Many years ago, while I was still on Upwork, I created a short-lived LinkedIn profile.
I thought LinkedIn could be a way to get high-quality leads for my copywriting services. So I created a profile and started aimlessly “connecting” with people who could be potential clients or contacts to help me get clients.
This lasted all about three days. I hated the experience, and it produced nothin’. I felt stupid and frankly humiliated, groping, and needy.
In a fit of rage, I deleted my LinkedIn profile, raced up to the tower of my moss-covered castle, slammed the large oaken doors behind me, and vowed that the cruel world would never see me “connecting” with anyone ever again.
And yet, ever since, I continue to hear stories of people getting clients, customers, and, yes, valuable connections through LinkedIn.
Even though I refuse to come down from the tower of my moss-covered castle, I have to admit my beastly ears always do perk up at these stories.
And so they did a few days ago, when I got an email from reader Carlo Gargiulo, who works as a copywriter at an info publishing business in Switzerland.
Carlo wrote me to say he has been applying some ideas I’ve shared, specifically inside my Most Valuable Email training, to writing LinkedIn posts. The results have been impressive.
Like I said, I couldn’t keep my beastly ears in place. I let out a soft growl. And I wrote back to Carlo, to ask exactly what he was doing on LinkedIn. He wrote me to say:
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About three months ago I decided to start writing posts on LinkedIn about copywriting and direct response marketing.
I started doing this because I noticed that very few Italian copywriters were talking about copy on LinkedIn.
So, every Monday morning I publish a post.
The goal is to create some authority for myself and to get some clients among the entrepreneurs who follow my page.
For the past 2 weeks or so I have been reaping the first fruits.
There are entrepreneurs I had met in the past who have contacted me privately to ask how much it costs to consult with me and how much money I charge in exchange for writing marketing materials.
Specifically, they want posts similar to the ones I write on LinkedIn and email sequences.
The other result I have achieved is about the growth of authority in the company where I work as a copywriter.
Many colleagues started following me, and since I’m not very popular (since I’m very private), those posts were a hook to showcase my knowledge, and now I end up with a queue of people who want to talk to me about anything related to copy and direct response marketing.
As I told you, I’m very private, I lead a quiet lifestyle (books, TV series, magazines, running, walks at the lake) and I don’t like to show off.
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Carlo’s message went on. He listed the specific marketing and copywriting ideas from the MVE swipe file, included with the MVE training, that he has been using in his LinkedIn posts.
I won’t repeat those here. But I think you get the bigger point:
A way to use LinkedIn not to feel humiliated and out of place, but to get clients warmed up, reaching out, and asking to work with you… and even maybe to get a kind word or a smile of appreciation from your coworkers and colleagues.
Of course, that’s all assuming that you can write something that lights up people’s brains a bit, and that they feel interested in reading more of.
There are different ways to do that.
But as Carlo found, and as I found before him, using the MVE trick, and specific ideas in the MVE swipe file, is one effective way to go about it. If you’d like to get started with that today, so you can reap the benefits within a few months’ time: