Welcome And Meet John Hesperian

Chris Norton 0:00

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes , the show that teaches you growth from failure . This week , Will and I are joined by John Espirian , the man who calls himself the relentless helpful LinkedIn guy . John is an independent LinkedIn consultant and author . He runs the Espresso Plus community for business owners all around the world and he hosts UpLift Live . A lot of us have fallen out of love with LinkedIn , reaches down for almost everyone , the feed is full of AI slop , and the platform itself cannot decide whether it wants you writing with AI or reporting AI slop . So if you want to maximise LinkedIn in 2027 , this is for you . Enjoy . Hi , John Espirian . Welcome to the show .

John Espirian 0:48

Thank you, chaps, for having me. Great to be here.

Chris Norton 0:51

So, John, you're like, we've had, we've probably had, I think we've had a few uh LinkedIn um gurus on the show. Um you describe yourself as the help helpful LinkedIn guy. Is that is that right?

John Espirian 1:04

Yes, uh relentlessly helpful is the phrase I came up with um completely at random um well, nine years ago now, and that just stuck with me. And I use it every time I show up online as a reminder of me being different from everyone else, hopefully.

Chris Norton 1:19

How did you get into LinkedIn then ? Because LinkedIn is I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn now . I think it's gone through so many different eras , a bit like Facebook and the others . LinkedIn was originally I used to teach uh uni , right ? And when LinkedIn , when I taught at university , which is about eight years ago now , I used to teach the students to use LinkedIn to set up their CV and engage with people online , right ? To do their CV and to engage with potential employers . And then back then , not everybody was waffling content left , right , and centre . And so if they optimised their profile as students and set up and started building their networks , actually a lot of them found that it got them jobs , which was great . And then I think we've been through this content in a room over the like the last , I don't know , five or six years , and then very recently the LinkedIn reach has just died a death from . I mean , I we've we've heard clients say it , but I've I've noticed it myself . Like the reach of posts for everybody has been severely affected . And then on top of all of that , um , there's the AI which has been out for ages and ages and ages , and hilariously , LinkedIn's been in a bit of a dichotomy in that it launched a help produce posts with AI , and then not a month ago or six weeks ago , it said report AI slop on LinkedIn . Which one is it , uh , LinkedIn ? So I think there's a whole issue going on with LinkedIn . What's your view of where we are with LinkedIn today ?

LinkedIn Reach Drops And AI Slop

Chris Norton 2:49

And can people , if they're business owners or marketers , still win at it , is what I was gonna say .

John Espirian 2:55

Yeah , I mean , the whole love-hate relationship thing is what I hear a lot from my clients and people out in the wild uh as well . So that's that's quite familiar to me now . Um , and I'm kind of in the same boat . You know , I I got into the platform when it was much easier to get visibility , and I did it to try and support my technical content writing business . I was trying to find new clients , and as I was doing that , I was sharing what I learned about the platform , and people eventually got more interested in you know how how do you use the platform rather than hiring me for writing services , and so I pivoted my business . You're right about the the advent of AI . I think they they went so big on it and didn't expect the backlash that they've had , and now they're kind of backtracking . So , for example , now you can report posts and comments as AI slop . The AI writing enhancement feature has been completely dialled back and changed into a proofreading feature . And yes , it is true that almost everyone has had a drop in visibility compared to where we were even 18 months ago . So that there's no way I can hold my hand up and say that those things are not happening . I don't work for LinkedIn , I'm an independent consultant , so I can kind of speak my mind and say that it's you know , not always um it's not always the best place , but it can still be useful as kind of the still the world's number one business networking platform . And so , you know , whenever you um want to find out more about a personal professionally , it's still the place you're going to look . It's still the you know , a profile that you're going to read , content that you're going to read from what they put out , if they put out anything at all . So it's still useful and it's still great for building relationships . And I at my last conference I talked about how direct messages are not prone to the algorithm at all . So whereas your content might be throttled in the feed , uh , your direct messages aren't . Uh you've got basically a hundred percent delivery guarantee on those things , and that's where I transact pretty much all of my business , and it's where I develop my relationships . So if you're thinking , well , my posts are not going viral on this platform , let's not bother . That's probably misguided thinking .

Will Ockenden 5:16

So you're talking about individual use of LinkedIn now as opposed to a business, aren't you? Um, I think in a sec I'll come on to some questions about how businesses use it. But I think direct messaging is quite an interesting one, and people will probably be thinking well, if you take it from Chris and I's experience, you know, if you looked at either Chris or I's inboxes on LinkedIn, we'd probably have 20 direct messages, unsolicited, untargeted, delete or ignore. Um, how can you cut through with with a direct message that isn't kind of perceived as spammy and does elicit a response?

DMs That Do Not Feel Spammy

John Espirian 5:52

I think I think that would really start from the way you show up in the feed . So , I mean , if you are commenting helpfully , for example , on other people's posts , that can be the jumping point for a real human conversation . And I I do also get some unsolicited messages , not as many as other people do , but I do still receive them . And it always strikes me how people have definitely not done their research on me . They haven't spent even a minute reading my profile , because if they had , then they wouldn't say some of the things that they do say . So putting a little bit of effort into the people that you want to target is worthwhile . Uh , and also if it's someone who's , let's say , high up in an organisation , maybe you take a step back and say , well , who who's in the level or two below them in that organisation who I could maybe form friendships and relationships with who could then lead me to that big uh person that I really want to impress . You know , so it's a kind of slower long-term approach and fewer conversations , but more valuable ones , rather than a kind of spray and pray that I think some people use where they're just sending 10 , 000 DMs if they can , and it never really gets anywhere .

Will Ockenden 7:06

So build credibility and build a relationship in a public forum, i.e. I would say so, yeah. And then take it.

