“Show Notes”
Gareth says his focus is the monetisation of this autism. One of his obsessions is LinkedIn. And he decided with his knowledge of LinkedIn he should help people get better with Linkedin. Gareth is also a percussionist. Marcus explains we do have a show about what we can learn from the music business. Gareth has been on LinkedIn just a year after I began. He has been on it 14 or 15 years. LinkedIn has been owned by Microsoft for quite a long time. More recently Microsoft has been getting more involved and they have been pushing users into paying for the use of the platform. Gareth says that up until recently it’s been possible to use LinkedIn as a free user. And if you use Linkedin to find a job then you can still manage free. But if you are trying to grow your tribe and your business it is very hard now without premium. It effects now even how much your posts are seen. LinkedIn give you a score your SSI score which you can find here. Having premium effects that score. Gareth says that connecting with people is important and he has an connection message he thinks you should use. Gareth says an initial message ensures you get a higher connection rate and you get more of a response after the connection, if you started with a connection message.
He thinks now up to 20 touches are needed on LinkedIn before you can get someone to do something you have asked. Gareth says commenting on other peoples stuff is really important. He also says posting about other peoples work and asking questions is a great way to go. Gareth recommends having a camera in your LinkedIn profile photo. That enables connections to know what you do almost instantly.
Gareth says he works on the principal that he gives away 80% of what he does. He wants people to see him as an authority in this field. So he gives them stuff people can test him on. They use it and then they start to trust him. Gareth then talks about the SSI. This is based on 4 different scores added together.
Those four scores are different aspect of LinkedIn such as interacting and connecting. Posting regularly and commenting and liking other peoples content is another part. Gareth also recommends resisting using Al to create content. But says it’s great for structure and helping to improve your content.
Top voice is the next topic. For anyone with over 1000 followers you get asked by LinkedIn to comment on some things. You can use this to become a “top voice”. To do this you have to answer and write comments on Al generated content. So Gareth recommends follow the link when you are asked to comment, but then within that topic do not comment and move up to the top level where you can chose topics. You can then see all the topics A-Z. Pick one that is close to you, then in that section pick a sub-section relevant to you. Then comment only on topic in this area. Gareth recommends in these area to be provocative and ruffle some feathers. That will get responses. You only get top voice if your comments get further comments and interaction. Gareth’s final tip is ensure you have the odd spelling mistake in some things you do to show you are not Al. Also avoid “Z”s in your work, which shows that content has been made by Al using American spelling.
“Show Transcription”
Sam: Hi Marcus, how are you doing?
Marcus: Hey yeah, I’m okay thanks Sam, how are you?
Sam: Very good thank you and we’ve got an exciting guest today Marcus who’s sat there drinking something blue which is slightly disconcerting but it’s not what we wouldn’t expect from this guest so I will let Gareth Wax introduce himself. Hi Gareth and welcome to the show.
Gareth: Just topping up with antifreeze. Excellent. Lovely, delicious stuff. My name’s Gareth and I feel very welcomed by your show.
Sam: Excellent, tell us a bit about yourself Gareth, introduce yourself.
Gareth: I’m a purple-hatted wearing international nitwit, my focus has been derived as a monetization of my autism so I’m autistic, dyspraxic, dyslexic, slightly face-blind and have momentary word blindness as well or as my wife calls it the full dance card and my focus has been on trying to find how irritating humans are because they don’t communicate effectively.
So my obsession, I have many of them, one of them it happens to be LinkedIn, it suddenly occurred to me, epiphany like Archimedes in the bath style that suddenly I should really take this obsession of mine and instead of cussing at people behind my linens, ooh look at him, instead of doing that what I should do instead is help them do it better.
Sam: Excellent.
Gareth: So I started a business some four and a half years ago called Purple Fedora, some three years ago I rebranded it Many Purple Hats or MPH and that’s where we are today, thank you.
Sam: Excellent.
Gareth: All audio effects come at no extra charge.
Sam: That’s brilliant and yeah I mean I have been at a networking event with you as well Gareth where there’s even bongos get involved in the whole thing.
Gareth: I’m afraid it cannot be avoided, I’m also a professional percussionist, it is part of my income stream, I think about a thousand dollars a month is due just to music activities. I didn’t play music for a good long while even though I did start out life that way. My early life, of course I was born and then I suddenly grew up a little bit, and understood the final niceties of sarcasm and irony. As I said to an American recently, irony is like silvery and goldery except with iron.
