Chief Brand

No Music. No Intro. This is The Morgan Snyder Show.

Last week, we covered how to loosen up and inject personality into what you’re creating and writing on the internet.

This week, we will dive into another way to accomplish that, plus, pointers on how to have fun with language and continue to get people interested in you.

But first, a story.

I was a “bad” student

During middle and high school, I was terrible at playing the public education game.

Which, upon further review, was a missed opportunity. I’ve always been pretty decent at both playing, and games. So, you would think if I followed the rules (turn in your worksheets and study random facts and formulas) I would have been a fantastic student.

I’m very competitive, high energy, and will try to dominate UNO as much as I would street hockey, wrestling, or who-can-do-the-best-trick? on a trampoline. At school? I couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t treat it as a game.

I was bored. Teachers and counselors told my parents I had ADD, and to put me on medication pronto. I would definitely struggle in college, if I could even make it into one.

Now, I knew, even as a 14 year old kid, there wasn’t anything wrong with me. The one class I could play in, Show Choir, I got straight A’s.

I aced all my sight reading evaluations. I auditioned for solo performances every year and sang at all the major shows for the school. I was section leader for years.

I wasn’t blind. I could see the difference.

So, grades aside, what was Morgan like in Show Choir vs. the rest of his classes?

In every class that didn’t include singing and dancing, Morgan was kind of an emo kid that didn’t even want to raise his hand. He didn’t act like a leader. He watched the clock and waited to make his escape from Math, Science, and History prison.

But as soon as he stepped into the Show Choir room, a new person emerged: magnetic, charismatic, and ready to sing Luck Be a Lady Tonight.

The transformation (and my ability to be liked by both teachers and students) came about because of play.

I was loose, free, and didn’t have a worry in the world. I didn’t care what people thought about me in Show Choir. In fact, I felt most like “myself.”

I was there to have fun. I was there to play.

You can be professional AND play!

Speaking of school, we’ve all learned the forms and structures for “proper communication”, and many of those teachings are hard-wired into our brains, making it difficult to play as a professional.

We know how to set up a thesis. We know how to support it with main points. We especially know how to summarize correctly so we can hit word counts. Booyah.

That’s all nice and good, but how we communicate online is a world away from 9th grade English class.

We’ve evolved. We absorb information in entirely new ways.

You can be non-linear online. Tangents are expected. “And” can start a sentence and no one cares. Flow and style are equally important as organization of thoughts and ideas.

People want to be entertained as they read.

The Grammar Police have been disbanded! No more red pens! Huzzah!

I would say it’s the most exciting time in our earth’s history to be a creator, a writer, or a thought leader.

Language is becoming more flexible and a lot of people are sick and tired of the status quo (and AI…sorry, robots).

Like we discussed in the last episode, it’s ok to be funny. We can redefine what professional even means when it comes to content and sharing our story.

You can write in short sentences. You can abbreviate. You can use punctuation to change meaning.

English is evolving. You don’t have to do what your teachers told you to do.

You. Are. In. Control. See?

The Curmudgeon, Mr. Trout

From time to time, I’ll get an email or message that says something like this,

“You’re a copywriter, and I caught a few errors in your last email. Does that matter to you? How much time do you REALLY spend editing? Does it keep you up at night?”

Look, I’m all about being correct and finding the most interesting phrase to use or the best word choice.

And if this was official client work, you can bet I would go through it with a fine tooth comb and catch all the issues.

But no, I don’t sweat mistakes. Especially not here or on social media.

For example, the classic rule you’ll hear some writers use is to, “write like you talk.”

Well, that means you can’t play with spelling, punctuation, capitalization, double meanings, layout, and structure. Kinda sucks.

Also, do you really write LinkedIn posts, tweets, emails, texts, IM’s, captions and scribble little notes like you talk? If so, weird.

Most of us write more in a given day than we talk.

That’s how we communicate. That’s how people read and learn. So the, “whole write like you talk” adage is pretty irrelevant.

We can all have a little fun with our content and writing.

Like me in Show Choir, you come off a lot better, and make a better first impression, when you give yourself permission to play, when you allow yourself the space to imagine fun possibilities.

Think about what a tragedy it would have been if the Got Milk? campaign couldn’t get through the grammar police and was…

Do you have any milk?

Ugggggh. That would have been AWFUL.

The signs in the cafeteria telling us to drink more milk wouldn’t have been nearly as cool.

Seeing as a major point of differentiation for leaders is having a personality and being interesting, I would venture to say we should all be in play mode when we’re sharing our story…

..or at least play before getting all serious and professional.

That’s how some of our best ideas come to be.

That’s how you can get people interested in what you’re doing.

So here’s my challenge for this week.

I want you to go to your own personal show choir room—whatever it takes to get into that headspace where you’re most comfortable—and play with ideas and let yourself laugh and have fun as your creating.

See what happens.

Then, come back here next week and tell me about it.

I’ll be warming up my pipes to sing, “The Music of the Night.” ; )

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If you enjoyed the show today, give it five stars and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It shows people that this is worth listening to.

Want to talk shop on all things writing online? You can find time with me at thoughtleadertoday.com or send me a DM on LinkedIn.

My friends: keep writing, keep publishing, and I’ll see you next time.

No music. No intro. This is The Morgan Snyder Show.

Last weekend, I was in Orlando.

I was there for a summit with leaders around the country.

Many were uber succesful executives who will forget more than I’ll ever know about business.

It was intimidating at times. But I forged ahead. I put on my winning smile and kept shaking hands.

“Oh, you’re a writer?” they said. “That must be fun. What is it that you do exactly?”

Like it was a pastime or hobby that you mess around with after the real work was done.

Using storytelling techniques that I’ve learned recently, I returned fire with a question of my own.

“Do you know how people go viral on LinkedIn or X and get thousands of views on their content? Or you see a website that really captures your attention? That’s what I do for my clients.”

That pulled them in much quicker than, “I work in social media and help leaders…blah, blah, boring intro.”

Suddenly, I had CEOs and people flying on private jets interested in me.

Blame it on the good desserts or my abilities as a conversationalist, it occurred to me that EVERYONE, the mega success stories and the up-and-comers, want to bring people in to their story.

They want to captivate a listener, draw someone in with something they wrote, and make new relationships to fuel their opportunities in life and business.

In short, we all want to learn how to be interesting and appealing.

This got me thinking.

How do you increase your likeability? And how can we do this to greater effectiveness with our content?

This may call for a longer episode, (or several) but here is one note I’ve been thinking about.

The Guide to Being Interesting Online

If you’re a frequent listener to The Morgan Snyder Show, you’ll remember that I’ve been experimenting with my LinkedIn content.

Due to the founders I’m working with having viral posts that are mainly memes, satire, and parody, I gave it a spin for myself.

In the last 3 weeks, I’ve posted 5 times. Each one is my attempt at at being funny. Can you guess what my results have been?

Over 150 thousand people have seen my picture, headline and posts.

Never in the last 5 years that I’ve been creating content on various platforms have I witnessed such a response to what many would consider “stupid” content.

I’m shocked. Why is there such an outpouring of comments and views over this?

Why is it when I’m “bringing so much value” by talking about storytelling and online writing is it complete silence, but when I make up my connection acceptance criteria it’s fireworks?

I think it’s in the injection of personality.

So much of the content we see everywhere is empty. It was written by AI, quickly looked over by a marketing team, and published haphazardly to the masses.

Along with emptiness, we have repetitive platitudes and in a lot of scenarios, we exist in echo chambers where leaders have parroted the same things over and over again.

If I have to read another post about how AI is “changing the game”, I’m going to lose my mind.

I realize that not everyone feels comfortable with this.

Being funny or telling jokes may not be the kind of brand you want to be associated with.

That’s why I leave it at personality.

Readers and listeners have to feel like it’s something different, a unique voice that’s talking to them through the void.

When I think about accomplishing that, my head goes to creating a voice, which is obviously something I’m thinking about a lot as I’m writing for executives.

Is the voice of the whitepaper, the ad, the social media post, sound something like Mr. Rogers? Brad Pitt? Plato? My grandma?

The voice comes with the perspective.

I imagine where the message is coming from and where it’s going.

Yes, know your target. But your voice is just as important.

Otherwise, everything you say starts to sound like it’s coming from this unknowable, bland brand to the anonymous crowd.

You can ask yourself: Is there a person / character out there who is my kindred spirit?

Then, as a follow up, you ask: What are the hand or facial gestures? How does this ‘voice’ walk around? It feels weird at first, but you let your imagination take you places and you’ll be surprised how easy and quickly you can land on a personality that feels really close to who you are.

I’m not as clever or funny as any of the people I feel like I’m match with, but in my head as I’m writing most things for myself, it’s a mash-up of The Colbert Report, Eeyore, and Conan O’Brien arguing with Jordan Schlansky.

You might also throw in the feeling of carving on a longboard or drinking a refreshing vitamin water…but we’ll stop there…

Because I’m comitted to the voice, and I know what my personality is and how it shines, that comes through in ALL of my writing—even down to the LinkedIn DMs.

For example, Morgan Snyder does not say something like, “Great to connect. How are you?” when making a new friend on LinkedIn.

He says something like, “Come here often?”

Or when someone asks me how I’m doing I say, “Typing my life away. Please send help.”

That personality makes all the difference in the world.

Here’s an example from Thomas Kemeny:

No voice: The new no-glare tablet. Take work out of the office and into the sun.

Ugh. Yaaaaawn.

Here’s one with voice: The new tablet. Embrace the light my office brethren.

I have a few more notes but I’m going to save them.

Looks like this is turning into a two-fer. Maybe even a three.

..

If you enjoyed the show today, give it five stars and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It shows people that this is worth listening to.

Want to talk shop on all things writing online? You can find time with me at thoughtleadertoday.com or send me a DM on LinkedIn.

My friends: keep writing, keep publishing, and I’ll see you next time.

I’ve noticed something about posts that are performing really well on LinkedIn.

They’re funny. They’re weird. They’re off-the-wall.

It’s storytelling on steroids, and getting a lot of attention.

So...let’s talk about it.

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Come say hi at morgansnydercopywriter.com 👋

No music. No intro. This is the The Morgan Snyder Show.

Last week, I talked about how one of my posts went viral.

77 k people watched it show up in their LinkedIn feed.

Some appropriately laughed at the ridiculous situation, while others were outraged and felt the need to give their relationship advice.

If you’d like a good chuckle, please go to my LinkedIn page or listen to the last episode.

You’ll get to see a whole spectrum of humanity.

As I watched it happen, I couldn’t help myself from wanting to do it again.

Because dopamine—people seeing me, sending me connection requests, getting DMs from friends and strangers telling me I’m CRUSHING IT on LinkedIn.

When a post hits like that, it feels good.

So what did I do?

I had an idea for triggering people in Utah. Cause that’s the goal, of course!

I would mix nonfiction (our family buying a new home) with fiction (The Y on the curb was from Yale instead of BYU).

I would pretend that I was a Yalie, and that in moving to our new neighborhood, my primary goal was to establish my superiority because I “went” to an Ivy League school.

I started writing the post in my mind. I let it sit for a few days. I manifested to the universe that it would go viral.

I got this intense feeling that it would perform well, like I was able to look out into the ocean of potential viewers and see their reaction. I was very confident.

Because to me, it was just math:

joke + everyone’s favorite college + bragging + Utah =

a great LinkedIn post.

I could see it happening.

Viewers wouldn’t be able to resist. They would feel obligated to comment on this post.

They would correct me, they would belittle me, they would make fun of me.

Turns out, I was right.

My post from yesterday is just over 33 k views, and like last week, random people are coming out of their LinkedIn stalker caves, keyboards ready to comment.

Now, having two posts in one week break the 100 k view ceiling IS NOT the norm for me.

I’m not in the 1% of the 1%, and I don’t think I’m doing anything novel or revolutionary.

Like I mentioned last week in quoting the creative director from Duolingo:

I’m trying to win the internet.

What are you willing to sacrifice?

I recently attended a marketing summit here in Utah.

Naturally, new and old friends talked to me about content and writing.

I got the usual responses, ranging from “I just don’t have any time to write” to “what’s the point of writing online because it doesn’t produce the results I want.”

I pushed back. I asked them what they’ve tried, how they’ve experimented—is there something irresistible that they could talk about?

Many were self-deprecating. “I’m just not that person.”

What? What does that mean?

I spent the day translating these types of answers. When you peel back what they’re communicating, what are they really trying to say?

I could be wrong, (I’m not a psychologist) but I think in the majority of cases, people are deathly afraid of being judged.

They don’t want to get outside of that comfort zone of simply scrolling instead of speaking.

They are afraid of what a few people might think.

They have a very negative framing for what writing online can accomplish.

They don’t want to win the internet, because of all the real and imagined consequences of putting yourself out there.

It’s the unknown.

So, like anything else that we’re afraid of, it’s better to NOT try.

Stay the same. Don’t tell the story. Push the post to another day.

I was in a seminar a few weeks ago where the question was asked,

“What are you willing to sacrifice to become the person you know you should be?”

Pretty profound, right? Gets you all tingly.

I think the same thing should be asked of leaders and executives who are hesitant to hit publish.

Are you willing to sacrifice your comfort or your ego?

Are you okay with voicing a real opinion or exploring satire?

Because that’s what it takes.

You have to say something that grabs their attention and pulls them into the special thing that you’re building.

Remember:

You’re not just fighting against other people in the social media feed.

The real competition, the stuff that’s pulling the eyes and ears of your potential customers, it’s Netflix, email notifications, and…certain kinds of websites…if you get my drift.

There is no time for celebratory milestone posts, unless you just raised money from the biggest and baddest VCs in the world and you’re flexing on everyone.

You have seconds to snatch them. And if you don’t, they’re moving on.

The Costs of Losing the Internet

I can hear a few of you right now:

“Easy for you to say, Morgan! This is your job! You get paid to write people’s posts! Of course you’re going to lecture us about sacrificing our pride because you want us to be your next customer!”

You caught me. 😏

But that’s only part of the picture.

I’m so adamant about this because it has transformed my life.

