The best follow up strategies on LinkedIn - 141 LinkedIn Live 2024 with Joe Apfelbaum

Hello and welcome to the Joe Apfelbaum Show. I'm so excited to be here. I want to discuss follow-up strategies today. What are some follow-up strategies that will help you be able to get noticed from people? You see, this company, Evvy AI, offers a LinkedIn AI assistant, but I also have another company called Ajax Union, and this is a digital marketing agency. And I also have another company called Evergreen, which offers people all types of training like LinkedIn training, Sales Navigator training, and AI training. So when I meet somebody, I first determine, are they good for Evvii AI? Are they good for Ajax Union? Are they good for Evergreen? Or are they good for joeapfelbaum.com, which is my website where I do speaking, I have books and all types of coaching and training and so on. So where, where do I send people? And that all has to do with what their need is. You see, when I speak to people, I don't try to push a particular product or service. Instead, what I do is I try to figure out who they are, what they need, and how I can add value to their life. This is my favorite question to ask people, and I write about it in my book, High Energy Networking. If you haven't checked out my books, I highly recommend this one over here. This one's called High Energy Networking. It's How to Get Anything You Want in Life While Building Meaningful Relationships That Last a Lifetime. And you can click on order now.

It'll take you straight to Amazon and you can grab a copy of the book.

Over 1,000 people have loved the book, purchased the book, and read the book, and the people are absolutely loving the book. And so what I always tell people is take a moment and think about what are the problems that your customers need? How can you add value to people's lives? Because the question that I'm always asking is, How can I add value to someone's life? So for example, if someone's visiting my company page, Evvy AI, and I notice that because I have a premium company page, I can see who visited my page. I try to figure out, okay, well, if this guy Joseph Ricard visited my company page and he's my first degree, what I'm going to try to figure out is why did he visit my company page? So what I can technically do is say, thank you so much for visiting the Evvy AI. company page. I'm curious to know if you are using our system. And I will put a capital T here. Thank you very much for visiting the Evvii company page.

I'm curious to know if you are using our system. So I'm going to press send, and now I just went there and boom, just like that, sent it to Joey Ricard.

Now what I'm going to do also is I'm going to see if he has a phone number, and look at that, his cell phone number is right here. And his birthday is June 15th. That means he's a Gemini. That means he would be very open to having a conversation with me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into my CRM and I'm going to look him up right now and give him a buzz and see if he picks up his phone. Now it is 8:30 at night, so it might be a little bit late to call Joey Ricard, but as you can see, he's already in my CRM. All I have to do is just populate his cell phone number into my CRM and his email address, and boom, I will put a, uh, put Put him on the list of people just to call tomorrow to build that relationship and keep it going. And the way that I would add him as a task, you just go into the task manager here, click on tasks, and you do add a task.

And now I'm going to say, call up Joey to find out why he visited Evvy AI.

Now I'm going to put it Friday at 8:00 AM. I'm going to assign it to myself. And I'm going to hit save and that's it.

I'm just going to call up Joey to find out why he visited Evy AI. And once I do it, I just press check off October 11th and boom, there we go.

This is a powerful way for you to connect with people, build those relationships, get to know people. And if I just hit this, like the button over here that says call, there's like a little call button right over here. This will call his phone number right from my CRM. And by the way, if you want a CRM just like this, just write CRM in the chat and I'll be more than happy to send you this link where you can get the CRM, where you can add unlimited contacts and so on. So I am curious to know right now, are you using a CRM? Let me know in the chat. You're using one, you're not using one. The number one way to follow up with people is to put them in your CRM and put a task that you're going to follow up with them.

Otherwise, you're never going to remember.

And he says, no, not using it, just looks cool.

Congrats.

I'm going to refresh over here. I'm going to be like, would you like to see a demo video I created?

I would be honored if you checked it out. This way you can let people know about what it does. It does because damn, it saves me time. By the way, love that you are a Gemini.

Okay, now if I used Evie AI to write all that, it would save me a ton of time. I just wrote it manually just to show you how it works. Tom says, hey Joe, appreciate it. Hope all is well with you. I've not seen it yet.

I'm going to do X demo. Actually, I'm going to say I'm going to go in here. All right, demo. Let's see if I have a demonstration video. I don't have the demonstration video here. Uh, new demo. So I'll show you how I, I'm going to look for the new demo of Evie AI. So this is the new demo of Evie AI video, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into Evie AI's templates.

I'll just go in here on the left side. You see it says templates, Evie AI demo.

Let me just check. Okay, yeah, it's right over here. Um, so it is there. I don't know Why didn't come up? Oh, maybe it's because I didn't write Heavy AI Demo. Okay, I'm gonna check again.

Click on this.

Click on this.

There it is.

Heavy AI Demo.

I press Go Insert.

And send. I don't know why it didn't come up. Let me know what you think.

Boom!

I just sent him the heavy AI demo. All right.

So the question is, how do you follow up with people? Well, there are many different ways to follow up with people.

Let's ask ChatGPT to help us come up with ideas. And I'm going to also ask Claude. This is what I love to do. I love to ask these tools. And I'm going to press this.

Can you tell me what are the best follow-up strategies when you're networking?

Give me at least 20 different strategies for ways to follow up with people so that you're not weird. You know, sometimes you send people messages and they don't reply to you. So what are some things that you can do to make sure that they actually get you a reply. The answer to this question is very important and my career depends on it. Let's just see what it does. There are 20 different strategies to come up with: personal reminder, offer for help, send a relevant article, comment on recent news, ask a specific question, Invite them to an event. Follow them on social media.

Send a thank you note.

Congratulate them on an achievement. Ask for a follow-up conversation. Share a success story. Provide value through a resource. Use humor or casual tone. Comment on their LinkedIn profile. I like this one a lot.

Ask them, ask for their insight.

Introduce them to someone else. Provide feedback.

Send a follow-up gift.

Mention mutual connections or revisit a past topic. Ooh, these are good.

So now I'm going to do is I'm going to take the same question and I'm going to feed it to Claude and see what it goes.

Here are 20 follow-up effective strategies. Send a personalized thank you note within 24 to 48 hours.

Share relevant article.

Connect on professional social media like LinkedIn with a customized invitation. Offer to introduce them to someone else. Invite them to an upcoming event.

Ask their opinion.

Follow up with a promised— follow up with any promised information. Send a brief coffee meeting invitation chat. Congratulate recent achievement. Share how you've implemented the advice they gave you. Offer assistance in a project or challenge. Say a friendly check-in email.

Send a friendly check-in email. Engage with their local social media content.

Engage with the social—

this is number 13, engage with content.

And over here, 13 is use a casual tone.

Where's comment on number 14?

Is comment on their LinkedIn profile. Propose a mutually beneficial collaboration project idea. Share a success story.

Invite them to speak at an event you've organized. Send a holiday greeting.

Ask for feedback, an idea. Follow up on any goals or initiatives. So I'm going to copy this over here.

You know what?

I'm going to ask the same question to Meta. Meta.ai. Meta.ai is Facebook artificial intelligence. Let's just see what it does. Continue with Facebook. And now I'm also going to do Grok. Musk, I believe. Look how quickly it did it. Okay, and then now we're going to do Copilot. That's by Microsoft. And then we're going to do Perplexity. It's going to find it from the internet. Connect on LinkedIn is number 2. Create a reconnect file for a specific Specific periodic check-ins. That's cool. So we have all these different AIs that are giving us different answers for how to, how to follow up.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take all the answers that I've gotten from other people, from other AIs. I'm going to put them all together and put them into a NotebookLM and make a podcast out of it. So how do we do that?

So we're going to go to Docs. We're going to go to Drive. We're going to create a new Google file right over here, and we're going to say, follow-up ideas when a prospect does not answer you.

Okay. Now we're going to take all the ideas From all these chats.

