Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Hala AKA The Podcast Princess Drops Wisdom at the Grow Your Podcast Summit

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Do you want to grow your podcast and dominate your social network? Listen to the top podcast host of Young and Profiting Podcast, CEO of YAP Media, and major LinkedIn Influencer, Hala Taha’s guest a...ppearance in the yearly Capsho + Grow Your Podcast Summit. The Grow Your Podcast Summit is a three-day event hosted by Deirdre Tshien, Founder of Capsho. At the 2022 Grow Your Podcast Summit, Deirdre interviewed 33 industry experts on ways to grow, monetize and scale podcasts. In this episode, Hala shares her career journey from radio to corporate to entrepreneurism. She chats about how she grew the Young and Profiting podcast, and she gives actionable advice about how to promote your podcast using social networks, advertising, and more.  Topics Include: - Hala’s career journey and podcast growth   - Dealing with rejection - How Hala grew her podcast  - Content on different platforms - Advertising on podcast players  - Hala’s LinkedIn strategy  - Hala’s content strategy  - And other topics… Sponsored By: Indeed - Claim your $75 credit now at Indeed.com/yap (Terms and conditions apply) Shopify - Go to shopify.com/profiting, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features The Jordan Harbinger Show - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Resources Mentioned: YAP Media: https://yapmedia.io/  Hala’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/     Hala’s Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/     Hala’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yapwithhala  Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/@halataha   Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/  Text Hala: https://youngandprofiting.co/TextHala or text “YAP” to 28046 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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 slash profiting. Booba one will save you on all your eats. Savings can't be beat. Up to 10 percent of your order. Join Booba one and save $0.00 delivery fee Percentage Off Discount Subjects to Old Minimums and Participating
Starting point is 00:00:27 Source. Taxes and other fee still apply. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast. A place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday
Starting point is 00:00:54 life, no matter your age, profession or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity,
Starting point is 00:01:19 had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. Today on YAP, we're sharing my interview from the Grow Your Podcast Summit, which took place in early July, and included 33 industry experts who spoke on how to grow, monetize, and scale your podcast. I was interviewed by Diedri Tishin, the founder of CAP Show, which is an AI-powered software that helps you write copy and promote your podcast.
Starting point is 00:01:51 My topic for this session was advertising for your podcast, the How-To for LinkedIn and podcast player ads. We chat about my come-up story and how I use LinkedIn as well as other creative strategies to grow the Young and Profiting podcast from 3, 3000 downloads a month to 500,000 downloads a month. I give tons of actionable advice for content and publishing strategies and I share tips that you can start using today to grow both your social following and promote your podcasts. Folks, they don't call me the podcast princess for no good reason. I know my stuff and I let you in on all my secrets in this episode.
Starting point is 00:02:28 So all you podcasters and wannabe podcasters, be sure to crank up that volume and get your notebooks out because I drop tons of knowledge bombs in this conversation. And before we get started, I did want to ask that if you find any value from this episode, if you're an up and coming podcaster and you learn something new, the best way to repay me and thank me for giving away my secrets for free is to drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. So go ahead, take a couple minutes
Starting point is 00:02:58 after the interview, drop us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you guys have other social media and podcasting advice, you can always join my text community, just text YAPYAP to 28046. And you'll be in the community, you can ask me anything. And I check those messages every single night.
Starting point is 00:03:18 All right, so without further ado, here's my appearance on the Grow Your Podcast Summit. Hello everyone, this is a Grow My Podcast Summit and I have Hala Tahar with you now. Get this, Hala is the host of Younger Profiting Podcast and this podcast is a top 50 podcasts with over four million downloads. Oh my gosh, and she's also the CEO of YAP Media.
Starting point is 00:03:40 It's a side hustle that was turned into a seven-figure business. Wow, that's amazing. Welcome to the Summit Huller. Thank you, Dejory. I'm so happy to be here. Yes, I'm so proud because I know that your growth trajectory is just such an inspiration for all about audience on this summit. So let's start there with your podcast and your journey, getting it to this point. Yeah, so I started my career at Hot 97. It was a radio station. I started my career when I was just in college.
Starting point is 00:04:12 I interned at the radio station for three years, learned everything about production. I first honed my on-air chops, recording commercials. After the station, I became a blogger. I had a number one hip-hop and entertainment blog site called the Sorority of Hip-hop and I I became a blogger. I had a number one hip hop and entertainment blog site called the Sfority of Hip Hop and I led 50 female bloggers. We had online radio shows on the side.
Starting point is 00:04:31 It was a precursor of podcasts. That didn't really pan out. I almost got to show an MTV twice, pretty devastated. We got rejected a bunch of times. And then I thought, you know, I'm gonna hang my hat up. Forget about the entertainment industry. I'm obviously not gonna make it, you know, I didn't get my dream job at Haunted A7.
Starting point is 00:04:47 I then didn't get the show on MTV after this like big website that I had. And I like just thought I'd never get back on a mic. But four years after being in corporate marketing, I got the itch again. And I started a young and profiting podcast. And at that point, I had a lot of skills under my belt to do it right this time.
Starting point is 00:05:04 A podcast were, you know, more mainstream. They were a thing. I knew enough to get one out the door and do it really well. And here we are four years later. Number one podcast across all apps. I've interviewed people like Deepak Chopra, Matthew McConaughey, have a team of 60 running a podcast network and a social media and podcast agency and making, you know, seven figures a year. So it's been amazing to say. Yeah. So basically not landing those those MTV roles really did you a favor? Yeah. In the end, you know, rejection is redirection. That famous saying. It's so true.
Starting point is 00:05:39 I'm so thankful for all the news that I got. I was rejected over and over and over again. It wasn't until I started my own thing that things really took off. And this isn't quite what I wanted to ask you on this summer, but I'm just so intrigued. Like how did you pick yourself back up? Because I think this is entrepreneurship, right?
Starting point is 00:05:56 Like you do get rejected over and over and over again. So what did you do? How did you, yeah, as I said, pick yourself back up and just keep going? Whenever something bad happens to me and I don't get something that I feel like I truly deserved and I'm devastated, I tend to channel my energy into learning something new. That's what I always do. So when I actually got fired from hot 97 after working for there for free for three years
Starting point is 00:06:19 and I got fired for like a really stupid reason. It was really unfair. I was devastated, but I was just devastated for a couple of days by, you know, I got fired on a Thursday. By Sunday, I was figuring out how to create websites and learn how to code websites and create, like, you know, custom WordPress sites. And I launched my blog, like the next week,
Starting point is 00:06:38 and it took off right away. So just channeling my energy into something new. When I got rejected from MTV, I went and got my MBA. That set me up for a really nice corporate career. And that's the key. To focus on something else, to stay busy, to be productive, and to realize that your failures are a good sign. Because, you know, the more opportunities you get, the more opportunities you have to fail. And so when you fail, that actually means that you got an opportunity that many people would have been too scared to even get that opportunity to begin with.
Starting point is 00:07:09 Yes, wow, I love that. Okay, now you have a huge audience, four million downloads, you've interviewed some really, really cool people, as you mentioned. But I'm sure that it wasn't, it didn't start out like that. So can you take us all the way back to that point? And can you talk us through some of the strategies that you actually credit for the growth of your podcast from the point you started to now? Yeah. Okay. So when I first started, I decided that I was going to promote my podcast on LinkedIn. And I specifically decided to focus on one channel
Starting point is 00:07:41 and not spread myself then by going on Instagram and Twitter and all these other sites. I decided that the people who would like to listen to Young Improving podcasts are going to be young professionals in corporate or young entrepreneurs. Those people are mostly on LinkedIn. And I did some testing. When I first put out content, people on Instagram liked my clothes and my makeup and that kind of thing. And people on LinkedIn cared about my brain and what I had to say.
Starting point is 00:08:05 And so I really focused on LinkedIn for that point. So I was consistent every single day. I posted every single day, and I made it part of my routine. So I used to have to commute from Brooklyn into the city to my job at Disney Streaming Services. And I would write my post every morning on the train, and I would do my engagement every day on the way back from work. And that was my routine every single day and I made it a point to be like, your one job on the train is to get out your post, right? And that is important, the consistency. So that's something
Starting point is 00:08:35 that I did want to kind of put a light on. And I also just leveraged the DM. So one of the first things that I did was I just DMed every single follower that I had. So I started with like 2000 followers today. I'm one of the most popular influencers on LinkedIn. I have 160,000 followers, very engaged community. And so I just message everyone, hey, like what's up? It's Hala. Like, you know, we met each other ex-YZ a go.
Starting point is 00:08:58 Now I have a podcast. Here's the link. I'd love for you to listen. And because I had all this experience, my first episode was great. And it took me months to put out my first three episodes. They were masterpieces. People still love them. And most people are embarrassed of their first episode, but mine got people hooked and people were really excited. And I got very good reception from my episodes. And so I would just copy and paste copy and paste DMs. By episode two, I got a message from who's now my business partner, Timothy Tan, my first
Starting point is 00:09:27 volunteer for the show. And he basically was like, are you copying and pasting these messages? Because you could be automating this. And I was like, what are you talking about? And so he taught me all about LinkedIn automation. And he became my business partner. And you know, now he owns 10% of, yeah, media. And he taught me how to do automation. Then I started to do it at scale. So what I did was target Gary Vee's
Starting point is 00:09:48 followers. And I thought that Gary Vee had a very lookalike audience, meaning that anybody who would like his stuff, his podcast, he talks about marketing, they're going to like my stuff too. So I messaged people who liked and commented on his post through automation. And I said, Hey, what's up? My name is Hala. I noticed you engage on Gary V's content. If you like his stuff, you're going to love my two. Let's connect. Then nine out of 10 people would connect. I acquired like 10,000 of his fans. Then I was always a top comment on his stuff with a hundred likes and got even more visibility because he I was always like that girl on Gary V's post. And then I did it with Tony Robbins and Lewis House and like the the next one after the next one. And all the sudden it with Tony Robbins and Lewis Howes and like the next one after the next
Starting point is 00:10:25 one. And all of a sudden I started going viral and I didn't need to really do that anymore. And I've used those same strategies to grow other people on LinkedIn as well now that I have a social media agency. So that's some of the ways that I grew, you know, as a LinkedIn influencer. And then I actually leveraged that influence to get featured in podcast apps. And that's how I blew up my podcast. Wow.
Starting point is 00:10:46 Okay. That was, it was ingenious. Okay. Okay. So, stepping back. So, for someone who maybe isn't as familiar with LinkedIn, like, in terms of content, is there a difference between the content that you would put on Instagram, Facebook, other places, and LinkedIn?
Starting point is 00:11:01 And what is the difference between that content? And why is it so important to be as consistent as you were? Yeah, so content definitely varies on platform, so like the size of your images, what type of content, videos, pictures, text only, what actually works on that platform. And so whatever platform that you're using, you want to study the platform, you want to learn all of its features, right? You want to really explore the different things and understand what the app is actually pushing because a lot of these apps, they're pushing certain features. So on LinkedIn, for a while, they were pushing polls, but they're no longer doing that. And so we don't post polls anymore because they're not working. Now on LinkedIn, like
Starting point is 00:11:40 big portrait photos work. So I called them poster size. It's I think three, like by five is like the dimension. And if you look on my page, you'll see that like most of our pictures are always in this portrait size because the bigger the real estate, the better it's gonna perform on LinkedIn. An aesthetic picture performs better than a video, performs better than a slider. Just a short catchy caption and a static graphic works the best on LinkedIn.
Starting point is 00:12:07 Now we've seen our most popular posts this year at yet media got 100,000 likes and 8 million views on LinkedIn. And that was actually a text post. And so we are testing text posts now because we're like, why did this get 100,000 likes and 8 million views? And so sometimes things change and you need to try to see, like, well, is this a trend?
Starting point is 00:12:27 Is this just a fluke? Should we lean into this? And that's how you got to go about it. Wow. OK. All right. So you started on LinkedIn, and then you mentioned that you did blow up on podcast players.
Starting point is 00:12:37 And there was another human strategy that you used to grow your show on podcast players. Can you talk us through what it is and how you discovered actually advertising on podcast players? Yeah, it's a really cute story. So I started growing my influence on LinkedIn two years ago, let's say I had like 60,000 followers. And that was a big deal at that time.
