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Hey, hey, welcome to episode 145.
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This is Tiny Marketing, and I am Sarah Noelle Block.
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Today we are getting into LinkedIn social selling strategies with Rich Brooks.
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Enjoy, hey, everyone.
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Welcome back to another episode of Tiny Marketing.
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Today we're diving into a topic that I'm super excited about selling on LinkedIn.
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Whether you're new to the platform or a seasoned pro.
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Linkedin offers incredible potential for B2B service founders like you.
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But let's be real LinkedIn can be a bit of a mystery.
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It's not just about adding connections, posting updates.
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It's not like all of the other social media platforms.
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Posting updates, it's not like all of the other social media platforms.
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There's a whole strategy behind how to do it effectively to be able to sell your services, and that's exactly what we're going to uncover today.
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Today's interview is with Rich Brooks and he's going to teach us his social selling strategy for LinkedIn.
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So if you're struggling with leads, or perhaps you're getting leads but they're not converting into clients, whatever the case might be, we've got actionable insights that you can use to turn things around.
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So why should you even care about LinkedIn?
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Great question, linkedin is where decision makers hang out.
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It's a platform filled with professionals and it's designed for networking.
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You're basically finding little like water coolers, to hang out in and talk to people who could be potential clients for you or referral partners for you.
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Unlike Facebook or Instagram, linkedin is all about the professional reputation and relationships.
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It's really about building relationships.
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It's where all of my biz friends have been made.
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So in today's episode, we'll uncover everything that you need to know to maximize your LinkedIn strategy, build those long relationships and convert your audience there's a bee flying past this camera to clients.
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Okay, so grab a cup of coffee, get comfy.
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Or, if you're like me, you're probably listening to this while you work out, or you're walking the dogs or you're cleaning the house.
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You know what you do, you.
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You don't have to have a coffee.
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All right, stay tuned.
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Hey Rich, thanks for joining me today.
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Sarah, I am so pleased that you asked.
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Pleased as punch.
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Thanks so much.
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Yeah, we're talking today about everybody's favorite topic.
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Absolutely everyone I have a conversation with brings up LinkedIn to me, maybe because that's my primary channel, or maybe that's just what's on their mind, but everybody is all about LinkedIn.
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We talk to B2B service founders on this show.
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So that's what your thing is.
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You are very good at that, and we're homing in on the selling piece of it.
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I saw a LinkedIn post from Molly, who's also part of this LinkedIn series, that said um, with Instagram, it's selling, selling, selling.
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You can sell really easily and you can sell every day, but on LinkedIn it's a whole other approach.
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It's really subtle.
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So I'm excited to hear from you.
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Can you introduce yourself to anyone who doesn't know who you are yet?
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Yes, I'd be pleased to, because I'm sure a lot of your listeners have no idea who I am, but my name is Rich Brooks.
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I'm the president of Flight New Media.
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It's a digital agency I started over 27 years ago.
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We're located in Portland, maine, one of the most beautiful places in the entire world to come visit, and we offer services like branding, web design, seo, social media, digital advertising, and on top of that, I'm also the founder of the Agents of Change, which is a weekly podcast and I was blessed to have Sarah on my show not too long ago and we've had over 500 episodes of that show.
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I think we're coming up on like 540.
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And that's also an annual conference that we put on as well, which we have again here in Portland Maine, and this year will be our 10th annual Agents of Change Digital.
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Marketing Conference.
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So that's a little bit of who I am.
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That is awesome.
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Yeah, podcasting has really changed the way I do business and I'm always recommending that, even if you don't want to podcast, you at least have like a episodic kind of content, so you're always showing up and building new relationships with people.
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It's probably my favorite content creation vehicle right now.
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Like for years, I preferred blogging.
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I just love to write.
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But as blogging has become more and more competitive in the SEO world and I found myself moving from I could write out a blog post in 30 to 60 minutes and it would perform we now find ourselves spending 8 to 10 to 12 hours per blog post in my company Wow, and not as good returns, even though I think the content we're producing is even better than when I was just you know, kind of knocking them out left and right.
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But podcasts whether you have your own show, like you and I do, or whether you just decide that you want to guest on other people's show I think it's just such an easier lift, especially when you're just getting started.
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So it is, and I feel like it's more intimate to a blog post.
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You don't know who wrote it until you're scrolling looking for a name for a specific person, like purpose, but with a podcast, you know that person.
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I have mentioned this before and I cannot remember what it is, but there is like a syndrome, I'm going to say, where you feel like you are friends with the podcast hosts because they're just like living in your ears.
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It's a very intimate experience.
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Absolutely.
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But podcasting isn't what we're talking about today.
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We're talking about LinkedIn, so let's get into it.
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So you have an agency.
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I am going to guess that you're getting the majority of your clients from LinkedIn.
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We're getting a percentage of it.
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I I am a strong believer that it's not ever one thing that gets the sale.
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It sometimes is, but but I think it's about getting in front of people and positioning yourself as an expert, and I know we're going to talk about sales and selling on LinkedIn today and I'm happy to share any techniques or skills that I've developed over the years, but I think so much of the power of LinkedIn is just the ability to establish yourself as an expert in the field that you want to be known for and getting yourself in front of your best prospects.
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And I know that you were talking about how you know on Instagram, you can sell, sell, sell.
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That is very much a consumer facing platform, and I started off.
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Obviously, I've been doing this for a while.
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You know I was an early adopter to Twitter.
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I was on Facebook pretty early on as well, and I enjoyed them at the time.
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I honestly can't stand them anymore, like when people say to me oh, you're the social media guy.
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I'm like I slightly groan and then I say, well, you can find me on LinkedIn.
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Like I know that sounds old, but LinkedIn is my favorite social media platform, in part because I can get more done in five minutes on a more effective work done on LinkedIn in about five minutes a day, or even every third day, than I ever could on Facebook or Twitter or any other platform.
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So for me it's just a very efficient use of my marketing time as well.
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Yeah, for me it's fun because it feels like hanging out with my friends.
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I'll go on there and then I'll enter little watering holes where I'm having conversations with people in comments, and it's like networking all the time, a place where I can go and make friends with people.
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Yeah.
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So I mean, for me it's been a great platform to connect with people.
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I also use it.
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So I use it in many different ways for doing sales, but one of the most effective ways, because I am not that kind of guy who slams the top of a used car and says what is it going to take you to get into this car today, like I don't want to sell to anybody who doesn't need my services, and that's something I tell my employees all the time.
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We're not pushing products, we're trying to understand pain points and see if we have a solution for it, and so that's the approach I take for LinkedIn as well.
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So I mean, if somebody is looking for help, how do I start generating business on LinkedIn or how do I start selling my business on LinkedIn?
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For me, the first thing is you just start with your profile.
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You need to make sure that your profile that's your tentpole on LinkedIn, and so you want to spend a lot of time there really developing that.
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You know, with a professional headshot, or at least a really friendly headshot, you know it comes down to what are the words that the search engine in LinkedIn is very basic compared to, say, google, so making sure you've got keywords in there, like I will sometimes go to LinkedIn and be like I need a photographer or I need a videographer or I need a copywriter and I need them, you know, if it's a, you know I like working with people here locally in Maine, so I'll then narrow the search down to Maine.
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So, knowing what people are looking for when they're looking for somebody who offers your services, and making sure those things go into your headline and the description of your current company and your responsibilities and definitely your about section, those are all things that are really critical.
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And when I come into companies and do training on LinkedIn which is something I love doing that's one of the places where we spend the most time.
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It's just let's go through a few of the employees' profiles and really make them the best they can be, because a lot of people they sign up for LinkedIn years ago they basically thought it was a place to post your resume and that's it, but there's this 5% of us that have realized that it is a Swiss army knife of B2B marketing and it's so powerful, but you have to spend an hour or two.
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I would recommend really creating the best personal profile you can be and really maxing it out.
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I mean, there's the featured section and you can put up videos and just really make it as active as you can be, and I think that goes a long way to getting things ready so that you can start quote unquote selling on LinkedIn.
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But for me, like just you know, today I have a lead from somebody they called up and I got back to them.
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But the very first thing I ever always do, if somebody wants to meet with me or whatever it is, I look them up on LinkedIn.
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I see if they're on LinkedIn, I see if they're active on LinkedIn.
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I try and get a better sense of them.
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I used to do this on Facebook, but now I don't really use Facebook for that anymore.
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So I go to LinkedIn and then, once I get to see a little bit about them, then I try and connect with them.
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I send them that invitation and I also tell them the reason we're meeting.
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And I don't do a lot of outbound requests on LinkedIn.
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I field a lot, but for me it's like I'm just trying to strengthen that relationship.
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So they can see how serious I am both about LinkedIn but also about their business, that I'm taking this extra step.
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I'm learning about them, I'm learning about their company.
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I'll add something personal in that note.
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And then that's usually a great way of kind of solidifying that, that weak tie, if you will, or that early stage relationship, so that we can discover is there an opportunity for the two of us to work together?
