1110: How to Multiply Your Opportunities through Smarter LinkedIn Posts with Jason Feifer

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, welcome back!

Jason Feifer
It is so great to be back. I got to say, after we did this the first time, I heard from so many of your listeners, including a woman I went to high school with, which was fun to reconnect after that. So, thank you for having me back.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s cool. Well, I’m glad. Hey, thanks, listeners, for reaching out. And I know LinkedIn is often one of the platforms where this occurs.

Jason Feifer
Indeed, it is!

Pete Mockaitis
And we’re talking LinkedIn. And, Jason, I want to say thank you because I just, like, impulse invited you to this podcast just because I was looking at your LinkedIn, yet again, and I was like, “By golly, I’ve read Jason’s LinkedIn more than anybody else’s LinkedIn on Earth.”

Jason Feifer
I love hearing that.

Pete Mockaitis
“What is he doing? And I think we all need to know.”

Jason Feifer
I really appreciate that. That is great. I always like to be impulse invited to a podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, you impulse accepted.

Jason Feifer
I did very quickly. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, that was one of the quickest turnarounds ever. Yeah, so thank you.

Jason Feifer
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so give us the scoop, like, you’re on LinkedIn, and maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s a lot of other folks who are commenting and liking and reacting and following and stuff with your posts. But I find them mesmerizing. Could you orient folks who have not been so lucky as to see your LinkedIn? What are you doing and why?

Jason Feifer
That’s a question. All right. Well, maybe I should propose an outline for this because there’s a whole bunch of different things to discuss, so things I want to cover on this episode with you. Number one, I want to talk about how to build a personal brand very strategically. We’re going to talk about that.

And then, number two, I want to tell you what LinkedIn is looking for, because I’ve had a lot of conversations with the folks who run the algorithms and machines over there, so I understand what is actually working. And then number three is we can talk about how to create great content on LinkedIn. So those are things I think would really answer your question.

But I’ll just start by zooming out and saying that I didn’t understand the point of LinkedIn at all for a long time. I thought it was just a place to promote myself. And so, I would post these promotional things and nothing would happen. Nobody would read it. Nobody would engage. I thought, “This is dead, useless.”

And then I came to understand that you actually are always promoting yourself on LinkedIn, but if you do it overtly, it doesn’t work. If you do it by displaying your knowledge in service of helping others on LinkedIn, then you actually position yourself as an authority on LinkedIn.

And I think that, right now, LinkedIn is the single strongest tool for reaching the people who could be hiring you, who could be promoting you, who could be your customers and clients in the future should you ever start a business. It is LinkedIn. It just is.

So, I started to evolve into a LinkedIn machine, where I now post every day, Monday through Friday. I have 241,000 followers, I think, at current count. And I get a ton of business out of LinkedIn. A ton.

Pete Mockaitis
A ton of business.

Jason Feifer
A ton of them.

Pete Mockaitis
So, folks say, “Jason, I want to give you monies.” And for what? What are you doing for these people?

Jason Feifer
Well, here’s an example. Someone wants me to keynote their conference for their employees. And I say, “Oh, that’s awesome. How did you find me?” And they say, ‘Oh, I follow you on LinkedIn.” Or, people will say, “Hey, I’d love for you to be an advisor to my business.” “Oh, that’s awesome. Let’s talk about that. How did you find me?” “Oh, I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for a long time.” It is always, “I’m following you on LinkedIn.”

And the reason for that is because everything else that I have ever done, and I get to reach a lot of people through newsletters and podcasts and whatever, is all in a way, it’s somewhat boxed in, right? It’s like you have to subscribe to my newsletter to get my newsletter. You have to subscribe to my podcast to get my podcast. But, LinkedIn, if you post something that really hits, it just starts bleeding out into other audience segments that you were not originally reaching.

And then because you’re posting daily, you’re constantly reminding people, “Oh, this person,” “Oh, this person,” “Oh, this person.” I see LinkedIn and doing LinkedIn well as simply about creating signal and noise. Every day there’s a lot of noise. You hear from a lot of people, you see a lot of people, you see constant stuff.

If you can create consistency, “This is who I am. This is what I have to offer. I will be relevant to you every single day,” then people start to recognize you. They start to say, “Oh, Pete, I love that guy. What does he have to say today?” And then after a while, they start to think, “Huh, can I work with that guy? Is there a way I can work with that guy?” And that is where economic opportunity comes from.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So well said. So, LinkedIn is the place where cool things happen in terms of getting hired or perhaps making deals, doing business, selling stuff.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, doing it all.

Pete Mockaitis
And then, so this personal brand…

Jason Feifer
Yeah, and let me add just one other thing to that. Also getting promoted, for real, getting promoted because we’re on a show called How to Be Awesome at Your Job. And the reason for that, this is a really interesting theory that someone floated by me and I’ve tested it out with people and found it to be totally true, is that LinkedIn, if you’re really good at it, creates external validation that then leads to internal validation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Jason Feifer
Which is to say that if you’re posting and you’re getting lots of people across your industry who are saying, “That’s really smart. This person is really smart. Yeah, I totally agree with that,” then people inside of your company start to see it, and they’re like, “Oh, this person is being externally validated, therefore, I should take them more seriously internally too.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s really ringing a bell. And I’m thinking back to, well, Bob Cialdini who wrote Influence, science and practice and more, was on the show. Great dude. Great guest. I’m thinking about just that principle of social proof is that, in a way, there’s a lot of things in the world of work that are super ambiguous and subjective.

I mean, if we’re doing like sales, okay, we know, “Okay, that person sold half a million dollars. The other person sold a quarter million dollars. Okay, Bada Bing, Bada Boom.” But in the world of knowledge work where so much of it is just like, “Hey, here’s some ideas that I’m putting forward. Like, are they good? Are they bad?” “Well, we don’t really know.” But if a lot of other people are saying, “Yes, you are brilliant, sir,” they go, “Okay, maybe. Maybe it is.”

Jason Feifer
That’s right. It’s predicated on trust, right? If you’re in a meeting and some people’s crazy random ideas are commanding more attention than other people’s crazy random ideas, and you wonder, “Why is that?” The answer is because of everything that happened before the crazy ideas. It was all the trust-building that went into it.

And so, people are carrying a reputation and, therefore, people are taking more seriously ideas based on reputation. So, if you have a tool where you can build your perception of authority, not just internally, but externally, it will feed back internally and you will walk into that meeting and be the person that people take seriously.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, now, and to totally reverse that, I’m thinking about instances where, about being not taken seriously in the humor domain. Because sometimes I’ve had the experience where it’s, like, I’ve made a joke and then another person made almost the same joke with the same crowd, you know, just like six people just chit chatting, within minutes, and they got much more laughter than I did.

I mean, and I’m not going to, I’m not trying to be a standup comic. I’m not road-testing material or anything. But I think that maybe these would be the same dynamics at work, it’s like, “Oh, I have a lot of history of this person making me laugh many times. And, therefore, I just kind of fall into that groove again.”

Jason Feifer
Totally. It’s the buy-in. It’s the buy-in. Why is the headliner comedian getting larger laughs than the opening comedian? I mean, maybe the headliner comedian is funnier, but also everyone’s just there to see the headliner comedian. So, they’re bought in on that person. They want to enjoy that person’s jokes more than the other person.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m here for laughing for you, from you.”

Jason Feifer
Yeah, “I’m here for laughing from you, very specifically from you. So, if you do a thing, I’m going to laugh at it.” And this is the reason to build up your authority. I have this concept, which is that I want to be singular. I think it’s incredibly important for me in my career to be singular, which is to say I am the sole person who you think of or turn to for this.

I have separated myself from everybody else. You don’t sit around, and you’re like, “Hmm, well, who should keynote my conference? I guess, let me just find any random person who talks about change management,” that’s the subject people generally hire me for. No, you want to hire Jason Feifer, “We got to get that guy, that specific guy.”

The more singular you can become and be perceived as, the more in which it’s not just you’re one of many, you’re just the selection today. No, it is you. People want you specifically, the more in which you will succeed. And so, you have to use the tools at your disposal to build that singular-ness, that distinctiveness. And personal brand is just top among your available assets.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So having a personal brand isn’t just a cutesy thing, that’s a checkbox that we’re “supposed” to check, but rather has substantial real-world consequences that we want working in our favor. So, lay it on us, how do we think about building a personal brand?

Jason Feifer
Okay, let’s do it. So, first of all, if you are not doing this right now, you, person, I’m talking to, because maybe you think, “Ah, that’s not for me. That’s for like, Jason’s got 240,000 followers. He’s like speaking in front of crowds. That’s for him.” No, no, no. Here’s the thing. Personal brands are valuable for everybody and they’ll serve different purposes.

So, my job and my ability to do my job does require having a large audience. It’s the kind of work that I’m in. But that’s not true for most people. Most people just need to reach the right audiences and they can be small and niche. So, an example I always like to offer at the start is my friend, Matt Adelman.

So Matt Adelman, he works at a company. His job is to help brands, like consumer-packaged goods brands, you know, food, beverage, snack brands, but get onto retail shelves, particularly a Target, which is what his expertise is. So, like, he helps people get onto Target, right? So, he doesn’t own the company, he works at the company and that’s his job.

So, he has built a personal brand for himself on LinkedIn in which every single day he is sharing insights about retail, about how to get on retail shelves, about what he’s seeing in retail trends. He’s walking around Target and taking photos of shelves and then posting, you know, “This is the beef jerky aisle is looking interesting and new today,” and whatever it is.

And he’s got like 6,000 followers because he’s been doing this for a while, but it converts, it converts because people see those posts and, eventually, first they say, “Oh, this is useful.” And then they say, “Oh, this guy is consistently useful. I should follow him.” And then they say, “Oh, we should hire that guy,” right? That’s how it happens.

And the reason for that, and this is very, very important, so let us keep it in mind as we do this, and that is that content builds relationships, and relationships convert. That’s it. Content builds relationships and relationships convert. So, when you put content out into the world, people say, “Oh, I like this person. I know this person. Now I feel like I have a relationship with this person.” Pete, that’s why you reached out to me is because you see me on LinkedIn every day and so I’m on top of mind to you.

And then eventually that relationship converts in some way where they say, “I’ve got to have this person on my podcast. I’ve got to hire this person. I’ve got to promote this person.” Okay, so with that as the premise, let’s start by talking about personal brand. Everyone gets the phrase personal brand wrong because they optimize for the word personal, “Oh, I got to post what I had for breakfast on LinkedIn,” or, “I got to…” No, no, no.

We have to actually put the emphasis on the word brand. You are treating yourself like a brand. And what is a brand? A brand is three things. A brand is simple, a brand is repeatable, and a brand is scalable. Just apply that now to the first brand that you can think of. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, what are they? They’re simple, repeatable, and scalable. You know exactly what Coca-Cola is. You know exactly the message that it has. Happiness.

And then, it’s repeatable. You say it over and over and over again in infinite ways, “Happiness, happiness, happiness.” And then scalable, they’re going to find constant new ways to reach as many people as possible with that message. That’s what a brand is. That’s what you need to become.

So, the first step of this is that you have to turn yourself into something simple. So being a personal brand is not talking about everything. It’s talking about one thing and doing it over and over and over again. So, I have a little framework with four questions that I will share with you for how to simplify yourself, how to turn yourself into something simple. And that is this.

Now, this is something I will caveat that I am usually teaching to people who own businesses, but it can very easily be applied to people who work at businesses, too. So, for someone who’s in a business, it would be like, “What is your product?” But for you, it’s, “What is your deliverable? What is your area of expertise? What is the thing that you hired for?” So that is it. What is that?

And then the second question is, “Who does that serve?” which is to say, “Who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you want to be very aware of and interested in you?” Question number three is, “What problems do you solve?” So, for the people that you serve, whether that’s a person, you know, a superior at a company or whatever, or the customer, “What is the problem that you solve?”

And then, number four, very important, most important, “How can you address that problem with content?” So, if I’m Matt who helps companies get onto retail shelves, that is my job. Well, what is my product or what is my service? I help companies get onto retail shelves. Who does that serve? Who do I serve? I serve founders of brands who have products who want to get on retail shelves. What problem do I solve? They don’t know how to get on retail shelves. How do I solve their problem with content? I can inform them about how to get on retail shelves.

Now I have narrowed it really specifically. And then if you want to go even further, I was talking to Matt recently about “How does he take it up a level?” And I said, well, start to think about, “What are the major problems that people have when they come to you for business?” So, it’s like, “Why do they hire you after a previous solution that didn’t work?”

And he’s like, “Oh, well, that’s because they got into Whole Foods, but now they can’t get into Target,” or, “They got into a couple retailers and then their sales flatlined. They can’t figure out what to do.” Great. Okay.

So, you now know the problems that they have, start to answer them in your content. Start to address that in your content, because they’re going to see that you have answers to the problems that they’re walking around with, and now you are incredibly relevant to them.

And now you have to be incredibly specific and specific, I said specific twice, but sure, why not? Because it’s very important. And consistent is what I meant to say. You have to be really consistent about this. Just be really regimented and consistent. Now you are simple. Follow me so far?

Pete Mockaitis
Simple, repeatable, scalable. And I guess I’m thinking that they could be quite possible to come up with some pitfalls, I’m guessing, in terms of, “You’re too generic.” It’s like “Oh, I help businesses with marketing.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, no, no, no, let’s get much more specific here.”

Jason Feifer
Very, very important. Right. Because if you try to be something to everyone, you will be nothing to nobody. And so, the way in which you have to signal value is through a really knowing level of specificity about who you hire. I mean, I tell people this all the time, if they’re building a business, like, “You don’t want to be, ‘Hey, we help businesses with marketing,’ because that doesn’t tell me anything about anything.”

And if I am a business looking for marketing, I’m not going to trust someone who’s just like, “Hey, I help businesses with marketing.” Instead, what you need to do is be incredibly specific about who you serve such that they think, “Oh, this person is for me. This person is for me.” “I help small businesses with less than five employees who are building SaaS products in the finance space with marketing because that is my area of expertise and I understand exactly what they need.”

And if you’re that person, you say, “Oh, my God, finally, I found my person.” And if you’re not, well, that’s fine. That’s not who you’re serving anyway. There’s something to keep in mind. Here’s a little kind of secondary framework here, but it’s something to keep in mind, is that there’s a thing that I like to call the first question. And the first question is the first question that anybody asks whenever they encounter anything.

“Is this for me or is this not for me?” That’s what you’re asking, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” We have limited time. We’re not going to waste our time on things that are not for us. We just want to filter things by, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” So, we started this conversation, and if you’ve made it this far into the episode, then you decided, “Oh, this is for me.” You’re not listening if this is not for you.

So, we have to know, whenever we’re producing something, like content on LinkedIn that’s going to reach people, that people are going to ask that question unconsciously of every single thing that they see, every post that they see as they scroll LinkedIn, they’re going to ask, “Is this for me? Is this not for me? Is this for me?” So, we have to anticipate that, we have to answer it as fast as possible.

So, the first words, and we’ll talk about content later, but like the first words that you write have got to be answering that. The way in which you show up on LinkedIn has to be answering that. The way in which you identify who your target is has to be answering that because, otherwise, people will tune you out. So, yeah, Pete, you’re exactly right. It’s got to be super specific.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s funny how it’s like the algorithms, and people talk a lot about the algorithm or the algorithms, I think that is, ultimately, what they’re trying to achieve is matching the giant catalog of stuff, whether they’re tweets or LinkedIn posts or Netflix or movies or YouTube videos or TikTok shorts, like, “Hey, I got a bunch of stuff, and I got a bunch of people. How can I get the right stuff to the right people?”

That’s what they’re trying to do in their little digital brains as best as they can, and then sometimes they do better or worse. And so, I think this is really vibing, says, if you want to do well on LinkedIn, for instance, you want to be swimming with the current instead of against the current, in terms of, “Hey, let me make it easy for you, everybody. This is who I’m for.”

Jason Feifer
Exactly. And you have to do that not just for everybody, but for the algorithm, because the algorithm is not some uncontrollable stroke of luck. The algorithm is trying to understand who your content is for. So, help it do that. And then you can use it to your advantage. I’ll tell you what the LinkedIn algorithm is for, and then we can get back to simple, repeatable and scalable because we’re still on simple.

But the LinkedIn algorithm is looking for three things. Ready? And this is not me making this up. This is multiple conversations with the people who build the algorithm at LinkedIn. So, it is number one, it is looking for knowledge and advice, and that’s their language, knowledge and advice. So, they don’t want life updates. They want knowledge and advice. They want you offering direct information that is useful to an audience.

And then, number two, they want it built off of your specific authority. So, LinkedIn is actually doing this crazy thing where it is looking at your background, because it’s got your resume. It’s looking at your connections. It’s looking at all past content. And it is making an algorithmic assessment of where your authority is, and it will amplify posts that live inside of your authority, and it will not do that for posts outside of your authority.

So, for example, if I write about marketing that is within my authority, LinkedIn sees it, it amplifies it. If, for some reason, I decided to write about anthropology one day, it would look at it, and be like, “This guy doesn’t know anything about anthropology,” and it would not amplify that. So, you really want to stay in your lane.

And then number three is meaningful comments. So, you want to write things that are going to get the kind of people that you are targeting to leave meaningful comments. And by meaningful comments, I mean more than like, “Yes!” or emojis. Like, give people something to have something to say about.

And the algorithm is literally looking for that because that is a sign of validation that it has reached its target audience and that that target audience is interested. And the more in which you’re getting meaningful comments from people, the more in which the post will be amplified to other people like them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Okay, so you said we’re just on simple. Let’s hear repeatable.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, I know there’s a lot here. Okay, so now we have to think about how are you going to show up as that brand. And I came up with this concept. I call it the 5% character, and it goes like this. So, Pete, you are a 100% person, would you agree?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Jason Feifer
But the thing is that most of that is not relevant to the people that we serve, professionally, at least. It’s just not, right? Bring your whole self to work? No. Actually, you have to bring the specific targeted, most relevant version of yourself to work or, certainly, to LinkedIn.

And so, I think what you need to do is assess what 5% of thoughts and expertise of yours is most relevant to that audience? What way in which you engage is most relevant to that audience? Some days I wake up cranky and some days I wake up enthusiastic. Only the enthusiastic version of me is relevant to my audience. The cranky never is, right?

So, once I understand who I am to that audience, what part of me is relevant, then I can start to build what I call the 5% character out of it, which is that I start to ask myself, “What brand attributes are embodied by this 5% character?” So, what does that mean? Really abstract, but really specific. So, 5% character for me, “I am a guy who simplifies complex problems for people in business.”

That’s how I see myself. That’s what I do. That is my offering to the world. I simplify complex problems. And I do that specifically and mostly through understanding communication and people. So, I can tell people how to do storytelling and how to understand the complex problems around them.

So okay, now, I think about my brand attributes, “How do I want people to think of me? How do I want to show up regularly on social media?” And so, I came up with some attributes. Here are some of them. Energetic. You’ve heard that as I talk to you, right? Like, if Pete and I were having coffee, I wouldn’t talk like this because it would be annoying.

But I do talk like this when I’m performing as my 5% character. I’m showing up on a podcast and I’m embodying this version of myself that is simplifying complex problems and is being really helpful to people. So, I have a way in which I’m speaking and that also translates to how I write. My writing is very sharp. It’s poppy. It’s lively. That’s how I want to do it.

And the reason to do this is because once you know who you are on social media, then it becomes much easier to show up like that every day. So, when I sit down every morning to write a post on LinkedIn, I think, “What does the 5% character version of Jason Feifer have to say about this?”

So that is how you become repeatable. And then scalable is when we get to actual content, when we actually start talking about how to make the content.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really intriguing. A character. It’s a 5% in that it’s within you, so it’s not utterly contrived. So, it is authentic in so far, it is genuinely a part of you, as opposed to something just invented, fabricated. But it is focused, distilled, polished. So, it’s like we have a very nice left foot of Jason that the world is admiring.

Jason Feifer
That’s right. The word I use, and all the words you used were great, but on top of it, intentional. It is intentional. It is the intentional, consistent version of you that, once you define for yourself, you can always show up that way. And that’s the critical distinction. If we don’t define this for ourselves, then we might show up differently every single time. And then we just create more noise.

But we want to create signal. We want to do things on repeat so that eventually people say, “Ah, I remember this person,” “Ah, yes, I want to follow this person,” “Ah, yes, I want to hire and spend money on this person.” This is why if you watch great personal brands, like just think of anybody who you follow, Gary V, you follow Gary V. Gary is so repetitive, so repetitive. And it’s because that works.

Because if Gary said some random new thing every time, or he showed up in some different way on a regular basis, then he would be noise. He wouldn’t be memorable from the first time you saw him to the next time you saw him, and it would just, you’d lose track of him. But because he’s being really repetitive in the way in which he’s talking and the way in which he’s showing up and the topics that he’s hitting, now he’s going to say new things each time, but those things are really all versions of the same thing.

And, by the way, I once, years ago, I’ve known Gary a long time. So, Gary emails me one day, and he’s like, “Hey, you want to get a drink?” And I said, “Sure.” And then a fun thing about Gary is that if you get a drink with Gary, it means that he’s going to give you, like, an incredibly hyper-specific time. He’ll be like, “Be at this place at 8:43, and I’ve got 17 minutes for you.” It’s so crazy, but I’ve talked to lot of people and they’re all like, “Yeah, that’s Gary’s thing.”

So, anyways, I show up and Gary has the camera rolling because he’s always got a camera on him, and he is Gary and he’s very energetic. And then the camera guy’s like, “Yeah, we got what we needed,” and the camera guy wanders away, and then Gary changes. And then he becomes, not a completely different person, but a more complex person.

He’s not talking quite like that. He has a softer tone. He’s slower. He’s more thoughtful. We’re having back and forth. He’s more nuanced, right? Like, that is actually the moment in which I realized, “Oh, Gary is playing a character named Gary. Like, when I see him on social media, he’s playing a character named Gary Vaynerchuk.”

But then when the cameras are off, he becomes actual Gary Vaynerchuk. And the character Gary Vaynerchuk is inside of that real Gary Vaynerchuk, but it’s just one thing that he’s activating every single time. And that’s being intentional.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that’s interesting. And, well, now I’m thinking, so you and I both know and love and respect Pat Flynn. And so, I have watched lots of his content, had him on the show a few times, met him at a couple conferences, hung out and got some burritos.

Jason Feifer
Nice.

Pete Mockaitis
And my experience of Pat, and people will say this about famous people, in general, like as a positive, virtuous attributes, it’s like, “Boy, you know what? It sure seems like Pat’s just the same sweet, generous, thoughtful, person in all of his content as he is in person.” And so, I mean, that seems to be the case, and that seems to be a positive. So, to what extent is that contrast with a Gary V. and square with your overall message here?

Jason Feifer
So, everyone is going to make different decisions about how much of their whole version of self they will show to others and in what context and when. And it’s true, Pat is extremely consistent. The Pat that you see on camera is pretty much the same Pat as if you’re talking to him in real life. But, you know, Pat’s a more complex person than what you see on camera. Everybody is. How could you not?

