Boost B2B Sales with Social Selling with Dr. Tina Ruseva

It's your robot. You can consider it like your tool. It's your machine. You are telling it, hi, you are now going to count me as an whatever leader you are and an expert because I'm going to put that content online. And the algorithm is saying, deal, but you have to deliver. So if you do this regularly and if the content is great and if it doesn't have typos, if you don't edit it very often after you have posted it, If people start reacting, it will over time be shown just to your people. Nice to meet you guys. I'm super excited. My name is Tina and I graduated the Founders Institute here in Munich, in Germany, where I'm based, 5 years ago. I want to talk to you today about how I use LinkedIn to bootstrap my business by generating B2B customers and sales in the beginning, and also marketing and awareness for our mission. I think the topic we are going to discuss is especially relevant for the Founders Institute community because pre-seed, you probably don't have so much funding. You probably don't have a partner yet. Even the Founders Institute also accepts single founders. This is also something special. You probably don't have so many customers and revenue. So how do you get to get the thing rolling? And in my case, I, a little bit intuitively without a big strategy, started to use LinkedIn. And then with more and more purpose and less intuition and more skills, we have it now as a core pillar in our marketing and sales strategy. What I want to give you today is one quote of mine. I know it's rather unusual, but it's really the simplest thing. And if I write it without the person who has said this, you might be thinking it's stolen from somewhere, but it's not. LinkedIn— and if this is the only thing you take away with you today, take this— is just a room full of people. Why I am saying this is because every social network out there has its own particular purpose. You probably know the stories of Instagram and TikTok. Their purposes are different than the one of LinkedIn. While Instagram started as a place to collect images of different whiskey tastes and bottles, and it remained rather the showroom and rather the really the wall with memories, LinkedIn's purpose has always been to be the professional community out there. So saying that LinkedIn is just a room full of people is not more than just acknowledging the purpose with which the company and the tool were built for— to connect people. This is a very, very important takeaway because you cannot do the same things on the different networks. And if you start to collect memories and show off with the whiskey tastes or your vacations on LinkedIn, you would probably not go as far as if you would consider it to be just a room full of people. What can you do in a room full of people? Let's say you're joining a party. You're new to the party. You don't know a single soul. That's probably how most of us feel in the first step steps on the LinkedIn platform, or after a few months down the road when nothing is really getting seen or, you know, working. When you're new to a party, it is inappropriate to just go inside and say, hi, I'm the greatest. Everything I work for is super important. This is what I sell. People would probably not like you. As much, and they probably would not listen to you as much as they should, because I'm sure that most of you are running and starting your companies to make a positive difference in the world. To do that, you have to get people's attentions. You have to get them listening. So how do you get people listening in a room full of people when you're new to the party? Well, the most intuitive thing is to just go to some groups of people and listen what they talk to And if it's nothing for you, just pass and go to another group. But if it's something that you have an opinion about, or it's something that is interesting for you, you should just share those. So this is the major learnings about LinkedIn. And I'm sure going to go into more detail and more into practical things. But if you have this intention and if you have this metaphor for LinkedIn, um, from now on, it will for sure change your game and your results. My, uh, my passion are people, and I am super passionate about the purpose of entrepreneurship, the purpose of work, purpose at work in particular. I have written books about this, and I'm still writing such. And one of the reasons I am fond of this is because I originally come from Bulgaria, where I have been part of the transition of the country. So I have experienced different kinds of workplace setups back there and here in Germany. And I know the difference of when we're just trying to get a job done and when we are trying to build something that lasts, create relationships that foster meaning and learn from each other and all of that. So I have made work to my work and I am running a big festival and Mentessa here in Germany. What we do is I try to remember the formula of a startup pitch from Founders Institute, and I tried to apply it here. So this is not our sales slide, but especially for you guys. So at Mentessa, we help knowledge-based organizations build a connected learning culture by assessing, connecting, and developing employee skills with the power of AI and peer learning. So we are all about breaking down silos, and breaking down silos is Probably your mission on LinkedIn too, or it should be. So why should you get involved into LinkedIn? Well, this is not just my opinion or my individual experience as a founder. There are millions of people in hundreds of countries worldwide on the network. There probably are, as we speak now, more than 900 million members already. It is the biggest professional network online. It consists of people, not so much of organizations and posts, although it's changing all the time. And, um, the most important reason for you as entrepreneurs who are getting your business going is that the digital technologies changed how we work, therefore how we organize business, but also sales. If we used to be opening businesses, let's say a shop, and putting up products on a shelf for people to choose from. With the power of technology, people today buy differently. And I really love the book of Doc Searls. It's a very prominent blogger. The book is quite old. I think it's already, I don't know, dozens of years old, The Intention Economy. And what it says is that we are not buying from shelves anymore, but we rather also as organizations are putting out our needs out there and we are waiting for companies to make the the best bid on them. So this is why, first of all, we have to be on LinkedIn to listen to people's needs and desires. And then there is so much statistics. And this is the second book that I would like to recommend to you by Tim Hughes, of course, and Matt Reynolds, Social Selling. There are tons of studies that people buy more, many times more, or many times rather, more likely from people than bots. Companies. If you think about the effect of personal recommendations in your network, you will be surely confirming this too. So today a network gives you reach, right? But a community like a social network where people know and listen to you gives you power, the power to sell. But also, I think there are better reasons for social media, the power to make a difference. And here are the 3 ones that I really am in it for. Um, you have started your companies or are starting them probably not just to get, uh, by or make some living. You probably want to solve a problem for somebody else. You probably want to make real lasting social change or contribute to the sustainability, um, causes out there. So your company has a purpose and it deserves the best effort from your side to make this purpose come true. So if a LinkedIn is full of people, your company surely deserves the right to get as much support and as much, um, audience by those people, uh, for its becoming. As it takes a village to raise a startup, and you are going to need any resource down the road, including those people out there on LinkedIn. Another great reason for LinkedIn is my favorite, because I have a tech background, uh, tech background. I studied computer science. I just find tech exciting. And just as with a new, um, game, I just love— and in the beginning of my journey, I just considered LinkedIn to be a little bit like a game. Um, I just like figuring out how it works, how, uh, it reacts, what you can do with this. So if you would remember how you as a child probably disassembled a toy, a little toy car or something else, and then tried to understand how the pieces fit together or broke down the Lego, um, this is a little bit an attitude that you could have with LinkedIn or any other social media out there that you're trying to understand. Just assemble it and try to take a look at the parts and see how it's working. It's just fun. And the last most important reason for LinkedIn as a social network is it is a room full of people, guys. So people are really the source of all the knowledge and, uh, development out there. People move businesses, people move companies, and people make change happen. So if you can get even one person to support you on the journey with your company, then that's, I think, worth it. So do not approach LinkedIn as this sales marketplace, but think about it. It's just a room full of people. All of them have hobbies, families, dreams, desires, and all of them hate to be alone at the party. And this, um, are like good reasons to, um, just not be too commercial about it while achieving commercial results. If you take a look at the recent studies on the skills for the future work, you will see that among the top 10 skills that are going to be the most required and most difficult to earn The number 1 and 2 are connected with how we connect and do business with people. So it is networking and relationship management. And I think there is this fourth very big reason to be on LinkedIn and to try to figure it out, even if you are not there for your company, but just for building those future skills for yourself. And for your careers. How to find the right person at the right time, how to start the conversation, how to build a relationship, how to, um, set up projects together beyond distance. Remember, this is the big promise of the internet and the digital age, that we can now connect with people all over the globe. It's not just always about this selling everything I have to everybody out there, but it is really about coming together and learning from each other, and by that being able to solve more meaningful problems. So those are some of the reasons. And now, um, I really would love to make this, um, really, um, uh, experiment. I will paste a link for you in the chat to the Social Selling Index, and I'd like to invite you to click on it if you are logged into LinkedIn. This is a free tool to tell you like a score of how you're standing right now in terms of, uh, 4 criteria. So if you would like to, I would welcome you to share your score in the chat. Maybe it can help you to match with peers with similar scores. I would also, in really in the spirit of the Founders Institute and the community of entrepreneurs out there, I would invite you to, um, just pick a person from the chat today, during the networking session, or afterwards. It can even be a random person if you like, and just ask them for some feedback on your profile. I do this with, uh, fellow entrepreneurs here in Germany very often. I have presented this content to the accelerators of Intel and, uh, um, the NASDAQ Entrepreneur Center and what have you, and all of them find it most helpful to get a small peer group, let's say 5 people, and each to give each other feedback of their profiles. So I'll wrap up the motivational part and come now to the, to the practical insights. What the Social Selling Index is giving you is 4 criteria based on which the algorithm will be deciding how to distribute your posts and how to score you when people are looking for stuff. It is a little bit like the Google score, if you want. And having a score of 30, 40 is quite normal when you're just getting started. Having a score of 60, 70 is when you're getting really active and seeing the difference. And then having a score above 80 is when you're really top-notch in your industry. The score is relative. It always is based on, and you can see on the upper right side on the industry benchmark. So for your industry, for mine, it's software and tech. For you, maybe something else. And also the network rank. This is the people that you know and you're connected with. How are they doing? So you might have a really good score because the people you're connected with are not so active, but it might be also that you have a not so good score, but this is just because in your industry everyone is like a top-notch LinkedIner, so to say. I love the Social Selling Index and I only discovered it a few years ago because it gives you like a game for hints on what you could do to improve. It tells you, uh, um, establish a professional brand. So be consistent about the things you're talking about. People are not consistent. We are so much about different things, and this is the beauty of human nature. LinkedIn is just a digital tool, and the stupid algorithm really wants you to be very much on purpose. So if you would decide to talk only about specific things on LinkedIn, just like you wouldn't talk about everything at a party, um, you would probably be scoring higher on this chart. And then there is connecting the right people. So if you're just there shooting out posts, your score won't be so much because LinkedIn is a room full of people and the party hosts want good engagement. So they don't want everyone sitting around in the corner with their polytopia on their smartphone. They want people engaging so that when those people go home, they tell their friends how great this party was. So this is why if you want to score high and if you want to have more engagement on your content, you should be connecting with people purposely, not just randomly and not just with whoever, but just be using the search and filtering function. And then the third one is one that most people really hate. And I really like this screenshot here because it also shows engaging with insights. Is very low for this imaginary Noah on the screen. But if you think like it at the party, the most uncomfortable situation that can happen is that you tell a joke and nobody's laughing, that you tell a story and people just turn around and go to grab a drink, that you just ask a question and you just don't get an answer. So this is why LinkedIn particularly highly rates comments, likes, and any sort of interaction with other people on the network. And then build relationships. This is how long you're staying connected and so on. So just use this as a tool. Once again, guys, tech is fun and you can learn more about yourself with this. So my profile, I just took a screenshot a few weeks ago. And by the way, the social selling score is constantly changing. So it can be very high sometimes and it can be very, very low on others. It's in German because I'm based in Germany and I had the content not translated, but I think the numbers speak for itself. If you invest some work into it, it is manageable. And I don't have a content plan and I don't have an assistant and I don't use automated bots, although you can use all of that. I just wanted to tell it, to show it to you for a reality check, not to so much say, wow, how great my profile is, but to say even normal people can have a good ranking in their industry and in their network, uh, if they put a little bit of work into it. And I'm really happy to, uh, get into debating, uh, afterwards in the Q&A session. So now to the, um, one-on-one of LinkedIn. One of the reasons why people do so poorly on social media is because it looks really easy. It is quite straightforward to post the content. It is even straightforward to write it nowadays with ChatGPT or even create a nice compelling image. However, when something is easy to use, it like every good tool, it does not mean that we don't need to know how to use it. So LinkedIn takes away from us the technical competence needs to know how to, you know, distribute content on the internet. This is what they do. They take away the entire technical task, but we still need the methodical competence. And I have brought to you here Jeremy Clarkson, who I'm sure you know, who really after his car show, he started farming in the UK and he made a lot of fun of himself really using wrongly big machines for farming, like the tractor on the back because they are, you know, making the physical work that people used to do thousands of years ago with their hands and feet easier for us. But it still needs methodical competence on to know when to do which activities and how to, how to farm correctly. So, um, take, um, a little bit of time to understand the methodics. The techniques is very easy. When I typically ask people what makes social media posts successful, um, they give me different answers. But mostly, if you take a look at the images, at the words, you would see it's how answers. So how to do a nice picture, how to do a nice tagline, how to do hashtagging, how to, how to, how to. But I think that social media is not just about the how. It's not only about the technical competence, it is about the what-to. So it is about when to do what, and it is really a room full of people. You cannot just automate it. In order to gain more reach, you have to change your, you know, perception of the network, which I hope I gave you enough reasons to do. And you can do also somehow things. So for everyone who is Absolutely, on the how, I have the content right here for you. So, um, you can be optimizing your post as much as you want, but unless you have more than 5,000 contacts, those will always have kind of a limited reach. So this is like an internal threshold, and if you're really, um, into building up your business, I would be striving to make those 5,000 contacts. How you can do them of course on events, on events like this one, by purposely connecting with everyone and your employees, networks, and partners, etc. Um, and when you have passed this threshold, this would give you more visibility, so you would be eligible for more than 10,000 views on posts. And also, if you take a look at the funnel, this would lead to more and more visitors to your profile. And then if you have a strategy to capture those visitors' attentions, you might even end up having customer calls. And with customer calls, of course, I mean demos and Zoom and whatever you have. So in the next few slides, I want to show you how I bootstrapped Mentessa and created 5 appointments per week without marketing budget and without anything else. Here are a few excerpts from my posts. Those are just normal posts. I do not have a content plan. Um, they— sometimes I share news like here on the left. Sometimes I just post an impression of an event where I have attended. Then I comment on something really big happening right now or some new laws because Mentessa is all about changing how we work. My topics are usually around diversity in the workplace, some laws about