Leveraging Linkedin To Shape, Expand and Sustain Thought Leadership

And I was firmly attached to the power of the LinkedIn profile. I looked at it as my own personal canvas that I could create freely on it. I brought stuff to the document that really didn't exist anywhere else about me. I figured people would get to my website. The website had its own content, but the LinkedIn profile was something else because I had it in my mind that This is where people were going to stop first. And truly, the LinkedIn profile, your LinkedIn profile, thought leaders, is your first point of reference in the business universe. And how you tend to it is going to dictate the impact that you're going to make on LinkedIn. So I've always, and I mean from day one and still, just focused on my profile. What kind of perceptions am I putting out there? And I have the ability to guide and manage people on that page. The second part of the hypothesis is once you've defined the success on LinkedIn, you now have to move toward those goals. So attaining thought leadership, which is a— it's a goal, it's a great professional goal, but it's dictated exclusively by how you set yourself up, how you represent yourself, and how you interact on the site. And certainly one thing that COVID has taught us if it didn't teach us before, is that we have to raise our level of accountability in our interactions. We have a battle between 2 different economies on LinkedIn. One is the so-called idea economy where anyone with a concept, with an idea, and a few social media accounts can put themselves out there as thought leaders. But are they truly gaining thought leadership status? And the second is the attention economy, the so-called clutter we have to rise above. And I'm the first to tell you that there's a lot of noise on LinkedIn, and finding your place within that noise is a daily challenge. But those who do, those who continue to work the medium and continue to put themselves out there as value creators, value providers, they're the ones who begin to elevate full frontal in front of their networks. I've outlined what I call my 3 pillars. Everybody's got a thought leadership paradigm. Well, here's mine. I've espoused it for about a decade now. I believe that there are 3 pillars. There could be more, but the foundational aspects of thought leadership as they apply to LinkedIn, the first piece is brand storytelling. Storytelling is the new marketing, but let's face it, people have been telling stories since the dawn of communication. Storytelling is just a nice way to dress up marketing and make it a little bit more right-brainy. The second piece is content marketing. Once you have the message, how do you put the message out there? How is it going to be received? How are you going to tweak it and course correct and make sure that it's on topic and on brand? And the third piece is community management, how we come to grips with this thing called a professional network that we're all building. So it's not so much one before the other as it is a triangulation of how we develop our story, brand storytelling, how we sell that story through content marketing, and how we live that story out in front of the real world or the virtual world in the way we manage our communities. So the brand storytelling piece, as you know, the power of story. I don't need to tell you guys and gals about the power of story, but I love a good metaphor, and a good teaching moment here is to talk about the great Chicago bluesman who started in the Mississippi Delta. Anybody know who that is?

Pictured?

It's the great Robert Johnson, who's considered one of the seminal figures in American blues music and was really one of the great storytellers of his day. And I choose the great Mississippi Delta bluesmen because they were social media strategists. Everything about these folks is what we're trying to do today. So they started in the Mississippi Delta, and as they migrated up, brought the music to Memphis, to St. Louis, and ultimately to Chicago, they wrote about these stories. This was their experience. This was how they created and disseminated value. And I've done a lot of parallel between the thought leaders and how these bluesmen operated back in the day, because the one thing that separated them from the other musicians was they had this Pathological need to be heard. It was insatiable. They wanted to write stories, they wanted to sing their stories, and they used very crude media at the time. And this— but they were the social media strategists of their day. People flocked to them. They were the ones who told the story through song and had value. And nowadays, we're all trying to do the same thing. It takes a lot to be seen, takes a lot to be heard, and sometimes just putting it out there in a— kind of a spray-and-pray approach is, is not the key to developing thought leadership. So we do it through video, we do it by guesting on podcasts, by hosting podcasts. We have all of these media now available to us, and it's how we now sell the story that's going to drive our thought leadership. And that's done through content, through written, through visual, through audio content. Now the content marketing piece back then was a little different. They had these crude instruments. Cigar box guitars. And although different instruments were added to the mix, different channels, it was clear that they all had their different style, their own approach. But they all understood how to best tell their story and get the audience, find the audience, which is what we're doing today. So we'll talk about this in terms of a target market and how people are kind of analyzing the landscape, maneuvering through their environment as thought leaders. Where is that audience? How do we find it? Some people will be receptive to what we have to say. Others will scroll right through us. And on LinkedIn, when you market content, it almost has that kind of message-in-a-bottle feel. I know it to be true. In the old days, I'd put out a blog or a piece or a post and it wouldn't surprise me on a— even on my worst day to get a couple thousand views and hundreds of likes and comments and shares. And the engagement was rampant. But as more people kind of leaned into LinkedIn, more people realized its thought leadership potential, they started to absolutely just swarm the home feed with content. And today, you look at your feed, it is swollen with stuff. There's just a lot of people trying to have a voice, trying to develop themselves as thought leaders, putting themselves out in front of people for inspection and ideally for their stuff to get read. And it almost takes a little bit of chance and hope to get your message into the hands of the right person, washing up on the right shore, so to speak. And the third piece, the third pillar, is how we manage this entity called a professional network, which is probably the greatest challenge we have right now on LinkedIn, be us thought leaders, trusted advisors, executive leaders, innovators, or salespeople. We've brought people into our network, they've brought us into their network. Now what? Managing the community, and that's how we gain acknowledgement, recognition as a thought leader. That's how thought leader status is conveyed. Companies can send out their people as thought leaders. We can certainly self-declare as thought leaders, but it sounds a little funny coming out of the first person. Truthfully, my experience on LinkedIn has been to put myself out there in a way where I let people make up their own minds about me. And if you do good work, it will rise to the top. People will notice it. It's very similar to the kid on the farm, 18-year-old who can throw 90 miles an hour. Someone will find him. The scouts will be out there. So when you produce content, you believe in it, and you believe it will be shared, it has a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So thought leadership is now about producing the kind of content that elevates the author, the figure, but also gets shared. And how we manage our networks becomes a huge piece of how we expand and maintain and sustain thought leadership. And we'll talk about that in our discussion. This is the engagement platform. I call it the LCS Magnum. You've got your likes, you've got your comments, you've got your shares. We all live for the likes. We all want that piece that we work so hard on to be liked. And we want multiple likes. We want people to engage on it. And I'm impressed by the fact that so many people who put work out there don't come back to see how it's truly doing. Metrics tell only part of the story, but what really converts out there on LinkedIn right now is how you filter all of the activity you're engaging in, all of the tasks you're carrying out, into one-on-one conversations that convert, whether it be a sale, a consulting assignment, get brand awareness for your book, your podcast, and back in the day prior to the pandemic, to get speaking gigs. We were putting ourselves out there for a perceived or a desired outcome. We built a following. And today, obviously, in the thought leader's playbook is how can you build a following, not just numbers, but truly people who support you, who will read what you write, who will share what you produce. And I think that's the essence of thought leadership, so that when it parallels with this concept of influence, it doesn't matter how many followers you have. 250,000, 500,000, 1,500,000, they're really just numbers. What I'm more concerned about is who are you influencing, why are you influencing them, and is the influence positive? And obviously for most of us, There's a monetary goal at the end of it. Early programs in thought leadership that I did were called Monetizing Your Mind, and they're still being done today with that title. I mean, how can we convert this notion of thought leadership that we have of ourselves or that others hold of us into financial gain? And with that, I'm done with my PowerPoint.

Thank you.

Wow. And I will pause for your thunderous applause.

On mute. Mute applause. There we go.

Look, man, as a speaker, I live for the applause. So come on.

Exactly.

Peter, Peter, I want to defer to you to, to get the discussion going.

Yeah. So, um, hey Antoine, I just saw Antoine pop in there. Um, a couple of things. So let me just throw out some, some sort of maybe conversation starters and then get some questions going. So I'll tell you some things that I've observed fairly recently, the last year or so, is by far LinkedIn is the place. So we used to be very, I wouldn't say confused, but for each client the answer was very, very different, right? So there's still a place for Twitter, there's still a place for Instagram, there's still a place for YouTube, there's still a place for all these other things, but hands down you've got to be on LinkedIn. So a couple of things that I find interesting is that In the conversations I have with people based on interactions and connections that we make on LinkedIn, I'll often ask out of curiosity or say like, hey, I've done my homework on you, I've checked out your website, blah blah blah, what have you checked out? And I would say 80% of the time they never make it past the profile. And not that that's a bad thing, but I'm like, geez, we spend all this money on our website, on our YouTube and all that, and all they're looking at is the profile. I know how to build a good website. Is the profile optimized?

It is.

if the objective is to get somebody on a call. But it's really interesting to think, wow, the only snapshot someone has of you is, you know, 60 seconds while they're doing 5 other things looking at your profile. That's interesting. The other comment I want to make is to build on something that you said, is I think that the numbers game is just stupid, right? So, you know, back in the early days of LinkedIn, you could buy, you know, Russian bot followers, and it was, you know, how many followers do you have? It is all about quality, it has nothing to do with quantity. The right— I'm a strong believer for all of our clients as well as for Bill and I, the right 100 people could be a game changer to your business. Game changer. You know, you might only have 800 followers and you could quadruple your business with that if they're the right people. And I think conversely, having too many and diluting it and whatever, you just get drowned out in this irrelevant noise. I'd rather be highly tuned into— I know the people that I really, really follow, I'm highly tuned in, I'm engaged. And then there's the other 99% where they've got stuff and whatever. So anyway, why don't we start with anybody— anybody have questions, comments, thoughts for JD? Let's see if we can stump the owl. It's the game show. Janice, you've got your hand raised and your mic off. Let's just get the mic on and then we'll—

Can you please speak to the all-knowing LinkedIn algorithm?

Well, I kind of referred to it in my message in the bottle pair of slides there. These days, and we didn't really hear much about the algorithm prior to the 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, because you could put content out there several times a week and get a fair share of views and people would truly engage on it. But somewhere along the line, maybe because of the user numbers, maybe because of just the way information, tons of information move around the site, there seems to be no rhyme or reason when you let a post go where in the heck it's going to go. So the trend then became, okay, I've got to pound the system. I've got to, you know, F ma. I've got to put more force out there on the system just to get a little bit of movement of the needle. And for whatever reason, your post, your message, The stuff that you work so hard on, it meets this algorithm, these mystic forces, and it just moves the information out there. Through it, LinkedIn makes some recognitions. They do look at your user habits. They do look at your network size. They do look at how often you post. They do look at how much engagement you've received on prior posts. It's a huge mathematical formula and it's tough to figure out. But that's why you have to kind of just keep doing it. Keep stuffing messages into bottles, Janice, and keep hurling them over the side of the boat. They're going to float out there for a while. All it takes, again, to Peter's point, the quality like— you get one good like and the thing opens up for you.

Right.

And, and that's what I try to teach folks to do now is don't be hung up on numbers. Numbers do not tell the story, especially when it comes to fighting the algorithm. And fighting the algorithm is, is a daily challenge.

Well, it seems like I see posts from the same few people in my realm, which is workplace wellness. And I'm wondering— and it's not that I'm worried about numbers, but I do want to expand my reach beyond my fellow thought leaders. I want to go past that. And I'm wondering if I go out and dig up other groups' posts, and I use the word group loosely, will that cause LinkedIn to start connecting me more to those other types of people?

LinkedIn recognizes a couple of habits. One of the things that you want to do is when we talk about building the thought leaders network, you want to bring in people who you feel are going to be good recipients of your content. The more people who aren't, The more it's going to just kind of hang out there in no man's land. Another thing you can do is start liking the content of people whose—

Right.

Who you would like to have like yours.

Right.

So there's a reciprocity involved in the algorithm, and sooner or later it does start to catch. LinkedIn recognizes it. Also, you want to just do a simple like and maybe leave a comment as opposed to sharing a post. Somewhere along the line, people were asking others to share their posts. And when you share people's posts, you lose some of that algorithmic push because now this becomes someone else's post and they're going to fight the same algorithm that you fought to get it out there. So you want to keep people engaged on your post as the author and not have it shared. In fact, I'd like to see LinkedIn do away with the share. Final piece, keep everything homegrown and internal to LinkedIn. Because once you start taking people off LinkedIn, that's a big red flag to LinkedIn. So if you're popping them into a YouTube video that you want them to see, don't put the YouTube link and don't import the featured image from YouTube. Do your post, put an image up on your post, and tell folks that you can launch the video in the comments section. So you leave a comment as to where you'd like to take them. LinkedIn will recognize that as not having a link, keeping people on the site, and they'll keep your post in play.

That's brilliant. Thank you.

Dave, I think you had your hand up. Mr. Simmons?

Yeah, I just had a quick question, JD. I mean, every loaf of bread, every bottle of milk has a freshness date on it. What's your thinking about how often a person should be putting new stuff out there?

How long does it last?

The shelf life of a given post really varies from post to post. I've had posts out that I didn't think would gain any momentum that took on a life of their own for weeks and had thousands of views and hundreds of comments. And then I've had stuff that I thought, well, this is going to engage the heck out of people, and it just kind of fizzled. It just didn't go anywhere. Obviously, there has to be something behind it. So I see a couple folks that I've had this conversation with already. When we talk about pumping content into the system, to be honest with you, daily, multiple times a day, keep liking, keep commenting, like the works of others, comment on the works of others, obviously, when, when it weighs into your sweet spot.

Yeah.

Great post, Steve, is not an engagement. Thanks for sharing, Lisa, is not an engagement with insight. You want to, you want to let the people know that you've read the work, that you've thought about it, and you're giving them content that they can hang on to. So I'm a big believer in refreshing the homepage a couple times, finding people whose content you, you like, and, and letting them know that, hey man, I was here, I saw it.

And maybe let me add to that, JD. Let me, let me just add a thought to that. I, I would say, Dave, We counsel folks to write content in an evergreen manner, you know, unless you're a sports journalist reporting on— remember when we had sports? But we tend to prefer sort of evergreen. And I can't tell you how many things— I mean, we're constantly creating new, but there are things that we know that are like, you know, the Stones playing Satisfaction again, that are just the oldies and goodies.

Right.

And we'll polish them up. We'll put a new image on there, a new something or new whatever. And sometimes you get bored with your own stuff, but it's not about you. If you know it works, if you know it resonates, if you know it's relevant to your marketplace, even if it's, you know, the same old same old, you can tweak it, polish it up, make some modifications, because the data tells you. You know, we're the worst judge. Of the 5,000 blogs I've written, I had no idea that these would be the top 20, none, right? So listen to the data as well, but freshen it up a little bit. You don't want to look like—

Good point.

Yeah.

I'm going through a massive internal audit of my content right now. I'm updating blogs. I'm seeing which ones are evergreen. Which ones don't make sense anymore, and which ones, especially in the face of a global pandemic, are now obsolete. And I think it's a good point to look at what people— if they can't squeeze any more value out of a post from 2005 because of certain new conditions, maybe it's time to edit that out.

Peter, I have a point. Peter?

Yeah, Tander, go ahead. Yep.

Yeah, so let's talk about the eventual outcome. What are we looking for in thought leadership? How do you jump the revenue curve, which is the key thing? I mean, I ran Havas Health.

Yep.

For a long time, for 18 years, and we were able to grow it to number 2 in the world. So how did we do it? I mean, how did we get—

I think that's a great point. So JD touched on it earlier.

Yeah.

Let me expand on it. So I think what happens is sometimes people separate, hey, this is my social activity, I wanna build followership, I wanna post stuff, I wanna do all this other stuff. It has to be your business goals, period. They're not 2 separate goals. So I got lots of other things to do besides posting on LinkedIn and all that. So to me it's like, okay, I wanna have these conversations with these new people. So for us on LinkedIn from a business standpoint, It serves 2 purposes. Number one, it's great for the brand. We want people to come and see us and say, okay, these aren't just 2 knuckleheads, they've written a bunch of things and they actually have a point of view and a perspective that goes back a long, long time. So you've got the expertise. In a move-forward basis, Bill and I primarily, you know, behind the scenes, are looking for net new client acquisition, period, full stop.

Exactly.

So we know the investments we're making, we know what it costs us to acquire a client, and we know that we wanna target people, and there's a bunch of different tools that we do that so we can get them on a phone call So that we can be helpful to them. So ultimately, that's the measurement. I think different people have different objectives, but to me, it's not a popularity contest. I'm, I'm looking for business. I'm looking for clients. I'm looking to help. I mean, I don't mind putting stuff out to people that'll never be clients, but I'm not going to spend 90% of my resources on that.

But it's really somewhere along the line, it comes down to really one-on-one.

I mean, people are not going to share Potential clients are not going to share their concerns with you online. It's a one-on-one.

Right.

