In this episode of “Ask Us Anything”, host Jay and Kristin Nagel tackle listener questions – one about work and one more lighthearted. Jay shares his approach to consistently posting on LinkedIn over time to grow his network. They also debate whether it’s appropriate for families to send out holiday cards once the kids are grown.
Main Discussion Points:
– Jay spends 15 minutes a day, 3-4 days a week, posting on LinkedIn to consistently grow his network over time
– Key to success on LinkedIn is consistency over time – “Just don’t stop” – and not overthinking what you post
– Debate whether holiday cards from families should stop once kids are older or is that “old school”?
And MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!
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Transcript
Foreign. It is time once again to solve many of the world's mysteries. For Ask Us anything on do this. Not that.
I am here with one of our lead producers, Kristen Nagel. Kristen, are you ready to just crush this?
Kristin Nagel:I'm ready.
Jay Schwedelson:Did not sound like you were ready. I mean, are you sure you're right.
Kristin Nagel:I'm ready to crush this.
Jay Schwedelson:Fantastic.
Just a reminder, this is a short episode that we do on Wednesdays where all week long we get questions in, we get work questions in and ridiculous questions in. And you could submit them, by the way, on jelson.com there's a button that says ask us anything.
And we, we get the wildest questions in and we try to tackle one work one and one ridiculous one each week. And then we still have our long episodes on Fridays. So check us out for that. So, Kristen, let's jump into it. Let's first tackle the work question.
What is the work question we got in this week?
Kristin Nagel:All right, Jay, the first question, the work question is from Chris in Orlando and he asks, I see you post a lot on LinkedIn. What exactly is your routine with all of that?
Jay Schwedelson:Yes, well, I'm sorry for everybody. My feed, I do post a lot on LinkedIn and I'm happy to share exactly what I do. Not that it's.
I'm not going to tell you it's the perfect thing to do at all. But if you are trying to connect with more people, meet more people, if you're trying to grow your network, I'll tell you what I have done.
So if you rewind about, oh, gosh, I don't know, two and a half years ago or so, I had about a thousand connections or so, something like that. And so now I have about 46,000 connections on LinkedIn, which is a lot, I guess. So how did that happen?
What I decided, I woke up one day, I said, man, I need to meet a lot more people. I need to connect with a lot more people. I just felt like that that was something I was lacking in my, in my kind of professional existence.
So I decided, you know what, I better start posting. And I started posting. So I mess around how to post and what people want to interact with.
And then I came up with a routine that I think has been working, which is I generally post three to four times a week. I spend 15 minutes, that's it, 15 minutes every day on LinkedIn. It's on my calendar. Generally, it's from 8:30 to 8:45 in the morning.
I have found that that is the best time to some people say to post 8:00am, I don't think that's right. I think it's anytime after 8:30 before 9:00 and I spend 15 minutes. What I do is I post something. I don't, I don't put it on a timer.
I don't really have a plan. I don't have like a whole content strategy at all. I post something that I think is relevant for that day.
So if I post three to four times in a week, I would say two of the posts would be something that's useful for people to see. Other two posts might be something that's funny to me.
I very rarely, maybe like once or twice a month I'll post something that is promotional about me, like I did something great, or you got to do this because I have a new thing I want you to check out. Very rarely do that. Because what I learned about LinkedIn is that people really want to learn stuff. They don't just want to celebrate others.
I don't mean that in a bad way. But what they want to engage in is stuff that's going to help their careers, help help them do better at their jobs. And I'm all for that.
I'm all for that. So that's kind of why I try to post in 15 minutes a day. There's two secret sauces of LinkedIn. One, consistency. Consistency.
When I say consistency, don't stop. I don't care if you have 10 bad posts in a row. Who cares? Who cares if nobody interacts? Who cares if nobody likes? It's meaningless.
If you are consistent, you will beat out 95% of people on this planet. Because what people do is they give up. Think about podcasts. 90% of podcasts fail after the 13th episode. That's like the going stat.
Because people give up. Just don't stop. Keep going for years, never ending. Keep on going and going and going and you will win the day. The second thing is don't overthink it.
Point the camera at yourself, post it and say, look, I have a funny hat. Or say, oh, I saw this article. This was really interesting to me. Go for it. Don't overthink it.
One of my favorite quotes always is, perfection is the enemy of progress. Because it is. Just do it. Who cares? And that's my soapbox for the day. So that's what I do on LinkedIn. That's the work question.
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that is meet marigold.com. all right, Kristen, I'm nervous. What is the ridiculous question this week?
Kristin Nagel:The ridiculous question. Jay is from Charlotte. She is from Salt Lake City, and she asks, do you send out a family holiday card?
Jay Schwedelson:First off, does your family send out a holiday card? No.
I think that there needs to be a federal law that after people in your family are of a certain age, it is against the law for you to have a holiday card go out. I don't think it's okay for people to be like, I don't know, over the age of 17 years old and nobody in the family younger than that. Okay.
And then a holiday card to go out. It doesn't matter what you look like. When you're an adult, it's not okay that these cards go out. Is that horrible to say?
Kristin Nagel:No, I think it's, It's, It's. It's old school at this point. I think everyone just posts on Instagram.
Jay Schwedelson:You know, oh, I get a lot of holiday cards. And you know what? The ones where people have babies, it's like, yeah, you had a baby. That's really cute. I want to see what the baby looks like.
You know, whatever. Oh, now they're two years old. What they look like.
Kristin Nagel:Great.
Jay Schwedelson:Everyone looks cute. Whatever. Here's your dog. But it's as they get older and you know the vibe. It's like the parents like, yes, go ahead, get dressed up.
We're going to take the picture. We do it every year. We're doing it. No, I don't care. You don't want to do. We're sending the damn picture.
And you almost can feel the energy when you get the card of, like, how nobody wants to be in the picture.
Kristin Nagel:Yeah, they're forcing you to smile for that one photo. And then you leave the store and you're just, like, angry before.
Jay Schwedelson:And by the way, I'm a horrible person because what I do is. And 90% of the time we get these cards, I don't even know who they are anymore. I totally forget who's.
I don't know why I'm on their list, but in my home, because I'm literally a horrible person. Not for the ones with babies, but the ones with older people.
I take the ones with the older people that I really don't even know, and I make sure they're very prominently displayed in my home. And then every time I walk by them, I make fun of that family. And every single time, like, on a daily basis, because it's pure entertainment to me.
And I'm a terrible person. So please send me your holiday cards because that is what I will be doing with that. So send them out if you got little kids. Other than that. Stop it.
Stop it. It's over. Okay? You missed the boat. That's. That's where I land on that. All right, so we did it again. Another crazy episode.
Check us out at Jay Schwedelson.com@guru events.com Kristen, you're awesome. And we'll see all the longer episode on Friday. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.
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