Happy Tuesday!

I hope you’re having an amazing week so far.

This one is all about my experience with growing my presence online & If it’s worth putting yourself out there a bit more.

Over the last year or so, I’ve gained a little over 4,000 new followers on LinkedIn.

So the real question is:

Has this actually benefited me or my firm in any meaningful way?

Yes.

Just not how most people think.

Okay, so why did I start posting more?

I decided to post more on Linkedin for a few reasons:

When you post online, you create room for serendipity.

You’re building a system that creates luck.

Let’s call out what this hasn’t done for me first, just to make this more fun.

Posting 2-3x a week on Linkedin has gotten me zero direct sales calls. Nada.

Because it’s led to new clients and business in a lot of less obvious ways.

Here are a few ways it directly benefitted me and my firm:

Once I stopped expecting social media to act like a sales funnel, everything clicked.

It wasn’t about leads.

It was about relationships, and growing my firm through them

Looking back, it’s obvious why.

At a good in-person networking event, you might meet 10–15 people.

When you post online, hundreds or thousands of people can see how you think, what you value, and how you approach problems.

That’s the leverage you gain online.

I want to share a bit of what I’ve learned about posting online in the last year with you.

If you’re not online at all, I think it’s a massive missed opportunity.

If you’re not posting, you do not exist online.

Here are a few rules I like to stay within.

Rule #1: Be yourself, be authentic.

Using a basic ChatGPT prompt to post is what everyone else is doing. If you post copycat stuff or just use AI, you’re only creating noise.

People love real stories, emotion, struggles, and successes. Not some post about “10 ways to import your 1099s”.

Be different. Be yourself. I know it’s vulnerable, but it’s what works.

(and you can post about the tax/accounting etc but don’t make it ALL your posts).

Rule #2: Be consistent.

You have to commit a little. I try to spend 1-2 hours a week just with ideas for both social media and the newsletter. I do this with a cortado at my local coffee shop without my computer and I write physically in a notebook. And I only write about topics that excite me. You can also record yourself speaking and transcribe it into notes which I’ll do on long drives or bike rides.

All my newsletters stem from these ideas and typically come from real life experiences I have with clients or running my firm.

Rule #3: Have a point of view

Say what you actually believe. Don’t be afraid of people disagreeing with you.

Those who post neutrally, just blend in. Posts that take a stance do better online.

Think 1099s are stupid? Talk about that.

Think college students should skip Big 4 and work at a small/mid-sized firm out of college? Post it! (This is one I did and had over 100k impressions).

Clarity beats likability and that’s hard for people pleasers like us.

So that’s it. That’s how you build a authentic following online.

I wanted to share a few people who do a great job with their posts on Linkedin and post authentically:

So… what are you going to post this week?

So this is how I use chatGPT and other LLM’s to generate content FROM me vs. FOR me.

I use it to pull thoughts out of my head. Here’s how.

Step 1. Create a project and give this project the context and instructions that it’s “You’re an AI to help guide me to come up with great ideas for posts, customer stories, and where I stand out in the accounting space” I added lots of my previous writing & my current list of ideas to mine as context. Also, mention your goals for this too.

Step 2: Prompt it to guide you using this information and to prompt you to come up with ideas. "What happened this week with clients"?” “What’s bothering you right now?” “What’s a hot take you have"?” type questions.

Step 3: Schedule this weekly. go through the process again and again.

Step 4: Save your stories/notes into a notetaker and share during this process each week as well.

Step 5: When you have your post almost ready, share the whole thing with the AI to ask for constructive feedback. Be skeptical of what it sends back but take the good advice it occasionally will give.

And lastly, share back with it what worked and what didn’t work after the fact. That way, it has full context going forward.

This is a great weekly flow for building a content engine and using your own brain to have ideas vs. using the generic fluff AI creates.

Have a fantastic week!

Tailor