The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Maximising LinkedIn Visibility in 15 Minutes a Day with Ashley Leeds

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 73

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In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I spoke with Ashley Leeds, known as “The 15-Minute Guy”, who helps business owners use LinkedIn to build genuine visibility without spending hours online. Ashley shared how he went from other fields into becoming a LinkedIn coach helping professionals show up confidently and consistently.

If you’re struggling to post on LinkedIn, unsure what to share, or feel it takes too much time, this episode will give you a simple and practical approach to building your brand the right way.

You’ll learn:
✅ Why consistency beats perfection on LinkedIn
✅ How to create engaging posts that reflect who you are
✅ Why overthinking stops people from showing up
✅ The power of commenting and engagement in building trust
✅ How to manage time and still stay visible online

Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn 

🎁 Check out Ashley’s free gift: 15-Minute LinkedIn Makeover Checklist

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

My 2025 Social Media Content Planner & Guide is now available! Packed with 400 content prompts, expert tips, and $377 worth of free resources to help you save time and get results in 2025.

Grab your copy now on Amazon!
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Louise McDonnell:

So today I am delighted to be joined by Ashley Leeds. Ashley is a LinkedIn specialist, with over 32 years of sales experience .Ashley delivers engaging and transformative workshops that leave people equipped and inspired to use LinkedIn for business success. You're very welcome to the show.

Ashley Leeds:

Thank you very much indeed. Thanks for that lovely introduction as well. But yeah I think with LinkedIn we don't look at it as if it's a proper business tool for getting leads and stuff like that, but hopefully we can dispel that today.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. I have to say in terms of social media, it's my favorite place to hang out at the moment. It's where I spend most of my time for business, when I'm looking in terms of using social media for business. So I love it. But I know there's a lot of people that may be tuning in that maybe they're possibly on LinkedIn, but maybe ignoring it or maybe using it sporadically. So what would you say to them?

Ashley Leeds:

Come and have a chat. The thing you say, social media to people. And we automatically think of Facebook or Instagram. we've been on Facebook forever. We use it, we know we keep up with our mates I hate it. I don't use it at all now. We try and do that on LinkedIn and it doesn't work. It's clunky. It's not a usable interface because we're so used to Instagram and Facebook and you're like, come on in, and you go, ah and oh, and everyone's grown up and they're all like professional and there's accountants and there's solicitors on there, and I don't know what to do. And so you post your CV and then you go away and you don't come back and. You said you like hanging out on it. I only work with three people at a time. So I do one-to-one and both of them This week I've said I am having fun on LinkedIn and that is music to my ears because when you're running a business. You're on your own, right? You've got a beautiful office there. I'm stuck in a shed, right? I'm at the back end of nowhere in Devon. It's a beautiful place to live, but it's not, you don't see many people here. But because I'm on LinkedIn, I've got hundreds and hundreds of friends, and I keep getting invited to different places and people want to chat with me. And I was at an event yesterday and a few people came up to me that I don't know, oh, I follow you on LinkedIn. I love this, and dah. And so straight away we were friends at this event. I wasn't lonely, I wasn't on my own. People wanted to say hello and it's. Just brilliant. And if you're not on LinkedIn, you are missing out on all of these other bonuses that you get from being present. You can tell

Louise McDonnell:

I love it too. I always say to people, it's like going to a business networking event, but you can do it every single day and you can do it at a time of day that suits you and you can make your soul right. You can make those connections that when you actually do meet either in person on Zoom or in real life.

Ashley Leeds:

Yeah. What's that?

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, I know that you feel like you know each other.

Ashley Leeds:

Yeah, I do.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. I suppose that happens across the other social media platforms as well, but what's different about LinkedIn is that it's just business. You're not gonna come on and see what somebody, had for their breakfast. Ashley Leeds: Although having post did really well. See there's the strategy behind it as well, so yeah, it is the largest business networking platform in the world. And I know COVID did it a favor, didn't it? Because I used to be on LinkedIn. I'm obviously in social media for years and years, and I remember I loved the idea of LinkedIn when I joined it, I was like, oh, fantastic. This is for business. I can't wait. And then it was just like tumbleweed, like there, you'd go there and nothing was ever happening. I'm talking years and years ago. And COVID really helped it, didn't it? Because people then saw the opportunity when they couldn't meet in person that they met online. So it's a totally different platform now. So if you haven't been paying attention, pay attention. There is so much potential for it. So you are the LinkedIn guy. What are you seeing that's happening now on the platform that's been trending? What are your favorite kind of native features? What do you tell people to pay attention to?

Ashley Leeds:

I had a chat with one of my clients that's worked with me but is now, doing her own thing. I've got the six week program and she did it weeks and months ago. And she just came on, she said, oh, just struggling at the moment. And we had a lovely chat about what you need to be doing, how you need to do it and I said to her, it's all about showing up. Every day. Okay, now I'm known as the 15 minute guy because I teach LinkedIn in 15 minutes a day. So you come in, do your 15 minutes and then go away again. I just reminded her what we need to be doing every single day. First of all, it's coming in and looking at your red dots. your red dots are at the top of the screen. So it's your notifications, people who want to connect with you, your messages. If you come in and get rid of all the red dots, then you feel like you've achieved something. Okay. Then comment on someone's post. because if you are commenting on someone's post, people are seeing you. And I teach all about the networking event. You, you've already mentioned it, it's like a networking event. Alright, so it might be the business lunch, it might be an evening, it might be BNI and we're all at breakfast, whatever. But we've all been to networking events. If I go to a networking event. And I go up to the coffee machine, get myself a coffee, find a nice chocolate biscuit, and sit in the corner and eat my chocolate biscuit and drink my coffee. I am gonna get nothing, absolutely nothing from that networking meeting. But if I see Louise over there chatting to Fred and I go over and go, oh, hi. I'm Ashley and, straight away networking meeting. Hopefully you're stood a little bit sideways. So there's room for me to come in and when I pop in, you go, oh, hi. Hello. Who are you? What's the yellow for? All that sort of malarkey and we start chatting. And so therefore that's me adding a comment. Now, personally, I'm a bit of an introvert, believe it or not. And so I don't really like going up to new people and just like with my biscuit and my coffee. So I'll end up finding someone I know, but I'll turn around to them, who do I need to meet in this room and stuff like that. And I go and have another conversation and then go and have another conversation. And so I've gone to a networking meeting. There's probably 40 people in the room, and I've had three conversations. I've got three business cards. I know three more people. I don't collect business cards. I connect 'em straight on LinkedIn, but there's three more people that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't have gone to that networking event. And if I go on LinkedIn and I add a comment to this post and add a comment to that post and then add a comment to that post, I've done exactly the same. And what I'm doing is I'm putting a comment on someone's post who's talking to my clients. Yeah, I love working a lot with accountants and bookkeepers. They hang around companies like Sage and QuickBooks and those sorts of people. So if I go and put a comment on the guy that's posting about Sage, most of the people following that are gonna be accountants, bookkeepers. They're my market, so they're gonna see me with my biscuit and my cup of coffee.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. And I know LinkedIn puts so much emphasis on this actual type of activity that they'll even tell you how many impressions, your comments?

Ashley Leeds:

Gosh. I know. I've had 9,700 impressions on one comment, right. I've done weeks. Alright. Where I've got less impressions on my content than I have on that. Alright. And I've got a little small community for people that have been through my workshop, and I was sharing this with the gang, and this lady turned around and she said, oh my goodness, I had 64,000. 64,000 impressions on one comment.

Louise McDonnell:

Now for anyone tuning in, he's not going and just saying, well done. You actually are adding value.

Ashley Leeds:

Yeah. Definitely. But this is the thing. Therefore people will look at it and then that starts another conversation. And what we're doing by adding a comment on someone else's post, they see who you are. They see your smiley little face, they see your headline. So they see your name and they see your headline. And all of that is all like, yeah, it's me. Hi. And what happens is I bump into people and they go, I see you all over LinkedIn. All I'm doing is adding a few comments.

Louise McDonnell:

And it's so important. And like I know, 15 minutes a day, I actually love that. And I say to people, if they say, I don't have time for that. I'm saying, if you don't have time for your marketing, where are you gonna find new customers? So marketing isn't just, oh, it's really nice to have, and I'll do it if I have time. Marketing is your lifeline of your future business. It's how you connect with your existing customers and nurture them. It's how you find new leads. So it's so commenting on other people's posts, and again, I always think that when LinkedIn, like when they start telling you the impressions your comments get, I think they really want you to do that. So I think when a platform really wants you to do something, doing it means you're pushing an open door. Is there anything else besides commenting on posts that we know that LinkedIn are really encouraging us to do? Look towards the end of 2025, just in case you're tuning into this a little bit later.

Ashley Leeds:

Your content has to be valuable, alright? Don't just post about your breakfast, but add value with it. And talk about the things that you talk about. So obviously I talk about LinkedIn, so I talk about all things related to that. Marketing, branding, all that sort of stuff. I will not talk about accounting software. for example. And so that's the thing. And then you get known for that area. And my biggest piece of advice for anybody creating content is if you can teach me what you do so that I don't have to pay you to do it, that's the best content. And you know you're listening to this now thinking this guy has gone mad. Alright? So I teach LinkedIn, all of my content or a lot of my content is how to do this on LinkedIn. A good idea for this, da dah, all that sort of stuff. If you watch my content for long enough, you will not need to pay me to come on one of my courses or to work with me one-to-one. Alright, and so therefore I'm giving away all of my IP. And if you're still listening to this, you really do think I've gone mad. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. We are too busy to put into place what this guy in the yellow is saying, but we keep seeing all of this. Oh, that's a good idea. But I haven't done it yet. Oh, that's a good idea. I haven't done it yet. And what happens is all the time that this is going on, I'm dripping into your psyche that I know what I'm talking about with LinkedIn. My content is fun, it's friendly, it's vibrant, it's yellow, all of that sort of stuff. If you don't like it you've stopped following me, so that's fine. But if you do like it, you're still seeing it. And the day that you wake up and go I need LinkedIn. Where do you think people are gonna come? And that's the bottom line, isn't it?

Louise McDonnell:

I completely agree. As an expert, don't be gating your expertise or your advice because. even if I am following Ashley, the chances are I don't see absolutely every post that you create. And same with people. the chances are that people are dipping in and outta your content all the time, and they don't see it in sequence they don't see it In the sequence that you publish it they may see a post from three weeks ago today and today's post yesterday

Ashley Leeds:

But you never know.

Louise McDonnell:

The point I'm making is that. When people pay you for your expertise, they pay you to get you in a room at a certain time to deliver that expertise in one go. So don't gate your expertise because even if you're drip feeding it every single day, your audience still needs. To pay you at some point to deliver this or to deliver a particular workshop or a program or whatever that is, so they can pull it all together. What we talked about commenting on other posts, creating content with intent. don't gate your expertise. What else should we be thinking about?

Ashley Leeds:

Connecting with the right people. So what happens is LinkedIn will turn around and say because you went to this university or because you were looking at this profile and it gives you a load of people. And one of my friends got banned from LinkedIn because she sat in the car. Waiting for a kid to come out and she's found this page on LinkedIn and she's gone connect connect. That looks like a bot and so therefore LinkedIn put her in the sin bin, but what she's just done is connected with a load of people willy-nilly, and we don't want willy and nilly as our connections. We want people who are either going to be a client one day or hang out with people that might be clients one day supply things to people who might be our clients or similar sorts of thing. So the copywriter in some foreign country isn't going to be my ideal client. Alright? They want to connect with me because i've got their ideal client, hanging around my posts. I'm never gonna do any work with them. I don't need to waste one of my connections on connecting with them. So it's doing that and I see people they hit the top charts and stuff like that. These different companies are saying, oh, we've got a top 10 and these people have got this many followers in a month. And you look at that and you think. They're just collecting number plates or, like the old days they used to train spotting, they'd just collect numbers. What's the point? So my strategy is I wait for people to connect to me. And so if they connect to me, they've seen something I've done and they thought, oh, this looks a good guy, I'll follow him. And so therefore they're keen to see what I'm doing and therefore when I create a post, they'll comment on it. Whereas if I've just connected with someone willy-nilly. They're not bothered.

Louise McDonnell:

I also think like that, this is what I would say to my clients in my programs is that, you can also be the author of your own Destiny. So if you know your audience are dentists. You can search them out. You can use the filters, you can find the dentists in your country or in your county, or in your region, or if it's worldwide, anywhere in the world. And you can control, if you want to connect with dentists, yeah, you can. And you can send them a little note and you can make, personalize it or not. And you can connect with them and you can grow your audience. With intent. That's something you can't do on other platforms. It's one of the features I really like about LinkedIn. So I know I have a client, I've been working with her for about three years now, and before working with me, she was not on LinkedIn at all, and now she's like rocking LinkedIn. And she maximized, her connection requests every single week intentionally with the audience. And when she goes to events People come up to her and they're like, you're like a celebrity on LinkedIn.

Ashley Leeds:

Yeah. it's hilarious. It is so funny.

Louise McDonnell:

Wait for people to connect by all means, but also, with intent. it's the only platform you can do that. You can send connection requests. I think you can send about a hundred in and around a hundred a week. Is it?

Ashley Leeds:

That's about right. last time I counted.

Louise McDonnell:

One of the features that I really like about LinkedIn, and I always tell people in my program to do it is polls.

Ashley Leeds:

Absolutely. They're really good for getting engagement. And that's the other thing. You've got polls, you've got text, you've got photos, you've got videos, you've got events, and then you've got the live and the newsletter. So there's lots of different ways of creating content on LinkedIn. Try and use them all. And the document post is also a top one. But a poll is dead easy because there's 1.2 billion people on LinkedIn. Less than 5% of them create content. Only 350 million people are actually active. Alright? But guess what? 100% of people on LinkedIn have an opinion. And so therefore, if you put a poll out, they're gonna go and comment on that poll. And the thing is, with the poll, there's a few rules with the poll. First of all, set it up nicely with the post. Make the question dead easy to understand. What's your favorite ice cream flavor? That's dead easy to understand.

Louise McDonnell:

Do you respond to DM? Ashley Leeds: Yeah, absolutely. And you've got to always have a comment. Please comment. Option.'Cause the thing is, there may only be three. Flavors of ice cream. So you're gonna put vanilla, you're gonna put salted caramel, you're gonna put strawberry. Alright, so you see those three there. And, ah, but what if someone likes this, and this? So that's what the other option is for. So that they can add a comment as well. So always do that. Yeah. I'm always saying that to people. I'm like, people, I think when they run the polls, they make the questions too complicated. So the questions have to be the simplest question you can think of related to a subject and the people have know what they're gonna answer. It's if they're not sure of the answer, if they could answer three or four different options, then they're not gonna vote in your poll. And people will want to vote in the poll because once they vote, then they can see how they compare to everybody else who's voted. So that's their motivation they only care about themselves. And I also think that, It's a great way to start conversations with people. What are your recommendations around reaching out or cold outreach and talking to people in a direct message, like a private message that nobody else can see.

Ashley Leeds:

Okay. So you're not just gonna pick up the phone and phone somebody random, I very rarely get. People phoning me and I dunno their number. And if I do, they, oh hi Ashley, it's you haven't put their number in the phone. You're not just gonna reach out to someone random, but there's lots of ways that you can reach out to someone random, because they've just liked my post. Hey, I saw you liked my post. Let's have a little conversation about that. Whatever my post was about today my poll this week was. Do you use phone numbers? Do you have a phone number? Because I was doing some training. a webinar this week and I turned around and going through the profile and said put your phone number on. And they're looking at me as if I'm from Mars. I said how are you gonna get business if people don't phone you? Some people I actually talk to Louise and I said, why haven't you got your phone number on? And they turn around to me and they say, 'cause I don't want people phoning me. How on earth are you gonna run a business? if I had a shop, it would be like locking the door.

Louise McDonnell:

I think that's a COVID thing though, because when people phone me outta the balloon now then, and I don't know them and they ring me and it's just highly and. What? You can't just call me. You have to make an appointment. I think that's just a, we've shifted. I can see where they're coming from, but I can see where you're coming from too.

Ashley Leeds:

Yeah. So anyway this one woman turned around. She said I didn't give my phone number out. I said, oh, okay. So what? You didn't even have it on your business cards? No, not at all. I said that's why people aren't phoning you. So I'm old fashioned and I like to phone people if I'm looking for services. So I found three people. I ain't gonna phone her. She hasn't got a phone number. And I'll phone the other two. So you've got to make it easy for people to get hold of you. So I did this poll and oh my goodness, the amount of people coming in with all their thoughts and ideas and it's something like that does create a lot of engagement. It's dead easy to just click a poll, a thing. Oh yeah, I've got a phone number. But then it starts getting a little bit, oh, and then people then come in and I go, I'm just commenting so I can see this post later.'cause I wanna see the results and stuff like that. And yeah. So if you'd create a good poll, it's a jolly good way to get some good engagement.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. I always encourage people that, your profile lets people know what you do. Your content gets you reach and awareness of people and when you comment on other people's posts gives you reach and awareness. But really, and you're right, the real business happens in conversations and those conversations start generally as a direct message. And then from a direct message you may organize a zoom call or a phone call or whatever that may be. So you do at some point need to move your activity. On LinkedIn into the dms, into the direct messages. But gosh, Ashley, I don't know about you, but there's so many people who do it, like there's a right way and there's a wrong way. I was looking down at my unread messages on LinkedIn the other day. And the amount of quick question starts with quick question. I'm like, I'm not even opening them because it's just somebody trying to sell you like they don't know who you are. It's like that analogy, isn't it? The networking event. You wouldn't walk up to somebody in a networking event with your cup of tea and your biscuit and go, do you wanna buy my services?

Ashley Leeds:

No you wouldn't, you wouldn't. I heard a great story. I heard a great story.'cause there was a guy that went to this networking event and he was doing that and the organizers. we're watching the CCTV later on that day, and basically, you know when you've got a magnet and you turn it the other way around and it pushes them away. They were watching this guy walk around the room and everyone he went to, it was like pushing the, they said it was hilarious. It's absolutely hilarious. There's learning in that. there's a lot of learning in there. and that's what they're doing on LinkedIn and basically what they do is they throw enough spaghetti at the wall and some of it will stick. And they're using bots to do that because you cannot manually send that many messages. So they're probably sending a thousand messages. For one person to call. And, years ago when I was selling photocopiers, I used to phone all the businesses in the area. Hi. Who buys your photocopy is in it? Oh, sorry. Hi. Your phone went dead. So who is it that buys a photocopy? It's Louise. Is she in today? No, she's not. Okay. Make a note. Hi, can I speak to Louise please? Yeah. And. Put you through. Hi Louise. It actually leads da do photocopiers. And I know you're not looking to buy anything at the moment. Can I just find out which photocopy you've got? I then write that down and then I'll send you something and, you'll get a calendar once twice a year from me. And then, I'll phone you up again near the time. You don't need to do that with LinkedIn anymore. And I've got a little standard reply that comes out. I work with people who I know and trust. Haven't got a clue who you are.

Louise McDonnell:

Do you do that?

Ashley Leeds:

I do.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. And then you haven't responded to my message. I'm just, I'm like. Are you interested int-

Ashley Leeds:

You've got a podcast yourself and so have I, and I don't know how many I get, but probably one or two every single week we can help you with your podcast. They also go onto my YouTube channel and , there must be a tool out there that does something to a YouTube channel. Because what they do is they do a screenshot and there's all these arrows pointing to this, and this. And we can fix this and we can fix this. And this is rubbish. And that's rubbish. No I'm doing my lives, my podcast for me, I enjoy talking to people. I like finding out I'm nosy. Yeah. So it's a conversation with a few people and I'll put it online, and if 10 people watch it, brilliant. If a hundred people watch it, brilliant. It really doesn't matter. And they've got all these people Yeah, but we do this, and that. No, I'm not interested. And they've spent a bit of time to do that. Why? Get to know me first. Get to know me first.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. I'll say in my coaching, I was like, if you wouldn't say it to somebody with a cup of coffee in your hand at a networking event, don't write it down and send it. Because you'll just, you just kill, you'll kill the relationship. Yeah, before it's even started. Yeah, you'll have that that opposite of the magnet. The repelling, you just repel people.

Ashley Leeds:

It's crazy. It's crazy. What school of thought are they going to? And this is the other benefit of LinkedIn, isn't it, Louise? Because people do get to see you and then they get to know you, then they get to like you, then they get to trust you and then what happens is people. Send people to you. Oh, you've got to speak to Louise. She's absolutely amazing. Oh, so if Ashley's just recommended Louise, I trust Ashley and Ashley, trust Louise. So therefore, I'm gonna trust Louise as well. Gonna have a quick look at her LinkedIn. Her LinkedIn says everything that Ashley was telling me about. Brilliant. I can't wait to speak to Louisee.

Louise McDonnell:

Referrals are unbelievable because like I do my I do different forms of outreach referral. So I have, let's say partners, and what I find is that when somebody recommends. Me to them, And they don't know me at all. They respond in the same way as somebody who's been on my email list for over two years. Yeah. So they're warmed up that much to me. They trust me that much just because of the recommendation from the person that they trust. Yeah. So that's hugely significant as well. So anything like, I know I have a list of things that I say to people all the time to stop doing immediately on LinkedIn. Have you got any of those nuggets?

Ashley Leeds:

Yeah, fix your photo. Oh my goodness, Louise. How many people have got a rubbish photo? And it's normally the guys, so I'm gonna pick on the guys now, because what happens is I'm gonna go on LinkedIn, I'm gonna have a decent photo on my LinkedIn profile, and the guys do this. Is this going out as video? Yeah. If you listen to the podcast, I just did a blank face and so what happens is they thought, oh I was at Louise's wedding three years ago. Yeah. And I got a nice photograph of me in that nice suit with that lovely. Tie of mine and they go back and they find that photo and in the photo wife is there. And you could just see her hair when they put that on LinkedIn. The best one I've ever seen. Oh my goodness. I wish I could share it and I bet not, but I can talk about it. In the war movies circa Vietnam War, they got those big helicopters with those big guns on the outside. that Sylvester Stallone was shooting, that sort of thing. There's a guy and he sat in a helicopter holding one of those guns pointing straight at the camera. That's his profile picture on LinkedIn. And we've got all these things going on in the world at the moment with all these political things and walls and stuff. What on earth is that guy thinking about with his profile picture?

Louise McDonnell:

I've actually had a meeting once with somebody that I knew through LinkedIn the profile picture was perfectly nice. I had no issue with, I was like, fine. And then when they came into the zoom room, I had to stop myself reacting because the photo was so old. The person, in the photo had nice brown hair. And then when they came into the meeting, they had white hair not that there's anything wrong with white hair, but I just got such a shock because Oh my God, this person just aged for 20 years.

Ashley Leeds:

Sorry, Ashley. Sorry. I thought I was meeting with Ashley. Go and get your son for me.

Louise McDonnell:

So if somebody wouldn't recognize you by looking at your profile picture. You gotta change it.

Ashley Leeds:

Can I pick on the ladies now?

Louise McDonnell:

Of course.

Ashley Leeds:

Because the ladies changed their hairstyle. I know somebody that changes her hair color. She's vibrant. She's really vibrant and she changes her hair color and on her profile picture her hair was, let's just say yellow. All right? On her banner, her hair was red, and when she came into the zoom, it was blue. I'm like, where's the congruity? What's going on? And then some ladies have their hair long, but they always wear it short. They've always got a bun or tied up and what have you. And if that's the case, don't show us a picture with your long flowing hair, because when I see you, it's like a different person.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. You're never gonna look like that person.. And what about links and posts like a link to an external website on a post? What's your thoughts on that?

Ashley Leeds:

There's loads and loads of people talking about this. Do you know John Espan?

Louise McDonnell:

Yes.

Ashley Leeds:

Yes, he is the relentlessly helpful LinkedIn nerd. He is a genius, but he's also, I'm allowed to call him a nerd because he calls himself a nerd. He tests everything and he analyzed all of his content with and without links and reach with a link down. So you get less reach if you put a link in. Alright. That's the first thing. The next thing right, is yeah but I've got this thing coming up and I wanna share it with people and so therefore I've gotta put the link on, alright. He tested it where he had different links going to the same place, but he could tell where that link came from and what have you. Less than 1%. the number of people reached in the post was less than 1% of the links actually went to where he wanted it to go. So bottom line, don't even put it in the post. Alright. And Here's the next thing, right? As soon as you say, oh, I'll prep the link in the comment. All right. You go to the comment, you've had 17 people comment that link's all the way down here. I can't be bothered to find it, but the thing is, I'm on LinkedIn, alright? I don't wanna go somewhere else. I'm on LinkedIn, so why am I gonna click a link? All right, so the link should be at the top of your profile. It should be in your featured section. And, just, yeah, it doesn't make sense. It's again, let's go back to our networking analogy. All right. You wanna know a little bit more, go through that door?'cause it's just down the road. No, I'm here. I, I wanna talk to Louise in a minute. And they're bringing out the chips later, so I'm staying for the chips. You don't you, I dunno about you. I don't get chips at home. So if there's chips at a networking event, I'm gonna be first in the queue.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, exactly. And the reason I ask the question is that so many people are still trying to use LinkedIn to promote their blog to blog articles. So they've got a blog article on their website, and then they're saying they're trying to give a little bit of a headline about it and then put the link in. And I'm like, don't do that. You're better off to just put the blog article on LinkedIn as a newsletter or an article

Ashley Leeds:

Do it as a newsletter. But the thing is what you could be doing is a blog article. Let's just say it's this long. Chop it into a few posts. Yeah. And then you've got content for the next week.

Louise McDonnell:

Or do the newsletter. And then do that as well. Because this is another thing I say like people won't even notice. Because if you change the angle or the image or the hook, sometimes people need to see the same messaging, the same content a few times for it to resonate with them.

Ashley Leeds:

Is it seven times you gotta tell somebody something before they get it?

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly.

Ashley Leeds:

I dunno if you've got kids, it's a bit longer for kids.

Louise McDonnell:

But yeah, remember people are just glancing, they're just scrolling at speed. Okay, so thank you so much for all this advice. So where do you hang out on obviously LinkedIn. How can people find you?

Ashley Leeds:

Google the 15 minute guy or find me on LinkedIn. Just put Ashley leads into LinkedIn. There's not many Ashley leads and there's definitely only one in yellow? What's the significance of the yellow? I wish I had a really good story. I have a good story, but it's not a very good story, if that makes sense. When I set up my business and I started thinking of the color palette, I used to work for a company that no longer exists and I really did like their color palette. So it was a dark and a light green with pink. Alright. So I adopted the dark and the light green. And then, I turned around to my daughter and I said I want a pink t-shirt. And dad, you're not buying a pink t-shirt. And I'm gonna go to the t-shirt shop and I'm gonna get a. Pink t-shirt And my wife turned around and said, you better go with him, Jess. So anyway, we went to the t-shirt place and they got all these T-shirts hang. I said, I want that pink one. And the lady was going, no, you don't want a pink one. And I go, yeah, but I want something that stands out. And there was a yellow one. I said, what about yellow? And my daughter goes, yeah, you can have yellow. So I tried the yellow one. Yeah, it looks good, dad. Brilliant. There you go. That's the yellow. That is the yellow. But the thing is, as soon as you do yellow, all right, people start buying you things. So you've probably seen me drinking at my coffee cup. I've got a yellow drinks bottle. And my phone is on charge at the moment, but like even my phone case is yellow, not a very good idea for a phone case.'cause it's gone a bit dark now because I keep putting it in my jeans pocket. So I'm gonna go back to a blue one. But yeah, I've noticed that Apple have stopped making a yellow mobile phone. So that's a shame.'cause they did have a yellow model at one time, didn't they?

Louise McDonnell:

But in terms of your profile picture, it's really good to have one of your brand colors behind you. You can do that really easily.

Ashley Leeds:

It takes two ticks. And if you're listening to this and you can't do it, I'll do it for you. it really doesn't take me long at all.

Louise McDonnell:

And you know what's really cool? if you check out my profile picture on LinkedIn, I actually did it use a gradient. So I use a gradient in the background. So it's not just a flat color. It's my teal color that I love. But it's got white behind it as well, so it just makes it a little bit more interesting and those little things really help you stand out on LinkedIn. So Ashley, the 15 minute guy, has shared so much advice with us and we've been on a little bit longer than 15 minutes, but I think the conversation was worth it. So thank you so much for your time and your expertise and for sharing all your advice so freely. If you're looking for help with LinkedIn strategies, workshops, unit programs, check out Ashley. He's the 15 minute guy and he is gonna help you out.

Ashley Leeds:

Thanks ever so much, Louise, and I look forward to when you return and come onto my show, which will be live on Monday, the 8th of December. We will be live with a live audience

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. Thanks so much again and see you soon.