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how to BEAT the new LinkedIn algorithm in 16 minutes
Matt Gray·youtube.com·14 min read·Mar 28
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178 segmentsLinkedIn is one of the most underestimated platforms that are out there.
In the last three years, I've grown my presence to over 846,000 followers in just 36 months,
all without spending a cent on ads. I was going collaborating with my team and we thought that
we should go and put together a deck of 80 slides that go in detail out that entire strategy,
the playbook, all the different tactics and systems we use so you can go and hand this
off to your team to grow your presence. Let's get into it. So my LinkedIn drives over 59 million
organic views every single month without spending a dime on ads. Here you can see, you know, I was
ranked by Tapio, a third-party platform, as the fastest growing creator on LinkedIn just last year.
And so what I want to show you here is the process behind those 846,000 followers because
there is an intricate and detailed process for scaling this big, this fast. And so some quick
stats for you here. I've grown at upwards of 102,000 followers per month, now have over 846,000 followers,
but it did take me 36 months to get to this point. So this didn't happen overnight. In addition to that,
it drives over 59 million organic views every month, again, without spending a dime on ads.
And so what I want to share with you here in this video is how I've gone and created viral content
that actually converts to my portfolio of online businesses, because we're not just looking to grow
a bunch of followers here. We want to actually make dollars. Now, I'm also going to show you how to
build a profitable personal brand using some core strategies that I see most people miss on LinkedIn.
In addition to that, I'm going to show you how to go and get high quality leads from creating the right
kind of content and setting up your profile the right way. And then lastly, how to go and scale
your business using LinkedIn. I've gone and created a deck with all the core aspects I'm showing you
right now. So you can go and fill this out and indicate all the core aspects you need to get in
place to scale your LinkedIn presence. You can go and get that deck and all the templates via the link
in the description. This is what I see most people getting wrong when they look to scale on LinkedIn.
They just start posting random content all the time without any core system behind what they're
doing. They're using it almost like a resume instead of really approaching LinkedIn as if it's
a really powerful sales engine. They don't actually get any engagement on their content, which doesn't
allow them to hijack the LinkedIn algorithm the way that you can and should if you're looking to really
scale on the platform. And they have no clear conversion strategy because they're just focusing
all day every day on just a bunch of vanity metrics and not what actually matters. What you
want to be doing instead are really three things. And these are the three parts to your LinkedIn
domination. Number one, a profitable profile, making sure you're setting it up right so you're converting
all of that attention you get to your product or your service. The next piece is then having an
engagement machine. Your content on LinkedIn won't go anywhere if it's not driving real engagement.
Things like reposts, which are the ultimate metric that trick the LinkedIn algorithm into pushing your
content to more and more people's news feeds. In addition to that, you need to have the right content
system in place because the last thing that you want is to just be spinning your tires day after day
and end up on some content treadmill where, you know, fast forward a year, you're just bound to
give up because you're just putting a lot of effort in and seeing very little results. Step one here,
your profitable profile. Here you can see my profile and we're going to break down some of the key
aspects here that allow me to go and convert so many visitors of my profile to followers. The key thing
there is as you convert them to followers, you have people following you now for the next two,
three years, and it's only inevitable at some point they are going to convert. And so first things
first, you need things looking clean, right? So a nice clean cover photo that instantly captures
someone's attention. From there, I have a one-liner, in my case, systems I use to grow faster. Now it's
memorable, number one, and number two, it's embedding the word systems into the visitor's mind. So when they
think systems, they think of me. You see this very much popularized across the internet, whether it's
stoicism and Ryan Holiday, productivity and Ali Abdaal, habits and James Clear, right? What word do
you want to own in the mind of your end customer? That should likely be in your one-liner. Now from
there, also having a clear value prop, in my case, proven systems to grow a profitable audience with
organic content. So your LinkedIn profile, right? It's very much your storefront these days. You know,
it's packed with people that are doing real things, you know, people looking to do business, and looking
to connect with others. And the truth is, that storefront never closes. And so here's how I updated my
profile. First off, compelling banner, you got a clear call to action, right? I actually have multiple on my
profile. If you see things like my featured section, you see the cover photo, you even see the links that I
put inside of the posts and the CTAs in each post I put out. I have the value-driven headline. So
within seconds of hitting my profile, people know exactly what I do and why they should follow me.
