Build Your LinkedIn Audience in 5 Steps (And Why You Need To)

September 17, 2020

LinkedIn is a B2B goldmine

There are over 660 million users on LinkedIn.
It’s where loads of small business owners and entrepreneurs spend their time.
61 million LinkedIn users are senior level influencers and 40 million are in decision-making positions.People go to LinkedIn to browse valuable content. LinkedIn users are actually CONSUMING content daily.

Mandy McEwen, founder of award-winning agency Mod Girl Marketing, Todd Lebo, CEO of Ascend2 – a marketing research company, and Eric Stockton, General Manager of SharpSpring Ads, share the tactics that are proven to GET RESULTS.

  • Step 1: Optimize
  • Step 2: Connect
  • Step 3: Engage
  • Step 4: Give
  • Step 5: Publish

View the slide deck:

 

The panelists from our webinar got together to answer more questions from our attendees.

Watch the Q&A to learn:

  • How would you recommend going into specialized “private” linkedin in groups and engage there?
  • Can you please explain the difference between a follower and a connection on Linked In?
  • For a business who used to promote primarily using word of mouth and FB/Google Ads, do you have tips for incorporating LinkedIn into the mix?

Transcript:

0:00

Hi, everybody, we’re super glad that you guys are here today. I’m Kathleen Davis on the marketing team here at SharpSpring Ads. And today we’re going to be doing a little training on how you can build your audience on LinkedIn, which, in turn grows your business, and then your overall following as well. Before we get started, I just want to remind everybody of our question box at the bottom right of the screen. Just drop any questions or comment that you have in there throughout the webinar and we’re do a Q and A at the end, and we’ll get to as many of those as we can.

0:35

So with that, we’re just going to go ahead and get started today.

0:40

I’m going to introduce you to our lovely speakers. Our guest speaker today is Mandy McEwen. She’s the founder of an award winning agency called Mod Girl Marketing and she’s based in California and we’re having her on today as kind of our LinkedIn expert. She does the thing day in and day out, and we’re super excited to learn the strategies that she uses.

1:02

Then, we have a returning guest, Todd. He’s the CEO of Ascend 2, which is a marketing research company. He’s developed, or helped develop their marketing research methodology over at Ascend2, and we worked with him quite a few times in the past. So welcome back, Todd.

1:21

And then, we have Eric, our General Manager here at SharpSpring Ads. He’s know for his knack of growing many businesses and sales organizations over the years. And he’s also spoken at Marketing Sherpa events, e-mail Summit, and a couple other events. Just like that, just to name a few.

1:37

So thanks everybody, for joining us here today. And we’re gunna go ahead and just jump in, because we’re super excited about the content that we have today. Todd is our research expert, so I’m going to hand this over to him and let him get us started.

1:53

Sure, thank you. And it’s a pleasure to be here today. And I was really excited about this topic because, I know, personally, I use LinkedIn a lot, use it for our company, and we’ve done a lot of research, kind of around tactics that not only encompass your LinkedIn, but just how do we engage audiences and grow audiences. So, when I was looking a little bit more at some of the data, and actually pulled some from LinkedIn, a perfect source, on how large is this opportunity, you can see the trends are, are pretty tremendous. This here is just looking at the US and how many, not just how many users are on LinkedIn, but how many are active each month. So, you can see 62 million, I think they have 170 million actually on the LinkedIn platform in the US. 62 are active on a monthly basis. And I think that’s a real, I mean obviously, we all wanted to tap into that. But I think it’s a unique audience. It’s a very great opportunity to engage. I’m looking forward to these practical tips today and we’ll have some more research sprinkled throughout the session.

3:04

Yeah. Thanks, Todd. Moving on, we just kind of have a graph here that’s kinda just giving an overview of just how many people use LinkedIn, not only in the US, but also world wide, because they’ve seen record levels of engagement in recent months, and in recent years.

3:20

And then, this is kind of just a general representation of who’s on LinkedIn. And Mandy will get into some of these specifics, but these are just the type of people that you probably are trying to get in front of, and this is how LinkedIn is gunna help you do that.

3:38

So, how are LinkedIn users engaging? And I think that mostly is through content. But since Mandy, this is her area of expertise, I’m going to hand this off to Mandy.

3:48

Yeah, so the majority of LinkedIn users, honestly, they go to LinkedIn to browse and consume content. And what’s crazy is, only 1% of LinkedIn users actually create content consistently. So, on a consistent basis. Yet, there’s 91% of executives that are using LinkedIn as their main content source. So there’s a massive opportunity for you guys to establish yourselves as thought leaders and post content on a consistent basis, because people are going to LinkedIn to absorb and consume that content. But we don’t need just more noise, right, and we’ll talk about this in the five steps we get going on. Like, we don’t need that. There’s plenty of noise out there. We need value, and we need people who are passionate, and really want to help provide that value to people. So, there’s never been a better time to leverage LinkedIn.

4:36

And Kathleen mentioned this earlier and they, they’ve seen a skyrocket in use because of code and more people being at home, right? Right. But what’s crazy is that the people posting hasn’t skyrocketed. Right? So, yeah, probably some more people have been posting. Because, you know, we’re, we’ve all been at home this entire year, pretty much. But there’s still such a great opportunity for you guys to really provide valuable content on a consistent basis. And that instantly is going to make you stand out, because again, only 1% of LinkedIn users are doing that. So that’s what we’re going to talk a little bit about today.

5:15

Alright, so we’re just gunna jump right in and get started. Before we get into the first five steps, or the first of the five steps. Mandy, do you want to talk a little bit about the difference between company page and personal page?

5:27

Yes, definitely. So I have a couple of tips I’ll get to in a minute about company page. But here’s the deal with company pages. It’s pretty difficult to get exposure on a company page when you don’t have an advertising budget behind that. And LinkedIn ads can get pricey, right? So for small businesses, LinkedIn ads aren’t even a viable solution, it’s just not a great idea. For bigger companies, yeah, it’s great. So, with a personal page, you can connect with individuals personally. You can build relationships, you can post valuable content. You’re kind of limited with what you can do on a company page, but I’m going to give you some tips here in a bit to leverage both your company profile and your personal profile. Everyone should have a company page. If you have a company you 100% need a company page. One, it looks weird if you say you work for yourself or a company and then there’s that grey box that you guys see and it looks like it’s a nonexistent company, right? So it’s super simple. That’s one reason why everyone needs to have a company page in the first place. So we’re going to walk through why I feel like leveraging a personal profile is more advantageous for you than focusing on a LinkedIn company page. But I am not telling you to neglect the company page. So we’ll get to that here in a second, because it’s going to allow you to open up many doors for opportunity from leveraging that personal profile.

6:48

Awesome, thank you Mandy. So we’re just gunna go right into our step number one.

6:50

Here we go. Step one with building an audience on LinkedIn, before anything else you guys have got to have an optimized profile. And what I mean by optimized is it can’t say that you’re a business owner and that’s your headline, right? Owner at or whatever the company is. So I see so many people just making the mistake of, you know, they kind of treat it as a resume, your profile. And it needs to speak to your target audience and it shouldn’t be all about you. So yeah, it should be about how great you are and how you can help people, but it should speak more to your end target user. Um, so for example, you know, who do you want to be connecting with, think about them. What are their pain points? How can you help them use data. I just posted a video last week I think, on my LinkedIn profile, you guys are more than welcome to connect with me there and look at my content, but I talk about using data. Todd loves this, right? So use data in your LinkedIn profile. Talk about what you’ve done for people and the results that you’ve achieved for them. And paint that picture of what that could look like with people when people work with you, right? You also need to work on your headlines. So use keywords. We like using LinkedIn to do a little bit of keyword research. If you guys go to LinkedIn, you start typing in keywords and you scroll to the bottom of it, it’ll tell you what other keywords people type in. You can also use tools like Uber Suggest which is a free keyword tool owned by Neil Patel that I love, and that’s just going to tell you what types of keywords that people are actually typing in a searching for. And then you can use those throughout your profile.

8:17

Um, one tip – headlines. Um, a lot of people are using, “I help, you know, blank to blank by blank”. Like, that’s the, I help, you know, people do this by this and everyone and their dog is using that right now and it’s completely overused. And so I don’t want you guys to do that for a couple of reasons. One, you’re gunna look like everyone else. Two, the first three words of your headline are the most important because that’s like the prime real estate that people see. Because if you’re commenting and you’re posting on LinkedIn, um, only LinkedIn’s gunna show those first three letters of your headline. Everything else is gunna get cut off. So if you’re not very strategic about your headline and what you do and using those keywords and attracting, uh, your tribe of people you can help, then people are just going to pass. you up and you’re going to look like everyone else. So, just a couple of tips there. Also, of course you sprinkle those keywords, start your profile, make sure you’re optimizing everything, take advantage of all the summary, um, that the character spaces and the summary and everything. If you guys want help there is a LinkedIn checklist, um, that SharpSpring Ads has on the bottom here and then the link that you guys can click on and get my free checklist to help you out with your profile. It just makes things easier for you so you make sure. you don’t miss anything.

9:30

Hey Mandy, I have a question for you. Go for it. How often do you suggest people go back and update and revise their profile?

9:38

That’s a really really good question. I personally like to do it a handful of times a year, right? So quarterly. I say quarterly, right, that’s what I like. And it’s not like you have to necessarily change everything. Just make sure you’re reading through it on a quarterly basis at minimum and make sure that it’s relevant for you now, because as entrepreneurs, especially business owners, we’re constantly evolving our businesses right? And things are changing and whatnot, so you want to make sure that it is highly relevant. Not to mention you might have learned something like this webinar you’re on right now. Where like, oh I actually missed that. So I would say on a quarterly basis is a really good idea. And I test out new headlines all the time so don’t be afraid to change your headline even like once a month and just see how it goes. Test new things out, see how it looks. And so, I’m a big fan of switching it up, but I would say quarterly is pretty good. Minimum, twice a year, I would say, yeah.

10:30

And also, I would also recommend maybe anytime you do any branding changes, things like that, a lot of times people forget about their LinkedIn page. Yes, 100%. Not only your company page, but your personal one.

10:48

Allrighty, unless you guys have any more questions we’re just gunna move on to step two.

10:52

Perfect. And that kind of leads me in a bit – the latter part of step one was having a plan, right? And so, like, connecting with people would be part of that too. So there’s kind of a, you know, two-fold approach here, and we’ll get into more of there here in a second with the content piece and the connecting piece and they really go hand in hand. So, I recommend that you guys block off time in your week to add new connections whether that’s a Tuesday and Thursday for an hour, or it’s a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or heck, it could be every day for 20 minutes. Whatever works best for. you. But if you don’t put it in your calendar, then it’s probably not going to get done, right? Or you don’t put it in your to-do list, whatever you guys use to stay organized. So, I highly recommend, um, leveraging the search feature that LinkedIn gives you. So when you’re on the free version of LinkedIn, you’re a little bit limited on what you can do. Of course they want you to pay just like every social media network does. So if you have LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator, you can do a little bit more with the searches and finding your ideal target audience and then sending connection requests. Um, we like sending at least 25 a day. Typically for ourselves and our clients, and it works better if you can personalize it. So let’s say you have a list of people that you want to connect with and maybe it’s a target list of prospective customers or prospective clients. You always want to personalize that so if I’m connected with Eric, “Hey Eric, you know, I just talked to your colleague Kathleen, she mentioned that would be great for us to connect, you know, what do you say”, right? So something like that where it’s like, do. you have any sort of, or let’s say they just posted an article and you saw on LinkedIn, okay, great article. I love what you said on x, y, and z, so anything to make it stand out is better. Um, if you don’t have anything you could always do “Hi, first name, open to connecting” that’s, you know, it’s better than nothing. There’s just so many people that are using LinkedIn the wrong way, that uh, for us, that are using it the right way. You need to put forth a little bit of effort so you stand out, right? So go ahead.

12:45

Uh, that is actually something that’s fascinating to me, so I get, I don’t know, 20 or 30 of these things, you know, all like, I get a ton of them right, and so, uh the question I guess I would have is what are the things that people are doing wrong, to avoid?

13:01

Good question, yeah. Um, selling on LinkedIn Message is wrong, period. But especially the people that are sitting there connect to request messages like, “Hi Mandy, I came across Module Marketing LLC”, which means that they just, the bot in there right. “Um, we do x, y, and z, and we offer this, this, and this, and this, and this, and we think you’d be a great fit.” But yeah, no, don’t do that. Don’t sell. So, what do you see, Eric and Todd, on yours, that you’re getting?

13:30

I think that’s right. I mean, it just, it destroys the, the power I think of LinkedIn, when you know, all you have is, you know, people that are trying to, you know, push something at you before they start generating a conversation, right? So, there’s, there’s got it, you gotta, you gotta, sort of invest in somebody before you start withdrawing from somebody, right. And, and , so you know, having that, you know, having that engagement deliver some value. Have a conversation rather than just, you know, hitting them to the point. And I totally get it, right, and you’ve got SDR’s and VDR’s and sales people and they’re, they’re using this great tool that is LinkedIn. This great platform and, and they don’t, you know, they’re, they’re not investing the amount of time the same way they would if it was you and me sitting, you know, at a coffee shop. And we were talking, right, we would know if we were going to, you know, have a professional conversation, and we wanted to talk about a business opportunity. You don’t immediately just start pitching right, right? Right. There has to be, there has to be more to it than just that to develop a relationship. To develop a little bit of trust, a little bit of rapport before you just jump right in. So, and that’s, that’s, honestly, I decline 99% you know, of that kind of stuff, or ignore it all together. Because – but, but, I think I would change that tune and, and, actually maybe the 1% that comes through are the people that are saying, you know, that are delivering value, or they are commenting or having, you know, wanting to have a conversation that’s not just a big, you know, sales pitch, so you declined because you’re, you’re tend to be a mean spirited person, but I am, yeah. That’s a lot of it. That is, okay. That’s my default, yeah, okay.

