How to promote your podcast on LinkedIn, like 20VC's Harry Stebbings
400 million dollars, 150 million views & a few lessons about social media
In case you haven’t heard of 20VC and its founder, Harry Stebbings. It’s a perfect example of turning podcasts into profits. He recently raised a $400M fund. What’s particularly striking is that he’s not a Venture Capitalist who got into podcasting, as they often do. He’s a young guy who started with very little business or investing experience and became a prominent VC through podcast conversations. Let that sink in.
I’m here to study how he promotes his business on LinkedIn, and his media business can’t be separated from his personality and investing business. Ultimately, it’s all about the “20VC” entity.
Personal Profile vs Brand Page
That’s going to be a quick one.
Despite having 14k followers, the page has almost 0 activity.
It reposted 2 of Harry’s post, that’t all.
Types of posts
He uses 4 types of posts, which seem to alternate quite regularly, forming a pattern.
Text + Thumbnail, with the links to Spotify and YouTube in the comments
The thumbnail is also used on YouTube, but he doesn’t post a YouTube link. I discussed the importance of thumbnails and how to test them.
Tip: I like to first see how they perform on YouTube, tweak them until I get a decent CTR, and then post on YouTube.
Text (related to VC)
These are unrelated to any podcast episode; there is no link, but there are #hashtags.
I still see it as a way to promote the business and the podcast.
The choice of words is interesting, insane.
They’re mostly superlatives or universalisms.
‘everyone says’; ‘the biggest mistake’; ‘the greatest investor’
It’s never mild. I know I use words like ‘Interesting’, ‘Insightful’, ‘Perplexing’, etc but for Harry it’s all:
‘insane’; ‘super super successful’, ‘incredible’
Clips
These are not the typical podcast clips where we see the speaker and there are bold captions. They’re highly produced and edited clips. I would call them teasers and would compare them to teaser trailers for movies
Personal posts
Caveats & Thoughts
What works for Harry doesn’t have to work for you and me.
The thumbnails and clips are worth looking at, but unless you have serious editing skills and a studio setup, they are hard to reproduce.
Everything listed above is very clickbait, and I’m sure it’s carefully crafted and measured by the media side of the business. But it also matches his overenthusiastic personality.
There’s also a reflexivity element in the success of these posts. For example, I follow him because he’s a super super successful podcaster, not because he’s my favourite podcaster. So what we observe can be less an indication of his content and more of his overall fame.
What’s insanely useful about using 20VC as a reference is its simplicity. 4 types of posts with a clear format.
Because it’s a media, I assume that the mix serves the podcast well, even when there’s no link to the podcast. I may be seeing a pattern when there’s none, but I’ve also been advised that a mix works and LinkedIn doesn’t like it when you always try to send the traffic away.
Personal takeaways
I never ‘got LinkedIn’, and I’m someone who likes to ‘get it’. I’m a dummy in terms of LinkedIn posting, but it’s nonetheless been working for me in terms of podcast traffic.
I wrote about it:
My approach on YouTube and elsewhere is data-driven, and when you find a formula that works, it tends to work a second time. That’s not the case on LiLinkedIn;ere’s a recent example:
The first post (a quote from Professor Ludovic Phalippou whom I tagged, with a link to his article on Private Equity), got 19,000 impressions.
The second post (a quote from Professor Ludovic Phalippou whom I tagged, with a link to his article on Private Equity), got 490 impressions. The only thing I did differently was adding inverted commas 😂, I won’t do that again!
Based on this 20VC study, here’s a provisional LinkedIn ‘manifesto’ for reluctant users:
Post more and create multiple posts related to the episodes, not just as they launch, but over time
Accept the weirdness of the algorithm; do not try to understand what works
Do not care about the stats of likes and engagement
Forget about the company page (occasionally repost)
Focus on posts that deliver value to the audience
Mix up the formats: I will use 1, 2, and 3 above. (Can’t bring myself to do 4)
Encourage guests to share - this will be the topic of a future post
PS: LinkedIn is not the only place to promote podcasts - this as well deserves a future post
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Useful Resources for Brand Podcasters: