The LinkedIn Strategy You're Probably Not Doing | Bathroom Break #107

0:07Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and subjectline.com. each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for another bathroom break.

0:41I'm Jay Schwadelson from Do This, Not That, and I'm with the Daniel Murray from the Market Millennials. And before we talk about some very cool under the radar, off the radar, LinkedIn secret tips, tactics stuff, Daniel, We haven't really talked about it much, but you're like very deep in now as being a dad. What is going on? How old is your kid? Are you like, is your kid now driving? Like, give me an update on some things that you're doing. So two weeks ago, we just started swim lessons. And I didn't know that it's intense that you have to go like four days a week. And they have all these rules that you can't.

1:17Four days a week? Yeah, four days a week. It goes four days a week to swim lessons every morning. And they have all the rules like he can't have like dairy like two hours before he can't have this fruit. There's all these rules in that. But it's two days ago is his first time like going underwater. And I'm like, I start freaking out and like searching, like, what is the rules for dry drowning? Is he drowning? Like, how would I know he's drowning? And oh, he's with an infant. He's with a like swim instructor that's like really good and well known. but it's just so scary to see your kid first time underwater when he's been in like a bathtub for like eight nine months um and not going underwater so that's that's freaky when they put like babies underwater like that it i don't care that my kid died it freaks me out yeah it's freaking but he's good now like he's like but this is the only time he ever screams like i've never heard him screaming Every time he goes in the water, he is full-blown screaming the whole time, like nonstop.

2:16But the only time he doesn't scream is like he knows when he's about to roll underwater, he stops, like holds his breath, and then comes back up. And that's how I like this far. Yeah. Do you do anything else four times a week? Not with your child, just in general. That is the most, I mean, I don't think I do anything four times a week. Oh, that's the most intense. I thought like swim lessons are like you go once a week. Yeah, but it was like a chill thing. And it's like, no, it's intense. You're going to have like Michael Helps or something. And apparently there's like rules about you have to put them in a bathtub a certain way.

2:50Because if you teach them something bad in the water, then you like throw your lessons back. And it's just all this stuff that I have to think about with Swimless. Dude, you're next level. I need you to be my dad. All right. Let's jump into some LinkedIn tips. uh daniel you taught me something about the size of a linkedin post that i stole that has my engagement skyrocketed after i stole this tip from you so you got to share everybody what the tip is yeah so the ratio eight eight by nine nine nine the reason why we we think that's like the best ratio is that if you see a text post that only if you look in your feed it takes you do a text post is you're competing against other real estate um when you do 800 by 999 you basically take up the whole feed for your post so if you're on your phone and scrolling yours is the only post that someone could react to um so this helps like get not only like people you not competing against other real estate but you're you're like the only the scroll time goes up on that pose it gives you more chance of getting engagement.

3:58And if you have a good hook or a good image, it skyrocks your engagement if you do it this way because it takes up the whole feed. All right, so let me break that down in simple terms. On LinkedIn, let's say you're making your thing in Canva or whatever, you go and you pick custom size and you put 800 by 999 pixel size, that specific size. That's the size that Daniel's talking about to get you to have the ultimate engagement on LinkedIn. I've now done this for, I don't know, six months. It has changed my engagement. It skyrocketed. All right, I have something super cheesy I'm going to get made fun of that I've been doing that is working that I'm embarrassed to say I'm doing.

4:37But so the number one thing for the algorithm on LinkedIn that they're looking for is how often a post that you put out there gets shared, sent around to other people, or if it gets saved. If somebody clicks on the three dots and then saves the post. So what I've been doing, after about 10 minutes of my post going live, I go and actually save my own post. And then I click the send button and I send it to like, I don't know, 10 people that I know or whatever. And since I've started doing that, saving my post and then sending it to people, it has boosted my engagement significantly. How cheesy is that?

5:15I hate to say this as a marketer, but you have to do what works on the platform. And a year ago, if you liked your own post, it gets shared to your network more than you not liking your post. So people who said don't like your own post, it's so cheesy. Well, you get way more reach because it's sharing to a portion of your network every time you like your post. um so i don't think that is a i think i always recommend do what works even though that is pretty cheesy that you're just sending your post to random people and people like why are you sending this post to me but i do think i always on the side of you have to know the rules of the game of a platform and play them to the best of your ability because they're gonna those rules are gonna go and other people are playing those games so like play them so you can get attention because the ultimate goal on social is to get attention.

6:10I don't care what anybody says. Like if you're on social to write a post to get two likes because it's a good post and you don't want to get attention, that's fine. But that's a journal, not like an actual marketing strategy. So that's my point for that. So I'll tell you one thing on LinkedIn that I did once and I'll never do again. I want to see if you agree, which is unlike on Instagram where you could use something like ManyChat to automate DMs to people. a while back, about a year or so back, I decided I was going to attempt to automate some DMs on LinkedIn. And I connected some tool that everybody said was a great tool, whatever.

6:46And it was firing off all these DMs and all this stuff. And then like, I got like, it was terrible. I lost all my engagement on my posts. I was like blacklisted without me even knowing it. Right. And then I got rid of that tool and I got rid of the automated DMs and stuff. And everything came back. Everything is fine. So I am on team, never use a LinkedIn automation tool because A, it is cheesy, but B, it's not like on Instagram, it will destroy you. Do you buy that? LinkedIn notoriously does not like plugin stuff on their platform. I think the only thing they are okay with is scheduling tools and if it's like approved by them.

7:29But if you're doing random hacky stuff that connects, not only your risk of like getting shadow banned on the feed, you're at risk of actually getting your account banned from LinkedIn. And then you have to go fight and say, like, so I've never, I've stopped like connecting third-party tools that are like LinkedIn hasn't recommended anymore because I'm super scared of LinkedIn just banning my account. And then you lose your account for, for, and then you had to go and fight and talk to, I've seen people being out of their account for two, three weeks from doing. Oh, no, no. Oh, that's good to know.

8:02You I know I I'm with you I I they don't mess around they really don't mess around no like Instagram is like more chill like other players are more chill I've been doing DMs on Instagram of like a free guide to people who like new followers just to like introduce them to myself yeah yeah so like a new follow I'll like do a many chat DM yeah many chats cool yeah yeah I think it's a cool way to like engage with your followers but um but instagram's less is more chill than linkedin because linkedin also if you some people are like think they're super smart and like they change their name on there and they're like oh i got you like you changed your name on there like i may put my name in all caps i got you um look they're spamming me um so that's the linkedin game is played.

8:52Yeah. Back to the swim lesson thing. So when I, not that you asked, but when I was two years old, I wonder why I couldn't swim when I was two. I was two years old. I was living in New York and we had a pool and I guess I fell in the pool and my parents were like in the backyard, but they weren't watching me or whatever. And my brother ended up saving me and it was a big deal. And they put it in the, in the New York post that he saved me from drowning. But the problem is my parents have always felt like crap. Like the parents are bad, terrible. They're always like, we look horrible. Like we're in the New York post for basically being crappy parents.

9:35I was like, dude, why was I near the pool if I couldn't swim? And then I ended up getting a lot of swim lessons and stuff too. So it's good that you're doing it. But, um, I'm as a kid, I remember I was with my grandma in the pool and like you know those like like floaty things that you put in between your legs yeah i think i and i have a vivid memory and i'm like i think i was like two years old too and i kind of knew how to swim but i jumped to go grab it and then i like my only memory is like the like what like i saw water like um above and my grandma dived in and got me but it was like super scary.

10:11So now we have a pool fence. We have an alarm that when someone goes out, like the house, it says that sliding door. I want to ask you something. So over all the listeners, Daniel spent the first seven years of his life growing up in Africa. That's not a joke. He did. So when you would get swim lessons, were you in the water with sharks and whales? I feel like there's a lot of animals going on there. How do you get swim lessons in Africa? I think you kind of learn how to like the hippos teach you how to swim so like hippos and flamingos and uh yeah you learn that you learn i don't feel like you're being honest no you go to an actual pool it's like but um but they are there's a lot of bodies of water in africa so like you you gotta um but not as much as like florida but did you have a pet hippo like as a kid no i i told you the story i used to tell people because so many people don't know anything about africa that i had a pet elephant named akuna matata that i used to ride to school every morning um and then i had like my little hut and i lived in the hut seven and i would come back to my hut and go chill in my hut because people people really don't know anything about africa it's really it's really that hakuna matata hakuna matata that elephant is no worries yeah exactly so i missed you missed that elephant uh well yeah everybody drop you know daniel uh a comment on his uh reviews let him know that hakuna matata you know no worries you know what i mean oh actually funny sorry about that that's my son's cool song so who knew yeah i need a pool song i think it's something by doing because that's like the only way he chills if i put it on so i put a kuna matata on so that's good i'm gonna do that all right everyone go listen to hakuna matata we'll see the next one daniel come on man i gotta get back to work get out of there all right while he's still in there this is jay check out my podcast do this not that for marketers each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and i hope you give it a try oh here's Daniel.

12:23He's finally out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Millet podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marking tips that we just spew out and it could be anything from email, subject line, to any marking tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.