How to get started on LinkedIn

We're going to talk about LinkedIn, more importantly, how we as hospitality owners can use LinkedIn to get our name out there, to get more eyes on our business, to get maybe different eyes on our business and how we can take advantage of it. So I reached out to Rob.

Hey, guys. How's everyone doing? Thanks for. Thanks for watching. I'm really excited to jam with you, Mark, and talk about LinkedIn. I think it's a really cool platform. It's been around for a while, but I think it's kind of making sort of its next wave here. You know, it's been kind of forgotten, but it's doing a lot of cool things as far as its features that I think is going to be really appealing to a lot of the people that are watching this video.

So let's go to the basics then. What exactly for those of you who are watching this thinking, well, what even is LinkedIn? Can you just explain what LinkedIn is in its absolute simplicity?

You know what, I think if I'm going to define LinkedIn now, LinkedIn is a social media network. It's much like Facebook, it's much like Instagram, Twitter. It is one of those now. It's a place where you can engage, you can grow your own audience, you can upload content that's engaging and then link out and point people to your website and your landing pages and all those things.

Very powerful platform people are going there because you just get a different type of vibe and a different type of audience on LinkedIn. And it is, it is so different. It's different from every other type of social media network. How long have you been using LinkedIn?

Yeah, you know what? I think I probably had. I've had a LinkedIn account for a number of years, probably several years now, but I haven't really started. Started using it since maybe a year and a half ago. Started creating a lot more content, started creating a lot more as soon as they opened it up for video content. Started creating a lot of videos just because naturally I was already creating a lot of videos on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook. And so just understanding how people are these days, Video content is just much more engaging. It gets a lot more reach.

So let's delve into the absolute basics then. What are the core basics that you should be looking to achieve when you, when you create in your LinkedIn bio, your LinkedIn profile, when I go in.

You know, obviously every day you're connecting with new people and so the ones you know, you're not gonna accept the connection Request from everyone. The ones that I do though, tend to have obviously a profile picture. So have a really nice, crisp profile picture. Now, depending on your business, if you're a hospitality business, then you want to be a little bit more. You want to be in your element, right? Maybe in front of your property. You know, you don't want it to be too corporate. You know, obviously if you're a corporate, if that's your, you know, that's your space and that's who you want to attract, then you want to be more corporate. But your bio, like, take advantage of your bio. You do have a title. So when you come up on someone's feed and if you request to be connected with somebody, they're going to see sort of like this little blurb, you know, about you. And so you want to put down who you are and what you do, you know, within, you know, and have, have a little bit of a, you know, sort of a human side to it as well. So don't just say like, hey, business owner, entrepreneur, like, you know, be really specific and play to, you know, to your personalities and about you. And you want to put in, like, for me, I really take advantage of that. That's to kind of tell people, you know, what I do, but more importantly, who I can help, right? So for me, I help entrepreneurs, coaches, online course creators, freelancers and service providers. It's sort of like, sort of like a little bit more narrowed down. And so then like, who do you help and then how do you help them? And then also, you know, how they can contact you or your website or if you have some type of promotion or landing page or anything, you want to put it in there. So that's a really key space.

This is the LinkedIn homepage and we're talking about, this is the organic search here. So when someone's scrolling, scrolling and they see this is the title here. So Ed, you all know Ed Davies and this is what they see. Ed Davies helping busy.

Da da da da da.

So yours would be Granary farm state owner. So it's right in the title.

There's.

So when somebody's looking at the network request, this is what we're talking about. You're going to get requests all the time here. That is what people are going to see. So you've got to be really clear from the start who you are, what you do.

Easel Eazl is a really good tool as well.

How do you spell that?

E A S I L dot com.

I like that.

Yeah, really cool tool. They're based out of Australia and they've got templates for all this stuff. So, yeah, for banners. Yeah, banners, Instagram stories, like everything. So, yeah, there it goes. Four hours of your life. No. Yeah, yeah.

How would you go about constructing a post on LinkedIn? What would you be talking about? Especially specifically for the world of hospitality, how would you be sort of bridging this? And what are the key things to look out for when you hit start a post?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like all types of posts, you know, whether it's images or videos or even there you'll see the third icon is documents. So I like videos the most. Obviously, if you guys go and browse through my feed, it'll be mostly videos, but I'm all about, you know, repurposing content as well. So for you guys, I think the best thing to do for most industries is really to storytell and to make the hero your customers. So rather than just like, you know, talking and always having the camera pointed at you and saying how awesome you are, then if you have the opportunity to, you know, have some guests come by and, you know, just take a couple minutes of their time, maybe when they're on their way out, after they've had an experience at your property, to maybe ask them for a video or like, hey, can you say a few words about your experience? That sort of thing. That's one really good type of content. Again, like Mark was saying, pattern disrupts. So, you know, a lot of the things that you'll see on LinkedIn right now are very much business, corporate, you know, motivational stuff. People will share blog posts and those kind of things. Kind of like what I kind of see LinkedIn kind of like what Facebook was a little while ago, where people were sharing, like, blog posts and all those kind of things. But, yeah, so sharing stories, you know, sharing things that are happening throughout your day. LinkedIn still, you know, I think the sweet spot, if you're gonna be creating videos, don't make them too long. So anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds at the most.

I think that's a really good bit of advice. Keep the video short, sharp and sweet. Title. Any advice or tips? Just to sort of further on to the point that I put about that. Is there anything you should be really putting in there? You know, emojis. Do you use emojis? What's the sort of thing to get the attention on there?

Yeah, mix it up. I use both. You know, I usually. My main thing I think is don't make it too long. Right. So if you look at some of these mark. If you scroll up to the Regis one just right above you. Yeah. So you'll see here, like Ed Davies. So his post gets cut off after the third line and there's a Seymour. So be aware of that. If you have a call to action to say, like, hey, go to my website or check out my video on YouTube or, you know, whatever that call to action is, make sure you put that. Try to put that link, if you're linking out, if you have to put it in the post, put it within the first three lines. Now best practice is to not actually put a link in the post caption itself, meaning, like right there and to put the link in the first comment. Since basically LinkedIn doesn't like you telling people to leave LinkedIn. So try not to put that link, that link in the copy. But when you're just beginning, you're just starting out, don't worry about it too much. Just be. Just understand that the first three lines is usually what shows up and then the rest goes to the Seymour. So try to be short and sweet.

Now, hashtags, what do you know about LinkedIn hashtags? Because I know nothing. I know that obviously hashtags are really popular in Twitter. Hashtags are really important and popular in Instagram. Obviously hashtags are not that popular or important in Facebook. But where does it sit with the world of LinkedIn?

Yeah, that's really good. That's a really good point. I'm not too sold on hashtags. I know LinkedIn started pushing hashtags a little while ago and I've been using them and just kind of seeing what I mean, first of all, there's really. Unless I'm missing something, there's really no place to kind of see your stats and analytics on your. How many, how much people are discovering you from hashtags. The only way I use hashtags is. Is for my own name. I got. And this is not my original idea, this is from another creator that I learned this from, is to use hashtags not to be discovered, but to actually just like direct people to all of your content, all of your videos.

I like that. So that's why you put Rob. Hashtag Rob.

Exactly. Yeah.

How do you pronounce your surname again?

Balasabis. Yeah.

Is there any other basics that you can pass. Pass on? Is there anything else to spot from here or how would you. Yeah. Any of a bit of pearls of wisdom you can.

Sure, yeah. I think just touching on connections, I would. So first thing when you do so Mark, let's see my network. If you see. So Mark there has a note from biz buddy, hey Mark, have you come across. So there's a little note there. And so that's really important I find if you are going to be requesting to connect with someone, you can add a note to that request and you can say like, hey Mark, you know, we connected on Facebook Live in the boostly group. We'd love to connect with you and start chatting about opportunities where we can collaborate. Yeah, see here. So you can click add note. Yeah, so that's really important, you know, especially if you're really wanting to make a connection with someone that's a potential partner or that's a massive bit of advice. I think this is more in general and social media is. If you're is basically first thing is just start posting, start creating content and conversation. But also you're asking about what kind of content to create. No matter what kind of content you're creating, try to end off with a question. Again, it's all about engagement, right? So we're talking about followers and all that stuff to, you know, to really win. On social, it's not about having the most followers, it's having the most engagement. So with LinkedIn and really on any social, Facebook or Instagram, ask questions. That way it entices people to comment, right? Don't ask very like the deepest life, you know, questions about life in general. Ask really low hanging fruit questions that are really easy to answer that they are open to answering publicly. So ask those kind of questions. That way people can comment and you can then start a conversation. And so that's one tip. And then the last tip I want to give is comment. So if you don't, if you're a little bit shy and maybe you don't want to be creating a lot of video content or a lot of content in general, start commenting. Like the way that the algorithms work on LinkedIn right now is that even if you're commenting. So if I comment on Mark's post, it's gonna notify all the people that have also engaged with that post that Mark put up. So people that I might not be connected with, but I probably want to be connected with, right? Because if they're gonna be like Mark, they're gonna be awesome and I want to connect with them. So. So yeah, so see here people are like getting, Mark's getting notified that people have commented on his post or people have commented on a post that Mark also commented on. So again you're going to be in the radar now of other people that you're likely wanting to connect with. So if you don't want to create your own content, commenting is also a form of content. So the next thing is when someone comments, comment back, answer their question or add value to that conversation and then maybe ask another question. Right. It just, you know, keeps that circle going.

Now, Rob has very kindly said that he's going to leave us with something. He's been really delving deep into LinkedIn and he's helping business owners all over the world, not just hospitality, get a little bit more of an idea with LinkedIn and just tell us a little bit with the challenge that you've got going on, with the little bit of training that you've got going on when it comes to LinkedIn and how can people, more importantly, get involved if they want to?

Yeah, absolutely. So thanks, Mark. Thanks everyone for watching this video. But yeah, I've really found a lot of value by creating video content specifically on LinkedIn. I know that's not something a lot of people are comfortable with. So what I've actually created is just a free five day challenge on LinkedIn gets you creating video just using your mobile phone for the most part. You can also use your laptop and webcam and all that stuff. And I'll show you how to do that inside the challenge and but for the most part it's just your mobile phone and so I'll show you how to use that, how to create video, even what to talk about and kind of give you some direction on how to do that. A lot of people that I've talked to say like, I don't know what to talk about on my videos. So I've given you some direction on how to do that really easily. So it's a five day challenge. It's been going really well. People have come out of it and then now they're creating video content on LinkedIn regularly and then also even repurposing those videos for Instagram and Facebook now. So it's been really cool.

So again, thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. And yeah, like I said, we'll get the link below. Get on LinkedIn and if you've got any other questions, you know where we are.