Building an Effective Freelance Audience

Copywriters have been using LinkedIn to connect with and land clients for years. So why is it still so difficult to grow an audience on that platform? I asked copywriter and LinkedIn Strategist, matt Barker, to chat with me about this for the 450th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We talked about the best content to post, the biggest mistakes people make on LinkedIn, and how to get the right followers to pay attention to you. If you want clients to find you, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

Matt’s LinkedIn
Matt’s Website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Research Mastery Course

Transcript:

Rob Marsh: Looking for ideas for finding and connecting with potential clients on LinkedIn? You’re in the right place. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.

There are a lot of ways to find and land clients. There’s cold emailing which allows you to choose the clients you want to work with—and if your pitch warms up your prospect and offers to solve the right problem for them, it can be very effective. Incidentally, if you want to learn how to cold pitch effectively, check out thecopywriterclub.com/lovenote. 

Beyond cold pitching, another popular method for attracting clients to you is posting content on social media. And for copywriters, Instagram or LinkedIn seem to be the two go-to platforms. And yes, there are copywriters using other platforms like TikTok or Threads and seeing success there, most of the action seems to be on these other, older platforms.

We’ve talked about finding clients on LinkedIn several times on the podcast. And in fact, we’ll talk about it again in the near future. But because so many copywriters are using thise platform to build an audience, it bears repeating some of that advice from time to time. But it’s not just repeating the same stuff… we’re looking for new ideas that work now. The algorythm is always changing, so keeping an eye on what’s working now is important.

So with that as our preamble, I invited copywriter turned LinkedIn Audience Building Strategist, Matt Barker, to share with me—and you as my listener—what is working on LinkedIn right now. Matt has built an audience of more than 170,000 followers on LinkedIn. His posts get 100s of comments and when he shares his programs or other products, the sales follow.

Matt will be the first to say that getting attention on LinkedIn is harder today than it was two or three years ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s hard to stand out. In this interview, Matt and I talked about what works, what he’s posting more of lately, and how sharing content to inspire and motivate can bring in more clients than posts pitching your services. 

I think you’re going to like this interview…

Before we get to the interview, just in case you missed this last week when I mentioned it, I put everything I know about conducting research and using A.I. as part of my research process into a short course called Research Mastery. It includes the 4:20+ research method that helps copywriters like you uncover the insights you need to write great sales copy. ..more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, … all of the questions I use to get find big ideas about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself. But unlike other resource courses that take hours to watch and implement, this one will teach you everything you need to know in a single afternoon. You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery… research mastery is all one word.

I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can’t type the URL into your browser right now… thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery

And now, my interview with Matt Barker.

Matt Barker: Yeah, thanks for having me on. By the way, I used to listen to this podcast a little bit when I was getting to learn copywriting and that sort of stuff three years ago. So thanks for what you do with your episodes, it’s helping people maybe more than you know, appreciate that, yeah, but yeah, with my LinkedIn profile, it was I started writing on there in January 2022, the main purpose for that was to get copywriting clients. I just left my job about three or four months prior, I worked in marketing. I was in marketing for about eight years, B to B and B to C, so I kind of understood marketing pretty well, and copywriting was a small part of that, but I wasn’t really sure how to be a really good copywriter. So. Yeah. Fast forward to when I started link running on LinkedIn, January 2022, I was using it primarily to try and get clients for my new copywriting business. I’d started, and it was pretty difficult at the start, because I just didn’t I had this thing that a lot of people experience at the beginning, when they start kind of writing content online that’s from their own perspective and their own personal profile, not through like a company logo, or like through their work, through a brand, where you just feel really kind of anxious and worried about what people will think of you, and you know, you’re, you’re putting yourself out there. And it was really difficult for the first sort of two or three months trying to, you know, kind of get over that. But so glad I did, because it and I kind of stuck to it. I would, I would read a lot of content about people who were doing similar things, writing content on LinkedIn consistently, and the kind of the power of, you know, having your, your own personal presence on on LinkedIn specifically, and as well as just set social media in general, so I could see that there was a long term benefit to it. So I kind of always had in my mind that I wanted to just stick to it and see what would come of it. And then after three months, I kind of had that, like there was a little breakthrough, of, like a post that done particularly well, and that was enough for me to be like, Ah, okay, this is, this, is really, this, like, could be, really be something. And it just kind of snowballed from there, really, I, I’m very data driven, so I was always looking at, like, what, why did this post work? How can I do more of that and do it and just consistently get better and better and better. And so it became a bit of an obsession, a bit of a kind of, you know, competition. You’re looking at other people growing and doing other things and, yeah, just managed to be really consistent and constantly wanting to improve. I think is, is one of the big things

Rob Marsh:  Or, you know what you were, you bumping along with one or two comments, and suddenly this one has, you know, hundreds or you know what, what did that look like?

Matt Barker: The difference was, I was, yeah, I was posting every night, every two or three times, every week for about three months, and I was just getting like one like, three likes, four likes, no comments. It took me ages to even get a comment, I think, which is quite funny, but I think that’s what most people experience. But yeah, the difference between that, that post that kind of had that initial reaction was, I think it got something like 80 likes or and 2030 comments, I can’t remember, but I think, I think there was a certain creator with about 6,000 followers at the time who managed to see it, catch it, and engage with it, and I think that had a big impact. But the difference in writing of that post versus the other ones was kind of night and day, when you look at, like, what works on LinkedIn, it was like, there was a there was a proper hook, like a real hook that actually, like, grabbed someone and talked to a pain point and was compelling someone to actually read it. It was concise, it was kind of formatted. It was easy to read. So it was, yeah, I think when you look at that versus the stuff I was doing before that, it’s quite clear, yeah.

Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about that a little bit more deeply. You know, what is the best content to be posting on LinkedIn, so that you’re actually getting engagement, and not just engagement from anybody, but engagement from the people that you want to work with, you know, people that maybe would hire you, you know, to do copy your content for them.

Matt Barker: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s an ever evolving thing the way, because, because these social platforms, they have their algorithms and that kind of dictates, you know, how much, how many impressions, and how what reach your posts get. But so that can, that can be a bit of a minefield, and that that can kind of make things not so consistent as they should be, as opposed to, like, traditionally, if you’re writing a landing page or, like, a sales letter of some sort, where you’re just driving traffic to that that piece of copy will just perform as it performs and you improve it, or as you improve it. You know, the only variance is the visitors. And on social platforms, you’re kind. If there’s, there’s external factors which are kind of out of your control, but typically the kind of the writing process is the big frame. The main framework that was the most helpful for me, was understanding problem, agitate, solution. To start off by highlighting a big, painful problem for a specific target audience, agitate that problem, make it really feel real, and kind of be able to make the reader feel like, oh, this person really understands, like, the problem that I’m facing. They truly understand me, and obviously that comes from the research that you put into understanding your target audience and then presenting a solution. So whether that’s like a step by step process that you have, or whether it’s just a one line kind of motivational kind of sentence that’s going to change their kind of beliefs. That was the main framework for me that has always worked well on LinkedIn, because you’re able to use it in so many different ways. You’re able to tell stories with that kind of framework. You’re able to educate your audience on, you know, problems that they’re experiencing, but you’re also able to use it to show off, you know, like results and outcomes that you’ve driven for other clients and past clients. So it’s such a helpful framework that I think just works across the board on LinkedIn, and then the other kind of variants of that are like the formats that you use, is it text only? Is it you adding some sort of visual to help illustrate the point? Or any, or, you know, some, there’s a kind of a format on LinkedIn that that gets a strangely large amount of reach is these kind of PDF guides called carousels that they call them on the platform. And they’re kind of these multi page guides. They’re typically not really following that kind of problem, agitate solution framework. They’re more kind of in depth pieces, but those kind of pieces of content can do extremely well. And if you, if you hold someone’s attention for that long, and you really, and you really educate them and kind of dive into their into their conversation that’s happening for them right now, that that’s those pieces of content can really have a big impact in terms of kind of lead generation, because they can get that really high reach, but then they can also really deeply resonate, because you can go into a lot of detail.

Rob Marsh: When it comes to trying to talk to the right people, you know, potential, ideal clients, Dream clients that we might have, are you letting the algorithm do that work based off the content, or are you doing anything specifically to target them beyond just knowing what your ideal client’s problems are?

Matt Barker: Yeah, so there’s kind of, I’d say there’s three, there’s there’s three kind of areas of of LinkedIn, ultimately, there’s your profile, there’s the net, there’s your network, and there’s your posts, the kind of three kind of main things that kind of have the biggest impact within those is your profile, where you have your headline, you have a very short amount of you have a very short headline that when you post, you your image is there, your name is there, and then there’s a headline underneath which is essentially, or should essentially be, your value proposition. So what? Who? Who am I helping out of that? How do I help them? That can be extremely powerful, because that’s essentially your, you know, your advertisement. It’s at the top of all of your all of your posts, no matter what your content is, that’s going to be the thing that’s there, if that, if that, if that headline is very targeted and calling out your ideal customers, showing them how you can help them, showing the problems that you solve in that really concise, like 10 or eight word sentence that can have a really big impact if your if your posts are then dialed in so we can come on to the posts, part of that, that kind of TRIO now. So with your content, the main thing that drives ideal clients and target audience to your content is the hook, because that’s obviously the first thing that people see if someone’s scrolling the feed, if your hook is, you know, calling out your ideal client, if it’s talking to a past or current pain that that person is experiencing, if it shows a potential kind of outcome that they’re looking for, if it includes any other you. Are words, phrases or kind of emotions that just trigger your ideal client and your target audience. So specifically it doesn’t matter what the format is, it’s gonna grab them if it, if it, if it gets into their feed and if it gets in front of them. So then that brings us on to the network side of it, in terms of connecting with the right people. So, you know, using the search bar to find, you know, founders, whoever your target audience is, using sales nav, if you have it, to go deep and really dial in, drill into those kind of demographics to find exactly your ideal client, connecting with them and then actually having conversations with them in the DM so the direct your direct messages, so actually talking to them. Because what that does when you actually talk to them in the DMS, which is a trick that a lot of people, I don’t actually think, realize is when you talk to them in the DMS, it the next time they log into LinkedIn, the likelihood of your most recent post being top of their feed is extremely high. So if you’re able to combine all that together, so connecting with the right people talking to them, having a headline that is optimized to speak to that person, and then having content going out that is also optimized speaking to that exact person. It is just all of a sudden your post is right at the top of their feed, and it’s something that they can’t ignore, essentially.

Rob Marsh: So this is a really interesting thing that I hadn’t thought of, and I want to make sure that I understand it correctly. So when it comes to commenting and appearing in somebody else’s feed, does that happen when you’re commenting on your posts, or does so let’s say you post something, I comment on your post, will that then put my content and we have a conversation in your in your comments, so it’s not just, Oh, great post, Matt, you know, or, you know, those, those kinds of non comment comments, will that put my content into your feed? Or does that have to happen on my content that you would, that conversation would be on my content that you’ve basically opted in and said, Oh, I’m interested in this because I’m commenting on Rob’s post, and now my stuff will show up in your feed. Does that question make sense?

Matt Barker: So I would for for your post to show up in my feed or to my audience, I would have to comment on your post. So that’s why, that’s why you know what I referenced earlier with that, that early post blew up for me. There was that one Creator who just had a much bigger audience than me, who engaged with it and that sent my post into their audiences, into his audiences feed.

Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. So let’s talk about how we get our first followers, and how we make sure that we have the right first followers? Because, you know, like any audience, you know, it’s great to have 100,000 followers, but none of those are your potential clients, your potential buyers there. It’s really not that great. You’re just creating content that’s going out there and being enjoyed but doesn’t actually have any kind of real business impact. So what do we do to get those, you know, first 1000 plus followers.

Matt Barker: So the main thing is actually going out and finding them and pulling them in. So, like we mentioned, actually going out and connecting with them. Obviously, that is quite difficult if you, if you are completely starting from zero, because you would need to work on your profile and kind of build your profile out. So when you connect to someone, and that pop that connection, request pops up in their inbox. If they click on your profile, they can actually see all the reasons why they should connect with you, even if your connections are at one or two or whatever, there needs to be all the information on your profile specific to them and showing them how you can benefit them and why you’re why you’re A beneficial connection. So that’s going to be really important for someone just starting out to make sure their profile looks really good, looks really strong and compelling, and talking to a specific person. Because when you do that connection request, that’s going to be essentially their, their only one of their only kind of part, one of the main parts of their thought process, when it comes to accepting or rejecting, obviously, your content works with it as well.

Rob Marsh: I was just trying to make sure that I understand this. So let’s say that I want to work with supplement companies, you know, people who are making vitamin supplements, nutraceuticals, you know, that kind of thing you’re basically saying, I need to go out and find 2050, 100 of these people, maybe they’re marketing directors, vice presidents, founders, whatever, and start to connect with it, like either put in connection requests or start to interact with their content. Is that right?

Matt Barker: Bit of both, yeah, connection requests. The reason for the connection request is, then if, if they become a first degree to connection, when you are then putting out content that is targeted for that target audience, it’s going to be highly relevant to them, and the likely it increases your chances of them hopefully engaging with your content. And that’s ultimately the goal, because the kind of you want your if you’re if you want your post to perform, well, there’s this kind of testing, kind of phase that the post goes through after you post it, and if your close connections aren’t engaging with it at a high rate, then it’s not going to be pushed out to any anyone. It’s not going to be pushed out any further. So want to keep your con that’s that’s the kind of good thing about LinkedIn these days, is that it is rewarding that kind of like people with really niche, targeted audiences and people with really niche, targeted content, because it’s just, it’s making sure that those people are seeing the right the right content.

Rob Marsh: That’s kind of an interesting idea then. So, you know, let’s say that I’ve got, you know, because I’ve collected these over the career, you know, several different jobs, or whatever, co workers who are maybe not my ideal clients. Should I be unfriending them and friending people who are my clients to curate that really tight group of potential clients I like, I’ve never, I mean, I’ve always just sort of thought, the bigger the network, the better. But it sounds like maybe having a more curated network is actually better on LinkedIn, at least if you want to use it for client acquisition.

Matt Barker: Yeah, this is where it kind of gets a bit tricky. And I think it I think a lot of people disagree, and a lot of people would agree, depending on how you kind of go about it. So the strategy that I’ve always approached with LinkedIn is, it kind of looks a bit like a traditional marketing funnel with your top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel content. And that top of funnel content is really, I guess, and more, what I’ve been kind of leaning towards recently with it is it’s more showing your identity, like who you are, why I should trust you as a human, you know, because ultimately, we’re just speaking to each other through screens and now, especially with like AI and how much just copy paste content there is out there. It’s kind of got to this weird position where the more human you are, the more you can stand out. So there’s almost this kind of battle to just prove that you’re human and that can have a really big impact on your sales, right? Because, you know, obviously that building relationships of scale is what the kind of game is it on LinkedIn. So there’s that element of it where you you actually just want to put kind of human, humanized content out which isn’t necessarily always educational or targeted towards that target audience, who you would, who would be your ideal client, because you kind of just want to let people know, like, Hey, I’m human. I’m just doing like, normal life things you want to kind of get, you want to kind of tap into, like the different emotional side of your audience, to help them kind of believe in you as a person. And that is, in turn, going to then help when you’re posting this kind of middle funnel content where you’re showing off, like, your expertise and the skills you have around the service you provide, and then the bottom funnel content when you’re showing, like, you know, Client Results, outcomes that you’ve driven specifically for clients. So it’s a really important part of it, but that’s where it gets a bit shady, because you don’t want to, it’s good to have a niche audience, but it’s also you need a reason for people to trust you as a person. So it’s difficult.

Rob Marsh: I guess that’s worth thinking through. It might be worth, you know, somebody setting up some accounts to really test, you know, a super, super dialed in profile that only follows potential clients, versus one that’s that’s got maybe a more general application, and just sort of, I may not be a real test or a real way. Yeah. I mean, it might not be scientific because, you know, setting the profiles up for two different people, or, you know, the connections that you would get, but yeah, it’s just kind of an interesting conundrum.

Matt Barker: I think it really depends on how you ultimately want to approach it, like long term. I think for me, I always wanted to approach LinkedIn long term as a place of I want to attract clients to me, which long, long term would mean I have to do a lot less outreach. I don’t have to spend as much time sending DMS and doing outreach. I can leverage my audience post, get a lot of reach and attract people to me, but early on, right at the start, that just doesn’t work. So you have to do all the outreach to get things going. So you can kind of, you can do it at the start just by DMing and having conversations and and doing the outreach, but the effectiveness of your profile in the early days of when you’re doing that, it’s not going to, it’s not going to show as much social proof. You know, because you don’t have as many followers, you may not have the content that is getting all the engagement, and whether we like it or not, that does have an impact on people’s kind of psyche, you know? So, yeah, I think early on, you can definitely get clients on LinkedIn by really going heavy on outreach and just being really targeted with it. And then if you get those conversations going, then, if you’re good at sales, then you can, you know, get on a call. You can show all this work that you’ve done, if you’re if you’ve got all that experience, and you’re an experienced business, then you just need to get them on that call and show them what you’ve done. But if you’re someone like me, who, back in 2022 was just kind of just starting out, you need to really build up that portfolio and give people a reason to trust you. So it’s, yeah, it’s kind of two different approaches, I guess.

Rob Marsh: At what point are you trying to move people off of LinkedIn into, you know, a freebie or a product, or get them to your website, or some other kind of engagement. Or are you looking at and saying, Hey, as much of this as I can get to happen on LinkedIn, I’m happy to have it there on the platform.

Matt Barker: I’m very regularly plugging like, I guess I call it, you’d call it lead magnet, but lead magnets, that phrase is a bit overused now, isn’t it?

Rob Marsh: But everybody hates them, right?

Matt Barker: For me, I’ll rotate between different types of ebooks or email based kind of courses to give them some give, give my audience something for free to then get them onto my to my email list, and then I can send them regular emails. So that’s something that I’ve been doing pretty regularly. In my content. There’s a, there’s a bit of a, it’s a, I’m not sure whether we could class it as a myth or not, but putting a URL into your LinkedIn post can typically destroy the reach. So if you, if you write a post, put a link saying, hey, go here and grab this thing. LinkedIn doesn’t like you, sending people off platform, obviously. So then the algorithm catches it and says, no, no, you’re not, you’re not doing that. But sometimes it can be really effective if you kind of disguise that link in a kind of educational piece of content and attach, you know, like pictures or PDFs or something like that, to kind of disguise the link, you can and word it properly, then you can kind of bypass it appear and yeah, that that the the conversions you get from just plugging the link straight in the post to send them to a lead magnet or another resource to then take them off platform, massively outweighs if you kind of, if you just man, if You just type, go to my bio and download this thing, it’s an easy one click versus finding something else, clicking to your profile, finding the next clicking again, it’s just a lot less clicks. But yeah, the conversion rate, or the amount of clicks you can get by just putting the URL straight in the post can be really good.

Rob Marsh: I see a lot of conflicting information about the kinds of posts that work on LinkedIn. You know, I’ve seen people say you always have to have an image. I’ve seen people lately saying video works really well. You mentioned the carousels, and I seem to engage. I seem to be seeing a lot of carousels. In my view. Indeed, and I tend to engage in a few of those at least go three or four pages deep. What’s the best content right now, in your opinion, on LinkedIn, what’s working and, you know, what should we be thinking about doing more of it.

