I’ll be honest, when the outreach came in for this guest, I hesitated. Someone who writes content for other people? That is not quite my world. I live in the LinkedIn inbox, building one relationship at a time.

But the more I got to know Kaila Vander Horn, Head of Content at Speedwork, the more I realized we are speaking the same language. She just comes at it from a different angle. She built Speedwork's entire social department from scratch, writes over 100 posts a month for B2B companies and executives, and is known above all else for capturing each person's authentic voice.

We talked about what thought leadership actually means, why your content and your inbox conversations are more connected than you might think, and why the best LinkedIn content often has nothing to do with your product. We also went on record about emojis. You will have to listen to find out where we landed.

Key Takeaways

• Your content is your credibility check. When someone receives a message from you on LinkedIn, the first thing they do is visit your profile. If your content shows up, tells your story, and proves your expertise, the conversation in the inbox has a much better chance of going somewhere.
• Authentic voice is not accidental. Kaila meets with every client to learn who they are, what lights them up, and how they naturally speak. That process is what separates content that sounds like a person from content that sounds like a press release.
• A content mix matters more than posting frequency. Not every post needs to be educational or a call to action. Relatable, human content — yes, even a well-placed meme — builds the top-of-funnel trust that makes your more serious posts land.
• Personal profiles outperform company pages, but do not neglect either. People follow people far more readily than they follow logos. That said, a company page still matters — especially if you are running LinkedIn ads or want to build credibility through social proof.
• Just start. Kaila shared that 88% of LinkedIn users are lurkers. If you have been waiting until you have something perfect to say, start taking notes on your next business call. The pain points you hear every day are the content your audience is waiting for.

Connect with Kaila Vander Horn: linkedin.com/in/kailavanderhorn

Learn more about Speedwork: speedworksocial.com

In appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by checking this presentation page - you won’t regret it.

AND … Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky listener!

Connect with me:

http://JanicePorter.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/

https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1

https://www.instagram.com/socjanice/

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to

Relationships Rule. Question: What does it actually mean to

show up as a thought leader on LinkedIn, not just posting more,

not chasing the algorithm, but showing up in a way that sounds

like you and builds real trust before a single message is ever

sent. Well, my guest today knows this world inside and out. Kayla

Vanderhorn is head of content at Speed Work, a LinkedIn agency or

LinkedIn ads agency, but we'll clarify that in a bit. Where she

leads organic LinkedIn strategy for B2B companies and

executives. She writes over 100 posts a month for clients. Oh my

gosh, that just blows me away. And she's known for one thing

above all else, capturing each person's authentic voice. I'm so

glad she's here today, because this conversation sits right at

the heart of what relationships rule is all about. So, welcome

to the show, Kayla.

Kaila Vander Horn: Hi, thanks for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. It started out when I, when I

got the outreach from you, or someone for you, I can't

remember, because I get so many that I was like had my back up a

little bit. I was like, hmm, okay, someone who does content

for other people, I'm not all about content, but it's actually

a big part of what my clients have to work with when they are

using LinkedIn, and I'm teaching them to link to be more

effective with that content, and to do the things that will help

attract the right people to them, so it really does fit in,

and since I've gotten to know you a little bit, I see that

that's your zone of genius. So, it's good to have you here. So,

so let me just clarify, so your company Speed Work is a LinkedIn

agency, but is it mostly for ads, or is it both? Now it's

just doing, yeah.

Kaila Vander Horn: So, we are a LinkedIn advertising agency, so

we primarily focus our efforts there. We do the organic side,

so social content, LinkedIn articles, newsletters. We also

do LinkedIn ads, and we also help teams with their outbound.

