Podcasting, LinkedIn, 360 Feedback and more: A deep dive with Stephanie Fuccio

Are you ready discover the combined potential of LinkedIn, newsletters, and your podcasting journey?

That's exactly what we unpack with our editor, Steph Fuccio, in this empowering conversation. Steph reveals the secrets behind Season 4's transformation and the hard work that's driving our show's growth. She shares her dedication to helping small businesses create engaging content, and offers her top three mediums to get your podcast heard. Plus, we discuss the critical two-way conversations happening on platforms like LinkedIn and the importance of reviews and comments.

Imagine having an online portfolio that works for you 24/7, attracting the right people and opportunities. In our chat with Steph, we discuss how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for success. We talk about crafting a compelling headline that echoes your unique skills, creating an engaging "About" section using the right keywords, and the art of using emojis effectively in your profile. The discussion also covers how to leverage the one-link space to showcase your services and courses brilliantly.

Moving beyond profiles, we delve into the world of LinkedIn posts and engagement. We discuss the power of visuals on social media and the importance of optimising posts and images across various platforms.

Come with us as we explore the art of networking on LinkedIn and how it has benefited our Future is Freelance team.  And join us in real time, for Remote Work Europe's "Level Up Your LinkedIn Challenge" - kicking off on Monday October 23rd ✨

- Put it all into practice, and bring it all together. 
Just like Steph:

😋 Steph's newsletter: 
https://coffeelike.substack.com/

👀 Sound Sorceresses newsletter:
https://soundsorceresses.substack.com/

🦾 National Podcast Post Month: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/napodpomo/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

You're listening to, the Future is Freelance podcast, the show for solopreneurs, digital nomads, slowmads, consultants, remote workers, e-residents and everybody living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for people who defy categorization, people who make a life and are living their own way. Every Freelance Friday, we're bringing you expert tips, inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of Freelancing to help you achieve success with your borderless business, whatever success means to you as you live life on your own terms. And today we're exploring some of my favorite subjects social media, podcasting, and the power of collaboration and cohorts. Now we're joined today by previous guest and the person who actually edits this show that you're watching and listening to right now is the Steph Fuccio, who previously joined us back in Season 3, episode 6, in March. So welcome back, steph.

Speaker 2: 0:55

It's a pleasure to be back. It's so fun to hear you say that live like to do the intro live. That's very cool, it's very meta.

Speaker 1: 1:02

You must know it word for word. I should have just let you introduce the show. Really, you've been doing so much excellent work on the present season and you know video is completely outside my comfort zone, but you've held my hand and led me there and made it look and sound great too. So tell me about what changes you've been making with Season 4 and what you've been doing behind the scenes that people won't appreciate.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Well, it's easy to make it look and sound good because you have such amazing content. So I mean that part is a no brainer. But we've been doing more over on YouTube. Specifically, we've been like optimizing everything with the funny thumbnails. We have to make sure to make a funny face so we can use that for our thumbnail, for this one too.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Oh, I think I'll just do that naturally automatically. Regular intervals.

Speaker 2: 1:46

My hands are the life of their own, so I tend to like just kind of scan for one of those moments. So, yeah, thumbnails and tags and timestamps so people can go around, so it can be scannable. Mostly optimization, so that it starts getting recommended to people more and more and more and it's working.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Yeah, it's just really exciting because I've focused so much on the audio for the first year and a half. The video just went out there automatically and I didn't really make any notice of it and it didn't really generate any traffic. But the difference when someone's actively managing it is really transformational. And this is what you do, right, steph? You specifically work with small business podcasts and SMEs, and are they all like me? What's your focus in business?

Speaker 2: 2:30

It's more of a focus on small business folks that are teaching others to do something, more so than a specific industry, which I love because I am a lifelong learner and I love being having a finger in each industry, kind of thing. So I've got a bookkeeper, I have you in the remote space, I have folks doing like historical podcasts, I've got all kinds of different things and I specifically have a. I promise I won't make this too long, but I'm so excited no, I'm just excited Because it's podcast focused but then I have three supporting mediums that I really recommend to folks, and that is a newsletter, which, of course, you already have, you know, optimizing your YouTube channel. And LinkedIn profile, which fits in amazingly with what we're doing today.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Yeah, well, it's all part of the same thing, isn't it? It's about us trying to project ourselves online in a way that's consistent, authoritative, leads people into our world and helps us show up for the people that we want to help, that we want to do business with and we want to connect with and communicate with.

Speaker 2: 3:28

Exactly, and the podcasts are amazing, but you have to get them into people's ears, and that's where the supporting mediums of newsletter, youtube and LinkedIn are. It's to help you get in those conversations where people go oh she's got a podcast, let me listen to it. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:42

It's amazing. I've just got back from an event, an international event, and I was talking about freelancing and Estonian e-residency and I had at least three people come up to me and say I know you from your podcast. Yay, and it's so powerful. People who actually recognize you because now it's video as well. They know what I look like as well as what I sound like, and it creates that amazing connection. Already, people who already it's not just that they recognize your voice and your appearance, but they're already connected with your message and they feel some empathy with you. They feel that they know you, which is really quite interesting, because then you have to build the other half of that relationship when you actually meet them in real life, because you can't see back through the screen I've tried, I just can't get the camera to work the other way and who are those people? So it's wonderful when they do come up and say hello. Please do that to any podcaster or YouTuber. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Yes, I'm thrilled with that.

Speaker 1: 4:41

But I suppose one of the ways we do have that two way conversation is through social media like.

Speaker 1: 4:45

LinkedIn? Absolutely. That is definitely one of the ways that we can make it into a conversation, because reviews just mentioning reviews, folks, reviews for podcasts and comments these are all incredibly valuable, but when it's actually in a social platform, where it's not something broadcast but it's just completely a thing, then it can be really mutual conversational, things can get shared and amplified, and it all happens in public. So that's really exciting and that's why I am leading a cohort starting on Monday to help people level up their LinkedIn, and this is something that I've mentioned in previous episodes and it's really important because of that mutual activity. Now, I'm not going to put you on the spot here, steph. How many podcasts might there be in the world at this moment? How many, oh, active? I?

Speaker 2: 5:38

think YouTubers think there's so many stats I want to say maybe a million active globally, but that's not counting the YouTube ones.

Speaker 1: 5:50

They don't have an audio component that calls themselves podcasts.

Speaker 1: 5:53

So a lot. How many blogs, how many business websites, how many of us solipranos doing our thing in the world, and often very successfully when we make that contact with the right people. But what I want to do is help more and more, because I'm obsessed with remote work and freelancing. I've proved it over and over again that the best way to do that to disconnect yourself from having to work for a particular company or having to be in a particular location is to build that online presence and be found and known for exactly what it is you do better than anybody else, more niche than anybody else, more specialized, and LinkedIn is so powerful for that. So that's why I'm going to be working with people.

Speaker 1: 6:33

It's in a small group and we're going to be committing to post five times a week, every weekday, which is a bit, but it doesn't have to be an epic essay every time. It doesn't have to be really substantial. It's just a case of if we all post every day, we can all see what each other's doing, we can give feedback, we can comment, we can uplift and engage with each other's work, and so that's what we're going to be doing from Monday. There are still places, so we will drop links into the comments for that. But one of the other things we're going to be looking at if I can get it finished in time, I'm still working flat out because I want to put so much into this challenge. We're going to be looking at people's profiles, so Steph has very bravely and boldly volunteered to submit her own for scrutiny today. Now do you want to share, or shall I share it?

Speaker 2: 7:22

Yeah, please do. And I actually looked on the podcast index and for podcasts that have published in the past 30 days, it's just a hair above 350,000. So it's not as many as I thought.

Speaker 1: 7:34

Oh well, yeah, that's no problem to compete against them 350,000. I mean, we just have no trouble at all with that right. What are we looking at here? It's you, yay.

Speaker 2: 7:47

That's it.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Now you told me that you feel that you don't give your profile a lot of love, but you maybe haven't.

Speaker 2: 7:56

I love it. I just don't maintain it. I don't know how to put like client work into, because I'm so used to jobs, not clients. I'd still four years in but I'm just still very awkward on at what point do I put them on the CV? At what point do I tag people? Can you tag people in your? Yeah, it's just weird and the phrasing of it is odd, because I still am thinking in terms of this is what I did for my job, I think in terms of tasks, not so much as an accomplishments and successes for the clients, and I just so. I just don't update it very much, I just freeze.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Well, it's difficult, but I suppose the only thing to remember is that you don't have to attack it all at once. You can chip away at this. You can decide to spend five minutes a day or something attack or one piece at a time. I've got a really nice guidebook, which I can also put the links to in the comments, but we can start with your profile and you've got a nice headline here which tells me exactly what you do. I think that that works great. We've got podcast editor and marketer. I would like you to maybe have a rethink about that in terms of what people might search for if they need you. There's no mention of YouTube in there, which I regard as your superpower. Obviously, podcasting has to be in there, but nobody's searching for a 360 podcasting media strategy. Yeah, so we have to try and put this into what their words would be.

Speaker 2: 9:27

Right, because there are so many podcast editors and marketers that I was trying to like infuse the thing I do differently, which is including those other three supporting mediums, and I'm like, yeah, but nobody, you're right, nobody's going to search for my term, for what that means.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Yes, if you can cram in newsletters and social in there, that's because people know what they are and they might be looking for those. Podcast editor and marketer is the first thing that's going to show up and that's perfect, because that's the bit that will show above the fold when you comment and it might be followed by the dots. People want to learn more, but when they come over to your profile, we want to make sure they can say, oh, that's, that's what she does. Either I'm that's exactly what I need or I can rule her out quickly and move on to somebody else. So don't rule me out. No, but you want to rule out the people who aren't right.

Speaker 1: 10:11

You know we're always trying with the people who, who you know what they really want is audio books, or you know that's not your thing, so it's not, or the, or their corporate or whatever you want. People who are very, very clear matches for you will fit into your, your stable clients and you know, use the best, make the best use of your skills and what you do. So we do want to rule people out as well. Tags are perfect, because obviously these are the things that you do. These are what people are looking at. Podcast editor. Yeah, again, I want to see video in there because it's so powerful. Now LinkedIn has recently started giving us these links, so obviously they don't want us to go somewhere that's not linked in. They don't want us going away. So this is quite recent. This is a link to your courses. I wonder if you might want to just review the anchor text. There could be podcasting courses or, yeah, check out my amazing courses, or just something that for me it's not important that they're 60 minutes, but you could say blazingly fast courses or something like that. That. That just entices people to take a closer look. Yeah, it's really hard to make good use of sort of that real estate one link, but it's definitely worth a try. And you've got your services there, you've got your connections. That's fine.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Where's your about section? This is the bit that's most exciting, really, and the bit that I suggest people spend the most time trying to optimize if they do nothing else. It's all about search and being found within your network. It's such a weird mixture, linkedin, of search and social Right, and you've kind of got to work both sides. You can see how they keep connecting with people who are going to find you here and they're going to remember who you are and they're going to tag you and so on.

Speaker 1: 12:04

This is obviously. You've used rich, human, engaging language here. I would just make certain that you've got your keywords too. And again, what are people searching for? Help me set up YouTube, help me reach more listeners with my podcast. So these little phrases, because if somebody comes on LinkedIn and just I need someone to help me edit my podcast or start my podcast off or things like that. I love the use of emojis. You can do all this within your about section. It's important to look at it from time to time the way, the way that it was before, when we just looked at your profile and I should have done this before I expanded it so you can see what people see above the fold. That's the most important thing when people click on your profile, on your thumbnail anywhere on the site, which is really powerful, because as soon as you start commenting everywhere, people who stuff need to check that out and they'll see that first couple of lines.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Is it like two or three lines then that they've got before?

Speaker 1: 12:58

they do that.

Speaker 2: 12:58

Wow, that's not a lot.

Speaker 1: 12:59

I think you need to get podcasting into there somewhere. Podcasting and video, as well as all the lovely stuff about voice that's, that's super powerful.

Speaker 2: 13:09

It's very old. I think that text is honestly the thing that I update the least. That's probably poor year old text, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:17

The thing is it's pretty timeless. So if you hadn't said that, I wouldn't know, whereas some people's context might be much more changeable. Because I write about technology and the future of work, I have to revise my keywords all the time. Yes, okay, that goes a bit of us, and let's talk about prompt engineering and I have to keep on top of that, whereas what you're doing is very timeless. Words, connection, human voice.

Speaker 2: 13:41

It's SEO, something I've always struggled with, and so I wonder what's a good way to find the keywords for that.

Speaker 1: 13:49

I should highlight there it's not quite SEO, because LinkedIn isn't quite as smart as a search engine. It's much more text based it's it can get confused by punctuation, emojis, formatting and all sorts of things, and I think the best way to think about it is to put yourself in a customer's shoes. Absolutely focus on that. What would somebody be looking for? What would my ideal clients be looking for? You can ask your clients. You know what? How do you describe me? Ask them for a testimonial where you're at it, and see what phrases they use. If you fell under a bus and they had to replace you tomorrow, what would they look for? You know how would they? Oh, steph's gone, I need a who, or what? What would they look for? Because it's all about trying to match their vocabulary, their descriptions and things that you would use.

Speaker 1: 14:40

Now I see you've got top skills highlighted, which is great because that's fairly new and a lot of people haven't actually done this yet LinkedIn. Obviously they don't publish all their thinking and what's going on in their algorithm, but one of the things that we've had a lot of very strong signals for this year is it's all about skills, oh, skills, skills, skills. Whenever you apply for anything, whenever you look at anything. Oh, when they send, when you set a job alert like you match on these skills, get your skills in there. And if you haven't looked at your skills for a long time this is something that sometimes we come across with people who set their profile up 15 years ago or something. It's like OK, it's fantastic that you're awesome at Excel, but is that really? You know what people are going to be hiring you for today? Really think about what value you bring to the table and get that, because you can only have is it six? Yeah?

Speaker 2: 15:31

it's very limited amount of them, which I don't like at all.

Speaker 1: 15:36

No, if you think about if this is what LinkedIn cares about, make sure that all the ones you can't fit in here are woven into your about text anyway. But they show up in your experience because you've got skills here as well. You can add more here.

Speaker 2: 15:50

Again, where's your video? And, if I remember, you have to choose from their set and there weren't very many podcasting ones that I could pick. So a lot of my skills, a lot of my strong skills, I couldn't pick because they weren't in their list. It's the same with journalism.

Speaker 1: 16:04

Ah, it's a tough question. There's the newsroom and things like that. It's like it's not how it works in 2023. Linkedin isn't perfect by any means, but it's definitely. It's one of these areas that they keep tweaking around with and changing as well. So that's good in the sense that, hopefully, they're evolving it and improving it all the time, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Speaker 1: 16:28

And, with the skills you can't get in here, get them into your work history, gotcha. Okay, so that then you'll come up because remember that people search on LinkedIn if they're hiring, they'll get prompted to do a search of the network first. It's oh, actually I don't need to run an ad because Steph would be awesome for this, so just go straight there, gotcha. So the experience section is obviously really important. This is what most people see these are these days. You don't look so worried, you're awful. Look, okay, six years you've been doing this. Let's have a look. There's nothing wrong with this stuff. It's just blah. The stuff about shifting and things like that. That doesn't quite go here. That's, that's more narrative. Okay, we need to go skills experience what you can do for them.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Yeah, this is. I mean. That could even go into your about section. Your about section can be, as it can be, thousands of words long, and you know, if people want to read the life history of Steph, that can be well down the page. And the other thing about your about section actually is if people aren't logged into LinkedIn. So if you come up in search, for example, they click right in. They'll actually just see your name and headline in your about section and all its glory. So it is worth having something really built out there. Try logging out of LinkedIn and Googling yourself. Quite interesting, see what. What people see, though, with with something like 900 million users, is quite likely they are logged in, so they will see this. But, yeah, I would really really focus this onto what you do, how you help people. There's a lot of it's in here. It's just slightly. You know, I had to expand that to see, well, what does she actually do? You can definitely put more skills in here too, yeah, and this.

Speaker 2: 18:07

this is the problem. I'm still thinking as as far as like an employee and stuff, and so like, what are some terms that you would use instead of employee? Speak like for, like freelance or not even freelance or small business. Speak like what are some like action verbs that would be good to use there, as opposed to the like super boring ones that I already have?

Speaker 1: 18:27

Not super boring, but we just need to pack it out with the things that people are searching for. When, when I needed your help stuff, I was looking for somebody to support small business podcasting to optimize video and audio editing. It's really important because so many people want to shift into multimedia but they haven't a clue what to do with that file Once they've. You know how do I magic that onto my phone, and so these are the things that people would be after, so definitely want to see more about. You mentioned YouTube in the text here, but I want to see video editing skills here because it's it's one of those things that, yes, people could teach themselves, but it's for me. I would just rather outsource to somebody who knows what they're doing.

Speaker 1: 19:10

And if you're targeting SMEs and solopreneurs who are time poor, it's how are you going to fix things for them?

Speaker 1: 19:16

How are you going to save them hassle and trouble and time their most precious resource. So get it in there. And also, you might find that over those six years and seven months, you have clients who are slightly more than clients and you can declare a closer affiliation with them. You could actually list yourself as as an experienced position podcast editor, for you know, obviously with a conversation with that client, with their consent, which is hardly likely to be withheld because you know, assuming that there's no sort of secret that you're you're working for them, it's a really tricky one because obviously, as freelancers, we are our business and that should always be at the top. You get to choose the order when you go in and edit that section, so you could always have coffee, like media, at the top, but within that an overlapping dates, you could have social media manager for a particular brand and make sure there's a testimonial from them. Once you have a brand listed in there as well, you get one of these nice pictures if they've got a LinkedIn page.

Speaker 2: 20:26

Yes, oh, this is exciting because I've been doing the newsletter and some promotional stuff for the SoundSources magazine and they have a company page so I can go in and do that. That should definitely be listed as a position here and you can do a mutual exchange of testimonials.

Speaker 1: 20:45

It was something that came up recently in a conversation about LinkedIn top voices, the people who get these badges. I don't know what they're worth, never had one picture, but it does seem to be related a lot to the number of testimonials and people who actively seek out and get hundreds of them. Wow, there's nothing to stop you asking anybody you do a bit of work for and I will write you a testimonial. It's the kind of thing that I tend to do, sort of towards the end of a relationship or something like that, and it doesn't just naturally occur to me, but it should, because it's one of the best ways as freelancers that we can pay it forward support each other. It really takes no time at all and it's also fine to ask for them, particularly if you're coming to the conclusion of a project or a particular thing. Just ask for a testimonial. But if you added in those other positions, it would just kind of not there's anything wrong with this, but it gives you a chance to highlight different projects, different things.

Speaker 1: 21:37

People might not know what you do, because I know the sound sorceress is. You're on substack, for example. That's another keyword that should be in here because I keep looking sideways at substack and thinking should I? Everybody's on substack? No, no, shiny thing. Step away from the shiny thing. You've got too much going on.

Speaker 2: 21:55

We need to talk about that later. Ok, there's a lot going over there which is just amazing, amazing, the communities you're building and the accessibility is just yeah. Yes, I keep hearing about substack, but yes, I'm trying to back off, and they're doing in-piercing meetings for writers too, and they're connecting people in ways that are just beautiful.

Speaker 1: 22:18

It's clearly the universe is trying to get my attention on substack, but I'm resisting for now. But you can get it in here and then, when I'm ready, I will be reminded from your keywords, from your skills. Steph is my go-to lady there because clearly she has this nailed. So I think, particularly when we've been doing our businesses for a long time, it's almost, it's quite a nice ego exercise as well to just go back through and think, oh yeah, I did that amazing thing, I learned that thing. There might be something that you can call out and put into your featured posts here, instead of like my stomach, which looks really weird there.

Speaker 2: 22:54

So just to move that on, please. I know I'm not good at visuals, but I did like that post so I highlighted that.

Speaker 1: 23:03

No, we'll just move swiftly on from that.

Speaker 2: 23:05

Well, can I ask you a question about that, because visuals are my nemesis when it comes to social media. Do you know like a good ratio to use for like for photos, so they look good in that area?

Speaker 1: 23:18

I really don't know. I mean, it looks to me like what they're coming up with here is kind of a landscape snippet here, so that shows your logo nicely and they might change the format of this, and also it's going to look different on every device, so you could spend hours trying to optimize it to look great on desktop and your next hot client is coming along on their phone and you can't do anything about that. So it's more important you set the right content in here.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Because even spreadsheet I can see. You know I might not think, well, that's stunning visually, but I can say, hang on a minute, she actually knows numbers about podcasting and it's good to have that in there. And what you actually post as posts I think is great. I really like what you're doing. You put stuff in here. You support your clients. Obviously. You post about oh, we've got more sub-stack. Then stop it, go away, so sorry.

Speaker 2: 24:09

It's coming for you.

Speaker 1: 24:11

It's coming for me National Podcast Month. This is something I need to know more about. So we're linking straight to your videos. That's great. Linkedin might not like you linking straight to a video. I see you only got three likes on that one, so it's a really tricky one Because obviously LinkedIn, like every platform, just wants to keep you on their platform.

Speaker 2: 24:34

Yeah, I've heard that you shouldn't put any links in the first post. Like you should post that and then put it in the second one. You can put it in a comment.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Yeah, I mean, it's a tricky one. Again, none of this stuff is really transparent. I went on a webinar for LinkedIn for journalists earlier this year where LinkedIn staff categorically denied that there was any penalty for linking out, because everybody was like, hey, we're journalists, we're content creators, everything we want to post is about stuff we've done somewhere else, so please stop knobbling our posts Right. And they insisted that they didn't. My own testing what I've found is it seems to be something to do with how far down the post you put the link. Also and again I've got no evidence for this, but other people have said it too it kind of reads the post differently. So LinkedIn likes image posts, so this is great. But what you can do is, even if the image is on a third party site or an article somewhere, save the image locally, open a new post in LinkedIn or in AuthoredUp, if you're using the plugin add the image and some text and then it will read it as an image post and then put the link a long way down your post. That seems to work. I can't find any kind of proof that that's a thing, but just in my non-robustly experimentally controlled conditions testing it seems to be a good bit of context why this thing is important.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Add the image, even if it's the image you've just scraped from the post. You don't have to create something amazing and unique and then put the link. Other people have got great success putting the link into the first comment, but your first comment should not be for 10 minutes or so. It's better if the first comment isn't from you so complicated, I know right. So you write this beautiful post and you write all about why the thing that you've created somewhere else is awesome, and then you say LinkedIn comments, and then you go right, 10 minutes, and so your first comment might be where's the link? I can't find it, so you can go around in circles of it. So I found sneaking the link in after the image, after a paragraph or two, so it's below the fold.

Speaker 1: 26:48

So make your first, your opening bit of your post, something that people want to read more, so they open it up. Oh, there's the link. Gotcha, right Now I can go and see the fantastic article that she created over on Substackle, wherever. So, and make sure that it looks like an image post to LinkedIn. Then you don't have to be the first commenter, which does seem to penalize you. It's almost like they think you're trying to sneak something in. And also another thing which I've had verified, again not from LinkedIn, but from a number of people, is don't edit your post too soon. Uh-oh, at least wait 10 minutes or so. Oh, even when you think, oh, I forgot that amazing hashtag or whatever, just pause, go and have another coffee, come back and then add it after 10 minutes, ideally after you've got it in there.

Speaker 2: 27:36

No, guilty of that. I post so it saves somewhere and then I go in and edit for any like spelling errors or anything.

Speaker 1: 27:44

Oh God, yeah, that typo, you spot it and it goes live. Of course you do, because that's the universe messing with your head. But apparently LinkedIn doesn't like that. It's sort of I think what, and I don't know this for certain, but I think the algorithm might perceive that as potentially deceptive. Like right, and you make a post, you get all this engagement and then you change it. That makes sense, so it's pointing somewhere else.

Speaker 2: 28:06

Oh man.

Speaker 1: 28:07

I know that Facebook, too, hate sort of editing posts. You've got to be really try and get it right the first time. I absolutely understand the blaring typo or the missed point or whatever, and go. I'm a writer, I publish something with a typo in it. I just have to sit on my hands to not go in and fix it because I'm sure the entire world is looking at it. Oh, she's rubbish. God, and sort that out. You can do a lot to optimize your posts as you go along, but I would say, just experiment. You're going to be doing Na Podpo Mo, is that posting every day?

Speaker 2: 28:42

Yeah, national podcast post in November.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Awesome. Well, that's just like we're going to be doing with the level of your LinkedIn challenge. You're going to be going in every day. So I would suggest experiment. Have a look at your analytics, have a look at what's working for you. Try different hashtags. One thing I found interesting recently was just asking chatGPT for more hashtags. I post about this, this and this. What else should I be? Tagging Comes up with stuff you might not have thought of. It might be rubbish, but you can experiment with it. There doesn't seem to be too much penalty as well for hashtag stuffing. Basically, you can just bang a whole load of them at the end of your post, see what seems to resonate and if it's one that you've not used before, I mean that won't give you any useful data on what's tracking, but at least you know.

Speaker 1: 29:28

It's more like sort of early days Instagram that you can bung a load in there and they seem to be automatically read. Another thing is making sure that you're following the people who were using those hashtags and you're connecting with them. Use your connections, invite people all the time to connect with you. Forget about following and things like that. Go straight to the connect button, because it's highly unlikely that they're not going to connect with you, even if they've got the creative profile on.

Speaker 2: 29:53

Oh, I have a question. Somebody actually asked me recently the difference between follow and connect on LinkedIn, and I did not have an answer. I don't really understand the distinction between those two.

Speaker 1: 30:06

The distinction is yeah, if you've got the creator profile on which I think you have, because it gives you these nice feature posts then that means the default button that you get is follow. Oh, it's that asymmetric one way thing that they introduce because us creators are supposed to be, you know, so elevated that we wouldn't connect with you. But of course we would, and there's always a more button next to it. Obviously we're already connected, but there will be a connect thing in there. So if you see somebody who you're not, you're not connected with, and they've got the follow button on there, just click on more and then you'll see the connect button.

Speaker 2: 30:41

I always thought it was weird but the people would follow me and not be and not connect with me. So I do, I tend to, I go in and I connect with them and I'm like, well, why didn't you want to connect? Why did you not want to talk to me?

Speaker 1: 30:54

Yes, you know I stalk her, are you? Yeah, no, it's LinkedIn's full, it's totally on LinkedIn. So it's just something. And again, they might change it back because, but there does seem to be this thing of, yeah, hiding the connect button a bit now and it's definitely worth remembering to connect with people.

Speaker 1: 31:12

Say, you try a new hashtag and it seems to be getting some traction with people that you like, then just click on that hashtag and see who comes up, who's using it, what are they into, and then you can send out a load more connection requests with people. Love that and you can literally do ten a day or something. And the interesting thing to know is, if you do that quite tactically, based on stuff you're going to be sharing about, like your podcasting challenge, you will be prioritized in their feed, for I think it's about the next month after you connect. You'll notice when you connect with new people, you see a lot of stuff from them because LinkedIn's saying this is your new friend. You know let's interact and that works the other way around, so you'll be coming up in their feed. So, if you think about that, when I'm going to be posting next week something about this, so what kind of people might be the perfect audience for that content, then you can really get tactical about it.

Speaker 2: 32:06

Yeah, you've just given me hours worth of homework, and I love it.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Sorry about that. Can you edit this podcast first?

Speaker 2: 32:14

Yeah, but only if we stop soon.

Speaker 1: 32:17

Yeah, okay. Well, I've probably given you enough to be getting on with there. Well, that's back at you, for keep mentioning some stuff all the time.

Speaker 2: 32:24

So I've got to my note to bug you about this tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 32:29

Yeah Well, let's get this live. First, because I want to help as many people as possible, as well as you, because there's an awful lot of good stuff there and it's clearly your territory your social media expert, your podcast, your communicator it's just trying to keep up with everything that LinkedIn keeps introducing and changing is a big hassle and all of these things are. I can't guarantee any of them are going to work and change your life, but if you're posting daily through your podcasting challenge month and if you're thinking about these things like get the image in before the link and stuff like that, then you'll know if it works or not by the end of the month. We should probably have a catch up about it and just see what's happened with your analytics, because this is what I know is going to happen with the LinkedIn challenge people as well. I encourage people to. Just, it's not about stats and numbers and things, unless you're really into that, which some people are. But I know when I've had a really hot post and I've tagged interesting people, it's got loads of comments, it's got other people replying to the comments and things like that, and you can't predict when that's going to happen, but you can just kind of nudge it in the right direction and try and give it all the tools that it could happen.

