Digital Horizons

LinkedIn Growth Strategy: From 0 to 6000 Followers within 4 Months

• James Walker & Brian Hastings

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What if you could build a highly engaged LinkedIn following in just four months? Our guest Brent Neale did exactly that, amassing 6,000 followers and over 640,000 post impressions. Inspired by Gary Vee’s philosophy that attention is the new currency, Brent strategically crafted content to stand out in a crowded digital landscape. Join us as Brent spills the secrets behind his rapid growth and the distinctive elements that make a personal brand irreplicable.

Authenticity and consistency lie at the heart of personal branding, and Brent exemplifies this perfectly. By staying true to his values and employing natural language, he’s turned content creation into an effortless and genuine endeavour. We delve into the balance between quality and quantity, sharing practical tips on generating content ideas from daily experiences, ensuring factual accuracy, and maintaining a consistent posting schedule. Brent also reveals his techniques for creating engaging LinkedIn posts, including the effective use of visuals and comment trap posts.

But building a personal brand isn't just about gaining followers; it’s about leveraging that brand for business success. Brent shares how interacting with clients and simplifying complex topics through real-world analogies can establish you as an expert in your field. We discuss the benefits of consistent content creation, from personal growth to industry recognition, and the importance of continuous learning. Whether you're just starting or looking to refine your digital presence, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiration to help you stand out on LinkedIn.

The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Nous

Connect with Brent: LinkedIn Profile

The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:

James Walker - Managing Director Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous

Speaker 1:

If I put something out there that I'm not confident in saying that this is exactly how it works, then that forces me to go and learn it and understand it more and better. So I just I feel like it's just a massive circle of I help someone else, linkedin helps me, making sure that I'm 100% teaching someone else the right thing, and then ultimately it comes back and making sure that I can use this for my clients.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Digital Houses podcast. I'm your host, James Walker.

Speaker 3:

And I'm Brian. And I love that quote that you just said before we started, I just talk shit Pretty much.

Speaker 2:

What are we? Episode 25 now of talking shit.

Speaker 3:

Talking shit yeah that's good.

Speaker 2:

So today we are joined with Brent Neal. Brent, welcome to the show, thank you. So Brent has come on a bit of a journey over the past four months on building his own personal brand and we're so impressed with the I guess traction he's had with it that we thought it'd be definitely worthwhile for him to jump on the show and give our listeners a little bit of advice or even just a bit of overview of what he's done, to sort of see some pretty fast success, I guess, in any term of building brand from any of the metrics. So to give you a bit of an overview here, so just over the last four months when Brent started, he's gained 6,000 followers and this is on LinkedIn so this is focusing on LinkedIn channel here Over 640,000 post impressions, some posts getting over 1,000 likes and over 100,000 impressions, and was awarded the top Search Engine Marketing Voice by LinkedIn.

Speaker 2:

So he's got that badge on his thing and this has all happened within a four-month period, which I mean to get that happening. What was the idea to make it start? Did you just sit there one day and just go? You know what? I'm just going to build my LinkedIn profile. So where did this come from?

Speaker 1:

In all fairness, it wasn't really just one thing. I think probably where it started is you hear like a lot of especially like Gary Vee how he's constantly going out and just talking about how the new currency is attention and just kind of building some sort of like online brand. I feel like that's where it really started and just knowing that that's something that I can truly own myself, no matter what industry I work in, no matter where I go, no matter what I do, especially on LinkedIn, it's something that I can kind of take with me throughout my career and kind of build and take from it in the future. So the initial standpoint was actually a bit more of just learning how to create engaging content. I think that's something that I really wanted to do.

Speaker 1:

Why LinkedIn instead of like Instagram and Facebook? I feel like it just comes down to me as a person is I prefer to work with businesses. I prefer if I would have a conversation at a party. I'd rather talk about a specific topic rather than just talking about every other, like Kardashian sort of topic. So to me, I just naturally was drawn more towards that educational style LinkedIn posting something that I can sort of use to benefit me in the long run and my clients and my career and what I'm doing, so they just seem like the right platform. So it was an opportunity to not just learn a bit more myself but also teach a whole lot of other people that are following me and trying to learn as well, and kind of build that little bit of community.

