Hyper Pony Studio

Owner

North Square Investments

Digital Marketing Consultant

FortéOne

Fractional CMO | Chief Marketing Officer

Ariel Investments

C.S. McKee

UX Collective

Contributing Writer

MAQTOOB

Digital Bootcamp

Instructor

The Simons Group

Senior Designer

👑 Web, Marketing, & Design Expert for Advisory and Consulting Firms 👑 Websites driven by marketing expertise 👉 hyperponystudio.com

👋 Hi I'm Manda!

Follow me and ring my 🔔 if you're in the financial services industry and want to learn more about:

👉 Marketing persuasion techniques 
👉 Writing copy that converts
👉 Attracting potential clients
👉 Turning those prospects into clients
👉 Professionally presenting your brand 
👉 Attracting your ideal clients
👉 Creating an EFFECTIVE website
👉 Establishing trust and building authority

🔻 🔻 🔻 Want to work together? 🔻 🔻 🔻

For advisory and investment firms:
🔹 Complete brand, website, & marketing overhauls
🔹 Ongoing marketing and fractional CMO services
🔹 Deep-dive website audits

For independent financial advisors:
🔹 Deep-dive website audits
🔹 Web and marketing flash audits
🔹 Ignite Your Site course coming soon!

Learn more, view samples of my work, or start your project at hyperponystudio.com!

👑
Hyper Pony Studio 
Digital marketing for the financial services industry

Manda Szewczyk

While everyone else is hurrying to add AI to their platforms, this is the message I received when I clicked the chat/help option on the app I use for my proposals:

"Don't worry, we don't use AI, bots or canned replies. Just 3 guys in different parts of the world ready to help you use Better Proposals."

What a relief! Thank you Better Proposals!!

 - - - - - - - - - - 

🤔 So what's the lesson here?

If you're doing something different (or something better) SAY IT.

Don't expect people to notice on their own.

 - - - - - - - - - - 

👋 Hi I'm Manda - I share Tiny Tweaks to help financial advisors improve their marketing and level-up their websites.

👑 Websites & Marketing Overhauls for Financial Advisors & RIAs 👉 Sharing digital marketing tips

I'm noticing some disturbing behavior on Linkedin.

I've been away for a while, and I'm longing for the days when all there was to complain about was pitch-slapping in the DMs.

Here are some new LI tactics that I'm NOT loving...

- - - - - - 

🙄 People selling their services in the comments section of my posts

Not just chiming in or offering anything useful, but literally saying, "These are the services I offer" – like a little ad in the comments. Most of them are other marketers or web designers.

Not cool.

- - - - - - 

🤨 Adding me to their email newsletter list just because I accepted their connection request

Um, I agreed to connect. Not subscribe! As soon as someone does this, I lose all trust in them and their business tactics.

Unsubscribe. Unfollow. Goodbye.

- - - - - - 

😡 Sending me calendar invites when we've never communicated before

This one is the WORST! I'm getting meetings on my calendar and in Zoom from people I've NEVER met!! Some of them are for webinars, some are demos, some are pitches – but NONE of them are with people I've ever met or talked to.

What the actual...???

- - - - - - 

I get it. Building a business is hard. But come on!!

Have you experienced any of this? Or is it just me?

Quick tip for anyone creating a video. 

Take a pause every now and then, look at the camera, and smile. 

Because at some point, someone is going to have to go through that video and find a nice screenshot to use as an overlay. 

And, if you never stopped to smile, you're not going to like the options.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

🛼 Hi I'm Manda - I share Tiny Tweaks to help financial advisors improve their marketing and level-up their websites.

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My least favorite part of Halloween? The commercials.

Even as an adult, ads for scary movies freak me out. 

As a kid? I'd have nightmares for weeks.

I don't like the images or the sounds – it messes with my nervous system.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Why isn't there a law against showing ads for R-rated movies during G- or PG-rated programming?

I'd like to be able to opt out of the horror category in my streaming services too.

I know lots of people love those movies and that's great - but they're just not for me.

Anyone know who I can talk to about this?

- - - - - - - - - - 

BTW, my favorite part of Halloween? Half off candy the next day! I'm also a fan of toddlers dressed as Care Bears and older kids who make their own costumes. I always give extra candy for home-made creativity 🎃

What's your favorite/least favorite part of Halloween?

This is a rare post for the non-advisors who follow me.

One of my clients wrote a book, and for today, it's only 99 cents if you order the Kindle version. 

Here are some of the things you'll find inside:

👉 Why the “4 percent rule” and other retirement myths could be sabotaging your future

👉 The Three Tax Buckets strategy that gives you control over your retirement income

👉 How to create a “retirement paycheck” that feels like real income rather than raiding savings

👉 Dynamic Income Planning with guardrails that adapt as your life evolves

👉 Why most estate plans fail, especially after the SECURE Act, and how to fix yours

It's a book about retirement, written for people who want to do their best to avoid mistakes and set themselves up for success – and who don't enjoy reading financial novels. This one is short, actionable, and free of financial jargon. 

If it sounds interesting, search for "From Work to What’s Next: Designing a Life you Don’t Want to Retire From" on Amazon, and choose the Kindle version.

All three of these tweaks come from real samples I found on a professionally designed advisor website.

Take a look and let me know which is your favorite, and if you're planning to make any of these changes to your own site.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

🐙 Hi I'm Manda - I share Tiny Tweaks to help financial advisors improve their marketing and level-up their websites.

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Hema Pentakota

Digitally Hema

I help busy founders and CEOs grow their businesses with my Social Media Marketing services. 
My principal services include:
- Social Media Strategy & Content Creation
- Creating a Content Calendar
- Content Repurposing

Freelance Social Media Manager

My blog 'Own Your Authentic Life' aims to motivate women with inspiring articles to lead the life they wish, more precisely to help restart their career or start a new business.

Web Content Writer

BNP Paribas Corporate & Institutional Banking

Within the entity of Correspondent Banking (CBK):

• Design the products in close collaboration with CIB - CBK Sales & Network teams
• Express the business needs
• Validate the functional specifications delivered by the IT teams
• Follow-up projects with IT teams until deployment
• Be the main interface point between CIB CBK team and Back office IT teams (SWIFT and SEPA payment incidents)
• Monitor the implementation of the digital offer (new products and services) to customers
• Global Governance:
o Organize and monitor actions of the regional committee and the Strategic Board
o Audit of CBK accounts at international level for the audit done by General Inspection
o Be a SPOC for different CBK sites to have their exhaustive list of accounts
• Working languages: French & English

Product Manager - Correspondent Banking

Euroclear

Within the team "Delivery Excellence" in France in the Division, Application Development & Maintenance (ADM):
- Organization of the monthly meetings of Department (ESES)
- Analysis of the performance of the Department, including financials and KPIs
- Quality Assurance of projects
- Support project managers with project planning tools (MS Project, Oracle BI, MS Excel) 
- Follow-up and support of resources (200 people) for their time-tracking (Oracle Time & Labor)
- Close collaboration with PSO Roadmap team (Brussels) for the provision and maintenance of tools
- Communication of monthly deadlines of planning exercise and budget review
- Planning transversal activities (Change requests, On-Boarding and Production Support)
- Working languages: French & documentation in English

Project Management Officer

BNP Paribas

In the context of a global program, “Cross Production Projects” of BNP Paribas Group (France, Belgium and Italy)
o	Normalization and standardization of IT productions of the Group
•	Establishment of operational governance and finance for the program
•	Identification and analysis of opportunities and projects
•	Follow up of portfolio of convergent projects
•	Coordination of steering committees (monthly)
•	Definition and implementation of KPIs and budget
•	Design of SharePoint to facilitate sharing of documents among the stakeholders 
•	Communication and documentation in English and French

Assistant Project Management Officer

HSBC

• Respond to the queries of clients about the products and services offered by the bank
• Interpretation of complex numerical data, negotiation with potential buyers to sell products

Customer Service Executive in Card Services

Australian Unified Pathway Program (AUPP) centre

Taught Computer Science courses (Introduction to IT, Basics of DBMS) to students pursuing Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) program

Teaching Assistant

I help B2B founders build their brands on LinkedIn 🔹Freelance Social Media Manager

Are you a founder struggling to keep up with your LinkedIn?

➡️ I can help you be consistent, build an engaged community & generate leads through my social media strategy, content creation and marketing services.

