Ep. 125 – 300% Increase in LINKEDIN Comments? Anne Hathaway Movie – Good or Bad? I Ask Us ANYTHING

Welcome to do this not that the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are back for Ask Us Anything from Do this not that. This is our super short episode where all week long we get in work questions and we get in ridiculous questions and we try to tackle one of each.

And if you want to submit one, all you got to do is go to jschwettelson.com podcast and there's a big button there that says Ask us anything and put in whatever you got in your brain. And don't forget, we have our longer episode at the end of the week. But let's get into it first. We're going to do our work.

Question and we got a question in from Ricky from Columbia, Tennessee.

I have never been to Columbia, Tennessee, but whenever I think about Tennessee, I get so embarrassed because when I was in college, I went to the University of Florida.

Whenever we would play Tennessee in football, I'd walk up to girls, me and my buddies would walk up the girls and be like, hey, are you from Tennessee? And then we would say, because you're the only 10 I see. And that is the cheesiest thing any human being can say to another human being.

So don't ever say that to somebody. Anyway, Ricky, what's your question? Jay, I stink at LinkedIn. Is there any secret way to get more people to comment and engage with my posts?

As a matter of fact, there is. I have a secret sauce thing that's going to be a game changer for you.

But before I tell you the game changer thing that you could do on LinkedIn to get a lot more engagement, it's super easy. You need to think about the post. The first few words that you write on your post.

The actual first few words are really a deciding factor of how much engagement you're going to get. And the reason is twofold. Number one, when someone's scrolling and they see those first few words, if it grabs them, they're going to engage.

If it doesn't grab them, they're going to keep on scrolling.

But also we receive notifications of posts of people that we like to follow that we like seeing what they're up to or people that we just connected with. And those first few words, if they're not grabbing your attention. You are done. And people make the mistake. They use things like this.

They start out their post with something that says here is blah, blah, blah or discover blah, blah, blah, or I just blah, blah, blah or I'm happy to share, blah, blah, blah. These are all boat anchors, okay? Nobody cares. Nobody wants to discover anything. Nobody's interested in what you're happy to share.

Nobody wants any of that. But what do they want? What they want is something called an engagement prompt. An engagement prompt is a secret sauce thing.

First, let me give you the stat and let me give you the examples. If you start your post with an engagement prompt, that's what I want you to think about.

World Data Research just finished this big content study across all social media platforms and we found this super interesting stat for engagement prompts. Specifically, though, on LinkedIn, starting a post with an engagement prompt will lead to a 300% increase in comments.

Specifically, on LinkedIn, what is an engagement prompt? If you start your post with these phrases, these are engagement prompts. Here we go.

Looking for advice, exclamation point, need your insights, exclamation point, seeking suggestions, exclamation point, Any recommendations, question mark, some help, exclamation point. Why are things like looking for advice, exclamation point matter? Why is that an engagement prompt and what does it do?

What you are basically saying is, hey, I think you're smart and I'd love for you to help me out with whatever it is I'm trying to explore here. And people generally like to help and they like to feel valued.

When you ask for somebody's input, it can make them feel important and appreciated and then they want to interact. And you see those posts, right? Looking for advice. I'm trying to up my game and blah, blah, blah, help me out. Or I could use some help.

What do you think about this idea? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Or needing your insights. All that.

When you say needing your insights, you're telling the person, hey, I think you're smart. I value your opinion.

So if you start your post with an engagement prompt, like looking for advice, need your insights, seeking suggestions, any recommendations, some help, it gets the person engaged. And we see comments go up by over 300% by using these engagement prompts. Cool.

All right, before we get on to the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by by Marigold. Marigold is my email sending platform.

You go to jschwetelson.com marigold and they are sharing the six trends in retail that are happening right now and they have crazy cool stats. For example, I have a stat in there that I was just looking at.

It said 59% of people say convenience is a factor that is more important than price when making a purchase decision that has to factor into your business, what you're thinking, what you're doing. So download this thing for free at jschweddelson.com Marigold Marigold is awesome. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question.

Got a question in from Jenny from Toronto. I love Toronto. Toronto is like the nicest city. It almost feels like it's not even real. It's so clean and nice and I like it.

I'm all in on Toronto except the winter. You can keep it in the winter because it's cold. Anyway, Jenny, what do you got?

Jay, I'm curious, what movies and TV did you watch this this past weekend? You really want to know that? I mean, do you honestly want to know what I'm watching? Because it is terrible, as you know.

All right, so here's what I watch. First off, two thumbs up. I watched the idea of you with an hathway. This was a great movie. It's on Prime.

It's about an Hathway being like 40 year old mom and she falls in love with this boy band singer and you think it might be horrible but it's not. I give it two thumbs up. You should watch this movie. I'm pro this movie. What else I watch? Oh, then I just saw that I was going to see in the theater.

I'm so happy I didn't. But I saw that the movie Civil War became available to rent on Apple. So I rented Civil War.

And this is about like the end of the United States and everybody fighting and I thought it was going to be really interesting. It was. I don't care what you care think about politically. I don't does not matter to me. This is one of the worst movies of all time.

You'll never convince me otherwise. It was if I was in the theater I would have walked out. Do not watch Civil War. It is garbage.

And then the last thing I watched the new season of Real Housewives of New Jersey. Yes, it's back. So I went all in. I watched every episode that became available.

Had to see what's going on with Teresa and Melissa Gorga and all of them. I mean, it's like another planet. That show is unlike any of the other Real Housewives because they're just. They're just strange.

A lot of them are strange human beings. But I love watching it. You know what I read? Do you know how much they get paid?

Melissa Gorga, okay, how much do you think she gets paid on to be a Real Housewife? I saw this on screen rant. She gets paid $750,000 a season to be on that show. There you go. But you didn't know that.

All right, so what did we talk about today? I have no idea. Check out our longer episode at the end of the week. Leave this thing a review. Come on. That helps me. It circulates it.

If you've been listening for a while, please leave a review even if you hate me. I mean, that would be weird. But I appreciate you. Thanks for checking this all out. And yeah, talk to you later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice.

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