Sam: Excellent.
Marcus: Oh my gosh, oh gosh, this is, I can see what type of show this is going to be.
Gareth: I’m afraid so, you have no choice, just strap in and enjoy the ride.
Marcus: So the point is, just as quick, if I can just quickly butt in there, I will do a quick plug because we do have a show coming up and I think it will be out before this one with Pete Coco. We recorded it last week and we discussed the similarity between the music biz or what we can learn from the music business for photography.
Sam: So yeah, yes, very interesting and relevant. He wasn’t playing bongos but still relevant.
Gareth: Even if he wasn’t playing his bongos, I’m glad that you managed to get something out of that. The music business has changed beyond all recognition in the last 10 years, particularly accelerated in that in the last three.
Marcus: Yes, that’s exactly what the show is about. So yeah, listeners, tune into that when it’s a good one. Have you been on LinkedIn for…
Gareth: I’ve been on LinkedIn pretty much a year after it started.
Sa: So when was that? Because it started before my recognition of it as a thing. It’s difficult to know exactly when it started because it was out there as a test base for quite before it was released to the public. But I’ve been on it for, oh gosh, 14, 15 years. But what most people don’t know is it’s now wholly owned by Microsoft.
Marcus: Yes.
Gareth: But what you understand is that until recently, until very recently, it ran its own ship. It had Microsoft back end, Microsoft dollars helped power it, but it ran its own ship. However, those wonderful people at the steering committee and on the board at Microsoft have started asking the obvious question, if I own a very large company for which I’ve paid over a billion dollars for, and nearly 85% of that membership don’t pay a red cent towards his upkeep, surely there should be some way that we can gently place a size 10 across their throat and get them to squeeze a few more few more dollars out of them. And they’ve been insidiously behind the scene doing exactly that. Now, I’m not sure I approve of the mode by which they chose, but if you thought about it, and you had a process, a product that you were selling to some people, but giving away free to the vast majority of people, I suspect at some point, someone’s wife or someone’s husband would turn around and say, surely you should be charging some people for that. And that’s pretty much what’s beginning to happen. What they’ve done before we get into why I do what I do and who I do it for, and how more importantly, photographers and people in the creative fields can really benefit from it, the first thing I want to say is that up until recently, you could get away with having a free account. And you can still to a certain extent, if you’re just trying to promote yourself as a person wanting other people to take you up as a member of their team, to become part of their company, otherwise, using it for what it was originally created as a glorified job board, then yes, I suspect it’s okay at the moment. If you’re trying to find people to become part of your tribe to find .
Sam: It’s a nightmare. certainly, isn’t it? Because I use it a lot for that. And in the Yeah, I’ve gone premium in the last few weeks, because they are just hammering me on invitations, they are hammering me on connection messages, it’s just become impossible without premium.
Gareth: Not only that, but the spread of your posts is diminished by you not being premium.
Sam: Well, they’re even gone that far.
Gareth: Yes, I’m afraid so. Do you know about your SSI?
Sam: My SSI? Oh, is that the number you get your kind of say they give you a euro?
Gareth: Because LinkedIn are very good at putting stuff in there, then not telling anybody about it in the back end. It is loosely connected to your SSI number. So what I’m going to do is, is I’m going to give you if everybody’s listening, and they type this in.
Sam: Well, sorry, we’ll put links and stuff in the show notes. tinyurl.com forward slash find my SSI. If you type that in right now, it will take you to a portion of the back end, which was put together for the sole purpose of selling LinkedIn Navigator. There are now multiple levels of LinkedIn Navigator, then the version you need really to be efficient now to really achieve is LinkedIn Navigator core normally charged at somewhere around 69 pounds a month or 59 69 pounds a month there around there. It should be noted that I am a reseller as well. So if anybody’s interested, I can get it for you substantially less than that. But, but being on that gives you many facilities, including connecting to more people using an opening message. Now, the benefits of using opening message aren’t just that you’re being more familiar, it also but more people trust or start the very beginning veneer of trust people who seem to be communicating them in a way that doesn’t say any of the following things. I’d like to extend my network. I’m sorry for butting in your day, but I want to sell you my okie dokie 2000. Have you heard about this, you can get 80% savings if you take none of these approaches ago. The approach you should take is, I believe that I’m going to be sharing content that I think you may be interested in by connecting to me, you’ll get first dibs looking at that content. And I just want to share with you information that will help you do better on that basis. That’s a really good connection request. Because what it’s doing is promising something relevant to you in the future, without expecting you to think with a sales head on.
Sam: Yeah.
Gareth: And that’s, that’s the idea.
Sam: Yeah. And I’ve run the numbers myself with connections with and without messages. And it very clearly the use, you can just look at the numbers and you go, you get more connections when you send the message with a message.
Gareth: About 20 to 30% more success rate, both on connections. And then here’s more important, that of those 20 or 30%, over 50%, the more likely to respond to you.
Sam: Ah, so you get, because you’ve built that initial trust.
Gareth: Yes. But it’s not, I always think of it is, don’t think of trust, think of a series of beliefs that are tested. So you say, I’m going to do this. And they test it by saying, does he do it? Is he a man of his word? Is he a woman of her word? Does she do what she said she’s going to do? And if you do a multiple number of those occasions, eventually you get to a point where I call it a trusted advisor, where you can say, do a thing. And they’re far more likely to do it. That’s where you want to get to a number of pre all this nonsense we’re talking about 10 years ago, eight to 10 touches. Now I would say we’re talking upwards of 20, which is all about consistency and application. Now where it’s relevant to creatives on there, and I’m talking about artists, I’m talking about photographers, I’m talking about anyone, even musicians who are putting out content, rather than invading them and what you’ve done and say, look at my funky stuff. How wonderful am I? Instead, what you need to do is comment on other people’s stuff. Comment on other people’s stuff. So write commentary on what somebody else has written, put out a post and say, this was a repost of somebody else’s. It’s all their work. And I love what they’re doing because of X, Y and Z. And then at the end of it, ask questions. And I recommend always asking two questions. Always ask a closed question. That’s like a practice question. It’s like anybody can answer Do you like red or blue? Let me think. Oh, red.
And then the open question might be, why do you like it? And so the whole point about this is, if you get them answering questions, answering questions is the start of dialogue. Once you’ve dialogue going, you can get them to believe that you are really interested in the topics that’s at hand. And then further down the line, they’re now in rapport with you. So you can say, well, I hear what you’re saying about that. Have you ever thought about doing this way? And they’re far more they say, well, how do you do that? And you say, well, actually, would you believe it? I have a process that will help you do that. Or I know someone or they say, if you if you start talking, I’m going to take forgive me a horrible topic that always comes up headshots. Only because there’s different perspectives on this. You see, the ideal headshot from a LinkedIn perspective is plain background, head and shoulders facing forward, smiling like a given and engaging with the eyes. That’s the ideal LinkedIn headshot. But a headshot from a photographer’s aspect will involve lighting, shadows, and the way in which the colors pop, and so on—all that sort of stuff. Now, I don’t concern myself with that. But if you’re a photographer, then you’re… I recommend, and this is going to sound so cheesy, that within your profile image, you also have a camera about here.Because what you want them to do is, as soon as they see you, they immediately know what you’re about, because that colors everything you do. The most important thing in any LinkedIn interaction, before they’ve even liked, followed, or joined your crowd—before any of that rubbish—you want them, in the first three seconds of interaction, to understand what your purpose is and how you could potentially help them. They need to know that instantly. And it’s not in a sales aspect—just from the picture. So, your picture should be bloody good. It should be bloody good, should be obvious, and then with the camera. I’ll get to you in a second, but I can see you’re just standing there like on spilkes. Sorry, a bit of Yiddish there. And then the banner at the top should very plainly say some sort of mission statement—why you do what you do. So mine, if you read it on my profile, says very clearly, “I’m here to help brands stand up above all the others. So, it’s going to get more people attracted to you, because that’s what I do.
Sam: Okay, sorry, there’s a massive amount to unpack there. A huge amount. Yes, so I was gonna.
Marcus: I’ll just quickly point out for our listeners: when Gareth mentioned holding a camera, just because you can’t see it, he didn’t hold it in front of his face, by the way. He was holding it lower down, so he’s not covering his face for your profile picture.
Gareth: So, Marcus, isn’t the camera the most visual image that instantly says, “Oh, that’s what you’re talking about”?
Sam: Really easy, yeah?
Marcus: Well, maybe, but if you’re really good, your image is going to look like you’re a photographer based on how you photographed or lit it—just without a camera.
Sam: because it might look like you had. It done by a photographer.
Gareth: Well, only if you’re another photographer that sees that.
Sam: That’s similar to what I tell a lot of photographers when they just show their work on their website, thinking, “My work will show my quality.” It’s like, no, for the average person, they can’t tell you apart—apart from the really bad ones. Only photographers can, which isn’t relevant. Connection messages, Gareth. So, you were saying… I’m trying to unpack about the 5 billion things we’ve got in the last five minutes. So, connection messages—you were saying you’re going to tell people, “Look at my content because it’s relevant for you.” So, in that case.
Gareth: no, no—look at the content because I think it will engage with you. And you’re interested in their feedback on that.
Sam: So, as a photographer, you’ve got to think really carefully about who your audience is and what’s going to engage them. Probably just showing photos isn’t enough. If you’re a branding photographer, this is presumably more guidance on improving your branding, where photography is going to be a part of that.
Gareth: The other thing I was going to lead into: I give away 80% of everything I do for nothing. 80%! I work on the Pareto principle—20% is going to lead to anything; 80% leads to nothing. So, I’d rather fill that 80% with useful information that others can immediately use. And why do I do that? Because I want to ensure my authority. I want people to see me as an authority in this field, and to do that, I need to give them things they can test me on. By that, I mean giving them stuff they can use right now. So, let’s hop back to the SSI. I’ve given you that link—tinyurl.com/findmyssi. This is not mine—I just created a short link to a portion within LinkedIn that’s free to everybody. It will give you a number out of 100. It’s not a percentage because a percentage means out of 100 in one topic. It’s four arbitrary figures added together to make a figure out of 100. But if you’re below 70, you aren’t traveling well on LinkedIn. What it means is some of your content isn’t reaching who it’s supposed to. There are four sliders on there, each scored out of 25. The bottom one should always be maxed out—up to 25—that shows you’re interacting and making friends with the right people. The easiest way to fix that is by bringing on new connections, following up, and getting them to respond to you. So, if you just make a new connection and nothing happens, it’ll have no effect on that slider. You need interaction. The next few sliders are about putting out stuff not just about yourself, but about things you’re interested in and applying comments regularly and consistently. In fact, the two most important watchwords on LinkedIn are regularity and consistency.
Sam: We’ve got a whole show on consistency in marketing. Whatever you do, you’ve got to systemize it. Make sure you’ve set aside half an hour each day to do LinkedIn, this, and that. If you don’t stick to it, it’s not going to work.
Gareth: LinkedIn is constantly suggesting you create content using AI, and I say resist that urge. Please resist! Unless you’re struggling, because AI can be useful for structure. However, it’s useless for coming up with heartfelt content that shows any essence of you. You can use AI, but you’ll have to rework it a lot for it to feel authentic. The problem is people are putting out AI-generated content and then responding with AI. So you’ve got AI talking to AI.
Sam: In some ways, it’s… If you’re not confident with your writing, you’re better off writing it yourself and using AI to help polish it. But make sure it’s your original content. Do you agree?
Gareth: I use Fathom—it’s brilliant for summarizing meetings. It has saved me a few times when people couldn’t remember what was said. They’ll say, “You said you’d do this,” and I check the summaries—no, I didn’t. Or, the other way around—they ask, “How are we going to do this?” and I point to the summary: “I said very clearly that we were going to do this.
Sam: Fathom is one of those chatbots that follows you into meetings, like you had when you joined us on Zoom. A lot of people have them—different ones.
Gareth: Oh yes, and I’ve got no problems with them because all they do is summarize the organic content you put out there. They’re not creating anything new.
Sam: They’re just taking notes—like an old-fashioned secretary sitting in the room, doing shorthand.
Gareth: We’ve been told AI or software will come along and take away the irritation of daily life so we can sit with berets on and create the next Picasso. Meanwhile, you’ve got a bot sitting there with an easel, and the rest of us are still taking the rubbish out. It’s just not on.
Marcus: We’ve talked extensively about AI before, so let’s move on to some golden nuggets. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left.
Gareth: I’ll nugget you! Can I talk about Top Voice?
Marcus: Yes.
Gareth: Any of you with more than a thousand connections who’ve been on LinkedIn for more than five minutes will occasionally be asked questions by LinkedIn: “What’s your comment on this?
Sam: I usually ignore them. No, you’re not supposed to, but…
Gareth: I’m going to tell you how to stand out from everyone else doing what you do, without paying a cent. It takes effort, but it’s worth it. If you navigate to my profile, you’ll notice it says “Top Voice for Lead Generation.” That’s not by accident. Having it there improves my search results. If you search for all people providing lead generation on LinkedIn, I’ll come up near the top because of that “Top Voice” badge. So, it’s worth it. You do need to answer questions on AI-generated content. However, instead of responding to random prompts, exit out of them and go to the top level where all the questions are listed. On the right-hand side, there will be a “See All” option. Click on that to see all available categories from A to Z. Don’t use the search function—it’s misleading. Pick a category relevant to you, like photography models, and focus on answering questions in that field. But don’t just answer questions like everyone else—ruffle feathers, push, redirect, and punkify your responses. You don’t want to follow the herd. Say something that makes people go, “Oh, that’s a thought I never had.” Why? Because that generates responses. You only get “Top Voice” status if people respond to your comments. Lots of people write stuff that gets no response—it’s just crickets.
Marcus: So, you’re saying respond in an “argy-bargy” way—be a bit of a controversial provocateur? I like that! That suits me!
Gareth: Well, Marcus, you know, you’ve you’ve you’ve seen these. You’ve no doubt looked at them. You get people who have responded to it and they’ve all agreed with the proposition.
Yes, I agree. Yes, I love you. And I go now things completely wrong. You take you’re taking absolutely wrong attitude about this. You’re looking from the wrong angle. And so that immediately gets people going, what the hell are you talking about? That’s what you want.
I love a bit of outrage.
Marcus: Wow. OK, excellent. OK, look, we have covered a lot there.
Gareth: Let’s see one last thing. One last time. I know I know you don’t want to say those two letters again. But look, if the if you want to stand out from the crowd and you have written all that wonderful content and perhaps done written a I not done it, I want to go over it and make a few intentional spelling mistakes.
Sam: To show it’s not a I almost show it’s not a and you will stand out like a sore thumb.
Gareth: And I like these days just to say, look, for instance, here’s the classic spelling. They’re wrong. T.H.E.R.E. and T.H.E.I.R. You’ll annoy some people, but they’ll take notice at it using. By the way, and the biggest thing that sticks out that you’ve been using a I, especially if you’re in Europe, Zed’s everywhere.
Sam: Yeah. The Americanization.
Gareth: So that you must have seen it from a mile off markers and you, Sam, you read through their content, you go, oh, he’s just this is a I shite.
Marcus: So I shite. I like that. Look, just what I want to do. What I want to do here, Gareth, is just for you to summarize. Give us three main points and we’ll take that as we’ll take one point there. We just you just said, which is basically a bit a bit of RC in your answers. If I can think of a way of saying give us two more, give us two more sum up.
Gareth: OK, remember the facilities provided on LinkedIn. Don’t just take the more prima facie value. Look at ways that you can somehow twist things up so people take notice of your brand so that you stand out. Do things in a slightly unconventional manner. Yeah. And lastly of all, a mistake is only a mistake if you didn’t intend to do it.
Marcus: That’s what that’s an old music gag, isn’t it? When you do a solo, if you make a mistake, just do it twice.
Gareth: And it’s intentionally said, intentionally said. So, for instance, I’m a I’m a drummer and occasionally.
Marcus: I need to apologize.
Gareth: Well, you know what they say, a few musicians and a drummer. Anyway, so you’re playing along and you screw something up. So I just turn it to a mini solo. Yeah.
You know, for I the most important thing you can do in life is fail forward. If you make a screw up, don’t turn to screw up. You know what they say? You can’t you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.
Marcus: Oh, I love that. That’s a good final note there. What do you think of? What do you think? What do you think of what he said there?
Sam: No, I can’t get the I can’t get the glitter turds out my head now. I think that’s done me. Right. Thank you so much, Gareth. It has been very good to have you on the show. What we would like you to do as listeners is please go to the platform you are listening to shoot the top on. Be that Spotify, be that Apple, be whatever it is and go and give us five stars or if they offer ten, give us ten. We need some ratings. So please head to your podcast provider and rate the show. Give us ratings. We would really love that. And it will really help the show and allow more photographers to hear about us. Gareth, thank you so much for being with us. It has been entertainment and pleasure. And we’ve learned that, as always, we expect nothing less when we’re with Gareth Wax.
Gareth: I didn’t see. We did not expect a boring show. No, I was phasing in.
Marcus: I was so entertaining. Thank you very much, Gareth. Thank you. And Sam, see you next week.
Sam: See you next week. We hope you enjoyed this week’s podcast. You can like and subscribe on your usual podcast platform.
