be that for some people. But I worked with one of my very first students inside my LinkedIn course was a UX designer. And she built beautiful websites for a living. She's incredibly successful. She's done really well for herself. We worked together for about eight months. And she came back to me on one of the final calls. And she's like full disclosure. I have to have a website because of the work that I do. But because of the way that she'd set things up. And she's a service provider who, like she's not scaling in the way that a lot of people are scaling. And if you're needing freebie or you want funnels, you have to have a website like you have to do this my way around it. But she was like, to be honest, I don't need a website anymore. And if I didn't have to have one as like a showcase for my work, I really wouldn't do because that's the impact that your LinkedIn can have if you set it up like a website. Yeah, I'm aligned with that. I'm definitely aligned with the fact that it can do a lot of the same things your website can do for you. Can answer the questions. You can put that information on there. I'm definitely aligned with that. I also feel like like you were saying, before once you get to be a bit more advanced, you do need one, but in the beginning, if that was a barrier to entry to you starting on LinkedIn, like not having a website, I don't think that should be a reason to not start on LinkedIn. So we're aligned on that as well. 'Cause if you're not posting on LinkedIn just 'cause you don't have a website, that's stupid. - I completely agree. - I think we're aligned. I think we say the same thing. - I think we just made up. We were fighting for a second there, 'cause you tried to cross me, but then we came back. - Came on point of the story, crossed the podcast. - Point of the story, don't fucking craft me, I'm just getting point of the story, speak your truth, and you know what, we can have an adult conversation about it. - We can go back to LinkedIn too, I give it all. - Yeah. - So yes, and that would be where I go next. I feel like foundations, let's make this really, really good. Then, one, two, three, four, five, four. - Oh, I have a whole workshop on this, and I literally could yell about this for fucking hours. - Okay. - You need to link it. - You need to. - I'll link, I'll give you the link too, you can link it. - Yeah, basically, you need to treat it like a sales page. Like, you need to have a really solid idea of what is the thing that I'm here to say. And I do believe that needs to be like one big thing, which is your point of view, your whole perspective. You're like, here's the one main thing that I believe that should be in existence in the world. And if you can whittle that down to one sentence like I believe XYZ, or I stand for XYZ, the hill I would die on is this. If you can nail that, which is where you probably need to support for copyright, 'cause it takes potentially a really long time to get there. - It's funny as the copyrighter. I was like, shit, I wouldn't mind one sentence but I have so many sentences. - It's hard. - And doing it for LinkedIn specifically, I think, is so nuanced because ideally, you want something that captures what you value personally, as well as what makes sense for you in your business. So it's doing a lot of heavy lifting. - Yeah, what's yours? - I'm still working on mine 'cause I have two different businesses. - Wait, what do you mean two different businesses? - I need to hire myself. So I do what most people would know me for, which is soft-launched LinkedIn. I run a course, I did that to make that more accessible, make LinkedIn more accessible to a lot of the people that I think really need it that can't afford, like, you know, 5,000 pounds a month ghost writing with really good quality ghost writers. But I also run an agency, which is where everything is done for you. So I work with founders of unicorn businesses, scale up startups to grow their personal brands and manage their reputations. And we do that across all social channels. We also do PR, but that's the side of things that most people don't actually know about 'cause I didn't talk about it. - Wow, there's some nickel lore y'all didn't know about. I do think the word reputation has to be in there. Like, I like the manage of your reputation. I feel that could be relevant for LinkedIn as well. 'Cause LinkedIn is like the tool that you can use. But if LinkedIn ended tomorrow, like, I would still have a job. Like, I wouldn't die if LinkedIn. - Yeah, love that for me. But yeah, it is very much about kind of like, reputation management. Like, what do you stand for? What's important? How do people talk about that? - Yeah, what do you wanna be known for? - Exactly. - I feel like your statement could be helping people figure out what they wanna be known for and then making sure they get known for it. - I like that. - Oh, see? I needed a coffee riser. Did we not just say that? - You're welcome. That was even proper English, but whatever. Okay, so let's say we're at the point where I cleaned house, fuck all of them, the lawyers that I'm connected to right now. I hated y'all anyway. I don't wanna talk to any of you anymore. Elizabeth Kennedy, my old boss, literally get off my LinkedIn, stop looking at my shit, you're weird. And not me name dropping. I named dropped in an earlier podcast that I recorded today too. I'm feeling feisty today. - We love it. - But seriously, stop looking at my LinkedIn. So all those people are gone. Okay, now we have a safe space to create and we're gonna start posting. Is there anything we need to do to our profile? I know you were talking about making the profile pretty than we squirreled about something else. You were talking about making it look good and you still could get us a sales page, but what should be on it? Like right now, the things that are on mine specifically, I keep using myself as an example 'cause obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, we should know on the website, copyrighter. And like, it's a familiar example. I do that a lot. And I just want you guys to know that I'm doing it so you understand 'cause I'm a very learned by example person, not because I need you to be talking about me all the time. I had to put that out there. Okay, so on mine, I have like the fucking, again, law firms that I worked at, the hotel that I worked at, and like the skills section is like random skills from back in the day, me and my philosophy degree, like none of it is relevant. So what do you think is relevant to put on the profile as a business owner? So I would work top to bottom. So if you are imagining a LinkedIn profile, or even if you haven't pulled up, like I would start with your footprints on LinkedIn, which are your profile picture, make sure that that matches to what you have anywhere else, just for consistency. So I would make sure it matches your Instagram and your website so that we've got that visual resonance. People can start to recognize you 'cause most of the time, people