I built a six-figure writing consultancy in under two years without making a single sales call.
And the only marketing channel I used was LinkedIn.
I know I’m in danger of sounding like one of those growth hacker wankers, but I promise I’m not. This is real talk and I’m sharing my story in case it helps you.
I launched my writing consultancy in March 2020.
· Year 1, I made $81,815
· Year 2, I made $120,326
· Year 3 is work in progress, but I closed 2022 on $130,670
97.53% of my revenue is profit because I have low overheads.
Now for a solopreneur consultancy, that’s not too shabby. Especially when you put it in the depressing context that only 12% of businesses owned by women bring in over $100,000 per year*.
In my first year 40% of my revenue came from LinkedIn. As my business grows, the number of regular customers and referrals also grows, but about 25% of my revenue still comes from LinkedIn.
That’s over $95,000 in revenue since I started my business.
So, when people tell me they don’t use LinkedIn as a new business tool, I tell them that’s a shame, because they’re missing out.
I’m no LinkedIn guru, but I do make LinkedIn work for my business. And the LinkedIn ghostwriting service I offer brings in $$$ for my clients too.
So, I thought I’d share what’s worked for me, cos it might help you.
We’ll cover:
Why posting on LinkedIn works.
Who LinkedIn won’t work for.
Five things that have worked for me on LinkedIn.
Whether the size of your LinkedIn audience matters.
So, if that sounds like it could help you lift your LinkedIn game, come on in, the water’s lovely.
Posting on LinkedIn ain’t magic, it’s content marketing
I’m not here to persuade you to get active on LinkedIn (although I defo recommend it because it’s awesome). But if you’re looking for a quick recap of the benefits of showing up on the old LinkyLinky here’s a rundown:
· Make your ideal clients aware of you and what your business does.
· Encourage people to feel they know and trust you.
· Attract more business enquiries.
· Increase your conversion rate on proposals.
· Attract opportunity, community, and top talent.
Posting on LinkedIn is content marketing. Content marketing is based on the philosophy that the most effective way to promote your business is to focus on your ideal clients’ aspirations. You create and share content that helps those clients solve their problems and achieve their goals.
As you do that, you establish affinity, trust, and a reputation as an expert in your field. By showing up regularly and sharing content, you also increase the likelihood you’re top of mind when your ideal clients need help with those problems you solve.
When you get content marketing right, you see an increase in new business enquiries and your conversion rate on proposals also improves. But lots of people don’t get content marketing. They don’t realise how powerful it is. They don’t understand that if you master content marketing you don’t have to sell.
Instead of cold calling, people come to you to ask for help. You diagnose their problem, propose a solution, check they can afford your rates, send them a summary of your recommendations (which takes 20 mins tops because you’ve packaged your services) and over 80%** of people say, great when do we start?
Not everyone has what it takes to bring in $$$ on LinkedIn
Before you go any further I should say that making money in LinkedIn is pretty simple … but it ain’t easy. It requires nous and stickability.
If you’re not willing to:
1. Play the long game and put in the hours.
2. Make a plan and stick to it.
3. Show up consistently.
4. Write and write and write some more.
5. Put the legwork into commenting and engaging AS WELL as posting.
LinkedIn (and indeed content marketing in general) probably ain’t for you.
And that’s ok. There are lots of other ways to promote your business out there. I love LinkedIn because of the way it attracts opportunity and community, and the way it qualifies potential clients before they contact me, so I never have to make the hard sell.
Let’s dig a little deeper on those five success factors.
1. You won’t make money overnight
The other day on LinkedIn (natch) a marketing consultancy in the UK posted about how well content marketing was working for them. A sales guy popped up in the comments, saying he was well impressed because in his experience most agencies can’t make bank this way.
And he’s right. Most agencies can’t make content marketing work for them because they don’t understand it's a long game where the effort is front loaded. You build hard for your first few years before starting to reap exponential rewards. Content marketing is wildly effective when you nail it. But it takes time, effort, consistent commitment, and confidence in your strategy to deliver.
Check out the diagram below from SEMRUSH. It’s a great illustration of how different types of marketing perform, and how well executed content marketing works cumulatively becoming more effective over time, as you build a body of content and a community.
Content marketing isn’t for everyone because it takes discipline, grit, and patience. So, you’ve got to be in it for the right reasons. To have an authentic desire to help the people you serve.
I don't create free resources like this just to sell my services. It’s about helping consultants, coaches, and freelancers like you improve your content, because being a solopreneur ain’t an easy row to hoe. We’ve got to be everything from admin wrangler to hype merchant. And (probably because we’re stretched thin) our businesses are more likely to fail.
Freelance life can be hard and lonely. That’s why my mission is to help freelancers who hate selling use content to grow their business instead. And hey, if you find my content useful, you might think of me if you need some help with copy or refer your mate my way. But that’s a bonus. So, be clear on why and how you’re using content to add value to your community before you start investing time in content creation.
And LinkedIn isn’t just a long game. It’s also an investment of time. I spend (at least) three hours writing content and three hours engaging on here every week. But my ROI last year was about $104 per hour spent on LinkedIn. So crunch the ROI on your other marketing activities and see how LinkedIn compares.
2. You’ll need a plan
To make money on LinkedIn you have to know you want to achieve by posting here.
Once you know why you’re showing up each day, you need a content strategy.
A solid LinkedIn content strategy has three parts.
1/ Identify your expert topics
These are subjects you want to become famous for that are both relevant to your ideal clients and grow your business.
2/ Confirm your content pillars
Your content pillars combine your expert topics with social proof you know your shit and personal stories that help people get to know you as a human.