Speaker 3:

That's awesome. It's a great success story so far, and I'm sure it's going to start to sort of exponentially grow as well. So let's just delve into a little bit more about the personal brand side of things. What does a personal brand mean to you? Obviously, we're talking about your brand as an individual, not just the company you work in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, to me the definition of a personal brand would be something that can't be successfully replicated. No one can be me, no one can tap into my head, no one can replicate the post that I do and the language that I posted, in the way I sort of deliver the value in my posts or whatever the takeaways are. So it's something that can't be successfully replicated by someone else. Someone else can try, but it's never going to be 100% the same. So I feel like if I look back and someone were to try, and you know, if you guys tried to replicate my posts and I'd be able to look back and be like, yeah, it's mostly right, but I'll probably do this differently, to me that's not successfully replicating it, but you can kind of mimic it in a way. Same way for me and you guys. I wouldn't be able to replicate that in any way, shape or form. So that's probably what I define a personal brand to be, but some other indicators for it would be it shouldn't take much energy. It should be quite easy to be able to do it.

Speaker 1:

It's just you talking, or you, for the case of LinkedIn, is writing a post. It's just me typing the way that I would usually speak, so just using more native language, I shouldn't have to sit here and try and think about okay, what should I say? How should I say this? I can't just say it. So I feel like the personal branding side of things. It really just does come down to the individual. It doesn't create a team to do that. I feel like it's just one individual that says this is how I'm going to do it and just kind of being true to it sounds really hippie saying it, but true to themselves, yeah, knowing who you are and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, not thinking too much about how should I do it and just how do I want to do it, that's great.

Speaker 2:

So we've talked about, I guess, the results and, Brian, sorry we didn't make much of a plan as to what we're saying. Did you have a question to follow that one up?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, with the personal brand, I guess all the challenges around creating content representing an actual brand, where different individuals have to try to remain consistent with how a brand speaks, presents, carries itself to market all of that goes out the window. You're already trained on how to live your true self and deliver your personality is really important that point you said at the end there to be true to yourself, because if you're inconsistent with your own personality and how you bring that to market, that will be seen as inconsistencies in brand. So I think that's a massive benefit, or removing some limitations people would have in trying to produce content for a brand. When you're doing it under your own banner, as someone who does work for a brand but you're being true to yourself, it's a lot easier to just just be yourself and put that content out there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, one less thing to think about so, no, that's really good and that's the thing. Right? Just trying to make it easy for me, I'll be coming up with the post idea is one thing. Having to look into, into everything I'm posting about to make sure it's 100% factually true and correct, that's another thing. There's always all these things I'd go through to create a good quality post. If I just sit here and think about how I'm going to brand it, that just is too much. There's just no point doing that. So, having something that, exactly as you're saying, is consistent, something that as soon as someone sees it they're like oh, it's probably from Brent or it's probably from XYZ, that little bit of reliability and consistency, I feel like that's what really draws an audience towards you and builds that little community, because they know what they're going to get. The more consistent it is, the better. But the only way you can really do that is just to do what you would usually do that doesn't change.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, do it your way.

Speaker 2:

So I guess, based on that, you're saying you want to make it as simple as possible. So let's talk about the process You'd mentioned. You were posting almost daily at a point. I don't know, I guess, what's the cadence of your posting, how often are you posting and how are you actually, I guess, allocating time? How much time?

Speaker 1:

What is the process in terms of getting from a blank schedule that's coming up to having a stacked full of really good quality content that you've been doing? Yeah Well, I mean for me, being a Google Ads specialist, I spend every day in a Google Ads account, so naturally, by being involved in it, constantly surrounded by Google Ads accounts, ideas naturally come to me. I might either learn something myself and be like, oh cool, that's interesting. Like me a year ago would learn from this, or benefit from this. So therefore, let's post about it, and I was just trying to essentially come up with post ideas that would help me from a year ago. If that's something that I'd find value in, then there's bound to be so many other people out there that will get value on that as well.

Speaker 1:

But in regards to how it all started, consistency is obviously the most important thing. I always try to maintain quality and quantity, and it seems to be like this battle these days which one is it? Do you want quality or do you want quantity? I feel like quality is just where you get the engagement, that's where you get your followers, and then quantity is where that all accelerates and it really exponentially grows. So if you were to do two posts a week or something like that and you got, like, say, a hundred followers or something like that from it. But you knew that if you did five that could turn into a thousand. Because of that consistency and the amount of quantity that you're pushing out, you'd obviously go for five right, it just kind of makes sense. So quality grabs the attention and the quantity is what really kind of pushes it and makes it grow and take it to the next level.

Speaker 1:

So for me, I was just trying to focus on quality and quantity and making sure that every single post had both of those and the amount of posts that I scrapped and then decided not to post on the day because I just couldn't find anything that was quality.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad I did it, because the amount of times you get a bit of either pushback or you can actually kind of take away from what you're trying to build if you do something that's incorrect or something that doesn't make sense or kind of gives doubts to people. So yeah, just trying to be factually correct and trying to make sure that everything I'm putting out there is something that will definitely give someone some sort of actionable advice or benefit, and then also trying to be as consistent as possible. So any ideas that I get I just jot it down into a notes app and just make sure I have this massive backlog of ideas that I can draw back onto. So it just kind of takes away from the friction of having to sit here on a Sunday afternoon trying to plan out my out my entire week. It's already there.

Speaker 2:

I can almost do it on a daily basis okay, and so on the Sunday, then your batch creating post, or so you've got your idea log, you've got your backlog there, and then you're just working through and smashing out how many sort of in advance you or how far in advance you're trying to get it. So you're not. Is it just like the next week, or how are you approaching that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, so you, every Sunday I usually sit down and do a Monday, tuesday and Wednesday post, and then what happens during Monday, tuesday and Wednesday would be my Thursday and Friday post. So I try to draw from the most recent possible experiences. If there's any major industry updates, then I might just say it's on a Monday. I might schedule that for the Monday afternoon and then push everything back a day. So, yeah, it just kind of comes down to what's important, like what's going to help people more immediately. If there's no updates, no movement, then great, something that's a bit more evergreen, you can a specific strategy breakdown or something like that is awesome. And then, yeah, between Thursday and Friday, that's generally something that I've learned that week or something that I've sort of come to realization that way from.

Speaker 3:

Is it rare that you'll find you're not comfortable with what you've got in the can and you have to leave a day? Or have you made a commitment to five days? No matter what, how do you balance that quality and quantity Until I need to sleep in all?

Speaker 1:

fairness, that's kind of what it gets down to. So, yeah, there's definitely a lot of days where I just haven't had anything that's worthwhile putting out there. It wouldn't benefit anyone. So it's just kind of a bit of data that's wasted. So, generally speaking, what I'll do is I'll come up with an idea. If I can't make it work, or if it doesn't make any sense or whatever it is, I might jump onto a different idea. But, generally speaking, just until I have, until that little bit of battery, that creative battery, is drained, then I'll put it aside and then move on to the next day or whatever else I'm working on Awesome.

Speaker 2:

So what's been your favorite piece of content that you've done? Because I mean, I see you've done a lot of pieces of content. What is it? And Kenny, or whoever's doing the editing on this, can we bring up the actual piece? So let's we'll chat about it, because so, and I mean there's probably different posts where you've spent maybe less time or more time, and I think there's been some. We've had a chat about it and you've spent a lot of time really creating and really creating something unique and different that is probably haven't seen on the platform, which then I imagine, has better engagement. So, in terms of content style that you've been doing, what have you been finding is probably, like you know, you've learned probably not going to waste my time doing these kind of posts or first, you know, if I do x piece, this is like really lifts up my engagement, lifts up my reach and I get a lot of followers from yeah, it's a good question.

Speaker 1:

So, generally speaking, the more value I can give away, the better. So and this is the thing with like short text form posts, it's very hard to give out a lot of information, and sometimes some information just requires a lot of context too. So you can't have this massive paragraph post because it's just not going to perform well. People are going to look at it too much. See you later.

Speaker 1:

So, generally speaking, what I found works is having the visual element. It always has to be there, so some sort of image to do with the text post. So whatever sort of value I'm trying to deliver and that bit of imagery that I'll have attached to one, have a bit of branding on there, but also have a screenshot or something that I'm trying to show, or just some sort of visual explanation of what sort of message I'm trying to convey here. But but the next one is typical comment trap posts, like they do so well on LinkedIn. Essentially, what it is is, if you comment on this post and you like, and then you also connect with me, I'll send you a message that has a specific document in it.

