Ep 43. What I learnt at the UK’s only LinkedIn focused conference (Uplift Live)

Today I’m doing something a bit different. I’m going to take you along with me to an event called Uplift Live I went to last week which at the time of recording is the UK’s only LinkedIn focused conference.

Now stay with me if you think, oh my God, LinkedIn – booooriiing.

It was actually the opposite and I thought I’d take you along on the journey so this is a bit of a mishmash episode of all of the takeaways that are in my head. Hopefully they help you too. Let’s get into it.

If you’re new here, hello and a very warm welcome to Quiet Confidence with myself Anita Popat. This is the podcast for introverts who want to market your thing without changing who you are.

[00:00:36] So last week I went to Uplift Live, which is a LinkedIn focused event, as I said, and it’s run by John Espirian, Gus Bhandal and Jeremy Freeman. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you’ll see that I shared only photo I took from the whole thing at the end.

One because I was busy being in the room, talking to people, soaking up all the talks and just being present, which tells you everything you need to know about the day.

To be honest, the vibe of the event is everything to me, it generally determines whether I’ll be hiding in a quiet corner for the whole day or if I’m gonna end up talking to people four hours. And at Uplift Live, I did the latter because there was so many people I was connected to online or I hadn’t seen in ages, that it was just nice to catch up and get loads and loads of those really squeezy proper hugs and when I left, there was still loads of people I didn’t get a chance to properly speak to as well, so that’s another good sign of an event to me.

It was a last minute decision to go. Mainly because I’ve been craving human connection.

(Yes, this introvert does like to socialize in small doses, obviously).

Everyone was so lovely and welcoming and even though 70% of the room were LinkedIn trainers, there was no competition. We were all just connecting and talking around the theme of the day.

This would be the point where I say, if you haven’t got your ticket for next year, go and get it. But they’re not actually doing one next year but they’re offering to share the recording. You can get them here.

I’m not affiliated with this in any way. I just like to support nice people doing good things. 

So that was the vibe of the attendees on the day, but there were also some amazing people on stage.

As the talks went on, I started noticing a thread that ran through almost every single one, which was to be more human, and it was obviously enhanced in whatever their topic of conversation was and in the way that’s working right now.

I think most of us know this by now on some level, but we tend to overcomplicate it because when someone says, oh, just be you, it’s kind of hard, right? Because we’ve added so many layers of strategy and systems and frameworks on top of all the things that do make up you and at its core is the very thing that connects you to the people that you want to attract.

So for me, the talks reminded me to go back to my core and ask myself, what is your version of being human?

Because we obviously have different ways of doing things, so lean into your version of being human, whatever that looks like, and amplify that, whether that’s in your DMs or in your content, and even how you connect with people in the real world.

[00:02:48] So on the theme of connection, John Espirian and Tony Restell talked about the importance of starting conversations and building relationships in the DMs.

Now I encourage my clients to do this a lot. Some of them embrace it and some of them we do together in our calls because it just feels so icky to them and some of them just won’t touch it.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed on LinkedIn right now, some posts are being seen like a week/two weeks after you post and your DMs are algorithm proof, meaning that when you send the DM it’s gonna land in the inbox of the person that you’re trying to talk to – you’re not relying on the algorithm to show them your content.

And if you send a DM to someone who doesn’t know you yet, you’ve got your content and your profile to back up who you are and then it’s up to them to decide whether they want to respond or not. But the point here I think is to be more proactive in your DMs and use them as a tool to build relationships, because your content alone isn’t enough to drive conversations. You have to actually talk to people, which I know sounds obvious, but I think a lot of us, especially as introverts, we hide behind our content.

I know this because I get a lot of clients who say, oh, I’m putting the content out, and nothing’s happening. But then you just find out that you’re waiting and hoping that the right person finds you. The real trust gets built in the conversations, not in the captions. And to be honest, once you get going as introverts, we’re actually really suited to the one-to-one conversations so lean into that.

[00:04:03] Then we had a talk by a lady called Nicole Osborne, and I think she was one of my faves of the day because she talked about being the relatable expert and how you don’t need to be the loudest person in the room, you have to be the most relatable. (Obviously that landed with me because I’m here for the quiet ones).

She was saying that we wanna use our values, our stories, and all the relatable stuff to help people make a decision on whether they trust us or not.

I know some people feel like they don’t want to share personal stuff, but personal doesn’t have to be sharing every single moment of your day. It could be things like what your values are, or even how you do your coaching or how you deliver the service that you deliver. It doesn’t have to be sharing every single detail of your life.

She also reminded us that people aren’t choosing you because of your credentials. They’re actually choosing you because of how you make them feel, because people buy on emotion first and then follow it with logic.

So looking back at your previous content, are you showing people what makes you different and making them feel something?Or if we covered your name, could that be written by anyone in your niche?

[00:04:58] Then we had the lovely Heather Murray who talked about AI, and she gave us a really practical run through of how to use AI as an assistant, not as a replacement for your voice.

To spend time training it with your voice, your values, your body of work, so that when you use it, what it gives back to you actually sounds like you and not like all the AI slop we see.

It took me back to the days when I worked in IT, when it’s like garbage in garbage out right?.

She kept going back to how a lot of people can’t be bothered to do the work, so they just end up asking AI to write them a post. But if AI doesn’t know all of that rich information, what data is it using to bring that post together?

If you really want to use AI in your workflow, then I think it makes sense to spend some time with it.

I personally use it for ideas and then I prefer to, like for this podcast, talk into the mic with whatever’s coming into my head, but honestly, she asked it to create a post in her voice in real time and it pretty much sounded like her.

So yeah, if you are using AI, then make sure you take the time to train it in your voice.

[00:05:50] Another talk I found really interesting was from a guy called Phil Agnew, who hosts the Nudge Podcast, which is all about marketing and behaviour psychology, and what I took away from him was that he said that, yes, consistency matters in your marketing, but that’s not always the whole picture.

Sometimes an outlier, something that you don’t regularly do – it could be a different format, something that’s different from the usual content could be the thing that completely changes your results. And I found this really interesting because I think we can get so focused on the rhythm and the routine (I know I do), that we can stop taking those creative risks and we play it safe.

And you might tick the box, thinking, yeah, I’ve done my content for this week. It’s safe and consistent, but is it actually moving the needle? What he was saying is that sometimes the thing that could skyrocket your visibility or make like a bigger impact on your business could be the thing you weren’t sure about posting or something you don’t normally do.

He talked about how he has a list of a hundred small bets, which I guess could contribute to being some of these outliers. So what I took away from him was that to experiment more in your content and, yeah, consistency is good, but don’t be afraid to try different things because that could be the thing that moves your business forward.

[00:06:52] Then we had a double act from Guy and Mic who talked about cultural differences on LinkedIn.

If I’m being honest, I hadn’t really considered this from this angle, but they were talking about how you can have different profiles in different languages and also to be mindful of the cultural differences, which some people might not do.

They also made us laugh with the different ways that LinkedIn is pronounced. We obviously say LinkedIn, but then there was like Link-a-din Linka-deen – it was just funny!

They actually sparked a really interesting conversation in the break, where I was talking to some ladies about how you can’t always assume that people are receiving your content in the way you’d intended.

I talk about this a lot to my clients, but I don’t think I share it enough in my content.

It’s always at the beginning of Silent Storm, where we really, really go deep into, who are you as a person? What makes you unique? What is it that you wanna say and how can we make sure it lands to the people that you’re trying to make it land to?

Because even though you think your content is landing in a particular way, it might not be received by people in a particular way. That’s because we all have a different lens that’s made up of our experiences, our stories, how we view the world, our upbringing, and things like that.

Which is the whole subject I found really fascinating, but we won’t go into that today.

[00:07:57] Lastly, on the talks I have to mention Dave Harland from Wordman Copy, and I have never, ever laughed so much at a presentation in my life. It was so authentic, so unique and I never thought I’d see the word “Bumhole” on a massive screen at a LinkedIn conference and it’s since been shared all over LinkedIn as well.

Not only that, his colleague got me to leave him a review on video, which got me to say the word, which felt really cringe, and now I’ve said it on my own podcast as well!!

He was talking about not being afraid to use humor, be yourself, and if you wouldn’t say it in real life, don’t say on LinkedIn because again, it’s all about connection.

[00:08:26] So in case you needed that reminder. It’s all about building those connections in the DM’s, being yourself, and not being afraid to experiment with your content because in the world we’re living with right now, people are consuming content all over the place and you never know where they’re gonna find you or what it is that sparks their attention.

I hope you took something away from these talks too, because even though “be yourself, experiment more, connect with people more” (basically be more human) sounds simple, it doesn’t mean that it’s always easy.

Because what we tend to do is edit out all the human parts. You probably write something. Then you go back to smooth it out, make it sound more professional. And then somewhere in the process we cut out all the bits that actually sound like us, but what if you left that slightly messy, first draft version, because those could be the bits that people actually connect with.

So the next time you’ve written something, before you go back into edit, just ask yourself, am I about to take out the best bits?

We want to stop editing out the parts that sound like you because if you’re an introvert, I’m guessing you’re naturally gonna lead with depth empathy and that will spark really rich conversations, which is what I was having during the breaks then they make much more interesting conversation.

So yeah, be more human!

Right. I’ll leave it there for today. If you were at the conference, feel free to slide into my LinkedIn DMs and say hi. If you weren’t, you can still do the same and let me know what you took from this episode.

Until next time, keep showing up with your quiet confidence so you can make that loud impact, and I shall speak to you soon.