Getting Clients on LinkedIn in 2024 – Fill Your Sales Pipeline

Getting Clients on LinkedIn in 2024 – Fill Your Sales Pipeline

In this LinkedIn Live Stream, Gary outlines a 2024 framework for building a B2B sales pipeline on LinkedIn, covering authority/branding, purposeful network building, content, outreach, and (time permitting) LinkedIn ads. He explains housekeeping items (event replay availability, invite-list signup at pipelineology.com/events, and a PDF flowchart available by email) and describes Pipelineology’s appointment-setting focus. Key tactics include continuously building intentional connections (often limited to 100–200 requests/week), optimizing profile elements—especially the headline’s first ~40 characters—using About/Featured/Activity/Recommendations to build trust, and creating content aimed at an ideal client rather than vanity metrics. He recommends LinkedIn events, carousels, stories, and repurposed content, cautions against generic memes/politics/irrelevant polls, and emphasizes outreach quality, sequential follow-up, not pitching first messages, and avoiding calendar links. For ads, he suggests retargeting unless LTV and budget exceed $5,000 and points to LinkedIn’s ad library.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome And Weather Chat
02:24 Session Kickoff And Agenda
05:50 About Pipelineology And Gary
08:08 LinkedIn Pipeline Framework
10:13 Offer And Done For You Option
10:50 Build Your Network Right
14:24 Optimize Your Profile Basics
16:35 Headline And Trust Builders
21:14 Content Versus Outreach Paths
22:10 Content That Attracts Clients
27:52 What Content Works Best
31:52 Personal Versus Company Posting
34:03 Why LinkedIn Events Work
35:44 Repurposing Event Content
36:07 Event Promotion Playbook
37:59 Personal vs Company Posting
39:15 Make Content More Human
42:14 Outreach That Actually Works
48:16 Outreach Mistakes to Avoid
49:47 LinkedIn Ads Quick Rules
51:01 Offer Help and Open Q&A
52:27 Connection Requests Strategy
54:15 Referrals and Posting Cadence
56:52 InMail and Link Reach
01:03:37 Leverage Recommendations
01:05:58 Personal Stories Win
01:07:49 Poll Practice and Wrap Up

Transcript:

[00:00:03] All right. Welcome everybody to the How to Get Clients on LinkedIn Live Stream. we will be starting here in just a couple minutes. I’m showing. 2 58 right now. and we’re starting at, three o’clock Eastern time. So if you’re, if you’ve been to one of my events before, you know how I like to start on time.

so we will be doing the same thing again today. in the meantime, it is a, it is a, looking out the window here. It is a foggy day in Detroit, Michigan. Where’s, where’s everybody calling in from? And how’s the, how’s the weather in your neck of the woods? I gotta say it’s nice that at least it’s not so cold.

kind of the upper Midwest, we had a kind of a nice deep freeze for felt, felt like real winter. I would, I would say. but, we’re getting a little bit of a thaw this week, which is, which is always great. So makes, it, makes winter a little bit more parable.

And if you’re just jumping on here, we will be, starting here just. Just about one minute or so. Oh, Jeff. Jeff from North Idaho. I believe you. Foggy and cold there. Yeah, that, that’s do you have a lot of snow there as well? Justin? Good to see you. It’s, lots of rain in Houston. Terry also, it seems to be raining just about everywhere it seems in, in California.

Nicole in Chicago has the nice slushy snow. Yep, we got, that’s coming our way too. We had some of that, yesterday. Oh, Pablo, you, you, Pablo so far is the winner for, for weather. He is. Got the sunny Miami weather. Charlotte, looks, I would, I would take 50 degrees Fahrenheit right now. That, that seems nice Matt.

Good to see you. Klein Herman, Louisiana. Got lots of rain fog, rain fog, rain, everybody. Oh, not, not nearly enough. Not nearly enough. Snow first. First ski season. It’s been, it’s been a while. I haven’t been out, been out west to go skiing or snowboarding in, in quite a few years. So, but, but I hear you. The nice powder days were always the most 

[00:02:22] fun.

All right, well, my, my, my clock here is already showing three o’clock. So, I think with that said, let’s, let’s jump into it here. We’ll get the presentation started. if anybody comes in late, we’ll, we’ll just kind of send ’em to the replay. But for everybody who is here, I, I do appreciate everybody when they show up on time.

So I like to get started on time to, for that. So this session is building a sales pipeline in 2024 on LinkedIn. So we’re gonna be talking about the, the kind of the framework that our agency is using and has been using to build a sales pipeline on LinkedIn. So hopefully you’re gonna get a lot out of today’s session.

just a few housekeeping items, especially if this is the first time you’ve tuned into one of our sessions. There’s about a 20 to 32nd time delay, so if, if you’re in the chat there and you do ask a question, I don’t see them rolling. So when I try to answer your question, I’ll do my best to, you know, try and answer it as completely as possible since it’s difficult to have a conversation back and forth if one person talks and you don’t hear it for 30 seconds.

So, if you did get any people, we, we’ve seen less and less of that lately, but I do always just like let people know that we’re not associated with any of the people who noticed you were attending today’s event and wanted to connect with you. I, I’m sure you can figure that out, your smart people, I’d just like to mention that unless it says they work at Pipelineology.

So unless you got a, an invite from me, Evan, Katie, Nicole, or, or Angelique now, Not part of Pipelineology. So just kind of keep that in mind. The replay. I love, one of the things I love about doing these live streams is that the replay is available just a few minutes after the event ends. So if you did show up late, or you’re just seeing this now, you’re gonna get to see the whole thing in its entirety.

Or if you, you know, you hopped out a little bit late, the replay is there for you. And if you want to be notified of future events, we do try to invite as many people as possible. But, right. My, my network is hitting just hit 25,000 people in the past month and I’m not able to invite everybody. So, if you wanna make sure you get, get notified of our future ones.

The way to be sure you get on the list is go to Pipelineology dot com events. Just plug your email address in there and we will email you, what, when our next one is upcoming. So today’s agenda, we’re talking, we’re gonna be talking a little bit about the authority and the brand side of things, and how that’s probably one of the more unique advantages that LinkedIn has to offer.

We’re talk about building your network. then we’re gonna talk a little bit about content as a way to get leads. Then we’re gonna talk about outreach as a way to get leads. And then finally we’re gonna touch on LinkedIn ads. I know time per, that’ll be kind of a time permitting one, simply ’cause I got a lot packed in here and I’m trying to keep this, ideally under 45 minutes.

So we’ve got time for q and a, but, but we’ll see how it goes. I will do my best to kind of take pauses here and there and take some questions from people as we go along. So if you’ve got a burning question that pops in your head, go ahead and throw it in the chat. and I’ll, I’ll try and catch some of ’em as we go through.

if I don’t get to it right away, at q at the q and a at the end, I’ll stick around as, as long as necessary to make sure I get everybody’s questions answered. If I somehow miss it, just feel free to ask it again at the end. But we’ll, we will get back to everybody’s 

[00:05:49] questions. Alright, real quick about me.

This is the 32nd super fast version. I am the founder of Pipelineology. we are a, an appointment setting business development company and we focus primarily on helping our clients get more quality meetings and close more sales through LinkedIn. I’m the host of the Pipelineology podcast. I’ve been in marketing now for 22 years.