won't know what you actually look like up close. Like most people that follow on various platforms, they wouldn't recognize me on the street 'cause I'm not zoomed in enough. But they will recognize my profile picture if I'm speaking at an event or it's featured somewhere else. You want to build that visual recognition. So first off, have a solid profile picture, make it consistent across all the platforms. I know you might have tons of really gorgeous headshots, but just pick one, stick with it. Then I would look at your headline, which is the section that sits just underneath where it's like, this is what I do. The usual thing that people do is that when they start a business, they're just like founder of BTS, right? What's nice, 'cause that means something to you, but it doesn't actually mean anything to anybody else. So as an ego exercise, it's like, cool, I'm a founder now, this is great, but actually nobody knows what that means. When I am granted very much to do as I say not do as I do, because if you look at my LinkedIn, it does say founder it by line. Forgive me, we're a work in progress, we're rebranding. For the most part, you do want to express what you do. Now for some people that is, I help this person do this or I support this person in doing this, but you want to try and wiggle it down and make it mean something and get a bit more specific with it. So it's not enough anymore to be like, I write website copy for ambitious people. That's very broad still. Liam, I write website copy for anyone who stays to me and can afford it. But even that, that is different because most people don't communicate that way. So that would be unique, that would have enough personality that I'd be like, ooh, I'm interested. If you think about where your profile picture, your name and your headline are appearing, they're kind of like your footprints all over LinkedIn, right? So they're what's popping up in other people's comments or people's notifications. Like even if you're not posting, you might still be commenting or engaging. So they're going to be what's intriguing people the most. So it's designed to draw people in a little bit. You need that headline to be doing a fair bit of heavy lifting. People should look at that and be like, either intrigues or understand enough about what you do to know that you are the right fit for them and to land on your LinkedIn profile. So you want to get that nailed. And then I actually have a workshop that takes people through all of this 'cause I know that this is different for everybody and you need the confidence to actually be like, hey, here's what I put here. So we go section by section, hashtag promotion. And in terms of everything that we go for as well. - This is a very heavy promoting positivity podcast. Like I would love to link 65 things if you have them. Like the girlies want action. We want actionable tips. - So yeah, we have rather workshops. - I spend time building them. But they're ready to go. - Yeah, they're waiting for you. Come on in. - They'll wait for you to succeed through this. - And the next thing I would encourage you to do is to update your banner. So one of the big things that most people do is they're like, let me just throw a picture up there. But actually, if you think about it with LinkedIn, if we're treating it like we would do a sales page, which has all of the potential to make you money without people doing much else. Like LinkedIn is a place where people are very prepared to buy. Especially if you're B2B, you're kind of B2C, but you're working with people in more of an employed environment. They're logging on to LinkedIn at work. They're ready to have conversations about working together. They're ready to partner with you in some capacity. So they're already in that selling mindset in a way that you may not get as much on Instagram 'cause you're competing with people's family, people's friends. Kim Kardashian is crazy to me now. - Wait, I don't want to screw it over that. Can we just highlight that? If I could highlight something in audio format, I would. I feel like that's a major draw to LinkedIn that maybe people are realizing is the stage of awareness. Like you just said, when people log in there in work mode, they're already thinking about, "I want to invest in this thing." I was just having a conversation with a student of mine in my group mentorship program for copywriters the other day about how when we're on Instagram, her specific audience, they might not be scrolling Instagram to find this specific service like they want to work with tattoo artists. I don't think tattoo artists are on Instagram. Like, hmm, let me look for a copywriter, but if you go on LinkedIn, you're already in work mode. What a good point. - They're right there. - Just by telling you not to get that picture. - Black on LinkedIn, generally, of the squarely point. There's such a lack on LinkedIn, generally, of just good copywriter kind of vibes, good storytelling, good quality content. So if you're able to do that and you're able to sell something that is actually effective, you're already doing very well. You're already standing out from the screen. I'm right here. So, banner, make the banner look good. The copy on the banner, because we're not gonna go for the vibe of like, let me post a picture of the mountain I hiked 10 years ago, 'cause that's what I had for a really long time and she was cute. I didn't do anything, and she didn't serve a purpose. - Yeah. - So you want to get people kind of like, either talking or thinking, or you want to actually just tell them what you do. I always tell people, and I actually have a freebie for this, which has a mini-training, and it gives you a ton of banner templates, which I can give you to drop in the-- - That was my next question. I was like, "What the fuck are you doing in this banner?" - Can we do it? - I have literally tons of templates that has a mini-training that will walk you through, like, step by step, all of this. And now, I love it so much, because I can log on to LinkedIn and look at people's banners, and I'm like, "That's my template." And it brings me a deep joy. I feel like grew with all of his minions, where I'm like, "They're out in the world, and I love it so much." - Literally. Well, you're brought to log on to my LinkedIn and see mine, 'cause guess what, when we hang up, that's what I'm doing. - Vibes, I love this. - So yeah, I would update the banner. would make sure that the copy is not replica of what you have in your headline. It should be like the next part of the conversation. Because the way that I tend to frame this to people is if you went to a party and you met someone and they asked you a reborn question, they were like, "What do you do?" and you were like, "Hey, I'm Nicole. I'm someone who works in digital reputation." And then they said to you, "Oh cool, like tell me more about it." That's essentially the action that they're taking when they land on your LinkedIn profile. Right. And they're seeing your banner. So if you then come back to them and you say, "I'm Nicole, I work in digital reputation." You're just repeating yourself and they're like, "I'm seeking more." I need more. Yeah, I need more and you're not giving it to me. That's what you're doing if you put the same text in your banner as in your headline. Give them a little bit more to go if you carry the conversation on. Wow. I'm impressed with your education, which I don't know why, because duh. Right? Of course you have the perfect answer to this. That is the point of you being on the podcast. But every single question that I have had in my brain is a follow-up question. What you said, you're already answering it. You're reading my mind, because in my head, you're talking about this. Obviously, I'm thinking about using my own LinkedIn as an example. I'm thinking about the applied knowledge of what we're learning right now about LinkedIn. So my first thought for my headline, like a little piece, not the banner, the headline, was the website copyrighted or your narrative needs because that's my homepage headline. And people like that as my Instagram bio as well, very like brand awareness. If you follow all my other platforms, you would recognize that whatever. So I was like, okay, maybe I could use that. But then I'm debating also. I do think it's funny to say like I write website copy for anyone who's nice to me and can afford it. Like I think that's funny. And I do think that would capture people's attention. So I was going to ask you which one you think is better, but maybe I could use one for a headline and one for the banner. But I don't know that it necessarily fits your formula. Of like, let's say I said the website copyright or your narrative needs is my headline. And then my banner is like, okay, but what is that? I don't know that I help, you know, I wrote website copy for anyone who's nice to be able to afford it. And so there's more of the questions to now I'm rethinking. I'd flip them. I think that. And honestly, I'd be looking, if we were working together, I'd be like, right, are you looking to speak to your existing audience just on LinkedIn? Like are you looking to double down with the people that already know you and follow you or yeah, are you speaking to a new audience on LinkedIn? Because if you're speaking to a new audience, I would make sure that you're using language. Oh my god, perfect. So I would use the second one. Repeat it to me. I write copy for. I wrote website copy for anyone who's nice to me and can afford it. Yeah, see, that is going to stand out on LinkedIn because most people just get lost in the jargon, they get lost in the sauce, all they try and over-explain what they do. I think that's nice. That's simple. That's eye catching. And then I would make the banner, a version of what you have as your website headline so that it still feels like you and it still looks like your, your style, but it doubles down on like cool. If somebody has seen that you write website copy, help them understand how you do that and put that into your banner. How long of a, like, how much can be put in this banner? Because I could say that, you know, the website carburetor, your narrative needs, if you want to be able to like, I don't know, work with dream clients only, I just made that up. But like some sort of end of that sentence, is that too long? No, that is, as long as you're not like overcramming design and you're a strong designer, what do you know that you are? Then you're absolutely fine. It should just, it just looks like clear. You're like, yeah vibes. The thing that you're planning should have, it should have the continuation of like what you do. So it should explain what you do. It should also have like credibility on there in some way. So that looks different for different people. For some people that's like screenshots of the work that you've done. I work with a lot of photographers. For them, that's like, let me see your work. So many photographers that I work with hide behind millions of website pages before you actually get to their portfolio. I'm like, show me in the banner. Which is crazy. I need to see your style. Come on. So I would make sure that you have some kind of like credibility and some indication of how you work. So for you, that might be like some really cool people that you've worked with or some really amazing stats that you've got. Or something really, really nice, like some really amazing press. Really nice. That's something really nice. It's something really cool. Wait, where am I putting this? It's all going in about it. You can. I need to go look on LinkedIn because I'm like, I can't picture what this fucking banner looks like. I'm going to use one of your templates and forget a little bit about that. Yeah, get a template. They work pretty well. They think about all the things from like, how's this going to look on my wall? Is this going to just play well on desktop? What do you need to have in that? And there's a mini training. So I will literally be there in your ears being like, Sarah, don't put that there. Fix this up. Make sure you put that there. Don't do that. I will tell you every time I have somebody with an accent like yours on this podcast, the people are obsessed. I'm weirdly interviewing a lot of people from that section of the world. And every time I'm like, stimming and I'm repeating your voice back to you. Sarah, don't get that there. I used to live there. A very lovely friend of mine who was American. And we just basically a whole conversation. Like, our house was just echoes constantly because she would repeat what I'd say. I don't think what she said vibes vibes. That's tea. Okay. So we removed everyone. We are fixing our profile. Remove the fuck-ass information. And now we're putting the, like you said, going top to bottom. So banner done headline done. What the fuck else is supposed to go on there? We could spend ages on the prayer fall. And I would, I would love to, but I want to make sure we get to posting as well in this session. And we're not like, yeah, it could spill this all day. I was just going to say the same thing. The second I asked the question, I was like, well, we're not just going to tap a delinquent profile. That's boring. We're going to move right on. I'm wanting to know before I move on, if there's anything you need to like, remove from it. Like, you know what I'm saying? I think a lot of people would have the objection of like, well, it was my professional career or was my past self or my past life. And I don't know what's relevant to keep on there when we're in the Marie Condo of it all. You know, I love this question very much. So I work with a lot of people that either have careers that they've moved away from. And quite a big way. And then I actually don't even want to think about it. It's like a trauma response. People that are kind of doing more than one thing. And they're juggling like two jobs. Maybe they're kind of in that in between phase of like, I'm building the business, but I'm also doing something else. And generally, I think we tend to fall into a bit of a black and white phase where we're like, I either have to talk about it and I have to acknowledge it and address it. And people are going to get really confused. And so I can only talk about my employed work or I can only talk about my business. Or I have to like, completely delete everything and like start from nothing. Yeah. The best thing you can do in my opinion is like anything that is truly not relevant, yes, take it off your LinkedIn profile. There's no rule that says it has to be like a CV where someone's going to be like, why do you have a career gap in 2006? Nobody cares. I was, what was I doing? DJ caliding up in my earbuds, I guess. Probably also you kidding me. Wait, pause. How old are you? I'm 30. I'm my math is not nothing in my head. No, I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? You were doing men 2006. There's no way I'm also 30. I was like, I was not all the pairing from my very first interview when I was in. I was just so confused about how old you are, which like shout out to my 50-year-olds if you're listening. I know I have at least a few of you in your 40s. I don't know if anybody in their 50s is listening, but I was shocked by Nicole's math there just now. That was terrible. My biggest weakness is off the top of my head mass. We tend to follow to this trap of all or nothing, totally binary. You don't have to. If I could give people one thing, yes, it's like get onto LinkedIn, but generally it's just a bit of a permission slip. To say that you're LinkedIn should actually reflect who you are as a person, which shouldn't be this groundbreaking, but I feel like the second we log onto LinkedIn, this veil comes down and we're like, oh my god, I have to be professional. I have to write that in a certain way. I have to articulate myself a certain way. What will people think? The best thing you can do for LinkedIn is actually just dial it back and be like, what do I want to say? How do I actually talk to people that I care about? How do I talk to my friends? How do I talk to my clients that I really get on well with? What would I want them to know? It's not that you have to necessarily delete previous work experience, but I would look at it through the lens of what thread is there that ties all of this together. So remind me what job you did prior to this. So if you look at my LinkedIn, you would see lots of law firms. You would see a lobbying firm and you would see a five-star hotel. Okay, cool. And if I was to ask you if you took any, like, what was it that made you go from law to website copy if anything? You want the real answer? Do you want me to try and connect them? Because let me tell you, the real answer was I was moving to a different country. I needed a remote job and none of that stuff was remote job worthy. So I went on LinkedIn. This is my last, you know, time I logged in and looked up writer jobs thinking like, okay, what am I good at? That can be a remote job for me. And then I kept seeing copywriter and I was like, what the fuck is that? Google it and was like, oh, I'm the most convincing person on the planet. I can absolutely do that. And then I started was born. So when you was that down and we were like working together, I would give you a couple of different options. But based on what I know about you already, because you are somebody that posts on the internet and we follow each other and we teach that, I would say you could probably lead with honesty. And I think that's going to be very true to your brand. And I would literally plug into your experience section, like truth bombs, be like, hey, I did this job, honestly didn't really vibe with it. But realized I was really good at spinning things or like making things sound really good. Then did this job double down on the writing got even better at the legal side of things, but realized it wasn't really my passion. Then like the next section could be like career break for like two months or something. And then be like, this is when I applied for a job on LinkedIn and realized that website copywriting was actually really fucking fun. So you could literally you think about how you have your about page. There's nothing stopping you from kind of mapping that out in your experience section and being really transparent because that personality element, if that's true to how you show up your clients, there's nothing stopping you from bringing that into LinkedIn and it's going to resonate with people. Yeah. And also similarly, I feel like I'm always talking about LinkedIn saying you're about pages in your LinkedIn profile because in your website, it's not. Meaning I don't want your traditional resume CV list on your about page, like absolutely not. We'll talk about that in a different podcast. But That's my narrative, usually about it. So I think that it's interesting to flip the script on that a bit and then make my LinkedIn more about page because fuck a real LinkedIn, why would I need that? Like there is no reason other than me, you know, missing out on opportunities potentially or like not having the visibility from people that are on LinkedIn that might find me. Like I'm obviously fine without it right now. And I think a lot of people have that mentality about it as well, like me, I'm in a growth phase right now 'cause I'm in the process of hopefully going from six figures to seven. And to me, I feel volume is necessary. Like growing the community is going to be, it's gonna be one of the few things of my small list of things and it's gonna take me from six figures to seven and I feel LinkedIn could help a girl out with that. But right now, I do feel like fine without it. So I feel like who cares if I experiment and turn the LinkedIn profile into more about page vibes 'cause I'm never gonna use it for a resume. Like I'm never working on a corporate job again in my life. - 100%. - I really, really vibe about that. - Are you aligned with this perspective? - I'm so aligned, big fan of that, by back at 100%. - Tea. - Okay. Now I wanna talk about posting. - Yes. - 'Cause we have been yapping for a long, fucking time. - And we didn't even talk about what to post and that's the most important part. - I do, yeah. - Posting is what's gonna get you in front of people and it can be the thing that takes you from like, here's my existing audience and here's what they know about me into that next sphere of here. So I get in front of really cool people and here's how they, like, are joining calls with me and feel like they already know me or they're being put in touch with you from somebody else because somebody that they used to work with is connected to somebody you used to work with and they've engaged with your post and you just have this gorgeous spider web of connections. So it's like my favorite thing because I used to be somebody that I very much relied on word of mouth for a lot of my work. So I've been out there for, going on eight years now and I would say it really turned into a