Using LinkedIn to Supercharge Growth with Graham Riley

If you go on Google and you search for how to generate leads on LinkedIn, you'll get 8,000 sources telling you pretty much the same thing: post more content, optimize your profile, automate your outreach. But here's the thing, majority of that advice is outdated. The real game on LinkedIn isn't just about what you post, it's how you engage. Hey, what's going on everybody? I'm Mike Sirius and this is Mastering Tech Growth. Every week we sit down with industry leaders to bring you no-fluff tips on how to grow. If you enjoyed the show, please make sure to subscribe and send us your biggest growth challenge at masteringtechgrowth.com. Today I have someone who cracked the LinkedIn growth code. Graham Riley. He's a LinkedIn strategist, speaker, and a founder of LinkedIn Enterprises. He's been in the game for over 20 years now, helping B2B companies generate millions in revenue using the LinkedIn the right way. He works with CEOs, sales teams, marketing leaders to create LinkedIn strategies that doesn't just get you likes, but actually drive deals. Something you might know about the show is that we livestream all our episodes. We usually get from 30 to 100 people tuning in, all depends on the topic. Graham is the only guest who managed to get 400 people tuning in for this LinkedIn event. I don't know how he did that, but I'll make sure we ask that. Graham, it's excellent to have you here today.

Thank you very much for inviting me, Mike. I'm excited to participate in your show and share any of the insights that your listeners, I hope, find both helpful and actionable.

I've been looking forward to this conversation. Let me set the scene for our listeners. So what we're talking today is what actually works on LinkedIn in, in 2025. It's a big topic, but we have a couple of takeaways which we believe are the most important ones when it comes to B2B growth. Number one is the fact that your execs should be leading from the front. Their silence is costing your brand visibility. We'll also look into why LinkedIn needs to be treated as a strategic system. It's not just your social feed, right? Aligning your leadership, sales team, and marketing teams creates compounding results. We'll cover as well why comments beat content when it comes to reach and how to use them where your buyers already are. And we'll finish with what you need to know about LinkedIn's shift to video content. If you want to turn LinkedIn into your highest-performing B2B channel, This is where you start. Graeme, we love to open the show with this question. When I say mastering tech growth, what comes to mind?

Mastering tech growth. It's, it's the leveraging of any technology or tool in order to do one of or both of these things for an organization. First is how does this technology improve the financial outcome of the organization? And/or how is the technology being used to improve the customer, client, user, or patient experience?

Okay, so let me make this more difficult, Graham. If from all the things that drive growth for business, let it be sales, you know, marketing, customer acquisition strategies, go-to-markets, timing, there's many of them, right? If you need to choose the number one which has the majority impact for growth, what would that be?

Business starts with a sale, right? You can have all of the other things, but unless you have the ability with a service or a product to solve an individual or business's problem, then whatever the idea is, unless there's a market for it or a demand or a need for it, it's not going to fly. And what I've seen with a lot of startup businesses is it's a great idea. Somebody has tremendous amount of expertise in a particular area, but what they're struggling with is how do I say the right things to the right audience at the right time in order to generate curiosity in my or my company's ability to solve their problem.

I love how you put that. How do you say the right things, the right place and the right time to generate curiosity to then get the sales? This is lovely. I love that. Ultimately, we're saying sales. Sales is the beating heart of every business. You're not making sales, you don't have the business. That's pretty much what we're saying, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Okay. Let me start with this one. So a lot of companies rely on marketing teams to handle LinkedIn. That's at least what's happening right now. But, but, but here's the thing. People trust people, not brands, right? So when executive posts and engage, it creates credibility and amplifies company's visibility in a way a corporate page cannot match, right? And according to LinkedIn CEO Dan Shapiro, content from individuals, especially especially executives, builds more trust and connection than corporate brands. More business leaders are adopting this approach currently, right? So the question is, Graham, most executives either too busy or then they don't see the value in posting on LinkedIn. How do you convince them that this is not nice to have, but that this will actually drive growth for the company?

You raise a very interesting point about how do you convince somebody. The reality is that LinkedIn is just a tool, and how you view the tool is going to shape how you use it or if you use it at all. One of the things that LinkedIn, especially in the US, suffers with or has a hangover for is that when it was released in 2003, for the first decade or so, it was very much geared to LinkedIn as an HR tool. And so anytime somebody updates their LinkedIn profile or they're looking for a job, oh, I need to go on to LinkedIn in order to present my skills and capabilities. That legacy is still around today. I only use LinkedIn for jobs, or I have to do something with it for my company. I'm not seeing it as a tool. The difference is that LinkedIn wasn't marketed like that in other parts of the world. And so that's why you see folks from Europe or Asia using it primarily to drive business and as an online resume second. Okay. So how you use the tool or how you perceive it is how you're gonna use it. And if I don't see it as integral to driving new business opportunities or growing my business, then I'm not gonna use it for all of the reasons that you shared.

Okay. So effectively we're saying the executives might be looking at the tool in the wrong way. So we just need to reposition their understanding of LinkedIn as a growth driver rather than some type of glorified CV platform, right? Like you can close deals over here, so we need you to engage with that. That will have an impact. So from all the things you are doing when it comes to helping the business to grow, that should be a big thing.

Absolutely.

Okay.

We worked with the chief technology officer. Now I won't mention the company, but they're a Fortune 500 networking infrastructure company based here in the US. Worked with the chief technology officer, and I gave insights into what LinkedIn was capable of doing. And his response to me has always stuck. I'm in technology, and I cannot believe the power of this tool. It is I was aware of it, but its capability has simply not hit my radar. My eyes have been opened.

