Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Growing Your Network, Building Your Personal Brand, and Going Viral on LinkedIn

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Hala Taha has always had a strong work ethic and a desire to change the world, but when she worked in the radio industry, she was often seen for just her looks. When she decided to change her personal brand to focus on the intellectual value she has to offer the world, she turned to the one place all the other intellectual professionals were hanging out: LinkedIn. Within a year, she reached 60k LinkedIn followers and became a LinkedIn influencer. In this episode, you’ll learn how to gain a massive, engaged following on LinkedIn from Hala Taha, the LinkedIn Queen herself.  In this episode, Hala and Ben will discuss:  - Why did Hala choose LinkedIn, of all platforms?  - Hala’s LinkedIn come-up story  - Tips to expand your LinkedIn network and post engagement  - The importance of making your content skimmable  - What many people get wrong about LinkedIn  - The only right way to use hashtags on LinkedIn  - New to LinkedIn? Here’s what to avoid - Why you should regularly remove your followers  - Sell in the DMs, not on your feed - And other topics… Ben Albert is an entrepreneur, podcaster, public speaker, marketer, community builder, and professional discoverer. As a Marketer, he helps professionals use the internet to expand their business seamlessly, by bridging hidden gaps in their online presence. With his podcast concierge services, he helps leaders reach targeted consumers so they can better increase their influence, build relationships, and earn partnerships that pay, using strategies they've often never heard of. Ben is also the curator of The “Real Business Connections Network.” He hosts 5 podcasts, “Rochester Business Connections,” “Learn Speak Teach,” “Ben’s Bites,” “Five Minute Fridays,” and “Real Hits.” LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘masterclass’ for 25% off at yapmedia.io/course. Resources Mentioned:  Real Business Connections podcast: https://realbusinessconnections.com/ Balbert Marketing: https://balbertmarketing.com/  Ben’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-albert-a74737106  Sponsored By:  LMNT - Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order only when you order through DrinkLMNT.com/YAP Shopify - Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. Hey, young and profitors! Today we're replaying my interview on the LearnSpeak Teach podcast with Ben Albert. Ben is the curator of the real business connections network and the host of the LearnSpeak Teach podcast. This interview with Ben is all about mastering the LinkedIn algorithm, and I go pretty damn deep.

We talk about how to make your content skimable, how to audit your followers, how to sell on LinkedIn, and even the right way to use hashtags. I don't hold back in this episode, but it's still just a glimpse of what you'll get in my two-day live LinkedIn masterclass. And we hold this LinkedIn masterclass every single month, so if you want to check out details for the next one, go to YapMedia.io slash course to learn more. And if you enjoyed this episode, there's 10 more hours of content in my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. Again, if you want details, go to

YapMedia.io slash course and we'll stick that link in the show notes. LinkedIn is the platform you need to master if you want to create a thriving personal brand in the business world. And it's relevant for everyone, whether you want to climb up the corporate ladder, expand your small business, or simply grow your influence with the community of like-minded people. All right, so let's talk LinkedIn. Here's my interview with Ben Albert on the LearnSpeak Teach podcast.

Hi, Pat. Hi, Pat. Hi, Maria. So happy to be on this show again. It's always such a pleasure. If you're looking to learn about LinkedIn, you're in the right spot, correct? Yeah, I mean, they call me the podcast princess, but I'm also the LinkedIn queen. The LinkedIn queen. So I was, I was trying to come up with different names.

I was thinking LinkedIn Lioness. Oh, I love that. Lionesses are courageous. They're strong, they're hunters, but also caretakers. It's funny you say that people tell me all the time that my spirit animal is a lion. Like I'll have strangers come up to me and be like,

do you know that you're a lioness? And I'm like, okay, thanks for letting me know. You are, you're the LinkedIn queen, you're the LinkedIn lioness. And you also just launched what is a YAP Academy? Yes, so I launched my third business, which is the educational arm of YAP Media YAP Academy. And it's going super well.

Our first program is a LinkedIn masterclass, and then we're gonna put out a podcast class as well. Excited for that. Yeah. Let's talk LinkedIn because the masterclass is blowing up. Guys, go follow Howl on LinkedIn. That's in the show notes. I feel like the only people that aren't following you on LinkedIn There's like a small little couple and baby dash. But do you remember when you first started LinkedIn? What was your first relationship? You type LinkedIn.com. What happens?

Was it a job board? Where did this all begin? That's a good question. Nobody ever asks me that. So I had a LinkedIn profile from like 10 or 12 years ago, right? But I didn't actually start being a content creator on LinkedIn per se until 2018 when I launched my podcast. So to answer your question, I don't really remember when I actually created my profile, it was probably sometime in college because you know how they tell you to build your

online resume and you used LinkedIn to get a job. And so I always thought of LinkedIn as that, like, job network platform you go on there so you can get a job and then you don't really log on. And then when I was at Hula Packard, I got introduced to LinkedIn in a different way because I started running social media for Hula Packard. And one of our big initiatives was to use LinkedIn because it's a big B2B company. And at one point in my role, I had like every job at Hula Packard on the marketing team. At one point, I was sales comps. And my role was to learn LinkedIn,

