Linkedin Safari: Session 6 of 12

Slide decks are the highest-performing format on LinkedIn.

This week Simon Chappuzeau works with me on my slide deck.

Since we started  this 12 week safari I have reduced my posting from 4-6 per day down to 1 per day.

I have increased my followers from 10,850 to 11,070

But most importantly my engagement rate has increased >100%

In other words I am spending much less time posting and getting better results.

What we look at today- is where the time should go. And that is on content creation instead of content dumping.
     

If you prefer to watch this then the video is on Youtube.

https://youtu.be/4gfoFeEAZLo
 

Transcript

Simon Chappuzeau: 0:02

Right. Do that. Yes, absolutely. I mean, any kind of success. Yeah, because it's, I think it's a good illustration for what success really means. Success doesn't start with, Hey, sold something. Success starts with, Hey people. Have something to talk about with me because I understand who I am and that then leads to a relationship that leads to sale.

Jim James: 0:25

Hello and welcome back to What is Now Session six of the LinkedIn Safari Sessions with me, Jim James here in the uk and Simon Chapo in Cape Town, South Africa. Simon say,

Simon Chappuzeau: 0:39

Hello. Hello on Jen

Jim James: 0:42

Simon. It's wonderful. We are moving forward. It's hard to believe we've managed six live sessions, but we're moving forward. What have you got in store for me today?

Simon Chappuzeau: 0:51

Well today, I think, uh, some great thing is that you've done your first slideshow and, um, so we're gonna look at your slideshow and I'll show a couple of examples of other slideshows. We will look at your post and analyze, um, how you structured the post so you can then take that for the next slideshow that you hopefully gonna do.

Jim James: 1:12

Okay. Grayton we're gonna talk about then, um, the posters on the last show we talked about which formats are most, if you like, uh, highest performing, and you said the slideshow is the highest performing of all. So that's why we've had the challenge. You let me, the challenge, we are even gonna show people how to create a slideshow. Right. I'll, I'll let people see my camera and show how I made the slideshow after you gave me the template. So do you want me to just share a little bit of good news first, Simon, before we dive into how to make a a deck, we love good

Simon Chappuzeau: 1:43

news. So whatever, whatever you have in good news, give it to us.

Jim James: 1:47

I wanna, yeah, the world needs good news. So good news. First of all, my, you know, I say followers sounds a little bit egotistical, but the number of people that are connected and, and you know, following what I am sharing has increased now to 11,000 and. 71, so that's fantastic. So that's grown from just under 11,000 before we started this, uh, process. Mm-hmm. Um, I am spending measurably less time on LinkedIn. But my engagement levels are higher. And today I had a call with a couple of, um, business development, uh, people from a new company called Omni Course, which is an audio app for courses. Uh, they were in actually Turkey, um, and they'd found me through LinkedIn and they'd read my line. You know about jumping out of a plane at 17 and loving our profit and publicity can go hand in hand and that's thanks to you getting me to work on my story, Simon. Whereas before it was kinda like my cv. So, um, I'm that leading to an opportunity.

Simon Chappuzeau: 2:52

It's, it's a great example how something that you could consider like irrelevant, trivial, almost, um, gives somebody else a sort of like a hook where it can connect with you Yeah. And, uh, form a relationship. And yes, I mean, in the long run we wanna sell something, but, uh, Before that comes a relationship that has to be built in that relationship. You can build with personal experiences that make you unique and memorable in a way that people connect with you and think, Hey, that, that is an interesting guy. Let's talk some more. So, great, great

Jim James: 3:28

story. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for that. So really opens up an opportunity, um, and just a direct result of changing the about me profile. And, and I think we did that in, uh, session three, didn't we? So if anyone wants to. Go back and look at that. That's on YouTube. And also we're writing this up into articles. So Simon, what have you got in store for us this week?

Simon Chappuzeau: 3:49

Yeah, today. Um, I wanted to dissect your. Slideshow and, uh, look a bit at the, at the structure. I wanted to show a couple of examples of other slideshows and, uh, hopefully give you some pointers and ideas, um, for your next slideshow because I think you have, with a book that you wrote, um, the Entrepreneur, you have a lot of great content on your hands, and the question is really how can you best convey that in a way that people, um, Can easily consume that and connect, connect with you. And I'm gonna show you a slide show that, that I think you're gonna like, um, cause it almost gives you the feeling of a book. Um, but it's a tructure, so. Okay. But yeah, first let's get started. Um, let's start by, I've put together a little. Slide. And, um, what I've put together is sort of a guideline that I have, um, for the, for what we, what we should think about, um, when we write a post. So like a test and, um, it's a very simple test. Okay.

Jim James: 4:59

Now are you gonna share your screen?

Simon Chappuzeau: 5:01

Yeah, I will. You should see my screen. Do

Jim James: 5:05

you?

Simon Chappuzeau: 5:07

Yes. So sorry. So it's five very simple questions that I ask myself every time when I write a post. Um, and, um, it's, yeah, it's really not rocket science, but, but does my post teach me some, uh, teach my reader something? Does my post motivate my reader? Does my post entertain my reader? Um, does it make them think or. Do I give them the feeling that they understand me? And, um, if you take these five questions, um, I think it's a good true North compass a, a guideline to measure whether a post is really good. And, um, I had to, uh, admit to myself with some posts that I sort of wrote down in a hurry because I didn't really know what to write. it doesn't hit any of these. Yeah. And then usually you get low engagement because it's like people are like, so what? Um,

Jim James: 6:10

I don't care. Yeah. Those are great questions. And you've got enough of them to give some diversity, which is part of the challenge if you're sitting there and also not so many, is to not know where to start. And you could even put one of those into like story lab, dot ai or uh, PEPPER type or chat g pt or any one of these. Uh, writing aids right to give you a prompt. Simon, you still there? Hello. Simon Simon's in Cape Town, South Africa, so sometimes we lose him and I think that may be the case right now. So Simon is talking about the unnoticed entrepreneur, but are you back Simon? He's is back, is live. Simon. Hello, can you hear us Earth calling Simon the joys of international videos. And what we're gonna be doing is we're recording these using riverside.fm and uploading each of these to the YouTube channel, the Unnoticed Entrepreneur, so you can watch all of these afterwards anyway. And I'll also put out as a bonus episode on my podcast, the Unnoticed Entrepreneur, she can find an all players. Simon, are you back with us? Hello, Simon, are you there? Okay, now, so if I can't get Simon back, I'm gonna show you what he's given me his homework this week to try and help as an author to share the contents of my book without sounding like I'm selling something. So I'm looking at the LinkedIn Live and I could see Simon's, uh, frozen there. So, Simon, are you, are you there? Hello, Simon. Now while we don't have Simon, then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna share my screen, okay? Um, and I've got here under my window, the canvas slides. And I used Canva to create the presentation. Simon gave me a template, which is great. And what I did was did a sort of a, a red, gray, black sequence taking the content from one of the, um, one of the chapters with Oscar Trumbo, who's a listening expert in actually in Australia. Seems like we're doing everything with people from all over the world, which is fantastic. And you can see here, basically what I did was create a slide, each slide with a small amount of text telling a story. And this is really Simon's genius, has been to try and, you know, help me to work out, not selling. But informing, but entertaining, educating. This is really a key point of what Simon's been teaching me. And you can see here what I did was I was able to create this Canva. And truth be told, I was actually waiting for my daughter to finish her ballet lesson and I used the iPad app on Canva to create this while I was waiting for her sitting in, in the car. Um, and what I did then was I. Was able to export this, um, as a PDF file. And Canva has access to lots and lots of of great photographs. So you can get stock photographs and then you can remove the background in Canva. This also, uh, will work in vis me two. Um, so when you export that, then of course you can import that as a PDF into LinkedIn. Simon, you're back with us. I'm back. Good. I was winging it a little bit there. Uh, well I lost you, but um, I know that sometimes you're having some issues with power there. Thank you. So the South African power outage. So luckily we had a little bit of a chat before Simon and I thought we always talking on Monday what we're gonna cover, and then on, on Thursday we go through it. So Simon, I've just shared how I made the deck. Do you wanna share your screen and, and see the performance of it or is your. You not gonna cover. Not gonna handle that.

