LinkedIn Learning - Interview with Tracey Burnett

If you've ever dreamt about building an agency that's less dependent on you, but worry about losing control and find yourself more tied to your agency than ever, then you need to grab a copy of my brand new book, the Self Running Agency. Now this book is part autobiography about my journey of starting, growing and selling an agency and part step by step guide focusing on three core areas you need to develop in your agency if you ever want to build a business that's less dependent on you. Now this book retails on Amazon for 5.99, but right now you can grab a copy for free. Just go to dacostacoaching.co.uk the SelfRunningAgencyBook there's hyphens between each of those words. So let's get on with today's podcast, which is talking everything to do with LinkedIn.

But if we focus on on content, the initial engagement within the first hour is absolutely key. So the algorithm as far as we know, because nobody knows really about any of the algorithms, but as far as we know, it will show your post to a small percentage of your connections. So if they start engaging in terms of liking and and commenting, then it will show it to more of your first connections and then if there's more engagement, the algorithm will deem it a quality post and they'll show it to more of your first connections and then start to show it to your second.

Connections in this week's episode of the.

Agency Accelerator Podcast, I'm really excited to be talking with Tracy Burnett. We learn all about how to use LinkedIn, how to get your profile right, and how to use it as a great business development platform. We also learn what an unshakable business foundation is. This is a great episode full of really actionable tips. So let's get on with the podc.

Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. Okay, on today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast, I am really excited to have Tracy Burnett with me. Now I've been following some of Tracey's content on LinkedIn and Tracey and I have been chatting a bit on LinkedIn and I really like the stuff that she writes. So I was keen to have Tracy on today's podcast to talk a little bit about how we can better use LinkedIn to create engagement with our target audience. Now Tracy has been running her business, the LinkedIn Marketing Alchemist, and Tracey's been working in marketing for over 35 years. So Tracy, that was a bit of a mumbly jumbly. I'm sure you can do better.

Yeah, I specialize in LinkedIn. I spent hours and hours a day sort of either on LinkedIn or learning about LinkedIn. So I'm really, really into it as a subject. But prior to that I've just been in marketing for 40 years, either in a, in a corporate capacity and then my own consultancy for I think 30 years.

Brilliant. So you and I have probably similar ages and been around the block a few times and seen lots of social media come and go and the latest topics and latest trends, But I guess LinkedIn has around for a while now. I think personally that LinkedIn is a bit of a untapped resource for many of us who want to find ways of engaging with our target audience. So do you just want to share some of your sort of top level thoughts on what people should be doing to get their profiles as sort of honed as possible and then we'll move on to talk about how they can do some kind of outreach to their audience.

Okay, so. So yeah, your profile is really important. It's one of the first things that you do. But let's take it back a sort of stage further because you can't write an effective profile unless you are very clear about what I call your unshakable business foundation. And your unshakable business foundation is all about your target audience, your niche and your client magnetizing marketing message as a summary. And so you know, when you're writing copy for your, your profile or anything else come to that, as long as you're very clear about who you're writing for and you know, what they want to hear about, what keeps them up at night, what sort of results they want to achieve, what their dreams and goals are. It's very, very difficult to, to write anything and especially a profile that's going to appeal to the people that you want to talk to.

You and I are banging on the same drum because I always talk my audience about getting clear about their target niche. And if they get clear about their niche, then they can work out who their ideal target customer or their customer avatar is. And of course, I guess we need to be thinking about our LinkedIn profiles as almost like an advert or information that's going to that audience. Yeah, and I guess also that means that sometimes it's easier to get other people to write our profiles because they can do it a lot more objectively.

Yeah, no, that's true, that can be the case. But it is possible to do it yourself. Although when you're working on this unshakable business foundation element, I think it is good to get some help because it can seem so counterintuitive to really narrow down your audience, for example, and talk about one thing. And even me, after sort of decades of doing it, I still feel find myself sort of pushing back and it's a bit like, I don't know whether you've ever done rock climbing, but when you get to the top you can sort of like be lay down and that sort of thought that you have in your head when you're standing at the top of that rock mountain, whatever it is, and you just, you want to, you need to let yourself go and you're, you know, your mind is just saying it's so ridiculous, you're going to kill yourself. But you know, then you sort of think, well no, no, no, I'm all harnessed in, I'm absolutely fine. And it's just taking that first jump. So, so it just really is so, so important. I can't over overestimate just how important it is.

I guess a lot of people just don't think about that. They almost write their profile like a CV or something, but they're not really thinking about who the reader is when they're doing it.

Absolutely. So they're moving on to the pro profile. Yes, I, you know, I look at it as a, like a mini website or a, you know, a landing page or opt in. An opt in page or an ad. So if you think about the construction of the profile, you've got your banner which is, can be text and image and that's like a press ad that has the heading part of a press ad. Then you've got your name and the tagline, so that's your subhead and you're drawing people in step by step. So once they've read the tagline, they're likely then to see the first few lines of your about section and so they can scan that in literally less than a minute. And if it's appealing to them, then the chances are they'll click more and to read more. But if it's not, then they'll move on to somebody else. So I think it's, yes, it's very important to look at it as a key piece of communication rather than a cv, which is a rather old school, old fashioned, whatever you want to call it, way of actually looking at a profile.

I think even a lot of people don't realize that they can actually edit the image on their profile. And just change that generic blue sort of banner that LinkedIn puts there and actually put an image behind their face shot. Because I figured that out a while ago and realized actually that is a good bit of real estate that I can put something useful into.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's one of the most important things. If you want to get your message across really quickly, that's the place to do it. Really. Yeah. Another thing to think about is the more you complete the profile, the better it is. LinkedIn will give you what's called an all star rating. And you're much, much more likely to get found in search if you've got an all star rating on your profile. So if you're really serious about LinkedIn, then the profile is a really good place to start.

Start.

And of course Google loves LinkedIn as well. So if people are searching on Google and you've got the right keywords in your profile, then you're going to get, you're going to get found on Google.

I just don't think people think like that. I don't think they think of it as almost an ad. I don't think they think of it as a searchable thing that can be found on Google and I certainly don't think a lot of people are thinking about who the reader is when they're creating their profile. So do you want to share any other tips? So I would imagine that a lot of our listeners are small to mid size agency owners. LinkedIn plays a lesser or greater part in their outreach and their business development. What would be like five tips you could share with people on what they should be doing to maximize their usage of LinkedIn?

I could do a day's seminar on this, but I won't. The five things they can do well, the first thing obviously is that definitely the audience, as we've already discussed discuss the. The second thing is, is getting the right profile. And then once you, you know exactly who your audience is, obviously the third thing would be to create an audience. So your first connections are basically your potential audience, people that you, that you want to, to talk to. There's no point in just willy nilly accepting connection requests or sending connection requests because those people, if they're not your ideal audience, then what's the point of having them in, in your network that follows through into your content. You've got newsfeed posts or articles that you're putting on LinkedIn, you obviously want engagement and, and so it's your first connections that are going to have priority viewing on your content. So if your first connections aren't interested in what you're writing about, because in actual fact they're not your ideal audience, then that they're not going to engage, they're not going to like, they're not going to share, they're not going to comment. And so a quality network of first connections is the third point.

Can I just ask a couple of questions about that? Am I right in thinking that when you post an article or a post on LinkedIn, it doesn't automatically get shown to all of your connections?

Correct. Yeah. The other thing that people don't realize is that a lot of these things are all interconnected. So, you know, people say, oh, how do you get, get better engagement on content? It's not just about the content, it's about other things that you're doing on LinkedIn. But if we focus on content, the initial engagement within the first hour is absolutely key. So the algorithm, as far as we know, because nobody knows really about any of the algorithms, but as far as we know, it will show your post to a small percentage of your connections. So if they start engaging in terms of liking and commenting, then it will show it to more of your first connections and then if there's more engagement, the algorithm will deem it, you know, a quality post and they'll show it to more of your first connections and then start to show it to your second connections. And so that's how the, the engagement should, should build in that respect.

