Welcome! I am so glad you’re here. This is a password-protected blog post for private clients like yourself, where you can acquaint yourself with our approach to thought leader marketing and find resources for growing your audience, email list, authority and more.
If you have questions about anything you learn here, send me an email at evajannotta@gmail.com. And if you’d like to see a resource here, please submit that feedback to me.
Table of contents:
Click to go directly to the topic that piques your interest.
- New clients: start here!
- Systems: content library and review
- LinkedIn content strategy
- Email list strategy
- Medusa’s policies
- Inclusion
- Holidays (coming soon!)
- Language guidelines (coming soon!)
Systems: Content Library and Content Review
Before our kick-off call, please take 10 minutes to learn our documentation system:
MUSE drafting:
If we’re working together on long-form content creation for your email list and/or blog, I encourage you to watch this video excerpt about MUSE drafting:
Muse drafting: change the goalposts to avoid the perfectionism trap (3.5 mins)
When you send word salads to us, please make them as Messy, Ugly, Shitty and Embarrassing as you’re comfortable with. The worst, the better—your job is to get the sharp thinking out from between your ears and onto the screen; polishing it to gleaming is our job.
Our LinkedIn Content Strategy
Below you’ll find details and examples of our approach to LinkedIn thought leader marketing, from how we define content sources and flavors, to post examples and formats.
Content sources:
Sources: original vs curated + Medusa’s definition of “thought leadership (2 mins)
Content flavors:
“Flavors” or types of posts (7 mins).
This video covers:
- Post flavors: E.g. education, storytelling, offers and more
- Offers: about your offers and why it’s important to share them consistently
- Post flavor examples
- Note: “question” posts are inspired by this piece on riffing
LinkedIn post format:
In late 2024, we transitioned from writing teaser style LinkedIn posts to summary style. The strategy is to give people value where they are, i.e. give them the best ideas right there in LinkedIn, rather than requiring them to click on an outbound link to get the value.
This is helpful for your readers, because it summarize valuable ideas for them in your words. It also makes LinkedIn’s algorithm happy, by signaling that readers want to spend time on your content and by avoiding putting outbound links in posts (more on that in the blog post linked below).
Teaser style posts are still useful for content that lives on LinkedIn, such as LinkedIn newsletters, articles or events. But for outbound links, we’ve transitioned almost entirely to summary style posts.
Here’s an example of a teaser vs summary style post, based on an article by author, researcher, and burnout expert (and client) Dr. Kandi Wiens:
| Teaser style (before fall 2024) | Summary style (after fall 2024) |
| It hit me during a massage—I was lying there, trying to relax, while thinking “I need to hurry up here so I can finish everything I need to do today”. Sound familiar? It made me realize I had a case of “hurry sickness,” which explained why I felt frazzled and frenetic and constantly thinking about my to-do list. To my lack of surprise, a look at the research showed that hurry sickness can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and (yep) burnout. If you’re feeling recognition, or a sinking feeling like “well this explains a lot,” you’re in good company. I’m right here with you, and it’s not a life sentence. So what is hurry sickness? What causes it, and how do you know if you have it? I share the answers on my blog, including its symptoms and problems it causes, plus exactly what I’m doing to address my own hurry sickness: https://kandiwiens.com/blog/the-rush-to-nowhere-why-we-suffer-from-hurry-sickness/ #MindfulLiving #IntentionalLiving #SlowDown #BurnoutImmunity Image alt text: a rabbit running over grass | It hit me during a massage—I was lying there, trying to relax, while thinking “I need to hurry up here so I can finish everything I need to do today”. Sound familiar? It made me realize I had a case of “hurry sickness,” which explained why I felt frazzled and frenetic and constantly thinking about my to-do list. To my lack of surprise, a look at the research showed that hurry sickness can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and (yep) burnout. So I found out: – What is hurry sickness? In short, a chronic feeling of urgency and the compulsive need to rush through life. The term was coined by a cardiologist in the 1970s. – What causes it? A combination of cultural expectations, technology, lifestyle choices and personality traits (some individuals, like yours truly, are predisposed to hurry sickness). – How do you know if you have it? Feeling irritated when you’re delayed, rapid walking or talking, and rarely slowing down or resting are just a few of the symptoms. – The problems it causes: Some examples are a lack of creativity and a decreased ability to collaborate with others and take in, process and use new information. Not to mention less awareness of your own physical and mental wellbeing (yikes~). – How I’m addressing my own hurry sickness: For one thing, I’m paying closer attention to what I’m doing. For another, I’m getting more comfortable letting people down by saying “no” so I don’t overcommit. I’m also implementing some forcing functions in my calendar. If you’re feeling recognition, or a sinking feeling like “well this explains a lot,” you’re in good company. I’m right here with you, and it’s not a life sentence—I share more about hurry sickness, its symptoms and problems it causes, plus how I’m addressing my own, on my website—you can find the link in the comments. Image alt text: a rabbit running over grass |
For more on our post format, including why and how we use alt text for images, why we started putting links in the comments in 2024, and why we’re phasing out hashtags in 2025, these blog posts have details:
- Make Your Content Accessible With Alt Text: Best Practices For Thought Leadership And LinkedIn
- LinkedIn Strategy FAQs for Experts: Links-in-comments, Scheduling, Hashtags, and the F-word
Grow Your Email List (by Fixing Leaks)
This video covers an important mindset shift to fuel email list growth, as well as examples of where exactly (and how) you can remove friction:
Remove friction by fixing links (16 mins)
