How LinkedIn Changed My Life

Aside from this article, I have no words to represent what the LinkedIn platform has done for me, my business, career, personal life, and everything in between.

How could a social media network be anything more than something you open up haphazardly and scroll through until bored?

I used LinkedIn just like that and actually registered for the network in my days back in high school to have as an “online resume.”

Little did I know, that’s only 1% of what LinkedIn actually is yet most people leave it at that and then complain that they’re not getting results. 

How I Truly Discovered LinkedIn’s Community

Everything began to slowly change for me when I was writing an article on Influencers in the Virtual Reality & Mixed Reality space for my businesses blog. After doing hours of research, a name repeatedly kept on coming up again and again, article after article. Alan Smithson, CEO of MetaVRse was ranked as one of the top leaders in the industry and had one of the best social media brands out there for his field. Guess his #1 platform? LinkedIn. Every time I googled his name a LinkedIn link would come up in the 1-3 search results.

I clicked on it and checked out his posts and that was the first time I saw that LinkedIn had a content feed just like Facebook. I eventually ended up interviewing Alan on my podcast (Humans 2.0) and I asked him a bit about why he was posting on LinkedIn. He said something very profound to me “I try to post every day and haven’t a missed a day yet.” I began to look through Alan’s posts and saw they ranged from information-rich industry news to even slightly personal stories and experiences. 

My mind began to shift and learn. After that interview, I began to do my best posting every day. I failed. I would try to come up with advanced topics to fit in LinkedIn’s 1300 character count and eventually that was too daunting of a task for me and I stopped. 

At the beginning of 2018, I ended up interviewing Quentin Allums. Basically everyone on LinkedIn knows this branding master and genuine human being and when I got to hear him speak on my show….he told me an amazing story of how he went from a low point in his life with -$900 in the bank to eventually day after day using LinkedIn to grow his brand and eventually a successful business. Quentin told me that of course producing content is important but engaging and creating a community is even more important. Coming from a video game background, like Quentin he made the analogy of communities built on video games and how similarly people’s roles functioned to a social media platform like LinkedIn. 

I remember literally the second after the interview ended…I was on LinkedIn trying to figure out how to use it from Quentin’s guidance. Additionally, at that time I had just interviewed Kyle Mogged, someone who originally worked with Gary Vaynerchuk on his content team. He ended up asking me if I had any kind of micro-content that he could put up on his page as a way to promote our episode to his following. I had a loss for words and never even thought of that or at least didn’t want to put in the effort to do so. 

Prior to that I had tweeted, Facebooked, and even used LinkedIn to get the word out on my podcast…but not correctly. I would write a text post and say “Hey guys check out episode 14 w/ {guest} we talk about x, y, z. If you want to check out the podcast please check out the links on iTunes, blah blah blah."

I learned that if you want to continuously grow and attract new listeners to your podcast…you can’t possibly expect a busy person with a productive life is going to randomly stumble upon your post and listen to your 30-40 minute podcast episode just because you said so….

However, spending some more effort & time creating a valuable 60-second teaser of your podcast episode and if someone stumbles across that video they will be much more likely to not only check out the full podcast but also share it to their friends.

LinkedIn Daily Marathon 

Day after day. Podcast episode after episode. Guest after guest began my daily LinkedIn marathon of creating valuable content as a way of engaging and getting to know others like me in the LinkedIn content creator community. At first, nobody saw my posts and would routinely get 1-3 likes on each video post but I stuck it out.

Just like going to the gym, LinkedIn is also all about the reps and how you show up on the days when you don’t want to show up. How many reps can you do on a great day and a not so great day? Some videos will go viral, some won’t be seen by a sizable amount of people even after you’ve built a solid audience of people who care about you and the topics you bring. 

Sometimes I would get thoughts along the lines of “Mark, why are you posting a video? Nobody wants to hear from a 20-year-old.” But then I saw somebody that was my exact age posting content and absolutely crushing the game, Swish Goswami. He gave me the mental model I needed to show up and be myself every day despite a biological number. 

The main point to emphasize in this process is never tie anything to your happiness. Which can be tricky when you see a number of people who like or don’t like you and the content you put up that may be close to your heart. Never tie your mood or happiness to social media in general or the number of likes you get it because there will be high moments and low points. Stick it out and play the long marathon and you will surprise yourself and be able to push through when most quit or give excuses to not show up. 

I learned that every time I put out a 60-second promotional video highlighting an impactful idea with my guest, it presents me to the LinkedIn world as some kind of expert or at least a valuable content curator. The real power behind this idea is that if I record an episode with Seth Godin and put out a promotional video for it…everyone in Seth’s network has a chance of seeing it in their feed. 

LinkedIn’s Psychological Impact

The first video I ever recorded and uploaded to LinkedIn was the #LetsGetHonest initiative urging people to share something in their life that they want to get off their chest. I took this challenge to heart and used my Macbook’s webcam to record a 90-second video talking about my social anxiety and how much of a neck hold my fears around talking to people had on me. 

After a few months went by, I realized what actually had happened to my mind and psyche after recording that video (alongside exposing myself to fear & discomfort every day). I learned that things in our lives that hold the most power over us in our personal lives are given that ability from us because they are cast into the shadows of our mind and subsequently hide them in the real world to others. 

One of the meta foundational layers you can tweak that dictates most of your behavior is ... identity. Which is shaped by many factors, but one of the biggest influences is how people in your social circles perceive you...

Talking about your goals to your family, friends and everyone is of the utmost importance. It's important to hold yourself accountable as well as surrounding yourself with people that will keep you honest. 

I've recently realized that social media is basically a big loudspeaker announcement system. What if you could tell the entire world about your truthful progress? Social identity psychological reinforcement on steroids. It's no quick fix but a fundamental game-changer that will assist you for the rest of your life. 

Media & Money

I remember the exact moment and day I received these 3 messages that changed my life:

• “Hey Mark! I'd be honored to interview you for my podcast, the donothing podcast. I do them in person and on video, they take 2 hours, and are followed up with an article in Forbes. I'll be in NY taping episodes in a couple of weeks and I've got a slot holding for you!”  
• “Hi Mark, I founded and serve as the executive director for an organization with 60 employees and we are thinking of starting a podcast. We want to do it right and would like to hire you to be our consultant to assist us with what to do and what not to do. Let me know if you are interested.”
• “Hey Mark!! I have a question for you, would you be interested in being one of our speakers for the LinkedinLocalBoston event on Sept 12th?!!”

After each one of those events, I connected in my mind that LinkedIn was generating me so much free PR as well as positioning me to be a paid speaker and making serious money from helping an organization doing something that will generate impact. 

This is when LinkedIn moved from a light giddy “personal branding” move to …. oh wow this is actually an unbelievably ROI positive business tool I can use to spread my influence and message to the entire world sustainably.

Hit LinkedIn Hard

I don’t think LinkedIn has started yet. Jeff Weiner and the rest of the team at LinkedIn is unbelievably smart and are building something much bigger than "networking" or "social media."

You should do what you want but if you’re not utilizing LinkedIn as a strategy for growing your brand, business, networking, even personal matters….you are missing out on this underrated and undervalued network. 

I’m trying to post as many times as I can on LinkedIn. Some days it’s 2 other times its 4 times but just creating content isn’t the only factor you should focus on. Engaging with like-minded individuals and collaborating with the leaders in the community is absolutely pivotal. Show up every day and don’t let your own excuses or other’s excuses slow you down. 

If you need any assistance or help ... don't hesitate to reach out!

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Listen to the Humans 2.0 Podcast

If you’re looking for a technological self-development podcast that focuses all about the human experience transformation in this 21st-century world, you should definitely check out my podcast, Humans 2.0 

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