I love that.

And I would offer that it's going to be a brave employee who approaches the C-suite with the statement effectively saying that your LinkedIn profile isn't up to par.

Yeah, you can still see a lot of people in big companies as well underestimating the power of LinkedIn, not only for their own brand, like a personal brand growth, but for the whole business in combination. The biggest challenge, and I get that all the time, and I have the same challenges, like how do you actually build that credibility without spending hours and hours of just generating content? Like, you know, what's the easiest way for any— anyone in CXO to basically participate and get the value without spending hours on that?

Sure. I'd like to tell you that there is a magic bullet or a shortcut.

I know where that's going.

A great LinkedIn presence is the same as anything else in life. It is simply many little things done well consistently over time. Right now, in your introduction, you shared that— is it content? Is it your profile? Is it, is it the outreach? All of these things. It's true. All of those components are important. Now, LinkedIn can be a great vehicle to get your brand or your business development efforts from where you are today to where you want to be. But everything that you mentioned should be working in its own right. But the power comes when all of those components are what, just like the engine in your car, are all working in harmony together. That's when you get the momentum. Because if you just solely rely on content, if you solely rely on comments, you're not going to get, um, the outcomes that you could absolutely do if all of those levers were being pulled.

Okay, so, okay, so I'm probably guilty of just putting out content and not putting enough engagement, and I feel like I know exactly what he's saying on pulling all of them. At the same time, but in the right way. I still feel like the engagement is, when it comes to visibility, and we'll touch that in the later episode, I feel like it has an edge when you compare the content with engagement and what it means to actually your profile getting seen. But let's not jump over the takeaway around the executives. So a follow-up on that, Graham, which I have is, Is there a difference of what type of content I put out as an executive for B2B? If my target is B2B or B2C, like effectively what type of content drives B2B sales, you know, or B2B sort of visibility versus B2C?

Specifically for executives, that's the opportunity from their position in the company and in the industry to share thought leadership that surrounds the way the problems are described in their customers' C-suite. And the reason that executives play such a vital role is the fact that executives like to get their information from their peer group, from other executives. And the language that is being used in the C-suite is very different than language that a manager or a director or a VP uses. So, okay, there's credibility or gravitas to the person who's sharing the information. And typically the C-suite is not selling. What they're doing is they're informing about moves or trends in the industry that impact organizational growth. Now, you might have— this is the CFO's perspective of it, this is the CEO's perspective, or this is the Chief Operations, or this is the Chief Marketing Officer's perspectives of what is happening within their industry. And the language that they use is because they're in the seat themselves. Has so much credibility and resonates with their peers in the community that they wish to serve.

Okay, I love that. So they, they talk about trends, movements in the market, they talk about their customer problems to, to effectively resonates with the customers and the market, but they don't drive sales. So in effect, they support their sales team by using that, just putting content like that, but the sales team, how would the sales team like utilize that for like compounding results? Like let's say, you know, SEO is doing that, like what is the sales team doing then?

Right. So what the CXOs are doing is they're creating this halo around the sales efforts, which means that when they're connecting with the executives inside of, the target audience. The executives in those businesses, they're aware of the company, the leadership team, and the nature of the problems that that organization solves. Now, when a sales team is coming in, perhaps at the VP level, or even at the executive level, it's not the first time that that VP or executive has heard from this company. They're already aware of them. And that's the key, is the 3 things that are needed for salespeople to sell is awareness, trust, and belief. The awareness. How am I inserting myself, or how are we as an organization, how are we inserting ourselves into the audience that we wish to serve? Once we have their awareness, how are we building out trust that we have expertise in solving these particular problems? And then the third is, how do we then build a belief that it's going to be worth our prospect's time to have a first-time appointment with us, to have a sales call.

Okay, I love that. Awareness, trust, and belief. And we can target all of those three with different things we do with LinkedIn, right? So awareness is like we're putting content out. We as well engaging with similar content or or people within our industry, we're going looking at their content, we're commenting their content, we're effectively adding value to someone else, but about the same content. Once we're getting seen, people will come to our profile and then they will look at our profile and they will hopefully get some trust that we know what we're talking about and what we're doing, because they'll, they'll see our feed and, you know, all our profile, which is hopefully optimized to whatever your product is. How do you do the belief thing then? Like, how does the last thing happen?

Sure. That's with hyper-personalized comments and messages to the individual.

Okay.

Now, one of the interesting things about LinkedIn is that nobody, when they go onto LinkedIn, nobody wants to be sold to. Nobody. But if I'm in business development and my audience doesn't want to be sold to, how do I reconcile that? And it's by behaving as a trusted advisor. One of the things that you said during my introduction was it's not only what you say on LinkedIn, but it's also how you behave. So if I'm sending pushy sales pitches, Sometimes it's called pitch slapping, where you immediately connect with somebody and all of a sudden they've got an offer for you. So the approach is, let me first build out my LinkedIn profile. I'll call it setting the stage. So anytime somebody visits my profile, it's abundantly clear I solve these problems. 'Oh, we solve these problems and here's our track record in doing it.' You made the observation. I hope it's clear from your profile that this is the value that you and your business can bring to somebody. We did an audit of a sales team's LinkedIn presence. The sales manager was in his Speedos on vacation.

That's probably Facebook.

As is his profile photograph. So it really does matter how you set up your profile. And I say behave as a trusted advisor. As any salesperson worth their salt, They want to end up or be viewed as a trusted advisor or strategic partner by the clients that they serve. So behave like that right from the start. Don't put somebody through a sales process before you start to educate and create interest in what you do.

