Jay Schwedelson: We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And today I'm gonna talk about stuff on LinkedIn and Instagram. I'm not supposed to talk about should you be liking your own posts? Should you be commenting on your own posts? Does it help? And I'm gonna rip through all of it. 'cause you know what people are like, should I do that?

Jay Schwedelson: Is that cringe? Is that stupid? Am I wasting my time? And here's the secret and I'm gonna break it all down It. Helps to drive engagement on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and on other platforms. So let me dig into it right now. So first off, let's talk about LinkedIn. There's a tactic that I do that I've been doing for a long time.

Jay Schwedelson: It works incredibly well, and now I have some data to support it. So when we, when I post something on my LinkedIn feed, okay? And within the first 30 minutes of. Me posting that, not only do I like my own post, but also I will like the post from different company pages my company has. So my company has some company pages.

Jay Schwedelson: We have one for subject line.com. We have one for Guru Media Hub, uh, and for another, uh, agency that we have. I'll just change the thing, Ima Bob, and I'll like it from those different accounts. And so right outta the gate, my post will have like three or four likes. Now that sounds incredibly cheesy. Trust me.

Jay Schwedelson: I get it. And if you're saying, well, I don't have other company pages to do that, why not? You could start a company page in three seconds, right? You can go on linked. You start a company page, you stick a logo on it. Like I created a company page for this podcast, the do this, not that podcast company page.

Jay Schwedelson: The page is 20 followers. Nobody cares about that page. But I can now use that page to like and comment on any social media posts that we put up. And you're like, well Jay, that is embarrassing. That is fake engagement. That's garbage. And here's the deal. And there's data to support it. Now, when you see a post and it has no likes and no comments, you scroll by it.

Jay Schwedelson: You're like, oh, maybe this isn't good. Maybe this is a piece of garbage. Whether you believe that consciously or subconsciously, it doesn't matter. That's what we do. Now, when you see something that has like three to nine likes and stuff, it feels like, oh, this thing's kinda working. Maybe I should jump in and pile on.

Jay Schwedelson: Then when you see anything with 10 or plus, 10 plus likes or whatever, like, oh, this thing's valid. I gotta get all involved with this. And so we looked at uh, uh, we a hundred different posts of various types. And in the first 30 minutes we commented and liked from these different company pages. And then for the other posts, we did not, we went to see did this change engagement.

Jay Schwedelson: We founded those posts where we liked and commented from three company accounts versus not at all, had a 40% higher overall, like an engagement count when the post finally fizzled out after a few weeks. Beyond doing that tactic, which I know is like, are you kidding me? Here's the one we all really wonder about, the one that we all really wonder about, and this is on LinkedIn, Instagram.

Jay Schwedelson: I'll break down Instagram in a second. Should you like your own posts, period, and should you comment. On your own post period from your account, not switching to another company page or whatever. And here's the deal. So this company called Just Connecting, did this massive, massive study, okay? And they looked at 1.3 million posts.

Jay Schwedelson: They just did this study. And what they found is that engaging with your own LinkedIn posts does increase reach and visibility. Okay. Actually to the tune of about 17%, meaning that if you like your post, it helps, but then when you really wanna do. You then want to comment on your post and you then can tag people in the comments.

Jay Schwedelson: You could ask a, a good question in the comments to kind of get it going so people think, oh, that hurts. That hurts circulation. It does not. It helps. I'll tell you somebody who does a great job with this is Justin Welsh. Now, you may follow Justin Welsh, 'cause he has like a million plus followers on LinkedIn.

Jay Schwedelson: He's a monster. But what he does. He says, and he does this all the time. He actually waits an hour. I think that's too long. Okay. He waits an hour and then he'll go and he'll comment on his own post. And what he does on his own post is he shares a bonus tip. So he goes in after an hour and he puts a comment on his own post and he writes, bonus tip, and like all capital letters, colon.

Jay Schwedelson: And he goes, you should blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then that bonus tip gets like circulated to more people. They come back to the post. The other thing that is huge. Is actually resharing your own LinkedIn post, and you could do this, uh, 12 hours later, 24 hours later. It also gives an incredible lift. So in in general on LinkedIn, if you're playing the game of, Hey, I just put a post out there, I hope it does well, you're not really playing the game.

Jay Schwedelson: And as cheesy and as gimmicky as this sound, it works now on Instagram. Let's talk about the value there. There's absolutely no value whatsoever. Of you liking your own posts on Instagram at all? Other than the social proof that it actually actually has a like. You want it to actually have a like, but it doesn't actually, like on LinkedIn, it actually helps you circulate it when you like your own post and comment on it.

Jay Schwedelson: It doesn't do that at all on Instagram, but there is one tactic that actually will increase your comment volume overall by about 20%. And this is per Instagram and that is pinning. A comment. I don't think enough people are doing this. So on Instagram you can write the comment or if somebody else wrote an amazing comment that gets people talking, that's great too.

Jay Schwedelson: So let's say you put a post out there. And then you go on your own. It doesn't matter if it's company page or personal page. You go on your own Instagram post and then you say something building off of whatever the post is, right? You could say, and when we do this, we think this, what do you think about this?

Jay Schwedelson: Whatever. Something like sensational, and then the way that you pin a comment in a post is you just hold down the comment. Right. And then it says, do you want to pin it or not? And you say Yes. And then that pin, that comment will stay at the top of the feed for everyone to see. And then that's the reason it increases people commenting is it's the most sensational comment and then people jump in wanting to react to it and give their answer to it, whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: As opposed to just the comments being like, Hey, great post, or, I agree, or Who cares? Or whatever the bottom line is with social media. Um. You need to feed the beast. Okay. You do. You have to put out great content that doesn't suck, obviously. But then you also have to understand the little things that kind of trigger other people to wanna engage.

Jay Schwedelson: And if you think it's cheesy, you think it's gimmicky, you think, oh, that's so loser to do that. Yeah, it is. But then don't be on social media because, uh, what are we doing here? What's the game? We're trying to get more people to see our stuff. I dunno. That's, that's the reality. Alright, since you didn't ask coming up, that is the ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous push on this podcast, which I wanna take you through 'cause I have stupid stuff to share.

Jay Schwedelson: But before we do that, this podcast is exclusively presented by Emma Emma's an email sending platform. Listen, you don't like your email sending platform. I like mine. I do. Emma's incredible for attention marketing, loyalty, marketing, you name it. EMMA. It's from Marigold. Now, just for listeners, this podcast, here's the deal.

Jay Schwedelson: They gave us this offer, 50% off for three months. Your ESP is too expensive. 50% off for three months. What do you got to lose? All you gotta do is go to Jay schon.com/emma. That's j sch shettleston.com/e ma, check it out. All right, let's get into the sense you didn't ask. So, um, I just finished watching the Biggest Loser documentary on Netflix, and by the way, I'm sure you won't be shocked to know this, I probably saw every episode of the first 12 or 13 seasons of the Biggest Loser back in the day.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, I was all in on it. Uh, it was terrible. I, I mean. I'm a horrible person now that I think back. 'cause all I was doing was like, oh wow. At least that's not me. Right? That's what I did watching the show. And I probably was eating something while I was watching it, which is even weirder. Um, but yeah, and it's kind of messed up now that I think about it.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, I, I feel bad seeing these people who kind did the show, lost the weight, gained the weight back. That sucks. I will tell you. 'cause I, I told everybody on the show that I was gonna be very transparent about this. So here's my transparency. I, a few months ago, I, I, now, I told on the show, I said I was gonna go and try one of those weight loss things, you know, the wegovy, the Ozempic, the whatever, the shot.

Jay Schwedelson: So I did that. I did it. So I went out there and I got, um, uh, and by the way, I don't think we Gove's ever gonna sponsor this show. So I hopefully I'm not doing anything irresponsible if by talking about them, lemme just talk about my experience. You do you, if it works for you, I'm all for it. I have a lot of friends that it works for.

Jay Schwedelson: Don't even, don't at me. Okay. I, I get it. So that's my disclaimer. So, okay. So I used Wegovy. All right. I went on a govi and there's like these different dosage. You move up in the dosages after like one week, two weeks, whatever it is. Okay. So I start with a govi and I'm on the lowest dos, whatever, and I start taking it and I'm an idiot.

Jay Schwedelson: My wife's like, you're not doing this right? Because I basically was like, if I take the shot, then I could eat whatever I want. And she's like, no, you have to kinda lean in. You can't just be eating more because you think you're taking the shot. It magically works. 'cause at that low level, it wasn't like suppressing my appetite at all.

Jay Schwedelson: So it wasn't working out of the gate. And then I went to the next level. Okay? And here's the good news. Bad news. It started to work, right? So I wasn't as hungry. I would sit down to eat. I couldn't eat all my food. That's the way it works. I'm like, okay, this is working. But something happened for me, which they, I, I ended up googling and finding out and talking to my doctor.

Jay Schwedelson: It only happens like 2% of people winner, winner over here. So what happened was after like a few weeks on this thing. I developed the craziest, I mean, I have anxiety anyway, but I developed the weirdest anxiety ever. Like the littlest thing would freak me out, right? Like I'd be in bed and I'd be like, I turn to my wife.

Jay Schwedelson: I go, is the door locked? She's like, what? Like, and like, I'd like, like wake her up. I should, did we lock the door and she'd be like. Yeah, we always locked the door. Whatcha talking about? And I'm like, I, I gotta go downstairs. I, I don't think we locked the door and I would lose my mind. I mean, the littlest things, you know, were setting me off.

Jay Schwedelson: It was, it was why, I mean, and forget it, I couldn't handle anything at work. I couldn't like, respond to an email. I was like, I was like frozen. And I'm like, what's wrong with me? I thought I was having, like, I didn't know what, I was just not my personality. So I start Googling everything and I, I call my doctor.

Jay Schwedelson: He's like, you know, we've had that, a few people that have like, I don't know, a baseline anxiety or whatever you got. I don't even, I'm, I'm not on medication for it or anything. Not that that's bad. You should be, if you need to be whatever. He's like, yeah, it like exacerbates it, is that the right word? And it makes it like way, way, way, way worse.

Jay Schwedelson: So I'm like, oh, this is very bad. So I stopped taking it 'cause I was like, this is wild. And then within two weeks. I was back to being, uh, myself and I was like, whoa, that was wild. I guess what happens is in order for the weight loss thing to work, it messes, you know, with your brain a little bit. I guess if you have other stuff in your brain, it maybe like makes it a bigger deal or a lesser deal.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know. That was my experience. That doesn't mean it's gonna be yours. Experience. I know it helps millions of people. It's great. Everybody should do it. I don't care. I'm telling you what happened to me, so now I'm back to irregular person and now I have to try to not shove a french fries in my mouth every time I see them, which I'm working on.

Jay Schwedelson: I am. I'm actively eating. Way more salmon than I want to. It makes me nauseous every time I eat it. I like salmon. Just makes me nauseous. Uh, what am I talking about every time? Anyway, I appreciate you being here. What can you do? Listen, guru conferences coming up. It is our giant free virtual email marketing event.

Jay Schwedelson: You think that we're gonna have unlimited seats? We're not. Okay. We will run out of seats. We have Nicole Kidman's gonna be there. We have Donald Miller, Amy Porterfield. Um, we have, I mean, it's wild guru conference.com. It's free, it's virtual. The world's largest email marketing event. I would say we're gonna run outta seats in the next probably two to three weeks, so I would grab one.

Jay Schwedelson: You are awesome. Keep it real and uh, peace out later.