KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- LinkedIn is the perfect platform business professionals who want to create better conversations with potential prospects.
- If you’re a small company selling B2C, you probably don’t need to invest a lot of time in LinkedIn. In the B2B industry, however, it can be incredibly powerful.
- LinkedIn is a great place to showcase your work, your personal brand and your recommendations.
- One of the most trusted platforms is LinkedIn, with 64% of B2B executives trusting the content they see.
- The first thing you need to focus on when it comes to your LinkedIn is your profile as this is what people are going to look at first. You don’t need to create a whole new profile, but you do need to find a way to reflect your brand.
- You need to think of your LinkedIn as a mini sales page. Think about your header image, your profile image, your headings and your experience. It’s important your information is buyer-centric so your potential clients can identify themselves in your content.
- Make sure you’re adding resources. Whether it’s blog posts, videos or places that you have been featured.
- When it comes to LinkedIn, it’s a great way to showcase your knowledge and experience without coming across as though you’re constantly selling your business.
- Share other people’s articles that you think your connections would enjoy. Not only does it show that you’re interested in the industry, but it encourages shares and engagement. Ultimately, this will help increase your overall visibility on the platform.
- Be aware of your audience and know what is suitable for LinkedIn and what isn’t. Just because other people are posting personal photos, it doesn’t mean you have to.
- Ads are great if you want to target micro-markets. If you want views, pay per click. If you want more clicks, pay per view.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
One of the most trusted platforms is LinkedIn, with 64% of B2B executives trusting the content they see. With various different platforms being known for fake news, it’s important you’re focussing on the platforms are trusted.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- Introducing Viveka – 04:26
- Why Should You Be Considering LinkedIn? – 07:55
- Who Should Be Using LinkedIn? – 11:30
- How Do You Get Started with LinkedIn? – 18:40
- What Should You Be Posting on LinkedIn? – 27:17
- How Much of Your Personality Should You Be Sharing on LinkedIn? – 32:50
- Growing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn – 42:00
- Using Ads on LinkedIn 49:11
- Should You Be Using LinkedIn Articles? – 51:36
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
- Viveka von Rosen Website
- Viveka von Rosen LinkedIn
- Viveka von Rosen Book
Transcript below
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Marketing That Converts Podcast, and thank you for joining me here today. It is always a pleasure to have you with me and to know that you're listening. I just wanted to say a very heartfelt welcome and thank you. While I'm talking about this actually, I'm always really keen to hear from people. I think I mentioned it in the last episode, but I'm going to mention it right here at the beginning before we get started, so I know that you're listening.
I'd really love you to come and reach out and find me, DM me on your favourite platform, I'm on them all as you know, or hit reply to one of my emails if you're on my email list and come and find me and say hello, tell me who you are, tell me where you're listening from and what you do because I'd love to find out more about you, and with the podcast the stats are really difficult, so it's really hard to get a good idea of who my audience are.
Now, I think I have a fair idea, but I just want to get as much information as I can so that I can make sure I'm bringing you the episodes that you want in the future. And also while I'm in the asking mood, if there's any chance you could head over to iTunes and drop me a review, I would appreciate that so very, very much. You just go to your main podcast page, you find me, I think you scroll to the bottom of the page and that's where the reviews are and you'll have the opportunity to leave me a five star review and if you could say something lovely, that would be absolutely amazing. I see them all and I appreciate them greatly.
And also from a podcasting point of view, it obviously helps me get found and get more listeners, which again I would really, really appreciate. I know you're busy, I know you've got stuff to do, so if you could find that time then I honestly do appreciate you very, very much. Like I said, do let me know what you want me to talk about. Do let me know if there's anything that you think, “Teresa, an episode on this would be so helpful,” it would be great to hear from you.
Okay, so today is actually one of those episodes that I think you're going to love, because it is something that we've not really done before, but I know you guys have been asking for it and I know that this is something that we should have talked about for a long, long time. Today we're talking to the amazing Viveka Von Rosen, and she is a … Of bestselling books, LinkedIn Marketing, An Hour a Day, and LinkedIn 101 Ways To Rock Your Personal Brand.
She really is the expert when it comes to using LinkedIn for your business. We have a really good chat about LinkedIn, and what it is now, and why you should think about it and not just if you are looking for a job or a recruiter that really why everyone should be considering their LinkedIn profiles and thinking about how to use it. She talks us through the main things that you should make sure your profile is doing, so literally the top three things that you should be focusing on.
And then we talk about content. What should you be putting on LinkedIn? What shouldn't you be putting on LinkedIn? Because as you hear me say in the interview, I once had a LinkedIn requests from a guy with no top on and quite honestly I'm not sure I'd accept that request anywhere, but certainly not on LinkedIn. It's not the place for it.
This is going to be a really, really good one. Like I said, if you're not doing too much on LinkedIn, then it's definitely worth thinking about this and definitely worth listening to this episode. Also if you are B2B, then honestly LinkedIn is a real winner for you, because right now it's really hot. It's really working well. You're getting seen in much more on LinkedIn than maybe you might be on your Facebook account.
Again, definitely, definitely worth having a listen to this episode. And Viveka was so lovely, we had such laugh and we had a good chat beforehand, and a good chat afterwards and she was such a nice lady. I really did enjoy having it on the podcast and enjoyed talking to her about this.
You know what, I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to let you jump straight into the episode and listen to her because there's some great stuff in there that you're going to get from this episode and I'll see you on the other side.
Introducing Viveka
It gives me such pleasure today to welcome Viveka von Rosen to the podcast. Welcome Viveka. How are you?
Thank you so much, excellent.
Good, good stuff. Viveka, I'm really pleased to have you on today because do you know what? Somehow I have got to episode, I think we're on episode 80, and we haven't really talked about LinkedIn and I've had no one on to talk about LinkedIn. You know what's really funny at the moment is my husband is leaving the military after 25 years, and suddenly he is asking me question, after question, after question, about LinkedIn and I'm like I think this is how you do it or I'm trying to help about it but it's just so funny, because he's all over LinkedIn at the moment and he was so excited when he heard I was interviewing you today. Yeah, this is kind of very good timing for me in a personal point of view.
Viveka, if my audience don't know who you are, which I'm sure they do, but if they haven't heard from you, can you give us just a little bit of a bio as to what you've done and how you've got to do what you do now.
Sure. Sure. So my name obviously Viveka Von Rosen. My Twitter handle, LinkedIn handle, Facebook handle, Instagram handle, YouTube handle is LinkedIn Experts. If you've heard of me, it's probably because you once Googled LinkedIn expert and my name came up first, so thank you Google. Wonderful SEO there that I never-
Yeah, that's awesome. Good idea.
Right. The problem with that is having to prove it's true now for the past 15 years or so but, yeah, I've been teaching and training on LinkedIn since about 2005, 2006. I've had my own company, I just started a new company with my partners which is a whole other story in and of itself. Yeah, I'm a huge LinkedIn advocate, even when I'm mad at the platform, I'm still a huge LinkedIn advocate and I still think it's such a powerful tool for business people, business owners, people like your husband who are in transition, folks who are in sales and marketing.
It isn't just for job seekers anymore. And it's not just for spammy network marketers anymore either. It's really, it's for the business person, either a professional within a company or owns their own company who wants to create better conversations with prospects. And that's the one thing that LinkedIn can really help you do.
Yeah. You know what, LinkedIn has had a bit of a rocky past, hasn't it? In the sense of, it wasn't great for ages and it was ugly and it was like not intuitive at all. It was a really difficult platform to get rained. And so it didn't do itself any favours, did it? For ages and ages. And then suddenly, I think probably in the last, I mean maybe even longer than this, but it's three, six months, it's like, no, no, no, honestly, this is a real contender.
I think you can explain obviously lots of reasons why it's a real contender, but suddenly now people are going to LinkedIn to do their live videos, to put videos up, to do their marketing rather than necessarily just looking straight at Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Suddenly LinkedIn is now really coming into its own really, isn't it? So yeah, just sort of give us a bit of an overview on why we should be even considering LinkedIn and thinking about it for our businesses.
Why Should You Be Considering LinkedIn?
Sure. Well, from 2003 to about 2010, really for seven years, it was such an ugly platform and it was … Yeah, it was really mostly for job seekers. Salespeople were beginning to understand that [inaudible 00:08:15] Rolodex on steroids. It was using a lot of, integrating a lot of third part apps to make its features and functions work. It was okay, but it certainly wasn't nearly as much fun as Facebook, Twitter and then later Instagram and YouTube and all of the other ones. It was, it was ugly and boring for a long, long time.
And then right before my book published with the old platform, they decided to overhaul the whole thing [crosstalk 00:08:44] that was 2011. They hadn't made a change to it in like seven years.
You are kidding.
Viveka's publishing a book, let's change the whole thing.
Yeah, she says she's a LinkedIn expert, we'll see.
We'll show her.
That is [inaudible 00:08:59].
Planning a book a week while we took a whole bunch of new screenshots. But yeah, and that was kind of my favourite time up until right now, of LinkedIn because it had a better platform, it was better looking, it still had an open API, you still could use it with a lot of third party apps. And then they decided we're going to sell LinkedIn and we're going to make lots of money, we're going to go public, and then they locked everything down. And then it was a kind of a sucky platform honestly, for three or four years, I think, until even while it went public, because they were just doing what needed to be done to keep the Stockholders happy, and I think it really restricted visibility of LinkedIn. Then went back down into the dumps again a little bit, and I was like, “No, really, it's a good platform.”
But then Microsoft bought them. A lot of people were afraid of that and they thought, “Here it goes, LinkedIn's going to suck now.” But really, they put their resources, they put their people, they put their money behind it and it's still pretty close. We can't use a lot of third party apps with it, which might be a good thing because there are a lot of spammy apps out there. Nonetheless, it's still a very functional, I think it's still a very functional platform. It's not as intuitive as it looks, but that's why I have a job. But it's still much better than it was, and I think people really are beginning to realise what a good platform it can be and how powerful it can be, whether you're in sales, marketing, business owner, job seeker, whatever.
Yeah, yeah. Today what is really interesting, I was actually really positive about Microsoft buying it, because of the fact that they needed money. Take Facebook, I always say, I feel sorry for someone like Twitter, because Twitter comes up with these great ideas. They were the first to live stream, and they were the first to come up with some of these amazing things they have, but they weren't very good at it. So then Facebook took a look and went, “Oh, we could do that way better.” They had the money and the time to invest.
For me, when I saw that Microsoft, my only disappointment was I thought they'd go crazy straight away. I thought they'd want to put a huge stamp on it, change everything and make it beautiful, and they didn't, and it seemed quite slow going, which possibly was a really good thing. But I was always quite positive. And also I felt like, because Microsoft hadn't got a social media platform, so I felt like this is going to be their thing to get in on and be like, yeah, you know, this is awesome.
Who Should Be Using LinkedIn?
But like you said, I think LinkedIn still, and it's interesting, I was having this conversation with my husband, is still very much seen as a platform for jobs and salespeople and recruiters, because obviously we all know about being bombarded by recruiters. But actually it's so much more than that, isn't it now, for any. Is there anybody that you wouldn't be sat there going, LinkedIn isn't good for you, or industries that you think, not the LinkedIn?
I think there's a place for LinkedIn, for almost every business or industry, because you can use it in some way, shape, or form. If you made me say that there's someone, probably the smaller B2C with the smaller product skew. If you sell $5, $10, $25, $30 things, if you've got a store front and you're selling to consumers, groceries or whatever, you probably don't want to spend a whole lot of time on LinkedIn. But with the bigger skew, certainly within the B2B market, I think it's a very, very powerful programme for everybody.
It's funny because marketers get it, a lot of marketers, not all marketers, especially the independent solopreneur, entrepreneur, marketer, or business owner and marketer, they kind of get it. They see the power of it. Some corporate marketers don't get it yet. They're still not bought into social. They're still paying for ads, and they're still putting up billboards for heaven sakes. So some of those marketers don't get it yet. And then a lot of salespeople don't get it yet just because they haven't been educated in the right way and they haven't been educated in the right way to utilise the marketer mindset and the marketer resource as a salesperson.
I think that shifting, I'm doing my best to bring that [inaudible 00:13:34], but it's still not 100% accepted, I think as a tool by sales and marketing people, even though as modern consumers, especially as a modern B2B consumer, they're using LinkedIn left, right, and centre. Whether you're a B2B marketer or a seller and you think LinkedIn's a spot or not, rest assured, the modern P2B buyer is absolutely convinced in LinkedIn.
They're using it to just research their sellers, they're using its research company. They're using it to look for constant, so it is a really, really powerful tool that hopefully people will adopt more and use more strategically than just a Rolodex on steroids or more strategically than just like, let's connect, and by the way, here's some spam.
Yes, yeah, because obviously like every platform, there's that isn't there? And like any platform, there are people that are using it really well and people that are using it and not so well. There's a couple of things that when I think about LinkedIn that I've said in the past, and now you can tell me where I'm wrong or right, but for me, one of the things I would say about LinkedIn is that it's the one place you can show off without looking like you're showing off. This is the one place where you can go, look, I've … Look at all this experience, look all these things, people saying nice things about me. It feels to me that you can be very confident about you and your offering without looking like you're being a real show off.
That's so interesting because yes, I agree 100%. I mean they have recommendations for heaven sakes [inaudible 00:15:15] a feature that actually pulls those in your profile, which not enough people use and more people should use those. But to your point, yeah, it's a great place to showcase your knowledge through the content that you share, to showcase your personal brand through your profile, and then of course recommendations and things like that.
What's interesting is, and it tends to skew male, female and then also some country's culture. It's like, Oh I couldn't possibly say anything about myself, and I would be too braggy. So you get a lot of women or you'll get a lot of country culture that people won't allow their brilliance to shine through their LinkedIn profile, and there's so much opportunity lost there. And sure, there's ways of going like, “Oh, I'm a quota crushing sales guy and I'm awesome, you should totally buy all my stuff all the time, because I rock the most.”
But, there's also like, “Hi, would you please buy from me.”
There's a lot of grey area in between those two and unfortunately most profiles seem to be like one [inaudible 00:16:21]
Yeah, they're either one or the other. The other thing I heard or read or made up, I can never tell, but isn't LinkedIn one of the most trusted platforms?
It is. Especially by B2B executives. I'm probably going to make this one totally up. I'll be off by a few percent [inaudible 00:16:41].
Yeah, I have no idea.
[inaudible 00:16:49] something like 64% of B2B executives trust the content on LinkedIn. And then there's a really high number, it's like 98% of B2B content that they read comes from LinkedIn in some way, shape or form. That's too high, but it's somewhere between 60 and 90. It's really high anyway, and it's two or three times that of any other social platform.
Yeah, and that's just amazing.
If you really want to look it up, look at HubSpot, B2B, LinkedIn stats, you'll see them.
Yeah, and honestly, in a world where at the moment no one trusts Facebook to do anything, our trust is very down.
[crosstalk 00:17:24].
Yes [crosstalk 00:17:26] what's going to happen there, and then also, we even take something like Instagram, we don't trust what each other's putting on because we only put the best of everything on. And so we do feel like, because it's more factual, because it's not like, when I put stuff on LinkedIn, obviously I'm still going to put really nice photos if I'm putting photos on the screen for whatever, but it's not like Instagram, it is very straight.
There's no LinkedIn face tune filter.
Yes, exactly. Some might say it should have one there, everything looks better with a filter, I'm not even going to kid.
[inaudible 00:18:03] to your parents.
Always, always. Honestly the I look, it's like before filters, I was about to go on Insta Stories, like thank God the filters today. That is so bad, is so bad. Let's say, if you're B2B, then LinkedIn, in fact, I had this conversation and I talked about it the other day, the fact that someone in my academy had said to me, what platform should I be on? And really LinkedIn was top of the tree for them, for sure. Because they were targeting professionals, it was an education product that they had. So it was like all day long if you're just going to do one, then LinkedIn for you is probably the one I'd be spending my time in.
How Do You Get Started with LinkedIn?
Let's say they've identified thought, right, okay, we really must be doing more of LinkedIn, what should they be really looking at and starting with? Is it a case of going to your profile and just going, let's wipe all that out and start again? What sort of things should I be bearing in mind when I go to a profile?
After the mindset, which is the most important thing, to have the mindset that actually, yes, I do need to use LinkedIn and I need to use it strategically, and I need to be systematic, and consistent. After that mindset, the next thing is the profile, because you don't want to have a crap profile and then reach out to people to connect and then they go, ugh. Similarly, you don't want to start sharing awesome content with a really bad profile. We'll drive views, and so you don't want to invest all this time and effort into starting conversations and then have people go, no thanks [inaudible 00:19:37], because it's fore fronts. You've heard [inaudible 00:19:40] storefront is so ugly.
So, you don't want to create a whole new profile, don't make that mistake. Some people think, “Oh, I'm just going to axe the old one or ignore the old one, start new. Because you do have a network and your network can build different network than what you're into now. Your network cab build upon each other, and it's all people who know people who know people.
