Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Your Secret Weapon, How Leveraging LinkedIn Can Grow Your Brand and Generate Leads | Marketing | The Goal Digger

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's going on, young improfitors? I am super excited for today's episode because we're replaying my appearance on the Gold Digger podcast with Jenna Cuchar. I was so excited to go on this podcast. It is such a big show. And the host of the show, Jenna, is the ultimate entrepreneur slash mom. She runs a seven-figure business and her podcast, The Gold Digger podcast, has over 100 million downloads. It was such an honor to go on her show. And I actually just recently interviewed Jenna on Yap. So if you haven't heard that episode, it was awesome. It's number 242, and I highly recommend you check it out after today's episode. And by the way, Jenna Coutcher just joined my podcast network, the Yap Media Podcast Network, which is the number one business and self-improvement podcast network.

Starting point is 00:00:56 I'm so happy to have Jenna joining our family. Today, Jenna and I are talking about all things LinkedIn, from using keywords to copywriting to building a content strategy. We'll also talk about how to sell in the DMs and build your personal brand on LinkedIn to generate more leads for your business. And if you want to dive in further with LinkedIn, sign up for my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. Our next session is December 13th and 14th, and you can go to Yapmedia.com.com. Again, that's yapmedia.com.com. And you can use code podcast for 30% off. Without further ado, enjoy my conversation with the lovely Jenna Coocher on the Gold Digger podcast. Well, this feels like an absolute delight.

Starting point is 00:01:39 I am so excited to finally connect with you. One thing that I love is when I see other women at the top of the charts. I have been cheering you on. And so welcome to the show, Hala. Oh, thank you so much, Jenna. I'm so excited for this conversation. So I know a little bit about your story. But for those who might not know,

Starting point is 00:01:57 can you tell me a little bit about your career journey that's led you to where you are today and where you are today because all of this is so fascinating. Sure. I started my career in radio about 10 years ago when I was a junior in college. I interned for the Angie Martinez show on Hot 97, which was the number one hip hop and R&B station. And I basically interned for three years at the radio station to understand how production works, radio works. At the same time, I had online radio shows, which was the precursor of podcasts. podcasts were technically available, but they're really complicated and a lot of people were doing online radio shows. So I'd host like music based entertainment shows with the up-and-coming DJs at Hot 97 on the

Starting point is 00:02:41 side. And I used to make my money selling like hip hop showcases and hosting like parties that night with all the DJs. And so I did that for three years. Actually ended up dropping out of school because, you know, they wanted me to keep working more and more at the station. And I started doing commercials at the station and working on the weekends for them and learning the dilett boards and running the whole music program and everything like that. And so I eventually wanted to get paid. And, you know, that rubbed Hot 97 a bit the wrong way. Long story short, I got fired. And I felt like my whole identity was taken away from me. I felt like, you know, I was hanging out with celebrities. I was dating Chris Brown at one point. Like I was, you know, it was like my whole identity was crushed.

Starting point is 00:03:22 And everybody basically blackballed me from Hot 97 because once you're sort of out, you're out. And some people were like, Laylo, maybe Angie will forgive you. But I didn't. I thought of a new idea. And I was like sort of wanting to get revenge. So I got fired on a Thursday. By Sunday, I had a new idea. And I was going to start this thing called the sorority of hip hop.

Starting point is 00:03:43 And it was going to be a blog. Blogs are super hot at the time. And so I went on Twitter. I had a big following on Twitter at the time. I went on Craigslist. And I started recruiting girls. And I was like, if you're in the entertainment industry, if you've been burned, if you want to learn how to blog, if you're pretty, if you're smart, send in your pictures, send in your resume. And I want to recruit you for the sorority of hip hop.

Starting point is 00:04:04 And so I started this group two weeks later. I had 14 girls. I went back to school to finish my senior year in college. And I remember I had my first board meeting in my college. I like rented out a room. And there was like 14 girls. So I was the president of this new thing called the sorority of hip hop. And I started learning how to build a website.

Starting point is 00:04:22 sites. And three months later, we were one of the most popular entertainment and hip hop sites in the world. I basically figured out how to hack Twitter. We kept recruiting more and more girls. So in and out, over three years, I had like 150 girls. But usually there'd be like 50 girls at a time who were under me learning how to blog. And I basically would connect everybody's handles to Twitter. So when we'd put out a blog post and it was a music based like makeup, hip hop fashion website, we would like tweet out like Wiz Khalifa and his new song. And there'd be like 50 pretty girls tweeting him and they'd retweet it. And I was the first one that figured that out.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Now everybody does that, right? But I was the first blog to do that. And so we got popular really fast. And so MTV reached out to us and they wanted to shoot a reality pilot. This was just three months into it. We didn't get the show, but I figured what else could happen, right? Who cares? And then all of a sudden, because I was making so much noise,

Starting point is 00:05:18 everybody from Hot 97 started reaching back out to me. And then I just started hosting all the coolest parties in the city. And instead of being somebody's intern, I basically was peers with DJ Camillo and Funkmaster Flex. And even Angie was trying to get me on love and hip hop and helping me out. And everybody had more respect for me because I built something on my own and they realized I wasn't just going to go away. So I started hosting all these parties.