Do you have any advice on like, the best time of day to post or does that just vary?

There has been research done on this and, and to be quite honest, I did used to, I did used to give advice on this and now I just don't think it's, it's a good thing to do. And I'll tell you for why is because since March and you know, the lockdown, everything, people are engaging at different times of the day. And I think when you think of all those families that have got kids, their daily schedule is just not the same as it used to be. So I just wonder whether or not it's just a little bit dangerous to assume that the times of day prior to March 2020 are going to be applicable now. That said, I think that the mornings are probably better to post in, to be quite honest.

Yeah. And I guess in that respect it's probably worth doing a bit of trial and error and trying different times and different styles of post and different topics and just keeping a record to see which ones get the most engagement.

Yeah. So I Use a piece of software called Shield, which I think is like $20 or month or something like that, not very much. And it picks up each of your posts and it gives you analysis on the post. So that's quite useful. And that is another good point that you raised there, Rob, because what's good for me is not necessarily good for the next person. So I, I don't do very much video, but when I do do video, I don't get the engagement on it. Now that's not to say if I did engage, if I did video every week, it wouldn't get the engagement. But you know, so many people these days banging on about video being, you know, the way that everything's going and yes it is, but you know, it certainly isn't getting the traction for me and also a couple of my clients. And then the other point is people think, oh you, if you don't have a video, you should have an image. And I very rarely put an image on my posts and I get, well, I think the best, best number of views I've got is something like 36, 30,000 on one. But that's unusual. I'm more likely to hit the sort of 1500, two and a half thousand mark, something like that.

Well, that's interesting because I usually do put an image on, so I should probably try some without an image as well. Okay, so I interrupted you just to go off a bit of a detour to talk about posting and so on, but let's move back into your tips and that was tip number three. So what's your tip number four?

So tip number four was to create great content, be consistent about it. You know, if you really committed to being visible and getting credibility amongst your audiences on LinkedIn, then you know, you need to be consistent. And I always say post between two to four times a week to increase that visibility and people will get to know you and get to know the sort of content you put out and to give value. This is the other reason why having a really clear idea of who your audience is, this actually helps your content because it allows you then to give value, to give practical advice or thought provoking points of view that are going to be relevant and of interest to the people that are reading them, which if you've built your audience correctly, are going to be full of your potential clients. And it's just great to be known as the person who always writes something worth reading and it's a post that they learn from.

It's the same adage that I use all the Time, which is that we should be spending 80% of our time adding value to our audience and 20% of our time selling. And I guess that doesn't matter whether we're talking about email marketing or social media posts or our blogs or whatever. It is the same kind of. That's the ratio I've always talked about. But that sort of ratio is the right thing to do because if all we do is go onto LinkedIn and try and sell, then people are not going to follow us and I guess we won't get much engagement. But on the other hand, if all we ever do is add value, then people are going to know us for someone who puts good content out there, but never kind of consider us someone that they might buy from.

You know, this is something that I've been considering quite recently because I never, never outwardly, outwardly sell on, on my LinkedIn posts. You know, obviously people are attracted to me by my content. So then I can have conversations. So I do get inbox messages that say, can we talk? And I am going to be testing this out actually, next month. You know, if I. I think your 8020 rule is really good. And I am going to be testing out, actually, I say selling something. You can't sell something from a post and you can't sell something for an inbox. What you should really be aiming for is to have that initial conversation, you know, a zoom conversation or a phone call.

Yeah. And I guess what I mean by selling is, for example, I might say, look, hey guys, I've got this new book that you can download. And of course, if I can get them onto my email list, then they're going to go into an email sequence that nurtures them, that adds some more value and ultimately tries to invite them to a call with me or a webinar or whatever it is where I can sell.

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a number of lead magnets, and that is my goal as well, too. If I don't get them on a call, then I'll get them on my email list.

Now, can I ask a bit of a controversial question at this juncture, which is very relevant to what we are talking about right now? I send an email out to my email list every week, and this past week I sent an email about the fact that you own your email list, whereas you're only renting social media space. And I shared this story of someone who had 10,000 followers on Instagram. They got hacked. And Instagram's terms and conditions say that when that happens, we delete Your profile. So overnight they lost their 10,000 subscribers on Instagram. So what's your view about where things like LinkedIn sits against things like your mailing list? And do you agree with what I just said?

Oh, God, yeah, 100%. I mean, I, I had this exact conversation with somebody last week and, you know, the thought of my LinkedIn account being hacked or closed down just fills me with absolute horror. I mean, there's certain things you can do, so I don't know how many people are aware, but you can actually download your connections. So in theory, say your, you know, your, your account was hacked, then you could take that, that file and make contact with all those people again. It'd be a flipping slow exercise. And all of the articles that I post and all of the news feeds posts that I post, I've, I've also got those that I hold on on my drive, on Google Drive. So again, you could, you could start again. But yeah, not, not something that I really relish, to be quite honest.

No, but it's a good bit of advice. I don't think people do realize that you can actually download all of your export all of your contacts out of LinkedIn. And I also think it's really good practice to save that content because there's probably some really great content that you can repurpose and reuse. And actually, on that note, let me just ask you what you feel like best practices here. Do you think it's okay to take a post, for example, that you post on LinkedIn and post it on other social platforms as well, or even turn it into an email, or even use it as part of a blog? Do you think that's good practice? Or do you think you should be trying to create exclusive content for each of those platforms?

Okay, I think it's really good practice. I do that myself. So my process is that I create a blog post and then that goes on my blog, and then that then goes on to LinkedIn. So my audience is very, very much on LinkedIn. So that's where I start. So blog, post, article on LinkedIn, and then I have, I won't go into the detail of a content plan, but I have a content plan. So sometimes I take bits and pieces out of the article to create my newsfeed posts. Or they could be totally separate from the articles, but then once I've got those, those newsfeed posts, I post them in the LinkedIn newsfeed. And then I've also got a company page, so some of them get repurposed on there at different times. Plus, because I'm a local, a LinkedIn local host for my, my city, I've got a showcase page. So some of them go on there and then they get repurposed into emails. And I'm giving Facebook its last chance, giving it a three month trial and it's, we're halfway through. So I've been posting on my page and on my group and on my personal profile. I've been using the post there. But in terms of creating posts, especially for those platforms, there is maybe a slight tweak, but essentially I use them pretty much as is.

Yeah.

And that's just really smart, isn't it? I, I guess that's sort of taking this content centric view that content is the center of your world and how you disseminate it to these different channels is just a way of getting that content out there. And it's much smarter than saying I need to create five bits of separate pieces of content because I got five social media channels, for example, on a blog. So I'm, I'm completely with you. I do exactly the same thing. I create one email a week. I turn that into LinkedIn post and other social posts. And my goal personally is to drive all my traffic from my social media into my email list because as we've already talked about, I then have ownership of that. It's interesting that you were mentioning Facebook because I have a love hate relationship with Facebook. I've tried and tried to make Facebook work. In fact, I have a Facebook group that's got four or five hundred members, but I find it really difficult to get them to engage. And I think for me, Facebook is on its last legs as well in terms of the effort I put in. Maybe I should just be using it for looking at holiday snaps and cuddly dogs or something.

Yeah, pictures of cats in your lunch. I mean, that's really, you know, Facebook is not really my platform in terms of. It doesn't really suit me. I don't really want to be looking at pictures of people's lunches. And I just found there was a lot of people that wanted freebies through Facebook and I just got sick of it. And that's really why I took another look at LinkedIn and you know, I knew my audience was there. Yeah, I might, I might just dump the group. I find the same. But then you can't be all places at all times. And I'm a great believer in doing one thing well rather than lots of different things poorly.

Hallelujah, I beat that drum all the time, do a few things really well, really consistently and learn about them rather than trying the latest fandangly thing because some supposed guru online is telling you that's what you should be doing. You know, get into TikTok or get into, oh, I don't know, whatever, you.

Know, I absolutely agree. And I think the newer you are online, the more you think you've got to be on every single platform. And I think there is a danger as well that, you know, I have a quick flick at Instagram every, you know, couple of days and I, I see other people that are advertising LinkedIn services and my first thought is always, should be on Instagram. But then I think, no, I shouldn't. You know, I do LinkedIn and I do that really well. And you're creating content for lots of different platforms. You'd literally be doing it full time. And I just couldn't do that. I probably spend two or three hours a week creating content and that is enough.

So let me ask you, listen, I know we, this is going to be a 10 hour answer and it definitely means we should get you back, but can you give a few thoughts on how people should be reaching out to their potential new contacts? Because it drives me crazy. Every single day I must get 10 requests from people that are usually people that say I help coaches win new clients. I'm not interested in connecting with them, but they don't even bother to send me a personal request. They just use that generic request. Have you got any kind of best practice ways of reaching out to people?

Yeah. Okay, so what's happened over the last, I don't know, four, probably four years. Three or four years is there's lots of software out there that's really, really cheap to buy into, maybe $15 or something like that a month. And what you, that enables you to do is to blanket message literally hundreds of people, or let's say 100 people a day more. Some people do. And so if they haven't targeted properly in the first place, if they don't know what their audience is and then they go and search on basic Search or sales Navigator for a group of people. Again, that's going to be random group of people. You don't know what their individual circumstances is. So you can only, you can only send them a generic message. And we all know what those generic messages are and we can spot them a mile off. So that's why people get messages that don't really resonate because they're probably being done by a bit of what's called Chrome Extension often. So that's not a very good way of doing it. The best thing to do really is to search for people yourself. And you can do that in a number of ways. You can use basic search using different criteria. You can use Sales Navigator, which is a paid for premium service from LinkedIn. I think it's about 65 pounds, 85, something like that a month. So you can search through people through that, then you look at their profile and then send them a personal connection request. And I looked at my list of people, it's called my network, a list of people that had asked me to connect today and probably about there was 97 people in there asking me to connect and probably only about 6 or 7 had sent a personal message. So not only do you get those people that are using the software, you get those people that are just randomly willy nilly, sort of half asleep just thinking I'm going to ask her to connect.

That's crazy, isn't it? The days of like throwing it and hoping some of it sticks, like cold calling, almost just a way gone. And we need to be so much smarter than that. I just delete them straight away. And partly because I only want to connect with my target audience now and partly because I think if you can't be bothered to send something more than I'd like to connect, then you know, I'm not going to be bothered to be connecting with you.

No, no, I absolutely agree. So you know, you can search with them, as I say, via Sales Navigator and by basic search or you can look down your newsfeed. So look down your newsfeed and see who's commenting on posts, see who you like the sound of. So that's another way I do it. Or looking. If you're members of LinkedIn groups, that's a whole nother subject. LinkedIn group.

Yes, definitely.

But if you're a member of LinkedIn groups, you can get a list of the members in that group. So if you're all in the cuddly teddy bears group, then you've got to assume that everybody else in that group likes cuddly teddy bears. So you can connect, you know, you can find people that way. So there's a number of different ways that you can find your audience.

Yeah, and I guess, and I guess so therefore really we ought to be allocating some time almost every day, even if it's only 15 minutes to getting onto LinkedIn, looking through our profile, looking for new, first new people we want to connect with, match our ideal target customer. And taking a moment to look at their profile and send them something.

Exactly. You know, I've got. I don't do everything every day, but I. I've got a list of things that I do on LinkedIn, and I do them once a week or once a day or a couple of times a week. So, you know, I've got a process that I actually go to that's, you know, let's call it a weekly process of things that I. I do on LinkedIn.

Well, that's great. And that's what we all should do. And listen, there's. There's at least two other big topics I wanted to talk about today. One of them was advertising, and the other one was groups, but we're not going to have time to do that. But there's definitely a part two in this, because I know that my audience of listeners in this podcast will be really interested in this. And I certainly spend a lot of time talking to my private clients about the fact they should be using LinkedIn, and I just don't think people applying the science to it because either they're spreading themselves too thin or that. Or probably more likely, they don't really know how to use the platform. But one thing to think about at the end of the day is that LinkedIn is the world's biggest business business database, so we really ought to be using it as such.