Simon Chappuzeau: 11:06

Let's see, uh, um, so you shared, um, Canva and how you do Dexon, Canva and just to

Jim James: 11:15

show Yeah, that's right. Very simple

Simon Chappuzeau: 11:19

just to show alternative. Yeah. I show my take.

Jim James: 11:25

Yes, of course. So that was the plan. And then I think the point of showing you Canva is that without being a designer, tools like Canva and vis me give you the power to create content that's really not that difficult. If you create a format, size is standard on LinkedIn, uh, and you choose some colors that you want and some fonts that you want, and the sizes and a style, then Canva really helps you to make this as quickly as anything. Hmm, Simon, over to you. The template you gave us,

Simon Chappuzeau: 11:57

Exactly. So this is just another example of a template you can use. Free tool can, I think is, uh, I dunno, 10 pounds a month or 20. Um, and, uh, Google Slides is a free tool, um, which basically does the same. What you don't get with Google Slides are, Images, so I had to buy them separately. But essentially it's the same tool. You have like individual slides and then you can work with text and um, you can yeah. Insert images like you've done I corrupt background. Yeah. So it's, it's very simple tool. Um, if you know how to use Word, you know how to use, uh, the SLU and it's free.

Jim James: 13:20

and, and Simon, this is the template you kindly shared with me at the beginning. Do you want to then look now at the post on my LinkedIn as we said so exactly. Can see how it then looks. I had to write a little bit of introduction text. Mm-hmm. And basically what we're doing, Simon and I, is finding a way for people that have got something to promote in this case, you know, the book by Wiley, the, the, uh, unnoticed entrepreneur and how. So we're not selling people a book, we're giving them an insight into what they might get from the book. So that's really the purpose. So Simon, why don't you go, you wanna screen share and show then

Simon Chappuzeau: 13:53

how it looks on my profile. So, and, and on the note of the book, you said a good thing. Uh, yes. I mean, in the end we wanna sell the book, but, um, I believe that the best way to sell something is to basically give it away for free. Um, because, um, it's, I mean, even if you. All the content you that you have in the book, it will never be the same like having the book. Um, but it will help people to understand what they can get from the book. And, um, so some people might think, Hey, I can't share what I've written in the book because I want people to buy the book, so why share this in the book? And I think the, the best, the better way to approach this and sort of we are, we are getting there now, is to share as much as possible from the book. Because that is, um, giving value on LinkedIn. If you look at like the average feed, and you remember the session we had a couple of weeks back where I asked you to, um, yeah, give comments on the posts and you struggled with some of them. And that is very often because these posts only promote something where you can't really have an opinion or you don't care. So what is that to say? But the minute you start sharing things that are. Of interest or valuable. And coming back to the five things that I said, uh, earlier today, would they teach me and, uh, entertain me and, uh, make me think and show the, show that you understand me? These are things that, um, Or interesting or engaging for pe. So yeah, you started doing this with your post here. Um, I love your opening line with the Simon Sinek, um, that, I mean, that's so ironic. I would've never thought that Simon Sinek is a bad listener after he's been talking to us for, uh, what, close to 15 years. But, um, actually I can, I can see that, but

Jim James: 15:48

No. And, and that's why I led with that, because you, you'd also said to me, Simon, in, in one of the episodes, I think in, in four, that, you know, if you're posting about people that are obscure, um, no one really knows, right? And so what I decided this time to do was to try and link it to someone who has a profile. And I listened to Simon Sinek. And he's, uh, a bit of op, uh, optimism podcast, and he said that. And so I, I thought from what you had said, I would try and build bridges or links to people that have got a profile. So people go, oh, if Simon says that, it's in a different category to sort of, uh, uh, someone that, that people are not familiar with. So that, that's why I this Absolutely. I learned that

