Networking for High-Paying Opportunities

Initially, I wanted to talk about content today.

But I had some experiences that made me shift to networking. Of course, we won’t be covering the entire thing on networking. And yes, we would also touch a bit on content.

This is going to be a serious deep-dive study.

The most important part of this week’s lesson is exclusive to the Get-Feedback Program. There is a 50% discount on your first month (or first year).

Who Are You Writing For?

Last week, I introduced you to the concept of niche. If you missed it, you can read it here.

Your LinkedIn niche determines how far you go on LinkedIn. It determines your reach. And it greatly influences the opportunities that comes to you.

Here is one step further from niche – who are you writing to?

Now, it seems like an easy question. But it is actually a tough one.

As you know, my niche on LinkedIn is remote work. The next question then is – who am I writing to?

Who is the ideal recipient of my writing? The more clearly I have that, the better my content can be.

And you always want to write evergreen content. Such that if people see it 2 weeks from the time it was published, it is still great information. So, keep that at the back of your mind.

After a bit of thinking, I resolved that my ideal audience is someone seeking a new job or someone planning a career transition (to remote work) within the next 6-9 months.

That is the person I am talking to on LinkedIn.

So, every post of mine has to pass these two filters:

1. Is this about remote work?

2. Does this help (or encourage) someone looking for a new job or planning a career transition (into remote work) soon?

Even though my expertise is in marketing, I don’t write posts on marketing. Why? Marketers are the ones that read posts on marketing.

Do I want to reach marketers? The answer is no.

I want to reach professionals. I want to reach career people who see the need to build a professional brand on LinkedIn. That is my focus.

That is just an example for you to gauge your strategy. You have to be clear who you want to reach. And when you do, speak their language.

If you want to reach founders, use terms that founders use. Talk about ROI, revenue, runway, getting capital, churn rate, and all of that. If you want to reach freelancers, talk about the things freelancers have to deal with on a daily basis – getting a new client, determining the rate, pricing services, and so on.

And only talk to one ideal audience. This is a lesson I learned just last week. If you are talking to freelancers, talk to freelancers and them only. Do not try to talk to executives too.

I talk to professionals who want to work remotely (or keep working remotely).

Who do you talk to? It must be that clear.

Now, we move on to talk about a trending LinkedIn hack that was discovered just last week and the basics of networking on LinkedIn. People think networking happens in the DM – that is so wrong.

A Trending LinkedIn Hack

Last week, I saw a surprising split test that caught me by surprise.

Apparently, the LinkedIn algorithm is throttling certain kinds of posts. This caught me by surprise.

Someone in my network shared two exactly identical post with one major difference. To see if LinkedIn throttles one over the other. In just about 5 hours, here is the difference:

She put a time on one post and didn’t put time on the other post. I saw the one with the time first. And then I had to go research to find the other one.

The other one eventually came to my timeline. But I guess it was because I engaged with the first one.

This means if you put a specific time on your post, for some reason, the LinkedIn algorithm will throttle it. Now, don’t try to abuse this. Only use when necessary.

For example, my thought on how to use this is to say that my newsletter drops every Tuesday by 1 pm EST.

But that would be only on posts where I talk about my newsletter (which is mostly Fridays).

Here is an interesting way to use this. Let’s say you are writing a post and you want to refer to a meeting you had with someone. It would be very good to include the time of that meeting.

You could say, “I met him at a coffee shop at around 12 noon that day”

And there are many more variants of this. If you have met someone famous, I think you should use it in your content.

If you have a picture to back it up, that is even better.

Try this tip this week. And let me know how it works for you.

Also, there is a sense that the difference in the content is because of the split test that appeals to people (or because of the timing, that LinkedIn prioritizes the latest post over the previous post).

Those are valid hypothesis and I would be testing them soon. But don’t let that hold you back from trying this.

From my experience, social media platforms hate hacks like this becoming well-known online. They actively kill it when there is a lot of discussion around it.

There was a time when the best LinkedIn hack was to spend at least 10 minutes on LinkedIn after making a post to engage on other people’s posts. But that no longer works. They altered the algorithm once people found out.

So, I hope you take advantage of this before they decide to undo it.

Let’s Talk About Networking

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