Hala Taha: LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Explosive Business Growth | Marketing | YAP Live

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A lot of people like put up content, they cross their fingers and they're like, okay, people are gonna find my podcast.

And it's like, no, no one's gonna find your podcast.

Haula Taha is the CEO of Yap Media, a podcast network and social media agency.

She's host of Young and Profiting Podcasts.

She's turned her side hustle podcast to a media empire.

When I first started, I didn't focus on Instagram.

TikTok wasn't even existing yet.

I focused on LinkedIn and I built my leverage on LinkedIn and I became one of the biggest influencers on that platform.

When I first started my podcast, I had a rule for myself.

I'm going to post on LinkedIn every single day.

If you understand the publishing and engagement strategies,

you will go much more buttons.

It is still an organic platform where you can kind of just like hack the algorithm.

How can a salesperson watching this right now start a podcast that helps them generate leads for what what they sell.

When you're thinking about monetizing a podcast and getting leads from a podcast, there's really three ways, right?

You can

Yap Fam, did you know you have the power to build something extraordinary from nothing?

That's exactly why I was invited to sit down with Jeremy Minor.

And this is an episode you don't want to miss.

You've seen me take Yap Media from an intern volunteer squad into one of the most fastest-growing podcasts and social media agencies in the world.

In this conversation, I'm sharing the exact strategies I use to build a multi-million dollar media empire.

And we get into how I hacked LinkedIn, the psychology behind viral content, and how I turn my podcast guests into high-paying clients.

If you're ready to master influence and scale your business, make sure you follow this podcast if you're new to the show.

You can also watch this episode now on Spotify video and on YouTube.

All right, guys, let's get right into my awesome conversation with Jeremy Minor.

All right, Jeremy Miner, welcome to another episode.

Now, today, look, you're a salesperson, you're an entrepreneur, maybe you're CEO of a company or VP of sales, sales manager, and you want to get higher quality leads to buy your product, your service, your thing, you're going to want to pay attention to this next guest.

This guest, the famous podcast princess, as she is known, Hala Taha, very unique name, is the CEO of Yap Media.

Now, that is a podcast network and social media agency.

She is one of the top 100 global hosts of young and profiting podcasts.

And she's been featured on the cover of Podcast Magazine and 40 Under 40.

She's turned her side hustle podcast, Young and Profiting, into a media empire, Yap Media, which was voted best podcast agency and fastest growing podcast company of 2022.

Anything in 2023, 2024?

Biggest.

We're on track to hit 10 figures.

I mean, eight figures, not 10 figures, eight figures.

And she's been recognized in the New York Times founder, Radio Inc.

She's, like I said, known known as the podcast princess.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

Fresh off the stage.

Yes.

How was that?

It was so much fun.

Funnel Hacking Live.

It's Russell Brunson's event.

It was like 6,000 people, huge stage.

So it was so much fun.

So when you're speaking on stage, this is just kind of off the subject, but pay attention to this because we're going to talk about...

pattern interrupts and that's going to help you sell.

When you're up on stage, how do you,

because I think they can apply to this if they sell one-to-one or one-to-many, how do you keep an audience engaged?

What are some maybe a few things you do to like really keep them engaged where they just don't like fall asleep?

Yeah.

A lot of speakers.

I love that.

Well, first of all, you got to open up with a story.

You have to make it shocking.

So I opened up the stage today.

I said, you know, imagine you started a podcast in your car.

You had no place to record.

You had no mic.

You had no equipment.

So it shocks them.

Like, what do you mean?

And you became a very famous podcaster.

So opening up with a a hook, a story.

Another thing is just getting them to say yes and agree right away.

Why is that story so important to start your, let's say,

your training or whatever you're doing up front, like on stage?

What does that story do to their mind?

It takes them somewhere.

It makes them feel like it's all relatable.

Yeah.

So it makes them feel part of the story.

So I actually say like, imagine you're starting a podcast and where you have no idea.

So you're talking about your story, but you're actually speaking to them.

Yeah, so they can feel like they're in the story and relate to it.

Exactly.

And then you actually turn it back to them and say, can you guys relate to how Jenna, this was about Jenna Kutcher, how Jenna was feeling in the moment when she first started her podcast.

You didn't have any equipment.

You have no podcast plan.

Yeah.

But now you could do this.

So addressing their pain points.

The great thing about what you did with that story is not only did you take them back where they think about it, but they visualize the story.

Because when you start that story, you're forcing their brain to visualize what you're talking about, and they become interwoven in it.

So it forces them engagement rather than them looking at the phone or getting up and go to the bathroom, like a lot of, hey, how's it going?

How's the weather?

I need a raw, raw, raw, like most speakers.

It's fine.

Now you've triggered curiosity.

Yeah.

And they're like, whoa, this person's important.

I need to listen to what she says.

Well done.

Most speakers don't know how to do that.

Okay, so I've got some questions for you.

So podcast agents, how did you, like, did you, you know, were you born like just with these podcast skills or like, what, how did you get into podcasting?

So I actually started my career in radio when I was 19 years old in college.

I started at Hot 97.

It's one of the most

I was Angie Martinez's assistant for three years.

Okay.

I was basically an unpaid associate producer.

So I dropped out of college to be her apprentice.

And I learned.

I told you to do that.

That's that's a big gamble.

Like, yeah.

You know, we're all taught you got to go to school.

And I believe in college for certain professions, you know, if you're going to be a doctor, you probably have to go to school.

Or an attorney, there's professions you do.

But what caused you to be like, hey, I don't want to go to school.

I want to go this other route.

Because most people wouldn't think that way.

Really, I wanted to be a singer.

I was writing music.

I was singing and songwriting.

And I thought, oh, I could get an internship at the radio station and push my music to the DJs.

But then I realized that...

I was a really great on-air personality and they were basically priming me to be the next Angie Martinez.

And so I was, you know, just paying my dues because that's what they do in radio until you get an on-air spot.

Okay.

But when a paid position opened up, they ended up giving it to somebody else who didn't work on the show.

And

I said I didn't want to show up to work and they ended up firing me.

Oh my God.

So firing me from an unpaid job.

You're fired.

But it wasn't like a real fire.

They were like, just lay low.

Angie's really mad at you.

And I was like, you know what?

Yeah.

No, I'm not going back to the station.

I worked for free for three years.

Yeah.

And I started a blog called The Sorority of Hip Hop and it got really popular.

Okay.

I ended up hosting all the parties with the DJs that I used to work with at Hot 97.

And we were like pretty famous in the tri-state area.

We had online radio shows.

This is in New York City.

This is in New York City.

Yeah.

And then MTV reached out to us to be on a reality TV show.

So this was like right when

Jersey Shore just ended.

And they filmed us all summer.

And I was about to be a lead on a reality TV show, okay, MTV.

So it was like my big break.

Your big break.

They pulled the plug two weeks before the show was going to air.

What happened?

Why did they pull the show?

They just said they're moving in another direction.

I'm Palestinian.

I don't think they were ready for like a Palestinian-American lead on MTV.

Really?

Yeah.

So, what year was this?

2012.

2012.

2012.

So a long time ago.

Wow, 12 years ago.

Yes.

This world has changed seven times.

I know.

I know.

I was really young.

You know, I was really still like, so I was really young.

And

yeah, I didn't get this show on MTV.

So I was crushed and I thought I'd never get back on a mic.

Okay.

Went to corporate and started my podcast four years into corporate.

What did you do in corporate?

I worked at Hewlett-Packard in marketing and then I worked at Disney Streaming Services and I ran their email and their mobile.

So you got some really good corporate experience, which, you know, I say experience in corporate America is one of the best things in entrepreneurship.

oh 100 because i was a failed entrepreneur basically with this blog it was like successful but a lot of like you know just more of like partying and like yeah smoking mirrors

um but in corporate i got really successful i was like working for the c-suite by the end of it and basically like the chief of staff and i think it's really important because i think um a lot of people that start their own business so whether you maybe you're a salesperson and you look at it maybe starting your own thing one day it's one thing that you cannot buy you can buy somebody's like content or their training and try to mimic it, you know, if you're in that space or whatever.

But one thing you never can buy is their wisdom.

Yeah.

You can never buy their experience because they're the ones that lived it.

And that's the most important thing.

So, how did, how did corporate America kind of like help you have that foundation of like this huge podcast you have now?

It's such a great question.

I make a joke that before I was the podcast princess, I was the PowerPoint princess.

And so I used to make all these amazing PowerPoints.

And actually, when I first launched my company,

I had a team of volunteers with my podcast.

So I had fans that would reach out to me on LinkedIn.

I was big on LinkedIn right away.

And they asked me how they could help me with the show.

I changed their life.

And so I started recruiting all these volunteers into a Slack channel and it became my team.

And two years into it, my podcast blew up.

I became a top podcaster.

And the guests that would come on my show, they'd always ask me, like, who does your LinkedIn?

Who does your podcast?

How can you help me?

And I was working at Disney, had a great job.

And I was like, I'm sorry, this is just a hobby.

I can't help you.

Until COVID hit.

And I found myself with all this free time.

So I converted my volunteers into an agency and I started Yap Media.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk about LinkedIn strategies because I know you want more leads to sell your things.

So whether you sell life insurance or maybe you sell SaaS or solar or cybersecurity, cars, it doesn't really matter, real estate, whatever.

We're going to talk about how to generate better quality leads from LinkedIn.

So, you want to stay tuned to that because we're going to come up to that in about 10 or 15 minutes or so.

I want to talk about the mindset, though, first, because it's important for you to understand, you know, the mindset like she has that, you know, she can go from that corporate job or whatever and really do whatever she wants.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to leave your sales job or anything, but that mindset will help you with whatever you want to do in your career.

Maybe you want to become the senior vice president of your company, or maybe the CEO one day.

That mindset's going to help you get there.

What was like your winning, what was like a strategy that

you felt you did, you mastered this one strategy that caused your podcast to blow up compared to everybody else that has a podcast?

Well, that's a really good question.

One thing that I didn't get to answer from you yet is you asked me like, what did you do in corporate?

How did you end up growing your business?

So basically, when I started my agency, people would ask me if they could come on my show.

Sorry, if I could do their podcast and marketing.

Really?

Okay.

And I told you, I got this skill of being really good at PowerPoints in corporate and really good at presenting.

Right.

And so at the time, my first client was Heather Monaghan.

Do you know her?

I don't.

But she's a very big LinkedIn influencer, very big podcaster.

And she basically like convinced me to start my company.

And she was paying me nothing, like $1,000 a month or something.

My second client was this billionaire guy in the solar space.

And

I remember pitching him.

And when I put together my offer, at first I was like, okay, I'll do 3K for LinkedIn, 3K for Instagram, 3K for podcasting.

And my business partner at the time was like, let's just do 10K service.

He's a billionaire.

And I'm like, okay, cool.

Let's do that.

I had no logo.

I just knew how to create really great PowerPoints.

And I knew how to present really well.

because of corporate.

So I put together this presentation and I pitched this billionaire.

No logo, no website, no company name, even.

Yeah, just put together a presentation.

Yeah.

And I'm like, all right, it's 30K.

And he's like, let's do it.

Boom.

My second client ever was $30,000 a month.

That's good.

The certainty.

I saw how you frame the presentation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, anyway, that's what I wanted to answer your original question.

You got really good at framing your presentations where it wasn't just facts and features.

It was more about getting them to focus on the end result of what you're on.

And getting to trust me.

Like, I.

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I knew my stuff.

I was an expert i could present really well energetic enthusiastic and he was like well i want to work with this girl yeah you know besides the the winning presentations what do you feel like is one strategy you know one other strategy that really took your podcast from like where everybody's is you know everybody has a podcast to like one of the top you're on top five now or something yeah in the world yeah um so basically there's a bunch of principles for growth but from the start i was always 50 production 50 promotion so a lot of people like put up content they cross their fingers and they're like, okay, people are going to find my podcast.

And it's like, no, no one's going to find your podcast.

You've got to spend your time promoting it.

A lot of things that I do is DMs, so DM funnels, direct messages.

So basically,

for example, on LinkedIn, we'll put up a LinkedIn live video or any post on Instagram about my podcast.

Anybody who likes or comments on that post, we then retarget in the DMs and we give them a direct link to the episode.

That brings in new subscribers daily.

That keeps me ranking at the top of the charts because the charts are based on new daily subscribers.

It's not based on how big your show is.

It's about how many new subscribers you bring in every day.

So I'm getting featured in Apple and Spotify every day on the charts because I'm bringing in new subscribers from the DMs.

And I'm getting people to subscribe.

And I'm getting new subscribers every day from social media doing it that way.

So promoting is really great, of course.

The other thing is just leverage.

When I first started, I didn't focus on Instagram or like, you know, TikTok wasn't even existing yet, but I focused on LinkedIn and I built my leverage on LinkedIn and I became one of the biggest influencers on that platform.

And then with that audience, I had leverage.

I could then trade that audience.

So you focused on one platform.

You're all in horsebinders.

I'm going to master this platform.

Yeah.

Why do you feel like that's important rather than just trying to do everything, all the other platforms and just kind of hope and pray it works out?

Well, first of all, like LinkedIn had my target audience.

I was reaching young professionals.

Second of all, I felt like it was less competition.

Felt like Instagram was pretty saturated, less competition.

Figured out the algorithm, like totally hacked the algorithm, got really popular on that platform.

I actually became a LinkedIn influencer before my podcast blew up.

And then I traded my audience.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as a LinkedIn influencer.

There it is.

You brought that up.

I'm like, I didn't even know that.

That's amazing.

I've loved some people say that.

But yeah,

it is.

It's a social platform just like any other social platform.

There's 135 million daily active users on LinkedIn.

Interesting.

You know, I think we only have, that's our smallest channel.

I think we have like 50 or 60,000 people that follow me on LinkedIn.

We got millions on others, but we'll talk.

We need to grow LinkedIn.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm the LinkedIn

and the podcast printer.

Josiah, content director.

Okay.

So let's talk about this powerhouse that you built.

Actually, I'm going to go back.

In your mind, how can a salesperson watching this right now?

maybe start a podcast that helps them generate leads for what they sell?

Because I don't think most salespeople realize that that's a channel that they can do that in.

Yeah, I think when you're thinking about monetizing a podcast and getting leads from a podcast, there's really three ways, right?

You can grow an audience, sell your own products and services.

You can get sponsorships and brand deals.

And then your guests can become your clients.

So like me, for example, like I made $600,000 on sponsorships this year from from ads, but I made $6 million

from the guests that came on my show.

I see.

So it's a way bigger opportunity.

When you say you made $6 million from the guests that came on the show, is that them paying you to be on the show?

That's them becoming my clients.

And I do their social and their podcasts.

And I get them ads.

So they become my clients.

Yeah.

They get impressed.

And hey, like, what do you do?

And the conversation.

And so you can be strategic.

You can actually design a podcast where you interview your target client.

And then if you can also then create content that attracts an audience,

then you can sell to them.

It can be a totally different product.

So I have my high-ticket agency services.

We're a white glove agency for my guests, or they can join my podcast network, whichever one they fit into.

And then for my audience, it's my courses, it's things like that.

And my brand sponsorships.

That makes sense.

That's really good.

Okay, so let's talk about this media powerhouse, scaling, all that stuff.

And then we're going to get into LinkedIn because I know that they're going to want to be like, how do I get leads on LinkedIn?

I need more leads on LinkedIn.

These are really good leads.

Doesn't matter if you sell business to consumer, business to business.

It's all the same.

So your company has been recognized, as we know, as one of the fastest growing podcast networks.

It might even be one of the biggest there is.

Yeah.

I think it is.

What were the biggest challenges that you faced

in building that to get to that level, to really scale?

What were some of the biggest challenges?

So everything has happened so organically, honestly.

But I think the biggest challenge for me, which is probably pretty unique, is that I had a volunteer team and I had to convert them to employees.

And when people are working for you for free, it's just everyone's so happy.

Everyone's, I'm not getting paid.

You're not getting paid.

We're all motivated.

This is a movement.

You just bought into the business.

Right.

It's just a movement.

It's a vision.

But then once, you know, there's clients involved and like, it's got to get serious.

So there were some people that I had to like fire that I'm like, you guys are still acting like volunteers and this is a company now, you know?

So it's kind of like growing pains of like moving away from being like a movement to like a real company.

Yeah.

and then just also the fact that I'm not just a CEO and founder, I'm like a media personality.

So, not every CEO has to have interviews twice a week, two full days.

And so, it was really important for me to get business partners.

And so, I met my COO and one of my business partners, Jason, and now he's helped me so much.

So, just finding the right people that have the right mentality that I could trust to give equity so that they could help me grow my business while I could also be the face of the company because it's kind of like two different roles.

And I see it even more evolving more

you have to you have to bring in somebody to run the business if you're like the face of the business exactly it's hard to really do both you have to do both here in the very beginning the biggest thing that that will determine your success as a business is bringing in the right people to run the business yeah uh that can make or break your company so and i've seen that both ways even in my own business we've had setbacks with maybe the wrong management team they did well in certain areas but other areas not so well and a lot of times you might bring in a management team that gets you that has a skill level to get you to a certain level But once they get you to that level, if they don't learn and grow and know what to do above that level, you're going to stay capped.

So you have to bring in sometimes even better people that have already done the thing that you're wanting to do.

So whatever you're at now, let's say if you're like, I want to grow this, you know, media thing to 250 million a year.

Yeah.

Well, maybe the people that got you to where you're at, they might not, not all of them, because some will grow with the business.

They'll learn.

Others won't necessarily do that and they won't have the skill level to get you there.

So when you brought in that COO, like what changed for you?

Well, the thing is, is that he was actually working with me first.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it's not somebody that I just like found, I put out like a post, I want a COO.

It was somebody who was my production director.

He had his own company.

He ended up shutting down his company to run my production team because we were doing really well.

And then he just started taking on finance, taking on ops, and we became really good friends.

And then I trusted him.

And so it was like, it was an Aqua hire.

Yeah.

So it wasn't just like me finding it.

They knew the business.

They were instantly involved in the business.

Yeah.

And I had the proof that I knew he was going to do well.

All right.

So I want to pivot because I know everybody's going to be like, how do I get leads on LinkedIn?

So if you're a salesperson, business owner, you know, sales manager, whoever you are, tell us, you said you became a LinkedIn influencer.

Yeah.

I didn't know what that term was before you even got into podcasting.

So

how did that happen?

Well, basically, when I first started my podcast, I had a rule for myself.

I'm going to post on LinkedIn every single day.

Okay.

And what would you post?

Well, it would just be whatever I decided to post a day.

I was very motivational and inspirational in the beginning.

I was working in corporate at the time and I wanted to push my podcast.

And so I made a rule that I was going to post every day.

But the key is, is that I figured out all the engagement hacks.

Okay.

So for example, on LinkedIn, a DM is the

highest viral action that you can take.

So if you DM somebody and they respond back, they're 85% more likely to see your post on their feed the next time that they log on.

I did not know that.

So I had the strategy.

I didn't know what I was doing at the time.

I didn't know that.

It was just madness.

I just figured it out.

I figured it out.

You were walking down the street one day and somebody sucked myself.

Hey, if you're in LinkedIn.

Well, I know the LinkedIn algorithm like the back of my head.

Yeah.

So when I first started, Gary Vee was somebody who I thought was very similar to me.

He had a podcast.

He was in marketing.

He had an agency.

He was motivational.

So I decided I was going to target his fans.

So I'd go on his recent post.

I'd see anybody who liked and commented.

This showed me that these people took viral action.

They were active on LinkedIn.

They enjoyed similar content.

So I would invite them to connect.

Hey, I see that you like Gary Vee's posts.

I love him too.

If you like his stuff, you're going to like mine.

I've got a podcast.

I'd love to talk about motivation.

Let's connect.

They'd be like, oh my gosh, sure.

Before I knew it, I had like 10,000 of Gary Vee's fans.

Wow.

I would always be like the top comment on his post.

And then so other people would be like, who's this girl with 100 comments, 100 likes on her post?

And then it would just be an effect.

And then

because I was very engaging and actually had conversations in the DMs, I got super fans that were like really invested in my success.

Oh, Holla talks to me.

Holla knows me.

And so it wasn't just about posting every day.

I used to have a 45-minute commute to Disney.

I'd post in the morning, but then I had a rule on the way back, I'd have to send all my DMs.

Now, were your posts intentional posts or were you like posting about your cats or like, what were you posting?

So I want to make sure that everybody knows, like, it's not just post to post.

There's probably a

well, back then, I was posting motivational posts because it reached the broadest audience and they were most likely shared.

And the second most viral action on LinkedIn is shares.

So if you want to go viral, you need shares.

So I used to post motivational, positive content so that it would go viral.

But LinkedIn has changed over the past six.

Like, you know, I became an influencer on LinkedIn six years ago, right?

So now if you want to do well on LinkedIn, you've got to think of a couple things.

Number one, it's got to intersect.

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Yeah, fam, I have to say, one of the coolest parts of my career is that it takes me all over the world.

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with linkedin's editorial agenda so linkedin is a careers hiring and recruitment site any of my posts that get like a hundred thousand likes million views they have something to do with careers and jobs and recruitment give us an example of what a post might say for so it might be like a tweet card so something that looks like a tweet if you guys have seen those posts it might be like the three things i look for hiring are you know reliability recruiting career yeah so it's like these are the three things i use to hire or these are red flags in a job interview or you know like here's these things to ask your you know the person interviewing you to secure the job or just exactly so something that has to do with careers hiring promotion because LinkedIn is a social media site but they're also competing with ZipRecruiter and Indeed and so they want to keep their editorial agenda to hiring careers recruitment they want to keep that brand so it's really important to do a couple posts a week about hiring recruitment and you have to figure out the intersection of what you talk about.

So I'm an entrepreneur, so it's really easy for me to talk about hiring.

This is what I look for for hiring.

I'm not going to talk about necessarily like being a recruiter or something like that, but whatever fits with my

if you were like in health and wellness, it could be like work-life balance is your angle of being in careers and using those keywords, right?

Okay.

Also, for like a sales training company, it might be like, hey, here's as a sales manager, here's, you know, four things to look for before you hire that

whatever.

Okay.

100%.

The other thing is, like, keywords are really important.

So these days, it's all about interest-based algorithms.

So every user on LinkedIn has an

interest-based cloud, basically, where it can say like what you're actually interested in based on the things that you like.

And so you need to make sure that you're using the same keywords over and over again in your profile, your title, your job descriptions, your posts.

I see.

And then LinkedIn can match like, okay, Holla talks about entrepreneurship.

So anybody who likes entrepreneurship, we're going to send her

content to them.

What could a person, I'm just going to pick a random industry.

Let's say if I sold,

oh, I don't know.

Let's keep it easy.

Let's say if I sold cars.

Yeah.

What could they post, you know, kind of some type of simmer?

Would it be like, hey, here's four things to ask the dealership about your purchase of a new car.

Would it be, what could you do on that?

Well, let me ask you, is this a local business?

Let's say it was a local business.

It would have to be a local business.

So my strategy for you would be actually to proactively invite your target market to your profile, which means that you would need to look up, you would need to know what are the titles of people that I'm looking for.

And then on LinkedIn, it's unlike any other social media platform because you can search people by city.

Okay, that makes sense.

So let's say, let's just stay in the car industry.

It's an industry, one of the industries we train.

Let's say that if they're selling, well, Ferraris, like or like, you know, let's say Range Rovers or something that's $150,000 plus, they're probably going to want to be looking up like high-level executives, business owners, right?

Exactly.

So you can type in business owner and let's say it's San Francisco.

Okay.

And then you would proactively try to connect with those people.

You might engage on their posts, bring them into your world.

And then when they engage on your stuff, LinkedIn will send a notification to all of their first connections who are likely in the same region.

That makes sense.

And then your stuff will get shared to even more people in that region.

So you've got to be strategic to invite the people who are your target audience, even as, and if you're a local business, it's really important.

Let's say if you sold life insurance over the phone or something, you could target what, like families between the ages of this and this that make this type of income.

Does it allow you to like target that?

You can't target that.

Titles,

location,

industry, company, company size.

Okay.

That's good.

Schools, colleges.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

Okay.

So

what are some other things that they might need to know?

Let's put yourself in their shoes.

Yeah.

Let's say that you go back before you do all this stuff.

Yeah.

And you're in corporate America and you get a sales job.

Yeah.

What would you do on LinkedIn to bring in more leads and appointments if you were in their shoes?

Yeah.

So first of all, you got to optimize your profile.

So like I said, keywords.

How do you, like LinkedIn is just like a search platform at this point.

Even ranks super high on Google search.

If you've ever googled your name, it's probably LinkedIn comes up first, right?

So you want to make sure that all the keywords that you think people need to use to find you are in your profile in your post you're using that you're strategic you actually think about the keywords that you're going to put in your profile okay yeah number two is you want to post right people want to see active profiles uh but it's not just enough to like post and ghost you need to have some strategy about it so that means engaging with other people on the platform potentially uh joining

this question this would be good yeah let's let's say you go back to your job you were for disney yeah right and let's say you were in sales for disney like corporate sales.

Yeah.

What would be, what would be like a post

you might have done to like start that engagement?

There's type of strategy you would have done there.

So I would have probably went with an educational angle.

And I'd be like, here's the top three ways to close your next deal.

You know,

the features matter on LinkedIn.

So this is something that we didn't talk about yet.

So like video actually doesn't do that well on LinkedIn.

It's just starting to pick up, but it's mostly like photographs, graphic posts,

captions with keywords.

That's what does well.

So I would do something that is a keyword-heavy caption

with like all the, and it gives meaningful content for people who want content from experts.

I would make sure

that I have

content in my profile that shows LinkedIn that I'm an expert.

This is the other thing.

LinkedIn, if I all of a sudden start talking about finance and I never talked about finance before, LinkedIn's not going to show my stuff to anybody.

Right.

He's going to be like, you're not an expert.

We're not going to feed the content.

So they're actually looking at your track record of performance, your last two weeks of engagement.

It'd be like me as a sales trainer.

Yeah.

Like talking about, you know, the end of the world, like food storage.

Yeah.

So

you've got to kind of like pick what you're going to talk about it and make sure it's on your profile and make sure it's on your post.

The other thing I would do is like lean into your own personal story.

Okay.

So photographs of yourself, action shots, you at a meeting, you making a deal, you on the phone, you on the computer, show people, like people love photographs.

And on LinkedIn, you actually get like points basically for dwell time.

And people actually stare at your photographs and it increases the...

If you're a salesperson and you're in a boardroom meeting with, you know, some executives, maybe you take a picture there and you're like talking or something shows that.

maybe you're an expert in something.

Yeah.

So you want to use a, you could use like a photograph and then pair it with something that is educational, right?

Or motivational.

Okay.

So let's say if I sold, I don't know, let's say if I sold, you know, commercial insurance, you know, maybe you post something about like the top three things to look for when renewing your insurance for next year or something like that.

So it has to be around, you want to focus on something that's going to trigger like, oh, wow, that's really valuable.

Yeah.

And then the key is the people who like and comment on your stuff, they're raising their hand.

They're saying, I'm interested in what you have to say.

Then you retarget them in the DMs

and you give them something for free.

Okay.

okay you give them some place to learn more then DM them and like hey saw that you comment on that if it helps we have a free guide that shows you how to xyz totally would you like me to send that over or something exactly so you build up your social currency and then you can lead them off linkedin eventually to a lead form to a call whatever it is that's better than just like cold messaging them and they have no idea who you are they've never really seen you or anything yeah and you want to think about like every post has a purpose right so some posts are meant to go viral maybe that's your more motivational inspirational photograph with an inspirational story or um like a career related post like i was telling you and then some are sales you want to just sell to your first connections anybody who likes and comments you retarget them in the details it is true what you're saying like even on my ig i have a little bit under like 900 000 followers but it's very niche specific to salespeople if i started doing mainly like motivational stuff i could probably get you know i probably have double the followers now

wouldn't have the same type of business right because now now when we're focused on sales they're like i want the sales training if i'm just another person posting motivational stuff you're not really separating apart so totally you got to you got to do kind of a happy balance i think where it's like you know you're you're posting stuff for business as well that you're targeting audience not just for more views because sometimes views don't just necessarily like to totally income right you know uh our

guy on our team was at one of Alex Hormozzi's events the other day and talking about social media.

And he even said the same thing.

He's like, I got the most

views and followers from this one reel I did on my favorite burrito recipe.

But then we went back and looked at the analytics.

Nobody bought any of his courses.

So he's like, why was they even doing that?

He's like, I got a lot of followers, but none of them from

At the Anza did anything.

That reminds me of like...

There's like some like meme type pages on LinkedIn where they post like cat videos.

It's like, nobody's buying from these people.

They're just getting followers, but they don't have a brand.

They don't have anything.

Yeah.

okay so what what would be a few other things that they could do to really like monetize linkedin from like a salesperson's perspective besides the dm strategy besides the posts like what are what are a few other like nuanced stuff that most people just would not know that i know you know i know i know uh i would be targeting events really okay so linkedin has these events that people sign up to and it tells you exactly what they want to learn about exactly what problems they have exactly what they're interested in.

Okay.

And so it could be like, for example, I sell a social media course.

You could sell like a sales course,

or

we can think of any example, but let's say if it's like some sort of, you know, solution that you have, and there's an event about solving that problem.

So you're a financial advisor and there's events, you know, they come and you're going to be able to do that.

Yeah,

build your wealth or whatever.

You can actually see who registers for those events on LinkedIn.

And that tells you that's my target audience.

I'm just going to invite all those people.

That makes sense.

Interesting.

The other thing is once you grow a following, you can use polls, right?

So I do something where when I have like a LinkedIn course, I'll be like, who here wants to level up their LinkedIn?

Yes, no.

Yeah.

They say yes, retarget them.

Hey, I've got this webinar coming up.

I'd love to invite you, blah, blah, blah.

Okay.

So you can actually just like kind of pull your audience, see what they're interested in, retarget them.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Okay.

Give us one more.

I know you got like a hundred more.

You're holding out on us.

Give us one more thing, like a nuance that most people just would not know that kind of separates you from anybody okay so one thing to note on linkedin it is still an organic platform where you can kind of just like hack the algorithm okay okay and the first 90 minutes is very important you know when you guys say hacked i've pictured like some kid like you know like in the basement in like russia and he's got like a hoodie over him he's like hacking like what is what does that mean how do you hack it so basically it's like if you understand the publishing and engagement strategies you will go much more viral okay and it's just like a recipe how do you how do you learn that where do they go well there's there's a course i have a course okay that's a good idea i have a course about that so there's like a lot um

so first of all you want to avoid spam filters okay so the first part of the linkedin algorithm when you put up a post it scans you for spam so it's looking for things like chunky paragraphs, which is counter, like not intuitive.

That's why you see all the influencers doing line-by-line style online.

Okay.

So they want people to skim.

They want it to be readable.

They're looking for grammar errors.

They're looking for anything, nudity, profanity, like the regular phone numbers,

follow for follow, anything that looks sketch.

Yeah.

They won't show your stuff to anybody.

So you need to know what the spam filters are.

Also, over tagging, over hashtagging.

Even tagging anybody who's not going to respond.

How many tags is an over-tagging?

None.

Just don't do it.

None, none.

Well, I even say three max.

But in general, I think hashtagging will hurt you.

It's just keywords now.

Hashtags don't really work.

Also, you can't tag people who won't engage on your post within the first 30 minutes.

So basically, all these things that people abused are now spam filters.

So people used to like tag 50 people.

Yeah.

They abused it.

So now if you tag anyone, if they don't like or comment in the first 30 minutes, you're deprioritized.

It looks like you're spamming.

So you don't tag anyone.

So there's spam filters that you've got to get through.

Then like the second stage of the algorithm is really all about viral action, and viral actions are all weighted differently.

Okay.

So, you want to

share?

Sorry, my brain's fried from speaking today.

I can't believe you did a podcast.

I went on Dan Fletchman's.

Do you know Dan Fletchman?

Yeah, yeah.

I went on his podcast right after a seven-hour workshop

last week in Beverly Hills.

And he asked me a couple of questions.

My brain was so fried.

I'm like, oh my gosh.

I feel like I'm 97 years old right now.

Yeah.

So sorry about that.

But shares are the most viral action.

So, and every viral action on LinkedIn is weighted.

Okay.

So shares are four points.

Comments are two and a half points.

A like is one point.

So you could actually, if you optimize for likes, you're never going to go viral.

You need to optimize for shares.

Okay.

Okay.

And so basically you want to make sure that if you're writing a post, like if I say, hey guys, comment below and share your story.

That's me trying to engage my first connections because I know I'm not going to go viral viral if i tell everybody to comment or maybe your cta is like hey you know share this with somebody who you feel like this will help or something like this that's almost your ct to just get or if you say nothing so like a viral tactic that we did once um is that i would find like really motivational quotes that went viral on instagram that i already know go viral yeah i would put it up on linkedin with no caption That would trigger people to want to share it with their own thoughts because I didn't tell them what to think.

So that would lead to like all these shares in us going viral.

So it's like you need to think about like, okay, what do I really optimizing for?

Every post is a purpose, like I was telling you.

Okay.

You got to kind of change it up a little bit.

You got to interrupt the pattern.

Cause if you're, if you're writing the same type of stuff in almost every post, if you're writing the same pattern, the brain recognizes patterns and they're not going to share it as much.

So when you, what you did is when you, you, let's say you wrote all that stuff and share if you agree or whatever.

And then the next one's just the thing with nothing on it.

Yeah.

What you did is just interrupted their pattern.

So they're like freaking out and they're going to share it.

And that's that's the other, it's a lot of it's like psychology.

Yeah.

On social media, if you give everybody the kitchen sink and you say, I've got the five ways that you need to do X, Y, Z, be like, okay, Holla knows it all.

Like I have nothing to share.

She already gave the five ways.

So like I'll purposely leave something out that's very obvious.

So people are like, oh, you forgot this, right?

And then they want to contribute and they have their own ideas.

That makes more sense.

Yeah.

Okay.

This has been a very interesting conversation because we always talk about sales, persuasion, and influence.

But really what you're doing is sales, persuasion, and influence as well in the form of LinkedIn and podcasting to get your message out there.

I always can say, you know, I always say you can have the best product, the best service, the best thing in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you're not going to go anywhere.

Yeah.

So where can they find out more details about maybe how they can look at maybe starting their own podcast or maybe if they want to learn how to generate like high quality leads in LinkedIn so they can sell more?

Where could they go to learn about that with you?

I have a course on LinkedIn.

It's a masterclass.

You can go to yachtmedia.com/slash slash course.

Brilliant.

Okay.

Go there if you want the two-day workshop.

Okay.

In terms of podcasting, I've got a podcast, Young and Profiting.

I talk all the time about growing podcasts because that's what I'm known for.

Where would they go to get that podcast?

Like iTunes, Spotify, just anywhere?

Spotify, Apple, YouTube, we're everywhere.

So Young and Profiting.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I've actually been on your show.

I remember interviewing.

I think we did a virtual.

Yeah, we did a virtual.

When was that?

I've been on so many podcasts.

Probably a year ago.

A couple years ago.

I'm like, Dave, you know how it is.

It was great.

We did an embrace.

bunch of podcasts and you're just like, can't remember anything.

Well, it's been a pleasure to have you watch.

Yeah, thank you.

Congratulations on crushing it.

I heard a lot of people come out there saying that you're really, really good.

Thank you.

So good job.

And we will see you on the next show.

Go to her site.

Look, if you want to be the best at what you do, you got to do what?

You got to commit.

to mastery, right?

You don't want to be a dabbler.

You don't want to be a winger who wings everything.

You don't want to be a know-it-aller.

You want to commit to mastery if you want to be in the top 1%.

To be in the top 1%, you got to learn skills that she's talking about and other skills we talk about on the show to get to the highest level.

So make sure you go to the website, check out her course, learn LinkedIn, get a podcast, and make selling even easier for you.

Thanks for being on.

Yeah, fam, it was so much fun to speak with Jeremy Miner in person for his podcast.

I loved being there in person.

I love doing more in-person content.

And it really just reinforced something that I've believed for years.

Whether you're closing deals and sales or building an audience on social media, it really all comes down to human psychology and creating those genuine connections.

Now, in my conversation with Jeremy, there was some takeaways that I want to just highlight.

First, that's mastering the art of storytelling.

Whether you're opening a sales conversation or starting a LinkedIn post, beginning with a story that people can visualize and become emotionally invested in is super important.

Remember back to how I opened my funnel hacking live presentation with Jenna Kutcher's car story.

That wasn't accidental.

It made 6,000 people lean in because they could see themselves in that moment.

Next, you've got to leverage a DM strategy.

And this works for any platform, but especially LinkedIn.

When somebody is engaging with your content, when they're liking, when they're commenting, they're raising their hand and they're saying, hey, I'm interested in this.

Pick me.

Don't let that opportunity slip and retarget them in the DMs.

That means reach out to them in the DMs.

They took the first action.

And so you want to respond with something valuable and not salesy.

Be of service and just keep building up that social capital.

And here's something Jeremy and I both believe.

You've got to commit to mastery.

You can't just dabble.

Pick one platform and then go all in.

Truly understand the algorithm.

Study the features and get your reps in.

I became the LinkedIn queen before I conquered other platforms because I focused on that one platform.

I actually stopped posting on Instagram and other platforms.

I only posted on my LinkedIn and podcast for two years.

And then I dominated both those channels.

Finally, remember that your personal story is your unfair advantage.

Corporate America taught me presentation skills that I still use today to land high ticket clients.

I got my first 30K a month retainer client, my second client ever, because I had good PowerPoint skills.

So your background, whatever it is, has given you unique skills that others don't have.

Make sure you get those skills and then use them.

Yeah, fam, if you found value in this conversation and you feel like you're now ready to level up your influence game, make sure you pay it forward by sharing this episode with somebody who needs to hear it.

Maybe they're struggling to generate quality leads or trying to build their personal brand.

This episode could be exactly what they need to hear.

And by the way, you don't just need to hear Young and Profiting Podcasts.

You can watch all our podcasts on YouTube.

And now with our Yap Live series, we're also on Spotify video.

You guys can follow me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn.

Just search my name.

It's Hala Taha.

And again, I want to say thanks to Jeremy for having me on his show.

It was such a fun fun conversation.

I hope you guys are enjoying this Yap Live series, enjoying hearing me on other podcasts from time to time and learning from me directly.

This is Halataha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.