30 Days of Focus Can Change Your Life

Each week I'm sending you a side hustle idea, stories of entrepreneurs who’ve executed successfully, and resources to learn how to do the same

THIS WEEK'S THOUGHTS:

We hit 5K this week.

5,000+ people have raised their hand and said I want to see more of the content that I put on LinkedIn.

This seems small when you look at someone like Austin Belcak and his 1.3M followers on the platform.

But, it’s all a matter of perspective, innit?

I mean, the largest Broadway theatre only houses 1,933 people (the Gershwin - where Wicked has sold billions in tickets, but that’s another conversation for another time).

If you’re playing to a packed house, then the audience feels massive.

So, I’m gonna celebrate 5K.

Because 100 days ago, that felt like a massive number.

So, in lieu of giving you a side hustle this week (I have a doozy for you next week though), I analyzed my last 100 days of posts and wanted to share my top 5 learnings so you could grow your audience, as well:

1/ MWF

Not to be confused with ‘married white female’, I’m talking about Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

• Excluding any viral posts (which also happened to land on these days), MWF outperformed Tuesdays and Thursdays by 35% on impressions.
• They outperformed Sundays by more than 105% (I’ll be giving up my posts on Sundays).
• Saturdays performed well enough to keep up with and even outperformed my Tuesday / Thursday posts.

This doesn’t change my strategy (yet). I may vary the times on Tuesdays and Thursdays to see if that has an impact, but I’ll still continue to post at least 5X per week.

2/ Who Engages Matters

One thing that I’ve noticed is the more people that engage within the first hour of posting, the higher the visibility of the post.

No surprise here.
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However, I saw the below post (which was pretty lackluster imho) got more than 8K impressions.

Why did this basic-ass post perform so well?

Well, it turns out that LinkedIn bad boy (who wants to be known for always being controversial), Tom Goodwin (700K+ followers), commented on the post.

His comment was fed to his audience and received 74 engagements (that’s more than my post). That engagement fed my post to thousands more people than usual.

Very interesting.

Then it happened again with this post.

I saw that Ryan Musselman (44K followers) and Bill Kerr (19K followers) both commented within the first hour, lifting the visibility of my post to their audiences.

Create content that drives engagement, yes.

More specifically, work to get engagement from high follower count creators.

Engagement from creators with visibility catapulted my results.

These people aren’t going to engage unless you’re actively involved in the content they create. Which leads to learning #3.

3/ Engage. Engage. Engage.

You’re not engaging for engagement’s sake. You’re trying to find people on the platform with common interests. Similar goals.

You want to build a tribe and treat LinkedIn like a “social” media platform.

I sent 10-15 connection requests per day based upon common interests, groups, and relationships to find potential connections that fit within my ICP. This led to 1,134 new connections over the last 100 days.

I know... seems like a lot of work. It is.

Then, I engaged with content that resonated with me for 30-min. each day.

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In fact, I spent more time:

• Commenting on interesting topics
• Engaging with thoughtful posts
• Reaching out to new contacts
• Chatting w/ them in DMs

than I did writing my own posts.

Get social.

4/ People Love Personal Stories (success or failure)

My most (consistently) successful posts were stories of:

• Personal successes or failures (lessons)
• Other people’s successes or failures (lessons)

Social media has gone from “social” media to social “media”.
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Everything is doctored to try to paint a version of reality that doesn’t exist. Talk about:

• Your wins
• Your losses
• Your journey
• The wins of others
• The losses of others

Tell the roller coaster that is your journey.
Share your stories.
Be vulnerable.

Top "Personal Story" Posts:

• ​"My spouse was laid off …” (3,455 Impressions)
• ​“I've written on Linkedin…” (3,082 Impressions)
• ​“Pornstar martinis change…” (2,884 Impressions)
• ​“I was recently part of a…” (2,760 Impressions)

5/ Virality impacts surrounding content

The biggest driver in my growth was one viral post.

One post.
​This post.

It had 314K impressions and drove over 1K new followers overnight.
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The interesting thing about that is the impact on the two posts prior.

They jumped from 1K and 850 impressions to 5.7K and 4K impressions, respectively.

The post right after? It had 2.7K impressions (170% greater than my avg at the time).
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Looking at my next highest posts, I saw the same impact.

Often people will create a banger post and then put something mediocre out as the follow up.
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​**I say “people”, but I mean “me”. It's me. I’m people. ​
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Instead, the data shows that you should capitalize on a viral post with another killer post. The audience is primed to engage with you and LinkedIn is more likely to share your content.

Don’t waste the opportunity to get them to want to come back and engage more often.

Key Takeaway:

Look, the above is just what I've learned from 100 days posting on LinkedIn. I don't have it figured it out.

What I know worked more than ANYTHING else was posting for 100 days.

You have to get out of your comfort zone.
Embrace the fact it feels "cringe".

The people who are successfully building their digital creator businesses are saying "f*ck it" and posting despite what their peers may think.

Hope this was helpful. If it was, I can't wait to see you on the platform.

As always, I'm sharing my thoughts as a way to help you. If it helps you, it could help someone else. So feel free to share:

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