15:22

You know, one thing too that I, that I’ve missing and trying to get better at, is you know, like somebody will set up a meeting with me, or at a company and then I realize, oh, I didn’t go, and uh, you know, connect with them on LinkedIn, and so I try to make sure I keep a note of like people who’ve connected with me in other formats and make sure that, you know, that you know, if I’ve been talking to them via email or something, that I connect with them on LinkedIn, because, you know, a people move, and then you still have that connection, uh, and just it’s just a much more natural process. So, I find that there’s a lot of ways outside of just, you know, um, even outside of LinkedIn, sometimes that you can find that connection. But make sure you make it on LinkedIn as well.

16:12

Yeah that’s a really good point. Just being like consciously aware of that right Todd? It’s like some things we don’t think about because we’re so busy and we talk to so many people throughout the day. It’s like, just having that conscious awareness of, I should probably go connect with them on LinkedIn, right? It’s just, Hey Todd, we just chatted, you know, give minutes ago, would love to have you on LinkedIn. I mean, it’s just a simple way to build your connections, especially if you’re posting content because you want people to see that and you wanted to get in front of people and there’s no better way of doing that. Especially with people that are warm, right? Like, warm prospects that you’ve actually talked to, which is rare in the LinkedIn world that you actually talk to you know, your connection. So it’s kind of like, that low hanging fruit, like why wouldn’t you add them? But that’s a really good point because it’s so easy to just miss that and not think about.

16:56

Especially senior level people, because you know, we see some of the research that senior level people are on LinkedIn, so they might be a participant in a meeting, but you know, you may only be able to talk to them once every like two or three months because of their busy schedule. But if you connect with them on LinkedIn, you have another opportunity to at least keep your company and your name in front of them in a strategic way.

17:18

Exactly, which is going to begin to show the power of posting on LinkedIn too, right?

17:26

Yeah, thank you guys for all of that. So I kind of think that after connecting the next, that leads into our next step, which is engaging.

17:33

Yes, the best. So can I tell you a story that I just heard yesterday when I was talking to an individual. W were talking about working together, so she was telling me that she left a comment recently on a post of an influencer and he has like, 200,000 followers and she left a pretty well thought out comment. And she got 400 followers like, instantly, within an hour from that one comment. Okay, so if that’s not like, proof that engagement is powerful, I don’t know what is. And this literally, I just had this conversation yesterday. And this has happened to me last week too. I posted on an influencer’s post and I got lots of people connecting with me saying they saw my comment. So first things first, it’s very advantageous for you guys to follow certain hashtags in your industry. So whatever industry you’re in, or whoever you’re targeting, follow those hashtags every single day. If you, if you can do it every day, that’s better. If not, again, this is something you need to block out time on your calendar for, even if it’s like 8am every day, every morning, I do this. This is what I do, I go and I look at hashtags for 10 minutes. And I go and look at the influences for another 10 minutes. Whatever it is, put it on your calendar and make it happen. Otherwise, it might not, but follow these hashtags and look at what’s happening and, and try to post comments on recent posts, right? So ones that aren’t 48 hours old, trying to do the most recent ones possible and look what’s popular, and try to leave a well thought out comment. That’s one great way to get followers and awareness and then also follow industry influencers. It could even be micro-influencers – other people in the industry who are posting content consistently and have a decent sized connection base or a following – engage with them and post their content and share, you know, you can share their content too. So any way that you guys can engage with popular posts and people doing good things on LinkedIn, the better it is for you. Um, and there’s so many, there’s so many benefits of that. One, you’re getting your name out there more to all of their followers. Two, your connections are seeing that you’re posting valuable comments on, on great posts. And three, the influencers themselves are going to see it, and they might even connect with you and they could introduce you to their network, right? So there’s just so many benefits of engaging and I feel like selfishness is running rampant on LinkedIn, really in our world, let’s get real. But really on LinkedIn, and people are just so selfish and they’re just all about me, all about me, all about me. But when you take the extra effort to actually leave comments on people’s posts or share something that you like or you know, just engage with people like, be a human being. It goes a really long way, and I think a lot of people just overlook that because they’re so self-centered and they’re just like “I need sales, I need sales” and they forget why LinkedIn and social media is there in the first place. It’s for us to connect as human to human and to engage with one another. So, What do you guys think?

20:22

I, I think, I think that’s exactly right. I mean, there’s you know, you see so many people again that, that, that ones that have the most, uh, sort of dynamic conversations, uh, where they have lots of lively, uh comments, and feedback, you know. It’s, it’s where there’s genuine conversation happening, genuine, you know, contribution to the, whatever the conversation topic is. Uh, you, and then you can look at the next page over, or the next individual over, you know, LinkedIn profile over, and it’s just completely dead, right? You know, it’s got one comment, or zero right? There’s every time you post, it has zero reach, because there’s, uh, you know, we’re talking about an algorithm here, right? We’re talking about an algorithm that pushes out, uh and just like with Facebook and just like with Twitter, and every other social media platform, there’s an algorithm around that that says the more people that are engaging on these particular posts. I’m going to rank them better and I’m going to give them more reach because they are going to be more, uh, valuable, you know. They’re going to deliver more valuable content, you know, to the platform. Um, so I’m just fascinated by this.

21:39

I had a question, and this is sort of like a nitpicky one. But the, on the free version of LinkedIn, how many hashtags can you follow? Do you know? Do they limit you? They, I think they do, yeah. I didn’t know that because we follow so many. But ourselves, if we don’t use the free version of LinkedIn, so that’s a really good question.

22:03

I want to say that you do, like, as a page owner, there’s a certain limit that you have. And, I could be wrong, maybe, maybe I’m wrong, but I want to say it’s like three that you can follow, you know, so for, you know, for a SharpSpring Ads, for example, I could, I could follow, something like digital marketing or digital advertising or whatever, and then I capped. Um, but there may be a paid version that unlocks that a little bit more. I’m not sure, yeah. That’s a good question. I do not know, and I Googled it real quick. There’s a video we can very, we can definitely find that out and bring that up, yeah yeah yeah. Kathleen’s gunna have that by the end of the session and then, yeah absolutely. For sure, yeah.