Matt Barker: It completely depends on your goals. You know, if you the format that I found that works the best for follower growth, it and impressions, has been these carousel posts, specifically educational, step by step, carousel posts. So if you say, for example, here’s how I write a LinkedIn post, start to finish. I’ll then show you screenshots, step by step. What I do to do that process is that specific type of content for me, and that it’s been consistent over the last three years, has always been the piece of content that has really big spikes in follower growth and gets a lot of impressions. So that’s for that kind of outcome, for posts where I’m looking to drive inbound leads, because I’m not, not necessarily looking to do that from every post. When you kind of look at a strategy as a whole. It plays a part of it, but you need to kind of be fairly kind of softly, softly with it, because you don’t want to kind of, you know, annoy people and being too salesy and that sort of stuff. So if there’s a particular post around, trying to drive inbound leads from it, and really trying to pull in that ideal client. It can be text only, or it can be text with a really clear screenshot or image of proof of a client getting a result, like a happy message, saying, I just got this result. Thanks so much, or a testimonial, or something like that, or even a video, whatever that, whatever the format of the thing you’re attaching is, it just needs to show social proof of a customer or a client happy and new. And the text is, is you documenting kind of how it happened and talking about that at win? So the format, it really depends, you know, on what your goal what your goals are, but, but equally, there’s, there’s people who, and it’s been the same for me. I’ve written text only posts which are, you know, 2500 characters long, and they have completely blown up, which typically isn’t the kind of optimal kind of format for explosive growth, or kind of a viral post, if you want to call it that. So it kind of ultimately comes down to how good is your copy, in my opinion, if your copy is really good, really interesting, and talks to the right problems and the right person, then that’s always the main, the main thing. And you can go text only if you really get that dialed in.

Rob Marsh: When we first started talking, you mentioned how you kind of like to look at the data and see what’s performing, what’s not performing. How do you look at that now, do you kind of keep an eye on the baseline, and you know, if you have a post that is above average, are you still breaking that down and saying, What did I do differently here? Or if one performs below average, are you still looking at that saying, you know, where’s the mistake here? Or does it just kind of come so naturally now that you just know what’s going to be an above average post, and it all still works.

Matt Barker: There’s an element of that, yeah, because it’s got to a point now, I’ve written probably 5000 plus LinkedIn posts, so there’s a bit of that kind of ingrained in the process when I’m writing and creating, but I actually just did my kind of my Quarterly Review, where I sit down and I I open up my analytics and I filter by either impressions or repost or reactions, depending on it. Can I think when I just did it, I looked at impressions. It’s not too important which one you look at, but impression looking so looking at impressions as a metric can be a little bit misleading because of what we were just talking about with the algorithm. Yyou can post the same thing today, you can post it again next month, and it will be wildly different, but with reactions and engagement rate, I see that as someone has intentionally clicked like or they’ve done something to say I like that. Yeah. And that’s been in someone’s control, versus like this mythical algorithm. So yeah, you can sort your post by either of those metrics, whatever you want. And I’m looking at, I’m looking at the top 20, or the top 10% of posts that I put out, I’m putting them in a collection, and then I’m copy and pasting the hooks into a kind of document so I can see all the best hooks, and kind of analyze what the what the structures of those were, what the topics were, what the topics of the posts were that performed very well, what kind of pain points they were touching on. And I’m essentially looking at that every quarter, or, yeah, every quarter normally. So I’m kind of making sure that I’m using the right kind of hooks that are working well on LinkedIn for my audience right now, and I’m talking about the right topics that my audience are caring about right now and responding to right now. Because these platforms can change so much, it’s almost not worth looking at what worked last year. Sometimes that can sometimes they can work. If you take that post from last year, for example, this time last year, and kind of rehash it, it can there are the there are the odd posts that can work, but people, what people want to consume and what people want to read about, just changes so much on on social media. I think LinkedIn is a bit slower than than other platforms, I think, because just naturally what it is, it’s a professional place, not necessarily like a kind of quick, twitchy trend kind of platform, but yeah, looking at, looking at the last three months data, and just trying to find what those top 10% with posts were so you can take them and say, Okay, how can I create more content around these specific topics? How can I create more content that is using these kind of hook structures and these, these, these formats of content that I’ve used, and just really dial in on those specifically. Because I think when I looked at my data, it was something like 45% of the impressions I gained in those three months came from less than 10% of the posts, which, to me, sound is well crazy. And I think that was out of something like 180 posts. So it’s, it’s something like 2018 posts that contribute to almost half the impression. So it just shows you how much of a game is. Of like consistently posting things that you think are good and just seeing and just waiting and see which, one kind of pops, you know?

Rob Marsh: So you just went through this process of analyzing these aside from the PAs formula we already talked about, what did you see? What other trends did you see in your high performing content that people seem to be reacting to?

Matt Barker: It was, I mean, I post a lot of educational content. So it’s hooks that are kind of, you know how to or calling out a kind of specific problem in the hook. But then there was also stuff like, I posted something about how my dad, he’s 64 and he’s retiring soon. And that post got a lot of engagement. So there’s this kind of, it was a real mixed bag, to be honest, but it just kind of shows where the platform’s at right now with kind of, you can, you can, it likes the educational content, so, you know, kind of showing people how to do stuff, how you do stuff works. But then there’s also this kind of human side of it that still works, where, you know, I’m talking about my dad, who’s retiring, and there’s that, there’s those sorts of things that still work, and there’s no real kind of set formula. I don’t think there were hooks that are four or five sentences long, you know, over 30-40, words long, that worked very well. There were hooks that were less than 10 words that worked very well. Carousels done well. Text Only did well. There was such a mixed bag. It’s, actually, it’s quite hard to just say, Okay, this is the, this is the one thing, but, but ultimately, it’s, it’s, it’s more a case of kind of listening to what you’re. What your audience are signaling to you, it’s going to be completely different for everyone. So it’s almost, you almost can’t say, like, this is, these are the topics that work really well because it’s completely dependent on what your audience are telling you. The topics that performed really well for my audience and what I put out might be completely different to someone else.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. So I have a question that I want to ask. I do not mean this as a criticism or to be cheeky, but there are a lot of people on LinkedIn who are doing really well, and they are selling a lot of the same things that you do, which is how to do well on LinkedIn. I’m curious. You know, what you’re seeing outside of that? Hey, follow me, you know, and I can show you how to grow on LinkedIn. But rather, what you’re seeing other people accomplish with LinkedIn in other niches, you know? So maybe it’s people you’ve worked with, or people that you’re seeing on LinkedIn, and the things that they’re doing to grow obviously, these ideas that we’re talking about could work in other niches, but how are you seeing it being applied elsewhere, you know, to land clients, to Grow audience. That’s you know, beyond this will help you grow your audience on LinkedIn. 

Matt Barker: It’s an annoying one, because you don’t, you don’t want to be the person who’s talking about and growing on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, or, you know, writing about writing on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a weird one. But, yeah, clients that I work with, I’ve just early parts of this year, I’ve been growing a group called Copy builders, where we’re all writing posts together, helping people write posts quicker, more effectively, getting better engagement and attracting clients to their business or new opportunities, whatever their whatever position they’re in. And some of the range of people in there are quite interesting. There’s, there’s one guy who’s an offshore driller…

Rob Marsh:  I wouldn’t imagine seeing that on LinkedIn…

Matt Barker:  Yeah, not your typical business world on LinkedIn at all. But he’s just been absolutely, like, crushing it. Like, I don’t like the word crushing, but he’s been, he’s just been doing so well. And what he’s been doing really well is, so the position he’s in right now. Is he still working in offshore drilling, but he just has this passion for photography, so he’s mixed the two things. And what he’s been doing is kind of posting observations and opinions on the offshore drilling industry, stories of and experiences of his, you know, his experience in that industry, as well as some educational content around it, which almost feels weird to do for offshore drilling, but he’s done a bit of that, but mainly it’s been the stories, observations and kind of opinions on the industry, and he’s pairing that up with really nice photography of, you know, people on the, you know, working the drills, people who are working, and it’s just been doing really well. He’s grown to, I think, eight or 9000 followers now. I think he started out, I think he only started on LinkedIn a few months ago. And, yeah, I think, yeah, that’s, that’s a really good, I think that’s a great example of kind of how you can apply it for a niche that just isn’t anything to do with the platform. And then there’s other other kind of niches, like, you know, marketing agencies tend to do particularly well on there, whether it’s web development, advertising, branding, they don’t, they tend to do very well in terms of, it’s a great place to show off their projects that they’re working on. You can post videos and images. So if you’re, if you’re very design focused, you’re able to use that, that kind of visual element, to really show off your work. And that really works well to attract clients, whether it’s, you know, completely not LinkedIn related at all. So yeah, they’re kind of the two that kind of spring to mind.

Rob Marsh: How big does an audience have to be to you know, really start to support a freelancer in their work, in their business, to bring in enough clients, enough prospects every month?

Matt Barker: It’s tough to say, but in my experience, it was, it took me a. It took me about five or six months to really start seeing lead consistent lead flow. And that was starting from scratch. And I was a freelancer to start. Freelancer starting completely from scratch. Business from Scratch. Audience from scratch. I think my audience at the six month point was at something like 8000 or 9000 maybe maybe 10. But I really don’t think you need that many. I think that I’ve seen people who have taken my courses, and people who have worked with who are, you know, newer freelancers, and they’ve got 2000 followers, and they post fairly pretty niche content, and they’re able to attract clients and use the content they put out as kind of you know partners to their outbound and outreach that they do. So, yeah, I really don’t think there’s a minimum. I think it’s how effective you are with your copy and your content, and how effective you are with your outreach, and how well your profile is set up, kind of like how we’re talking about.

Rob Marsh: To me, it seems like one of the big challenges that a lot of us have on LinkedIn is this idea that we need to self promote, especially, I think copywriters, maybe designers, freelancers. You know, a lot of us are introverts. We like working alone, you know, we don’t, you know, love being out there, and so it can be really difficult. You know, talking about successes or talking about our own expertise, how did you overcome that? And you have, you know, advice for people who are sort of struggling with that, saying, I don’t really want to talk about myself in that way, or I am uncomfortable telling people how awesome I am.

Matt Barker: Yeah, it is really hard. It’s weird, isn’t it? Especially since I’m British, and we have this thing of self deprecating and putting ourselves down. It may even be worse for you right there. I’d love to see the stats on that, if we could somehow figure it out. But yeah, it’s really hard. I definitely have that kind of streak in me. And even now, it sometimes gets a bit like, do I kind of feel, you know, confident putting this, this result out? I think it’s definitely a lot easier now. But yeah, I think at the start it was the turning point were was just being more comfortable and kind of absorbed with the idea that every that the piece of content that I put out today could just be completely forgotten tomorrow. And I think for me, that’s, that’s quite reassuring. It’s a bit, it’s all it’s kind of depressing, but it’s reassuring at the same time, I think, because it doesn’t matter how many followers you, you could put a bad post out, and it doesn’t do very well. It can. It will deflate you, and it will kind of knock your confidence. But you can just do another one tomorrow, and you can do another one the next day, another one the next day, and the likelihood of someone seeing all of your posts is just extremely slim, because, you know, there’s a very small percentage of people who are logging into LinkedIn every day, same time, looking at the same person, checking for the same person’s posts. So it was, it was kind of coming around to that idea, really, that not every post is that important, and I’m kind of playing this longer, longer game. So when I do promote myself, it doesn’t feel like that much of a big deal, because if it say it bombs or it doesn’t do very well, it’s like, Ah, okay, well, I’ll have another go next week.

Rob Marsh: What part do pods and other groups play in LinkedIn? Growth, growth today, and these are these groups that are sort of invisible to, you know, anybody who’s just kind of scrolling through the feed, but obviously groups of friends or colleagues, coworkers that hop on like each other’s posts, promote each other’s posts. Is that still something that you need to be involved in to jumpstart the stuff? Or can you get around that?

Matt Barker: So, so for me, at the start of when I was growing my profile, I wouldn’t it wasn’t a pod, but just naturally through meeting people and connecting with people and kind of finding these guys who I really got. Along with who were kind of on the same kind of trajectory as me of kind of wanting to grow their profile. We were, we were putting out posts every day as well, and we were kind of doing the same things. So we would create this Whatsapp group, and we weren’t sending posts in or kind of, you know, just chucking the URL in and saying, Hey, engage with this. We were just engaging with each other’s content anyway. But by creating a WhatsApp group where we could actually just talk, share ideas, share what’s working, and kind of collaborate in that way and kind of keep pushing each other, that was the biggest kind of growth driver for me, because I was able to kind of grow alongside a small group of other people, and it was all organic. It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t manufactured. Because the problem with these, these kind of big engagement pods that seem to run is the content can be just complete trash. But if it’s thrown in these pods or whatever, then, because there’s so many people going and liking it, it can, it can, it can blow up. But the minute you stop using that, all that engagement just goes away, because your content is then not very good. So then you’re just left with, you know, so you end up, you would end up being stuck in this kind of perpetual loop of needing to use this, this pod, which is a bit of a kind of sad reality, really, because you’re never, you’re never truly kind of growing your your own skills, if it’s, if it’s A profile that you’re writing content for yourself. But there is definitely, there’s definitely a point of when you, when you grow on LinkedIn. I was talking to someone about this the other day when, obviously, there’s not many people who would, who would hit this mark, but when you hit the 50,000 follower mark. I’ve spoken to quite a few people about this, and it’s as soon as you hit that mark, your engagement just seems to just drop a bit and plateau. And you really struggle to get going after that. So you really have to have a really engaged audience and really, really get your community, your, you know, your community kind of side of things and your networking side of things going. You really have to keep that going. But then what happens is you either do that or some people then say, Damn, I need to try and manufacture this, this engagement back. And that’s when they start going to pods.

Rob Marsh: I mean, it’s, again, it’s another challenge that, I guess you have to decide if it’s worthwhile or not. I’m not sure about that. I mean, I’ve been in groups where people have definitely shared each other’s content, but I’m not sure that I would want to play in a pod the same way for the reasons that you that you mentioned, what would you say is the biggest mistake you’ve made as you’ve grown your audience posted on LinkedIn, you know, basically turned LinkedIn to the into the platform where your business lives?

