Build up your business by expanding your network
I’ll admit when it comes to social media, my least favourite platform is LinkedIn.
It’s like the boring guest at the party, hovering near the sausage rolls and talking about how great they are.
And over the years I’ve had sporadic attempts to rekindle my LinkedIn love.
But it still leaves me with a deep-rooted sense of meh.
Today we’re going to change all that. We’re straying from the SEO path to talk all things LinkedIn.
Why it still matters, how to make the most of it for your business, and our special guest Jo Saunders is going to share her number one tip for making LinkedIn a powerful tool in your social media tool kit.
Tune in to learn:
- What LinkedIn is, and what makes it unique to other social media platforms
- Three ways you can use LinkedIn to improve your business
- Why growing your network is important, and how to do it right
- How being yourself will take you further
- How to effectively engage and connect with others on LinkedIn
- How LinkedIn can fit into your digital marketing plans
- Jo’s top tip to using LinkedIn for your business
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Fantastic SEO podcast which cuts through the jargon and gets straight to the SEO good stuff.
Thanks Kate!”
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About Jo Saunders
She guides specialists, experts, and organisations through the complexities of LinkedIn and social marketing tools to energise their brand, establish credibility and earn influence through the power of ConnectfluenceTM.
She is the co-author of ‘Get Good or Get Off – A guide to getting it right on social media‘, was named #2 LinkedIn Expert in the Asia Pacific for 2018, and is a finalist in 3 categories of the 2021 Social Media Marketing Institute Awards, and winner of Best Use of LinkedIn 2021 and is the only Australian LinkedIn expert invited to speak at Social Media Marketing World.
Fun fact: She completed a quest to swim in every Perth public pool in a year, created a spreadsheet, and published the 2022 Perth Pool Guide to rate them.
Connect with Jo
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Transcript
Kate Toon:
I’ll admit when it comes to social media, my least favourite platform is LinkedIn. It’s like the boring guest at the networking party hovering near the sausage rolls and talking about how awesome they are. And over the years, I’ve had sporadic attempts to rekindle my LinkedIn love, but it still leaves me with a deep-rooted sense of meh. But today, we’re going to change all that. Yes, we’re straying from the SEO path to talk all things LinkedIn, why it still matters, how to make the most out it for your business. And our special guest, Jo Saunders is going to share her number one tip for making LinkedIn a powerful tool in your social media toolkit.
Kate Toon:
Hello, my name is Kate Toon and I’m the head chef at The Recipe for SEO Success, an online teaching hub for all things search engine optimization and digital marketing. And today, I’m talking with Jo Saunders. Hello, Jo.
Jo Saunders:
Hello.
Kate Toon:
It’s lovely to have you here. So I’m going to awkwardly read out your bio as you sit and listen to me. So let’s go. Okay. Jo is a LinkedIn expert, marketing strategist and educator known as The LinkedIn Demystifier. She guides specialist experts and organisations through the complexity of LinkedIn and social marketing tools that energise their brand, establish credibility and earn influence through the power of Connectfluence trademark.
Kate Toon:
She is the co-author of Get Good Or Get Off: A Guide to Getting it Right on social Media was named number two LinkedIn expert in Asia Pacific and is a finalist in three categories of the 2021 Social Media Marketing Institute Awards. She also took out the best use of LinkedIn 2021 award. She is the only Australian LinkedIn expert ever invited to speak at social media marketing world and the biggest global social media conference, which I went to that I spent the majority of my time asleep in my hotel room.
Kate Toon:
Here’s the fun facts about Jo. She recently completed a quest to swim every Perth pool in a year creating a spreadsheet and published a 2022 Perth pool guide to rate them all. Hello, Jo Saunders. That was a wonderful bio. How are you?
Jo Saunders:
I am very good. Very, very good.
Kate Toon:
Lots of fabulous awards there and yes, social media marketing world. I wonder if that will happen again this year? I don’t feel like I gave it-
Jo Saunders:
It is.
Kate Toon:
It is, it is jolly good.
Jo Saunders:
It’s happening. I’m just not interested in going right now.
Kate Toon:
Okay.
Jo Saunders:
But it’s going to be hard.
Kate Toon:
I think I went the year you were speaking, I think. Was I there when you were speaking?
Jo Saunders:
Yes.
Kate Toon:
Yes, but I didn’t –
Jo Saunders:
And that’s where we hung out –
Kate Toon:
Because I gave myself a ridiculous amount of time to get there and get back and didn’t realise it was like a 28 million hour flight. So I arrived, slept for three days, went to one networking event and came home.
Jo Saunders:
And that’s where we hung out at some networking dinner with all the Aussies.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I didn’t see a single speech or anything. It was a complete waste. But very good that you were there. Anyway, we’re not talking about that today. We’ve given them some free advertising. If you’d like to sponsor us, Social Media Marketing World, you’re more than welcome to. But today, we’re going to be talking about LinkedIn and look, the average Joe or Joanna might have an idea what LinkedIn is. But can you give us a quick rundown of how you would describe LinkedIn to an alien that just landed on Planet Earth?
Jo Saunders:
Well, it’s the largest professional social network. So it doesn’t compete with your TikToks and whatever the latest thing is, but it’s full of professionals seeking opportunities, seeking jobs, seeking clients, all that knowledge, all that sort of stuff. So it’s very targeted, but it can still be a vortex of time if you’d let it. But it gives you access to companies and information and there’s just events. Now we’ve got audio. So it’s all coming in. So it’s pretty cool, pretty powerful.