Nobody would want to be friends with or be married to a person who is as simple in real life as they are on camera. So, Pat has done a great job, because he’s such a good content creator, of developing a focused version of himself that is truly appealing and digestible and scalable, and that is absolutely him. But is still just a part of him. It’s still just a part of him.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I mean, I haven’t like, you know, been in his house for a week.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, right, right, right. And that’s the thing to remember, right? So, I’ve seen Pat in two interesting, different professional contexts, which is that, number one, we’ve worked together on a bunch of smart passive income stuff. But then also I took my kid to his Pokemon conference. And, you know, it’s interesting how it’s a version. It’s the same version of Pat, but when we’re doing business, he only talks about Pokemon in the context of lessons of content creation.

And when he’s doing Pokemon, he almost never really talks about business, unless he’s using it to help explain his own journey, “I did this and I did this and then I discovered this.” And so, he’s being thoughtful about how to utilize these different arenas of knowledge to be most relevant to the audience that he’s speaking to. And that, I think, is a critical part of this.

We all know lots of things, but we have to make sure that the things that we know are delivered in a way that are going to be most relevant and helpful to the audience in which we’re serving. And we have to think of everything and everybody. “Who am I speaking to right now? What do they need from me right now? What is going to be most relevant to them?” And so, this is what I mean.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think, in a way, all of us humans are pretty much doing this all of the time as we engage with different people in different contexts. And so, what we’re doing here is we’re just really clarifying, in your digital realm, if you want to show up in a particular way that is efficacious, this is what it’s about, and it requires a bit more proactive conscious thought than what we do subconsciously that, “I show up differently at Catholic mass than I do at my child’s friend’s birthday party.” We’re doing a different thing with different people for different purposes.

Jason Feifer
And it is easier to do that. I really like the way that you just framed that because what I am describing with the 5% character is, indeed, a version of what we do all the time. But the reason it’s important to think about it is because the context in which you are in will help guide the version of you that you should be.

Because you are in a very specific setting, you are surrounded by people who are also part of that setting, it is easier to fall into the right version of yourself that’s appropriate for that time. It is harder to do that on social media because it’s chaos, it’s noise. You’re seeing everybody do everything. And so, you’re going to go on, you’re going to see…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, you think it’s fine to do that. That’s a great point. Because we see everything, you may think it’s fine to do everything, but, in real life, we don’t get those cues. It’s like nobody is grunting and high-fiving at like a professional business luncheon, the way they are at a gym, you know. And yet, in a social media world, you see it all. And so, you might take the cue, it’s like, “Oh, it’s okay to just do whatever here.”

Jason Feifer
“Do whatever. I’ll just say it, yeah, say anything. Oh, they’re talking about this stuff over there. Maybe I should join that conversation.” No, do not show up just as yourself. The more in which you can think of yourself as a product in a marketplace, like when we’re engaging in a personal brand space, you are engaging in a marketplace of ideas in the same way that Old Spice is engaging in a marketplace of deodorants.

You are engaging in a marketplace of ideas and you have to be a product, and the product does not change. You don’t take Old Spice deodorant and put it next to orange juice and it becomes orange juice. It doesn’t. It always is Old Spice. And you always have to be that solid, too.

So, the more in which you think, “This is every day how I show up. This is how I talk. This is how I do not talk. This is what I talk about. This is what I do not talk about,” the more in which you will create that signal, and you will not be tempted to just morph into whatever you see.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so simple, repeatable, scalable. Lovely. And so, you mentioned a little bit about what LinkedIn is looking for already. Any additional comments there?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, well, so scalable is really about how to write content. And so, let’s just touch on that briefly, which is, once we’ve decided how we’re going to show up, then we have to know how to communicate on LinkedIn. And here’s the thing to know. Most people make the mistake of writing very dense or complicated openings or there’s a lot of throat-clearing.

You’ll find people who are writing like, “Last week I was thinking about…” Nobody cares last week what you were thinking about, right? That doesn’t matter. So instead, you have to always remember what I said about the first question, people are asking, “Is this for me? Is this not for me?” The first things that they see from you have to start addressing that.

So, I challenge you to do the following things in every post. Number one, visual. Find a compelling visual, maybe even put a caption on top of that visual with some text that’s going to draw some people in. For example, I write a lot about marketing on LinkedIn. And so, I would find, for example, a funny ad that Uber created.

And then I’m not just posting the ad, I’m going to write a little caption on top of that ad in the graphic that I’m uploading to LinkedIn, because that’s the first thing people are going to see. The thing that’s going to stop the scroll is actually the visual. So, they’re going to see the visual and then they’re going to wonder what you have to say about it.

And it could be a visual of you. It could be just a really compelling photo. It could be an interesting chart, but you got to have some context onto that chart. It could be anything, but you got to have something. And then the next thing that you want to write is that you want to write some language that signals who this post is for. And then after that, you want to signal the value that is to come. That’s what you want to do.

So, for example, I just told you like I wrote this post just two days ago or something – I’m to pull it up as we’re talking – in which I wrote about an Uber commercial that was really funny. So, what it is, I grabbed the video and I put this caption on top of it, and the caption said, “Uber’s ad was so good, it won an Emmy.” That’s the caption. Now, don’t you immediately want to see the ad, “Wow so good, it won an Emmy? Let’s see.”

Now, here’s my first line. This is what I wrote. This is all anybody sees, because LinkedIn will cut off after the first, like, so many characters. So, this is all anybody sees. It’s got to be good enough that people want to click more and read more. This has got to be compelling. This has got to drive people to take an action. And that action is, here’s what I wrote, I wrote, “Now this is how to speak to young people and turn them into customers.”

So, what have I done? Now, “This is how to speak to young people.” That is now signaling to anybody who is in a business where they need to engage young consumers, young employees, anybody, anybody who’s worried about thinking about that, that this is somehow relevant to them. And then I say, “And turn them into customers.”

At which point I am now promising that the next thing you’re going to read is going to help explain that. I’m going to pay off on that promise. And then if you open it up, that’s exactly what I do. What I do is I introduce an idea, and that idea is stop trying to be your audience, start respecting your audience. And it’s the difference in how Uber was talking to that young audience.

So, this is the language. I call this the three-hook structure, right? So, the first hook is the visual. The second hook is telling who this is for. And then the third hook is what is the value to come. And you do that all in a really nice and fluid way. And you try to be as punchy and simple in your language as possible and just start to experiment and you’ll see what people engage with. Try different formats. And, eventually, you will start to see your own patterns of what your specific audience wants from you.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about the hook, it’s funny, it’s almost kind of like standard issue is like the first sentence, it just has a hook. It’s like, “What? Tell me more. What’s going on?”

But sometimes, they’re clearly written by AI often, it’s like, in a bad way. Like, there’s not actually any substance to back it up. It’s, like, “Yesterday, I quit my job,” or something, or, “I had to fire someone today.” It’s like, “What? Why? Tell me more.” You know, it’s like you can tell what they’re going for. And then, often, you kind of wonder, it’s like, “Well, did you really? Or are you just like making stuff up to try to get me to read your LinkedIn post here?”

Jason Feifer
Totally. Totally. Or, people will do like, “Now this is what teamwork looks like,” and it’s a photo of their team. And that’s great. Good for your team. But there’s no reason for me to click and learn more about that, because you’re not promising anything. That’s what teamwork looks like? I don’t care. Or, a lot of people will also just get too in the weeds.

I mean, who was I just talking to? Somebody in logistics, and they want to position themselves as an authority in logistics. And they showed me some of their posts, and I was like, “You know what? I literally don’t understand the language that you’re speaking right now. It’s full of acronyms and it just feels dense. It just feels dense.”

The best thing that you can do as a writer, as a creator of any kind of content is just look at it through the lens of someone who is just stumbling upon it. Like, take yourself out of you, and imagine me or Pete, just coming across this thing and looking at it. Are we interested? Are we going to spend the time? Or is this too dense and it’s too complicated? And if so, then simplify it so that it makes us stop and read.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Any other thoughts on what LinkedIn is looking for?

Jason Feifer
Well, let me tell you the number one frustration that people in my world, which is to say people who are trying to reach tons of people on LinkedIn have, and that is that the LinkedIn algorithm is constantly changing, and it is. And everyone always complains it’s harder and harder to reach people on LinkedIn. And I’ve put this to LinkedIn.

And their answer, I think, is really instructive, especially for people who are listening to this show. Because what they’re saying is they don’t actually want things to go viral on LinkedIn. And they don’t, actually, want people to be trying to reach the masses on LinkedIn. What they want is for people to use LinkedIn to find economic opportunity. That’s the language they always use, economic opportunity.

Which is to say, and I was like, “Give me an example.” And Dan Roth, who’s the editor in chief of LinkedIn was talking to us. He’s like, “I was just talking to this nurse, and she’s wanted to shift into this specific position at a hospital or something. And so, she started posting kind of insights into best management practices inside of healthcare or something. And then somebody at another hospital saw that and reached out and hired her because of that.”

He’s like, “That’s success. That’s what we’re looking for.” Which is to say, you don’t have to reach tons of people. You just have to reach the right people, as I said at the very beginning, and don’t get discouraged if your numbers are small.