22:43

I mean, I would just say, you know, about the engagement – Mandy, I totally agree, you know. It’s that being selfless, you know, as compared to selfish, and making sure that you’re like truly adding value and you know, when you can, you know, it’s influencers and people like that, but just even people, you know, in industry and really providing that thoughtful content back to them via sharing. I mean, that goes a long way, and people you know, people remember that, and you know and they engage with you, um you know, you’re playing the long play. There’s no, there’s no quick fix I think in any of this. And you know, if you, if you’re going to get a, you know, quick hit, um, it’s probably, not going to happen.

23:28

Exactly. Reciprocation, right, like you said. And yeah, I’m glad you mentioned it. It’s not just influencers I want you guys to comment on. it’s your connections, right? Even if something has less connections than you do, if they have a great post that shows up on your feed, leave them a comment. They’re going to really appreciate that, right? Just like Todd mentioned. And it goes a long way. They see that you, you’re engaging with their content. Guess what? They’re going to engage with your content too. And guess what happens with, Eric mentioned the algorithms. The way the LinkedIn algorithm works, the more you engage with someone, the more it’s going to show your post to that person and vice versa. So if I’m commenting on Eric’s posts, Eric’s going to see my posts more, right? And then Eric’s more likely to comment on my post if I’m chatting with Eric on LinkedIn Messenger too, LinkedIn’s going to show my post more to Eric because they know that we’re interacting with each other. So there’s so many benefits of that. But yeah, I mean, you bring up a good point there too, Todd. It should just be anyone who has great content you’re connected with. Take the time to leave them a thoughtful message. It goes a long way. Or a complicated, especially if you know, especially if they’re uh, you know, like, during these times if people are looking for jobs or you know, things like that, I mean, you can just really help somebody by, you know, putting a comment into something they posted or something like, that I mean, you know, there is a lot of value you can give to people, uh with not expecting anything back.

24:41

Exactly, I read, I actually just read something an influencer, she said someone on her network had you know, I’m looking for a job and din’t have a single like or a single comment and she liked and commented and that alone was enough before she has quite a few followers to get people to comment and then someone saw it and then someone shared it, you know. And so just one little trickle effect is, can make all the difference in the world. And this, this individual is delighted because like you said, there’s so many people right now looking for jobs, looking for opportunities, and you can make a big difference just by leaving a comment. I mean, it’s so simple, yet it can go so far.

25:15

That’s true, and in the, uh, kind of the same vein of, not expecting anything in return, um, our step four is give, yes, my favorite give without expecting anything in return. We need more people doing this in our world, which is why we’re talking about it. So you guys can start doing this so you guys should always come from a place of value. Everything we’ve been talking about up until this point is coming from a place of value. Give, give comment to people, give likes to people, give content right, share your, your value, your expertise. I mean, all of. us have unique experiences and unique skill sets that we could share and help people all day long. It’s just a matter of doing it right. And there’s so many people who are just afraid of putting themselves out there. But uh, you, you can make a big difference and in a lot of people’s lives and work and livelihood just by sharing simple tips and giving people those aha moments that they’re like “oh wow, that seems quite simple, but I didn’t think of that”, right? So just always come from a place of value, even um when you’re connecting with people. I wanna, I’ll do this all the time Eric, you actually got a message from my team on this. Asking how I can help, right, so every connection. After I connect with someone, I send them a message and ask how I can help. Are there any projects you’re working on? Is there anything I can do to help you? So yeah, of course it’s gunna help me, obviously. if they want to hire me, but that’s not it. Like, sometimes people are just like, yeah you could share this, or can you like my company page or can you introduce me to this person? It doesn’t have to be, it’s not all about you know, reselling them in a helpful way. It’s just literally asking how I can help, and it’s just as simple as like, is there anything you do to help you, I mean it’s so simple. But so many people aren’t doing that, you know. How many times people are like “Oh, I haven’t been asked that in a really long time” Yeah, actually you can do this, right. I’ll get back to you on that. So, just give.

27:07

And the big thing here that we’re getting ready to talk about next is give with your content, right? So publish valuable content and give in that form, which we’ll talk about here in a second. But I just feel like you guys can chime in here too, I feel like there’s not enough people giving without the expectation of return on, on LinkedIn, and there needs to be more of that, because it comes back to you tenfold. When you give and you’re not expecting anything, I mean, karma for one, you talk about that all day long. But it’s just okay, this individual obviously always gives, coming from a place of value. That is going to come back from tenfold because you’re going to stand out because guess what, 99% of people on LinkedIn aren’t doing that. So, it’s helping the, the people that you’re giving to, and it’s helping you really brand yourself as this trusted expert that genuinely cares.

27:54

Yeah, they’re, they’re going there, there are going to be sales people listening to this call or you know, listening to this webinar right now. Uh, BDR, SDR folks, uh, entrepreneurs trying to do a partnership, and this is going to just fundamentally just tweak them in the wrong way, right, and what I mean by that is you know, they’re just either, you’re going to just certainly just like, see them like crumple up into a little ball, because they immediately want to jump into the conversation. They don’t want to take the time, right? And and they don’t want to, they don’t want to invest the time, but here’s a number, you know, that, that is super helpful. If this doesn’t sore of like, break you through that kind of mindset, and in the give first. Uh, is that, there’s a stat and I don’t know where it’s at, I’ll have to pull it up, but there’s a stat that’s basically that says, if you do this first, if you give first, if you contribute first, if you were real in your conversations first, uh, the the likelihood or the increase in let’s call it, uh, the engagement is around 320% more likely that somebody’s going to engage back with you than they would if you just jumped right into the conversation so, and that goes back to that point that I was saying earlier. It’s like, I, I mean, I’m just using, I’m using myself as an example, uh, but I will ignore 99%, I mean, I think that’s probably an accurate number, uh, of the people that request and, and immediately just ask for something, right? Because that’s because you know, what you know, what you’re going to get on the other end of that, you know, you’re going to just, you’re going to get pitched on something and everybody’s busy and it’s not like it’s a personal thing. I mean, I love people you know, contrary to what Todd was saying right, but my thing is I’m just fundamentally like, I’m focused, I’m trying to be cognizant, and be, you know, my time is valuable, and I’m trying to you know, I’m trying to uh, keep, keep, um things moving and do my job well, and , and so what you end up with is a natural bias towards ignoring or not wanting to engage with those kinds of people. But if you do give, if you do contribute to a conversation if there is a give first mentality, I’m much, much likelier, you know, to engage with you. It’s worth a test right, I mean, if you’re skeptical, you can, you know, just try some with a different approach. And see, you know, see what happens and especially if you’re really targeting specific industries or people. Um, you know, you can, you know, do a little research, and you know, go to their website maybe, see a blow, you know, blog, that that company wrote, uh, put a little you know, put something up there and mention you know, mention them. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways but it takes a little bit of extra time. But it’s worth it.