Kate Toon:
But I guess the biggest distinction you made there is 100% about professional worky stuff, whereas Instagram, [TikTok 00:04:01], Facebook, they blur the edges a little bit. LinkedIn still, although it’s a lot less formal than it used to be still is primarily a businessy thing, which for many people might make it easier to navigate than Instagram when you’re not quite sure how much personal stuff to share versus work. I think LinkedIn is a bit clearer. It’s a bit more black and white.
Kate Toon:
Now look, you know I’m not a fan on LinkedIn massively. I’ve been on the platform for eons. I don’t even know. Is there a way of telling when you started on the platform? Probably.
Jo Saunders:
Yeah. If you’re going into settings, it will tell you when you signed up.
Kate Toon:
I’m going to do that while you’re answering the next question. So I’ve been on there for ages. I’ve had sporadic bursts of enthusiasm and I’m inconsistent on it. So assuming the audience is pretty savvy, we’re not going to give them basic stuff like write your profile name, what are three ways that someone like me, someone who’s got an established business could actually use the platform to improve my business.
Jo Saunders:
Okay, cool. Well, first one is being found. Now that ties into your profile. So to be found, and it kind of ties into SEO as well. So you’ll love this. It’s having the right keywords in your profile. It sounds obvious, but for instance, calling yourself a director or a business owner or something like that, it doesn’t help you in search cause no one’s looking for that unless they want to sell to you. So heads up. If you want to be sold to, call yourself a business owner. Absolutely, you’ll get some business coach or marketing guru selling you some stuff.
Jo Saunders:
So make sure that you are being found for the right words. So it gives you that control and because of the way it works with Google, it allows you to rank in Google for your name, your company name and what you actually do if you can get that. So that can be quite powerful. So I often test mine. So I’ll do a bit of a search for LinkedIn expert Perth, LinkedIn expert Australia, LinkedIn training, all those things I want to be known for and by LinkedIn profile ranks, which is kind of cool. So free SEO. Organic SEO too. Well, would you call it organic SEO? I don’t know.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. It’s organic. Organic versus paid.
Jo Saunders:
Yeah. But just not your website, someone else’s. So you are kind of piggybacking off the really well-respected site. So that’s number one. Number two is finding information or finding people. So if you’re looking for… Well, if you’re in business, you’re looking for clients generally. You’re not looking for friends, you’re not looking for someone to date or maybe you are. But you’re looking for people to sell to, but you don’t want to sell to them on LinkedIn. That’s a whole other conversation, but you’re finding people. But don’t just limit it to people who are potential clients. Think about current clients, past clients, referral partners, as people who are well ahead of you, thought leaders, people who maybe you’ve growing your business, you might be looking for talent for people to outsource to, or people who can be a resource to you.
Jo Saunders:
So it’s a really powerful search engine in itself. So that’s number two. And number three is to be known, to be known for something. And this is probably the most time consuming and this is the thing you’ll do on a regular basis, and it comes down to content. But once again, having content that has the right words and phrases in it so that you can be found, but also people understand who you are.
Jo Saunders:
So it’s stopping you, and before you start posting the latest, I don’t know, photo of you in your latest cool T-shirt, whatever it’s got on it. That’s a cool T-shirt today. Or your latest glasses you bought, or in my case, my latest op shopping find, I always stop and go why. What purpose does this serve to my professional network? Now, it allows people to get to know me, absolutely, but it’s got to be purposeful.
Jo Saunders:
So you want to take control of… Work out who you are. What expert you are, be known in that lane or that field and contribute and create content.
Kate Toon:
Okay. I’m going to stray from the path a little bit there because I’m going to pick up on that point. So content is a huge issue. Obviously it’s something that I’m big on is sharing stuff. But the problem with LinkedIn I find is that when I share something really useful and valuable copywriting tip or an SEO tip or a resource or a tool, or any kind of lesson that’s businessy, I get very little uptake. When I do share a picture of my coolest T-shirt or a funny story, or volleyball, I get lots of engagement, but possibly because people are sick of just constant advice and tips.
Kate Toon:
But therefore I’m like, “Well, these posts are succeeding. These posts aren’t succeeding.” So it seems to be the converse of what you are suggesting. Being an expert doesn’t seem to get me much engagement. Being myself seems to get me more engagement. So what do you think to that? Or is it just me, Jo?
Jo Saunders:
No, it’s not just you. But I love that you are you on the platform because that’s why people like you because you are you and you’re not afraid to have an opinion, and you’ve got a way with words. Anybody who’s following you anywhere-
Kate Toon:
Thank you.
Jo Saunders:
Has to love your way with words. So it comes back down to, yeah, you want to know what your expertise is, but you want to stop and go, “Why am I sharing this?” So now I’m saying would I share a photo of me some really crazy outfit I found at an op shop? Because if you follow me on Instagram, that’s part of my content, which the last couple years to know me, but it’s got to have purpose on LinkedIn. So if you can share content that’s personal like a personal story or an experience or something that shows a bit about you, but link it back to your profession.
Jo Saunders:
So because if you think about it, if you’re sharing SEO tips or content tips or the latest Google, blah, blah, blah. So is Bob down the road and so is Barbara. But if you can do it with your flare, with your vocabulary and your cool picture of whatever you’re doing, share a personal story that ties into that thing, then you’ve got a connection. No one else can do that then. No one else can be you. You stand out in your corner. It also acts as a filter for people that don’t like you, whoever those people are.
Kate Toon:
Oh, gosh. Those millions of people. I think that works and I think you can do the kind of combo as well of sharing a few tips and, yeah, people maybe are getting their eyeballs on them. Maybe they’re not interacting with them because they’re not as interactable, withable, whereas a story or whatever is much more relatable and much more likely to engender a comment. So you can mix it up. Either try and get the businessy stuff into the personal post or do business post, have different content pillars as well. That seems to work relatively well for me.
Kate Toon:
And as you said, I think there’s still this attitude that LinkedIn is all very serious and suity, and people wearing pencil skirts, boardroom shots. I think it softened a lot. So I am seeing more fun content, more op-shop pictures, which to me makes the whole platform more enjoyable. And people are, I think, embracing the personal brand stuff and being more themselves. Have you noticed a shift in your time on LinkedIn for it to soften and be less serious?
Jo Saunders:
Absolutely. And particular, I think this COVID whole period has had a massive impact because we’re all working from home. You’re probably wearing pyjamas below that awesome T-shirt. Who knows? I often wear my boots. I’m known for that. But we’ve become a lot more forgiving of not having to wear that pencil skirt and those heels, which are now in the bin. No, the op shop. Not the bin.
Jo Saunders:
But we’ve become a lot more real. Even just this morning. So I saw a photo of a colleague of mine here in Perth and it’s first day of school pic on LinkedIn. My first thought was, “What? Why is that here? Why is that type of content infiltrating LinkedIn?” But she’s not sharing to go look my child starting school. She was using it as a story to talk about her work and flexibility, and how we work now, work-life balance. So that was the image.
Jo Saunders:
So she was revealing a bit about herself and her family, but the content wasn’t about that. The content was, it was the purpose behind the personal, and that’s what works really well. Because people connect people. People want to know the person. I want to know what you do when you’re not doing your SEO magic. Who is Kate? I want to know about your van stuff, which is awesome by the way. That sort of stuff.
Jo Saunders:
So if you can bring your passion into your content on LinkedIn, people get to know… It’s like the pool stuff like me swimming should not belong on LinkedIn. Me and bathers on LinkedIn do not go. But there are photos of me in bathers on LinkedIn because I’ve –
Kate Toon:
I think they totally go.
Jo Saunders:
-used the analogy.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, I think totally get it. Because who wants to be the person at the networking do. I like to think of LinkedIn as a big networking do. Who wants to be the person who just talks about work and has no outside interests? It has one dimension. We want to share all our dimensions. You don’t need to share all your sad stories or all your cossy picks, but you can share some of them because it’s who you are. And I think what we forget sometimes is because we are involved with all our social media channels, we think everyone else looks at all of them.
Kate Toon:
But for some people, LinkedIn is it. They’re not following you on Instagram. They’re not following you on Facebook. So unless you share a little bit of that stuff there, they’re never going to see it. So this assumption that people are following you everywhere. Your mega fans are of course, but the majority aren’t. But then there’s this other aspect to LinkedIn, and I’m sorry, I’m going totally off-script. But LinkedIn just feels like, “Rah-rah, I’m awesome. Look at me.”
Kate Toon:
The classic is, “Ooh, I’m so shocked and excited to have been featured in this article for which I paid to be featured. Oh, I’m so shocked and amazed to receive this award.” Or the dreadful, the dreadful story post, which is like, “I was living in a bin. I had no money and then I decided to make hedgehog jumpers and now I’m a millionaire.” And there’s a picture of someone lying on a Porsche. I mean, LinkedIn does seem to attract those kind of hideous, humble brag type posts. What do you think that’s all about?
Jo Saunders:
Well, it comes down to who you network with. I mean, you don’t have to follow these people. You can unfollow. You can remove them. But I think, I always like to give people benefit of the doubt. They’re either following other people. So they’re emulating what other people are doing and doing it themselves. And I love a humble brag, but I call it for what it is. So if I’m winning my award, I’m going to talk about it. There’s a photo of me with my award, but I’m talking about what the award meant, why it’s there. And in my case recently, it was a collaboration. So I talk about the power of collaboration with your competition.
Jo Saunders:
I like to just be completely honest about it and say… Actually, I shared a post when I was a finalist in an award a couple of years ago, and I talked about why you should nominate yourself for awards, because if you don’t back yourself, no one else will. So I thought I’d take it from that angle, and it was shared with this organisation. I ended up speaking on the panel about why you should nominate for awards because of it.
Jo Saunders:
So any content. You’ve got to stop and go, “Why am I sharing this? Is it just my ego?” And if it is your ego, that’s okay. But call it out for what it is and just go, “Look, I’m super proud of myself.” Don’t just go, “Oh, I’m so humble to be a finalist in an award I put myself out for,” because people see through it and it just looks… It makes you sound like an idiot.
Kate Toon:
So proud to be nominated when you nominated yourself. No, I think it’s funny, and I think this is it. You’ve got to have a bit of a sense of humour on LinkedIn and as you said, unfollow the humble braggers if they drive you crazy. Now another with LinkedIn, I’m just going to slag off LinkedIn and you’re just going to defend it. The other thing is aimless.
Jo Saunders:
Not necessarily.
Kate Toon:
The aimless connections. So every time I log into LinkedIn, I’ve got hundreds of connections from people I have nothing to do with. It’s funny. My decision on whether I accept them or not, it’s like my decision of whether I take the receipt or not at Woolworth when they said, “Do you want the receipt?” Sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say no. There is no reason to it. It’s just a whim.
Kate Toon:
So sometimes I will connect with the person, sometimes I won’t. And then obviously the first thing a lot of people do is send some horrendous pitch straightaway. “Thank you so much for connecting me. I sell sandwiches. Would you like to join my sandwich network?” Lordy. What’s the deal with connections? How can you grow your network that’s beneficial? And how do you know who to accept and who not to accept? Or is it just the numbers game? Should we be honest about it?
Jo Saunders:
Well, numbers do play a part, but it’s quality over quantity or value over volume. That’s how I like to put it because you’ve got to have the numbers. Because if you are very elitist and you just go I… Actually, one of my clients early on, he was very proud to say, “I’ve had coffee with all my LinkedIn connections.” And he only had a couple of hundred and he was very proud of it. He had a very tight red velvet rope policy.
Jo Saunders:
I said, “That’s lovely, but you’re then not reaching beyond and you’re limiting your reach. You want to be having more people at the party so that more people can see you because it works two ways. So LinkedIn’s got what I call the networking effect. And this is critical to understand because if you get this, then it helps you decide to take that receipt or not take the receipt.
Jo Saunders:
So you might have noticed next to names, there’s one, two and three. So you’re either first, second, or third connection. Now anybody outside of three, so you’ve got, I’m connected to you, you’re connected to Bob and Bob’s connected to Barbara. So Barbara is three to me. Now, if Barbara’s connected to Betty, Betty is four degrees away from me. I can’t find Betty. I can’t see her. She’s invisible to me, and I’m invisible to her.
Jo Saunders:
So if you understand how that works, you want to have more people on your first level of network in order to access three degrees away. And then if you bring in people closer, so if you connect to your second level connections, then the people without aside the fourth level, become the third and so forth.
Jo Saunders:
So it’s important to be constantly growing your network. But it’s not about the number, it’s about having the right people there in the first place. So going back to the whole who do you engage with? Why do you use it? Ideal clients, easy. Past clients, current clients, clients you like. Don’t connect to clients you don’t like. Unless their influencers of the people that you want to connect to. So say Kate, you are connected to all the people that I want to know. I don’t like you. I’ll connect you to use you to access the people you’re connected to.
Jo Saunders:
Now, that’s a very blunt way of putting it. But I mean, it’s about it being beneficial to you. Unless that person’s completely, got no scruples because by being associated with you, people are going to judge me then based on that. So it’s got to be the right person. So it’s networking with purpose. So constantly growing a network of the right people who know the right people.
Jo Saunders:
So thinking beyond, thinking, like I said, partners, potential partner, potential referral partners, leaders in your field. So being in the SEO space, I’m sure you’re connected to Rand Fishkin because I know you interviewed him because I was listening to your podcast and like his stuff. So you’d connect to him… Well, multiple reasons. Firstly, because he’s a leader in your space. I mean, he seems like a nice guy. I heard him speak, I think at the conference we first met at.
Jo Saunders:
But you want to learn from him, but you also want to be seen by his network because he’s well respected. So if you start commenting on his stuff, his network are going to see your comment and you’re going to say something really intelligent and vice versa. So it’s being connected to the right people and doing it the right way. But everybody’s strategy is going to be different. So there’s no one size fits all.
Kate Toon:
My strategy as I said is , the receipt strategy. So it’s based on nothing. And I’m not connected to Rand Fishkin because Rand, if you’re listening, he won’t be, he won’t accept my connection. We’re friends on Instagram and we email sometimes, but some reason on LinkedIn. There you go. But I’m looking now. I’m going to give you some real-life examples.
Kate Toon:
Today, I’ve got Sarah, Jonathan and Ken waiting in my thingy to ignore or accept. Jonathan and Sarah have written no message. I’m looking at their little titles and Ken has written a little blurb saying, “I’d like to connect with you. I was the winner of entrepreneur of the year in 2003. Gosh, what happened in 2003? That was a while ago. But good for Ken. Looking at this list, I’m like, “Who’s got a nice picture?” That’s what I’m thinking. That’s so far.
Kate Toon:
Sarah has got SEO in her title. So I’m going to accept her. I never write an introduction. I’m just like connect with me or don’t. It’s a script. They obviously got it off some course. “I saw we had mutual connections and I thought we may want to – bibbety-boo.” I never write that. Do you think it’s important to write an introduction? What do you think of people’s decision making when you… Because I’m not… I’m babbling now. Sorry, audience.
Kate Toon:
I’m not a seeker outer of people on LinkedIn. I am seeked out more because I don’t use LinkedIn very much. So I don’t go out and go, “I want to be because connected with Bob or Barbara, let alone Betty, but Betty may sometimes ask to connect with me and I pretty much go, ‘Do I like your picture Betty?’ And if I do, I connect.” That’s about it. Is there a better way of making decisions about those who connect with you?
Jo Saunders:
Yeah. Well, actually you’ve just hit on something that I just wanted to mention you’ve got. The way you network on LinkedIn, you’ve got proactive and reactive. So what you’re talking about is being reactive completely. So you go in, people connect to you, you just say, yes, no. That’s it. Being proactive is where you are a seeker out of people, and that’s where you’re getting really strategic about your network, which you want to do. But on a base level, the reactive is easy because you just sit back and wait for people to connect to you.
Jo Saunders:
I used to do that quite for a fair bit of time, but sometimes I want to work in a particular space. I’m going to find them out. But to work out who you should connect to and how to do it, I always recommend sending a personal message, but you’re right. Not everybody is going to read it. And often they’re just copy and paste or your VA has done it or your marketing person. And they’re very vague. I mean, when I teach LinkedIn I’ll show some real life examples.
Jo Saunders:
I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent of course. But, “I’m Barry. I produce widgets. You need my widgets. I’m going to…” Whatever. And you just go, no. Straight away that message, you can get an insight into who they are and how they’re going to engage with you. Are they going to be salesy promotional? If you say, “Hi, I’m building my network. I’d like to add you to my professional network.” Why? What purpose? You may as well not send that message at all.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. It’s just straightaway, “What do you want? What do you want from me?” That’s what I think. And then the terrible follow-up. So whether you send a message or not. What is your thought on the immediate follow-up with some kind of lengthy thing?
Jo Saunders:
Don’t do what you said previously. Don’t go into the whole. “Well, I’m the number one business coach in Australia or in the world, and I can give you my help.” I mean, I get them all the time and you just go, “Whoa, back off a minute. I’ve got this programme for women who want to 10X their business,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No. Firstly, you haven’t qualified me. So go back to the personal message. I like to send the personal message for two reasons.
Jo Saunders:
Partly for me, for my own selfish reasons. So I’m a bit forgetful. So down the track, I’ve met you at a conference and we did. I think we met in person at ProBlogger. I remember meeting you in person and I knew of you already. Now, if I send a personal message to you, yeah, it’s nice and friendly going, “Hi, Kate. Great to meet you in person, blah, blah, blah. I think you took my photo on the stage actually, when I put myself up there and said I don’t want to speak at a conference and the next thing I’m at Social Media Marketing World.” So there you go. Part of the journey.
Jo Saunders:
But I’m telling my future self, because I might forget where we met, and I want to just remind myself so I can go into my history and go, “Ah, that’s where I met Kate. Awesome.” And then it just helps me because I’m lazy. Just it’s all there, but it’s just nice and friendly. But you’re right, some people don’t read it, but don’t go into selling even whether it’s that first connection request or whether it’s your response. Don’t sell them.
Jo Saunders:
I mean, the best advice I can give people is just be curious. People love talking about themselves. So if I was to connect to you and I might say, “Loved your podcast. Love the episode about blah, blah, blah.” Talk to your ego because if I’m talking to your ego, you’re going to accept me unless you got to think, “Oh, she’s got a terrible photo. She looks like stalker.”
Jo Saunders:
No. Have a good photo, obviously. Have a good headline. And say something about the person. Ask them a question, flatter them, tell them how awesome… Not in a creepy way. Don’t do the whole, “You’ve got the most beautiful eyes and… Yeah, I’ve seen it on LinkedIn. No. Look at my standup comedy act for that.” Because I actually read through a lot of those types of messages I was getting from guys at one particular point.
Jo Saunders:
Yeah. I did standup comedy. Don’t ask. Midlife crisis. Just be interested. Don’t try to be interesting. Don’t talk about your awards. That buyer that you read at the beginning, if I was to tell people that… People just go, “No. I’m not interested,” because she’s going to sell to me.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, I think as you said, there’s different ways of using it. I use LinkedIn a lot to find guests for masterclasses and podcasts. So I’ll do a shout out. Does anybody know anybody who does this? And that’s been a great way. Just today, I’m slagging off LinkedIn and a lovely man called Russ Macumber who has a podcast named very similar to mine. He did apologise because SEO Success, his podcast is called. But he’s just invited on his podcast. So I think it’s a good way to connect with that.
Kate Toon:
I guess the thing that I struggle with is the conversion. But then with also social media, it’s a bit sometimes of a leap. We’re not going to go into LinkedIn ads on here today, but interesting. I’m going to go back to the script because I’ve strayed and I don’t even know what we’re talking about now. I’ve lost my thread. But we were talking about… I guess all of this is about being your true, authentic self.
Kate Toon:
So you said be curious, be interested. Don’t try and be interesting. There’s nothing worse, is there? How critical is that? Is it possible to share too much? What’s the right balance between seriousness and not seriousness? We touched on this, but what are your thoughts on that?
Jo Saunders:
Well, if all your posts are personal and fluffy and look at me doing this and here’s me doing that and here’s me, “Oh, I got married. Oh, I’m having a baby,” all that stuff. Everything has to have purpose like I said. So I’ve seen photos, a colleague works at Microsoft and she had a photo of a guy visiting the office with his baby and she was talking about flexible work.
Jo Saunders:
So obviously, she got permission and she was talking about the company culture and ethos. So if it’s about how you work, how you communicate, how you do business, then yeah, it has a place. Someone else was asking me, should she talk about the fact she’s changing her professional name? She got married. How should she handle that? And I thought, “Well, yeah, absolutely. If you want to, share a wedding photo and talk about the story and why…” Or even ask a question. Obviously, it’s more generally aimed at females, but when you got married, did you change your name on LinkedIn? Did you change your name here?
Jo Saunders:
So it started a conversation about something and if you can make it personal, but professional, personal professional, professionally personal, and get people to engage. Because the biggest thing you want to do… Well, going back to the whole just promoting yourself and putting yourself out there. You want to start a conversation. That’s really what LinkedIn is about. It’s a massive network of people and yeah, there’s people going, “Look at me, look at me,” being show ponies.
Jo Saunders:
But if you’re saying, “Look at me,” and no one’s actually paying you any attention and engaging, you’re not getting the effects of the networking effect. You’re not reaching the first degree, second, third, and beyond. So if you just share… And I do this. I’ve got a post I share every quarter and it’s about keynote speaking, Why You Pay Me To Speak. You might have seen it. There’s always a different photo. It’s just mixed up a bit, but I’ve got to schedule. I don’t do a lot of scheduling on LinkedIn, but this one is.
Jo Saunders:
So it’s a photo of me on stage speaking and I ask a question around, why do you… Well, it’s sort of a rhetorical question. Why do you pay me to speak? I talk about the fact that you’re not paying for the hour on stage or whatever it is, you’re paying for the depth of knowledge, the massive curiosity, and poking around, and all that sort of stuff up and how long I’ve been doing it and all those things.
Jo Saunders:
Then I talk about when I speak for free and I’ve got four criteria for that. And then I ask the question… Now that’s a very specific example of speaking. Not everybody is a keynote speaker. Not everybody loves speaking. I didn’t think I’d be that person, but crazy things happen. But then I open it up and said, “When do you work for free?” Because now I’ve gone why. So key is with content.
Jo Saunders:
I mean, that was a professional example. But if that was me, say, if I’m going to be doing a triathlon, which probably is going to happen, I’ll probably talk about the fact of the journey. But then I’ll make sure the question then is open and related to business. So it might be about focus, about commitment, about journey, about challenge, whatever it is. But you want to make sure that you end with a question to engage because that’s the power of LinkedIn starting a conversation, not just talking at people, talking with them.
Kate Toon:
I like that. I think even just the simple tip of ensuring there is a question at the end of every post is helpful even if it doesn’t directly relate, as you said, even if it’s a bit of a shift. So we talked about connections and the six degrees of separation or Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Jo Saunders:
Bacon.
Kate Toon:
And we’ve talked about how to connect with people, what message to send. Let’s talk a little bit about scheduling and tips and tools. So you mentioned there don’t do many schedule posts. And I use Agorapulse for my social media, free shout-out. Obviously, as we find with most social media platforms, when I share via a tool, I don’t get the same engagement as when I share live.
Kate Toon:
What’s your experience of the difference between being on the platform and engaging rather than using third-party tools? Do you notice a big difference between visibility, engagement, all those kind of stats?
Jo Saunders:
Well, there was that, I guess, theory that using third pay tools does limit your visibility of the platform. Now, I also use Agorapulse. I love it. I’m one of their ambassadors. I think it’s a fantastic platform. Multiple reasons. But I love the way that you can plan out your content. Actually, just a side note. The thing I love, love about this in LinkedIn is LinkedIn doesn’t give you a timestamp. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this. It will say one hour ago, two weeks ago, one year ago.
Jo Saunders:
So if you are looking of patterns, this is from profile perspective, not your company page, because that gives you the exact timestamp, your profile doesn’t tell you when you post. So you can’t look for what’s working. Agorapulse does. So if you’re going into your calendar, it tells you Tuesday at 2:00 PM, you posted this and these are the results. There’s a link to the post.
Jo Saunders:
So it gives you information LinkedIn chooses not to share with you, but clearly has. So that’s one of the things I love about it. But like I said I don’t do a lot of scheduling through my profile and LinkedIn, but the ones I do, like that one is a good example, the speaking post. It always gets massive engagement because I’ve written it in a way… I’ve got a framework for writing content EQ plus IC squared, which I can go through if you want.
Jo Saunders:
But that framework means is that I’ve got some things that I make sure in the post to make sure that it’s more likely to get engagement. So there’s that piece. But the danger of scheduling is that if you schedule or you outsource UVA or whoever, and they’re doing your content for you, I mean, if you write your content in a very personal way, as you do, Kate because I mean your stuff is very much you. You write as you speak and you can tell that you’ve written it.
Jo Saunders:
Now, whether you’ve pressed the button and post doesn’t actually matter. our VA could do it. Your tool could be doing it. But the danger of scheduling or using a VA is that you’re hands-off because the real key to LinkedIn is engagement. So content you can outsource. Absolutely. Because that’s not necessarily the best use of your time sitting there posting live, if you’ve already pre-written the content or whatever, or someone’s helped you craft some content and repurpose. But the live engagement is that you can’t outsource really because no one else can be you unless they live and breathe you. So that’s the key. So scheduling for me is dangerous if that’s all you’re doing. But it’s better than nothing.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I guess there is obviously, again, theories around how quickly people interact with it and the velocity of those interactions will increase the visibility. So if you post and you’re physically there answering and interacting with the comments, it could actually help propel that. The other thing I do like about LinkedIn is the half-life seems a lot longer. You post something on Twitter or Instagram, slips down the feed and it’s very rare that you’ll see an old post pop up as someone having liked it, unless they’ve done like a hashtag search.
Kate Toon:
Whereas some posts on LinkedIn months after I posted them, I’m still getting notifications on my feed saying such and such commented on this post. So do you feel like the half-life of posts on LinkedIn, do you feel they have longer half-life?
Jo Saunders:
Yeah, but it comes down to how the content is written in the first place. If it’s written in a talking at your audience, here’s some information, and it could be your best tips. You might have the three hottest tips on SEO right now and you’ve written them, and people think it’s fantastic. But unless it’s written in a way to engage people, it’s not going to have that velocity and that longevity then.
Jo Saunders:
Controversial can work but you want to be really careful how you do that cause you don’t want to get negative comments. So there are topics to avoid. But you’ve definitely got… I mean Twitter, I mean, last I research I did was 20 minutes, probably less now, the half-life on your tweets probably. It’s probably like, I don’t know, a couple of minutes these days. Who knows.
Jo Saunders:
But LinkedIn, yeah. LinkedIn’s algorithm changed… Now was it early last year, the year before now? I think it was the year before when that actually changed. So you would’ve heard of things called pods. Some of your listeners might know pods are orchestrated engagement. So I agree to engage with your content. You agree to engage with mine. There’s whole group. Sometimes people charge for this service and there can be random people commenting and it amplifies your content to their networks.
