How to Turn LinkedIn into a Personal Brand Lead Magnet with AI

Studies show that LinkedIn is responsible for generating 80% of all B2B leads and it's even easier than ever in 2026 if you know how to use AI every step of the way. So to show you how to do this, I brought on Lara Aosta, the number one female profile on the platform and she's going to be breaking down what is AI slop and what is not and how to stand out in an age filled with AI generated content. The three proven formats for authoritatively sharing things you learn in your business and telling stories about it. the two unbeatable writing frameworks that she uses daily to create viral content consistently and finally giving you a full demo of her actual AI workflow and how she uses it to do all of this work for her in just 30 minutes. I hope you enjoyed. Lara, thanks for coming on. Excited to get into this. I think uh it's no-brainer player to be getting into LinkedIn and particularly using AI to put more content out, especially when you know how to use it correctly to not put out the wrong kind of content because I think it's all too common now to see the wrong sort of stuff and that easily repels people you're trying to track. So, we have one of the foremost experts here to walk us through the LinkedIn content playbook for 2026. So, thank you for coming on, Laura. — Likewise. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Today, all I'm going to show you guys is how you can build a personal brand on LinkedIn. It's been the gold mine for over the last few years and I think it's still we're still at the crossroads for anyone to build grow and scale the brands and be able to make it profitable faster than ever just writing not with viral videos, YouTube videos, etc. This is the ultimate playbook that I think every founder should be implementing in 2026. Just quickly before we jump in, how much easier is it now with some of the systems you're going to walk through here compared to say two, three, four years ago to get into LinkedIn and actually start getting some traction? — I think honestly with AI coming along and with all the new systems that have been implementing implemented and what we've been able to see over the last two years of what types of content actually work on LinkedIn. It's extremely easy if you know what you're doing. If you're a true expert, the road map that I'm about to show you is going to help you go from zero to 10,000 to even hundreds of thousands of followers within a year if you do it right. — And just some expectation setting on what that's actually going to involve. Are there like is that three, four, five posts a week? Is that seven? Cuz I know there's like a trick about just posting once a day puts you in the top like 1% of users. How much time would people expect to put in to get some sort of decent result and maybe 5 10,000 follower growth uh this year? — Of course. So like what the thing that I love the most about LinkedIn and this is something that I've never seen on any other social media platform is that you don't need volume to win. You just need quality. So actually I've seen the most success by posting four times a week every single week for the last 3 years. Right? I went from zero to over 300,000 followers on LinkedIn doing just exactly that. No viral videos, no need to hop on trends. Just literally knowing how to write a good hook, educating on a topic, and being positioned as an expert. That's literally all it took. So, it can take you between 30 minutes a week or maybe two hours if you don't really know your niche or what you're talking about yet. But, um, overall, the best people that I know spend 30 minutes a week creating content and maybe spend 15 minutes every single day engaging and making sure that they're getting leads and creating conversations. So, it's up to you, but it shouldn't take that long. — That's news to me. I thought it was very much the opposite way around of it being needing to be a volume platform. So, this is going to be an interesting

conversation. — All right, cool. So, well, uh, for those that don't know me, hi, my name is Lara Costa. And just a quick overview, I've gone from, you know, freelancer to an agency owner to building an info product business and building a personal branding course as well. Uh, we've helped over 3,000 people build, grow, and scale their personal brands. I'm currently the number one creator on LinkedIn. I've also made multiple millions of dollars using just using LinkedIn. And what's happened here is that the reason why I did this was actually I just wanted to get a job. But then that single thing like idea of me going out to this jobseeking platform that I thought was cringe led me to this gold mine of opportunity which was you could actually just go viral with written form content. I didn't need a video. I just needed content that had a semi good hook. And then my first post ended up going mega viral. 400,000 impressions within days. So then that ended up changing my life and since then it I built an agency the product business and also a B2B SAS that just hit 60K MR. So if that's not enough proof that LinkedIn is the best platform to be on right now. I don't know what else is. — First post going that viral must have been a one of those chance moments in your life just like wow this is a sign I should be going all on this. It was actually crazy simple and this happens to most people because LinkedIn has this thing and I don't think many people talk about it enough. Um, LinkedIn wants more users on its platform. That's what they profit off. The more users they have, the more they can upsell to sales navigator, right? And so when you start posting on LinkedIn consistently, no one no one says this because they don't observe it like I do. LinkedIn actually natively pushes your first few posts onto the algorithm the most. So you stay on the platform and you feel like you want to stay and create more. — That's what happened to me. That's what has happened to my co-founder Jake who I'm gonna talk about later. And every single one of my clients who we've implemented this strategy for uh they're very smart with what they're doing. Um LinkedIn is also a very supportive platform. Uh if you look at it from hindsight, LinkedIn is a networking platform. So the more connections you make, the more networking you do, the better you perform on the platform. So, it's actually quite logical why this worked when you look at it like that.