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Yeah, that's one thing that I always have in my forms is drop your LinkedIn profile here so I can check them out, I can connect with them and even if it doesn't turn into a sale right away, I have found that connecting on LinkedIn has been a great nurturing tool too, like, okay, they didn't convert immediately, but three months later it did convert because they got to know me, they interacted with my content or whatever, but we built a closer relationship through it.
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Absolutely, and you got to remember that B2B sales tend to be a lot longer.
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The sales cycle is a lot longer than B2C.
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So I mean putting you know, starting to build those relationships that's the foundation of selling when it comes to B2B.
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So putting yourself out there, educating, I think it's a fine line.
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On LinkedIn and other people have different opinions of how personal you should be I think you should be 100% a human being when you're on LinkedIn, whether you're creating your own posts or, like you said, commenting on other people's posts.
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We want to see that we're dealing with humans.
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But I also like LinkedIn because nobody posts pictures of their kids graduating from kindergarten looking for congratulations.
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So for me it's like, yes, I want to be personable here, I want to be human here, but I may not share as much as I would have back in the day on Facebook or Instagram.
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Yeah, I don't think anybody is sharing their personal stuff the way that they used to.
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It's weird become.
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I see some posts on LinkedIn where I'm like this should have been a this out.
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This feels like a Facebook post to me.
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Like.
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I'm definitely seeing that and for me and this is just me that's a turnoff, like that's just like not what I want to talk about when I come to LinkedIn.
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And this is one of the reasons I like LinkedIn because it does tend to be about business and I'm an entrepreneur and I like having these discussions with other business owners and other marketers, building those relationships with ultimately leads to sales and for me, sometimes speaking.
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And I like having these discussions with other business owners and other marketers, building those relationships with ultimately leads to sales and for me, sometimes speaking gigs as well.
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So, for the personal profiles, we talked about SEO search engine optimization using the right keywords, taking advantage of all of the sections that are available within your profile, like the featured adding services, and filling out that about section.
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Is there anything that you have found that scares people away from people's profiles?
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Any red flags?
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Well, I think of it more like when I so I batch my accepting of invitations for Friday morning.
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I have a list of things that I tackle on Friday morning and LinkedIn invitations responding to them or one of them.
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You know this has been something that's evolved over the years.
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I used to respond immediately.
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Now I just find like once a week I knock everything out at once and although I am guilty of this, like in my header, my headline it says what I do.
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I'm a digital marketer and I help businesses generate more leads online.
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Give me a call, whatever it is, but when I'm on the receiving end of that, sometimes it can actually close some doors.
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Because right now, the advice is don't put down something like president or CMO or whatever it may be in your headline.
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Instead, tell people what you do and how you help your ideal audience, which is great, but sometimes that can immediately close the door before you get a chance to talk to somebody.
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So I get probably five to 10 invitations to connect each week that say I can guarantee you five additional sales calls a week or could you handle 20 new clients a month?
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And to me, that and maybe it's the way that they're presenting it rather than what they're actually.
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It's such a turnoff that it immediately closes that door for me.
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So I think you kind of have to find that balance, like it's okay that you're not all right for everybody, but sometimes that headline can come on so strong that you feel like, if I let this person into my LinkedIn life, all they're going to be doing is pitching me 24 seven and I know I hate to be pitched to like I know when I need something and I will find you, or I know that you do cybersecurity and you're local or you've been well-recommended.
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I'm going to talk to you then, but I may not want to the second we connect.
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I may not want to buy your cybersecurity services.
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So I think, as we're doing this, we need to be aware of not raising those red flags for potential customers and not necessarily closing those doors, but rather just opening conversations so that we can start to network and see, hey, maybe you're not right for this, but maybe you know somebody who does need cybersecurity or SEO or email marketing or whatever it is, and that's where that connections come from.
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Yeah, I found the same thing, that certain job titles that are in the headlines.
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They scare me off.
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I'm like, oh, this is going to be a pitch slap, I know it.
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I'm just going to avoid it now.
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And yeah, I hadn't heard that one before, but I like that I may use it.
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It's all yours.
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So we optimize our profile and how do we start building credibility within the feed?
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I think a lot of that just comes.
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So what I've started doing myself because I want to be consistent and there's I'm usually not somebody who tries to time when specific posts are going to be, but I also know that running my own company and then having my own podcast and putting on a conference, like things, just happen so I have started to come like create lists of things that I want to talk about, things that I want to share on LinkedIn, so I always have some content I can share.
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And my personal goal for me is that I'm going to post three times a week and it doesn't mean that I'm always posting really heavy educational information, but I try to like when I learned something new.
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Right now, like half of the world, I'm really focused on AI and how that impacts my business and marketing and my clients, and so when I find something that I think is really neat and very helpful, I'll create a little video and I'll show people hey, have you tried?
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What I did recently is, have you tried talking to your data using AI?
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And so I had this little video that shows how I'm using a couple of different tools to get better information out of the data that's in front of me and I thought that was helpful and a lot of people responded to it.
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But just today, just got back from some time off and right before I left I took my team out for a day of archery at LL Bean and had some photos that I wanted to share and that is work related.
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It's like, hey, we went out, we had a great time, team bonding and all this sort of stuff.
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Here's a photo of us standing in front of the targets, so on and so forth, and so it's more of a lighter stuff, but I want to stay visible in front of people.
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I know all of my posts are going to get some sort of engagement because I built up my SSI, which is LinkedIn's algorithm that they share with us, the Social Selling Index, and if you Google LinkedIn SSI, you'll get to the page that.
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Then you can find out what your own is and also how to improve your SSI, and the reason you would want to do this is because it extends your reach.
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So if I have a very low SSI and I post something, versus somebody who posts the exact same content but they have a very high SSI, their post is just going to go further.
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It's going to get seen by more people.
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Now, if my post is great, it will also get seen by a lot of people, and if their post is just spam bait, it's not going to get seen by a lot of people.
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But all things being equal, improving your SSI will improve your reach and improve your ability to finally make that sale.
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I'm intrigued.
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I'm going to go to this SSI right now.
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Your score is never as high as you want it to be, because it's a pretty steep grade right there, but at the same time, it's like you can see.
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The nice thing is it tells you how you do within your network and then how you do within your industry.
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So you're in the top 5% of this or the top 15% of that, and that gives you a sense of like OK, so maybe my score was only a 67 out of 100, but I'm in the top 3% of my network.
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I'm doing all right.
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But that definitely is a score that you can, and it gives you tips on what are the things that you're weak in, so that you can concentrate on those and suddenly raise your.
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Oh, there you go.
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Look at you.
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Top 1%.
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Fantastic, I just pulled it up.
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I have nothing left to teach you, grasshopper.
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I highly doubt that because I have 37 out of 100 in the people in my industry.
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Yeah, no the people in your industry average 37.
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You're a 71.
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Oh, okay, and the people in your?
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network average of 43.
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So a lot of people just don't do this.
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I mean, you have a perfect build relationship score right there.
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If people are looking at the video we're looking at your screen right now, you can't get any better at building relationships.
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You know?
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It says engage with insights, which I think is a little bit of.
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Personally, I'm like they just want you to engage with the things that they show.
00:20:18.329 --> 00:20:21.242
There is the insights finding the right people.
00:20:21.242 --> 00:20:25.608
Maybe you're not going out and connecting with as many people, but perhaps people are coming to you.
00:20:25.608 --> 00:20:28.672
So it's not perfect, but it does.
00:20:28.672 --> 00:20:29.173
You know.
00:20:29.173 --> 00:20:39.346
It tells you if you do want to get that further, reach the kind of things that you have to do to play by LinkedIn's rules so that they're going to share your content further.
00:20:39.346 --> 00:20:41.291
And look, that's the only reason we're on LinkedIn is because it's a networking site.
00:20:41.291 --> 00:20:44.820
We want to build our brand, we want to build our company and we want to close sales.
00:20:44.820 --> 00:20:51.442
It's not like social media, it's not like Facebook, where what we want to do is post pictures of our kids or our dogs or our lake house.
00:20:52.784 --> 00:21:11.651
I mean sometimes Okay, so we've got our profile, we know how often we should be going on LinkedIn and actually having conversations with posts and checking out our SSI, our social selling index.
00:21:11.651 --> 00:21:13.894
So what is?
00:21:13.894 --> 00:21:22.910
Is there anything else that we need to do to build credibility with our audience or start prospecting on LinkedIn?
00:21:23.560 --> 00:21:32.632
Yes, One of the things that's really big right now and I knew I was going to blank on what this is called, but there are articles, AI generated articles that you can contribute to.
00:21:32.632 --> 00:21:37.311
Have you ever seen those badges like top B2B voice or top marketing voice or top?
00:21:37.420 --> 00:21:39.868
Yeah, I have top content marketing voice.
00:21:40.621 --> 00:21:41.202
There you go.
00:21:41.202 --> 00:21:43.689
So you've contributed to those articles, I assume correct?
00:21:43.689 --> 00:21:47.782
Yes, yeah, so if you, if you, if you're listening and you don't know what we're talking about?
00:21:47.782 --> 00:22:05.729
Um, there are content articles that are generated by AI, but then use LinkedIn um members to contribute to those articles and I think, if it's like you contribute to three articles, you can earn the top badge for that particular niche.
00:22:05.729 --> 00:22:11.011
You can only have one on your page at a time, I believe at this point but that's annoying.
00:22:11.755 --> 00:22:17.022
Yeah, Cause I remember it's like oh, I earned two, but I only get to show one.
00:22:17.742 --> 00:22:25.136
Right, and then you also have to keep contributing, because I also lost one one time and then I was like holy cow, I better step up my game.
00:22:25.136 --> 00:22:27.048
And those only take what?
00:22:27.048 --> 00:22:29.717
Five, 10 minutes to give a meaningful answer to one.
00:22:29.717 --> 00:22:38.579
So one of my things that I try and do is a couple times a week I'll go in and I'll contribute to either content marketing or B2B marketing, depending on which one I want to do.
00:22:39.425 --> 00:22:43.467
It increases your visibility and these are the kind of things that get rewarded on LinkedIn.
00:22:43.467 --> 00:22:47.529
So that's another way of building your credibility on LinkedIn is having those badges as well.
00:22:47.529 --> 00:22:54.115
There are certificates that you can go after on LinkedIn, which can also be another badge on your profile.
00:22:54.115 --> 00:22:57.577
I don't know that everybody necessarily cares about those badges.
00:22:57.577 --> 00:23:02.903
I think the top voice is actually the most important badge right now to get on your profile.
00:23:02.903 --> 00:23:04.627
That definitely helps.
00:23:04.627 --> 00:23:12.037
It's critical to have at least 500 connections on, because once you get past 500 on LinkedIn, it just says 500 plus.
00:23:12.037 --> 00:23:21.714
But when I see somebody who's got like 23 connections or even 480 connections, I know that they're either just getting started on their LinkedIn journey or they don't take the platform very seriously.
00:23:21.714 --> 00:23:24.089
So I think it's critical to do that 500.
00:23:24.089 --> 00:23:31.608
And then for me, like I said, I don't do as much outbound as I used to, only because I have over 10,000 connections that were 10,000 followers, whatever they call.
00:23:31.608 --> 00:23:44.476
So I don't go out of my way for this right now, but I do think, especially as you're starting out or if you just want to build up your LinkedIn connections, that's something that's really important to do, and I have no scientific proof for this.
00:23:44.536 --> 00:23:51.777
Next point, sarah, but this is what I believe in my heart that LinkedIn is recommending people based on your network already.
00:23:51.777 --> 00:24:01.317
So it's like if I have a lot of people from Maine, or if I have a lot of marketers, or if I have a lot of people in HR whatever it may be who I'm connected to, they're going to show me more similar people.
00:24:01.317 --> 00:24:05.316
So I often think of shaping my network on LinkedIn.
00:24:05.316 --> 00:24:16.114
So if I'm getting people from businesses who I'll never do business with, or countries because we generally just do business in the US and Canada so I put my focus on connecting with people in the US and Canada.
00:24:16.114 --> 00:24:21.713
I don't care about countries outside of those two and this is not you know.
00:24:21.713 --> 00:24:23.105
Somewhere else I'll connect with them.
00:24:23.125 --> 00:24:29.759
But, like I'm trying to teach LinkedIn who to recommend to me and who they should recommend me to.
00:24:29.759 --> 00:24:38.996
So I'm very conscious about these days less so at the beginning, but these days about who I connect with, and just because you send me an invitation does not mean I'm going to connect with you.
00:24:38.996 --> 00:24:44.369
Whenever I ask somebody to connect with me, I always give them a very good reason why they should connect with me.
00:24:44.369 --> 00:25:02.388
It seems so obvious, but I, every Friday morning when I go through, if I've got 60 new people who are trying to connect with me, I would say maybe five of them have told me why we should connect and probably those three of them are like hey, I like to connect with like-minded people, which is such a lame comment.
00:25:02.409 --> 00:25:06.057
It has to be one of the generic ones, because I get that one a lot too.
00:25:06.704 --> 00:25:09.071
Right, I'm really impressed by what you're doing with.
00:25:09.071 --> 00:25:13.212
And then they'll list something and I'm like, or they'll list a company I no longer work with.
00:25:13.212 --> 00:25:26.847
I'm like, yeah, okay, way to do your homework, but yeah, so I mean, I try and keep it personal, but those are some of the things that will help increase your stature on LinkedIn and attract more like-minded people and more prospects to you as well.
00:25:26.847 --> 00:25:34.478
And then there's you know, so, all most of what we've talked about so far has been inbound, but I do know, like sales includes outbound stuff.
00:25:34.478 --> 00:25:42.790
So you know, when I'm going after a type of business, usually I have something in mind like I want to find directors of marketing in the state of Maine.