Capture, Engage, Convert: Leveraging GIFs & Video Strategy on LinkedIn with Expert Zineb Layachi

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Welcome to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host Michelle J Raymond, and I'm joined by one of my friends from the other side of the world. Zineb, welcome to the show.

[00:00:08] Zineb Layachi: Thank you, Michelle. So happy to be here.

[00:00:11] Michelle J Raymond: Before we jump into this, I've got a question for you. How did you get started on LinkedIn? Where did it all begin?

[00:00:18] Zineb Layachi: Great question. You know, I, I just recently checked when I created my account, which was back in September, 2008.

[00:00:26] Michelle J Raymond: Wow.

[00:00:27] Zineb Layachi: That is a long time ago. Now, it took me light years to get to where I'm at today and use it the way I use it today, and it was right before COVID hit end of 2019, I started to take it a little more seriously and then when COVID did hit and they announced the confinements, I was living in Barcelona at the time.

That same week I lost 80% of my business, of my revenue. And so I freaked out for a few days and then I was like, okay, let's go. What's the one thing that I know? LinkedIn. Let's turn to LinkedIn and figure things out. And yeah, made loads of mistakes and ups and downs. So that's basically it in a nutshell.

[00:01:10] Michelle J Raymond: Waking up to 80% gone and I think that was a pretty common thing. But lots of people that I know in my world that are running businesses, it was literally overnight snap gone out of your control. So I'm surprised that it took you a couple of days. I would've been like the other way.

I literally was the opposite. I began my business in COVID times, March 2020 is when I quit my job. And so, I had zero clue that I'd be in lockdowns for the next 12 months. I had no idea what the business would be. So here we are today. We've both got successful businesses, but you have carved out a couple of little niches on LinkedIn, when it comes to content that I wanted to share today with people.

I wanted to also talk about your commenting game because it is super strong, and you are one of the best and most frequent commenters in my network. But we don't have time to talk about that. But I just wanna acknowledge you for the amount of effort that you put in to support so many people around the world. And I think that's a big part of your success. But we're gonna talk about a couple of other little bits that people can learn from as well.

Another question for you. Are we talking today about jifs, gifs, jiffies, like, how do I call them? You are the expert.

[00:02:22] Zineb Layachi: That's gonna be either a discussion or a never ending argument. I call them gifs. The most common tool, I pronounce it, giffy. giphy.com.

[00:02:32] Michelle J Raymond: For people that don't know what they are, can you just give us a quick overview of what a gif is?

[00:02:37] Zineb Layachi: Let me just tell you real quick, my mom last week I told her about a group training I had done on gifs and she's like, what are gifs? And I was like, wow, that's amazing. So the thing is that she uses them all the time on WhatsApp, right. She just didn't know that they were called gifs to begin with. So they're basically just like videos except that they loop on autoplay. It's the simplest way to explain them.

[00:03:05] Michelle J Raymond: They're all those fun things that you see when you're looking for a short clip video to explain the words that you wanna say, but have these brilliant pictures bring it to life. That is your absolute A game. You are the absolute best at finding these short clip videos that just nail it. So this is why I've got you on today.

 When we talk about content Zineb, what kind of content gets people pumped to do business with you? Tell me what's the secret sauce?

[00:03:36] Zineb Layachi: First of all, it's in the t-shirt. I don't know if you can see that.

[00:03:40] Michelle J Raymond: I'm not for everyone. I love it.

[00:03:42] Zineb Layachi: I'm not for everyone, which is one of the biggest lessons for me in marketing and I bake that into a lot of the work that I do.

So I am not for everyone. That's one of the first steps, which is making sure that your content filters out people. Gifs do that too and we can talk about that later. In your content you infuse it with, um, I'm not a big fan of private being private, just personal.

When you infuse it with the personal stuff, you know, it's you. Then some people are gonna connect with your way of doing things. Your energy. It really isn't rocket science, right? We just have to accept that some people won't connect with us, right? And that's the biggest lesson. So if we infuse that and we just literally just focus on those with whom we have this fit and they bring us the most joy, and we just focus on those and learn from those as much as possible. Talk about where they were before and that type of content. Not making it generic and Yeah, stop me, I can go on and on.

[00:04:46] Michelle J Raymond: No, I want you to go on and on because I think it's really important because I went through it just like everybody else. You know, when I first set up my business, I thought, If I'm gonna be a LinkedIn trainer, I have to look and sound and come across like a LinkedIn trainer. I looked at everybody around the globe and it was very formal and very, you know, LinkedIn does this and LinkedIn does that, and off I went and I got to the end of my first year. And whilst it was successful on paper, I was like, I don't think I signed up for this.