Actually now it’s 2024, so I get to update that for 23 years. I used to run call centers at car dealerships, so my team would handle all of the, the leads for various stores around the country. And our job was to set up appointments for people who were looking to buy a car. So that’s where a lot of our. A lot of my, techniques were initially formed and tested and and proven.

these days we’ve kind of applied that more to consulting types of, firms, agencies, things like that to help them get more meetings for their business. I think it’s actually a lot more fun and, I am actively seeking New England. IPA style beer recommendations, always looking for the good ones.

It’s a, I know it’s a tough si it’s a tough style to make well, and there aren’t a lot of places that that do it well. So if you have any suggestions, I will, I’ll definitely keep my eyes open for it. ’cause I know the other part of them is a lot of those are really hyper local. I might only be, be available in one state or even one area spot.

Enough about beer. Who is this presentation for? So I think you’re gonna get a lot out of this if you’re a consultant or, or work with a small work at a small consulting firm. If you’re in a VP of sales or VP of business development role, any type of SDR or sales rep, I think this is gonna help you.

And then basically, if you’re in kind of a business to business type of environment where you’re selling to, to people at other businesses, this should work pretty well for you. If you’re in a business to consumer space, probably not gonna be the most relevant presentation, but business to business, if you work in any capacity there, I think this is gonna be a good session for you, but don’t take my word for it.

Everything we’re talking about today is really meant to be, try, tried out and tested for yourself. I always like to just kind of let people know this is, this is for the action takers. ’cause you, I can give you all the information in the world and then if you sit on it and don’t do anything with it, is gonna do absolutely no good.

So please do try this at 

[00:08:06] home. So let’s jump into it here. So I know we do, I do try and screen these things in high definition. so it is possible you could read that flow chart, but, we’re gonna be kind of taking, taking this and breaking it down to each of its little individual components as we go along.

If you want the overall process, if you’d like a copy of this, just send an email to me, Gary at Pipelineology and we’ll send you a PDF so you don’t have to try and screenshot and blow this up. ’cause I, like I said, I know it’s a little bit, like I said, some of you might be able to do it. If you’re watching on mobile, there’s, there’s no chance you’re gonna be able to read all of that.

’cause I try to fit a whole lot of stuff into the flow chart. ’cause that really is our process and really what we’re, we’re trying to do. So I try to give you as, as much of the detail as possible. But really if you want the high level overview, you know, we want to connect with the right people on LinkedIn, use your profile to really establish authority and build trust.

And we’re gonna get back to that one in a little bit here. But boy, that, that, that is one of the things that really sets LinkedIn apart from other types of, of advertising or prospecting, is really the ability of LinkedIn to build the trust factor. And I’ll, I’ll tell you, even, even compared to website leads, like website leads for us are great and they close at a very high percentage.

I still, I, I have less hurdles and, and I have to jump through with, with prospects. If they come from LinkedIn, there’s, there’s just kind of a built in trust factor. So we’re gonna be talking about how you actually do that for yourself. we’re gonna talk about using a combination of outreach and content to get meetings with people that well you wanna work with.

And then we’re, like I said, time permitting. We’re gonna touch on LinkedIn ads when you are ready to scale. So friendly reminder. Just email me Gary at Pipelineology if you would like a copy of that. and we’ll, we’ll make sure we try and get through those all by, gimme, gimme till tomorrow afternoon, maybe say one o’clock Eastern time tomorrow.

I should have everybody done, because I know it’s gonna get late and then, today and I probably won’t get ’em all today. But 

[00:10:11] anyway. If you don’t have time to do this for yourself, I’ve actually learned this, have this slide used to be at the very end. But if you don’t have time to do this yourself, if you’re too busy, you probably also don’t have time to sit through the whole presentation.

So the real quick version is we do have a done for you program, or we can help build this and set this up and actually run it for you. Feel free to schedule a call if you, you’d like to learn a little bit more about that. And you can go to the appointment lab.com or again, just email me directly garriott Pipelineology dot com or if you want the flow chart and you wanna chat, no problem, just email me.

So I’m, I’m a pretty easy guy to get ahold of. So let’s jump into kind of the meat and 

[00:10:48] potatoes. So the very first thing I want to kind of point out to people is, as far as LinkedIn goes, you want to be building your network continuously and purposefully. So on LinkedIn, you’ve really kind of got two types of, of, of people.

You’ve got your followers, and that would be the people who can see your content. and even, even if you’re not directly connected to somebody. LinkedIn does do a pretty good job of trying to get information, especially stuff that’s popular out to a lot of people. But the more important ones and the more limited side of things is the connections.

And you can have up to 30,000 connections, which that’s a lot of people. I, I, I get, I’ll get messages from people pretty frequently saying, you know, hi, how do you know Dan? Or How do you know John? And I’m, I’m probably connected to, you know, a few hundred people named John. So, and oftentimes I tell people I, I haven’t met a lot of these people personally.

They’re just a prof, professional connection. But the advantage of having multiple connections is you can invite them to things like your event, your events like, like you are today, or subscribe to newsletters. you can get contact information like an email address if you need to contact somebody off the platform and it’s easier to message them.

So, that one’s really important. If you’re gonna be doing any type of outreach or quite frankly any type of, of of business development work on LinkedIn. the better you connected, if you’re connected to somebody directly, it’s not gonna end up in the dreaded, filtered section. Which when’s the last time you checked your filtered messages on LinkedIn?

I know I haven’t checked them recent. I haven’t, probably haven’t checked ’em yet this year. but the thing I do wanna kind of mention here is that this, this is a very slow process these days. It takes time. You’re oftentimes, you’re gonna be limited to just a hundred connections a week. There’s some programs out there that can help boost it up to 200, but that’s it.

200. You can send up 200 connection requests to people in, in the course of a week. so it, like I said, it takes time. It’s a little bit of a slow burn, but one of, it’s one of those things. Stay consistent. Max out those, those invites every single week. And over the course of a year or two, you’re gonna have a really nice sized network of people that you had chosen to be there.

Feel free, like I, I tell people, you can accept all the ones that kind of come in from other people, but the, the most valuable connections you’re often gonna have are the ones that you’ve intentionally reached out to and kind of built, built yourself. Those are the ones that. Just about, you know, probably nine times out of 10, if not 10 times out of 10.

That’s where the real value is in building that network. ’cause you’re for sure getting connected to the right people.

real quick, Eric, I just saw is the session on, I don’t have any sound or cheat chains in the screen. check your settings. If you’re on Chrome, you might have the website muted. or it could be on the, on the, on the bottom left hand side. If you put your mouse over the screen, you might be able to click on the little soundbar.

but we are gonna be, I do have, I do have the recording separately so I will, make sure we send out the replay just in case people have some issues, with it. But we’ll get it published separately. but everything should be working. But you may have to click the blue, blue join button. That’s also a possibility ’cause the, browsers don’t let you just automatically place sound.

anymore. They used to, but now not so much. So let’s kind of start right at the 

[00:14:23] beginning. So once you start building your connections, the other thing you’re really gonna wanna do is kind of a foundational thing here, is work on your profile. And I’m gonna show you some examples here, but what you kind of, the, the real basic levels here is that you want your profile to let people know who you are, what you do, who you work with, and have a little bit of a fun.