Simon Chappuzeau: 16:30

from you. Abso Yeah. Yeah. Very smart. Absolutely. Because you build, you, we like to identify with things that we recognize and things that are familiar. And Simon certainly, definitely is um, probably less than Simon. Um, so exactly opening line. Then another great thing you led with a number, um, I'm not sure that we would see this number because it's in the fourth row with a, with a slide show, you only see the first three rows, but still it's always good to sort of cram facts, numbers and half things into the opening of a post because that pulls us in. One thing that I see a lot of people do, which is um, Not as good as sort of like have a lengthy introduction like you would have on a blog post or if you write a letter, um, that does not work on LinkedIn, so you really have to. Very, be very fast with what you're saying, but so people know what, what, what they can expect from this post. And you've done this, um, you've picked what I think was the strongest fact from the chapter with Oscar. Um, and yeah. Idiosyncratic number that 74.9% of people believe they're above average because Yeah. Doesn't make sense because otherwise it can't be above average. So great. And, um, yeah, you took four main lessons, um, from the chapter, the four listening types. That is quite nice. Um, and you kept the post rather short. So just this text is something that I can easily read in probably just in six 60 seconds. Um, Which is enough to have a touchpoint with you to give a taste of what to expect from this post, from you, and potentially from future posts. And then you just cut it and, uh, you have the

Jim James: 18:22

slideshow here. Yeah. And Simon, I owe that to you because I used to write sort of semi essays Really? And, and you know, the less is more. Do more thinking and less writing is one of the takeaways. So for anybody that's involved in writing for here and other platforms, you know, more thinking, less writing is a mantra that I'm taking away from this.

Simon Chappuzeau: 18:47

what is this beautiful saying? Sorry for the long letter. I didn't have time to sh write a short one. Um, along

Jim James: 18:54

those lines. Yes, that's right, Yeah, there's, there's all sorts of stuff about that. You know, great books are, are what's left out, not what's put in, right? Mm-hmm. So as you, as you said with your five questions, which of course we'll share again, um, and we'll be on the. Video version of this, you know, that you, you do anything you're entertaining or informing or inspiring, you know, or somehow sharing, it's a key. Mm-hmm. So tell us what you think of then The PowerPoint that I made in Can, I showed that while you were having a power outage.

Simon Chappuzeau: 19:26

Yeah, let's, let's go through it slide by slide so the listeners and the viewers can also see, uh, what you've done here. Um, so you've done 12 slides, which is a good number. Um, there's no half and fast rule for the number of slides you should have. Um, in the end. As long as it's interesting and entertaining for the reader, it's, it's a good number. And, um,

Jim James: 19:48

so And also one, one small thing is Simon, is I use the alt text to do the three killer questions to become a better listener. Yeah. So that was another little thing, another little. Well done piece, well done metadata that I hadn't used before, but now well just discovering and you're gonna share with us later about how to make sure you share so everyone can view it, not just your connections. We'll share that later today. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Chappuzeau: 20:11

And exactly. I mean, if, if you, if you come to the pause for the first time and you have a over it with the, with a mouse, then you see the killer questions pop up. So it's a nice additional piece. Of information that we can give to pull people into the post. Um, and I think you've done a good job here with, uh, yeah. Mentioning the questions. Okay. So, um, let's, let's start the, the analysis. Um, again here, you've done a good job by picking a number. Um, with the 75, the think we are above average listeners. Which is great. Um, which I would've done differently here, is to sort of show how ridiculous the number is, because if I just read it, sort of like you've, you've done it on the next slide. So, um, and you've chosen a great picture. So, um, I don't have the, don't have the answer now how, how to put that on one slide. Um, but, uh, um, that, well, I could

Jim James: 21:08

have switched them actually stronger. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I needed to get a better visual counterpoint to the text.

