Transcription
If I lost all of my LinkedIn followers tomorrow and nobody on the platform knew who I was and I had to build it all back from scratch really quickly, this is exactly what I would do, step by step. We'll cover the little-known "search" feature, only available on LinkedIn and not other social media platforms, to get qualified leads within 7 days. And the most important of all, how to get a 10,000-person LinkedIn audience within just 7 days, and this is not by posting content. And you'll all be able to do it.
But right now, it's day one, and we first need to build two parts of the LinkedIn profile, or none of this is going to work, because these two parts are visible to everybody, everywhere, no matter what you do on the platform. And one of these is the LinkedIn positioning statement. And most people write what they do. They see, say things like, "I'm a Founder," "I'm a coach," "I'm a consultant," "I do this," "I do that." Nobody is looking for what you can do. They are looking for what you can do for them. Everybody's favorite radio station is WIIFM: What's In It For Me?
So here's exactly what you need to do. You need to position around a Monday morning problem. And you might be wondering what a Monday morning problem is. And it's a really simple exercise. Picture your ideal client on a Monday morning. First of all, quickly, real quickly, who's your ideal client? Person most likely to buy what you sell. And if you aren't sure on this, just get something really broad, like entrepreneur or professional, because these two groups cover 99% of LinkedIn. Pick one and let's move on.
Imagine them on a Monday morning. They've planned their week on a Sunday. They get up on Monday, they brush their teeth, maybe they have breakfast, maybe they drop their kids at school, and then they head to a physical office or to the home office, excited to do all the things they planned to grow their business or their career. But there, in the inbox, is a problem. This problem could be that a member of staff has just resigned, one of their managers is on their case, an expected sale didn't go through, or maybe even a refund request. That is their Monday morning problem. They look around and they're like, "Who do I have to help me with this?" And they don't have anybody. And that's what we target, right?
It's day two, and we need to take advantage of something Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and the best book publishing houses know inherently. They know that as humans, we should not judge a book by its cover or a movie by its thumbnail. But people, they know this. People do this. And that's why they put so much effort into their thumbnails on Netflix. They know that the brain processes images quicker than text and allows us to reach conclusions about what we see. And the good news is, we can optimize this on LinkedIn so that everybody sees you as an authority. Imagine that feeling you would have if you knew that your profile image and your positioning statement created the image that you wanted.
All you need to do is just get a very simple picture and run it through this website. It's free. Make sure you're a 7, 8, or 9, or even a 10 on every single one of these ratings, likeability, authority, and so on. Don't worry, I'll drop the links to all these resources at the end.
But for now, it's day three, and we need to find your ideal client and contact them. And this is where most people are just going to tell you to send loads of cold messages or cold email to people you don't know, asking them to do things that you've no right to ask them, and it feels horrible. But you don't need to do this. And here's how to do it. Myself and my clients have done this for years, up to $3 million I've made doing this.
Draw a horizontal line on a piece of paper or whiteboard, wherever you want to do it, that represents a timeline of your life. Add vertical lines for all the places you worked and studied. Maybe you went to college, maybe you worked at a big company, even for a few weeks, maybe you moved around the country and your place of residence, maybe you traveled abroad. It doesn't matter. All this will get you quick leads. And you might be wondering, why are we doing this? Well, a lot of research from the main psychology books and evidence-based research shows that people are more accepting of people that are like them and members of the same community. And that's just life, right? And we call it trust stacking when we put it into the framework I'm about to show you, because you end up with a 90% accept rate on your LinkedIn connect requests and loads of conversations with great people that might become clients.
What's the LinkedIn connect request? It's when you invite somebody to become part of your network and a follower, okay?
So, it's day three, and people will now start accepting your invites. What's the first thing we need to do when we've got an ideal client that's just said, "Yes, I want to be part of your network"? Well, we need to take what all the LinkedIn coaches and sales coaches and business coaches tell you, which is: introduce your services, ask questions like, "What do you do?", or link to a piece of content to build your authority. We need to take all of those things and forget about them. Turn it 180 degrees and do none of it. And instead, we need to send what we call a non-needy message, because we want to create the right frame for the conversations with ideal clients we're creating.
And you might be wondering, what's a frame? Well, imagine you've just purchased a beautiful piece of art from the local gallery for a few thousand, and you take it home and you realize you haven't got a frame. So you mount it in duct tape on the wall. The picture would look awful if you did that, right? But now imagine you purchased a beautiful, handmade wooden frame that matches the style of the art and the decor in your house. The same picture, all of a sudden, looks a lot better. And starting a conversation on LinkedIn is exactly like that picture frame. You are in charge of the frame you create, and the frame you present to the people who might do business with you or hire you. And you need to create a non-needy, non-desperate frame.
Now, what does this mean in terms of the practicalities of what we write? Well, it's actually not about what we write. It's about what we don't write. And what we want to make sure we don't do in any first conversation is ask somebody we don't know to do something. Present the service, services to somebody we don't know when we don't even know if they have a need for it. We don't want to link them to a piece of content. And indeed, we don't ask them, we don't want to ask them to do anything at all. We, what we want to do instead is we want to create the non-needy frame and just say something very simple: "Hi [Name], great to be connected. Looking forward to learning more about whatever it says on their profile." Don't write anything else. And we've created the right frame.