Yeah.
But it's easy enough just to change what you have, so whether it's putting up a new background image that reflects your new brands, your new offer, your new launch, your new whatever it is. A photo that looks like you that's professional-
Helpful I find.
It's so funny because I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a conference and met someone in real life for the first time IRL and been like, “Oh, Hi.”
[inaudible 00:20:31] recognise you. Honestly it's hard, isn't it, but people do that.
Oh yeah.
I remember being at a conference once, and I'm not even kidding. So this conference had the photos of who was speaking, one of the very first conferences I went to for marketing, got to this one person on stage. She comes to one stage and I have to admit very rudely in my head, I thought, I'd have made a wee bit more effort because I was thinking, you are on stage, right? So that instantly wasn't great.
But then I looked in the brochure, couldn't see her, and I looked around, and I could see other people like scanning forwards, scanning back and then eventually I saw someone else point to someone and go, “That's her,” and I swear to God it did not look anything like her. It was a completely different person.
Her daughter's picture or something.
Honestly, she must [inaudible 00:21:24], because she was either so Photoshopped, or so not her. Don't get me wrong, we both have had, I'm sure, well I know I've had lots of photo shoots, exactly, but you have the best version of you.
The best version of yourself, that's-
Exactly. But it's still you, isn't it? It's not someone else.
Yeah, you're still recognisable. It doesn't have to be you on a bad hair day, but it does have to be you, you know. Or no hair day as some of our gentlemen have. But it does still have to be you. That's the one that cracks me up, is either the massive weight difference up or down, the glasses depend, if you wear your glasses all the time, just wear them in your picture too. The ones with the full head of hair to no head of hair, whether it's by choice or not, better update the photo.So new background image, photo that reflects who you are.
The headline or the title, that's huge wasted space because it's above the fold. Most people think, because that's the way LinkedIn sets it up, that it's title at company, but this is like your ultra-fast elevator speech, it's like the 10 second elevator speech where you get to tell people who you serve, what you do for them and maybe who you are, if there's still room in that 120 characters, not words, characters. 200 Ninja trick 200 if you do it on mobile.
Okay.
But you really have an opportunity here to attract your buyer's attention or attract your prospect's attention, because most people think of LinkedIn as a resume, but you should refocus to think of it more as a resource, almost a mini sales page. And so this is, you know, you got your headline or your banner image and then your call to action, or your motto or your sales message usually is somewhere up there, that needs to be in your headline. And hopefully it's addressing who you serve and how you help them.
And then you want to expand upon that in the summary section, which is now called About, but you've got now 2000 characters to expand upon that, and you always want it to be buyer centric or prospect centric. It's not about you, it's not about what you do, it's not about your resume unless your looking for a job, that's fine. But if you're trying to sell, if you're trying to market, if you're trying to represent a company, it needs to be about the buyer so that they can identify themselves in that content, go Oh, she's talking to me or oh, he's talking to me.
Yes I do have that problem. Oh look, they've helped companies like mine get these kind of results. Things like that. Oh here's a testimonial, either an image that's been uploaded or literally a two or three line testimonial and then [inaudible 00:24:04] recommendation [inaudible 00:24:05] bottom of your profile but needs to be a resource, needs to be buyer centric.
And if you just do those three things, background … Or four things, background image, picture of yourself, headline that speaks to your buyer, and about me section that speaks to your buyer and add some resources, media, blog links, YouTube videos, native videos, whatever it is, you can add that to be more stagnant so that it can actually sit there for a while and be seen. Those things need to be added to your profile and there's other stuff too. That's a good starting place.
And it's a great starting place in terms of, I love what you said about the fact of that about us, people don't really care about us in truth, they don't want to know that I'm a mum or a step mum or I'd like drinking gin, that as a hobby. They're not that bothered. Like you said, writing it in a way that you're talking to the person that is buying it and almost having to think slightly salesy, not full on [inaudible 00:25:12].
Not [inaudible 00:25:12] not like buy now.
Exactly, but just thinking that I'm talking or imagining the person that's going to be reading that on the other end, isn't it?
That's it. That then becomes, so you bring up a good point, we have to know who our buyer is and what we're selling to them. There's a lot of people who get on LinkedIn, especially if they're new to their business, and they're not exactly sure what they have and what they're selling, and who they're selling it to. A lot of people get on LinkedIn, especially entrepreneurs who are like, I can sell anything to anyone. My product is good for anyone with a face, or my service is for anyone with a computer. And so if you're speaking to everyone, you're literally speaking to no one.
Yeah, it's so hard.
And identify themselves, they're like, yeah, I've got a face, so what? And the other one you said, about us, it actually says about, so not about us, but about, I'd like to say it's not about us, it's about them. It's the about them section, really.
It's such a good thing, because like I said, often when, and especially for imagining CV, which lots of people still do.
Right, right, [inaudible 00:26:25].
They're imagining going up, this is what I like to do on a weekend, and it's like no, no, no, no, no, it's not like that at all. Okay, so obviously-
Upload your CV, especially if you're looking for a job, feel free to take all your personal info out of it. But you can upload your CV as a document if you want to on LinkedIn, and by all means, especially if you're looking for a job, do that, your resume, whatever. But you don't want your actual profile to be a CV.
No, no. Obviously there's lots of different places you can add in other things, which it's fairly those other things they talk through and they encourage you to fill them in, don't they? They do it. Maybe it's because my profile is very full, but I don't see it very often now [crosstalk 00:27:06]. Where there was gaps, they used to go, “Oh, have you done this?” And then prompted you to fill that in and things.
What Should You Be Posting on LinkedIn?
Obviously you've got your actual profile, which you're filling in, which obviously comparing it to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, there's way more that you can put into that. But what about posting? Should we be thinking about … So obviously I think this is nothing, people forget that they can post it like they have to post everything else.