Speaker 2:

I see these a lot.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, like a tool or a guide or an Excel sheet or something.

Speaker 1:

And, in all fairness, it benefits both parties so much because I'm going to give them a lot more value, something that one post just can't do in any way, shape or form. I'm also going to promote my brand and as much as someone learns from me, that's beneficial to me. That's what helps me grow. It helps that stickiness from the follower. So I'm trying to push out as much valuable, usable content possible and sometimes the way you need to do that is through like a downloadable guide because they're engaging so heavily with it. Then linkedin just pretty much makes those posts viral, like one of my posts got over 110 000 impressions, which, for linkedin engagement, is definitely pretty good, especially you know what 5 000 followers and and yeah, did exceptionally well with some major sort of people in the in the space sort of commenting and trying to get their copy as well.

Speaker 3:

That's awesome. That's like one small change. You could have just had a link to the download in the post, but just requesting that people reach out and start that engagement, that comment that tricks the algorithm. It gives you that extra boost and people are still getting access to the content. You also get a view of how interested people are in the content and you get that sort of connection with them and maybe some new clients along the way. Maybe it's going to some competitor agencies, who knows? No, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you talked about the download one. So what's a piece of content that you found just that people probably are doing that? You just have found, look, this just doesn't work and you shouldn't be wasting your time. So is there any kind of posts that people probably feel that it is the right type of content and then probably what they understand? You know I should be doing this thing, but you just found, look, I do this and I get no engagement or anything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and this is a funny thing. Sometimes it's just hit or miss, like some posts that I put so much, you know, blood, sweat and tears into. I'm like this is going to be the best thing ever, and this is also just the nature of learning. Sometimes I'll post something and then I didn't realize because I just wasn't experienced enough or I haven't come across it, whatever it is, but there could already be an alternative to what I'm posting about out there and that is commonly used, so that post will just die and that's like the learning curve that I get through posting.

Speaker 1:

But generally speaking, no, you never know which one does well. There's always, you know, little things. You need to do so for linkedin the more time on my post and if people hit that little read more to be able to read the entire post, linkedin 100, you know, looks at that and and uses that as like an engagement metric to push it out to more people. Like is this something that people actually finding interactive? So a mix of a lot of you know a of text, but also making it easy to digest is probably the most consistent takeaway that I'll put in a post to make sure it does well I think that's important.

Speaker 3:

A lot of people might be afraid of adding that bit of length, but sometimes that time spent dwelling on it or expanding it out to read the rest of it, if it is easy to digest, if it's broken into sections and not too long, actually proves to LinkedIn. Yeah, these people are interested.

Speaker 2:

So I think there's a name for it. Linkedin actually uses it as a measure now, because there's people like myself who consume content on LinkedIn. They don't actually do anything. They might not like it.

Speaker 1:

They might not click anything, they might not do anything.

Speaker 2:

But they're going to go through, they'll click to read more or whatever. They'll read the content and keep moving on. Yeah, and so for you, in terms of I didn't get me that many likes or whatever, but I think that linkedin's using that as a metric because they can tell how long you're actually browsing that piece of content, consuming it, because there is so much more of that long-form content on the platform compared to, say, your other social platforms?

Speaker 1:

definitely, and look the way I believe it would happen as well as to say I put a post out about landing pages or something. If I spend a lot of time on landing pages or on that post, linkedin is probably going to push some more posts about landing pages to me from someone else. If I spend less time on that, then LinkedIn knows oh, it was that post that did well, so this is a post that they actually got value from, whereas this other post not so much. So I feel like it's like a comparison metric to say okay is this post about landing pages doesn't necessarily mean it's going to go viral, but because of the way or something that this author has done about this post has made it more engaging to the user. So therefore, it's a good post. Push that to more people.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, as you're saying, like, you don't have to necessarily just engage with it. These days, I mean, I feel like linkedin's and most social platforms have gone around the whole. You know like and you know comment being the only engagement metric that you need to rely on, because there's so many bots out there, so many people just scroll through, like and then onto the next one, onto the next one, onto the next one. So, yeah, the real engagement is time. On page right, it's how long someone's actually spending on LinkedIn. That's what LinkedIn also increased. So the more I can keep people on my post helps them, helps me, helps everyone.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. Just coming back to the ideation part, I really liked your approach of thinking about what you would have learned from or what would have helped you a year ago. Put yourself in another position business's shoes or another specialist's shoes who may not be learning new and iterative ways to do their job year in, year out, but they still need to find what their customers or the people they want to engage with, what they're looking for and what problems they have to form relevant content around. What other approaches do you use to figure out what questions need answers?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I feel like this comes down to just any sort of general engagement that you have. I mean, I can speak on a B2B perspective being, you know, the platform that I'm growing on is any sort of clients I speak to and they obviously don't know about X, y, z, so they may not know about profit margins or something like that as an e-com business owner. Like, that's obviously a pretty important topic to know as an e-commerce business owner, or even really any business owner at that point. So maybe create a post that's a bit more informative. Like cool, this is what profit margin is. It's how you calculate it. These are some tools or things that you can use to help you get there, or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1:

So general interactions with your clients or with your target market is always going to be the easiest way to find out. What do they not know? What do they know? The most simplest of questions can always, you know, come back around over and over and over again so you know what is conversion tracking or how does that work? Like it's something so simple that I might answer so quickly. Yeah, but you start looking back on it being like hang on, like there's there's obviously a bit of consistency here, like let's just kind of fill the gap in here well, that's something.

Speaker 2:

Something we've talked about before is that there's not really any topic. That's too simple because there's always going to be somebody who doesn't know what you're talking about there, and if there are people who are going to be at different, varying levels in terms of their experience who are following you, and I guess if you're looking to build a reputation as an expert within the industry, you really need to cater to people that are just starting out, to people who are much more advanced as well.

Speaker 1:

I understand and I always find as well is my job and it's kind of like I think it was like a mentor a while ago told me is the one way you can tell if someone knows what they're talking about is they can explain the most complex topic to you in the most simple and easy way to understand. So if I know absolutely nothing about, say, fashion, and a fashion expert comes to me and says, oh, is's this, it's this, and in a way that I can understand it, using real-world analogies or something like that, I know that this person actually knows what they're talking about because they can explain it in a way that they have to have deep understanding. For If you're explaining something where it just sounds so overcomplicated and you don't know what someone's saying, if you're walking away being like I have no idea.

Speaker 1:

They probably don't know as much as they think. Yeah, they haven't graphed it enough to be able to explain it easily. It's a textbook version of it, so I always find that those sort of posts work really well. If you can explain it in a natural way of real-world analogies, that always does exceptionally well, because it just helps people understand. Oh, that's what this actually means. So even just explaining some of the most simplest topics, but in a different perspective, that's awesome too. Yeah, like simplest topics, but in a different perspective. Like that's awesome too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great. So we've talked a little bit about the process and how you've gone about doing this. What have you found is the benefits. So obviously there's a lot of time and commitment that's gone into this. What have you found as a benefit from yourself already that's come out of the process of doing this and that keeps you driving forward and going forward with this thing?

Speaker 1:

I feel like anyone that posts and you get like that little taste of success of your channel is growing, like your page is growing, whatever it is it's growing, like that's always just a nice little tap on the back. So I feel like that's probably my main sort of like North star, like true North metric. That I'm constantly chasing is how do I grow this? How do I make it bigger? How do I? I'm not who worry about what the audiences are, as long as they're engaging, as long as they're someone that keeps coming back, and I get that repeat visitor sort of metric to it.

Speaker 1:

But the other thing as well is I'm learning so much doing, and not just about posting on LinkedIn, but also about my career, my craft and what I do.

Speaker 1:

So if I put something out there that I'm not confident in saying that this is exactly how it works, then that forces me to go and learn it and understand it more and better.

Speaker 1:

So I feel like it's just a massive circle of I help someone else, linkedin helps me, making sure that I'm 100% teaching someone else the right thing and then ultimately it comes back and making sure that I can use this for my clients and instead of necessarily having to rely on one person to teach me everything. It means that I can now draw on to not just a community but also forcing myself to need to learn these things properly. So I feel like it's helped me in a lot of different ways around the integrity of the knowledge that I do have and making sure that I'm true in what I'm saying, helping me build a bit more of a community and people that kind of almost boost that little bit of ego about what you know and making sure that you're being rewarded for knowing that sort of stuff. But somewhere down the line, hopefully it just builds a bit more credit to everything that I say and do in my career. So you know, it essentially pushes everything to do with me in the right sort of direction. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I mean even just community, which is something I guess LinkedIn is. It's a community of people who connect with each other. I know that when we've talked, there's been people who we've followed as a business in terms of who we've looked at for advice and stuff based on their content, and they're now following you and engaging with your content. So I mean just even from that and now you've sort of building a community of of experts within this field, which is really cool.