aside from just running the company page, I needed to learn sales strategies on LinkedIn and teach the sales team how they can leverage it. And I would book speakers who would talk about LinkedIn. And I started exposing me to this world. And I started realizing that like, there's sort of an opportunity on LinkedIn to blow up. And there was a big gap in terms of young women on LinkedIn,

podcasters on LinkedIn, content creators in general on LinkedIn. And so when I launched my podcast in April of 2018, I didn't think about Instagram, I didn't think about YouTube or anything else other than my audio podcast and then LinkedIn. And I put all my chips on LinkedIn and I posted every single day for, you know, till today, five years later, I was at every single day basically

and just stayed really consistent. Cool. So, was it strategic to choose LinkedIn or was it like, I already know what I'm doing here? Like, did you know where your audience would be? Was it strategic? Like a lot of people might be wondering, well, why LinkedIn is that's B2B, right? I don't know. Well, it was really strategic because I wanted to put out a platform that was really about self-improvement. In my former life, I've been doing online radio shows and blogging and I hacked Twitter when I was younger. And I was, you know, I had an Instagram account, so it's not like I wasn't on the other platforms. I was probably better versed on Instagram, Twitter and all the other platforms at that time.

But the opportunity on LinkedIn that I saw is that the audience wanted to learn and it was more about a platform, about conversations, education. And I was at this point in my life where for a long time, I was sort of sexualized in my 20s. You know, I used to host parties and I was at this point in my life where for a long time I was sort of sexualized in my 20s. You know, I used to host parties and I was on the flyer of posters with DJs and and would interview hip-hop artists. And it was usually like really flirty conversations about music and their relationships and just not that meaningful. And I felt like I was, you know, an executive in corporate now. And I wanted to be more professional. I wanted people to, um, want to hear from me from because of my brain, not

because of my outfit, not because of what I look like. And I really just saw LinkedIn as like the only place that wasn't really sexualizing me and allowing me to just be myself. And so I didn't care. Like, you know, you guys see me in if you're on video, like, I look really girly or whatever. When I was starting on LinkedIn, like, I was like a nerd, like, I had big headphones like you. I like would barely, I would never have time to really do my makeup. And I would just get on. And a lot of it was like audio only. And it just like allowed me to just be a nerd.

And embrace that. And for once in my life, not worry about like what I looked like and like what I was wearing, but more of like what the conversation was about. The conversation, the content. And yeah, I've got big headphones. I'm totally a nerd, Hala. And I can relate because I got started in podcasting with the local music podcast.

And then when COVID hit and I started my firm, I rebranded. I didn't want to be hippie barben anymore. I wanted to be business Ben and LinkedIn's where I went. I know personally I posted, I put together the perfect post, my first ever post in like 10 years and crickets. Did that happen to you when you started? Where were you when you started and talk a little bit about the come up process. Yeah. So when I first started I wasn't getting massive traction, but I'm like not a person who basically takes no for an answer. I remember I was getting a decent enough traction that like three months into it. My boss at hewlett Packard was like, Hala, he's like, I always knew you're gonna be like two, like you were never gonna stay here forever. Like he's like, I know that one day I'm gonna like look back on this and

you're literally gonna be famous. And, and like he called it like way before it even happened because he just saw that like it was just like bubbling up. And I would say like, you know, I was not getting a lot of likes, but like pretty instantly I figured out how to really manipulate the platform and I was getting like 300 likes and back then like that was a lot. So I was getting traction.

And so suddenly I was like the most popular employee at Huat Packard. There's 300,000 employees on the most popular employee on LinkedIn other than the CEO, right? So then they're sending me to conferences and I'm taking pictures with the C suite and like they're trying to like leverage the fact that I'm like growing this little brand on LinkedIn. And a lot of people get scared to post on LinkedIn because they think that their company's gonna look down upon it. That happens at first,

but once you like reach a certain point, then people wanna utilize you for that asset that you've created that's actually an asset for the company if you represent the company well, right? And so I actually got a lot of support and a lot of promotions for starting my LinkedIn journey, which encouraged me more to get into it. And in terms of like what it looked like, essentially I started my LinkedIn to promote my podcast.

And so my podcast was my long form content. And the whole goal of LinkedIn was to actually grow the podcasts. But what happened, what ended up happening first is that I became a LinkedIn influencer first and then two years later, my podcast blew up. And I became the number one podcast around LinkedIn and a lot of my LinkedIn fans knew about my podcasts, but my audio podcasts like to the masses didn't really blow up until two years later. The LinkedIn influence came first and I leveraged LinkedIn to then blow up my podcast. And basically I was consistent, I left HP

and I went to Disney. I lived in Brooklyn and my commute every day was about 55 to an hour away. I would, from Brooklyn to Midtown. And I just had a rule, my one job on the train was to write my LinkedIn post. And on the way home, my job was to do all of my community engagement. And so I split it two fold from the start. I knew that it was just as important and just as much time needed to be spent

on dams, on comments, on engaging with my community, on sending out invites, on sending out like proactive dams. And I literally split up my time half and half. At the same time, I got a little bit lucky, magnetic, whatever you want to call it. And if you guys listen to episode one with me, I'm sure you will get this backstory. I essentially had a team of 20 volunteers who worked for free for me for the podcast for two years. Since episode number two, I had volunteers on my podcast. And there are basically fans from LinkedIn

who also were fans of the podcast that wanted to help and just felt like there was a bigger mission than them and they just felt very compelled. And so I would tell my team what to do. I would create my asset in advance. I'd write the post every single day. I never skipped a day and do all my engagement at home. Within like a year, I grew to like 60,000 followers, and I was like officially like, and this was,

guys, this was like five years ago, there wasn't influencers like that on LinkedIn, like, now a lot. So like, I was already an influencer, like a year into it. And then it just, you know, kept compounding. I got better and better. I started my agency, started learning from other clients, understanding how to build accounts, no matter what size they're at, starting from scratch. They've got millions of followers, no engagement. And I just really figured out the algorithm and happy to go through some tactics in terms of how people can leverage what I've learned over five years. I do want to talk about some of the tactics to get a little more microscopic because you

were on LinkedIn as a podcaster early, which helps. You had incredible grit and hard work and an amazing team with you, which absolutely helps. But you could be running full speed, but if you're running in the wrong direction, you're not going to get anywhere. You can post every day. You could post five times a day. You and I know you probably shouldn't post five times a day, but you could post five times a day, you and I know you probably shouldn't post five times a day, but you could post five times a day and get nowhere.

What was the secret sauce as to why your post and your growth was happening when other people weren't? Well, it was so I stood out. So the number one goal on social media, there's a couple like just no matter what social media platform, there's a couple goals that you always keep in mind. Number one, stop the scroll. Number two is you need to keep users entertained and engaged on the platform if you want the algorithm and the platform to reward you, right? So those are the two main roles that I always abide by no matter what social platform I'm on. So to stand out in the feed, I was very different

because I was a young woman in business talking about a new area that was pretty innovative at the time five years ago podcasts, right? And I was interviewing experts and I was only providing value. There's just a third number three, like rule of social media, like provide value, right? Be meaningful, serve, right? And so I was serving, serving, serving, never asked for anything, never sold anything, right? so I was serving serving serving never asked for anything never sold anything right and just kept serving stood out in the feed so if you guys look if you're on video and you're seeing this right now I've got bright colors neon green neon pink neon blue high contrast bold colors from the start I had bold colors very quickly transitioned in the beginning. They were a little bit muted and then just realized like, I got to go bold.

I got to go bright. So start out in the feed. I was like using hot pink in my feed. The other thing is that, you know, video podcasts were an a thing yet. I was doing audio. So I used to create these really bright, fancy comic book style, audio grams, also really stood out, also really different. And so continually, I've had to evolve, like, how am I different?

How do I stand out? You always got to figure out how to stand out. So people get linked and wrong because they think it's corporate, it's professional, so they think logo, they think template it. But the thing is, is that the more salesy and promotional something looks, the more logo heavy, the more that people get turned off, and they feel like it's salesy, it's not authentic, it's not promotional, and it's not shareable when it has somebody else's logo on it. And so I didn't use logos, I was very personal brand focus, which was different in itself. I used a lot of photographs, so a lot of

LinkedIn's feed was like articles and going to like boring articles or stock footage. But I had photographs of myself and I wouldn't be scared about wearing whatever outfit I wanted to wear. And like, I remember when I really embraced like photographs and being on video, that's one thing's like super blew up for me on LinkedIn. Because a lot of people are afraid of showing their face. And people weren't seeing the trend that LinkedIn was becoming a social media platform, like all other social media platforms in terms of content creators being on that platform. all other social media platforms in terms of content creators being on that platform. Love it. Answer the objection. Well, LinkedIn's not Instagram or Facebook. Well, what am I supposed to be posting pictures of myself that? Isn't that for Instagram and Facebook? So, it's not. I mean, there are millions of users on LinkedIn. The only difference is

that the audience is just very high caliber. They're a little bit older. In some regards, they're educated, they're rich, they usually have jobs, they're looking to buy, and it does have a professional skew. Now, I don't want to make it seem like it's like as any other platform. There is a career and professional skew, and the only reason why is because actually the last stage of the LinkedIn algorithm is human editors. And these editors are actually making sure that the conversation aligns to LinkedIn's agenda. And LinkedIn is a job site.

They compete with companies like Indeed and Zephyr Cruder. And so one of their main initiatives is to show that people are getting promotions, that people are hiring, to give recruitment tips, to talk about entrepreneurship, or to talk about holidays that they're promoting Women's Month, Black History Month, whatever is on their editorial agenda,

that's actually what they're gonna make go massively viral. And so I'm so good at manipulating LinkedIn that I can get all my clients to on average, get 1,500 to 3,000 likes every single post. And then if we align to a careers or LinkedIn's editorial agenda, we might get 100,000 likes or 30,000 likes. And that's when it really goes massively viral.

So LinkedIn is essentially controlling the conversation to make sure it has a professional skill. So you do wanna play into that. But at the same time, there's so many people from all walks of life on LinkedIn looking to consume content. And the good news is only 6% of those people are actually content creators, which is just crazy compared to other platforms. Only 6% of people are competing to be content creators, so there's lots of opportunity.

Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and Profiters, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University Podcast. The Millionaire University Podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who want to run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke.