Starting point is 00:12:59 Like the biggest influencers had 60,000,000 followers. Like 100,000 followers was like so much on LinkedIn, right? And so I was getting some notoriety at a little cloud and I started doing some research. I was thinking, you know, how can I leverage my following and cross promote with other podcasts, anything? And I'm talking about anything. So I cross promoted with Good Pods,
Starting point is 00:13:24 which is like a podcast rating. I worked with pod bean, my hosting provider, and tried to get like cross promo with them. I worked with Audrey and they wrote a blog and just all the anything podcast related. I'd shoot them an email, hey, what's up on the biggest podcaster on LinkedIn now. I wasn't called the podcast princess yet. I was about to say that, but that wasn't my name yet. So I was like, I'm one of the biggest podcasters on LinkedIn now. And I'd love to promote you on LinkedIn in exchange for you writing a blog, in exchange for you featuring me and your app, featuring me on your website.
Starting point is 00:13:57 And so I did that constantly. And I would just always be looking for new podcast brands that I could reach out to and become this podcast influencer within this niche. And it worked. People always said yes because I really did have something unique. There wasn't a lot of podcasters on LinkedIn. And so I had that community. It was engaged. And so I actually looked up cast box at one point. And I saw that they were looking for Twitter influencers. And that was they had a whole website about how they're looking for Twitter influencers. And so I emailed them had a whole website about how they're looking for Twitter influencers. And so I emailed them and I was like,
Starting point is 00:14:27 hey, what's up, I'm Hala, I'm not a Twitter influencer, but I'm on LinkedIn and I'd love to collaborate. So they said yes. And they sort of promoting me to their international community every month. And I would do like a review solicit and they were really happy with my results. And so they literally sponsored me for like five or six months. And my podcast just took off like I and they loved it too because the listeners
Starting point is 00:14:50 stayed and retained on their app. So they thought it was like a fruitful collaboration. And the lady's name is Valentina at Casbach's now. She's one of my closest friends. And she like I always I told her the other day. I was like, you like made me a podcast superstar because you believed in me and featured me in your app. Then I started doing the same thing with player FM, with pod bean, with podcast repub like all these different apps started to feature me, stitch your featured me. And my podcast just took off. I had really stagnant growth for a long time.
Starting point is 00:15:17 I was way bigger than I seemed. In fact, I always feel like I am way bigger than I seem. I'm always punching above my weight. And I went from getting 3,000 downloads a month to 10,000 downloads an episode to 500,000 downloads a month. And now it's crazy. I can't, sometimes I, I, I still growing really fast. So it's just been an amazing red.
Starting point is 00:15:39 That's amazing. And do you think in, because how long ago would that have been, do you think approximately? So the cast box thing was started two years ago. And now I have 235,000 subscribers on cast box. Wow. So just blew up. And do you think that same strategy could work for others if they were like listening to you and like, I'm going to do what she did. Do you think that it could work again?
Starting point is 00:16:03 So the lesson that you want to take from this is to think outside the box. I had no idea what I was doing. I was just like, I know, I want visibility and I have something to leverage. So the lesson is, grow something that you can leverage, whatever that is. Grow a social platform, a YouTube channel, whatever it is, a community, a text community, an email list, anything that you can leverage, take that and trade that with other people who can also share your message to their audience. Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors.
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Starting point is 00:19:25 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 two week trial at trinom.com slash app. That's trinom.nom.com slash app for 50% off try num dot com slash app. That's the lesson because it's not that you can necessarily do this anymore. Now I do media buying as a profession and I actually took all these relationships from the people who sponsored
Starting point is 00:19:59 me and I sell these opportunities to my clients because they're actually very expensive to do or not very expensive, but they cost money. So it's like a typical run will cost anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000. And you usually have to do it every month if you're going to do it, right? And so usually it's networks like Wundery and I Heart who are buying these opportunities for their original content podcasts. So for the average podcaster, it's out of their league. It was out of my league when I was a podcaster.
Starting point is 00:20:27 It's only because I was innovative and found this little loophole before everybody else did, right? And it's because I knocked on so many doors before I found that opportunity. I was stagnant for a long time, but I kept trying and trying and trying until I found something that worked. I love that. That is such a great lesson. And so it's so applicable for everyone watching this.