Simon Chappuzeau: 21:15

Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that, that's also a good point. Um, so the, the visuals here are, they're nice, but it's not really sort of working with a headline. It's sort of, it's, we, we see what we read. And there's one rule in, uh, film script editing, um, that what you see should always be something that you don't hear the actors say. And by that you create tension because it doesn't really gel what, what they say. I mean, it's like, I don't know. Somebody coming into the Simon, Hey, just for a moment here, but not smiling. Then we can read that there's a subtext between that person not being, uh, honest and sincere, having some other motives. Coming into the

Jim James: 22:00

room. Okay. Cuz if not, I will share my screen's an

Simon Chappuzeau: 22:02

example, but, um, I will share my, you get the point that if we see what is written, it's not as exciting as if there's Okay. I think we've, it looks like we've lost

Jim James: 22:11

Simon just for a moment. So, uh, I think that's, this

Simon Chappuzeau: 22:13

isn't ideal. You've done a good job here, um, by pointing out, um,

Jim James: 22:19

take over here. Okay, Simon, I think we've lost you there, Simon. So what I'm gonna do in the interest of time, Is, oh, I'm gonna share my screen. Oh, I can't do that while he's still here, Simon. Okay. I will share my screen and I will just show you, here is the, here is the post that we did and so we'll wait for Simon to, to be able to rejoin us. But here what I did was I took some pictures, um, stock pictures, and I think Simon's made a really good point there about the need to find pictures that are accountable in a way. Maybe that's the hardest part of this from a creative point of view. And why, uh, it's not just about finding pictures in Texas about making the, the, the work together. Um, here I have about most people know mathematics, wines, and cheese. And I have to say, I thank. Simon, forgive me the prompt on how to do all of this, because it's not something I was familiar with, but you can see. Another thing that I did was I made a point of having just a little text, not too much text on every page, and this is the central problem. No one's taught us how to listen. And here's Oscar. Now, Oscar's picture, and I took this from Canva, removed the background so that I could get, you know, the person and the place together. And then this is the, the, the solution that we're getting as a result of learning from Oscar. Okay. And Oscar's got the. Three essential questions that he says you need to know in order to hold a brilliant conversation, to be a brilliant listener. And the first one, then I just make the reader wait just a moment just to pause. And then the first one is, tell me more. So you're showing interest. The second question is, and what else? Go deeper in the conversation. And the third is the silence. Let the truth come out. And then what I've done is shared how if anyone was interested, they could find the podcast, which is on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast, or they could read the book and obviously, you know, and, and here's the book. So what we're really trying to do is to help people to know what's inside the book. This is one of 50 articles with people like Oscar. Without selling the book. And this is the key, as Simon was saying earlier on, what we're trying to do is to inform or inspire or to educate people and then to leave a place where they can come and find us. Ah, Simon, you're back. Wonderful. Have we? He's back, right? So Simon, I've gone through the deck and we've got about six minutes left and I'm sorry. In South Africa, I know you're having some problems there with power. Next time I have to get you a bicycle and you could sort of cycle for the exactly, for the power at the same time. So I'll stop sharing, shall I? Or do you want to make any more comments on the, on the deck? Um,

Simon Chappuzeau: 25:30

yeah, I think, uh, well, let's, let's, let's move on to the ne last section, which is, um, yes. The other samples that I wanted to share, um, more. Okay. Um, examples for interesting. Slideshow. Cause some people really have taken that to an art form and, um,

Jim James: 25:54

we are keen. So, and, and I think what, you know, what we are doing while Simon's teeing that up is, you know, we are just showing how. Using Canva and Simon's framework, a novice like me can transform my LinkedIn contribution from really being sort of content dumping to content creation proper. And it's taking less time, but more thinking. But the rewards are much greater. So that, so really taking some effort and thinking about the audience rather than the sort of the function is really a key learning from this. So, Simon. Just playing for time there. So, yeah. And you've used the great