In addition to that, we have a strategic featured section that goes and drives people to my newsletter,
as well as to FounderOS. So they can either join the only newsletter that's built for helping people
with their personal brands, or they can go and join FounderOS, where I help founders with proven
systems build their founder-led brand and remove themselves from operations. So LinkedIn really rewards
posts with value-dense images. The image essentially is the algorithm juice that's going to go and push it
to more and more people. It essentially acts almost like a YouTube thumbnail for your given post. And so here
you can see this image caused this particular post on LinkedIn to get over 24 million organic views without
spending a dime on ads. I went and simply visualized and hand-wrote all of the pieces from the main post
into this image so that it was highly shareable. Man, I even had folks going and telling me that they went
and printed this off afterwards. That's how valuable they found it. And so there are four types of posts
that I primarily use to go and grow my following on LinkedIn. Number one is behind-the-scenes content,
right? Using words like I, I've, when, or if, and describing some real stories from my background
of building businesses for the last 15 years. The trials, tribulations, peaks, values, obstacles,
challenges, wins, and everything in between. When you actually share your own story, right,
you get past all the pithy, cringe bullshit on LinkedIn and just share the stuff that's actually
true to you. And it also helps people know that there's not just some AI behind what you're writing.
The second aspect, again, is value-packed images, which we just spoke about. The third is deep work
systems. So I like to go deep into the what and the how I do things. So I'm not just simply putting
out high-level stuff. I know that people are going and following me because they want to see the details.
They want to know exactly how I do what I do. And so it's exactly what I give them. Fourth is personal
stories, right? We all have a unique background. You have a unique story. And your story is your
competitive advantage. And so opening up around the kind of things you've been through, you know,
what you learned last year, your challenges, the different approaches you take to things like hiring
and firing and selling and marketing, right? It's those personal stories that give it that personal
touch and, again, get you out of the cringe area of LinkedIn. So the next aspect here, right, is your
call to actions or your CTAs. What's the science behind what's going on in this CTA? Well, first off,
we're prompting people to go and repost it to their network. A repost on LinkedIn is one of the leading
indicators of LinkedIn that they should push your post to more people. So reposts lead to way more
views. So the next aspect here is I'm getting people to go and follow me. So they go and click my name,
follow me, and good to go. But you've got to actually prompt people to do that if you want to
generate a lot of followers. And then the next aspect is something that most people miss. So
the question that I use there will go and relate to whatever the post is that I'm sharing. So as an
example, if it's a post around deep work, I may go and have a CTA that says, want my deep work checklist?
Or, you know, if it's on my top 10 tools to capitalize on the AI wave, I may say, you know,
want my complete 56 tool list? You know, join my newsletter and get it. So the lead magnet or the
thing that I'm offering to give away is tightly coupled with the subject matter of the post it
appears in. This is super critical if you want to increase your click-through rate and the amount of
leads you acquire from the platform. Here's how I drive my newsletter signups. Here you can see,
you know, my newsletter landing page. There is no place for people to navigate, right? We have no header.
It's just simply build trust, share your expertise and stay visible. People can then go and get this
framework. And when they enter in their name, their email and their phone number, they go and they get
this lead magnet for free. And so when I'm going and creating any given post on LinkedIn, it really
comes down to your first three lines. Okay. If you can't stop the scroll in those three lines, you've
lost them. And so what do you got to do to keep people's attention? Well, number one, you have to
create curiosity. And so here you can see, I just read about a study I can't stop thinking about,
right? It instantly hooks me and gets me insanely curious. What's the study? The next line then drives
action, right? Introverts are more effective leaders, according to Harvard. So I'm using data.
I'm also using identity to go and call out a specific subset of people, instantly getting a
reaction. The next aspect then is I promise immediate value. So conventional wisdom says extroverts
leaders. They are decisive, outgoing, and dominant. And so instantly people are probably going to agree
or disagree with this statement. And the other thing that's going on is that we all either are
introverts or extroverts, and we have other introverted or extroverted friends. So this topic
is highly shareable and contagious. Now there are nine other elements, okay, of viral content that I've
noticed that I want to share with you. So you can also go and blow up your LinkedIn. So number one,
personal stories, right? Open up, get real with the sort of advice that you'd love to have given
yourself five years ago. What have you learned? What have you been through? What are the crucibles
of leadership that you've learned that you want to share now? Open up, right? Your vulnerability is
your superpower. The next is your proven systems, right? When you look at your company or when you
look at your life, what are the principles, the habits, the systems, blueprints, you know, everything
that you've learned that you think would be valuable to a large group of people on LinkedIn. The third
is value bombing people, which I think of it as like your value per second. You know, someone's
spending two minutes on one of your LinkedIn posts, how much value are you giving them? And are those
people so enthralled, so inspired that they can't help but go and share it with their colleagues or go
and share it with their team in Slack? That should be your goal. Fourth is you want to keep it tasteful.
We both know LinkedIn is probably one of the cringiest platforms there are out there. And so
when you have taste, it really can be your competitive advantage, your way to stand out.
That's why I'm constantly going and putting a lot of effort into things like my cover photo,
the images I'm sharing. I'll even have designers on my team, but really beautiful graphics together.
So we're inspiring people with our elevated design and our obsession around quality. Then,
like I'd mentioned, there are four powerful words you can use, which are when,
what, I, I've, and how. Well, those are five, but you get it. The point just being going deep in the
value you're trying to give away, right? When you use words like, you know, when I was 15, something,
something happened. You know, what I've learned, or I, or I've, or how I accomplished something,
something, right? These words, when used in your hooks, are great ways to go and formulate content
that's going to be uniquely valuable on the platform and helps you stand out versus 99% of
other accounts. Every 30 days, I review my content and all other high-performing content on the
platform, and then really formulate my own strategy for LinkedIn, okay? My goal is to be the strongest
and best creator on the platform. So it takes studying the patterns of my top 10% of content and
doubling down on it, as well as looking across all other players on the platform, looking at what
formats, what copywriting is working best, and being a student of the game. You know, it's really
about learning from the best of the best, even being mentored by them, having them in WhatsApp
groups and asking them questions, formulating kind of this mastermind around other LinkedIn creators
that are also growing fast so that I could do the same. And so from there, a big thing as well that
I've talked about is making sure you have your engagement machine set up. You need to make sure that
within 45 minutes of a post going live, you have 30 plus people that are engaging with that post,
right? So I have about 25 folks that are engaging with my content within just about 30 minutes of
it going out, which helps it then get pushed to more and more people in the algorithm. Now, one way to
do this, right, is to make sure that you keep creating content for a certain subset of people.
For my page, as an example, it's founders looking to scale with peaceful, calm systems, and that have
aspirations to eventually remove themselves from the operations of their business. And so I just keep
on hitting the drumbeat of what matters to these people. They want organic content systems. You know,
they want revenue systems. They want to be able to remove themselves from their companies. And I just
keep talking about this sort of cloud of concepts. So you want to think about not just the word that
you're ingraining in someone's mind, but who are you looking to target and what are the content
categories you're going to go and focus on most. So when it comes to my LinkedIn growth checklist,
okay, updating your banner with a clear CTA, no brainer, crafting a value driven headline,
adding two featured pieces of content to your featured section, having followed 20 relevant
creators and setting up off platform relationships where they're supporting your content in the
background. While many think LinkedIn is just a single player game, I can tell you from experience
having grown to 846,000 followers, that it's very much a multiplayer game and it's useful to have a
community around you. From there, you want to make sure you have many people, ideally 30 plus engaging
with your content in the first 45 minutes. Track your top posts, the subject matter, the words, the hooks,
and double down on what works. In addition to that, you want to make sure that you're reviewing your
analytics every single month, right? And looking at the patterns, what's going well, what's not going well.
So you can keep on learning, right? If you put a hundred posts out there and with each post,
you get 10% better each time, that's over 18,000 times better by the hundredth posts you put out.
So it's really that dedication to constant improvement. Even if you get started on LinkedIn
and you're not doing that well, or you're not getting that much traction, focus on the velocity
at which you're learning and improving, because that is the leading indicator to you growing on the
platform. Post your first piece. If you're watching this and you're not, you know, following the
guidelines of value-dense posts with an amazing image, awesome CTA with engagement on it, well,
it's time to get implementing your first post with those criteria. You want to then go and share your
profile below. I'd love to go and check it out via the comments. So if you want to go check that out,
I'll be doing some different audits of people's posts, posting some Loom video breakdowns as well.
And then if you want my help and my team's help going and helping you with your LinkedIn,
you can go and apply to FounderOS via the link in the description. In addition to that, you know,
if you're looking for more systems to scale across all the different platforms, well, you should also
go and subscribe to this channel. So are you ready to go and see my complete system so you can take
advantage of LinkedIn and all the platform has to offer? Well, you should go and check out FounderOS
where I share my complete playbook for going and tapping into the fullest potential that LinkedIn
has to offer. It has templates, SOPs, communities, support, mentorship for me and my team. So go and
check that out via the link in the description and let's continue to win together.
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