Perfect. All right, so before we get into

strategy, I would love to know, were you, how were you, or what

drew you into LinkedIn specifically? Was there a moment

when you realized this platform was different from the rest, or

was it just that you had, you took on this job and now you had

to learn it? You know,

Kaila Vander Horn: you know, it's a little bit of both. If

I'm being honest, you know, I come from a background of social

media, so I was primarily meta, Facebook, and Instagram. This is

before TikTok, and as I'm learning different things, and I

remember I had to download LinkedIn as an assignment for

undergrad, and so that's that's when I started seeing it, but I

had the misconception that many people do, of, oh, LinkedIn is

just for job postings or it's for press releases, like I

didn't see the in between just yet, and as I got older and I'm

exploring, you know, working with other companies and we're

using different platforms, I realized that LinkedIn is much

more than that, and when I started working at Speed Work, I

realized that so many people are under utilizing this platform

because they're not posting at all, and you know, especially

for business people, it's it's a great way to stay connected, and

it's a great way to show your expertise.

Absolutely, so you write over 100 posts a

month. I said that twice now, because I'm like in awe of that.

How do you capture someone's authentic voice when it's not

your own? What does that process look like?

Kaila Vander Horn: It comes down to meeting with them. I meet

with all my clients during an onboarding process, and I get to

learn about them, their product. So we'll talk specifically about

people right now, and with that I learned about who they are,

you know, their background, what they're interested in, how they

got there, and all of these things and conversations I'm

able to see, you know, what they're passionate about. You'll

learn that when you talk to people, they start to get a

little bit more excited about something, light

up, right, exactly, and

Kaila Vander Horn: those moments are when I'm able to be like,

okay, like, this is who they are, you know, because you, I

can sit here and talk about myself, but you might see three

key things, and those three key things are what's interesting,

and it's going to get other people's attention as well. So,

just, just meeting with them, talking with them one on one,

and you know it's easy to create content for someone from an

outside perspective, because oftentimes we can be so hard on

ourselves. I talk with people, and they're hesitant, they're

like, I just don't know where to start, I have nothing

interesting to say,

right?

Kaila Vander Horn: But you do, right, and you have all this

experience, so it's.. it's honestly, it just comes natural,

it's. Fun, and I love working with different personalities as

well, because you have, you know, more spunky people, or you

probably are just very hard, hard direct, right? And it all

just depends on who the person

is. I think that I identify with that a lot,

because when I'm working with a new LinkedIn client, I'm

starting usually with either building or rebuilding their

profile, and the about section is most, the most difficult, or

the most fun, because it's where all the the the nuggets are that

that that outline not just who they are, but who they serve.

But you can tell when you're working with somebody like I

just got off training this morning, and it was - we were

rebuilding this girl's about section, and I knew, though,

that it wasn't going to be "I love this, let's tweak this and

this, and put it up, because that's not who she is. She's

gonna go back and analyze the whole thing, and go through

every piece, and make it, you know, her own, which is great,

and she should, but just so that just as that other person tweaks

it, and they want to move on, and they're, they're ready,

their personalities are different, just, you know, that

when you start working with somebody, and I think there's an

added piece that you must have, because it's that intuition to

know that this person will like red and this person will like

blue, so you know, like that's a big piece for me to help me. Do

you find that you act on intuition at all?

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I've

always said that I'm a people person. I love connecting with

other people, and with that, I'm able to.. it's, yeah, it's the

instinct, it's a gut, it's just knowing, like trusting yourself

that you have that good indicator, right, and then also

the fact of, you know, the person that you're talking to is

giving you the information that you need as well, so

yeah, and at the same time you're building trust

with each other, and it gets better as time goes on, I

suppose. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,

Kaila Vander Horn: I have I have clients who leave zero feedback,

they're like, okay, great, post it, you know, and then I have

some, they're like, wait, like, let's, let's find, you know,

this and this, and it's perfectly fine, because it's

coming from them, and my end goal is I want to help them get

content that they're comfortable with, and that they want to push

out and into that world, and so, whether that's, hey, like, this

is great, or hey, like, let's tweak, you know, x, y, and Z.

Either way, they're one step closer to getting something

published online, and that's the goal,

right? So, most of my listeners spend a lot of

time in their LinkedIn inbox building relationships one

conversation at a time. How does a strong posting strategy

support that, or does it? Are they related?

Kaila Vander Horn: They definitely are. You know, when,

when you're talking to someone on LinkedIn, and in the DMs,

they're going to go to your profile, and they're going to

look for credibility, they're going to look for proof, they're

going to see, you know, who, if you are who you say you are, if

you know what you know, and so I always like to think of LinkedIn

as like a one-stop shop. You should be able to show your

expertise, but also show who you are, because people are not

going to build that relationship with you and that trust if

you're only doing hard sells on LinkedIn social posting. You

want to lead with value. You have to be willing to give them

something before you can ask for anything else, and with that,

with social, it's the same. People want to before I buy from

someone, I want to know who they are, you know? I need to know a

little bit more than just here's my product or service, here's

how I can help you, you know, like talk about pain points or

challenges, and make it feel also like you're talking

directly to me, especially now with AI. AI is so great, but

some issues that it comes with with copywriting is that you can

feel like it's copywriting and it doesn't feel authentic, and

it doesn't feel like yourself. And so you know, I feel like

when you're creating your content strategy, you need to

make sure that you do not lose that human element, because

people connect with people at the end of the day.

Yeah, so many good things in there. And now

I've forgotten what you said at the beginning that I wanted to,

yeah, but that's okay. It's important that if you are doing

your content through using AI, and so many times today we are,

let's be honest, we have to train AI to know who we are and

how we speak, right? And and feel free to challenge what it

has said, and then you know, take it and make it your own, so

when you're. And what I'm assuming I shouldn't, but that

you are using AI to some extent, and perhaps if you are, you're

training it on your specific clients, in, you know, in

different projects, right? So that you have this is Janice's

project, so here's who Janice is, here's how she likes to

phrase things. Here's how we're going to go forward with that,

and then go back and give me something. Right?

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, you know, when I started, AI wasn't

very big, right? So I had the experience of creating

everything from scratch. So now that AI is becoming more

popular. I'm able to train AI just as I would myself. And what

AI is so great about is, you know, I work with a lot of, for

company side, lots of like techy and SAS companies, and I, you

know, I am not an engineer, I'm not heavy on SAS in general, so

I've had to teach myself about more

jargon and the

Kaila Vander Horn: jargon, the target audience, the pain

points, and AI is so great because it's helping me learn an

entire different industry, as if I am now an expert, and once I'm

able to figure out what their pain points are or what the

product does, I'm able to create content, and that shortens my

time, because I used to have to go through and read every single

lany, like I would have to do such intense research to learn

about these companies or people, and then now I'm able to train

AI and help me call it out quicker, but yeah, so and then

you know AI is great, as mentioned for that, but when

we're using it for copy, a lot of mistakes I've seen is people

would just copy and paste AI, and I've actually talked to a

lot of people who say that they will not stop and read AI

content if they feel like the hook is generated for AI, they

keep scrolling, and that's not the best thing for LinkedIn,

because if no one is hitting that see more button and having

a longer dwell time on your content, LinkedIn is not going

to push it out to people, because it's gonna, it's gonna

say, "Hey, it's not relevant, people aren't stopping to read

it, and so you know, making sure that you're, you're having that

human touch, it's fine as a foundation, but you have to add

to it, you know.

So, what's a, what's a, an indication that the

hook is AI written?

Kaila Vander Horn: There's a lot of AI jargon and phrasing that

are red flags, you know. There it's the way that it's

formatted, it's little sayings. It's honestly AI could be in a

totally different podcast for us to do, okay, it's, it's, you

know, there's a lot to learn, and it's so useful, and there's

a lot of people who maybe don't want to spend money or don't

have the funds to spend extra money on a content strategist,

and AI is great for it, but a lot of people are at that

blocker of using it but not using it properly, and so in

return, it's getting flagged.

We'll come back to that then in our next

episode. So that does make me think, though, that when you

work with a client and you're getting, you're getting to know

the new client, and you're getting to know what kind of,

and you're developing what kind of content you're going to put

out there for them as well. How do you go about building a

content strategy, just more generically? But I'm curious

about that.

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, you know, in your content strategy

there needs to be a content mix, so you know we're talking about

different formats, which is the, you know, native copy post, post

with image, multiple images, carousel, video, but also we

need to mix up our content in general. Not every single post

needs to be a hard call to action for your product or

service. We need to, you know, do educational, you can do

product thought leader, more lessons learned, and then also a

lot of people forget sometimes that LinkedIn, like we're all

just humans, and it is a social platform at the end of the day,

so we want to connect with other humans, with that comes with

either, you know, things learned experiences, but also I want to

learn about who you are, and you know, I always tell my

customers, if, if you haven't done an introduction post

before, those are a good place to start, because introducing

people to you, and people love those, those are always the top

performing, at least for a quarter, because people are

attracted to people, people want to engage with people, and if

I'm introducing myself, and you know, if if you and I haven't

talked in a while, I'm gonna go comment, "Hey, Janice, so nice

to see you, so glad that you're doing great. And you know, if I

comment on it, then now my network might see your post,

because I comment on on it, even though that they don't follow

you, and you know, it gives a chance for people who don't know

you to get to know you to start building. That trust and that

relationship,

you know, I don't think I've ever done an

introduction post to myself. I'm going to do that. Yeah, that's

very good. So I was looking at your content on your LinkedIn

profile, and I just went back a couple of months, but I noticed,

and I had commented to you personally about this post, and

all it says is marketing teams, when employees start posting on

LinkedIn, and you're doing amazing, sweetie, and it's over

a picture of Chris Jenner taking a picture, and there's so much

in there, and it was one of your well, most performing posts,

right, and to me it's got 2400 likes and 76 comments, and 175

reposts. That's pretty darn good for someone who I don't know how

many connections you have, but it's not huge, like

Kaila Vander Horn: maybe 3500

Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. So that's really, really

good, so what is it about that post? Well, it says a lot,

right?

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, it does. I have this personal

strategy, so people who, my personal ICP marketing people,

okay? And so I just sit back and I always think about I'm also a

marketer, and what do I enjoy, and when I'm looking at my

content. I'm creating a full funnel strategy, so top of

funnel is reach. I want as many people to see this and as many

people to engage with it, because if they engage with it,

the next time I post, the middle of the funnel post, which is,

you know, maybe more educational, they don't have to

follow me, but they might see it, because they once interacted

with me, and so, yeah, with memes at memes tend to be my

highest performing content, and it's because it's relatable, it

makes people laugh, and sometimes we just forget that we

like to have a good time. LinkedIn can get very serious,

and you know, especially in a world that is a little heavy,

people like to just connect with people and have a good time, and

so I noticed that with memes, yeah, it gets really good

impressions, it gets great engagement, and what's funny

enough is I'm when I have, you know, a quote unquote viral

moment, I see my ICP following me, I have, you know, VP of

marketing, CMOS in my DMs, and it's, you know, it's, it's

hitting the right people, and it's a, it's an entry way, it's

a very easy way to be like, hey, this is really funny, I saw

this, let's connect, and it's that bear to entry type of

content,

yeah, and I think that's a really good point,

though, for people to remember that we have to be human, you

know. We can't, we don't have to just be serious all the time,

and whether that is an accolade, an event you just went to,

showing something that you just won an award, or, or, as long as

they're not all like that, as long as once in a while I

remember a client I had once who was a commercial real estate,

real commercial real realtor, yeah, commercial realtor, so he

dealt in big properties, huge actually, and his partner in his

company, same thing, but they were very different, so they

did, and they're big football fans, and they're in Minnesota,

and one of them had this, had a picture, they had a picture of

one of them in a, obviously ordered online a suit that was

all about Minnesota Vikings, okay, and it was like, had their

logo all over it, and the other one had Green Bay Packers, okay,

and they're their arch rivals. That photo went viral big time

because it was funny, and it showed their rivalry, and it

showed that, right, had nothing to do with real estate at all.

No,

Kaila Vander Horn: but it's same

as this, but this made me think this one of you

made me think that you did. Do you love the Kardashians? Do you

follow them? Are you a, are you one of those people that watches

them? Right, that was what it made me want to talk about.

Kaila Vander Horn: Interesting. Okay,

yeah, you know, because it was showing a side of

you, maybe it wasn't, maybe it wasn't, I don't know, but I

thought it was, and I think that there's no greater marketer than

Chris Kardashian.

Kaila Vander Horn: Hey, she works hard. Okay, she,

yeah, she's amazing. Okay, never mind her

face lift, but that's another story. Anyway, I

Kaila Vander Horn: was amazing. Yeah,

totally. I just think that we have to not take

ourselves so seriously, but you said something about top of the

funnel, middle of the funnel. I didn't, I don't think of it that

way when I'm doing a strategy, I'm thinking more of my pillars.

So talk to me about that.

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, you know, I like to think of a full

funnel strategy, and my pillars go within. Those that funnel, so

you know, and for myself, I don't - I'm not a big bottom of

funnel hard call to action. I will every now and then I'll do

it very organically, because you know people don't want to be

sold to, right? And with that, it needs to feel very natural,

so what I like to do personally is when I do any type of

educational how-tos, news, or any way that maybe I give you a

lot of value up top, I'm like, hey, do you need help with this?

My name is Kayla, I'm the head of content at Speed Work, and I

would love to talk to you, and I'll, I'll do it down there,

because it's very natural, and I'm not going to book a call

with you just because you say, "Hey, book a demo, you know, I

want something more, so I do the same strategy for myself, and

you know it works well, people seem to be more responsive to

that, because they feel like if I'm, if you're willing to give

me something for free, imagine what

exactly

Kaila Vander Horn: I can give to you for something that you pay

for, and

we think alike that way.

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, I don't mind giving up, you know, free

tidbits, because one, I know that not everyone is in the

position to be able to work with me, but two, I want you to be

able to build that relationship and that trust with me, and the

only way that I'm going to do that is if I give you something

first.

Yeah, beautiful. Okay, so you, I think it was a

post I saw on your LinkedIn that talked about this, that you

shared that personal profiles are outperforming company pages

right now, and I've been looking at some of that information as

well. Why do you think that is, and what does it mean for

someone who's trying to build relationships through the

platform?

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, so I guess maybe two to be clear on

the statement is that personal profiles do outperform company

pages, but that does not mean that company pages are dead. I

see that misconception all the time, and that's something I can

talk about later. But going back to the question, it goes back to

people want to connect with people in that logos, right? So,

on your personal page, that's where you can build that

relationship, and with brands that I manage, I have seen an

increase of follower. When we start to humanize the brand.

There is this one SaaS product, and we've grown about 150,000

followers for them, and it's from the strategy of humanizing

the brand, making it feel, you know, using less terminology

that maybe not everyone might know. And so

this is on their company page, putting the

content on their company,

Kaila Vander Horn: correct,

got it. Okay,

Kaila Vander Horn: and you know, just humanizing that brand, and

when we did that, that's when we started seeing increased

engagement, increased following, and then that goes back to the

whole point of people just want to connect with people, you

know, and it goes also back to the fact that it's a social

media platform, right, scrolling people want to connect with you

and me, you know. It takes someone probably three to four

times more effort to go follow a company page, and so where it's

so easy, if I see something of yours that I like, I'm going to

hit follow, just because you've said something that interests

me, or you said something that I found in, you know, it, I

learned from it, and sometimes brands do a really hard time of

conveying that in their brand voice, and so I think that's

kind of where those differences are, but it also, you know, with

your personal, you have a lot more flexibility, and you have a

lot more room to test things out, and it's just you, it's

just, you know, a person to person, and yeah, so while

personal profiles are so amazing, and they outperform,

definitely, and I do suggest for small business owners, or anyone

who is as a business, not to neglect that, because people are

still checking company pages, and okay,

inactive,

so even if they're not following the

company pages, they're checking those out, is what you're

saying.

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, you know, with referrals, if they..

if there's.. there's so many different things, especially,

especially if you're running any type of LinkedIn ads on your

company page, you should be posting. It's.. you will see a

decrease of cost per lead that way, because on your page you

are accumulating all of this content. How I like to think

about any pages, so this is a personal page and a company

page. Is I want to be able to go to someone's LinkedIn and I want

to know who they are, what they offer, if there's any social

proof. Tell me more about if it's the company I want to see

employees. If it's a person, tell me more about yourself. And

whereas if I were to go to a website, it would take me about

1015 clicks

to

Kaila Vander Horn: find out that information. Why LinkedIn is so

important is I can learn everything about you in one

scroll and I don't have to click around. So people don't use that

to its fullest capabilities, I feel. Yeah,

that's that's very true. And it's funny, I on

my newsletter that's going to be out on LinkedIn on this next

week, I just was talking about what was I talking about, oh,

your presence, and I was talking about one of the things I

mentioned is that when, when you meet somebody new, or you, you

know, you Google them, you still do that, you still google them,

and when you google somebody, their LinkedIn profile usually

shows up in the first five results, often in front of their

website, if they have one, so it's important that when they go

there, because they will, that it's, you know, that it works

for you, and it's up to date, and so on. So, but one of the

things I just want to ask you, so what is your take on, like,

when we're talking about company pages versus people, individual

paid pages or profiles? If you have a team and you're posting

on the company page, is it still okay? I don't know if I follow

this properly, but to copy or to share the company post on your

personal page, or should you be doing it the other way around,

or should you be doing it at all, or should you have

employees post on their page from the company page and get

them involved more, and you know, does it help all of that

good stuff.

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, this, so the employee advocacy pillar

is, I think, really big, because, as kind of mentioned,

how personal pages perform better.

Yeah,

Kaila Vander Horn: I always recommend as much as possible

that employees get involved as well, because not only are they

building their own personal brand, which is great for them,

it also is great for the company too. So the more that people are

posting content and education, people are going to start

learning not only about them but your company, and as far as

performance, you know, I like to try and mix. Every audience is

different, so I like to keep the company page active, but I do

like to repost employee posts onto the feed as well. And then

vice versa, there's a big announcement. Go ahead and share

that big announcement, and then if you want to post natively

about it a day or two later, do it, but that repost is going to

help get that your company page, or your page, depending on which

route you decide, more views, because then you're extended to

further audiences,

but if it's, if it's going from your personal

profile to your company page, it won't. I believe I don't think

it will get you more viewership unless more people are following

enough people are following the company page.

Kaila Vander Horn: Yeah, so if you want the reason you would

want to get a repost, an employee repost to a company

page is more so of that humanizing the brand, showing

your thought leaders, showing the people behind that logo, but

yet, so if you want more reach, so everything depends on what

the goal or objective is for that. If your goal is to have

more reach, that for the company page, then definitely encourage

employees to repost that company page post to push it out to

their audience, and even commenting, you know, commenting

and reposting are to the highest leverage thing that you can do.

It used to be commenting, but recently there have been reports

that reposting is now helping as well, whereas it was showing

that much impact previously, right.

But there's also, like, I was just going to ask

you to walk me through what a post looks like when it's

working, what elements are present, and what does the

relationship building look like after someone engages with it?

Okay, but let's just go back to the first part, what it looks

like when a post is working. I've heard that if you're going

to post, or sorry, if you're going to comment on somebody's

post, that commenting on other people start there. Commenting

on other people's posts is a really good strategy, right now,

right? And you agree that helps get you some more visibility if

you're going to be posting right, and they say post before,

post just after you, or comment before, comment after your post

is going to be visible. Okay, so then I hear comment first, then

like. Does it make a difference?

Kaila Vander Horn: No, I, it doesn't. Oh, I recommend there.

So, there is a tactic of warming up your account, right? So,

that's engaging with content before you go live, and then

engaging with content after. A lot of people are like, "Hey,

LinkedIn is not my full-time job, I have so much other things

to do. So, that's when I'm like, "Hey, totally fine, me too. Just

stay active, you don't have to, you know, as. If you are

consistently active online, whether that's scrolling for

five to 10 minutes a day just to engage, that alone will help

you. You don't have to be very nitpicky about it, because you

know, once you start getting into the granularness of it,

you're like, wait, I don't even want to do anything, I actually

want to log off my account, because it can get overwhelming,

all like the tips and tricks, so I definitely recommend just to

be active in general, spend a couple of minutes, scroll, like,

comment, commenting, if you do comment, and you know when we

look at commenting for exposure, so helping with that visibility,

I would recommend more than just a couple of words, because

LinkedIn is going to scan it, and they're going to see what's

relevant, or if I just drop three emojis on your post, and

it's not going to say, 'Hey, this is insightful, I'm learning

stuff from it.

Can we just talk about emojis for a

Kaila Vander Horn: second? I, I know you're a dislike of the

emoji. It's

LinkedIn, people, it's a business platform. Okay.

Yes, the once in a while I put a heart or I'll put something that

you know shows me pulling my hair out or whatever, but no,

it's not Facebook, it's not Instagram, it's not Twitter,

it's LinkedIn. It's the only business platform, okay. So

yeah, I'm, I'm not really for them. Sorry, Kayla. All right,

Kaila Vander Horn: yeah, yeah. So commenting and reposting will

help get more reach and visibility on a post.

Yeah, that's become a bit of a scam,

actually, though, with a lot of these posters going up on

LinkedIn. Well, not, I don't know if it's AI, but they seem

to be legitimate, like influencers or marketers. I

think they would be more who say, you know, I've, I've, I've

got this great document I want to send you, and you know, and

then they'll say repost this, and for some reason it gets it

more, it gets it more, but it doesn't get them sending it to

you any faster, and in fact you shouldn't even do that, because

they're cutting back on these things, like LinkedIn is

clamping down on them now, that yeah, not legit

Kaila Vander Horn: in the latest update, comment engagement,

which is, you know, comment Claude, and I'll send you a

report on how I built content for, yes, yes, they are act,

that's actually is going to be a negative effect, I have not, I

still see posts frequently on my feed that are with this tactic

right now, but with the engineering team and this latest

update, I do believe that they are going to start, you know,

kind of cracking that, yeah, as well as AI comments, because AI

spam comments have been really big, and that's kind of where,

you know, people hook up some automation and say the keywords,

they'll go and comment on it. I just want to say, you know, just

kind of be careful with any type of automation that anyone has,

because LinkedIn is, they're shutting things down,

I know,

Kaila Vander Horn: so, and they should,

I mean, it's, but what is important, I think, with

commenting and how I talk to my clients is that you want to, if

you want to be more visible, and you want to show your expertise,

then, and, and it needs to come back to how you are positioned

on your profile, then put something intelligent in there

that shows your point of view, or that you know gives an added

value to what that person's post is all about, because that's

going to help you do that, and surely to God you can do that

without AI,

Kaila Vander Horn: right? Absolutely, I tell the same, you

know, oftentimes there's, you know, these big posts blowing

up, whether it's articles or posts, and people are down

there, 400 comments, and if that's something within your

wheelhouse, something that you know a lot about, go in there

and comment on it, because that's more reach for you, and

then that's one step of you showing your expertise, and

people are now going to start seeing you pop up in those

comments, and then they're going to go to your page, and that's

kind of where that content is important, right, because you

can't be a thought leader in the comments, and then we go to your

page and you have nothing.

Right, excuse me. There's one other quick thing I

want to just ask you. I see this and it drives me crazy, and I

don't know whether you see it as well or whether you do it with

any clients, and if you do, I'm sorry, I'm saying this for you,

but I've seen, I saw a woman post something the other day,

she tagged me in the post, but she tagged like 47 people at the

end of the post, and I'm like, oh please, okay, so I think that

diminishes the, the, you're nodding your head, I like that,

so talk to me about. That,

Kaila Vander Horn: yeah, you don't want to over tag, just

like back in the day, you don't want to use too many hashtags,

now hashtags are no longer relevant, yeah, you know it,

LinkedIn scan, so if you are just tagging, just to tag, if

you have a paragraph long of tags, LinkedIn will flag that as

spam,

yeah,

Kaila Vander Horn: and when it comes to, there are some people

I get tagged in quite a bit. People will like create

articles, and they'll say, 'Oh, I found this person's most

insightful, go go look at that, and they'll kind of learn, and

that seems to get less flagged. Yeah, and I'm

okay with that. If you are a community builder,

and you want to, you know, extend knowledge. Hey, I saw

this post, that's fine, but yeah, I definitely would not

recommend just sitting there tagging me anyone that you think

that you could extend your reach. Not only does it not look

great if you don't, if people who you've tagged don't engage

with it, LinkedIn also flags that exactly, and that makes it

worse. It doesn't send it out to as many people, and you

mentioned the hashtags, and you said that they're not relevant

anymore, and that's true, but there are still some people who

are using them to help them find, I think, things I don't

know, like there's, I think you can still put a hashtag in and

bring up certain posts, but LinkedIn isn't using them at

all, really. For yeah,

Kaila Vander Horn: that actually changed last year, and soon

after they took away the creator, they had a creator type

of program where you used to have like hashtags on your

profile, but yeah, when they took that away, used to, I

would, if I followed a hashtag, and you posted something that

had my hashtag in it, I'd get notified, you know. 15 people

posted about marketing hashtag, and so that's how you know

people use that as a hack to get more reach, and you don't get

notified anymore, and actually, more hashtags you use, the more

spam you look, so it actually has that negative side of it.

Obviously, there are some people who still use to three to five,

which is perfectly fine, but if you're using it for some sort of

hack, it's, it's no longer hackable.

Yeah, that's great. I know there's so much,

right, so much. So, last question, if someone listening

or watching today has been lurking on LinkedIn and not

quite sure what to say or how to show up, what would you tell

them? Where should they start?

Kaila Vander Horn: Well, I read a stat once that said 88% of

LinkedIn users are lurkers.

Yeah, it's true, the very small percentage are

actually active. I know.

Kaila Vander Horn: I would just encourage everyone to start. You

know, people are so hesitant, and whether they think that they

don't know what to say, they don't have anything interesting

to say, but I would challenge that. You know, everyone, you

have experience, you have connections, and you have

expertise, and so if you don't know where to start on your next

business call, start taking notes. What are some pain points

that came up? What are some challenges? What's some advice

that that you gave someone, because that's content that's

going to resonate really well on a social copy, and so I would

just encourage you to take the negative thoughts away, and you

know people I work with, or like, kind of feel it like an

imposter a little bit, and I'm like, no, you know, it's

nothing's going to be perfect, especially the first time you

posted it, and I've been doing it for years, and I still make

mistakes, but it doesn't have to be perfect, nothing has to be

polished, and that's why personal profiles are great, is

because it's authentic, and you expect a grammar issue, you

expect extra letters. It doesn't have to be, you know, so PR

release, you know, that type of like formatting. It can just be

you talking to people. So I just recommend just to do it. Get to

a normal posting cadence if you can, one or two times per

week.

Kaila Vander Horn: LinkedIn will push out your content and your

profile more if you're posting five to six times per month, so

do a little bit more, and that will also help you get cited by

AI. So, yeah, it's all round a great idea, and just hit that

thin button.

It's all very good advice, Kayla, and I feel

your passion for doing it as well as mine. So, I love it. So,

thank you. This has been a generous and grounding

conversation. What I love most is that every everything you've

shared comes back to the same truth: people connect with

people, not logos, not algorithms, and not perfectly

polished content, so showing up with your real voice, a clear

point of view, and genuine curiosity is the strategy. Thank

you so much for being here for everyone, and for everyone

listening. You will find Kayla will put your link to your

LinkedIn and to. Your speed work email, sorry, and your website

in the show notes, and if today's conversation reminded

you that relationships really do rule, I hope you will share it

with someone who needs to hear it. Thanks for joining us today.

Kaila Vander Horn: Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Bye. I.