— Cool. Right. What's the big thing here, the AI SL problem? — Well, before I get into any of the content and how you can build a personal brand, I want to address the elephant in the room like you said, and it's the LinkedIn AI slop content. So, LinkedIn, as I said, it's literally seen as the cringiest platform with everyone talking about how bad it is. Um, I've seen people on Twitter, on YouTube, on Instagram complaining about how cringe it is, how it is the death of um, content, etc. But in reality, it's not LinkedIn itself is a people creating content using AI badly. If you know how to use AI properly, if you have the right frameworks and you strategy, you will end up winning. So most content right now looks like this. It's just either they're complaining about the AI slop while also creating more AI slop. And it's this consistent uh volume of content. And I just want people to think about it. This right here that you're seeing is your competition, right? And so for people like you, for example, you've got a lot of skill in knowing what a good hook looks like, knowing what a title looks like, like good title looks like, what a good thumbnail even looks like, right? How to write the script. Same with people that have created content on X and Instagram, etc. So the bare minimum for you is the highest quality on LinkedIn. So that is it. All you need to do is go beyond uh the cringe part of posting on LinkedIn and feeling like a robot and realizing that once you get past the stage of like having the egg, you'll be able to monetize faster by doing less things and getting higher quality leads. Because like research shows, most of LinkedIn's users are

actually decision makers. I we can't really say that on about X or Instagram or even YouTube. You know, on LinkedIn, it's almost nearly guaranteed that a decision maker will see your content. So, like I said here, the real fight isn't about AI versus people. It's about people using AI right and people using AI wrong. And I know this because after I've analyzed over 500 posts on LinkedIn, I've written thousands of posts as well. I know that this works uh if you do the right thing, if you know your strategy, if you know what you're good at, and if you follow the right blueprint. And so some social proof here. Um during our last launch, we actually made $230,000 just from our launch on LinkedIn specifically and email. So hopefully that motivates anyone here to start creating content on LinkedIn and bypass the cringe mountain that everybody seems to have. — Okay guys, very quickly. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur and want to start your own AI business and you haven't already joined my free school community, it's down there in one of the links in the description below has my full free course on how to start your own AI agency as a complete beginner. And you're surrounded by over a quarter million people who are also striving towards the same things. There's no better place on the planet right now to be surrounded by like-minded people. and you get free weekly Q& As's with me where you can ask questions directly to me about how to start and scale your business. I'll see you in there. Yeah, I think um it's important for people whenever you're looking at creating content. I think I see it quite often in the sort of start an AI business space that I'm in here, people will just kind of pick a niche that they want to go in and then they just pick a platform that they want to do and it's like, oh, I want to do YouTube and it for this audience and they don't stop to think, is that where my target audience is actually going to be? And if it's like plumbers, are plumbers really googling stuff about how AI can help their businesses necessarily or they go on YouTube searching for it? I don't know many plumbers who are sitting there in lunch break looking up AI tutorials. Um whereas you kind of have to think, okay, are they going to be on something like LinkedIn more often? Um or are they going to be on Instagram? Maybe Instagram would be a better platform for plumbers. So LinkedIn being such a dense platform for decision makers for a lot of the kind of B2B um and service based niches that you're probably going after uh is definitely the uh the king in terms of the density of uh of decision makers on this. So that's a really good point to make. — Cool. So step number one is building a

personal brand worth following. So when it comes to personal branding like you mentioned people are too quick to pick a niche and just a platform but they forget about what actually makes a personal brand work. And what I discovered over time is that it's actually two main things that people need to pay attention to. And the best personal brands do two things. They storytell and they educate. You know, the top 1% do either of them, but the 0. 1% do both. And I have some examples here for people that may be thinking, okay, like what does that actually look like? People like Imani, Alex Becker, Dan Co, uh Justin Welsh, people like Jordan Platter, and Dan Daniel, they all educate, but they're also storytelling simultaneously, but you don't really realize it because the stories are so dense in education that you think you're learning so much, but you're being retained because of their ability to storytell. Right now, when you look at it in terms of YouTube, it's like so long and it's like you have to think about the scripting and all these things. But on on LinkedIn, you only need to think about the writing fast. And this is why I love the writing fast approach to doing all of this. And that's why I picked it because I actually when I started, I was incredibly introverted. I didn't want to be on camera. I was actually 20 kilos overweight. So I needed to find a way to like bypass all these limiting things that I didn't want to have and didn't want to be seen etc. And I was like what is the lowest friction thing that I can do writing. So to start I needed to understand where like what is the thing that I can actually provide as a freelancer with no money no clients no nothing. Okay I found my unfair advantage like what is the thing that differentiates me the most right now as it stands and this is how you actually get engagement. Okay, so there's two ways of finding your unfair advantage if you don't know it. And if you do know it, I will challenge anyone watching this to rethink this. Because if you're posting content right now on LinkedIn and it's not working, it's because you don't have a unique differentiator yet. Maybe you're talking about B2B SAS, but it sounds the same. You know, you want to be different. So this is how you do it. You think about two things. You think about monetizable expertise and you

