Hey friends,

So last week, people enjoyed learning why they should build a personal brand, read that here.​

This week, many of you asked me to share a HOW-TO. So let's do that!

The first thing to say is - learn from my mistakes.

I tried to grow on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn all at the same time - it was too much.

The reason is it actually takes a while to learn what to do on each platform, how they work, etc.

Given my audience is predominantly CEOs and founders (as well as ambitious leaders and creators), I will focus my energy here on LinkedIn. And the timing? It's perfect.

What does good look like?

I've just had my best content performance month on LinkedIn, ever. In fact, I had a hunch I wanted to test... and it worked!

So it's worth using this experience to unpack it and to share the secret I have FINALLY discovered to go from hitting a few likes here or there to nailing it like this 👇

Covering The Basics

Before you start - find your voice:

What industry are you in?

What do you want to share?

Pick your 3 topics that you know you're interested in talking about (and that will attract relevant followers to you).

Mine are:

1. Business & Entrepreneurship Stories
2. Leadership Mindset and Psychology
3. Career and Management Tips and advice.

Note that - this is all very relevant to LinkedIn. On Twitter, I. don't do career and management, I swap that with neuroscience and health - which is more of a specialist topic to me - but equally I know more people on Twitter than LinkedIn will resonate with that - so I choose my core pillars relevant to the platform.

Optimise your profile

When you write content, people who might follow you go to your profile - it needs to sing and dance, succinctly - why people should follow you.

Mine used to say what I did. "Co-Founder of Heights, host of Secret Leaders Podcast, angel investor". It's true, it's good, but it doesn't really tell anyone about the value you'll create for them if they follow you.

Similarly - my banner was a picture of me on stage - good for credibility, not that descriptive on the one action you want someone to take.

In my case - it's Follow Me on LinkedIn (you can do that here btw) and subscribe to my newsletter. So, after many attempts at rewriting my bio and adding a header - it now works like this, and it's working, it's attracting more people to follow me than ever before.

The core takeaway from my profile design is this part:

"Follow for daily posts on business & personal growth". This is my killer hook. What's yours?

How the algorithm works

The basics of the algorithm on LinkedIn works like this for reaching new people:

Reposts > Comments > Likes.

So for maximum reach (which means new eyeballs) you are aiming for reposts.

For maximum engagement (which means building a deeper connection with eyeballs) you are aiming for comments.

For maximum signal (which means what you are writing is resonating but could be improved) you are aiming for lots of likes.

If something doesn't have reposts, comments, or likes - that content isn't resonating, so you need to try something else.

Quality or Quantity?

Quantity

If you aren't writing 5 - 7 days a week on Linkedin - you are less likely to go viral, and here's why:

It's not because the algorithm favours frequency (maybe true but I've not seen evidence of it).

It's simply because one of the founding principles of success is 'shots on goal'.

The more shots you take - the more times you'll score.

The more content you write, the more people you reach with your ideas.

Quantity matters for two reasons; you hone your message (practice), and your ideas reach new people (awareness).

Quality

Of course, what you write, and how you write it - matters too. With Claude (the best copywriting assistant in my view) and GPT4 etc, you are able to share high level ideas and have them turned into valuable LinkedIn posts.

You don't need to do everything yourself. If you aren't leveraging AI tools to improve the quality of your work already, you're missing out on practising a value modern skill - as well as making your personal brand building easier.

How to write a great post:

This has taken a lot of learning, but basically it's this combo:

1. Great hook (must be short and pithy with intrigue so they click 'see more')
2. Value creation for the reader (the longer they spend reading the post, the more the algorithm knows its valuable and shows it in other feeds)
3. Decent call to action (CTA) - for 99% of mine, that's subscribe to this newsletter
4. The big daddy: a powerful image

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1. Writing a great hook

This is bloody hard. It's taken me forever to learn, but I'm there now. One tip - I use 'authoredup' which simply helps me frame the best hook, cut out useless words, etc. I schedule my posts in there as I think it's the best for writing good hooks.

Let's dissect the hook of my most recent viral post.

Work-life balance is a myth. There's just life. 5 ways to take back control of it at work:

Work-life balance is a myth - controversial statement.