Justin and Tara started from Square One, just like you and me. They faced lows and dug themselves out of huge debt. Now they're financially free and they're sharing their hard-earned lessons with all of us. That's right, millionaire university will teach you everything you need to know about starting and growing a successful business. No degrees required. In each episode you'll gain invaluable insights from seasoned entrepreneurs and mentors who truly understand what it takes to succeed. From topics like how to start a software business without creating your own software,

to more broad discussions such as eight businesses you can start tomorrow to make 10K plus month, this podcast has it all. So don't wait, now is the time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays, find the Millionaire University podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Opportunity is endless. This is what I like to hear. And in Hala, the listener, most of them know, most of them are on LinkedIn, I completely built out the podcast by networking on LinkedIn.

Me included, I get some likes and engagement, know where near what you get. And a lot of my network gets three, five, 10 likes, five comments. We're not, we're not trying to get 20,000 right now. We're just trying to get to our first 100. Yeah. Someone, I'm going to grab my pencil for someone who wants to consistently get 50, 100, 200 likes. And if you can get 200, we can make it up to 2000. Yeah. Where do you recommend? We can write it down. I got my massive pencil. Oh my god. That's huge. Where where do you recommend someone's star? What should be the absolute first move to go from 10 to 10,000? What's my first move? Okay, so first I'm going to talk about what's hot or not in terms of features because I think a lot of people get this wrong

They are familiar with Instagram and they try to translate their Instagram strategy to LinkedIn and that's number one, don't do that. It's a totally different platform with totally different priorities. And so in terms of features of videos on LinkedIn, actually don't perform well, okay? So there's only very specific types of videos that perform well and that is like motivational,

shareable videos that have a positive skew that really stand out in the feed, meaning that like maybe it's outside, maybe it's babies, maybe it's people dancing or animals, like something that's really going to stand out and be motivational and shareable, those types of videos will go viral on LinkedIn. But if it's a talking head video or something like that, it's been done too many times where people just have sensory adaptation. Nobody wants to watch a video for 30 minutes or whatever, or even 30 seconds and get any sort of insight. People are skimming, right?

So that brings me to my next point. You've got to be skimmable. On average, people are scrolling through nine posts at a time on LinkedIn. And part of the LinkedIn algorithm is judging dwell time. So how much time are people spending on your post? And if you want people to spend time on your post, there's a couple of things that you need to do.

First of all, like we mentioned, bright, bold, stand out in the feed, whether that's photographs, whether that's with your topic, whatever it is, you wanna make sure that you're standing out. And the best way to stand out is to use the largest vertical real estate that you can on mobile. And so that is a four by five aspect ratio of a graphic. to use the largest vertical real estate that you can on mobile. And so that is a 4x5 aspect ratio of a graphic.

Okay, so it's basically, I call it poster size at YAP Media. It's not square size like Instagram. It's not quite story size. It's a 4x5 aspect ratio. You guys can Google it and get the size, okay? And basically, that is going to take up the most amount of vertical real estate on a mobile phone. So it's going to increase dwell time because people have to scroll longer.

And you also want to start your caption off with a hook. So that's going to get people interested. They're going to want to click to the three dots and LinkedIn to kind of read more. That's going to spend more time on your post and hopefully take some sort of viral action. So back to Schimmable. LinkedIn will actually consider your post low quality

if you use big chunky paragraphs. And on social media, just a few sentences, two or three sentences will look like a big paragraph. So you need to make sure that you're doing line by line. I think last time we talked, you called it broetry. Yes, broetry. So line by line. And still, it's literally, I've known this intuitively, but now that I have

a LinkedIn masterclass, I've like studied all LinkedIn engineering documentation and and now I I feel I realize it's part of their algorithm that chunky paragraphs, they deprioritize because they know they don't keep users engaged or entertained and people don't like to read. They're skimming. They want the information fast. The other tip that I'll give you is like more psychological. A lot of people make the mistake and it's really cool to have this masterclass because then I see like what people are doing wrong because usually I'm in control doing everything right for my clients. It's interesting to see like what people still don't like get wrong. And being too wordy is a big problem for people. They're just, they

just don't know how to be concise. So I think that I like to do is I write out my post and I'm like, what can I cross out? What can I cross out? How can I make it shorter? Right? The shorter, the better, even if it's a long story, shorter is better. Like, take out the fluff. The other thing is that when you're talking on social media, you want to stay away from lecturing. And you sound like you're lecturing when you give all the information and you don't let people think for themselves. So make sure that you have just like one single point that you're trying to get across. You're really concise.

You're writing it in an entertaining way. And you're not giving so much information that there's nothing else for people to think about or add. If you leave things a little bit more vague, people will comment with longer comments and you actually get more points for those viral actions than if they gave a short comment or nothing at all. So you don't want to look like a know-it-all being like, here are the three steps. Here's the exact three things. It's more like, here's one tip and what else do you think? You know and I mean, that's how you get people to engage.

Start a conversation rather than just preaching your entire encyclopedia of knowledge. Start a conversation with them. Yeah, people think that social media is like a college essay or homework assignment. You don't wanna be the guy at the party that's boring talking about work. You wanna be fun and keep people entertained and engaged.

So it's like, how do you take what you to teach, make it really fun, make it concise, make it vague enough so people want to contribute and you don't seem like you're lecturing and that you're know-it-all and the conversation and community will flow. So it can be about this or any of the things we talked about or something new with love for education in the master class. One thing I love about master classes is people can come to you with their individual issues, concerns. I'm sure you can look at post, work with each other.

What's an example of someone who is doing something terribly wrong? And what adjustments did you guys make to ensure that they were rock star going forward? Yeah, so one thing that people get wrong on LinkedIn is that they see like an influencer like me and they share my post instead of creating their own post. And that is a big no-no on LinkedIn. As content creators, you never want to repost or reshare anything.

If you want to acknowledge somebody's content, instead of reposing it, I would advise that you recreate it, post a net new post, you can screenshot their posts, you can credit them in the comments, so people do that wrong. Another thing that people do wrong are hashtags and tagging on LinkedIn. Again, they're using other platforms as their playbook

and LinkedIn is not the same platform. So for example, people use 10 to 20 hashtags on Instagram. On LinkedIn, if you do that, you're going to be flagged in the first stage of the algorithm and your post is not going to be served to other users, it will be considered spam. And so you cannot use over five hashtags on LinkedIn. That is the absolute limit. And I recommend that you only use three. So I typically say that you have two branded hashtags. So for me, that's like hashtag gap, hashtag young and profiting. And then you have one or two broad hashtags that you try to dominate.

So for me, it's hashtag podcast, hashtag marketing, right? And I just dominate those hashtags. Those are the only industry niche hashtags that I use. I never make up words like, you know, on Instagram people try to be cute, like hashtag too cool for school or something. Like, you know, I never make up phrases like that because that doesn't work,

it doesn't how it works on LinkedIn. People are following those hashtags. And what happens if you don't focus on just a few niche hashtags or broad hashtags, what I mean by broad hashtags is like hashtags that people follow that aren't branded, right? And they usually are related to your niche or industry. And so people follow those hashtags. And if you are just really nilly throwing them out different ones every day, people who follow those hashtags are going to randomly see your stuff in their feed.

They're not going to recognize you and they're not going to engage. So what's going to happen is that your impressions go up, your engagements go down, and your engagement rate goes lower. And that actually hurts you. And so the only way that you should use hashtags is if you concentrate on one and you get people used to seeing your content.

So they start to engage on it because they feel like you're familiar, not some random person who's infiltrated their feed, right? So that's what people get wrong with hashtags. And with tagging, you really never want to tag anyone in your post on LinkedIn if they won't respond within the first 90 minutes. And this is something people get wrong all the time. They get a promotion.

Oh my God, I just got a promotion at Disney. And they tag Disney. And nobody at Disney is ever going to comment or like. And so LinkedIn is going to consider that spam because they counted and engage. And so my rule of thumb is just tag them in the comments if you're going to tag them. Don't tag them in your caption unless you have a conversation with them beforehand where you say, Hey, I'm going to write this. I need you to like and comment within the first 90 minutes or the post is going to bomb.

One thing that came kind of had me thinking is the branded hash tags. So you work with some of the biggest up and coming thought leaders in the entire world. It's possibly easier for them to start a branded hash tag. If you don't have a large audience yet, should you be using a branded hash tag or should you use that? You got to start somewhere. Everybody starts from zero, right? So I have been using YAP Young & Profiting for five years before I had any followers. I never

changed it. YAP Young & Profiting podcast for five years straight until I had the YAP Academy. And then I was like, YAP Academy marketing or whatever. Because now I have a little bit of a different thing that I'm trying to do. But I was just consistent and now thousands of people follow each one. I have people who have like bots on my account, no matter what I post, they share it right away, they like it right away. And I'm like, I don't approve automation or bots on LinkedIn, but I'll take it. You know, it helps me. So interesting. Is there a lot of what are some of the problems with LinkedIn for a listener that maybe isn't spending much time on LinkedIn yet? I know personally I experience cold pitches all the time There's a lot of commotion. Is there anything if I'm gonna go? I'm a listener. I'm gonna set up a LinkedIn

What should I look to avoid or are there any kinds of people I should avoid or just any Issues that kind of just setting an expectation here that it might not be all sunshine and rainbows. Well, I think that I think LinkedIn's a great platform and just like any platform you curate your feed, you curate your following. So a lot of people make the mistake, there's a couple things that I'm going to go through. A lot of people make the mistake of inviting everybody, but you get 30,000 connections that are first connections and you can proactively invite those 30,000 people to your network.

So a lot of people make the mistake of like blindly inviting people to connect, sending out invites. And what they're not looking at is seeing, is this person somebody who's going to buy from me? Is this person somebody who's going to be interested in my content? And is this person active on LinkedIn? Are they actively liking and commenting on posts? Because a lot of people go on LinkedIn, they log on, they never come back on like because

they got a job or maybe they're a sales role and they were required to post but then they never came back on. And you want to remove those people from your profile because step two in the LinkedIn algorithm is essentially feeding your posts to a subset of your first connections. If those people aren't interested in your content, if they're not active, okay, if they don't take viral actions, your post is going to be deemed boring and not entertaining. LinkedIn is going to stop serving it to other people. You want to always make sure that your first connections are active and interested in your

content. So now that I've hit 30,000, you know, I'm at way above 30,000, but I'm saying I only have 30,000 first connections. I'm continually removing people who are inactive and adding people back who are now active on LinkedIn and interested in my content. So that's a big mistake that people make, just blindly inviting people, and then their network is really poor and unengaged. And then they think that LinkedIn doesn't work when it's no. Like you haven't pruned it correctly. You need to prune your account so that it can flourish. Prune it, pay attention, curate it.

So it's the kind of network you want to have in your corner. I've noticed I feel like everyone has at least 10,000 followers and then they get like two engagements on their post and I'm like, how many of those 10,000 are active followers? At the core, we want active members of our tribe, right? 100% if they're not active, then they're dormant and they're not helping us. And on LinkedIn, it actually like,'s that works against you. So you can't reach more people because you're not like playing the game. You're unable to get to the step of the algorithm or just in your post for people are actually sharing your content and strangers will start to see it.

You don't get to that point. LinkedIn is really cool because it's one of the only platforms once you actually know how to use it that still has organic reach. So if somebody likes or comments or shares on your post, people who follow them, who are probably the same people you type of people you want to connect with people or connect with like-minded people, right? People see that in their feed. They'll see their friend liking commenting or sharing on your post and they get attracted to your content.

And so if you have unengaged users, you'll never get to that point because nobody's taking viral actions to actually share you on their feeds so that you can have visibility and organic traction. So that's like number one, like you need to make sure you're following is cleaned up or else it just never gets started for you. And there's lots of different hacks. The other thing is like, like I said, if you do shares, like that's really poor. And if you have a bad performing post, a lot of people

don't know that LinkedIn is evaluating the last 10 to 15 posts in terms of whether or not, they're going to think that there's probability of your post doing well. So they're looking at two things. They're looking at author stickiness. How much you as an author is going to invest in the platform if this post does well and how much time you spend on the platform. So you can't post in ghost. You've got a post and then engage on other content and stay on the platform. You can't use scheduling tool for that reason. So they're judging you on author stickiness. And then they're also judging you on the probability of your audience and people on LinkedIn taking viral action, right?

And so if nobody is taking any viral action when you're putting out your post within the first 90 minutes, you're going to bomb. And so there's certain like rules that you've got to learn on LinkedIn and a lot of people do it wrong. The other main thing, and I'm giving away a lot of tips. The other main thing is link in the comments. You cannot do that, right? I told you guys that one of the main goals of any social media platform is keep users engaged and entertained on the platform. If you link out to a third party website, you're taking them off the platform that is opposite of LinkedIn's goals.

They've got ads and they need impressions on those ads. They want people in the feed, right? And so that means that you can't link out. You've got. They want people in the feed, right? And so that means that you can't link out. You've got to put a link in the comments and you can also like you LinkedIn will also smell if you're promotional or salesy like it's it's cans keywords in your post. If it's anything salesy where they feel like you're taking users off platform, you tell them people to call you or email you or whatever they are stopping that post. That's a tough pote a swallow for me and some people because I know I built my website

myself and there's hundreds of hours of content on it and I want people to see it. Well LinkedIn wants people on their platform. So if I'm trying to send someone to a third party platform, in essence, I might be shooting myself on the foot. Certain features on LinkedIn are meant for certain things. So the feed, in my opinion, is meant to go viral, to grow a community, to serve, provide value, grow followers, get impressions, shares.

The feed is for that valuable, shareable content, educational content, interactive, positive, motivational, that kind of content was on the feed so that you can grow your following gain visibility, go viral, right? The DMs is where the sales happen. So link and click conversions happen in the DMs. And so what you want to do is figure out a strategy where your content helps feed you generating leads for whatever it is you want to sell in the DMs. So you can have educational content about your niche, your industry, your product. But don't be salesy. Like pick one little vague thing, be light in terms of how much you push out. And you don't want to be promotional or salesy. And then you want to retarget anybody who engages on that content. They're basically raising their hands and you have permission to reach out to me.

Hey, I notice you liked this post about my upcoming book. I'd love to send you a link to my pre-order. Let me know what you think about it. And then you start a little campaign in the DMs. But value, value, value, the longer you wait to make any sort of ask, the bigger ask you can make, right? So you want to just keep giving value, keep giving free value as long as you can until you have to make the ask or want to make the ask. So in my masterclass, I have all of day two is basically sales strategy and how you basically can leverage LinkedIn for sales. It's very different than other platforms, but the good news is that people are there to buy. They're in that mindset of buying a service and they want to hear from their peers in their industry.

We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Your dog is an important part of your family. Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with nom nom nom. Nom nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's individual needs. Each portion is tailored to ensure your dog gets the nutrition they need so you can watch them thrive. Nom-nom's ingredients are cooked individually and then mixed together because science tells us

that every protein, carb, and veggie has different cooking times and methods. This packs in all the vitamins and minerals your dog needs so they truly get the most out of every single bite. And NOM-NOM is completely free of additives, fillers, and mystery ingredients that contribute to bloating and low energy.