Because if what you just want is more economic opportunity, well, then all you really need to know is who do you want to reach? And then how do you show them, don’t tell them, show them that you are an authority that they should take seriously, that you are great talent that they cannot overlook?

This is a long game. You have to have a lot of patience with it. You have to take it very seriously. You have to be consistent. But, over time, if you do it, people will find you. And that’s the point.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, and then your third pillar there was how to create great content. We’ve hit a couple of those bits. Anything else you want to make sure to highlight?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, there’s one other thing, which is let me tell you my number one tip for content idea generation. People always ask, “How do you get your ideas? How are you writing every day? What do have to say?” A couple of things to know.

Number one, I think that the best content comes from real life and will come up in real life, which is to say that I just use the Notes app on my phone. And any time that this little “Boop!” goes off in my head, which says, “Interesting!” I don’t let it pass me by. I write it down. I capture it in real time.

And what I am really doing is I am creating an ever-filling backlog of content ideas. Because if you sit down to write a LinkedIn post, you will have no idea what to write about. But if you just start capturing interesting things, just think about interesting things at work, “What problems did you recently solve? What came up in some meeting and you’re like, ‘Oh, that was a good way of thinking about that.’ Or, ‘This is a thing that I did and it worked really well.’”

Like, whatever. You’re not giving away confidential information. But like what are you seeing? What’s coming up? What did you just do to solve that problem that actually is based on something that you do all the time? “You know, the way that I did that is that I always first look at this. And if I look at this first, that it usually gives me a good direction.” Great. That little framework, that thing that you, that is content. So, constantly be capturing those things so that you can then sit down and produce that content.

And then the second thing I want to share is that it doesn’t have to be new every single day forever. So, you might write a post and it does okay. And then give it like a month, and now write another version of that same post. It was a good idea. Maybe you can do it better. Maybe you can find another more compelling way to do it. Maybe you wrote a post and you realize, “Actually, this is kind of like two posts. Like, I have two ideas here.”

So, I am always going back to my old material and just sort of like tweaking it or updating it or doing something new. So, the more in which you do this, the more material you have, number one, in your Notes app on your phone, and then, number two, on LinkedIn, and then it starts to become much easier and you start to get into a flow and a rhythm. So, you need to create some systems so that you can do it.

And then, actually, Pete, sorry, one more thing. I keep promising that this is the only thing that I have and that I just keep adding one more. But final thing is you might be wondering “How often should you post?” And I told you I post every day, Monday through Friday. Don’t do that to start. Don’t do that. You’ll get overwhelmed and you’ll never do anything.

Instead, I challenge you, “What is the minimum amount that you can definitely commit to?” or the maximum amount, I suppose, any amount, just commit to some amount. So maybe it is once every two weeks. Fine. Once every two weeks, do it once every two weeks. Pick it every other Monday, you’re going to write a LinkedIn post. You can spend two weeks thinking about it.

And then, once you’ve got that regularly, once you feel like you’re in a real flow once every two weeks, see if you can add another. Now, can you do it once a week? Great. Now get comfortable with that. So, you never want to take, if you try to do this too often, you will not do it at all. The more important thing to do is to just be building the habit over time. You’ll get better at it. It’ll become easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jason, are there any tools or resources or experts or websites or newsletters or just things to check out to get ever better at this LinkedIn game?

Jason Feifer
Absolutely. Well, let me tell you about my newsletter. It is not specifically about LinkedIn, but it is very much about simplifying complex problems and communication. I share a lot of great communication tips on there, and it is called “One Thing Better,” each week, one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company that you love. And you can find that by going to the web address, OneThingBetter.email.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thanks. Well, now could we hear a favorite quote?

Jason Feifer
Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, said this to me. He said, “Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jason Feifer
The last thing that I just was obsessed with was The Three Body Problem, the full trilogy. I could not recommend it more strongly. I think about it all the time. It is like a big hypothesis about the grand scheme of the universe, and I just adored it. So, The Three Body Problem.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks lucky to be awesome at their jobs?

Jason Feifer
The most valuable thing that you can do is to be constantly seeking the thing that is available to you that nobody is asking you to do.

We spend so much time at our jobs, doing the things that people ask us to do, and that’s fine. But if that’s all you do, then you are only qualified to do the thing you’re already doing. But to do the thing that nobody’s asking you to do.

That is actually where growth happens, because that’s where discovery happens. That’s where new opportunities come from. That’s where new skills are learned. That’s where new connections are made. So, I would step back and ask, “What is available to you,” in the abstract, “available to you because you could pursue it; available to you because you could make a phone call or you could go to a website, anything? What is available to you that nobody is asking you to do?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jason, thank you.

Jason Feifer
Thank you. I am so glad that you impulse invited me onto the show.