business in the last two years where I was like, you know what, let me double down on this and really make this into like my focus and my thing. But I started off as somebody that I'd hustling was running, that's why five to nine is called five to nine because I was quite literally, like, dolly-partening backwards. And yeah, I doubled down, I took it seriously, but like, initially a lot of my work came from word of mouth and so linked in a part of the reason why I love it so much is because it kind of is like word of mouth but on crack, like, it just is online and it's kind of like, if somebody is commenting on your posts and they are really well-known or they're really well respected or they're somebody who you've worked with previously and they're saying, oh my God, I'd love to work on this with you. Or like, a post that I put out a couple of months ago a load of my soft blonde students commented on it to be like, hey, I love this so much. I'm so excited to be a part of it. I love the course so much. That was one of the best things that could have happened for bringing in new people to the wait list for when the course reopens because it's publicly people advocating for you and saying, yeah, I vouch for this. And traditionally, most of the time, unless you're really putting a lot of effort into showcasing that yourself with testimonials and video things on your sales page or even on Instagram, like I don't feel like Instagram is even really designed to showcase those kinds of comments in the same way. LinkedIn is not putting them in front of people and saying, you're seeing this post because your friend's own so commented this on this person's thing. And I don't know about you, but for me, the word of mouthpiece, like, is what gets me new clients every single time. So LinkedIn facilitates me doing that at scale. At scale, that is such a good point. Okay, let's get into the specifics of what to do. So I want to, I feel like so many questions, oh my God, we need to wrap it fire as well. So I'm going to tell you all the things that I want to know and you tell me in order of importance what you think we can cover realistically because now I'm ready for LinkedIn masterclass and locked in. So this is what I want to know. I want to know what I'm supposed to post. I want to know how much I'm supposed to post. I want to know if there's something that I shouldn't post. I want to know if what I already say anywhere else can be repurposed. I want to know if I should be following anyone's specific and how to build that community on there and build the habit. That's what I want to know about LinkedIn. I love, I'm going to work backwards. So, amazing. The first and easiest one to answer is, is there anyone specific you should be following? This differs for everybody depending on what industry they're in. I would find some people that you know are active in your industry and start like engaging with them. That's always good. And also, I think you should curate your news feed so you're actually like hanging out there because otherwise, you're never going to start posting on LinkedIn because you hate it. But I run a newsletter specifically for this purpose. So, my newsletter literally exists to help you find more cool people to follow on LinkedIn. And I will always throw in like a posting tip as well. So shout out the news. I will link as we love. So, that's a very easy way for you to get more cool people in your world. Start following more interesting people that are actively posting and building their personal brand. So, you're not just engaging with people that are sat there quietly doing nothing but following people that are actually doing cool shit. Then, so many questions. What to post? I think there's probably a big one that we should definitely cover. Yeah. So, one of the big things that I get people to do regardless of whether you've been posting, whether you're about to post, whether you've never posted before. And people always dishing the supplies out. It's not new advice, but I really do double down and let. It's an introduction post. There are many different ways of doing this, but you need to communicate what you do. People like an introduction post. They like to know, hey, this is Sarah. What is important to her? And you should have a bit of kind of like personality woven in there, you want a headshot. You can quite literally start it with like, hi, I'm Nicole, I do XYZ. It's a format that has yet to come out of fashion. People still like it, still get great engagement. And that can literally be the catalyst. It could be your first post on LinkedIn and ages. That can literally be the catalyst for somebody that you've not worked with in years, reaching out to you and saying, hey, I actually think I need what you do. Can we have a chat? So, you could literally be getting results from that very first post, but you do need to make it really explicit what you do because it's very easy to jump on there and just start reposting stuff. You can repost on LinkedIn from other social channels, but if you only do that, people are missing a ton of contacts that you need to bake in on LinkedIn in order for this to make sense. So, what a lot of people do is they'll just jump on start reposting, it won't really work because people won't really get it. And then they'll be like, well, LinkedIn doesn't work for me. And I challenge that because I think if you can bake in like, here's my perspective, here is what's important to me. Here's like my personality and here's what you need to know. That will help guide this new audience into your world in a much more structured way in a way that just makes sense. So, introduction post, if nothing else. - Okay, so if you are gonna start posting on there, is there a social platform that you feel is most similar to the types of things you would post on LinkedIn? Like, is it most similar to maybe something you'd post on threads or something you would write in your newsletter or a sales email? Like, can you compare the vibe of the post to another social platform that people already are using? - When I first started on LinkedIn, part of the reason I liked it so much is because I used to be an Instagram buddy like eight years ago, I'd say. Back when Instagram was kind of more about like posting one picture and then a really long caption. And it didn't have music, didn't have audio, there was no short form, anything. You didn't have to edit anything. It was just post a picture, stick on a filter and then write a really long thoughtful caption. LinkedIn's kind of like that. It's for the writers. It's for people that love to just write stuff still. Like, people talk a lot about like, oh my god, LinkedIn's moving the video. They're dabbling. But you can still just get really strong content, put up a really great picture and you're done. That's why I like it. - Okay, so it likes abstract. - Yeah. - Maybe closest to abstract. If the girl is there. I have a partner episode about that. We will link it. It's called Everything You Need to Know