So basically make sure that you’ve got a, a picture of yourself not, and it can be pretty much from, from there. It can be just about anything. It doesn’t have to be as super, you know, buttoned up you in a, in a suit or very professional dress, or anything like that. It can be, you know, this is me just in a vest.

it just, just, just be a picture of, of you so I don’t have your privacy setting so that people can’t see it. The other things, I like to make sure that you have a, a custom background image there. Typically I use my background image for promoting my most, my next upcoming event. but it can be talking about your services.

it can just be something other than the generic gray scale image. Just I’d like some, personally, I like little pops of color, so I recommend little pops of color there. But again, whatever kind of fits your style there, just, just, jazz it up a little bit. and I like to fill in, you know, obviously put your company there.

If you are the maintainer, if you’re the admin of the company page, tell them to put the logo in there. I see so many companies that don’t have their logo there. And it just, again, it’s kind of like a little gray scale thing. Just again, it just little tiny details that make it look a little bit nicer. if, if you can get yourself Id verified, I believe it’s free still, at least it used to be.

that just kind of gives that little bit of extra assurance that, basically LinkedIn. LinkedIn says you are a real person and it’s not. Like playing for a blue check mark on, on Twitter or X or something like that, which it’s, you know, they, so, anyway, and then the headline, you know, letting people know kind of who you are, what you do, and who you work with.

And again, a little bit of fun where I say, you know, I really like memes, I like beer. Things like that. Those are always good little conversation 

[00:16:34] starters. So, going a little bit deeper here, one of the big things here is that, that headline, so I wanna show you all the different places that a headline is going to show up.

So it doesn’t just show up on your profile, right? This is my profile here. You can see the whole thing, the first 60 characters or so. Sometimes it gets cut off a little sooner. Other times it might be a little bit later. It, it just kind of depends how much space it takes up. But your headline can show up.

You can see here, down here, this is a connection request. You’ll see their headline. This is somebody’s post. You see their headline, this Person’s in Business Funding and Equipment Financing. You can see this one here. If you message somebody tells ’em what you do, you’re the founder at Anita and Co. Or even if you’re just commenting on somebody else’s post, you can see we’re here where Hannah commented looks.

That looks, se looks seven figures without spending five. And so on And so forth. So it shows up everywhere. So this is something that it’s, it’s, it’s not a lot of space, it’s not a lot of words, but something to really draw people in. and that that’s really the goal is to draw ’em in so that they click on you and check out your profile.

That’s, that’s really kind of the goal there. I, and I like to let people kind of know, you know, what somebody’s job title is. I feel like, well, we, we’ve noticed that having it, even though it kind of seems like a waste of space versus kind of what you do. Tends, tends to help with building the connections and, and establishing kind of authority.

So all, all good things to do there. Josh, I see that that recommendation for Old Nation Brewing and M 43 is in fact my favorite beer. So good. Good call. You have excellent taste my friend. So, carrying on with the, with the, the profile. So once you kind of get that top, top stuff done, there’s, there’s still a few more things to do.

’cause our goal again is to use the profile to build trust and kind of elevate your authority. So the about section, this is a really good place to get in a lot more detail about kind of what you do. So I like to think of this section. If you’re thinking of a landing page, this is where you really make your pitch.

I think, I think you get thousand characters or so, so you don’t have a, you have room to write a few paragraphs or so and kind of let people really know. Some more details about what you do. The featured section I would highly recommend using. Now this is for people who want to go deeper with things.

So, this will show up towards the very top of your, your profile. and you can choose what goes there and what doesn’t. we generally use it internally to feature different events that we’ve done. So if somebody wants to kind of spend, send some time at one of our sessions, that’s what I use ’em for.

You can use ’em for different types of, pitch decks or slide decks or, or any type of handouts you have. things like that. So just kind of what do you want people to know about if they’re really interested? They’re not quite ready to, you know, reach out and schedule a meeting. How can they learn more about you?

The activity section’s another good place and really all it means is just have some activity, be participate on the platform. Doesn’t have to be every day, doesn’t have to be all day, but you know, every, you know, maybe once or twice a week if you kind of log on and comment on something, make a post once in a while.

These are all things that kind of help just, again, make the, make the profile look real. because I mean, bots, bots are definitely a real thing on, on LinkedIn and in most cases it’s pretty easy to tell because they’re missing more mo most of these things, if, especially activity, activity is usually the kind of, the big, big red flag.

If there’s no activity, I’m, I don’t want to talk to that person ’cause they’re probably not real. recommendations. Another great one. if you’ve got people who, well, I’m sure, I’m sure everybody’s got at least one person who will say some nice things about their work, ask that person if they would write you a recommendation on LinkedIn work history.

This is kind of a really good way to establish that experience that you know what you’re doing. ’cause you’ve, you’ve been working at this, fill in as much as you can. The more full, the, the more fully filled it is, the better it’s gonna be.

Indeed, mar of those first 40 characters are, are really important when it comes to that headline on, on your profile. I,

so let’s 

[00:21:13] jump in here. So once we’ve kind of done that foundational part is, you know, you’ve, you’ve built your, you’ve really spent some time building out your profile and you’ve, you, you’re proactively connecting with people. We’re gonna have kind of two different paths we’re gonna take. We’re gonna look at content, for this portion.

Then we’re gonna look at outreach for the other portion. They’re both effective. and they both work well together. So I recommend doing both. of course it is totally up to you. You don’t have to, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. But essentially here what we’re trying to do is, is draw people in.

So here’s kind of the way I like to think about it, is begin with the end in mind, which means your end goal is really to land new clients. I’m guessing. I’m guessing that’s why you’re here. So what do we wanna do with our content with that end 

[00:22:09] goal? So elevate our authority. So putting out content that is in fact authoritative and kind of talks about whatever industry you’re in.

Also, one of the big things that we can do here with, with content is reduce price resistance. And this even goes back to your profile. ’cause, ’cause like I said, it, it is amazing how much the, having a good profile and a good system built on LinkedIn can reduce things like even price resistance, where now you’re looked at as, as the authority on this, like I said, you can even trump your, your website at sometimes and really kind of helps streamline your sales process.

So kind of this approach here, and this is what I recommend when you’re starting to think, well, well what do I write? What do I talk about? Write with your ideal client profile in mind and don’t worry too much about the vanity metrics. So here’s a, here’s a poster from, from Jason and them. This was, I think he sent, I think this was probably from December, but essentially he said, you know, funny observation about LinkedIn this month that reach and engagement are down qualified leads and close deals are way up, like way up.

So, and he says the right content may not get a lot of likes, but, but sure as hell brings in the money. And this is something we’ve noticed as well. Even back before we started doing LinkedIn, we were doing, we did posts on Facebook first and we saw the same thing is that, you know, the posts may, a post may not get a lot of, of likes or visibility, but there are people there that just, they see it, they stop and they read it.

It’s called, LinkedIn’s metric for that would be Dwell 10. And they don’t share that metric with anybody. so it, it’s tough to actually know how many people are reading it, which is why people get, get obsessed about, well, how many people shared it or liked it or commented on it. ’cause those, those are the metrics you can see.

But, but really you want the lurkers. And that’s a much tougher one to look at. So, I mean, ultimately it’s if you’re posting regularly and, and getting people to reach out and getting people to talk to you, ultimately don’t worry about the other metrics if that’s happening. so just a couple other things here.

I would avoid generic memes, right? Again, kind of when you think about vanity metrics, you’re kind of all thinking about trying to shoot for, for attention, and that that can be, it can get you the wrong attention, right? If you’re, what was I, I was just, I was on Facebook for, and it was a, a library meme that I stopped to read and then immediately I don’t, I don’t wanna see tons of, I, I saw one this month.

I’m good. I’m happy. But the very next post Facebook shows me, oh, you clearly like library memes. Let me show you another one. I said, I don’t want, I don’t wanna see more of this. I like just a little bit of it. But when you stop and read stuff or you engage with stuff, you, you’re gonna see more of that. So if you’re kind of just going for mass appeal, if your product or, or service isn’t mass appeal ready, you, you’re gonna struggle a little bit.

So I put a couple memes up here on the screen for you. for, for those of you, I, I like memes, so I, I’m gonna show you some examples here. Here’s one I found yesterday that kind of, for a guy. This is a guy at, his name is Uri, Y-U-R-I-I, he works at Woodpecker, so they’re a cold email system. It says how I see my cold emails as a delicious gourmet burger and how prospects see my cold emails and it’s a canna span, right?

So. Good and very relevant. So it brings an attention for people who are working in that industry. They sell a software service to people in that industry. Relevant good. However, the bottom one here, the bottom right corner, the Rick Asley paradox. well, funny, I enjoyed it. I got a, I got a chuckle out of it, but it doesn’t really bring in anybody that, it’s not really bringing in the right people.

It’s just bringing in the masses. a couple other things I would mention here. I would avoid trying to argue politics. I know especially this being an election year, there’s gonna be lots of temptation to do that. Again, it’s, it, it brings in attention, it brings in lots of, of, of stuff, but in many cases, it’s not the engagement.

You, you, you want. And, and finally I tried to avoid a relevant polls or for example, as we’re recording this, right? It’s NFL playoffs season, so you’ll see polls on who’s gonna win this weekend, whether, Let’s see, we got what the Ravens and the Chiefs or the, the Lions and, the 49 ERs and, and those types of polls you say.

Yeah, they’ll get engagement, especially with, you know, ’cause the NFL’s popular in America, so you’ll get, you’ll get votes, but again, is it really getting you in front of the right people? Whereas if you’re posting relevant content in your industry to people in your industry, you’re really training people to show it to the right people.

and that’s, that’s how the LinkedIn algorithm, I would say, use it to work in your work in your favor. You, you don’t need to get thousands and thousands of people to, to see your posts. if you can get a few hundred of the right people, you’re gonna be a lot further ahead in terms of actually getting business off of, off of the, off of this platform.

Alright, just checking out comments here. I think we can keep going, but if you do have questions as we’re, we’re going here, please, please feel free to, to post ’em in there if they’re relevant to the slides. I’m, I’m on at the time. I will, do my best to, to address them. However, if I don’t get to ’em, like I said, I will get to them at the end 

[00:27:51] here.

So what is working out well in terms of what types of content works well? events, are still really strong on the platform. It’s still something that LinkedIn, ’cause LinkedIn’s biggest issue is that people don’t stick on LinkedIn for very long. So LinkedIn wants to do things that makes their site stickier because that’s good for, for LinkedIn because then they can show more advertising.

it’s good so that they can now attract more advertisers because they can say, look at all the times people, people spend here. But as it’s as it is. LinkedIn has one of the, the, as far as any major social network goes, they have one of the very lowest, amount of time spent on site. the most recent data I, I saw, and it’s, it’s probably changed since then, but, but a typical LinkedIn user only spends 19 minutes a month on the platform.

just to put that into context, a typical, TikTok user will spend 45 minutes or day on that platform. So a lot, a lot of disparity there. So the reason I think that events work so well is because LinkedIn wants those things that keep people stuck on the site. So they try and make it easy to do things that keep people on the platform.

So we’re gonna talk just a little bit more about those and I’ve got, a whole session that we did if you wanna do a deep dive on those. And I’ll, just email me and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll show you that in just a second here. But some of the other things, carousels are another good one in terms of getting a lot of engagement.

And you can use Canva to help you create those. If you need a free tool, basic value you’re doing is creating, several PDF pages. so those can be a good way to really get information out there. You probably see those in your feeds quite a bit. Polls can be kind of good for getting just a little bit of attention from, from a bigger group of people.

So posting relevant polls about type stuff in your industry, can be good. telling stories, little anecdotes, things like that. Really helpful for kind of deep making pe feel like people making ’em feel like they know you. and that really helps, with kind of that trust factor and authority. And then finally, one that we really like is repurposing content.

like if you’re doing podcast interviews or doing events, or any type of, or maybe you’ve got a YouTube channel, taking little snippets, from those and posting those on on LinkedIn for. It can be, can be really helpful as well. and they’re one of the easier ones to do. ’cause what I, I will tell you is that if you, especially if you’re looking to outsource, some of this stuff on LinkedIn, it’s really hard to outsource good content because it’s, it’s tough for anybody else to write in your voice and create kind of content that way, versus if I can take things you’ve already said and content you’ve already created and just repurpose it, it works better.

So, if you’re, if you’re looking to get help on that side, and that’s probably where I’d start. If you’re, you’re looking to outsource, if you’re gonna do it in-house, everything I would say is, is definitely available to you if you’re outsourcing the events and the, the repurposing can be kind of the best, best.

Kind of places to focus your efforts. ’cause you’re, you’re giving that, that per, you’re giving the person you’re working with a lot more, ammo to work with and, and resources that are, are good. speaking of that, John Owens ask, is reposting valuable? in moderation? It’s not some, I wouldn’t just repost everything you see.

but it can be something that’s, that’s good in moderation. And I mean, it’s the people who post other stuff certainly appreciate it, as well. So I, I know, and I, I appreciate when people, share, share our stuff too. So, but you, you do want some things that are in essentially your name. You, you being the expert, other, otherwise you’re just kind of, you’re, you’re just, you’re kind of getting glossed over for whatever content you’re, you’re, you’re pointing 

[00:31:51] people towards.

So client asks. When you’re talking about what kind of content to post, are you referring to post from the company profile itself or from the personal profile that it is attached to? This is a really good question. This comes up a lot when I’m, when I’m kind of talking to people about, a content strategy, or even just a LinkedIn strategy.

I’m always talking about your personal profile. Here’s what I would tell you about your, your company profile. It should exist. It should have up-to-date information on it, and then you should stop worrying about it because, the last, the last data I saw on it, the last actually good data where people have, have looked at this, say that, the evidence is pretty strong, that you’re gonna get about one 20th, the amount of exposure to, a company post versus a personal post, which is just such a huge disparate.

A type of, of type of numbers that it just isn’t worth really spending much time on, on your LinkedIn, on, on your business profile other than, like I said, to make sure it exists. If somebody’s looking you up and things like that. you know, basically just confirming that you are in fact a real business.

That’s, that’s really all you need it to do. ’cause like I said, just LinkedIn doesn’t put any, any stock into it. If you, if you want to try it for yourself, just go on LinkedIn and just, just start scrolling and just count how many different posts you have to scroll through from the top before you even see the first one that comes from a company page.

