On this episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I wanted to talk about why having a massive argument with somebody actually increases your brand, increases your reach, and increases the business you will get. Now, this isn’t me making an excuse for just being a bit of a dick online. There is science to this. There is method to this. There is a real reason why I go around on social media kicking up as much of a fuss, as much of a stink as I possibly can.
[00:39]
For those of you that have followed me, you’ll know all about this. For those that haven’t, I do get into the odd ruck when I’m online. My latest ruck happened a couple of weeks ago when we were having parking wars at our office at Engage Web. We’re having a bit of a disagreement with one of the buildings next to us because they keep parking in one of our spaces.
[01:10]
We each have four spaces in the office for each office building and we pay for it. We bought this building. We own this building. We own the four spaces that are marked with Engage Web, and one of the office buildings next to us keeps having its staff, its visitors, whoever they may be, parking in one of those spaces. Frequently I’ll come back after a meeting, or maybe 10:00 in the morning, and find that there’s someone in my space and it’s not one of our cars.
[01:44]
I don’t care that it’s not “my” space — it belongs to the company. Any of the staff can park in it. Anybody’s able to park in it. But not people from other offices. Not randoms off the street. Not just any bastard who wants to park in it. It’s ours. So when I come back and somebody who isn’t one of our team is parked in the space, it pisses me off because we’ve paid for it.
[02:15]
I keep having arguments with them. I’ve blocked them in. I’ve parked across the back of them. I’ve had people knock on the door when I’m recording podcasts, when I’m in meetings, when I’m running online events, saying, “Can you move your car? It’s blocking me in.” It’s like, “Yeah, it’s blocking you in — because you’re in my space.”
[02:43]
I had one woman really aggressively have a go at me: “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you go and park in someone else’s space?” “Well, because that’s my space.” “When I got here, there were no other spaces.” No, because that’s my space. Where did you expect me to park? On the street or visitor parking, the same as everybody else does when there’s no spaces. One woman even said, “I always park here.” I know you always park here. It’s my freaking space. Stop parking in my space.
[03:21]
We’ve put labels on the cars. We’ve put stickers on them. Doesn’t do any good — they just ignore it. Then I block them in. I blocked somebody in the other week and thought, you know, I’ve had enough of this. So I took a photo of it and I put it on LinkedIn. Why haven’t I done this before? Why don’t I address this problem the way I address every single problem — publicly online, with some humiliation?
[03:53]
So I did. You couldn’t see the registration, so don’t worry — nothing identifiable. I put the whole story up and asked for advice: what would other people do? And I had some incredible comments — sunken bollards, putting out cones or branded cones to mark the space. People were very much in favour of blocking them in and going on holiday, which I actually did — but they managed to squeeze out, the buggers.
[04:27]
Somebody suggested putting a stinger down — what the police use to stop stolen vehicles. Quite a few people suggested getting them towed — mostly Americans; you can’t really do that here in the UK. Nobody suggested “crush the car,” unfortunately. Some people suggested wrapping the whole car in cling film. I love that idea — I might give that one a go. Others suggested spray mount on the windscreen, which is a real bastard to get off. All fantastic suggestions and it created quite a buzz online.
[05:03]
That post got me 236 comments, as I look at it right now, and 44,000-plus impressions on LinkedIn. But why? Why the bloody hell did I bother? What was the point in taking the photo, sticking it online, and getting all those comments and engagement on a post that’s got sod all to do with business? Am I going to get any clients from that post? No, probably not. Am I going to get contacts who think, “Wow, he’s a fun guy… maybe I’ll get a website off him”? No, probably not. That’s not the reason I do it.
[05:34]
The reason I do it is because LinkedIn, like most social media platforms, likes to see engagement. LinkedIn likes to see that you are posting content that people want. I’ve had this on Facebook where I’ve done similar things, and Facebook has even notified me — paraphrasing — “You’ve been posting some great stuff lately, Daz. We’ve increased your reach as a consequence.” Which it does.
[06:08]
So when you post stuff that is business-related — here it comes — more people will see it. LinkedIn’s exactly the same: the more stuff you post that people engage with, like, comment on, share, the more people will see it. LinkedIn will go, “Shit, you really are popular. People like your stuff. We’re going to show your stuff to more people,” so that when you actually post something you do want people to see — product, event, service, some offer, a lead magnet — more people will see it.
[06:43]
You’ll see others in marketing doing this too. They’ll post things that are intentionally engagement-based. They’ll say slightly controversial things that get people’s backs up, cause an argument, cause a ruckus, because they know the more people who comment on it, the more people will see it, the more their reach will increase — and when they post the thing they want you to act on, they’ll get more conversions.
[07:09]
That is the way to get LinkedIn and Facebook to dance to your tune. Get people engaging with your stuff — posting, commenting, liking, sharing — because the more people who do that, the more people will see it. The more people will see your salesy posts, your businessy posts, when you post those.
[07:38]
But don’t just follow it straight up with a pitch. Don’t go, “Right, bang, here’s a sales post — download my lead magnet.” That’s not going to work either. Do three or four explosive posts in a row before you do something salesy. Maybe Monday through Thursday you do your engaging posts, and then on Friday you do something salesy, businessy, focusy — technical terms — that you want people to see because you want leads.
[08:14]
The way most people use social media is they just post their crap: “Buy my… buy my… buy my…” Absolute freaking ghost town. Nobody’s interested. Nobody likes. Nobody comments. Nobody shares. LinkedIn buries your reach because no one’s interested. It doesn’t want to promote content nobody engages with — people will piss off to another platform.
[08:46]
So the content like I post about this parking war scandal — LinkedIn wants people to see that because it keeps people on the platform commenting. It keeps them coming back when I reply to every comment — let me stress that once again: reply to every comment. When people comment on your posts — LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever — reply to every single comment.
[09:18]
When you do that, they get a notification you’ve replied; they come back and sometimes they comment again. The more people who come back and comment again, the more LinkedIn goes, “Wow, this guy’s really generating discussion.” So it promotes the content even more — and then when you put your salesy stuff out, more people will see it and you’ll get more bites.
[09:49]
That is the way to do it. Do not just keep posting your salesy crap day after day after day. Sharing it in Facebook groups — I’m not going to start a rant about that again; I’ve done that so many times. “Buy my… buy my… buy my…” Nobody’s going to do that. It doesn’t work. Why do so many people think it works? It doesn’t.
[10:14]
Engage people. Post interesting content — stuff people want to see, comment on, like, share. LinkedIn will reward you for it when you post something else.
[10:34]
That is what this podcast is about — not my parking war scandal, although that is still going on. And believe me, I will be escalating it. I will be parking across someone’s car and leaving them blocked in for a good week at some point. I’m going to put the car there; they’re going to need a can opener to get out. And I’m going to piss off on holiday for about a week or just walk to work for a week. That’s the only way to stop people parking in my space.
[11:00]
But that’s another podcast for another time. Don’t worry — you will get the resolution to that one. This one is about using social media effectively, honestly. But also, go to LinkedIn, check out that post, drop some comments on it if you like, drop a like, drop a share — see what you want to do about that. We’ll put the link to that post in the podcast description below so you can go straight to it…
[11:20]
…and I will catch you on the next podcast.
