Why Influence

Ahmad Imam is the confidence and content creation specialist, host, presenter, and speaker. He is also an ambassador at Success Resources Australia. He provides a consultative service for individuals, enterprises, and organizations to determine which experience would add the most value given their profile.

In this episode, Ahmad shared his strategies on how he reached 350k followers on LinkedIn.

"I would say four things, number one, connecting and when I say connecting, I mean physically connecting as in reaching out to people within your target audience or people within your audience, actually pressing the connect button connects with them, but also connecting with them emotionally."

Ahmad mentioned that building an authentic relationship with people within your target is essential. You can message them first privately and set up a meeting with one another.

"Because the magic of LinkedIn actually happens offline, when you build those relationships, one person at a time."

"The next thing is engaging. Spending a bit of time every single day, it can be half an hour every day, just scrolling through your newsfeed and just liking and commenting on other people's posts."

According to Ahmad, this is the most underrated among the four but it is the most effective way to create a community and increase your followers. You can be strategic with whom you want to engage first and how will you do it.

"The next thing, of course, is posting. And since the video came out, content creation has blown up on LinkedIn."

Today, there are many content creators who are using LinkedIn as their platform. We may perceive it as a professional platform but in reality, it is open for any type of creative content and medium.

"It doesn't just have to be video. It can be a text post. It can be a text, an image. It can be a quote. It can be an interview that you've done. It can be an article. I mean, there's so many different forms of content."

"But posting is important when I say posting, posting consistently and frequently."

Ahmad discussed that the visibility of a post on LinkedIn takes for about two to three days only. After a single post, you will be invisible on the newsfeed and won't get any promotion. So, in posting, you do not consider the content only but the frequency and time of your posting too.

"And the fourth thing is building. Building a community."

This is the last one because you will be able to do this only if you have executed properly the prior strategies. Hence, it requires a great amount of effort to get through. You need to be committed to what you are doing.

"If people are commenting on your post because they appreciate your post, make sure you respond to those comments. Make sure you're showing them love. "

"The idea is to offer so much value, that in their minds, you are the authority within that niche. And so that when they need to reach out to someone that offers a service similar to yours, you're the first person that pops into their head, and that's how branding works."

And speaking of branding, you can check out the viral video of Ahmad together with his friend and 70 people from different parts of the world that talks about branding through a rap song! Listen to the full episode to learn more about how Ahmad gained confidence plus other tips and strategies on LinkedIn.

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Sean McVeigh has a great passion for fishing and archery. He initially created his website and YouTube channel which currently has over 11 million views to share his outdoor adventures, but they have since evolved into a platform for him to help teach people what he knows about archery, bow hunting, fishing, camping, etc. His first book titled Becoming a World-Class Hunter was printed in 2009 and released a second edition of the same book in 2014 with a new subtitle, A Bow Hunter's Spiritual Journey.

Sean developed a challenging hunt called The Map Reading Challenge — intended to push hunters to improve their ability to read topo maps and aerial photos to find hunting hot spots. His YouTube channel is entitled Sean's Outdoor Adventures wherein he established back 10 years ago.

In this episode, Sean shared his strategies on YouTube and how he reached eleven million views.

"So, the big tip is when you start uploading content, be ready to be flexible and change your motion, your direction because if you're gaining fans in a certain area, and it's not the main area you were setting out to, you're either going to let go of what you set out to do and embrace what people are looking for or you're just not going to have the growth maybe if that's what you want."

Sean mentioned that his growth has improved when he started to quit his original plans into something which the audience would like to watch but is still related to the track.

"... diversify your content, try some different stuff."

It is okay to have some content you wanted to share that is different from your niche for a while. Sean said that he's sometimes doing home improvement projects. He discussed that even if it is not related in his niche, he makes it a point that he invites the viewers to check his main course at the end of the video.

"And I really attribute it to some of that diversification is because I'm finding viewers outside of the niche right now. And I was telling you about that basement finishing video, I'm getting 10s of thousands of views on that for people who aren't searching hunting or archery. But when they find out that I'm hunting in archery, maybe they're going to convert to watching that content."

"....at least get one video go viral."

Having at least one viral video would already be a huge help to leverage your YouTube channel—it gets promoted by YouTube and people will start checking out other videos from your channel. But this is not the main thing here.

"Don't make it so much about growing and subscribing, but grow with the people that you want around you."

"As hard as I tried to be positive, and keep it positive, people still took it the wrong way anyway. And some people were like, lashing out at me calling me names."

Sean mentioned that he was hesitant at first to share his faith in God on his video contents because he is afraid to receive criticisms and judgments which will lead to the downfall of his followers. But when he has done it, his community became more respectful and supportive.

There are more tips and strategies that Sean shared in the episode. Come visit the full episode to learn more about Sean's Youtube-sharing journey.

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Rich Cardona is known to be sharing great videos in his LinkedIn account which has gained over 15k followers! He is also the CEO and Founder of Rich Cardona Media which offers its clients a quick yet excellent work worth of social-media-ready video content with a theme of storyteller for the personal brand.

Rich hosts a show entitled The Leadership Locker that tells stories through video-making and he has mastered discipline and leadership when he was still a Marine Corps Aviator.

In this episode, Rich shared his strategies in using LinkedIn as a platform and how it works.

"LinkedIn is not only a good spot, but it's changing. It's not as professional and buttoned up as people thought it or as it was. It gives people like me an opportunity and people like you who look for good authentic content. Like it's easier to find now than I think it was probably a couple of years ago."

"LinkedIn is truly a great growth engine for anyone trying to build their personal brand and company brand through their personal brand."

He mentioned that he had tested on LinkedIn the different techniques to improve his videos, pictures, captions, articles, etc.

"If you want to build connections, you probably want to build connections with people that are in your industry or people that interests you or people that you, quote-unquote aspire to be."

According to Rich, this will help you grow your engagements and increase your knowledge in the field you are taking. You are able to be updated with the topics and the personnel in the industry you want to be at. And when they visit your profile, they will know your interests and eventually might want to connect with you, too. Just keep in mind to make your account presentable so that they will have a good impression on you.

"It's a complete red flag for me, just for me personally, 'Hey, I'm all about people connecting step one like this post, number two comment on this post number three, connect with everyone in the comments.'"

On the other hand, the common mistakes that Rich has observed on LinkedIn is growth hacking. Having tons of connections does not mean that they are following. He also mentioned another common mistake.

"How to actually swap that is selling no matter how good the intent is on LinkedIn, no one wants to be sold to."

People on LinkedIn wanted to build relationships and not to do business. It is not like Instagram and Facebook wherein you can invite people to check your offers. It is a little bit more old fashioned on LinkedIn.

"If I make a post, and people liked it, I always at the end of the day, go to likes and scroll down and if they're second-level connections, I connect with them or I invite them to connect. And the reason is you're inviting them to like your content more. They already gave you a signal that they enjoyed your content. So why wouldn't you invite them again?"

Rich also has addressed how he sends connection requests in inviting people. Listen to the full episode to learn more advice from Rich when it comes to leveraging your LinkedIn account.

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Karla is a YouTube video blogger, public speaker, videographer, and optimist. Her Youtube channel - What Would Karla Say - currently has over one million views!

Karla Gregg is a social media and personal branding strategist. She worked with lifestyle brands, celebrities, and creative entrepreneurs for over six years. Her goal is to create viral content that builds an engaging audience. She works through one-on-one brand strategy and content coaching, consulting, workshops, and speaking to audiences at conferences and through a community of over 8k on YouTube.

In her YouTube videos, she makes it a point to emphasize always her PPSS system in creating a personal brand.

"...I actually teach this, I do coaching to help people with their personal brand... I call it the PPSS system, where it's Personality, Passion, Skills, and Story so, I do have them list them out."

Karla recommends her PPSS system to two types of people: one who is just starting out and the other is for people who are needed to be reminded of where they should be at. She mentioned that in order for you to stand out from the bandwagon, you need to align your content strategy to your personality, passion, skills, and story because that's what makes your brand unique.

"It could be like, I have a friend who's a videographer, but he's also a juggler. And just like those two things, if you mix it in together, he'll stand out versus another person who just calls himself a videographer, right? So just like finding those little quirks that make you different and really bringing them to your brand."

"...passions and skills, those two can kind of sometimes get mixed together."

People tend to give up their passion for a new skill and monetize it. But for Karla, you can combine both your passion and your skill. On the other hand, you can't just be stuck up in your passion without growing it into a skill.

"Then, really focus on your story, like, why you got started on what you're doing."

Your story will be your motivation to continue with what you are doing. It will prevent you from comparing yourself to others because all of us have different stories.

Check out the full episode to learn more about her works on social media and how you can grow your own branding through her PPSS system.

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Joe Raiti started Raiti's Rides to share the passion of performance cars with as many people as possible. As of this day, they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and it just keeps growing!

Joe caught the car bug at a very young age. Growing up in his father's mechanic shop, Joe learned quickly how to appreciate the inner workings of the internal combustion engine. After graduating from college, he raced formula cars professionally for three years. He has a wide variety of knowledge on many different makes and models and is considered an expert in Corvettes, Porsches, and imports.

Joe uses his Youtube channel to share his passion for car performance by giving car reviews. It's his second time here in Why Influence and in his first guesting, he already garnered 22 million YouTube views and 86k subscriptions. And now for less than a year, he has made 78 million views and 258k subscribers upgrade.

"The biggest thing that people have come to me with is 'Well, Joe, this is going to be mega for you because of everybody's home. And everybody's just gonna watch YouTube.' But what I discovered is when the pandemic first hit, I actually had a big decline in views."

It may be true that this quarantine period is unlocking the "free time" for a lot of people, and watching videos is one of the things we could do to kill time, but the truth is, according to Joe, many people are actually in a panic mode. They can't enjoy spending time with their phone. They are all anxious about what's going to happen next.

As a matter of fact, Joe's decline in views dropped by about 40% from last month.

The quarantine prohibits everyone to leave their house and makes almost everything temporarily shutdown. As for Joe, his career involves going to places where he makes his car video content to share with the world every day.

"So I went into this panic mode where I was literally every day filming about seven to eight cars a day to try to just build a treasure chest so to speak, so that, if our city, our state went into lockdown, I would then still at least be able to pull up one video a day and have some kind of footage."

"And now that I've seen how Florida has navigated through this because dealerships are essential, businesses, and because I'm classified as a journalist, as an automotive journalist, I've been able to still get out there."

With the help of his connections and while still following safety protocols and CDC procedures, he is able to consistently create and upload videos every day on his Youtube channel. And as the new normal continues, he is planning to make virtual car reviews through B-roll footage from companies as a basis.

Joe expressed a big dedication in his passion that's why it is crystal clear that he deserves the achievements he has right now. He is an inspiration to everyone who wants to succeed as they follow their heart's desires no matter how impossible it may be.

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Elsie Escobar works in the cross-section of technology, digital media, and holistic living with a heavy bias on podcast strategy and creative use of audio. A podcaster since 2006 and was one of the first female Indie podcasters using audio to teach yoga. She's behind the Elsie Yoga Class that has now been downloaded over 4 million times! She is also the co-host and producer of The Feed, the official Libsyn podcast.

Elsie is co-founder and co-host of She Podcasts. She focuses on podcasts' impact on society, diversity, and culture as well as their power to drive social change, personal development, and bring a voice to support underrepresented communities & initiatives. But before she discovered her talent in podcasting, she experienced being in different industries that eventually honed her to be a better podcaster.

"I think it was acting... Being on stage in front of lots of people and sharing… possibly my first step was in taking the stage… and at that point, giving voice to other people's words..."

Elsie said that she is already equipped with experience when she started podcasting. Back in her high school days, she is performing theatre arts. It was the first time when she dealt with a huge audience watching her from the stage. She had years to mold her confidence in acting. Then, she also earned money from it after finishing school.

"And then, the next stage was probably … my yoga classes, my physical yoga classes. "

She handled several students in her class. It was around 50 to 100 students per day. She said that it started in 2002 until it became a podcast in 2006.

"And then when podcasting came around, maybe I could just record my classes and then that way they can get them like I was thinking of my own students, and saying like 'you guys, well, you can come to my class, but if you can't, if you don't have access, you can take me with you, like you've been asking.'"

"So, I started to study up. I got a book on RSS. It really was a great book. It actually broke things down so well."

Elsie did the preps — like having a website, recorder, microphone, a host, and set up her social media accounts. Confidence was not a big problem in her podcasting journey and sharing yoga classes lead her to create her own podcast. Then, eventually, She Podcast was created to articulate, voice out, and help women to overcome barriers.

The long journey of Elsie towards podcasting was very inspiring. Her experiences were the initial steps for something bigger.

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Jeffrey Tobias Halter is a keynote speaker, author, and corporate gender strategist. He is the author of WHY WOMEN: The Leadership Imperative for Advancing Women and Engaging Men and the president in YWomen - Corporate Gender Strategy. He is a member of board trustees at The Miss America Organization and a former director of Diversity Strategy in the Coca-Cola company.

Jeffrey is already a two-time TEDx speaker. He frequently keynotes at industry and corporate events about women and helping men overcome the barriers to equality in the workplace. He is consulting from a high strategy standpoint, which is also making an impact on organizations. Thus, influencing organizations and their cultures.

In this episode, Jeffrey strongly pointed out how you, as a leader in the organization, must reach out on your employees both men and women in separate. This exercise is what he recommends to large corporate clients.

"...ask a simple question. Tell me about the experience you're having and do you think it's any different than men in the organization?"

According to Jeffrey, invite the woman for a cup of coffee or in virtual and ask her some questions that would address her current situation as a member of the organization. At first, the woman won't speak up and stand for their rights. But when you continue to reach out on her, you'll see what she is going through.

"...ask again. Is there some experience you're having that I don't understand? Or that I don't see? "

The moment she starts opening up, let her express her emotions. Listen. Don't interrupt her with what's on your mind. Don't try to solve the problem. Just listen.

"And then ask a third time. And in that third 10 minutes, you're going to hear root cause issues."

These causes might be from a personal issue or can be existing within the organization. Take note also that everyone will have different answers depending on what circumstances they are facing.

Jeffrey mentioned that the most common issue women are facing is how they are being ignored in meetings. Men rarely encounter disparity.

"And so this is where a leader says, I want every voice heard... "

Jeffrey also tells organizations to acknowledge introvert men, as well, by giving them some time to contemplate and patiently wait for them to speak up. In this way, they will feel at ease and valued.

Jeffrey has tackled many other things to ponder. So, better check it out in the full episode.

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Nate Woodbury is a Youtube producer who's currently managing 9 daily Youtube channels. He is the owner of Be The Hero Studio. His largest channel generates over $1M per month. All were from organic YouTube traffic. He has his own Youtube channels, named after his name, garners over 47.7k+ subscribers with 4M views, and 626 uploads.

Nate has a team of 14 employees from the Philippines who works with him in the back end. As a Youtube expert, Nate shared in the episode a lot of tips and advice on how to manage your channel well. One of those was his secret ingredient in handling your Youtube videos.

"...ingredient number one, you do keyword research to find those really specific questions."

He calls this as Leaf Strategy. This is about doing some research on what most people search about a certain topic before filming. Gathering all that you have collected and put them all in your content video. He elaborated this one by demonstrating an example in the episode. He also offers Keyword Research free mini-course on his website.

"...ingredient number two, you want your episodes to be 10 minutes in length."

This is the ideal time length for Youtube videos because the audience gets easily bored if you added many things and didn't get to your point directly.

"...ingredient number three, you want an average view duration of 45% or higher."

One of your aims is to retain your viewers and encourage them to finish watching your video. If most of them fully watched it, Youtube will recognize it and recommend it on top of the search results.

"And then ingredient number four, you post five episodes per week. And if you follow those four ingredients, for four months, you'll get a spike."

He mentioned that these things were proven and tested. It won't apply to you if one ingredient is missing. It requires all of them to be practiced in improving your SEO.

He also added a bonus tip in his ingredients — having a custom thumbnail design.

"One of the important things is you do want to have a custom thumbnail design. "

Thumbnail is essential in advertising your video which makes people click on it to check it out. It is as important as the title. Make it compelling and interesting for people to click on. It does not require a permanent format. It can be changed through time.

"You want your strategies like that to keep people engaged to keep people watching all the way to the end. And so, if you followed those four ingredients, and you're just strategic, you're mindful of 'what can I do to make my content better?'. You really deliver value, then you'll get suggestive traffic at the four-month mark."

Nate has also discussed points on what to do and not to do in your video script flow by his example of 'How to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics?' video topic. This episode is worth your time for Nate generously delivered everything he knows about SEO and upgrading your Youtube channel.

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Todd Uterstaedt is the co-founder and CEO of From Founder To CEO which aims to help founders transition from starting a company to building a company by supporting to build a leader in them. They are personal development accelerators who focuses on the growth of the founder's personal development as their business grows.

He is also the host of the podcast "From Founder To CEO" which has over a hundred episodes with big guests and tons of positive reviews. In addition, Todd was an Army Intelligence Officer, too, before his world opened up to entrepreneurship and podcasting.

"I'm a former Army officer, but I think I was a lousy leader. And so, I started the podcast..."

Todd mentioned that he used his issues in leadership to share it on his podcast in order to help himself as well as the founders to overcome it and be better as leaders. Then, he enrolled in Podcasting A to Z and learned how to start one.

"And then over the course of time, we get 15 to 20 pitches a day now of people who come on the show."

Like the other podcasters who are just starting, he also faced difficulties in maintaining the consistency. He experienced being rejected by humiliation as he invites clients to come to his show. But that didn't stop him from persevering until clients are the ones who look for him.

"In the beginning, I thought I needed to share my expertise. But in reality, I get so many emails from people who say to me-- 'Todd, I love how you let your guests talk and how it's not about you.'"

This put him into a realization that the reason why people are listening to his podcast is that they want to know the insight of both him and his guest. He needs to be a good listener so that he may give emphasis and deliver to the audience the strong points of the guest.

Over the course of time, Todd frequently receives feedback from his guests on how they are being contacted by big companies who heard their guesting episodes in his podcast.

"I suppose what had happened was some of the other media outlets were paying attention to some of the guests because I do also like to bring on founders who don't have a lot of visibility yet but have a great story to tell. And so, some of them listen to the show, and then their message gets amplified, and that helps them build their business more, which is very gratifying to me."

Todd has shared more stories in the episode of the impact and how lives were changed through his podcast. Truly, the podcast's name speaks that it is a great blessing to small businesses to stay motivated as founders persevere and strive to become a CEO.

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Daniel J. Lewis is a keynote speaker on podcasting and social media. He creates training resources and producing tools like SEO for Podcasters and My Podcast Reviews. He also writes in his personal blog about technology, productivity, and entrepreneurship. His Youtube channel currently garners over 7.12k subscribers with 820k views and 158 uploads.

He is the host of The Audacity to Podcast. The title of the podcast depicts having guts to do podcasting. The podcast also aims to share with the listeners the right tools in podcasting and to grow their podcast channel.

In this episode, Daniel has provided us some tips on what should be given importance in podcasting.

"...my top recommendations right now are for a microphone. Samsung Q2U. There are other microphones very similar to it like the Audio Technica ATR, 2100 and USB and there's now the new ATR 2100 x USB, yeah, you're using the ATR 2100 USB, there's also the Audio Technica AT 2005."

Daniel gives emphasis on the significance of having a good mic for podcasting and shared with us his top microphones that are high-quality but affordable. These are very fit for startup podcasters. He mentioned that everything doesn't have to be perfect at the very start of your podcasting. The important is you have clear content and direction to where your podcast will go. Buying cheap tools is good for a beginner and then, eventually, as you go further, you can level up your materials.

"And then for a podcast media host, I now recommend, captivate an advisor for that company as well…"

"Then, the next thing is you have to launch."

According to Daniel, having an advisor can make podcasting better. It serves as your gear in media hosting, stats, website, etc. This would be very helpful for the technical part. He also mentioned that launching in a way that you don't need to prepare first the produced 20-30 episodes. You can even start with a trailer only. Then, plan out the next 20-30 episodes. You can just list it. Again, you don't need to record the first 20-30 episodes, you only need to list them down. What matters is you know where you will be going.

"The other thing is to really focus on optimizing that experience for your audience in your podcast on the web."

Next, to optimize the audience experience, Daniel taught us in this episode how to use an A/B Testing wherein you will group your audience into two and you will examine what part they are interested the most on your podcast. In this way, you will know your succeeding content and the flow of your program.

"So look for ways that you can breathe some new life into the podcast. "

Lastly, this tip is for podcasters who are lost in track and are out of ideas. It's not really completely changing your format but rather adding up some new things. He said that you can search for new ideas in your podcast by joining events related to podcasting. It could be a Comic-Con or Podcast Movement depending on what you want to grow with.

Daniel was so generous to share his knowledge and techniques in podcasting and more of these essential tips can be discovered in the entire episode!

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