Brutal honesty—we either love it or hate it. Now combine that with typical Scottish directness and humor, and you’ve got Darren Gibb, Digital Marketer, on LinkedIn.

He knows he’s either going to attract you with his content or repel you, and he’s fine if it’s the latter. Read this week’s interview for his refreshing take on working on weekends (spoiler alert: he doesn’t), and how he uses DMs and daily outreach in the service of his goals.

Welcome, Darren. Please tell us about yourself.

I help coaches and solopreneurs create or stop producing sh*&&y or overly templated bullsh*t that people don't care about and create valuable content that converts.

I’m really helping them lock in that middle-to-bottom of the funnel to get DM conversations that convert onto calls and get them more clients. In a nutshell, I help them turn followers into clients using LinkedIn strategies to convert.

What’s your industry?

I'm a digital marketer. Well, I'm a teacher first and foremost. I was a high school teacher for over a decade, but I'm a digital marketer.

I work with individuals who have all these great ideas but just don't know how to content market themselves and teach them the basics and advanced social selling. I'll take people from less than 1,000 followers up to five-figure months onto webinars and challenges to six figures.

What does LinkedIn do for you?

At a high level, it's a source of clients. It's where I can market myself and show others that I'm very much living and dying by the sword. I do email marketing and have a newsletter, but the primary source for me is LinkedIn. I've built up a business from zero investment into multi-six figures. It's my way of expressing myself, being creative, and sharing my message with the world.

If you'd asked me that question three or four years ago, I’d talk about community. I think we all too quickly get caught up in this idea of bunny rabbits, fluffy tails, and the wonderful LinkedIn community.

What people end up doing is spending eight hours commenting on other people's posts that will never be their clients. I think that there's a lot of falsities being sold. I think it's in the interest of big creators to comment, comment, comment, because then everyone's going to comment on their content. So it gets their content out there more. 

I think that you can have your community, but I always say it's 15, 15, 15:

• 15 meaningful connections made every day with the right people

• 15 comments made every day on the right people's content

• 15 DM conversations a day

If you can do that, that's 75 a week, 300 a month.

That's how you get clients on LinkedIn. It's not through spending two, three hours a day commenting. If that works for people, fair play to them. But I think you become everybody's best friend rather than anybody's expert. I'd rather be people's expert than best friend in that regard.

What are your main goals for using LinkedIn?

Just clients. I'm nowhere near an influencer at 16,000 followers. I've always been very particular. I don't want to go viral. You could write a viral post tomorrow, it's not difficult. But for me, it's about attracting the right people and repelling the wrong people. I'm here to help people get their message out and create better content.

Darren’s content strategy

Who’s your target audience on LinkedIn?

Coaches and solopreneurs. I’ve got a couple of SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses), but coaches and solopreneurs are the main focus. 

How do you decide what content to create and share on LinkedIn?

Listening to what people see, listening to what people say, seeing the mistakes they’re doing, and picking up on it. There's also the market research element, where you see what's working for other people in your niche.

When it comes to topics, it's coming from the problems that I'm told, the problems I see them [the audience] having. The comments as well, they'll be quite open there. Then there's Perplexity.ai, which provides a lot of information. But for me, it's listening and seeing the problems that need fixing. It's the social aspect of it. 

How do you differentiate your content from others on LinkedIn?

Attract and repel, be spiky. My spikiness is topics like:

• “Why commenting 120 times a day is nonsense”

• “Why eight hours a day on LinkedIn is nonsense”

• “Why hooks are really important, but these templates, everyone's seen them a hundred times, so, therefore, they lose their effect” 

For me, it’s about showing how I think about things differently, seeing those trends that I see happening in my space and seeing it as not being that important or really important or something that goes under the radar nine times out of ten.

What makes your content successful with your audience?

Brutal honesty. I'm not for everyone, and that's fine. As long as I'm not upsetting or offending you, I don't care. I'll say the word f&ck and that's fine because f&ck is a word that I use quite a bit and I don't really give a f&ck if it offends people.

Again, [for me it’s about] attract and repel. If we're going to work together, I'm going to drop an F-bomb or two. I’m Scottish. I can't f&cking help myself. Some people hate them. But again, if that's enough for us not to work together, it probably would not be a good fit anyway. 

What are the processes you use to create content? 

• Schedule in advance ❌

• Batch create content ❌

• Optimize for SEO/keywords ❌

• Follow an editorial calendar ❌

• Have specific content pillars/themes ✅

• Repurpose content to/from LinkedIn or reuse on LinkedIn ✅

• Use AI in any part of the content writing process ❌

• Have team/human support for any part of your LI process ❌

• Keep a list of potential topics somewhere (Notes, Notion, etc.) ✅

• Design or source visuals including infographics and carousels and video ✅

What types of content do you post to LinkedIn?

• Text only ✅

• Polls ✅

• Audio ❌

• Video ✅

• Carousels ✅

• Photos of yourself (selfies) ✅

• Photos of other people or things ❌

• AI generated images ✅

• Infographics (single image) ❌

• Other people’s graphics ❌

• Links to your company content ❌

• Links to other content ❌

• Reposts of others’ content (repost only) ❌

• Reposts of others’ content (with your thoughts) ❌

• LinkedIn newsletters ❌

• LinkedIn Live events ✅

How much time does it take?

How much time do you spend each weekday on LinkedIn on comments or Direct Messages (DMs), outside of content creation?

An hour and a half, two hours.

Are you active on LinkedIn on the weekends, either posting or commenting or both?

I’m not touching LinkedIn on the weekends. It’s for me, my family, my loved ones, and soccer.

It’s a fallacy that [people have] been sold, you don’t need to [be on LinkedIn seven days a week]. I’ve never posted more than four or five times per week consistently, it’s very rare i’ll post five. Weekends can be taken off. I’m here for business.

How do you use DMs (direct messages) in the service of your goals?

DMs are there to book calls. First, it’s about finding that commonality—whether it’s a post, a book, a connection, a job, or even being in the same space. There are many possibilities, but ideally, it’s something like a post, content, or an event.

After finding that commonality, it's about identifying a pain point. If 95% of your content addresses pain points, even in tofu content, it can hint at one. MOFU (middle-of-funnel) content, of course, focuses more on this, and if even 80% of your content hints at pain points, it should mean they’re engaging with something useful for them, which usually involves a pain point.

If they’re reaching out because of a post, for example, that shows there’s a conversation to be had. This allows you to dig deeper and then get them onto a call. That’s the purpose of DMs—it’s not to be everyone’s best friend in the comments. It’s about getting to the point. What’s better than a DM conversation leading to a call where more can be solved?

We lead people emotionally through our content, showing them problems and our solutions. We then lead them through the DM strategy and onto a call. Once on the call, it becomes a no-brainer to move forward. The process is very deliberate:

• finding commonality

• addressing pain points

• moving toward a call

Not getting stuck in small talk or the "friend zone."

Darren’s biggest growth levers

What has contributed most to your growth?

Showing up unashamedly and unabashedly. It’s a combination of consistently showing up and not giving up, but these are very obvious answers.

It's not just that; I know people who haven't given up and who have been consistent, and yet, I don't consider myself to be a big success, either, at 16,000. I think followers aren’t a good metric for anything, but I don't know if I'd even still see myself as some sort of success. What has it is being consistent with myself and my expectations of what my followers need, want, and deserve.

How do you track what’s working and know what to change?

Instinct. I think that knowledge of basic psychology, knowing what people don’t want to happen to them, and being able to build content around that. But how to measure things that aren't working? Good sh*t is always good sh*t. Good content is always good content. Bad content is always bad content. And it doesn't really change. I think that remains the same for the vast majority of niches.

How Darren makes money

How do you generate revenue in your business?

I generate revenue by putting out content that attracts the right people. That will then lead to the DM conversations which leads to the sales call, and that leads to me working with them.

There are multiple ways we can do it. Most typically, it’s one-on-one. I've also got a digital course, group calls, and things like this. I also use webinars, three-day challenges, and blueprints to get people in the door to spend time with me. I'll get the registration through LinkedIn, onto a an opt-in landing page, onto the email list. So I’m growing my email list at the same time as I’m growing participants in the challenge.

How do you quantify your success on LinkedIn?

Booking a sales call a day. If not, at least two or three a week, so 12 a month. The aim’s always “Where's that next deal coming from?” It’s a steady stream, but again, it’s knowing how to get them coming forward.

Darren’s top tips

What challenges have you faced on LinkedIn? What’s made you almost—or actually—quit? What got you back on track?

I wouldn't say I'd ever quit. I think it’s just knowing that I enjoy it, and I wouldn't go back to what I was doing before. It's as simple as that. 

What advice would you give others who are looking to grow and, ideally monetize their LinkedIn platform?

Have a basic understanding of the algorithm; you need to understand what performs well. Number two, get on vertical video. That sh*t’s going through the roof at the moment. It’s not going to forever, but in the age of AI, you need to be able to show up and turn up on video. Third bit of advice: get damn good at writing. You don’t have to hire a copywriter or even read a book about copywriting, but get comfortable just writing, writing, writing.

And invest [in learning]. Everyone I know who has “success” on LinkedIn has spent money. And it doesn’t have to be dropping 10k to work with a coach one-on-one. It can be starting with a $400, $500, or $27. Get a bit of ROI on it and then move on to the next one. Don’t stagnate. We need to continue learning.

Lastly, surround yourself with people better than you. When you're surrounding yourself with people with similar follower numbers and similar success, and when it comes to client work or failing, you start making excuses and buying their excuses as currency. So surround yourself with those that are a good few steps ahead and ask questions, but give back in return. You can’t just take, take, take.

Darren’s best post

Stephanie’s note: I’ve asked each Networker to give me one “best post,” based on their own criteria.

Read this post on LinkedIn

Why Darren considers this his best post.

This is one of my favourite posts.

It's intentionally super Top of Funnel - I created it with the intention of getting broad engagement from my niche.

Not focusing on a specific problem per se, but more just those who have stuck around creating content and on the platform despite how difficult it can be at times.

It shows a tongue-in-cheek humorous side to me as well, which further shows my personality and way of saying things.

It functions as it offers a galvanising effect of 'us' versus 'them', throws stones at those who have given up and praises those who haven't.

It offers motivation and hope to those to continue through those difficult times as with the right strategy, there are better times ahead.

It finally acknowledges that even those of us who have successfully built our businesses on the platform still have those difficult days and again galvanizes everybody together to ensure we have one another's backs.

It does everything good content should:

- has a common enemy
- lightly throws rocks at the common enemy
- but reframes the enemy as the one who allows us to succeed.

How to network with Darren

• Follow Darren Gibb on LinkedIn

• Grab Darren’s free guides and prompts

What’s new related to LinkedIn? Here’s what caught my eye this week.

• The most talked-about LinkedIn-related event in a loooong time…a disgraced CEO updates his profile to add his new prison “job.” (Quartz)

• Some of my very favorite creators, including Lara Acosta, Jasmin Alic, and Richard Moore are featured in this Forbes profile of people who are making their living as LinkedIn consultants. (Forbes)

• A new-ish LinkedIn feature with 10m users, the Services Marketplace, aims to help freelancers get gigs. (TechCrunch)

• How a social media manager leverages LinkedIn influence to earn $27k a year. (CNBC)

• At first glance, LinkedIn looks like it loses on a new privacy ranking of social sites, but it actually comes out looking pretty good. (Incogni)

Darren just talked about the importance of DMs to book calls. Now Morgan Ingram is here with a tip of the week about exactly what to put in an outreach request. His positive/negative spin is really clever—will you try it?

Read this post on LinkedIn

Read this post on LinkedIn

I’m always on the lookout for something that changes the way I use LinkedIn. It could be an idea, a tool, a process, or something strategic.

Have a tip I should consider? Hit reply to this email and let me know!

That’s all for now—I look forward to seeing you again next week for another Networker interview.