Mandy McEwen - Building Lasting Relationships Using LinkedIn

If you're coming from a place of value and you're genuine, you're going to succeed, period. It's people that are trying too hard not being genuine and doing, you know, doing things that you can tell like what that doesn't really, you know, like if you're yourself, you're going to succeed. And so my thing is always just trying to give people the confidence to go out there and do it. Because you're unique, your voice does matter. You, you're the only one in the world that has your unique experiences and background. And so every single person on the planet has value to share. It's just a matter of getting the conf to do that.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Wiki Wiki Wiki. Hey, welcome back.

What's happening today?

An amazing conversation.

Yeah. Get ready to get tactical and explore a platform by the name of LinkedIn. It's one that not many people are posting on, I hear, including us.

But we're going to start maybe a.

Little bit and maybe we'll raise the bar a little bit on the LinkedIn posting engagement side of things. But so you should be there. And today we are having, we are having, we have Mandy McEwen. And she is a just a total badass when it comes to LinkedIn. So let me, let me tell you a little bit about her. She's the founder and CEO of Mod Girl Marketing, an award winning digital marketing agency. She's also a renowned content creator, speaker, mentor. She's speaking at TNC pretty soon here. Mandy is also the top 24 B2B marketers by LinkedIn. She's worked with them a lot as well. Created content, listed in Search Engine Journal as a top 12 SEO expert, named top 20 female marketer by G2. That's pretty sweet. She's a creator of eight plus marketing courses, founder of the Inc. Rated marketing or Facebook group. Interesting. And Mandy and her team at Mod Girl partner with ambitious companies who increase their exposure and all their revenue and brand awareness. All that stuff basically through humanizing content marketing via LinkedIn.

Yes.

So that's what we're gonna deep dive in on. This bad boy.

And this one, like you said, is tactical. Right? She's gonna tell you what posts to post on LinkedIn to get the best engagement. She's gonna teach you how to reach out to people through direct messages to actually get responses from people. She's gonna talk to you about how to create your own content on LinkedIn, how to curate content on LinkedIn, how to use a business page on Linked, how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator effectively. So, all this being said, you're going to want to grab the notes because this is tactical. Like, this is a lot of actionable stuff that you can just go do in LinkedIn today and get some results. Right. So go get the action guide. If you go to flowchart group.com, you can join our Facebook group. And when you join our Facebook group, we'll ask you if you want access to the action guide. Just give us your email. If you give us the email, we'll send you the action guide. That's over@flowchartgroup.com perfect. Go get that for this episode.

It's going to be a great one. And before we get in, we have our sponsors, so we're going to slip them in right here. Yo. Hey. Hi.

You're here.

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All right, Mandy, we're here. We're live. Kind of not really live, I'd say that. Dang, I feel like we're a radio show come one day. Thanks for joining us today. Like, you're saying, thanks for having me, for sure. Yeah. And Lisa Byer, a good friend of both of ours, whenever she's telling us, hey, you gotta have this person on the show. We kind of don't ask questions and we're like, well, duh. And then, of course, your wheelhouse is what, for the last, like, 11 plus years is all LinkedIn and going deep on how to do that organically, you know, and that's always been kind of like a black hole for us. And I know we've said this in the past, but maybe you'll slap us straight and kind of fill that gap for us, because I know you have some really sweet strategies to stay on top of that. Always. Yeah, always. And I was curious about the background because you have a similar background to us being an affiliate marketer originally and content SEO, all that stuff. So maybe we start there.

Totally.

That's pretty cool. How'd you get started in this whole thing?

Yeah. So 2007, which makes me feel old, is when I started in online marketing and I was really, you know, had graduated college, started working@j o b like everyone else, and I was like, I don't like this. I don't like having a boss. I don't like what I'm doing. And I was always kind of a computer nerd. So I started just researching ways to make money online. Like, literally, you guys, I went like, how to make money online. Like the most, like, generic Google search ever. And then of course, ended up buying all these gurus products. You know, they had their Lamborghinis and their girls in bikinis on them, you know, living the high life. So I kind of like bought into that affiliate marketing lifestyle. I've seen all these guys do it. I was like, I can do that. I got this right? Who defined this is before I even.

Who are the gurus?

Well, ones that don't even exist now. Like, literally. Honestly, they don't. Like, I bought. I spent most money with this one dude, and I couldn't even tell you his name right now. Like, he's non existent right yeah, but then like, you know, there's some OGs, you know, that are still around, but it was mainly guys that, I don't know, you know, that like fell off Facebook. Alex Becker though, was one of them early on. And I love Alex, he's great. So, you know, just started and I kind of fell in love with SEO and I actually taught myself HTML before I knew WordPress existed like an idiot and started building these like HTML affiliate like dating sites and like just really random like dog training, all of this. Then I found WordPress obviously was like, oh, duh, why, why am I wasting my time on h. Email? So started building out all these like affiliate blogs and I started flipping them on Flippa.com for profits and selling them to people. So I was like, I was in this like brand. I didn't even know what I was doing. I was kind of just playing around, you know, But I was like building brands and I loved it and I was pretty good at it and I loved SEO and content and so that just kind of molded into like, I love this. I think this is what I want to do, you know. So then I realized I couldn't make a living off of like $10 commissions once a day, you know. So I was like, these affiliate commissions are not like, I'm not, I'm doing something wrong that the gurus aren't doing. And then I had like this Snuggie campaign, you guys, where I like literally was selling snuggies and I didn't read the fine print and I was on Google AdWords using Snuggie keywords and I made like $8,000 in like, you know, eight hours. They took it all away.

Oh yeah.

Because I was not following rules. So I spent all this money and I was like, oh, this is awful. You know, that was like my first taste of getting burned by Google AdWords. I was like, oh my God, idiot. You know, so long story short, I was like, I need to figure something else out with online marketing cause I'm not gonna be able quit my job. So I was hearing these business owners, I was in home improvement sales outta college and I was hearing these like roofers and contractors bitch about their SEO and web designers. And I was like overhearing them, I was like, hmm, I'm actually doing this, you know, on the side, hardly making any money at it. And so I was like, maybe I have something here. So then I just started talking to them and then I would send some emails out with like chiropractors that were on like Page three in Google. This was back in Kansas City, which is where I started my business. And it worked. And people were like, sure. So I did it for free. And I was like, hey, once I get you to pay Google, you pay me 500 bucks, and then we can go from there. And they're like, okay. You know, and it worked. And that's how I got my few first clients. And then their websites were all crappy, of course. So then I redid their websites because I was doing WordPress at the time. So that's literally how I started my agency, is by doing that in the local business area in Kansas City. And the local business, you know, Kansas City community is amazing. And so I really didn't even need to do a whole lot of my own online marketing when I first started, it was just networking in Kansas City and so word of mouth, you know, helping local businesses. And bam, I had a business. And then I was like, I think I need to hire people. So I legit went to fiverr.com way back in the day when Fiverr was like, I mean, Fiverr is still great, don't get me wrong. But there wasn't as many people to sift through.

Right.

So my $5.

Like, everything was $5. Right. So my first hire was from Fiverr, and then my second hire was from Fiverr. It was a marketer and a writer, and they stayed years, honestly. Yes. It was so incredible. So then I just started hiring people and I had an agency. And then we've obviously done a lot since then, but that's kind of my background of how I got started.

That's so cool. It's funny because I'm like, I'm counting the similarities in the story to ours. We started in 2007, so our marketing career started in 2007. We were. Back then, I think it was the warrior forum where we were spending all of our time trying to learn all of the stuff there. Right?

Totally. You said home improvement. We were working at your parents window shutter company.

Yeah, we had a manufacturing company where we installed, like, shutters. Window shutters.

I sold windows, by the way. That was my job. I sold Andersen windows. Yep.

Okay. I've heard of them.

And so we were also. We were doing affiliate marketing and we were making websites and selling them on Flippa. That's how we were making our money when we first started.

I love it.

We actually, we actually quit our jobs at the shutter company before we were ever making any, like, real money off affiliate marketing or anything. We were like, oh, we made 200 bucks this month. Let's quit and go all in, right? Like that. That's literally what we did. But we started by doing affiliate marketing and selling websites on Flippa and we started in 2007. It's just like how weird all these overlaps.

How are we just now connecting then all the, all this time?

Thank you, Lisa.

I know you're watching, right?

So this is why we can. We got connected for sure. Well, I mean you just spoke to the power of relationships, which I know you obviously transitioned big time into LinkedIn, which is your focus, what for over 11 years I think I read that. Right.

Well, you know, we've been full service, so we've done LinkedIn forever. But in 2017 I had a pretty successful LinkedIn course for agencies and consultants. And then like typical entrepreneur add, I went and did a million other things after that, made a bunch of other courses and memberships and all the lovely things for agencies and then pivoted, you know, in the last couple of years to focus mainly like primarily on LinkedIn combined with some demand gen and email stuff and overall digital strategy. But the main focus is LinkedIn now just because it's. There's such a hot market, there's so much opportunity. Most B2B organizations have no clue what they're doing on it. And so we just saw this opportunity. I have relationship with the LinkedIn's marketing team so I've been invited to their in person events pre pandemic and I've collaborated with them on several blogs and I've done webinars for them. So I'm already kind of like have this brand as like this LinkedIn girl, right. Over the years, although it was just one part of our big service offerings, you know. And so it got to the point where I was like, what? Why don't we just hone in on this? There's not enough people doing what we do. We're really good at it. People already think I'm like this LinkedIn girl, right? People. It's so funny. People like, you work for LinkedIn. No, I work for LinkedIn. That's a good sign, right? Like it's so funny how many people think that. I'm like, no, talk about the trust.

You got because of just the association right there. It's like cool.

Yeah, exactly.

I'll send her my leads or.

100%. Yeah, sure, go ahead. I literally had someone like want to talk to me because they thought I was a LinkedIn rep and then they found out that I wasn't and they're like, oh, I don't think I want to pay for the training. Did you think LinkedIn is going to train you? It's so awkward.

About that. So anyway, that's kind of where we're at now is we train sales, enterprise sales and marketing teams on really how to leverage LinkedIn. We create really robust strategies for them. We help rewrite all of their campaigns, email and outreach with LinkedIn and kind of just train them on how to be human beings leveraging LinkedIn, you know, and content marketing and in the midst of that. But it's crazy because most corporate companies, they're so old school and they're like, you know, biz dev outreach endeavors where it's just, let's blast out a bunch of cold impersonal emails and inmails on LinkedIn and let's just see who bites. That doesn't work anymore. It doesn't.

Well, it's like giving a black eye to the platform. I think for some people, I know for a while it was us. It's like, okay, great, everything's just gonna be spammed. Everyone's gonna want my connection. It's gonna be super impersonal. We're not gonna act like humans. And I think, at least for us, that put the little like, ehh.

Yeah, I mean, I pretty much avoid the DM section of LinkedIn because it's just 98% either people pitching me their software or basically essentially begging to be on the podcast. Like, those are the only two messages I get on LinkedIn these days.

So, man, how do we.

Preconception that we have. And probably a lot of people have that are listening right now.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's unfortunate that it is kind of the truth. Right. So I'm not going to sit here and like lie and tell you that it isn't. But the thing is, is like what works, why this works so well is because what you guys just said, your inboxes are bombarded with shitty messages, for lack of a better word, that are spammy. So when you get one that's genuine and people actually like paid attention to something or commented on some line on your profile, you're. And they're not selling you anything. You're like, wow, this is refreshing.

Yeah.

You know, and so that's, that's what we bring to the table is when you, it's so, it's like, it sounds really like simple, like just be a human. But it's crazy how many people aren't being like normal human beings. And so My thing is like, would you talk to someone like that in person? Like if you were and I were at a conference in person, would you really like instantly be like, hey, this.

Is my.

Set up a call for 30 minutes.

Hey, it looks like we're in the same industry. You know, I've got something for you. Yeah, you would never say that if you bumped into somebody at a conference. Like, oh, you like marketing too? Well, I've got something for you.

Yeah, it's so awkward. So I mean, that's my thing is just that's what we train people on is how to start meaningful conversations. We have like a don't list. Like don't ever send a link in the first message, don't ever pitch, don't get the person's name wrong. I mean, there's so many things, you know, don't use automation where it says, hey, first name, want to connect. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Yeah, I like the don't list idea. You know, just like putting that forward. Are there some other don'ts that are just like so obvious that we should all know about? I mean, I'm sure you have a list of forever.

Yeah, exactly. I was going to say we could be here all day. Those are the big ones though. Like don't pitch, don't ask to get on a call, don't send a link. That's a big one. So when you're first talking to someone, a lot of people are like, but it's valuable. I'll send them a link and it's something valuable. It's free. I'm like, no. But they know, they can read between the lines. Like everyone knows what a free link is, you know, when you have. So what works well is if you ask permission. So once you build up rapport with someone after you connect to them, ask how you can help them start a conversation like a normal human. Then if you think there might be something that would be valuable, you ask their permission to send the link before you send it. So that's a big thing too that a lot of people are doing right now that I see is they're sending a link into instantly or within the first couple of messages. And that just is off putting to people because so many people do it and abuse it. And so even though it's valuable and free for them, they're still not going to waste their time doing it unless they have a reason to. And that reason comes from starting the dialogue and asking permission. Hey, I have this awesome resource I think you would find valuable because you just told me, xyz, would you want me to send you the link and then ask permission?

Yeah. No, it's so true. Because if you get a link on like anywhere, right? If I get a link from somebody that I've never really interacted with too well, I'm just skeptical. From the very moment I see the link, I'm like, is it gonna be, you know, some sort of phishing scam? Are they gonna try to get like my, like, login details to something? Like, I don't know what I'm clicking on. Like, if you get an email and somebody just says, hey, I've got something for you and there's a link in the email, you'd kind of be an idiot if you clicked on that link. Why would people think it works on LinkedIn?

So many people do.

Very good point. Very good point.

That's crazy. I want to talk a little bit the personal brand element of it. And you know, I know you're big on using LinkedIn to grow a personal brand, but I want to talk about the reasons people don't build a personal brand. I want to kind of talk about the mindset elements of it a little bit because I know this is something that you've talked about in the past and some of the other interviews you've done and things like that. But, you know, what are some of the reasons that people don't post on LinkedIn? And I'll share one. For me, I know for the longest time this has changed over the years, but for the longest time, I didn't really just want to put myself out there. I didn't want people to think my ideas were stupid. I wanted to come across smart when I post, you know, so I was always very self conscious about posting. And to this day it's still a little bit like that. I've dropped the filters a lot, but it is, it is a little bit like that still to this day. So can you speak into that a little bit about the mindset elements and how to build the confidence to post what you're really thinking online?

Yeah, for sure. Well, the crazy thing is we all have personal brands. You know, like, whether you want it or not, you have a personal brand, especially entrepreneurs, but really anyone with a link LinkedIn profile has a personal brand, so you might as well start owning it. And it is a confidence thing, honestly. I mean, you, you nailed it right then and there. You know, it's, do you want to. How confident are you putting yourself out there? And so what I tell people, though, is that it's severely lacking humanized content. Really, the Internet is. But LinkedIn specifically. And so what's crazy is there's such a massive opportunity because 1% of LinkedIn users post consistently, and there's like, what, 800 million LinkedIn users and 1% are posting consistently. That's crazy. It's ridiculous, right? And I know that number's maybe gone up a tad bit because of the pandemic and the usage, you know, has spiked, but it's still such a low number. And it really is a confidence thing, honestly. It's like you have to have the confidence to just go out there and try it, because guess what? Most people aren't. So when you do it, who cares? Most people are nice anyway. That's what I love about LinkedIn is, like, the community is very nice and uplifting and encouraging. They're not assholes. They're not gonna, you know, talk down to you because you messed up in your video or something, you know, like, people don't do that. So it's just one of those things where you have to just go out there and do it and realize that you are going to stand out. One, because you're doing it and most people aren't. And two, because you're being real and genuine. So if you're. If you're coming from a place of value and you're genuine, you're going to succeed, period. It's people that are trying too hard and not being genuine and doing, you know, doing things that you can tell like what. That doesn't really, you know what I mean? Like, if you're yourself, you're gonna succeed. And so my thing is always just trying to give people the confidence to go out there and do it. Because you're unique, your voice does matter. You're the only one in the world that has your unique experiences and background. And so every single person on the planet has value to share. It's just a matter of getting the confidence to do that.

Yeah, well, it seems like so many people take, like, this sort of passive approach to LinkedIn. I know we've been guilty of this in the past where you, you use, like Automation, you know, buffer or Meet Edgar, a tool like that to just automatically post links to LinkedIn or a lot of the messages that come to our DM boxes, you could tell, are clearly some sort of automated tool that have merge codes that swap my name in. Right? Like, you can see a lot of this, this automation that happens. And if you do that, you're building a personal brand there as well. It's just your personal brand is the brand of a lazy person who doesn't have anything real to say yourself.

Personal?

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And LinkedIn nor Facebook or any social media likes when you're scheduling tools. Like, we actually have studies where we'll have scheduled posts and then the exact same post, non scheduled. And it's crazy the amount of views, you know, that they show when you don't schedule something, you know, and so it's. And again, you're, you're talking about how most businesses do content marketing. Yeah, they write a bunch of generic posts and they schedule them like, I mean, we schedule stuff on Twitter and stuff. So I'm not. There's nothing wrong with doing that. But if you're trying to stand out and leverage your personal brand to grow your business.

That'S not gonna cut it. You know, you have to think outside the box and try harder. A try harder, get some confidence. Don't schedule everything you know.

Do you think there's value to being a curator on LinkedIn where maybe you're not sharing as many of your own personal thoughts, but you are sharing article and quotes and things like that from around the web?

Yeah. I am so glad you brought that up because that is a big part of our sales training for enterprises. Because I'm realistic here. Like not everyone is like me. I understand. I've been doing this for a very long time. This comes like second nature to me now. And I'm realistic in the fact that most enterprise sales reps aren't going to be comfortable with creating their own content consistently. That's just not realistic. So I have an entire like training on how to curate content and because at the end of the day you want to be seen as a trusted industry resource, not another annoying sales rep on LinkedIn. And how you do that is by posting content. But it doesn't have to be your own. It can easily be curated content. And so what I tell people is just add your two cents to it. So if you share something, an article, a post, a video, even if it's from your company page that you're sharing, just add your two cents, take 30 seconds and write a couple of sentences out and bam. Post. And you have curated content where your still seen as a trusted industry expert, as long as that content's valuable, obviously. So you don't have to be coming up with unique, incredible content all the time to brand yourself as a trusted industry resource.

See, I love that stuff because you could be super timely with the market. Maybe there's some trend in the industry that's happening. And you can probably even stream a video, you know, throw on. I mean, we're using Riverside right here. I know this goes to LinkedIn, but you know, you can do maybe a live stream, walking through the article, talking about your. Whatever your thoughts are around it, curate the content completely and then post. I imagine that could be part of the process.

Yeah, exactly. And it's so simple. And that's what that's the thing is that I'm trying to get out there too is people over complicate content marketing and sharing content. I mean, they really do. They overcomplicate it. And it doesn't have to be that difficult. Honestly, it doesn't. And so I'm so glad you brought up the curation aspect of it, because that's the easiest way, especially for people that aren't super comfortable with writing their own content. I have another quick hack here for people who aren't super comfortable with writing content, and that's to start leaving comments on people's LinkedIn posts, which you should be doing anyway. If you're leveraging that platform to grow your business, leave comments and then you can turn those comments into your own posts. So if you're leaving five plus meaningful comments a day, all you do is copy and paste every single comment that you make into a document. We use Google Docs. And then you go back and let's say when you're writing your content, you look at all those comments that you wrote for the week and you're like, bam, I have five posts now that you can leverage.

You just took the next question out of my mind, which is content, you know, content development, all these different ways to have different ideas all the time. Well, now, yeah, you're leveraging someone else's thought with your own thought and then expanding on that. I love that. That's brilliant.

Totally. And it's so easy because it's so much easier for us as humans to go and respond to someone else's post than to come up with our own again. We overthink things, right? So it's the easiest way. And this is what I tell people too. If you're just getting started, that is 100% the best way to do it. Because the more you do that, the more comfortable you're gonna get and accustomed to actually writing the posts. And it's gonna be easier and easier.

Now, when it comes to posts specifically, I know there's all these different formats. Do you have like a go to way that you post or, you know, is it written, is it video, is it live? Like, do you. Do you have kind of a go to. Like, if you're saying 80, 20, like a structure that you follow.

Every. All of them, you know, so my account is used for experimentation as well as growing my personal brand. So we literally try everything, but we do the same. We leverage all different post types for our clients, too. But what we found with the experimentation, I can go through in order which one LinkedIn likes the most, algorithm wise. And so we'll talk about that out. So, number one, polls. LinkedIn polls. Love them, hate them. The algorithm loves them. People love them. So polls by far get the most views and traction from any other type of post. It's wild. And if you really want to have a poll go viral, talk about something that's trending in the news. I had a Krispy Kreme vaccine poll last year.

Wow.

Yeah. But be prepared. Be prepared for the backlash. And it was neutral. I wasn't. I wasn't like, I'm anti. I wasn't anything. I was just like, I don't really know if it's a good idea to encourage people to go get donuts and vaccinated. Like, we're trying to make. We're trying to make healthy decisions as Americans. Like, that was all. My point was.

Right.

Let's be healthy.

You're playing in the friendly pond, though, at LinkedIn. So you're probably like, it's the best place to post something like that.

Right? But I got some serious. Interesting that. And then just industry polls, like, anything. Right? But people love polls, so that's number one. The second thing that LinkedIn loves, algorithm wise, are those documents that you can, like, slide through and flip through. You guys know what I'm talking about. You can upload like a PDF, like slideshow, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not SlideShare, but. So it used to be SlideShare, and they, like, don't. Now it's like you literally can upload your own PDF and then LinkedIn will, you know, you can just flip through the pages of the PDF. So that's what it looks like, a slideshare.

So is slideshow.

Exactly.

Is SlideShare still a thing? Or did LinkedIn, LinkedIn just sort of rebrand SlideShare to its own thing?

I think it's still a thing, but it's not integrated like it used to be on LinkedIn. You know what I'm saying? I think it's still a thing, but not as, you know, as much as it was on the LinkedIn side of things. And so you can easily create that in like canva. Literally I did one in like 10 minutes not long ago and it didn't, you know, it's very simple. So those work really well. Algorithms love them. And then from there you should really try every type of post post images, text only, LinkedIn Live videos. So I go LinkedIn Live once a month now. I was going once a week and I take clips from my LinkedIn lives and I make video clips for them. They're like 30 seconds to 90 seconds long and I post those, you know, on a weekly basis on my LinkedIn. Personal posts do really well. It does better if you can apply some like motivation or inspiration to it. You know, don't like post what you ate for breakfast because no one cares. But if you have, you know, like I had a wedding picture of my wife and I that went viral a few weeks ago and it was more like an inspirational type, you know, and everyone's comfort level is different. I'm not saying that you have to go out there and share all things about your personal life, but personal posts do really well because again, we're all craving that human to human interaction and people do business with people. And the more people get to know you as a human being, the more they're going to know like, and trust you. And that at the end of the day that's what we all want people to know like, and trust us, us to do business with us. So anytime you can, you can weave in your own story, you know, and with a personal image or video or whatever, it works really, really well. So I always encourage people to, you know, it is Facebook esque but in a professional way, you know what I mean? So, and some people have different views on this. Like I have a good friend that has a sales training company on LinkedIn and she tells people not to post personal posts. And I'm the opposite. And that's everyone's different. But I have seen the power and what it's done for my personal brand. When I do post personal things and my clients that it would be silly for me to tell people not to post personal.

That's just because that's human bonding right there. It's sharing.

That's what I was gonna say. That's just human nature, right? Like we don't want to peruse LinkedIn for a bunch of boring ass, you know, educational content. Step one, step two, step three, like no one only wants that. Like that's there's A time and a place for that, and you should do that, too, but. But not always, you know, so you need to mix it up.

Well, I mean, it's cliche now, but people buy from people, right? People don't buy from brands. They buy from people. Like, if they feel a connection to you, they're gonna buy from you. I'm curious about LinkedIn Live. Are those actually getting some pretty decent reach? Cause for a long time, wasn't LinkedIn Live only sort of set aside for, like, the more elite people on LinkedIn, the ones with the bigger followings and bigger brands? But now, recently, it's kind of rolled out to everybody, and I'm curious how those have been working out for you.

Yeah, so I was one of the early, like, you know, beta triers, if you will, with. With LinkedIn Live, and it was awesome. That's why I was leveraging it and going live once a week. But, yeah, no, it's great. And now I think anyone. You guys still have to apply, I think, but they're pretty much approving, you know, most people. But I think it's. I think it's awesome. It's. Video is interesting because. And I was just talking about this earlier on a podcast, I am a huge fan of video. Obviously, I have loads of videos out there, and they're all mainly from my LinkedIn lives. But. But the interesting thing and why people get discouraged is because the views are so much lower on videos, the LinkedIn views, than other posts. And so people get discouraged by that. But you can't look at those vanity metrics, because video is so much more powerful than any other form, because, again, you're building that human connection, and people feel like they know you and your personality. So my videos are the most powerful in terms of, like, Legion and getting clients and landing stuff like this. But if you look at my stats, you'd be like, huh, that's interesting. You know.

Yeah, the repurposability of them. I don't know if that's a word or not, but the repurposability of them is pretty big, right? Because you can do the Live, and then you can break it into clips for YouTube if you want. You can, you know, break it into Instagram images. You could pull out the audio for podcasts. There's just so many different things you can do if you start with the Live, because the Live does feature video and audio and you can pull transcripts and, you know, so there's so many different things you can do with it.

No, I was creeping on your Instagram, not Instagram, on LinkedIn, that is. And I saw that you have something that's kind of like a story. I think it's the COVID What was it? A cover video profile. And I've never seen that.

I didn't even know you could do that. I'm just learning this right now, and.

It looks like an ig, you know, like a normal story or something. But tell us about that. Is there some.

So that is creator mode. That's something else that was like, only rolled out to linked, active LinkedIn users and content creators. Now I think almost anyone can have access to it. So if you guys go to your LinkedIn, either on mobile or desktop, if you go to your profile, it's like right underneath your headshot area, you'll see a little toggle and it says creator mode. And you can either click it on or off. Like, it's off naturally.

Okay.

So if you toggle it on, you'll be able to create your 20 second cover video story, which is amazing. And again, helps build rapport. You'll be able to add those hashtags underneath your name. So, like, what you talk about. And then it kind of reorganizes your profile too. So it moves the featured media up. It kind of reorganizes some things in like a more content creator way, you know, so that's what that is.

Okay, is there anything else for creator mode that we should be aware of? Because that sounds interesting. If it's toggled off, I'm like, okay, that's maybe an opportunity there for us, right?

No, it is. It's an opportunity for sure. So back in, like, this was, I don't know, several months ago when more and more people started getting access to it and there was a lot of talk around, oh, I flipped creator mode on and my views decreased, you know, but I don't. I don't really think that's the case now. So it was going through this weird transition period where I think now they've kind of worked out all the bugs, but those are the main things. It just reorganizes your profile to feature more of your content, which is awesome. So it makes you more influencer. Ish. Right. So you're gonna look more like an influencer when you flip on, you know, the creator mode, which is what we.

All want, you know, power of the brand, right?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's pretty much it. It's just that the hashtags underneath and then the COVID story, which is powerful. But another tip, you don't have to have a creator mode for this. But have you guys leveraged the audio name pronunciation tool?

No.

Nope.

I didn't know about it.

Okay, so here's another awesome tip that anyone can do, even if you don't have creator mode. So you go to your mobile, it's on LinkedIn mobile, and it's like, you go and you act like you're going to edit your headline. And right below, actually, it's like right when you click that, it's right there, it says, like, name pronunciation. And it's like. Like this little microphone and you click it and you can talk for 10 seconds. And it's. The idea is so people know how to pronounce your name, but it's a perfect opportunity to just introduce yourself. And so mine's super simple. She's like, hey, my name is Mandy McEwen. Thanks so much for stopping by my profile. If there's anything I do to help you, let me know. You know, it's something super simple like that. But you can. You can say anything, you know, and so that combined with the 20 second cover video is like, you're already going to stand out and build that trust with people instantly from that.

Yeah, I wish. I wish more people that we've interviewed on this show would do that, because I don't know how many times we've, like, mispronounced people's name when introducing them.

That's when we're on the hunt. Like on YouTube, we're like, okay, he's got to say. Or she's got to say her name sometime.

Yeah, we have to hunt YouTube to find other interviews, and we just introduce them the way other people intro. I'm curious about.

You know what I do is I literally Google, like, how to pronounce names. I did that last night. I do it all the time. And then you're on this YouTube video, and it, like, repeats it, like, in 12 different ways. I'm like, well, which way is it.

To pick that one?

You know, there actually could be a company there where you just have, like, a website that's like, how do I pronounce this? Because, like, podcasters like us would use it like crazy. So there's a business idea. Anybody listening? There's an idea for it.

Well, on LinkedIn, I mean, it's crazy because it felt. I feel like for the last, like, five years, people have been saying there's a massive opportunity over there. And it's odd. It's crazy to me, there's still just like, 1%, maybe a little bit more, like you said, are actually on there actively posting, not spamming. We're gonna take them out of there. But, like, why is that the case? Like, is there just, like, a mental disconnect? Like, oh, it's another platform I gotta add into the mix? Like, is there something you've seen that, like, why people are.

That's a really. That's a good point, what you just said. Like, oh, God, it's another platform.

That's what I feel a lot of times. Yeah.

Honestly, what it is. Okay, so we're business. Like, it's a business platform. Right. So the people that are most active are influencers that work. They're executives or CEOs of companies, and then entrepreneurs. Right. So they also have a company page. So I feel like a lot of the issue is people are just posting on their company page and they feel like that is enough. So they're not actually posting on their personal profiles. Because it's just like, okay, Facebook, for example, most business owners aren't posting business posts to their Facebook profile. They're posting it to their Facebook page. And so they think of LinkedIn as the same. See, so they're not even thinking of it in a way of, like, this is an opportunity for me to stand out. Because, again, like you mentioned, people do business with people, not brands. And so they're just kind of thinking that it's just another Facebook ish type platform where people just go to get jobs and to peruse and, you know, leverage company pages. And I think that's the biggest disconnect.

Yeah. In your opinion, is there, like, a good way to use the company pages? We actually have a LinkedIn page for hustlin Flowchart, but I know we're not using it to its potential because we don't really do anything with it.

I think Jacob's posting some stuff.

Yeah, I think. But, yeah, I think for the most part, it's kind of like a glorified RSS feed. Right. Like, when new episodes come out, they get posted to that page.

Yep.

So I'm curious, like, how would you leverage pages?

Yeah. So what we do at Mod Girl and with our clients is we do, you know, obviously the traditional company page content, but try to make it, you know, not so lame. So it is more queued up. Right. So this is when we leverage social scheduling. Not gonna lie, we still do that. So we'll schedule posts out that are queued up. So even, like, we'll tweak it, you know, and reshare it four times. In the next five months or whatever. And then we have new posts. And then what we do is every time I have a post on LinkedIn, we share it on the Mod Girl company page. So it's a good mix of company content that goes out every single day and then my content, which also goes out every single day. And we're sharing that at different times. You know, with companies, obviously, that would be really awkward and annoying if they shared every single thing that all people, you know, were posting with companies we work with. Obviously, I'm the only one on my team right now that's posting content consistently. So it's easy, you know, for us to just post it. But with companies, we pick and choose. So, for example, we work with usually a couple of executives. Like when we train sales and marketing teams, a lot of times we'll work with a couple of executives and we will create content for them. So we'll interview them on video, like you and I are doing now, and we'll take, you know, splices of that and we'll create content for them. And then we will recommend what the company should reshare. And they have a choice whether they can reshare this. Like, we will say, okay, so this is the content calendar this week, Tim's post is going to be great to share. This is when we're posting it, we recommend, and we might say, hey, this post of Michelle's would actually be great. But instead of resharing it, just repost post it and kind of tweak the language for the company page. And so we do that with clients a lot where we're leveraging what they're paying us to do, create awesome content. But it's in a way that's very strategic. So they can keep posting the company content, but they're also leveraging that more humanized content too. And then, of course, a lot of times we have to kind of train the content writers on these corporations on how to write better content that gets more engagement. But that's kind of the best way to do it, is leveraging the individuals that are posting, posting regularly in your organization.

And I know the LinkedIn pages, it has like this invite feature, right, where you can invite like a certain amount of people every month. Yeah. How does that work?

100. 100. We do it 100 people every month. You can invite that are your connections to, like, your page. And we do that for ourselves, consistently, for our clients. And then our clients that we're not managing their pages, we're telling them to do it as well, so it works really well. And that's like the best way to actually grow a company page is by doing that.

Yeah. So. So is there, like a certain cadence or, like, at the beginning of the month, do you just go and invite, like a hundred people that are following you? Like, how do you pick and choose? Yeah. How do you decide who, who to?

You know, it's just, honestly, there's no rhyme. Like, one of my. One of my LinkedIn managers is responsible for doing this for us. And there's no. Literally, it's just that time of the month ever. You know, beginning of the month, we go and do it and it's whoever shows up first on that 100 list and we send it to them. There's no, you know, there's no strategy there. It's just like, check, check, check, send.

So if there's two of us that, like, manage a page, do we both get like 100 invites or is it just 100 invites total for the page?

I think it's for the page. That's actually a really good question.

Yeah, I mean, we've never.

Now that you said that, we've never.

Dove deep enough to know ourselves.

I'm going to have to ask Rocky, because I don't manage this myself, but this is something I should know. Thank you for bringing that up.

If I had to guess, my. My guess would be it's only one per page because otherwise you.

I was. Yeah, I think it's only one per page because the way it's set up, like on the back end, it's very company specific on invite people to your, you know, like your company page. It's not like, individualized. So I'm gonna go with. It's just that. Because other words, you'd be spamming. You could spam a hell of a lot of people. It'd be really beyond all your employees doing that.

Yeah, more admin accounts or whatever.

So what's up? Like, when you're working with clients and the whole human element, you know, you're dealing with the page, you get the personal brand. Like, are there any hangups? I know we talked about the mental game, but are there other things that, like, stop a business from really going full in on LinkedIn and really believing, like, oh, this is really good for me. I'm gonna take this as like a straight up marketing channel and be myself, like, put myself out there. Like, are there hangups that you just find when working with people? Maybe we can kind of expose those here for folks.

Yeah, I would say the biggest Thing is lack of patience and wanting instant results. You know, it's, you know, especially for those, those organizations who, you know, have these attribution models that they're, you know, bound to and they're, everything is tracked and all the metrics are there for their PPC and their webinar, you know, signups. And so it's kind of a mindset shift in that regard too. This is a brand building opportunity and it's a long term play, it's not a short term play. And so a lot of people give up, even companies, because they'll be doing it and they, you know, they don't see results within two weeks, they're like, what the hell, this isn't working. You know, we're putting this into it and that's not how it works. And so that's impatience is probably the biggest, you know, is like they want results now and that's just not, you know, realistic. Um, and the other thing is they're just so used to doing things the old school way and so their team hasn't been taught any different. And it's not their fault they don't know any better. And that's why we exist list is to change that for them. So they, they just post again, kind of lame corporate content because they don't know any better and it doesn't work. And so that's something else too is like we're not getting engagement on our posts. Well, no one cares about your 1200 white papers that you share every other day. Like, no one gives a shit about those. Like, I'm sorry, they don't, you know, like, I'm sure it's awesome, but you can't just be posting webinars and white papers. Like that doesn't work. So that's something else too. It's just like, how can we get these content teams to start posting better content that's engaging and actually starts dialogue and conversation?

I like that.

Do you have any case studies or stories of people that you've worked with that started following some of your LinkedIn strategies that have had some really big success? Do you have any stories that you could share about what they did and how it worked out for them?

Yeah, I mean we have loads of stories all day long, of course.

Are there any that stand out that would be cool to share here just to kind of show people the impact it can have?

Yeah, so I have some entrepreneur ones off the top of my head. So we have loads of company ones. But you know, the company like for example, just recently One of my clients, I did a two hour training for their sales and marketing team and we just started posting content like yesterday for them. And so before we started posting content, this has been two weeks. The CMO sends me a screenshot. Literally, I think it was yesterday morning or the day before that. And it was like their page, their company page was like all the numbers were up like 30 plus percent across the board. And I was like, we haven't even started posting content. He's like, yeah, but they listened to you and they're actually doing what you said. Like, that's amazing. It's only been two weeks and Mod Girl hasn't had any physically anything to do with that, but they listened to our training and our strategy and it actually is working in two weeks. I was like, this is incredible. So that's awesome. That was a very recent one. I have so many entrepreneur ones. Like for example, one that sticks out is I was coaching an agency owner on how to effectively reach out on LinkedIn and something similar actually happened to a Google executive we were working with too. Very similar story here. And within a week she had 15 phone calls scheduled for consultations. Fifteen, okay. And within a week our Google exec had 30. He actually had to cut him down. He's like that, this is too much like it was working too well, you know. And so we had to halt it for him, honestly. He was like, I don't have time to do all of these right now. Like, this is great, you guys are killing it, but we need to rethink this strategy. So with him, we kind of like went back. We're like, let's be really, really specific now. But those are two that, that stand out and that's just simply from like changing your outreach tactics. So a, having an optimized profile, that's the key, right? So people need to know what you do, who you help, how you do it, your passions. They need to see that on. Your profile needs to be completely optimized or none of this is going to work. Right. So that's number one. But then it's just changing your approach on how you reach out to people. So going and engaging with their content ahead of time. So commenting on their posts before you even send a connection request and then mentioning that post post in the connection request. I mean, it seems very simple, but most people aren't doing this. They're just going for the kill instantly. You know, they're going for the marriage proposal right away instead of easing into it. And so when you change your mindset it's crazy in your approach. It's crazy how quickly you can see results just from that.

So would it be fair to say your first step when you're working with a client is like, hey, I'm going to train you how to be a human on LinkedIn and then go from there 100%? Okay.

Yes. Yep. Let's go back to the basics and learn how to talk to human beings.

Well, let's be honest. If you're dealing with a platform where most people aren't posting, you already said this, but maybe this really solidifies it, at least in our minds. But those listening and watching is like, yeah, if you just exercise yourself as like, let's be a human on this platform, just give it a shot, maybe go for a month or so. And likely you're gonna see results sooner than that just by engaging with other posts, sharing some stuff around, maybe curating some things. You don't have to be the thought leader, like, use your, you know, you don't have to be the best voice out there. Like, frame your. You don't have to be the best expert yet, but you'll get results.

Exactly. And I mean, what. Those stats that I just gave you guys had nothing to do with content? Honestly? Yes, These people had content on their pages. The company, the stats had content. The people told you about hot content, but they weren't. Those results are from what they were doing outside of their content. So, yeah, they land on their profile and they can peruse some of their content to help build their trust. Trust, value, up. But there's so much power and just literally engagement, like genuine engagement with people on this platform can go so far. It's crazy. Another quick story.

Yeah.

One of my clients left a comment on an influencer's post and within like four hours it was that same day, she had 200 connection requests from one comment.

Must have been a good comment and the right influencer.

Exactly. Well, yeah, that's the thing. Like, it was an amazing, well thought out comment that was, you know, rather long. Not, not too long. But that's the thing. When you take like an extra minute to leave a meaningful comment, you have no idea how impactful that could be because, A, you're helping that person by boosting their post up in the algorithm because, you know, obviously engagement is key, so they're going to appreciate you and love it. B, you're building up your authority and trust as an industry expert from that amazing comment where you left insights and then see, you can turn around and use that comment for Your content, you know, so there's so many benefits of leaving meaningful comments, and it's crazy. Like, the results that you can get just from one comment alone.

Yeah, I love it.

No, it's crazy because, you know, most of the comments that I see on places like LinkedIn Instagram is, like, horrible with it. It's just like, great post, fire emoji and stuff like that. And it's like, come on now, you're not. You're probably not getting the attention of. Of the person who posted or anybody that's reading it. What is the point? I don't understand.

Right, so the fire emoji.

And there's nothing wrong with, like, right, with sprinkling in, like, great posts every now and then. Not gonna lie. I'm guilty of that. But you should. That should not be your only commenting strategy. Like, you have to say, you know what I mean? Like, you have to give a little bit more than that if you want results. And the key is if you can try to be one of the first people to comment. So if you're following influencers or just popular industry posts or even prospects posts, if you're one of the first to comment, you're gonna get way more traction than anyone else. And I know that's like, timing, you know, you can always do that.

Do you set, like, notifications or anything like that for specific people so that you can post quickly?

Sales Navigator is amazing for that. So it's kind of hard to, like, control your LinkedIn feed, as you guys know, unless you unfollow people, you know. But with Sales Navigator, you can build lead lists, and then your Sales Navigator feed only shows the activity from those lead lists, and so that's really beneficial. And they can alert you and stuff, too.

So what's your process look like when using Sales Navigator? Are you, like, going through that list and engaging with them all the time? Like, is that like your top 80% of folks? Basically, yeah.

That's a good question. So we have these lead lists we build out in Sales Navigator, and then we have this strategy where basically we go and we engage with them for an entire week. It depends on the timing. Like, if I'm wanting to get in front of someone faster, then I'll speed it up to like, a couple days, you know, but we'll go and we'll leave comments on their posts for a couple of weeks, and then we'll send a message to connect. That's kind of how we leverage it. But it's. It's really amazing for building those really highly targeted lists, and not just individual lists, but company lists, too. So if you're targeting specific companies, you can get alerts on when they were mentioned in the news, whoever they, you know, recently hired or whatever it is. So you can get alerts for both of those and then you can know how to properly engage because then you can reach out to, let's say if me, for example, CMOs or a lot of my target market are like VPs of demand gen, if I see a company update, you know, maybe they just got acquired or whatever it is, I can go and I can mention that to the person I'm reaching out to or trying to get in front of her. Let's say I'm already connected to them, but they're not yet a client. I can still go and send the message on, hey, congratulations on xyz or I just saw you guys mentioned here, you know, so there's a lot of benefits on leveraging that. It's really powerful.

I love that. Yeah. I'm curious here because I know Lisa Byer. You had a. I think you did some training with her. She's a buddy of ours. She's been on the podcast here. She's all about pr, public relations and all that. Are there ways to leverage LinkedIn and PR since we've had her on, but are there ways that you've gotten maybe your brand or your client's brand out in a big way, maybe off the platform as a result of something on LinkedIn?

Yeah, I love that you mentioned that. Yeah. Lisa and I could literally talk for hours about this stuff because her PR methodology is exactly like my digital marketing methodology. Right. Perfect fit. Yes. And I have landed so many press opportunities for ourselves and our clients from LinkedIn, journalists, you know, podcasts, like what we're doing here. Right. So we do this for our clients, too. And so when you have a great presence on LinkedIn, you have an optimized profile, you have some content again. And so this is kind of like a hack for people that want to get results fast. If you can just post a couple of really great LinkedIn posts like, like spend some time on it, make them quality, even if it's like a video or something. And then you feature those in your featured media section on your profile and you completely optimize your profile. So the headline, the about the experience, add featured media and all the opportunities, it's going to look like, you know, you're amazing. Then you can go and reach out to people, they're going to go to your profile. Even if you haven't posted in a month, they're going to see the featured media there, you know, and then they're gonna be like, okay, okay, yeah, this person is legit. And it works great when you're PR opportunities. Right. So journalist podcasts, et cetera. And so we use. And then again, just like human beings, like journalists are human beings too. If you can mention something on like, hey, I saw your piece on xyz, it was so great. I have, you know, some ABC that I think would be really beneficial for you, you know what I mean? And so you kind of like mention what they're already doing that's related to what you're trying to get in for the topic, you know, and then build relationships with them there. Engage with their content to toot their horn, boost their ego. I mean, it's all the same stuff, but it works so much better than email because it's more personalized.

You know, it's a two way concept.

Combine email with LinkedIn. Yeah, but you can actually. Exactly. You can actually have a conversation with people, you know, on LinkedIn and they're much more likely to do that and converse with you on LinkedIn messenger than they are email.

I dig that.

If they're active on LinkedIn. Yeah, this only works if people are.

Active, you know what I mean?

So that's the thing too, you know, that's why we take it to email. That's why we a lot of like most of the time work with clients. It's a combination of email and LinkedIn because not everyone's active. But that's Sales Navigator. Going back to that. Yeah, Perfect for PR opportunities too, because you can drill down into who has been active in the last 30 days, aka who has posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. We use that religiously, actually. We don't build lists unless it has that selected because we only want to target people who are active. And when you're going for PR opportunities, same thing, you know, so if you're checking that box, use Sales Navigator. Build a list of targeted, you know, PR peeps, journalists you're going after, bam, you know, they're active on LinkedIn. The ones that aren't, you could combine it. You can still send a, you know, connection request, that's custom. And then you can follow it up with email. Hey, you know, Suzy, I just sent you a connection request on LinkedIn. Blah, blah, you know, you can still do both.

That's super interesting. It's all right. Sales Navigator. Yeah, that's something we have not dove into. I think I had a trial for a while and dinked around a little bit but didn't have a strategy. But that right there, I mean that just seems like that's.

I have a 60 day free trial. If you want to check it out, I can send you the link.

Yeah, please. Do you, do you know it as well? Do you want to shout it out?

Actually I have a short link for it. It is sales nav.modgirl social.

There you go. Yeah, sweet.

Just set this up for my. The traffic and conversion session I'm doing. I just made this link the other day. So it's sales navigation, nav modgirl social and that's a 60 day. They don't usually do this but I'm an affiliate for them. It's like a private affiliate invite only program where they give you a 60 day link to try it out.

So you mentioned TNC traffic and conversion and I'm just actually checking. Do we. I think this is coming out. It's on the 16th so it's right after TNC. Literally the day after TNC is. It is when you'll go live.

That's awesome.

I was gonna say. Well, maybe it's still relevant. Like are there some topics or cool things you can kind of like sprinkle out here for folks who haven't. Did not attend. I guess like since it's going to be afterwards. Like are there any gyms that you can share here?

Oh, there's loads. So it's funny because I went through it yesterday with my good friend Katie who is a TEDx speaker and phenomenal and it was too long. She was like, like this is incredible. This there is so like they're gonna love it. She's like, but you gotta, you gotta cut it back. I'm like, oh man, it's so much good information. And I, I usually like over, you know, over give on the value because I don't hold back. Like I'm not of the notion like I'm gonna hide my secrets because at the end of the day most people aren't gonna do it. You know what I mean? Like they don't. And I've been doing this for so long. I've been training in creating videos and courses for so long that I know this, you know, like, like I don't. I'm not hiding anything. Like I will tell you exactly what we do. And it. Not to mention there's more than enough business to go around. So it's, it's gonna help me if you actually follow this and do what I say. Like, I want you to, you know, like, you're not gonna steal the business for me. So there's just. So there's so much there. But, like, I have five steps that I walk through with people. And like before. And this is for entrepreneurs specifically. Before you guys do anything on LinkedIn, you have to have 100% clarity on your goals, your purpose, who you're going after. So get super specific on your target audience and what you're trying to achieve and your unique selling proposition. So what makes you different? And so you have to have all these figured out before you even start anything on LinkedIn, otherwise you're not going to succeed. So you have to have something that makes you different. You have to know exactly who your target market is. And you have to know, like, why the hell am I doing this? What's the point? You know, what are my goals? And so that's like the first step for anyone and businesses in general. But most companies have this already sorted out. So it's usually the smaller businesses and entrepreneurs that they just get so excited and they jump in and they're just. It's just too broad. They start posting and reaching out to people and it's all over the place. You're like, well, who. Who the hell are you going after here? Small business owners.

Like, what kind of small business owners? Let's get a little bit more specific. If you have a. Maybe a local area of small business owners. Perfect. That's a little bit more niche, you know, better. So that's key, you know, and then the steps I take people through, like real quick or just optimize your profile after that, which we already kind of talked about. I have a checklist for that, by the way, too. If people are curious on getting help there, I have an awesome checklist that people can download. And so just your headline is key. Another hack. Go to LinkedIn mobile to optimize your headline and you'll be able to get more characters. So they give you a lot more character space where you can put in more keywords and stuff if you do it on mobile.

Ah, that's good to know. Okay, sweet.

Yes.

Now, was there a link to your checklist that you want to shout out?

Yeah, yeah, there is actually. LinkedIn modgirl social is the checklist that you guys can download. It's super helpful. And then after that, it's literally all about leveraging your network. And so what I tell people too is most people aren't leveraging the people they already know. And so that's low hanging fruit. And so step two should be go to all the people you know, all the professionals, past clients, current clients, colleagues, anyone you met at a conference. If they are not on your LinkedIn, go and add them right now, you know, because the beauty of LinkedIn is it's all who it's business. It's all who you know. Right. It's all about connections and relationships. And as we know, like, referrals are the easiest way to get new business. You know, people do business with people, they've been referred to, that they have, you know, awesome results or whatever. They know them. So the best way, the best thing to do is go and connect with all those people and then you can look at who you're targeting and look at the mutual connections and then say, oh, okay, I know Bill, and Bill is connected to Susie, who I'm trying to go after. Awesome. I'm going to message Bill and ask how well he knows Susie and tell Bill that, hey, I'm getting ready to reach out to Susie. How well do you know her? Is there any insight you can offer me and just get that feedback? And then you can even hop on a call with Bill and ask them questions if you want. But at the end of the day, you're trying to get name drops and you're trying to get introduction. So if you can name drop. Hey, Susie, I was just talking to Bill from ABC Technology today. He mentioned you and blah, blah, blah, would love to connect. You know what I mean? So anytime you can name drop someone or get an introduction, I mean, your chances of being at least having someone want to talk to you are sky high versus a cold outreach, you know, that's the best.

Yeah, we do the same thing here for the podcast, obviously, Lisa being the one that connected us. Yeah, that's solid.

Exactly. And so, yeah, that's, that's, you know, the second and third step is literally all about that leveraging sales Navigator, which we talked about, and then posting content, you know, so it's like optimize your profile, figure out who you know that isn't on your LinkedIn and add them to your LinkedIn with a custom message. I'm all about customizing everything, so don't ever just blindly send something. And it could take two seconds. Hey, Bill, I realize we didn't. We're not connected on LinkedIn. I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. We'd love to connect here. I mean, it literally takes two seconds, you know, so when you do that and you're leveraging your network, you're building lists on Sales Navigator, you're acting like a real human being and you're posting great content. Lovely things happen.

Yeah, it is. Oh, my God. Okay, now I think my homework, or maybe our homework, is to time block some time so you actually focus on LinkedIn. Because I know that was one of the questions, but I saw a video, it was like, okay to actually stay on point. I know you're time blocking and using that quite a bit to stay consistent. And I know if it weren't for doing that, there's no way I'm gonna be on LinkedIn doing stuff. Or it's another platform, you know, it's kind of missing.

Yeah, it's just another chore. It seems like another tool for people, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And so when you have a strategy, that's why I'm so big on being strategic. But it has to be an agile strategy because things change all the time, you know, like today I. What? Right before I came on with you guys, I tagged you in it. I just posted like a random picture of a selfie with my dogs, you know, that are barking now. And I, you guys, I literally talk. I literally put in this post, does anyone else's dogs interrupt their podcast interviews and videos? So as I'm telling you this, she barks on cue.

What the hell? She knows her friends are on the podcast here. Like, what up, friends knows. Oh, man.

So that's like an example of being agile, right? Like, I didn't have that planned. I didn't have anything planned today, actually. I was like, oh, need a post. Let's put that up. So you have to have an iterative process where, okay, this is a strategy. This. The strategy that's most important is who you're going after and what are your goals. Right. And how you stand out. Like, that's most important. Everything else just kind of falls into place. So plan your content. That helps, but also, like, have fun with it too. Like, not everything has to be so regimented and, you know, structure. Like, you can have fun and post randomly when you didn't plan on posting. It's not a big deal. But as long as you're doing what you just mentioned and like taking time to do the things that are necessary, you're going to succeed. And that's why I love time blocking. So it's like, from this time to this time, I'm going to reach out to X number of people. So Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, from 10:00am to 11:00am, I'm going to do manual outreach to 20 people that I already engaged with last week. And then on these days, I'm going to leave at X number of comments during these time, you know, I mean, so you have to have a plan of action because a lot of people, they'll tell me, you know, I'm posting all this great content, but I'm not getting results on LinkedIn. I'm like, well, what else are you doing? What do you mean? Are you sending connection requests? Are you engaged to other people? Well, no. Like, well then how the hell do you expect to see results? Like, content is great, don't get me wrong, but I would not be here right now if I relied on my content only. Like, we are proactive. We're going out there and building relationships and my content helps me build that trust factor. But, but my content isn't driving like hordes of leads to me right now. You know what I mean? It's helping. And sure, we get business from it, but that's, that's not the main driver. Like, we're, we're actively going out and building relationships with people and that's what moves the needle. And so a lot of people, they get frustrated because they're spending all this time on LinkedIn, but they're not doing all the things you need to be doing. And what's funny is when you actually, like, look at it and you drill it down, you'll actually save time and get better results from doing the right thing strategically versus just spending all your time posting and hoping for the best, you know, and so you can actually cut back on your content creation and spend more time on outreach and you're going to get better results. You know, I feel like it's more.

Fun too, because you can get some.

Feedback and it's more fun. Exactly. 100%, yes.

All right. Damn. This is so cool. Mandy. All right, I'm motivated.

I'm reading motivized.

Motivized. I don't know what that was. Motivated. I like that we did two words up today. Go for us, huh? Yes, we did. Well, I mean, I'm pumped on this. A couple shout outs to the links again. What was it? LinkedIn, Modgirl Social. We'll get you to that checklist, right? All right, cool.

Exactly.

I think there was one more link too.

SalesNav. ModGirl Social will get you the 60 days to sales Nav.

Bam. Is there anywhere else other than. Well, it's coming out after tnc, but we'll, we'll post before and say go see Mandy live if you're coming to San Diego. So where else can. Yeah, obviously go find her on LinkedIn.

But LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best. You know, hit me up on LinkedIn. Happy to connect. And then mod. Girlmarketing.com is our company website, if you guys want to check that out.

Right on.

Yeah. Those are the best places.

Awesome. Yeah, it's been amazing. I can tell that you're very passionate about the topic. You got a lot of. A lot of energy around the topic. So it's just. It's refreshing to see that I could.

Sit here for hours and talk to you guys about it. That's why people are like, oh, my gosh, you have to talk for 45 minutes. And I'm like, that's not enough time.

I could sit for hours and talk to people about this. I love it.

Once you get past the mindset.

Thank you guys so much for having me.

Yeah, for sure. Right? Exactly. All right, Mandy, have a good one. Thank you. Mandy. Mandy. Mandy. Yeah, that was packed. That was packed with so many things that you can do at LinkedIn now.

Yeah. If you're watching the video, you might be able to see this. I don't know, but this is my page of notes for Mandy. It looks like a whole bunch of chicken scratches.

You wrote most of that during the episode probably, too, huh?

I did especially, like, look, I've got notes here from, like, the team meeting. And that was the notes from our team meeting. And then, like, everything above and below were the notes from Mandy.

She brought it. Yeah. Okay, let's just start here. You need the action guides of this episode because we slowed down Mandy's talking because she wanted to, I think, cram so much in a little period of time. There's so many tactics you could just swipe. So go get those action guides. They are free or it is free. Two weeks of this episode, going live over@flowchartgroup.com and plug in your email address and also get you into our Facebook group, flowchartgroup.com. go grab them.

Yes, go do that.

So what. What. What resonated out of your. Your behemoth of notes here? Your chicken scratches? What. What stood out?

Let's see what stood out.

Other than we should be paying much more attention to LinkedIn. Well, I feel like we're a broken record. I think we've said this before.

We've said this before. I think, you know, it's. For us, it's about focus, right? It's like, yes, there's. There's LinkedIn, there's YouTube, there's Instagram, there's TikTok. There's Snapchat, there's Facebook, there's Twitter there, you know, and it's like, you could put some focus on some of them, but it's hard to put focus on all of them. And I think for us, it's always been like, okay, let's put our attention on Facebook and maybe like, little bit Instagram for a bit Instagram a little bit. And YouTube is sort of the big thing that we're playing around with lately. And so LinkedIn is kind of one of those things that's always sort of fallen off. And I don't necessarily think that, like, LinkedIn is the answer for everybody all the time either. I think there's certain, you know, certain niches and certain people who LinkedIn, their audience might not be there, but. But chances are our audience is. And we're not B2B. We're not using it, so. Not using it as much as we should, for sure.

Yeah. Well, I loved the structure that she approaches her stuff with. She time blocks everything out. We didn't get into that big time, but at the end we kind of talked about it briefly. Just that structure, I think, helps with that whole prioritization of different platforms to show up on because, yeah, it trips me out a little bit when she was saying only about 1%, maybe it's a little higher now, are actively posting on that platform as a user. Whereas compared to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all that stuff, it's just constant posting, which is great. But, yeah, it just seems like there's this black hole with LinkedIn for most people when it comes to content posting.

Yes. Well, it's interesting because I think the funny thing is, to be successful on LinkedIn, this trick seems to be just don't do what everybody else is doing.

Don't spam people.

Yeah, because like we said, our direct messages are mostly just either some sort of pitch that was clearly an automated message. Right. Or in our case, it's a lot of people asking to be on the podcast where we're like, I don't think they're.

Well, they're blanket pitches again. Yeah, typically.

They're typically blanket pitches. You know, every once in a while we get a pitch from somebody who actually listens to the podcast, but we still don't really think they're a great fit for the podcast. But, you know, for the most part, it's all pitches. That's all we see in LinkedIn. It's like, hey, do I feel like getting pitched to today? Because I've Got a place with an inbox full of them.

Right.

And so, like, like, can we sell.

These pitches to others? I'm just kidding.

I don't know if there's much value to them. But like, really the trick to being successful on LinkedIn is, you know, don't do that.

Yeah. Be a human. I mean, Mandy said it. We've had other folks like Joshua B. Lee on the podcast as well. He said it. Be a human. When you show up on these platforms. And yeah, I know that's not the thing that we, that stops us, I guess, with the LinkedIn momentum, but I think it's the perception of just like everything's pitching here. Yeah. And at least for me, I think I discount the value of the platform because that's the thing that I see the most of, are more pitches every day. Cool. Another 10 or so that I don't really want to sift through or anyone else should really. But yeah, in terms of the posting the content and engaging with folks, that's why I liked, and this is something we've heard as well about LinkedIn is just start engaging with people and their content. I mean, this goes for any platform, but LinkedIn is probably the one. You'll see a lot more movement with the right kind of eyeballs, ideally with your, with your business. Like, she was talking about the growth of a client where they weren't even posting their own stuff. They're just engaging with like thoughtful comments.

Yeah.

And then I liked the idea of how she was like, yeah, you could take some of these thoughtful comments that you build into your routine of engaging with people and you can make that content your own, you know, expand on that in whatever format of content and then post it yourself.

Yeah.

So you're kind of like, it's all self contained in that content machine on LinkedIn. If you build it into your routine.

Yeah, yeah. You create that closed loop system of like, you know, the others kind of tell you what content to create. You create that content, they comment, they tell you what content to create next. And now you just, you have a never ending supply of content for sure. I also really like, she got like pretty tactical because she was talking about like the things that the algorithm loves. So if you're gonna post, polls are getting a lot of love right now. So if you post a poll on LinkedIn, those seem to be getting a little bit extra love from the algorithm. So you're gonna get a little extra reach when you post polls. Second was like, she called them documents. This is where we were like is that SlideShare or is that something. And she said it was kind of something else. But posting like PDF documents too, those actually get some reach.

It's like a floor flip book, it seemed like. Yeah.

And then for the third thing she said all the rest of the types of posts, like experiment with videos and images and just text posts and stuff, but polls and those documents seem to be getting a lot of love right now. So if you want to.

Maybe get a little additional reach than what you normally get, try one of those. And then if it works like the other platforms, if people engage on that, then your next post after that ideally will some of that engagement will trickle to that as well. But. But some things to try know we.

Missed though, the one thing that is required of all of these techniques is to dial in your profile. That's what she did make that a point. Like before you start engage, I mean you can engage with a bunch of people through comments and stuff, but really the first thing they're gonna do, especially if they don't know you, is go click over to your profile. Cause that's how I use LinkedIn. I think that's most people is like, cool, who's this person? What are they all about? Who are they connected with? You know, what kind of business have they done? And so it's, you know, I guess there's just so many features. And the cool thing is that on the mobile app, you know, there's all these other features.

Yeah. Different features.

So it's like, who would have known that? Like, who pays attention? Unless you're Mandy actually in it for years now. But like, who's going to know to optimize all. And then the creator mode, like she was like, yeah, there's a switch. It's actually off by default. But like it would probably do you guys really well. And most people don't even probably know that exists.

Yeah, I didn't know it existed.

Yeah. I want to do some digging and how. Because I'm sure that would benefit probably most of us.

Yeah.

If you're post because she was like, it gives you the tools of an influencer, essentially.

Yeah.

And I never knew that. I've Never used the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Never used it before. And I never knew until this episode that if you have a LinkedIn sales navigator, you can actually create custom feeds of like only the people you want want to see. So if there's people that you know, I want to be engaging on these people's posts whenever they post or I want to be early on One of these posts, you can create a feed of like, just influencers that you want to be on the radar of. And. And every time something gets posted that feed, you comment quickly so you can be an early comment on these influencers posts. That's fricking ninja. I've never actually used Sales Navigator, but she just gave me a reason to want to go play around with it.

Yeah, I have before, and I didn't have a strategy going into it, but I think it was like a free offer. You know, LinkedIn sometimes does those things. I was like, what's this? I think what I was using it for is like you can creep on other people's profiles and see like a little deeper into or actually, no, on your own. Who's creeping on you? Yeah, on LinkedIn, like usually it kind of blocks you at like 10 or something, but it actually shows you who's paying attention to your stuff. Which I was like, that's cool. Yeah, so, but that, like having these lists of people that you can probably set up reminders around or notifications so you can keep like your top. Whatever amount of people and be like, those are my. That's the target right now. Yeah, that's super smart. So strategy. Definitely have a strategy going into LinkedIn if you're gonna do this.

The other thing was we talked a little bit about LinkedIn, like your LinkedIn business page.

Right.

And she actually gave some real practical tips around that too. Like you can go and invite 100 people a month to that page. So you could just go invite all the people that are following you on LinkedIn, because theoretically those are the people that are interested in what you talk about if they're following you. So you can go and invite them all to your page at a rate of 100amonth. And then with your page, you can post every time, like a new episode goes out or a new blog post or something like that. But then also people like me and you, when we share to our personal profiles, share them to that page. Right. So that kind of keeps engagement going on that page and you know, they. They sort of cross pollinate each other a little bit. So I thought that was a really cool. This was a really tactical episode.

Very.

Like, as I'm talking, I'm just thinking I'm remembering all these other things that she said and I'm like, oh, and I could talk about that, I can talk about that. But you know what, I'm just gonna go listen back to that episode.

You should too.

You missed some of this stuff.

And get the action guides again. Flowchart, group.com. so go get them. That's probably what I'll do. Yeah, I'll get the action. We'll do both. Yeah. Well, we've been. Yeah. You were like, dude, I like our episodes later.

I do. I actually like watching back to our videos.

I started listening to them too, and I'm like, I really enjoy them too. So it's like, yeah, it's nice.

I always. Every time I listen back to one of our episodes, I always hear stuff that I missed in the actual conversation. Like stuff that, for whatever reason, just didn't register in the moment. And then I watch back on the YouTube video, and I'm like, wow, how.

Did I miss that?

I don't remember her saying that. How did I miss that? I would have dug even deeper on that if I would have caught that in the moment, that kind of stuff. So I actually do love going back and either listening or watching on YouTube.

Well, especially a tactical episode like this, where it's just so much getting tossed at you. It's like, whoa. Miss that nuance? Or. Oh, that actually applies here.

Well, I also love watching them on YouTube because our boy Jacob and his teammate Eric are making really badass videos right now.

Check them out. Hustleandflowchart TV. Yeah, we're putting a big old effort into YouTube. And finally, the video's like. Not finally, but it's been a process. Yeah, we're finally the whole team.

They do feel like we're getting to a place where we're like, all right, this is what we wanted to see the videos look like. Cause they're just getting more and more polished with each new video that we put out. And, like. Yeah, so I literally go to watch our videos on YouTube because the first time I see the final product is when it goes live on YouTube. So, like, I go to YouTube and go, ooh, there's new videos out. And I get excited when our new videos come out.

It's like a little gift. Like, how did this one get dressed up? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no, it's cool. It's entertaining. It's fun. Eric and Jacob, props to you too.

Yeah. Hustleandflowchart TV. If you're not following us on YouTube, definitely go subscribe. Because, like, so much of our focus and effort is going there right now to just make that the best content we've ever put out in our lives.

Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. So what else we got? We got easy webinar, sponsored by them, of course. So all of your webinar needs are in one place with Easy Webinar. That's why it's so dang easy. Plus, they make a lot of those weird techy stuff easy as well. Yeah.

All the landing pages, all of the setting up your lives and hybrids and collecting the emails and collecting. Keeping all the stats in track for you.

It's an all in one system to run webinars. You don't need any other tools.

It's a process if you don't have a tool like this. Yeah. So get Easy Webinar. And they're hooking you up with a big discount because you are our viewer or listener or both. Thank you. @easywebinar.com hustle easywebinar.com hustle. You get a fat discount. If you see Matt's face there, you're.

In the right place.

I'm on there as well, I think. Or it's some really outdated shot of us. Is it? I have a lot darker hair. At the time.

Joe was in elementary school.

I was in elementary school. We were both wearing plaid. That's when you know you're in the right spot. I was wearing oshkosh b' Gosh overalls, likely whitey tighties.

How would you know that I'm wearing overalls?

Because you tucked your shirt into your underwear. It was a little awkward. Overalls, overalls.

Oshkosh b' Gosh denim overalls.

Oh, you're going pure denim. I was thinking there's a different style.

That's actually what I wore when I was a kid. My parents put me in overalls.

I like it.

Denim overalls.

The overall kid. You were that kid.

Other kids of the 80s know exactly what I'm talking about.

Of course. Of course. I think I had a fine pair, but I didn't rock them as hard as you did, so. So I'll give that credit to you. So where were we?

That's one thing that, like, looks good on kids but not really on adults is denim overalls. Well, maybe. Well, on men, I guess. I don't know.

I don't know, man. I've seen overalls come back. Well. There's some men I've seen in at least San Diego and the hipster communities. I was like, wow, Bringing the overalls back.

But are they denim overalls?

Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. I don't know if I'm that brave to bring it back now, but maybe one of these episodes will.

I feel like they could be stylish on women, but I can't really See it on men right now. Cause all I picture is, like, little kids wearing it, and then I see a man wearing it. I'm just like, well, that's why it.

Was a double take. When I saw it, I was like, wait, what? I think he was dressed professionally as well, in overalls. I was like, bold.

Put a sports coat over it or something.

That actually would be a thing.

All right. Yeah, we got off the rails here, baby.

Well, we talked about Easy Web, and so we were just talking about. Yeah, when you see him in overalls. Actually, he won't be in overalls. Go to easywebinar.com hustle all that to say, go get yourself a deal. What else, man?

Pod Hacker. If you're not a member of Pod Hacker, we're teaching you how to do what we do. So if you want to learn how to build, grow, engage with your audience and monetize a podcast, we got you covered inside of Pod hacker. Go to podhacker.com, check that out.

And some good course. Yeah. Give us some loves on all the channels, wherever you're at, where you're watching right now, if you're on YouTube. Thank you. Go hit that subscribe button, all that. If you're a podcaster, go, go subscribe, go comment, whatever. Spread the love. You know what we're doing here. So, yeah, that's all we got, I think, my friend. Right.

I think that's all we got.

All the call, the calls to actions.

Yeah. And I mean, if you want to leave a review. Is this the ones you just said? Leave a review.

I didn't say it specifically, but if.

You wish, Leave reviews actually do nothing for our rankings. We just like to read them because we like to know what other people think of our podcast.

Soft egos.

It's our ego.

We're just. We're just want to get that tap on the back. Yeah. Doing the good job, guys.

We just want to make sure you don't think we suck.

Yeah, we don't suck. All right, till next time. We've rambled enough here. Thank you very much.

Bye bye. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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