I love how you put it, trusted advisor or a strategic partner. So effectively, don't push the sales, understand if you can help the prospect first, try to be that value add to them, and then the time will come where that gift of your free value can be exchanged in potentially a sales conversation, right? That's what we're saying. Okay, I love that. So let's say someone right now listening and going, I'm a CXO, don't have a good presence. What would be step one to get started? Like, what's the easiest way to get into the game and then get the momentum going?

Absolutely. Uh, the first step is actually nothing at all to do with LinkedIn. Um, the first step is understanding and have clarity over What value do we bring to whom? What problems are we uniquely positioned to solve? And the best way of going about that is going and visiting your super fans, the people who have done business with you. You know, if I was to ask one of your clients, Mike, you know, why do you do business with Mike? What they will share is, oh, this is what I am now able to do as a result of engaging Mike's services. So the vocabulary that they use is business impact. Okay, now, once we understand what is the business impact that our functions, features, products, or services deliver, then we start to understand who's our ideal client profile. And so I understand the value to this particular audience. Understanding that value now helps me craft a LinkedIn profile that makes it abundantly clear we solve these problems. This is the value that we bring to this industry or this company size or this sort of business.

I love that. Right.

And that is the well that you draw from. That exercise drives who am I connecting with? And it also drives what is the nature of the content that I am looking to deliver.

It stems from all of that. It's very similar exercise you would do when you think about your landing page and your value proposition on your website is how you actually— what is the messaging to the market around your services or a product. So it's pretty much the same. It's the same approach, isn't it? It's understanding the pain points, the problems you're solving, understand your ideal customer profile. You do the same for LinkedIn, right? It's just that LinkedIn profile is your landing page, but it's your, it's your personal, it's your personal brand, right? But the beginning is pretty much the same, right?

Right.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Organizations don't treat LinkedIn like an enterprise application. Hmm. An example of this was doing some work with another Fortune 500 company that just operates here in the US. They have 853 members of their business development team. Each member has been given a Sales Navigator license, and with the idea that they're going to use that license for prospecting. Here's how it was rolled out. Hey, Graham and Mike, here are your Sales Navigator licenses. Period. Good luck.

Do your best.

Do your best. And what's interesting is, as you look at either the executives or the members of the business development team, when you speak to them, each one of them gives a different variation over this is the value that we bring to our customers. And so if we don't treat it like an enterprise application, then what happens is we get as many variations on how LinkedIn is being used as there are people using it.

Okay, I get you. And I want to put some context in a quote exactly about that. So most companies treat LinkedIn like just another social platform. Post something and hope effectively for engagement. But LinkedIn works more like an enterprise tool where strategy consistency drives real results without the structural engagement plan.

Correct.

Everything is going to be just basically random, right? You're not going to have a— no process, no plan. Everything's going to be random. And according to Sales— LinkedIn Sales Solutions, companies that implement a structured LinkedIn engagement strategy generate 45 more inbound opportunities that use that rely on just solely posting the content. So here's a question, Graham. What does that actually look like in practice? Like, what is, what is to use Sales Navigator as an enterprise tool, practically speaking?

Sure. Um, anything that gets trained, measured, rewarded and talked about gets done. If, if an organization is providing Sales Navigator licenses, but there are no best practices, this is the process that you use and this is the role that Sales Navigator plays. Then there's no context for what is our system. The customer acquisition should be a common process that everyone in the organization is able to articulate. This is how we go about using LinkedIn to acquire clients. I understand the process, and do I have technology and people that support that process? And so one of the challenges that LinkedIn has is, it will sell you the license, but it's not selling you the process in which that technology is being leveraged. Now, it might provide training to that technology, but it's still not providing— this is the process that you use in order to acquire clients.

So does the process— I want an example, Graham, but you can give that example, like an example of customer acquisition process that is like 101, the simplest example. And then the follow-up would be, does that process differ for like sales team, for marketing teams, and for other teams? Or are we actually saying that the Sales Navigator license, because it meant to drive the sales, should be given only to salespeople?

Okay. First of all, everyone, everyone should understand This is the process. And that's why there isn't a— this is a process for marketing and this is a process for sales. There should be a continuum from which we move a client from a suspect, right? So this is the customer journey. A suspect, we believe these people can use our product or service. How do we move them from a suspect to a prospect, from a prospect to a sales lead, from a sales lead to being a client. And then when we deliver world-class services to that client, we turn them from a client into a superfan, our referrals. That's a continuum that we're looking to move. Okay, in order to move somebody from a suspect to a prospect, How do I know that I've got momentum? It's because they've now become a first-level connection to me. How do I move them from being a prospect to a sales lead? It's how I engage with them with the trust and belief. And then how do I convert them from a sales to a client? That's really nothing at all to do with LinkedIn. That's down to the ability of the salespeople.

Okay.

Right. And so when it comes to creating content on this continuum, marketing should be supporting the sales team with snackable content that speaks to the customer's pain points and not is a litany of these are the functions and features that the product team has been developing. There should be an alignment. Sales, marketing, the executive team, we're all pulling on the same rope in the same direction.

Okay.

Can you—

if everyone's pulling the same direction, which is great, but how can you— how would you see that? Is that something which you can see in LinkedIn, or would you take that strategic planning into some type of another CRM?

Okay. LinkedIn is great for creating that awareness, trust, and belief, right? Now, the belief is, and it's gonna be worth my time speaking, you know, jumping on a call with Mike or jumping on a call with Graham. What follows after that, that is where that area of setting up the call, that's when it enters into the CRM system. Otherwise, you get CRM dashboards that management and the sales team don't trust.

Yeah. Okay.

So if I'm to trust something, then I have to know what process occurred that ended up having Graham Riley, Linked Enterprises landing in somebody's CRM. Where Graham Riley and Linked Enterprises is aware of the company that now has me in their CRM. Otherwise, I can fill a CRM with sales lists from ZoomInfo and nobody on that list is aware of me or my company. That's not adding value.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. So I think, okay, so we take that out effectively to external CRM to manage all of that sales lead to a client effectively element.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay. And then it just becomes other systems. So what we do in the customer journey, we do suspect, prospect, and that's on LinkedIn. And then that just goes with the awareness, trust, and believe, us posting content, us engaging. Okay. That makes perfect sense. Okay. So we are in this good position now. Hopefully, execs are starting to do that. Everyone has licenses. Everyone can articulate what a customer acquisition process looks like. Everyone's engaging, then, you know, we take that out to the sales team. That seems like a solid, you know, process to have, right? So most businesses focus too much on what they post, right? So they go in on their page and, you know, they, they really think about these viral posts and how the algorithms work, and they're sort of like trying to a game, you know, a system in a way. But, but the ones which are effectively actively commenting and participating in conversations are seeing a lot more impressions, let's say, like they're seeing a lot more engagement with the profile. People are coming looking at them. And if people listening using LinkedIn, you might have noticed that LinkedIn started showing impressions on your comments. So this happened quite recently. I think it's probably maybe half a year to a year old element. So that means, you know, LinkedIn is telling you that, look, like you should care about how much your, your comment is getting seen, right? And sometimes if you compare your content, something you post on your feed, depending on your network and the quality of the content, then compare your comment, which is a value-add comment to an influencer in your industry. These impressions will be, you know, like 10 times more, which means your name, your comment has been seen 10 times more than your content, which leads to this realization that potentially participating with other posts and commenting is a much easier way to start doing the LinkedIn game. So the question would be, why do comments on LinkedIn often have that reach on posts, and how should businesses take advantage of this?

Sure. So you've mentioned content and comments. Let's just clarify what the algorithm was doing and what it is doing today.

Okay.

Up till last year, when you posted content on LinkedIn, it gave exposure to that content to a sample size of your first-level connections. And depending on how that sample size responded to that content, it then gave a larger sample size to your first-level connections. And again, if there was lots of activity within the first 2 hours, that's how posts went from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands to even hundreds of thousands of views on that particular content. The algorithm has changed and it no longer does that. What it is looking for is sharing your content with people that you are having an interaction with. And so if you're simply posting but not having an interaction, then your content is going to basically sit unnoticed. And what do I mean by an interaction? Your profile is set up so it's abundantly clear. I get that. That's setting the stage. The next thing is I need to grow my audience of the people that I want to see my content. And so what I'm doing when I'm growing the audience is I'm liking and I'm commenting on their posts. I'm showing curiosity in them. I'm following them. A polite, professional, and courteous, would you be open to connecting? A few days later after they connect, a thank you. And then over the next couple of weeks, there's more likes and comments and endorsements on their profile. Why? Because if I take that approach with Mike, there'll come a point where you thank me for my endorsement, or you say, oh, it's a pleasure connecting with you, Graham, as well. What the algorithm is then doing, it's saying Graham and Mike are exchanging information, that there's a connection, there's an exchange going on there. So if Graham then shares something, it's going to appear in Mike's feed. But if I'm not commenting and liking, etc., then how do, how do those dots get connected? Well, they don't, they simply don't. And what people will notice is, I've created all of this content and it used to get thousands or tens of thousands of impressions a week, and now it's getting a few hundred. It's because the component of engagement and showing curiosity and interest in others is missing. And if you can't be interested in me, why would I be interested in your content? That's how the algorithm is driving who sees what.

Okay, so we're saying it doesn't matter how good your content is. Maybe you wrote a post which is, you know, a million dollars worth. I don't know what that post would be, but just for the sake of argument, it's an amazing post, right? And you post that, but if you're not really engaging with others, you're not going to get seen anyways. The LinkedIn will show this to 50 people from your first connection and it will just stop.

Sure, it'll be minimal. And here's what the definition of an impression means, that your content simply appeared in somebody's feed right now. They didn't necessarily stop. They didn't read it. They didn't hit that 'see more' to see everything that you shared in your million-dollar post. It simply appeared in their feed. Now, obviously, it has to appear in their feed for the chance that it will be then viewed and read and reacted and then commented. Right? Okay. All, all of these components are important. But how do I drive more impressions in order to get my content to sit in somebody's feed, that's engagement. And how have you engaged? Because you have shown curiosity in the audience that you're looking to serve.

Okay. So how do you engage when it comes to comment? What's the 101 best practice to actually write a comment which hopefully, you know, gets seen by more people, gets liked by more people, maybe gets responded by more people? What is that good value-add comment?

Absolutely. It's one that elevates and adds value to what the author was trying to say. Now, the vast majority of LinkedIn's 1 billion users are lurkers, people that are on LinkedIn. They're checking out what others are doing, but they're not necessarily contributing. And so when it comes to asking somebody to comment or to create a post, very often they think, hmm, what would I say? Right? How would I go about phrasing it? But these individuals, if they were at a trade show or they're at a conference or they're manning a booth and people are walking past and coming up to their booth, they wouldn't have any difficulty in showing curiosity to the people that they were engaged with. So whatever you would say, then have your LinkedIn profile say the same thing. It's authentic because it's your own language.

Hmm. So let me ask this, Graham. I've seen many tools, uh, when AI came out, Right. Where they effectively do commenting for you. So they, you know, it's a LinkedIn automation tooling, which is effectively frowned upon, actually not frowned upon. It's, you can't use them. Like if LinkedIn actually gets you using that, you know, your account might be banned or deleted. Right. But people are still using it and effectively it works as a browser extension. It will go to your network or directly to people. You want to target, you look what they're posting, they will look at a post and they will AI generate a comment and they will post for you, which means you don't need to put any energy. What's your take on that?

AI is just a tool and it's described often as it's simply an assistant. If you spend a great deal of time, energy, and commitment to training that assistant, then the assistant can create some great comments or posts for you. Right now, if I just want to use the assistant without training, it's just like in real life. If you've got an employee that you haven't gone through, that hasn't gone through orientation and training, why on earth would you ever expect that employee to be effective?

That's very nice. No one put it like that, Graham. You just made my mind to realize a few things. I love that. So, so if you train assistant on your language, if you train an assistant on your, uh, service or your value you're providing to the market, effectively you can train that on your skills, but there's a, there's a huge element of knowledge which you can share. Potentially you have ebooks, a book, some type of processes you train, maybe you have a course if you're like an online coach or whatever, but you likely have a huge amount of information which like defines you. So if you put that in AI, then what we're saying is that these comments will be just as your assistant telling these things, which is pretty much the same as you doing that, then you get efficiency boost, right?

Right, right. Now, a lot of organizations, they will record or tape the conversations that their business development reps or sales development representatives are having with prospective customers. And then the manager listens and provides coaching and training to that SDR or BDR about the script or how they handled or overcame objections, etc. That's a treasure trove for training the AI as to how to overcome objections or to help initially with comments or a demonstration of expertise.

Hmm.

So I— here's an example that might resonate. I've got access to my kitchen, I've got access to the cookbooks and all of the ingredients and the stove and all of the kitchen utensils. My wife gets a far better outcome after using all of those tools and following those instructions than I do. It's simply because she's been trained in the process to deliver fantastic dinners or baked goods or whatever the heck she's making. It's no different for your AI agent or indeed members of your sales team. If they haven't got clarity over this is the value, this is who has these pain points, dependent upon the level in the organization. This is what's important for them, and this is how we position it for financial impact, for customer experience impact. If they aren't trained in it, then how on earth can then they go and train their AI agent in order to drive comments, etc.? So that's why I'm saying that when executives, marketing, and sales are all aligned under one process, then every AI agent that is providing comments has been trained versus you've allowed the individual to try and train it and they might not even be trained themselves.

Yeah, I love that. Very good example. Being able to use the tools and have access to the tools doesn't mean you're going to do same amount of value with these tools than someone else who actually knows how to use them much better. It's a very good analogy. I love that. From your experience, Graham, if I'm an exec, how much should I be participating within the commenting section to actually have an impact on my own posts? And when I say have an impact, let's say I'm posting something right now. I have maybe a network, let's say 10,000 people. I'm getting 100 impressions, you know, a couple of likes. How much do I need to spend time every day in the commenting session to get that to 1,000? 10x.

Okay. So it's again, it's back to engagement. How have you primed that audience to, um, see value in not only what you're saying but how you're behaving. Because if I don't know who Mike is, how you behave with me, how you communicate with me, is shaping my perception of how much attention I should pay to Mike.

Right, okay.

Right? So if I connect with you and the next thing I receive from you is a request, is an ask, and that ask can be join a webinar, right? Join a podcast, join a group or follow the company page. What we need to do is with our behavior and our content and our interactions, We need to put in micro doses of reciprocity or social goodwill or capital. We need to deposit that with members of our audience. And our ability to deliver these micro doses of goodwill then starts to shape people's perception. I'm seeing value in what Mike or Graham has to say. And then when it comes to, hey, there's going to be a podcast, that's how we ended up with the number of people who registered for today's session. Okay, I didn't simply put a post out that said, hey, I'm going to be on Mike's podcast. It's the micro doses of value that I have added over several years, and I'm going back to now the many little things done well consistently. So I am posting on a regular basis, I am growing my network by 200 to 300 new followers every month. I'm doing those things so when I do run a webinar, I do attend somebody's webcast, I'm not like that relative or friend that I only hear from when I need something.

I see that it's a full-time job, almost feels like it. Like you need to put some proper energy into it, into to get proper results. So it's, it's give and take. There's no, there's no shortcut. There's no, um, AI automation you can put in this if you really wanna have appropriate results and be able to close deals. Is that what we're saying?

It is. If we were having this conversation 10 years ago, I would say, hey, you just have to message somebody, right?

Yeah.

If we were having this conversation 5 or 6 years ago, oh, you need to message people and you need to share content.

Okay.

But we're not back then. We're where we are today.

Yeah. 2025. Yep.

2025. I need a profile that makes it abundantly clear. I need a network of first-level connections full of the influencers and decision makers who can buy our products and services, not former colleagues, family, friends, people who I worked with in the past. And are no longer able to purchase what I have to sell. So I can be sharing that million-dollar piece of content, but the audience that I am engaged with, unless it's the people that can actually buy from me, is not serving me. That's why I'm saying that all of these components, all of these levers, need to be working in harmony in order to get the the momentum that sales teams are looking for.

I love that. That's a very loud and clear message, Graham. I think we definitely landed that one. And you made me think about my own approach to LinkedIn. I'm doing some mistakes which I need to fix, especially about the engagement. I'm way too much concentrated on content production and not enough concentrated on content engagement and as well the social good element of it. So I'll need to up my game over here. So, so that's good. I love that. Um, let's talk about videos. Um, I want to mention this. So if you check Microsoft 2024 financial year last quarter earnings report, right, you'll see the LinkedIn revenue increased by 10% year over year. And the videos, the videos were the fastest growing content type on the platform, right?

Right.

So it implies that either people are pushing videos or maybe algorithms promoting videos or maybe people pushing and people liking, whatever is the core reason, it's sort of clear that, that there's a, there's a growth around the videos, right? It's literally in the numbers, right? So the question would be, are we saying that LinkedIn is moving towards the videos? You know, do you see from accounts you manage and help to grow that videos work? What type of videos work? What type of content, you know, vertical or horizontal? What do we want to post in videos? What's Graham's approach when it comes to video content on LinkedIn?

Sure, I would offer that it should not be all just video. Yeah, you want to have it to be a nice mix. You mentioned LinkedIn's or Microsoft's report about LinkedIn's ad spend. LinkedIn has some very, very aggressive ad revenue objectives, which means organic posts are being crowded out because there's only so much space in your feed for promoted or sponsored content. So when you do share a video, when it's you, then there's a lot of authenticity because they can see Mike or they can see Graham sharing, sharing their posts. So it's popular because it's authentic, and other platforms like TikTok or Reels, etc., has already warmed up people to experience information in that particular format. Now, because we are adult learners, let's say that we do have that million-dollar insight that we're looking to share right now. I can share it by articulating the insight. So that's a video. I can share it as an infographic. I can share it as a carousel. I can share it as a text post. So, or I can share it in a newsletter. All different ways of delivering the same message. And when it comes to creating content, Once you have that insight that does add value, then repeat it. There is power in repetition. Um, and the reason I say this is we cannot tell our loved ones, our family members, we can't tell them something once. They understand it and they will always remember it. Right? That doesn't happen. And so for an audience that has never met you on LinkedIn, there's power in repeating the message because we are known for what we talk about. And even though I might have seen and really appreciated Mike's content for 2 weeks ago, I appreciated it at the time, but there is a lot that has gone on in my life between what I read on Mike's post 2 weeks ago and today. And unless you are repeating it, I will have forgotten it.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I repeat the same things to my kids every night, Graham. It seems like they never remember anything. So I get exactly what you're saying. Um, so if we send the same message, do we, do we need to just make it in into different formats? I love you mentioning images and carousels and infographics and newsletter posts as well. So let's say I have this one big idea which I'm pushing out. So do I literally take the same idea and I go like, here's a newsletter on it, here's a video on it, you know, here's a couple of carousels on it, and you know, here's just the text and potentially maybe infographic if there's enough content. And I just literally same message, same idea, different styles, and then I push it out And then if it landed well, and what is well of course will be subjective to everybody, but then if it landed well, I go like, okay, I'm gonna repeat that after like 4 weeks.

You, you, you keep repeating it.

Okay.

So, um, I, I feel confident in saying, Mike, that your business does not hang on one good idea or one insight. Yeah. There's multiple facets, right? So once you have that clarity, and that's why that discovery phase where I mentioned Understanding your value to whom is really nothing to do with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is simply the delivery mechanism of that values messaging.

Yep.

Again, so you might distill down your offering or your capabilities to 5 or 10 key areas or key insights. Now, those 5 or 10 key insights if they are repeated in 5 different formats, now you have 50 posts that you can then share each month.

Yep. Okay. I love that. And I actually do see people resharing the same content, especially bigger ones. I follow a couple of like influencers on LinkedIn, which they talk about topics I enjoy. And because I followed them for a longer time, I do see the same, the same posts coming up. And I think the frequency is something like once a month. They, they reissue the same post which performed previously quite well. And sometimes maybe different formats in delivery, text versus image and things like that, but it's clearly the same content. So I get what you're saying. That's a very, that's a very great tip. Right. So let's do a rapid question, Graham. Right. I got about like 10, which you know, doesn't go under any of the takeaways which we talked today, but they're still very good questions which I love to sort of get your inputs on. Yep.

Yes.

All right. So what changes have you seen in how buyers engage in B2B with B2B salesperson on LinkedIn over the years, especially this year? You know, is there any pattern in how people respond to B2B salespeople on LinkedIn?

It depends upon the experience that somebody has had prior to the salesperson engaging.

So if you were, if you got like pitch slapped before, you're probably going to be like, I don't like that.

Yeah. So a very simple, very, very simple rule to implement for anybody in business development is if another sales individual does something or say something to you that rubs you the wrong way or leaves you with a negative impression, don't do that behavior or that sort of messaging to somebody else. You immediately start to differentiate yourself because what annoys you, Mike, annoys me and annoys everybody else that's on the call today. So don't do it.

Yep, 100%. Take feedback, even if it's silent. And readjust your ways. That's what we're saying.

Right.

Okay. What is the most effective way to look at your first-level connections and turn them into real business relationships?

What I would do is I would have my ideal client profile previously defined, and then I would go into Sales Navigator and I would look for how many people fit this demographic. So for example, if you're selling to a Chief Information Officer or a VP of Finance, you know, whatever your demographic is, how many of those are in my network? Because I always want to be prospecting inside of my first-level connections. The next filter that I would put on apart from job title, is who is currently sharing something on LinkedIn, who is currently being active there, contributing to the platform. And what you'll find is you might have, let's say, 1,000 VPs of Finance in your network. My guess is that there's only going to be 200 to 300 perhaps that are actually sharing something on the platform. Narrow it down to them.

Why?

Why? Because I know that they are utilizing the platform to share information. They see value in being on the platform. Otherwise, why are they sharing content?

Okay.

Right. And so now I know that these are not dormant accounts. I know that somebody is active and sees value in adding content. And then I would go to their profile, I would look at their content, I would look to add value, I'd like and react, I would follow them, and then add insightful comments to their posts. And then a polite, professional, and courteous, would you be open to connecting? And it might sound something like this. If you'd be open to connecting, I'd welcome the opportunity to add you and your expertise to my network. Thanks for your consideration. Have a great afternoon.

All right. Very simple. Very to the point. Actually, LinkedIn started capping the notes you can add to connections. Do you have any insights into that? Like, what would be, what would be the value of not being able to provide a message when you're doing a connection request?

So there is, you're allowed 300 characters. Now what LinkedIn is doing when it's limiting characters is it's trying to drive people into a license.

Oh, it's not about the characters, it's about an actual message. Like when you're doing a request, you can add a personal note or not.

Yes.

And you run out of these notes, like eventually, I don't know how many you get a month. But then you just, you still can connect, but you can add, you know, you can add any note. It just becomes, you know, no message connection request, basically, like it's just silent.

Um, so I've seen, I've seen that, uh, on mobile. I haven't experienced that limitation, and I send out a lot of, uh, me and our clients send out a lot of connections. Now Here's something to bear in mind. At any given time, there are several different versions of a LinkedIn profile that are out there. Why? Because LinkedIn is developing its product and it's trying new functions and features and layouts to different audiences.

Yeah, I get you. I'm actually exposed, but I don't pay for LinkedIn account, so I'm just sort of assuming maybe that's on free accounts where you can add the personal note. But I definitely saw that, like, you know, I want to add the note and it just pops out a sales model window to go and upgrade. And I was like, I don't understand. I can just skip the note and I can still request the connection. But then, you know, it becomes like I can't even tell why I'm connecting with that person which it's almost like feels like you're gonna just get a number. But, you know, it's like I wasn't sure what exactly LinkedIn is trying to drive with that.

Oh, I can share what it's trying to drive. Yeah, it's pay-to-play.

Okay.

It has over the years, it has ratcheted down what a free account can do.

All right.

Now, for anybody who's serious about growing their business, having a process and are paying for Sales Navigator is the way to go. Now, I'm not saying that somebody with a free profile can't generate opportunities, but you're making it so much harder for yourself to do that. And the people who can do that, that's more— that's the equivalent of a lottery ticket winner. Right.

Okay.

If you're serious about it, I have a process. I understand where LinkedIn.com plays. I understand where content, connection building, Sales Navigator— I know where all of these pieces fit in my LinkedIn engine. They all work well, but they play well together, which really gives you the horsepower.

Okay, I love that. Right, so where do most businesses right now waste time trying to generate leads on LinkedIn effectively? The question is, what approaches no longer deliver results?

Hiding behind the company page. Um, marketing looks at, um, LinkedIn— well, I've got my own personal profile, but I'm here to market the company. And so I'm going to market the company page. And so you see lots of content coming from the company page. But as you look at it, there's very, very little interaction. And it's not unusual to see company pages with hundreds of thousands or even millions of people that are following the company. But when you look at the content that is being shared, it's in single or early double-digit numbers. And the majority of the people reacting to it are employees, right?

So where do they get the followers from then?

It's because of, um, their perhaps TV ads or their trade show presence, you know, it's other marketing channels has, um, or they've got large number of employees, right?

Okay. Um, but we're basically saying that having lots of people on your company page, it doesn't drive results anymore. Like, those results need to come from your personal page. And that's, that's one of the takeaways which we're trying to deliver today, which is that execs have to lead that.

Correct. Now, if I'm looking for— if I'm on a business development team, what I need people to do is I need them to be familiar with my face. My name, what I talk about, the company that I work for, and what the company does. Right? It's no different than if we met at a trade show, at a conference where all we've got is our name badge on, right? But how we interact and engage, we may never get to what the company does if that interaction doesn't go well. And so use your LinkedIn profile to mimic those professional behaviors that you would have at a trade show, at a conference. Use them via your LinkedIn profile, because if I lead with the company page, then it's a long way from talking about what the company does all the way through to somebody recognizes Graham or Mike. And recognize who you are and what you're about. That's too far.

Yep. I get it.

Yeah. Every company will say our people are our most important asset. If that's the case, then lead with your people and your CXOs should be the brand champions of their organization.

I love that. Okay. What LinkedIn tactics have you seen work best when dealing with multi-level decision makers in enterprises? Sales?

Make sure that you're connected with all of the decision makers and influencers that are typically involved in your sale. Even if you are not directly connected perhaps to the CEO, just ask your CEO to connect with them so at least there's familiarity with the brand. And then have content and messaging and engagement relevant to your audience. There is no one-size-fits-all. So having a clarity over the— this is our value, this is how finance would view our proposal, this is how operations would view our proposal, this is how IT would view our proposal. This is where marketing can really help. In creating that messaging and that value add to that specific audience so that you're sharing content that speaks to all of, all of those audiences.

Okay.

Here's an example. Many businesses have a frequently asked questions section on their website, right? Don't hide it on the website. If it's a frequently asked question, put it in a LinkedIn post. Get those questions answered ahead of time, and you get to choose the framing of how you overcome those objections in your content.

That's a great tip. That's, that's your content strategy right there. Just utilize what you have on your website. Just FAQ session. If, if it's really good questions. I mean, you know, if you didn't generate that with ChatGPT just for the sake of having a website. If it's a real pain point, see, you could probably make some content around that. Um, what LinkedIn metrics have you found to be best to measure return of investment when it comes to the time you're spending with LinkedIn?

Absolutely. Uh, the two ones I watch very closely are who has viewed my profile and how many times have I appeared in a search.

Why these two?

Because if somebody is visiting my LinkedIn profile versus looking at content, when you log into LinkedIn, you never go to somebody's profile. You don't even go to your own. The first place you go to is content.

Yep.

Right. So what that means is that somebody has seen a trigger inside of the LinkedIn platform that has created enough curiosity that they've gone to see who is this.

Yeah, I love that. And what about the search?

Is it appearances in search?

Yeah.

What this does when you analyze that figure, it tells you what triggers are getting people to visit your profile.

Do you actually see how they find you? Because, like, is that in Sales Navigator then?

No, no, no, it's, it's in your profile. So when you go into your profile, just scroll slightly down off the first page. And what you'll see is analytics that are just for you. On the left-hand side, you'll see how many people have viewed your profile. In the middle, you'll see impressions. And then on the right-hand side, you'll see appearances in a search. Views is in 90 days. Impressions on your content is a 7-day period. Appearances in a search is a 7-day period. Click on that number, appearances in search, and it will tell you where, which mechanism people ended up on your profile.

Okay.

So around 75% of the people who visit on my profile have come from the comments that I've made.

Right. Which just puts a, a dot on the I of what we just talked about, that engagement will drive more results than the content. Okay, I love that. All right, so how do B2B sales teams can utilize AI right now when it comes to LinkedIn but not lose authenticity and all the human touch which we currently have but still are able to capture some of the efficiency which AI offers?

Sure. So AI is a very general term, right? And so there are specific tools and GPTs that you can put inside of LinkedIn to take the message that you want to share and then customize it for the audience that you wish to serve. So let's say that marketing comes out with a customer success story, or it comes out with a white paper. Train the AI to take that success story, but gear it specifically to a CFO, or gear it specifically for the people that you want to have engagement with.

Okay, so we're basically just rewriting the same content, but we're using AI to tailor it for specific ideal customer persona profile.

Correct.

Okay, great.

And when it comes to white papers or 15-minute videos, honestly, 0.00% of people are actually reading the entire white paper. If you want to behave as a strategic advisor or a trusted partner, what you have to do is to take your company white paper, which might be 5, 10, 50 pages, and distill it down to, hey, Mike, here's our white paper, but this is what you need to know. Here are the top 3 things that you need to know.

I get you. No one reads long posts.

Nobody reads long posts and it's making it snackable. We call it snackable content that either informs, educates, or you're giving somebody a tool that they can try doing it themselves. And this is why the popular creators, especially around the AI space, are giving away the prompts that they use because it's immediately actionable and it's speaking to a very specific need.

Yeah. Which is prompting, right? What have you seen work best for building trust on LinkedIn before you making an ask, before you making a sale ask?

So I would honestly not make a sale ask.

In general, just don't ask.

Yeah, sorry. Let's just clarify what we mean by a sales ask. I would invite, I would invite somebody to have a conversation with me.

Yeah. Okay.

The sale takes place when somebody feels that they know, like, and trust me. If I try and make a sale using LinkedIn and we haven't had that human interaction, then I'm not setting myself up for success. LinkedIn is a relationship engine. It's not a sales order processing system. And the more that you are adept at generating and nurturing relationships, the more successful you'll be as a salesperson. Why relationships influence decisions and all of those micro doses of goodwill that I've spoken to is the fertilizer for the relationship. It helps that relationship grow.

I love that. I mean, it's been a theme which is coming over and over again through all the guests we go through, you know, all the episodes we have. If there's a topic about sales or influence or networking, there's always the relationship element and people are trying to use AI and they're trying to use the tools of AI, which gives the efficiency and automation, effectively gives the automation and you get that efficiency. And then they position themselves, don't lose that personal touch and all of that thing, but at the end of the day, you can't go far. Like, it is still a relationship, which means you will need to do the work to build that relationship, to nurture that relationship and take it somewhere, you know, you want to take it. So AI will just not gonna do that for you. There's, you know, you can have some AI chatbots maybe and things like that. But again, couple of steps maybe in the beginning just to open the doors, but at the end of the day, you'll need to do the job. You need to put in the work, the social capital as you called it, to actually build that relationship if you want to actually close deals, right? That's what we're saying. I love that. Well, Graham, that was, that was incredibly insightful. And I'm sure our listeners are enjoying this. So if people want to learn more about what you do and potentially even work with you, what is the best place for them to find you?

Go to LinkedIn and type in Graham Riley.

Easy as that. He's gonna come up straight at the top. Confidence, right? Gonna be the first result in your search.

Absolutely. And, you know, anybody who's a first-level connection with me and they haven't tried LinkedIn Sales Navigator before, I can give 10 people a free 2-month trial of Sales Navigator.

That's excellent. Can we add this in the comments of the show notes just for the first people to grab that?

Yeah, but the caveat is I can only assign a license to somebody who's a first-level connection with me.

Okay, so they'll need to connect with you then.

Well, I have a sneaking suspicion that there might be several people who are already first-level connections. But if not, I will keep assigning these licenses until I hit my 10 limit.

There you go. So people listening live, you probably want to jump on this right now. Just find Graham Riley on LinkedIn and just send that message. And if you hit that, then please tell us because once that goes to production, will not add this in the comments, right? So if you enjoyed the show, guys, uh, as always, please, uh, subscribe. Do not miss any show. We love you showing us attention, potentially leaving a review, and sending us your biggest growth challenges at masteringtechgrowth.com. And as always, until the next time, stay safe and see you online.