#526: LinkedIn Mastery: Grow Your Law Firm NOW!

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jennifer Whigham (00:12): 

Hi, I’m Jennifer Whigham. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:13): 

And I’m Zack Glazer. And this is episode 526 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie talks with Matthew Hunt about creating content on LinkedIn, 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:24): 

And today’s podcast is brought to you by Posh Virtual Receptionists. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:29): 

Yeah, so Jennifer, I can’t ever say virtual receptionists. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:33): 

Why 

  

Zack Glaser (00:33): 

Not? It’s like the word similar. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:35): 

Rural. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:35): 

I try to, yeah. Or rural juror. I try to keep virtual receptionist or, yeah, I avoid, actively avoid saying similarly in any of my 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:47): 

Thoughts. What do you say instead? 

  

Zack Glaser (00:50): 

I don’t know. Alternatively, just also 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:54): 

In addition to similarly in addition, do you think it’s our southern roots? 

  

Zack Glaser (01:00): 

Probably. Probably. Well, speaking of Southern roots, I just got back from Austin, Texas at ClioCon. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (01:10): 

Oh yeah. 

  

Zack Glaser (01:10): 

So another plug for Clio, but we go to a lot of conferences. And just to start off, ClioCon is a very, very good conference. Love going to it, love seeing all the attorneys that are there, talking about their practices, love talking to all the other providers. Always love getting caught up with the Clio c-suite and everything, talking to Jack Newton and whatnot. But it always makes me think of what’s the value of going to a conference? What do we get out of it? When I was practicing, it would’ve taken me a lot to take time away from my practice to go to any sort of conference. I mean, when I was practicing, I didn’t even go to a tech show and I was very into legal tech. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (02:03): 

Why didn’t you go, I mean, was it just taking, it felt like you didn’t know what the value was, it felt like was, what was the light bulb moment that made you realize conferences are actually super useful? 

  

Zack Glaser (02:16): 

Well, so I think I’m still pondering this. I’m still kind of working around with this one. I go to a bunch of conferences and I do find value in them, but when you wind up working at the conference, you’re doing work, you’re answering emails, you’re getting a bunch of stuff done, you’re trying to go to the conference and practice law at the exact same time, or do your job at the exact same time. I think that’s when you don’t get real major value out of it because you don’t immerse yourself in it. And I didn’t have a practice set up where I could really do that, where I could go, I mean, not even to say the money that it costs to go to these conferences in, but I didn’t have the processes set up to give me that time really. I think. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (03:06): 

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And I would say something that I get out of conferences, I wouldn’t have considered myself a conference person either until the past couple years, is that I get to be around a lot of people doing the same things that I’m doing and thinking about the same things that I’m thinking that I otherwise wouldn’t. And it gives me an excuse to really learn a lot from a bunch of smart people who are interested in the same things. And you just can’t get that everywhere. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:35): 

No, you can’t. And I think that’s part of what I’m getting at with the, you can’t go there, try to work in the downtime and then just go to the things that you’re interested in in the downtime. It’s kind of important to go and just literally run into people. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (03:54): 

Literally. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:56): 

That’s what I do. Yeah, you just knock them word. I’m sure there are people listening to this that got run into by me at ClioCon. I’m a little clumsy, but I think pushing yourself at the lunch tables, going and sitting with somebody and just saying like, Hey, hi, I’m Zack. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:18): 

Hey, and this is the Lawyerist podcast. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:21): 

I’m a hound dog. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:25): 

If Zack said that to you at ClioCon, please send me a private message. Would love to hear about 

  

Zack Glaser (04:31): 

This. Obviously that’s from the fucks in the hound, not just me. Yes. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:34): 

No, I know. Yeah, you’re right though. It’s been maybe 40 years since I came out, 

  

Zack Glaser (04:40): 

But I think it’s important to go connect with people. I guess it’s the people. A lot of times 

  

Jennifer Whigham (04:45): 

That’s it for me, the hallway conversations that people, you meet people. I mean, you don’t get a lot of, it’s like in school you made friends because you were trapped together in a building. And as adults, especially the more we work remotely, we don’t get trapped together in a building as often. And so conferences are the way to make adult friendships as well. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:04): 

Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. Okay. Well, I think another way to make adult friendships is to be very active on LinkedIn. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (05:12): 

Oh, segue. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:13): 

And so now if you want to do that, if you want to think about that, here is Stephanie’s. Well after my conversation with Posh, here is Stephanie’s conversation with Matthew. Hey y’all. I’m Zack. I’m the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist, and today I’ve got Sarina Perez with me from Posh virtual receptionist. And we are talking, you guessed it, virtual receptionists, but more specifically kind of the why of virtual receptionists and the system, because I think a lot of us out there in podcast land and lawyer land don’t necessarily know when to pull the trigger on a virtual receptionist, or frankly, a lot of us don’t know when to pull the trigger on a receptionist. So let’s kind of talk about the benefits in that moment where you go from I’m a one person show, or I just need a lot more receptionist ability. Serena a welcome to the show. It’s good to have you. 