There's something missing. You know what's going on? And I was like, I know what's missing. It's me. I care about people. I have a huge heart. I'm completely authentic. That's my superpower. And where did I leave it? In the cupboard. I didn't bring it out. I just went, oh, I can't be empathetic and a LinkedIn trainer because God forbid someone would look at me and take away my credibility because of that.

So I love that you've raised, you're not for everyone and people should buy the t-shirt from your website as well. Mavens of merch. We'll throw that one in because I love the t-shirts and everything that you've got.

 So we are getting these people excited. We are attracting the right ones. I gotta ask you. Gifs, are they actually for business? Can businesses use them? Are there age groups that should be using them, not using them, or are they for everybody? Because I've heard pros and cons on both, but I'd love to hear what you have to say.

[00:06:10] Zineb Layachi: Yeah, great question. Love the question. So let me just start with one of the recent conversations with someone who they call her the gif queen on WhatsApp and Slack, right? So she has embraced that medium. She's even known for that, outside of work and in work.

But when it comes to LinkedIn, she doesn't dare, she feels like, is it unprofessional? Is it not? This is the case with many people, right? So they've embraced their medium. It makes sense on WhatsApp, it makes sense on Slack, but when it comes to LinkedIn, it's like, huh, what are they gonna think? So there's definitely that. But I just wanna say that gifs are just another tool. They're another medium. I think of it the same way as a carousel, for example, right?

So it's this medium. What are you putting in there? It's your message. It's supposed to amplify you, your message, your brand. Use that in the comments section. We tend to forget that in the comments section. There's a lot of competition, right? Either people are looking forward to hearing from you or your content really pops right for them to stop scrolling.

But in the comments section, it's even worse. You have all these comments. How do you stand out? Now you can stand out for several reasons. If you commented, Michelle, because you're one of my favourite creators, you already stand out for being you, right. But I know you and I enjoy your content, so, I'm eager to hear from you. But if not all the comments look exactly the same. Emojis are the same, yet some people don't feel like it fits with their style, and that's perfectly fine.

Some people overdo it, right? Some people don't like emojis. It's the same thing. Gifs just allow you to pop even more in the comments, for example, in addition to being a vehicle for your message.

[00:08:04] Michelle J Raymond: I love that you said that because I've never really thought about how much they amplify your comment because you are right to the naked eye when you've got 50 odd comments that are all text. We've all got the same little photo, the same little headline. There's nothing else that we can do to distinguish it. In my experience, you're right, not many people use images or anything different. I think the only thing is how long or short somebody's comment is. I think that's really the only other way that you can distinguish yourself.

But yeah, when I think about it, your comments probably do stand out to me far more because there's always this image that grabs my attention, that drags my eye to your comment. And then I read what you've got to say. And I think in a platform where we're trying to get so much attention. And it's good attention. It's not a bad thing. But if we don't get that attention, then we're in trouble. We're sitting in the background fading into the beige, as I call it.

And for me, that is the biggest problem that businesses have. And they're not prepared to take risks. They're not prepared to stand out. I think memes probably fall under a similar category, like they're welcomed on LinkedIn.

Question for you. LinkedIn's roughly, I don't know, 65%, 25 to 34 year olds, and then we've got roughly the other half is, Gen Z and Boomers. Is there an age group thing? Because I've read that the younger age groups are anti gifs. Are they or aren't they? Is there rumors or is it just like, if it's good, it's good and it doesn't matter who you are and where you.

[00:09:38] Zineb Layachi: I'm gonna go with the last part. I do not think that there's an age restriction or it's just a vehicle, it's just a tool for your message. Just like we say an image is worth more than a thousand words, right? I think a gif could be worth 2,000 easily, 3,000 easily.

Now think of your sense of humor, for example, or lack thereof, right? That's a great tool to show, a bit more of your personality of the way you think. That's going back to the very first question, content that gets people pumped to do business with you. It lets me see a little bit and gives me access to the way you think because if anyone has ever been to giphy.com, you have to actually search for keywords. It's not always, easy to find. You use analogies, you use examples, TV shows, movies, stuff like that. It's all complex. So it gives me like an idea of how your brain works, also.