A few years ago I was struggling to survive, and taking my little family down with me. I was a Spanish teacher, wrestling coach, curriculum writer, odd job guy, and barely making enough to cover our bills.

I’m not getting into all that nonsense today. I only bring it up to remind you that this is very personal to me.

So what are the costs? What are you missing out on?

I think everyone knows the basics:

* brand awareness

* missed opportunities for sales and leads

* reputation control

* connections and relationships

And then there’s silence.

No one is talking about you and your business. There’s no energy circulating about what you’re doing. There’s no leadership directing a movement.

It’s a static website that hasn’t been touched. It’s a LinkedIn profile that posted 9 months ago about a conference they were at.

It’s like a giant billboard has been constructed that reads, “Welcome to Boringsville, USA!”

Plus, silence is a signal of stagnation. Oooo gotta love that alliteration!

Think about when you ask a friend how they’re doing and they say, “Ok.”

Then you have another friend who says, “Oh my gosh, you’re not going to believe what happened to me today.”

Who do you want to spend time with? The one with the interesting story.

Similarly, if you want people to spend time with you, you’ve got to have a good story to tell.

Social media is basically free, and you have the chance to experiment and test constantly.

Every day you’re on X, LinkedIn, Substack, wherever you post your content, it’s another chance to get eyeballs on what you’re up to.

Take advantage of it!

To close, I’ll ask you the question that I ask all the reluctant execs I come across, the ones who have no desire to write and get themselves out there:

Would you rather have a million views per year or zero?

All it takes is a few posts per week.

Beautiful things will happen as you try and win the internet.

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If you enjoyed the show today, give it five stars and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It shows people that this is worth listening to.

Want to talk shop on all things writing online? You can find time with me at morgansnydercopywriter.com or send me a DM on LinkedIn.

My friends: keep writing, keep publishing, and I’ll see you next time.

I went unexpectedly viral this week. This episode is the analysis.

Here's the post.

Come and say hi at morgansnydercopywriter.com or on LinkedIn. 👋

Ever wonder how to make the perfect post?

Seems like there are a few people on LinkedIn or X who write great stuff every day, getting massive attention and engagement.

You may think, “UGH, I could NEVER do what they’re doing. How are they so consistent? Why does their content pop off?”

There are ways to stop the scroll, and I’m going to give you a framework that you can use right now.

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Want to chat? Go to morgansnydercopywriter.com or say hi on LinkedIn. 👋

Have you noticed that ghostwriters and copywriters keep getting bashed on LinkedIn?

I read no less than 5 posts every day of the week about how AI is coming for my job.

(said in a spooky voice) “You don’t have much time…soon the bots will be doing all of the writing…there will be nothing left for you…”

The AI stuff is too long of topic to address this episode. My point in bringing it up is there are a few misconceptions about what ghostwriters and copywriters can do for an executive or a leadership team.

I don’t know if the haters and doubters understand what the real value is.

So that's what I'm covering today.

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Come and say hi at morgansnydercopywriter.com or on LinkedIn. 👋

No music, no intro, this is The Morgan Snyder Show.

Hey, are you getting sick and tired of hearing how you should ‘be authentic’ online?

For the last year, it’s been the most common piece of advice on LinkedIn. Despite it being parroted continually, when it really works, it can yield huge results:

More connections, increased engagement, and a memorable brand.

One of the easiest ways to show your authenticity? Put your humor on display.

So, for this final session of Digital Writing 101, I thought it’d be good to work through humor, which I have found to be a great asset when it comes to my content and writing.

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If you enjoyed the show today, give it five stars and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It shows people that this is worth listening to.

Want to talk shop on all things writing online? You can find time with me at morgansnydercopywriter.com or send me a DM on LinkedIn

Hey, remember when your English teacher had you in a chokehold?

Five-paragraph essays, indent or die, sentence fragments, no contractions or you’re toast...

...those were the good days.

But now it's 2025. A new world of English. No one’s measuring your margins or docking points for a run-on. Readers are scrolling X at 2 a.m., can’t sleep, hunting for something to make them laugh.

Thankfully, it doesn’t matter to them if you have a firm grasp of MLA.

Having said all this, digital writing isn’t exactly a free-for-all. There ARE rules.

We're going to cover the best in format, structure, and style in this session.

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If you'd like to say hi, come and do so on LinkedIn or drop by morgansnydercopywriter.com. 👋

We have access to the biggest and brightest writers on the internet—people who have written across LinkedIn, X, Medium and other major publications.

I’m talking about Nicolas Cole, James Clear, or Alex Lieberman. These writers have hundreds of millions of views, and the best part is they put out TONS of stuff for free on the internet.

Why not learn about what makes them tick in our first Digital Writing 101 Session?

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If you want to say hi, hop on over to LinkedIn or get time with me at morgansnydercopywriter.com. 👋