But for now, it's day five, and I'm going to explain how to create some social proof on your LinkedIn profile. Otherwise, when you do get the 10,000-person audience, we need to first of all create an environment on our profile where people will believe you're worth spending more time with when they go back to it after seeing you. And think of it like this: imagine you're hiking in some beautiful mountains. I love the French Alps. You may have a favorite place. Imagine you come to an old bridge across a ravine. And before you go across that bridge, you want to really, really make sure it's safe. So obviously, you want to see the guide or someone else walk across it before you feel safe enough to walk across it yourself. Business behavior on LinkedIn is exactly like that bridge.
Here's what we need to do. We need to make sure Creator Mode is enabled. Again, I'll link this at the bottom, just in case you haven't had it done automatically, which a lot of people have. It's free. And then we want to enable the Featured section, which is where you can choose to have certain posts featured so people see them and they can't avoid them. And then create two posts using an AI app I'm about to show you. And we're going to create what's called a listicle post on a carousel because they get loads of reach and they're really low effort, and you don't have to write a story about yourself and do a picture or anything like that. And the reason for that is because LinkedIn changed the algorithm, and it's exactly what we've been doing to get results in the business. And they're really simple and really quick to make using free apps. And all the links again will be available in a moment.
But all you would do, you go into the app here and you would write, "What are the best 10 apps to improve health and sleep?" Press enter, and it's going to go off and get you a ready-formatted listicle post. There you are.
Okay, so we're now at day six, and just, we're going to do it a day early. We're going to show you how to take advantage of something unique to LinkedIn and their algorithm that's going to allow you to get in front of 10,000, literally tomorrow, if you start it. And I'll show you now. Because unlike YouTube, and unlike Instagram and TikTok, here on LinkedIn, content gets pushed very differently. On YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, content gets pushed to a wider audience based on virality. That is to say, if something does really well, it will get pushed to the whole platform. But on LinkedIn, content gets pushed very differently. Content on LinkedIn has much more of a bias to show to people that are already in your network. And that means the worst thing you can do if you're brand new and starting from zero is loads of posting on your own profile daily, because nobody's going to see it. LinkedIn just pushes it to first-degree network, of which you have none.
So what do you do instead? Ethically take advantage of other people's audiences on LinkedIn in a way that at the same time positions you as an authority. Let's just run a really simple example to illustrate this point. If Person One on LinkedIn has a following of 500,000 people and they post on their LinkedIn feed, their first-degree connections are going to see it, 500,000 people. They're also going to see all the people that comment on that post, and they're going to see the people that comment first, and the people that make the best comments. Person Two, let's say they have 100,000. The same thing is going to apply. All of their first-degree network is going to see that post and going to see the comments. So commenting on LinkedIn should actually be called posting and treated as such. But it's better and quicker than posting when done right. And there is absolutely some nuance to it, and it's really important who you target and what you write when you're commenting on profiles.
So you should look for profiles in two categories and no other categories. First, you want people with more than 100,000 people with broad appeal. And to find them, you just need to spend 30 minutes on the platform searching for phrases and words that your target market will like, and everything will pop up and you'll be able to use it. And it can sometimes take people a while. And if you want to shortcut this, I've made a quick spreadsheet with the most popular people on LinkedIn above 100,000. You can download it, and you can really easily build your list. It will save you a lot of time. Pro tip: when you make that list, most of these big, broad influencers will post exactly the same time. And if you can learn what that time is, set a notification on their profile to follow them, you'll be able to arrive quickly and be seen and build that audience even quicker, literally than 7 days.
But I like to do something else, because there's actually another audience I target that gets me quick money and cash, something more important if you're getting going than just the reach, right? So what you can do is you can actually target people with between 1,000 to 5,000 followers. And just imagine you're targeting a CEO or somebody that's been told they need to build a personal brand. And believe me, there's a lot of these now, it's a big trend. And they're just tentatively posting for the first time, and no one's recognizing it, no one's commenting, they're going to feel a bit lonely. But they would absolutely notice you if you start engaging, if you start commenting, and you support them. And very soon, that turns into conversations, and that turns into clients.
And here's the strategies I use for commenting, because we have it down to an art. First of all, the first category of comment we do is we like to do a motivational comment that makes everybody feel good, that attracts people that jump in, and they all want to feel good, and they all want to look good in front of other people. LinkedIn's a social. The second type of post I do is I just picture that I'm giving my best advice, like I'll give to a client, and I put a lot of effort in, and I put that on the post. And if you do this, by the end of day seven, you will absolutely have an audience to take advantage of.
But there's one thing that can speed this up. You can use LinkedIn automation apps. There's a couple of new ones you can take advantage of. Their AI search, you can build lists so you don't need to bookmark, so it's all done automatically. Check this video here, and it's going to show you how to take your first seven days to the next level.