Yeah.
I think because the profile is so big, it's almost like all the attention goes there, and they forget they actually have to do some posts. Should we be viewing it differently? How should we be thinking about posting?
Yeah, yeah. No, you're exactly right because Facebook and Twitter live and die by the timeline. If there was no timeline on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, they wouldn't be any social networks. Whereas LinkedIn, it's like a lot, I'd say most of the people don't actually post and yet that's what you want to do to start to get the activity. It's not in your face. When you go on LinkedIn, it's generally on your profile, so you don't think about it.
It's LinkedIn at this time certainly doesn't live and die by it's timeline, so we forget about it. But to your point, it's very, very important, for numerous reasons. First of all, it's a great way to showcase your expertise and your knowledge without being a know it all, because I call … Well, I got the Twitter handle LinkedIn Expert, and I had to think twice before hitting enter, but I didn't think that long-
No good job, because someone would have had that.
But you know, [inaudible 00:28:36] right. And as a woman, I was like oh that's kind of …
I know, Isn't that funny? Whereas there is a difference [crosstalk 00:28:44]. That it's not boo, yes I am.
But I did, I had qualms and if I had to go with LinkedIn Guru, it was going to be even worse. But it's been very good to me since then. But, instead of just saying I'm an expert, I'm an expert, I'm an expert, I'm awesome, I'm awesome, I'm awesome. I actually showcase my knowledge and let you make that decision, whether I am or not. I don't care as long as you buy one.
And so whether it's even my own stuff that I'm creating for LinkedIn, or my company, stuff that I'm curating for LinkedIn, or if I'm … A lot of sales people are not content creators. They went into sales, not marketing for a reason. You can still curating other people's content, content you're probably reading business journals, magazines, the news, whatever, you're probably keeping abreast with … Going on in your world so that you can share that content in conversations at least with your buyers.
Well, just take that same content, put it on LinkedIn, and what I tell people is whether you're sharing a link, a video, a document, an info graph, info graph, is that what … Yeah, whatever you're sharing, just make sure to spend the space. I know we're trained by Twitter and to some extent, Facebook [inaudible 00:30:13] characters or less, but you've got 1200 characters on LinkedIn posts, so tell people what the article is, who should be reading it, why they should be reading it and what's in it.
That might take you five minutes and yet you're going to have a lot more people than going through looking at your content, that's going to build visibility for you, which then gives you a little bit of boost in the algorithm, LinkedIn's algorithm, which gets you even more visibility and hopefully then visibility to your buyers.
And especially in the B2B world, winning vendors, the buyers have read between five to seven pieces of their content before buying. If you're the one sharing the content and your competitor isn't, that's who they're probably going to end up going to. It's really about positioning yourself as a trusted advisor, whether you're in sales, whether you're in marketing, whether you're a business owner, it is setting yourself up as the trusted advisor. Then all that icky sales pushiness just goes away.
Yeah, yeah.
[inaudible 00:31:13] trusted advisor. My inbound leads are nuts. I can barely keep up with my inbound leads and I don't even do sales anymore.
Yeah, amazing.
[crosstalk 00:31:21] on LinkedIn, so I just get to talk to you and other people and run our personal branding office. That kind of inbound leads, for someone who's not even selling is pretty powerful, and that's what I want my clients and my audience to do is make that mind shift, position yourself as the trusted advisor and start sharing content that your buyer really is interested in. Whether it's product details, which it's usually not that, by the way, or whether it's really addressing their points of pain and some solutions that are available to them.
Yeah. Okay. When we talk or when I talk about content for other platforms, I often mention that there should be a level of entertainment in there, and I talk about having different pots of content and there's prove you're an expert, which is perfect for LinkedIn. There's call to action or the sale, but where you're actually trying to get them to do something. And then, and it's not like it's a third and a third and the third, but trying to get a mix of all these. And then there's entertainment.
How Much of Your Personality Should You Be Sharing on LinkedIn?
I will say to them, it's social media, we should be social and therefore there should be an element of you and your personality and what you do do it the weekend I guess if you're on Insta Stories and stuff. How much of that do we want, and should we put on LinkedIn? Because there are things for sure I'd put on Instagram story that I would have never in a million years post on LinkedIn. So is that right or should I be trying to be a little bit more personal on LinkedIn?
Yeah, I have to tell you a personal story and then I'll go to the answer.
Yeah.
So, I was at Cape Cod in Massachusetts this weekend, at a friend's house, and I tried cupping for the first time. Now I don't know if you know about cupping, but they put these cups on your back that create like [inaudible 00:33:19] see them.
Like these big circle things?
These huge [inaudible 00:33:23] I've got these bruises all over my back. So I'm like, “Oh, what the heck, it's Facebook.” My therapist took a picture for my … So naked back, completely naked back, lying on the table, barely covering the [inaudible 00:33:36] down there, and it looks like a symmetrical octopus their way with me. That would never go on LinkedIn.
No, no. Not so much. Facebook, fine. It's funny, isn't it? There is like an unwritten rule, how do we know what that rule is?
Right, right. Well, and know your audience. There are some people, like if I was a therapist on LinkedIn, I would probably post that-
For sure, for sure.
But obviously I'm not, so I don't. Having said that, there's a couple, Shari Levitin does a phenomenal job of pulling in her life and her business. Now everyone wants to be Shari when they grow up. She is the most … S-H-A-R-I L-E-V-I-T-A-N I believe it is. She's also got a famous brother who is an author about music. But she's a phenomenal, phenomenal business woman. She's a consultant to coach. She just unbelievable, and she lives this amazing life.