They have to like you first, number one. No matter how smart you may be, if they don't like you from a personal point of view, you're not getting the business. So it's a really one-on-one, but in person, and try and do as much research on that person as you, as you can. And then have them eventually share their concerns with you. I mean, how do you build a company? By really focusing on the concerns of that client and getting to fix that, fix their concerns, and you get the income. That's it, over and over again.

Well, I, so I would add to that is that Bill and I know who our client avatars are with a very high level of specificity. So we're in a niche business, right? So we know that 99% of the world, 99.99% probably, couldn't care less about us, and that's fantastic. So we spend all day and night looking for that 0.01%. Who are they? So we know who they are. And number 2, what are their pain points? And can our content, can our thought leadership speak to that? Phil, you wanted to add to that? I think your hand's up.

Yeah, there's something I'd say to there would be, I can list a number of calls where, for the people that I'm trying to reach, my target avatar, I get on a one-on-one call for the first time, a get-to-know-each-other call, and they'll say something like, I've been following you on LinkedIn and it feels like you've been talking to me personally, right? And that's a warm one-on-one conversation when you go and say, rather than, who are you, what do you do? It changes the dynamic so much.

Yeah, sorry, let me unmute there.

Um, there you go.

This is This is some great information. I'm finding myself, probably as a lot of others are, struggling to balance the process here. At some point, I'm almost catching myself where the means becomes the end. And I'm finding myself spending all of this time on LinkedIn just trying to play catch-up on certain things and not looking at purely what are those few activities that are revenue generating that I need to be able to get there. And that's part of my dilemma right now because I'm not the expert that's going to be doing the social media stuff. I'm a business owner that's trying to use this tool to get to clients. And if I try to run a race like this where I'm trying to keep up with the social media experts, I'm losing hands down. And that's part of where I'm trying to keep my head afloat from this, but I'm finding it's getting worse and worse. I'm finding myself in this spiral where it's very, very dangerous and I'm losing, I'm finding myself almost losing focus on the people that are actually paying the bills.

Well, so let me comment and I want JD to jump on that. So there's a couple things there. One is LinkedIn is Microsoft, has thousands and thousands of people staying up all night trying to figure out how to get you on there longer. So there's a dopamine piece there that although you say, hey, I want to go there and just check out that piece that Bill wrote, maybe leave a comment and I got 10 minutes, you know, and 3 hours later you're whatever, you know. That's by design. So I think you have to be disciplined. I think you have to have some goals and objectives. Today I want to make 20 new contacts. Today I want to look at these 5— like, I don't know what those metrics are, but based on your business objectives, I'm going to allocate a half hour of my time, an hour of my time, do it first thing, whatever it is, and not make it that time sucks in, right? Not make it that, oh, Hey, you know, I'm standing in line at Starbucks and let me whip out my phone and, you know, whatever. Like, be really focused and disciplined. JJ, you've probably got a perspective on this as well.

A couple of things, and I'm the first to tell you, Khan, that there's a lot of junk out there on LinkedIn, a lot of rabbit holes that you can go down and a lot of distractions. And if you— but again, the serendipity is also the beauty of the site. LinkedIn has a poor CRM system. They do a very poor job of letting you manage your contacts. for whatever reason. I don't have Sales Navigator. If the question comes up later as to, JD, should I pay, we can talk about that. Because I think that what LinkedIn does in its brilliance and in its greed is it incentivizes your use of the site so that you eventually wind up paying for stuff. You eventually become very tethered to the site if you want the information on the other side, if you want the expanded metrics on who's viewed your profile, If you want more filters to prospect for people. So the more time you spend on the site, the better you get on the site, the more you're going to like what LinkedIn is throwing at you. That said, to piggyback on that point, LinkedIn operates on a series of prompts. People with not much time on their hands, there's a lot of things you can do, what I call a surgical strike on the site. And you can gain a lot of information in a few seconds. Whether it's desktop or whether it's on this thing. And 75% of LinkedIn use now, over 75%, is mobile. So what are the types of things you can do to keep yourself on that track, Con, and keep the important people in front of you? Go on the site, scroll a few times, refresh the screen a few times. Someone's bound to have a birthday or a work milestone or, or a new job, a new position. And LinkedIn's not doing that for sport. It's not doing it so that the haters will say, I don't care. They're doing it like, oh, you know, it's been a long time since I've talked to Ron. What, Ron's got a new gig? Click on Ron's profile, DM Ron. You're in a conversation with Ron. We're talking collaboration. Everything that goes into this so-called conversational funnel, I call it a conversation funnel. The drip on the other end is powerful, and that's what Peter was alluding to with his 0.01%. Not everybody's going to be worth your time, but when you find someone who's worth your time, then you start investing in the relationship. LinkedIn becomes this interface between you supporting each other and introducing them to people who will support them, and that's how the community builds— community you want. Not just the community that's out there, the thought leadership community.

So I want to go to a slightly different direction for a moment, which is modality. So most of us as thought leaders have our default preferences, right? If I'm a writer, I write. If I'm a visual person, I create graphics. You know, if I'm a spreadsheet jockey, I like spreadsheets, etc. I think, you know, once, once you're tuned into your peeps and your tribes and who you're trying to connect with, Also be aware of how they prefer to consume content and don't be afraid to experiment. So I did— when did we do that, Dave? Like 2 weeks ago, Dave invited me on. He's got this new thing which is like a little 5-minute— what do you call it, Dave? What's the title?