And my guess is you’re gonna have to scroll through several times. It’s probably, I don’t remember what the exact number is. I think it’s at least five times you have to scroll through before there’s even a chance they’re gonna show one. So just kind of keep that in mind. just looking at a couple other ones here before we kind of move on to the next section here.

But, I, I will, I will jump back to these, if I, I miss them. And I think there’s a few that I’m gonna gonna miss here, so. Alright. Good questions though guys. You’re asking you, I could tell you guys are engaged on this one. ’cause you asked, actually, you’re asking the good questions. So, real quick, let’s kind of talk about leveraging your network with 

[00:34:02] events.

’cause I like to pull up this particular content piece, simply because it’s, it is a little bit more involved, a little bit more in depth, but it’s, it’s such a valuable one because you can do so much with it. One is somebody, one, if somebody just takes the time to, to RSVP to an event you’re doing, even if they’re only there for 30 minutes or, or.

That’s a, that’s a whole lot more than they’re, they’re getting a whole lot more from you than if they just saw your post in their, in their feed. Even if they clicked like on it, maybe it took them 30 seconds to read your post versus, versus 30 minutes. They’re just spending more time, they’re getting to know you better and, and ultimately they’re probably a lot more likely to eventually work with you.

But like I said, you, you get a lot more benefit to it to do it than just that. Is, is one. LinkedIn puts make does a lot of work to put, make sure events get exposure because they want people to stick around. So you’re doing things LinkedIn wants, which means they’re gonna show it to more people, which means you get more people to see it if you’re recording the event.

We find that probably, we get about three to four, three to five times as many people to see it through the replay. Then actually are even gonna watch it live. I think right now we’re, we’re, I think at 79 at least, that’s the last time it updated for me. So 79 people watching live right now, and we’ll probably end up with 600, 700, maybe even 800 people who actually end up watching it over the course of the next month.

So by, by doing that now, we’re getting a lot more exposure that way. And it gives you opportunities to kind of engage with people in a way that isn’t pitchy or spammy or anything like that. And it’s a good way to build an email list. So tons and tons of 

[00:35:43] benefit from it. Plus, like I mentioned, you can take video clips from some of these.

You can do little sections, little snippets from them, and then share them in your, in your, in your regular feed, in your regular content side for people who aren’t really engaged and don’t want to do a long form type of thing. So you can now take this long form and turn it into lots and lots of little short form videos.

[00:36:05] So. I like to always kind of highlight the events if you want to go deeper on events. We did do a, a deep dive on this, late last year, I believe, or mid last year. We’re gonna do another one this year. We’ll do an updated one, but in the meantime, if you just kind of really want to get a better idea in terms of, of what you can do and how to set them up and how to do the invites and how to get as many people as possible to attend.

because if you’re gonna do all the work, you may as well get as many people to it as possible. Just send an email to me, garriott Pipelineology dot com and I will make sure we get you that link. So, but don’t sleep on LinkedIn events. you know, I told you guys not to worry too much about vanity metrics, but from one I did, with, Scott Moss, last year, I think this was our September one, we had, over 1500 people who registered for it.

We had, a hundred over 160 comments on it and over 8,000 impressions on that particular post. And I’ll tell you if, if I’m having, if I’m struggling a month to come up with an idea for a, for an event, doing an interview with somebody is a really easy way to just make sure we’re, we’re getting that exposure out there.

Even if I don’t have a good offer for that month, they’re, they’re good to do. So that’s, that’s what the other thing I’ll say about events. If, if your goal is really to get clients and bring people in, keep it internal within your company or, or kind of do it solo like these, ’cause then you’ve got, you can really structure it well and, and, and make sure it flows the way you want.

If you’re just trying to get the exposure out there, maybe you don’t have a good, good idea for a topic that month. Doing an interview with an expert in, you know, some in a related industry is a really good way to get it and get an invite in. And plus they’re gonna help you promote it. So, so you generally make, they end up generally being fairly, fairly large 

[00:37:56] events.

So, just taking a look here, and I, I do have one question here. I see a few people asking, so I will, we’ll address this one. care Ms. English, we’ll go with that. yeah. Should you post to your personal, then reshare a company or post to your company, then reshare your personal run everything as, as much as possible through personal first, resharing.

A company one from personal is also not gonna get the, the, probably the amount of exposure that you’re looking for. So run everything through personal as much as possible. If it’s, you know, a corporate press release such and such company is pleased to introduce new C Ffo such and such, yeah, that can, that’s appropriate for company stuff, but really the content, things that you’re using to try and actually do business development, bring people in and, and, and get people to wanna work with you.

Run all of that through personal, which I know is, is, is counterintuitive, but, ’cause if you think about like a typical ad campaign, you’re running it all through a company website and then it’s getting, you know, sent off to individuals to, to further that relationship. But on LinkedIn you wanna do everything personal and funnel it, funnel it through that 

[00:39:14]: way.

So, and then Pablo here is asking, so I usually post short articles with content about my industry, but I get few likes. I’m convinced people do not read, but I use it as branding. Should I continue investing time and writing content? It, one of the things is I would kind of look at what is your content? Is it, is it, is it, can it be weaved into a story?

That’s usually the first place I’m gonna look and I’m, I’m doing this blind Pablo, so please forgive me. I, I haven’t looked at any of your content to actually know for sure, but I find that if somebody says that typically it’s, it’s, it’s dry and it doesn’t just doesn’t have that human element. Can you take that same content then and turn it into a story from your career and kind of weave it in that way about your industry or time that you experienced some of that, something about that particular, thing you wanna talk about.

That’s a really good way to approach it. Can you turn it into some type of poll, that, you can use to kind of get the engagement? You can write a whole lot above, above a, above a poll. so that can be kind of a, a little, I don’t wanna, it’s not really a hack, but it’s another way to really get more engagement on something.

can you turn it into a video, something you can talk about, something you turn into an interview. There’s lots of ways to take content that maybe isn’t getting the attention it might. Might be worth, might be worth seeing and, and get, get more attention just by making it feel more human. so a couple ideas there.

one final one for you that, we’ve used not nearly as much recently, but, I like to, I like to do just ’cause it looks real different, is I’ll take little sticky notes and I’ll put ’em on my, I’ll put ’em over here on my window and, I’ll do kind of a 10 or 15 of those as just, just little slides.

And, I, I find I probably get five times as many people to see that type of post. As if versus just if I wrote five or six paragraphs saying essentially the same thing. ’cause it just, it’s, it’s little tiny bits of information that are really easy to consume. So, lots of ways to take it. especially if it’s little short articles.

Just little short little bullet points. Put ’em on, you know, and you don’t have to do it the, the hard way of writing it out by hand. I just think it, it stands out ’cause it’s, if nobody else does it really, you could, but you can certainly go into Canva and just, and create ’em that way, or Adobe, acrobat and create ’em.

So, couple, couple ways to kind of take the same type of content and get a lot more mileage and attention for it. So probably yes, worth investing your time. Then just think a little bit about how, how to make it a little bit more engaging and, and interesting for people. Alright, real again, really good questions guys.

You, these are some of the best questions I, I’ve had in a session in a while. So really good 

[00:42:13] stuff. So we’re gonna switch gears here a little bit and we’re going to go, and I’m gonna go through this part pretty fast, because I know we’re kind of running out of time. but essentially I do want to touch on, on outreach here, not because people like it, because business in business to business especially, so for consulting and, and salespeople, this is often the most consistent, reliable business development strategy used in the enterprise space.

What do I mean by that? Well, enterprise, if you look at the down, look at all the buildings downtown, look at all the companies with big names on, with names on the big buildings. I’m talking about those companies. If they have any type of business to business types of, of initiatives going on. And these, I’ve even been, I’ve even had cold outreach from Amazon for, for a different company.

I have, that’s in the e-commerce space. ’cause my product that I was selling is not on their website. So they reached out and said, Hey, you should list that on our website. So yes, even Amazon will, will reach out to people cold to, to try and get products. So it’s, it’s not something that is a destroy your reputation type of, you know, rinky dink, little, little company technique.

This is, this is what the big companies use as a, a reliable means of building business relationship. So I just kind of wanna preface it with that, that this is a, a reliable approach. And the other thing I’ll tell you is that everybody I pray, basically people will tell you, well, I don’t watch TV ads. I don’t respond to them or radio.

I ignore all the Google advertising. Good luck with that. But they throw away all their junk mail and all that kind of stuff. But. Basically people are against advertising. They, they would just assume not have any of it. And I consider business development just part of that overall pie. It’s just another way of, of, of advertising.

nobody’s excited to get your, get in the office today hoping that today is the day they get your pitch. but if it’s relevant and if it’s, if it’s in a way that they, they, you know, if it’s approached in the right way, people will respond positively to, to outreach and if they think it’s gonna help them or their company or their career.

So just, just, I want, I always like to say, say that, you know, kind of put that out there. Is that, yeah. It’s, it’s not, it’s not the, the sexiest, most exciting, most cutting edge thing. But it works. It consistently works. And you, you go back, it could be door to door salesman and, you know, back in the, you know, fifties, just cold calling, picking up the phone, going door to door.

It doesn’t matter. The, the techniques keep evolving, but the, the, it continues to work no matter how you do it. So, building a relevant campaign though, on, on LinkedIn. Here’s the big thing I’ll mention it’s not on these slides, is it’s, this is a quality over quantity game. you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna fill your calendar, with, with LinkedIn outreach, but what you can do is instead get really relevant, really high quality, really good conversations with people who can make decisions and eventually become clients.

So, couple things to, to kind of make, you know, to kind of really make sure it’s effective for you, you want it to be relevant. So do your, this is why we talked right at the beginning of proactively building your. Network with the right people. You want relevant people. So if you work with people who are the vice president of logistics at, medium sized companies, then connect with vice presidents of logistics at medium sized companies and similar job titles.

’cause people do change careers quite a bit. So if they’re in that field, maybe they’re not the right connection today, but might be worth connecting with them so that when they do have a, you know, a change which happens often, that, that your, your connection to theirs. I like to make outreach sequential.

So not just one message. I You like to ask a series, run through a series of messages, follow up with people. Probably, I should probably put that in all caps, like I’m yelling because I really wanna say follow up with people. Because I, that I find that’s oftentimes lacking. I in, as somebody who responds to other people who do cold outreach, I, I can’t tell you how many times I’ll ask a question.

I say, okay, that sounds interesting. Can you tell me blah, blah, blah. And it gets crickets because they, they don’t wanna try and deal with somebody asking questions. They want the, oh, I, I said, here’s this and let’s schedule a call. And I say, well, I have a few more questions. And then there’s no follow up.

And, and they just let the opportunity die. Don’t be that person. And then finally, you wanna make an offer. So what do you want to happen next? That’s, you know, is ask somebody, do you want to have, and here’s, here’s the two that really work well for us is one, offer to meet for a virtual cup of coffee. If you’re in a, if you offer, especially if you offer something complex where you can’t just say, I do this and it does this.

if you can’t say that, then offer to meet for a virtual cup of coffee and, and get to know somebody. If you can, I like to offer information. It’s a really soft ask. I like to, Hey, can I send you a video on X topic? Is that, that, if that’s relevant to you. So a really soft way of asking it. And you know what, some people say no, but here’s the, here’s the really important thing.

Some people say yes, and, and you know, a portion of those people eventually will become clients. So, we don’t need to do outreach anymore. We continue to do it though because it’s still the highest ROI most cost effective way of, of us still getting new clients. And for most of the clients that we work with, same thing.

They’ve got, most of my clients have other initiatives going on too. It’s just this one happens to be really effective. ’cause LinkedIn is, is still a special place. I know it seems like it’s just full of spam and people trying to clamor for attention, but it really, at its core, it still builds more trust.

It still gets you connected to the right people, better than any other other network out 

[00:48:15] there. So, I know we’re running real short on time here. Just a couple things I wanna mention here is two things. Don’t pitch in your first message, please, if, if there’s one thing you can, you’re gonna take away from this, it’s that one.

Don’t pitch people in your first message. They’re gonna disconnect. You’re gonna get nos, you’re gonna basically train LinkedIn to tell people to say no immediately to you. So don’t do it. ask g ask chat GPT for, for a suggestion. How, how can I just say hello in a friendly way that’s maybe a little bit funny and it, whatever comes up with may not even be great, but it’ll be better than pitching them on the first message.

And two, do not include a calendar link, please. I’m gonna say that again. Please do not include a calendar link in your, in your messaging. People aren’t gonna use it. and I know it’s convenient, trust me, I, I would love if it worked. heck, we’ve even been playing with that little book, book an appointment, link at the top of any type of post or anything here.

I can tell you, I can tell you pretty definitively, people don’t use that either. So people like the old fashioned way of, of let’s discuss, Hey, I’m available on Monday. Cool, I’ve got this time, these times available in the afternoon. If not that, what is, how does Tuesday look for you? Just, just like the old fashioned way of actually talking to a real human being.

Treat it like a real human being conversation and you’re gonna be just fine. So, so that’s what I’ve kind of got there on, on the outreach 

[00:49:46] side. real quick on LinkedIn ads, it’s gonna be on the, on the handout I’ve got for you. Here’s, here’s kind of the, the short version of it though is unless your budget’s about, unless your lifetime value of a customer is over $5,000 and you’ve got a $5,000 budget.

Just stick to retargeting. So if you’ve got existing traffic sources from your website or other places, this is a really good way to start with it and can be really cost effective. But LinkedIn ads are by design more expensive than just about anywhere else. and that’s just, just the nature of the, this platform is they intentionally price them high.

it’s, it’s certainly worth pursuing. It’s certainly worth doing eventually. Work on the other things first, work on your content strategy. Do events, get people to come to those, do outreach. have, build a, build an outreach for your whole team. If you, you have, if you, that’s where you’re at. But if you’re not at that point yet where you’ve got a $5,000 a month budget, just, just do the retargeting side of things.

And if you need some inspiration on that, go to LinkedIn’s ad library. It’s, it’s just them, them being transparent with ads. That’s linkedin.com/add-dash library. 

[00:50:58] So. With that said, we’re gonna get to q and a here in just a second, but if anybody does need a little bit of help with this, you’re, you’re busy, you know you need this, but you just don’t have the time to, to do it.

Go ahead and schedule a call with me in the appointment lab.com or again, you can just email me directly. I’m pretty easy to get ahold of. But we can build something like this for you, manage it so that really at the end of the day what you’re focusing on is getting appointments and talking to those people and building that relationship.

So our goal is to kind of be that engine at the, the top of your sales funnel at the beginning of your sales pipeline is doing that demand, getting that demand generation, getting people interested in raising their hand and saying, yes, I’d like to have a conversation with the goal, that we’re gonna free up your time so you can focus on the most, you know, valuable activities that you can do in your business.

And the big thing is we’re gonna do that follow up for you. ’cause I know some, so many of us. Myself included, this is why I have a team is ’cause I’m bad at following up too. So I have to have people on my team and tools at my disposal to make sure that that follow up gets done too. So with that said, thank you so much everybody for coming today.

I will open it up to questions and I will kind of start here with, I’ll probably kinda start with some of the, the most recent ones and as they come in, I’ll just do my best to ask ’em if I missed your question and it looks like I’m not gonna get back to it, just post it again and I’ll do my best to get it, get it 

[00:52:26] answered.

So, let’s, this is a good one here from, let’s say Jodi, is it more effective to send a connection request without a message allowing prospects to explore my profile, but be receptive to future networking opportunities and messages? So, yes. when it comes to sending connection requests. There’s always that debate.

Should I include a message? Should I not include a message? I tell people if you know them, if you’ve met them, maybe you met at a trade show recently, an event or something. If you’re at like a Chamber of Commerce or meeting or something and you actually met them there, then putting that message in there.

Hey, was great meeting you at, insert name of event here. You know, just wanted to connect on LinkedIn too. That is a great time to insert a message. You’re gonna get a really, really high acceptance rate on something like that. Probably 90% plus people will accept that. However, if you are working on building your network proactively with the right types of people, but you haven’t actually met them, you don’t know them and they don’t know you, I leave them blank and we find that that consistently gets the highest connection.

Percentage rate. Yeah, you, if you experiment around. With good messaging about it, the best you’re gonna do is about the same. So that, that’s been our experience with it, is don’t bother trying to come up with a super clever, connection message if you don’t know them. ’cause it’s, it’s essentially most people say, yeah, this is looks, this looks like they’re just gonna pitch me.

I’m, I’m gonna skip, skip that one. So it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit interesting, but yeah, I know it’s counterintuitive, but yeah, just leave them blank. It’s the easiest way to do it and it’s actually the most effective way to do it, is what we found. 

[00:54:10] So Charlotte asks, how do I ask my connections for referrals? This one’s tough, Charlotte, because referrals oftentimes are gonna come from people who know you, like you, trust you, and, and have worked with you. So one thing I’ll kind of give you a little, an, anecdote from, from mine, is if like, when people ask for, Hey, can we have a networking meeting?

I turn most of those down because, you know, people say, yeah, let’s have a networking call. I want to, you know, we can talk about, you know, maybe we can give referrals at some point. And that I, what I’ve learned and, and we’ve looked at the, the numbers here is almost all of our referrals these days come from existing clients.

It’s really rare for us to get somebody from a, to refer us ones from, from an existing or from outside of that, that, that people who’ve actually worked with a space. So I kind of quit networking and quit spending time doing that type of thing with the mutual referrals type of idea. Just ’cause it, it hasn’t been effective.

So, I don’t know what business you’re in Charlotte, but in my experience is get more clients and you’ll get more referrals. just focus, focus on acquiring customers. That will help with the referrals part. ’cause now you’ve got people who work with you, they know what it’s like to work with you and they, they can genuinely recommend you to somebody else.

So that’s, I know that’s a, that’s not the typical take on that. but that’s, that’s where, where we’ve kind of, where I’ve kind of landed on it anyway. kirsta, asks is it good to schedule posts at the same time of day versus randomly? I, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. you’re, you’re gonna find that there’s more, you’re gonna see more people on the platform during business out, like during the, during the week.

It’s a different crowd on the weekends. but it’s, the differences are probably in a lot of cases, gonna be subtle for anything else. If you’re really looking for a time, late morning, early afternoon, are probably good times to post. but otherwise I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The big, probably the bigger thing, the more impactful thing is gonna be just getting, getting posts out there.

Howard asks What action is needed to enable people to follow you on LinkedIn? Turn on creative mode. and then you’ll get that if, otherwise you’ll, you’ll just see the, it, it’s, it’s an option for everybody, but if you want that blue follow button, yeah, just turn on creator mode.

[00:56:48] Alright. Aaron asks, let’s see here. Are there higher InMail acceptance rates for people that are second or third connection compared to someone you have no network connection with? I don’t know. ’cause we don’t send in mail. It mails out to anybody. We don’t have a connect, an any network connection with, in fact, we generally still try and stay within that second, second degree rate, so that they can see that there’s a mutual connection there.

Even, even if we’re not trying to connect with them, it still makes a difference. If they see somebody’s name that they know is a mutual connection, they’re far more likely to respond. So we still, so we, we really shoot for that second connection. unless it’s such a small space that, you know, you only have some, you know, it’s, or it’s really, really hard where you can only work with third connections.

But, yeah, I would, I would stick to that. So. good, good question though. for anybody who’s not quite familiar with InMail, I should probably explain that. you probably see the messages if you have a premium account, where people can message each other and basically it’s LinkedIn’s way of saying, this is an important message.

You should take a look at it. They’re, they’re gonna send you an email that, you know, you’ve got ones and things like that, so, but it’s a kind of a one and done communication, whereas with connections, we were talking about sequential messaging and InMail is basically, here’s my message, yes or no type of basically at, at the end of the day.

So, can be useful. They’re, they’re tricky to get right, but, they can certainly be a valuable way to get more communication out there. let’s see here. Mohamed asks, is it a good idea to sit down and create content on LinkedIn or repost, or use it only for reaching out to prospective clients or partners?

I would recommend, Doing kind of some of all of the above. I would recommend creating some content. it’s good. Even, even if you’re not getting here, here, kind of goes back to that lurker, right? You, even people who don’t necessarily see it, they might, prospective client or prospective partner might go to your profile and they’re gonna see your activity and now they’re gonna see that content.

But if it wasn’t there, then I said, I don’t know this, this doesn’t look to be much here. I’m gonna, I’m just gonna ignore this, this post. So having more activity, even if you’re doing outreach, even if nobody’s coming in from the content you’re actually creating, because it’s showing in people’s news feeds, is still valuable so that prospective clients or prospective partners can see it.

So, reposts, again, it’s, it’s fine to do them. They’re not, they’re not hurting you, but they’re also not gonna do a lot to help you. But for the three seconds it takes to do ones, if you really see a post you like. And you want it to show under your activity log, go ahead and do that. Just keep in mind that that will show under your activity log.

So if it’s like a, something that’s, you don’t want people knowing you’re involved in, you know, don’t, don’t we post it. Alright. Good questions though guys. You’re, you’re, I think we’re getting pretty close to the bottom. So if I missed yours, if I missed your connection or I missed your question, just go ahead and repost it.