3/ Plan your posting strategy
This is how often you talk about different topics.
Typically, business content has three different purposes:
1. Entertain
2. Educate
3. Sell
Each type of content benefits your business in a different way. To grow your business, use a balanced mix. A sensible split is +90% entertain & educate vs -10% sell.
Then develop a content plan to structure your week or month of content. Made you a cheeky wee two pager walking you through how to develop a solid LinkedIn content strategy.
3. You’ll need to be consistent
Once you got your content strategy sorted, showing up consistently is half the battle.
Consistency is a funny thing.
· Consistently showing up.
· Consistently practicing helpful habits.
· Consistently trying not to be a colossal tool.
Cos with consistency you get the benefit of repeatedly doing whatever thing it is you do, but then you get added spadoinkle as well.
The consistency itself creates momentum.
You become the sort of person who regularly runs, or writes, or rises at 4:00am to meditate on Elon Musk’s perineum (no kink shaming here team, you do you).
And when it comes to showing up, you get the bonus of the mere exposure effect. Anyone who’s had the ineffable delight of doing coaching with me will have heard me bang on about the mere exposure effect because it’s a truly magical thing.
The mere exposure effect is our tendency to prefer things because we’re familiar with them. It’s why we walk the same way to work, go to the same café, order the same coffee. Not because we wouldn’t like alternative options, but we prefer the things we’re familiar with.
Happens with people too.
If you show up places like LinkedIn regular enough, people get familiar with you.
And (unless they think you’re a total nozzle) they will prefer you to another total stranger that they’re less familiar with, which works in your favour when it comes to winning work.
This faux familiarity works so well that we can even develop parasocial relationships with people we follow online, feeling as if we have a real rapport with them when they’re completely unaware of our existence.
4. Post more
There are no hacks for getting better at content. No matter what anyone says.
By all means study content hooks, play with top performing LinkedIn post templates and different post formats, but there’s no way around practice.
Habit guru James Clear tells a story about a study that involved a cohort of students studying photography. At the beginning of the term, they were spilt into two groups. One group were told they’d be graded on quantity. The more photos they submitted, the higher their grade. The second group was graded on excellence. The better their photographs, the more they’d score.
As the term progressed the teachers noticed a curious thing. The students in the first group were consistently submitting better work than the students in the second group, even although it was the second group being scored on quality.
The reason?
Practice. The first group were cranking out the work. They were learning through doing. In contrast, the second group were paralysed by the pursuit of perfection. They submitted less work, they learned less, and at the end of the term they lagged behind their peers in quality as well as quantity.
I often recommend new LinkedIn creators do a thirty-day LinkedIn challenge, where you post every day for a month. Not only does this boost your profile and following, it also makes you a better writer, and you establish a regular posting habit. Give it a go.
5. Engage more
Spend more time engaging than you do posting.
LinkedIn is a social media platform, so you need to be social to make it work.
You wouldn’t run into a networking event, holler your elevator pitch at the room, hare out again, and expect to win business from that behaviour?
So why would you expect that to work on LinkedIn?
If you’re a LinkedIn newbie, the best place to start is simply following people who interest you and commenting on their content. Do that for a few months to get a feel for the lay of the land. Then you’ll know whether you’re keen to go all in and start publishing yourself.
Does size matter?
Last time I checked, I only had 2,188 LinkedIn followers. But as I mentioned above (yes I am quite pleased with myself) I’ve also made $95,000+ from posting on LinkedIn in the last three years. So, while sharing tips for LinkedIn feels a tad awks because I’m clearly no LinkedIn guru or influencer, I am making it work for my business in the $$$ department.
If you’re a coach or a consultant, it appears size doesn’t matter that much when it comes to your LinkedIn following***. It’s the composition of your community and how you tickle them. So, let’s talk about that.
Don’t rely on growing organically on LinkedIn.
Unless you are:
Already famous / notorious.
Extraordinarily hot.
Very, very, very good at writing for LinkedIn.
You will need to put in extra legwork and connect with your ideal clients.
I was pretty dedicated about this in the first year of my business and grew my following from 250-over 1,000 in eight months. Then I got lazy. And it took two years for me to attract my next 1,000 followers.
If you want to grow your following by 1,000 people, you’ll need to send 7-10 contact requests a day, every working day, for the next year. Not everyone will say yes, hence the overkill. If you want to up your chances of being accepted by someone as a connection, engage with their content before you send a contact request. People like people who show an interest in them.
The holy trinity to grow a bankable community is to combine:
1. Targeted commenting
2. Targeted connecting
3. Targeted posting
Let’s talk about that third point.
Creating highly relevant posts that speak directly to the problems you solve for your ideal client are key to making LinkedIn pay. You have to connect your content with the services you offer, and the simplest way to do that is to teach people how to do what they pay you to do, for free.
So, find out what’s really ripping your ideal client’s gusset. Double down on conversations about their pain points. Then serve up content that solves those problems for free. This proves you’re qualified to fix their pain.
Hire me to write your LinkedIn content
Know the importance of building your personal brand, but can’t find time to craft thoughtful, intelligent content for LinkedIn? I do LinkedIn ghost writing for a select few special humans.
* US stats. I can’t find comparable research for the NZ market. Please HMU if you know of any.
**Based on my 84% conversion rate on proposals in 2022.
*** Huge hoofing caveat klaxon. The relevance of this advice depends on your business model. Coaches and consultants like me offer high value services. We only need a handful of repeat clients a year to make six figures. If you sell low value products you’ll need a bigger following to make bank.