And so she pulls in, she does lives beautifully, or not lives, I guess it's native video on LinkedIn [inaudible 00:34:48], and she pulls in her audience wherever she is, whether she's skiing, white water rafting, hanging out at Rodeo drive. She pulls the audience in, so there's definitely a personal aspect. That's what people identify with or want to identify with, and that's where you really get your, I think it's [inaudible 00:35:12] the raving fans.
Yeah.
You get your raving fans because they bought into you and they bought into your life. She could just be like, “Watch my webinar on Friday about three things you can do to improve your business.” But of course then she wouldn't be Shari. That's pulling in that personal aspect. [Kurt Shaver 00:35:32] one of our CSO actually he did the same thing. He, it was actually green screen, but he had a pretend picture of himself skiing, introducing a webinar or a conference rather, that he was going to be at, that happened to be in Tahoe.
And so again, pulling in that fun personal aspect is fine. Just be aware of your audience. There's going to be levels where it's okay and not okay. You will see a lot of people doing math quizzes, bikini shots, things like that on LinkedIn, and you'll see they get a massive amount of visibility because everyone in the timeline's going, this isn't good for LinkedIn, and the second someone says, this isn't good for LinkedIn-
You're blowing it up.
[inaudible 00:36:17] feed, so first of all if you see that, just block it, don't respond to it. But do you really want, like all news is not necessarily good news, you don't want your name associated with that kind of negativity I would say.
No, I take it [inaudible 00:36:31] I think for me, because I am quite personable or I try and be, and on something like Insta Story, they hear it all like, and I sent an email to my list today and I told you a story before we started recording about my daughter getting her coat stuck on a [inaudible 00:36:47]. Anyway, I put that on an email, it's my list today because I do share stuff like that.
But I feel like for me, if I was going to do it, I'd have to start very slow and very gently and just gauge how it was, because I know, like you said, I have seen things on there and I thought, “Oh no.” Whereas if I'd seen on Insta story, I wouldn't have thought twice about it and I might even be following that person on both. But for some reason, it's like you're in a different mindset than you are on the other platforms.
And therefore for me, I once had a friend, not a friend request, a LinkedIn request from someone who had no top on, which again I was a bit like, that's not for here. Like not [inaudible 00:37:30].
No, no.
My husband listens, I don't often accept.
That's more like match.com.
Sites that I am not on as a happily married woman.
Yeah, exactly. That is a swipe left-
Exactly. But seriously, of all the platforms that is not the one I'd be having my top off on. I wouldn't be having my top off anywhere, just get that clear. I would not suggest you take your top off for LinkedIn. So yeah, for me, like you said, it's funny isn't it? We just assume like, “Oh no, that's not right because that's not here.” I remember watching Guy Kawasaki once at social media marketing world, and he was talking about LinkedIn and he said he puts personal stuff on that. And he also said, because it was at the time before, I think it was before Donald Trump got into office.
He used to put like proper divisive comments up, which I would suggest if people are doing this, a business that you avoid, I avoid anything like that like the plague, because I just think, just don't go there, because you don't want to upset people and for no reason.
Especially [inaudible 00:38:37] social media marketing.
Exactly.
[inaudible 00:38:42] back after that actually [inaudible 00:38:45]. It's so funny you said that. Here's a little insider story. His social media person, she's more than that, but the one who ran his social for a long time is like [inaudible 00:39:06], and Peggy's amazing. She's just amazing, amazing social media person. She's like no, I am not going to be-
No.
Yeah, and she was paid very, very well, but she was like no one in the world can think that posted-
That this was me.
That this was me, so I was very divisive and have your opinions is fine, but think as far as politics, unless you're a politician then you can have your [inaudible 00:39:38] but for LinkedIn, politics and religion in most cases [inaudible 00:39:43].
Yeah, for sure. Because I just think, I even joke in the UK that's even sports sometimes, because in the UK they're really big-
Yeah, you go away over it.
We do, and I am not a sports person at all, I don't follow anything, but I know that some people are really serious. And if you were to say something about the wrong team, you could lose a client and it's really not worth that, is it? So it's probably just best to keep those things to yourself, and maybe pictures of you going on holiday keep them for Instagram and Facebook rather than LinkedIn.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We actually just had a, our CEO, Mario and I just did a little video on this because we work with a lot of enterprise size companies and the one thing about LinkedIn is you own your profile. No company can tell you to put on there.
Yeah.
We can make suggestions, and so when we say that, when we do a profile templates for our clients, we're like, “This is the suggestion. It's based on thousands and thousands of profiles, and awesome results, but it is just a suggestion.” But you can, in your social media policy, tell your people what they can and can't share as far as content. You need to do that because Facebook is not a place to be blasting your political or … Because people are going to, because it's LinkedIn, I think more so than any of the other sites, people are going to associate you in your profile with the company-
For sure.
[crosstalk 00:41:18] associating the company as being Republican or liberal or Christian or non Christian or whatever, and most companies don't want that affiliation without their permission basically. So if you have a company, especially if you're in marketing, you need to make sure that there's a social media policy and that your people are following it. And that there are consequences for not following it, because we've all heard the stories of the person who didn't switch over their Twitter account. That's something [inaudible 00:41:51]on a corporate account and got fired. Absolutely happen on LinkedIn.
Growing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
And you're right, it's the one and only place where you're representing the company, but it doesn't belong to the company. You've got to tread that really carefully, because like you said, you're making suggestions and you're asking people not to or to do, but at the end of the day they can kind of do what they like unless like you said, there is something in a contract or a policy that says you can't to this. But it can have massive impacts on your business if you don't.
[inaudible 00:42:23] impact on your business.
Huge. Huge. Okay. Let's talk a little bit quick through that. About personal brands because obviously one of the reasons I use LinkedIn specifically for me, is the fact that I try and grow a personal brand and therefore it's great to be seen as the expert and going out there and trying to get as many connections as possible. Tell me a bit about your thoughts around that and linked in to that.