Matt Barker: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think there’s, there’s probably two. There’s kind of two moments where that come to mind. One of them is pretty much right at the start. It took me, I think it took me two or three months to actually comment on anyone’s posts or DM anyone I was just because I’m naturally introverted. I was just so kind of scared of commenting and engaging with people. That was the thing that was kind of holding me back in those early stages. And as soon as I started doing that, everything, everything grew because my content was was decent, but I just wasn’t doing that the other the networking side of it and the engaging side of it to make friends and find, you know, make new connections that would would then come and visit my content and give me some more engagement. So there’s, there’s kind of that element and and we’re along with that, not not seeking help, like not try. I wasn’t looking for I wasn’t finding enough resources, and I wasn’t taking the kind of the leap on any kind of courses which would help me accelerate my my LinkedIn, writing skills, my LinkedIn. You know, skills in general. You know, copy, networking approaches, content strategy. I was figuring that all out myself, and it just took so long for me to really kind of get to a point where it was working. It took probably sort of six or seven months really, which for a freelancer just starting out is trying to cope. Business that wasn’t too helpful. So there was definitely that. So I think looking back, I would, I would definitely get help at the start, and just try and find that that kind of, either that, course, or that, you know, something, that person, that coach, or someone who can just help me skip all that horrible start bit and just say this is what you need to be doing from the start, because I think that would save you so much, so much time. And then two, there was, there was a moment, and this, this is really kind of a mistake around audience growth, not business related. Business related. It was, it was great. But if we’re strictly talking audience growth on LinkedIn and content related, there was a period around the start of think 2023 where a friend of mine, another copywriter on LinkedIn, we were having this kind of race to grow our followers and try and get to 100,000 followers. And it was great for us. We were competing, and our content game, like, really leveled up, and we were kind of really understanding how the platform worked, and what was, you know, what content was best for our audience a lot quicker, because we were competing against each other, not the best for business. I’m not endorsing that as a strategy, but I built up so much momentum in that period of where we were growing, I think I went from something like 40,000 to 100,000 in about five months. So it accelerated really rapidly. But then once I hit 100,000, I completely changed my approach. And I went from I was posting, kind of broader writing, copywriting, kind of content, and then I really changed that, that approach to being very strictly kind of content strategy for founders and agency founders, and that, that that shift, just completely took the momentum that I’d built and and I was all of a sudden neglecting a very large part of my audience, so that engagement dropped. And I did that for a few months. Business wise, it was great, because I was able to start signing, you know, higher value clients, more clients. I launched a course in that period, which performed extremely well for me, and I was able to kind of attract much better clients for me. So business wise, it was fantastic, but audience growth wise, I would have kept that momentum going, because by now that it could be something, you know, like three, 400,000 followers or more,

Rob Marsh: Imagine how much bigger your business could be if you had. This has been really interesting, Matt, and obviously given me a few things to think about that I’ve never considered with LinkedIn before, if people are still here listening, want to get in contact with you, I know you have free book on your profile at LinkedIn, but where should they be going to follow you?

Matt Barker: Yeah, so if you go to Matt Barker on LinkedIn, my headline is, I make LinkedIn posting fast, easy and fun. There’s a how to build your LinkedIn audience ebook right at the top of that page. If you click on that, you can download that for free, and I’ll give you some kind of tips and show you through some mistakes and stuff that I’ve made along the way, so you can help build your audience, that’s the best place to find me and can follow my content and and if you enjoy it, then you can get engaging and reach out.

Rob Marsh: Thanks, Matt. This has been, like I said, interesting, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I appreciate your time.

Matt Barker: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. 

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Matt for sharing how he grew his own following on LinkedIn, starting with struggling to find clients for his own business to helping dozens of clients build their own followings. You can follow Matt on LinkedIn. I’ve put a link to his profile in the shownotes for this episode. You can also check out copybuilders, the program Matt is building that works for just about any niche. I’ve linked to Matt’s site in the show notes so you can find that.

Matt’s advice on how to write content that resonates with potential clients should feel very familiar to copywriters. He mentioned how research uncovers the beliefs and emotions you can use to tap into in order to entertain and educate your audience. These are the kinds of insights you can discover with Research Mastery, our short course that will help you find the ideas that resonate with your audience. We didn’t create the course specifically for posts aimed at your LinkedIn audience, but if you’re posting on LinkedIn, it will help you find the ideas that will connect with your audience. Get it at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery

Clearly LinkedIn is a great environment for connecting with clients specifically because it is entirely business focused. But it takes time, so get started. Follow Matt. Post once or twice a week, but more importantly connect with potential clients and post comments on their content. Success happens when you connect to others more often than when you capture someone’s attention temporarily.

As Matt shared, the topics and content types that will work for you may not be the same as someone else’s. So in order to make LinkedIn work for you, you need to be trying new things, different things, and some of the same things you see others posting… in order to figure out what will work with the readers in your audience.