About Substack. This episode is called Everything You Need to Know About LinkedIn. So, if you liked this one or you're liking this one, you'll love that one. But, okay, I'm interested. I have to put a picture. I would recommend pictures, especially when you're first getting started because same things are the four. - Same thing. - Same thing. - What are we doing? You have headshots, right? - Yeah. - It's just a picture of me. - Yeah. That's kind of what we want. Because we want Ethan to build this. - Yeah. We want that. This is literally just gonna be a podcast of us like audio-stunning. - We're just gonna be going back with the words. - This is the best part. - I would ever do a friendly podcast. - It really, really is when I love that for you. I would say, you're building visual recognition with people. So in the early stages, you want people to start to recognize, oh, that's Sarah. Oh, that's Sarah. Oh, yeah, that's Sarah. But for most people, me especially, I'm not great with names. I'm really good with faces. Like, I will know if I met you 10 years ago at coffee with like 60 other people, I'll recognize the face. I won't be able to do the names, but I'll know the face. - Yeah. - I literally haven't this last week. I walked past somebody in London. I was out for a dog walk. Brangmine, I was like, hood down. She was hood down. It was raining buckets. And I saw her and I was like, I know her from somewhere. Turns out we'd met like two years ago, one time. And I'd bake banana bread and she'd had a piece. And we'd met like for a couple of hours. It was so brief. So you need to help people recognize you facially. Facially, facially. - Very shy. - So that you've been so much about that. So pictures, yeah, facially. So pictures really help with that. You don't have to post pictures of yourself. If it's not really your vibe, you can also, I'm a big fan of posting pictures on my hands. 'Cause I mean, nobody can see this on the podcast, but I'm showing my hands on that tattooed. And so for some, that's my calling card. I'm like, these are my hands. That tattooed, you can tell them my hands because of the ink starting. So that for me is like a way of not needing to show my face all the time, but still having it feel personal brandy. - Interesting. I feel I wasn't picturing the LinkedIn posts with pictures. 'Cause if I'm thinking about the types of things I would post, well, we didn't get to the how much we should post questions. So maybe this is a relevant question. But of course, I understand the need for a photo on like a reintroduction post. Or in my case, an introduction post because this will be me being like, hey guys, I'm here. I get that. But what if I'm posting about something? Like, I'm assuming LinkedIn is like where you're posting your perspective as you shared. So let's say I wanted to promote like my populating mentorship program or something. Recently, I just came up with a really cool idea that I feel there might be a cross over with the LinkedIn. I was gonna say the LinkedIn bros, but like, I don't want them. LinkedIn girlies. If you might get this, on LinkedIn, I had a student that I was meeting with and he really is locked in about his cooperating journey. He hasn't really started yet. He's full time in a different career, making the switch now and he needed a game plan, but something that was going to work for his brain and something I specialize in as a mentor is creating specifics that will work for your brain. Like, I'm not just going to tell you to do what worked for me. I'm going to create something that's going to work for you. And he kept comparing his journey to his fitness journey. He lost like 50 pounds or something recently and he's very locked in about it. And I also, on the DL, I'm very locked in about mine. So I wouldn't say I'm like super knowledgeable and I'm like this personal trainer. My boyfriend is though. So you know what? Secondary knowledge. So I was like, why don't we create your copywriting macros? And I thought it was the fun, cool idea and he loved it. So I created like what his protein is, what his carbs are, what his fats are, whatever. So his protein is like the copywriting muscle that we're building. Super important, we need to make sure we hit all of our protein. I made tats that like go into his copywriting protein. I did another one, you know, his copywriting fat. That's great for your brain, brain building activities. This is what you're going to study. Then your carbs, this is what's fueling your business and giving it energy. This is what you're supposed to do. And my head, I'm like, that's prime LinkedIn post because I feel like I'm sharing this perspective like where else am I really sharing that? Maybe a sales email, I don't know. So if I'm posting something about that, what the fuck picture am I posting? Like a plate, his face, I'm like, I'm not going to post my head shot. You know what I'm saying? That's why I can't understand like where are these pics coming in? No, I feel you. So I would say if you're posting perspective in a sense of like, if you were to go on my LinkedIn, for example, and you would have a bit of a skull, you'll see some posts that are like, I have beef with this this week. Or like, this is what I don't like about the personal branding industry. Or if I see one more thing like this, I will be sick. I sound very complaining on LinkedIn. I swear to God, I'm quite a positive person over there. But like if I'm posting though, they do, they really do. But like, I'm generally a swear to God, positive queen. I'm going to get my reputation right on this recorded line. I've got to do it. But for that kind of content, if I'm talking about my perspective in a very personal sense, like all about me, I would put a picture of myself doing something. Yeah. Because it gives people that visual like, oh, interesting. And if the scrolling is probably more likely that they're going to stop. Yeah, they're going to stop. If you're posting something about a client, that's what I would do. I mean, it's kind of like hot content because it's potentially looking to convert people. Because you're talking about how you're working with students. Yeah. So for that, you don't necessarily always need a picture. If you have like a really good picture of the client, for example, if that doesn't feel weird, because for some people that survive, for some people that's not, especially copyrighting, we don't usually do that. Yeah. That might be a vibe. Like, I work with a lot of people that do branding and design. So I'll get them if they're posting about their client work or like a conversation they've had with clients. I'll get them to post a picture of them with the client that isn't overly staged. Like a candidate like them at the event or something or a picture of the branding work they did together. So they have a bit of a visual aid. But it's generally all about how can I continue telling this story visually? So I try and avoid going too literal. So the place example might work for some people, but