In this solo presentation, Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Evvy AI, explains how to use LinkedIn mentions strategically for professional networking. He outlines why mentions matter—leveraging LinkedIn’s notification system and searchable mention filters—then breaks down the four mention types (post, article, comment, company) and their distinct visibility and engagement effects. Technical constraints are covered, including a ~30‑mention limit per comment and daily mention caps that can trigger “mention jail.” Apfelbaum proposes a permission‑based smart mention workflow: build curated lists of contacts who consent to being mentioned, time mentions for peak activity, and notify them via LinkedIn messages or email. He lists dos (relevant, value‑adding, prioritize online users) and don’ts (random strangers, over‑mentioning, spamming). The talk also showcases Evvy AI tools—Mention Saver for quick copy‑paste tagging, Presence Checker for real‑time online status, and analytics dashboards—to streamline the process and track engagement. Finally, he describes success metrics such as comment rates, reciprocal mentions, network growth, and professional opportunities, urging viewers to like, comment, and request the Mention Saver.
Chapters
Hello, this is Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Evvy AI, and today I want to talk about a really important thing called the LinkedIn mentions strategy and also give you best practices for effective and professional networking. A little bit about me, I started a company called Evvy AI, and this company allows you to be able to use LinkedIn more strategically. One of the strategies that we teach in our classes is called LinkedIn mentions. Now you have to understand that a LinkedIn mention can be a very dangerous thing. So knowing how to use mentions in a classy and strategic way is really important. So in this presentation, I'm going to walk you through what mentions are, how to use them, what not to do, what to do, and maybe a little hack or two. So let's rock and roll. LinkedIn mentions is your key to strategic networking because it taps into the LinkedIn notification system. LinkedIn mentions allow you to be able to tag other LinkedIn users where they get notified not just on their mobile app, because 58% of people on LinkedIn are using their mobile app, but also it'll often send them an email saying that they were mentioned. In addition to that, it allows you to be able to search people that have been mentioned using particular search filters If you click on LinkedIn search and you can filter by people that have been mentioned. And if you click on notifications, there's a special subsection in LinkedIn that shows you all the posts that you've been mentioned and all the comments that you've been mentioned at. So mentions is a really important part of LinkedIn. LinkedIn knows how many times you've been mentioned and who mentioned you. So making sure to use mentions as part of your strategy is extremely important. Now let's break down the types of mentions. There's post mentions, which gives you wide visibility and multiple notifications. For example, if I mentioned you in a post, you will get notified every single time someone likes that post and every single time someone comments on that post. So you got to be really careful when creating posts with mentions. You can do article mentions, which is long-term visibility, which will often also rank on Google. So if when I Google your name, you want that article to be associated with you, you want to be able to mention my name in the article. And also tie it back to my LinkedIn profile. Comment mentions means you're mentioning me inside a comment. And if you, for example, if you want me to notice a particular comment or notice a particular post, but you don't want me to be inundated with notifications, you can simply mention me inside a comment. And then of course you can mention company pages. For example, Evvii AI, you can mention it while you're talking about it. And then the authors of the company page may see that. Now there are technical limitations. For example, you can only post, add about 30 comments, 30 mentions inside one comment. After that, we try to save the comment, it's not going to work. And also, if you send too many mentions in one day, you're going to get into the jail, the LinkedIn mention jail, and sometimes that lasts several days. So you want to make sure that you're not using mentions too too much and you're not spamming people. Multiple mentions across pod counts count towards your daily limit. So just be careful. There isn't like a hard limit on LinkedIn. When I say daily limit of 100 mentions, that's kind of like to be safe. You don't want to overdo it. But with the strategy I'm about to give you and the new technology, you might be able to overdo it. So you got to be a little careful when you're using mentions. Now let me give you a smart mention strategy. Make a list of people who are interested in getting mentioned. So there are people, like for example, I posted up a post and I said, do you want to get mentioned? And people said, yes, I want to get mentioned both in posts and both in comments. And so get yourself a list of people who are people who are likely to comment, who want to get mentioned, who know you, like you, and trust you. And maybe make a list of 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 people in your network that are more than happy to get mentioned. And when they do get mentioned, They're more than likely to go ahead and leave a comment right away. And that's really important because you don't want to mention somebody and then they don't comment, because that actually will hurt your post. So when in doubt, don't mention people in the post, mention them in the comments. But if you are going to mention someone in the post, make sure that they know and make sure that they are available to comment on that post, because that will actually help promote the post very, very much. Not only because of the comment, but also because the person who was mentioned means it's relevant and that they approved that mention. Make sure to pre-create approved mentions list. You