Why Your Small Business Needs to be on LinkedIn

The Small business show, episode 329 for Wednesday, May 26, 2021. Greetings, folks, and welcome to or welcome back to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show where we are small businessing every week here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton, and in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. How you doing?

I'm good, man. I'm ready to small business. Are you?

I am totally ready to small business. You know, I've been wanting to do this show for a while. We had a few things come up that kind of pushed it back a bit. And, you know, today we're going to talk about what I consider to be, you know, one of the most underutilized tools for small business owners, and that's LinkedIn. I know you have some thoughts on that too. You just went through some hiring stuff with it, so I'm interested to hear your take on it. It, and it's great. I, I love it. You know, we've used it for various purposes. Hiring, promoting the Small Business show, the podcast.

Yeah.

And you know, I'm, I'm looking forward to talking about why you and your business should be on that platform and how to use it to grow your business.

I, I, Yeah, okay, same. Yes, I have, I have, I don't know, I have a weird issue with LinkedIn. And, and you're absolutely right. Like, I just used it, used LinkedIn jobs to find Sadie, who we hired here at Backbeat Media, who's doing some podcast promotion for us, including doing for this show. Right. And she was a great find, as were, you know, there were maybe 70, 72 people, I want to say, responded to $60, $50 worth of ads. I mean, it was like short money, man. And of those, we narrowed it down, there were seven people. Any one of whom I feel like would have excelled at this job. Right. So, like, that's, those are great numbers.

Powerful. They are great numbers.

So, yeah, so I say that up front because I definitely don't have something against LinkedIn, but I have a history against LinkedIn. It just, it's never stuck for me. I've tried several times to make it my social network of choice. Now I generally use social networks to communicate with my podcast audiences. Right. Like, that makes sense that that's, I mean, certainly there's friends and family and certainly that, like the bands that I play in, you know, have social media presences and those sorts of things. But it really, you know, Twitter came out after we started macgeekab. It was a very instant Immediate thing to, like, tell our audience. This is a great way for you to contact us. And the same with Facebook in different ways. And LinkedIn doesn't have that for me, not even for this show. And so maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but it just hasn't stuck as, like, the place I want to visit every day.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that's valid. And I think that. I think a big part of it is really defining what you want to get out of it and how you will measure the success. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And so let's talk about why.

I.

Here's why. I think it. It works in. In a, you know, a few different aspects. You know, I, I think the exposure is great.

Okay.

It. But it's a long game, right? It's not. It's quick.

Right?

Yeah, all of it is. So it's. It. I think it, it does add credibility to you as a business person, as a business owner, perhaps as a writer of content, creator of content, of all kinds of things. If you're a young person just getting started, you know, out of college, you know, a really strong LinkedIn profile that, that highlights what you're good at and your skills and things you've been endorsed for. Very helpful. And I think there's, you know, there's a ton of free features. It's easy to use. And I don't think, you know, I want to mention that credibility thing again, because if you're just starting a company, you can put together a business, a page for your business that you manage and that you can have an employee manage. And I think it helps you come up in search results in Google if you've got more engagement, people are searching for your name. You know, you want to. I talk all the time about how you get to make your own story. I think LinkedIn is just part of that. And if people are searching for your company name or your personal name name, and you've got a lot of engagement and good activity on LinkedIn, well, that's going to come up in the search results, and that's a great place to control the narrative about who you are, what you've done, what you're doing and what your business is doing.

Okay, so. Right. I get this. And I'm hoping that not only am I acting as Dave trying to figure this out, but hopefully somebody else out there is in a similar situation as me and, And I can be their proxy. So, because I firmly agree, like, I do use LinkedIn all the time, but it's the social network aspect. The timeline, the feed. Because I keep my LinkedIn profile updated, whenever I meet someone new, I hunt them down on LinkedIn and connect with them and all of that. Right. Like, I am very aware of that. And if I need to find someone who works at a company, I will mine LinkedIn for them. So, like, yes, definitely. But what I've noticed, and maybe this is why I don't see the value yet in keeping an ongoing stream of content from me published to LinkedIn is anytime I'm doing any of those things, I never even see other people's content stream. Like, if I go and look for Shannon Jean on LinkedIn, I can find your LinkedIn profile. Right. And pro tip, LinkedIn, especially if you're not paying for an account, LinkedIn limits the amount of searches you can do every, let's say every month or something like that. But what they don't limit is how many searches you can do of Google or DuckDuckGo, you know, your favorite search engine of choice. And as long as you put in, if I put in Shannon Jean Space LinkedIn, it's going to expose your profile to me, right. And then I can go find you. And I didn't waste one of my LinkedIn searches.

So that's a good tip.

Yeah, a little tip. But, um, once I find you, like if I go to your LinkedIn profile, I don't see your social activity there.

I have to dig deeper to find you. Yeah, if you go to, if you find a page of somebody you're interested in, you need to click on their activity. There's an activity link.

But that's what I'm saying is that they don't prior by not having it right there as like top, like what's top of page. And I'm talking about like, I don't.

Think that's the most valuable thing.

Okay. So maybe I'm not missing anything out by LinkedIn different.

I think you're using it or you're thinking of it like other social networks.

Yeah.

But let me tell you the way that I use the feed and that I think the best use of the feed is, you know, now we're going to talk about engagement here in a few minutes. But just to address what you're talking about.

Yeah.

Using the feed is a great way to find new customers. And for me, even more importantly, it's a great way to find suppliers for my businesses over the years. And I'll tell you how I do that.

Okay.

Is let's, let's take the customer thing is, okay, yeah, let's take customers first. You get people all the time that want to connect with you on LinkedIn and then they immediately try to sell you something, which is a big mistake, and I'm going to mention that again in a few minutes. But getting involved in the feed, in, in your industry and connecting with people that perhaps may be your customers, if you're, you know, in. If that makes sense for your business or your service, whatever you're providing, that's a big deal. And I can tell you, like, with Tech Restore, I used to connect with educators all the time. I wanted to connect with people that made decisions about school districts because as, as our edu business grew more and more, those were the people that I figured they, those were the decision makers.

Right.

And then also technology coordinators for individual schools because they had some impact on, on district decision makers. So I would connect with them, I'd make a comment about, you know, I would try to find their activity, try to make it personal. Hey, I saw you made this post about this. Awesome. And sometimes you send a connection with a message. Oh, you know, I'd like to connect to. I'm in a similar business or whatever. I'm interested in educational things. And they would connect with you. But, but even if they didn't, you can still find them in the feed. Right, right. And commenting, liking commenting on their posts is very powerful, especially before you send that connection request.

Got it.

And asking questions and engaging with them.

Sure.

Because, you know, you're building this relationship with them. And we would target. It sounds a bit manipulative, but it works. We would target these folks and say, hey, you know, this person is a coordinator for this school district up in this area. Let's get involved, let's talk. Let's see, are they, you know, hey, and you'd ask a question, how many iPads do you have in your entire district? That's crazy. You know, don't ask them for any business. You're just doing the soft sell and connecting with them because eventually they're going to, they're going to recognize your name.

Right, right. This makes sense. Okay, so.

Okay.

Yeah, no, thank you. Because I certainly have done this in limited quantities in, in the past. Right. It's like, okay, I need to go and hunt down that person. Right. For whatever reason, you know, I, maybe I want him to be my vendor, you know, but I want to get to know him first. Like, you know what I mean? Like all kinds of things. So. Yeah, okay. That, that part on the flip side. Yeah.

And on the flip Side, what I've always done and I've told people this is just. It's a hidden gem. If you're in the product business and you're always looking for sources like I have my entire life, you connect with suppliers the same way, you know, if you want to sell, you know, Louis Vuitton handbags, well, you better go connect with everybody that's involved with Louis Vuitton on LinkedIn and comment on their posts and like their, you know, whatever, make suggestions to them and add value. Think about what value you can add to those people and build a relationship on LinkedIn. Before you ask them, can I buy from you? And let me tell you, I have made some connections that have, I mean, changed my life in many ways. Not just financially, but certainly financially with people that I've met using these tactics, whether it's a customer or whether it's a supplier, Got one of the largest Edu customers in the north northwest part of the US by connecting through LinkedIn. Took me, probably, it may have taken me a year. Right. But it really paid off. And when they, when they were ready, when they were frustrated with their previous service provider, they were looking around. My name was all over their LinkedIn feed and my company name as well. And that led to a great relationship for years. So those are two ways. I think using the feed is really great.

Okay, I can see this. Yeah. All right. And I've done some of this. I don't have quite the success story with it that you do, but I see the. I've experienced enough of it to see that kind of value. Yeah.

And it, yeah. And it don't. You know, it's like cold calling. You know, it's the one out of 100. It takes a lot of time. You can get your employees involved. You can have an assistant go up there and comment on your account. I mean, there's lots of ways to do it to save time. Um, and I also like the feed because within your industry, it can help keep you connected and what's going on in your. In, you know, I mean, we're all both Apple guys. Well, you know, I follow tons of Apple people, you know, on, on LinkedIn and kind of what's going on in their business and, and celebrating when they have successes and all that stuff. And who knows when you may need to connect with one of those people on a. On a different level.

So, yeah, I guess that's the part of it that always seems to turn me off. And I know that every social network, the feed on any social Network. And I realize LinkedIn is different from Facebook, but it's also. That's also different from Twitter. And, you know, it's certainly different from Instagram. Every, every one of these feeds is some kind of highlight reel. Right. Like, without question, we aren't putting all. Most people aren't out there saying, wow, I had a terrible day today. You know, I mean. Right. Certainly not on LinkedIn.

It's.

It and came across as so much like braggadocio out there that it was like, I just, I don't want to think this way about these people. Like, you know what I mean? Too much of this. Like, like, it's fine. Yeah. I mean, like, great. I, I love to celebrate other people's wins, but that seemed a little contrived.

If you want.

It is certainly.

Yeah, it's. It's a highlight reel. And I think that I, I wouldn't recommend doing that if, you know, if, when you're posting. Yeah, I think it's always great to post just, you know, news things that are going on, not to ask for congratulations, you know, congrats, or pat me on the back. I've achieved this. I achieved that.

Right.

It's. I think there's different ways to do it. You could ask a colleague to post and congratulate your business or your company, because I think it's always more powerful to have someone else do it than yourself.

Yeah.

You know, and it is. It can be that way. But I, But I don't think it's. It's so much like that that it's not worth it as another tool. Right. It's just one more tool that you can use in a different manner. And, And I also think, you know, you can become seen more as an expert in your field, not even by your own post, but just by linking to news articles. It's like, I read this, you know, this. Look at this post on here. What do you think? Is this right? Is this, you know, are they correct?

Yeah.

And I think that's a great way. What you're looking for is engagement because, you know, like all social networks, LinkedIn is not going to show. Even if you have a thousand followers or connections, they're not going to show your post to every single one of them. Right. They're trying to monetize everything, of course. So you may get 50 people that see your post. Well, can you get them to comment? That is powerful. Can you get them to like or, you know, ask a question? And you do that by posting different kinds of things. Like, is this right you know, do you agree with this? Instead of just, hey, look how great I am, look how good my company is doing, look at this new service my company has. It's like, well, you know, flip it, change the narrative a little bit and you'll get different reactions.

Right. But it, maybe I follow the wrong people because as we've been doing this, I've sort of just been like, you know, lazy scrolling on my LinkedIn LinkedIn.

Feed and that's a good term.

Yeah, well, I've been trying to pay attention to you to be perfectly fair. But, but I'm also trying to see like, okay, it's been a while. And when I say a while, maybe three weeks, like, it's not like I completely ignore this, but I, I saw 10 posts and one of them was someone not posting about themselves or their business.

Yeah. Scroll by that other stuff.

I know. Or like it's the signal to noise ratio is, is not. It's worse on LinkedIn for me than it is on any other social network. And maybe that's because I need to cultivate my. I mean, yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah.

But even if those people are, maybe.

I'm connected to too many people.

Yeah, well, that's one thing. But also those, those self promotion posts or whatever it is, you don't care. But if you're looking for customers or you're looking for a supplier and like, let's use that Louis Vuitton example, if there's some executive at Louis Vuitton or some, I don't care who it is, a warehouse manager for whatever, and they're posting all that kind of stuff, well, wouldn't you want to be like, hey, congratulations man, I love seeing you succeed.

Yeah, yeah.

You're trying to connect, you're trying to stand out, you're trying to get your name in their wheelhouse, if you will, and so they see you over and over again and who doesn't love someone that tells them, hey, you're doing a great job. I love seeing you post these things about X. Right. And that's it, that it works. And sometimes you got to do a little flattery like that. So I think you have to change your framework on the feed, if you will. And the feed is only one part, Right, right. It's only one part of the value.

The feed is the part that, that I use the least in terms of like for me, the value of LinkedIn. I. Yeah. You know, profiles and connecting with people and even messaging people on LinkedIn. I do that all the time. It happens constantly. I Mean, I'm generally bombarded with incoming.

Messages, so value there.

Yeah, but, yeah, but the feed.

So I. So we have some different takes on that. I think the other thing you can develop with LinkedIn we talk about having kind of a board of advisors, if you will, for your small business. These are just individuals that you trust, maybe your banker, your attorney, your accountant that can advise you. Well, maybe you don't have access to as well rounded a group of people that you would like. You can develop that over LinkedIn by. As you develop those relationships. And you could, you could just ask, hey, would you mind sometime if I had a question about. You seem very knowledgeable in, I don't know, the insurance industry. If I had a question sometime, would you mind if I asked you? People are usually very flattered and very willing to help when you ask them. So you could have build a little quasi board of advisors on LinkedIn and ask those kind of questions. Questions and maybe use their services. That might be part of it as well. Sure, but sure, I've connected with people that you have to start early. If you have a problem to solve, that's not the time usually to go to LinkedIn to find somebody to help you.

Just like if you need to borrow money, that's not the day to get a loan. You got it. Right, right. No, that part. Thankfully I've made enough mistakes in that department that I've learned that lesson. Like I gotta pave the path today that I don't know if I'm ever going to need tomorrow. Right. Like that's for sure. Yeah. And LinkedIn, LinkedIn makes that totally doable because it's connecting with someone, I'll say randomly, nothing's ever actually random, but connecting with someone on LinkedIn is far, generally speaking, far less invasive than connecting with someone on Facebook. Right. You know for sure, because it's less personal. It's less personal. It's intended to be less personal. Now there's some companies, Apple, that the people there are very weird and still very shielded and like that's just normal. That's how that not normal. That's not normal at all. It's how the company is. Right.

Yeah. So that being said, you know, don't think things are going to happen quickly. I do want to share you a quick story about my couch and how I got things fixed via LinkedIn. Okay, I'm all in. So, all right, so I don't know, a number of years ago, about 10 years ago, whenever we moved to this new house, we needed a big giant couch. And we go to the store and I find this couch we fall in love with. Not inexpensive furniture can be very expensive. And I don't know, it was maybe five or six thousand dollars. And I paid cash. I just happened to have some cash, so I paid cash. That's mistake number one. And so got this couch, they build all this stuff, waited six weeks or something, got this couch delivered, put installed, and we live up on a H. And the deliveries are always kind of a pain. And so all this work, just driving.

Up your driveway is kind of a pain. I. It's a little petrifying. Yeah.

Can be challenging.

Yeah. Especially in a rental car. Yeah.

Especially a big truck. Yeah. And so I get the thing delivered and after a couple of weeks, I started to smell something. This kind of plasticky, you know, kind of toxic smell. And I was like, wow, this is really bad. And I started asking, do you smell that? Do you smell that? You know, and everybody, I said, yeah, I could smell it. And I, I would boy. And I, I was like, I'm getting a headache sitting on this couch. And so I do a little research and like I. Online. And I'm not the only one that mentioned this. I'm not going to say anything the brand, but there were some other people that mentioned this kind of comment too. I called the store and said, hey, you know, I'm not, this is a problem. Make a long story short, the company, the store wouldn't help, couldn't help me. You know, I couldn't get the credit card company involved because I didn't use credit card. So I'm like, how am I going to get this fixed? I cannot keep this couch. It just seemed to have getting worse and worse and worse. Research online, trying to fact I go to LinkedIn and I find the, I don't know, some senior VP of whatever, North America for this company. And you know, you can't just message people on LinkedIn unless you pay. So I was like, okay, I'm going to do the, the gold or whatever, 25 bucks a month. I joined that. I sent this guy a message and I said, I, I, you know, I kind of hyped it up a little bit. Said, look, I waited my whole life to buy one of your couches. And I gave him the whole thing. And I said, now I had this toxic thing in my house and I'm afraid to have my kids sit on it. Yeah, I never heard back from that guy. But I got a phone call the next day and they picked up my couch 48 hours later. And I got my couch replaced and I got a loaner because, you know, it takes six, eight weeks or whatever to make your couch.

Yeah, right.

And that all. It would cost me 25 bucks. And then I canceled it. So it, you know, you can connect to people that you otherwise would not be able to connect to in your life with that, with LinkedIn. And I would highly encourage it.

It's true. And you're right. Paying for the ability to access people that LinkedIn keeps out of your reach. I mean, let's be fair about the, you know, who's creating the walls here. But, you know, it's, it's not very much money if you know what you're doing with it. And that's why we've. I mean, LinkedIn is not a sponsor of this epis. But I will put. They have been in many different ways, right. LinkedIn jobs. And I will put a Linked in the show notes because even though they're not a sponsor anymore, the link is still good for 50 bucks off. So that'll be in there. Right. Like we, They've sponsored us, but also LinkedIn sales navigator. Right. Like they have tools to truly help you up your game on top of all the other things that they, that they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Especially if you're, you know, a lot of. I make, I have these conversations with folks about LinkedIn and I get a lot of feedback. I get. Yeah, it just takes so much time. I understand. And I probably spend maybe 15 minutes. It's usually the first 15 minutes once I land on my desk in the morning, I kind of go up, check my messages, look at what's going on, kind of maybe look at the feed, laugh at everybody, like you said, and then make some comments. And I have some tactical people that I'm commenting on and connecting with, because I have some brands that I would like to sell their product.

Yeah, of course.

And I work on that and then I move on. And so that, that, that's it for me. And now if you're just getting started, and you know, my son's in college and one of his business classes said, hey, you need to go create a LinkedIn profile and get 100 connections. You know, and it's like, wow, how am I going to do that? So we sat down and, okay, great, you got to do this. And you know, I know these people.

You can do something once, you can do it 100 times. That's right.

Yeah, exactly. So, so you got to look at a different way. And everybody is, I think, will have their own uses for it. The one thing I will say, and you mentioned earlier, is that it's just not something that you're going to connect with someone and sell them something right away. Just don't do it. You immediately fall out of my resources when you connect with me and send me a pitch in the same. Within 24 hours. I mean, come on, you should be looking at what I'm posting. You should be commenting, oh, I heard you on the small business show, Shannon. I love the episode about hiring. You know, we do this, that and the other related to employees or an HR business. If you'd ever need our services, here's a link. Boom, that's so much better. You know, and I would look at that and go, hey, thanks. No problem. I'll let you know if I ever need your service versus just ignoring you or telling you, you know, are disconnecting with you. Right. So you have yet to think about it.

Okay, so I have a, I have a question for you about tactfully using LinkedIn because I explained the signal to noise ratio of my feed, just the general feed. Is it possible for me to, without you knowing, put you on a list, like a priority list? So I can say I only want to look at my, you know, 25 or even 75 people that I see as priorities. I want to see their posts on LinkedIn. Can I, can I narrow down my feed somehow? Because if I can question if they would let me pay to do that, I would do that. And maybe they do, I think, yeah.

