How to Create Content for Linkedin with Dan Knowlton

Foreign.

I've just got finished on an interview with Dan Knowlton of Knowlton Agency, host, co host of the Business Anchors podcast with his brother Lloyd. And we talked about LinkedIn. He's massively used LinkedIn to, to grow and scale his agency. And, you know, he's done a lot of LinkedIn training online. He's done workshops with LinkedIn and when I, when I, when I came up with the idea of doing a LinkedIn episode, he was one of the first people that I wanted to contact.

Sure. So, yeah, I'm currently in our office in Margate, Kent. We run a digital and social media marketing agency called Knowlton and I run it with my brother Lloyd, who's the co founder who was on your show last week, like he said. And we help brands, businesses, organizations to create entertaining ad campaigns that sell stuff. That's the really simple way of putting it. And we mainly do that through kind of creative video and paid social media campaigns. And I also speak at events around the world and share the insights we learn from working with brands and running campaigns. Obviously at the moment, not really traveling. I've had quite a few speaking engagements postponed, so I did a virtual event the other day which was quite fun. I think, Atomicon, that you were there.

Could you just sort of give a breakdown of when did you start taking LinkedIn seriously? Because obviously you've had the business for a while now, if you used it in your previous jobs and careers than what you were doing beforehand. But yeah, just give us a little breakdown of when it came into your sort of world.

LinkedIn from about five years ago we were just scheduled automating content to go on it and not taking it seriously at all. So I'd say probably about two years ago we actually started thinking, we can't just automate content to go on this platform just because it's something we should be doing whilst we're focusing all our attention on other platforms. So, yeah, I'd say two years ago we started taking it seriously and, and completely changed up our strategy.

But what do you find is the biggest misconception when you talk to somebody, someone in a brick and mortar or maybe somebody from hospitality? Maybe it's just like a mate down at the pub and having a chat with them and you say, oh, you should check out LinkedIn. What do you think the biggest misconception is? When people talk about that platform, they.

Think that LinkedIn is just a place where you go to get a job or you sort of upload your CV to get a new job and It's a fair, you know, understanding of it because that's what it started at. It started as somewhere where mainly for recruiters and people searching for jobs, where you go and you get a job or you apply for jobs. Whereas now it's completely evolved into this sort of social media powerhouse. It's so much more than that now.

Do you know of where it ranks now in terms of the other social media? Has the people using the platform overtaken Twitter, for example? Do you have like a privy to any of those?

It's definitely more than Twitter. It's not quite up to Facebook's 2 billion yet, but it's in the top five social platforms, so, yeah.

So are you personally quite active on Facebook anymore or do you spend majority of your time on LinkedIn because that is where you feel like your potential clients and customers could be?

Yeah, you're exactly right. Most of our time, especially mine, is spent on LinkedIn. It's where we get the most reach, the most engagement, the most conversations, and it's our ideal target market. A lot of decision makers are on LinkedIn and, yeah, because it's the place where we get the most engagement on the content that we publish on my personal profile, I spend a lot of time having conversations and engaging. Whereas Facebook, for the brands that we run campaigns for, it's hugely powerful and it's the main focus. But for our agency, LinkedIn, we spend way more time there now, definitely.

So when you see a client of yours, say, and they're posting on Facebook and they may be posting on LinkedIn, what would you say is the biggest mistake that you see people make when they're sort of posting content on LinkedIn?

It's important to understand the differences for each platform. It's a completely different audience. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people kind of having when they're posting on LinkedIn is that they try to be all corporate. For some reason, we get this mentality that LinkedIn's a business platform, which is known for a B2B platform, but people get in this kind of corporate mentality where they need to be very stiff and have no personality. And especially when kind of setting up your profile and writing your bio and producing the copy for posts. You know, we've seen through experience, the content and the angles that work really well are when you do the opposite to what you think you should be doing on LinkedIn.

Are you spending time posting on Knowlton business page? Are you doing the majority of it for just you and, like, say, your.

Personal brand on there Almost all of it on my personal profile. We've got a company page set up because when you put in your job role on your profile, it links to a company page. So when people click on it, it goes to a company PA and then there's a link to your website. So it's quite a good way to drive traffic. However, across the board, you can generate so much more organic reach, organic engagement, organic opportunities through posting on your profile compared to if you post on a company page. I think it comes, it's definitely how the algorithm is configured.