Speaker 1:

I think that's probably the biggest thing is is, yeah, exactly as you're saying, some people that I used to follow and almost used to have, like this god tier status sort of thing, like no, no way they talk to me, sort of thing. You know, being able to engage with them and being able to draw on their knowledge on a more personable level, like that's absolutely awesome. It's definitely rewarding, but it also just gives you that confidence that you need to know, hey, if this person that I used to follow and used to learn so much from, is now following and getting value from me, like I really do know what I'm talking about, it's a nice sort of pat on the back and push in the right direction to give you the confidence that you need that you are doing everything correctly.

Speaker 3:

So I feel like that's probably the most important thing for me is not just saying that I know what I'm talking about, but actually demonstrating that, and knowing it yeah, and I think there's also the really clear and obvious overarching benefit that a lot of people listening to this will want to know is does it generate more business? And I think there's a huge benefit of credibility for the brand you work for that they hire and have thought leaders the best of the best in their field. They're not just a list of nameless people. There's thought leaders and they chose this company to work at. Yeah, and if you want to have your search campaigns run by someone, why not a thought leader in the field? Yeah.

Speaker 3:

so it's a added effect for the company that you're working for at the time that you bring this quality and this brand and this credibility with you along to that business, and that's something that we've talked about, and I think it was even today.

Speaker 2:

We're talking about, like, if we're talking to a client that we're pitching for, it'd be like hey, this is the team that's going to be working on your account, this is their social profiles, this is how much they know their shit. And I mean it goes so far in terms of the brand reputation for that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think in advertising and digital marketing especially. It's hard to create a meaningful resume in dot points. I've done the Google certifications or I've worked on these campaigns. This much media budget has been under my control. It doesn't mean as much to the real visible engagement in public in these platforms and channels as building your own personal brand.

Speaker 1:

I feel like that's probably the biggest thing is some of the biggest brands you work with. They generally speak and they know what they're talking about. They don't look at Google Ads being like, oh, what's that? Like we built a million-dollar business and we don't know what Google Ads is like. Everyone knows what it is, because to get to that level you have to have not just understood it, but you have to see what success looks like with that. So whether that's been working with someone that's given you that success, you know that success yourself.

Speaker 1:

Long story short, you need to know how to sniff bullshit.

Speaker 1:

So when you're having a conversation with someone and someone's trying to sell them, hey, we're the best for Google Ads, there's not much you can really say or do in just one meeting to really show that you actually know what you're talking about. You can say you're the best and you can say, oh, we work with these clients and all that sort of stuff that's always there to give you the right sort of measures. But the businesses that at least I want to work with, they're going to be someone that cares about. Does this person actually know what they're talking about? How can they demonstrate that to me? You don't just get thousands of followers through LinkedIn overnight. It doesn't just happen like that. So, to show that consistent bit of like, knowledge and value over the course of time, that I feel like that is its own resume, like you can't just fake that, like that has to happen one way, which would be pretty much organically, through people actually wanting to follow and, you know, follow your posts and what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

Okay, it's one platform that you can't buy followers, yeah, yeah, where you can, on all the other ones with like campaigns or subscribe campaigns on YouTube or any of them really. There are campaigns you can, whereas LinkedIn, you've really got to earn it, don't you? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:

So someone starting out, would you advise video content over graphic or image explainers, and how do you balance that? I can imagine it would be quite daunting for someone new to go. All right, I'm just going to start shooting five videos a week. How did you get over that hurdle of doing the first ones Just initials, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, look to me I feel like there wasn't really much of a hurdle. I definitely see a lot of posts and people were saying, oh, if you're struggling with just doing your first post, like then do this. I feel like for me it was the want to get better at something. Well, probably month or so was just the easiest because I haven't posted anything before. So every idea that I have is an original idea that I haven't done before. I feel like I was recycling.

Speaker 2:

And you're probably getting more followers who have higher level of knowledge and so you are getting those. The people that we've talked about that were previously posting and you're looking up to their posts. Now they're following you. So you're probably thinking, oh shit, these guys potentially will critique if this is spot on because I feel a level of followers is probably elevated a bit over the period as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, I mean, I actually was showing you a metric yesterday between the conversions and conversions by time. I thought that was a really cool new thing that I've learned. I'm like, oh my God, how does no one know about this? It's a great way of looking at data. I brought up a post last night. It was a pretty solid post and then over a bit of time of thinking I'm like, wait up, wait up, how does this actually work? Is this 100% correct? And then I kind of look at it from the angles of critiques and I'm thinking, okay, cool, it's not actually what I think it is. It's not really the metric that I thought it was, or I'm not really understanding this morning.

Speaker 1:

So it's like, yeah, like there are definitely posts where I'm sitting here putting so much time and effort in and it just doesn't work out. But, as you're saying, I have to be right about it. If I'm not right, then it's to me. I feel like it's a bit more of an embarrassment to post about and be like, yeah, you do it, and then it doesn't actually work out that way. So, yeah, that integrity is definitely there.

Speaker 3:

Well, that's good learning, for your own sake as well. You sort of go down a path, and then you've sort of gone on this journey yourself of understanding something in detail. I think learning something to the point where you can teach others really helps ingrain it in yourself as well, yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1:

And that's the thing is. Because you're revisiting that little simple topic, you're teaching yourself again. So, because I'm explaining it to someone that may not know it, I'm almost reteaching myself everything again. So, yeah, it just helps me beneficially in the same ways.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, brent, what's next from here? I've got 6,000 followers. Have you got a goal? Or is there something on the platform that you're like, all right, cool, I'm done, or you just keep it going and just see where it leads.

Speaker 1:

Just keep it going. For me, it's just this more enjoyment thing. You know, if I feel like I'm having to force out posts and that's that's its own issue right there. So for me, just continuing to grow in the following base you know, it'd be awesome to be able to have the opportunity to do better work with some major brands and I feel like that's the right sort of stepping stone and introducing myself to not just you know brands here in Australia but internationally, because the amount of reach that you have, you know overseas you don't even realize how big you know what I do is overseas like it's huge. So just having open, opening that horizon to other brands and to brands that are looking to you know, grow and and find value from what I do as well, is absolutely awesome. But I feel like the main thing right now is just growing the brand and, yeah, and trying to focus on teaching myself more.

Speaker 3:

That's probably the biggest thing, awesome a lot of key takeaways for me. I like the be true to yourself as a brand personal brand. You know mantra, when you're trying to think of how I'm going to present something and the other one that I'm going to take away is would this help me a year ago as a way of forming some sort of structure around? Is this going to be useful to others? 100%.

Speaker 2:

I remember I talked to you about coming on the podcast and you said to me it's like yeah, it's just pretty easy. You just talk about shit, you know. I think like it shows there's a lot more to it when you actually think about it. But I feel for yourself it is. You're just talking about the shit you do on every day and it's, as I said, making you elevate your knowledge, because you you've always also got to make sure it's of that level of quality that you're happy with.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that probably the hardest thing is just the time.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, yeah, there's always time that goes into these things and to come up with an original thought like that. It's not the time that it takes to be able to sit down and come up with that original thought. It's the time it takes to be able to sit down, do your job at a very high level and then that idea eventually comes out of it. You know I can sit down for half an hour trying to come up with an idea. But if I sit down and you know work my clients accounts for a week and I come up with that one idea, then like that's how I actually form that original idea. Isn't by sitting down and just brainstorming an idea. It has to just come from naturally doing the work and then it will come from it. So it does. It just takes time, that's all it is, yeah, cool.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you for joining us today on digital horizons podcast. I feel like anybody who's thinking about building a personal brand is going to get a lot out of this, and hopefully it'll convince. Well, I haven't started posting on LinkedIn. Maybe I should start.

Speaker 1:

You've talked to me about doing that before, pretty inspirational for me as well.

Speaker 2:

Maybe we'll start posting the podcast on LinkedIn for a bit. Well, thanks for your time for listening no-transcript.