Ep. 299 ACCELERATE YOUR BOOKINGS WITH LINKEDIN – RICHARD BLISS

Hey there, Mark Brown. I don't know about you, But I'm on LinkedIn a lot. But I'm wasting my time instead of multiplying it. I've been learning from Richard Bliss and I am so excited to have him here. Mark, what are your thoughts?

I say let's get right to it, my friend. I want to be in a state of bliss.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time, Stage time, Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. Ahas, let's dive right in.

First off, Mark, I gotta say, I appreciate Richard's grace that he gives me because I had him, we had him at Game Changers. He taught all this stuff, but I wasn't paying attention enough. And then Chris McGuire's out talking to me like, hey, what are you doing? I've been using Richard's stuff and it's really been helping. I get. And I'm almost embarrassed. So, Richard, I'm here. I'm thankful to have you here. And like me, I have a feeling a lot of people are wasting time on LinkedIn. So, Richard, thanks for being here, Darren.

My pleasure. Thrilled to be here. And it was thrilled to spend some time with you in Las Vegas just recently, so. And I get to see you again real soon. So I'm always looking forward to spending time with you guys.

You are very kind. Mark Brown, what do you got for questions?

Well, first of all, you set the stage. You said, I'm wasting time on LinkedIn. So, Richard, my first short answer question is this. What is the most common time waster that LinkedIn users are engaging in right now?

I gotta admit, that's a bit of a tough question because almost everything they're doing on LinkedIn is a time waster. And so, hey, don't hold back, okay?

Don't, don't hold back. Be really honest. Now, come on.

Here's why is because so many of us, I'm the universal royal, we use LinkedIn like we use the other social media platforms, right? And LinkedIn is not a social media platform to some degree. It is a business platform. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, X, those platforms are designed to entertain, engage. Yeah, you might be able to do business B2C. Oftentimes Facebook advertising, that type of thing, Facebook marketplace. But the algorithms are designed to maximize profitability for those customers. And that is not us. We're the product. So when you take those techniques and come over to LinkedIn and expect the algorithm to treat your content the same way, you're going to be woefully disappointed. So over sharing, posting multiple times, hashtags, links, fancy graphics, all of these things are oftentimes getting in the way of the communication you're trying to do with each other on the LinkedIn platform, where you're trying to do business. And most of us are on LinkedIn because we want to do business, not because we want to watch funny cat videos. Right. That's why we. And we don't see funny cat videos on LinkedIn. Thank goodness. Because of the way the LinkedIn algorithm works. So that's, that's the biggest time waster. And I didn't say anything specific. It was more in general. Yeah, right. Just treating. I see people spend so much time on a LinkedIn post. So we talk to a lot of speakers, right? We have been on stage oftentimes, but can you imagine if we put the effort into our common conversations with people that we do with our presentations on stage? Okay, I'm going to be meeting these people for lunch. I've got to prepare my opening. I've got to have the joke at two minutes. I've got to have this. You're like, no, you're going to go to lunch with a business person to have a conversation. LinkedIn is the exact same way, yet people treat it almost as this, as like, oh no, I got this one post. It's got to have this pre graphics. I'm going to have this link. I'm going to have the. No, no, no, no. Have a conversation. And that's probably the biggest waster is that people are spending too much time on the. The way the content appears rather than simply the conversation that it drives.

A quick follow up question to that because it is very clear business platform, not social media, but because we try so hard to get the content right. I've seen where individuals are calling upon AI to help them craft the perfect post and they have eight or nine different emojis. And you and I talked about this briefly in Las Vegas. I can see your head shaking. Help us to understand and what is not a good idea. Richard.

Yeah. So emojis, I often tell the story that I started using. I tried to use emojis because I like chocolate ice cream. So I use the pile of chocolate ice Cream with the big googly eyes and the smile. That's what my team pointed out to me. Richard, that's not chocolate ice cream. So one of the key things to think about.

I hope you all. I hope you all caught that. I hope you all caught that.

If they didn't visualize that, okay, too bad they're boomers. If they didn't catch it, they're boomers. So one of the key things here is that emojis mean different things to different generations and demographics. I often ask, does anybody know what the skull emoji means? And it's generational. The younger people are like, oh, yeah. And the older people are like, no. Should I? It's basically the replacement for lol. The skull emoji is. You're killing me. I'm dying here.

You're killing me, Smalls. You're killing me, Smalls. Okay, I've got you.

You're killing. Dying here. I'm dead.

Oh, wow.

Right? So if I use that emoji, you guys up to 30 seconds ago would have thought that was a really different thing I was communicating. So also, the algorithm. Our latest research, which came out just in April, is showing that emojis, depending on the emojis, are actually interfering with the reach of your content. Because it's interfering. I have my own theories. That's based on research based outside of that of the human. We process the written word differently than images. So as I'm reading, my brain is processing. I can read if I push myself up to 900 to 1,000 words a minute. And so I'm just flying. But if there's an emoji, wham. I have to stop, process that emoji as an image, find context of what that means, and then try to pick up speed again. And those emojis interrupt our abilities to consume the information. Yeah, they're fun. But now let's be clear what kind of emojis I'm talking about. All the smiley faces and the unicorns and the rainbows, that's one thing. But I'm talking about, like, a checkbox or a finger. Those are a replacement for bullet points. Those I understand, but when you start putting in things that I'm trying to. Somehow you're substituting an emoji for a word. So there we go. I don't know if that was a really long answer to a really short question. I'm not even sure I answered the question.

Well, clearly our reaction tells you, hey, stop and think. What do emojis mean? Is there an emoji legend document that.

Says, oh, my gosh, you're showing your age, Mark. No, no, but I mean, it's so prevalent. Think about this. We have all seen the progressive commercials with Dr. Rick, who's talking about homeowners, parents.

I love those. Love.

They're fantastic. Now, one of the way is he points to the woman, he says, they're not actually talking about fruit. Okay. He makes that because she's talking about emojis. And he's like, they're not talking about fruit. Well, it's, it's a very subtle jab at a sub context of communicate. So you got to be really careful. You start using those emojis, your audience are reading it from a way different perspective. So that's on the emoji side.

Nice.

There's so many questions I want to ask, but I know we have.

We go ahead.

We mostly have speakers who listen to this and obviously they want to accelerate their bookings. And I love your method and I know it's kind of at the end, but I want to bring it up now and we'll remind them if we want people to. You and I just did a little seminar and you showed a great image where someone had nobody looking at their profile or just a few people. And all of a sudden, bam, he used your 3 by 5 method.

And all of a sudden, let's talk about that.

He got people looking at his profile. So if we're presenters, we have people who are event planners or speaker bureaus that we want them to get to know us. Well, you brought up a great idea. It's like you got to be interesting in order to get people interested. So let's talk about your three by five method.

Yeah, and you've kind of paraphrased what I said. And that is if you are interesting, you become interested. Excuse me? If you are interested, you become interesting. And so the way that you become interested is to show that you're paying attention to their content on LinkedIn. Nobody puts content on LinkedIn hoping nobody sees it. All right, so. But oftentimes people put content on LinkedIn and all they get is a bunch of thumbs up. Right? Which is indicating that I didn't find it interesting. I just gave it a thumbs up because I really didn't find it interesting. Which is the exact opposite of why we give a thumbs up on Facebook or Instagram. But on LinkedIn, that's an indicator. But the point here is if I take the time, because, Mark, you made a post on LinkedIn, I want to influence you. So that you will see me as a speaker, that maybe you'll book me at your next event. So I see you post something and I go leave an incitement comment. Mark, you make a really good point. I like what you said here about this and here's how I see that. Oftentimes when I'm on stage in front of my audience, I'm able to use that in this way. And that's why I found it so valuable. Okay, that comment is going to stand out from the Awesomes. Great, thanks for sharing. Instead. Oh, that person paid attention to me. Who is that person? And they click your name, they go look at your profile and boom, you suddenly got a nibble. You've got them paying attention to you. And you do that a couple of times, a couple of comments like that. Now send them a connection request. Don't send them the connection request first. They don't know who you are. You're asking them to trust you that you're not going to try to sell them anything, that you're not going to try to self promote them. And they don't believe you.

I know, I've been there. Yeah.

Yes. Instead, go and pay attention. The word pay attention is interesting in the English language because it's structured as a financial transaction. In English, particularly in the United States, we look at the way that we give attention to each other as a financial transaction. I pay you something and in return you give me something back. I pay attention. And then when I pay attention, you give me something of value. Now, Mark, you speak a foreign language. I speak a foreign language. Darren, I don't know about you. I know you're still sometimes struggling with English. So.

Yes, Bliss circle.

Mark, tell me, because you speak a foreign language, right? What do you speak?

I speak my Jamaican dialect. I did learn a little bit of French in high school. Yes.

So in Jamaican dialect, if you pay attention to someone, how would you say that?

A request or a statement? I'm paying attention.

Either one, I'm paying.

So boss me. I tune in, man. Yeah, man, tune in.

I'm tuning. Is it sounds like I'm tuning in?

Yes, I'm tuning into you. May I tune in? Yeah, man.

And think about the difference between I'm paying attention versus I'm tuning in. Those have very different subtle connotations. In Spanish it's darquenza. I give you my attention. I give it as a gift language. So in English it is very much. I'm paying. So on LinkedIn in order for you to be successful, because I'm Being this is a long answer. Darren has other questions. We need to focus on giving to our relationships that we want to develop before we ask for something. If I. If I pay attention to you, human algorithm says that you will probably pay attention back. And that's one way I go that. I do that a lot in my deep trainings. When we do the deep dives, we dive into this human element of the human algorithm, of how to subtly use LinkedIn to give to people so that they want to give back. Sometimes they give back their attention, sometimes they give back a connection request, sometimes they give you back business. So that's some of the things to think about.

Real quick. I've got to jump on this phrase. You said the human algorithm.

Yes.

I know you don't want to go into the wheeze, but I cannot let that sit there without asking you just to dub a little bit more. So we understand it's no longer the electronic piece, it's really the human piece that's important.

Yeah. Let me give you some very easy. You and I have met.

Yes.

When I walked into the room in Las Vegas, when you and I saw each other, you immediately knew who I was.

Yes.

You gave me something in the human algorithm. Now, how do I feel at that point? Flattered, Acknowledged. Acknowledged. But now if I don't remember you, all of a sudden I'm at a disadvantage. So the balance has been tipped in your favor ever so slightly because you remembered me, you remembered my name and maybe you remembered something personal. You have given me something attention to me, my identity. I now am going to struggle to give that back. I need to get that balance. I need to make that balance. So the human algorithm requires that we try to maintain that balance. I don't want to become too far into your debt, because then it becomes awkward or vice versa. So on LinkedIn, this is why commenting can be so powerful, or mentioning somebody in a post or a comment. You got to be careful with this. And we dive that deeper into the training that I do. But when you mention someone and give them attribution for something they've said on LinkedIn, I've tipped the. For example, Mark, you made a post on LinkedIn, and I'm going to write something that says, I read an interesting post the other day from Mark Brown, and here's what Mark had to say. And I say it. And here's why I find this really fascinating. Now I'm talking to my audience, but I tagged you in the post. You're going to get notified. Richard Bliss mentioned You in a post. Now, if you don't know who I am, the first question you're going to ask yourself is, who's this guy? Who's. Who is this guy? And then the human algorithm kicks in because you cannot, you cannot ignore the urge to go click and see what I said about you.

That's true. That's true. Yeah, that's true.

What did this guy. I don't know this guy. What did he say about me? And then you come and see that I'm not saying anything about you. I'm using you as an attribution to something you said that I found fascinating, that I wanted to share with my audience. What you don't know is I really wanted your attention. And so I used to use the. And I got it. And not only did I get it, but I tipped the balance ever so slightly in my favor. So now the human algorithm causes you to want to rebalance it out. Now if I send the connection request, you're like, you know what? This guy already gave me something. I'm going to give him something in return. Except nice.

What you didn't say, Richard, is when Mark recognized you, what was the look in his face? Was it boy or was it discussed or.

He made me feel, I mean, he made me feel like a rock star. It was, it was flattering. It was wonderful. And I was just like, wow, wow, I gotta come to this more often.

Well, you are a rock star.

Well, I appreciate that.

In our eyes. In our eyes. Sweet. Continue. Well, we never really talked about the three by five thing. What is that?

Three by five is take this idea, this human algorithm concept and LinkedIn algorithm, and what you should be doing is not focusing or worrying about posting content. You can do that, but most people aren't going to pay attention. There's so much content out there. It's a flood of content and mostly AI is being generated. And so the audience sees that and they're not engaging with it. Mark, this comes back to what you said. Instead, go comment. Go find ways to. Three times a day. That's all I ask people to do. Now, if you can do it 10 times a day, that's awesome. But most of us have jobs. Three times a day, go comment on somebody. Similar to the comments that I just shared with how I just interacted with Mark's content comment in a way that adds value, that shows that you paid attention. Interesting, Darren, I love this post, especially the link that you showed to the Forbes article. As I read the Forbes article, one of the things that stuck out to me was this. How have you seen this have an impact? I not only have shown that I paid attention, but I took the time to go read it. I actually didn't. I just skimmed it, looked at one thing and cut and pasted it, brought it back. Don't tell anybody that. We'll keep that between us. What's going to happen then though is I'm using this commenting strategy to show that I'm interested in you, I've paid attention to your content, I'm following you, I'm reading what you have to share, I'm listening to your videos and then I have something valuable to add back to it. And not about me, but about you. And I have some great examples I share in my training that are stories about how my team and other teams have used this to get in front of. I won't go into the whole story, but let me just jump to the punchline. My team went to a technology event. We had 100 prospects at the event because of the techniques they used that I've alluded to here. 100% exception connection request. 100%. And some of them initiated the request themselves. This was 100 prospects at an event that I sent my sales team to in Las Vegas. Of the 100, all of them accepted a connection request, oftentimes initiating that themselves. And 22 of the 100 accepted an immediate follow up sales call. Why? Because they used a commenting strategy to get in front of these prospects so that when the time came for them to connect with them in real life, it was actually in person. Now they were thrilled to connect because they, my team had given, given, given, and now suddenly they just simply wanted to rebalance that human algorithm to bring it back and accept that or initiate that connection request. There's powerful ways you can use this technique to drive interest of other people into you.

And that's the three. What's to buy? Five.

Five days.

Five days.

Five days. And what you're going to see now, what you want to, what your listeners to do is to look at how many people have looked at their profile, go into your LinkedIn analytics and see profile views. Now most of your listeners don't have sales navigator or LinkedIn recruiter LinkedIn Premium. So they're going to see a number. Let's say that number is 180. That means over the last 90 days, two people a day have looked at their LinkedIn profile on average.

Okay.

Okay. Now if you have a more advanced premium, you'll be able to see a lot of that analytics. But in this case I don't. I'm just going to see 180. So take a screenshot now do the Bliss point, Richard Bliss, three by five. Leave three comments a day for the next five days and at the end of those five days go back and look at that number. Now remember, it's a 90 day. It's a 90 day moving target. I can guarantee pretty much or the money back from your listeners. If you've been getting 180 impressions over 90 days, that number in a week is going to jump to 300 to 500 immediately, which means you probably got more people to look at your profile that week in the previous 90 days combined because it's a rolling number. So if last week it was 180 and this week it's 400, that means 220 people looked at my profile this week. I don't want to make right in a week more people than the previous three months. Only because you did one thing. You left three comments a day for five days. That's actually more than one thing, but I think you get the point.

Nice.

I need to make a change, right. I'm saying 90 days, 300. I gotta fix that.

Yeah.

Is that what your says right now? 90 days, 300 people. So you're getting about. What is that about three people a day? A little bit more than three people a day. So if you go and leave three comments a day for the next five days, we come back next week, that number should at least double.

Okay, I'm on it.

Richard, you and I were just doing a little training a few minutes ago and you were telling me about a text you got from a guy that you work with. Now for everyone, when you listen to these numbers, results may vary but it is a real life text that he just got today. I did from a man who was at you with me S I think yeah.

The event is mes. It's by the CRN magazine. The channel company hosts a series of events. I'm often speaking at their events. So I was speaking in Orlando a few weeks ago and I introduced this man, taught him some things and what happened was first of all during my speech, which was 30 minutes, I had him make a post that I had everybody comment on. He received 1,000 impressions on that post in 30 minutes. Now he often gets 2 to 3,000 impressions on many of his posts. So that was pretty impressive though in 30 minutes. But here's the text that Darren's referring to that he sent me today. Hi, Richard, I wanted to thank you for the LinkedIn advice. Since the event, I have been making my posts shorter and breaking them up into two or three lines and a space because I told them, look, don't do more than three lines per paragraph. It's hard to read. My impressions have been blowing up. I'm getting between 10,000 and 30,000 impressions per post versus the 2 to 3,000 max before. Wow. He said that to me. His name is Brent Hamilton. You can go look him up on LinkedIn, tell him you heard about him here on. On the podcast. But yes, he texted that to me and I was like, wow. He says, I'm also commenting on other posts three times a day and responding to my comments as well. Thank you. So he's doing the three by five strategy and has changed the structuring of his content. He's getting 20, excuse me, 10 to 20, 10 to 30,000 impressions per post because he changed some of these approaches that he uses about LinkedIn. This is what I talk about. Facebook, Instagram, those are algorithms are fundamentally different. LinkedIn's like, look, do you have good content that starts a conversation? Boom. We're going to show it to a whole lot of people way outside the number of people you're connected to. That has nothing to do with it. It has to do with the value of the commenting that are coming in.

And Richard, I know our time's getting short here. The one thing I wanted to clarify. That gentleman you were just talking about, he was doing post, but like in paragraph format. So what you're saying is a line or two hit space. A line or two hit space. So it becomes, especially on your iPhone or mobile phone, becomes more readable. Bull like that alone. And then he was making shorter. So it actually is less time if you follow this. But the impact is ginormous.

I like 120 words per post. That's a good number. Research. Our research reports showing shorter posts are starting to do better. But I say don't. When we say shorter under 10 words. No, that doesn't count. But. But 120 is a good number. And then somewhere, okay, 80 to 120. That gives you enough real estate to actually say something that causes people to want to participate in the conversation with you.

Okay, I have one more question. I got.

Sure you do have more questions.

We get a hard stop in five minutes. So I can't wait my client. But I got to ask this one, people. I've been told our profile, the way we write a profile can really change the game for us. You know, we often. Here's our Bio. What we have done, we went to school, all the great things that we do. And others say no. Show how you can serve an audience. Others say no. Be more fun, be more conversational. I've heard so many ideas, I don't know what to do with my profile.

All right, tell you what, here's what I'm going to do. And this happened this morning. I've been on sales calls this morning. I'm speaking to a vice president of sales at a company, a tech company. He and I said, your prospects, clients, partners, vendors, they're all looking your LinkedIn profile up to see if you can solve their problem. So here's the opening to his LinkedIn profile. You tell me who he's talking to. Here we go. Hello. I'm an accomplished professional with a wealth expertise, devising strategic sales initiatives, uncovering new business opportunities, executing growth plans, producing acquisition and channel program strategies, managing channel relationships, and building high performing teams. I'm adept at delivering innovative ideas to enhance sales efficiency, organizational productivity and brand awareness. Who's his intended audience?

Management and sales forces or no?

Darren.

I would just say he thinks it's everyone.

But he also sounds like. And I asked his team in front of him as I read this, who does it sound like your boss is talking to? And they all said unanimously, recruiters. It sounds like he's talking to his next hiring manager. I'm an accomplished professional with a wealth of expertise devising strategic sales initiatives. I'm covering, blah, blah, blah. I'm adept at delivering innovative ideas to enhance sales proficiency. See, what does the customer care about that? And so instead I said, let's shift it. As an accomplished professional, I have a wealth of expertise in devising strategic sales initiatives that helps my customers solve their problems Today in the world of security, as nation states are now threatening organizations of every size, in today's world, it's so important to focus on that technology. Security is not simply a technology play, but it's a universal cultural play on how we change our business. As I work with my customers, I'm able to draw upon this experience to help them focus on building their right. I did that on the fly. Yeah, but you can see the difference. I'm using the same language but a different audience. And so, so much of the people that we talk to, speakers speak as if it's a resume or cover letter or somehow. Speaker bio. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Talk to the person who's as if you were talking to me, not in a third person. I came to your LinkedIn profile to find out about you. I want your work history. I'll look in your work history. I want your skills. I'll look in your skills certifications. I'll look in your certifications. I look at your about section because I want to know about you. About you, what motivates you, what brings you here, why do you do this? And what I don't want is a once upon a time story. I decided to become a public speaker because when I was a kid in third grade, I did this. Yeah, I don't care. Nobody cares. Now you might put that at the bottom because that's interesting. After I found out everything I want to know about, but I was like, oh, that's interesting. There we go. We're at the top of the hour. I'm being sensitive to your time. This has been awesome. I appreciate you guys having me on the show.

All right, well, hey, we know you got to run. Mark's going to do a quick recap, but Richard, bounce if you need to. If you're listening to this, I have convinced Richard to do a two day deep dive for professional speakers in August for first and second in Vegas and also hybrid. So just check out stagetime workshops.com if you want to know more about that deep dive event.

Mark, how can we reach Richard? If I want to get hold of you, how can we reach you or contact you, our listeners?

I have an account on LinkedIn, so that's usually perfect. No, no, no. The best way is email. Our Bliss, Richard Bliss. Our Bliss at Bliss Corp. B L I S S c o r p.com blisscorp.com our bliss@blisscorp. That's the easiest way because I'll respond to that. LinkedIn gets a little busy for me, but if you send me an email, that's the easiest way to get hold of me.

All right.

Our Bliss at Bliss Corp. Well, here's my quick recap. One LinkedIn is a business platform, not social media. Don't use it that way. Emojis mean different things to different people. Use them carefully. They can interfere with the intent of your content or always leave insightful comments. Invest in human relationships first and apply the 3 by 5 system. Comment usefully 3 times daily for 5 days and watch your impressions soar. Go to analytics and see your profile views. Remember, shorter posts, 120 words or fewer every three lines. Skip a space and watch your bookings soar and accelerate on LinkedIn.

All right. Hey, Richard, thanks for being here. Stagetime workshops.com join us in August in Vegas. See ya.

Make sure you subscribe to our show.

Remember to subscribe because if you miss a week, you miss a lot.

If you like this episode, please leave us a review. If you want to get more from Mark and Darren, check out stagetime University where they provide experienced presenters a proven path and world class feedback. To become the speaker everyone is talking about, go to stagetimeuniversity.com join us next week if you're going to take the time to prepare a presentation, make it unforgettable.