Seven Pieces of LinkedIn Content from one Idea

posted on 14 Mar 2023 in

If you’re on LinkedIn, there’s a good chance you’ve ran across one of Justin Welsh’s posts. I’ve been a follower and subscriber of his for some time now. I have always liked his idea of being able to generate multiple posts from a single Idea.

Here’s his post:

So in that spirit I want to work on one of my ideas and turn it into multiple piecse of content. Actually I may try to do this several times. The thought in my head is that 4 or 5 ideas could then turn into enough content to fill an entire month.

My Idea:

Everyone should learn to sell

And I am going to turn it into:

  • A story
  • A listicle
  • A teardown
  • An observation
  • Contrarian take
  • Past vs. present
  • A future prediction

Here we go!

A Story

I am the king of good ideas.

I think so anyway, but does everyone else?

I took a sales job to learn how to sell my ideas.

Over the course of my career, I can’t tell you how many times I felt like I had a great, impactful idea, which went unnoticed.

Sometimes it was likely because the idea wasn’t fully baked, wasn’t a good fit, or the audience was wrong.

But hindsight has shown me that I really wasn’t good at selling my ideas. So, I took a sales job to learn how to sell my ideas better. Now I’m convinced that everyone should know at least a little something about sales.

My main take away so far is that value sells! It sells products, services, promotions, etc.

Learn how to talk and sell value!

A Listacle

Everyone needs to know sales!

We’re all trying to sell something.

Here are 5 ways sales skills can help you in any role:

  1. Selling your boss on the value you bring to the table can lead to a promotion.
  2. Selling a recruiter on the value you could bring to a role could lead to a job.
  3. Selling a customer on the value of your services or product could lead to more revenue.
  4. Selling your boss on the value of a project could let you have more control over what you work on.
  5. Selling a customer on the value of your solution (dashboards, spreadsheet, etc) could lead to increased adoption.

Even if we aren’t doing it intentionally today, we’re all selling something pretty much every day of our lives.

Understanding sales and value can open many doors.

Follow me for non-salesy sales content and let me know in the comments what you’re trying to sell right now!

A Teardown

An Observation

Look at the really effective people around you.

Do you see anything in common between them.

Among other things, my guess is they know how to sell.

Selling is only one part of a whole, it’s not everything. But it is widely applicable.

We are selling when we want people to give us money, sure. But we are also selling when we want people to join our team, use our product, follow us on Social Media, etc.

The fact that I am here writing an “observation” post in Justin Welsh style is because he sold me on the value of creating multiple pieces of content from one idea.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: everyone should know how to sell.

Follow me for thoughts on value selling, especially in the tech and data sector.

Then comment what common thing you see about the effective people around you.

Contrartian Take

What’s the most valueable skill for someone in data to know?

#1, they have to understand the business.

#2, that they have to be able to sell their solution.

And by that I don’t mean selling it

Contrarian Take

Don’t do this:

“Hey, have you tried my dashboard? It allows you to filter by 16 things.”

Instead try this:

“Hey, have you tried out my dashboard. It’s built specifically to try and save you 15 minutes each day by bringing important information you need into one place. Lisa in accounting used it and she feels like it doubled her productivity.”

Do you know what the second item does that the first doesn’t: value selling.

Value is what sells, it is what garners usage. Selling value is the key to better adoption, more revenue, more pay, and so much more.

That’s why I think everyone should know some sales!

What’s your secret for getting people to use your outputs?

A Future Prediction

Conclusion

What did you think? Don’t be surprised if you see some of these on my LinkedIn. I really like the system, and believe it or not I actually really like blogging about it as well. Because then I can actually turn 1 idea into 8 pieces of content!