When you put a post out on social media, it doesn't matter whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or anything. And you put a post out and it gets tumbleweeds, as in nobody really sees it, the reach is really low, no likes or engagement. So with LinkedIn and what I like about what you do is you do create content that is really engaging. What are sort of the tips that you give to business owners when they're sort of saying to you, Dan, you know, how do I get more traction? How do I get more engagement on Facebook? What's the sort of the top tips that you do share with people and how do you sort of break that down?

The first key thing is if you want people to be engaging with your content and commenting on your content, it's really basic. But so many people we speak to don't do this. You need to be proactively engaging with other people's content. Right. You need to be investing time, you need to be scheduling time every single day in your calendar to be adding meaningful comments to other People's content on LinkedIn.

Now something that I've always wondered with LinkedIn is hashtags. Now obviously with Twitter, Twitter became. One of the reasons why Twitter was so popular is the hashtags, the use of hashtags in a post because it started a conversation and you know, you can sort of, you know that Facebook isn't hashtag based at all, but Instagram is. Now where does it stand in the realms of LinkedIn?

Yeah. So on LinkedIn you can follow hashtags. So if I followed the marketing hashtag, then content that's published that uses that hashtag, a percentage of that will be shown in my feed. So it's definitely a strategy you can use to generate more reach.

B2C is heavily, you know, leisure guests, tourism guests is heavily, what brings in a lot of our revenue. But there are a lot of people watching that rely heavily on the corporate world getting business bookings. So the scenario based question that I've got. I'm an owner of a couple of rental properties in a popular city centre. I know that some of my guests come in from out of town for work. I would like to get more of these guests because they fill up that midweek calendar. How could I use LinkedIn to network or get in front of the decision makers, the pa, the accommodation service providers for more businesses in my local area? What are your top tips in this scenario?

Firstly, there's really three core pillars of your LinkedIn strategy that you should be thinking about. So these three core pillars are your profile, optimizing your profile. Secondly, your content strategy, so what you're posting on LinkedIn. And the third thing is your engagement strategy. The first thing you need to think about before diving into those three pillars is who are these key decision makers that you want to be reaching on LinkedIn? Right. Once you know who they are, then you can start to dive into those three pillars of LinkedIn. Firstly, your profile. So you need to optimize your profile in two ways. Firstly, you need to optimize your profile for search. So there's a number of things you need to do to ensure you're found by these key decision makers on LinkedIn. The way you do that is through keywords. So you need to do keyword research. There's a really good article from a guy called Backlinko, or his name on Twitter's Backlinko, Brian Dean. That's it. He's written a really comprehensive free guide to read. Once you've done that research, you can then start to input those keywords throughout your profile on your headline in. In your. So that's one stream of optimizing your profile. The other stream is optimizing your profile for conversion. So once this PA lands on your profile, they discover you. That's the first bit of work. But then you actually need to convince them that you're worth speaking to convince them that you're credible, convince them that you can deliver whatever it is you're saying you can deliver for them. So there's a number of ways you do this. So visually, things like your profile photo, your header image is another big bit of collateral in your profile that you can optimize to clearly communicate that you can deliver what you say you can. So, for example, if you're saying that you've got great accommodation for businesses and people within the business world, what image could you produce at the top of your profile to reinforce that message? Could it be a lovely photo of your accommodation with the extra strong wi Fi because you know they're going to be connected to the Internet with something saying about they can check in and out late and early, whatever, whatever a business person wants from their stay, clearly communicate that. Could it be other big credible organizations, their logos on that header image, because that communicates credibility. So you need to optimize your profile for search and for conversion. That's the first real pillar at the consideration stage. When they're considering you as an option, you need to be thinking, what questions are they having in their head before making a purchase decision? What do they need to see to be convinced that you're the best solution to their problem? The simplest way to describe this is think of like the Amazon product page as an example. On an Amazon product page, you have every single piece of information you could ever imagine that you wanted to make a decision that if that product is right for you or not. You've got reviews, you've got testimonials, you've got all the information on specs of the product. You've got other people saying what they think of it, asking questions with other people, answering loads of videos, loads of images. Think of yourself as an Amazon product page on your LinkedIn. What can you produce to give them all the answers they need at that stage? And then finally at the purchase stage, once you've produced these different layers of content and someone's ready to buy, what can you do to make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch with you? So things like adding a call to action into your LinkedIn profile, if you're interested in a business booking, message me today or whatever you want to say. Adding a call to action in your content, that just gives you a bit of an idea about that. And finally, engagement to ensure you're being seen. If you're starting from scratch, you've got no audience, no one's going to see you. How can you get people to see your content? Engagement is so important. Proactively engaging with other people's content is so, so important. So you need to schedule 10, 15, 20 minutes a day to proactively comment and add meaningful comments to other people's content. People are convert because you've optimized your profile for conversion.

Right? Really do appreciate that. And as we do with every guest, I like to finish on quickfire questions so we can get to know a little bit more about Dan number one. Number one, one, one, one, one. If you could be on lockdown, so in isolation lockdown with just one celebrity figure or a famous figure, dead or alive, who would that be?

It's got to be Ricky Gervais.

So I think I already know the answer to the next question, which is, what movie have you watched over the past few months that you can Recommend, Apart from Afterlife 2?

Oh, I tell you what, I think season 3. Have you watched Ozark? Ozark's like a roller coaster. I just. I watch it with my fiance, Cristel, and it's just quite stressful to watch because it's about money laundering and they're in these crazy lives. Money laundering. But yes, good. Definitely recommend that.

Next one. What is the one thing that you've missed the most since being on lockdown?

It's got to be socializing and going to the pub. I just say pub in general.

Next one. What is your favorite purchase in the past 12 months? But it's got to be under 100.

Something that Lloyd and I are constantly talking about. Now, we both signed up to this beer subscription service and we get all these different beers on a monthly basis. And we've both got this app called Untapped, which is a free app. You basically scan the barcode of the beers you have and rate them and stuff. And we just get so much of enjoyment of trying these different weird tasting beers and ranking them and commenting on each other's beers that they've drunk and stuff.

So do you have a favorite podcast or an audiobook or something that you like as you're going into work or working out or whatever? Is there any podcast that you like listening to or audiobook?

The one I always get most excited for is the diary of a CEO Steve Bartlett, because he's running a social chain, which is basically a scaled up version of what we do. And so it's just for us, for me, it's really relatable hearing his journey of being a CEO and. Yeah, and it's just really interesting.

So obviously this is a podcast and it's the whole of Boost Lee stands for is all about showing hospitality owners how to increase direct bookings. And I would love to know if you were sat chatting to a hospitality owner, hotel, guest house rental, whatever, and someone says, dan, how could I increase my direct bookings? What would be that one piece of advice that you could pass on to them?

I think of this as from a different perspective rather than a marketing hat. I think of it as a consumer because I'd be thinking, why should I book direct? Like, I think looking at me analyzing myself as a consumer because I've traveled and booked places, I think only a couple of times I've booked direct and I'm obviously going to book direct all the time now, because I'm listening to you, Mark. But, yeah, only because I haven't seen a big enough incentive, like, obviously with platforms like Airbnb, it's very easy and things, but the couple of times I did, I remember going somewhere, loving it, and they basically said, oh, by the way, if you book direct, next time we'll give you a discount and whatever. And I thought, you're a really nice person and I just want to do it to be nice to you. And you've given me a bit of an incentive. So I think my advice, again, actually thinking from a consumer's point of view, is what's your value proposition to book direct? It's so easy for me to go book on the Airbnb app. It's so easy for me to go on booking.com, so why should I bother having to go through your website and do all that? And I'm sure there's loads of answers as to why I should do that. That you preach all the time, Mark, in the comments. But it's fine.

This is a really good question because it just proves my point that us as hospitality owners all over the world aren't saying this in the most obvious places, that is social media, our own website. So, yes, it's really good to get somebody's outset looking in. Really appreciate your time, buddy. Thank you so much. And if anybody wants to go find you on LinkedIn, how are we spelling your last name?

It's K, N, O W, L, T, O, N. Lovely.

Go type that in. If you just type that in on. On. On The Google and LinkedIn is. His profile will come up. All right, buddy, thank you very much. But for now, thank you so much for everybody that has tuned in.