Starting point is 00:05:42 My business turned into a blog slash event company. I would host concerts, throw concerts. then MTV came back to us two years later or so we had like built it up pretty popular in the tri-state area would get shouted out on the radio like every day for all the parties we'd be hosting and they were like this is it it was right after Jersey Shore had ended they're like you're going to get your own show you're going to be the star they picked like five out of 50 girls to be in the cast with me they got a studio on Broadway they filmed us the entire summer we threw a concert like we did all these cool things and I thought it was going to be famous so

Starting point is 00:06:17 At this point, it was like six years of basically working for free. I was scrounging money here and there, but I was like kept working like marketing jobs and doing like social media for festival companies. And we were making money, but there were so many mouths to feed. And it was expensive to run a blog site with all the servers and how popular our site was. And I hadn't figured out advertising like,

Starting point is 00:06:36 you know, I was like just bootstrapping and like didn't even know what I was doing. I was so young. Anyway, we shot this whole pilot and two weeks before it's supposed to air. It's not just a pilot. We shot like a whole series over the sound. Somewhere two weeks before it's airing, the producer from MTV calls me up.

Starting point is 00:06:52 And she's like, Oh, I'm so sorry. We went into another direction and we're not going to air the show. And I started bawling and I was like, no way. Like, what do you mean? This is the second time you guys did this to me. We signed all the papers. Like, what do you mean? It's not going to air.

Starting point is 00:07:06 And she's like, I'm sorry. We're going in another direction. And at this point, I was really beaten down. And I felt like I can't make it and try to bring up 50 girls with me at the same time. if I'm not even successful myself. I felt really like ashamed with my parents because all my siblings were like in med school and residency, all these things. And I was like still trying to make it and like even just make like $30,000 a year or

Starting point is 00:07:29 whatever. Like you know what I mean? I just wasn't making any money. Even though I was like almost famous in the tri-state area, I wasn't really making any money. So then I just shut everything down. I actually pretended that it was a fake shut down. I said I needed a break. I was like, let's pretend we're shutting down and just get a lot of attention.

Starting point is 00:07:45 I just need a break. And then our break was supposed to be like two weeks. And then I was like, guys, I don't want to do this anymore. And all the girls were really upset with me to this day. Some of the girls, like, really hate me for doing that. But I had to do it. And so I went. I had a terrible undergraduate GPA because all I was doing was working at Hot 97 in my undergrad.

Starting point is 00:08:05 So I wanted to get my MBA. And I couldn't get into any schools. And then I ended up begging my director of my alma matter of the alumni program. And she let me in. I told her my story and she was like, okay, like, you know, if you get a 4.0, I'll keep you in the program. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do it. And so I got my MBA, got a 4.0. I graduated number one in my class. And I started my corporate track. And I just literally thought I'd never get back on a mic. I thought it was done. And then I started my corporate track that worked at HP, worked there for

Starting point is 00:08:34 four years. I became the face of the young employees there. So I essentially was an entrepreneur at the company. It really stood out. And I was way more tech savvy than everybody else. And so in the marketing department, I just kept rising up in the ranks and I was sort of like the C-Suite's pet and I would go to all the conferences and interview the CEO and the CMO and I was like that type of character at the company. And then four years into it, I got the itch and I saw podcasting was really out there. I saw that there was apps like Podbean and things that seemed accessible that I could figure out. And so I just decided one day. I remember it was New Year's 2018 right before the new year. And I was just like, all right, I'm going to start this podcast. And instead of

Starting point is 00:09:13 being like an influencer within this corporate company. I want to take what I've learned over the years and interview smart people and be of service. And I started this podcast, Young and Profiting. So I'll pause there. There's so much more. There's Stitch Fix.

Starting point is 00:09:26 There's Disney. You have been all over the place. What was it about podcasting that drew you in? Was it that radio background? I mean, because if you think about radio and blogging, podcasting is kind of this interesting combination of both of those skill sets. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:42 I felt like I knew. how to do everything, right? So I had like, hacked Twitter. There's a social media element for sure with podcasting. I knew how to do audio editing. I knew how to do video editing. I knew how to do graphic design. I knew how to host. I also knew that I had a story and that I could probably get some really big guess just from my story. And so I just, you know, figured I had all the skills and I had the time, you know, I was doing really well in my job and I felt like I had all this kind of free time. I would volunteer internally with an HP and I decided to stop doing that.

Starting point is 00:10:14 And then all the sudden, I felt like I had like four hours a day to figure some stuff out. And the cool thing about young improfiting is that I had a team of volunteers that actually helped me for two years. I had 20 people for two years that helped me. And it's because I had so many skills that like there'd be one guy from Atlanta and I teach him how to do videos. One guy from Estonia, I taught him how to do my website. You know, interns from my past college, I would teach how to do. production research for me. And so I just like had this like army of interns that would help me so that I could have

Starting point is 00:10:48 a day job. And then I just kept growing the podcast that way. So I know that you made the leap into full time entrepreneurship in 2020, which was a crazy year for everyone, but especially for you. What finally gave you the confidence to go all in? What did that look like? Yeah. It was actually, you know, when I started the podcast, I never thought that I was going to make any

Starting point is 00:11:10 money. I was just being of service, growing my, I became a really big influencer on LinkedIn, growing my like personal brand. And I literally didn't even think it was possible to make money off a podcast. And I remember like being in clubhouse like before I really blew up being like, guys, there's no way you're going to make money from podcasting. It's about networking. And then like, little did I know there's so much money in podcasting if you know what you're doing. Right. And so the first way that I started monetizing my show is that these guests would come on. And I, from the start, I had a really big guess because like I said, I was punching above my way. I understood how to get big guests from the start.

Starting point is 00:11:45 And I never sort of settled for anyone. I always shot up and it was like a volume game. I just knew the more I sent out, somebody would eventually say yes. And then one person says yes, it was easier to get more people to say yes. So basically these big guests that were very successful already would come on my show. They'd be author, speakers, celebrities. And after the end of the show, they would literally like clockwork, like, Hala, how did you grow your LinkedIn? Can you do it for me?

Starting point is 00:12:11 How did you grow this podcast? Can you do this for me? And I used to always be like, I'm sorry. I have a really great corporate career at the time I was working at Disney. You know, I've got a volunteer team, but they're really busy with my stuff. Like, we don't have the bandwidth to help you. I'm sorry. And I would just always say that. And then one day I met this lady, Heather Monaghan. Are you familiar with her? Yes, yes. And I know this part of your story. I love it. So she came on my show. And I gave her the whole show. And I gave her the whole show. feel she was like holl i need you to do my lincoln and i was like i'm sorry i can't and then she just wouldn't leave me alone she was on every single one of my videos on lincoln she's like holly you have to do

Starting point is 00:12:49 this so she kept commenting you have to do this for me so then i was you know she was somebody who i looked up to and so i was like you know what i would love heather to be my mentor so i was like listen i can't do it for you but i can teach you how yeah and so i started setting up these meetings with her on saturdays and she thought it was so cute that i would like send a calendar invite for saturday And like I was like trying to teach her how to use like headliner and Canva and Premiere Pro. And I was showing her like our Slack and our drive and our templates. Yeah. And she is just like was like, Hala.

Starting point is 00:13:21 I literally am talking to VaynerMedia for them to do my social media. Your stuff is more impressive. She's like, you have a company. Do you understand you have a company? I want to be your first client. And I was just like it was COVID. And I was working from home. and really I was in a space where like I wanted a distraction, you know, quite frankly,

Starting point is 00:13:43 because I had a lot more free time. I was sort of coasting in my job. It was a hard job, but I felt like I had time. I just figured like, all right, we'll do it. And I was like, okay, I'll start with your videos. And then we did a great job. And we started taking over all her channels and then eventually her podcast. And then my second client.

Starting point is 00:14:01 So Heather was paying me like nothing, like $700 a month. Like it was really nothing in the beginning, right? And so then my second client, Jason Waller, he was the CEO of like one of the fastest growing, oh, you know him. He was the CEO of one of the fastest growing solar panel companies. And it's like the fastest growing private company in the U.S. And he invited me on a show. And afterwards, he was like, how can you do social media and production for me? And now I had like a business kind of.

Starting point is 00:14:26 And I was like, yeah, definitely. I can do it. And I like, sure, I'll send you a proposal. And I remember meeting with my business partner, Tim, who has been with me since episode two. we put together this proposal and it was like $3,000 for each service. It was three services. And then he's like, why don't we just make a $10,000 a service? And let's just shoot for $30K.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And I was like, okay. And it was a 30K monthly retainer. I was like, let's do it. And so I hop on a call with Jason and I give this pitch. And my second deal was $30,000 a month. And then it was just like, boom. Then I got like Kara Golden of Hint, if Hint, Hint, for another huge contract. Then I got the CEO of When I Hinder got junk, his personal brand and his company.

Starting point is 00:15:06 then it just like skyrocketed and I just kept getting client after client. So then six months after I started the side hustle, I had 30 paid employees. I started paying everybody right as soon as we started making money across the world. I had like, you know, already full-time U.S. employees. I was still working at Disney. Then I got on the cover of podcast magazine and interviewed Matthew McConaughey.

