The 3-Step System to a High-Profit LinkedIn Strategy with Scott Aaron

Dustin: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the seven figure lead podcast. I am excited today. I've got a friend, an entrepreneur, someone who's got a real shared value system around family and kind of the purpose of entrepreneurship. And I think most importantly, for you guys as listeners, he's a bonafide LinkedIn expert. So LinkedIn is something that seems like it comes up in every conversation I have when it comes to marketing.
Dustin: I feel like it's really the yin and the yang with what we teach with podcast guesting. And so I'm really excited to have Scott Aaron here. Scott and I met Scott. A little while back, we kind of run in similar circles. We were both guest experts, , on someone else's forum called magpie, a tool we both use.
Dustin: And as we got to talk and shop, I was like, I would love to have you come on to this podcast and kind of give us the real, real, the practical takeaways for LinkedIn and how to actually use it here in 2025. So Scott, welcome. I really appreciate you being here. Would love for you to kind of take the mic, introduce yourself and kind of.
Dustin: Wherever you think is most appropriate to tune people into your story and start digging into why [00:01:00] LinkedIn, why now, why is this your passion? I would love to hear more of your backstory.
Scott: Awesome. Thanks, Dustin. And yeah, it works. just use it. Thanks. Have a great day.
Dustin: No, that's a wrap.
Scott: , all right. So just to, I like to give context behind everything. , I believe there's a reason to, , every rhyme and for me. I always tell people I've been psychologically unemployable since day one. So I've never worked for anybody.
Scott: I've only worked for myself. as Dustin and I, we were talking in the pre show, I come from a fitness background, so I was in the fitness industry. , from 1998 to 2016, , I owned three different health clubs. I was a personal trainer, sports nutritionist, corporate wellness speaker, you know, everything that, required, to be very busy.
Scott: , that's what I was. I was working like 80 hours a week at a lot of ups and downs and kind of shifted into the online space, , in 2013. And I'll, I'll kind of share why. So for me, one of the most impactful moments, I would say professionally. Was something personally, [00:02:00] and that was the birth of my son, , in 2012.
Scott: And I remember, you know, growing up, my dad was always present. He was an entrepreneur himself, still is. And he was at everything. He was at every basketball game. He was my baseball coach. He was there. like he could make everything. He wasn't working late nights. He wasn't working weekends. And I said to myself, I'm like, man, I'm working late nights.
Scott: I'm working weekends. I want to replicate. The availability that my dad had so I can have the same thing and I'll never forget. I was, proposed a question by a friend of mine and they said, if you got sick or injured where you couldn't physically train people anymore, like God forbid something happened, you couldn't train people, you couldn't get to the gym.
Scott: Something happened to the gym. How would you earn a living? And this was, I would say, at this time, scariest question I've ever [00:03:00] been asked, because for me, I never thought about my business mortality. I never thought about doing anything else but that. And when I was posed that question, it allowed me to see.
Scott: My future through a different lens.
Scott: So then I started to think about, okay, I, I, I get the point of the question. I need to start thinking outside the box. And this is when social media really started to become very prevalent in business promotion. So between I would say 2011. To 2015 was like the real heyday of people really getting on to social media and really promoting their services. So I was charging a premium price for personal training in person at the time. I mean, this is, you know, I was charging anywhere between 75 to 100 an hour. And, you know, it, it was, it was good, but it was training time for dollars. Right. So the only [00:04:00] time I would earn is if I was training, right. There was no vacation really.
Scott: It was like a week off was a week off of no money.
Scott: So I couldn't afford to be sick. I couldn't afford to get injured. So then I started to think about, okay, let me, let me look at. The demographics of the people that I serve. So I started to look at my appointment book and the
different types of people that I was training, you know, what are their backgrounds?
Scott: And there was just a glaring, glaring statistic that. They were all business professionals. They were people that were driving on their way to work that would see me. They were people driving on their lunch break to see me and on their way home from work. So then I said to myself, you know, if all of these business professionals in the local area are willing to see me in person, there's got to be a place for me in the online forum where I can connect with business professionals so I can serve them that way as well.
Scott: So then I started to think about, okay, where am I most [00:05:00] likely to. Connect with the business avatar that I'm looking for in the online space. It wasn't Facebook, wasn't Instagram. It was LinkedIn. Now I had started on LinkedIn in 2009 for my gym and personal training. At that point, my profile was just collecting dust at that point.
Scott: So I went on there and. I changed things around, keyworded it more for online coaching, online training. So really predominantly putting myself in the online space. So when people would see my profile, they knew that I worked remote, I can work online. So I said to myself, if I can start creating, tailored fitness routines, workouts, nutrition plans for the business professionals on here, I can charge.
Scott: You know, X amount, a hundred hours per month, you know, for eight or 12 weeks, whatever they want to pay, I can start working with these people this way. I do a bi weekly check in with them, whether it's on [00:06:00] zoom or a phone call, whatever it is. Right. And within six months, I was able to grow the online side of my business to match what I was doing in person that had taken me.
Scott: 15 years.
Scott: And I was like, all right, well, that's, that's a glaring sign that this thing is working. And I, I pay attention to trends and I pay attention to shifts in business. And this was a trend in a shift in business. So I wanted to free up more of my time so I can spend it online, which I started doing.
Scott: So I was not. Taking on new clients. If a client fell off, I was not trying to replace them at that point. I started to raise my package rates in person, so it would cause more people not to renew and the people that would, would be paying more. So it was still worth my time. And then as things naturally
progress, I started reaching out to some friends of mine that were also coaches and they were consultants, not just in the wellness space, but [00:07:00] just in business.
Scott: And I said, if you're not using LinkedIn, you should be like. I'm having a field day over here.
Scott: So I taught them all. I wasn't charging anything. They were just friends. So I'm like, here's what you need to do. Blah, blah, blah. One person in particular wrote me back, sent me a text message. I'll never forget.
Scott: And I said, dude, call me. So I called him and I said, what's up? And he goes, listen, he goes, I don't know what you figured out with this LinkedIn thing, but he goes, you need to be teaching this to people. I said, what do you mean teach it to people? He goes. I have 14 appointments booked. Like you could be helping so many coaches and consultants on LinkedIn that are probably not getting these results that you are, that I just got because of the simple things you told me to do.
Scott: And I said, I don't know. I'm like, I just don't see the correlation. He goes, and this is what helped me. He goes, Scott, you've spent the last 15 years helping people build healthy bodies. Now you're going to help people build healthy [00:08:00] businesses.
Scott: And I'm like, Ooh, that's good. I'm like, that makes sense. So it was at that moment that two things happened.
Scott: Number one, I first got the results for myself, and then I proved the concept by someone else getting results.
Scott: So once those two boxes were checked, I'm like, you know what? I can take this to market now. I, it just so happened that I was, I was working with a business coach at the time. And he had a podcast, and this is back in the days of 1 800 conference call dot com.
Scott: Really aging myself right now. And I go on there, and I'm just, you know, spitting out all these statistics and facts and things and the reasons why people need to be on LinkedIn. And again, this is now 2014, this is 11 years ago. And when I got off of that call, I was just [00:09:00] checking some notifications on Facebook.
Scott: And eight people that I knew had reached out to me saying, how much do you charge for your coaching? And I'm like, I didn't say that I coached, like I never, I never, I never, I never mentioned any sort of,
Dustin: deadlifts here. I don't understand what
Dustin: coaching.
Scott: I'm like, and every message was like, can you teach me how to use LinkedIn? Can you coach me?
Scott: Can I pay you? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm like, these people want to pay me to teach them how to use LinkedIn. And that was like, okay, the third box that I didn't really recognize that was there. That I also needed to check was the need for it in the marketplace.
Dustin: Yes.
Scott: So the three boxes that everyone needs to check is proving it for yourself, proving it from someone else and seeing if there's a need for it in the marketplace.
Scott: And that's what it did for me. So at that point, I didn't have a website. I didn't have a way to take payment. Right. I'm like, are these people going to write me [00:10:00] checks and mail them to me? Like how, how's this supposed to happen? So I opened up a PayPal account. I downloaded the square app and basically launched my consulting practice and from that point on.
Scott: So now in my 12th year, as you alluded to my wife and I run three business together. One, I, I solely run myself, which is my LinkedIn coaching consulting. I have. Five different books. I have, a membership that's called the expert content society, which is a private LinkedIn community, , membership that basically we teach people how to create compelling and genuine content on LinkedIn with.
Scott: AI prompts and playbooks and checklists and worksheets. So it's a, for someone that's really looking to elevate their LinkedIn content. That's how we help people. I have a DIY course. Now I have group coaching that I launched
twice a year, and obviously I do high level one to one [00:11:00] consulting, and that's more for, I would say that six into multi six, seven figure business owner.
Scott: That's looking for that has like. I would say a high ticket offering. So I'm working with a guy right now. He coaches CEOs and founders. He sold his business for like eight figures. Did really well with it. And he's now giving back by teaching other CEOs and founders how to grow and scale their business.
Scott: I mean, he's got a very high ticket offering. He charges like a lot per month and he was on my podcast and he's like, Oh, he goes, I see you do LinkedIn coaching. He goes, what do you charge? How's it work? And, and then basically he's picked up, I think four clients in the last seven weeks that has. 60 X his, investment in me.
Scott: And
Scott: that's what feels the best because when I can help someone [00:12:00] like completely, like just crush it on there, like that, that feels amazing. So, And that's everything that I'm doing now. Like, you know, LinkedIn is one of those, those playgrounds. And one of those sandboxes that if you're a coach, if you're a consultant, if you're a service professional, and you have something of, of over 1, 000 to offer, you need to be on there because the average income is 000 a year more.
Scott: So you're in a space where you have more opportunity of more people that can afford what you're offering. And that's why I teach people how to use it.
