EP #025: Mark Cuban can break LinkedIn rules...

One of my clients has a spreadsheet of influencers to emulate on LinkedIn. Most of the people on his list are exceptionally successful:

• Fortune 500 CEO

• Celebrity CEO

• Founder of a prominent brand

My advice: He should ignore nearly all of them.

Here’s why: most celebrity executives have enormous success on LinkedIn IN SPITE OF their tactics, not BECAUSE of them.

A great example of this phenomenon is former Shark Tank judge and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban. He can get away with lazy content creation because he’d already built a brand with his audience. 

When people like Mark come to LinkedIn, they bring a massive following along with them. And celebrity covers a multitude of bad behaviors.

Here are a few of them:

1) Sharing articles

Mark has 7M followers. He can get away with sharing articles (and poor grammar). But for the rest of us, sharing articles doesn’t work on LinkedIn. Full stop.

If you look at the average views, likes, and comments on a shared article, it is nearly always 20% of the engagement of a text or photo post. 

Pro tip: Most people won’t take the time to read an article. If you are going to share an article, add value for your audience by summarizing the key points. 

2) Posting once per week

If you already have an established audience, you don’t need to publish frequently. Your followers will find your content, even if it is posted sparsely.

The same is not true for a CEO who is growing their audience from scratch. Most of your content is only shown to a fraction of your audience in the best case scenario. And if you’re not consistent with your post schedule, your content will get drowned out by the volume of competing content each day.

The only way to overcome these obstacles is to consistently publish high-quality content. Our data shows that 2-3 times per week is the absolute minimum needed for someone with <10,000 followers to grow their audience.

The people with the largest following most often publish content 10+ times PER WEEK.

3) They just post selfies 

This is actually a thing. Leaders posting shots of themselves with little to no meaningful context. But if the person is recognizable, regularly publishing images of themselves is an effective way to attract attention.

For a CEO who is (a) not as well known, or (b) has <20k followers, on the other hand, it’s an ineffective tactic.

If you’re going to post a photo, be sure there’s a point. It should support a personal story or highlight a valuable lesson.

The tl;dr:

So who should regular leaders be following for inspiration? Follow influencers who have built their audience from scratch. People who have garnered an audience from 0 to 20,000+ followers did so by discipline and best practices:

• Consistent posting

• Educating their audience

• Prioritizing authenticity 

Remember, the point of investing in a presence on LinkedIn is not to imitate celebrity CEOs. It’s to develop your brand as a trusted thought leader in your industry. You can’t do that with gimmicks or lazy content creation. Offer value to your audience every time you post.

Thanks for reading! If you know of someone who would enjoy this newlsetter, please forward it to them. And, if you’re a leader looking to become a thought leader on LinkedIn, sign up for a consultation. On the call, I can share specific advice based on your situation, and see if we’re a good fit to work together. You can sign up for a consultation here.

Best,
Justin

Justin M. Nassiri | Founder & CEO
M: 650.353.1138 | E: [email protected]
250 Fillmore St Suite 150, Denver, CO 80206
www.ExecutivePresence.io

Executive Presence specializes in helping top-tier executives boost their visibility, activate their network, and position themselves as thought leaders via our premium, fully-managed LinkedIn service.

Our unique process involves ex-McKinsey, BCG, and Bain consultants conducting monthly hour-long interviews with our clients, and turning them into impactful daily LinkedIn posts to establish their unique voice and authority. On average, our clients see a 500% bump in engagement in their first 30 days with us. Data is continuously analyzed to improve engagement and identify impactful messaging that you can use for conferences, podcasts, and internal communications.