Here are 20 ideas. We're going to start with this one because it was the first one we tried. I'm going to save this right here.

Then I'm going to go to the second one.

Here are 20 effective strategies. Okay. And then I'm going to get the third one from Meta. Okay. And then we're going to get the 4th one from Grok.

And then, oh, I didn't ask Gemini for the same question.

We're going to ask Gemini in a second.

All right.

So now we're going to get the next one from here. This one is from Copilot. Okay, we got it from Copilot, and now we're going to get it from Perplexity, and then we're going to go ahead and get it from Gemini, and we're going to ask it the same question. Oh, look at this. Collect network connection, LinkedIn connection request. Okay, put it in here. And now we're going to say, first of all, if you are going to To use LinkedIn, make sure to comment on their post, like their post, endorse them, send them a DM, make sure to email them about a post that they did. They wrote, follow their company, make sure to comment on their company page content, look them—

Save them to your eviai.com account.

So you can use Abby AI. Okay, so that I just did that.

Now what I'm going to do is we have this ready. We're going to go to NotebookLM.

.google.com.

We're going to open up a new notebook. We're going to call this Google Docs Follow-up Ideas, and this notebook is going to be Follow-up Strategies.

Okay.

Okay, now we're gonna hit generate conversation. It's gonna generate a conversation. Your notes will appear here. The sources provided comprehensive guide to effective follow-up strategies for networking, offering 20 different methods to stay in touch with potential contacts without appearing pushy or awkward. They emphasize personalization, providing value, and maintaining consistent contact. While respecting the individual's time and boundaries. I like this. Okay, so let's see how long it'll take it to create a podcast episode out of this information, just to kind of show you how this works. All right, so I'm going to close all this because we don't need all this open. And even this, we don't need open. We don't— we're going to keep this one open. here, but we're going to close this one. We're going to close this and that's it. Okay. Back to this. All right. So I went to a networking event today and by the way, I went to Claude. Let me check this out. And I said, I am going to a networking event and I want you to make me a list.

I copied and pasted the attendee list and I said, make me a list of members and make me a list of guests. So who are these guests? Let's take a look at them. I'm going to—

so this guy I met, I'm going to look him up on LinkedIn. Okay, so Senior Vice President of JLL. I'm going to hit connect, add a note. I'm going to add a note, generate.

So he has his— he has a family public adjusting business.

Love that you are a public adjuster now. And would love to learn more about your family business. Okay, I'm going to save him and I'm going to follow up with him because he really needs help with his LinkedIn profile. So I'm going to go here, add to list. I'm going to add him to EAYC. I'm going to summarize his content over here. I'm also going to check out his new post, his latest post. That's weird. Oh, because it showed me his overlay. Let's check again. I'm happy to share I'm starting my position. That was a year ago. So last time he commented, last time he did that was a year ago. That's interesting. Okay, moving on. Let's, um, let's find the next person. The next person, so Zachary. So I met him, uh, who invited him? Invited by Mitch Brill. Mitch Brill. Ola Armani by Frank Winston. I have not met Ola Armani. She was at the event apparently, but I didn't see her. And she's not on LinkedIn, so it doesn't matter. Frank Lynch from Standard Fire and Suzanne Engel. I just said hello to her, but we haven't really connected deeply. Providing courtroom-savvy trial preparation. Okay, interesting. I'm going to send her a connection request. I don't have her email, so we're not going to send her a connection request. Let's see if her email's in her About section. It's not here. I'm going to check over here. Sustainable Blah blah blah. Let's see who invited her. Invited by Rachel Kellner. Okay, well, I'm not going to connect with any other guests. Let me look at the members and see who I need to follow up with now.

Rachel Kellner, Elise— I didn't see her there.

George is very nice and gracious. Salvador, Ed, Aaron, Adam, Bert, Jocelyn Nager, Eric Wegweiser, Andy Summer, David Swidler, Frank Winston, Jonathan Chiaro, Anthony DiCrescenzo, Andrew Stiller, Jesse Berland, Kenneth Migdon I already connected with, Boris, Colin, Tina, George. I didn't see George there, but Colin Bond, I'm gonna connect— I'm gonna send him a message just to say thank you, it was nice connecting with you. It was nice chatting with you. Okay. I'm going to go here to Google. Oh, let's listen in. Let's listen into this podcast.