I have a daily, very LinkedIn-friendly video blog. It's called Reboot, and it adheres to— it's like tailor-made for LinkedIn. They fit in under 10 minutes. It's 3 questions. And I've been talking to authors and thought leaders, and I've been talking to people in supply chain management. I've got an interview with a graphic artist coming up pretty soon. But the, the core of the, of the concept is what lessons are we learning in the midst of COVID that we must not forget? And I asked 2 questions that are in my guest's wheelhouse. I asked the 3rd thematic question, which is just that— what lessons have we learned? And people are digging it. I mean, it's just long enough to get some traction with who they are, what's on their minds. It gives them some flexibility to say, here's how I'm adjusting to it, here's how I'm remaining relevant and what I've learned. And that's just— and I asked Peter to be a part of it. JD is going to be on it. Khan is going to be on it. And it's just a way to keep things fresh. And even if you— here's an offer I'll make. If you want to come on my program, I'm happy to talk to you, but I will give you that file. If you want to do something else with it, you know what I mean? I have no problem with that. But to Peter's point, I just— I've been doing it because I'm newly independent. For the past 2 months, I'm trying to build a brand. I'm trying to make people have some credibility in me as sort of the universal Swiss Army knife interviewer, consultant, coach to help them present better from a digital media standpoint. And that was just the concept. And the right people put me in touch with Peter, and here I am listening to all you smart people, you know, totally sucking it up. So thanks for that.

Well, what's cool about that— so Dave, short term, I'm not putting words in your mouth, you know, is looking for digital marketing gigs. That's what he does. He's done it for some of the best folks out there. So what a brilliant way to do it. One is the production value is cool. You look at that and go, that's different. I haven't seen anything like it. And he's smart because he's working with— I don't know, what do you have, 50 of those already? He's done a bunch of them. And everybody that does it promotes it. So you're promoting Dave, right? You're promoting it to your network to say, look at me, look at me, I just did an interview with this guy. But then everybody's like, well, who's the other bald dude on this? He's interesting. Let me go check him out. So you've got people every day now promoting you. And I don't know, I'm assuming that will turn to good stuff for you because, you know, one is you got to do good work, right? If it's crappy, that would not—

Yeah, well, it has already. I pushed out episode 59 this morning. I've got— I'm sitting on like 6 of them right now that are in post-production. I've got 2 more interviews. I'm gonna have to leave early today to actually do another one. But it's just a way to keep things fresh. And it's also an opportunity for me to just give back to a whole bunch of smart people who I've gotten to know over the past blah, blah, blah, blah years, you know? So that's my take.

Well, and I think just to dovetail on that, most of us here have value in our LinkedIn network that we could be sharing with others. Right? So when Dave came to me, I'm like, I'll do that. JD's got something for me, he wants me to put it out there, I'd be happy to do that. I know he's smart, I'm happy to put him in front of people. So I think that's part of it too, is how can I— the network that I've built, how can I offer it to you, assuming you're someone I like and I trust and I admire and your messaging would be good for my peeps? Sandra, you had something to say there.

Yeah, Peter, but it really, as we discussed, comes down to one thing: I will fix your problem. I'm the— I am the fixer, and people love the fixer because everyone has, you know, everyone has these big issues. So if you get a personal branding, a personal branding of the problem fixer, that's it. You know, they're gonna love you.

Well, I think the best LinkedIn profiles are written from the point of view of client pain.

Yeah.

It's amazing how many profiles that I've seen that talk about the subject as being a results-oriented problem solver. And first of all, can I just say, is there anybody out there who's not results-oriented at this point? And it's amazing that the folks who speak of themselves as these intuitive, natural problem solvers don't talk about the problems they solve. So to Sander's point, the more you can open the window of the of your world into client pain, write it from a client-centric perspective, and assert yourself as the solution and believe in the strength of your solutions. That's what builds the brand. That's what builds thought leadership. It builds authority.

But you know, JD, within the advertising industry, what you hear is, my creative won an award. Who cares? Who cares if it doesn't move the product? It's about revenue. That's what it's about, making that client look good. Winning an ad, who cares?

People don't care how cool you are. They just want to know what you can do for them.

JD, who's ever met someone who's a self-titled influencer that ever influenced anybody?

I have yet to meet them. That's a good point.

Yeah, and when your post starts with, I'm writing this to inspire you, it almost guarantees there's nothing inspirational coming, right?

Yeah, so maybe we should start our post with, I'm writing this to not sell you anything, based on that. I'm going to try that.

Please don't read this post if you're looking for garbage.

Right, right, right, exactly.

Well, you know, there's a lot of— I mean, it goes even deeper than that when you see people sabotaging themselves on LinkedIn. It's— I mean, I, on the one hand, it's, it's It's like, I don't want to look, but I have to look. It's like passing by the scene of a bad car wreck. I mean, your eye is drawn there, but you don't want to look for a long period of time. But I applaud people who have a voice and there's a lot of content and I'm sure it aggravates you as well, that looks very mundane and it looks very trite and yet it's getting tens of thousands of likes and views and comments and you're wondering, well, gee, the post that I just put 50 to 100 man-hours into isn't getting anything, and these people are getting great engagement. Again, it's the quality versus quantity argument. So my advice is, again, you just got to keep hurling the messages in the bottle over the hull of the boat and they'll wash up.

I got a question for you, JD. And lately people have been, for example, throwing my name And hey, these are for people who really know B2B marketing, and they list like 12 guys, and then for the rest of the day my post is blowing up with everybody sort of liking it. Have you seen any evidence that that brings anyone any kind of traffic besides you needing to go in and mute all these darn posts?

It'll give you a couple dozen connections who won't buy from you.

Yeah, that's kind of where my—

It's kind of an in-the-moment thing. Though it happened with me the other day.

Hey guys, I'm sorry, I have to leave the meeting. I really enjoyed it tremendously.

Thank you.

Nice, Andrew.