governance, et cetera. So if you master the following slides, you will be getting without budget and without advertising, without spamming people. And most importantly, the one thing that we all hate most, without cold calls and complex systems, you will get some leads without budget. And this is how my calendar looked in 2021 when I had LinkedIn going for about 6 months, it's really a lot of incoming, um, um, just emails just for, oh wow, I saw your post on LinkedIn about the future of organization, just show my team what you have. Oh, I saw you wrote about the new law for equal shares on management boards for women and men, uh, in public companies. And we read that Mentesa does something for breaking down silos. Show us what you got. So by speaking about what was important for me and my company, by making this visible, by increasing my contacts, people just were in touch with our mission more often and they got curious and they wrote us back. The most important rule on social media, and by the way in life, is to not when people ask you not just to immediately start selling. It's the same with the party. If a person just comes to you and says, hey, would you like to get some of this? And, uh, the conversation is over because then it is just a yes or no and people just can decide. And if it's a no, they don't give you a chance to learn about your hobbies and your family and have a nice time. But if you first, um, try to understand what they need help with And this is what I was doing while bootstrapping my company. Uh, I just really wanted to build a good product and therefore I was asking a lot of questions. I, I was asking how people found me, how, uh, what is their main problem with the topic right now and what could be helpful. This not only helped me win their trust, but it helped me, uh, bootstrap the company in terms of not money, but building the product hand in hand with customers. And this is paying out until today. So here are the 5 steps on how you could replicate that. The requirement is that you consider this a room of people and you always try to give first. If you do all that just technically right and there is no soul and no good intention, intent about this, and you're not authentic and you're just selling stuff to people, it won't work. But if you do, it will, and it will pay off. So here is the action plan. Uh, first step in the funnel is you have to have more relevant contacts. So one of the things that people really do not know about is the all filters function on LinkedIn. So if you want to, while I am speaking, you can go to your LinkedIn profile. And think about the ideal customer persona that you have. Probably you're developing a product for CEOs or for marketing freelancers or for like me, an HR person. So just look for this title on the, in the search bar. And when you have, just notice on the bottom right, there is the option to open all filters. If you click on that option, you will see a lot more operators. This is here, and you would be able to additionally refine your search. Why this is important? Because you have really limited time as a founder, guys. You only have 8 hours a week, 12 hours a day, 12 hours a day. It doesn't matter how much it's ending and you have to make the most of it, especially if you're bootstrapping and if you're in the beginning of the journey, you cannot really procrastinate and put too much effort into everything because the world also is changing so fast. You have to try your hypothesis now today. So what you can do is you can think about your ideal customer. Take this as a checklist, by the way, you can just use it as a checklist later, write down what are the specific job titles. For example, for us at Mentessa, it used to be senior HR director in the beginning of the journey. And then you can think about also what keywords can be searched for, for example, human resources, but not a freelancer and not CHRO and, or head of people. So you can refine, you can, if you're looking to sell to people you know, or to, you know, refresh them about your product, you can be searching for first connections. But if you're looking for new contacts and to increase your contact pool, you should be filtering for second and third connections. And you can filter by locations in your target market. This is really like a great tool and it is included in the free version of LinkedIn. By the way, I'm not getting paid by LinkedIn. I'm not getting any commissions and please do not buy any tools. I did all that with the free capabilities of LinkedIn. Just what I'm trying to tell you is you don't need technical competence, but you need a little bit of methodical competence for that so that you make the most out of the tool. And as with all the tools, we only do 5% of their potential and we just say, ah, I couldn't do that, this and that. We did that with Excel, we do that with our smartphones, and we do it also with LinkedIn. So it's okay, just try to get better. By the way, you can also use this function to look for, uh, for employers. So if you do that, if you filter purposely, you can then send out connection requests to people you want to connect to, just like you would do this at the fair or at a just a physical event. And you would say Hi, I'm Tina. I'm building this startup and I saw you're in this field. Would you like to give me some feedback? And also think about give first. Some people do reach out with the idea to give first and they say, hi, boom, such a big message, please click here to download this and that. Wait a minute, I don't know you yet. Even if this is a free giveaway, this is selling. You need to step one step back. It's a relationship, it's a party, people don't know you. Just a nice person and say, hi, I'd like to talk with you, and how are you, how is everything going? Most times people just say yes and take the time, just like at a party. So once you build up your contacts, you can gain more visibility by increasing your engagement with the platform. Again, before building up the first stage of the funnel, investing so much into the second is not so, uh, fruitful. But still, you can do this in parallel. Um, what you need to do is to give 3 comments or likes per day. Um, you can write when you have a new contact. Let's say somebody connected you, or even more, more important, you connected somebody and they accepted. You can write a welcome note and you can say, hey, so good to be connected with you. Where are you based, um, what you're working on. Not long emails. People do not have time for reading and understanding the mind of a stranger. And understand that you can become really close partners online, but you are starting as strangers. So you have to just be going one step at a time. It's just like dating, it's just like everything you're doing with people. Um, you can also suggest a meeting, but not in the first message. It's like, I just met you, let's date. It's too much at once. But you can do this after a few days. And also you can greet people if you know them and if you're honest. So if you don't care about somebody, don't write happy birthday. I have some people in my network actually that I began to like because year after year they're sending me those happy birthday messages. And then after a while and say, okay, let's see what this person is about. I don't think this is very efficient though, so do it every time when you see, um, and, um, um, yeah, just avoid the don'ts. Here are such, um, like as a summary, uh, it is, um, an example from my message. A person that I don't know is sending me so many things, like 1 million links I'm sure you know from marketing, you only need one call to action. Too many is too many. People get confused. I have never read this message, even if I have presented it for 3 years now. And I have muted the person because immediately after I accepted their request, you can see also a sales director, they immediately start into selling to me. Sorry, at the party I just want to have a nice time, so I turn around and I go to the to the nice bunch of people, and I don't want to be bothered with this. I'm sure you feel the same way. In order for that not to happen, just make sure to be decent and have a nice picture. I have here some example of a woman that is not in her best, you know, raccourci, and also it is not the best quality image. She doesn't have a background. So it's all kinds of seems messy. And in a world full of abundance, you want kind of to know who you are with. And if a person especially have— you have your sunglasses on, then I cannot recognize you, then it is really difficult to connect. You can take a look at how I organize my profile on LinkedIn, comment in a Roosevelt. Everyone who connects me, by the way, I have a one-pager with those tips I will send it to you, I promise. So for the Founders Institute community, I'll do it. Just send me your request if you like, and please feel free to share it. I have created it, I have the rights to, um, distribute if you want, so it doesn't cost anything. So I'm happy to share with the world because it helped me build a business entirely on my own with €1,000 capital as a starter. I'd never like to do terrible journey again, um, because it was very difficult, but it worked out. So if it can help you, I'm happy to share. So 3 more steps, and those are going to be very much more quick. Uh, once you have a lot of contacts, or more contacts than 1,000, let's say at least 1,000, and you are engaging with your network, you can start thinking about what happens when people visit your profile. So in the beginning, you can be tweaking your profile as much as you want and pimping it. People will just not visit. Probably you know this feeling from the first time you launched the website for your company and you were so excited about the colors and the pictures and that everything works great. And then it was only your parents and your friends that visited and nobody else. So this is the same with LinkedIn too. In the beginning, it can be messy because there won't be so many people, right? Until you're not actively reaching out, it can be messy. It's fine. But then when you have a really nice contact pool, take a, pay a little bit of attention to your profile so that when people come, they're not surprised, but they find what they maybe are looking for and maybe book you. And this is only here. Is when content becomes relevant. For the first two pieces, you don't need to post a single thing, right? You can just do it without whatsoever. If you, however, want to convert visitors on your profile to somehow leads or customers, you should be starting to, um, create content. Remember, this is for the conversion. This is not for building up the network. You can be totally using LinkedIn for sales just with the first two ones and never do a post in your life. But if you want your profile to be working for you automatically, independently, without your manpower, you need to do content. For that, you need manpower. That's kind of the, of the fairness God works. So you should be then thinking about what content is relevant to your audience. And remember, everything I I'm saying here is almost one-on-one distributable to your company LinkedIn page. However, I would not invest my effort into the business page now. I would really invest in building your own profile because social selling, people buy from people. So even if your company is super good, they want to see that you're legit too. Um, so think about your own profile first. If you have a good profile, people will follow your company, but not vice versa. So you can define a few different pots of content that you find interesting for your audience. Feel free to experiment a lot. So LinkedIn is not Instagram. Stuff disappears in your feed. It is even difficult. There is this lazy load mechanism where it is really difficult to scroll back down, um, farther than 2-3 months. So don't worry, you can delete content that didn't work. You can also just forget about it, nobody cares. And you have to do it regularly. So you don't need to post every day, you don't want to become an influencer. You're an entrepreneur, you're running your business after all. But sharing 2 or 3 times a week is really necessary so that you build up this collateral and also SEO, guys. It's the same logic. The more you use specific words and content on such pieces, the more relevant it becomes for the algorithm for when people look for that. Your content plan can look something like, you know, when you're sharing what. I don't have this content plan, but our marketing team now has it for our page and they see a difference when they, when they use it. Why I'm saying that you might need a content plan is that some people are just naturally more creative with ideas on what to talk about. Others do not feel they have such, but we all have something to say. And if you are out there with a company that wants to make a difference in the world, probably you know something that other people don't, and you can sit down in quiet and think about how to transport it. And you will find out that you have quite a lot of ideas. Also, you can use ChatGPT to tell you, okay, what are quick tips that people in the HR industry might be needing nowadays? Um, give me ideas for knowledge posts and others alike. So you can do this, it will be helpful. Typically, people used to say Saturday and Sunday, it's dead on LinkedIn. It's not the case anymore. People are active on the network all the time. So you can think about your audience and when this is like the most, uh, the best thing. I am not so good in that. This is why my score will probably never go higher than what it is now, uh, because I really like more living in the moment and intuition and stuff like this. But, um, I know from my other LinkedIn creator buddies that this working. When you start thinking about content, preparing a great piece of content and posting it online just to have 3 likes and maybe 2 of them from your family is daunting. Can be really, um, even if you don't care about recognition, this can really get you down. So one of the ways to think about how to make the most of your content is to find out what are the best times for people. When are the most people out there? It's like having a restaurant open at 7:00 AM in the morning and 7:00 PM in the evening. Well, probably there is a lot more traffic and people willing to sit down and enjoy some time in a restaurant in the evening. So this is the same thing. It's a room full of people. Depending on at what time you go in, it might be less or more engaging. So think about this too. Other than this, I would also recommend that you try repurposing content. If you have been working, and I do that myself, I write blog posts and I only want to write them for an hour, but then it's like a whole day. And my husband is sometimes so angry and he's like, 'Why are you writing this so long?' But hey, I'm understanding the topic and I'm connecting and I'm trying to be useful and it pays out, so I keep on doing this. However, just posting something you've been work— you've been working on for so long and then seeing just a few likes is, uh, of course a lot of wasted effort. So what you can do is you can repurpose the content and create a few images for this blog post and post them separately. You can create a survey. Surveys are really great on LinkedIn nowadays, great way to engage, and, um, uh, just refer to your content pieces more and more times. Once you start converting people from your profile, it's not only about the content, it's also about a strategy. Who do you want to be in your network? What do you want people to know you and your company for? How do they need to know you if it was to support your company? So thinking about a great picture, a great positioning in the slogan and description becomes more crucial. And the more and more professional your company is becoming, the less and less those would be available for an intuitive decision. I used to have really out of my heart profile descriptions on my social media before. Now with our company growing, with employees, um, also applicants, they tell us that they have checked LinkedIn before they applied and that they heard this podcast and that they read this article. Now I'm more mindful about those things and we try to do them more in sync with the general company strategy. But in the beginning, when I started, I really didn't have all that. So it, you can really start small and do it one step at a time. And lastly, if you have a lot of contacts and you purposely are reaching out to people to just make yourself visible, not the content, and if you optimize your profile so that visitors find what they expected to, or even something better. Uh, and if you have a really strategic approach to your profile of something like a professional channel, like an alternative website, people will be getting in touch with you. They will be just writing to you briefly and saying, hey, what's up? Also, would you like to join us at this event where you can tell something about your company? And so on and so forth. That's the way. I know it's not rocket science. I know it is really easy to do technically. You have all the tools, you have so many automated, um, um, you know, uh, tools for LinkedIn. Um, I can recommend you PhantomBuster, is really something to explore. But nowadays LinkedIn also comes with the scheduling function so that you can just write your post and schedule them upfront. It comes with so much prebuilt intelligence and tips that are popping up individually based on your level. And it comes with the social selling index that gives you tips on how you did. So I want to encourage you to like say, I have my LinkedIn challenge in the next 2 weeks and try to do it on purpose and see how it will affect your score. If you want to have a summary of what are my key things to remember, here they are. LinkedIn is a room full of people. Be decent and treat them as such. Don't treat them like algorithm items and just buyers. You're not just a seller neither. You're a purpose, you're a per— person on a mission and you want people to perceive you as such. So be a person and be on a mission. Secondly, uh, LinkedIn is not just a terrible another thing you have to do as an entrepreneur, just the 100th task that you cannot outsource. It can be fun and it helps your company's purpose. Do not give up. You need this help and we need the change happening that you're probably working on. So, um, go out there and get yourself the help and the resources And always, and always, as an entrepreneur— and Founders Institute is role modeling this quality— always give first. Always. Even if people are directly asking for an offer, just always think about how you can be useful and give first. Even if it doesn't pay out immediately, it always pays out at the end. So that's from me, and I'm really happy to get your questions and to discuss your doubts and practical challenges and to, you know, connect you with each other so you can give each other feedback and help each other as we do in this community. Thank you. I am waiting for Emilia to join. And by the way, don't remember if you ping me on LinkedIn, I I will send you the one-pager if you want it with all of those checklists at a glance.

Hey, Tina, can you hear me?

Yes.

Thanks a lot for sharing all these amazing, very actionable, very practical tips. I really loved your metaphors about the party and about dating, and I'm sure that our founders found a lot of value in your presentation because we get these questions all the time. So now, yes, so this was Tina Roostveen from Mentesa. Here are her contacts, and you're all going to receive within 48 hours the recording because it was an enormous amount of information, so don't worry. We got you covered and we have a few minutes for Q&A, so I'm gonna jump right into that. Okay, first question is from Nicholas Robles: Are LinkedIn posts better coming from a personal or company profile?

Yes, Nicholas, this is the right intuition. The most important posts are the ones that you do from your personal account. Engagement on business accounts is generally lower, and it takes the same funnel that we discussed for your personal account too, so that you would need a big followership and a lot of exposure and interaction for your business page. Typically, you need a separate person or an agency for. So if you're just starting, I would just recommend to focus on your, on your own thing. This can have a bigger reach, and position you as an expert because you probably are.

Thanks, I hope that helps. And next question is from Cheryl: How can we change our SRI industry? I noticed that mine is indexing as higher education, which is part-time honorary role I have and not related to my business.

Yes, absolutely, you can change it. You have to go to your profile through your picture and edit it in the, in the settings. I am not sure where exactly, but you can Google. Oh, I, I see now. I'm just clicking. It's your profile settings, and there you can select name, location, and industry are right there in your profile. So it's up to you. It's nothing automatic. You set this and you can set whatever you want.

Awesome. And this one, I hope many— I think many people want to know. I used to be able to see who viewed my profile, but this feature disappeared. How does anyone know how I can get this feature back?

Yes, that's a premium feature nowadays. I have Used premium for just a few months now because I was named top voice. So it comes with the benefit of having premium for free. And I have tried premium every now and then when they have this on offer, you know, for a month free or so. It is just a premium feature. So you either get the premium or you just forget about this, or you try to wait and find one of those offers when you can get it for a month so that you purposely, you know, check who is visiting your profile and like. Yes.

And another thing that people ask quite often, when you send out a connection invite, do you add notes or not?

Uh, this is a very good question. Um, I guess it has many answers because it depends on who you're connecting with, what for. I will tell you, for example, in the beginning where you just have, let's say, a few hundred followers, or maybe you're not such a— maybe you have 5,000 followers but you don't really have a lot of content, so people don't know who you are. I would do say Hi, I'd like to connect for exchanging on the future work or whatever, because then people just don't know you. Now I have a little bit collateral in my profile, so I don't always do it, but it is better, it is more decent to always add a few lines of code. And because I am a LinkedIn Top Voice now, the LinkedIn editorial would say always write some notes because they just want to have a nice party. And the party is not an anonymous thing. It is— we come together to do something nice for everybody. And yet we— yes, we don't know each other yet, but then if we interact and exchange, we do. So if you have the time, put a little bit of note. I, uh, I can tell you what I have when I'm writing a quick note. I'm just saying, uh, greetings from Munich. And happy to exchange on the future work or whatever. So you don't need more than this. And please, no links in a first note. People do not read those, and the preview makes it impossible to read your actual message. So people just are scared and they think, oh, it's one of those sales guys.

Yes, but don't overdo it. Okay, I think one last question now. There are many, it's hard to go through all of them, but at least a few. As LinkedIn, uh, with ages, I have so many connections, but most of them are from different industries and countries. What would be the best practice to ensure my posts reach the right ones?

Yes, Ali, this is great. So having a lot of connections is the basics. So in order to reach the right people with your content, you have to prepare content for those people. So it's something that automatically, if you do it regularly, uh, if you have a good quality of your posts, uh, will reach the audience over time. I will tell you, I had the same challenge like you because I have been on LinkedIn since 2008. Oh my goodness. It's like 15 years of LinkedIn and I still don't have 1 million followers. Failure. And my problem was that I have had several startups and everybody knows me for entrepreneurship and everybody knows me for innovation and maybe even for public speaking, but I'm starting Mentessa and Mentessa is an HR business and I know nobody in HR. So my posts are super engaging when I say I won this award or I'm making a a trip to Silicon Valley because it's startups. But when I write something about the future of work, or when I used to write something, it got zero points of interest. So I was really frustrated, but it really takes a little bit of time. It's like search engine optimization for your website. You have to teach that algorithm. It's your robot. You can consider it like your tool. It's your machine. You are telling it, hi, you are now going to count me as an whatever leader you are and an expert because I'm going to put that content online. And the algorithm is saying, deal, but you have to deliver. So if you do this regularly and if the content is great and if it doesn't have typos, if you don't edit it very often after you have posted it, if people start reacting, it will over time be shown just to your people. So now I have the opposite problem. So many people know me, but only because I only write about HR, only HR Reacts. So my friends are now, oh, Tina with her future work, I don't care. So you have to decide if you want to be known among your friends or, you know, among your other community of customers and partners.

It takes time. So with that question, I think it's time to close the Q&A. We have many more questions coming in, but feel free to connect with Tina and watch the recording later. So now, before we jump into the networking session, and Tina might join us as well if she has time, would you like to add something for as the final of today's event.

I would actually love to because I was scrolling down. Guys, I'm sorry, I tried to give every comment a heart, but it's just too many, so I just didn't have the time to scroll to all of you. I equally am grateful for all of your good feedback, and I saw a really good question and I'd like to use it for my final words, so to say. There's so much content online. So how to differentiate? And I think this is a question we have to ask ourselves as entrepreneurs all the time. There's so much startups out there. Why are we building ours, right? There's so much competitors and the likes, but the thing is that each and every one of you has a unique point of view and nobody in this entire world can say things the way you do. So if you are not trying to be like the other guys, but if you're really doing what you think is important, and if you're showing your finger to things that you think other people do not talk about, and if you're discussing issues that disturb you or you really have enjoyed, then it will make a difference. Then it will be different because you are different. So I think this is a really great question, and my biggest message to you guys: do not change for LinkedIn, just use it for your purposes. You're unique enough.

Wonderful message, and, and thanks again a lot. And everyone, we wait to see you in the lounge or at our next event. And until then, learn more about FI, find Tina and my intesa and subscribe to our newsletter. See you soon, Tina!

Goodbye!