can use Evvii AI's Mention Saver. We have a technology called the Mention Saver that allows you to be able to save specific mentions so that you can just copy and paste mentions in and all the mentions are done for you because to create a mention, you have to press the@ sign and then find the person. And sometimes it's hard to find the person or it just doesn't work on LinkedIn. And it's just very time-consuming if you're doing, let's say, 30 mentions. It's very, very time-consuming. And so we have something called the Evii Mention Saver for Evii Pro users. And if you want to try it out, just let me know you want to try it out. I'm happy to let you know, happy to let you try it out. Notify people when you mention them. Make sure to message people and say, hey, I mentioned you in a post. If you can go ahead and drop a comment, that'd be cool. You can also email people letting them know, hey, I mentioned you. And then make sure that you are mentioning people at a time where they're likely to leave a comment, that they're likely to engage. So don't just do it at 2 in the morning when everybody's sleeping. And then consider time zones and so on and so forth. Here are some best practices. Here are some dos and don'ts when it comes to mentioning on LinkedIn. Make sure that it's only relevant to people that are relevant. Don't mention people that you have no idea who they even are. Prioritize users who are online. So if you go to the My Network tab, you're gonna see people that actually have a green dot on their profile. And we have something called the LinkedIn Presence Checker that will take all your connections and tell you who's online right now. So if you're an Evvii Pro user and you want the LinkedIn presence checker, let me know. I'm happy to help you with that. Provide value in your comments and in your content to the people that you're mentioning. So if you're mentioning coaches, it's because your post is relevant to coaches and coaches can benefit from it. Like I posted something asking questions from lawyers, and then I went ahead and tagged 20 lawyers. And then all those lawyers were engaged LinkedIn users. They went ahead and they all commented on that post because they were all engaged. It was relevant to them and it provided value because they wanted to show their expertise. Use comments instead of posts when you're mentioning. You could mention people in a post occasionally, especially if it's relevant to them, and especially if you know that they'll reply to the post. But if it's not relevant to them, then don't mention them inside the post. Instead, leave a comment and mention them in the comments, because if they don't reply to that, It's, it's not going to bother LinkedIn. It's not going to bother the algorithm. It's fine if you mention someone in the comments and they don't reply to it, but they will notice it over time. And then make sure to track engagement patterns. These are the to-dos. What about the don'ts? Don't mention strangers. The last thing you want to do is press the@ sign and put a random person there. You don't even know if they're going to complain about you to LinkedIn or cause you problems. Don't overuse the feature. Make sure that you're not constantly, constantly mentioning people because people will start blocking you. And ignore you. And then make sure that it's— you're not spamming. Spamming is the worst comment. Mention spam is the worst thing you can do. And sometimes I get mention spam and actually get really annoyed. I end up blocking the person because I just don't want them to keep mentioning me over and over and over on things that are kind of unrelated to me at all. So make sure that you don't do that. Permission-based strategy is the key. First, ask for permission. Keep a curated list of people Group it by topic or by industry. Notify promptly. Let them know that you've mentioned them or that you're going to mention them. And then track responses and see what works and what doesn't work. If people are not responding to your mentions, then take them off your list. You don't want them on there if they're not responding to you in an appropriate amount of time. Common mistakes to avoid: mentioning unknown connections. You don't want to mention people that you have no idea who they are. You want to make sure that you're not overdoing it, that you're not exceeding your daily limits. You want to make sure that you're not mentioning multiple people on multiple posts, like on the same day. It gets really, really annoying. And especially if you're mentioning people on a post and that post goes viral, they're going to get a million notifications. They're going to be super, super annoyed. And make sure that you're not spamming mentions. And then look at the engagement. The engagement speaks volumes. So here are some tools. Using the Evvii Mention Saver feature allows you to be able to save groups of people that you can just copy and paste in and all the mentions are done for you. You can have preset mention groups, copy and paste functionality, response tracking, and engagement analytics. These are some tools that you can use to be able to see what's going on. Going to linkedin.com/dashboard, you can see your analytics. You can start using mentions in a strategic way, and then you can start getting results. All right, finally, measuring success. It's all about the engagement rates. Are you getting more engagement? Are you getting people to respond quickly? Are you having other people reciprocally mention you as a result of you mentioning them? Are you growing your network as a result? Are you having more professional opportunities? For me, it's all about the conversations, but also about the reach. And so if you're using this appropriately, you're much more likely to be successful. Hope that you got value from this. If you did, give this a like, and also in the comments, let me know, do you want me to mention you? Do you like the ideas of mentions? What do you hate about mentions? What do you love about mentions? Let's have a conversation. And if you want to try the Mention Saver, let me know that you want the Mention Saver in the comments. Talk to you soon. Thanks for watching this. Boom.