Thanks, Andrew. So, J.D., let me, let me comment on what Andrew said. So I, I would split that comment in 2, Andrew. There are people out there who I'm happy when they put my name on something because I know they're always putting out good things and I'm proud to be guilty by association. Then there's some knucklehead that I, I don't even remember I was connected with and they're looking through their list of who's got the biggest whatever. And, and, and now there's 87 people in a comment. And like you said, like, you know, you're starting to get blown up with the comments. I'm like, how can I unfriend you and mute you? And now I'm just thinking like, okay, that guy just got filed in the jackass category. I think it's just so obnoxious.

Um, you put them in the Bitcoin—

I think there's a difference. What's that?

You put them in the Bitcoin folder?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Melissa, you've got your hand patiently, patiently up there. Janice. And we'll get to you, Janice. Sorry. Whoop, you're muted, Melissa. Whoop, let me get you unmuted.

Sorry.

We need the game show buzzer.

Right.

So, JD, my question is, what about these folks— like, I try to be in my network not careful, but somewhat careful about the people that I connect with in the sense that I understand why we're connecting. I get it. Versus people where I— like, you'll get people that are— they've connected to other people that you know, but they live across the country, don't do anything similar to you, and all they want to do is sell something to you. And I had— I've had 2 of them.

Be wary of them.

One guy probably sent me 5 inbox messages that I responded to zero of them, which is probably why I didn't get the 6th one. But I'm like, dude, stop. I don't want to do this. I'm not interested. And I guess that's on me because I should have said, hey, you know, back off. But, but how do you filter to make sure that the connections you have are useful? Or do we care? Because I see these folks that I'm connected to 30,000 people. I don't even know 30,000 people. Like, let's be serious here.

It's pointless.

Yeah. So, so how do I, how do I filter? How do you filter that for what's useful and what's just like, I have 30,000 friends?

You're leading into a great area. Here's how I would go back and rephrase that. You want to make sure that the connection is sound. Obviously, if someone is selling you at the point of an invitation, that is the most egregious breach of ethics right there. I mean, that really takes, at this stage of the game, with all that we're hearing about personalizing invitation and developing the relationship, the audacity of people who would sell you something, pitch something to you on the invitation. I report all those people to LinkedIn.

Well, I typically unfollow you. I unlink immediately.

It's a violation of the rules.

Clearly I was behind the 8-ball on a couple of them.

Yeah, but at the same time, the people that connect with you under the guise of being familiar with you for all the right reasons and then they try to sell, again, It's, it's not good connections in the network. Good connections in the network are people who come to you organically through your own experience, who you're happy to connect with, and there's some kind of flow to it. Like with everybody here, we've all shared a common experience migrating in and out of these various communities. You, you contact people who intrigue you. We're all kind of in this thought leadership space. You know that you're going to get a good conversation at the other end of it, and you see what's there for people. When it comes to kind of finding that lane to cruise down and get into a sales dialogue, you have to earn the right to do it. Some people are uncomfortable when they kind of hear it coming, but they kind of by that time have the expectation. But that's going to happen, and that's not a LinkedIn problem, that's a LinkedIn user problem. So connections are your connections until proven otherwise. If you connect with them, They really annoy you or ignore you or, or offend you in some way, launch them.

Can I comment on that, JD? You know, this 30,000 follower thing, and I know JD knows what group I'm talking about. I was in a— where 2 people were advocating for why that's so important. And these are the people who, who basically shoot mosquitoes with shotguns because Their belief is that you get 30,000 people in your group and then they might know somebody in their network who wouldn't find you any other way, which is kind of like playing roulette in Vegas. But the other side of it is then they get into, well, once you're up to 30,000, then you have to start getting rid of, you know, the Bangladeshi boat builders who you're never going to do business with and replace them. And I think about what my hour costs me. And how much of that, that, that I want to spend honing and pruning a list of who knows who. So absolutely what JD is saying is 100% spot on. And further point, Andrew, it's really easy to click, sure, I'll connect with you. And then later you're going to have to go back and do the work to get rid of all those people because not only are they clouding your feed with crap you never wanted to see. But they're preventing you from seeing good content from people that you want to hear because your, your feed's full of garbage.

Well, and further to your point, if I'm tapping into you for your network, when I reach out to somebody in your network, I'd like a response. Yeah, as opposed to, oh, I'm connected to them. I don't even remember that person. Sorry, I can't help you.

Yeah, I've been, I've been on LinkedIn since like the first days it was on, and back then it was your, your contacts that you had, and you could see to go, hey JD, I see that you've spoken to this guy, you're connected, I'm about to reach out to that company, can you tell me about him, can you introduce me? That was really what it was about back in the day, and it's powerful. I, I can't tell you how much business I've done because great people I do business with reciprocate, say, hey, you know the CEO of this company, can you, can you get me a meeting? I can't seem to get through the gatekeeper. That's power. Now you got people that will argue with you that LinkedIn stopped being a business format. It's a social media format and everything is a game. Those people are not in my, in my connections anymore because I don't— I'm not interested in that. If I want that, I'll go to Facebook.

Yeah, I'd like to add something to this.

Oh yeah, who's that?

Nico. Hi, Peter, once again.

Did you shave a beard off or something? You look different.

Yes, I did. It's the new look.

I usually don't do details, but I'm like, whoa, same name, different Okay, got it. Here you go.

But the same guy, same guy, different costume, no? But it's the same guy. Yeah, I'd like to add a little bit to this. I've seen personally, and I'll be very frank, I think we find ourselves in different niches. I rarely post, and I do not see it as a social media platform. I hope the algorithm stays in the business format in this sense, even though, I mean, LinkedIn in the end is driving revenue through memberships instead of time spent. An increase, a ridiculous increase the last few years in content, and they're pushing a lot of content so that users stay more on the platform. No, I'll be very frank with— My LinkedIn strategy and what's actually worked and has conversion rates is one-on-one conversations, so to say, old-school referrals and so forth. I do find the problem, and this is my question, JD, that Regretfully, this is not scalable in the sense that I do spend my day, I answer 20 LinkedIn messages per day. I personalize most of them. I have automated a part of this process. And in the question to personal messages, without losing this personal touch to it, if you, JD, could recommend tools, CRM tools, you know, if you integrate HubSpot, Zapier, or any other kind of integration, organizations that help. And on the other side, how recommendable is LinkedIn evolving to more of a social media platform where content is being constantly exposed, which to be quite frank, I don't know about all of you, but contacts, usually they're CFOs, these are busy people. They spend 10 seconds on a post, they might read the 2 top lines of the article. If it's of interest, they'll save it for later. But this engagement, and excuse my French, but it's— I find it sometimes to be a lot of bullshit, to be quite frank. You know, there's very few, and they are the ones that offer webinars, they are the ones that actually offer value of a learning experience. You know, LinkedIn is a platform where I can contact a CEO, have a conversation with him, learn from their experience. As an entrepreneur, this has decreased my learning curve very highly. But the fact is, we have 8 hours a day. How can we functionalize this? JD, if there's any tools you would recommend integrating into LinkedIn— I have used LinkedIn Sales Solutions. I have used HR solutions work-wise, but I don't find it very functional in that sense.

Peter, you have something to add? JD, before you answer that, I just want to push on one thing that you said, Nico, that I think needs clarifying. So you talk about, you know, you have this routine, you answer this many a day, you do this many a day, whatever, and you want to get phone calls and all that. That's great. And then you said scalable, and I think I think that's actually the wrong question. Is your goal to be scalable or is your goal to be impactful? You know, as a result of those phone calls you're having, is that doing what you want it to do? If it is, then I'd say right at you, it's working. It doesn't, you know, scalable just means you get to do more stuff, you know, quicker, more effectively, more efficiently. But if you're having the right 5 phone calls a week that lead to the outcomes that you're looking for, does that—

Yes, yeah, I understand the The question of high importance is generating impact and quality, and a conversion rate in the sense where there's a follow-through that the person I'm having contact with actually becomes a client, and not just a client, but a high-paying client.

Got it.

It's the quality of the clients, not necessarily the magnitude. I think that with the routine, There's 2 ways of going. You can automate, you can do posts, you can attract more traffic, so to say, or you can have someone on your team assume a role of community management and continue with a personalized messaging system in that sense. For me, there's 2 interests mostly, and the prior is learning from the experience of others, something I highly value, and I even give out my time. In the sense, I mean, I charge a certain amount as a strategic business consultant, but it's been very helpful to put out my schedule for free, so to say, to generate conversations, to turn cold calls into warm contacts, so to say, because I see that business mostly goes through referrals. It's old school in that sense. No, I think having much more traffic, and I could put the example of the CEO of Slidebean, he's a good friend in New York. What he does, he is dedicated and has a wonderful YouTube channel about financial education for startups, and how to, from A to Z, how to develop convertible notes, how to convert them into shares and so forth. But he's generating value, and he attracts his clients through this value. I think that's one of the keys. No, the other thing is just posting content and having a ridiculous amount of content that doesn't really make sense or has no cohesion in an intellectual side or in an educational side in that sense. Yes, the importance is in quality. But once again, we have 8 hours a day. There's only so many conversations where I can also have the input of personalizing them with quality. I can't assure that I wait a couple of days to answer or do the workflow. That was a bit the question of saying, how much can you automate while remaining personal? Because I hate the emails that I can— when I start reading it, I can see it's completely automated and they just changed the name, so to say. I think we're in the age of having rapport in our relationships in that aspect. And I'd love to hear your opinion, Peter, Bill, and JD also.

There's a lot there.

I wanted to jump in.

Go ahead, JD.

So a few people have brought this up, and Melissa and a couple other people. First of all, I want to congratulate Melissa For moving, she's the only person that's been moving this whole time, and I see that she's standing and she's either doing a treadmill or something.

What a—

go, go movement! I'm so impressed.

10 minutes before the end of the hour, I need my steps. So yeah.

That's— I mean, just so impressive.

Distracting.

But in response to what Melissa said, and I think what we're all trying to do is make connections, and what And I think that's what Peter said. I think that's what Peter Sanders said about people buying from people they like. The only way to get to know people is to have the one-on-one conversations. But when you first connect with somebody who maybe attended one of your events or was in a group with you, getting that one-on-one conversation isn't always so easy. And you can't start pitching. As we all agree, we don't want to be pitched to the minute we said, yes, I'll connect. A way to connect so that you can develop the trust and the like, the true like, right?

Yes, absolutely.

But I think it's a little bit difficult. You can't just ask for the— I mean, it's like going all the way on the first date. You can't just ask for the business the minute you meet somebody. You have to develop over time some kind of relationship.

Janice, if I may, something that has worked very well for me is researching the counterpart, so to say.

Yes.

So I research, I read an article of them, and I comment on this. This is a bit the engagement, the elevator talk, so to say. You know, it's, hey, I found this interesting, I'd like to know more about it. I fully agree, and I think the sales pitch is something for the 3rd meeting. Work on the relationship first. Get to know each other, feel each other's energy, if we wanted to be a little subjective. And if there is potential in a business relationship in a symbiotic sense, then you do the pitch. And that's my opinion, and that's what's worked for me. And I don't doubt there's other ways of operating, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Bill, you had something you want to jump on? You wanted to add to that?

Actually, JD, I know you've had a couple questions thrown your way. Why don't you answer them then, and then I've got something to add as well.