Simon Chappuzeau: 26:31

word of content dumping, which I think, uh, sums up what a lot of people do on LinkedIn thinking if you announce your latest workshop, your promotion, your whatnot, uh, people care about that. And, um, I couldn't have named it better. It is content dumping cause it's not really paying attention and is not considering what, what is interesting to the reader and. What is interesting to the reader again, is like if you teach something, if you motivate people, entertain them. If you make them think, and if you show them that you understand. So it's always about the reader. And um, I think we are just at the beginning of a wonderful journey, understanding how we can do this with, um, our audience. And I wanted to finish off by showing, um, one of my, uh, favorite, um, slideshow. This is a guy, um, called uh, Cho Valk. From Mexico and, um, oh, okay. He's taken at a new art form. He summarizes, um, books. He asks people for the input. And, um, as you can see, the whole look and feel. Now you see the first page, the whole look and feel of this thing is almost like a book. And, um, what happens very often, and that is another thing that, um, LinkedIn rewards you or holds sort of for you, is if people. A look at the whole slideshow. So every click that you do on a slide is counted as an impression, so you get great impression numbers. Um, if people go through the whole thing, it's a big plus for LinkedIn. And the other thing is, um, if people save a slideshow, because you can save these light shows so you see some Right. Uh, LinkedIn authors. Taking this to an art form. And Jo, there is one of these, um, this example, it's, yeah, a, the five deck copywriters that he's chosen best classics of copywriting and what you can see with sort of like his name at the bottom, it almost feels like a book cover. And, um, yes. What you then get as you go through this book is nothing short of like, really interesting and valuable. It's easy to read. It's, it's, um, Very text based. So you can do images, you can do text, um, if you do text, it really has to be, um, good, well written on point, entertaining. Um, so that you over time, Built trust with the audience that they know, whatever you do, whatever you deliver in these, uh, slideshows is of value and they, they want to see this. And, um, again, you can see, so again, great visual, almost like a book cover. Um, clear font, clear layout, um, and. Since I know that he does all of his slideshow like that and all of his slideshows are highly, um, insightful and interesting, um, I definitely want to, um, save them all and I blindly check them out. And that is sort of a thing that you develop over time. So if I look at my original slideshows, I don't wanna see them anymore cuz a horrible. But over time you get a sense of like how to put the font, the colors and images and not images. And most importantly, um, how to write what you have to show in the slide show to make it interesting to the reader and hit these five qualities that we spoke about

Jim James: 30:10

earlier. Simon. That's wonderful. I love that. And I think for those people that are watching, you know, who like me, are not necessarily writers or creators, I think the, what we are really trying to do with the LinkedIn Safari is to just show progression, right? And we're making incremental changes over time. But there's a takeaway from today it's that we really need to reduce or think about reducing the volume and not doing content dumping. But think about Simon's five questions. I dunno whether Simon, you could put them back on the screen again, can you? Absolutely. Because I think if we approach LinkedIn as we would with Twitter or, or uh, Instagram or any of the other channels with what's in it for the audience, rather than that I need to post something today. That for me is a critical mindset change. On the journey to creating content that people actually want to engage with. Well, Simon's back in the dark. Simon but I'm here. So he's here, which is great. And we are nearly, we we're finished. It's half past. So Simon, just read those last five quickly and then we'll sign off.

Simon Chappuzeau: 31:13

Again, so if your post, um, hits any of these five, if it teaches people, if it motivates people, if it detains them, if it makes them think, or if you show that you understand your reader, um, then it is a good post and, uh, you should feel confident to, to publish

Jim James: 31:33

that post. Thank you for joining Simon and I in this. Episode six of the LinkedIn Safari. Simon, do you wanna say, uh, goodbye from South Africa, from Cape

Simon Chappuzeau: 31:45

Town. No, that was great being here with you. Always fun and looking forward to next week's slides. Show that you will

Jim James: 31:53

then show. Yeah. And we are working on this. So on the YouTube channel we'll put a link. Um, but we've now got all six of these, uh, online. You can watch the back catalog. You know, Simon and I, our details are obviously on LinkedIn, so reach out to us with any questions or any questions that you've got you'd like us to answer or any particular problems you're solving. And in the meantime, until we meet you, same time, same place. That's, uh, 12 o'clock G m t here on LinkedIn Live. Thank you so much for joining us and, and as I always say, keep on communicating. Thank you, James. All right, we'll say goodbye. We used to sing before, but I think probably people, no one liked that, so we'll just say goodbye. Thank you so much for watching. Bye-bye.