Speaker 1: 33:38

And then occasionally you'll get one that just goes spectacularly viral and blows up. Another time you'll share something you think is amazing and you really want eyeballs on it and you think it's so great it just sinks without trace. I mean, if it is actually content somewhere else, then I would just say repost it. Just do a completely new post a week later or whatever, because it's not like people are going to think, oh, she keeps posting about that because only two of them saw the other one. So you can kind of have a do over there. Or you might find then it's worth going into mid-journey and trying to make a bespoke image or camera or something. Do something to just try and really grab attention in a way. That didn't work the first time, but you never know for certain why something has worked or not. We just have to try and go with these signals. So, and you're saying nice things, but I really hope you're going to do these things and that you're going to find it helpful.

Speaker 2: 34:26

No, I am. That's why I said, ma'ai, use me as your guinea pig. I need help, and I'm a small business person that wants individual attention. So here we are.

Speaker 1: 34:35

Well, absolutely. This is what we do for each other. So what else have you got coming up apart from this podcasting challenge? What else is going on in the world of coffee like media?

Speaker 2: 34:45

That's where I'm moving towards right now.

Speaker 1: 34:48

That's going to be 100% of Steph Brain I tend to do like a workshop, a month kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 34:54

But I even cancel the October one because I'm already starting to pre-record some stuff for November, because I've done it four years in a row now and I know I know that I will go crazy if I don't have 10 of them ready For those days when I just can't handle being online that much.

Speaker 1: 35:11

So Well, I'm still in admiration. One a week is. I need your help to do that.

Speaker 2: 35:19

Well, this is what lights me up, like I love making the content, I love getting the feedback during it. I try to do it live as much as possible. So there's like a chat room, so there's people. So I mean that's what I really, really love to do. I just, but even so, it's very intense to do it for 30 days in a row. Yeah, as anybody that's done the writing, one that I never remember the name of, not Nano Rime- yeah, I did.

Speaker 1: 35:42

Yeah, I've never done that because I don't do that much creative narrative writing and if I did the thought of doing it with a, you know, a deadline like that, journalism's always got a hard deadline and gone to your head, I do. I'm ever trying to write something fictional. I don't want that. This is all about self-awareness, isn't it? And this is knowing what makes us tick, what pushes us away, what really inspires us, what energizes us, even if it drains us in the end. You know, this is the kind of thing where we want to give and give. And this is the wonderful thing about being freelance, about being a solopreneur, is you can take that self-awareness and build your whole business around it. It's all very well-knowing that if you're doing a job for someone else, but then you have to persuade them, that's how you should spend your time, whereas we we get to choose. We do, isn't that me?

Speaker 2: 36:32

Oh, and the other thing that's ongoing is thecoffelakesubstackcom newsletter, which is every Monday.

Speaker 1: 36:39

Well, you can put that in the show notes. I will say I'll put that in the show notes, but you're going to be finishing these up for me, so I know it's all going to be in there. The other thing that will be in there is the level up Hill LinkedIn challenge Chose with remote work Europe. It's going to be a small group but we can fit a couple more in if people are really keen to do it and to commit to that. It's going to be about 20 minutes a day. You're not going to, you know you might be a dash off a post in five, but we need you to have time to engage with other people, do the community thing which lifts all of us. So please have a think about that. Have a look at the commitment as specified in the page that we'll link to, and if you're in for it, then jump on it and we'll send you the welcome and get you in October 23rd, Monday.

Speaker 1: 37:22

Yes, I mean you can do a lot of it in advance, just like you're doing with your podcasting. You can do that in LinkedIn. You can schedule posts, but you can't schedule comments and you can't schedule that engagement. So you can get ahead with a lot of the stuff you're putting out, but you do need to show up. So, yeah, this is. This is all about the power of the group, the power of the community. Linkedin is a fantastic example of that 950 million people. Let's make them part of your network. Let's remember that it's the individual connections and conversations in that huge network that really matters. So, Steph, thank you for being in my network, for being part of the team behind the Futurist Freelance, and thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 38:02

Thank you, I really enjoyed this.

Speaker 1: 38:32

Don't forget you can check out all our back episodes from other seasons and learn more over at futureisfreelancexyz. We're so grateful not only for our listeners, but for the contributions of our wonderful guests and for the production and marketing assistance of Coffeelike Media. This is Maya Midlemish, wishing you freelance freedom and happiness until our next show.