Starting point is 00:15:28 And then I was like, all right, I got to just take the leap. It's like I'm like, I should have done this three months ago. And I quit my job and the rest is history. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

Starting point is 00:15:49 We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate, even though I'm so picky because when it comes to hiring, indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsor jobs help you stand out and hire fast by boosting your post to the top relevant candidates. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones, according to Indeed data worldwide. I'm so glad I found Indeed when I did because hiring is so much easier now. In fact, in the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on

Starting point is 00:16:22 Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs, more visibility at Indeed.com.com. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed is all you need. Hey, young improfitters. As an entrepreneur, I know firsthand that getting a huge expense off your books

Starting point is 00:16:59 is the best possible feeling. It gives you peace of mind and it lets you focus on the big picture and invest in other things that move your business forward. Now imagine if you got free business, business internet for life. You never had to pay for business internet again. How good would that feel? Well, now you don't even have to imagine because spectrum business is doing exactly that. They get it that if you aren't connected, you can't make transactions, you can't move your business forward. They support all types of businesses from restaurants to dry cleaners to content creators like me and everybody in between. They offer things like internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone TV, and mobile services. Now, for my business-owning friends out there,

Starting point is 00:17:35 I want you to listen up. If you want reliable internet connection with no contracts, and no added fees, Spectrum is now offering free business internet advantage forever when you simply add four or more mobile lines. This isn't just a deal. It's a smart way to cut your monthly overhead and stay connected. Yeah, Bim, you should definitely take advantage of this offer. It's free business internet forever. Visit spectrum.com slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. It's so insane. I love your story. And, There's so many parts you didn't even include, which is why everyone needs to go listen to your show so they can hear the full story.

Starting point is 00:18:16 So one of the things that you hinted at is LinkedIn. Now, we have had hundreds of episodes on this podcast and we've only talked about LinkedIn a handful of times. Why do you love LinkedIn? Sell it to me for anyone who is like, wait, people still use that? Yeah. So LinkedIn is a really popular platform. There's 135 million active daily users on LinkedIn. And my favorite part about LinkedIn is that people are prime.

Starting point is 00:18:39 for sales conversations. So people are doing research and their buying journey on LinkedIn. People are used to being approached in the DMs. People want to be approached for relevant things related to their career and their job. They want to be helped

Starting point is 00:18:54 and they want people to help them solve their problems. And so they're receptive to basically selling in the DMs, which is where a lot of the selling happens on LinkedIn. Whereas on Instagram, when you try to do the same thing, people get turned off because they're there for entertainment. they're there to check up on their family and not there for sales and business. So that's one reason.

Starting point is 00:19:15 The other reason is because that algorithm is completely hackable still, right? It is completely possible to grow without the use of boosting and automation or bots or whatever. And Instagram is really hard to grow right now. There's a couple ways that you can still grow on Instagram. But LinkedIn, it's like once you understand the tactics, once you understand what works, what doesn't, and you understand the algorithm, no matter what your topic is, no matter how well you write or whatever, you can figure out how to grow a following on that platform. So happy to dig into any of that. Okay. So let's talk about first the following. So does your following matter? We know we've seen like popularity and people are so fixated on growing that number under their

Starting point is 00:19:55 name on all the platforms. Walk me through why you want to grow your audience on LinkedIn. Yeah. So I think that getting a following is really important, but really it's engagement that matters. It's the amount of views that you get on your content and how much people engage, like comment, share. That's what really matters because I've got a lot of clients that have come to me in the past. They might have a million followers. Maybe they had like a big press push or they were LinkedIn's top voice or they started on LinkedIn 10 years ago when it was no matter what you did, you went viral. And they have little engagement and they get no sales.

Starting point is 00:20:30 They get no business from LinkedIn because nobody's actually seeing their stuff anymore. So it's really important to focus on engagement and understanding how to go viral on the feed rather than just getting connections, right? So in terms of why it's important to have a following, especially first connections on LinkedIn, because those are the only people that you can DM. And on LinkedIn, there's first connections and there's second and third connections.

Starting point is 00:20:51 And second and third connections can see your feed content if people share your stuff or engage on your stuff. But you actually want to be able to DM people so that you can generate sales because all the action and connection and people actually clicking on links really happens in the DMs. So what would you say would be the first step? If somebody's listening to this and they're like, I have a very old profile on LinkedIn,

Starting point is 00:21:14 it probably hasn't been updated. I'm an entrepreneur now. I haven't thought that I needed this. What would be the first step of getting reacclimated on LinkedIn? One of the things that I ask people to do is look up their lookalike profiles. So when I say look alike profiles, what I really mean is people who have a following that you want. It's not necessarily your competitors. It's not necessarily anybody who's actually.

Starting point is 00:21:38 in your niche. It's people who have a following that you think would resonate with your product or offering. Okay, because those are the people that you want to study and emulate and figure out how you're going to differentiate between their profiles, take what's working for them and then improve on what you think could be better. The other thing that you can do with those lookalike profiles, as you can see who recently liked and commented on their stuff. And this is really important because people go on LinkedIn, they go look for a job, they get a job, and then a lot of them never log back on. And the last thing that you want is dead profile. So a lot of people make the mistake of just like typing in titles or doing searches on LinkedIn and then finding people that

Starting point is 00:22:16 they think would be their target audience and inviting them. But those people never accept their connection requests because they don't log onto LinkedIn. So you want people who log on to LinkedIn and take viral action on posts, which means you want to find people who have a big engaged following, not just a big following. Again, people who get 200 likes, 300 likes plus on their posts and are getting engagement. And then you want to see who liked and commented on those posts and who shared those posts, which you can actually see. And you're going to want to invite those people into your network. And so I did this when I first started. Everybody was calling me the young Gary Vee. I, you know, knew he had a podcast, knew he talked marketing, knew he was motivational. And I was

Starting point is 00:22:55 like, okay, anybody who's going to like his stuff is going to like mine too. And I'd say like, hey, what's up? I noticed you engage with Gary Vee. If you like his content and podcast, you're going to like mine too. I'd love to provide value on your feed. Let's connect. Nine out of ten people would accept. Then I all of a sudden had like 10,000 of Gary V's fans. And little did I know that I was also triggering the algorithm. Because when you recently connect with someone, they see your content at the top of their feed for two weeks.

Starting point is 00:23:22 If you DM with someone and they respond back, they see your content at the top of their feed for two weeks. Then if they like or comment or share, they're like 85% more likely to see your content. If they comment, they're 70% more likely to see your content. And so you just start this flywheel effect of bringing people in, DMing them, then they see your stuff, then you go viral on the feed, then people are connected with people who are similar to them. So if you are targeting someone, let's say, who's in real estate, chances are they've got a lot of people in real estate who's in their following themselves.

Starting point is 00:23:53 And when they engage on their content, those people see that engagement in their feed. And so then you get like a referral to all their following. And so that's really how you crush it on LinkedIn. you have to be strategic and invite people who take viral action and start this flywheel effect. And it's both content on the feed and this DM strategy. And so you can do this in a million ways. Another great way to sort of target active people on LinkedIn is that there's thousands of events that are going on every day.

Starting point is 00:24:20 And people are registering for these events. So if you, like for example, let's say you have social media services. So if you look up social media events on LinkedIn, you can see all the events that are coming up everybody who registered who basically are raising their hand, I'm interested in this topic, you can register for that event and then then you get access to message everybody who's in that event and they're active. They're interested in what you want and it's relevant and people will have that conversation with you because you're bringing up something relevant to them. Wow. Okay. So I'm obsessed with this. I love hacking the system, which you have absolutely done.

Starting point is 00:24:56 So you brought up content in the feed. So a lot of people just visualize like the old school Facebook, right? When you could only see your own profile and when we all freaked out that the newsfeed happened. The similar rollout happened with LinkedIn where now you are supposed to be sharing content and value. Walk me through different types of posts that you publish that can show up in the feed so that people can start imagining what type of value can I add on that platform and

Starting point is 00:25:22 what does it look like compared to other platforms that I might already be on? Yeah, this is a really great question. So whenever we're talking about feed content on LinkedIn, we want to promote shareability. And there's two main types of posts that are shareable. There's motivational and inspirational. And then there's educational. And both of them work really well on LinkedIn. In fact, LinkedIn is now prioritizing educational content.

Starting point is 00:25:45 So one of the things that you want to think about when you're thinking about motivational content is telling stories. So things that work well is like transformational stories. I was poor. Now I'm rich. I was fat. Now I'm skinny. right, showing that like transformation and what your learnings are and giving a story. And it's really important on LinkedIn to remember what features work the best on that platform.

Starting point is 00:26:08 So while Instagram is really video heavy, they want to compete with TikTok. LinkedIn is not the same. Actually like vertical style videos that work really well on Instagram do very poorly on LinkedIn. And actually you want to stick with a four by five size graphics. So a very large, I call it poster size that, yeah. media graphic on LinkedIn. If you guys are curious what that looks like, you can go to my profile on LinkedIn, and you'll see that almost every single post is like a four by five photograph on LinkedIn. And so typically these motivational posts is either a story or a quote or a

Starting point is 00:26:41 lesson that you're giving that is going to be relevant to everyone. And the reason why it's shareable is that everybody wants positivity. Everybody can relate to it. It's relevant to everyone. So if you're looking for a broad audience and you might have a lower ticket offer that doesn't need to have a very specific audience, you probably want to lean into motivational content that's going to go massively viral. That's the most viral type of content. And it doesn't matter if it's a long caption, a short caption, but when you're thinking about social media on any platform, prioritize being skimable. Okay. So on LinkedIn specifically, they'll actually deprioritize you if you use chunky paragraphs because LinkedIn knows that people are skimming through about nine posts.

Starting point is 00:27:21 They're only going to stop and read if it's easy. It should be fun. You don't want to make people work, right? So you want to make it as easy as possible. So even if you're telling a story, it's line by line and you're opening it up with a hook to get people hooked in to actually spend time on your post, increase dwell time, click the learn more button or keep reading button and keep spending time on your post. That's really important. And then eventually hopefully engage. So again, line by line style copy. They call it broatry on LinkedIn. That's actually the algorithm is prioritizing that kind of content. That's why you see all the influencers do that. Young and profiters.

Starting point is 00:28:00 I know there's so many people tuning in right now that end their workday wondering why certain tasks take forever, why they're procrastinating certain things, why they don't feel confident in their work, why they feel drained and frustrated and unfulfilled. But here's the thing you need to know. It's not a character flaw that you're feeling this way. It's actually your natural wiring. And here's the thing. When it comes to burnout, it's really about the type of work that you're doing.

Starting point is 00:28:25 Some work gives you energy and some work. work simply drains you. So it's key to understand your six types of working genius. The working genius assessment or the six types of working genius framework was created by Patrick Lensione and he's a business influencer and author. And the working genius framework helps you identify what you're actually built for and the work that you're not. Now, let me tell you a story. Before I uncovered my working genius, which is galvanizing and invention, so I like to rally people and I like to invent new things, I used to be really shameful and had a lot of guilt around the fact that I didn't like enablement, which is one of my working frustrations.

Starting point is 00:29:02 So I actually don't like to support people one-on-one. I don't like it when people slow me down. I don't like handholding. I like to move fast, invent, rally people, inspire. But what I do need to do is ensure that somebody else can fill the enablement role, which I do have, K on my team. So working genius helps you uncover these genius gaps, helps you work better with your team, helps you reduce friction, helps you collaborate better, understand,

Starting point is 00:29:24 why people are the way that they are. It's helped me restructure my team, put people in the spots that they're going to really excel, and it's also helped me in hiring. Working Genius is absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with this model. So if you guys want to take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off, you can use code profiting. Go to workinggenius.com. Again, that's workinggenius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius. What's up, Yap Gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touchpoints every single cold customer has with your brand. Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot com initially. But here's a problem.

Starting point is 00:30:06 Too many companies treat their website like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade from my website and I'm planning on doing that with Framer this year because small changes can take days with my other platform and simple updates require tickets. And suddenly we're just leaving so much opportunity on the table. And that's why so many teams, including mine, are turning to framework. It's built for teams who refuse to let their website slow them down. Your designers and marketers get full ownership with real-time collaboration, everything you need for SEO and analytics, with integrated A-B testing. I love that. I love testing and making sure that we've got the

Starting point is 00:30:44 best performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds. Whether you're launching a new site testing landing pages or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a framer pro annual plan. That's 30% off. Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply.

Starting point is 00:31:21 Hello, Yap, gang. I know my young improfiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life. and the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real. You can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform, and they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business.

Starting point is 00:31:48 And I love that QuickBooks helps you get paid faster, pay bill smarter, and even gives you access to funding when opportunity pops up. So QuickBooks can help you with bookkeeping, can help you with getting paid, can even help you with projections and understanding where your business is at financially. Plus, QuickBooks Money Solutions reduces manual work by half and keeps your money and your books perfectly synced. That means less time staring at spreadsheets and more time actually building the vision that you started with. That's the upgrade that every profiting entrepreneur needs.

Starting point is 00:32:18 Start the New Year's strong, take control of your cash flow with QuickBooks Money Tools. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash money. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash money. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. So that's a motivational content, which I love. What about your other kind of things that you're doing inside of your business or your work?

Starting point is 00:32:43 Yes. So this is really important, especially for an entrepreneur. It's educational content, right? And so when you're thinking about educational content on LinkedIn, really what you want to make sure is that you're not. lecturing. So this is the biggest mistake that I see entrepreneurs do. They want to give everything away, the kitchen sink away. They want to give like a blog post on their LinkedIn, but you have to realize that this is a digestible platform and you can break apart, like let's say a blog post,

Starting point is 00:33:09 over five days instead. And when you're posting, you want to give one lesson and you want to give room for people to add their opinion. So if somebody's saying like, I'm going to give you the top five ways that you can crush your LinkedIn and they list every top. five way. Then people are going to be like, all right, Halla's got to figure it out, like, what's there for me to add or, okay, I'm just going to keep moving. Like, she's a know-it-all. You want to give one kind of meaningful nugget that is actually going to help people whose problem that you solve, but then allow them to participate by not giving away the whole kitchen sink. Then people can be like, yeah, that point is okay, but what about XYZ, right? And so you don't want

Starting point is 00:33:48 to give too much away in your post. I think that is a big problem that people have. So once you come out, with content and you're continually educating people. People are going to start engaging on your content. And then you've got to close the loop. You've got to retarget those people in the DMs. So you put out educational content about your offer. And you don't want to be salesy on LinkedIn. You actually get deprioritized if you're salesy.

Starting point is 00:34:13 So you can't link out to your website in the caption. LinkedIn's goal is to keep users active and engaged on their site for as long as possible. So that means you can't link out to another site. you can put a link in the comments. But even if you use salesy language, LinkedIn is basically going to deprioritize your post because they have their own editorial agenda and it's not to make you sales.

Starting point is 00:34:33 So you have to be completely of service. And you want to use keywords. This is another point. So let's say again, let's use a real estate example. If you're in real estate, you want to use real estate keywords in your post, the same keywords that would be found in your target client's profiles

Starting point is 00:34:49 because LinkedIn will start to match profiles and start to feed content to people who they think would be interested in your content based on their keywords. So it's important to infuse your posts with keywords so that it gets fed to the right people. Okay. Now, hopefully people are engaging on your content. And once they do that, you can then DM them. So you can say, hey, I noticed that you recently liked my post about real estate. I would love to give you another tool. I've got this mortgage calculator. I'd love for you to check it out. And so then you can give them some sort of free resource once they respond back. Oh, thank you so much. This was awesome. Oh, yeah. Let me know if you have any questions. The goal is to just keep the conversation going until you've

Starting point is 00:35:29 built up enough social currency with the person that you can make and ask. Let's hop on a call. Here's a forum if you want to learn more information and book a call, right? So then you want to bring them off platform and close them. So really, that's the goal. It's getting them from the feed, starting a conversation in the DMs, and then bringing them off platform so that you can close the deal. So I love this. I think that most people are terrified to try to sell to people via DMs, probably because we've all experienced like that one girl from high school who started a skincare business and is now reaching out.

Starting point is 00:36:03 Do you have any tips of gaining comfortability in terms of like reaching out and having that type of language around how we can close a deal? Yeah. So I think first things first when you're reaching out to somebody, you always want to to think of the law of likeability and you want to think of common ground. So let's talk about the law of likeability. People like people who are like them. And that means that you need to find your similarities. What is it about you that's similar? So are you both powerful women? Did you both go to the same school? Are you both from the same city? Do you both like the same influencers?

Starting point is 00:36:38 Are you both, you know, MBA grads? What is it that you have in common and you want to give people compliment. People like people who compliment them, right? People also like people who ask them for advice, who ask them questions. And so you want to think about all the ways that you can become more likable. And so one of the ways that you can use the law of likability is, let's say you're a executive coach for females, for female executives. So you would go on somebody's profile. Let's say you're targeting anybody who's in chief because you know all those people are qualified and you can go to them and say, hey, so nice to meet you. I saw your profile. I saw your profile. I saw your profile and you look like somebody who's a blazing powerful female in the space,

Starting point is 00:37:19 I'd love to connect with you. And so you're giving them a compliment. You can also say something like it looks like we both have a lot in common. We're both really crushing it in the female entrepreneurship space. I'd love to connect with you, right? So you're giving them a compliment. You're showing that, hey, I'm like you too. Let's connect.

Starting point is 00:37:36 That person is likely going to accept because you've given them a compliment. You've shown that you have some sort of common ground. And again, you can use any sort of attribute that they have in their profile to set that common ground. LinkedIn's really unique from other platforms because there are all these different search filters where you can basically look, say like, okay, I want all the titles of VP in California. And you can find everybody with that criteria and then come up with some language that is relevant for all those people that you can just sort of customize as you go along and invite those people to your network.

Starting point is 00:38:09 So that's one way. And then let's say if like you don't have a lot of. accolades and you're just coming up. Instead, you can ask people for advice. Hey, you look like a really strong, powerful female. I'd love to connect with you and, you know, get your feedback and get your advice on XYZ or I'd love your thoughts around XYZ. Now, if the person's really famous, this is not going to work because they're getting bombarded with messages like this. But if it's just somebody who's like in corporate, they're going to be happy to have a conversation with you because probably not many people are reaching out asking for advice. And people love giving their advice.

Starting point is 00:38:42 and showcasing their value and expertise. I love this. I am smiling so big. I was recently on a girls trip, and one of my friends has this beautiful British accent. And she looks to this guy, and we needed an extra golf cart for something. And she was like, you look like a man who could get things done.

Starting point is 00:39:00 And like the guy like gets like all excited. And he's like, I can. Yes, I can. And I was like, I need to take that line with me everywhere. Because all of a sudden he was like proud to help us after two people had already told us, no, it was just so. funny. So I love this because I totally agree with it. The other thing that, and you just alluded to it, the other thing that you want to make sure

Starting point is 00:39:19 so that you don't turn people off in the DMs, I'm sending thousands of DMs a day and 99% of people say thank you and are appreciative. That is not normal. And it's because I'm doing little things to make sure that it doesn't come across spammy or insulting. So your friend said you look like someone. She didn't say you are. Yeah. Let's say somebody engages on my post about my LinkedIn masterclass, we might approach them, you look like somebody who may be interested in our LinkedIn masterclass. Then they're like, yeah, you know, I'm kind of am interested, blah, blah, blah. If I said, hey, you're interested in my LinkedIn masterclass, I'd love to X, Y, Z. They'd be like, I'm not interested in your class. Who are you to tell me what I like, what I don't

Starting point is 00:40:00 like, get out of here, you know? So you seem like, you may be like, you seem like the type of person who would X, Y, Z, right? So you just want to make sure that you soften it a little bit so that it's not so direct because people like to prove you wrong, right? So you want to make sure there's no way that they can prove you wrong. Yes, I love this. One of your gifts, one of your like secret sauce things that you are so good at is branding. Talk to me about how branding plays well with LinkedIn. What does that look like and how do they kind of coexist and compliment each other? Yeah. So when you're thinking about building a personal brand, you want to be so consistent that people think of you like an old friend. This is what I always say. Like you want people to think of you like they know you without you even knowing them. So for me on LinkedIn,

Starting point is 00:40:43 I've done a good job of this to the point where if somebody trolls me, I'll have like all my fans being like, you don't know, holla, don't tell her this, blah, blah, blah. It's just because I've been consistent in all my actions. And so essentially, branding is consistency. And if you are consistent in every single action that you take on LinkedIn, that means your profile, your bio, every single caption, every single comment, every single video content, every single DM, they all have to be consistent. And that means you need to step back and understand what you want to be perceived of. What do you want to represent as yourself? So one of the exercises that we do in our LinkedIn masterclass is we come up with voice guidelines. And essentially it's like a breakdown

Starting point is 00:41:24 of your personality. So first of all, what are your values? Your values are your decision making compass, right? So when things go bad, how do you know what you stand for? Because that's when you can't think logical. And that's why it's important to understand what your values are as a person. And so you come up with your values. The next thing is personality. So your personality actually reflects your audience, not yourself. You want your audience to feel magnetic towards you and people like people who are like them. So you need to reflect them, not yourself necessarily. Maybe there's one element that showcases your personal personality. But really, you want to mirror the way that your audience acts. And so you want to think about your audience demographics. What's their age?

Starting point is 00:42:07 What's their gender? What's their interests? What do they sound like? You know, what other influencers are resonating with them? What do they sound like? And you kind of want to mirror that when you're thinking about your personality and your tone and the way that you come across. The other thing that you want to think about is your transformation, the impact that you want to make with your audience. This is extremely important. So essentially, it's like your four or five key messages that you're going to tell over and over and over again in a hundred different ways. So for me, you're never too old to learn something new. You know, sky is the limit.

Starting point is 00:42:39 Life is limitless. You can do anything. You're always able to grow and learn. Continuous learning is extremely important. So there's a few messages that I just say over and over and over again in a million different ways. And this is what I stand for now. This is why when I share a picture of myself on LinkedIn, I don't represent Halitaha

Starting point is 00:42:57 anymore. And I'm extremely shareable. People share my picture automatically because I represent hope for them. I represent learning for them. I represent motivation for them. And so they're happy to share my face, which takes time once you're consistent and you feel like an old friend and you represent more than just your face. You're now your brand, right?

Starting point is 00:43:16 And so you've got to be consistent in those messages. And then the last part is your delivery method. How are you going to make that impact? What are you going to do for me? I've got a podcast. I'm going to share microcontent. I'm going to share motivational posts, educational posts. and so on. And so you've got to think about what is your delivery method to make good on that

Starting point is 00:43:33 impact. So that's sort of what I take people through my masterclass. And then you're really set up for success. If you pair that messaging and branding with viral strategy as an engagement strategy, there's all these different hacks on LinkedIn. There's no way that you're not going to be successful. Amazing. I am so impressed with you. I am obsessed with your story. I love seeing you on the chart. Thank you so much for coming on the Gold Digger podcast. This was an absolute dream. Thank you so much.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Your Secret Weapon, How Leveraging LinkedIn Can Grow Your Brand and Generate Leads | Marketing | The Goal Digger

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.