Why LinkedIn Content Fails (and How to Fix It)

Karin Conroy (00:03.989)
Before we get into this quick note, if your law firm is trying to really build authority on LinkedIn and actually stand out, we have a thing for that. We have this new service called the Authority Tour, where we do this custom built marketing plan where we help you get your expertise showing up in all the right places, all of the right platforms and the right messages, not just so you’re visible, but so that you are seen as the go-to expert. So if it’s something that you’re working on or working towards,

check it out at conroycreativecouncil.com slash authority dash tour. So on today’s show, most lawyers don’t have a content problem, they have an intention problem. So you can be completely right, highly informed, the best expert on this topic, but still be ignored. So the question is, why do so many LinkedIn posts fall flat, even when the ideas are solid?

And so I’m joined by Bill Shander, a data communications expert who helps professionals turn complex information into clear, compelling insights and visuals that actually get noticed and action. So they work. It’s not just like throwing stuff out there and nobody’s paying attention. So we’re going to talk about that struggle, the struggle of just putting out that content and being ignored.

which is kind of personally painful and you know how do you overcome that and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So Bill thank you for being here.

Bill Shander (01:39.042)
Thank you so much, Karin. I’m very happy to be here.

Karin Conroy (01:41.449)
Thank you. So today, the topic, the title is why your LinkedIn posts fall flat. So what’s usually like the number one thing when you start to kind of look at people’s content or LinkedIn or whatever they’re putting out there and you’re looking at it and thinking, I see it. Like that’s the thing I see all the time. What is that thing?

Bill Shander (02:05.506)
to start by saying, I usually don’t know only because LinkedIn’s algorithm is changing, it seems second by second. And you’ll put out a post that has all the magic sauce, and it still falls flat and vice versa, you put out like a random post and it takes off. we sort of never know. That being said, you know, there are certain things where I see a post and I can understand, okay, that one fell flat. And this has got to be a contributing cause because it’s done everything wrong. You know, one example being

Karin Conroy (02:14.473)
So true.

Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (02:23.922)
Right?

Bill Shander (02:36.338)
especially if you’re communicating about data, you put out something about data and you have like a chart that’s just like a crazy hot mess of a chart with 8 million data labels and 400 colors and maybe 800 bullet points below it, information overload and there’s no focus and your typical sort of communications mistakes. So that’s like a go-to for sure where people are just like, kinda wanna look at that. That’s always something to keep an eye out.

Karin Conroy (02:45.109)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (03:02.357)
So do you start by looking at the visual, but not before you even look at the words usually?

Bill Shander (03:08.462)
You know, there’s actually some really interesting research into this. You know, they do eye tracking studies where they watch where people’s eyeballs look when they look at the screen and they see what they do and where they go next, etc. If you have a text page like Google search results, the pattern looks like an F. Essentially, they start in the upper left hand corner, go across, drop, go across, drop, go across. If there is an image, everything changes. When there’s an image in front of us, we actually look right in the center of the image first.

And then what do we do next? And so yeah, like if your post has a big image on it, people will look there first, like it’s almost guaranteed. And then it’s about their peripheral vision. Where are they going to look next? And so, you know, they’re design tricks to guide the eye, but you can’t force people to consume content in the way you want them to, even though you can encourage it.

Karin Conroy (03:44.233)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Karin Conroy (03:57.043)
Right, and then there’s these kind of ingrained ideas. I wrote a post about this eye tracking. It’s Jacob Nielsen who has done these eye tracking surveys. I wrote a post on Lawyerist, I wanna say it was at least 10 years ago, and it was one of these posts that went really, not viral, viral wasn’t a thing back then, but it did well. It got a lot of traffic. And I think it was because,

you know, in this audience of lawyers, it was very analytical. And so it was like this, like, you know, I know you are very much about the data and the numbers and it was data driven, but it was based on these visuals and like what’s actually working and how does that work? And for a website, this, this, I came back to this over and over because at the time years ago, people were trying to sort of disconnect the typical sort of design.

rules. I had clients who did not want to put the logo in the top left corner and I was like, okay, let’s not do that. Like stop. And here’s why. And it’s not just because I want the lazy option. It’s because that’s where your eye starts. And if you’re from a culture that’s reading from left to right, and there’s things that we know that we’re not going to ignore about human behavior. If there’s a picture of a face,

an eye is going to be drawn to that because people instinctively want to like look at that face and do I trust that face and doesn’t look real to me? And so, but if it’s just text like you’re describing, then you’ve got this F and people are reading down and across. So we’re not going to put the most important piece of text in the top left corner or like mid left because that’s, you know, it’s just going to get lost and people are going to be confused by that. So

What else can we know about kind of human behavior in terms of like the data and what people are typically doing wrong in terms of either their LinkedIn posts or just kind of what they’re doing in their marketing in general?

Bill Shander (06:01.442)
Yeah. And if you don’t mind, like, let’s take some of the science stuff because this stuff is always fascinating. And yeah. And we’re going to teach these lawyers something new today. And the eye tracking studies are like, I love those too, for the same reason. Like, you know, people look at a face. The other thing that’s really interesting on eye tracking with, with, with faces is people look at a face, but if the face is going like this, right. People will look at whatever that face is looking at. So if you have a face looking at your logo, people are going to look at your logo. So that’s kind of a neat one.

Karin Conroy (06:04.211)
Yeah, I love it.

Karin Conroy (06:24.591)
Yes

Karin Conroy (06:29.063)
Yes, the direction of the gaze. And I’m just gonna repeat that because if you’re listening and people didn’t see where your face turned, but your face, when you were describing that your face turned off to the side. So you weren’t like looking straight into the camera. You were looking off to the side and that really shifts the whole feel of a visual. And people are like, what are they looking at? It’s like when you’re talking to someone and they constantly are like looking back behind you or over in some other part of the room and you’re like,

Bill Shander (06:30.552)
But there’s another one that I love.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (06:58.035)
and you like immediately flip your head around like what, are you not looking at my eyes while I’m talking to you?

Bill Shander (07:02.286)
Yeah. Yeah. Another really, really good one. This is one of my most favorite things to teach. So I teach workshops on data storytelling and visualization. I teach online classes and all the rest of it. This is literally one of the most favorite things to teach because once you hear it, if you really metabolize it, it’ll change how you create any visual for the rest of your life, or at least it should.

Karin Conroy (07:26.441)
That is quite the buildup. I can already, yeah, exactly.

Bill Shander (07:28.568)
That’s a big claim. I know, I know. But I stand by it. All right, here’s the thing. Every single visual experience that you have, so not just when you look at charts and graphs, but when you look at anything, that experience occurs in what’s called a pre-attentive way. Meaning, it’s before you’re paying attention to it, your brain is processing it. So in other words, it’s an instantaneous, okay, and it’s sub.

Karin Conroy (07:33.321)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (07:56.051)
Yes.

Bill Shander (07:57.678)
conscious. Now, what do we learn from this? Well, the basic idea is this, when someone glances at whatever it is you’re putting in front of them on LinkedIn, whether it’s a chart, whether it’s a new anything, the moment they look at it, they are judging it, they are making decisions, they are thinking and processing subconsciously. So when you throw a chart up there, and it has 800 colors and 47 data labels, and you know, 8000 things going on.

What are they doing? They’re going, my God, I’m so freaked out right now. I don’t know what to look at. I’m confused. I’m going to close my eyes now. If instead, right. They get annoyed.

Karin Conroy (08:31.305)
Yeah. But also why does this person want to confuse me? You know, like what’s, yeah, and I’m judging the person who made this chart based on my feelings of the chart. Yeah.

Bill Shander (08:41.486)
100 yeah. So if instead of that, if we created a chart, same data, same everything. But let’s say it maybe even still had 800 bars because it’s a complicated data set with a lot of stuff. Fine. But if all the bars were a light gray and there were no data labels, numbers all over this thing, and it didn’t have 800 bullet points and you only used that one color of gray except for boom, one bar is a bright blue.

And that’s the bar that shows that our profits jumped by 16 % last quarter. That’s the story of this chart. So therefore that’s where I use the color, but everything else is minimal. At a glance, people are going to look at that and they’re going to get the story you’re trying to communicate. So the pre attentive response, yeah, that glance response teaches us to remove everything except to draw attention to what’s important. So one thing at a time chunking that’s the other, let’s talk more science.

Karin Conroy (09:24.499)
in a split second. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (09:33.07)
One point. Yes, yes.

Bill Shander (09:38.35)
The most cited or one of the most cited research reports in all of psychology was about the idea of chunking. Basic simple idea is human beings are much, much, much better at understanding one idea at a time. And when like you have things like, you know, I can’t remember 10 digit number, but if it’s broken up to three, three and four, like phone numbers, I’ll remember those little chunks of information, right? But one piece of information at a time. So yeah, one idea at a time.

Karin Conroy (10:00.049)
Yep. Yes.

Bill Shander (10:07.298)
You’re designed for that glance response to be able to quickly understand that one idea. As close as you can get to that, the more effective your communications will be.

Karin Conroy (10:15.145)
Well, and clearly they knew something about phone numbers because this idea with phone numbers has sustained. nobody’s even using phone numbers anymore. But if you’re driving down a highway and you need to see, you know, they’ve got the billboards, they’ve got the numbers in chunks. You know, it’s always like 888-444. I was going to say lawyer, but you know what I’m trying to say. Law or law, know, whatever it is, some memorable thing.

Bill Shander (10:22.058)
yeah.

Bill Shander (10:38.336)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (10:43.783)
So what does this have to do with marketing? Like what is all of this like science around? Because I hear it and I’m making that connection, but why as a lawyer would I care about this idea of presenting these charts? Like what does that have to do with being a lawyer and chunking and this memory idea and why does that matter?

Bill Shander (11:09.144)
That’s a great question. I think that the basic idea is, and listen, I was doing work with lawyers as clients 30 years ago. When the website came along, the internet came along and I was doing website design and development. I would go to these law firms and say, you don’t have a website, what’s going on? They would say, well, we don’t need a website. And I would say, okay, let’s talk again next year. Yeah, yeah. And so.

Karin Conroy (11:31.571)
This is the story of my life right here.

Bill Shander (11:36.044)
you know, the industry has always been a little bit behind some other industries and that’s fine.

Karin Conroy (11:38.417)
Yes. Yeah, I call it risk averse to be nice. And that’s what I say to their faces. But yeah, the legal industry is typically pretty slow to technology just because I think their jobs are to kind of hold back and reduce risk, you know, and yeah.

Bill Shander (11:43.0)
For sure.

Bill Shander (11:55.31)
Yeah, fair enough. And I do. I 100 % understand why. And I’m the same way with a lot of things too, by the way. I’m very slow to adopt AI as an example. But long story short, what does the stuff we were talking about having to do with them? Well, the fact is you do need to market. That’s why you exist, right? That’s why your agency exists. And you do need to reach an audience who might then pick up the phone and call you.

