LinkedIn Unlocked: A LinkedIn Newsletter About LinkedIn

Hey there fellow plotter …

(Plotter because you’re here at the Plotting Success newsletter, not because you’re Snidely Whiplash twirling your monocle.)

No, I don’t have the hiccups. That trio of LinkedIns up top is intentional.

I’ll get to the why in a minute. First, I want to thank you for being here.

I seriously mean that, and not just as a clearing my throat after grabbing the mic kind of way.

Starting out on a platform where you have no pre-existing footprint feels like shouting into an empty hallway, hoping someone will hear your voice and respond.

I honestly did not expect a lot of people to show up. But the signups to this newsletter gave me an audience, and like I wrote up top, I really appreciate that.

I’m only here right now because of you.

In January, I was like: LinkedIn be balls.

In February, I matured a bit and adjusted my thinking to People I really like are doing interesting things on this platform.

In March, I started posting in earnest, not getting it wrong exactly, but definitely not getting it right yet.

April saw me re-upping that shit hard for 30 days in a row.

By the beginning of May, I was hitting my groove and getting good results, but not yet comfortable. Nowhere near reverting back to my earlier position of LinkedIn be balls, yet still far from the flow I long to feel in every creative space I inhabit.

(Of course LinkedIn is a creative space.)

I’m not naive enough to think I’ll feel flow while writing this week’s newsletter, or next week's, or even the three after that.

But I will soon.

Because that’s how it always works once I’m committed to figuring something out and have found a way to make it fun enough that I can’t stand the thought of not growing.

Exactly a year ago, my COO and partner, Niamh, and I were scrambling to recover from a dick punch that left us both gasping for air (even though only one of has the twig and berries).

A writers' strike had effectively guillotined every film and TV project on our slate …

Followed by the sudden closure of our biggest ghostwriting client …

Leaving us with a nearly seven-figure crater to fill.

On Thursday we got the news. On Friday we told all our partners. On Saturday and Sunday we were scrambling to stay afloat in the story. On Monday we told everyone in the company who would be financially affected. And on Tuesday we told the entire studio.

I spoke for 45 minutes without stopping. I’m sure that’s no surprise if you know me, but despite my history of talking, I had never wielded more weight in my words. I was in a fugue, barely aware of one sentence finishing before the next was rolling out of my mouth.

Of course I was crying.

I’m crying a little right now after grabbing the transcript from that meeting and reading some of what I said to our beautiful studio a year ago when the suffering was still raw.

If feels great to be speaking from the scars instead of my open wound.

This is how I ended those 45 minutes:

"Now that we’re back at the bottom, it’s clear what we need to do, and once we get it done, there will be nothing to stop us from reaching the peak. And we’ll live there, we'll make camp there, we’ll invite other people up to the top with us, and we’ll be the ones who did it.”

Then I turned it over to Niamh. She anchored what I was saying with specifics about how we were going to turn things around. Because she is the grounding force for my business-minded grandiosity.

We ended the meeting collectively hurt and communally-inspired.

Niamh remained a sherpa by my side, and together we navigated our studio through an unrelenting blizzard, with a rope line of creatively-intrepid climbers behind us.

We delivered on every promise made in that meeting. And as a result, we’ve already made more in publishing revenue (and profit) this year than we did in all of 2023.

I’ll tell you more about our big wins in publishing, along with some our other storytelling wins, in later newsletters. I’m also excited to tell you all about all the ghostwriting, and how that’s changing my life in multiple areas, while honoring every letter of our NDAs, of course.

A lot of our success has come directly from embracing LinkedIn — and for that I’m grateful to YOU, the people who showed me that this could be awesome.

You have inspired me to start with the one flywheel I am one-hundred percent positive we have in common right now: LinkedIn.

I wrote my first LinkedIn post to everyone, but I was the primary reader, explaining things to myself. It was called Why I Chose LinkedIn as My Platform.

That post got more impressions on day one than anything else I’ve written since.

Gave me a lot of false confidence.

I can rock this shit like a one man Coachella!

But then I stopped talking about LinkedIn and had to start over.

I kept rolling the dice and moving my piece around the board so I could internalize the rules enough to play a better game.

I’ve tested it multiple times. LinkedIn loves it when you put LinkedIn in a headline.

I put LinkedIn in this headline three times because it made me laugh, and because I wanted to see if the bump in impressions carries over to a newsletter. In that order.

In the last three months LinkedIn has gone from a tentative experiment to a relationship renaissance, breathing new life into old connections and forging powerful new alliances.

What I am LOVING About LinkedIn:

1. Genuine connections and conversations with new and old friends alike. I have smiled and laughed and learned and grown as a communicator.
2. The networking opportunities are insane. Not even one day after taking it seriously, I saw how many of my friends are here, without all the crap I can’t stand about Facebook (stay tuned for my Why I changed my mind about Meta! post in some multiverse future).
3. Ample avenues and opportunities for business growth. How do you make money on LinkedIn? Pay attention, dude. It’s that simple. If you’re a marketer with a storyteller’s brain, or a storyteller with a marketing mind, you should see bottomless wells of opportunity, and countless ways of dipping your bucket.
4. LinkedIn is a place to think out loud in real-time. If you’re not engaging in drive-by comments, but are instead being thoughtful to yourself and the creator you’re commenting on, you are using the best parts of your mind instead of the most disposable and fleeting.
5. The ability to see my business from an outsider’s perspective. This has helped me to recognize ways we can improve our present to grow a better future.
6. Future casting. There is never a day on LinkedIn when I don’t find myself seeing the future unfolding in front of me. Not just for my storytelling businesses, but for the world and all of her industries.
7. Content marketing, oh yeah. I never wanted to be a content marketer when I grew up, but I got good at it fast when building our fiction factory, and I owe much of our studio’s success to that skill set. Being on LinkedIn has reminded me how much I like to play with those particular toys.

I deserve a pie in the face for my years of dismissing the platform.

What I am NOT LOVING about LinkedIn:

1. Too many self-appointed gurus. Show don’t tell, assholes. Your one-size-fits-all advice is a disservice to legitimate learners. Worse, it often promotes the kind of content that ends up as the dead skin of our internet (like all those craptacular SEO articles I wrote back in ’08 about buying auto insurance in Ohio).
2. Algorithms are both ice cream and diarrhea. Our lives are run by them, and that inhumanity can be exhausting, except when it helps us to be more human. The problem is that algorithms can be gamed, but rarely, if ever, for the better. Posts on LinkedIn (like books on Amazon or shows on Netflix) which are designed solely for clicks often lack substance, detracting from meaningful discourse and making time on the platform less rewarding for most of us.
3. Lazy AI: I love AI and use it daily, but I refuse to let my creativity atrophy while I’m developing this latest skill set. I write clean copy faster than it takes me to fix LLM-generated prose. Yes, that colors my perspective, but I want to drown in vomit at A) the number of comments that have clearly been generated by AI and B) the number of influencers encouraging people to use AI in ways that don’t benefit the collective in the short- or long-term. Using AI as part of your toolset can make you a top-tier content creator; using it as a crutch to do your work for you will only dilute your critical thinking and stunt your potential.
4. Cold DMs: Hi [Name], I noticed you're in [Industry]. Want to hop on a quick call to discuss how I can help you generate 1000x more leads?" Dude, you suck, and based on how hard you suck, I am forced to believe that at least four of your ancestors on each side sucked just as hard if not harder. I would rather down a shot of expired rat milk than make a cold call, so I’m coming at this biased, but if you’re going to DM or email me, can you please take ONE MINUTE to know something about me so you don’t seem like a human loogie? If my business ever needs your services, please put a pillow over my face and hold it there until I change careers.
5. Performative authenticity. Vulnerability is powerful when it's genuine, but it loses its luster as a personal branding tactic. Authenticity is a way of being. Don’t microwave my mac and cheese, then call it homemade.
6. Non-stop commercials, with some users constantly broadcasting their achievements and services without offering any real value or engagement. This turns the platform into a sea of noise, making it harder to find meaningful content and genuine connections.
7. Echo chambers suck and they’re everywhere on LinkedIn. Echo chambers suck and they’re everywhere on LinkedIn. Echo chambers suck and they’re everywhere on LinkedIn. It’s a never-ending loop of the same talking points: a LinkedIn version of Groundhog Day. Groupthink is exhausting. Consensus is comfortable, but it does not lead to innovation.

It wasn’t even an afterthought at this time last year, but LinkedIn is now a cornerstone of my business strategy and a wellspring of inspiration.

What I have GAINED since being on LinkedIn (that I would not have otherwise):

1. A deeper understanding of my network. You never know which seeds will sprout, but the more you sow, the richer your harvest will be. And after 15 years, my web of connections could catch a blue whale.
2. New partnerships for Sterling & Stone and Invisible Ink. Both are relationship-and-idea businesses, so partnerships are lifeblood for growth. Adding LinkedIn to what we’re already doing is proving to be a remarkable accelerant.
3. New products and services for Invisible Ink. One of my favorite things to say is “There’s nothing we love to write more than a win-win scenario!” StoryStreams (a story branding and email autoresponder product) is the first offer born from pairing our skillset to an obvious market need. This kind of relationship-based offering is perfect for LinkedIn.
4. Content marketing is a garden: ideas cross-pollinate to create blooms of innovation. Getting a long look at the landscape has given us scads of ideas.
5. I feel like the old me, but stronger. I used to write a metric ton of content online, until I quit cold turkey to launch Sterling & Stone. Now I’m back, both with the words and making my rounds with podcast appearances. I’m highly-verbal and love getting to discuss storytelling from all kinds of different angles depending on the audience.
6. LinkedIn is like holding a mirror to my business: Being consistently engaged on the platform shines a spotlight into the hidden corners of our company, illuminating potential improvements and untapped potential.
7. A separate identity: For the first time in many years, I am developing a business identity away from Sterling & Stone. Invisible Ink helps with that, but so does being out in digital public discussing a wider spectrum of subjects. And both businesses will be bigger and better if I support their growth instead of make their evolution reliant upon me.

LinkedIn is now a map guiding me toward meaningful connections and breakthroughs.

What I have LEARNED about LinkedIn (and what I’ll do differently as a result going forward)

1. LinkedIn is a long-term play. Magic is in the relationships, and so far for me that has come almost exclusively in the DMs. I only have 30 minutes per day scheduled for LinkedIn, which feels like simultaneously too much and not nearly enough for all the things I want to do here. But honoring that time block is important, because I need to grow within those constraints. I hate breaking streaks, and the last two days are the first two days since being on LinkedIn when I’ve not posted, but that’s because I used the time to write this for you, and I’m super glad that I did.
2. I don’t like writing disposable content. It takes me longer to make shit I don’t care about, so I might never write another listicle, unless it’s something like 7 Reasons Why AI Can Write Better Listicles Than You! I have a couple dozen listicles I wrote but will not be posting on LinkedIn. Because we both deserve better.
3. My target reader is me. “A writer” is just one of the many things I am, but that label is a galaxy far, far away from my identity. One of the reasons I write is to figure shit out. Narrative order sharpens my ability to reason. If I write for me first, then the same thing will happen as has always happened before: I will naturally be of service, meet super cool people, and attract the right collaborators and partners to the things I am doing.
4. I am not on LinkedIn for Lead Gen. Of course leads will always be nice, but contrary to my initial motive, that’s not my reason for sticking around. With Sterling & Stone, I’m looking for deeper connections with some of the production companies and executives we do business with, along with adding talent to our studio over time. And I would love to raise the profile of Invisible Ink. But both businesses are at the stage where we need a harpoon instead of a net. We deliver top-quality perennial seller books tailored to their ideal market and reader, but we need to refine the experience for our authors now that ghostwriting is its own business, instead of something we excel at on the side.
5. If I’m spending time here, then I need it to feel more like me. My initial profile was all content marketing, with little soul to season it. I’m still appealing to a specific audience, but I’ve shifted to a profile that feels less like a sales pitch and more of a genuine reflection of who I am.
6. LinkedIn is its own medium. The platform is evolving fast. I plan on evolving with it. Video content is blowing up, and I believe that as much dead skin as there’s going to be with AI generated content and comments, there will also be new kinds of content and connections.
7. Investing in relationships pays off in ways you can’t predict. From partners to projects to podcast appearances and new areas of business, LinkedIn has already yielded a bigger bounty than I expected in such a short time. But I am more surprised by the specifics of those new opportunities.

That was a lot of business shit, so I figure we should probably end with a joke.

Why don’t skeletons use LinkedIn?

Because they lack the guts to make new connections.

Let me know in the comments (or DMs if you’re shy), which storytelling flywheel you’re most interested in hearing about next!