Mastering LinkedIN Growth for Small Teams: Insights from Content Evangelist Logan Lyles

02/14/24 • 40 min

About The Episode:
Logan Lyles, is the Head of Evangelism & Content Marketing at Teamwork.com, and host of the "Agency Life" and "Nearbound Marketing" podcasts.

Logan walks us through the importance of audience research, why LinkedIn could be a goldmine, and how a bit of authenticity can transform your strategy. Logan also breaks down the art of turning conversations into impactful content, and gives us a front-row seat to his strategic approach towards building an engaged audience.
Today, we'll cover:
- Journalism, B2B tech sales & content creation strategy.
- LinkedIn and how creators can maximize the platform
- Start by recording conversations and voice notes
- Repurposing content across formats
- Niche communities, employee advocacy, and the potential of short form video in 2024.

What You'll Learn
1. Content creation authenticity and value
2. LinkedIn engagement and audience building
3. Transitioning to team-based content strategies
4. Employee advocacy and content sharing
5. Repurposing interactions into compelling content
6. Multi-platform content strategy and distribution
7. Tools for innovative content creation
Timestamps
00:00 Path from journalism to b2b marketing.
05:20 Use tools to find top creators, engage.
09:51 Leverage tools to create, share engaging content.
11:42 Utilize Castmagic app for recording internal conversations.
14:26 Leveraging AI to quickly create branded video clips.
20:36 Consider audience's online location for marketing strategy.
22:33 Small companies have an advantage for content creation.
26:07 Embrace using tools to create quality content.
30:08 Create invitation-only LinkedIn content groups, encourage sharing.
33:09 Alex Hermozi is the new Gary Vee.
35:41 Engage, connect, and share to grow network.
38:23 Send form, share video, optimize, promote report.
Leveraging LinkedIn for Visibility: "If you scroll LinkedIn after listening to this episode and it says like, oh, Logan commented on this post, and then it shows the post and then it shows my comment, right? I'm getting visibility and I didn't even create a freaking post, right?"
— Logan Lyles [00:06:24 → 00:06:37]

The Power of Short Form Video: "I do think that video, especially short form video, I think anybody listening to this is not surprised by. That's hot right now. YouTube shorts, obviously TikTok, and even on LinkedIn, we're seeing the same sort of trends there."
— Logan Lyles [00:08:17 → 00:08:32]

Leveraging Employee Advocacy in Content Distribution: "how does that work into our distribution strategy on LinkedIn of what we call an employee evangelism program, where we're activating individuals within the team to share that content."
— Logan Lyles [00:09:52 → 00:10:03]

The Power of AI in Video Editing: "And then leveraging some AI, even within that tool to, say, shorten my word gaps, take out the filler words. And now in just a couple of minutes I can apply a template where it's got my captions with our branded font on there, the progress bar with our brand logo."
— Logan Lyles [00:14:28 → 00:14:43]

Social Media Strategy: "where is my audience, right? If they're all on X and you do some of that research, maybe you look at Sparktoro and you look at what are some of the accounts people are following? What podcasts are they listening to, what YouTube channels are they following? Where are those folks repurposing their content? Are they more active on LinkedIn and getting engagement? Are they more active on X and getting engagement? And you might want to follow the crowd that you're trying to gather and see where they're at. So I would say it comes down to kind of that fundamental marketing question of where is your audience at? And go there."
— Logan Lyles [00:21:16 → 00:21:49]

Advantages of Small Businesses in Advocacy Programs: "You don't have the bureaucracy of, if we launch an employee advocacy program, how do we let people in and tell some people no and all the different things and HR and legal and all that stuff, like you got five people, you can work it all out, right?"
— Logan Lyles [00:22:44 → 00:22:57]

Content Strategy in Digital Marketing: "Sharing that in a LinkedIn post is basically like product marketing on a small scale, right? Because the people are the ones delivering the service."
— Logan Lyles [00:24:44 → 00:24:51]

Content Creation Innovation: "Before castmagic was around, when I was at sweetfish, we were using gong or chorus AI, one of those call recording tools, and we were using it exactly for that. And obviously that didn't have any AI built into it, didn't have the quality of recording the audio or the video. But that's why w...

About The Episode:
Logan Lyles, is the Head of Evangelism & Content Marketing at Teamwork.com, and host of the "Agency Life" and "Nearbound Marketing" podcasts.

Previous Episode

Ultimate Guide to Creator Brand Deals: Monetization, Affiliate, and Pitfalls to Avoid with AppSumo Head of Marketing, Nick Christensen

About The Episode:
In this convo with Nick Christensen, we breakdown the secrets to using influencer and creator marketing to amplify sales and views. Nick shares insider strategies on how to maximize ROI, the importance of genuine partnerships, and how to forge lasting brand deals as a creator.

Today, we'll cover:
- How to negotiate influencer marketing deals during high-conversion periods like Black Friday.
- The critical factors influencers should consider when setting rates and approaching brand deals.
- Exploring the distinction between affiliate marketing and influencer roles, and how to navigate these.
- The effectiveness of outreach strategies for securing partnerships and the preference for commission-based models.
- Nick's journey at Appsumo and his tips for creators to connect with brands authentically.

What You'll Learn
1. Leveraging influencer marketing for sales.
2. Creator compensation and negotiation strategies.
3. Affiliates vs. influencer marketing roles.
4. Crafting successful brand partnerships.
5. Engagement over follower count.
6. Long-term relationships with brands.
7. Performance-based partnership benefits.
Timestamps
00:00 Passionate about helping creators grow efficiently. Started ambassador program.
04:42 Monetize YouTube channel through brand outreach and outreach.
10:13 Avoid coming on too strong with rates.
11:22 Suggest specific approach, avoid standard email.
16:53 Appsumo's successful Black Friday marketing strategy.
18:21 Measuring marketing success with LTV to CAC.
22:13 Six-month trial period with potential for growth.
26:49 Build long-term partnerships with smaller companies.
29:09 Affiliate opportunities in SaaS for recurring revenue.
32:41 LinkedIn is the best marketing channel.
Expanding Influence with Strategic Partnerships: "We have an eight figure affiliate and influencer program that I started about five years ago. Started with really just referral marketing, expanded to affiliate, traditional affiliate marketing, and now kind of the final stage is what we call ambassador or influencer marketing."
— Nick Christensen [00:02:34 → 00:03:47]

Influencer Marketing Strategies: "Ten times out of ten, you're going to get a yes from brands, especially if the first three months are more of like a test and then invest where there's no skin off their back."
— Nick Christensen [00:07:56 → 00:08:04]

Influencer Marketing Pitfalls: "You just got to ten k subs, you're the king of YouTube and it's like, yo, I'm coming in with $15,000 per month fee, right? And it's an exaggeration of an example, but I've seen some insane rates being thrown out to where not only are you not trying to align with my goals, but the outreach is just so transactional."
— Nick Christensen [00:10:20 → 00:10:45]

Effective Marketing Outreach: "Don't send them some general pdf with some crazy numbers in it. Send them a real email and say, hey, I checked out castmagic or I checked out Appsumo and I loved this part of it, or I loved this tool. I would really love to promote this in this and this way."
— Nick Christensen [00:11:29 → 00:11:44]

The Importance of Genuine Engagement in Monetization: "Well, I'm looking for good engagement, not just views. I'm looking for real followers and real comments. Bots are huge on YouTube. All social media channels pumping up these creator channels to make it seem like they have these insane followings and insane engagement."
— Nick Christensen [00:14:08 → 00:14:25]

Evaluating Social Media Engagement: "One ratio that we use is a CPM based on the last ten videos, the views of the last ten videos, and then a ratio of follower to view to comment accounts, right? So it doesn't matter if you don't have a lot of followers or you don't have a lot of subs. If your sub to view count to comment ratio are really good, let's say you have 100 followers and you get 80 views on your videos and of those 80 views you get like 20 comments. That's a really good ratio, right? That means you have a great channel of people that are really engaged."
— Nick Christensen [00:14:37 → 00:15:13]

Maximizing Black Friday Earnings: "People are conditioned to buy during Black Friday. And so if I was a creator, I would go really hard on Black Friday, lowering my fee amount and increasing the commission amount of saying, I think if there's any time for me to do this and adjust my ratios, this is it."
— Nick Christensen [00:17:34 → 00:17:50]

Marketing Efficiency in the Digital Age: "LTV, to CAC is how we track all of our paid returns at Appsumo. The LTV, meaning the customer profit that I am getting from them. The CAC being how much I am paying to get that customer...

Next Episode

The Art of the Offer with Tommy Magill: $30M+ Mastering Paid Ads and Course Funnels

About The Episode:
This episode is all about scaling profitability of your content and we're joined by Tommy Magill – he's scaled content businesses by millions through paid ads.

In just over a year, Tommy Magill's marketing agency went from zero to managing over a million in ad spend, and becoming the number one affiliate for Shopify. As a dynamic player in the content and course creation space, Tommy has unlocked potent strategies for leveraging trust, credibility, and a strong offer to not just attract but retain your audience.

Today, we'll cover:
- The art of securing low interest business credit and using storytelling to supercharge sales.
- The science behind testing offers and strategic allocation of funds for maximum return on investment.
- The undeniable power of content creation in building trust and testing course concepts with your audience.
- The insights Tommy gained from working with top-tier clients, including the effectiveness of paid ads and course marketing.
- Tommy’s perspectives on the future of content strategy and his commitment to long-form content for the year ahead.

What You'll Learn
1. Leveraging Low Interest Business Credit
2. Scientific Offer Testing & Analysis
3. Trust-Building Through Content Creation
4. Effective Paid Advertising Strategies
5. Course Creation & Concept Testing
6. Importance of Creating High-Quality Offers
7. Affiliate Marketing & Software Revenue Potential
Timestamps
00:00 Transitioned from affiliate marketing to online courses.
05:02 Networking: staying connected, learning, adding value.
07:03 Low ticket, mid ticket, high ticket products.
11:47 Meeting to discuss market offers and tactics.
13:55 Testing multiple ad themes increases engagement and credibility.
17:44 Create content like interviewing customers, engage, snowball.
20:21 Success story of growing ad spend with Shopify.
26:05 YouTube marketing boosted spending from $20k to $650k
29:06 Creating personal connection, scaling ads strategically.
31:18 Jeff Bezos ad transformed YouTube, made money.
34:15 Platforms favor organic content, diminishing ad space.
The Power of Affiliate Marketing and Education in Business Growth: "Found my way into courses because affiliate marketing keeps you sharp on just whatever marketing channel you chose."
— Tommy Magill [00:02:33 → 00:02:40]

E-commerce Pricing Strategy: "There's like the low ticket product, which is everything underneath. Like $197, which we found was like a consideration window from a click was like less than four or five days on average. There's what's called mid ticket, which is like that 197 to about 2000 ish dollars, where the click to purchase averages a little bit. I think it's seven days is what we found for the average. And then for high ticket, which is like anything 2000 plus, we see consideration windows of like 14 days on average."
— Tommy Magill [00:07:03 → 00:07:41]

Impact of Compelling Offers in Business Launches: "there's one of the brands in our portfolio talks about business credit and helping business owners acquire credit at a 0% interest rate for twelve months. We launched that, I believe it was like three years ago, and it sort of was mind boggling."
— Tommy Magill [00:09:29 → 00:09:46]

Webinar Marketing Insights: "I think this alone will provide a lot of value if you go to a tool called similar web and you just put in the website webinar jam, and webinar jam, for everybody who doesn't know it hosts a ton of webinars. And so if you put that into similar web and you look at the referring traffic, you can see effectively what are the best performing webinars right now, or over the past three months."
— Tommy Magill [00:12:07 → 00:12:34]

Building an Unassailable Brand: "this brand that we create is the only brand in the world that can do this like this."
— Tommy Magill [00:13:03 → 00:13:10]

Viral Marketing Strategies: "And when it rings true, the great thing is, then there is a quote unquote flywheel of people talk about how easy it was and how engaging the communities and everything like that."
— Tommy Magill [00:13:55 → 00:14:07]

Effective Content Creation Strategy: "set aside at least an hour per week. But really, I say, like four to 5 hours per week. So an hour per workday, so to speak, creating content for six months straight and do that every single day, and depending on your follower size, maybe that looks like Amas, maybe that looks like creating a Facebook group and just going in there and just talking about what you're got."
— Tommy Magill [00:15:52 → 00:16:20]

Creating Engaging Content: "Very similarly with content, do you want to know that what you're d...