Karin Conroy (12:11.187)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Bill Shander (12:21.248)
One way to do that for law firms, of course, is thought leadership, right? You need to prove that you are the smartest person on this topic. And the way you do that might include communicating data. Maybe it doesn’t. There may be other things you’re communicating. But whatever it is, when you throw, let’s say it is data. When you just throw a bunch of data at people, you’re saying, hey, be a data analyst. Good luck. But when you throw the insight at people, hey, this data shows us that X, Y, Z, guess what that sounds like? That sounds like a thought leader. So.

Karin Conroy (12:27.251)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (12:40.808)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (12:48.669)
Right.

Bill Shander (12:49.73)
When you speak in jargon and when you use your acronyms and you lose legalese and all that stuff, and you throw a bunch of at people, again, they’re gonna be annoyed, confused, questioning your credibility, zoning out. And so all of this stuff is relevant for exactly that reason.

Karin Conroy (13:07.241)
Yeah, and you I was even thinking when you said the word thought leader and like it’s become so cringe and overused, but the idea of being a thought leader, like let’s just even look at that title. You’re, you’re supposed to be leading them to some point, right? Either some conclusion or some understanding about you and your firm. You’re not supposed to just be presenting data like you’re saying. You’re supposed to be saying, this is what I

understand about the data. And this is, I’m an expert on this data and you don’t even really need to know what the data is because I do. And I’m explaining it to you and I have this understanding and I’ve got you. And so you can come and work with me and I, and you don’t even need to, I’ve got you covered because I know the data and I’m expressing my understanding of the data, not just the data, not like here’s all the numbers. It’s an understanding of it, which is super different.

Like that chart that you’re describing with the 17 colors and all the different labels and all of that. The other thing I was thinking about when you were saying that is Seth Godin had this book ages ago called The Purple Fez. one of the main principles was, because it was about web design and very simple, like this thin little book. one of the main principles is treat your customers like a monkey, not in an offensive way.

Bill Shander (14:06.774)
Yeah, for sure.

Karin Conroy (14:35.733)
but they’re simple needs and give them one banana on each page, period. That’s it, one banana. And yes, you can have, and that’s like the primary call to action is what marketing people call it. And yes, you can have a secondary call to action, but make it very secondary and make it clear that this is not the main thing I want you to do. This is just in case that main thing is not exactly right for you, which should be a minority of the people visiting your site.

Bill Shander (14:43.246)
You

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (15:05.821)
so one banana, one banana people. okay. So let’s talk like how this, this works. Like, first of all, we were talking earlier about, who are we even talking to and, and who are these stakeholders that we’re kind of trying to speak to them? And, a lot of people don’t get this right in terms of the communication and conveying what we need to convey to those people.

Bill Shander (15:10.498)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (15:35.854)
Yeah, yeah, so, know, there was a University of Virginia professor, Edward Freeman, who invented the entire idea of stakeholder engagement. He sort of defined the terms and, you know, his definition for stakeholders, I think is really, really pertinent. It’s anyone who can affect or is affected by whatever it is you’re doing, okay? So let’s say you’re just a random corporate worker, forget about lawyers, but let’s just sort of broaden it a little bit.

Karin Conroy (15:59.817)
Okay.

Bill Shander (16:05.172)
Obviously your boss, but even in a law firm, you’re down here in the partner. They are a stakeholder, sure, because they’re the one asking you to do X, Y, or Z. Fine. In the case of marketing, obviously the potential customer, the potential client is a stakeholder. When you’re in the courtroom, the judge is a stakeholder. Your client, your law client is a stakeholder. All these people are potential stakeholders. But obviously when you’re marketing,

Karin Conroy (16:12.031)
Sure. Yeah.

Bill Shander (16:33.164)
You know, you’re probably not talking to judges when you’re marketing, right? So maybe they’re not on the list or maybe or maybe actually, I don’t know. I’m putting a billboard up in my city where my firm lives and the judge I know drives on that highway every day going to work. So I kind of know where they live. Maybe maybe I am talking to them. So this brings up an important point about stakeholders. You have to assemble your entire list of stakeholders in priority order.

Karin Conroy (16:35.989)
Right.

Karin Conroy (16:50.291)
Karin Conroy (16:54.611)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (17:01.747)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (17:02.028)
The judge may pass that sign every day. I bet I’m not piss him off, but at the same time, they’re probably not who I’m really talking to. So at every moment.

Karin Conroy (17:08.327)
Right. It could also be, the one I would want to add to that list is your referral sources. So maybe you have this referral source that sends you 80 % of your business. You very much should be speaking to them on a regular basis. And that should be a different conversation and message than your potential clients. Like these are totally different stuff.

Bill Shander (17:14.382)
yeah.

Bill Shander (17:27.182)
100%. And there are more stakeholders. There’s the media. There’s the law school in your town. There’s so many potential stakeholders. And you have to assemble that list, prioritize the list, and then, yes, pick the channel and pick in that channel who you’re really talking to. Because, the billboard may be all about, I’m in Albuquerque right now or outside of Albuquerque. And I think it’s because of, you know,

Karin Conroy (17:31.806)
Sure.

Yeah.

Bill Shander (17:54.978)
Better Call Saul and the other shows. can’t slip after. Yeah, but long story short, yeah, exactly. There’s a very strong culture here of billboards for ambulance chaser, ambulance chasing lawyers. So long story short, billboards may be very well targeted towards potential clients, fine. But then, your thought leadership might be oriented towards more of like a corporate.

Karin Conroy (18:02.549)
I’ll think of it in like 10 minutes.

Yes. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (18:22.506)
Yep.

Bill Shander (18:22.734)
whether it’s an in-house legal team buying your services or da-da-da-da. Long story short, who are you talking to and who are you talking to right now? And you just said it, what is the one banana right now for that audience that’s gonna do the trick? And everything else is noise and nonsense. And so you gotta strip it away, focus, or maybe you have ancillary messaging, et cetera, but yeah, you gotta have that one banana really prominently placed.

Karin Conroy (18:34.141)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (18:50.715)
And I want to be clear about the one banana. It sounds really simple, but it’s these simple things that are the most complicated to figure out the messaging. So when you were talking about, know, it’s, you know, the, the other stuff is the noise and nonsense or I, I’m not sure if that’s a direct quote, but that is the hardest part of the work. And most firms I’ve been working with for many years will bring all the noise and nonsense. And that’s fine because we have to sort through it, but we are not going to.

Take the noise and nonsense and not work through that and clear that out of the way and end up with the message that includes the noise and nonsense. You have to make sure that that is, you know, that’s the work that you have to do in your marketing. Figuring out word for word which one is really necessary.

Bill Shander (19:34.328)
So.

Bill Shander (19:39.33)
Yeah, that’s my favorite quote of all time. I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time, right? It takes time to edit. Yeah, that too. Now, what’s interesting is that, you know, on the visual side of things, if you recognize that pretentive response and then therefore decide to always design your visuals in a minimal way, you’re essentially starting from less.

Karin Conroy (19:46.119)
Exactly. Yes. That is the life story of most lawyers too.

Karin Conroy (20:03.689)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Shander (20:06.914)
That’s the advice I give in design is do less. And so if you start from less stuff, then it takes less time to edit. So if lawyers could find a way to be more concise when they make their requests of their marketing people, when you start with less, it does become easier and less time consuming to get to that one banana, but it’s never simple.

Karin Conroy (20:30.013)
It’s never simple. And that world that you’re describing, the if lawyers could start with less, man, I dream of that land. have never personally seen that happen. So, you know, that is idyllic, but I don’t know if it can happen. I mean, the reality usually is the opposite. And sometimes it’s not. But the other thing I like to say,

Bill Shander (20:39.65)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (20:43.234)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (20:48.447)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (20:59.689)
just kind of to reinforce that idea is that the luxury and prestige and confidence is quiet. And the less that you say, it rises you to an elevated position as opposed to when you’re grasping and desperate and.

you know these people that you’ve seen in like networking events who just cannot stop talking and you just like slowly back away and you’re like, stop, stop, like just shh. You don’t want to come across that way in your marketing where you’ve got way too many words and you just sound desperate and then you sound cheap. So that’s the kind of like, you know, reality I try to bring to the conversation so that

It’s not like I’m trying to take these words away from you because I’m lazy or we’re trying to do something that is easier or something. We’re trying to really elevate your brand and make it look confident and strong and some kind of prestigious, elevated, elegant kind of version of it. yeah. Yes.

Bill Shander (22:11.628)
Yeah, which comes back to, by the way, the idea of thought, thought leadership, because, you know, if there was like this new thing out there, like AI, let’s say, and, you know, if a new brand comes along and says, let me, let me tell you the hundred different ways why we figured this thing out. And it does take, it does take time to explain and it’s, but then eventually they become really guys who understand this thing. But eventually you become, if you’re lucky, you become McKinsey.

Karin Conroy (22:26.749)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (22:38.762)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (22:39.09)
And you know, that’s not legal. I know. But like in that world, you know, the old, the old quote, never, nobody ever got fired for hiring McKinsey. McKinsey’s brand stands for we know everything. We know business. And so they didn’t even have to say anything anymore. They just have to their logo on it. Right. And so law firms, can do the same thing. Like if you own a space and maybe you to say a few extra words now, but probably not. But then over time you own it and like you really can get away with saying literally almost nothing.

Karin Conroy (22:50.461)
Yes.

Yep. Yep.

Karin Conroy (23:06.803)
Yeah, I love that idea because I even heard the other day, someone was, we were having the same conversation and they were saying something about the same idea in regards to Apple. And they’re like, listen, Apple doesn’t even use the Apple anymore. Like Apple doesn’t have to say anything. They just throw their logo on it and there’s a line out the door. So that’s the goal, you know? And I feel like, you know, Apple, when it comes to branding is kind of overused and we always talk about it.

Bill Shander (23:26.584)
Yeah.

It’s true.

Karin Conroy (23:36.115)
but there’s a reason for that too. Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about how to get the attention and how to stop the scroll. So I kind of started at the beginning where like, you know, you’re imagining all these people who are, there’s so much content going out, especially on LinkedIn and everybody’s trying all these different things. And most of it gets ignored. Most of it doesn’t even make it to certain people’s kind of scroll feed.

Bill Shander (23:37.656)
There’s a reason exactly. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:06.375)
So what works and I thought it was actually interesting also that you mentioned that like it changes all the time with LinkedIn and three, five years ago, we would have had an entirely different show and we would have been talking about totally different stuff, but it does feel like LinkedIn changes, like totally changes what they are doing and want. It’s a totally different story in the last couple of years, right?

Bill Shander (24:18.222)
100%.

Bill Shander (24:29.646)
Yeah, it’s so true. You know, when they came out with the short form video, the vertical video that they sort of started to emphasize, if you did a video, you’re gonna get a bazillion interactions on that. Now, everyone’s doing video, it’s all over the place, and so you’re not guaranteed anything. But video does seem to still be a good place to be, a good thing to use.

Karin Conroy (24:37.769)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:42.73)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (24:53.585)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s the note your numbers are always higher with a video. Yeah.

Bill Shander (24:58.7)
Yeah. Now, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned recently, and so because I’m a LinkedIn learning instructor, I get some of the inside scoop on what’s going on at LinkedIn.

Karin Conroy (25:09.196)
is that like an official LinkedIn, like through LinkedIn title? What is that? LinkedIn, okay.

Bill Shander (25:13.614)
Yeah, so LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning is their learning platform. So if you’re a premium subscriber to LinkedIn, you have access to LinkedIn Learning. It is an enormous library of courses, online courses. So any topic you would ever want to find in technology design, nowadays business as well, you know, if you want to learn about just about anything, you can go to LinkedIn Learning, you’ll find courses from vetted,

Karin Conroy (25:20.124)
okay.

Karin Conroy (25:29.008)
awesome.

Bill Shander (25:41.486)
course creators. It’s more like a publishing model. It’s not like anybody can create a course up there. I have like a dozen courses up there on data storytelling, data visualization and related topics. And it’s a really good quality for the most part. Long story short, because I have this affiliation officially with LinkedIn, I do get some inside scoop on what’s going on. Not much more than the average person to be perfectly honest. I wish I got more. But one thing I have heard about and seen

Karin Conroy (25:42.893)
nice.

Karin Conroy (25:49.23)
cool.

Karin Conroy (26:06.612)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (26:10.574)
confirmed in my real life is definitely commenting now is way more powerful. And so, you know, if you if there is somebody, you know, let’s say your law firm is specializes in, you know, environmental law in this very particular niche, and there’s a very prominent story in that world and the journalist has written in the Atlantic or the Wall Street Journal or wherever that person is going to get a lot of action on their post. When you’re the person commenting on that.

Karin Conroy (26:14.845)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Shander (26:38.956)
you’re going to get a lot more visibility than if you did a poster on your own. So that’s one.

Karin Conroy (26:42.547)
It’s like you’re dovetailing on the attention that that other post gets and you’re like, hey, me too. Let me grab, like hook my wagon onto the traffic of that post. Yeah. I think that’s something totally different from other platforms. Like that’s, that’s unique to LinkedIn.

Bill Shander (26:51.692)
Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Shander (26:58.862)
It really is. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really powerful and it’s very valuable. And the thing about it though, is you don’t want to just, you know, like the old, the spammy way to do that, of course, is, you know, buy my book link post, you know, like no one’s looking at that. Like that’s not going to work. But if, know, there’s this really interesting conversation going on, cause this interesting article about your area of expertise and you drop in a comma that says, yo, this is so interesting. And here’s my point of view, blah, blah, blah. Here’s why I know about this stuff. Then.

Karin Conroy (27:12.699)
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Bill Shander (27:27.778)
That’s gonna be really powerful for sure. And you’ll see bigger engagement numbers and people will be clicking on those links if you do include links.

Karin Conroy (27:29.437)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (27:34.473)
Yeah, I feel like kind of hand in hand with that, the thing that you see on LinkedIn, unique to LinkedIn is this like two layers of removed behavior that your friends of your friends are doing. So like, I will see a post and I’m like, why am I seeing this? And I can see that someone I know commented on that, which I actually really love. Cause it’s like you, your kind of network is rippling out and you can see all of the stuff that you’re

relations are doing. And so I feel like that’s something LinkedIn really encourages also. So when you’re commenting, your network is going to see that. And then when you comment on the stuff your network is commenting on, LinkedIn’s like, yes, that’s what we wanted you to do. And you kind of get rewarded for that. What else should people be doing specific to LinkedIn that is different and

does a better job in terms of their own posts and content and just getting attention and making things work better.

Bill Shander (28:43.426)
Yeah. I mean, one other thing I will say that is definitely sort of in line with the evolution of LinkedIn right now, you you go on LinkedIn and on the right hand side, they have the top news items, right? And, you know, LinkedIn isn’t becoming a news platform per se, but the news and that sort of that idea of really bringing information to people in addition to just connecting people.

Karin Conroy (28:57.631)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (29:12.233)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Shander (29:12.82)
is growing. And so I would pay attention to that news panel. And once again, if there is something in there, because that’s it, there’s a human editorial team at LinkedIn picking those stories. Yeah, and sort of deciding what sort of lives in there. And what they do is they so they, you again, someone wrote an article about some environmental law, environmental issue, it shows up over there, that’s going to get a lot of extra eyeballs. And once again, if you comment,

Karin Conroy (29:26.254)
okay, interesting.

Yeah.

Bill Shander (29:43.046)
on that, then you’re going to get more visibility. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the LinkedIn news team, that your comment won’t just be a comment, that’ll actually elevate your post to be a post that shows up when someone clicks on that link.

Karin Conroy (29:58.349)
awesome. Okay.

Bill Shander (29:59.988)
that’s super, super powerful. It’s rare, but if you’re like the legal expert in XYZ commenting on this, then guess what? You might have a better chance of actually getting elevated to that sort of prime position.

Karin Conroy (30:13.149)
Yeah, perfect. Okay, so I know you talk a lot about data and storytelling. And the other thing that I see specific to LinkedIn, or working better, I suppose, on LinkedIn is carousels. So instead of a video, you kind of got a bunch of slides and you’re explaining stuff. And we use these a lot for law firms because sometimes they do have this really specialized kind of work. Like they may be doing personal injury, but it’s a very specific kind or whatever they’re doing is

kind of complicated and they need to explain it a little bit more. And these like carousels as you click through can kind of very cleanly and simply, you know, tell sort of a story of what this is and explain it. And I find, can you talk about if those are more successful? It seems like they’re more successful on LinkedIn. And then what should we be doing for something like that? Some piece of content like that.

Bill Shander (31:09.73)
Yeah, it’s a question. you know, I here’s the way I tend to judge features, especially on LinkedIn and other platforms that are like that. If it’s still around six months later, it must be working. You know, and so to the risk averse lawyers who are like, why would I invest in doing this new crazy thing because it might disappear tomorrow? That happens a lot on LinkedIn. But the carousels are still around. That seems like a good sign. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (31:22.846)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (31:29.789)
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Carousels have been around for a while too. I, I, I’d easily say a couple years, right? Yeah.

Bill Shander (31:38.206)
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, they definitely are working. And I don’t have the numbers to back it up. But clearly, just by for that reason alone, I think they’re working. I know that I click through them sometimes. And I’m very like, I’m more of a scroller. I don’t really jump into things too often. So the advice there is this, you know, a carousel is like a slide deck, right? You can only look at one thing at a time. And how do you construct a narrative that’s going to capture attention?

Karin Conroy (31:47.805)
Yeah, same.

Karin Conroy (31:52.799)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (32:02.228)
Yes.

Bill Shander (32:07.234)
Do you start with a, wow, this crazy thing happened, now let me tell you why. Do you start with an intriguing image and sort of build to some sort of a climax? There is no right or wrong way to tell a story, in my personal opinion. All those different methods can work. But obviously you wanna capture people’s attention. So that first slide, matter, whichever approach you take, and there are 12 other ways to do it, that first slide, boy, it better be compelling.

which gets back to what we said earlier. If it’s an image in that carousel and it’s got a paragraph of text and six point type, that’s probably not gonna capture my interest, right? If it’s a picture of Seth Godin in purple going, with a single banana saying, you need this, I wonder why I might click through. So.

Karin Conroy (32:43.893)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (32:50.633)
With a banana. Yes. It’s like, what? Exactly. Yeah. I think that’s the kind of reaction you’re looking for is people to look at a thing and say, what? Like, what is it? And then to click through to the second slide. So, yeah, it should. Yes.

Bill Shander (33:07.468)
Yeah. It’s very audience focused back to the beginning of our conversation. Like, know, for your referral partners, it’s gonna be a different thing is gonna be successful as opposed to your potential clients, as opposed to et cetera.

Karin Conroy (33:15.283)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (33:19.965)
Right. And it should be, you should have two totally different messages that are speaking to both of them and you should have a balance of that content. And so, you you’re doing both at the same time, not at the same, in the same moment, but in your overall marketing campaigns and strategy and all of that stuff. Okay. So it is time for the book review. I know you have a good one and we have a whole library. If you haven’t checked this out of all the guests have a good book.

Bill Shander (33:37.528)
Yeah, for sure.

Karin Conroy (33:49.173)
And this book goes back, so what is the one that you’re going to recommend for the library today?

Bill Shander (33:55.042)
Yeah, so I think it’s one of the most important books in the 21st century. You know, we’re early in the century ish, but I really think it’s a big, big, big deal. And so, you know, it written by Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, and it is called Thinking Fast and Slow. And should I explain the book or? Okay. So yeah, the basic idea of thinking fast and slow is that human beings have two systems of thinking, essentially. The first one.

Karin Conroy (33:59.57)
wow.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (34:13.841)
Yes, I, yeah, okay.

Bill Shander (34:24.366)
is fast thinking. In other words, that’s like when someone yells duck and you duck like it’s the instinctive response. And that’s really powerful. It works super, super well. That’s how we avoid getting hit by baseballs, right? And so we don’t die and therefore our genes get passed on. Now, the other system is called slow thinking. That’s where duck isn’t quite sufficient for the task at hand like at work when you’re a lawyer, you know, your instinctive response probably isn’t doing most of work, you’re probably slowing things down.

Karin Conroy (34:28.937)
Yeah, yes, yeah.

Bill Shander (34:54.51)
thinking things through, being analytical and reasoning. Unfortunately, as Kahneman explains, we’re not very good at slow thinking. As much as we think we are, we’re in fact always being driven by our subconscious. And in fact, there’s another book, The Enigma of Reason, which I would add to the list if I had two slots. All right, The Enigma of Reason makes the case very compellingly that we don’t reason at all, that we essentially don’t do slow thinking, that

Karin Conroy (35:04.529)
No. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (35:14.173)
Okay, well, we’ll definitely add that in the notes.

Bill Shander (35:24.16)
Every time we think we’re reasoning, hear myself thinking and I sound pretty smart to myself in my own head. But what’s actually happening is I’ve already decided subconsciously what I’m going to do. And what I’m doing now is simply convincing myself that that was the right choice. So.

Karin Conroy (35:28.945)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (35:36.417)
Yes. There’s another book that I love called Predictably Irrational. Have you read this one? gosh. Okay. I’m going to send that one to you afterwards, but same idea. And he goes through case studies that explain it oftentimes from a marketing perspective of basically how you are convincing yourself of the logic of your irrationality. Like you are making these decisions and you think it’s rational. And he has this great example that I’m hoping I can explain in like 30 seconds or less.

Bill Shander (35:41.334)
I have not read that one. Okay. All right.

Bill Shander (35:56.814)
There you go.

Karin Conroy (36:05.821)
of like a magazine to subscription and you have offer A and you have offer B and then there’s a third offer that makes no sense. And the third offer that makes no sense is to convince you of offer A because offer B is too much, offer A is okay, but offer C is just like, wait, no, that makes no sense. So for sure I’ll do offer A. Offer A without offer C makes no more or less sense than offer B.

Bill Shander (36:14.51)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (36:19.586)
Right.

Karin Conroy (36:34.389)
So you’re still making this irrational, illogical decision, but you’ve just got a thing that makes you feel better about it. And so it’s not logic. It’s just your sort of emotions. And that’s what I think where a lot of lawyers with marketing and everything get tripped up is they really want it to come back to this logic and this analytical thinking. But it’s really not that that’s not what’s happening. It’s these emotions and this really impulsive

Bill Shander (36:45.538)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (37:03.869)
choices that just make you feel a certain way.

Bill Shander (37:06.274)
Yeah. Which brings up, by the way, a third book, is influenced as that’s right for influence, the psychology of persuasion by Robert Cialdini classic. you know, yeah. And, know, he explains like the six categories of influence, like the types of things that do work. And in the end, yeah, it’s all about the subconscious and emotion. And so, but knowing some of that stuff can be helpful in marketing, obviously, because it helps you sort of reach your audience. By the way, one of the most important ones is expertise authority.

Karin Conroy (37:09.557)
We’re at four now. Yeah.

I love that. Yes, we had that one on last week.

Karin Conroy (37:24.137)
Yeah. Yes.

Karin Conroy (37:36.243)
Yes. Yes.

Bill Shander (37:36.45)
which gets us back to thought leadership. So like, especially in a complex sale, like a, like a lawyer, you know, you become the known expert. Obviously people are going to hire you, you know, who would you hire if you needed to build a house on a cliff or if you needed, you know, gallbladder surgery, you’re probably gonna want somebody who knows what they’re doing.

Karin Conroy (37:44.583)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (37:51.155)
Yeah, not just a guy who went to med school for a few days. You want the guy who specialized in gallbladders. Here’s what I’ll say. Here’s what I’ll say about thinking fast and slow. I used to have a whole separate podcast with a couple of guys I went to business school with, and we covered this book and this was more than 10 years ago. And I did not like it because Kahneman, he is this Nobel prize winning economist and he is very

Bill Shander (37:55.532)
Right. Right. And they’ve done a thousand of them.

Karin Conroy (38:20.563)
like academic. is, the book is, it’s hard to get through. But these ideas, so now as I’m like aging, I can appreciate it. These ideas, I really firmly like in my core believe that this is where marketing is going. Marketing historically has been this intrusive, really interrupting,

kind of concept where we’re in the middle of a show and we’re gonna throw in a commercial. We are gonna like get in your face and be that ambulance chasing lawyer who has the billboard by the side of the freeway and we’re just gonna try to intrude on your thoughts. And I don’t think that’s what anybody wants anymore. And what they want is this longer term thought and strategy about how you connect with my goals and my

needs and how I feel when I work with you and the law firms that understand that difference about where and that used to work, but I don’t think it’s working as much anymore. And the ones who understand that difference, number one, you’re just going to have a better existence. Like that’s just a better way to live in general. And that’s that longer term, slow thinking that Kahneman is talking about, but it also is going to work in the age of AI.

And I’m telling you, we weren’t gonna make a big conversation about AI in this episode, but that’s what AI wants to see. AI wants to see that you’re a long tail expert on these things that you’ve been around. You’re on these different platforms. You’re not just doing this like hot take on this topic. So that’s my philosophy on picking fast and slow. I originally could not stand the book. So I will not blame anyone if you just get like the Cliffs Notes on it.

Bill Shander (40:05.102)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (40:11.597)
and take the big picture idea. isn’t it like 1,200 pages or some ridiculous, like a textbook? Yeah. Thank you.

Bill Shander (40:19.362)
It’s a long book. It is fairly academic and no one needs to actually read it. I actually 100 % agree. When I say it’s one of the most important books, it’s like one of the most important things is you need to learn the 60 seconds of ideas from it and then you’re done. Like it’s okay. Oh, what’s funny is that Kahneman is like, he’s like a standup comic compared to that other book I mentioned, The Enigma of Reason. That one, you want academic. That one, I couldn’t even understand half of it. So, you know.

Karin Conroy (40:31.904)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Karin Conroy (40:46.293)
Do you like to punish yourself when you’re reading? sounds like you.

Bill Shander (40:48.514)
No, no. What’s funny is I used to have this inability to put a book down if I didn’t like it. So I did finish the Enigma of Reason. If I read it today, I’d probably be like, OK, I get it. Good. But one thing I wanted to add. Yeah, exactly. You know, the point you just made is so so spot on. And, know, that’s one of the reasons LinkedIn is so powerful because I’m not in LinkedIn. I’m not watching TV trying to be entertained. And you’re interrupting me as much. I’m on LinkedIn. I saw someone.

Karin Conroy (40:55.397)
well, forget it. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, we didn’t need this to be 800 pages. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (41:09.299)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (41:14.484)
Yes.

Bill Shander (41:16.748)
write an article, dah, dah, dah. I clicked into it. That’s why the commenting and those other things are so powerful, because I’m clearly interested in this topic right now. And so you’re engaging with me and you’re bringing smarts to the table, not just injecting spam into it. Like, I appreciate that. Like, you’re adding to my experience, not taking away from

Karin Conroy (41:24.467)
Right.

Karin Conroy (41:35.763)
And I will remember that. And it is like you’re describing, it is very different than a lot of the other platforms, like any of, know, meta platforms, the Instagram or the Facebook, you’re likely on there doing something different. Like there’s something, you know, more personal about all of those platforms. And LinkedIn is very different. Like you’re feeling an intent when you’re on that platform is more professional and

like maybe trying to learn something or understand something or somehow related to your career and your profession, that’s a different feel than when you’re on some of those other platforms. All right, so Bill, what is the, we’ve covered a lot. What is one or two of the big takeaways that you would like people to get from this episode and then maybe something that they should.

Bill Shander (42:10.104)
percent.

Karin Conroy (42:24.361)
think differently about or do differently after they’ve listened to this episode. Like when they sit down and they’re like, Bill was saying I should do something, something. What is that? What would that be?

Bill Shander (42:36.044)
Yeah. So I think, you know, the biggest takeaways for me, think are certainly that, you know, communications is hard and especially if you’re communicating complex stuff, which lawyers are right. what you just said a moment ago though, like the way to cut through the noise is to realize that the complexity isn’t the important part. The you’re connecting with people emotionally. That’s, that’s really, really important.

Karin Conroy (42:59.111)
Yes. Yeah.

Bill Shander (43:01.326)
And so if you just remember that their subconscious is driving their response, and even though you may have to explain the complex stuff fine, or at least get the door open so you can have the meeting with them to explain the complex stuff, but you need to show that you’re an expert in this stuff, do it in a way that connects to them where they’re at, which is all about connecting to their subconscious and all the stuff that we talked about. One of the other things that I would add, which we haven’t really talked about, but it sort of ties into this,

just like the visual response is subconscious and pretentive, just like we all think fast, so it’s all subconscious. We also have to recognize that that fast thinking, constantly driving the bus, both visual and otherwise, means that we need to question everything. So no matter what you’re doing, at every moment, assume that what you’re doing might be wrong. And so, you know,

Karin Conroy (43:44.658)
Yes.

Bill Shander (43:54.81)
This might be a really good LinkedIn post. This might be a really good idea for a billboard. This might be a bad, bad, Whoa, hold on pause. And the way I phrase it, as I would encourage you all to engage what I call your useful paranoia at every moment, stop and ask yourself, wait, what, what might be wrong about this? Am I being too overwhelming? Is this too complex? Am I not tapping into their subconscious? Am I, am I using the wrong colors? Am I putting the logo in the wrong place?

And everyone will just pause for a second. You don’t have like drive yourself completely crazy, which you can’t, but just pause and you know, bring in Karin or somebody else who can help you sort of think through through these things. But you know, slow it down. Even though we’re not good at slow thinking, do the best you can.

Karin Conroy (44:38.173)
Yeah, because just to add to that, because where it might be wrong is that you’re putting your all your own stuff as this overlay into why you’ve decided to do that thing at that time. And it could be that, hey, I saw this competitor of mine post about this thing and it made me really jealous. And I’m not gonna actually say that out loud. I’m just gonna have this feeling in my gut and I feel like I’m

behind or jealous or whatever. And that is not the way to drive a marketing campaign. This is a bad start. So like add this idea that it might be wrong because of the lens you’re viewing it through. And so take this step back and then question it and say, okay. And I love that idea of questioning it and what am I seeing also when it comes to AI. And I feel like when I ask and question AI and say, ask,

Bill Shander (45:12.846)
Yeah, very true.

Karin Conroy (45:34.129)
AI to tell me what am I missing? I get so much good stuff. I’m like, my gosh, you are so right. I never even thought about that. And that’s, then like there, it’ll, it’ll give me five ideas. And I’m like, three of them are like, no, that is ridiculous. But one or two of them, I’m like, okay, yeah. All right. Definitely good. so question yourself, question AI, you know, all of that stuff. but I love that idea of like recognizing the lens that might not be the lens you actually want to be looking through stuff.

Bill Shander (45:41.56)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (46:04.083)
and then question that for sure. And then like all of a sudden, maybe it’s right or maybe it just needs a slight tweak, but now it’s better than it was before. Yeah, awesome. Bill Shander is an information designer. We will have all his links, the bajillion books that we mentioned in the episode, along with Thinking Fast and Slow, which like I said, I did not originally like, but I do think there’s so much core.

Bill Shander (46:11.266)
Yeah, 100%. Yep.

Karin Conroy (46:30.197)
theory there that is really relevant. And this book is easily 10 years old, right? I mean, this is not a recent one. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Yeah, so it’s a good one. And we’ll link to that in case you really want to just sit down and like, you you’re having sleep issues and you want to like take through it to whatever you want to do. But thank you so much. I think this was such a cool conversation.

Bill Shander (46:36.942)
Yeah, I think it’s 2011, 15 now. Yeah.

Bill Shander (46:47.771)
Yeah.

Bill Shander (46:54.574)
Thank you, it was fun.