John Espirian 7:14

That's that's right. Comments are massively valuable algorithmically speaking. Um, and um I often say to clients that you know, when you have when you leave a comment on someone's post, ostensibly you are having a conversation with the poster, but actually you are having a silent conversation with the vast majority of people who are just looking at their feed and maybe spotting a comment and thinking, that's interesting, that guy maybe knows what he's talking about, or I like the way he looks at this. I'm going to drop him a line. And those people would never have discovered you through a normal search or just by sitting there and hoping for something good to happen. So leaving more comments uh than you probably do at the moment is is a is a valuable tactic. And in my training, I'd say that you should um make about 10 times as many comments as you do posts. So even if you're just getting started on LinkedIn, you might aim for maybe one post a week. Yeah, in that scenario, I would say comment at least 10 times a week on relevant other spots where you can demonstrate your knowledge of a platform. And just to tie that into the business side of things, if businesses were to just take the leash off their employees and say, look, you are our ambassadors in the world, go and find good spots where you can showcase what you know and your skill set and just speak kind of almost on behalf of the company, but in your own personal capacity, that would get you a lot more goodwill and a lot

Employee Advocacy And Personal Brand Risk

John Espirian 8:47

more interest than putting a corporate logo everything and putting it out through a business channel because people don't feel that's very human.

Will Ockenden 8:55

Why aren't they doing that though? Is there a fear to business's fear unleashing their employees in that way? Because I'm I'm totally on board with that, you know, and I think that's that's that's the key to unlocking real authentic reach and engagement, isn't it, if you leverage your employees? But a big corporate sort of scared of doing that?

John Espirian 9:12

Well , well , they are , and it's because of an old school mindset that says , you know , if I'm your boss , Will , and you get too big for your boots by by by kind of building a personal brand , then you might , you know , you might uh take your intellectual property with you and leave . And and what happens to my business then ? That's a very , very sheltered parochial view of what it means to build a personal brand business . You know , we know businesses really through their people . You know , that there's a reason why you know you probably know Tesla better than you know Ford , because you you wouldn't be able to name someone who's at the top of Ford , but you probably can name someone who's at the top of Tesla . That that personal brand approach to everyone in the organisation , knowing what the organisation stands for , and then putting their own personality on it , that is it takes a bit of bravery to do that , and it certainly takes a bit of training because if people have no guidance whatsoever , then you might end up in some PR mess . But so long as they've been trained and they're trusted , uh , there's no reason why that can't work . And and yeah , the the people who are brave tend to get the best results with that that approach . So there's your first mistake , not trusting your people with with with building your your corporate footprint in an organic way rather than through a single , often very dry business channel .

Chris Norton 11:28

So you launched Espresso + about five years ago , right ? Is that right ? About five years ago ?

John Espirian 11:33

Yeah . So so my my community

Building Espresso Plus And Community Learning

John Espirian 11:36

that I run is the result of me running a free mailing list and and people sending me loads of interesting questions to it . And I thought , well , it would be a really good idea if these people could speak to each other , not just to me . So I set up a free group on LinkedIn , and then it quickly took over my life because it got so busy , and then eventually I , well , within a few months , I monetised that , and that that became my community . So Espresso Plus has been going since early 2022 , so it's probably four and a half years now .

Chris Norton 12:06

And how many people you got in there? How many people?

John Espirian 12:08

Yeah , we've got about 100 members in there , so it's fairly small and it kind of suits the name , but it's business owners from around the world and people who just want to have kind of ongoing close access to a group of people that they can trust and they can ask questions to , and we can kind of uh learn on LinkedIn together . Because of the way the LinkedIn platform works as well . Often some features will go to some people before they go to other people , and so it's a good kind of breaking news outlet because someone will say , Oh , my my look , look has look and feel of my feed has completely changed this morning and look what it looks like now . And you get a chance to kind of think , oh , okay , what does that what implications does that have ? Let's chat about it . So that's the community , and we we do live Q & A calls and I do a roundup of changes every month on the platform . But they're all almost all of them are small business owners . So we we talk as well about other stuff like you know , how how do you set up a website that works and or you know what what accounting package package should you use and just this the the the mechanics about you know what it what it means to be a an online business owner in you know in the modern day .

Chris Norton 13:16

And do you think what's your what's your opinion on company pages in in 2026 ? Like , because everybody's talking about brand like you've

Company Pages Still Matter A Bit

Chris Norton 13:23

just talked there about brand ambassadors , you know , brand ambassadors and staff and use utilising your staff as your your brand ambassadors , but there's a big pushback on inauthentic content on LinkedIn where companies are now demand , you know , like I'm let's say I got everyone in all 28 people in Prohibition , my our agency to to engage with a post on our page . There's a lot , there's a they call them engagement pods , don't they ? And there's a lot against that as well . Where do you think company pages are now ? Is it more about the individual still ?

John Espirian 13:56

Certainly , the individual will get more visibility than the company page will . But that's not to say that you shouldn't have a company page . So if you're listening to this and you haven't yet set one up , it's still a good idea because it can reinforce your visual brand because you can associate your experience section with a company page , and therefore you can show your logo at the top of your personal profile . It still gives you an extra chance to be found in a Google search because you'll have an extra entry in the in the sort of LinkedIn database . Uh , you know , gives you a chance to advertise , whereas you might not have been able to before because it gives you full access to the Campaign Manager , and it kind of gives you the air of like this is not a cowboy fly-by-night organisation , it's a it's a proper establishment . So given that a company page is easy to set up , I recommend everyone goes out and does that right now if they haven't done it already . It'll probably take you about five minutes to create the bare bones of it . But then in terms of putting stuff out for visibility , it's still much better to put it out as an individual than it is via a company page . So just to give you an example , I'm a solo business . I uh , you know , I run my I run everything myself . My personal profile has got 20 times the followers of my company page , even though both of them are me . One of them's got my face on it and the other one's got a logo on it . But the content is , I would say , of comparable quality , still me producing it all , and yet people are more interested in the personal content . So if you take that attitude with your business , getting your people to create content is gonna be much more organic and um highly visible than putting it out through the company page . LinkedIn is , I think , wise to the old school practice of okay , we're gonna publish this on our on our company profile , and 20 employees are gonna all go and hit repost . That's not really going to be very effective because yes , you're right , there's a very clear analogue there between that and engagement pods where you know there's kind of false boosting of content . So getting your people to post independently is going to be more effective .

Chris Norton 16:02

I was just gonna say, um, what about LinkedIn newsletters? Um, because I I found like I started a new LinkedIn newsletter about two

Newsletters For SEO And Discoverability

Chris Norton 16:09

and a half, three years ago, and um it's got like I think it's got 1900 followers. And but I found myself a slave many marketers and business owners or I found myself a slave to the content wheel that I was doing a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn and I was pushing it out regularly on top of the podcasts and stuff. And initially it did really, really well and was getting loads of engagement. And then I th I don't know if they throttled LinkedIn newsletters or what. So I'd I'd I'd be interested to know what you think of LinkedIn newsletters and whether they're a worthy tactic in 2026.

John Espirian 16:45

Yeah , they have throttled the visibility a little bit , and people who sign up for updates don't always get them , so that's a bit disappointing . But um , you know , they they do occupy good uh visibility on search engines because LinkedIn's domain authority is so high . And a couple of recent reports showed that LinkedIn was either the top or the second top most cited domain in um search results that come back from um the LLM , so things like ChatGPT , and Claude . So when those tools need to reference a third party for to back up the things that they're saying to their user , LinkedIn is one of the top two cited places . And it likes looking at long-form content for that because that's the stuff that's guaranteed to be indexed . So when you write an article or a newsletter on LinkedIn , 100 % of that will be indexed on search engines . Whereas if you compare that with the short form posts that you're used to seeing when you scroll your LinkedIn feed , maybe only about 10 % of that content will be indexed . So , in terms of being found and building an online footprint , publishing through your newsletter is going to be more effective . And probably it's going to be even more effective than if you just publish that content on your website . So , what I recommend is that , assuming you have a website with a blog , that is , that you publish on your website and syndicate that cont that long-form content to LinkedIn because you've got kind of two tickets in the lottery to be found . It's always nice to drag people back to your domain if you can . But given LinkedIn's domain authority , um , publishing it via newsletter is a good idea . They they don't tie you into a um a posting schedule . So although they will ask you , are you going to publish this daily , weekly , monthly ? You don't actually have to do that . So publishing at a time that suits you , so long as it's adding some value to your to your um to your to your readers , uh , is a good idea . I run a podcast , a public podcast myself , and I use it to publish my show notes , and newsletters can support rich media . So that means I can embed my podcast episodes from Spotify so that if people don't want to go off and use a third-party app , they can just stay on LinkedIn , they can listen to the show , they can read the full transcript , and it , you know , but they get all of the content as a native consumer on LinkedIn . So I use my newsletter for that purpose .

Chris Norton 19:14

I might check that out. Have you got any LinkedIn newsletters that you'd recommend that are worthy of a good look look for for business owners and marketers, I suppose?

John Espirian 19:23

Yeah, I mean, I I've got a very specific interest in in understanding more about the platform. So the ones I pay attention to are all LinkedIn focused, but I've got a couple of members in my Espresso Plus community who who do a good newsletter, so I can dig out those links and send them to you and maybe you put them in your show notes. But I I I found that um, you know, I took over my podcast from uh the its original owner who did like 450 plus episodes, and he used to use uh his articles and newsletters exactly for this reason to publish show notes because he knows that readers are probably lazy and they won't go and seek out a show. So if you give them another reason to uh consume that content on LinkedIn, some of those might then turn into subscribers. It's free to do, the visibility is not as good as it was, but it's still decent. And the SEO potential of that content, you know, if you put your transcripts out on LinkedIn, for example, all of that stuff is then available to the uh to the LLMs, and and who knows what where that might turn up in future searches, and therefore you might get business and subscribers off the back of it.

Chris Norton 20:28

Love that. Love that tip. Great tip.

Will Ockenden 20:31

And um so what what other content forms on LinkedIn, specifically company pages, is is working at the moment then? So obviously, you know, we've talked about kind of algorithms throttling that organic reach. You know, is video content still a big thing on LinkedIn? I mean, we talk to our clients a lot about you know the sort of shorter form snackable video that's not necessarily 10 minutes long, it might be 30 seconds long. So talk to us about what's working in 2026.

John Espirian 20:58

Well , LinkedIn's advice , okay , so this is the official advice , is for you to do short form portrait content

What Content Works Plus Testing Mindset

John Espirian 21:06

video uh of of 60 seconds or or shorter and put to put your captions into the video . Um , but in practice , though that content tends not to get great visibility . So although LinkedIn seemed to want you to do that , um , it doesn't actually get a whole lot of visibility . And because of the the physical way of the the interface looks , when you put a video post out and you consume that content on mobile , which is what most people do these days , there's only about a sentence worth at most of the con of the text that comes with the video that's visible . And so you might spend a load of time writing content to go to explain the video , and no one's ever going to see it because they never expand the thing . So , in my experience , that that video content tends not to perform well in the numbers . So if you if that's all you really care about , it's not going to do that well . But anecdotally , I can tell you that when I go to events , people will say that if they've seen content from me , that they will remember having seen me on a video . So there's a kind of qualitative thing that the numbers don't really capture . It's like what is the kind of the brand density of that content is very high with video because if people can see your accent , your your body language and all that stuff , that doesn't come across in anything else . So it doesn't translate to the numbers necessarily , but in terms of being memorable , having a little bit of video on your profile is a very , very good idea . So I I recommend that rather than having some kind of series of videos that you do , maybe just one or two things that end up being pinned in your featured section will give people a very quick way to say , Yeah , I like this guy . I like his vibe , I like his accent , whatever . Um , I want to have a chat with him . So if you if you haven't already done that bit , I think you're missing out . In terms of generally speaking , what content does well , at the moment , polls are doing well . They did well a couple of years ago and then they kind of faded away , but they seem to have come back a bit because they're a very easy thing to engage with . So polls , um , if you pick the right question , uh , can be very high engagement . Uh the thing that's traditionally worked best for me is the thing that takes probably the longest time to create , which is document posts . Uh , they're not doing quite as well at the moment for me , um , but document posts are where you can just create a PDF from a presentation deck and you've got a multi-slide kind of result that that looks and acts quite nice on LinkedIn . And you know , that content has always performed better for me . Um , but the the caveat to all of this is I would always say to test your own numbers and see what works for you . So in my case , for example , text-only posts , so so pure text with no image attached , uh , that performs 60 % better uh than text plus image , which is the complete opposite of where it is for most people . So my audience seems to like it when I just get to the point and share a little factoid , but that might not be true for someone else who likes to post loads of selfies and get you know big numbers off the back of that . So all I can say to you is test the full gamut . So test your multi-image posts , video posts , document posts , text , text plus image , um , you know , and even do live stream events , you might want to test those too , and just see what your audience responds to uh before you make a judgment from me saying , well , text works best for me , ergo , that must be the best for everyone . That's not true . Uh you can only tell once you've tested it for yourself .

Will Ockenden 24:45

It's a bit frustrating , isn't it ? Because I know when we've been doing you know , link uh LinkedIn training or advising our clients , often the answer is it depends . And it always depends . It depends on your audience , it depends how your audience likes to consume content . And you're absolutely right . It's about A / B testing , isn't it ? And trying different things and measuring it and doing more of what works for it .

Chris Norton 25:05

It's looking at your data , isn't it ? I suppose it's just looking at you looking at your data , and now I suppose you could just export your data or you could clip your data and bring it to an LLM and ask it to analyse it for you .

John Espirian 25:14

You can. That's actually a very, very common question. People say, well, what third-party tools should I be using to kind of you know help

Data Exports And LLM Analysis Safely

John Espirian 25:22

enhance my my LinkedIn effectiveness? And I would say probably none in most cases, because LinkedIn doesn't like opening up its API to other people. So the only thing that I do recommend is that you do a complete data export, which I recommend you do at least twice a year, and then to feed select bits of that information into a tool such as Claude and make sure that Claude isn't set to share its results with the world, because there is a setting for that in Claude and ChatGPT. So, in other words, your data doesn't go anywhere uh externally, uh, and then say, you know, look for some insights in this data. And sometimes it'll say, Well, so-and-so, Bob, you know, you used to DM him a lot and you haven't DM'd him for three months, so you might want to drop him a line again. Something like that, you probably wouldn't spot yourself, but it might just be something that revives a relationship.

Chris Norton 26:19

Yeah.

John Espirian 26:19

Uh , you know , so so um so you know uh that that's the route I would recommend if you want to be analysing the effectiveness uh of your content .

Chris Norton 26:28

Um so were we saying that I mean so many questions? I love this. I love it. Thanks so I love it. We're geeking out over LinkedIn, and like I spend a lot of time in LinkedIn because the show, the show, right? My content is weirdly, it used to be so I'm I'm talking like for clients, you know, we help we might help a client build some sort of thought leadership. My content, because we because you know, Will and I do either to do together interviews like this, or we might do single interviews, either of us, depending on who's busy. And and so my content has become uh maybe two posts a week on the podcast, which is just it's just a side hustle. I'm the PR agency owner, I like to win you know, we want to work with people to do their PR basically in social media. But um, in terms of LinkedIn, like that is my content now. If I I I might I might not be having an identity crisis here, John, but I might is that is that because it's video content, it's good video content, it's interesting to my audience. That's what I use now. I don't do the posts like where like um I sometimes write something and something comes into my head. I it was quite interesting what you were saying about the document stuff. I've never I don't think I've ever done a document post ever in well since LinkedIn came out. Um so I suppose I suppose what I'm saying is, do you think podcast content is the right stuff for us to put put out and because that's regular content and it's relevant to the audience? Or is it better to is it better just to do a mix of everything? Because that's the problem, isn't it? You get in this cycle of oh, what can I do today? Well, and it's coming up with new ideas of new ways to do content, and now just you can you can get looking back at your exporting the data, paralysis by analysis, can't you? Where you just sat there going, oh my god, I've got to do a document, I've got to do a little text post, I've got to do a portrait post, I've got to do what I mean.

John Espirian 28:24

Yeah, it's hard if you want to test it all rigorously. There's just not enough hours in the day, truthfully. I found, again, this is just anecdotal because it's only one person's example, but whenever I post about podcast clips for my own show, those ones tend not to perform very well, which is disappointing because I think the content

Podcast Clips Versus Behind The Scenes

John Espirian 28:41

is good. I'm sure that you feel the same. Yeah. Um, what people probably would be more interested in, and I I need to do this more myself, so I'm giving myself advice here, is that what people are interested in is maybe the the thing that is the behind-the-scenes content, right? It's the stuff that you can't actually Google. You know, like if I wanted marketing advice, I can do a Google search and I can find five podcasts and get them lined up for my next drive, and that's great. What I can't see is like what did it take to actually make a show and what what problems are you thinking about in the process? And can I actually see you editing a show with you know with a with a with a sped-up example of how how long this stuff really takes? And something that gets people invested in the person behind the thing, because that's the that's the other thing. Like, you know, we these days we're not sure what what is real, what isn't, what is AI, what isn't. If I see an actual named person who's scratching their head going, well, how do I how do I fix this thing? Let's have a chat with so and so, and this is what we decided. Oh, well, we can't do it like that because we've got to do this, and here's me actually doing it. That makes me feel like someone is putting effort into this. And there is a kind of well-established psychological research that shows that people will value things more. I'm sure Phil Agnew probably talked to you about this, but people will value things more if they can see that there was an effort behind it. So, you know, me seeing a three-minute video in my feed and going, I'm gonna scroll, versus understanding that this kind of blood, sweat, and tears went into it and what that thing was, and who were the people building that thing by hand are more likely to care and more likely to remember. So, again, like I say, that's that's advice for me as much as it is for you.

Chris Norton 30:27

Shout out to Phil , actually . I'll listen to his latest uh episode , and at the end it goes , Thank you for listening to Nudge , the podcaster that helps with behavioural science . If you like the show , you can subscribe Phil . I love the fellow , I'm giving him an advert here . If you like the show , you can click on the Nudge newsletter . I spend on average 6 . 8 hours a week researching it , doesn't it ? And I was like , there we go .

Will Ockenden 30:53

And that that's some specificity as well, isn't it? When you have a really specific number and it's got a greater I love it.

John Espirian 30:59

I do the same with with a couple of my things and I'll put an exact number on something because I know like the exact number of subscribers on a date or whatever, because people like those specifics rather than, you know, join a hundred plus, you know, it just feels very anodyne, I think. So just showing that real effort really makes a difference.

Will Ockenden 31:17

So I can feel a director's cut behind the scenes embracing marketing mistakes coming on, Chris.

Chris Norton 31:22

Christ we'll have a chat with Andy . I mean , the the thing about this show is we're we're quite lucky because we're we're we've got like um we've got a social media team , we've got a video team , right ? So you'd be pleased , John , that I'm not involved in this bit . And actually , I've got a full we've got a full-time editor back at and like I think people underestimate . Like you could use a uh a video hosting thing for your podcast , and the AI can edit podcasts , but to be honest , all the best ones use humans to do it because humans are just still better at it . And I don't think they realise how much time it takes to edit a bloody podcast . This hour that we're doing now , this that will take uh an editor , professional editor , probably minimum six hours , four to six hours to edit one hour of content down to , you know , so so um I I think I don't think people realise that because I never realised that . So I think watching our video editor watch a video for four to six hours might be not the best content that I've ever formulated .

Will Ockenden 32:21

You can always hear our voices ringing out through the office, can't you, as as is editing it? It's quite distracting.

John Espirian 32:28

One thing to keep in mind is that you're the experts in this, so you know how it really works, and the consumers are not the experts. So there'll be a load of people from you know, probably my age, who just think recording something is the equivalent of pressing two buttons at the same time on a tape deck and you record your radio on a Sunday afternoon, and then you press play afterwards and you get the result, and that's that's it. And they'll think that your job is no more than that. So, unless you show them actually, there's a lot more to this than what you thought, and here are some of the details, they'll appreciate it more, and therefore, even though it's still free content, they'll still value it more. So I think I think that would be useful.

Chris Norton 33:05

John, I think you've given us an idea for an episode. I think me and Will are going to do a behind-the-scenes episode where we sit down and just talk through everything that goes behind the show, just to give you people a listen to like what sorts of because there's a lot that goes into it rather than just the chat. Like this this bit where we get to hit grill you on the best stuff that's still working, um, is is is the great, is the is the good bit, the the actual amplification and everything. Um so is it is it a really competitive market space you're working in at the moment then? Because that we I've I'll be honest with you, John. We get a lot of people. Uh I know I came to you on to get you on the show, but we've had we get quite a lot of people up asking if they can come on the show that are LinkedIn experts. There's quite there's a and it's like there's only a few. I tend to think that the best people practice what they preach, so hence why I invited you. But then there's there's certain people out there like Melanie Goodman and uh is it Goodwin Goodman or Goodwin? I can't never remember. You'll you'll

Differentiation And A Memorable Brand Promise

Chris Norton 33:59

know her. Um we've had Sarah Clay on the show, and I see you speak to some of the other guests that we've had on the show, Sarah Townsend, the copywriter, who I love by the way. She's been one of our most she came on the show. Will doesn't know this really, but as she came on the show again behind the scenes, shouting out to Sarah Townsend, Sarah Townsend, and she plugged that episode so many different ways. She kept talking about it, sharing different bits. And I've never had a guest like her. She was brilliant. I'd actually have her on again because she was that good. Great podcast guest.

John Espirian 34:30

Oh, I know. I had lunch with her on Friday, actually. Yeah, she's great. And Melanie's in my community. Yeah, loads of I mean, uh, I suppose I I respect the hustle of people who are just trying to approach you to be on the show, but it's not something I would ever do. Thankfully, I've been invited to be on, you know, more than 60 shows now. So that's, you know, I kind of I've it sounds arrogant to say I've been there and done that, but I I don't need to chase that kind of visibility. And my whole marketing has really been based on trying to put something helpful in the world and hoping that the right people discover it rather than being right in your face going, I'm going to change your life in these seven steps over the next two weeks. I think that's very, very pushy. And I I think people are just fed up with that sort of in-your-face marketing these days. It's not my style at all.

Chris Norton 35:17

So, what do you one-to-one sessions do then? Because you that's part of the community, isn't it? What do you do there then?

John Espirian 35:22

Yeah, I mean, I I do one-to-one sessions so that people can, first of all, improve their landing, their home base, you know, the the their profile, but also to understand what their approach is to the kind of content that they put out and their strategy with how they search for people or do commenting or do DMing. It depends. Different people have got different weak spots, and that comes out in consultations. As you said earlier, it's it all kind of it depends. Some people are good at some things, other people not so good at others. Um, so we kind of do a bit of interrogation and maybe work on a personal brand approach or content schedule or something that could revive, you know, a rather boring profile. We said right at the top of the show that I use this relentlessly helpful brand, which really came about as a complete mis accident. I didn't plan it at all, but it was part of a response to a question I got that that um that that stuck with me. And that personal brand has done a lot of heavy lifting for me because it means that I kind of I've got just that tiny chance of being more rem remembered than than the next person down the line. So I try and work with people to say, you know, what is the biggest promise you could keep to your audience? Let's try and put that in a nutshell to people and and make it memorable so that people know what your actual job is, but also what is the kind of elegant spin on that that says, wow, that's that's something I'm gonna remember, that's someone I'm gonna pick. Because it's really hard to be the very, very best person. If you want to say, I'm the best podcast editor in the world, that's that's a really hard gig to try and win. But if you can if you can no fine, but if you can differentiate yourself in some way, there must be something about your process or your approach to life or or whatever that just makes you that bit more memorable. Um, and that's teasing that out is not easy because when you're in the field, like in your case, podcasting, you know, you're the expert, you do it every day, you don't have that chance to step away a couple of steps and go, what am I really? Or how do other people perceive me? How could I convey that in a way that makes people go, Wow? And that there's a very popular expression that I didn't I didn't come up with, but I say it all the time, which is you can't read the label of the jar you're in, right? So you sometimes need that external person to go, this is what you are. I I I I can see, I can see what you are, and they go, Oh, yeah, that's brilliant. That's let's um let's play on that. So um we we do those sort of things in consultations, and it can be quite transformative sometimes. People take a totally different route, or they might go, Well, what I really need to do now is start a podcast on something or or whatever. So I can't tell you what every session is like, but that's kind of just a little idea.

Will Ockenden 38:13

In your view, um, which you know, if you look at kind of business leaders in in the UK, chief executives of of big companies, you know, who's who's getting it right at that very senior level? And then the sub-question to that is do they do it themselves or do they have an agency looking for that? I mean, is there anyone that's called your eyes to think they're just so authentic, they just get it, they show up on LinkedIn and they they really kind of cut through.

John Espirian 38:38

Yeah, I don't have I'm not gonna name any specific names because I don't really pay attention to the the thought leaders in that way, but you never quite know who's just using a ghost writer or who's truly doing it for themselves. I suppose that's one of the things where when you reach a certain level of prominence, that's when video is really great because you're almost like a mini celebrity and you can see that someone is actually talking from their heart, as opposed to just reading off a teleprompter and and reducing all their credibility, you know. So um, so yeah, but if something feels human, then that's that's a that's a really, really good start. But how many of those are really doing it out there, how many of them are just handing it off to someone else? I'm not quite sure. Is that proper? I do tend to have a good radar for seeing like this smells like AI or this smells

Ghostwriting Ethics And AI Voice Clones

John Espirian 39:29

unreal. You know, I I I one example I was mentioning to someone the other day was I saw that Snoop Dogg, the rapper, was on LinkedIn. But if you looked at any of his posts at the time when I spotted him, it just looked horribly corporate. And I'm thinking there's there's no way that that person would speak that language. It's very obviously been handed over to a third party, and I'm not going to pay any attention as a result. Whereas if it was someone speaking in their natural voice, you it comes through the page. So just do more of that if you're brave enough to.

Will Ockenden 39:59

Is it is it except you know, if it's done properly, you know, there's a kind of a consultation with the senior person, the content's written in their tone of voice on topics they've agreed, but not written by them. Is that okay? Um happens all the time.

John Espirian 40:15

To say that that's not okay would be to say that the industry of ghostwriting shouldn't exist . And I don't I don't stand for that at all . A good ghostwriter really gets into your head and is able to represent you on your best day in your natural voice , so that you know people can't really tell the difference . That's great . And it might well be the case that if you train your AI tool well enough , you you give it because I've done this as an experiment , I've given it transcripts of every single podcast episode I've done , for example , and guest episodes , and every blog I've written , and all that stuff , so that it knows my turns of phrase and my attempts at humour and all that stuff . And it could put out something that is pretty believable , not 100 % , but there will come a time where it'll be indistinguishable from me , and then you get into the ethical realm of saying , well , what's to stop me just pressing a button now and sitting back and doing nothing ? I don't think that's the right approach , but I can see that people probably will do it . Uh and even in the realm of AI voice , one of my members actually is doing clips from his book , but he doesn't want to do a full audio book , but he's managed to do a voice clone , and I know him really well , and it sounds just like him . Um now he's being transparent saying , by the way , this was AI generated , but if you just want to listen to this little chapter from my book , here you go . Yeah , um , so he's being very honest about it , but it would be very easy for him to just mask that and go , yep , this is this is me , here's a here's my here's my book in audio form as well .

Chris Norton 41:46

It's saves so much time that, wouldn't it? Like being able to do them. I never thought about that, audiobooks that you could just voice clone the whole thing.

John Espirian 41:53

Yeah. I mean, because I my book came out um six years ago, and I did record an audiobook with it. I was recommended to do so, and uh, it took me a month. Yeah, and I'm proud that I've done it, and I think it's good content. But I I could probably do that in half an hour now, probably less if I trained my voice suitably. And and I'm sure a lot of people will be taking that shortcut. But then, and maybe people won't even notice that they have. Um, so that's the glorious future that we're moving towards.

Chris Norton 42:22

Um, this show's all about mistakes, John. What's what's the mistake that you've made then that you've um learned from that you could

The Cost Of Stopping Marketing

Chris Norton 42:29

share on the show? Is it this is a safe space?

John Espirian 42:32

Well , one that definitely comes to mind is that uh in 2015 I got as busy as I'd ever been with my technical writing business at the time . And I was so busy that I didn't have any time for marketing . Uh so I stopped that because I was just too busy writing for clients . And then in 2016 , I had my worst financial year ever because all my leads dried up . And at that point , I kind of realised that the only way to succeed is to have some guaranteed time where I would be marketing my business . So I set aside about 20 % of my work time purely for things like putting out something that would approach a promotional post , something that would market my business , who I am , what I do for people , regardless of how busy I was . And what that meant is that I was able to raise my rates a little bit to a coup to cater for the fact that I wasn't working at full capacity and things balanced out nicely . And I haven't really changed that approach since . So I I always will market myself . And I suppose one other thing I would say as well is that I was kind of forced into signing up for LinkedIn back in 2008 by my old boss , uh , and I left it alone for eight or nine years . And I wish I hadn't done that because if I'd started building there properly , but right back at the start , or effectively near the start , I'd probably be a lot further ahead now . So I try to tell people , especially like students , get yourself a profile , start talking about the stuff that you're doing , because you know , this this thing's been around for more than 20 years , it's probably not going away anytime soon . And it could be your you know future leads potential for for a new job . So so don't sleep on it , even though it's not the most sexy social media platform or anything like that . Um , but it is something that's got a really good track record . So if you haven't started , just just start .

Will Ockenden 44:24

Have you ever put out a piece of content that's been horrifically uh misjudged, either from yourself or from a client, or anything that's kind of backfired, or anything that's just not got the reception you wanted? I mean, a lot of people we do.

John Espirian 44:37

Well, I've plenty of things have have fallen flat, but um I suppose I'm I'm fairly mindful of what I want my brand to be about, which is always trying to help people, and I and I try not To I I like challenging ideas. I never try to challenge people. I think there's a bit too much of that in social media, and it turns into an ad hominem attack and stuff, and you can get into horrible fights. I don't have the energy for public fighting or private fighting, frankly. So there's always a kind of um and I'm a scientist at heart as well. So I'm I'm I'm always a little bit um hesitant to be really, really bold about something I'm gonna say because I always see the other side of the argument. So I tend not to get into anything too controversial in my content. But

Cleaning Your Feed And Custom Creator Feeds

John Espirian 45:24

I've had plenty of experiences where I've spent an hour making a 10-minute video and it gets 300 views or something, and you think what what what was the point of all of that? Whereas often it happens often at lunchtime, you're just having a random thought and it's something that's irritated you, and you've rattled it off in 30 seconds, and that thing goes and gets 30,000 views. So people still are there for human content where where they can see an emotion coming through. Um, so the the the mistake a lot of people make is that they get seduced by that, and then they think, well, if I just put a selfie on and put something rage baity every single time, I get massive numbers, but then no one actually knows what you do for a living, and it's yeah, it's all a bit pointless. You're chasing numbers for no good reason.

Will Ockenden 46:10

And there's plenty of people doing that, isn't there? The uh kind of boosts, yeah.

Chris Norton 46:14

Oh I well, this is the thing that I was saying right at the beginning of the show is like I found LinkedIn, like there's certain people who I won't name, but I've seen their content, and I'm like, you are just allying that content. It is so obviously AI the whole time, and it's like this is no I'm no longer reading your content. And it's it's got to the point, John, where I'm like, I've actually thought about culling my LinkedIn feed, you know, like where you can somehow go in and maybe you could use AI for this, maybe Claude or some of the one of the choose your AI of choice, other other AIs are available, uh, to go in and just assess all the people that you're reading and to because I I feel like there's too much noise that's not people anymore. Do you know what I mean?

John Espirian 47:00

Yeah. Yeah, there are a few approaches to this. So you can in on individual posts, you can go and say that you're not interested in a topic, or if you think it's AI generated now, you can say it seems like AI slop. Uh, if there are people that you are following whose content you're not interested in, you can specifically unfollow those people. You can't do that in batches, unfortunately, but you can stay connected to someone and unfollow them so that you won't see their content in your feed anymore, but they will still see uh yours. One caveat with that, because I used to do this all the time and I don't do it anymore. One caveat on LinkedIn that almost no one seems to know about is that if you've got a connection and you unfollow them, you won't see their content. But if that person ever at mentions you, so if they tag you in a post or a comment, you will not receive a notification about that. And that can sometimes lead to some very awkward conversations because someone will say to you, Oh, I tagged you in this, and you go, Oh, did you? Because you know that you unfollowed them, but they don't. Uh and and the more extreme version of that would be to disconnect with that person altogether. Now I've received a few recommendations to do this. I did an experiment maybe about a year and a half ago, where I've removed about 2,000 connections, and that took me ages, by the way, because again, there's no batch disconnect, and you can't use AI to batch disconnect either. Um, so I had to do that manually, and there's a limit to the number of people you can remove without being seen as a robot. And so it took me a while to do it, and I didn't actually notice that much of a benefit. But from all the other people I've spoken to, most of them said it it's cleaned up their feed quite nicely. So removing people from your feed is uh is a is a good thing to do to kind of improve the quality of what you see. And one other advanced tip on this is if you want to specifically see content from a named group of people, you can do that. So if you were to go into your search field and do a search for in the content section for uh nothing, it's an empty search, and then say, but only from these creators, you can then list the creators you want to hear from, and that builds you a custom feed of all of their content and no one else's content. So that means that you can build custom searches of you know, my top 20 people in marketing or my top 20 people in architecture or whatever, and have those bookmarked and have your own custom feeds, and that gets rid of all of the noise. The only downside is there's no serendipity, you you know who you're going to see. You're never going to discover someone by accident through that method.

Will Ockenden 49:42

Black belt tips here. And I was going to say it's almost as if LinkedIn wants to make it difficult for you to disconnect with people. Or are these barriers in the way?

John Espirian 49:50

I mean, obviously, the idea is that you're only meant to connect with people that you already know. But that that seems nonsensical to me because it is a networking platform, and if you did that, you'd never meet anyone new. Um, so I don't really agree with that approach. But yes, disconnecting, you can't do it on uh in a batch.

Overrated Advice And Engagement Pods

John Espirian 50:07

I I don't think that's right, but uh that's always been the system that they've that they've applied.

Will Ockenden 50:13

What is um what's the most overrated piece of LinkedIn advice that you hear? Um, that you kind of wince when you hear other other gurus giving clients. Um, you know, is there anything out there that just makes you think, why are people still talking about that?

John Espirian 50:28

Well, you you mentioned briefly the engagement pods thing, and and people don't talk about it that openly anymore, but it still happens. You know, you can still do Google searches and find paid engagement pods that will boost your content. Um, I I I don't think anything like that is a really good idea for your brand. You know, you might get some short-term visibility, but in terms of long-term trust, it's uh it's an awful thing. Uh it's an awful thing to do. Uh, and and also, you know, loads of people want to chase virality. So they'll look around and they'll see some some person sharing a selfie and something that looks horribly vulnerable, and then they'll just say, Well, we we just need to do that, and that's totally inauthentic. The original might have been perfectly authentic, but copying something just because it seems to work for other people is is no reason to do that for your own brand. That means you you probably don't have much of an identity, so so don't do that.

Chris Norton 51:22

Um you know, identity, yeah.

John Espirian 51:27

You know, you you might have seen the kind of famous example of the crying CEO uh that that went viral not that long ago, and and you know, it was subject to a lot of mockery because you know, even though he might have been authentic in that moment, it it spawned a lot of uh a lot of satire, and and anyone copying that just for the numbers probably got found out, I think.

Chris Norton 51:49

Can I ask you a very um strategic question, which is what are all those post-it notes behind your head?

Will Ockenden 51:55

Yeah, I was intrigued by that.

John Espirian 51:57

It looks very it looks very put a load of the Espresso Plus uh the community members behind me because I thought, well, I've got a blank wall. Um, this is the cheapest way of uh of decorating my office, is to take the people along with me. And the idea is I I put a little plus symbol next to each one I've met in person.

Chris Norton 52:15

Okay.

John Espirian 52:15

So that you know , because the idea is uh I go around , well , not all around the world , but often people come to my conference from around the world , and uh ideally you've got to almost like Pokémon , you've got to try and catch

Conferences And Meeting Members In Person

John Espirian 52:26

them all and see if you can meet all of your members . Um , so yeah , it's one of the reasons I set up the conference is so that people would come to the UK and we could chat about LinkedIn best practice , and that means that I've met people from Australia and Texas and all over the place .

Chris Norton 52:39

Where do you have the conference then?

John Espirian 52:41

We run it in Birmingham . Um , we've run it for the last three years . Um , so uh so yeah , it's a great chance to meet . We're not doing one next year , but we're planning to come back in 2028 . At the moment , we are running these kind of satellite events around the country , much , much smaller , much more intimate . So we've recently done one in Bristol . We've got one uh coming up in London . We're gonna be doing one uh early 2027 in Manchester because uh you might have heard that LinkedIn are getting rid of the LinkedIn Local brand , so you're not able to use that name anymore . Uh so there's a kind of space in the market for people to get together and have a bit of networking and you know , have a bit of lunch and maybe chat about some LinkedIn stuff in person , you know , without any AIs present . Um , so that's what the UpLift Live Nano , uh , these kind of satellite events are . But the main conference , UpLift Live , I think it's the only one in the UK that that actually talks about how you can win on LinkedIn in in an ethical way without spending all your money on ads and doing dodgy things like engagement pods .

Chris Norton 53:41

And probably one of the final questions on on cadence, how often are you posting now in 2026 then, Compare? It used to be you should post three times a week and then it became five times a week, and now it's full of AI slop as we've been talking about. But what what do you think?

John Espirian 53:58

Uh well I've I looked at my data back from when I started getting active on LinkedIn, it averages at about four and a half posts per week that I've been doing. When I advise people, if they're just getting started, I say try and aim for one or two a week. If you can just stay consistent with that, that's a good place to be. If you're more experienced, then you can hit for sort of three or four uh per week. But it's much more valuable to spend that effort in the comments and in the DMs because you can't do everything. So I would rather you reduce the number of posts you do and get more active in comments and DMs, because that's actually where you build relationships and that's where you get remembered, and that's where people go, Oh, I know I know a guy who can do that, and then you end up getting a business lead. Whereas getting business leads direct from posts uh isn't, you know, it doesn't happen that often. And also if you put uh links in posts, the click-through rates for those things, just the very transactional, I've got a thing, here's where to buy it, kind of thing. That that though those transaction rates are very, very low. I did one experiment with links and it only got a 1.3% click-through rate, which you know, you've got to have thousands of people seeing something to get a chance of actually selling something that

Posting Cadence Comments And DMs First

John Espirian 55:08

way. And most people aren't fortunate enough to get that much visibility. So more effort on comments on DMs, I think, is a good way forward.

Will Ockenden 55:16

People will be listening to this, John, and thinking this is gold, and I want to speak to John and I want to find out about the conference and I want to connect. So, how can people get hold of you?

John Espirian 55:24

Well , I've got a very unusual surname . So if you can spell Espirian , you'll probably be able to find me and then I'm open to a chat . I've got a Premium Open Profile , which means anyone on the platform , whether we're connected or not , can send me a DM . So by all means , do that and let's have a chat .

Will Ockenden 55:39

In fact, that leads to one more question, and I will let you go. Do we need a premium profile? Do we need to be paying for LinkedIn or can we use the um the free bottle?

John Espirian 55:47

Uh 95 % of people don't need it . No . Um again , I don't work for LinkedIn , so I don't have to shill for them . Uh if you're not already optimising your profile , writing good content , uh , leaving good comments , sending good DMs , having a good banner image at the top of your profile , having a featured section , all of those things you can do for free . If you're not already doing that , you haven't got a cadence in place , you haven't got a comment strategy , get those things in place first . If you're right at the limit , by all means upgrade , but most people aren't . So I I you know I often say , look , if you can't drive your family car well , why are you gonna go and buy a Lamborghini ? Is it get the family car working properly and showing that you can get it to its limits and then maybe maybe you upgrade ? So most people don't need premium and it's really , really expensive anyway . I looked at the diet . Don't go there for no speakers . Yeah .

Chris Norton 56:37

Okay. Um I've got I've actually got a final question. So you've been on the show now, John. And if you were us, who's the next person that you'd invite on the show and why?

John Espirian 56:48

Oh, that's interesting. Well, I've got um one of our international speakers, or actually a couple of our international speakers at the conference, are great interviewees. They know loads about LinkedIn platform, but they also know loads about business because they've been in business for ages. Um, so one of them is called Brenda Meller, one of them is Kevin D. Turner. Don't know if you're aware of either of those, both very, very trusted allies, really, really good people, and I've met them in person as well. So I can certainly introduce you to both. And um, yeah, especially if you speak to Kevin, you'll find out about why uh LinkedIn beat Meta in a very, very important decision a very long time ago, which completely changed the course of social media history. Fascinating guy to speak to. I'm intrigued.

Chris Norton 57:32

I am yeah, you've told me that story. That's great. Right. Well, thanks for coming on the show, John. That was absolutely great.

John Espirian 57:39

Very welcome. Thanks for having me, guys.