Jo Saunders:
But going back to the networking effect, if they’ve got the wrong network for you, it’s a complete waste of time. If they’re all plumbers and you’re, I don’t know, you make cupcakes, they’re not interested in your cupcake. Well, they might be actually. But it’s the wrong people. So, with the algorithm change, they’re boost in content based on interest and all sorts of stuff.
Jo Saunders:
So you’ll see in your feed, you’ll see stuff that’s like an hour ago, two days ago. And then you’ll see something that’s 14 days ago. Well, probably it’ll say two weeks and you’re probably thinking, “Why am I seeing this old content?” It might not have any engagement, but LinkedIn just giving it that fresh boost. So it’s then up to you then to decide what you choose to engage with to help the algorithm or what you choose to unfollow.
Jo Saunders:
So clicking the three dots at the top right of a post and taking control. Do I want to unfollow Kate? Do I want to unfollow… Like if it’s secondhand content. So Kate, if you commented on Bob’s post and I’m seeing it because you commented, I can unfollow you. I can unfollow Bob. I can report it. I can tell LinkedIn this content is old, which I do often. Because this is where the algorithm fails.
Jo Saunders:
So you are talking about your event. You’ve got an event next week. Big conference. Actually, when is your conference?
Kate Toon:
It’s not for a while.
Jo Saunders:
Is that September?
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Jo Saunders:
So you’re talking about your conference. It’s next week. So you’re doing that whole last minute boost of content. Now, I might see that post two weeks after, two weeks later. The conference has been and gone. It’s pretty useless, which LinkedIn hasn’t really gotten smart with looking for certain words, triggers. So in that case, I go to three dots and say, I report the content, but I’m not reporting you. I’m reporting that your content is old. So this is where-
Kate Toon:
Oh, you’ve got the time to do that, man. I can barely go to the toilet, let alone go through and report content. Anyway, no, so that sounds great. Now another thing that I wanted to ask about was video. So obviously, some people have the ability to go live on LinkedIn and some don’t.
Jo Saunders:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
And then also we can post prerecorded videos on LinkedIn. So could you take us through video a little bit before we finish up?
Jo Saunders:
Yeah. So video is really powerful, but it comes down to your network and how your network consume content. Because for me, video is not my best performing content. Because if I look at the stats, it’s just not there. So I don’t put a lot of video out there. But live is a different story because live is now. Live is if your network have got the setting default, they’ll be notified that your live now. Now live as you mentioned, not everybody has it. I’ve had it for, oh, good 18 months now, I think.
Jo Saunders:
But to get live, you need to have creator mode turned on. So creator mode. You might go, “Oh yeah, just press the button to creator mode on.” But creator mode is not right for everybody because what creator mode does is it turns your… It rearranges your profile. So it focuses on content. So if you’re a heavy content producer, you’re regularly publishing articles on LinkedIn. You want to do live. You’re doing video. You’re doing all sorts of content.
Jo Saunders:
It puts the focus on content first and gives you access to live, then you could apply. But what it does, it turns the button that says connecting to follow. So what that does is it makes it harder for people to connect to you. So if you are focused right now, I’m building a network of people, you’re making it difficult for people to connect to you.
Jo Saunders:
They can follow you, but it’s not two-way. Following is a one way. It’s like Twitter. If I follow you on Twitter, I’m subscribing to your update, but you don’t have to follow me back. Whereas connections is a two-way. So it depends on your objective. So some people, creator mode is wrong right now, but might be good later.
Kate Toon:
I’m thinking it might be good for me because I think because I figure it depends whether you’re in the job market or whether you are, as you said, trying to build a network of clients or you’re just trying to build brand awareness through your content. So that’s really interesting, creator mode. So that’s live videos which are great and then just prerecorded videos, any tips and advice on those? Is there a certain lens that works? Is there a certain style that works? What are your tips there?
Jo Saunders:
Well, video can be up to 10 minutes, but no one’s… Well, not a lot of people are watching 10 minutes in the feed. Because you’ve got to capture attention and then they’ve got to watch the whole thing. Now, you can look at the stats that you get back from LinkedIn and it tells you how many people have seen the video. But here’s the thing. With the views, a view is counted at three seconds. So if someone watches it three seconds, that’s a view. Four seconds, it might have tuned off and not watch the rest of the whole video. So you just don’t know.
Jo Saunders:
So you want to make the video as short as you can. Short, snappy and to the point because people are time poor. They’re not going to watch it. A lot of people are watching video without sound because if you’re on your mobile, you haven’t got your headset plugged in, now you’ve got to find… It gets awkward. So captions, if you can. Obviously, that’s a bit more production though, so you’ve got trade off. Is it worth doing that?
Jo Saunders:
My best performing video on LinkedIn was a couple of years ago now and I created it in Snapchat. So one thing I wanted to do, go back to the whole messaging. So how you connect to people. So I did this little video, nine seconds long and all I did was I wanted to create a video where I sounded like a robot. So at the time I had bright blue hair. I used one of the crazy filters, changed my voice to robot and said, “I’d like to add you to my professional network” in my flattest robot voice.
Jo Saunders:
I shared that video with a point about why you want to slow it down and connect with purpose and that sort of stuff. And that video got massive views at the time. The thing is though the videos. Well, that one particularly, it was on repeat. So people just were… If they were stuck on that video, they would’ve, yeah, I’ve seen it a few times. But that worked quite well.
Jo Saunders:
But video, like I say, it’s about your audience. You’ve got to be clear on, are you just wanting to be seen by them? Like Gary Vee, I follow him. I don’t necessarily love all his stuff, but I might see his videos. I don’t click listen though because I can get enough context from seeing him, particularly if he’s got some captions or some subtitles on there. I don’t need to watch the whole thing unless want to hear him yell at someone about doing the wrong thing or whatever.
Jo Saunders:
So it depends on your audience as to whether that’s working. So don’t just look at your views though, look at your engagement because you’ve got… Do you want people to see it or do you want them to engage with it in order to propel it to their networks and build a relationship?
Kate Toon:
Okay. Well, look, we’ve got a wide range in chat here. I strayed from the path. They’ve talked about a lot of different things. Let’s wrap it up with some tips. Yeah? Some people are listening to this. I think one thing I’m going to take from this is to explore how to move my profile to creator mode, because that’s something I don’t know how to do. So I’ll be asking Jo how to do that after this.
Kate Toon:
Also, finding out the day I started. I’m really glad as well. I don’t know if I’ve turned off my notifications or if LinkedIn has stopped doing it. But I don’t seem to get the birthday and the anniversary notifications anymore. Have they turned it off?
Jo Saunders:
No, they haven’t turned it off. So you might have just gone, because-
Kate Toon:
I think I have. God, I hate them so much. So anyway, I’m waffling. What is your number one tip for people on LinkedIn? They’re listening to his pod. They’ve listened to us waffle on. They’re walking away thinking, “What action can I take today that’s actually going to make a difference on LinkedIn?” What would you suggest?
Jo Saunders:
Well, it’s two part. I mean, if you are time poor and you don’t love LinkedIn, but you want to get the benefits, you understand the network is take the time to engage. So seek out people. They don’t have to be people you’re connected to. So if you love Kate and you’re too scared to connect to Kate yet, find her profile, look at her activity and comment and start putting yourself on the map.
Jo Saunders:
But then the second part of that is the more visible you are, the more Kate is going to judge you. So actually your advice Kate, have a good photo, firstly. I wasn’t going to say that, but it’s clearly important to you and have a photo that’s representing you. But your headline. Make sure your headline positions you well and don’t just be a director or a business owner or whatever. Don’t be too abstract going, “I’m all about change.” Change what? Be specific. Use the words that are important and use them up first so that when you are engaging people, are intrigued and they know who you are and which box you fit into. They want to click and have a look at you and stalk you.
Kate Toon:
I’m just going to have a look at yours and see what yours is. So you are positioning and content ideation strategist, and LinkedIn training, and then dot, dot, dot.
Jo Saunders:
Dot, dot, dot.
Kate Toon:
There’s lot there.
Jo Saunders:
Something funny with that. So the dot, dot, dot, it does change, and I did a bit of an analysis, but mine used to stop at… So I’ve got future proof your business brand. So it used to stop at future proof your bra, dot, dot, dot. Which I thought-
Kate Toon:
That’s much better.
Jo Saunders:
-was hysterical.
Kate Toon:
Yeah that’s much better. Mine just says digital marketing beast, misfit entrepreneur, hula hooper. And then for some reason, at some part I thought it was a good idea to add an avocado emoji. So utterly nonsensical, which is genuinely my approach to LinkedIn. But thank you very much. I think the photo is important. I sound like a very judgey, shallow human being, but much more likely to connect to someone who’s got a photo where I can actually see their head and work out who they are. So Jo, fantastic. A few different things there. I’ve just realised I have creator mode on. So there’s-
Jo Saunders:
Excellent.
Kate Toon:
… something I didn’t know. So that’s exciting. I’m going to work out how to apply for video again, because I think it’d be fun. But I’m not sure you’ve removed the meh entirely for me. It feels like I need to invest in serious time into it to really get out of it as with all social media platforms. You kind of get out what you put in. So maybe it’ll go on my list for the year. But Jo, thank you so much for coming and talking with us today. We’re going to include links to all your various bits and bobs in the show notes.
Kate Toon:
We’ve got you on Twitter. What else have we got here? We’ve got your website, your YouTube, your Instagram, and of course your LinkedIn. So thank you ever so much today, Jo.
Jo Saunders:
Thank you for having me. And feel free to ask me any questions. I’m happy to help.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. All right. So if you want to connect with Jo, Jo is a member of the I Love SEO group on Facebook. You can find her in there and, obviously, you can hit her up on any of those channels and say hello. And of course go and connect with her on LinkedIn, but just make sure you have a good photo.
Kate Toon:
So that’s the end of this week’s show, if you have questions about using LinkedIn then head to my I LOVE SEO group or the Misfit Entrepreneur group on Facebook.
Kate Toon:
I like to end the show with a shout out to one of my lovely listeners. Today it’s Avaleomoomax from the United Kingdom, who writes, “Brilliant SEO tips and updates from Kate. Fantastic SEO podcast which cuts through the jargon and gets straight to the SEO good stuff.”
Thank you very much Avaleomoomax.
Kate Toon:
And thanks to YOU for listening. If you like the show, please leave a rating and if you want to read the show notes, little note here, we’ve had a few people say they’re a bit confused, you can see some brief show notes in the app, whatever app your using to listen to this pod, but you can also head to the website.
Kate Toon:
Just type in The Recipe for SEO Success in Google, you’ll find us. In the nav there is a big icon, the nav element saying “Podcast” and there you’ll find all the notes for this pod which includes the transcript, links, advice, tips – lots of other good stuff. So yeah.
Kate Toon:
Until next time. Happy digital marketing and happy SEOing. And if you are on LinkedIn and would like to connect, send me a connection request and just mention that you heard about, that you heard me on the show, and then I’ll know where you came from. Alright, thanks for listening, bye.