I mean, I'd be like, I mean, the thing you and I would be like, that's not the vibe. But as an example, like a picture of you, I feel like this isn't really your vibe to post, but a picture of you in the gym. If that was the same thing. I could. Yeah. It wouldn't be a million miles away. So for you personally, I feel like if we were working together, I probably wouldn't recommend it because I feel like that's not what I see from you. It doesn't go on my brain. It's the background, like my Instagram story. That doesn't go like in my brand for us. Yeah. So if that would be out of character for you, but for someone else that was posting about this kind of thing and if that was their vibe, that would work as a concept. Yeah. It's generally though, always aimed at pictures. They get half to half of them in every single one. So if you're posting that specific story as you, I probably just go copy only. Yeah. So if I did that, that would mean like really analyzing this one post that I thought of. So something that I do on Instagram all the time is my handwriting. Like I'll take, I'll write it down instead of like a fuck ass camera carer. So I will write it down. I'm sick of people stealing this from me. So stop. If you're listening to this, stop. But I will write it down. So I could for that. I'm wondering if that would work on LinkedIn. Like if I did like, wrote down like the, in took a picture of the list, are you, are you following? Like the protein is this? The calories are this. The bubble of love. Yeah. 100%. Somebody I really like that does that as a find of mine. Maya, right? Sure. She does a lot of handwriting stuff because she is a breathwork coach. But she really brings it back to like manual writing and delivering really well. So she's another really good person to follow. Okay. I love that. So I hijacked the, what do I post conversation because I got stressed about the intro. So you post the intro. And then what? What else do you fucking post? How much are we posting on there? Then, okay. So it's kind of what you can maintain. My new favorite thing, my favorite number is 11. And it just so happens that there was a study done, which I wrote down somewhere to sight. But I, I've got the notes up on my phone and I can't find it. Somebody did a study. Surprisingly, the average amount of times that somebody needs to see something in order to like recognize you in different spaces and like take an interest in you now is about 11 on LinkedIn, specifically, they were looking at this data. So for personal brands, somebody needs to see you about 11 times. And if you're posting every day for 11 days, fantastic. They're going to see you more. They're going to build that recognition they might buy from you. If you're posting once a month, for another month, great. You might just have a longer sales runway. So I try and get people to think about what is realistic that you can sustain over longer periods of time. That's what we work on in side soft launch. The final module is literally all about reverse engineering or posting because it's all great for me to be like, well, the average, like great posting time is like three days a week or five days a week. And there's people that post like multiple times a day. I don't believe that you have to do that. And I don't believe that's sustainable or the business owner. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I would never. No, it's wild. But I do want from people though, if they go through the course, the expectation is that they're building the muscle of consistency and they're building something that works around their life. I don't believe in creating things where it's like we have to post X amount of times. And just like, okay, well, are you going on a summer holiday in two weeks cool? Well, then maybe you want to have a plan that allows you to post more at the beginning of the month and less at the end of the month than as long as you're consistently showing up people. LinkedIn doesn't have enough good content that it's like short of things people to see. So at the moment, you could post something two weeks prior and it may not be shown to people until two weeks later or it's being re-showned people because they have a real lot of good content because the shelf, like the longer I'm LinkedIn, it's so much longer which is fantastic because I'm a lazy person. I don't want to touch on the button's popper. It's really good. It's really good. I'm wondering how many people listening to this are convinced about LinkedIn right now. I'm convinced a bit posting is honestly one of the hardest parts. I'm not going to, I'm not going to like it. It's really difficult because there's so many barriers that I think you have to overcome in terms of like the cringe factor, knowing what to say, like working out how to articulate it, writing for LinkedIn is quite different to writing for anywhere else. So I work a lot of copywriters that come through the course as well and they're like, I don't understand this. I write good copy, I don't get why this isn't working for me on LinkedIn and it's a whole different beast. There's so many different factors. It as a platform, like we talked about at the beginning, it's evolving every quarter. They're literally hiring people on the platform, the scaling and growing at different ways and they're testing new things as a platform, which is great for us because it means that the growth is huge in terms of the potential, but it doesn't mean that there's constantly it feels like the metrics are changing that we need to be looking for. That was literally why I started soft launch because I was like, I get this, but there's a barrier for entry, barrier to entry for a lot of entrepreneurs that I think shouldn't be there and they shouldn't have to pay like five figures for the privilege of writing down to and having it like connect with people because that's ridiculous to me. I agree with that. I would never. I just wouldn't straight up not post on there. I wouldn't value it enough for that. The barrier to entry is definitely the reason why the LinkedIn sphere is growing slowly. I'm curious to know, you said it's quite different writing on there. What do you think if you could simply define it? What is the difference? I was just asking you a couple of minutes ago, okay, what do you think it's similar to the writing style or you're saying that people have tried writing on it and what they already write or the way that they already write is not appropriate for LinkedIn or it doesn't work on there. What doesn't work on there? Slash, what does work on there? I think that everything can work on LinkedIn. Okay. Like, truly, I feel like I may have mentioned this beginning. I worked with a client that literally talked about doing mushrooms and talking to aliens. Oh my God, you did not say that. Did I not? Oh my God. No. I must have been talking about this on another cool today. I, one of the clients that I used to work with, she did retreats, but she was talking about spiritual stuff. It was wild and it worked on LinkedIn, like she, she landed partnerships, she got investment while we were working together through LinkedIn and she got a documentary that was being filmed about her, which last day checked, was being recorded, what month is it now? So vibes, like, it works. There is not really one thing that doesn't work on LinkedIn, but there are things that are helpful to consider. So it is genuinely very different to any kind of platform, like with a substat, you can kind of just dive in and like start writing and assume that people will keep reading because they're already on your substat. So they're kind of. And they're too read long form content, that is the point of substat, so that part is a bit different. Yes, 100%. On LinkedIn, you've got that like initial hook at the very beginning and then you get the cut off bit where it's like, see more. So you have to engage people from that very first sentence to keep reading. Right. So that's why it's not like maybe exactly. And it's very difficult to walk that line between click baiting and then not following through. And then it becomes click bait, rather than being like intriguing and then following through and like over delivering. So I think there's quite a big difference. We're feeling comfortable. Feeling comfortable. Like, yeah, we're good though. I feel like you're good. You get this. But then I think there's also you have to be aware that if you're posting content that is quite divisive, that's not a problem as long as it's something that the people that you want to work with can engage with. So, if you're looking at speaking. two people that are still in full-time employment, for example, or are still going to be worried about what people are thinking of them if they're engaging with your stuff. If you're posting things that their bosses wouldn't like, that's not a problem, but it doesn't mean that you don't get the engagement that you want. I think that's something that a lot of people overlook. It's like you need to kind of make it interesting to them, but also something that they feel like they can comfortably showcase publicly because if they like it, it's going to show up on everyone else's newsfeed. Right, interesting, interesting. We have so much good stuff to work with. I feel somebody could listen to this and start their LinkedIn progress today. What do you think? Good. That was my goal because I feel like quite often LinkedIn feels very just complicated and difficult, and a lot of the advice is like post five times a week and make sure you know what you're saying, and it doesn't let you give you-- You know which post what? Yeah, what are we saying? What are we doing? And as much as I can give people like really specific guidance, like the better? Yeah. A love. Okay. Well, thank you so much for giving us such a complete LinkedIn education. We talked about so much good stuff today. Profile, what to remove, what to pose, how often to post, how not to post a fuck-ass post with a weird picture. Love. So as I mentioned earlier, every single thing Nicole said will be linked in the description. It sounds like for everything that we shared about today, she has an extra resource that's giving-- it's giving retail copy. It's what that's giving. And I'm here for that. I love, love, love that. So if you have questions about LinkedIn, obviously you know where to find her. And I'm going to have every single possible link linked. I was going to say LinkedIn, the description, get it? Nicole's like sure. Not a finger gun. She's like now, I'm hitting her with the finger guns. So if you could leave everyone with one final thing, you want them to know about LinkedIn or getting started about LinkedIn, what would it be? It's not as scary as it feels to most people. It's really not. And the more that you can just, like, sat at a little like 30-minute timer and get cracking, or get someone told you accountable, the better. That was one of the best things that somebody ever did for me was like, they sat me down. They were like, you got something to write. You're going to post it. The end doesn't matter if it's good or bad. Like, the more that you can just really overcome that cringed muscle, yeah, 100% experience therapy, just like overcoming the fear of like being perceived on the internet. You just got to take the small steps. I experience this in seasons myself all the time, but it's truly not as scary as it feels right now. The second you actually do it, you'll be like, oh, that was not too bad. And everyone else is on the same boat. So yeah, just get going. I agree. I also want to take this opportunity to remind you that nobody cooler than you are more successful than you ever made fun of you. That never happened and it's never going to happen. If somebody is making fun of you, making you feel insecure, you're afraid of being cringed down around them. They are the problem, not you. They are trying to bring you down to their level. If they are making fun of you or they are making you feel bad for posting something specific. So, that's what I have to say about that. Also, I want to take this time to remind y'all, I have a course in template collection about writing about yourself. And it would be perfect for reintroducing yourself on LinkedIn, introducing yourself on LinkedIn, figuring out what the fuck to say on LinkedIn. And maybe we'll convince Nicole to contribute a little collab moment. I think we're going to have to discuss this. That's a lot. It's called main character moment. It is linked in the description. You can use code point at the story for $100 off of that. Okay? Okay. Nicole, Marguerite Gray, thank you so much for coming on this podcast and teaching us about LinkedIn. We love to have you. Having me, this was a joy. I appreciate it so much. How are you ready to be close personal friends with deep dark secrets? Oh my goodness. Yes. I built a full one for this. We've been waiting for this moment. I'm ready. Okay, guys, we're going to go kiss now. Have a nice day. Thank you so much for being here. You know where to find me. You know where to find her. Do not forget. Okay. Capital, do not forget to comment on this podcast and tell me one thing you loved about it. You can talk specifically about Nicole if you want to because that is going to enter you into my giveaway to win my October month prize. So don't you dare forget. Okay. Okay. Love you. Bye. If you listen to my ads in this episode and you thought, hey, I want Sarah to talk about my thing in my podcast. Good news for you, Queen. You can sponsor this podcast too. The link to be a sponsor of point of the story is in the description for you or you can visit between the lens copy.com/sponsorships to see information about how you can sponsor both the podcast and my newsletter. As a sponsor of either my newsletter or my podcast, you will get in front of thousands of listeners or readers every single week and I guarantee if you think the squirrelies want what you're selling, this is the perfect place to promote your thing.