Your dog deserves only the best, and NOM-NOM delivers just that. Their nutrient-packed recipes are crafted by board-certified veterinary nutritionists, made fresh and shipped to your door. Absolutely free. Nom-nom meals started just $2.40, and every meal is cooked in company-owned kitchens right here in the US,

and they've already delivered over 40 million meals, inspiring clean bowls and wagging tails everywhere. Ever since I started feeding my dog Nom-nom, he's been so much more energetic, and he's getting older, he's a senior dog, but now we've been going much more energetic, and he's getting older, he's a senior dog, but now we've been going on longer walks and he's much more playful. He used to be pretty sluggish and sleeping all the time, but I've definitely noticed a major improvement since I started feeding him Nom Nom. And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't

wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk 2 week trial at trinom.com-shap. That's trinom-n-o-m.com-shap for 50% off trinom.com-shap. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling

online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Shopify is packed with industry leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth, giving you complete control over your business and brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code. And Shopify grows with you no matter how big your business gets. Thanks to an endless list of integrations and third party apps, anything you can think of from on-demand printing to accounting to chatbots, Shopify has everything you need to revolutionize your business. If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn secrets masterclass.

Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was gonna collect payments and how I was gonna trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me was just the click of a button even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button it was so easy to do like I said just took a couple of days and so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be and I I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat. It enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship.

With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly recommended Shopify is a platform that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopfide.com slash profiting. Again, go to shopfide.com slash profiting all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that shopfide.com slash profiting shopfide.com slash profiting all lowercase. This is powerful.

So don't post and ghost. Actually engage, engage in the DMs, start a conversation with people. What about engaging on other people's posts? What, what if, what if I'm small, I, I don't have much of a LinkedIn? I don't have followers. I don't know what to say. I can gain some momentum just by engaging with other people, right?

I would say yes, but you definitely need to post. I would say you should post at least three times a week if you wanna start your LinkedIn journey. And I would post original content, don't just share people's content. And every time you post, I would then spend 20 minutes or so commenting on other things that you find in your feed, maybe like clicking on your favorite influencers profiles and commenting on

their recent posts. You can find lookalike profiles, so this is something we didn't talk about. And essentially, a lookalike profile is a profile that has an audience that you want. It doesn't have to be a competitor. So for example, like Gary Vee for me is like a lookalike profile. I think a lot of the people that follow him would like to follow me. We're both podcasters. We're both motivational. We're both marketers. We've got a lot in common. So Gary Vee is a look-alike profile. So I'd go to my look-alike profiles and gauge there because his following may be interested in my stuff. You can even be proactive, and I teach this in the course. You can even be proactive to invite the content that people are engaging

on your local like profiles posts so that you can bring those active people in your network that fit the bill in terms of their engaged in all LinkedIn, they're interested in your content, and that's how you increase your engagement rate so that you can get viral actions and hopefully go viral. Two things are stood out to me, which I love because a lot of people have taught, you know, start engaging on other people's posts, start a conversation, even if you're not posting. And that's better than not doing anything at all. But I like you challenging us. We need to be posting three times a week. Possibly more.

Yeah. My father, I mean, I feel like I feel pretty strongly about this. Like I don't think you can build a personal brand on LinkedIn, just commenting. You don't think you can build a personal brand on LinkedIn just commenting. You need to be a thought leader yourself. You need to stand for something. You need to be a personality. Branding is consistency. If you want to have a good brand, that means that you need to first of all know what you represent, know what your brand persona is, know what your personality is, your values, the impact you want to make. Then you need to take consistent action. There are lots of opportunities to take consistent action on LinkedIn. But if you're only commenting, you're like shooting yourself in the foot because you're missing the opportunity to be consistent in your caption, consistent in your graphics, consistent in your comments to

your people commenting on yourself. So you've really got to put yourself out there if you want to have a personal brand. It's so powerful and it's it's facts. I mean, this isn't about me, but I was on over 75 podcasts last year without even trying and I'm not Hala and I have like a small following. But you're linked in cells and brands yourself for you. So when I reach out to someone, all my posts and my graphics, all of that is serving as a testament of who I am, that you don't have to go on some long sales pitch about how cool you are. Your LinkedIn profile speaks for you for itself. So I'm very passionate about that. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I feel like if you have a personal brand on LinkedIn, you create so much

job insurance for yourself. First of all, you read a very powerful network. Second of all, if you work corporate, people are going to be poaching you left and right once you start your personal brand on LinkedIn in terms of dominating your niche or being more searchable on your niche, you just have a leg up in terms of job opportunities and getting poached from other companies. So that's number two. And then pricing and being able to close sales to your point, I get on a call. People are so bought in, like way before it, like I even take the call. Like they're already ready to buy because I've had so much social proof that they don't need to see anything else. People want what other people have

and they don't want to make decisions. So if they see that other people respect you, that you've got a following, you have social proof, it's going to cut the buying decision time down because there's nothing for them to think about. People already made the decision and took the risk for them. And so all this kind of social proof really helps in the sales process and to also increase prices. I feel like I can charge for like one-on-one social services. I'm at like the highest-highest end in terms of what you can charge. And that's because I've done it. I have the social proof, so I can charge that. Yeah, what about social proof in post?

Like something like a case study. Is that too salesy or is that organic if I'm telling a story of a client? Again, is that salesy or is that a good use of social proof? I would say if you do it in a way to your you you hit an nail in the head. If you tell a story, it's okay. And by the way, you can be salesy if you know it's not going to go viral. So for example, I have 200 and almost 50,000 followers on LinkedIn.

And if I post this I post salesy post all time. If you guys go look at my profile, you'd be like, she's such a hypocrite. She's supposed to say, but it's no. I've grown it to 250,000 followers. Now I'm having a community moment. And I'm literally strategically saying, I want my community to see this post. And I don't care. I know it's not going to go viral.

And by the way, I can delete it in two in a week after I'm done with this session. And then it's gone forever. And who cares, right? And so I'm I'm being strategic, but that's because when you know the rules, you can break them, right? And so I know what's going to go viral. And I know how to get how to keep things viral. I know how to get shares. And then I know that, you know, I can have a community moment and sell if I want to or need to. And so, um, you just need to know your priorities, but as you're building, you wouldn't want to do sales, you post until you had an audience. Otherwise, no one's going to see your sales. They post. So it's just a little balance and you just do them sparingly.

Hmm. Hala, this has been like a freight train of pure value. How about things? So three most important people in my life right now, one, the listener, two Hala for being here, three, my grandma, and since she's my grandma, she has to take first place. I'm about to take her out to get some Chinese food. I love it. We need to wrap up.

But oh my god, you're a wealth of information. Is there anything that we miss today that you want to close with? If you guys want more information, I'm always doing free teasers, giving free information on LinkedIn. So you can follow me on LinkedIn. It's hard to miss me. Just type in a Hala HLA. I should pop up at umhala taha. And I would love for you guys to listen to Young and Profiting podcasts. I interview, we didn't talk about the podcast at all. So it's a number one entrepreneurship podcast.

I recently had Alex from Ozeon, Grant Cardone, Layla Hermosi, Elena Cardone. I've been doing a lot of power couples. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just at least a village. So hopefully I get Tom Villi on soon. But yeah, the podcast is amazing.

I interview the brightest ones in the world. It's a top podcast in the world. So I hope you guys checked that out. And then my masterclass. So again, you can go to yapmedia.io slash course. I'm capping it at 100 seats and I'd love to see you guys there. Well, answer this for me because it seems like you just started this. But since you're capping out every single time, are you doing this monthly?

The this is going to be evergreen, where are you going to be doing this six months from now? Like I want my listener to, I want my listener at any time in their life to be able to get a taste of this. So yeah, I mean, I'm going to do it as long as I feel like I should be doing it. So right now, we're doing it every month. At some point, I'm going to launch a podcast course and then only offer the LinkedIn and podcast every other month. But right now, we're doing it every month. There's so much demand for

it. I want to keep the classes pretty small because they're just so great. And we're building such an amazing community. Part of this is that you actually can have the option to join my community after. And we're all in like basically a WhatsApp group. We didn't talk about engagement pods today. But we're supporting each other's posts. It really helps with the algorithm and getting viral actions. And so it's just such a great thing. Like honestly, I didn't know that I was gonna be like this.

It's like blowing up and becoming one of my favorite things that I do now. So it's just been incredible. Yeah, yeah, Academy, whether it's podcasting, LinkedIn or anything new to come, check it out in the show notes because it sounds like you're going to create a million things. Let's do 20 seconds on engagement pods because I know if you're jumping into this LinkedIn endeavor and you feel like you're doing it alone, do it with three, four, five additional people,

right? Put together a team and help each other out. Yeah, 100%. So a lot of people hate on engagement pods, but they're actually not get against LinkedIn terms of service. I'm a LinkedIn like official influencers. So I will never give advice that is against terms of service.

OK. So engagement pods, essentially you are off platform and you're bringing users onto the LinkedIn platform. Now, remember what I said about the rule. People LinkedIn is one people

to send people off platform, but they're happy for you to send people on platforms. They don't care about engagement pods and you promoting on WhatsApp or Telegram or Facebook or whatever because you're bringing people onto LinkedIn. They're happy about that. If you start your own engagement pod, I would say the rules are pick a platform that's easy to use. So, what's up Telegram? Have some common interest so that it's not just transactional. So when I started my first pod, it was all podcasters who were trying to make it on LinkedIn. And so we were talking about podcasting. We actually cared about

each other. We became friends. And then people give thoughtful comments. It's not this like fake, weird thing. Also, you got to make sure that your first connections with everyone. So if you're not first connections, LinkedIn's going to be like, why is this person always engaging and they're not even first connections? So you got to also be first connections that goes for Instagram or any other like engagement pod that you're going to do. Everybody has to be first connections. A lot of people do that wrong.

And then they're like, why doesn't my pod work? It's like because you're triggering the spam algorithm and everything. So just a couple of hacks and I love engagement pods. It's really important as of now for LinkedIn and it helps us get a lot of organic traction and build real community and conversation. So I'm nothing against engagement pods. I think it's a really smart thing to do. I want more of the listeners want more. We'll end up doing this again. I imagine when you launch something new. Yeah, I'm doing the podcast. You're fantastic. I appreciate your time today.

Thank you, Ben. Enjoy Chinese food with your grandma. I'm jealous. I'm so excited by stomach scrumbling right now. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science,

ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast happier with Gretchen Rubin.