We now have a podcast episode.

Let's listen in. All right, here we go.

Okay. So have you ever like been like an industry thing, you know? And you meet someone, you're like, oh, wow. This person is really interesting. We should totally connect.

Totally.

And maybe even swap business cards.

Yeah.

But then nothing happens.

All right.

It just fizzles out.

It's so easy to let those connections just kind of—

Totally.

Yeah.

It's like the missed connection section of those old newspapers.

Exactly.

But for your career—

Yeah.

And that's exactly why we're doing this deep dive is like, how do you take those fleeting moments and turn them into something that lasts.

It really is an art, especially these days when everyone's so busy.

I would tell Matt it.

Everyone's inbox is overflowing, and trying to get someone's attention for more than like 5 seconds, it's a real challenge.

It's true.

But the good news is you don't have to resort to those cheesy tactics or empty promises.

Like, hey, let's do coffee sometime.

Exactly.

And then never.

Never happens. It's about ditching that whole transactional networking thing and actually genuinely connecting with people and building actual relationships.

So true.

Right.

So how do we do that then? What's the secret sauce?

Well, a lot of it comes down to personalization. And I don't just mean a generic nice to meet you email. We're talking next-level personalization.

OK, I like it.

Like really showing the other person you were listening and you remember those little Because that's what makes you feel good, right?

When you can tell someone was genuinely present.

Absolutely. It shows you value their time and that they're not just another contact on your list.

It's like that aha moment when you realize you've actually made a connection.

Exactly.

So what's that look like in practice then?

So one thing the experts we looked at recommended was to use details from someone's online presence.

Oh, that's interesting.

Like, let's say you glance at their LinkedIn and see a photo of them hiking.

Okay.

In your follow-up, you could casually mention that you're also into hiking. Oh, I get it. So it's about finding that common ground, even if it's something small.

Right. It shows you've done your homework and you're interested in them as a person.

I like it. Okay, so another thing I remember reading was about, like, work anniversaries.

Oh yeah, that's a good one.

But not just the company anniversaries, like the actual day they started their current role.

Exactly. Now, that's impressive.

It's so specific.

It is, and it shows you're paying attention to the details.

I mean, who wouldn't want to feel seen like that?

And it all comes back to showing genuine interest and making people feel valued.

Which, let's be real, is something we all crave.

Absolutely.

Okay, so we've talked about personalization, which is huge. But there's another piece to this puzzle, right?

There is.

It's not enough to just connect; you have to bring something to the table.

You said it.

And I don't mean just the, like, generic, let's connect and share some articles.

Right.

It's got to be more meaningful than that.

Definitely.

Yeah.

We need to offer real tangible value.

Which can feel kind of daunting sometimes.

It can, but it doesn't have to be. Okay. It's really about shifting your mindset from what can I get out of this to what can I give?

Okay. That's a good point.

Because everyone's so busy these days, right?

Yeah.

So if you can show someone right off the bat that you're there to help them, That goes a long way.

Makes sense. So instead of, you know, that whole like, let's pick your brain thing.

Yeah.

Which can feel kind of icky sometimes.

Yeah.

Nobody wants to feel like they're being used for their knowledge.

Exactly.

It's about being generous with your expertise.

Okay. So how do we do that without like giving away the farm?

Well, one idea I saw was to offer like a really focused consultation.

Okay.

Like instead of just saying, hey, let's chat sometime, you could say, hey, I'd love to offer you a free 15-minute consultation on this specific thing I do.

Well, that's good. Because it's like you're giving them a taste.

Exactly.

Of what you can do.

And it's not a huge time commitment, so it's less intimidating.

Totally. And it shows you're actually serious about helping them.

Right.

Oh, and what about this? So, like, you meet someone and they're telling you about this challenge they're facing.

Yeah.

And you're like, oh my gosh, I know the perfect person who can help them.

Oh, yeah, that's huge.

Connecting people like that is so valuable.

It really is. And it shows you're thinking about their needs even after That initial conversation.

It's like you're saying, hey, I see you, I hear you, and I'm here to support you.

Exactly.

Even if it's just connecting them with someone else.

Exactly.

Okay, so we've talked about personalization and adding value, but then there's the whole, like, timing thing.

Oh yeah, the dreaded follow-up.

I used to be so bad at it. Like, I'd send 1 or 2 emails, and if I didn't hear back, I'd just assume they weren't interested.

Yeah, it's easy to take it personally.

But then I realized, like, people are busy.

Oh my gosh, so busy.

They've got stuff going on.

Inboxes are overflowing. Schedules are jam-packed. It's a lot.

So what's the right move then? Like, how do you strike that balance between staying top of mind and being like that annoying person who just won't quit?

Right.

Well, it's funny because some experts recommend following up within 24 hours.

OK.

While others say like a week or two is totally fine.

Wow, that's a pretty big range.

It is. And honestly, it really depends on the situation.

Okay. So how do you know what to do?

I think it comes down to reading the room, you know?

So if someone's like super responsive—

Yeah, like firing off emails left and right.

Then maybe a quicker follow-up makes sense.

Exactly.

But if they're a little more low-key—

Yeah, maybe give them some space.

It's about being respectful of their time and their communication style.

Absolutely. And I think it's important to remember that there's no magic formula.

Right.

Like, it's not about rigidly sticking to some arbitrary timeline.

Yeah.

It's more about finding ways to stay on someone's radar without being intrusive.

Which I love.

Yeah.

Because it takes the pressure off.

Totally.

Like, you don't have to stress about sending that perfect email at the perfect moment.

Right.

It's more about just nurturing those connections over time.

Exactly.

And that can look a lot of different ways.

It can.

And I think that's actually a really freeing perspective because it means that even if someone doesn't respond right away, Yeah. It doesn't mean they're not interested.

Right.

It just means you need to adjust your approach.

OK, I like that. So it's not about giving up after 3 emails?

No, not at all.

It's about finding other ways to stay top of mind.

Exactly.

So instead of stressing over crafting the absolute perfect email, you could just quickly like their latest LinkedIn post or something.

Exactly, or send a quick note congratulating them on a recent win. Right, like you saw them featured in an article or something.

Exactly.

It's about those little things that show you're paying attention.

Without being too over the top.

Exactly.

Honestly, like, after going through all this research, yeah, I'm feeling a lot less stressed about following up.

It's good.

Feels less like a chore now and more like, I don't know.

Yeah.

Just a natural part of connecting with people.

It should be fun. It shouldn't feel like a burden.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it's all about building those genuine connections, like you were saying.

At the end of the day, that's what it's all about.

So speaking of genuine connections.

Yeah.

One of the things that really surprised me in the research was about handwritten thank you notes.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. I know it seems like kind of old school in our digital world.

Right.

But there's something about getting a physical note in the mail.

It's so rare these days.

It really is. It's like, you know, you open your mailbox and it's all bills and junk mail.

Right.

And then suddenly there's this, like, handwritten note.

It's like finding a treasure. It totally is. It shows that you took the time and effort.

To do something personal.

Exactly.

And it makes you feel special.

It really does.

So it's like a really simple gesture.

Yeah.

But it can have a huge impact.

Totally. It's memorable. It makes you stand out.

Okay. So as we wrap up our deep dive here, I'm curious, what's one small change our listeners can make based on everything we've talked about?

Good question.

Like, what's one thing you're going to do differently?

Yeah. What's going to stick with you?

Yeah.

For me, it's about being more intentional with my follow-up.

Okay. How so?

Like really thinking about what I can offer the other person.

Okay.

And then finding a way to work that into my message.

So not just like a generic, hey, let's connect.

Right. It's got to be more specific than that.

Okay. I like it.

What about you?

What are you going to do differently?

You know, I think I'm going to try that handwritten thank you note thing.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I mean, why not? It's worth a shot, right?

It totally is. You never know what kind of impact it could have.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And you know, at the end of the day, mm-hmm, it's all about building relationships.

That's what it's all about.

And relationships are built on connections, both big and small.

So true.

So whether it's sending a quick email or a handwritten note, or even just liking a LinkedIn post, it all matters.

It really does.

Well, that's all the time we have for today.

This was fun.

Thanks so much for diving into this with me. And to all our listeners out there, thank you for tuning in.

Happy connecting, everyone.

Until next time.

Wow. Wow. Did you see me create a whole podcast episode using Google LM, but using data from ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, That was just—

my mind, my mind is blown, ladies and gentlemen. My mind is blown. I need to upload the photos from— I did a bunch of selfies with people today and I need to upload those photos now. So I'm going to go ahead and put my phone on Wi-Fi and then I am going to set my Google Photos to upload. Once the Wi-Fi's on, Wi-Fi's on, uploading, automatically uploading, backing up all my photos to Google Photos.

This way I can pull the perfect photo and write a post about what happened.

And I'm going to use Evie AI to write the post, and I'll show you as how I write the post right now. And you guys saw the way I'm connecting with people, building relationships. Great dinner out, great dinner out, and the cake was great. I'm going to I'm gonna say nice. Okay, looking forward to calling you and chatting. Okay, so let's see if there's anybody else. Look how many people I messaged today. This is crazy. Derek says, well done, Joe, outstanding. I'm gonna say thanks. Let's see, let's see.

And by the way, if you wanna be able to see how many people you messaged, are you commented on.

You'll see I have 234 comments.

My goal is 1,000 comments per month.

If I did 250 a week, then I'm doing good. So by the end of the day tomorrow, hopefully I'll leave 15 more comments and I'll be good to go. And that'll get me to my goal. Let me see if Jason, Jason Connors, who's Jason Connors? Jason Connors. I'm Jason Connors. Let's see who Jason Connors is. I don't know who that is. Um, okay, moving on. Derek gave me a thumbs up. All right, now somebody, somebody asked me for specific topics to be able to cover in my video today. So I'm gonna go ahead and cover these topics in my video. Here are the topics I wanna cover, and I'm gonna go to Claude, and I'm gonna go to new, and I'm gonna say, write me 3 bullet points about each of these topics to cover in my LinkedIn Live. All right, let's just see what it does.

How to keep your client— how to keep your client be connected with you once you sign them. How to keep your client be connected with you once you sign them.

How to get GoLink live while promoting every AI.

Why LinkedIn is the best platform to market your business.

How frequent should you message someone on LinkedIn without getting flagged? The things you're doing on LinkedIn to boost your performance. Why Evvy AI is the best LinkedIn business partner you'll ever have. All right, so let's do that. Let's have a conversation with AI. We're gonna—

let's give AI a call right now and talk to it about this. Let's give AI a call.

How are we gonna do this? We're gonna open up ChatGPT. We're going to connect to the Bluetooth. Let's see, connect to the Bluetooth. Okay, now we're connected to the Bluetooth. Let's make sure that worked.

Where's my— okay, there we go. We're in the Bluetooth.

Now we're going to open up every AI. We're going to open up ChatGPT and we're going to go for it. All right, here we go.

You are my co-host today and me.

Hey there, what's up?

Yeah, you're my co-host for my LinkedIn Live, and we're gonna be discussing topics and you're gonna ask me short questions. And typically the questions you're gonna ask me are under 15 seconds, and you're just gonna build rapport with me. You know, we're gonna go back and forth.

You're gonna say, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In between conversations.

And are you ready to do this LinkedIn Live with me, my friend?

Absolutely. I'm ready. Let's dive into this LinkedIn Live. I'm here to keep the conversation flowing and engage with our audience. Let's do it.

All right. So how do you keep a client to be connected with you once you sign them?

Great question. Keeping a client connected after signing them is all about consistent communication, delivering value, and building a relationship. Regular check-ins, updates on progress, and being responsive to their needs can make a big difference. How about you? What do you think?

I think that just getting to know the client. So first of all, connecting with them on LinkedIn. Most people are not connecting with their clients on LinkedIn. Checking out what they're up to by saving them to Evy AI. Evy AI is an AI for LinkedIn. So when you save them, you can see what they're up to. And when you check out their recent activities, make sure that you're commenting on their posts. So for example, Chaya is a client of mine and she wrote a nice post about Yom Kippur. So I'm going to go ahead and leave a comment. What I'm also going to do with the client is just learn about what's going on in their life. You know, just sometimes I just give my clients a call. Don't you ever do that? Don't you think it's nice to just give a client a call to learn what's going on in their life personally, see where they could use support? You know, some of my clients have kids and sometimes they need advice. I had a client call me up and ask me about their marriage, you know, because he knows I went through a divorce. So just keeping up with your clients personally, checking out their social media, and then learning about what new things are going on at their organization, maybe checking out the news. I don't know if you do this, but you can set up Google Alerts. Did you know that you can go to google.com/alerts and you can set up a Google Alert that will notify you when your client is mentioned in the news? Isn't that cool?

Absolutely. Those are fantastic ways to stay connected and show clients you care. Adding that personal touch by engaging with their content, making a quick call, Or staying updated on their news shows you're invested in the relationship beyond just business. It's all about creating those meaningful connections, right?

Yeah. And here's another thing that I like to do is I like to go on LinkedIn Live. Like right now we're on LinkedIn Live. LinkedIn Live is a powerful tool. So I'm going to go on Facebook just now, just to kind of show you my Facebook page. And you'll notice that I connect with my clients on Facebook too. So While I'm going live on LinkedIn, I'm also going live on Facebook. I use this tool called restream.io, and restream.io allows me to be live both on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or whatever, all the other sites. It allows me to kind of, you know, keep up with my network. As a matter of fact, somebody recently reached out to me and said, Joe, I would like for you to get more involved with my company. He's doing a roll-up. He's rolling up marketing agencies and he wants me to be involved. He wants me to be on the forefront of his roll-up. And I'm like, you know what? Now's a great opportunity for me to get involved with this. So let's have a conversation about this. Let's definitely talk about this. I am 100% up to discuss this roll-up concept with you. And now we're going to go out to dinner. We had a meeting, we're going to go out to dinner, but this was because I went on LinkedIn Live. So LinkedIn Live is extremely powerful and I'm on LinkedIn Live. You know, this is the 141st episode of LinkedIn Live, so I'm on LinkedIn Live pretty often.

Wow, Joe, it sounds like you are really maximizing the power of LinkedIn Live and other platforms with Restream.io. It's incredible how going live can lead to such meaningful business opportunities and connections. It really shows the value of putting yourself out there and engaging with your network in real time. Keep it up.

So here's a question I get from my audience. Um, here's, here's a, a pretty interesting question I got from somebody. He said, Joe, why is LinkedIn the best platform for your business? Like, Joe, tell me why LinkedIn is so important. You know, like what, what do you love about LinkedIn? And what I always tell people is I built an assistant called Evvy AI because LinkedIn is so important to me. LinkedIn has over a billion people on it right now, and it's growing rapidly at a rate of 3 new members every second. The thing I love about LinkedIn and the reason why I built Evvy AI specifically for LinkedIn is because LinkedIn is the only platform where you see everybody's first name, their last name, their company name, Where they went to school, where they currently work, where they worked before. Sometimes you'll see how many kids they have. Sometimes you'll see their birthday. Sometimes you'll learn a lot about them personally and professionally, like their achievements, their accomplishments. You'll learn about all their previous jobs, all their previous educations, their licenses, certifications, what projects they're up to, volunteering. You'll learn about their skills. You'll learn about the recommendations that people have given them and what they're probably good at, what publications they've published, their honors, their awards, the languages they speak, the organizations they're part of. This is powerful information, but the most powerful thing about LinkedIn besides knowing that it's verified is that you can see who your mutual connections are with them. So if I pull up any connection at all, you can see somebody's mutual connection. That's powerful. You know what I mean?

Absolutely, Joe. LinkedIn's rich data and networking capabilities make it an invaluable platform for business. The wealth of information available on each profile helps you build relationships, understand prospects, and identify opportunities with incredible precision. Plus, the power of mutual connections can open doors that might otherwise stay closed. It's like having a live, dynamic resume and networking tool all in one place.

Yeah.

So powerful. Let me ask you a question. How frequently do you think you should message somebody on LinkedIn without getting flagged as spam or without being annoyed? What's your opinion on that?

That's a great question. I'd say it's important to strike a balance. Starting with a personalized connection request is key. Once connected, it's good to engage with their content before sending a message. A thoughtful message every couple of weeks is generally safe. You want to add value, not just pitch. So sharing relevant insights or asking engaging questions can keep the conversation going without feeling intrusive.

I think that there are certain triggers that will allow you to identify when somebody, you know, I think there are triggers. You gotta find the triggers of why you should message somebody. For example, if you're on LinkedIn and you go to the feed and you see, you know, Nat Berman or whatever, you know, posted something, this could be a, a, a reason to message him. You know, so for example, I'll go to his profile right now and I'll click on message and I'll be like, love your latest post.

Absolutely. Using triggers like a recent post, a work anniversary, a job change, or a shared article can make your message timely and relevant. It shows you're paying attention and genuinely interested in what they're sharing. Plus, it gives you a natural conversation starter, making your outreach feel more personalized and less like a cold message. Great strategy.

Yeah.

So what I would say, um, the most important thing that you need to do is understand the different triggers. I'll give you another example. If you click on my network, LinkedIn has a new tab called the Catch Up tab. When you click on the Catch Up tab, you are going to see it says there's job changes, birthdays, work anniversaries, and education. And if you click on, for example, job changes, you're going to see all the people that started a new role. That's a trigger. You see there's a birthday.

That's a trigger.

You see there's a work anniversary. That's a trigger. You see, there's an education update.

That's a trigger.

There are other triggers. For example, if someone started following you on LinkedIn, that's a trigger. If you see somebody posted on LinkedIn or left a comment on LinkedIn, liked your post, commented on your post, all those are triggers. If you see someone visited your profile, that's a trigger. So for example, Kimberly visited my profile. I messaged her and I said something like, are you enjoying my LinkedIn Live? She said, yes, thank you for sharing your knowledge. I said, I really enjoy sharing knowledge.

All the great teachers do.

Okay, so now I just sent her a little message and she left a comment on my post. See, these are reasons to message people. That's key. Reasons to message people. And here's another reason to message. Hey, can you do me a favor and tell me how many sales reps are in your company? So you see that I just messaged this person. I said, can you tell me how many sales reps are in your company? That's powerful, asking them a question. But can you list out all the triggers I just mentioned?

Sure. Here are the triggers you mentioned for messaging someone on LinkedIn. First, job changes, when someone starts a new role. Second, birthdays, an opportunity to send well wishes. Third, work anniversaries. Fourth, education updates, when someone completes a course or earns a new degree. Next, new followers, when someone starts following you. Next, engagement with your posts, likes, comments, or shares on your content. Next, profile visits, when someone visits your profile. Next, LinkedIn posts, when someone in your network posts something new. These triggers provide timely and relevant reasons to reach out, keeping your engagement authentic and personalized.

Very powerful. Yeah.

So that's what, that's what I would say, you know, like at the end of the day, our goal is to be able to help people make a difference for them. And so that's what I'm doing, supporting them. Until next time, thank you very much for being here. If you guys want to learn more, check out evyai.com.

That's E-V-Y-A-I.