My services include:

⭐️ SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

• Create a Content Strategy
• Make a Content Calendar
• Brainstorm content ideas, write captions & design graphics
• Research the right Hashtags
• Repurpose your existing content
• Schedule your posts
• Authentic engagement

👩‍💼 My Story:

After having worked for a few years in the financial sector in the field of IT Project & Product Management in France, I changed careers to become a Freelance Social Media Manager.

Being very fond of women's empowerment, I started a blog in 2020 to inspire women to restart their careers. I absolutely loved the process of creating content alongside creating a like-minded community on my social media.

I decided to take this passion of mine a step further and help passionate founders like you.

⚡️ Want to level up your LinkedIn presence?

Send me a DM and we can schedule a time convenient for you to talk.

LinkedIn Manager

I help busy coaches and small business owners grow their businesses with my LinkedIn Marketing services. 
My principal services include:
- LinkedIn Strategy & Content Creation
- Content Calendar
- Content Repurposing

I got back on LinkedIn after a 3-month break.
I had no idea what to expect.

Would anyone still remember me? 
Would the algorithm even care? 

But the warm welcome surprised me. 

Messages, comments, and DMs from the people I hadn’t spoken to in months showed up. 

When you spend years building a genuine community, they don’t forget you when you go quiet for a while. 

Consistency builds visibility. 
Authenticity builds connection. 

And that’s what lasts. 

How has your community supported you recently?

I help small businesses turn LinkedIn into a growth channel with effective strategy 🔹LinkedIn Strategist

A woman in a blue sweater, smiling at the camera

(social media, personal branding, content, digital marketing, entrepreneur, founder)

Every successful entrepreneur has a failure story. 

Some could be small setbacks, others big.

A launch that flopped. 
A pitch that got rejected. 
A strategy that didn’t pan out. 

But failure is not a dead-end. 
It’s feedback. 

The best founders don’t just endure failure. 
But they study it. 

They ask themselves: 
🔹 What went wrong? 
🔹 What lesson did this teach me? 
🔹 What can I do differently next time? 

The next time something doesn’t go as planned, draw the lessons from it and apply them. 

Have you ever turned a failure into a win?

Tweet style post with text on a black background that says:

Failure is not the end.
It's the price you pay for success.

(social media, digital marketing, LinkedIn, strategy, personal branding, founder, freelancer, content marketing)

Many founders want LinkedIn to work.
They delegate and disappear.

Then wonder why nothing clicks.

Even the best strategist can’t replace your perspective.

You don’t need to get involved every day.
But if you're never involved, growth starts to fade.

The strongest content usually comes from:
→ Your lived experience.
→ Your insight into the business.
→ Your point of view on what matters.

No one else can bring that to the table.

LinkedIn is part of your brand presence.
Not something to tick off once a month.

Do you communicate often?

A statement on a light turquoise background that says:
Stop expecting ig results from LinkedIn when you don't get involved in the process.

(social media, strategy, LinkedIn, digital, marketing, content, personal branding, founder, entrepreneur, freelancer)

You might be the best at what you do. 

But if your positioning doesn’t reflect that:

People won’t see it. 

Positioning is less about skills. 
More about perception. 

It’s the difference between: 

“We offer marketing services” 

and 

“We help e-commerce founders 2x their revenue through conversion-focused content strategy” 

Same skillset. Different story. 
And it changes everything. 

From how you're perceived to who reaches out. 

If your content isn’t attracting the right clients, don’t just look at what you’re saying.

Look at how you're positioned. 

🔹 Are you speaking their language? 
🔹 Are you solving the problem they care about most? 
🔹 Are you showing them how your experience leads to their transformation? 

The expert they need might already be you. 
You just have to show up that way.

Being great at what you do isn't enough if people don't see you that way

(social media, digital, marketing, content, personal branding, freelancer, founder, entrepreneur, partner, LinkedIn, strategy)

Last month, a founder told me: 
“We have amazing clients, but our LinkedIn looks… empty”. 

When I checked, they did post sometimes: 
Product updates, team wins, even testimonials. 

But every post started with their brand, not their audience. 

The content wasn’t speaking to the right person. 

Good content tells people what you do. 
Great content shows people why it matters to them. 

Once we flipped their messaging 
✅ From “Here’s our product” 
✅ To “Here’s how this solves your problem” 

Engagement doubled. 
Leads followed. 

