Karin Conroy (00:03.529)
Before we jump in, if building authority and visibility is a priority for your law firm, we run something called the Authority Tour. You might have heard about this on other episodes, but we are helping firms position and position their expertise across the right platforms. And the more you hear about AI, AI search, and the approach, this is what’s working. So you can take a look on our website, conroycreativecouncil.com slash authority tour.

So today we are talking about LinkedIn. So most lawyers are active on LinkedIn, but very few are actually influential. They’re posting, they’re engaging, but they’re not actually building authority and they’re definitely not seeing consistent results. So the big question is why isn’t your LinkedIn strategy working? Today I’m joined by Neil Schaefer. He’s the author of Age of Influence.

And he’s an expert on LinkedIn strategy and digital authorities. So, Neil, let’s start here. Where are lawyers fundamentally? What are they getting wrong about LinkedIn?

Neal Schaffer (01:10.616)
hey, Karen. First of all, thank you so much for the honor to be on your podcast. Yes, and I think it’s not just limited lawyers, but I think that, you know, we all know LinkedIn is not just a job site. It really is the number one professional social networking site. And it’s great to hear more lawyers getting more active. But if the activity is not strategic, and it’s not branded properly, it’s not going to really bring you results. In fact, it’ll just add to the noise. So there is a need for strategic

Karin Conroy (01:12.393)
Thank you for being here.

Neal Schaffer (01:40.27)
content. And I think, you know, the level of content that’s being created right now on LinkedIn, especially with the help of AI has only gotten better over time. So it’s actually getting hard. Yeah, it’s actually getting harder to to get your voice out there. And there’s more and more engagement going on. Right. So I think I think it needs, you know, I wrote this book on LinkedIn, not to like self promote, but I wrote this, this, the second edition of this book in January 2026. The first edition was September 2024. It is

Karin Conroy (01:48.637)
I agree. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (01:56.339)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (02:02.375)
Yeah, no, definitely.

Karin Conroy (02:08.937)
Oh, interesting. So it’s been kind of the life of AI a little bit.

Neal Schaffer (02:09.974)
It has changed. Yeah. It has changed that much with AI, but the fundamentals are still there. There’s still people, their decision makers to the people you want to be friend and more and more people more active on it. So the opportunity is still there. We just need to tweak things a bit.

Karin Conroy (02:26.121)
I think that it has been slowly gaining. And maybe this is just my focus and how I’ve kind of slowly changed my own approach. But I just feel like it’s really kind of the hot place to be right now, as strange as that sounds. But let’s take a step back and talk more broadly about where to start. Because I know you also have the book, The Age of Influence. And I first want to talk about

influence broadly and how it works. And I do think that that’s the place people are starting wrong. They’re thinking, let me just throw a bunch of content on LinkedIn. They’re not really planning it out and they don’t have like a strategy behind all of it. Where do you start with influence? How does it work?

Neal Schaffer (03:15.64)
Yeah, you know, it’s funny before influence, I really start with brand, right? Because you can’t really build influence without a personal brand. And the ultimate definition, now it’s attributed to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Who knows if he was really the first to say it, but in the world of personal branding, he is the first to have said, apparently, a personal brand is what they say about you when you’re not in the room. And it’s just, it’s a very powerful.

Karin Conroy (03:20.315)
Okay. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (03:39.067)
Yes, yes.

Neal Schaffer (03:42.1)
easy to understand definition that I still use today that I think really defines what are people going to say about you and people are going to talk about you regardless. But the art of personal branding is really controlling that narrative. What do we want people to say about us? And it comes down to everything about us. And when people don’t have a chance to meet you in real life, it comes down to your digital profiles, LinkedIn being the number one place where people will vet you. Karen, you know, I also have a podcast. I get pitched all the time by people. you know, like yesterday, there was someone I’ve

I’ve managed $35 million in Google Ads and they don’t have a LinkedIn profile. Exactly, right? So if you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, you’re really a nobody. So I think you’re all listening, you already have a LinkedIn profile, but do you have the right personal branding? What do you want people to know you for? What differentiates you from all the other ex-lawyers out there? And I think those are really the places to begin. It’s really an exercise in self-discovery to try to find those angles.

Karin Conroy (04:17.865)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (04:32.775)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (04:39.758)
that are really unique to who you are and what you do and how you help other people in businesses.

Karin Conroy (04:45.309)
Yeah, you I laugh when you say that this person didn’t have a LinkedIn profile, but that’s kind of getting at the core of it. Like maybe, maybe you’re not quite that bad. Like you have the LinkedIn profile, but you really are not doing a whole lot with it. You’re using it more like a resume and less like an actual platform to engage and seek out those connections. And I think that’s where people get confused because

I think back in the day that really was where most people started. think LinkedIn really did start that way. was like, let’s just kind of upload our resume and or CV if you’re not in the US and just kind of slap together our work experience. And then when we’re in a position where we need to either hire someone or seek a new position, then we go to LinkedIn. But other than that, we kind of leave it alone and it’s just not what it is anymore. So

maybe your profile still is kind of in that world and it has not really evolved from being just a resume. And I think you need to start by taking a different look at what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, not just like I worked at this place and I did the following eight things. Where should people start? I know you mentioned kind of this whole idea of differentiation and how you’re different and

where you fit in the kind of chart, I talk a lot about blue ocean strategy where you kind of graph out, okay, here’s the market, here’s where everybody else is, where can I find a little space to carve out for myself? Where should someone start? Let’s say they do have that sort of historical, not in a good way profile that’s just resume based. And they’re not necessarily looking for a new position, but they’re just trying to grow.

either their firm or their book of business or whatever the case might be.

Neal Schaffer (06:39.438)
Yes, I want to sort of comment on your perspective on LinkedIn. I mean, I couldn’t agree more. And I will say, I don’t think a lot of people know, but it was 2004 when LinkedIn was created by a bunch of Silicon Valley executives. And it was really started as a professional network. Now we all know that that’s where the hidden job market, that’s where get the best jobs. And then it was the 2008, 2009 recession, which really started this, what people think of today as LinkedIn for resumes. But I’ve been arguing, I wrote my first book on LinkedIn back in 2009, believe it or not.

Karin Conroy (06:53.641)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (07:04.318)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (07:07.941)
wow, so right in the middle of that.

Neal Schaffer (07:09.61)
Yeah. And my background is more B2B sales and business devs. I’ve always argued it is really a business tool, right? And, really about the networking, not the job. So yes, you’re absolutely right. When you have that personal brand created, then how do we transfer that to the profile? Because all roads will lead back to your LinkedIn profile. Anything you do on LinkedIn, people click, they see your profile, they check you out. You have a chance to either stop the scroll, get some communication going, or people leave. So I think it comes down to a few things. If we look at the most

Karin Conroy (07:28.082)
Right.

Neal Schaffer (07:38.958)
I mean, you talked about a general thing in terms of how do we talk about ourselves? And I think there’s a few really, really strategic areas when you break it down. When we think of the personal branding, obviously at the very top of your profile, there’s a cover photo or a banner image, whatever you want to call it. And that really is one of the most important things. A lot of people take it for granted. They just use the standard or they put up some random photo. Cause it’s the first thing people see when they go to your profile. Right. And we know that we know that visuals.

Karin Conroy (08:02.321)
Yeah, why is that so important?

Okay.

Neal Schaffer (08:08.672)
are way more important than text. So you’re leaving an impression. I do annual sales training on LinkedIn for insurance professionals of one of the top 10 insurance companies. And it’s interesting how insurance professionals and maybe in the legal industry, you’re similar. If you serve a local base, then often having a picture of your local, you know, something that people would be proud of seeing, right? You know,

we’re both in Orange County and Irvine. So maybe like a balloon, the orange balloon going over the great park at sunset with the mountains in the background, it shows that you’re part of the community. even having some, yeah, exactly. Even something like that, oh, this person speaks my language, right? If you are, if you’re a lawyer who specializes in AI, then it would be something AI related. I have a nephew who graduated from university who wanted to go into the hydroponics industry, believe it or not. Long story.

Karin Conroy (08:39.122)
Right.

Karin Conroy (08:42.537)
It’s familiar. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (08:58.78)
that’s very niche.

Neal Schaffer (09:01.546)
So we went on stock photo sites and a photo of like a vertical farm, put that on your profile, right? It immediately resonates with someone that might be looking for you. So this is all part of the branding. often, I think for lawyers, I am not a lawyer. I’ve worked with legal companies before, Karen, you’re the professional here. But if you specialize in a niche, and I see this with insurance sales professionals, maybe they specialize in protecting sailboats.

Karin Conroy (09:06.235)
cool!

Neal Schaffer (09:28.61)
because they’re sailboat aficionado. They have a sailboat that every weekend they’re out in Newport Beach, you know, sailing around Lido Isle. They will put a picture of their sailboat right up there. So, you know, what is it? What niche does your legal profession have within that? What is your niche? What is your angle? And sometimes when you find an intersection with personal passion, it becomes very powerful. I lived in Japan for 15 years. I speak fluent Japanese. My wife is Japanese. It’s our first language at home.

Karin Conroy (09:36.093)
Yeah. Right.

Neal Schaffer (09:57.324)
So when I find chances to build in like Kaizen, Ikigai and these Japanese concepts, it totally differentiates me, but it’s also something I’m passionate about, something that no one can compete with, right? So what are those things that you have? And when you have that, the visual, becomes really easy to visualize that in that cover image. So that’s where I start. I want to get a sip of water here, but I know you’re about to say the same thing.

Karin Conroy (10:06.343)
Right. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (10:16.697)
Yeah, no, 100%. I couldn’t agree more. I feel like, you know, most of the audience is lawyers who have had a certain amount of experience. So they’ve probably experienced this. But when I first started there, I was talking to more younger lawyers a lot of times, and they were so concerned with, want to build this firm. I want to make money. I’ll make money however I can. And when I first started my own company, I felt the same way. And they would say, OK, what kind of websites are you making? I’m like, I don’t care. What do you need? You know.

But it’s a very short road to not being successful because we had someone on not long ago who was talking about how if you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one. And yeah, exactly. there was a great interview with Seth Godin who talked about how if you, imagine yourself in the middle of Canada and you are fishing somewhere and you break your left knee.

Neal Schaffer (10:56.142)
I was gonna say the same thing, yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:14.329)
suddenly all of a sudden you don’t just want a doctor, you want a knee specialist. And if there’s you pull up the internet and there’s a knee specialist who specializes in left knees for some reason, you’re on board because this is your problem, right? And so suddenly the decision is easy and obvious because there’s nobody else that does the left knee. So I just think it’s hard to overcome that hurdle of

feeling like you’re shrinking the potential, but it’s the opposite that’s actually happening because you’re really focusing on that group and you become the obvious answer.

Neal Schaffer (11:54.156)
And you charge more for that specialty. Because there’s fewer out there. Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:55.909)
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I think that’s the piece that people miss all the time also. Like, because you’re so focused and you’ve got this very special answer, that people will pay whatever they need to for that answer.

Neal Schaffer (12:11.82)
And the funny thing I found cards, I’m sort of similar. have been avoiding, I want to take any deal that comes my way. So I totally get that approach right. But I also find, so I wrote this other book called Digital Threads. It’s a digital marketing playbook. So I’ve had some people reach out and hire me as a fractional CMO from that. But what ends up happening is, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? And inevitably the work I’m doing for them goes beyond the scope of that book. Meaning that as you get to know your clients in that niche,

Karin Conroy (12:18.653)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (12:33.277)
Yes.

Neal Schaffer (12:42.072)
they have other needs and they have other friends with other needs they refer you to. So, you know, it’s the branding that we’re talking about here. What you do in reality, of course you can help in so many ways outside of that niche, but it’s how do you get known? How do you get found? How do you build those relationships from there? You can expand. you, know, once you’re known for one niche, you could build an auxiliary niche. And it’s funny talking about influencers. This is what influencers do. If you remember a lot of these Tik Tok dancers, they’re now musicians. They now have TV shows on Disney.

Karin Conroy (13:06.088)
Yes.

Neal Schaffer (13:10.818)
They expand out influences that were just known for cosmetics. Once they work with the big Procter and Gambles, healthy drink. can do that as well. So it is a natural extension, but it starts with that niche. And, know, we’re not going to talk creator economy here, but it’s the exact same thing in the creator economy.

Karin Conroy (13:10.898)
Right.

Karin Conroy (13:25.861)
No, but it’s, yeah. And I think anytime you’re talking about social media, it comes up because people kind of put them at the peak of success. And it’s like, well, but that’s not really the success that you want. You want a success that first of all speaks to an entirely different audience. We’re not talking, you know, just, you know, to the bottom line necessarily, but.

And your audience is looking for a professional. They’re not looking for someone to dance on TikTok. They’re looking for a lawyer. you know, in a certain, there’s a certain amount of a box that we have to put around it and we want to be unique and stand out and everything, but you also need to look like a lawyer. Like we don’t want to look like, you know, yeah, it’s a little weird.

Neal Schaffer (13:54.071)
Exactly.

Neal Schaffer (14:04.116)
Yeah, you I find working with clients that often the social media managers tend to be on the networks that they like, that they prefer. So maybe we have some younger lawyers listening and they love TikTok. Remember, marketing is about being where your target audience is. So are they on TikTok or are they on LinkedIn? And I don’t know who your audience is, but you know, I would say more likely they’re on LinkedIn. So even if you don’t personally like to use it, look at it as a business tool, look at it as a challenge.

Karin Conroy (14:12.935)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (14:22.994)
Right?

Neal Schaffer (14:32.93)
And that’s really the best way to look at it because it really is the number one place you should be where, you know, decision makers are, professionals are, referrals are being made. So, you know, I’m sure everyone’s bought in, but getting back to your question, you know, starting with that cover image on LinkedIn, the next thing I would look at is that headline. Cause when people scroll through your profile, they see that cover image, then they’re going to see that headline. What does that say about you? And I think the common thing and you sort of hinted at this car and what’s that people say lawyer at ex law firm, which says nothing about you.

Karin Conroy (14:46.951)
Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Karin Conroy (15:00.741)
Yes, in such city. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (15:02.766)
Exactly. I know nothing about that. So how do you rephrase that, you know, helping inventors or helping startups protect their IP assets to get greater valuation, to get more money from VCs? I don’t know. I’m just throwing stuff out there, but it’s a similar approach that how are you helping that target customer? You know, what is it specifically you do that no one else does that provides value so that they would want to reach out to you or

In the case of this professional headline, another reason why it’s important is when people do searches for, you know, family attorney Irvine and you show up at, you know, in the top 10 search results, they’re going to look at that professional headline and they’re going to decide whether or not they click through. So that’s where that becomes really, really important as well.

Karin Conroy (15:43.144)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (15:47.997)
I feel like that ties really almost one-to-one with the front main heading part of a website too. So we talk a lot about, that’s usually where we start a lot of our projects. Usually firms are coming in and they’ve already got a brand and a logo. And so then we’re going to really revise the website because, know, historically that has been sort of the first impression. We’re finding more and more, it’s not really the first impression anymore, but you control it. You control your website. So the first,

thing that I typically see on a website in that sort of homepage main heading area is a similar issue where it’s talking, it’s very like self-centered. I went to, you know, we are ex-lawyers in Y city doing Z practice area. And this is the same thing that you’re talking about on that LinkedIn headline. So it’s very kind of focused back, tanking that light and shining it back on yourselves when in reality what works is to

flip that light out, know, kind of focus on your solutions, how you help people, what they’re looking for. And it may sound like I’m kind of saying the same thing, but it’s definitely a different approach where the language is problem solving language.

Neal Schaffer (17:03.938)
Yeah, no, exactly. It’s not legalese. It’s customaries, right? It’s speaking their language.

Karin Conroy (17:06.333)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, so how else? That was kind of the next part I wanted to get into. What are some other tips and things people are typically doing wrong in their approach and how should they twist those in order to align with this idea of like providing this, or being more influential in order to actually make it work?

Neal Schaffer (17:31.126)
Yeah, so I wanted to, I, you know, I’m one that says the profile is a set it and done thing, right? Like listen to this episode, spend a little bit of time on it, spend a Saturday morning on it, you’re done. Maybe look at it again once every three months, but there are one or two more things I want to talk about the profile before I talk about the other things. The other one is, and this is just a natural progression. They see your, they see your image, they see your headline. The next thing is that about section or summary. And this is again, where there’s a lot of mistakes made where it’s just like a third person.

Karin Conroy (17:37.148)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (17:46.877)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (17:54.439)
Okay.

Neal Schaffer (18:00.768)
So-and-so is a so-and-so lawyer. That’s really where you want to have a first person message that says, hey, this is what I do. This is why I do it. This is how I help you. I’d love to help you. Please reach out to me here. Really, that’s sort of the formula there. But this is something, again, that most people miss out on, not just lawyers, but professionals in general. So that’s another area. And the other area.

Karin Conroy (18:22.459)
Yeah, it’s it once again, usually comes across resume sounding, you know, I’ve done and it’s sort of like historical. I did this thing five years ago and, you know, I’ve I’m kind of known for this other thing. And it’s not necessarily like today. If you’re landing on my profile and you are looking to work with me, here’s what you might need.

Neal Schaffer (18:26.284)
Yeah, exactly.

Neal Schaffer (18:42.83)
Yeah, and it’s stories. My dad was a successful entrepreneur. I’m just making this up. Was a successful entrepreneur and he got sued and he was in court for two years. We ended up being successful, but I promised my dad when I grew up, I’m going to be a lawyer and protect our assets. Do you have a story about why you do what you do? That just becomes even more powerful. So I just throw that out as an example. But once again, working with these insurance sales professionals, I’ve found some really compelling stories in a similar way.

Karin Conroy (18:44.562)
Yes, yes.

Karin Conroy (19:00.079)
Yes. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (19:12.157)
Yeah. they should. mean, if you’ve worked at all and had any cases and you obviously want to keep things with a certain level of privacy and all of that, but you can tell the story of it. We have successfully pursued 73 cases and we have done X, Y, and Z without disclosing any names or saying anything that’s kind of inappropriate.

Neal Schaffer (19:12.172)
I think lawyers can do as well.

Neal Schaffer (19:37.934)
Of course. right. So those are stories. So when you talked about that, resume, like we did this and this and this, that is really for that professional section, that professional summary. Flesh it out. And here’s the thing, a lot of professionals, and I’m assuming lawyers as well, don’t flesh out that professional experience. It’s not a resume. So whatever experience you have, you should put it in there. LinkedIn is also a search engine. So take advantage of that fact. Don’t just use your current experience. Go back in history, right?

Don’t worry about age discrimination because the more you have, the more data points it builds with the LinkedIn search engine and with other people that might be looking for people that worked out such and such a company or that have this experience. know, flesh that out. One more thing in the profile. I mean, there’s more we can go into. One more thing is there’s something called a featured section. So, Karen, I’m sure you have it. I have it. Sometimes you scroll through a LinkedIn profile and you see these like featured images before you get down to the professional experience. You have to add this section.

Karin Conroy (20:18.087)
Okay. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (20:25.128)
I

Karin Conroy (20:28.713)
Mm-hmm.

Neal Schaffer (20:32.888)
but I highly recommend you add it if it’s like a PowerPoint, you have like a YouTube video, if there’s a post that was really successful you wanna point people to, the visuals really stick out and that also adds to your personal branding. So do those few things and immediately your profile is gonna be 100 % better.

Karin Conroy (20:51.037)
Yeah, that featured section, that is the thing I go in and change the most often because I’m regularly sending content over to, well, all of my platforms, but especially LinkedIn. And so I am constantly kind of adjusting it and making it look basically like I’m active, like I’m there and I’m doing things. If I land on someone’s profile and they have a featured section, but they haven’t changed it in three years, I’m going to think, okay.

All right, what else are they not updating? And this is what your clients are gonna think too. Is this how you’re gonna treat my case? Are you gonna actually call me back when I urgently need you to address something or, you know, like it’s just a bad look. It’s same, you know, this kind of goes hand in hand with marketing in general, same with your website. It’s little things like your copyright date down at the bottom of your website. Does it say 2019? Because that’s not good. You know, like if you haven’t posted,

in five years, like maybe take the dates off. Maybe make it look like you are actively working and ready to take on new clients and new cases and you’re not just going to let them sort of, you know, fade off. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (22:03.374)
Note to Neil, revise my featured section right after this interview. Okay.

Karin Conroy (22:07.163)
Right? Yeah, well, I I would say like I do it regularly because just because I because that’s just the thing that I know is working and that’s where I’m going to spend a minute or two every so often. But I would say, you know, every at least a couple of times a year, you know, so it at least doesn’t look super stale and whatever. And, you know, as long as it’s within the last few months or so, I think it’s fine.

Neal Schaffer (22:11.256)
smart.

Neal Schaffer (22:32.91)
Yeah. And this is part of this quarterly audit. Go back to your profile every quarter and update things that need updating as your business changes, as your personal brand evolves. But this is the static part, right? Set it, forget it, come back once every 90 days. The dynamic part is the content creation and the engagement. these are the room and building influence over time. And really, every influencer is also a content creator. And if we think about public influencers as well, well, maybe they’re actors, they’re

Karin Conroy (22:51.464)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (23:02.7)
you know, musicians, they’re, they’re, you sports players. So there’s an entertainment aspect as well, but for mostly, you know, when we think about people in our industry, they’re influential. They are creating content, you know, writing books, speaking, which is another form of content creation, or they are really active on social media. So what is the content that you create? And if you go back to the definition of personal branding, the content should actually feed into that personal brand. Right? If you say you’re different at this, you’re good at this.

Karin Conroy (23:28.328)
Yes.

Neal Schaffer (23:32.236)
then your content should back that up. And this is where the disconnect, people think, you we came up with a new blog post today, let’s share that. It becomes very random. It aligns more with your activity rather than where you wanna take people, how you wanna be seen. And you know, what’s great, Karan, is that if we had this conversation five years ago, we couldn’t have said this, but today you can have a conversation with a chat GPT, with a Gemini, with a Claude. And exactly what we’re talking about here,

give me, know, this, help me develop a personal brand. These are some content ideas. You should always work with a professional like Akaran or Anil because AI, it’s like, wait a minute, you said this, isn’t it like this? you’re right. know, AI makes mistakes. You don’t want to screw up your personal brand, what have you. But in terms of ideation of just brainstorming, I think you’re going to get a lot of great ideas there that then you could begin to think about fleshing out content around. So obviously with NDAs, you, and

Karin Conroy (24:13.201)
Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (24:29.228)
you know, with with client, you know, privilege and exactly, you cannot give out real names and real things, but you can say, you know, you can say, hey, you know, in the past, how to client say it in broad terms in a way where you can legally do it. But you know, it’s not often it’s not all also just about those experiences is also what you think, right? About, hey, you know, people are talking about, you know, whatever cases in court right now.

Karin Conroy (24:31.849)
privacy issues. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:44.295)
Right.

Karin Conroy (24:51.923)
Right.

Neal Schaffer (24:57.158)
you know, based on our experience, this is the direction we see, we see laws moving. And this is why if you’re doing this, you should consider contacting us because you really need to revise your living trust or your patent or whatever it might be. So those, so those are that that’s where you begin to see, you know, thought leadership when you have an opinion. That’s very crystal clear attached to your brand and that people start to tune into you. Okay. If I want to know the latest, what’s going on with, you know, immigration law, whatever it might be.

Karin Conroy (25:10.547)
Right.

Neal Schaffer (25:25.858)
that you’re the person I tune into because you are always having an opinion. Yes, you’re abreast with industry news. And that’s another thing is just sharing the news with your opinion is a great way instead of just sharing the news, right? But it’s having the opinion and the angle that gets you remembered that’s aligned with your brand that over time builds an influence to where you become what we would call a thought leader.

Karin Conroy (25:34.376)
Yeah.

Right.

Karin Conroy (25:47.273)
Okay, so you said a minute ago that let’s say your firm in general has a blog post and you don’t want to just sort of repost that. I think there’s, you so there’s a few different ways that this can be done. Like if, let’s say you have a small firm and it’s you and maybe it’s just you, you have a solo firm or maybe it’s you and a couple other attorneys and your blog post is probably coming from one of you as opposed to sort of a firm, you know, broader sort of corporate

blog post that’s talking about something one way or the other, how should we approach that talking about that blog post? Let’s just kind of say, for example, it is an immigration firm. We’re talking about something that’s happening in the news. And how do we approach that in order to kind of use that as a starting point to then also put our sort of personal brand overlay on that?

Neal Schaffer (26:41.568)
Yeah, and this is something I talk about in digital threads. I’m a big believer. I know this goes against what a lot of people marketing say, but social media, social media, blogs are blogs. They’re two different things. And I think there was a time, Karan, when we could generate a lot of traffic from social media back to our blogs, like the heyday of LinkedIn groups, what have you. But those days are simply long gone. Social media, they want to keep you on their sites. But on the other hand, if we think, you know, I think

Karin Conroy (26:45.426)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (26:53.852)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (26:59.154)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (27:06.515)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (27:09.282)
The reason we blog is really for search engines now for large language models and also to have something to say, right? So I focus on that, but you’re right in that, hey, we have something important to say. How do we say it on LinkedIn? The minute you post it as a link on LinkedIn, the algorithm devalues it. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about it, not in terms of the blog post, but use the blog post as a launching pad to speak more about the subject broadly.

Karin Conroy (27:24.925)
hates it. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (27:35.912)
Okay.

Neal Schaffer (27:36.076)
And then it’s like, hey, if you’re more interested in the subject, just published a blog post about this link is in the comments. And then obviously after we publish it, we put the link in the comments. So it’s not, it’s not, you I think in the past we would basically summarize and some people use AI to do this. We’d summarize the blog post as LinkedIn posts. We’re not going to do that anymore. We’re going to, why did we write that post? What’s the important point and what can we say about that? And we’re going to offer our opinion and then, Hey, by the way, this came out today. You might want to check it out.

Karin Conroy (27:42.408)
Yes.

Neal Schaffer (28:05.6)
If you really want to go the LinkedIn blog post to generate traffic route, the best way to do that is actually to create a LinkedIn newsletter and repurpose that blog post into a LinkedIn newsletter. there are 12 different content format types on LinkedIn. I’m not going to go into all of them, but I find over the last two years, LinkedIn newsletters actually deliver the most impressions. They give me the most visibility. When you have a LinkedIn newsletter, people subscribe. You might be able to hit their email inbox. So

Karin Conroy (28:32.136)
Yep.

Neal Schaffer (28:32.558)
There are strategies for this and that also builds to that sort of thought leadership over time because it is a subscribable media. People don’t have to even follow you to subscribe to your newsletter. So if you really want to ramp it up, that would definitely be one area where I do it. But once again, Karin, if we detach what we want to say the message from the blog post, we could also do a video talking about the same concepts, right? It opens up our minds to do a lot of different things. And here’s the thing about the LinkedIn algorithm.

Karin Conroy (28:55.121)
Right? Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (29:01.238)
Some people prefer video, some people prefer text, some people perform long form or short form. There are carousel posts we can create. So if you really want to get to that next stage and really become more discoverable in the platform with content, there’s a few different tactics. It’s going to require a little bit more of your time, but I think it’s going to be worth it to reach more people. And then with every post, more visibility, more engagement.

Karin Conroy (29:23.857)
It does sound though, like broadly, and this has been my experience too, that what you’re suggesting is just regurgitating a blog post, especially if you have the link in the actual post, it’s just not gonna really be a good approach and LinkedIn doesn’t like it. And this is what I’ve seen. They just don’t perform and it’s just not a good strategy. If you really want to use your blog content whenever you have to,

kind of massage it and find other avenues to take that content and manipulate it in a way that you’re sort of following LinkedIn’s rules too, because LinkedIn doesn’t like external links. LinkedIn doesn’t really want you to talk about a blog post. It wants you to kind of keep the conversation on LinkedIn. do you think, you know, is it too bold to say that like blog posts are just not, like, don’t do it. Like, it’s just not the number one strategy anymore.

Neal Schaffer (30:23.406)
Yeah, that’s exactly. So in digital threads, I have this concept called platform authentic content. writing blog posts so that they get discovered by search engines through SEO and now through GEO, AO, whatever you want to call it with large language models. Absolutely go for it, right? That is you’re going to get way more traffic from search engines and large language models than you’re going to get from LinkedIn. The potential is just a lot bigger because social media generates less than this traffic.

Karin Conroy (30:37.587)
Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (30:45.725)
Yes.

Neal Schaffer (30:49.282)
So what do you do with social media? Well, platform authentic content, the whole idea is you’re going to write content that the platform wants, just like SEO. You write blog posts that search engines want, right? So it’s a similar process. Well, if the game is to keep people on as long as possible, what can we do? We’re not going to drive them off with a link. We’re going to start conversations. And you begin to sort of shift from looking at social media as being a transactional place to get website traffic and more as a place to build relationships. And more importantly, if you’re a lawyer,

looking for new business or to increase business, every single business deal probably started with a relationship that you built somewhere. Yeah, exactly.

Karin Conroy (31:24.561)
Yeah. And then that’s more of a conversation too. It’s not just like, Hey, here’s this thing I wrote. Here’s this blog post over here. Please go read it. It’s the whole language around that is going to be different because it’s like, how do I even start a conversation? How do I get people talking to me here on LinkedIn? Not just kind of clicking over to my blog post.

Neal Schaffer (31:43.918)
Exactly. So you begin to reimagine social media to be very, very different as really a place to connect with people, also to share your brand and how you help people and you do that through your content. But you know, not every piece of content every time has to lead back to your website. And that’s really the key thing is what are things I can talk about that do not lead people back to what you know, and I think it really opens you up to be able to go, wow, there’s so many different things I can talk about. Let me take out my, you know, my voice recorder.

Karin Conroy (32:00.36)
Right?

Neal Schaffer (32:13.25)
or whatever it is, then we record a few things and you could definitely put that through AI and get some drafts to help you get started. But I find it really gives me a lot of freedom to be able to talk about lots of different things. And then you begin to say, okay, I’m going to commit to posting once a week, or if I’m posting once a week now, I’m going to commit to posting twice a week. And maybe, yeah, you still publish four blog posts a month, but which of those blog posts would actually get conversations going on LinkedIn? yeah.

Karin Conroy (32:24.477)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (32:41.257)
And then what, sorry, sorry, yeah.

Neal Schaffer (32:43.18)
No, no, I’ll give an example. I, for SEO, I have a blog post. What is influencer marketing? That’s not something I’m to share on LinkedIn because the people that follow me have already seen my books on LinkedIn, on influencer marketing. It’s too elementary. find that search engine users often are looking for elementary advice. So it’s fitting for them, but not for my LinkedIn audience. So that’s another sort of, you you want to go through this, this barometer of is this relevant for my audience or not? And yes, you should share some blog posts that are relevant.

But even when you do, it’s not about the blog post, it’s about the information. it’s, you know, exactly, exactly.

Karin Conroy (33:15.399)
and the conversation. Okay, and so then what about in terms of that conversation, the engagement piece of it? So that we’ve been talking all about like what you post and your kind of profile and your little world, but in order for there to be a conversation, people need to be coming to your stuff, but you also need to be going to theirs. So what’s your plan, strategy, thoughts around how to also spend time making sure that you’re engaging with your world

and your community on LinkedIn.

Neal Schaffer (33:47.18)
Yeah, and a lot of content creators and people that want to become more influential have realized that fact. And therefore, maybe some of you have recently seen over last year, you’ll get comments from second or third degree connections, which often end in a question back to you. And I get these all the time and I hate it. And I’ll ask them, why do you end your comment with a question to me when I already gave you the answer to my content, right?

Karin Conroy (33:53.0)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (34:00.955)
I love that.

Karin Conroy (34:12.713)
Right?

Neal Schaffer (34:16.546)
But that is because there’s a lot of people that realize that comments, the more you engage with others, they engage back with you. And this is just social media in general. LinkedIn is no different. So yes, you need to be able to have signals to send to the algorithm so that when you publish new content, these people that have engaged with you will be more likely to see your content. So it is a best practice. It only comes after the personal branding, profile revision, content creation. Then we get into the engagement.

And every day, it’s as easy as every day in your feed, you know, making sure you like X number posts, making sure you’re comment on X number posts. I say that at the beginning, because you may not be used to doing that, but just like, you know, if you’re on Facebook, you open up your Facebook feed and you’re, you’re naturally scrolling through it over 15 minutes, you’re naturally going to comment and like, it’s the same thing with LinkedIn. And if you can do that on a daily basis, then that might be all the engagement you need. There are other people who say, you know, these are influencers in my industry.

I am going to check out their content and I want to build a relationship with them and I’m going to comment on their posts. Well, you should be doing this with your clients, with your prospects, with people that you want to do business with. It is really the same aspect. You can follow them and really be developing relationships through that engagement. the engagement piece, you know, after the content creation could take a lot of time. Obviously, if you work with Karin,

Karin Conroy (35:22.557)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (35:40.408)
what have you, they might be able to accelerate that, it requires time. So after that, it’s like, my gosh, I finally posted all this content. Now I have to engage. So you need to build. needs to become muscle memory every day, five, 10, 15 minutes. The other piece to the engagement is also direct message. I’m not going to, I’m not going to say, you know, invest in automation software. I hate it. I don’t do it. I never recommend you do it, but to be able to go in and, know, every day.

Karin Conroy (35:46.961)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (35:57.341)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (36:08.216)
have a conversation with someone that you haven’t been in touch with in like a year, right? Or someone that you connected with, but you don’t really know much about them and you want to get to know them better. In my book, I recommend a tool, which I’ll throw out here. There aren’t that many of these tools, but there is a really, really interesting tool called Kondo, K-O-N-D-O. I’m not being paid to talk about them, but they have a really cool tool that basically brings in your LinkedIn messages into an interface. So then if you want to say, okay, I want to reach back to this person in a month.

Karin Conroy (36:11.901)
Right?

Neal Schaffer (36:38.336)
or three months. You can set that and it’ll appear at the, just like Boomerang for Gmail, it’ll appear back at the top of your inbox. You can tag people. There’s a lot of interesting things you can do and it’s the first tool I’ve seen do that. So then, you know, and there’s other CRM tools where you can bring your LinkedIn contacts into your CRM. That’s another approach. You know, I have a whole chapter. call these personal CRMs. If you don’t have like a Salesforce. So there’s more and more tools out there that can do this. But if you really want to keep in better touch with people, which you should,

Karin Conroy (36:41.782)
awesome. Right.

Karin Conroy (36:48.134)
Nice.

Neal Schaffer (37:07.874)
That’s really the approach I would take. Yeah, exactly.

Karin Conroy (37:09.811)
Yeah, you should have some system behind it one way or the other. Like if you are just doing it internally within LinkedIn, you kind of create your own system. I don’t know how you would do that, but I do think that I’ve seen so many different tools. I’ve tried and used a handful of them. And I just think they keep getting better also. So I don’t have any to actually recommend, but I would recommend a system, whatever that may be. Do your research, figure out what makes sense for your firm, especially if it’s something that integrates with

your broader firm CRM, then that makes sense that you can kind of tie that all in. You’re pulling out one of your books. Do you have a list of them in one of your books?

Neal Schaffer (37:45.848)
with, yeah, I’m pulling out Maximize LinkedIn for Business Group, because I mentioned that I did this follow-up of, I did a second edition, you know, 15 months after the first, I just want to read you. So one of the things I added was chapter 11, using a personal CRM to stay organized on LinkedIn. And the moment I knew I was dropping the ball, while revising this book, I had what I called a DM epiphany.

Karin Conroy (37:53.709)
Karin Conroy (38:05.18)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (38:12.704)
I was knee deep in content planning and reflecting on past collaborations. And I started scrolling back through my LinkedIn messages. The volume of missed conversations, people I meant to follow up with, but never did with staggering. It wasn’t just prospects. It was podcasters. I never circled back to people at many conferences, book reviewers, collaborators, friends, all buried under hundreds of newer threads. And that’s when I realized I had an inbox problem, but more importantly, I had a system problem.

Karin Conroy (38:24.36)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (38:39.19)
I was relying on social inboxes like LinkedIn messaging and Instagram DMs, which weren’t built for organization. couldn’t tag or sort people. couldn’t set reminders. I couldn’t easily follow up. That’s when I knew I wanted to fully tap into the relationships I’d worked so hard to build. needed a personal CRM. So this is, it’s all about the follow-up.

Karin Conroy (38:45.245)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (38:57.171)
think that’s a really valid point that especially the part about this is not built for organization. It’s just a very kind of simplified inbox that’s super messy. It’s just a big scrolling thing. And ideally, if things are working and you’re getting success and you’re having interactions, that is not where you want to keep things. it’s you’re going to, like you were describing, you’re going to totally miss out on stuff. You’ve got all these opportunities on podcasts and

Neal Schaffer (39:09.921)
Exactly.

Karin Conroy (39:26.173)
who knows what else was in there, and you’re doing all this work and then it’s kind of getting lost in this black hole of the inbox in LinkedIn. So what did you end up using for your CRM?

Neal Schaffer (39:35.958)
Exactly. So condo is the tool that I condos not a CRM, but it is, it does help begin the process of tagging and what have you for the, for the LinkedIn box. So I am still like you, I’m sort of on the fence. I bring up a few tools in the book. I’ve played around with some CRMs that have, you know, like for small business, right? That have the ability to bring in LinkedIn connections, what have you. I haven’t really found the one I like. The one I’m currently looking into is a tool called relatable.

Karin Conroy (39:39.922)
okay.

Karin Conroy (39:46.494)
Okay.

Neal Schaffer (40:04.756)
And it was actually developed by someone who developed another CRM a few years ago called Contactually. And Contactually was actually bought out by Compass, the real estate company. So this is someone who’s been in the CRM business for like 15 years and who has something new. Contactually was really cool because what it did is every day you go in and it would show you your connections or people in your email database.

Karin Conroy (40:11.855)
I feel like I’ve heard of that one.

Karin Conroy (40:17.042)
Interesting.

Neal Schaffer (40:32.472)
Do you want to stay in touch with this person or not? Or why do you know this person? Or how do you know this person? It would be like gamified. so over time, then it began to build a more robust database with you to help reminding you of who you want to reach back out to. Exactly. So Relatable also has something similar. Like I said, they’re still relatively new.

Karin Conroy (40:39.739)
Nice!

Karin Conroy (40:47.229)
these kind of key connections. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (40:54.19)
But the founder is really passionate. They have a lot of great resources about networking and keeping in touch. that would be, if you were curious, there’s also another one called Clay, C-L-A-Y. I think it’s Clay.social. That is also more of the personal. Relatable is more like personal slash business. There are one or two I think I brought up in the book, but right now those are the two. If you don’t have a CRM, you’re using Excel spreadsheets. But even using condo and

Karin Conroy (41:05.511)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (41:13.778)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (41:17.511)
Yeah, I hope not.

Neal Schaffer (41:19.104)
Yeah, even using conduit and saying, like I’m going to start tagging people. And if these are prospects, I’m going to make sure like, you know, each month I’m to reach back out to them. If I don’t hear from them, even something like that can be really powerful. So that’s the missing link for a lot of people.

Karin Conroy (41:31.633)
Yeah, because I think, right. And the thing to keep in mind with LinkedIn is, you know, like some platforms, if you get a message or whatever, you can set it up to send you that message by email. But I don’t know of any way to do that within LinkedIn just manually. So you’re not going to get, you know, if I could get that in my inbox, then I feel like I could pretty easily take it from there and pull it into the CRM. But there’s a big jump there that you have to kind of

hook something else in to make that happen and pull it out of that sort of native LinkedIn. One way or the other, I just think having some system around it and not just the CRM part, but like, what is your plan? How are you going to respond to these things? When are you going to spend time on this? Like plan that all out so that once you invest this time and effort, then like it doesn’t just kind of all go into the ether because you haven’t really planned what’s going to happen after that.

I think that’s really important. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (42:28.556)
Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, no, exactly. And, you know, LinkedIn does have a setting where you can enable emails when you have LinkedIn messages, but you’re going to get bombarded with irrelevant stuff. So I turn it off. Exactly.

Karin Conroy (42:37.276)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (42:40.967)
Right, all the spam. I think that’s where I’ve landed too, because I get a lot of inquiries around people looking for SEO jobs and whatever the case might be. all right, well, it is time, sorry, it’s time for the book review section. And I know you have a good one that ties in the whole broad topic of everything we’re talking about. So Neil, what’s the book that you want to recommend for the library today?

Neal Schaffer (42:53.42)
Yep, join the club. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (43:07.598)
So the book is called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. He’s actually a professor at Arizona State University. He’s getting up there in age. the book, he is still working for what I know. I don’t know how active he’s working, but he’s still there apparently. yeah, Influence is really the book that defined not just like influence in terms of influencer marketing, but terms like social proof.

Karin Conroy (43:15.909)
Yeah. Is he still working? wow. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (43:32.558)
that we talk about. If you’ve ever seen a presentation like the Haslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that all day people talk about, he I think was the first one to really go to really tie that to consumer psychology. But it’s really just a fantastic book to understand the way that people think how to influence. And it was written before social media. So these are evergreen concepts. But as you read it, it’s like, my gosh, this is extremely applicable to the day of today with social media. So

Karin Conroy (43:54.44)
Yeah.

Neal Schaffer (44:00.662)
Yeah, if you want to just get a better, deeper, broader understanding of how these concepts work, I highly recommend that book. I think it’s going to make everything else you do a lot more effective.

Karin Conroy (44:11.027)
feel like anytime a marketing book ties back to psychology and sort of core human thought process, that’s when I’m like, this is one that I’m gonna come back to over and over. The other piece of it that I always feel like it’s a green flag for me is when I feel like, I don’t have toddlers anymore, but I know you had kids. if this is something where I’m like, this also works when talking to a toddler, this is like a good thought process in terms of like,

because toddlers are this sort of this beautiful thing where they are, they’re learning how to use their brain. Right. And so we, as observers are figuring out how to speak to someone who’s learning how to use their brain. And this book is also kind of speaking to that idea. Like how does that work? And then how do I, as a business kind of pull with those ideas and pull that into my plan in terms of how people use their brain, not how people use Facebook.

or social media or these kind of ideas that are kind of taped on top of it. But the core ideas of how as a human we think and make decisions. then it’s, okay, this is like you said, an evergreen marketing topic that we can come back to over and over. And this is a book that I’ve read many times and it is, it is this core idea that you should definitely have kind of filed away in your brain in terms of how it all works.

Neal Schaffer (45:35.756)
Yeah, mean, 50 people are lined up to go into a store. You assume that the store is really good. So you get 50 likes in a Facebook post compared to one like, you assume and that’s social proof, right? So yeah, there’s a lot of things that we could talk about there, but yeah, highly, highly, highly recommend it. And you’re right, it’s a life hack too. How do people think? Yeah.

Karin Conroy (45:41.096)
Right?

Karin Conroy (45:51.941)
Exactly. Exactly. But as you’re driving by and you see those 50 people lined up at the store, what’s happening in the minds of those people driving by that think, wait a minute, maybe I need to stop. know, that’s, that’s the, excuse me, that’s the psychology.

Karin Conroy (49:01.171)
Okay, we will keep that book. We’ll put that book on the library and we’ll have that in the show notes. So, Neil, what’s the one main takeaway that you’d like people to get from this episode?

Neal Schaffer (49:19.18)
You know, we talked about a lot of things, but I think at the end of the day, we went all the way into like LinkedIn direct messages and personal CRMs, but I go back to that personal brand, right? That’s where it all starts. Who are you? What do you believe in? What’s your mission? How do you help people? What differentiates you? Those are the things I really want you to think about because when you have that locked in and you begin to bring that into your profile and into your content, that’s where I think it becomes really, really powerful.

Karin Conroy (49:48.775)
Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. We will have all of your links, including your LinkedIn, of course, excuse me, and the book and all the good stuff on the show notes. But thank you again for being here. I appreciate it.

Neal Schaffer (50:04.512)
It was an honor.