I think as a paid customer you do get lots more options on your. What you look at, what your views are, your, your connection to certain channels, your connection to certain groups. Because there's all just like Facebook and everything else is a ton of business related groups on, on LinkedIn. So yeah, you definitely get it. I think it's worth subscribing. There's no contract or anything. Join the thing for a month. LinkedIn Gold or whatever it's called now. Yeah. And check it out and see all the tools that they give you and see if it's worth the while, if it would help you. It all depends on what you're trying to achieve and again, what your definition of success is. You know, if I was in the insurance industry, if I was providing services to businesses, man, and I was just getting started, that would be the place. I mean, I would be all over it, connecting with every business related to what I wanted to do within my immediate geographical area and then expanding onto there and looking for ways to Add value. Posting articles. I mean, you can post links to things on LinkedIn, but you can also create content and post articles on LinkedIn related to whatever you want, you know, in what topic? Maybe there's certain topics that you want to be considered an expert at. Well, that's how you do it, man. You start talking and then, you know, ask people for their feedback. You know, what do you think? Keep things brief. I get, you know, alerts each morning for certain people I like to follow because I believe their content's credible. You know, one of the nice things, too, about LinkedIn is there is not a lot of politics and, and other things going on there.

Like, it's true.

Other social things, for sure. And I like that a lot.

Yeah.

You know, so look at it in whatever way it makes sense to you. I have some more specific tips if you think, you know, we go over it or maybe we can just post them in the show notes. I know we're at about a half an hour. I don't want to keep everybody, you know.

Yeah, well, we'll see, we'll see. Let us know what you want. Feedbackusinessshow.co. and we'll, we'll, we'll dig more into this if, if, if there's, if there's, if you're interested, let us know. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what that sound was behind you. Maybe it was a big truck backing up your driveway or something.

Might have been. Might have been. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, if you want to hear more, you know, I've got a bunch of topics. It's, you know, how to do things, what to do thing with your business page, all that kind of stuff. Feedbackus show co. We can share you additional tips or if you want to hear more, we can do a part two and talk about the specifics on, on how to use LinkedIn.

Yeah, I'm gonna dig in and see if I can get better at this. That's gonna be my, that's gonna be my little homework assignment.

It works, dude. I mean, yeah, it, it does, but it's just when I explain how I use it, I'm usually met with those kind of comments, like, oh, wow, I didn't think of that.

Yeah.

And, and for me, it was just like, well, what's this? Probably like, you, what's this worth?

That's all I use it for is those very targeted things. Like, there was a company, the company's name is Behringer. They make audio gear. They are weird. Like, I complained about Apple being hard to reach. It took me 10 years, Shannon, to finally get in touch with someone at Barringer. And like. Only the only reason I wanted to get in touch with them was to tell them that we mentioned their products in one of our podcasts. Like, that's it. I'm not here to ask you to sponsor us. I just like people know now that is mildly self serving because sometimes they might promote our show if they thought what we said was good or they might want to work with us on, you know, reviews of stuff. Like, I mean it helps us get content is really correct. So if there's any. Anything self serving, it's that. But it's mostly just because I'm a relationships guy. Right.

Like I like and you're adding value. You're telling them. Correct.

Correct.

Oh, hey, I just.

Yeah, it took me 10 years and then this February, I finally using LinkedIn got in touch with somebody and they replied to me and they're like, I'm so sorry. I know we're weird. I'm glad you found me. Like the relationship is great. So it, like I definitely use it for those things and I'm certainly in for the long game. Right. Like if that story does. Doesn't share that, I don't know what does. But like that's, it's, it's only I don't use LinkedIn generally. I use it very specifically and I think I am missing out.

Oh, that's good.

Well, I think I need to find a way to use it a little more. A little more. Not more generally, just more so.

Yeah, I got it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's great if you have tips for LinkedIn that you'd like to include maybe in a, in a part two of this show, you know. Feedbackusinessshow. Co and let us know your thoughts or go up and post it on our LinkedIn page. It's. But just search for the small business show and you'll find it.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We love to have these kinds of conversations and we love when we hear from you. So as he said. Feedbackusinessshow.co and keep living that charmed life, will you? We'll see you next week.