  

Sarina Perez (06:12): 

Thank you, Zack. I’m happy to be back. Thank you again for having me. I really just wanted to touch on today the highlights and the benefits of using our services. No matter how big or how small your firm is, maybe you’re a startup, maybe you’ve been doing this for 30 years. It’s definitely a benefit no matter where you’re at in the moment of your career. Really the most important thing why people go looking for an answering service or virtual receptionist service like Posh is missing calls, right? Yeah. That is a missed revenue generating opportunity. 85% of your calls that you’re missing, if you call them back, they’re not going to answer that call if their first call is not answered. And that’s a big number. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:55): 

A big didn’t answer the phone. They’re not going to answer the phone. I don’t answer phone calls from places that I don’t know them. Absolutely. Yeah, 

  

Sarina Perez (07:01): 

Right. They’re onto the next. So really first impressions being available is your number one, and growing your business and growing your firm and growing your clientele. So that’s where Posh comes into play. Again, no matter how small, no matter how big your firm is, our job, and the reason why we’re here is to ensure that you never miss a call. 

  

Zack Glaser (07:23): 

But I’m in court depositions, I’m in meetings, my assistants are doing something else and can’t necessarily have that. So if I’m a one horse operation or if I’ve got a bunch of people, I might miss calls. Absolutely. 

  

Sarina Perez (07:41): 

Exactly. Exactly. Yep. You just can’t do it. All right. And rather than going through and hiring someone in-house, like a receptionist to take those calls to consider salary, to consider, PTO rates, vacation, things like that, that’s all goes out the window when you’re looking at a service like Posh. We take care of all of that for you as far as we’re available 24 7, 365 days a year. So that’s all you got to do. You forward your calls to us to turn us on you forward when you want to turn us off. It’s as simple as that. 

  

Zack Glaser (08:16): 

Well, yeah, that is very simple. But I also think the vast majority of attorneys in the United States are in more rural areas because the vast majority of the United States is more rural. And I know being somebody who practice in a rural area, it’s not easy to go out there and find a high quality receptionist who is available during office hours, much less 24 7, 365, 

  

Sarina Perez (08:47): 

Right? And it is very hiring, especially in this day and age. Oh man, it’s a task in itself, right? So having a service like that kind of takes that responsibility away from you. We’ll handle that and we can do everything and more that an in-house receptionist can. So it’s almost as if we are part of that team. That is our goal, to be that front desk, to maintain that composure. We can schedule appointments, we can connect calls to you depending on your availability that you can share with us through our app in real time. You can do lead intake with a customizable script depending on the type of law that you practice. Vetting and fielding those leads even takes away that extra step that you have to do when you’re making these calls back or maybe even scheduling consultations, whether it’s in person or a virtual visit. If you work from home and you don’t have an office, these are all possibilities that can be done depending on what you’re currently doing 

  

Zack Glaser (09:44): 

Internally. And that’s just a communication with Posh either through the app or by calling them as well. I want to kind of hang on that for a moment of that specifically that intake process. I think there are a lot of attorneys that go, oh, well, I don’t have an intake process, so I don’t need that. And I think that’s the wrong conclusion to come to when you go to, I don’t have an intake process, I don’t have an intake process, so maybe I need to make one, 

  

(10:14): 

Not, I don’t need a receptionist who I can put the intake process with. And that’s for general practitioners, that’s for pi, obviously, that’s for family law, that’s for probate. All of these types of law, no matter what type of law you’re in, I guarantee you can have some sort of intake process that you could be assisted with by just creating the set things that you do when you get called by a potential client or even a current client or the court, you get called by the court or opposing counsel and a virtual receptionist like Posh knows what to do and who to send them to. 

  

Sarina Perez (10:59): 

Yes. And it’s all based on your preference. 

  

(11:03): 

I think I touched on this last time I visited here, but it’s not a one box fits all. It’s completely customizable per our client. Every single time we have things that if you don’t know where to start or how to use a service like this, that’s what we’re here for. We have a beautiful sales team that will assist you in getting that set up, but it’s really about, alright, what are you doing internally? How can we best implement the service so that it’s efficient for your client’s experience when when you turn on that service, we want to make it seem like you have a new front desk receptionist. It’s professional, it’s accountable, and it’s going to help you take away some time from you answering and handling those calls. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:42): 

Well, Serena, once again, thank you for being with me and sharing your knowledge about virtual receptionists with our listeners. I really appreciate it. Obviously, if people want to get connected with Posh, they can go to you guessed posh.com, that’s POS h.com where they can get a free trial, right? 

  

Sarina Perez (12:02): 

Yes, yes. And if you mention that you are coming from Lawyerist, you get a 14 day free trial, so definitely mention that you heard about us from here, you can either visit our website, you can give us a call, 8 3 3, get posh 8 3 3 4 3 8 7 6 7 4. Or you can email us if you don’t have the time to get on the [email protected]. 

  

Zack Glaser (12:28): 

That sounds pretty easy. And I want to point out that that 14 day free trial is seven days more than the normal trial that you guys would give. So just another perk of listening to the Lawyerist podcast and connecting with Posh. 

  

Sarina Perez (12:41): 

Yes, yes. Thank you again, Zack for having us. It’s been a pleasure. 

  

Matthew Hunt (12:45): 

So my name is Matthew, I’m the founder of Demand E. We help busy executives create all of their short form stackable content for social media from a single monthly one hour interview. 

  

Stephanie Everett (12:56): 

Hey Matthew, welcome to the show. 

  

Matthew Hunt (12:58): 

Thanks. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:00): 

So I found you on LinkedIn, honestly, if I’m being real honest, I’m pretty sure I saw you make a comment on someone else’s LinkedIn post and was intrigued by your title, the idea of snackable content. And I know that you help people figure out what to do on LinkedIn. Is that one of the things that you’re focused on? 

  

Matthew Hunt (13:24): 

That is the only thing I’m focused on right now. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:26): 

Alright. I wasn’t sure about your intro because I was like, I thought it was mostly LinkedIn, so yeah, that makes sense. 

  

Matthew Hunt (13:32): 

It is, yeah. I mean people do syndicate it to other platforms because they all work the same to some degree when it comes to social media and short form content is short form content. However, our unique proposition is that we focus on LinkedIn as our angle to get into creating social media content. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:48): 

Awesome. And so maybe some people might be thinking LinkedIn, are we really still talking about LinkedIn? Is it relevant? What’s your answer to why business owners should still be on LinkedIn and paying attention there? 

  

Matthew Hunt (14:03): 

Well, one, if you’re a business owner, you’re probably the founder or the president or the owner or however you want to title yourself CEO. It doesn’t really matter. Your number one asset is actually yourself, but your biggest obstacle is time. And so anytime that you can multiply yourself where you can share more of your mission, your vision and your values, that is a good use of your time. In fact, I would even argue that it’s irresponsible not to take an hour per month to do that. And if you are one of those individuals, then you’re being watched and one of the places that you’re being watched is linked in. So I think that you have to do that today in today’s marketplace, and you have to show up on social media in general like LinkedIn and share those things. People are not mind readers. And generally speaking, the more you do that, the opportunities happen for you. 

  

(14:53): 

So it’s like the harder I work, the luckier I get. Well, the more you share yourself about your vision, your values and your mission, the more good things that happen in general. So that would be one of the main reasons why every executive or leader or business owner should do it. But more importantly why you should do it on LinkedIn is really the next question I think that people are probably asking. And so why LinkedIn is because there is in the US alone, over 300 million active users, which is pretty incredible. And then including for people who are in the niche that this podcast is about for legal. And so what is the number one source for most lawyers of new business? It is referrals. And if you would like to have more for referrals, staying top of mind with your existing warm network is a good way of getting more referrals to go, Hey, if your name’s Tom and they go, oh, there’s Tom again, he’s really helpful. 

  

(15:56): 

I’ve been meaning to do an introduction to Tom again about this. And half the time it’s from other lawyers and so it’s just lawyers referring more business to other lawyers. One lawyer is an immigration specialist and another one does family law. And we all specialize as we go down and you want to kick it to the people. And the only way you kick it to the people is those who show up regularly. And it doesn’t matter how you go about doing it, whether it’s networking events offline or online or if you have a gifting campaign or snail mail, lumpy mail. This is just another one of those ways to do it. And it’s so easy to do today, why wouldn’t you do that? Do you really want to get in an airplane and fly to the next event? 

  

(16:37): 

You get much more reach. And even if you are doing this is a nice way to salt and pepper in between. So that’d be the bare minimum of the reasons why you show up. But LinkedIn can also be a very, very powerful place for lead generation, which is the other main goal for most solar practitioners or small legal firms. They’re like, how do I get me some more leads? They’re like, I need some predictable leads, referrals are great, but man, one month I’m busy the next month I don’t even know if I’m going to make payroll. And they just want to smooth out the edges. Well, a good way of doing that is creating content and getting it seen by others. And LinkedIn is a great place to do that because the partners that you meet there are usually one to many type selling, especially when it comes to B2B or there’s always an element to that. Or even if you don’t, it’s an underappreciated network. So for example, I have some clients and they are in family law, which usually means things like divorce. 

  

(17:40): 

And when you do the family law and you’re a lawyer that does that, you want clients who have something to divvy up. And so you can create content that is for other people who happen to have more money. Well, how would you target that? Will you target based on job title? Are you a president? Are you a CEO? And you would share contents and you could even take that content and sponsor it just like you can on Facebook or Instagram. The only difference is on Facebook and Instagram, your marketing too. Sometimes people who may not have anything to divvy up and as a mentor of mine once told me, Matthew, sell things to rich people, solve rich people’s problems, make a lot more money. Now, I’m not saying that’s the mission. Some people are mission driven and it’s different approaches to doing that. I have another client who’s more mission-driven. Not everybody’s a mercenary type business owner where it’s all about money. 

  

Jennifer Whigham (18:32): 

And 

  

Matthew Hunt (18:32): 

I think that’s important. And I have a woman who does immigration and she’s helping people do some pretty amazing things. And her specialty isn’t actually helping women who are abused and have problems get new opportunities in another country. And I think that’s really powerful. And LinkedIn’s also just one of those places in addition to being on other platforms like Instagram or Facebook or showing up in search and so forth. And the last one is search is going away. And so I previously had a search agency. I did a lot of ICM, I actually serviced a lot of legal firms in the past, and there’s one place that it’s getting harder and harder and harder to rank. And if you had already been there in Google Maps or if you’d already been there in Google, now it takes you forever to get seen. Well, you don’t have that problem when you’re in social. 

  

(19:25): 

You have a network, so on LinkedIn people. And so you’re going to get seen if you just post there’s more opportunities faster that going to come your way or if you boost your content through content and make an offer to them, there’s more opportunities for you to get more business as well too faster than you would from another platform. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t do search marketing or you shouldn’t do Facebook or Instagram or TikTok marketing. I think you should do all of those things. But sometimes you want to look at where’s the unfair advantage for me? Where can I get one to many sales? Where can I get more referrals? And if you look at even just referrals, like look, it’s going to be your number one closing rate. Someone who’s cold or doesn’t know you doesn’t trust you. But if you get a referral, inherently your closing rate’s going to be higher. 

  

(20:09): 

And so I would want to lean into these things. What are things that one, multiply me. Two, allow me to do one to many selling three, lean into my unfair advantage, make it easier for me to close sales. This would be the filter that I’d be using. And when you start using this filter and you start thinking about it and you really look at all the opportunities that a law firm owner can do, a lot of times they miss the one which is like, whoa, LinkedIn’s kind of like this crazy place that could bring in a lot of business for me. And so those are some of the things that I’ve noticed that are working for them and why they should be on LinkedIn and why they should be creating content. 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:46): 

It makes sense to me. And I don’t know about all the different algorithms and all the things, I don’t pretend to follow all of that, but I’ve noticed just by being on the platform, it feels like people see my stuff on LinkedIn longer stuff just seems to live, has a long lifecycle. Somebody liked to post today that I feel like I posted three or four weeks ago and I’m like, wow, that thing’s still kind of hopping along. And so it just feels like a easy place for professionals to start too, maybe compared to some of the other places where you’re trying to get seen. 

  

Matthew Hunt (21:22): 

I think that’s a great point. And in addition to that, what’s wonderful about LinkedIn is it’s a really safe place. Most people on LinkedIn have it tied to a professional profile. It’s not like Harry Tom 1984. 

  

(21:38): 

You just don’t run into as many trolls or people are going to be negative. So if you’re a little bit scared about getting on social media or you’ve heard nightmare stories, well not on LinkedIn, and as long as you’re creating helpful content, you’re going to be okay. And so people always ask me, well, what is helpful content? What do you mean by this? Well, helpful content is not about you or the services that you’re providing, it’s really about the problems that you solve. And so a simple way of creating this content is you simply just start with who are you speaking to and what is the problem that they’re experiencing? And just by doing that immediately does something that’s called dog whistle copy, which then those people who have that problem are going to pay attention and those that don’t are not going to pay attention to it, which is fine. 

  

(22:23): 

So for example, if you’re saying, Hey, one of the biggest problems for business owners who are CEOs and founders going through a divorce is how do they divide up the business? And so that would be an introvertive hook so that anybody who is like I say going to be like, whoa, I’m happen to be in a rough place, or things are not going as planned in the business. And then you would say, okay, well here are all the bad things that can go wrong or I’ve seen go wrong. It’s called agitate. So problem agitate, then you say, but however, this is how we’ve solved it in the past for some of our clients that made both parties really happy. Or here is how I would solve it if there was this situation or here are all your different options. Or lemme tell you a story about, we’ll just call them Bob and Mary, here’s how they solved it. 

  

(23:17): 

And so when you go from problem to agitate to solve, you build a lot of trust and you’re helpful. And because you led with the individual’s audience problem, you attracted the right people and propelled the wrong people. Now we could do this again. Now let’s just say that we took an example of like let’s say you are an immigration lawyer and let’s just say that you deal with we’re to stay on this theme of entrepreneurs, but maybe you do some sort of BFI visa where you’re helping other business owners who want to come to the United States and it’s a good visa. I know a lot of lawyers who charge anywhere from 20 to $50,000 to process this visa, but it’s very important to some people. They want to give an opportunity to their family. It’s an easy way to get their family coming to the us. 

  

(24:01): 

They can start a business, I don’t know, I am not an expert of understanding at all. But you just start with that and you say, here’s the things that go wrong if you don’t set this up, here’s how we recently did this for Sally and her family. And you could go through telling that story. And again, it follows that format of creating helpful content. It’s actually technically called the PAS formula, which is just problem agitate, solve. And if you do that, it’s really helpful. And then if you want inbound leads, you just pair it with a little bit of bait, which is known as a lead magnet in the marketing world or a marketing collateral. And you say, by the way, I also have this really cool thing that’s going to make things easier for you. Or by the way, I’ve got this free assessment where you can see if you’d qualify for an EB five visa, why don’t you fill it out today? 

  

(24:43): 

Or hey, if you are going through this, take my form on how to negotiate fairly on the business, or maybe it could even be something small. How do you share this with your business partners? How do you share with your business partners that you’re going through a divorce? And this might impact things or all kinds of things like this. There’s so many different angles you could go about doing it and you can even do it at a BC level. So for example, maybe you help with work visas or you go into the HR department or I’ve had a client that specifically just focuses in on immigration and they do the immigration, that’s the H ones and the H one Bs. And they help temporary workers help farm the land in America. And if you didn’t have that, you wouldn’t have your tomatoes this season. This is a very important work to be done. Or there’s people who just are not interested in doing certain work In Canada, we had people who weren’t willing to work at Tim Horton’s and at Starbucks we needed people. Someone’s got pour your coffee that 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:46): 

Got to get those donut notes, right? 

  

Matthew Hunt (25:47): 

That’s right. And so again, you can go into the HR department and help them set up the ability to be able to bring in temporary workers or student visas. And then there’s an array of different ways that you can go about doing this. But this is how you talk about the content and how you make it helpful. I mean, if you do that, you feel happy about your content and you feel proud of it even if you’re uncomfortable doing it. And then when you’re helpful that you attract more good things that come to you and if you stay consistent with it and if you get really strategic with it where you sponsor it, make sure it’s seen by the right audience. So just imagine you taking your content and then pairing it perfectly. So if you’re speaking to hr, overworked HR departments, you’re trying to keep up with filling the staff or people turn over, they just keep quitting for whatever reason. Well just imagine if you took that content and you guaranteed for it to be seen every time they logged into LinkedIn, well they’re going to see you, they’re going to get to know you, they’re going to get to like you and eventually they’re going to trust you. So then when they reach out to you, they’re already pre-sold 

  

(26:53): 

Because you’ve been whispering in their ear over a long period of time. And so it’s a little bit of the long game, but some people fast track themselves and end up in your sales pipeline earlier. But if you keep doing it, it works really well. Just even think about all the listeners who are on this podcast. If you’ve been listening to this for a long time with Stephanie, I guarantee you if you saw Stephanie at the next event or somewhere else, you’re going to literally feel like you know her, right? As opposed to not, right? Yeah, the other way around. It’s very, very powerful that whispering. And so doing this at a consistent basis and building that type of brand as an expert in your niche is very, very valuable, valuable it, it gives you an unfair advantage and it makes all your other marketing work better. 

  

Stephanie Everett (27:40): 

All of that resonates and tracks. I’m curious, I’m going to get real specific for a second. I feel like I see a lot of people on LinkedIn right now and your post makes sense to me, but I feel like everyone’s asking a question at the end because they want that engagement. They’re trying to invite people, come have a conversation, basically put a comment in because, and I assume that’s because that’s going to boost in the algorithm’s mind, but I’m also just kind of curious what your advice is and how is there some 

  

Matthew Hunt (28:12): 

Yeah, so what you’re talking about is actually A CTA at the end of your post and CTHS stands for call to action for those people who are not marketers. And so you should always have a call to action, but only one call to action. And it depends on what it is that you want to do and you want to pair it with the type of piece of content. And so really there’s four different types of content that you can create. There’s authority, I call it the ACEs method. So A is for authority content. That’s what you want to be known for as an expert in your vertical, your niche, okay? Two is C. Okay? So that is connect content. That’s anything that hits the heart, the gut or the funny bone. We want to know you’re a real person who cares about real things and experiences real things in life, right? 

  

(28:51): 

Just like if we can’t trust, if we don’t like you, we can’t like if we don’t know you, right? So you got to show up first, get known, then you got to have sometimes have connect pieces of content. The third one is engagement content. That’s the E, okay? And what that is is you don’t have to be the knower of all things. You just need be a good host. And so if you ask a question, it could be like, Hey, which logo do you like this one or that one? Or Hey, I’m running into this problem. Does anybody know a good accountant? Or you’d be like, here’s what I think. What do you think? Any way you want to engage it is good in getting a conversation. Just remember conversions happen in conversations and you don’t have to be the knower of all things. And this is why creating content is easier than people think. 

  

(29:27): 

Just ask questions. And the last one is show. And so what I mean by this is we don’t want to tell people how awesome you are. You don’t tell and sell, you show and sell and show is content where you show before and after as results. You had client stories, client case studies, things like that is the content. So once you figure out what the content is you’re doing, then you decide on what CTA you want to have at the end. And sometimes it might be too common below. Now some people put the comment below because they think that it’s improving the algorithm, but it has nothing to do with improving the algorithm. So yes, when you have more threaded contents that have meat to it, that is good and you will get more reach with your content, but that’s not why you’re going to get more reach. 

  

(30:06): 

All you need to understand about all social media does not matter whether you’re on LinkedIn or not, is they only care about one thing, okay? So LinkedIn only cares about one thing, which is keeping people on LinkedIn longer. And so what they’re going to do is they’re going to reward content that keeps people on LinkedIn longer. And so you just have to adhere to that rule. If you do that, then you will find that your content does better. And so I can get into all the different tactics, the things you can do, but as long as you understand that’s their agenda, and as long as you adhere to that agenda, that’s good. Now you have a secondary agenda, which is your ideal customer. And so you have to go, you think about what does LinkedIn want or so what’s going to keep them there? If you think about it, here’s how the LinkedIn A works is they go, who is this person connected to? 

  

(30:51): 

Okay, are they a first connection? Then two, have they engaged with that content before? If the answer is yes, then likelihood is they’re going to engage with it again and therefore they’re going to show that to that person again. Now, if that person did not engage with your content where they stayed longer and site, they will not show your content again to them again. They just go, I’m not going to show it to them. Now if there is no content to show ’em, they’ll default to the first connection. So they’re looking for a pattern based on behavior of your followers and or connections. And of course some content goes further, but the reason why comments work is if it’s a meaty comment and there’s conversations happen, what do you end up doing? You’re staying longer on that piece of content, therefore they’re going to show more of it to the next person. 

  

(31:32): 

So this is even a reason why sometimes I sponsor organic content as a paid ad and we start getting threaded comments of the content is really meaty underneath that ad. I will never delete that ad. I’ll continue to keep leveraging it because as so much social proof and there’s so much meat, I know it’s sticking there, which then increases my quality score, which decreases my cost per click to be able to get there. So there are particular tactics and strategies that you can use to go really, really deep on doing this, but for most people who are listening to this podcast, all they need to understand is LinkedIn only cares about one thing, which is keeping people on LinkedIn. Don’t worry about all the algorithm or when it changes, it doesn’t matter. All you need to care about is who’s your ideal audience, how are you being helpful to them? And then two, how do I keep them on LinkedIn longer? And if I adhere to those two rules, I’ll create content that makes sense and I will always generally speaking, be rewarded Well for doing that. 

  

Stephanie Everett (32:27): 

Yeah, I love how simple you just made it. I think everybody, because we do, we get it all up in our heads and we’re worried, how am I going to show up? What am I going to say? I have so many people and they’re like, oh, I know I a post, but I just get stuck. And I mean, I know you help with that too, that’s actually your job. But I love that you also are just like, guys, just get out there and start talking about problems you solve. 

  

Matthew Hunt (32:51): 

I think change, algorithms change. I’ve seen people lose their Facebook accounts, lose their ranking. So overnight you can’t obsess about these things. And generally speaking, when you do lose it, it’s because you got really spammy and tactical and overdid something, right? I’ve seen clients when I did s do dirty and it worked for years, and then all of a sudden, boom, they got a slap. And apparently I’ve seen people do with Facebook and it’s because they’re over optimizing for some tactic or hack that just doesn’t pay off. Instead of just looking at what’s the long game here? What are we really trying to do? I’m trying to build an audience. I’m trying to build trust, I’m trying to get people into my database. I’m trying to add value, and it’s because you’re just thinking too short termed and it’s normal. I’ve made the mistake a million times myself. If you’re making the mistake, you’re not alone. And sometimes when you’re starting out, you’re in reaction mode and you’re saying you need that money, you’re desperate, you’ll try anything and if it’s working, you’re going to lean into it. But if you can step back when you catch your breath and remind yourself what it’s really all about, 

  

(33:56): 

It’s really just about being helpful. 

  

Stephanie Everett (34:00): 

Yeah. No, this has been great. I want to shift. I definitely want to ask you this other line of questioning and I’ve had the benefit of taking part. I haven’t finished it, but I’ve been taking your online course. Oh, 

  

Matthew Hunt (34:13): 

Awesome. Oh, I didn’t even know you were in there. That’s great. 

  

Stephanie Everett (34:15): 

Yeah. I want to learn your top tips. I know you have a bunch of ’em, but I’m going to challenge you. What are the top three or four things you think we should be thinking about when it comes to our profile? Because I think this is another place where people get tripped up or worried, and I think you make it pretty simple. 

  

Matthew Hunt (34:32): 

Sure. So I always look at it as the 80 20 rule. And so your LinkedIn profile is important, but it’s not as important as you think. So what I mean by this is how do people get to your profile? So if I get a hundred thousand impressions on some of my content in a month, I’ll have 2000 profile visits. So we’ll call it 2% of the people end up back at my profile. And that’s pretty standard. It’s really low, right? Really, really low. So where are people really consuming the content? They’re consuming it in the newsfeed. So then you have to think, well, what parts of my LinkedIn profile show up in the newsfeed? And the elements are your profile photo and your headline. So this is your LinkedIn headline. Usually what people put in is their job title and the company they work for in their headline, but you can make it actually anything that you want. 

  

(35:19): 

And so you can look at is this an opportunity to sell who I help and ally help? And I think if they can’t quickly tell, then that’s going to be important. The second thing that you can have is you can have a feature in there where you can actually have, visit my website as a button just underneath, but only if you activate it. So if I was looking at what is the most important thing, you want to get those three things. So make sure you have a headshot, make sure it’s a nice headshot of you where you’re looking at the camera, the eyes are to the window and that you’re smiling. You can actually test your headshot on a website called photo feeler. 

  

Stephanie Everett (35:48): 

Yes, I did this. I did this on your advice. 

  

Matthew Hunt (35:50): 

Oh, good. And you can find out if you’re likable or not by strangers. And the reason why you want to use photo feeler is because of strangers and they don’t know you. If you ask your friends and family and the people, they’re biased based on knowing you, which is not really fair generally speaking as strangers who see you. So get it validated based on strangers, and you can find out how likable you are, how far, just based on your headshot, your profile photo. So I think that’s a good way of doing that. And then you can do the same thing with your header line as you can figure out, I like to do the formula of who you help and how you help. I help blank get aspiration without blank fear or frustration. That’s usually the formula I like to use. And then of course, if you just turn the button on that says, come visit my website, you’ll get people who come visit your website or you can put the button that says Book a consultant. 

  

(36:36): 

Usually people will want to book time with you yet, but depending on your structure and your marketing funnel and how you want to go about doing it, I would make that. So if you get that part right, that’s going to be amazing. Some other highlights on your profile is the header image, have one. If someone gets back there, that’s what we’re going to see. Write your bio in first person. Use the featured section that you can have to create an offer. Ensure that all your employment history filled out. Try to attach case studies and assessments to it, which you can do. And of course have recent recommendations. So for example, if you come to my profile today, you’ll see over 80 people who’ve recommended me who are busy executives, CEOs, lawyers, et cetera, business owners who are all like, yo, Matt’s like the bomb. And they go into detail about my course, they go into detail about my consulting, or they go into the detail about our done for use services where we help busy executives create all of their social media content from a one hour monthly interview. 

  

(37:30): 

You’ll see all that stuff in there that it becomes undeniable social proof that when someone’s thinking about doing business with me, there’s no question am I? It just stops the reference checking. They’re just like, holy crap. And there’s new ones every month. So those things, yes, you can do, but when I look at the 80 20, what’s the 20% that’s going to move the needle? Get your profile, get your head your headline and get the button right, because as long as you’re creating content, that’s where they’re going to see it most. Now, if you can do the other part, amazing kudos to you, you’re a rockstar. And it is just a one-time activity really. So taking a day to get it all organized is a good investment. 

  

Stephanie Everett (38:07): 

Yeah, that’s what I did. I took your course, I did the photo feeler thing. It was fascinating to see what these people said where I scored on my, I put in three different headshots. I was curious and it was just amazing it, and I tweaked some of my stuff. So I mean, here’s a good fun challenge. If you’re listening, go check out my LinkedIn page. I want some LinkedIn love here, but tell me what you think. How did I do following Matt’s guidance there? 

  

Matthew Hunt (38:37): 

What do they have to search for you, Stephanie? You got to tell ’em what they’re going to search for when they’re LinkedIn. Stephanie. What 

  

Stephanie Everett (38:42): 

I mean, I think it’s just Stephanie Everett Lawyerist. I don’t know. I mean, I should know. I should have been prepared. I was not you guys. I did not. Hopefully you all know. But yeah, my pages, Stephanie A. Everett is how I show up on LinkedIn. 

