I Hired a Digital Marketing Guy, and It Wasn’t Good

I paid him to grow my followers on LinkedIn. What a disaster.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

I was preparing my book proposal in April 2022. My writing/publishing consultant suggested I grow my LinkedIn followers to demonstrate to potential publishers a substantial following. Sounded reasonable to me. She and another person recommended a digital marketing guy.

So Jon James, CEO and founder of Ignited Results in Reno, Nevada, and I chatted. Nice guy.

He told me he could increase my followers from about 2,000 to 17,000 in a few months. I asked him how he could do this. He gave me a vague answer about promoting my profile. I pressed for more details, but I got zippo. This was my first digital marketing rodeo, so I was flying blind but trusted his reputation.

$3,645 to Jon James, and off we go.

Within a few weeks, my followers grew by several thousand. And they kept growing, hitting 17,000 about five months later. I asked him several more times to explain his secret sauce. No explanation.

I signed my book deal with SelectBooks out of NYC in June 2023. They didn’t care how many followers I had. They wanted my book. Out of curiosity, I checked my LinkedIn profile. My followers were back to about 2,000.