But I’ve got, one from Jeff here, one another, one from from, and one from Bob. if, if that’s not yours and you still have a question, just go ahead and post it, below here. But here’s Jeff’s, given the recommendation we’re refrain from including messages and notes and the connection requests to individuals we are not personally acquainted with.

How does this guideline apply to the use of LinkedIn InMails? they’re, they’re pretty different. and InMail is pretty different from a connection request. Whereas an InMail, you’ve gotta, you’ve basically got one message to do everything. You’re not trying to build a connection. it’s either you’re trying to get them to accept some information from you, get them to meet with you.

I guess it depends on kind of what the campaign’s, goals, goals are. I’m going to assume it’s one of those, those things. but essentially you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got a few paragraphs to kind of make that all happen. So it, it’s, I would say, think about it from a, a copywriting perspective is how do you most efficiently use the words you’ve got to work with to, to get somebody to take action on it.

so, in terms of an InMail, yes, you want it to be, you want it to be, I guess, have as much information as they need to see, but say yes or no in a, in a relatively short amount of time. So, hope, I hope that helped. Curious to asks if you write content, should you publish to LinkedIn articles versus your blog on your website?

Is it true that offsite links from LinkedIn reduced your post reach? It seems like people are repackaging blog can blog content into slides, which seems like a lot of work. Yes, you absolutely will see reduced reach if you post any type of external link. And LinkedIn will even go a step further to reduce its, reduce people from taking any action into it.

if you’ve ever tried to click on a link that is not part of that is not on LinkedIn site, it’s gonna say you are leaving LinkedIn. It’s gonna say, whoa, whoa, time up, stop. You’re leaving LinkedIn. Are you sure you wanna do that? So, and that’s gonna stop people right there too. So if you’re, that’s why people might be repackaging their, their content on LinkedIn and posting them as articles on the platform is because it’s a much more, it’s a much smoother.

One, experience. So one, it’s gonna get more visibility from LinkedIn in the first place. And two, if they do click on that link, they don’t have that, they don’t have LinkedIn trying to intercept ’em and stop ’em. Instead, LinkedIn’s just gonna take ’em straight there. So, good question. Bob asks, is it good to pose daily versus randomly at three to four times a week?

it, it depends really at that, at that point, if, at that frequency, it’s gonna come down to quality. so if, if, if daily, if you can’t daily’s a lot, if you can’t keep up with it, scaling it back to three to four times a week with better quality is gonna get you better, better traction, better, better numbers.

If three to four times a week and you still can’t maintain the quality, back it off even further, you’re gonna do better. but that’s, that would be kind of what we’ve seen on that is. Daily is a lot. There’s a lot to try and keep up with, unless you actually have a content team in place. so, but good 

[01:03:36] question.

Percy asks, Gary, how can I leverage several recommendations I have in my profile if they’re in your profile? That is great. Essentially, the leverage then comes from coming to the other things we’ve been talking about is how do you get people to view your profile? Well, you can do it your content, you can do it through posting comments.

You can make sure you’ve got a good headline to draw people in, or you can do outreach. All of those things will get more people to view your profile and if people, as people view your profile, they are going to see those recommendations and those recommendations. That’s how you leverage ’em. So really it’s, it’s kind of working backwards from that.

The recommendations are great. I know they’re at the, they’re, they’re right towards the very bottom of your profile, so it feels like people don’t ever see them. It’s not true. People who are interested in you and are considering working with you are absolutely gonna see those recommendations, but the rest of the people, they’re not ’cause they’re not interested and that’s okay ’cause they’re not, they’re not interested in working with you anyway.

But, that’s, that’s how I would, that’s how you kind of leverage those is they’re there, you’re doing great. If you’ve got good ones now, now it’s just kind of doing those other things. Get, get people in through, through either your content or through outreach. All right, Dan asks if I get warning, a warning message only connect if the person knows you.

What does that mean? Dan, that almost certainly means that you’re trying to connect with people who aren’t second degree connections. easy, easy solution is to only connect people who are second degree connections. once you, once you kind of venture out out, first of all you’re I’ll tell you is that, we see about a six times increase.

If you go from. It’s third degree to to second degree. So if you’re connecting with 6% of people, which in a third degree, if it’s third degree or outside of third degree or more, that’s probably average. If you were to do that same campaign and click the second degree connection, you’re probably gonna see 30% or more connect with you.

It’s, it is wild how big of a difference that mutual connections, makes when it comes to company. Somebody clicking, accept or ignore. so that’s generally what that’s gonna mean.

all right. We’re getting pretty close to the bottom. You guys are still asking really good questions though. So let’s see this one. Alright, bungee jumping into, okay, this is interesting. My partner and I have an ongoing debate regarding the appropriateness of posting personal stories on LinkedIn that have business relevance or application.

IE five Leadership lessons I learned by Bungee Jumping into the Abyss. That’s a good title. I like that. Versus business posts, lessons coming from the company. IE latest learnings regarding remote work from HPR. Vanity Metric. I know, but personal posts seem to get about 20% of the response rate. Should company repost personal posts?

Glenn, I really like those. You got, you guys have some good titles. my recommendation, yes. You want to keep posting those personal stories, because you’re, you’re right on the money there. 20 times the response rate is what people are gonna see there. should the company repost those personal ones?

No, I don’t think so. I, I don’t, I don’t really, they don’t need to. Lemme see if that answer all the questions there. yeah, I I really think that, you’re, I think you’re, you’re on the right, you’re on the right path there by doing the, it is doing those, those personal stories and, and relating them back to, to something fun like that.

It’s, it just makes the whole, the whole article more consumable, more interesting. There’s, there’s that promise of what the heck does bungee jumping have to do with leadership? that makes me wanna keep reading it, that I don’t, I’m gonna look and say, regarding remote work from HI don’t care. I’m, I’m, I’m bored.

So, keep doing what you’re doing. I think that would be my recommendation on, on that. but, it sounds, sounds like you’re, you’re doing some good stuff there. 

[01:07:47] Alright. I don’t have a name here. It looks like we aren’t connected close enough. but is there a way to create a poll to a subset of your network or in a sandbox to practice and, not publish something in error that could be better off after you post it?

I believe so. There’s by default, you’re, there’s gonna be a little piece of text that says anyone. if you don’t want it to be anyone, pick a different, pick something different. Just keep in mind that, it can be, I think to people, you’re connected with, it can be to just certain groups, but, if you want to get more exposure, basically you’d have to start over.

So, but if you’re just looking to practice, yeah, that can be a way to do it is to. Just post it. I think you can still post it to just a group just to make sure it’s working, but, that you can use it. But, really don’t worry too much about it. You can always push to the, the push, the delete button or push the edit button, if you make a mistake.

So that would be, that would be what I would try and do is rather than trying to get it to a subset of people, just go ahead and, and post it. put it, put it out to everybody. Double, double and triple check to make sure everything’s spelled correctly in the way you want it to, to say and then, and then go for it.

Just get it out into the world. Just, just go, just try it. Alright. we’re, I think we’re just about to the end here guys. You guys are asking, you guys have some really good questions today. It was really great having you here. let’s see. Yes, we made it to the bottom everybody. Alright, thanks so much.

I’ll see everybody, hopefully for the next one, for our next event in February. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much for spending some time with me today and take care. Have a great one everybody.