  

Matthew Hunt (38:58): 

That’s awesome. And if you search Matthew Hunt or Matthew Hunt LinkedIn, you’ll find me in LinkedIn pretty sure. Or even if you search it on Google, it’ll show up. Matthew Hunt LinkedIn. You’ll see that there’s something in there about me, 

  

Stephanie Everett (39:11): 

And I hope everybody, because he was flying through all those so quickly, but I’m going to pull one out, which is don’t waste such valuable space in your headline by just saying lawyer attorney. I see that so often and it’s just not helpful. And as I said at the top of this interview, the whole reason I connected to Matthew is, I don’t know, I was on LinkedIn one day and I saw his headline and I was actually in the market. I knew I wanted to do more on LinkedIn, and so I clicked in, I was like, what is this snackable content? But it was his headline that I saw because you posted on, I don’t even remember now where you posted, you commented, something happened that got my attention, but it was that headline that drew me to you and is the reason we’re talking right now. So don’t miss that opportunity to tell people who you help and how you help them in that really valuable space. 

  

Matthew Hunt (40:05): 

That’s right. And when you comment, it shows up. So when you’re commenting, that’s where that photo and headline matters and commenting is content. I always recommend even before you start creating content, learning how to comment and creating the habit of commenting is actually a good place to start. And when you comment, it’s not like great post or thank you, you have to actually add something in value. So usually you can compliment the post, but then curious, add by asking a question, then add something useful afterwards that adds to the conversation is a great way of doing a good comment. It takes a little more than 10 seconds to do. You might need to spend two or three minutes, but a good comment on a good profile can drive a lot business back to you. So it’s a good exercise. A lot of times we’re in score holes at home instead of getting on the Instagram or TikTok score hole, why don’t you get into the LinkedIn scroll hole and don’t just surf anonymously. Most people secretly creep everything. Actually just take a minute and make a comment. And you’d be surprised if you did 10 of those a day over the course of a year, how much new business that can drive you and how much more new awareness. And that’s not even creating your own content. Just commenting and participating in the LinkedIn community can be very, very powerful. 

  

Stephanie Everett (41:20): 

Yeah, I mean, I just told everybody, I was kind of beating myself up at the end of the summer. I was like, I got to do better on LinkedIn. I’ve kind of let it go for a while. I’m going to get back involved. And I noticed just by, I started commenting, I started doing a few things and it was surprising how quickly some people that I didn’t know with bigger following started commenting on my things. And so I was like, wow, okay. And I know it’s a long game, so I don’t want people to think this is going to happen overnight, but it is encouraging when you start kind of seeing some of those results and you think, okay, I could do this. There’s a path here. 

  

Matthew Hunt (41:58): 

Yeah, yeah. I mean you do it anyways. It’s just like how do you do it? I mean, everybody gets on social media on a scroll hole today. How do you turn that passively into something actively and something productive? This is a great way of going about doing it. 

  

Stephanie Everett (42:12): 

It’s 

  

Matthew Hunt (42:12): 

Just like anything. It’s just habit changing. We just get into these habits and then we just need to change the habits. And often people have the time, they’re always like, I don’t have time to comment. I bet you if you hit me your phone and I could look at your actual phone usage, I’d be like, okay, 30 minutes on Instagram today, two hours on YouTube, you’re telling me you don’t have time to do 10 minutes a day, add a couple comments, you’ve got time. We just need to redirect that energy differently. 

  

Stephanie Everett (42:39): 

And 

  

Matthew Hunt (42:39): 

Even busy lawyers, everybody falls for it. Everybody thinks they’re busy. It doesn’t matter if you have one kid or 10 kids. It doesn’t matter if you have 30 employees or one employee. It doesn’t matter what everybody in their own world, they’re the hero of their own story and everybody’s busy or feels busy or overwhelmed for sure. Usually not true though. If you add it up, you’re like, well, how does Leon Musk get so much done? I’m not saying he’s something we all aspire to be. Trust me, it’s not my goals, his goals around Michaels. But Dan, dude runs a lot of company, does a lot of things. So how does he get so much done with the same 24 hours? He’s doing something different. And we see use case of Oprah, same thing. Before she retired, she did a lot. So how was she doing all these things? Well, she just used her time better and leveraged it better, and media was definitely one of them. And so if you’re not leveraging social media to multiply yourself, you’re definitely not finding a lot of leverage in your life. 

  

Stephanie Everett (43:31): 

For sure. I love it. Alright, this has been so helpful and I know we are taking away a lot of tips from this conversation. If people are interested in learning more about the specific work that you do, where should they go? 

  

Matthew Hunt (43:44): 

Yeah, they should go to demand.com. Now, demand is spelled a little different. It’s demand like D-E-M-A-N-D, and then it’s i.com. So if you put in demand.com, you’ll find it. Or if you just go to Google and you search Matthew Hunt the way it’s spelled with two T’s in Hunt and then put in LinkedIn, you’ll find my profile and you’ll be in touch with me. If you message me on LinkedIn or if you come to the website, you’ll be able to directly speak to me. I watch it like a hawk and I’m very responsive. 

  

Stephanie Everett (44:14): 

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with me today. I have learned a lot and I’m headed to LinkedIn right now, so yeah, I’m going to go comment on some things. 

  

Matthew Hunt (44:23): 

Thanks, Stephanie. 

 

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