Dustin: I love it. So, couple sort of themes there, and then we'll dive more into the strategy side and, and how people can do this for their business. But the term business mortality, that's the first time I've heard someone say that. I've, I love that as like the, , the impetus for why you needed to change your delivery model, your business model, right?
Dustin: And like. What I, what I say sometimes is people talk about, well, what if you get hit by a bus and you die like that is a [00:13:00] good thought exercise because you want to make sure your family secure and hopefully your business can live on without you. If that's a priority for you to question, people don't ask is what if you get hit by a bus and you don't die and you're maimed, right?
Dustin: And you're like, you just lose the ability to deliver. What you do in person or, you know, in the current model that you have. And I think that this idea of resiliency is really important. And so for you, that was a drive, you know, life change, child's here. You're reflecting back on your own dad's legacy and how he was there for you.
Dustin: And it forced you to think in a new way about how you deliver value in the marketplace. So that was number one, business mortality. I think that's a really. Healthy exercise, , even though it's a crude term, I think it's important for people to think about that, to build healthy businesses. So, you know, like I have an engineering background and people are like, well, how's engineering going to like podcast guesting?
Dustin: I'm like, well, engineering is just problem solving, right? So like my whole thing is helping people come up with a game plan and action plan to solve a problem. The problem I solve is lead generation. To me, that's very cohesive. And so I love that you had this fitness [00:14:00] background and working with these individuals on their physical health.
Dustin: And you're like, well, I can do that for their business health too. And I thought that was cool. And then that final, the final nugget here that I think I want to call out is kind of the, the three step validation process, if you will. Do something that works for you, and once it works for you, see if you can help someone else could be friends and family.
Dustin: It could be someone that you're close to in a community, and that proves external validation to someone else. Like this is a transferable value add and then 3. Then you bring it to market, which you did through one 800 conference call or whatever. , and you got like immediate valid validation from the market that like, yes, other people want this.
Dustin: And this is like a viable business. So that's a really important context and like why you do this, how you made this shift. And of course you've done this to like the nth degree written five books. You've got multiple modes of ways to provide value all the way from courses and community up to, you know, premium coaching.
Dustin: So I love that backstory. I'm really grateful you shared that. Scott: Awesome.
Dustin: [00:15:00] Let's talk about LinkedIn today. So, I feel like, you know, I got on LinkedIn, I was probably on it maybe the same time as you, I mean, I probably had some sort of online profile when I had an engineering job and was like. It's an online resume, but you know, a couple of years ago, I started actually paying attention to it, being strategic, creating content.
Dustin: Now it's kind of, it's, it's part of the system that, that I look at as, as marketing and I know I can learn a lot from you. So if someone's listening and they're like, Hey, I'm a coach, I'm a consultant. Like I get a lot of referrals. I kinda, I kinda like dink around on LinkedIn. I scroll on there sometimes, but I don't really get it like.
Dustin: LinkedIn one on one for someone who's got a good offer. They love to serve people. They get good referrals and where do they start? I know that's like the kindergartner question to ask someone of your, , of your esteem, but I still think it's really important to kind of go down to the basics of like, what's it for, how did they use it?
Dustin: And then we can talk a little more about some advanced strategy.
Scott: Yeah. So I would say, well, first and foremost, LinkedIn is a [00:16:00] giant search engine, right? So everything that I do for myself still for my business and everything I do with my clients is from a visibility standpoint. So what can I do? For myself, that will create more visibility on the platform that will draw more people to me.
Scott: So that's first and foremost. And that's what I do with people because again, social media is rented land. So for me, what I also teach is what can we do on the platform to get people from online to offline? So what can I do on LinkedIn to turn my LinkedIn profile into a lead magnet, which is one Advanced strategies, which we'll cover towards the end.
Scott: But I would say from a very foundational standpoint, number one, you need to have a fully optimized LinkedIn profile. So anyone that goes to my website, scott Aaron dot net, there's actually a free download on there [00:17:00] that basically teaches you the six steps. It's a pop up that comes right up. Just name and email.
Scott: And it's a nice little six page infograph that kind of goes through these strategies. But I'll just I'll cover them right now. The first thing is like using key words in your headline that your ideal. Client avatar will be searching for. So think about, you know, your offering and who you're offering from a professional or industry standpoint, what keywords would they have to put into the search engine that would enable your, your profile to populate?
Scott: So is that marketing, branding, podcasting, lead generation, sales, client acquisition, whatever the case may be. And if you put those in your headline, again, LinkedIn always pulls keywords from the headline. So if you've ever
done a search on LinkedIn and you hit search. And you look at the search result, you'll see in bold where LinkedIn pulled that keyword from and nine times out of 10, [00:18:00] it's from the headline section, right?
Scott: So make
Dustin: be really clear, the headline, if you're looking at your LinkedIn, you have your name and then the thing right under your name is the headline,
Scott: yeah, and what you don't want is like an I help statement because that that's, that's something that you should include in the summary or the about section, because that's not searchable. People aren't searching. I help they're
searching marketing, branding. lead gen, you know, client acquisition, you know, whatever the case may be.
Scott: So that's the first thing. The second thing, and I know this is even like, like I would say pre K, , is connecting with the people that actually would value what you offer. And I know that sounds like really, really elementary, but it's the truth. There's a lot of people that kind of just like cover their eyes and just connect with people.
Scott: But you have, that's why you have to, the way that I correlate that is Why you put certain keywords in that people would find you, you want to search for people the same way. So [00:19:00] you want to search by industry, by job title, by profession that if they end up seeing your profile, your connection requests come across, they're like, Oh, makes total sense.
Scott: Why Dustin wants to connect with me. Makes total sense. Why Scott wants to connect with me. I'm going to hit accept. So you always connect with the people that either a. Will value what you can offer the marketplace or be you have commonality with for collaboration like Dustin and I do being podcast hosts, right?
Scott: So if I, if I wanted to use LinkedIn also from a power partner perspective or collaboration perspective, I could, you know, start collaborating with other business coaches, right? Other consultants who also could be clients, other podcasts or so and so, so on and so on. So the strength of your network. Is the strength of your net worth.
Scott: So you have to think about the people I'm connecting with, you know, will there be value in that connection where they see value in me and [00:20:00] could potentially at some point cross that bridge to becoming a client where it's
now an acquired paying person in my business. Now, the third thing is, is messaging.
Scott: And I would say from a foundational standpoint with messaging, don't message people the way that you don't want to be messaged
Dustin: Cardinal rule. And one that, , I know is broken every day because you and I, I'm sure both receive them all the time. The horrible stuff where you're like, I would never, I never want to meet this person in real life because they're creepy or weird. So, yeah.
Scott: My wife and I call it the smell test. If the messages you're that you're about to send stinks, don't send it. Like it's just plain and simple. You do not. Want to send or receive an 18 paragraph long drunk a log verbal vomit message. You just don't. That's not how you win business. It's just it's you're going to lose every single time.
Scott: So when you are messaging someone you want to craft a message that's very [00:21:00] clear. Very direct, but very warm. So it could be, Hey, Dustin, so great to connect with you. I noticed that, , we had similar backgrounds in business coaching and podcasting. Would love to hear more about your business, share more about mine and how we can support each other here on LinkedIn anytime for a call or a zoom this or next week.
Scott: So it's very warm. It's very connectable. I'm mentioning a connection point between myself and Dustin, actually two connection points, and then I'm, I have a very clear call to action. You know, would you like to talk offline? Because you have to have the C. T. A. So people say, well, how do I get more people to respond? Have you asked them to respond?
Dustin: Ask them.
Scott: Most people like they finished with a statement. So statements lead to nowhere. Questions lead to answers. You have to ask to G. E. T. You have to ask in order to get. So when you're optimizing your profile the right way, you're [00:22:00] connecting with the right people. If you're genuinely messaging them, you're gonna have more conversations.
Scott: And now I would say the fourth and final thing, and what people need to know is like three specific statistics, I already dropped one. The average income that someone makes on LinkedIn is between 75 to a hundred thousand dollars a
year. More. Number two, 88% of people on LinkedIn are in the decision making role, which means 12%.
Scott: 12% are actually providing services and offers. So if you're listening to this and you have something to offer and provide, you can be in the 12%, not the 88%. And third, only 3 percent of the LinkedIn population posts one time a week or more, which means the visibility effect and opportunity that you have is through the roof.
Scott: Because if you're in that 3%, that means 97 percent are just consuming content. So which brings me to my final point of the basic strategy is producing three [00:23:00] pieces of content. A week. Now I call this the bookend methodology. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So you have either Monday and Friday or Tuesday and Thursday, you have a video on the one side of the bookshelf and then on the opposite end of the bookshelf, either Thursday or Friday, you have your long form written content.
Scott: So that could be done in an image text post up to 3000 characters, or it could be done in a newsletter article. Or a newsletter edition up to 150, 000 characters completely up to the person in the middle of your video and your long form written content is your market research. Now that market research is done in a poll question. So I always tell people if you want to find out what you should be posting. So
Dustin: Ask so you can [00:24:00] get right. Yeah. Okay.
Scott: like an example would be, , a poll question could be, how often do you post on LinkedIn each week? , one time per week, three to five, barely ever other comment below. So if I see the majority of people, and this was actually a, a poll question I asked last week at the time of recording this, the majority of people, nearly 60 percent of the people that voted said that they're not nearly posting enough or maybe once a week.
Scott: So then I use that information to then. Create a piece of written content on the three posts that you should create every single week. Then I turn that into a video training and now that's going to become another poll question, which is going to be which type of LinkedIn content do you most post most often a poll.
Scott: A video, written content, other comment below. Now what's going to happen after I do that is whatever the [00:25:00] least popular answer is, that's going to become my next piece of content explaining why they should be. So
just for example purposes, say that, , they say the one that they're not doing at all. I noticed poll questions.
