Why I am Selling Less on LinkedIn
I was never on LinkedIn prior to starting my digital marketing agency. I grew The Behaviorist Bookclub solely through email marketing and Facebook groups, and subscribed to the idea (and still do) that until a social channel has driven 1 million in revenue, you should not worry about different channels.
My theory for the ABA Digital Marketing Agency was that the primary channel should be LinkedIn, since that is the most likely place for ABA business owners to be. And I was (generally speaking) right about that! My early posts on LinkedIn were reinforced not just with likes and comments, but also leads and sales, validating my assumption and encouraging me to post more and more.
The only problem? I didn’t think what I was posting was that good.
The LinkedIn Stereotype
There is a meme that goes around whenever folks talk about LinkedIn content. The meme is just a visual snip of the “hook” behind a LinkedIn post and it says:
“My dog’s cousin just won a horse race… Here is what it taught me about B2B sales.”
Essentially, some random event designed to get attention, and then a hamfisted transition into a personal brand post.
And I see this same style EVERYWHERE—whether it is in an ABA post talking about how we shouldn’t use extinction or a marketing agency telling someone that they are BURNING money with ads.
These are the most common posts on LinkedIn, and they became the posts that I was making most often. At my peak of text posts, I was writing about 5 posts a week in that style, and even recording videos to go along with it. Leads were coming in, so the strategy was working, it was just… Blah.
The Core Problem with My LI Content
Even though I disliked a lot of the posts I was writing, I could have continued. After all, I have a mortgage and a family to feed; I can post some cringey stuff. However, I found over and over again that the LI post was the first thing that I would push off to the next day, and the next day after that. I went from posting 5 times a week to posting 1–2 times a week.
And THAT is when my impressions, follower count, and even the leads I was getting started suffering. I may not be an expert in social media, but I do know that consistency beats 95% of other metrics when it comes to getting things pushed past the followers. And the fact that I was unable to be consistent was really starting to hurt my business.
At the same time as realizing that LinkedIn content was not enjoyable for me, I started building out the cold email infrastructure to get sales meetings and leads from cold email, which was crucial as I transitioned off of consistent LinkedIn content.
So, I was faced with a dilemma… Push through my slump and post the same LI slop I had been posting, or change it up and try to find a writing medium I enjoyed. Because I had my cold email system generating about 12–15 leads a month (SaaS/ABA service providers, hit me up if you want to chat lead gen), I was comfortable risking my LI content with a new style, knowing that I would be playing the long game—specifically the personal brand long game.
Why Switch to a Writing Challenge?
While I was deciding that I needed a new content strategy, I also had been building not only my local outreach automation and AI system, but also my ads system too, along with some various AI side projects (more on that soon).
Basically, I was drowning in AI tools, and my copywriting had gotten lazy. My conversions were down at the Bookclub, and I began wondering how much of that was me relying too heavily on AI and losing the “me-ness” that made people want to participate in the first place.
Thus, the writing challenge was born—both because I needed to become a better writer and because if I pitched one more time on LI to three likes and no comments, I was going to throw up.
P.S.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the types of posts I mentioned above. Go off, man; get your impressions with your aggressive hooks and vague stories. They were just not my speed.
Next Post
Why I Stopped Consuming Self-Help Content
Writing Stats:
Current Post
- Post Number: 4
- Words: 753
- Writing Time: 20 minutes
- Editing Time: 20 minutes
Overall
- Words: 4077
- Writing Time: 137 minutes
- Editing Time: 78 minutes