30:54

Well, the tendency Todd, right, is to just blast it out there. Right, just blast it out there and and, you know, it’s quantity over quality, and and you know, there’s, it’s it’s really like a false positive that you’re getting like more numbers, because those people you know, are you know, less likely to, to, actually do anything, you know. And, and, I don’t know, I kind of, you know, in some cases too, on the, on the flip side, you know, anybody who’s just blankety, or blankety, that’s not even a word, but you know what I mean, right? No matter what, right, they are just going to accept your requests, right? You know, they just sort of go through, maybe they’re trying to build a network and maybe it’s like this vanity metric or something I don’t know, but but you know, it’s a little bit of a pride thing, you know. I want you to know I want to hit my 5,000 cap or whatever it is right. And so, but my thing is about, that is, you know, the the the, you you sort of, you know, my dad always said, you know, you get what you pay for, right? You. know, so, you know, when you’re engaging with somebody you want to make sure that that conversation is valuable, and if you think about it, you know, I would much rather have 10 really good conversations than I would 100, you know, surface level conversations that are never going to go anywhere and and it will rub people the wrong way, but like Todd said, just test it on you know, your next, you know, for the next two weeks, just test it and see what happens. I guarantee you, it will, it will, outperform anything else you’ve been doing. Agree that quality over quantity is kind of the same principle that we have here under step five, which is published. Everything has a trend that you guys have noticed right. Quality and give a human being it really goes a long way, and it’s you know, funny we’re talking about being human, but we laugh back. Right now in our world, unfortunately, but we need it now more than ever due to the craziness that’s been happening. So it’s not about, I know obviously I could sit here and tell you guys all day long that you need to be posting and I did when we first originally started this, because only 1% of people are posting content, but I don’t want you just to post for the sake of posting. That’s dumb. And we don’t need more people posting fluff and noise. That’s not what we need in this world.

33:15

We need quality value content that’s actually going to help people and engages them and entertains them right. And one way to do that is just to be human, be vulnerable. Um, I feel like so many companies and individuals and companies, they feel like their posts have to be about the company. You guys don’t know how many times we work with clients on a consulting basis, we spell out everything. These are topic ideas you can talk about, um, what what are your customers paint points tell a story, tell a customer story. Tell about a time in your life where, you know, you went through hardship and what you learned out of it. Talk about your favorite inspirational quote, what that means, whatever, and all they do is post content that leads back to their company page, and it’s just all about the company. Like, that’s not what I’m telling you to do. You guys, you should have the majority approach, shouldn’t even mention your company to be honest. You can talk about certain topics that your company does, but it should not even mention your company anywhere in it. It’s value, it’s providing value to people. It’s helping them and then getting people to think, so thought provoking content too. And getting people to engage because like Eric mentioned, earlier the algorithms, it’s all about getting people to comment and engage on your posts, so instead of just talking all about you and your company which no one cares about, not to be rude, but they don’t ask people questions. So start a conversation with people and ask people what they think. Ask people to leave an example of whatever you’re talking about. I mean, there’s so many different ways to do that. And people love stories. Tell a story about a certain situation. Tell a customer story. Showcase why it is you do what you do and tie that into your content. I mean, there’s so many different ideas. We could talk for hours about constant ideas. But it really is quality over quantity and being a real human being honestly, being a real human being, you know, that is like, it boils down to that, right?

34:48

I mean, it’s so funny. I was, I was, um, I was, I don’t know, I can’t remember who it was, I think it was Dave Gerhart had posted something a few weeks ago or something and he’s like, he’s like, you want to k now what the most, uh, out of all the posts and in the, in the posts like, you know, three, four, or five times a day or something you know, and and um, he’s like you want to know what the most, uh engaged post I’ve ever had was. I’ll share it with you, and it was him, I’m pretty sure this is, I’m pretty sure I’m quoting this right. It was him and it was like his daughter, like off in the background, like he was working from home and everything started happening with Covid and everything and it was probably March or something, and it was, I think it was his daughter or something off in the background, and she was, he was on like it was a vide of him, you know, and he was on like a professional call like trying to be all professional, and his daughter’s over and off to the side, and just completely interrupts and starts talking about like her poop or something and just that video of just like that little snippet of him just posting because it just because it was, you know, it was real, and you know, because I mean you, that’s look, by the way, I am not suggesting that people, you know, that’s that, that is not the platform. This is a professional platform, but what did I mean that was, you know, one post, out of the last you know, 400 or whatever that he’d done that, you know, was, was good deliverable, you know, good delivering content you know, very, you know, uh, sort of uh, talks a lot about things like, copyrighting and things about, you know, uh, you know, marketers needs, and and what works and what doesn’t work on things like LinkedIn, you know. Or some other platform, and and so you know, when you see that, what you see is somebody who realizes, you know, that you know, people do need connect, especially right now, right?

36:47

People do need connection, people need to see that you are a real human being and that you are not just you know, something, and you know, just my own personal little story. I you know, uh, so when we started working from home, uh my kids went off and like their first day of school, you know, in the, in the spring, and and um, it was, it was probably, I don’t know, January or something, February and I started working from home and they, they made me for school, they made me this big posted that said SharpSpring Ads you know, on it, then it was all handwritten and everything, and I swear, I cannot tell you if, if it was a new person that I’d, you know, I was on a video conference with, or some, you know, some sort of um, zoom or something. Never failed, somebody was gunna mention that, you know, and I would tell the story, you know about how the kids did it and everything, and and that was like a great you know, just that something simple, you know, like, that where, uh, was a great icebreaker. And, and, um, but people, people are craving that right now. its just that real interaction they are, and sharing just like you mentioned, personal posts too, like I know this isn’t Facebook, but you can still sprinkle in some personal posts – a picture of you and your family if you’re even if you’re out camping or whatever. Like people love that, and it shows the human element and the human side of you, so it doesn’t have to be all about business, business, business all the time. I mean, I sprinkle in random. So my sister visited in July and I have a selfie that I took of her and my wife and my sister, and it blew up. I think that was like the second most popular post. It was just, you know, I think there’s a little bit of value in it, but people love, like, oh, this is a real human being, things like I do, and that’s how we relate to each other, I think.

38:35

I think in terms of numbers I think, that’s right like sprinkle, I think is the right word for it, right? You know when you, you’re talking, it can be every time, it’s got to be you know, just, just in, in the right, you know the right, small you know, amount. And I think we’re gunna see some, some of the research, but some content that people really appreciate and is inspiration, so however you get to that inspiration and encouragement, uh that you know, sometimes is, you know, what’s missed in the whole B2B world, you know, yeah, I agree. I try to post on Monday’s. I try to make that like, my inspiration, and if you go and look at my stats, I guarantee you like over 60% of my most popular posts have been the inspirational ones. Really because people are craving people, like, uh, someone I usually only share inspirational stuff on like Instagram, that’s all I do. And I rarely post on there. Someone messaged me I’m going there, like I thought you were a psychologist because of all the inspirational posts that you post. I’m like, I majored in psychology but thanks, I’ll take that as a complement right? Because that’s important to me. Like, I want to motivate and I want to inspire people, right? I mean, that’s a big part of what I do as a professional and as a human being. And so I’m glad you brought that up, Todd. I mean, that’s huge.

39:48

And people just like, I mean, they’re craving the human element and they’re craving inspiration right now too. And if you can give them that, I mean, the sky is the limit.

39:55

Yeah, I was also going to make one more comment on the whole quality versus quantity and Eric, you know this because Eric and I used to work together at Marketing Sherpa, and those research studies that we did even back then you know, it was always whether it be, um , regarding like, lead generation or any kind of marketing tactic. This is whole like quality versus quantity. And even though people typically say quality over quantity, their actions don’t always represent that, so their true belief system you know, when push comes to shove, is quantity, quantity, quantity, and they, they, they speak to quality, but they do quantity, and so I would just, you know, maybe an inspiration or encouragement would be, you know, it has to be a belief system. I mean, obviously, you you need to have data behind everything you do in marketing. We’re judged by results, but I feel like you have to have a conviction to quality and make sure that you stick by that principle and what you’re doing.

41:07

Yeah, I agree. And speaking of that, I mean, the belief system mindset too is huge in this too. I feel like so many people, um are afraid to be vulnerable and they’re afraid to post personal stuff, they’re afraid to post inspirational content. They’re, you know, especially people who aren’t used to who are. you to just pumping out, you know, for lack of a better term, crap content. Like you’re talking about quantity over quality. They overthink it, and they’re like well, if I do this, are they, people aren’t gunna like it or if I do this video, I don’t know what, am I, I’m not gunna look good or people aren’t gunna like the way it sounds or whatever. Or what if, you know, I share this story and people don’t resonate with it. Like, there’s, there’s so much fear around it and mindset is huge like you can’t worry about what people think of you period. I mean, not everyone’s gunna love you. That’s just the nature of the beast, but you have to get over that, you know. And so it’s a belief system too that you need to pay attention and make sure you’re doing quality over quantity. But it’s putting forth that extra effort and getting real that people are kind of afraid of. Like, it’s easier for them to just post this, you k now, tip and the link back to the website than it is to like sit down and, okay how can we tie this to a personal experience or a customer experience to where it’s showing that human element. And I feel like a lot of it is people are just afraid of what people are going to think or it might not go well and it doesn’t matter, you can’t care about people. Not to mention, not everything is going to be a hut. Like, that’s the whole point with posting quality over quantity, is you will be able to judge which posts are great and which ones weren’t so great. That’s normal. Not all of them are going to be a hit. But when you’re just posting quantity, you can’t even go back and look at like, what posts perform better because they’re all kind of like meh, you know? So there’s a lot of beliefs, uh belief systems and mindsets that that is a big play here. I, I think if you, when we talk about publish, if you think like a publisher, um, well, Eric must not like that last statement, he’ll be there. He’ll be back, but you know when you think about you know, publish, and if you think like a publisher in my background, I started out truly in publishing companies, you know, what it was all about and you mentioned this earlier, Mandy, about having a calendar and a schedule and a process, you know. So, sometimes you can get quantity I think. But, and quality just purely by planning for it and having that consistency, that that will you know, people underestimate it, if you, you know, if you have a methodology like a publisher, um, you know, you can, I think you can accomplish a little bit of both.

43:40

Yeah, no, I do too. And it’s all about just having that structure right, and so um, one thing I do, here’s a tip for everyone, is, I keep a Google doc in my bookmarks on my chrome browser and it just says content ideas. And literally throughout the day, even if I’m not in front of my computer and I’m like out on a walk or something, and I think of an idea or I see something and it sparks inspiration, I’ll go and I will drop that down right. So throughout the day as I am browsing LinkedIn, as I’m just working and things come up, if if it you know, if I’m consciously aware of, okay Mandy, you have to create content every Sunday, like Sunday’s when I create my content for myself. On Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So every Sunday I go and write content and I keep this document going of all these ideas and that way I never run out of ideas because we’re bombarded with information all the time and conversations we’re having. And there’s so many great things that we can talk about and things that like you know, oh that’s a good idea right? This aha, oo I could write about that and if we’re just writing them down it makes creating content so much easier, so much easier. And then you guys can use that save feature on LinkedIn, so if you’re browsing uh, LinkedIn and you see posts that you like, that maybe you could reference and use as inspiration to create your own posts, you just click that three dots in the right hand corner and there’s a drop down and you can save it and then you can go back and you can look at all your saved posts on LinkedIn from other people. And then, voila, that’ll give you content ideas too.

45:00

So it’s just being aware of everything that you’re, you know, absorbing in your brain and what you’re seeing on a daily basis and being aware of hey, I can use that as a reference or I could use that to help me write content. And that goes a long way too, so you, so you’re not just like, oh gosh, whatever day you choose it, oh it’s Sunday night, I have nothing to write about like what am I gunna go and you freak out and you spend hours upon hours like, overthinking it. Whereas, if you could just reference this document, even mine is messy, it doesn’t have to be super organized. But the process of writing is organized, but my thoughts are not, you know, and so it’s just having a process that works for. you guys. But I think something like that where you can kind of like brain dump if you will, when you have ideas or when you see things, it really does help because then you have endless content and just like Todd said, you can create lots of quality content if you have a system and a process. But if you don’t have the time yet, just start with one a week even, right? Just one quality, you know, piece of content a week and then you can ramp up from there once you get more comfortable with the process.

45:59

Yeah, and I just got a text from Eric, he said how’s that for real, he just felt you know, the money fell off, this fell off the webinar so that’s a webinar. We’ll hopefully have him back soon but um, we are coming close to the end and I definitely want to get to some of our questions since we have some really great questions in the chat box.

46:20

Really quick, um, Mandy, would you just kind of give us a, uh, I mean, we had a little overview of the personal profile versus company page earlier, but give us some more tips on this.

46:29

Yeah, so, real quick guys, uh, LinkedIn gives you 100 invites a month. I don’t know if you new this. So if you go to your LinkedIn company page and you click admin tools, there’s a little drop down and then you can click “invite people”. So there’s like an option under admin tools to invite people to your company page to like your company page, and you can do that 100 times a month. As in, you can invite 100 people a month to do that and you can just go through and select or you can type who you want to invite so. I highly recommend doing that. It’s a great way to build your company page – followers. Speaking of – it’s pointless to have followers if you don’t post content. So two ways on how you can leverage content that you’re already posting for your personal page. One is to just share it. So, instantly when you write the content for yourself on your personal page, you can share it on your company page or the second thing is you can repost it another date and maybe slightly tweak it. So take the same content you posted on Monday, let’s say, on Tuesday or even Thursday, you posted on your company page, and just maybe change a few words to match the company voice etc. right? So those are two ways and then I already talked about why every business needs a company page. Just because it looks uh, amateur, if it shows up with a little grey box on your profile, when in reality, you have a legit company and if you just haven’t created a company page, it goes a long way. Because then, it’s going to show your logo on your profile.

47:45

Yes, definitely. I just want to pop in and say that at SharpSpring Ads we’ve done that trick – the inviting people – 100 invites a month. We do that, um, that definitely works, so that is an awesome tip Mandy.

47:57

So, Todd. Here’s we’re gunna have some more um, research from Todd basically about LinkedIn engagement.

48:06

Yeah, I mean, this just kind of shows you know, why people engage what type of content. So it’s pretty self-explanatory, but I mean, that aspect of educational relevance, you know, staying on top of the trend inspiration. And I would say, you know, I guess my takeaway from this would be one of the things is, you know, you have to know your audience, right. So you have to know what’s of interest to them to engage them. So you have to know you can’t have, you can have educational material. But if it’s not educational material, is of interest to them, you know, it’s not going to help you with the engagement of those people. but you know, again, this is like really taking the time to know your audience. And then. you can transfer that into content that engages them.

48:56

Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. That the skill development is such a lower percentage of the amount of engagement than the educational or relevancy because it, and when I started on LinkedIn just out of college, skill development and professional development was everything and that was all that I cared about. But kind of as it evolved, it’s kind of grown into something more than that, I think.

49:18

No, it is interesting. My guess is though, that this is just a hypothesis, I don’t know if a whole lot of people and companies do a whole lot of content around skill development. That might be, you know, that’s an opportunity for you to actually focus on that.

49:41

I know. That’s very very true. That’s a very good point Todd. And then we have the topics because that’s the other side of this right? What topics drive engagement and you know, I think about this all the time from the standpoint of you know, what can we put out there that’s what I mean. We’re a research firm, so we have that advantage of always putting out like new research you know, and things like that. So industry news, tips, that’s why, you know Mandy, after you do a great job, just from that aspect of putting out quality tips for people, you know, if they see it and they use it they’re going to follow you, right? So jobs and skills leadership and he says I think, all these things are, you know, just industry events. I think also when you can tie other things into industry events, not just like posting that this even is going on, but maybe posting that event, and you know, if you have something special going on during that event you know, sharing that and just being helpful. So yeah, all of this stuff, you could just think about. Like, to me, these are like research. Like this is just you know, a thinking tool. So think about, like okay, what I see here and what applies to me, what applies to my business, and it just kind of tests, I mean like, Mandy said you know, put something out and you see how many people engaged and you kind of learn and adapt as you go along.

51:08

And you can blend these right? So I blend like, trend slash news with tips right? So I’m like hey, LinkedIn just rolled out this new x, y, and z, here’s how to take advantage of it. So for example, I didn’t talk about this and we could talk all day long about LinkedIn tups by the way. But you all can connect with me on LinkedIn if you want more. So there’s a feature that they rolled out a few months ago where you can pronounce your name, right, you can go on the mobile version and it’ll let you print – it’s for pronunciation, but we, us marketers use it for an introduction right, and it’s so genius because a human element again, and you go and you’re like hey, this is Mandy McEwen, thanks for browsing my profile, if there’s anything here to help you, let me know, thanks. Like that’s what mine is right. It can be so simple. Other people do something more specific, like if you want help with your LinkedIn, let me know. But it’s just one simple way that you can add that human approach. And so I know you shared this on one of my LinkedIn Lives, and shared it again and again, and so I like blending a few of these. I mean, what Todd has here on the screen, you guys can get creative and blend several of these together and then like, just said just test and see what happens right?

52:09

Yeah, we do that for example. Like on research, you know, we show the research, maybe we ask a question you know, does this connect with what you’re seeing, you know, to find you, to find out, you know, um, you know if what they see in the research connects with what they experience in their company. Or you can also say, okay here’s some challenges that marketers are having, and here are some tips on how to overcome those challenges. So like, there’s like you said, blending it and kind of combining in getting you know, it kind of goes back to like maximizing the value of like a high quality content piece. So you know, you spend a lot of time, maybe to do you know, like for us like a research report or a case study or something like that. Well then, you want to really find like how many different ways can I use it, and it’s not like a one and done.

52:57

Oh you know, I shared that case study, now let’s go on to the next thing. No there’s probably 40, 50 things you can do around that if you just sit down and kind of become more strategic about it.

53:08

Totally, yeah. And it’s just taking that extra time that people just, they’re so busy they’re not willing to do. But when you take that little bit of extra time to do that, and to spin off different ways of sharing that research report like you mentioned. It’s going to pay off ten fold. If you want to do it so that little bit of time, that 15 minutes or 20 minutes that you took coming up with those ideas, it’s going to pay off. Like you can’t compare it to where if you were just well, you spent all this money on this routine, you shared it once, now what?

53:36

Moving on. Well that’s kind of a waste of your resources right? Where you can spend a little bit more time to get creative and then you can be posting about it for months with all sorts of different content that people are engaging with. So that’s a good point. Well that’s very very true. Those are all great tips. We’re just going to give a little shout out to Mandy’s checklist here. This is Mod Girl marketing’s ultimate LinkedIn profile checklist. So if this is something you guys are interested i, the link is in the chat on the bottom right and you can go check out her website. So if you have questions, continue to send them in. If anything that we just said has sparked your interest, leave us a comment, but we do have some questions already. So Todd and Mandy, I’m going to read off a couple of these. One of them is so some of these we have gotten before the webinar, and one is specifically about how to build and maintain strong relationships with your network when you do have a busy schedule that doesn’t allow for constant LinkedIn engagements.

54:32

I think that’s definitely probably an issue that a lot of people are running into, is just the time crunch. So what kind of what time-saving tips would you have for them? So we all have 24 hours in a day, right? We’re all super busy. It’s where we spend out time and prioritizing and Todd and I both mentioned this. It’s the putting stuff on your calendar and making you do it right so if you’re structured and you know, let’s say you only have an hour a week to do this on LinkedIn, well then when is that going to work for you on your calendar. Is, you know, Monday Tuesday Wednesday mornings for 30 minutes, is that good? Well then put it on. your to do list on your calendar. Like, you have to be structured at doing this and it’s all about prioritizing right? And so, if you have a plan, if you have a structure, it’s going to go so much faster. So, if you don’t have a plan right now, step one is to go and write down what you need to be doing. So I need to be following these hashtags. Go follow the hashtags. I need to make sure I’m following the right industry influencers, right? Go do that, right, and then come up with a plan of action, then try to execute that plan of action. But if you’re just like, I don’t have enough time to do then nothing’s really going to get done and you’re still going to be spinning your wheels. You have to make yourself do these things and the easiest way for me to make myself do something if I have it on my to-do list and on my calendar right? Time blocking or whatever works for you, everyone’s different. But just write it down, you know, whatever you got to do to make yourself do that. That’s my tip Todd. What about you?

55:51

Yeah I mean, I think you kind of mentioned this before, but like I always like to have some sort of way to keep little, jot little notes down so that when I do go and spend that time, like I have you know, ideas, and you know, thoughts already kind of you, wherever they came, and we’re inspired by, I have them here and I’m starting not from a black, uh, blank, you know sheet of paper so to speak. But you know, I have some things already baked in, and uh kind of go from there and I think, and many people reply should connect with you because I think there’s also just some general tools you can use to help kind of, like you said, you can do your writing and then have it go out over the course of the week and things of that nature exactly. And I talk a lot about those types of things on my weekly LinkedIn livestream every Thursday so you can connect with me, and I can help you out with whatever you need on LinkedIn. But yeah, make just, and again, going back to the question keeping in touch with people so let’s say once a month, spend an hour and go and just ask how people are doing so people that. you connected with and maybe not everyone but maybe someone you had a conversation with it could have even been a prospective lead or a prosperous program, spend a little bit of time even if just once a month, put it on your calendar and go and just check in with people. Hey, first name, you know, I haven’t talked to you in a couple, we just want to see how are things going, how’s business going, I mean. Something as simple as that can go a long way so you have to make an effort to block out, you know, times to do all those things – not just posting content, not just engaging – it’s also keeping in touch with people via LinkedIn. Because that alone goes a long way, because a lot of people are just connecting, connecting, connecting, accepting, and then they never talk to them again. You know, which is kind of pointless. So you want to make sure that. you’re keeping in touch with those relevant connections as well. And just a simple, Hey Todd, how are things going since we last chatted, that’s all it takes. It’s so simple yet it takes a little bit of time that people are just not willing to do. And so for the people that are willing to do that, it goes a long way right and you know, one I guess final thing too. I mean, LinkedIn does make it kind of easy because you know you have your notifications, and you can see, for example, when people you. know got a new job, and I never just say congrats, you know. I mean, it’s worth you know, actually sending them a message and you know having a few words for them. But you know, you have all those notifications and that’s like, I’ll try to go through that and just look and see. So they kind of prep some things for you, you can get a lot of ideas there, and but just don’t take the easy way out I would say right?

58:21

No, those are both great tips. I know that we’re almost out of time. I do want to take one more question. This is a good one from Terry who’s listening still. So he has been posting content, but does not seem to reach his target audience. So, we’ve kind of talked about how to build your audience, how to gain engagement, but what if the people that you’re reaching are not your target audience. What, in that case, would you suggest?

58:48

So I would focus on growing your target audience, right? So focus on adding connections that are in your target audience for one. So a lot of people will come to me at the same thing and they’re like, I’m posting all this content and posting this content and not getting the results I want. I’m like well, how often are you building relationships and adding new connections? And they’re like, oh probably not as much as I should be. Well are you going to answer the question. They’re not. So they don’t answer the question, right? The answer is, they’re not building connections. So if you are awesome, continue doing that. But keep building connections with people in your target audience. And then the second thing is, this is popular right now too, is you get people together – we do this at Mod Girl with people that like-minded people that are posting content and you guys can help each other out. And it’s kind of like engagement groups, right? So if Todd and I are posting on a consistent basis, we might get together with, you know, five or ten other people that are posting content and consistent basis. And we help each other out and we have messages and threats or whatever we use to communicate and we share each other’s content. You know, with Okay I just posted this awesome thing, and you like and you comment and it’s so, it’s kind of like the, you know, you have my, if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours type of thing. And that’s a way to get engagements. And even though it might not be people on your target audience, it’s going to help with the algorithms right. And so, it’s just a way for you to get your posts to show higher up in the feed by having people that you know and you like that are also posting content. Like and comment on your stuff and then you do the same for them right? But the only way to get targeted people in your industry to your content is to add more of them to your audience. And then also, engage with more people in that target audience, right? So make it a point like we talked about every single week to go and engage on people’s posts that are in that target audience. And you’re naturally going to get people requesting to connect with you because they’re going to see your comments on those industry posts.

60:33

Yep, as I said, be laser focuses and if you find the right people that are in your audience and they have influence and you can just spend the time. once you get engagement with them, then you get their audience and that’s how you build it. So I mean, we do that. For example, it’s a little bit, not in LinkedIn, but like for media coverage of research, we know if we get one or two of the big players to cover our research, a lot of other people will cover it right? So we spend a lot more time trying to engage those one or two large media companies knowing that once we get them, all the other players will see it right? So you have to be very strategic in what you do.

61:19

Yeah I would, if you’re not spending time right now on the engagement, adding new connection piece, I would cut back on your content and take a chunk of that time that you’re spending on your content if you don’t have more time to spend, and put those efforts toward engagement and connecting with those targeted people that Todd’s talking about. Because that honestly goes so far, and I feel like for people that don’t have big audiences already, that is almost more important than posting content to be honest. I mean, They’re pretty close, but I mean, you want people to see it right. Like you guys want people to see. your content and you want targeted people to see it. So if you’re not building those relationships, you’re not engaging with people in that community, in that industry. The same people are going to see your content over and over again, which is kind of, you know, not the greatest for you right? And then the spirit of quality of our quantity if it’s not the right kind of content, then it’s the wrong quality, right? And that’s a whole other topic right? We’re just assuming that your content’s quality.

62:11

Well so we do have quite a few questions, but we are unfortunately out of time for today and everyone’s time is valuable like we’ve talked about. So we’re gunna close here, but we will send out our follow-up email with the recording. So we will either do a follow-up video or we will send out some answers to these questions in that email. So just be looking for that tomorrow in the morning. And I just want to thank you Mandy, thank you Todd for jumping on behalf of Eric, thank you for everybody who’s listening and who attended today. Eric had some internet issues, but he is awesome. He’s glad that you guys joined and if he had been here I’m sure he would have some more answers for these questions as well. So just look out for that follow-up email and thank you guys. I had a great time. Alright, thank you, appreciate it!

 

Kathleen Davis

Kathleen Davis

Marketing Manager - SharpSpring Ads: Kathleen is an enthusiastic marketer experienced in marketing automation, campaign management, and digital analytics. She's previously worked on direct mail campaigns, spear-headed lead generation efforts, and managed the marketing intern program at SharpSpring.
Post categories: Webinars
Post tagged with: A.I., Eric Stockton, Jalali Hartman, Webinars

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