[00:10:38] Michelle J Raymond: I've gotta say when I go on there, cause sometimes I'm like, yes, I'm gonna go and find one. Um, Probably more so with friends in WhatsApp chats. I'm like, I think this would be funnier with an image, rather than me describe something and I go looking for them and I'm gonna say my search game on giphy.com/ is woeful. I probably have a bit of work to do. I'll take your course and see if I can get better at that and make my own even, because that's something that you also do, which I wanna ask you.

What's the benefits of making your own? Cause you've even created a course based on this to help other people do it, which I'm excited to take a look at, but I can see that it's that other association with my words, with my picture and just again, standing out. So what made you go down that path?

[00:11:27] Zineb Layachi: Oh, I even called myself a gif strategist, and it's in my headline and people always make reference to that in the DMs and I'm like, fantastic. Cause they're surprised, right? They're like, I've never met a gif strategist or, I didn't even know that existed, type of thing. So it starts conversations and that's again, the whole points of gifs, it's another conversation starter.

Why make our own? Most of the gifs that I make, they actually have my face at some point there. I'm reminding you that I'm there, I'm there, I'm there, with the right message of course, it's not attention for the sake of attention, but with the right message, I'm helping that whole top of mind, being top of mind. And then when you make your own, there is this surprise factor.

Michelle and everyone else listening, I'm telling you, even if you are surrounded on LinkedIn, with people who do use gifs a lot, a lot of people still don't. So that is extra surprising, right? That you've actually made your own.

[00:12:28] Michelle J Raymond: I'd kind of go as far as saying, besides yourself, I would maybe be able to think of a couple of other people. Now I'm connected to, let's call it 12,000, 13,000. I dunno what the number is, but when I think about it, there's two or three people that might use them on a semi-regular basis. When I think about their own, it's probably you. I don't have anyone that immediately springs to mind that. I go, yep, that person's doing it. They've made their own.

And when you think about it, that's the opportunity for businesses just as much and their employees is, if I can't think of it and I'm on that platform, some would say 24 7, maybe longer some weeks feels like it. But if that's all I can think of, like that's the opportunity and staying top of mind and also not just being top of mind, but having people be able to recall you when they wanna do business. And it's like, it's so much easier to go in my brain somewhere, I'm connected to Zineb I'll go and find her because I know, and I remember her in a sea of, 900 million plus people on LinkedIn these days.

But if we go into it Zineb, are they dos and don'ts? Can you get them wrong? What are the dangers of this?

[00:13:40] Zineb Layachi: Yes. The first one that comes to mind is when one discovers the world of gifs, it's all gifs, gifs, gifs, gifs, gifs. So, I would just recommend, not forgetting that other mediums like photos, emojis, other things, just words. Words are also powerful. So, don't use the gifs just for the sake of gifs.

Another don't, is, which I see a lot, and there's that discussion of, should I put my logo in everything that I do or should I not? In Merch, we have the same discussion. We have conversations with entrepreneurs every single week. My thing is no logo stuffing, right? Because first it's you, right? They're gonna come to you for business. Logos, depending on where you're at in your business, it might actually have a meaning. Most of our logos don't. I can see your logo now after a year and a half of following you, yes, I would recognise your logo but that's not the case with everyone. So no logo stuffing unless it makes sense.

But I would always recommend the ones that you make, adding your face to it. Yeah, definitely.

[00:14:45] Michelle J Raymond: I can see that there could be some inappropriate ones, if you make your own and go doing it on somebody else's post. Maybe, let's call 'em a competitor, theoretical competitor all the time. I can almost see, it's like the whole photo bombing thing. Like here I am taking attention away, and I think there's like an element of are you adding to the conversation with it or are you trying to take the attention away and bring it back to yourself and away from the conversation?

So I think they always work when you're adding to the conversation, and I think that's where people can get them really right, but when it becomes your own face and your whole point of it is to try and get someone away and back over to you. I think that feels icky. And it's not just with these, it's with any kind of content, that you put out there. It's certainly not limited to this.

For me, I'm gonna have a go. That's my promise to you. I'm gonna take an action from this. I'm gonna have a look at your course. I'm gonna give it a crack and I'm going to make my first personalised one.

I am been thinking about it because, again, challenging myself to do things that aren't natural, that aren't easy. Like I will always default to words because I love to write, I love words, but I think there's an element of if you keep using the same tricks over and over and over again forever, you end up back in that sea of beige and. So for me, I'm gonna give it a crack. That's my promise. It's out here on the podcast, that by the time this releases, I'm gonna make sure that I have created one for you. I'm not sure which one it's gonna be, but I promise you I'll do one.

I wanna work on, another type of content that you do, which I think you're brilliant at. I call it your Golden Snippets. You may have another name for it, but it's what you call Flow State videos. And tell me a bit about that and how you got started on it.

[00:16:32] Zineb Layachi: Yeah, that's one of the most overlooked, source of video content, but also source of learning. If we think of us doing our job, running our business, we're going from Zoom call to zoom call, whether it's with the team, with the prospect, with the client. We're giving talks, webinars, all this recorded material. And let me just stop here for everyone listening, if they're not recording these, think about recording more of them. Okay?

Now all this recorded material, you're not thinking, oh, I'm being recorded. Look at the cameras. Am my hair okay? Is the light okay? No. You are in your flow state.

Think of you in a session with a client. You are a hundred percent I hope, with them. You're working, you're guiding them, walking them through their pains or giving them aha moments here and there, et cetera. You're in the moment. That's you in your natural state, the stuff that comes outta your mouth.

Now, go and sit in front of LinkedIn, try to write a post about that same topic, and you sound robotic, right? So go back, listen to those conversations. You can even transcribe what you said into a post or make a carousel or top three questions that I get asked all the time. But you can also repurpose that in terms of video content of yourself and build a post around that.

[00:17:54] Michelle J Raymond: There are definitely times when I'm doing training with clients that every single time is a little bit different. There are things that might have happened within that timing of when I'm presenting that training. Something that I learned from the previous one. Something that I've learned from the platform or just anything can happen. But sometimes when you look back, and I edit a lot of these podcast episodes as well, is that when you get people passionate and talking about a topic that they love, it just comes out of them and you just wanna grab onto it.

And I know for myself, there are times when I'm like, I said that that was pretty good, but I don't reuse it, right. I don't use it enough. And I think there's probably another lesson out of this podcast episode for me as well is that, you know, I spend all day, every day on Zoom, like probably a lot of people that you know, have businesses working from home, or working with clients that are elsewhere. How much content just disappears Zineb? I think I'm gonna cry if I think about it.

[00:18:50] Zineb Layachi: I don't want you to cry. Michelle, I think for everyone, who's starting to think about these types of things? If they don't go back to the basics, which is actually have a strategy. It's gonna be a bit overwhelming because there are hours and hours of video content.

But what do I, what do I snip, right? So if we remind ourselves that what we're trying to do is get prospects to understand that we are for them or we are not for them. Go to your content, your day-to-day. What can you use to show them proof, show them examples, trigger them, et cetera.

[00:19:29] Michelle J Raymond: I also think that most people skip over the basics. My first step in my training, when I redeveloped it, I added in Let's have a game plan. Because too many people were coming to me, they're really, really busy on LinkedIn. They're posting all kinds of stuff. They're commenting here or there, and it's like, well, what's your goal? Like, what's your strategy?

And they're like looking at me going, I'll post so many times a week and I'll comment this many times and the algorithm will love me, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Let's back this train up a little bit. Let's get back to the station. Where are you headed? Who are you trying to target? Let's talk about these kind of things. And they're like, looking at me with this, well anyone that wants to buy from me.

And back to your point, back at the beginning, it's standing out for these ideal clients. Like this is the whole point of content. But if you don't know who they are or what you're targeting, uh, I think you're in a bit of trouble here, right?

[00:20:20] Zineb Layachi: It's always easier to do it for others, right? I'm a work in progress myself. I just recently revamped, a little bit my website to make things clearer. I know what it's like, and I get help from others, right? Even though this is what I do.

[00:20:37] Michelle J Raymond: we're all there. I'm exactly the same. We've got power partners around the place that are like keeping us in check. They're like the guardrails to keep us on track. But one of the things that I love about these videos that we're talking about. So Flow state video, just kind of similar to the conversation we're having here today, but it's not recorded. There's no audience. You're riffing, you're in your zone, but what can you actually learn from these videos that's gonna help people grow their business? Because I think they're pretty powerful. But what kinds of things have you discovered working with your clients?

[00:21:08] Zineb Layachi: The first thing that comes to mind is the specificity, right? So if in your content you want to infuse examples, real examples from customers. When you try to come up with them in your head, I guarantee you at the beginning it's gonna sound generic. No one's gonna believe you. So that specificity of having someone in front of you or even a prospect that's telling you about their current situation and you're asking follow up questions to get the juicy details right.

But all that helps you give examples that are completely relatable in your content to attract other potential buyers. So that specificity, the richness of the details that's right there. It's like with testimonials, Michelle with testimonials, too many of us wait too long to ask for one, if at all. Now, when we wait too long, what happens? Let's say I had worked with you, you waited a year and I was super happy with the work that we did but I'm not gonna give you a testimonial that's rich full of details because it's too far away. I can't remember. So I will say that super recommend Michelle. She's the best, but it's not gonna be useful to you. Right?

[00:22:22] Michelle J Raymond: It sounds like I've written it myself almost. It goes back to that whole generic, you know, blah, blah, blah. And again, we're trying to do things that not everyone else will do. This is the point of this podcast, is to give people tips.

Everyone can create a post. Everyone can use the same number of hashtags, but it's these like little gems that I can give you that I want people to take away. For me, I think learning how a customer describes their problem that you solved. In their words. I think is the most powerful customer research so that the chances are somebody else would describe it in that way.

And I've often had the conversation with people where what I thought I did for them was not actually what they got out of it or wanted to get out of it. There was like this total disconnect. I use an example, just like a simple one. So I'm best known for Company Pages. Everybody knows me for Company P ages, but the actual official term is LinkedIn Pages. And depending if you've come from Facebook or some parts of the world, especially India, they call them business pages.

Now, back in the very beginning when I was trying to be my LinkedIn trainer version of myself, I was calling them LinkedIn pages because that's the right term, right? But everyone else is kind of going, what do you mean? Like what's the LinkedIn Page? Because that's not how they called It, described it, used it in everyday language.

So by switching across and just calling them Company Pages and being okay that that's not actually their real name. And just knowing that there are other people out there that will be going, what's a Company Page? Aren't they business pages? But getting those words right just opened up a whole new audience for me and took away confusion. Which again, I think is the other point of our content to make it really clear for people what we do, how we help them, and how they can do business with us, Right?

Anything else that you found from doing these videos that might surprise people to learn?

[00:24:17] Zineb Layachi: Apart from the fact that it can be a little excruciating to listen to yourself, at the beginning. That's a big one. And if you can power through that, then fantastic.

[00:24:27] Michelle J Raymond: That's actually brilliant because when I first started editing these podcasts, I know exactly what you were saying. I was like, oh my God, I hate my voice. Why would anyone wanna listen to my voice? So shout out to all the listeners of the podcast who do listen to my voice because there was a point where I was like Zineb. I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Why would you want to listen to me? Then my secret is, I had to get outta my own head and start thinking about who I wanted to help. And every time I kept thinking about them, it got me outta my own head. Thank God. Cause here we are today, almost a year in of episodes. It's those little things that stop us. Right? It's not always the big things. It's not the tech, it's not the whatever. It's our little heads that get in the way.

[00:25:07] Zineb Layachi: Yeah. And I love what you just said about, you reminded yourself why you were doing this. I think we all need that reminder. I do too. When we start thinking, oh, the hair, the voice, no, it's the timing. What are they gonna think, et cetera. We need to reconnect with that fire. Like, how deeply do we want to help the people that we wanna help? And it instantly works for me. And I'm like, okay, let's go. Let's do this. Okay.

[00:25:34] Michelle J Raymond: Yeah. Game on, right? So I love to wrap these shows up with an actionable tip for the audience. So we've covered a few different areas today with the gifs, jifs, jiffies. We've called it all three things depending where you are in the world listening to this. But we've also covered the flow state videos and I know that's a lot of ground, but if you had to give people one actionable tip, what would it be?

[00:25:58] Zineb Layachi: We've slightly touched on it. To not do marketing in the dark. What I mean by that is putting stuff out there and not asking for feedback. How do people describe you? How do people talk about you? How do people refer you? I think one big piece of advice is in business, never take a compliment and shut up. I think too many of us stop with the compliment because we are afraid not to hear the good stuff. We're afraid to hear the bad stuff also.

[00:26:31] Michelle J Raymond: The bad stuff is the one where we can grow the most. And people aren't necessarily doing it to, try and bring us down. They're genuinely trying to help. And if you take this advice that way, I think it's just brilliant.

 I wanted to end this show by saying thank you so much. You are the gif that keeps giving. Hahaha Pun. Nice work.

[00:26:52] Zineb Layachi: Oh, that's brilliant.

[00:26:53] Michelle J Raymond: I've been waiting for that, the whole show. I've been working on it. Zineb, you are fabulous. I appreciate you and thanks for coming on the show.

[00:27:02] Zineb Layachi: Thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you for having me, and thank you everyone for listening.

[00:27:06] Michelle J Raymond: Cheers.