Scott: They're never doing, they're, they're posting image text posts, they're doing video, but they're not doing poll questions for market research. So then I could do an image text post. Or a newsletter edition on the three reasons why you need to post one poll per week on LinkedIn. So now my, my content is fueling more content.
Scott: So I typically talk about the same thing every single week. It's just in different forms. I'll do a video on it. Right. It could be a quick little 30 second tip video, vertical video right from your phone. I'll do a market research poll. And then the answer from that becomes that long form piece of content on Friday.
Scott: Whether it's just an image of me with text, you know, above it, up to 3, 000 characters or a more deeply contextual piece of content, which I typically [00:26:00] like, which is my newsletter, which is about 8, 800 subscribers strong now on LinkedIn. And I'll get, there'll be imagery in there. And from a foundational standpoint, if someone just takes the time and they optimize their LinkedIn profile, they connect with the right people, message them genuinely and provide value through their content, right?
Scott: So the content has to, someone has to learn something or they need to take action on something, right? So you have to, you have to provide information or education. So next steps can be taken. You're not selling and pitching, you're educating and informing. And if you're doing those four things from just a very basic foundational standpoint on LinkedIn, you'll hit a home run.
Dustin: That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure this will be a clip that will pull out, but like that, that, but I was, I view that in terms of that's a flywheel, right? Like that you are going through a consistent three post sequence that gets better
and better and feeds itself, right? Because it's the poll question, the research question that feeds the [00:27:00] long form and then.
Dustin: From that long form, you can pull out the best snippet and make a quick video. And then you go back and ask again, and it takes away this like deer in the headlines. I don't know what to post. So I'm just going to procrastinate and not post this week. I like that. And so I think I have one, one quick hit sort of follow up question for each of those three pieces of content.
Dustin: That's a little more advanced. So video, that's something I don't do well, or I don't do enough of, , do you see the video? Is it. Preferable to do something native to LinkedIn. And if so, should it be like vertical or horizontal? And like, you know what I mean? There's like sort of like YouTube style videos.
Dustin: There's Tik TOK style videos. Is it what works best on LinkedIn right now?
Scott: To get started, I would do the vertical videos. So that is something that you could do native again, to your point, you can actually log onto the LinkedIn app and you can hit the media button rate on there and it will ask you to access your camera and there's a record button right there and you just [00:28:00] literally hit record and you just do a quick little 30 to 45 second little tip of the day.
Scott: That's going to leave value basically from there. You'll click next, and then you'll write some context above, like what the post is about, like, here's a little tip to do X, Y, and Z. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. What was your biggest takeaway? Couple hashtags, and then you post it. And that's really all you need to do for video.
Scott: Short form. quick hit video right now is really becoming popular on LinkedIn. They have their own LinkedIn video feed now, on the app. So it's in beta. Some people have it. Some people don't. I do, , fortunately. So it's cool to see. So I would say just get your content out there that way, because video connects people better than any other form of content.
Scott: So it will automatically position you as a trusted person, because obviously people know that it takes a lot of vulnerability and gumption to really put yourself out there that way. And it's a great way to connect with your [00:29:00] audience.
Dustin: That's awesome. Okay. Well, that was. Awesome. So video quick tips. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Do something quick
Scott: Let's do it.
Dustin: and you've got something to feed off of because you can kind of go back to your last form of long form or that pull and just like riff on that. Maybe it's a personal story of how this has worked for you or it's a quick story about a client or it's just a quick tip.
Dustin: Like, Hey, what? Scott could have just made a video that said, Hey, when you're doing linked in videos, just hit the plus button on your app and do a vertical and do it for 30 seconds. No pressure. You're gonna love it. And here's how it works. So that's a great video tip. The middle here, the poll research. So I've done this sparingly and I probably did it a little too transactionally.
Dustin: There's been a couple of times where I'm like, the poll was, Hey, I'm thinking about creating something. Which of these things would you want me to create? Right. And so it wasn't very. Broad in the sense that it gets a high response rate. However, one of the really cool things I discovered in doing that is you actually get to see how people respond, [00:30:00] like the individuals.
Dustin: So if I'm like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing a workshop on LinkedIn and Scott says, I would like that, , then I can actually like go to Scott and say, Hey man, heard you want this workshop. Here's a link to it. Right. And so you
can literally see who responds and how they respond. So you can be pretty strategic.
Dustin: Are there more strategic ways to use the polls besides just. Tell me which content to create next.
Scott: well, I always like to, so I created a GPT, , and chat GPT that basically I can, I like to find out, so I, I taught chat GPT all about me and my business, about my ideal clients, the problems that I solve for. And I'll basically say, you know, everything that you know about me, my, my ideal client persona is really struggling.
Scott: With marketing themselves on LinkedIn. Can you give me a very simple question to ask my audience that would draw up engagement [00:31:00] and please give me three response options that are under 30 characters in length. And then basically it will give me this great question that I. Maybe never would have thought of, and it's all directed towards, and it's all me.
Scott: It's all about my information. And to your point, that's what I, I, I also utilize the LinkedIn polls. Like you said, like where you can see the people who vote, you can see the people who vote. I use it as more of also a nurture campaign. So. If like I do a poll, I got the poll that I just kind of referenced, I ended up getting like 70 some odd votes or whatever, so I can click on the 70 votes.
Scott: I can see who voted and then someone that's in my ideal client avatar pool that I want to kind of like nurture. I'll click the message button and I'll
message them and just thank them for voting and say, you know, thanks for voting my poll. If I could be of any help or service in any way. Don't hesitate to reach out and thanks again for supporting me.
Scott: And that's it. And I just kind of like drip, just drip on them. And then I just kind of move on. So I like to use the [00:32:00] polls from that perspective as well, to kind of almost like an active nurture campaign on the platform to just to let people know, Hey, I'm here on visible and. If you need any help, don't hesitate to knock on my door
Dustin: That's awesome. Yeah. And then they feel seen there. You're real. , and you're not pitching them, but you're opening the door. So they may say, yeah, I'm really glad you actually asked that question because I've been thinking I need help with this, right. You know, tell me more about what you do, Scott, because I've been, I've been following your content and I want to, you know, and of course that's how you enter into a natural conversation that can lead to a sale.
Dustin: So. That was awesome. I love the pull strategy. And then the final one, the long form content. That's probably the thing most people are familiar with. You write a normal text post, you might include an image on there. So kind of
two questions there on, I want to talk about the post version of this and the newsletter version of this.
Dustin: So. On the post version. What are your feelings about images? I feel like that's one of the questions I get a lot. Like, should I include an image? Should it be a selfie? Should it be a screenshot? Like, should we have an image? Should we [00:33:00] mix it up? Like what? What images tend to work best in your in your experience?
Scott: Yeah, I believe in AB testing. So again, I would do maybe a couple of weeks of no image. I would do a couple of weeks with an image. I would do a couple of weeks with maybe. A graph or some sort of visual representation of
what you're talking about a couple of weeks of selfies of you like more personal branded.
Scott: So find out like linkedin will let you know through the analytics of what your audience wants more of. So I would say definitely kind of like play around with different forms. Um. And again, it's, it's really about just providing value. And I would say, Catacorner to that, like the difference between that and a newsletter, newsletters is where you can go as deep as you want.
Scott: Like I love newsletters. So I created, I have a, I created another GPT that, I will give chat like. A 3000 character post that I typed up [00:34:00] for an image text post. And then I created a GPT where it reformats it into a newsletter for me. So it just takes my information. And then basically from there. It reformats it and then I'm good to go.
Scott: I like newsletters because you can have a subscriber base. So LinkedIn invites people to subscribe to your newsletter. So these are people that want to hear what you're doing and what you have to say. So you have a higher open rate. You have a higher impression rate and a higher analytic rate. So when you're doing just a regular image text post, yes, if it falls into the right hands, it could completely blow up.
Scott: I curate specific content for the newsletter additions that is specifically geared towards those subscribers to again, nurture them through what I'm doing. But again, try different things. Even with my newsletters, I'm trying, you know, just content. Right. So just like content, I try some [00:35:00] newsletters that have like kind of bullet points to kind of contextually go along with the content.
Scott: And then I do another test where I throw images. That correlate to the content that I've written. So I'm all about kind of just trying different things. I never get comfortable with my strategy on LinkedIn. I'm always trying to kind of reframe rewire and relaunch to see what hits, what doesn't. And that's why I do look at my impressions every seven to 14 days to see which are my top performing posts.
Scott: Why were they? How can I duplicate this? How can I create more like this that I just created?
Dustin: Love that. And I think just to be really clear for people, people hear newsletter and I think, oh, my, you know, kit or active campaign, you have your own version. Hopefully your own external newsletter. This is a LinkedIn native newsletter that people can subscribe to. And when you, when it comes out, they get a notification specific to the newsletter.
Dustin: And depending on how they have their stuff set up, it'll actually go to their, their email You know,
Dustin: As I understand it [00:36:00] and. It's been a long time since I've looked at this. I don't currently have a LinkedIn newsletter. I think this is a definitely a low hanging fruit. Isn't it true that when you start one, you can
actually like invite all of your followers to become subscribers for the first couple or something like that.
Scott: So LinkedIn, when you create the newsletter and you publish your first edition, LinkedIn will auto invite every connection you have to subscribe.
Dustin: Okay.
Scott: So you will have subscribers with the blink of an eye. So I Scott: had,
Dustin: that first one good and make it clear that this is a new value add in that. Yeah. Okay.
Scott: yeah. So mine's called LinkedIn tips and updates. I had a thousand and 24 hours, like thousand subscribers right away. Then to your point. Every time you release a new newsletter edition, , LinkedIn puts a push notification out to your networks. It says, check it out, but also emails them and says, check out, join the conversation on here.