There's just life - meaningful contribution that this isn't just shock for shock's sake, there may be substance in the post for the reader if they stay with it.

5 ways to take back control at work: When you use a number like that... you are making something time-bound, and clear up front what their investment in time may be. That drives more reads.

2. Value Creation For The Reader

This comes from your topic of expertise, of course. Things that work well include line spacing (not walls of text), clear points (ideally numbered), and a tl;dr or summary at the end to wrap up the conclusion for the reader so they can take the message away succinctly.

3. Decent CTA

I've heard you should never put a link in your posts - it turns out that's not true. Great content still gets distribution, and my CTA has been this newsletter ever since January. What is yours? I suggest at the start it's to follow you on Linkedn, at least until you get your first 10k followers.

4. Powerful Image

Here's the crazy fact. Remember this hook: Work-life balance is a myth. There's just life. 5 ways to take back control of it at work

Well - that post originally got about 1k likes. Like I said above - that is 'signal' it shows people really do like that concept, the copy, etc - but it wasn't quite powerful enough as a post to go viral.

I waited a couple of months... and found the killer image to go with it and...

30k likes, 1,774 reposts 518 comments - all within 3 days.

The Secret Hack

So wrapping this all up - you can see there's a bit of an art and a bit of a science to going viral on LinkedIn and after about 15 months of experimentation I think I've cracked the code.

You see - I had a hunch. Is it great content I want to write about that goes viral, or is it viral content that's already gone viral, that I should remix with great content?

Turns out - trying to write brilliant original content like I had for years - is bloody hard.

What the real trick is.... is to study what's gone viral already and put your spin on it.

The easiest way to do this - isn't actually with words, but the images of viral posts.

The difference between my two posts above was simply adding that image - from another creator who had gone viral with it (I asked for his permission first - this is always important if you don't want to get in trouble).

What I have just started to learn is - stuff has much more chance of virality, if it went viral before - and the best easy replicable indication of this - is imagery.

Popular memes, statements, even other posts from creators (so long as you get their permission). Look at this example here. You probably know my friend Chris Donnelly - he's one of LinkedIn's biggest creators. I asked if I could use the image of his already viral post, he said yes, and... the results;

1,323 reposts, 14k likes, 355 comments.

I had written the original content myself but without an accompanying image, I don't think it would have gone so viral.

Let's Wrap This Up

Turns out the science of success...fully growing on LinkediI is indeed teachable, replicable, and possible to turn into a real system.

The crazy part? I've barely had time in this email to scratch the surface to tell you everything I've learned about growing from 0 - 80K followers in the last year.

Every month I do monthly coaching calls with CEOs and Entrepreneurs looking to learn how I do this on LinkedIn in more detail - you can book a session with a how-to, here

Book a coaching or mentoring call with me, for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots)

I'm actually hosting a private event for 50 CEOs and founders of £10M+ companies next month when I'll be delivering this as a talk.

I'm considering turning the slides of that private talk, with everything I'm learning into a paid for mini course, so anyone can access the information and do this themselves because I believe building a valuable following on Linkedin is the highest ROI career choice you can make, whether you're a CEO or not.

I know the value (and value of my time, but curious what that would be worth to you).

If you are interested in taking Linkedin Growth seriously - take 1 minute to fill in this form and you can be the first people to give it a go, if it is a popular idea.

As you can tell, I have lots more to say on all of this - but I want to let you carry on with your Thursday, so for now - I'd like to know if this WAS helpful?

Hit reply, and let me know. I'll do my best to respond to you!

SOS (Science of Success) Curated:​

LinkedIn of the week: Career Advice I Wish I Had When I was 20 here​

Podcast of the week: Want to go even deeper? I revealed 'too much' in this episode of Secret Leaders. The dark and dirty tricks to growing a personal brand, revealed on my podcast here. ​

With love and success,

Dan
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​Want to take your success (even more) seriously? 👇​
🧠 Fuel your brain and feed your gut, try Heights here (use code 'SOSDMS' for 15% off your first month of any subscription

🎧 Check out my podcast Secret Leaders here​

👍 Book a coaching or mentoring call with me, for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots)
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