If you’re posting but not seeing traction, reread your last post. 

Is it about you or them?

Two tables with BEFORE and AFTER:

BEFORE
Posts about your brand
Product updates
Team wins
Features and specs

AFTER
Posts about customer problems
Real stories and results
Solutions that help your audience
Clear next steps

(social media, digital, marketing, content, personal branding, small business, founder, LinkedIn, strategy)

The typical advice founders get: 
“Post every day to grow on LinkedIn.”

I disagree.

Most businesses don’t need more content.
They need the right direction.

Posting daily without a strategy feels like shouting loudly in an empty room.

It feels busy but not productive.

You don’t win by posting more. 
You win by saying the right thing to the right person.
Consistently.

Set your focus on a: 
✅ Clear message 
✅ Consistent rhythm 
✅ Conversations that build trust

That’s how you grow an audience and a business.

So no, you don’t need to post every day. 
You just need to make every post count.

Tweet style post with a black background that says:

Posting more doesn't lead to growing faster.
It can lead to burning out faster.

(social media, digital, content, marketing, personal branding, small business, LinkedIn)

1 thing that has helped me to stick to a posting routine 
(especially during school holidays): 

Scheduling my posts in advance on LinkedIn. 

I have been doing this consistently since LinkedIn introduced native scheduling. 

It’s a relief when you know your post goes out on time and then you can focus on engagement. 

When we use 3rd party scheduling tools, I found that we usually cannot tag someone in our posts. 

1 reason why I prefer natively scheduling apart from the fact that it’s LinkedIn’s own feature. 

It is available for Company Pages too. 

So I'll be scheduling my clients' posts as well. 

To balance my workload. 

Have you tried scheduling your posts via LinkedIn?

P.S. Happy Diwali to those who are celebrating 🪔

Follower count vs. engagement: what matters more?

You’ll come across LinkedIn profiles with thousands of followers.

But when you look closer, there’s barely any engagement on their posts.

Even though they post consistently.

It always makes me wonder.

Is the audience real or is it simply a vanity metric?

A small but engaged community will always be more powerful than a large, silent following.

Real business growth comes from building real relationships and not just chasing numbers.

Focus on turning your followers into a community that knows, likes and trusts you.

That’s what actually moves the needle.

How are you building a deeper connection with your audience?

A graphic showing an icon of a group of people standing together and holding their hands.

Community > Vanity Metrics

(social media, marketing, digital, content, strategy, LinkedIn, personal branding, founder, entrepreneur, freelancer, partner)

New LinkedIn Update for Company Pages!

If you have a LinkedIn Company Page:

You can now 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝟲 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 at the top of your Page.

That means: 
🔹 More control over what visitors see first 
🔹 A chance to highlight key offers or thought leadership 
🔹 Better visibility for your best content (not just the most recent)

Whether it's a client win, team update, or newsletter, you can now curate what reflects your brand best.

Just head to your Company Page → click “𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀” → and start selecting.

Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/edet-Zkk

What kind of post would you feature first?

FEATURED POSTS For LinkedIn Company Pages

Screenshots of the new update shared

(LinkedIn Tips, Update, Founder, entrepreneur, social media, marketing, personal branding, digital, content, freelancer, strategy, management)

Want to get more visibility on LinkedIn

(without posting more)?

Start commenting with purpose. 

Your comments get seen just like posts do.

If you're strategic, a single comment can bring profile views, connection requests and even leads. 

But most people waste the opportunity with “Nice post 👏” or “Totally agree”.

Instead, treat your comments like mini-posts.

Make them insightful, specific and easy to read.

P.S. Do you like to hop on calls?

Screenshot of my comment shared:
Calls can be really draining and ghosting just makes it worse.
Soft selling through content is underrated but way more sustainable for some of us.

It has got 261 impressions.

(social media marketer, digital marketing, social media manager, freelancer, founder, entrepreneur, partner, personal branding, LinkedIn strategy, management, content creation, service provider, small business, B2B)

taplio

The Battle

Manda Szewczyk

Hema Pentakota

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreManda Szewczyk's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreHema Pentakota's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Manda Szewczyk

Hema Pentakota

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Manda Szewczyk's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreHema Pentakota's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreManda Szewczyk's LinkedIn Performance