think about strategic arbitrage. Those are the two key pillars that every single time we implement them, we get results. So, let me explain what monetizable expertise is. So, when you're trying to educate someone and get clients and get that social proof and get that authority fast, you need to tell people what's in it for them. This is basic psychology and sales principles, right? Is the same in marketing and it's the same on LinkedIn with writing. So monetizable expertise in essence is knowledge that directly changes someone's outcome in a way that they'll pay for. So I have two posts here that have made us up to tens of thousands of dollars just from one post. So I have one from Jake. Jake, by the way, um important to say Jake has an SEO agency. This is a very boring business niche, right? And so if it's so boring, then why is it getting 3,000 likes on LinkedIn? So, because he learned how to use uh monetizable expertise to his advantage when creating content, he kind of like pivoted to going from here's how to build an SEO strategy to here's a problem that you think you have. Let me break it down and add an image on top of it. And it's the same way here. So, here I broke down my exact lead genen strategy in 2026. Then it got me over a thousand likes just by doing something that most people think that they're doing. But what we're doing differently is that we're specifically telling people from the start what the outcome is there for them. So how to make 1 million, how to do it in 2026, etc. So you're leading with social proof. And I think this is where the majority of people are going wrong. And this is why when people write with AI, it just doesn't look the same because it's missing that specificity that builds trust. — So just as an example on the on this side here, — what's the the typical like this is the good version. What is an example of the bad version? How do people typically start with this kind of content that just means it flops? — So let's say um I want to talk about my lead generation strategy. I'll say here's how to get leads on LinkedIn. Um and then there's not going to be any second line. So step number one use sales navigator. That's basic Chad GBT could literally do that for me. But what we did differently here is this is the exact so specific here lead generation strategy I'm using. So I move from how to how I and that gives me a lot more credibility because it's how I do things rather than how Hopspot is telling people to use LinkedIn. How this other YouTube video, right? And then the second thing, and this is important as well, thank you for pointing it out, is a second line, and that's called a rehook. So the rehook is your second chance to retain someone and get them to click more. The click more button here will always appear um on your LinkedIn post. So like no one's ever going to see the entire post firsthand. You have to prompt people or push them to actually read the entire post. So when the second line is as compelling as the first. So that's why I use like specific metric like this and more specificity like in numbers it makes — instead of going into a list in that second line, right? So you're like dragging the hook out a bit longer so they have to click more. — Yeah. — Do you know the like exact character count that you have to get or can you kind of like eyeball it? So my rule of thumb is every single time you write the

first two lines, they need to be eight words long because that's the cut off between the this like this side, it'll cut off on mobile. So you need to make sure that it's always eight words. And then oftent times, unfortunately with LinkedIn, you can't always predict when it's going to cut off. But ideally, you just always optimize for the first two lines to make it the most. Like give everything away at the start. Don't try and be so mysterious and like here's 10 ways I learned how to do this like it's not gonna work. It doesn't work. People are fatigued from this. So that is the strategy that I use for monetizes. Cool. Now the second thing is strategic arbitrage. So taking what works and using your story or skill to grow. So for example, I know that on LinkedIn people love storytelling. Why? because it's still a social media platform regardless of what we see it as. People are still doom scrolling and they are looking for entertainment, right? Basic marketing concepts. It's like, oh, you need to educate, entertain, and inspire. Okay? On LinkedIn, it doesn't work. If you post a meme or a viral reel that went crazy on Instagram, it won't work because the type of entertainment you need to provide to your customers and your ideal audience is different. you need to satisfy their craving for transformation or some desire of purpose of motivation especially that is linked to a career and so when I storytell I think okay what do people on LinkedIn want to read today and it's usually something about how to make more money how to make their parents happy dreams come true or how to achieve a specific outcome right so me knowing this I'm strategically arbitrageing the topics that I know work and using my own stories through those lenses, right? I wouldn't really be talking about my dad that much if I knew that this wasn't relevant to my audience. I would be talking about something completely different. But me knowing what I know, people love supporting others. Like LinkedIn literally thrives on announcements. They thrive on synergy exchange, right? So use that as an advantage. Don't cringe at it. just think okay this is how the politics works here how do I manage to hack it to my advantage so that's what I did — more so than other platforms you're saying like you do need to toot your own

horn that's like where the LinkedIn memes come from but it's for a reason that's why they exist cuz people like to make these big announcement posts and cheer each other on and sort of make these big announcements about their career and so on but I suppose we all have that if you're on Instagram I guess you're a bit more hesitate hesitant to make a post like this, you know, cuz it feels a bit weird if you're on your personal Instagram or like even if it's a business Instagram. Um, you're saying these feel a lot more at home on LinkedIn and they get the feedback that uh you're really looking for on them. — I think you need to look to think about it as different currencies between different social media platforms. Like on Instagram, you'll see more Ferraris, Dubai, yachts, uh alcohol, cigar launches, right? That is a currency there. That's how you kind of like portray yourself and position yourself as successful. I. e. like all these trips around the world on LinkedIn is how do we touch on family values? about on professional achievements in the right way? And I actually coins a term on LinkedIn. They call it the art of the humble brag. So the reality is that content that is oh my god I'm so excited to announce at this like no one cares. How do you still brag about something that you did but still have humility when you're doing it? And this pose is actually a great example. So, POV, you became the first millionaire in your family. And then I say, I never thought I'd get to write this post. And then you see photos of my dad looking proud of me. This if I was if it was written in a completely different way, people would be like, "Oh my god, this is horrible. Like, she's so self-absorbed, I would have ended up in LinkedIn Lunatics, right? " But because I did it in such a non braggy way, but still mentioning the subject, but truly making it seem more so about my family, then it worked because it was about that. And when you learn how to explain yourself in the right way, like communicate the right things at the right time, then you're going to be able to do this instead of being like, I just became a millionaire. Please congratulate me. Like that is the wrong way. what what's in it for people reading this thing about you achieving something? What are you going to give them? So, that's one. Then the second one, and I think this is the easiest one to replicate for most people uh that don't really want to do anything with storytelling, is how do you take a topic that is currently trending online and then make it yours? So, my friend Jake, again, uh he's my co-founder. He saw this as a tweet, right? And he was like, "Okay, so something's happened to the Reddit stock. I want to write a post about this immediately. " And so he literally just said exactly what happened. Reddit just lost 82% of its AI citations overnight. That's all he had to do. 2,000 likes. He hadn't posted in 3 weeks, right? His account was ter like technically dormant. But by posting something like this, he knew that if he tapped onto a trend early enough, he would be able to ride that wave and then rekindle or revive his uh LinkedIn. So this is actually quite easy, especially for anyone that is consistently chronically online. LinkedIn gets news like a week later. So it's actually easier for anyone to tap on trends to be honest because um — same with uh same with YouTube. A lot of the time you can just keep an eye on what's happening on Twitter. — Twitter snag some like interesting things and then make a video about it. — Yeah. And you can also like even use AI to even do this like hey write me a LinkedIn post about this. Uh use a hook that's eight words long. But uh we can get into that as well. So hopefully that is um relevant and actionable enough for anyone watching this. I truly feel like if you understand these two things, you'll be able to start cracking pastel branding uh faster than you trying to pick your niche and your content strategy and deciding how many times to post a week and what the best posting time is. Like don't do that. Focus on how can you position yourself as a as an expert as fast as possible using these two things. Now, you can also use AI and I've been doing this from the very start. Like I started my ghostwriting agency. It was like a solo agency. I've literally handled over 12 clients by myself using AI when it first came out 3 years ago. And so how I did it was simply I adapted these two uh terms and then I was like okay based on everything I know about myself or about my clients please write me a list of what the offer advantages are for this client the monetizable expertise and strategic arbitrage topics so I can educate and storytell in content based on my personal brand and then ideally you ask the AI whatever you use you can use charg you can use cleo um always ask it to give you hawks for each idea. So instead of you having yet another strategy that you are never going to use, you actually have something that you can go off and write something about instead. I always find that the hooks are the hardest part for most people because they require different things like oh my god is it how to is it how I is it a number. So when you get an AI to do it for you, like 90% of the work is already done for you, right? The problem with chargebt is that it gives you average output and so that's why LinkedIn is full of AI slop because it doesn't understand the copywriting basics that you actually need to succeed on LinkedIn. But tools like Cleo, for example, which is my tool, um they are able to well they're built off my brain. So it knows how to write for LinkedIn because I built it. So you can either — get a demo later, right? — We'll get a demo as well. But um basically that is in a nutshell. You can also train charge to do it for you by the way. Um so but that will take time etc. But yeah so that's how you validate your thoughts, get content ideas and make it easy to write content from scratch. And I think based on every single thing that I know about my clients is that people don't struggle with writing. Like they don't need faster content. Otherwise, Chad GPT would have created so many multi-million dollar personal brands with over hundreds of thousands of followers. The problem is they struggle with specific and clear content that actually works. So that's why ChadBt is just not the one for writing. just for my audience watching this, say you're starting an AI agency of some form, an AI business. And if we just go back up to those two buckets that you have there of content. Um, yep. So, say they're just starting off and they've landed their first client or they've done their first free project or something and they are looking for some sort of insight to pull out of that and take into a piece of content that would fall under the monetizable expertise and that like we just delivered this AI voice agent for a client. Here's three things we learned or like can you give us an example for say an early stage AI business owner that was fun each of those? — I can write you one. So, what you're an ali you just signed your first client. — Yeah. Say you've just delivered your first free project and you're kind of trying to pull a bit of that credibility over to uh to LinkedIn. — Yeah. So, um last night I signed — So, immediately you're like putting it in adding in like exactly when it happened. So, it feels like a story, right? — Yeah. Last night I signed my first ever client. — We could say delivered my first ever project. — Okay. Last night I I started building my AI business 3 months ago. And then we're giving people, you know, what happened. So very exciting news. And then giving them some context. So like what why are you excited about this if they don't know you? It's like, well, I started building my AI business 3 years ago, 3 months ago. So, and then we get into the meat of the story. So, um just for I'm going to get into this in a minute, but I usually use this frameworks called the slay. So, start with a story, lead with a lesson, have actionable advice and then end with a U. So, with a we started with a story. This is a story. Then, how will we pivot into a lesson? Well, um, we can do either here's exactly how I did it and how long it took, right? So, here people are interested because let's say another freelancer, another beginner or even your ideal client is like trying to understand what your actual system is and they want to have a look. So, that's actually how I signed my first ever whale client. I literally just broke down an entire strategy and they were like, "Hey, I really like your the way you think. Let me pay you five figures for this. " And I was like, "Whoa, that's crazy. " So, yeah. So, here's exactly how I did it. And then you kind of like do a list of goals. So, like step one, step two, step three. And then you end with like a feelood quote like um three years ago, I never thought I'd end up here. But today we made it long nights were worth it or something like that. I don't know. — PS blah blah. And then you do a call to action or a call to engage. So that's how I would write that. Basically, — if you're a business owner who's interested in what generative AI can do for your business, you can get in touch with me and my team at Morning. AI AI in one of the links in the description below and we can start your entire AI transformation process going all the way from the education and training of your staff to the identification of the best AI use cases for your company all the way through to development and beyond. We have worked with some of the world's biggest sports teams and also publicly traded companies. So rest assured you are in good hands. — Wow. You literally like think in uh think in LinkedIn. You speak fluent LinkedIn. I I'm very thankful that I ghost wrote for so many clients by myself because I now I'm able to just write like that at all times at any point. But my friends abuse this uh power of mine. So that's not good. So now let's say that you're like okay Lara I've written so many posts over the last two months and I'm I've been following these frameworks and this and that past slay like I've seen some of your videos. I I've even used templates at both courses, but I'm not getting the attention. Okay. Well, the problem is it content right now is not enough in any social media platform. Like there's a an inconsistent wall for attention.

So, the main goal with content is that you know how to position yourself. Now, your next goal is how do you get people to see it and how do you achieve mass distribution? So the way that I think about it is you get attention through your content, then you need to retain them and then you convert them. So the attention playbook is quite simple. After you understand what your monetizable expertise are in your arbitragees are, then you can start understanding the three key pillars of attention which is highlevel educational content which you saw a little bit on monetizable uh expertise then elite tier storytelling and authority jacking which is my favorite and I think every single person who's watching this podcast right now needs to implement this today. So I'll get into the first two. um how do you do highly high level educational content? So ideally most people are scared of giving their blueprints away but in a world where chat GPT and AI literally know everything then the only thing you have is your own ways of doing things. So you need to actually share the entire source no matter how much it costs you. Uh you don't if you fear that a client's going to steal this and implement it by themselves then they will they were never going to be your client. If you're fearing that a competitor is going to steal your strategy, then build up a strategy. Like, it's a consistent way of you thinking, "Okay, I'm going to share this. I'm going to get a high ticket client and it's going to pay for itself. " So, the way I do it is like my 1,000 business is about to hit $200,000 a month. Uh, and then I give people the incentive to write this, so to read this. So, with zero outbound, zero cold emails, here's the breakdown. And then, like I showed you earlier, I did the exact same thing. So I literally just broke it down in very much indepth actionable steps. So instead of people feeling like it's yet another piece of AI slop and fluff, it actually has something for them. So maybe one of them liked step number one, maybe some of them like step number two, three, maybe some of them had never seen anything like the strategy. So that gives me the upper hand amongst any other personal branding agency or consultant or course seller or anything because I am literally telling people what to do for free. — What's the secret source when it comes to like how niche down to be with this content? So for people watching from my audience, they're probably either like kind of a general purpose AI agency where they're helping sort of broad range of customers and therefore say if we're talking about what we do at Morningside, it could be a consulting a breakdown of our consulting process and how we carry through from consulting into development and that's our method. Um someone may be working specifically with uh like roofing businesses and the AI system they had for roofing business. Uh there's definitely that the with any kind of audiences online, they're often so much smaller than you think. And so as soon as you go from talking very broadly about like an AI transformation strategy for every business down to a roofing business. Um is there some sort of secret source there where you do need to kind of try to blend it into broader content and get into bigger audiences or you just going to get stuck in that small pool of like a few hundred likes? So, I have this uh framework. Uh I didn't put it here, but I'm going to show you quickly. So, it's called the 4 321. So, four posts a week, three types of content pillars, and this is what I'm going at. So, you need growth content. You need um you need growth content, you need total addressable market content, and you need sales content. So, the total addressable market content that I'm talking about is that type of content that you're talking about gen in general about AI. So, this is how you're going to get those customers like on your YouTube videos basically on how you're talking about general AI topics that then brings you a small uh pool of leads that are more qualified for your service. And then when you're doing growth content, you're talking about AI for roofing businesses in X place, right? So then you're increasing your chances of getting that type of funnel with the total addressable market content and then you shift it quickly to the growth content that's about that specific thing that you're solving and then you do sales content that closes them. And if you consistently repeat this L loop, you'll be able to start increasing your engagement without hurting your sales or like putting you in a completely broad niche that no one that you're competing with everyone. uh you're actually just building your own niche while it's still benefiting from the mass market content that people like AI in general. — Yeah. Because that's one of the biggest mistakes I see with people whether it's LinkedIn content or even YouTube content is they like oh I'm going I've got a bunch of videos of like case studies and things I've done with my clients and like that's great but it's probably not it's going to get a few hundred views realistically. You need to figure out what your discovery mechanism is. what kind of content is actually going to get you put in front of new people. Cuz until your your p your profile or your channel is getting pushed in front of new people um and you've got a reliable way or a kind of content bucket to hit that's going to get you there consistently, um then you're not going to be able to get in front of new people. And that's kind of the whole name of the game. — To answer that question, actually, if you can see here, the best way to kind of like beat that is by doing these two and then also this one. So like, but the thing is you have to do them consistently. You can't just do one a week and then just call it a day. Like they need to be consistent. So elite tier storytelling like I called it and authority jacking are what allow you to sort of like hack into the LinkedIn algorithm and getting in front of people because you're talking about topics that are close to you. You're still maintaining some sort of personality and growing your personal brand. The main mistake that people make when storytelling and using authority jacket, which I'll explain in a second, is that they get too broad that they forget to talk about their business themselves or what they actually help people with. So, anytime you do a story, even if it's about your dad, like I did here, I'm talking about being a business owner. I'm talking about, you know, the achievements that I've been able to accomplish by using this distribution mechanism that is LinkedIn. here this guy Simmyi he's like today's the proudest day of my life I retired my dad um and then he was talking about you know all of his job jobs etc and how he did it through his own business so this link right here is what matters the most and where people go completely wrong because they'll just close the store like oh I retired my dad this is the happiest day of my life I can't believe it by you know viral post all well and nice but then people don't really know how you did it and then the people that see that viral post then they'll want to follow the journey as to how you built a business, which is this specifically. Um, and so when you're writing educational content, your goal is to still try to remain as broad as you can while it's being specifically niche. So I have this all the framework that I use. I have so many uh it's called broad narrow niche and it's in your content. So you go broad in the hawk. So for example, my one person business is about to cross $200,000 a month. Okay, that's broad enough but still kind of niche. And then I go narrow. Okay. So, a narrow problem that only people that are interested in something that I potentially have to say about business want. So, people want don't want to do outbound and they cold emails. Okay. So, I'm capitalizing on the majority of business owners, right? Anyone else that's not a business owners owner doesn't care. Cool. So, I know that. So, I started broad then narrow and then I went incredibly niche on everything else. And so, that's what makes a brilliant LinkedIn post. your ability to understand how to still make a niche topic broad enough. So, a lot of business owners that don't have any interests read it and then they get into your sort of like mind share of knowledge and then they follow you, they buy from you. — 100%. Same on YouTube. If you can get that like the niching that you're really good at but somehow managed to like just wrap it in something broad enough and then pull them in via that broad audience um 100%. The next thing I think is the storytelling parts which I kind of like broke down. But I think it is important to note that the first three lines are what really truly made this post work. Today is the proudest day of my life because today I retired my dad. Right? Again, it's not braggy. It just feels very heartfelt. Like I just feel warm in my heart instead of being like who's that like? And the way this actually happens is through photos. I don't have that his hair, but even with mine, you can see my dad smiling. Like, you can see him taking photos of me on while I'm on stage. Like, it just feels very honest. And the reason why stories tend to seem cringe on LinkedIn is because they'll be like, "Oh my god, my dad died. " And it's a selfie of this girl, — and this is what it taught me about B2B sales. — And it just Yeah, exactly. And it's just like memeable. It's almost like laughable, but these people actually think they're doing God's work, but in reality, they're missing the key elements of a good story, which is the emotional side and the psychology side where you're able to communicate your story through the lens of them. Because the stories are never about you, they're always about them. And that's how I think about it. And then the last thing, and this is a thing that actually got me to upwards to 50,000 followers in 6 months, was authority jacking. And again, not many people talk about this because it just feels weird, but I don't care. So when I to when authority jacking essentially is when you're just using someone else's audience to maximize yours. So we have Simon Swift here, we have uh Sean, we have Daniel Priley. These are very popular figures in the business space. Okay. So then if someone sees me next to these people, I have the halo effect around me. So all I need to do next is get them to read the post and then actually follow me. So when you know that you're going to meet someone that has either some pool in the market, some following, just try and take a photo with them and use it to your advantage. — The algorithm side of it is interesting as well, right? Because if you can tag them and then get them to comment on it, then that's going to pull it onto the feed of a lot of their followers. Correct. Yes. So, you're so right. Yeah. So, when you're tagging people, then if they see the tag, they'll like it. And then what happens is that if I see your post, for example, I have 300,000 followers. Me liking my post will show on people's feeds. Like people, you can see like Lara Costa like this post. And then they will like it as well. So, I'm bringing also a 10% of my audience as well. The problem with this though, and that's why here, if you notice, I didn't tag any of them. Why? Because I know that none of them are checking LinkedIn. So I'm like, well, when you tag too many people on LinkedIn and they don't actually comment or like the post, it actually marks it as spam. So that's where you need to be careful when it comes to tagging because people um LinkedIn hates spam. Um you know, all of their business owner clients complain about it. — So when you're tagging people that you know you can't reach, that you don't have on your phone to message, hey, like I'm going to post about you. Can you please like this? then just don't do it and just use — there's some source that's a new one for me. — So yeah, use strategic arbitrage and the halo effect and authority jacking as much as you can is similar to what I was talking about here actually just in a different way. So here you're just you know uh arbitrageing a popular topic but here you're using someone else's uh branding. — And just a tip on the storytelling bit. — Yeah. Is there like a week audit that you do or is it like a daily audit or something? Because I think people often gloss over a lot of the things that they're encountering every single day, whether it's like looking back at their calendar, I think is a method that Homzi uses, but there's gems all the way through your day and sometimes it'll be things that didn't go well that are like an opportunity right in front of you that people don't realize they could flip into something good on LinkedIn for content. So, do you have a method or something that you recommend for people to be able to, I guess, like filter through what they've done recently for stories that they could tell or uh to mine their own experiences like you did with the immigrant side of things, — an exercise that will allow people to find better stories to tell. — So, I have two ways. One of them that I do for clients, for my ghost writing clients, I have weekly interviews with them. Well, when I used to run the ghost writing agency, so that's how I would get the gems from them that they didn't even see. So if you want to do that for yourself and just sit down and interview yourself on like different questions like what happened this week, what were the wins? Did I get a new client? Did I go to a speaking event etc. then yes. Um, how I do it is I talk to my very good best friend Chaji PT and I just voice notes it random voice notes throughout the week and I have a Chad PT project that kind of like just collects my thoughts and then at the end of the week I just give it I just ask it to give me a summary of what I went through uh that week and then it gives it to me. But for me the biggest win has been having the AI recorders on every single one of my calls. So then if I know that on a call I solved a problem for a client I know that this problem can actually be turned into content. So I take the transcript from the AI I use and then I'll take it on to tools like Cleo and then that I'll be like hey based on this transcript please write me a viral link to post about lead genen or something or like touch on this problem that this person had and then they'll create me a good post. But um for storytelling, I think that the best way is to get into the habit of taking photos because you'll actually need the photos um to post them on LinkedIn. Uh a story without a photo, it truly doesn't hit the same. So, let me get into the last part of step number two before we move on to three. So, you can also combine uh two of each. So, let's say you want to do highly educational content, but you also want to do elite tier storytelling. Well, you can actually do them both at the same time. And I showed you guys the slave framework earlier. I'll get into that again in a second. Or you can do high level educational content and also authority jack. So you don't have to do one or the other. Like I don't want people to be in the middle of the bell curve and be like, "Oh my god, I don't have this or you can do both. " Like it's okay. I'm just giving you different choices of like what you can write about. But if you're like, "Oh my god, but I have this photo with Simon Squibb, but I think I want to talk about how he helped me build my business. " And you can do both. So, I'm just I just want to make that specifically clear because I the amount of times that I give advice and then there's like no nuance um just that. — Tell me about it. — So, um yeah. Um here's some good examples of like people that have done it well. So, uh this is one of my clients. So, he here is obviously doing some trend jacking and authority jacking. So, Open AI just changed marketing forever and then he's educating on what's happening as well. And then he actually turned this into a lead magnet. So he trenched, he educated and he also sold um from this and that got you know 1,000 likes which is incredibly good for someone and also 4,000 comments. Uh so that's 4,000 leads for him. So that's one way. The next way is also you know you can also do trend jacking as well in this way and do some templates like he did and use validated content that he saw on Twitter. So, I personally think that your audience has the upper hands on LinkedIn because I assume that most of them are on Twitter um as many tech people are. And so, if you you're able to just catch something early, talk about it in a slightly storytelling way, you'll win. Then the last one is this uh post that I saw about Grace Beverly. Uh they're documenting her losses, the media to tearing her apart, and the way she told it was a story, right? And that got her 2,000 likes as well. Um, I looked at her LinkedIn as well. She doesn't her average is like 100 200. So, if you're looking for the ultimate way to actually get attention on LinkedIn, just do this. And I promise you, if you do this at least twice a week for the next 30 days, you'll see your impressions blow up. I'm saying the same thing when it comes to like if the easiest hack for particularly in the AI space right now is follow the news cycle and trend jack it like this either through some person and a story or like taking a tech entrepreneur and pulling theirs down or it's like opening I just released this here's what you need to do the easiest clicks and views are always going to be around the new stuff so you must see that just all the time with your clients right — no totally and I think um even I can imagine that for your clients they're like oh but where do I get the best news and like, oh, it's too old. Just do it. — It's new to someone else. Yeah. And what do you have to lose? Like another post that fails. Okay. Well, no one's going to see it anyway, so might as well.

Okay, cool. Now, we got on to the important part on like how to get attention. Now, step number three is the how to create content for your niche and for you. So, again, if you're like, "Okay, Lara, I get all of that, but I still don't know how to start writing. " Okay, let me show you. Let me show you because I have the perfect two frameworks that I love so much. And the first one is the slay framework. I created it obviously because I'm a girl and I slay all the time. And the best part about building a slave framework on LinkedIn uh that is mainly maledominated is that I've got people that are 40y old — 40 men saying that they're using — so like the glorification of LinkedIn has happened. So thank you very much. In reality, this really happened by accident to be honest. Um, I was like explaining to someone how my post kept on going viral two years ago and I was like, "Yeah, well, I start with a story and then I try my best to lead with a lesson so people stay on the post, but then I give very tactical and actionable advice every single time. So then people find this incredibly useful and save it. " And then the last hack that I use is I always point it back to them. So I always ask them a question. And [snorts] then my friend was like, "Well, Lara, that's literally sleigh. " And I was like, "Yes, I think this framework has been used by over 10,000 people already. " Um, which is honestly a privilege, but um, when you think about it in logical terms, like a story gets attention, then the lesson gets retention, then actionable advice gets you the conversion. And that is the at its very core the fundamental basics of the slave framework is like you retain you get the attention by being engaging you know hey I used to I read many books but this one changed my life okay which one oh not rich dad poor dad and then you get a reaction from people like I was saying the second line is also as almost as important as the first one and then I tell them the lesson which is okay this book it's like okay so now here are the six principles to win on LinkedIn. So what most people actually do is that they'll just start here, you know, here's six principles to win on LinkedIn. Like no one cares. But the reason why they do is because I gave them that full story beforehand and I gave them a reason to stay. So if your content currently sucks, it's not because you don't know how to like you don't have anything good to say. It's just you don't know how to say it well yet. But I I'm teaching you so it's all good. And then we just try and lay out as simply as possible. So again using the eight word marks kind of like limit try and keep your um lessons as concise as possible so people feel like it's easy education and it's immediately applicable. So you want every single post that you ever write you want people to go and implement one thing from it get results and then come back. That's how you get that's how you build a real coldlike audience on LinkedIn. And so you don't want these being too long on each line that they wrap around and like drop down and make it look kind of messy and hard to read. — No, because again, we need to think about LinkedIn as a true social media platform. Like what's happening right now with attention like people have the attention of a goldfish, right? And that doesn't change if even if they're on LinkedIn, right? So just because we don't have short form video popping up at every single time, it doesn't mean that people want to read essays. So how we I called it the tictoation of LinkedIn content. So, how do I make this vengeable and skimable? Well, I make it as short as possible, but I still make it feel like it's giving so much value uh in like 3 seconds. It's the same thing as like a 3se secondond vir viral video. So, just apply that logic. And so, that's what I did. So, hey, here's the six principles of this book uh in a very condensed way. That's it. And then at the end, I'm like, hey, this book taught me more than my marketing degree. I've read it every I read it every 3 months. the lessons are timeless. Then master these principles and you'll become unstoppable. So you always want to end with like a cliche type of quote because you want to make people feel good at the end because people never remember the start. They always remember the end and then they'll go back to the start if they felt good and then that increases LinkedIn ranks its content based on how much time people spend on it. So that's how impressions are counted, right? If you want to your impressions to increase, then you need to increase how much time people stay like are on your post. So the way you do it is by just retaining people as much as possible, getting them to save and comment, right? The next one is a very popular one. I don't really need to explain it, but I'm going to just talk touch on it quickly. Pass like problem agitate solution. So like here's your problem. Founders founders, your LinkedIn content sucks. Agitate it's costing you thousands of dollars daily. And then the solution is here's how to write content that sells. And that's pretty much it. Your content isn't boring. your ideas aren't basic. — That's like the SEO one, like the SEO is dead problem that we mentioned before. — Yeah, — exactly. — And yeah, so scare them, agitate it, and then be like, here's what you actually need to be doing. — Yeah, even here, it's the same way. So, you're correct. Well spotted. I just wanted to put this on screen so people can screenshot it as well. Um, if you want to write a brilliant LinkedIn post and here's exactly how you do it. That's the checklist that you need to follow. So like I kept on mention it through mentioning throughout the video eight word long hooks are best. Always use a specific outcome or number have varied sentence lengths. So you can see here one line space one line space and then I get into you know completely just line and then one line space. So try and vary that and the reason for that is again psychology is how you make something flow. And if you have ever designed a landing page, you know the F shape, how people can read um landing pages. So it's the exact same principle on written content. So that's how you make your content actually perform better because people can get the most out of it without reading the whole thing. And then you either do a direct uh step by step or a clear story outcome and then you wrap it up with a clear CTA. And now the last thing I know

at the start I was talking about AI, JBT, code, etc. Well, I did build a tool that actually solves every single one of these problems live. So, um there's a quick demo here and I'm going to show you. But basically, what Cleo helps you do is that it literally builds your strategy using content you already have. So, I'm going to show you guys that in a second. But we have a template library based on every single viral post we've ever seen. And then you can actually use those templates to turn that into a pose that actually works for you. So, let's say I say, "I love this post that I just saved from my swipe file. Uh, based on what you know about me, write me a similar post. " And then I took one of Jake's, the one that you saw earlier. And then I made Cleo write it for me based on what he knows about me. And it literally looks the same but different. So, this is based on our like main philosophy at Cleo. Good artists copy, great artists steal by Austin Cleon. So um that's exactly how you start creating content on LinkedIn without being in this again belove of like oh I need to be super original and like everything needs to be so different like you don't have to it just just you just do what works. So um I can give you a quick demo here as well. So the way clear works in essence is we have different things that we have three different pillars of how you actually create content. So you create clear content, you discover content and you think about it. So we have a knowledge base where you basically just upload every single document that you've ever created. If you have a podcast, if you have um an SOP, etc. You can actually upload them. Also, you can upload every single memory from chargi or like code already has it. So we love that. Then you can choose your writing style, which is my favorite thing. I actually pushed a lot for this feature. So, let's say you're like, "Okay, Lara, your posts are doing amazing. I want to write exactly like you. " Okay, perfect. We built uh the backend prompts so it knows how to write specifically like me, how to write like Jake if you like how he educates, how to write like Justin Walsh, etc. So, we have multiple creators that have consistently proven to go viral. And then you can your post will immediately be resonant to how that author writes. So, that's good. And then you can also add different preferences. So for me I'm like hey I don't like I like using this type of language. I like using natural tones etc. And then so you can also by the way you can also build your identity. So basically you're about you can fill it with your offers etc. So when you say hey write me a sales post it already knows what to sell. So I was actually testing it out earlier because I didn't want to waste your time. So I asked it the first prompt that I showed you guys earlier which is based on what you know about me please write me a complete list of my own advantages etc and please give me hugs for each. So if you don't know what to even do with your strategy and you're like overwhelmed you can just ask Cleo after you've given it the information that it needs to have and it will do it for you if you prompt it right. So then after this you can be like okay I really like this hook so hey um love this hook please write me a full post and then it would actually go ahead and write you the post for you um based on what you've prompted to look like the content that it knows that that it knows about you and the backend you know preferences that you gave it — and So for that first step, you would just go on to Cleo to get set up. You'd fill out that like background context on who you are, which I think is essential. So once it knows you, your offer and so on. — Yeah. As soon as you sign up onto Cleo, the onboarding process are actually quite simple. We'll ask you a few questions and then you can upload everything else after. So we'll just ask you basic questions that are enough for you to write your first LinkedIn post and then you can keep on adding stuff to it. Um my favorite thing about it is that you can also chat to it. So let's say you don't like this hook. you're like, "Hey, um, redo this, make it shorter, and it'll do it for you. " So, it's based on how me and Jake, who are, you know, creator first, uh, creator first entrepreneurs think, instead of, you know, a 40-year-old person that's trying to create an AI tool for writing that's never written viral content in their lives. So, uh, with the engineers, we literally, I showed him my process. He's like, "Okay, here's how she thinks and that's it. " — Awesome. Cool. And how much volume can you like crank out on a week with this? Is it like you sit down for an hour? Should people come on with uh with their own like best performing bits of content I've seen throughout the week to borrow over or you've got the swipe file there and they can just rely on that and what can we filter by? — Yeah, that's a great question. So, we have a um a community swipe file where you can literally see live what people are saving. So, let's say you don't have any ideas and you're like, "Okay, I really want to write something today. I really like this post. Okay. So then let's say I'm like, "Love this post by Jake. I want to write something exactly like that. " So then I go and do the exact same thing. So I'll go back to the chat like, "Love this. Love this post. I want to write this about AI — AI and uh building your own software as a non techchnical person. " And then what we can do here, we can actually select uh the post that we just saw. And then we can give it a little bit more structure. So you can choose how long you want the post to be. So I'm going to say 800 words to up to upwards to a th00and. And then it'll take that post. It'll analyze it. It'll use the backend prompts that we have and then the context that it has on me. So it won't be completely accurate but to you. But yeah, that's how it would do it. And then what Cleo then does, it shows you why it's written like it is rather than just writing your post and you have no idea what it is about. It actually analyzes the post it wrote. It scores it and then it lets you edit it after. It tells you exactly how it did it. — If anyone's writing LinkedIn content seems to not be using this sort of stuff. I mean, I don't know how you could go back to just like hacking away in a notion or in uh what it tapio and stuff like that. Um does this handle scheduling as well? Yep. You got a schedule button up there. Yeah, we do. You can plug it into your LinkedIn as well, but um personally um just from personal experience, I haven't scheduled a LinkedIn post in over three years. So, just a hack for me personally. — So, you just like do it on the fly. — Yeah. So, what I find is uh with LinkedIn content is that when you are choosing to schedule it, you're also choosing to forget about it. And a main key lever for LinkedIn content is engagement. So, if you're not there within the first 30 minutes of the post going live, then the post has a higher chance of dying. Um, people say that you can't control the LinkedIn algorithm, but you actually can for the first 30 minutes because it's the lead time that almost like YouTube, I would I would assume. Um, if you get — get a lot of comments. — Yeah. — Then you're in. So if you truly want to succeed on LinkedIn and you have the time to spend on the platform, I would say always schedule, you know, 30 minutes after. I've had this on my calendar for the last 3 years. It's like I've got assigned LinkedIn time at — 12 every single day for like the last — engage. Yeah. — So that's my life, but uh it's got me far so I don't regret it. — There we go. Okay, Lara, mate, that's been absolute master class and I'm sure people got something out of that. You guys will be able to grab that full board. Uh it'll be linked in the description. It'll be on the school community and the resources for my podcast. Um and of course there'll be a link to uh Cleo for you guys to try that out if you guys aren't already um using some kind of AI to help you write content at this point. I don't know what the hell you're doing. Um but this has been the leading uh LinkedIn content expert breaking down how she's using AI and it's been um absolute pleasure having you on. Thank you for your time. And um is there any last minute tips or tricks for 2026 you want to give uh before we wrap up? — Comment below so Liam starts posting on LinkedIn and gives us all the source and u uses all my strategies and I can take all the credit for it. — Yep. There we go. All right, that's all. I think we can end it there. Thank you so much, Lara. It's been awesome. And you guys can get in touch with Lara and follow her and all that good stuff down below. So that is all for this episode of the podcast, guys. If you want to see something similar that I really think you'd like, you can click up here to watch another one. And remember, if you think you have a story worth telling and some valuable insight you can share with the community, you can fill out my podcast application form in the description below. I'd love to have a chat with you and get some exposure for your business. Aside from that, guys, that's all for the video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next