I’ve been teaching digital marketing in Bangkok and I’m at the part of the class that I love: I get to roast review my students’ LinkedIn posts.

I’m doing it like Lara Acosta does in her Literally Academy (affiliate link): take a post, put it in to AuthoredUp (my favorite LinkedIn tool - not an affiliate link), and then change it in real-time with the original author and the rest of my class watching. It’s fun for me and (hopefully) useful for the class.

This week’s Networker has a great team of people to help him improve his posts, including his two partners and a marketer on his team that spends a lot of time on LinkedIn. Nathan Hirsch finds time to build his personal brand while running four businesses - I’m impressed and I think you will be, too.

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

• If you’re anywhere but the E.U., you’re gonna wanna turn off LinkedIn’s ability to train AI with your data. Here’s the explanation. (E.U. users like me won’t see this setting, as data training like that is not allowed.) (The Verge)

• Is LinkedIn the hot new platform for video influencers? (Fast Company)

• Nike’s new CEO has the best LinkedIn resume ever. (News.com.au)

• UK designer adds “desperate” to her LinkedIn banner. (Hindustan Times)

• Man fired during his divorce adds it to his LinkedIn profile, says he learned key skills. (Business Insider via Apple News)

Welcome, Nathan. Please tell us about yourself.

I'm a lifelong entrepreneur. I've been building businesses since I was 20. Connor [business partner] and I met in college and started working together. We sold about $25 million on Amazon. Our next venture, FreeUp, was a freelance marketplace. We eventually got that to $12 million a year and exited in 2019.

After that, we said, instead of focusing on one business, let's diversify and try to build a portfolio of companies. We have TrioSEO, our SEO company, two bookkeeping brands, EcomBalance and AccountsBalance, and we also run Outsource School, which teaches you how to hire. My main focus is growing this portfolio of businesses and turning on the marketing levers to pump good clients into these systems that we know will deliver a good experience.

What’s your industry?

The online remote business industry.

What does LinkedIn do for you?

LinkedIn has been a great way to connect with people from all around the world. I have different communities, whether it's the agency, marketing, e-commerce, or the startup community—it’s my way to stay in touch with all these people. 

It’s also a great way to learn from others, because diversification in life and business is a good thing. If I can get other people’s ideas who have different experiences, running different businesses, and apply bits and pieces to my own businesses, it makes me better as an entrepreneur.

What are your main goals for using LinkedIn?

My goal right now is to get on Connor's level. Connor Gillivan, my partner, has about 78,000 followers.

I also use LinkedIn as an avenue where it's pushing stuff for my businesses, but also building a personal brand so that people hopefully rely on and trust and like us. So when we launch that next company, we're not launching from scratch. And networking: I've met great clients, great partners, the greatest people in the space that I've learned from. That's a big component of it as well.

Nathan’s content strategy

Who’s your target audience on LinkedIn?

It’s that online entrepreneur, usually bootstrapped, doing between $500,000 and $5 million a year. If you’re wearing a suit and tie to work every day, you’re probably not following me, I’m probably not the right person for you.

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

We hired an operator, Hassan, who a lot of people know on LinkedIn. He’s running point [on LinkedIn] right now. It’s his job to do the research, see what’s working on each channel, and customize that content to make sure it adds value to people. He runs ideas by me, and interviews me every week to learn about me, my story, and my values, and all that is put into the content.

How do you differentiate your content from others on LinkedIn?

Connor and I have a very unique way of building businesses. They’re very lean. We don’t take half a million dollars and put it into a company or dump money into ads or hire 10 full-time U.S. employees. Whether that’s right or wrong, it’s just how we do it. I think we have a lot to teach people about how we do things, which might be different from what the average entrepreneur is used to. 

I like to change people’s mentality from “Once I raise money, then I’ll execute” to “No, we start our companies with $5,000 or less. This is the process we follow.” Sure, there’s more competition, but it’s never been easier or cheaper to test an idea and start a company. That's what we try to share with our message and my brand.

What makes your content successful with your audience?

We try to focus less on hacks and what's working right now. Sure, carousels are hot now. Will they be hot in five years? And it's more about consistency. We start by saying we will post once a day on LinkedIn, 5:30 AM Mountain Time. And we do it every single day. We don't miss a day.

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 ✅

• Responses to community articles ✅

• 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?

A few hours a week, a little bit each day. I'm still the one responding to all messages there. So people are DMing me, or I'm DMing them. So yeah, a few hours a day, a few hours a week spread out.

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

I try not to be, but sometimes a DM will pop up on my phone, or a post will blow up, and I want to check it.

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

If there's a reason, like I’m hiring. But I don't have a goal for 30 DMs daily going out to cold prospects.

Nathan’s biggest growth levers

What has contributed most to your growth?

Just consistency. No one cares if you make a bad post. What people care about is that you keep coming back and you keep learning what works and what doesn't work. 

I've had the benefit of some other stuff, whether marketing for my companies that have my personal brand or going on a lot of podcasts. Things like that will always help with LinkedIn, but really, it's just consistency. And now that I have a team behind me that can push out really nice cheat sheets and carousels, I look really good. That helps as well.

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

We do a lot of testing, experimenting, and brainstorming on the content that works. We try to do more of what's working and less of what doesn't. Then we take the content that’s working and put it into a carousel, or maybe videos will become popular. [We’re] kind of adjusting to the hacks.

I think a lot of people go through it backwards. They're like, carousels are working, I'm doing carousels. For us, we go through the process and then plug in what's working.

How Nathan makes money

How do you generate revenue in your business?

All my businesses are pretty simple. Like bookkeeping, we offer one thing: monthly bookkeeping. For TrioSEO, we offer two packages. Those can be anywhere from $1,000 a month to $5,000 a month depending on how many articles you want and whether you want the full service or the outlines. Outsource School is $1,000 a year to join, and you get our hiring process and all our SOPs. So pretty straightforward business models.

How do you quantify your success on LinkedIn?

From bookkeeping, we do $70k a month. [About] half of that came from LinkedIn. TrioSEO is a little newer, about $40k a month. We get most of that on LinkedIn or another social media platform. It's a good amount.

Nathan’s top tips

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

Start consistently. Pick a time once a day, do it every day, use a scheduler so you don’t miss days. And then start networking with people. Do three to five networking calls a week. Try to connect with big people, pick their brain, see what worked, what doesn't work, learn from them, and that’s just a great way to get started.

Is there anything else you want to tell me that I haven’t asked you?

I’m fortunate that Connor and Steven are always on LinkedIn doing stuff. I’m always trying to learn from them and follow them. I recommend checking them out.  I don't consider myself a LinkedIn expert, I'm kind of following in their shoes.

Nathan’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 Nathan considers this his best post.

Personally, it means a lot to me because i look at failure a lot differently now.  Second, it just took off and a lot of people told me they can relate.

How to network with Nathan

• Follow Nathan Hirsch on LinkedIn

• Check out Nathan’s businesses:

  • TreoSEO [Sephanie’s disclosure: I’m a (very happy) client]

  • EcomBalance

  • AccountsBalance

  • Outsource School

• And follow Nathan’s partners, too (also top creators):

  • Connor Gillivan

  • Steven Schneider

Admittedly, I’m still struggling to get on the video bus. I create video but don’t post very often. Fortunately Elenor Hodgson is here with an idea I can easily execute - and you probably can too: A quarterly update video.

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.