Scott: Now, the other thing is, if you're doing the second thing that I talked about, you're building your network. [00:37:00] If someone accepts your connection. After they accept, they get an auto invite to subscribe to your newsletter. So LinkedIn helps you grow your newsletter while you grow your network. So they go hand in hand.
Dustin: I love that. That's. That's by the most powerful, more advanced strategy that that we've we've tapped into and something that is really opening my eyes. I'm like, yeah, I totally got to do that.
Scott: Well, it's also an easy way to build your email list because at the end of every newsletter on LinkedIn, you can put a hyperlink to a landing page or an assessment or a download. And, you know, for my I have 8800 subscribers. So every week I'm getting. 8, 800 eyeballs on a lead magnet that can then convert into email subscribers off the platform, which is what I'm doing.
Dustin: that's awesome. Sweet. Two more. I'm getting really tactical because I know I'm asking you questions that not only I have, but I hear all the time. So. And this may be, maybe it sounds old school, [00:38:00] but you said the word
and I hadn't even thought about to ask you, but hashtags. So, you know, old school social media is about hashtags.
Dustin: Follow me on link on Instagram with hashtags, all that stuff. What are the role of hashtags on LinkedIn? Should we include them in every post? Do they do anything? So, yeah, tell us a little bit more about hashtags.
Scott: three hashtags for, image, text posts or videos. Basically there's a rule of three. So with LinkedIn, they show more content that has three specific hashtags related to the content. One or two is okay. You're not going to get as much visibility for an above. You're going to get devalued. So they're going to show it to less people cause they don't want it like Instagram.
Scott: So three is the magic number. But make sure that the three hashtags that you use are related to the content, but also that people actually follow. So hashtags have followings. So you can actually, after you post your content, you can click on the hashtag that you used, and it will show you how many people are [00:39:00] following it, which will tell you if it's an active hashtag that people are actually paying attention to.
Scott: You can see other people. That are using that same hashtag. So you can use it as a networking tool, but also it will put you in front of the right people because LinkedIn does value, showing people content. That has the hashtags that they're following in sometimes first above anything else. So there, there is a benefit to using the right hashtags.
Dustin: Okay. Well, that's super insightful. And so if you're not sure which ones to use, you can try some because as you start, if you hashtag and start to type, it'll auto populate some ideas, I think. But then as you're following creators that are in your space that you admire, who do a great job, follow Scott, Aaron, obviously, , and then pay attention to the hashtags they're using and kind of piggyback on that.
Dustin: So I think that's really useful. And then the final one. , that I wanted to ask, and obviously I'll open the mic to you, Scott, unless you add anything else you want to add here, is recycling. So, I think a super undervalued strategy is like, people have this mindset, kind of like, other social [00:40:00] media, where it's a one and done, right?
Dustin: But I think on LinkedIn, one of the cool things that I've experienced is You can totally recycle the best content, right? You can, you can go look at your analytics and be like this thing killed. , I want to reuse it now. Maybe you tweak it repackages. So how do we recycle the best content? Should we recycle it?
Dustin: Do we need to tweak it? Like what? What's the best strategies around repurposing content?
Scott: I love repurposing. So sometimes if I'm kind of like not sure what to post, I will go back through maybe something I did, you know, two or three weeks ago. And I'll repurpose it into something else. Maybe if I did it as a newsletter edition and I didn't necessarily do it as an image text post, I'll shorten the information, throw an image of myself, do it that way.
Scott: Something that I'm doing right now as a repurposing strategy. Is, either bi weekly or monthly, taking old posts where I gave maybe three [00:41:00] tangible tips and I'm actually doing LinkedIn carousel posts now, which are almost like Instagram carousel posts. So the, the key to those is if you go on the Canva.
Scott: And just type in LinkedIn carousel post. It'll give you templates that you can use. And then you basically just input your information and you just give, they're like quick hitters. It's just like quick, tangible tips that people can slide through on the desktop and mobile app. , the only caveat is make sure that when you download the file, you save it as PDF standard.
Scott: Because it's a PDF document that you have to upload. You cannot save it as a JPEG, , or a PNG file. It's gotta be, It's got to be PDF standard and then basically you'll, you know, go on and then this is under the document tab on LinkedIn. So when you go to create a post, you'll click the plus sign, which will give you the full gamut of what you can do.
Scott: The second to last one is a little document. You click on it and then you basically upload the file, give it a title, write some context. And then post [00:42:00] it. So that's one of the best ways because people what I've realized is that people on LinkedIn visually engage with different things. So some of them engage in visual representations like that.
Scott: Some people like to engage in video so they can see and hear. Some people like to read the newspaper so they'll read long form articles or newsletters. So I'm a big believer in trying all different forms of content to see what hits when. How, why, and should I do more of it?
Dustin: Love that. I said that was my last 1, but. If I can indulge for one more minute, commenting. So we talked a lot about your profile inbound, how to start a conversation with people. We talked a lot about content. So like, how do you
create content? The, the three, the three piece cycle here. We talked about newsletters and hashtags and repurposing.
Dustin: What about. Commenting on other people's profiles as a visibility tool. And as a content sort of discovery tool, I'd love, I'd love your thoughts on that. And then I'll turn it over to you for any gaps that we [00:43:00] need to fill in. And we'll talk about how to, how people should, , should come find you, but yeah, how about commenting or sort of engaging with other profiles as a growth strategy?
Scott: Yeah. So I created a GPT for that too. So I look for it. So LinkedIn gives me suggested posts now for me, like, and some people may get this, like you'll go to your notifications and LinkedIn will say suggested for you. And it's like a really high engaging post. They're doing that for a reason because they see.
Scott: The context of what is being talked about in that post relates to you and your expertise. So I created a GPT that I teach others how to use that. Basically, I will copy the person's post and basically I chat. GPT knows all about me, knows my zone of genius. And I'll say, you know, Dustin said this. Please give me some ideas of what I can reply with that highlight his post and my expertise and it basically will spit out like exactly what I would say.
Scott: It's awesome [00:44:00] and then I basically tweak anything that needs to be tweaked. I edit what I need to edit, you know, rewrite it the way that I need to and then I go on and then I basically. Post it under that person's post. And what it does is, and this happened the other day, I did it with a, a Gary V post, six or seven people actually liked my comment, which makes my comment the most relevant comment.
Scott: So there's two types of comments. There's, , recent and relevant, recent, doesn't matter. LinkedIn shows by relevancy. So the more relevant your comment can be where people engage with it, the more likely they're going to continue to show it, which means it gives your profile visibility so you can start growing your network off of just commenting on high engaged content that's going out on the platform every day.
Dustin: I love that. So that's a very simple way to grow your profile is go comment on a relevant profiles where your clients are reading those and commenting on those. And if your headline is good, [00:45:00] you know, he has your name and it has like the 1st so much of your headline. So as long as the start of your headline is relevant, they can immediately see Dustin.
Dustin: Profitable podcast guesting, and then they see my, my response and be like, Oh, I'm curious about that. And I'll click over to my profile. And so like you just said, you know, Gary Vee, my most viral posts several months ago, Alex Ramosi had made this post. , I read it and sort of had a visceral reaction to something he shared.
Dustin: I just made like, I'm in the airport getting ready to get on a plane. I left like a two line comment, but it was a direct, it wasn't offensive, but it was direct. It was kind of a hot take on why I thought it was. Ignorant, the thing that he shared, and when I landed from the plane, I had, I don't know, more than 100 people had reacted and then a lot of comments.
Dustin: Yeah, it was crazy. And so it became a top relevant comment. And so then I was like, well, this is interesting. So I actually took my comment, made it my own post, screenshotted his post as the image and said, You know, people are really responding strongly to my, my thoughts on this. I'd love your thoughts.
Dustin: And then on my own profile, this post became, I think I had 250, [00:46:00] 000 impressions, hundreds of comments, book sales calls, cause it was relevant to what I do, but it was like a hot take. So that was sort of a unicorn magical moment, but, and that's an extreme example, but you could do that and hit a lot of singles just by like commenting on someone else's profile
Scott: doesn't always have to be a home run.
Dustin: Borrowing their audience right in a way that brings the right people over to your profile. So, I thought we could talk for hours, but we can't because we, , we got to, we got to go do some other other things here, Scott. But, I would love to any just like, dude, how did you not ask me this sort of response?
Dustin: And then barring that, you know, call to action where people should go to go deeper with you or deeper with their LinkedIn journey here.
Scott: Yeah. No, I think all the questions were great. I think this is a great starting place for people to kind of go back and listen to all this because there's some, I would say, beginner tactics. And I think there's some advanced strategies. So I think, , a lot of the bases were covered. If someone is looking to kind of learn more about me and what I do, obviously linked in is a great place to find me.
Scott: You can subscribe to my newsletter. I do for you. Two free LinkedIn trainings per [00:47:00] week, every Monday and Thursday at 10 Eastern. So those are quick hit 15 minute trainings that people can pop on. Also if you go to my website, scottaron. net, , that's where you can listen to my podcast, grab my book.
Scott: And then if you want to learn a little bit more about my wife and what we're building, you can also go to the time to grow. com and you can learn about everything that we're doing to help people grow and scale their business.
Dustin: Beautiful, man. That was awesome. So Scott, Aaron, just like it sounds, , I don't know. You, you know, he's been on there a long time because he says like Scott, Aaron, as a, as the profile, , and then Scott, Aaron. net to go deeper. Scott, , you're, you're a treasure to the audience. , I'm really grateful to connect with you here.
Dustin: I know we're going to go over, I'm going to be on your podcast and talk about podcast guesting. And I really feel like these are. Very complimentary, strategies and topics. So thanks again for being here. Go to Scott, Aaron. net, go to Scott, Aaron on LinkedIn, make sure you're following him, getting on his newsletter there.
Dustin: , and just, yeah, man, so much gratitude. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing so much.
Scott: Absolutely. Grateful to be here and I can't wait to hear the reaction.