Anytime that you try to game the system, and by gaming the system I mean removing yourself from the equation, your brain, your DNA, your hardwiring, your eyesight, your critical thinking, anytime you remove that from the equation, you run the risk of not using LinkedIn effectively.

Yeah.

You can't automate, I'm sorry to say. I have no tool to recommend to you, Nico. Other than your brain. Once you try to bring a virtual assistant in there, you're jeopardizing what could be great relationships that you're delegating to someone else. What I've learned in 15 years of doing this— thought leader, executive, salesperson, whatever— you can't delegate. LinkedIn is like a lottery. You must be present to win. If you're going to do business on LinkedIn, if you're going to advance a career, if if you're going to develop a partnership, if you're going to build a referral network, whatever the endgame, you've got to do it. You've got to be proactive in doing it, and that means sifting through the muck like the old prospectors do. You know where the term prospecting comes from, right?

Yeah.

They put their sifter into the mud and they shook and shook and shook and shook and shook. Nothing. Put it back in. They shook and shook and shook and shook. Nothing. And this went on until finally When the sun was going down, they pulled out what? One little nugget of gold. And I'm sorry to say that that's how LinkedIn kind of works. You've got to sift before you find the gold. And if you delegate, if you remove yourself from it, you're not going to have the encoding and the processing and the memory, and you're not going to be able to put it together to bring yourself into a conversation with someone and try to merge it down a sales journey.

Yep. Well, this has been great. As we start to wrap, let's do any— so thank you to JD. Any last-minute questions we didn't get to? This was good, but I think this was top tier. Antoine, put your hand up. Turn your mic on.

Yeah, no, I have a last-minute question. I'm not sure whether I'm necessarily extending this, but I have 2 questions. I mean, you alluded to Navigator. And we never got to it, you know, you thought about, you know, LinkedIn Navigator, you know, use it, don't use it, which case it's worth paying, are there any tips and tricks around that?

Okay.

And then I have to admit, maybe this is why I waited until the very last moment, I have a very, very probably stupid and basic question. But when you talk about posting, what do you mean? And is there only one way to post on LinkedIn? Are there other ways to publish? So that's really a very fundamental question.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, let me take, let me take the first, the second part of that first, if I may, Senator.

Senator? Okay, I'll take it.

The first part, the first part would be what is posting? Posting is an outflow from you. It is an expression from you. It is done in the form of either a short form post, which is right at the homepage of your profile, profile, which is the default page, the stream, it gives you an opportunity to post something, whether it's a thought, whether it's a link to something you've written elsewhere, something you've written on LinkedIn, just putting up an image, video, whatever, any kind of outflow from you.

Got it.

That ideally is related to what you do.

Got it.

Ideally.

And second of all, regarding the paid version of LinkedIn, Again, I—

but hold on one sec because you can't— before you continue, there isn't any other feature like publishing or something else?

Well, there's LinkedIn long-form publishing, which is— everybody has a blog that's connected to their account. When you look at your homepage and you're ready to post, one of the options that LinkedIn gives you is write an article. If you click on that, it will take you to a dedicated internal blog platform that is directly attributable to your account. So if you post and publish on that, LinkedIn will take you through the steps to post. It's just like a regular blog, and ideally you want to keep them anywhere between 150 to 400 words max. You don't want to write a white paper on that thing.

When you write an article, that's what you're referring to?

Right. You want to write little short bursts of who you are professionally. Yes, they can be emotional in nature, but there's value there. As thought leaders, we want to dole out our value in increments, in palatable increments. So you release these into the LinkedIn bloodstream and ideally they generate engagement.

Yeah.

And because they're internal to LinkedIn, they will get you a higher level of engagement than taking people to your website. In many cases, here's a great strategy for you folks who have off-LinkedIn blogs. Write a LinkedIn publishing post, a blog. It used to go into a thing called Pulse, but that's no longer there.

Yeah.

But write a long-form post that links to your blog. So you tease the piece enough where you give people some value, but it's like, for the full story or to read more, click here, and then it will take them to your blog. So that's the first piece. And then obviously LinkedIn does support video. It does support audio. So you can, if you're guesting on a podcast, great way to parse out your value as a thought leader is to put your podcasts out there on LinkedIn. The second piece, I don't have Sales Navigator. I have the Business Premium account. The times that I've looked at Sales Navigator, there are some things that are great about it and there are things that I would never use in it because—

Mm-hmm.

Everything I can accomplish on LinkedIn, I do on a one-to-one basis. So I, I really do operate on the, what I call the end-to-end, the mind-to-mind. And I'm much more concerned with having great one-on-ones, which has been a real blessing in this pandemic curse. I've met more people in the last 5 months than I've met in 2 years of speaking and networking.

Yeah.

And I mean quality people that I would have never known any of you if it weren't for the pandemic.

Right.

You guys started it when we were all healthy, but, and not fighting the thing, but who would have really known? Who would have given themselves up in a way where they would be going into meeting after meeting after meeting on Zoom and meeting people? So now the strategy becomes leveraging LinkedIn truly in an integration with Zoom to set yourself up for opportunities. And as a thought leader, that means selling books, hinting that you write about book, hinting that you're a podcast guest, and that you'd like to guest on more shows, hinting that you're starting a podcast, looking for guests, just kind of, again, leverage.

That's—

it's a word that's thrown out there so much. It's in Peter and Bill's Tribe, thought leadership leverage.

Yeah.

Anytime you assert yourself on the system, you're assured of something ideally happening on the other side. But if you're inactive, reactive and neglecting it or postponing it or delegating it or removing yourself, nothing happens.

Cool. And, and well, this has been great. I want to make sure we wrap because we're out of time. Oh, there we go, 3D. So thank you to JD. This has been fantastic. And thank you. It's like Survivor here.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah.