Unlocking LinkedIn Success: Authenticity, Engagement, and Ghostwriting Insights

You know your expertise inside and out. But writing in a way that translates that expertise to the reader and impresses them is hard. Ghostwriting, also known as content writing, is a field of professional writing that provides you with the expert voice you need to ensure your company's success.

Today's guest, Emily Crookston of The Pocket Ph.D., shares how she serves clients through writing for LinkedIn, blogs, and business books. 

Ready to achieve your content goals? 

Emily’s LinkedIn Roadmap is a high-level audit of your LinkedIn profile, actionable recommendations, and a one-on-one call with me to answer any of your burning questions about leveraging LinkedIn. It's your first step to making LinkedIn really work for you.

Connect with Emily:

Website
LinkedIn

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Podcast Transcript:

Kiva Slade 0:01

Hello and welcome to collab with Kiva. I'm your host Kiva, Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing themed office chair. I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a legislative director for a member of Congress, policy director for a nonprofit, stay at home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry biz owner, and now the owner of a service based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line, or full of zigs and zags. Join me and my guest as we share insights hope in lessons learned from our email entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat? Let's dive in. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to this episode of collab with Kiva. I am excited today to present with you my guest, Emily Crookston. Emily is a ghostwriter for rebels, renegades and Mavericks. She helps experts who are long on ideas, but short on time, right business books. As the owner and decider of all things at the pocket PhD, Emily and her team collaborate with professionals in brands who are ready to take their LinkedIn networking to the next level. Together, they strategize and create content for LinkedIn based on their client's goals. Emily is also though a former philosophy professor. She is a speaker a podcast guests. And when she's not writing intensely, she's most likely practicing yoga intensely. And I've seen some of her yoga poses. She's she's she's really good at yoga. Yeah. She lives her coffee shops and playing great music to write to and desserts top with real whipped cream. So welcome to this show. Emily, how are you?

Emily Crookston 2:06

Thanks for having me came on. Great.

Kiva Slade 2:09

Sam. Okay, before we dive into the real meat of the thing, let's talk about the real whipped cream. How do you know that it's not real whipped cream? Or?

Emily Crookston 2:19

Here? Yeah, good question. I think I can taste it. But most most likely, I know, because I've made it. Take it, you know, you get the little carton from the store. You whip it up with your mixer, you add the amount of sugar that you want you add them to know that you want or the flavors. And so I just think it's so much tastier than like Cool Whip.

Kiva Slade 2:40

Yeah, I have to agree. For marshmallows. Like literally one time I took the expert like Martha Stewart like really made marshmallows. And I was like, What is this other stuff them but I've been eating that's been called marshmallows. does not taste like that stuff. So I love that a person for a passion with desserts. We are besties I

Emily Crookston 3:04

love it. All right. So

Kiva Slade 3:06

now let's talk about one aspect of what you do, which is being a ghostwriter. And for those that don't know like, to me ghost writing is I don't know having its moment in the sun. There's been an article in Forbes like all the things like how did you become a ghost writer and maybe even first them about he is what is the ghost writer?

Emily Crookston 3:25

Yeah, I get this question a lot, because I think people don't generally encounter ghost writers that much out in the real world, the wild if you will. And I honestly didn't know that ghostwriting was a job you could have until I kind of stumbled into it myself. So yeah, you mentioned that I used to be a professor. And when I was ready to leave academia, I said, Hmm, what did I want to do before I wanted to be a philosophy professor? And the answer was, Well, when I was 13, I thought marketing was cool. So I said, Well, let me see about marketing. And I kind of had in mind that I would find a job but a marketing agency, something like that. But what happened was a friend of us friend was looking for marketing help. And she owns a small web development marketing company. And she was looking for people to help write her blog and blog for her clients. And so I started out as a ghost blogger, basically. And you know, it to me, it was content marketing, you know, it wasn't exactly ghost anything at the time. But then at some point, someone called me a ghostwriter. And I said, Oh, right. That's what I do. So basically, you know, I just I write in your voice, I help you kind of figure out how you want to present yourself with the LinkedIn content. For example, you know, we meet with you once a month, we talk about your goals for the month or if you have any events coming up, and then we create posts that you can actually post yourself on your LinkedIn. So you know, we're like the behind the scenes little elves creating content for you. And we You want it to sound like you because we want you to be able to own it. And that's especially important when I get into the book, ghost writing, I never want to write a book where someone is like, Oh, this doesn't feel like me. Because then they're, they're not gonna be excited to publish it, they're not gonna want to talk about it. And that's the whole point of writing a book, a business book, at least.

Kiva Slade 5:18

Right. So that leads me though to another question. When especially in the book writing part, like, how do they have ideas, I guess ahead of time when they come to you? Or do they have material ahead of time? And you kind of vibe off of that? Or do you create from scratch?

Emily Crookston 5:37

Yeah, yes, good question. Yeah, ideally, they bring me lots of material, they have all kinds of stuff that they can share, so that I can wrap my mind around their tone, that you know who they are as a business owner. Most most of my clients are business owners. You know, what, what they're really trying to get across in this book. So I require them to come to me with an outline. And that can be really high level, sometimes it's just, here's some names of chapters that I think this book needs to have. And then you know, our work is to come together and collaborate to figure out, what's the theme of this book, what are the threads that we want to pull through and make sure show up kind of in every chapter. But some clients, you know, they come with really detailed outlines, they have tons of presentations that they've given that they know, have good material that I can use, but my process is really collaborative. So we meet weekly for 16 weeks. And in that time, I can usually pull out, you know, everything that I need to do go away and do the writing for them. And if they are comfortable checking in, they know that, you know, they're reading along as I'm writing. So that's helpful as well. And they could say, that doesn't sound like me. And I could say, Okay, what would you say instead? And they go from there, we kind of edit back and forth. Some clients like to do a bit of the writing as well. And I'm totally open to that. So yeah, it's a really collaborative process.

Kiva Slade 6:59

Oh, wow, that sounds awesome. Now, you said in there 16 weeks. So you mean to tell me that you get people from Hey, how you doing? I want to write a book. And here's the master to hey, here's your draft. Yes, like in format?

Emily Crookston 7:14

Yes, that's right. 16 weeks, I think that's one of the main benefits of my system. And I've done it with several authors. So I know that it can be done. I know that it works. Really, I'd like to get a full draft done in eight weeks. And then we have eight weeks to edit, move things around. And you know that first eight weeks is tough. You know, when you're just working on a messy draft, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of like, ooh, anxiety is this going to work out. But I really comfortable that when I get done like 40,000 words, that's what I suggest. That's about 100 250 pages printed. For this for business book, it's a good length, someone can read it in the afternoon if they wanted to. So in eight weeks, we get those words on the page, and then I'm pretty confident we can figure out the rest from there.

Kiva Slade 8:05

It is amazing, Emily, I'm just like, all in shock and awe over here. Like I've never thought of ever writing a book. But maybe you know.

Emily Crookston 8:17

I mean, a book is a snapshot of your brain. And I think a lot of DIY authors, new authors make the mistake of spending too much time because if you work on it in you know, you leave it for a month, you come back, it's like starting over, you know, it's much better just to find a block of time, where you know, you can dedicate a couple hours a day and work on it. And you know, most people are good at working out a couple hours a day, you can get it done in a few months, even by yourself. And that's what I record, you know, a draft a messy draft, but you know, you feel so good when you get to that stage of like,

Kiva Slade 8:52

oh, yeah, I got the words. Yeah, that's totally it. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so that was super exciting. And thank you for that. Because I don't know if everybody knows what a ghost writer is. And I love what you were like, Yeah, I started as a ghost blogger. And just in my mind, I have like little Pac Man ghost figures going around, like, you know, in my head. I'm not sure if you were like, or Pinky or Inky, or whatever. Right? Blogging to ghost writing. I love that though. Because there are a lot of us who we have a lot of ideas. And obviously, social media plays a huge role in that and how we show up and we know the longevity of a blog post. And you know, there's so much there. But yeah, it takes time to actually write those things out. And you have like it some of us, myself included, I have notebooks of ideas, but it's like, yeah, will they ever see the light of day or late I literally have a sticky note here like literally said content, because two things happened last week and has like, Please would make two great posts. Yes, the sticky note has traveled with me, like out of town. back to town, okay, from a bag to like now my desk, but even then it's to the right of my desk still not here. So will it become content? Maybe one day? I don't know. Hopefully this like sticky goes don't eat it because like, literally that's what has happened. Okay, so speaking of that, though, one other thing that you do is really helping people with LinkedIn. And, you know, let's be honest, a lot of us as business owners, that's where we're hanging out. Okay, so we're hanging out on LinkedIn, trying to LinkedIn has algorithms, people, I don't know, if you knew that there's like, one for their mobile one for desktop, like, we're gonna one day just die from an algorithm. I guess, like not a aneurism, it's an algorithm. That's what's gonna take us all out. So each platform being different, but your specialization is in LinkedIn. So talk to me about like, what are your top three tips for using LinkedIn to grow one's business? Sure, yeah.

Emily Crookston 11:01

Good question. Um, yeah. So before the pit, when the pandemic hit, I decided I got to take all my networking online, because most of my business came through networking. And so LinkedIn was the obvious choice to start with. And so my first tip, if you're getting started with LinkedIn, is choose a really simple goal that you know, you can stick to, my goal was just consistency. So show up Monday through Friday, post something Monday through Friday. In the beginning, it was like it doesn't even matter what, what I post anything. That was my goal just to be there. Because when you do that, you automatically start to notice things, you start to notice patterns, you start to learn, oh, this worked better than this thing. Oh, posting it this time work better at that time, going back to the algorithm idea. Yeah, it turns out that LinkedIn first shows your posts to people in your local market. So for me that I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, so people in Chapel Hill and people in Durham people in Raleigh, right, it shows my connections, my stuff first. And so that means a lot of people also check their LinkedIn right before they go into the office. So like eight to 9am is a really good time to be posting on LinkedIn, during the week. So that's, that's one tip, like pick consistency, and then start to notice patterns, take notes, that kind of thing. The other tip I would give is, don't get too obsessed with algorithm. Because that can make social media really not fun really quickly. And I really think we should keep the social and social media, you know, LinkedIn is best used as a networking platform, if you look at it as a place to, you know, DM people who might be good prospects, cold, cold leads and things like that, it's gonna be a lot less fun, not that you shouldn't make offers, you definitely should tell people what you do, and show them how you do it on LinkedIn. But you don't want to get too bogged down in the numbers. So pick your goals. So once you've got that first simple goal, you might step up to a little more complicated goal, like maybe you want to get to, you know, 500 connections, or you want to get to 800 connections. And so you know, you want to start connecting more with people to hit those goals. But that's the number you're looking at, right? You're not looking so much at post views, post views help you get connections, but they're not the end all be all. And post views, honestly, are just a vanity metric. And if you start comparing your post views to other people's post views, it can start to really feel bad. So you know, if you just focus on your goals and the numbers that support those goals, that's what you should care about. And then you can have fun, and then you can look at, oh, look, my posts got a bunch of comments, and we had some great conversations that helps you get connections, you know, so there's a lot of stuff that's not as measurable on LinkedIn that I think would be is is more important.

Kiva Slade 14:01

Right? So you definitely, though advocate, like, you should respond to people who comment on your posts, because I see that some people are like, Oh, I'm not responding. But I mean, that's where that's that conversation, like you were saying, and like that's that networking that's taking place.

Emily Crookston 14:17

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's another good point. If you if you just post and you never engage with people on the platform, your posts aren't going to do as well, first of all, but also, you know, that, again, this is a platform for networking. And if you went to a networking group, you know, in person kind of event and just shouted, you know, whatever your posts for the day or you know, your billboard thing and then left the room. You would never do that. Right. So you can't do that online either. Expect to have goals are expected to meet your goals, I should

Kiva Slade 14:51

say. I love that example, though. Yeah.

Emily Crookston 14:54

Yeah, I mean, you can literally think about what you would do at an in person networking group and do it on LinkedIn. and you'll have a lot of success. So that's the third tip engagement is even more important than posting. So if you just like stuck, and you're like, Ah, I don't know what I want to say today, don't worry about it, just go in and engage with other people for the 20 minutes or whatever you are going to spend writing that post. That's super valuable. And the algorithm rewards you for engagement.

Kiva Slade 15:23

Oh, I love that. Because there are days when I'm looking at the keyboard, and I'm like, Yeah, I know, my stickies over there, probably have another one somewhere else, but I really just nothing is flowing. There's just so I love that you say just engage, like, I love the voice message feature in the DM. So like when I get a new client, you know, connection? I leave a voice memo, you know, and it's just like, it's super quick, because you're only allowed to talk for a minute. So hello, well, yeah, you know, like, I have to be quick witted, and we're moving on. But like you said, I've at least done something. And instead of just staring at my keyboard, which does nothing as it relates to my LinkedIn, so Exactly.

Emily Crookston 16:09

Different. Networking, you know, you're starting conversations, that's another kind of networking, it's not, doesn't always have to be about posting,

Kiva Slade 16:18

right. I love that. And I love when you have, I've seen and been a part of when you comment on someone else's posts and someone like tag someone else. And then you have like, now you've met someone who you wouldn't have met. Otherwise, because you both weren't connections, you might have been second connections to someone else. And that's how that kind of formed and then you meet someone who now you guys become first thing and you're like, oh, my gosh, we have so much to come have we never met before. It's like such this exciting, you know, just feeling that happens. Because it's like, wow, I just met some really cool person. And it literally was in a comment on someone else's post. That wasn't even my post. But like I said, it's like that networking in what takes place from that. So I love that. So what has surprised you the most about LinkedIn since you started using it almost two years ago?

Emily Crookston 17:12

Hmm, uh, yeah, I think what surprised me the most is how much I like using it. I, you know, social media has, I'm an elder millennial. I, you know, I had I checked my email once a week when I was in college, you know, that's, that's the level of things. And so when Facebook came along, I think was in graduate school. And I was always kind of resistant and hesitant to any kind of social media to be honest. I'm a late adopter. So, so yeah, so I, you know, I always thought, you know, I tried using Facebook, for social media for my business at the, in the beginning. And it was fine. You know, I did the same kind of experiments where I played around, I did video, even though I was very much like, Okay, I hate to be on camera, I don't want to do this. But I was doing some Facebook Live kinds of things for a while. But you know, when I moved over to LinkedIn, you know, having that idea that, you know, this is just an experiment, let's see how it goes. And then discovering that people, people are so much nicer on LinkedIn, then on Facebook, first of all, they don't have to worry about people jumping down your throat with everything that you say, people are, like, massively supportive of what you say, in most cases, and if they disagree with you, they disagree with you politely. And it's like conversation. It's not, Oh, I hate you and disconnect, you're not going to be connected with me anymore. Whatever,

Kiva Slade 18:40

I'm no longer going to be your friend. Right.

Emily Crookston 18:44

It's very professional. And I think a large part because people want to show themselves as professional. So yeah, I've just kind of sort of hit my stride and been like, look, this is the social media platform that I've always looked for. Because I feel like because it's part of my business, it's easier to show up it feels more like I'm you know, I'm not just wasting time I'm not just fooling around and scrolling. I'm there for a purpose. Every time I come in there, it's much less distracting than other forms of social media for me I could scroll Instagram for hours and be like where did the time go that with LinkedIn so yeah,

Kiva Slade 19:22

I love that though that I do find that like you said, people are more supportive, um, you know, it is less distracting. And I think even for me, I start to try to utilize it like you know, kind of people list of people I want to interact with. So then I don't even have to be dependent upon what they put my feet I can kind of, you know, cherry pick who what I do there. So, I do think that that's really important as well. So I know for me, and I think a lot of people that I've heard in different circles like obviously 2022 And like here we are You know, in the second month of the year, they're wanting, you know, there might not be finding traction on Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Twitter. I don't even know what medium. I don't know, whatever else I forgot. Okay. All right. So and they're like, hey, you know what I used to use LinkedIn when I was in corporate or Oh, my goodness, I haven't been there in forever. Is it stuffy? Still? Like, there's obviously like different perceptions of what takes place on LinkedIn. And you have your LinkedIn purists who are like, don't ever post anything that looks like a real or feels very social in social media. Yeah. So but like, if those people are saying, hey, Emily, I need to want to, I think this where my clients are, I need to figure out how to be on this platform, you know, and you've shared three great tips like, what else is there? Or if there was like, two more things that you could share with people? What would it be?

Emily Crookston 21:04

Yeah, this is a really good point. So LinkedIn, you know, a lot of people think it's just for job seekers. And it's just for people looking for job candidates, right? It's very corporate, and you go there and you give your company update, or you know, you have to go there, because your marketing director says everybody needs to go to LinkedIn and comment on the company page, or whatever it is. But yeah, I've found that, you know, LinkedIn, your feed will definitely conform to what you want. That's the whole point of the algorithm. So if you want to find people who are more innovative people in your industry, who you know, you want to connect with, who haven't been able to connect with in real life, or whatever, they're there, and you can definitely seek them out, and you can start commenting on their stuff, and they'll start showing up in your feed, you know that that's the way to sort of get into using it, think about, you know, who you really want to connect with, or think about what you really want to get out of LinkedIn, and set those goals really carefully for yourself. Maybe it's getting more clients, and you know, your ideal client avatar that everybody has to think about that, like, you know, every other month or something, like adjusting that thing, right. And you know, you so you may have a search term that you can pop into LinkedIn, and you can start connecting with those people immediately. And you can, the other thing is you can watch what they're doing on LinkedIn and learn so much about their pain points, you can learn so much about how they talk, you know, all of that stuff is is just useful. And so you know, if you're just getting started with LinkedIn, or you're coming back after leaving a corporate job, or corporate job, or you're, you're you know, you're trying to get back into it, I'd say just just start by just hanging out out there. From from time to time, set yourself a goal, how much time do you have to give to this, you know, maybe it's 10 minutes a day, cool, you know, scroll through, do some searches, see what's out there, and take some notes. And you can use that later to kind of shape your presence on LinkedIn. The other thing I'd say is, it's been a while since you've been on there, you probably want to update your picture, you want to update your profile, your about section, that's really valuable real estate right there. So a lot of people you know, it's like their CV, it's written in the third person, you know, using she and him and that rather than I didn't write, just tell your story there because you know, it isn't your resume, your resume is something totally different. I haven't even seen a resume on LinkedIn, people just don't, they don't link to them or anything on there anymore. It's really like your personal brand. And you can think of it that way. Whether you own a business or not, you know, we're moving to a stage where people have personal brands, you know, you're 21 you graduated from college and you're thinking about, you know, who am I as a professional? That's really what what's out there on LinkedIn. So once you I think once you have a profile that really represents who you are, you'll feel more confident being on the platform, right?

Kiva Slade 24:17

Yeah, no, those are really great tips especially about your bad banner and your you know, your headline like literally people if someone lands on your site that literally is like this big old space real estate up there that people have like that LinkedIn grapheme, you know, like, thing that they put it. Yeah, and you're like you know, like, even if it's just your website address, or whatever it is, that is such prime real estate. So I love those tips that you've shared and really, I mean, I think it was one of the football games like LinkedIn. had a commercial on I am professional and it you know just showed people in different you know lights and it was like LinkedIn during the football game. So for those who might think it's stuffy platform definitely not they have like a new creator thing. There's like there's so many different bells and whistles. They now have audio like clubhouse like, there's so much happening there like don't think of it as like I don't know your grandfather or father's like LinkedIn, it has changed. You know, definitely feel free to come like a no dip your toes in the water and get over there. Alright, this has been great. Emily. So down tell us since you do work with people on LinkedIn, is there a way for folks to work with you? And what would that look like?

Emily Crookston 25:51

Yes, totally. So I've got basically three LinkedIn services. So the first one is a LinkedIn roadmap. And you can find that on my website, the pocket PhD comm. But the roadmap is basically an audit of your profile. So I'll go in, I'll look at every look everything over, I'll rewrite your about page, I'll tell you, you know, oh, you need a different photo, because of this, and this and this, whatever it is, we'll help you create a banner, if that's what you need, all of that stuff. And we're kind of give you tips for how you can, you know, improve your LinkedIn presence. And basically, that's just a one time engagement. It's a one on one, one on one call with me after I do the audit. And then I have a couple other ways to work with me, you can work monthly, where we're doing content creation and strategy for you we're meeting once a month, we're also doing some blogging for you. So we write to blogs, and then we create your LinkedIn posts based on those blogs based on our conversations. And then the third way is just LinkedIn posts. So we could do you know, we'll skip the blogging, and just do three months of LinkedIn posts for you to kind of get you started. It's almost like a boot camp. So you know, we give you all the strategy in theory, you could take our strategy and iterate, you know, keep using it for yourself. So it's kind of a LinkedIn boot camp, if you will, for three months.

Kiva Slade 27:12

I love that you guys like Emily's, she's intense with her yoga, so like, she's probably not gonna be Debbie Allen fame kind of boot camp. Right, there's definitely some intensity that's gonna happen in that camp.

Emily Crookston 27:28

Yeah,

Kiva Slade 27:30

I love that. And thanks so much for sharing, because I do sometimes feel like we need a a jumpstart, you know, to get us into that practice, and habit of how we need to show up there. And at first, it may feel overwhelming. So you know, starting with a really great audit, getting like that foundation together on LinkedIn, and then moving into some posting, I think is a wonderful like way to get there and get ourselves into that habit of how we need to show up, you know, so I think that's exciting. So all of those details, everyone will be in the show notes. And we'll make sure that have all of the links there. So you can definitely connect with Emily, you can connect with her on LinkedIn. Also, we'll make sure to share that as well in case you guys want to watch what she's doing and see what is happening over there as you take notes and figure out how you want to show up as your best self on LinkedIn. So Emily, thank you so much for sharing your digital wonderful knowledge with everyone today. And for those of you who are interested in ghostwriting, we will have that information as well. And hey, let's all get our you know, ideas out of sticky notes and actually create that content and or partner with Emily so that that content is created, and your best ideas are getting out into the world. So Emily, thanks again for joining us today and everyone make sure to check out the show notes and we will see you next time. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of collab with Kiva. You know my heart and it wants you to know that you are uniquely made and that your business path is unique to you. I hope that now you have some clear takeaways from this episode that have left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. If you are a small business owner and you are ready to build out your business playbook, and you're ready to document and delegate what takes place in your business so it can grow beyond you. Make sure you visit me on my website, the 516 collaborative.com and let's schedule a time to talk. I'll see everyone next time. Bye

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.