Starting point is 00:20:45 So thank you so much for sharing. If people want to learn more about what is that you do and about yet media, how can they do that? Yeah, so the best place to go is yetmedia.io. And we've got all our services there. I also launched a new podcast network. So if you get over 10,000 downloads a week,
Starting point is 00:21:03 come talk to me. We have a new podcast network that is absolutely crushing already. Amazing. Wow. Okay. So what I wanted her to share with us in this video was really just go through and deep dive in her strategy. Like what did she do? Almost step by step to use LinkedIn to grow her podcast. So how are over to you? Please share with us everything you can. Yeah, sure. So, why don't we split it up in a couple different things? First, let's talk about frequency. So, LinkedIn is the type of platform where you want to post at least five times a week, if not every single day. And I would say post in the morning. So, anywhere between nine and 12, that way people can engage on your content all day. So that's frequency.
Starting point is 00:21:46 You post every single day, be consistent. Once you start, just make sure that you post every single day, even if it does bad, if it does bad, just delete it. That's it, right? It's not a big deal. Nobody's going to notice. Okay. So that's first things, first consistency.
Starting point is 00:21:59 Now let's talk about captions. So LinkedIn likes broitree style. So broitree style means that it's this line-by-line content. You guys, if you follow me on LinkedIn, just search for my name. It's halataha. You'll see that all my posts are this line-by-line content.
Starting point is 00:22:16 People do not like chunky paragraphs. People do not like to read when they're scrolling on mobile, reading chunky paragraphs is just really hard. And your sentences will look like paragraphs. So just think about just doing a couple lines. You also want to start with a hook, so something that really entices them, and you also want to end with a call to action, and you want to make sure that your posts have meaning,
Starting point is 00:22:37 right, and they provide value. So stay away from promotional content for a long time. You don't want to sell to your audience too quickly. You want to be of service. So make sure that you're educational, inspirational, motivational. Those are the types of things that you want to post if you want to get traction on LinkedIn
Starting point is 00:22:53 and any other platform. Now, the best and highest engagement on LinkedIn, like Blyk's, comments, shares, the most valuable engagement is a share, right? So the more that your posts get shared, the more likely engagement is a share, right? So the more that you're post gets shared, the more likely it's gonna go viral. So you wanna optimize everything for shareability. So whenever you're posting something,
Starting point is 00:23:12 you wanna think, would somebody share this, would I share this? So if there's a picture of you on it, and you're dressed inappropriately, no one's gonna share it. If there's a picture of you and you're smiling, and you look professional, and people are gonna share it, right? And people love faces. So big smiles, big eyes, white teeth, that's really important. The bigger the face, the better a perform, okay? So I know I was pitting out a lot. I just know there's a lot of
Starting point is 00:23:38 things. The other thing is content types. So the bigger the asset, the bigger the piece of real estate, whether that's video or graphic, the better it's gonna perform. You wanna stop the scroll. Also, the brighter the better. So be different standout, especially on a platform like LinkedIn people are sharing external links and it's really boring a lot of the times.
Starting point is 00:23:59 So the more that you stand out, the brighter the colors, the more even controversial, the better. Again, faces, if you have a video, put a thumbnail that has a face on it, it will perform a lot better. If you have a picture, make the face as big as possible. One face, I think, is better than many faces. And that's really key.
Starting point is 00:24:16 So if you notice a lot of my posts and a lot of my clients, it's just portrait photos. And that does the best on LinkedIn with something that's educational, motivational, inspirational in the caption The other kind of hacks that you want to think about is don't post external links Especially in the caption so most platforms they don't want you to go to another website They want you to stay on platforms So if you point to an external website, they're gonna deprioritize your post
Starting point is 00:24:41 So you can put the link in the comments or you can retarget anybody who liked or commented in the DMs with your link. That will be a lot better clicks happen in the DMs that don't happen on the actual content. I love that. Wow. So in terms of, you mentioned hook in the caption, do you put any text on the images or videos that you post
Starting point is 00:25:03 as do you put any text hooks, I guess. Yeah, so the thumbnail definitely should have a very few amount of words, but something that's going to hook them in, maybe a question, maybe something that sparks curiosity, right? And then captions are great, especially if you want to be accessible. Captions are always a good thing.
Starting point is 00:25:21 So definitely important. I would say what's more important is your caption, making it short, sweet, catchy and meaningful, and making sure that your asset has content that's just, you know, interesting and people actually want to watch. Now, what I will say is videos on LinkedIn in general don't perform that well, but something that people don't realize is that their impressions are counted differently. So on LinkedIn, a video view is when somebody watches your video for three seconds, whereas the view on a graphic is somebody just scrolls by. And so it's a lot harder to get video views.
Starting point is 00:25:56 So you can basically like times it by four or so to know how many people actually saw your post. And it's hard because people think like videos don't work at all on LinkedIn, but really it's just counted a little bit differently. And you have to realize that it will always seem like videos perform way worse. Yeah, wow. Okay.
Starting point is 00:26:13 And so you talked about the frequency of posting every day. What was your content strategy? I see in in terms of, you know, we talked a lot about content pillars and did you have a content strategy when you were posting personal LinkedIn around that? I mean, it's changed so many times, you know? But like, I think I would have, you know, maybe three posts a week were more like motivational,
Starting point is 00:26:33 inspirational, personal stories. Like if something happened to me at work or on the train, I would kind of like share more personal things that would connect me with my audience. And so they'd felt like they knew me as a person. And then two days a week, I would promote my new episode. And so putting out micro content. And here's the tips since everybody's a podcaster.
Starting point is 00:26:53 If anybody's liking or commenting on your podcast episode, they're raising their hand and they're saying, hey, like I would be interested to check out the full episode, that's your opportunity to then damn them and be like, hey, I notice you likes my microclip. If you want to catch the full episode, that's your opportunity to then damn them and be like, hey, I noticed you liked my microclip. If you want to catch the full episode, here's the link. And that's how I got a lot of subscribers. So I'd re-target people who liked and commented on my micro content videos,
Starting point is 00:27:14 which were about like three minutes long. And then we'd encourage them to listen to the full episode. Love that so much, so much gold there. Okay, cool. So that was frequency. What's the next part? Well, we went over frequency We went over content captions we went over
Starting point is 00:27:31 Asset types because I mentioned graphics are performing well again polls are not working well on LinkedIn So stay away from them sliders aren't really working well on LinkedIn It's really those big static posts text only posts have a little bit of momentum right now, and videos. So those are the three things that you should pay attention to. The more shareable, the better again, the more shares, the more likely you're gonna go viral. Even a ton of comments, because people can kind of fudge comments now,
Starting point is 00:27:57 LinkedIn doesn't really care that much about comments. So you could get hundreds and thousands of comments and knuckle viral is all about the shares, okay? The next thing I'm gonna talk about is publishing strategies. So people don't realize that publishing is just as important as the actual content. And what I mean by publishing strategies is the way that you engage and get other people to engage on your content.
Starting point is 00:28:19 So one of the first things that I did when I first started getting influenced on LinkedIn is I decided to team up with my competition. I was like, who is an upcoming podcaster that's coming from my neck right now? It was like Mark Metrie at the time, Quentin Alums, like Jordan Perris, all these guys that were bubbling up and also podcasting or doing similar things. I said, let's join a WhatsApp group. Let's have a monthly mastermind call. Let's change exchange strategies since
Starting point is 00:28:48 for both doing LinkedIn and podcasts. And let's support each other's links. And so I got all these podcasters in a WhatsApp group. And I just had some simple rules. I was like, listen, if you post something today and you post a link, you got to share on everyone else's link. And I looked it up and LinkedIn's turns with service. And it's not against their TOS. It's not against terms of service, but engagement
Starting point is 00:29:08 pods. So I encourage everyone to start your own engagement pod because you want people to like and comment within the first 30 minutes of your post. So I got all these other influencers to do that. Their audience was very similar to mine. Their audience started to see my stuff. It made me even bigger, made me even go more viral. So start your own engagement pod, make sure people are liking and commenting within the first 30 minutes of you putting up a post. If you have a team, have the team liking comment, if you have a family that will support you, have your family liking comment, it really does help. And it helps kind of boost your visibility in the feed. So publishing strategies are important. The other thing is like the timing,
Starting point is 00:29:43 pay attention to your timing, and then also responding to your comments. There's a trick though. You don't want to respond to every comment. There's some psychological things going on in the comments. If you respond to every single comment, people are going to find it and be like, they're going to think, oh, she is like on it right now, and I'm like too embarrassed to comment because she's like actually reading her comments right now.
Starting point is 00:30:05 That's one reason why you don't want to respond to all the comments. The next reason why is because people are gonna be like, oh my gosh, I think the conversation is over because everything's responded to. And they don't, so you wanna leave the last five, 10 comments unanswered at all times because then people will keep commenting.
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Starting point is 00:33:15 She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on young and profiting, and she talked about her conviction marketing framework, it was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in nine to five. And at at the same time she built her eight figure company
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Starting point is 00:34:30 Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, ya fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently
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Starting point is 00:36:41 I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class. And right now as a app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com slash profiting. That's masterclass.com slash profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com slash profiting. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think hashtags don't work that well in LinkedIn. You want to keep it to like three. You also don't want to overdo it with very popular hashtags because actually more people will see your post, but less people will engage. Your engagement rate will go down and you actually won't get boosted in the feed. So you want to kind of own a hashtag.
Starting point is 00:37:20 So for example, I use the same three hashtags. Two of them are branded. One of them is one that I'm owning and that's podcast. So I basically own the podcast hashtag on LinkedIn. I do it for every single post. And then I have YAP, which is my brand and younger profiting, which is my podcast. So a couple branded hashtags,
Starting point is 00:37:37 maybe one that you try to own and you always use is another tactic. So awesome. Okay, and then talk us through your whole DM strategy, because this was another way that you really blew up. And you shared one way with us, which is as people are commenting, liking, hey, DM them, and go like, so that you did that,
Starting point is 00:37:58 do you want to listen to the podcast episode? What, how else did you use DMing on LinkedIn? There's so many different ways to use a lot of the different features. I'll just talk about some of the things that people aren't realizing. The other thing I'll say is that automation is against terms of service. I did it when I was first coming out, but I would not recommend that anybody do automation. Now you've got to do everything manually.
Starting point is 00:38:19 You can get a VA or something like that, but you have to be careful because you can't log in from a different country or a different city. It's pretty technical. So what I would say is if you wanna get into this, you've gotta really know what you're doing and don't just do it without really studying about it and understanding that you have to be logged in
Starting point is 00:38:37 from like the same city, you have to stay under certain amount of actions so you don't get flack. And so automation is against terms service. I do not recommend it. It's something I did early in my career before I even knew that it was against LinkedIn terms of service. Okay, so just calling that out.
Starting point is 00:38:52 Now, in terms of like just general things that you should be aware of, number one is that LinkedIn is full of dead connections. So one of the things that you wanna do is you wanna optimize for active connections. And what that means things that you want to do is you want to optimize for active connections. And what that means is people who have logged on to LinkedIn for the past six months and people who actively engage, meaning they like, share, and they comment on posts. Those are the people that you want to invite to your network because the last thing that
Starting point is 00:39:19 you want is somebody who doesn't engage because in your engage, Marie, is always going to be down. So I run a social media agency for celebrity as an influencer, some things like that. And we always get different types of clients. Sometimes people have no following, which is the easiest thing to grow and get a really active channel that goes viral because you don't have any dead connections.
Starting point is 00:39:38 Some people have like 30,000 connections. They used LinkedIn from 10 years ago. They added people left and right. And those people aren't on the platform anymore. You need to go in there. You can get access to something like sales navigator, which is a software from LinkedIn. You can see who's been an active for six months or more. You can see who's in India, who's in countries that you don't care for, and you don't sell too.
Starting point is 00:40:01 You can start to unfollow people who don't belong in your network. That's going to be really key if you want to go viral because you need a high engagement rate. So that's a key tactic that some people don't realize is that you actually need to unfollow people so that you can get a better head start, especially if you already have a lot of connections. If you don't have a lot of connections right now, it's a non-issue. You can just focus on active connections. Now, where do you find the active connections? It's not just looking at follower lists. It's looking at who liked and commented on recent posts of people who speak about the topics that you speak about. And so think
Starting point is 00:40:33 about your niche, come up with a list of lookalike profiles. So for me, it's like Lewis House, Jay Shetty, Jordan Harbinger, Gary Vee, right? Those are the people that I targeted. Who is liking and commenting on those posts? Sound those people and invite, Hey, what's up? I noticed you're engaging on this Sonsos post. That's my favorite podcast. I'd love to connect or oh, I noticed that you're engaging with Sonsos posts. He actually just came on my podcast. I'd love to connect. Like then send a DM after they accept and say, hey, thank you so much for liking my stuff. If you want to listen to my show,
Starting point is 00:41:02 here's the link. I'd love to like, you know, provide value on your feed. Can't wait for, you know, to learn more about you and have genuine conversations with people. I really got to know my followers and then they became my super fans. Some of them worked for me volunteers and it everything just took off from there. So definitely pay attention to your community. Wow, I love that. Okay. Now I know that you you've obviously used other organic means to grow your podcast. Can you share some of those with us? Yeah, I think there's lots of different ways and a lot of them don't cost any money. So one of my favorite tactics is to guest on other shows. So for a period of time, I went on anybody's show who asked actually this month, I'm going on anybody's show who asks for while I had some criteria, you know, yet I've over 5,000 followers on one platform or you know, but now I'm just
Starting point is 00:41:52 supporting anybody who sports me, Jaldi style, and guessing on shows is a great way to get new listeners because 50% of people who listen to podcasts, sorry, 50% of people in America do not listen to podcasts. So when you're posting on social media, you gotta remember that you're posting to 50% of people who don't listen to podcasts and most people don't listen to podcasts frequently. But the people who do listen to podcasts listen to six or seven at a time.
Starting point is 00:42:19 And so that means that if you guess on someone's show, they might be interested to go find you and subscribe and listen to your show. And so, guessing on other shows is a great tactic and it's a free tactic. You just gotta find a swap. Now, in terms of how you actually find those podcasts, so basically what you wanna do is
Starting point is 00:42:39 you can go to something like listen notes and you can look up your podcasts and see, and this is not entirely accurate, because I know that they're not that accurate with me, but it's, I think it's accurate enough. Yes. If you go here, you'll see what kind of podcast ranking that you have. And then you can go look up other podcasts and see if they rank similar. If they rank similar, you can use this as a leverage point and say, hey, like we have the same global rank on list of notes. Why don't we have a podcast swap? Or you can simply tell them, hey, I get a thousand downloads in episode. How many
Starting point is 00:43:13 how many downloads do you get for episode? If you're surround the same, you know, range, we have a similar audience. Let's have a podcast swap, right? Now, the other thing that you can do is a commercial impression swap. So basically what that means, and I did this with Jordan Harbinger. So Jordan Harbinger's show is like five to eight times my size at any given moment, right? So it shows much bigger than mine. So when he became my mentor, we had an impression swap where I did eight commercials for his every one to promote my podcast, and we did an impression commercial swap. So that's a very creative way to get a commercial on a really big podcast. So if you get 10,000 downloads, an episode and somebody gets 50,000 downloads, you're going to do five commercials for their every one and you'll do an even impression swap. So that's a key thing. A lot of big podcasters do that. A lot of people don't really know about it, and it's something that up and coming podcasters can kind of replicate.
Starting point is 00:44:07 Wow, okay, this has been so, so cool. Thank you so much, Har. This is just invaluable information that you're sharing with our audience. So if people want to know more about what is that you're doing about yet media, and maybe even like what level do they need to be at to even have a conversation with you. Can you share with us all those details? Yeah, first of all, I think the never one way to thank me would be to listen to Younger Profiting Podcast. I just put out an episode with Wim Hof today. It's an amazing conversation. I'd love for you guys to go listen to my episode with Wim Hof, then drop me a review on Apple Podcasts since I'm still actually growing my Apple Podcasts and trying to,
Starting point is 00:44:48 so please drop me a review on Apple Podcasts. If you found value from this session, that would be the number one way to thank me. And to subscribe to the show, listen to Younger Profiting Podcasts. I interview the brightest minds in the world. We unpack their wisdom for actionable advice. And then my company, Yap Media.
Starting point is 00:45:04 So it's for CEOs, influencers, celebrities. It has a pretty high monthly retainer. So if you are, you know, doing really well and you want to ramp up your personal brand or blow up your company, hit me up, YAP Media dot IO. And if you're an up and coming podcaster and you have any questions for me, I have a text community. You can join that by texting YAP to 28046. And that's how you can ask any question that you have for me. So I'd love for you guys to join my text community. And if you want to find out more about me or the show, just go to 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
Starting point is 00:46:01 podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a 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
Starting point is 00:46:17 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?
Starting point is 00:46:39 Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever. And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast, happier with Gretchen Rubin.

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