Yeah. I mean, most people don't know how to use LinkedIn. That, that is the. That is the problem. And, and it really pays off, but it's not really that easy to get into it, I have to say. And it took me time, I think, in the beginning. I did about three or four training courses on LinkedIn and then tried different things myself and then came up with my own process. But, you know, I'm learning. Literally every week I learn something, if not every day.

Okay, so we'll share some of your contact details in a moment, but before we do that, I just wanted to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger Tracy, who's just starting out in business, some advice, what would it be?

That's an easy one, really, because I think the biggest, number one tip is to have enough capital to get you through the first six months and enough to get you some expert support, because there's nothing worse than thinking, oh, my God, I need a client. I'm not going to be able to pay the mortgage next month or I'm not going to feed my Kids or it just kills your sales and it kills your mindset, which kills your sales. So if you've got enough capital in the bank to last you through six months and also enough to get some expert support because, you know, as business owners we have to wear many hats and we're not expert in all those areas. So you need to be able to identify what your strengths and weaknesses are and where you need help right from the, right from the get go as well as the capital. The other thing is do your research in terms of the audience and really understand what's going to encourage them to spend money with you and what results they want to see as a result of working with you. Because if you haven't cracked that, you're not going to go anywhere. And that's why I call it my unshakable business foundation. All those things that you should do right in the beginning to give you the best chance of success.

Yeah, I might have to nick that term because it sort of sums up all the things that I, I took back. And that's really interesting. Actually you have shared a thought there that no one I believe has shared before. Often I get very similar answers to this question, but actually that answer was really different. And actually the person I interviewed for the previous podcast, his answer was really different because he said, I wouldn't give myself any advice. I just need to go and learn, learn all the lessons and make all the mistakes. But I think the thing is, yeah, of course we do learn lessons by making mistakes. But if we can avoid some of those mistakes by getting some help and having that capital so that we can focus on the right things, then of course we're going to make our journey a lot easier than it will be if we were on bumpy seas and you know, learning through the mistakes that we make.

Yeah, I mean, the fewer mistakes you can go through, the, the better. Because I think if you, you're not getting results and you're making mistakes, that again affects your mindset, affects your enthusiasm, then it affects how productive you are. I just don't think that would get, get you anywhere really. You know, gets you to burnout very quickly.

Absolutely. Okay, so Tracy, if people want to find out more about you and your business, where should they go?

My website is tracyburnette.com T R A C E Y B U R N E double T dot com. That's a good place to start. And oh, why not LinkedIn? That would be quite a good idea. And my, my profile is just my name. That's another little tip. Actually don't. On your LinkedIn profile, you've got all these opportunities to put letters and numbers and God knows what else in, but you can change your URL really easily just to be your name. So yeah, so you'll easily find me on LinkedIn under Tracy Burnett too.

And of course I'm just checking my profile as we talk to make sure that I've done that. But actually my profile is just Rob Dosta, so that's good. And of course people are going to be going to check your profile out now to see if you practice all the things that you've preached.

Well, I hope I do.

So, Tracy, it's been really good talking to you today. We could have gone on a lot longer, but I'm always conscious about trying to keep these podcasts to around about 30 minute mark. But there are a few things that I know I'm really interested in and I know my audience is to do with advertising and groups and and some other tactics as well. So let's do a part two of this podcast interview and have you back to tackle those things as well.

Great stuff. Yeah, perfect.

Good. And thank you so much for your time today.

Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed it.

So there you have it.

I hope you found that episode really useful. As ever, I learned some things that I am going to implement on my LinkedIn profile. For me, LinkedIn is a really important platform and it is one of the best ways I can engage with my target audience. Both by putting value added content online, but also some direct outreach as well. So I hope you found that episode useful and have some tips that you can begin implementing on your profile too. As ever, if you enjoyed the episode, please make sure you subscribe, please share the episode and I would love you to leave a review. And in the meantime, have a great Thursday Friday and a brilliant weekend. And I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.