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously solopreneur, entrepreneur, small business owner, you are your brand to some extent, and so it's easy and it's often a great place to build a website before you even build your website. Or while you're building your web website, you can customise your LinkedIn profile to represent your brand, so that's easy. Where it gets a little bit more difficult, and where we get push back again from our corporate clients employees, is when we say, use these banners, use these headlines, use [inaudible 00:43:20] sections, use these experience section copy, use this media.
Because they're like, no, it's my profile. The fact is, first of all, rising tide floats all boats. If the company looks good, you look good. If you look good, the company looks good. I would assume, as an employee of a company, you want to make your company look better so it's more successful, so you get paid more.
For sure. For sure.
Especially if you're in sales, so that's kind of a no brainer. There are definitely places where that we leave open for customization. First of all, they don't have do anything they don't want to, but we give them many. Many options of headline. We open up the template for [inaudible 00:44:04] as far as we ne the summary and the experience section, but year, representing yourself within the company, serving the client. But what it comes down to is you're serving the client, as an individual sales person, marketer, business owner, as a corporation. You're serving the client.
And so the messaging should not be a thousand … Should not be 180 degree opposite of each other. Where it becomes more difficult is when you have a day job, or you've got several interests and they're not cohesive. Then you have to decide how do I best want to represent myself? What am I trying to grow with my LinkedIn profile. If I've got this 9:00 to 5:00 engineering job, but I'm really trying to grow my gardening practise, then focus on the gardening practises, because you can [inaudible 00:44:58] to 5:00 engineering job and you're not selling.
If you're sales person for a big, Microsoft or Cisco or Oracle or whatever, you probably need to focus on the sales job. But you can of course talk about personal interests. Keep it clean, and you can add a paragraph or two in your summary section, you can add a whole experience section about your career, and talking about why being a good salesperson makes you a good gardener. I don't know, there's probably something about dirt in there. But there's probably some kind of correlation there. There are ways of making the story available to everybody, or palatable to everybody.
And again, it's really important I guess, I'm just thinking about the fact of when people go, what are they seeing and what are they assuming about you, and what are they, what's the picture they're putting together in their heads? And it needs to be consistent. [inaudible 00:45:54] I recorded a podcast earlier today, just on my own talking about speaking and becoming a speaker. And one of the things I was sort of saying is make sure that your content is consistent with what you want to speak about.
It's the same thing. If you are trying to push yourself out there is one thing and yet your profile doesn't reflect it, almost … There's been a couple of jobs that I've had that aren't on LinkedIn because they are no reflection to what I do today. The fact that I worked at McDonald's when I left a college is of no interest to anybody. That does not make me a better marketer.
That's right.
It's trying to tailor it up to the kind of where I'm headed now, even though … And obviously I've had some of that content in for a long time before I had my own business, but it's trying to sort of say, actually this builds a really good picture of my experience in this area and all the things I've done in this area.
When we're working at McDonald's and looking forward to our future, we don't know what our future is. We wouldn't know what we're doing today. It wasn't even possible, it wasn't possible-
No, no. Didn't exist.
Didn't exist, but you can stand from here and look back and go, “Okay, I can see where,” I mean, I probably wouldn't add McDonald's-
Not the McDonald's.
Just for fun, I can see where working at McDonald's taught me about marketing and taught me about engagement and taught me about time management. And then I took that into my next job and then I took that, those skills into my next job, and then I took that … And so you can actually see the path where you're looking back. But yeah, when you're starting back there, you have no idea.
No. Like you said, it might even be worth, and this is probably something that I haven't done for a really long time and lots of other people haven't done, but almost going back and just quickly go over those past jobs and go, actually, am I leading people to the right place now I'm in this place. Because like you said at the time, you didn't know you were heading that place, so now you're here, or if you are in your head thinking actually my next step is, and this is where I want to get to, should they be tweaking that just so it reflects that more.
Absolutely-
Especially if they go for a new life.
Yeah, and it's kind of interesting because I'm a little bit in that position too. I'm working on a book that has nothing to do with LinkedIn and personal branding [crosstalk 00:48:10] so I'm like going, okay, this is going to be interesting because the only thing it has in common with what I'm doing right now, is it's focused on the business world. And that's the only thing that it has in common with what I'm doing right now.
So yeah, when I get to the place where I'm starting to look for a publisher-
And they're going to start looking at you.
How am I going to wrap that, and I will. I'll make it work. I'll put the mock up book cover on my van Grosso background image. I do have a writer and author and I have written several other books-
Yeah, so you'll find the links, but it's just reviewing it and making sure that those links are visible to other people, aren't they?
Exactly, exactly.
Using Ads on LinkedIn
Okay, so this has been wonderful and I just want to ask you a couple more things to finish off, just out of my own nosiness and my own thing. So ads on LinkedIn. Now, my experience has been that a long time ago I did ads and they were very expensive and I've never done, done them again. What is your thoughts on ads and whether we should give it a go?
You know, it depends on what you want the ad to do. If you want a $5 paper click to lead to a $20,000 sale, it's not going to happen.
Not going to happen.
Not without $40,000 worth of investment. But if you are trying to build awareness around a product, yourself, your company, they are good for building awareness. The trick to ads, the trick to LinkedIn ads, at least this was a trick to LinkedIn ads when I did the lynda.com LinkedIn learning programme for them, it might've changed since then, but the trick to ads back when I was doing them was a micro target and they've made it easier. The new ads manager is actually pretty good on LinkedIn.
Okay.
So micro target, do multiple campaigns with basically the same messaging to different audiences [inaudible 00:50:13] by location, by title, by gender, by whatever and then speak to them so that they recognise themselves, so micro. It's better to have 10, 1,000 person campaigns than one $10,000 people campaign.
Okay.
Because their ROI is going to be significantly higher. So there's a little bit of a work on the onset [inaudible 00:50:34]. If you want clicks, pay for views. If you want views, pay for clicks.
Okay. So [crosstalk 00:50:41].
Yeah, so if you want more views, do pay per click, because LinkedIn's going to keep showing your stuff until it gets its money for the clicks. You're going to get way more views for pay per click than you would for pay per view. Whereas with pay per view, if you've got something and you just know it's dynamite, you just know it's gold, it's good click bait or whatever, then you don't want to pay for all those clicks, you just want the views.
That's true.
So then you do your PPM instead of your PPC, your pay [inaudible 00:51:16] impression rather than your pay [inaudible 00:51:17].
That is interesting.
[crosstalk 00:51:20] Clicks, pay for impressions.
That is really interesting.
[crosstalk 00:51:25].
Should You Be Using LinkedIn Articles?
Try that, all right, that sounds great. And then finally, the last thing I'm interested in, because I used it a lot and it used to work really well and not so much now is articles. So obviously if I'm doing a blog, obviously I could use that to put a blog on, and it used to inform you didn't, it used to say it would notify me in my notification section that someone had put an article up, and it doesn't do that now and they don't seem to be getting the gravitas that they did. So should we bother? Should we not bother?
You should bother, and the only reason I say you should bother, you've written the blog post anyway. I mean, what's another five minutes to put it on LinkedIn? It's static, so it speaks to the brand and it speaks to your expertise. If you're blogging anyway, why not? Now, I don't put every blog up. I literally have like five in draughts right now that I just need to go in and publish. You're not going to get great visibility, but yeah, it speaks to my knowledge about LinkedIn.
LinkedIn loves its new toys, just like any of us, loves it's new toys. Articles are not new toys, they're old, they're 2014. So, it's newest toy, LinkedIn Live, obviously which not all of us, including myself, have-
Do they have it, Oh no, that's not good.
LinkedIn doesn't like me [inaudible 00:52:42]. It is video, because I'm honest about LinkedIn. [inaudible 00:52:48]. Native video is still very good, but their newest is so silly is just the ability to upload a document, an infographic, a power … Not an image, but a document, so PDF or PowerPoint. Now the slide share link, even though they own slide share, and that would make sense, and actual PowerPoint or an image just needs to be under, I believe it's 10 megabytes. But LinkedIn, if you upload that, LinkedIn's like, Uh, new toy, show everybody.
Oh, okay.
Silly infographic. Well, it's not silly, it was actually a phenomenal infographic. It was a year old. I've used it before, but I uploaded it this time as a PDF instead of a link back to our blog site and it got over a hundred thousand views.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, so documents, if you can upload a PowerPoint or a PDF, LinkedIn just likes that right now. And to what I spoke about earlier, if you've got a blog post and you could shrink it down to 1200 characters or mostly, or I'll put almost all of it in those 1200 characters and then put a link back to either the article or the blog post, do that. But again, it's, let people know who the blog post's written for, what's in it and why they should read it and what's in it. If you just do those three things, it'll make a huge difference to visibility.
Okay. We should definitely be going more rather than less on the text in-
[inaudible 00:54:12] updates, yeah.
Okay, so that's interesting.
[inaudible 00:54:15] right now.
When this comes out, could all be different. This is the beauty of the world we live in. I love it.
Again, like I said, forget about it.
Might work, might not, just try it. That's the best thing. Viveka you have been such fun, thank you so much. And honestly, because I know when … Like some platforms are so easy to talk about, like what isn't exciting about Instagram stories or like it is really exciting. It's lovely as the, and often when you talk about LinkedIn people are a bit like ugh, and you've made it such fun, so I really appreciate that.
And it is good, people should go and just see. Everything I say is just test it. Put a post on Facebook, go put the same post on LinkedIn and let's see what you get from it. Because I think you'd be really surprised. Really surprised.
Viveka, thank you so much. It's been a joy to have you on.
Thank you.
So wasn't that great. I really enjoyed that episode. I thought she gave some really good advice. Really helps you think clearly about how LinkedIn is and what's interesting, and one of the things I loved, the fact that she said was that we live and die by the timeline when it comes to things like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. That really the timeline is where it's at.
If you think about it, when was the last time you really paid attention to the actual profiles, the about us of those accounts because we don't, we just tend to look at the feed and what comes up in the feed. Whereas actually LinkedIn, the whole, or the main essence of it is that you fill in this great profile and you can put loads in there. But then because of that I think we forget to actually post.
So, having a balance of both is great. I thought she gave some great, great information in terms of some of the things that need to look at and some of the basic stuff. This isn't necessarily rocket science, but it's just a case of reviewing what you've done and trying to keep active and on top of these things like it is with all social media, to be honest.
Now I have to say, I have used consistently LinkedIn for a while now and I wouldn't say I go overboard. I wouldn't say I put loads of effort into it. However, I do post fairly regularly and I obviously make sure my account is as up to date as it can be. Although literally I've just said that and I'm now sitting here thinking, when did I last look at it? Honestly we're hilarious, aren't we?
Anyway, and I have to say in all honesty I have had connections through LinkedIn that have turned into business. I've had someone asked me to speak through LinkedIn, so actually LinkedIn is a really, really good place for you to be considering if you are, especially in the knowledge industry and especially business to business, but actually any industry, I do think that you could still consider LinkedIn.
So like I said, I really enjoyed this episode. I thought she was lovely. Do go check her out. I'll obviously link up to everything in the show notes for you so you can go and have a look at her things. I know she's got some great freebies that she's got on her site and things, so do go and have a look at that because I think you'll find it really useful if you want to know more about LinkedIn.
Okay. That's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will see you again here next week.
