LinkedIn Marketing and Optimization for Consultants, Coaches and Course Creators

Okay, let's go ahead and get started. This is LinkedIn optimization for coaches, consultants, and course creators. My name is Terry Rice and I'm a business development consultant. And normally what that involves is helping other consultants, coaches or course creators build their brand and their revenue. And then beyond that, I'm also a contributor to Entrepreneur magazine, which is a lot of fun because I get to interview a lot of the top coaches, consultants, and course creators, learn some of their best practices, try them out on myself, and if they work, I pass it on to people like you. Before that, I was a client solutions manager at Facebook and also a search engine marketing consultant at Adobe. So it's been doing consulting for the majority of my career. Another fun fact, I live in Brooklyn and that's where I currently am right now. And it's going to be somewhat loud in the background. Hopefully it's not too noisy, but, you know, it's during COVID and there's never going to be a perfect time for me to record this, so I'm just going to go with it. And I also have three children who you might hear in the background as well. But my, my goal here is to give you some very valuable information. So if you can just bear with that, we're going to be okay, and it's going to keep on rolling. Otherwise it would take me forever to get this done. And I want to make sure you get this information. So if you've never been to New York City, this is your chance to somewhat experience it with the. The sirens and the trucks and everything in the background. Let's keep it moving here. So who is this for? It's for you. It's for coaches, consultants, and course creators who want to use LinkedIn to land more clients, to become a recognized expert and book more media opportunities. So I'm going to show you how to do all that today. And here's the agenda. First is profile optimization. Making sure we're attracting the right people, by the way we describe ourselves, display ourselves and the content that we have in our profiles. Next one, creating compelling content. And I know this is where a lot of people get stuck. They're like, I don't know what to say. I want to sound smart, but it's taking forever and you never end up doing anything right. I want to help you get over that hump by showing you how to create this content on a consistent basis and then outside of that, making the right connections. Right? So when you're on LinkedIn, that's your goal. It's a social media Platform. It's not just you talking about yourself. You want to make sure you meet the right people that you can learn from, work with and just overall engage with that are relevant to your industry. And then playing the long game, realizing that, you know, you're building a career, you're building a business, and doesn't have to happen next week. And just being patient in how you do this will give you even more rewards in the in the long run. But really important to realize that, you know, there's no magic bullet for how to do this. You know your approach is going to vary based on the audience that you're targeting. You know, how often are they on LinkedIn, what kind of content do they want to see and the content you can produce, can you create videos, is it more text based, so on and so forth, and then how many clients or customers you'd like to attract. So if you're selling courses, you probably want to sell a lot of those. But if you're working just with clients one on one, you don't need like 50, right? So all these things really factor into your process you would have in regards to using the platform. Let's go ahead and get started here with your headline. And your headline you want to think of as almost like your micro brand. It's the first thing people see when they go to your website or, sorry, when you hit your LinkedIn profile or when you comment on a post. So you want to make sure that you attract the right audience with your headline and your bio. So the keywords that you have in there are very important because if someone's searching for a digital marketing consultant, you want to make sure you have that term in there. Or if someone's looking for a financial consultant, you want to make sure you mention that in your bio and in your work history. So it's fine to get creative, but you also want to spell it out as well to make sure you're being captured by these searches. And I'll show you a few examples here. This is my buddy, Mike Koenigs, and he says I help experts build empires and personal brands. Then goes on to say he's the host of this, this podcast called Capability Amplifier. He's an entrepreneur, investor and author. So these are the terms he wants to show up for, right? Podcast, entrepreneur, investor, author. No one's searching for I help experts build empires. But that's how he's branding himself because again, that's, he knows this is his micro brand right here, right? This is where he wants to get in front of People, when they first come to see his profile, and in the background you see get paid for who you are, not for what you do. And all these media outlets he's been featured in. So he's very intentional about how he's presenting himself right now. Going a bit further is my friend Amina Altai. She is a holistic business coach, meaning she will help you grow your business by working on your actual business, but also your mental and your physical health. But no one's really searching for a holistic business coach typically. So she just uses the term business coach. And she says helping female entrepreneurs and leaders make work a place they freaking love, feel good at, and get paid. Now, some of you might say, well, she should be saying freaking love in her profile. Isn't that gonna turn some people off? Yeah, that's the point. You don't want to be everything for everybody. So with Amina, she says, hey, if we can't swear, we can't be friends. So by design, she puts this out here because she wants people to know what her personality is like. Right? It's going to attract the right people and turn away the wrong people. So she's doing this all by design. Next up, Justin Doyle, another buddy of mine. He's an executive coach, and he normally coaches people that work at hedge funds or other financial services. So they're very high achievers and just could use some help navigating their personal life as well as their professional life. And if you look at his title, Executive Coach, he also chose that very much by design because even though they're different coaching, consulting, those terms are sometimes used in a similar way. But what you'd want to do here is say, well, what term gets more searches? Right? You can explain that you're actually more of a consultant than a coach. But if you want to show up for these searches, you want to see which one gets more searches. Is it executive coach or is it executive consultant? A really cool and free tool you can use is Google Trends. And the cool thing about Google Trends is you can put in any two keywords or more in this case, executive coach versus executive consultant, and see which one's getting more search results. So in this case, we see executive coach gets way more searches than the term executive consultant. So if you want to show up higher when someone's looking for executive advice, let's just call it that you would use the term executive coach instead of executive consultant. For you, it's going to be different. But if there are terms that are kind of synonymous that you can Consider using run it through this tool first to make sure you're using the right word to get in front of the largest possible audience. Okay, so that's Google Trends, totally free. Please do try it out. Now let's go a bit further into your headshot and your cover photo. Super important here. We want to make a good first impression, right? So first of all, use a professional photo. And if you have to just use your iPhone or Android, if you're like me, that's fine. But you want to have a plain or neutral background and make sure you smile. Whatever you do, don't be the person who doesn't have a photo up because that just seems a little off, right? So you want to have a professional photo, not one from when you're at a bar and you crop someone out, or you know, one of those ones where you're at a wedding, but you can still tell that, you know, like, that's not the natural background you'd normally be in. You want to make sure that you have a good looking photo. So on the far left, this is like the evolution of my profile photos. The far left, that's back when I worked at Adobe and just really didn't care because I worked in house. I'm like, I'm not looking for a job. I wasn't on LinkedIn that often. So I got the hat on, I got the earrings in, and I have this silly necklace on as well. And then as I got a little bit older, I was like, okay, I should probably use something more professional. So I have that free one I got from a conference, which isn't bad, isn't great. I have like almost a smile could be better. Um, and now you see the one I have now, right? So it's more professional. I'm looking at something and I'm happy about something as well. And it's funny, when I went from that black and white one to the color one where I'm actually smiling, the number of people reaching out to me went up much higher. My requests got accepted more as well. So it just makes me look more professional. And again, you want to do the same thing as well, Right? So it doesn't matter if it's, you know, just you on your own, on your iPhone or your Android, whatever it is. You just want to make sure it looks clean and that you just look approachable. Right? So again, doesn't have to be perfect, but it just has to be better than me sitting at a bar looking like I'm waiting for a drink. Okay. Another big thing Include a call to action in your cover. And this is something I didn't do for years. And this is what I mean. You have this cover photo above your profile photo. You want to include some kind of call to action there. Whatever it is, it can be. Get on my email list, download this white paper, contact me, whatever it is. And you can see here with this woman, Shanae, she's saying, hey, text me if you want to grow, right? So that's, that's the way she's doing this, through sms. But just do something. First of all, please don't have just that generic blue background where it's like light blue with those lines all over the place. I know, hey, I was guilty of that for years as well. But just put something here. I see some people putting like landscape photos, like, hey, I like trees. That's cool, I like trees too. But that's not going to make you any money. So what I would say is you want to make sure you have something that looks professional there and just really can get people to take action once they see your profile. That's really what we want people to do. It's like your homepage on your website. What do you want them to do once they get there? Right. So next step again is having this cover photo set up. If you look at mine, I have this free mini course that I created. It's called how to get More Coaching and Consulting Clients. Your six step marketing plan for booking coaching and consulting clients that will pay you what you're worth. And in this case, I put a bitly there as well just to make it easier to memorize. Because if someone's on their phone or just on their computer, like you can't actually click through on these links. That's why I put a bitly there. And then you might as well look at my profile as well. I'm saying my title, which is an entrepreneur magazine, expert in residence, and then saying I help consultants grow their brand and revenue. Right? So it's being straight up about what I do and how I can help you. Again, time for you to revisit yours. Just think about what would make sense. What do you want someone to do as soon as they go to your profile? This is another one that I didn't do for a while, uploading featured content. And by the way, this is a relatively new feature as compared to everything available on LinkedIn. So if you're not using this already, it's, it's understandable. But featured content is available directly below the about section on your. On your on your LinkedIn profile. And if you're not using this, you're definitely missing out on some prime real estate because you see how large it is. That's why it's, it's called featured. And you can put some really good information here to get in front of your target audience. Now on my end I have my, my founder video, so more or less introducing myself to my audience. I also have my speaker reel. You go a bit further. There's a webinar I did with Entrepreneur as well. Whatever you want to put here that makes sense, go with it. But you have a lot of options. It can be a post that you put up before a really good post. It can be an article you created on LinkedIn. It can be a link to anything on your website. So maybe it's a link to your testimonials or your services or whatever it is. It can be photo, it can be, you know, sorry, it can be a photo, it can be documents, it can be pretty much anything, right? So just do something. And again, the goal here is to encourage people to take the next action you want them to take by making it so prominent on your, on your LinkedIn profile. So please do not forget to do this as well. Right? Super important. Now going to, getting into the meat of it. Ah, creating compelling content. How do we do that on a consistent basis? Right? That's a lot of Cs. I just noticed that. And I think that's the problem is some people, they get so stuck on this part, they just don't do anything. And unfortunately you're making a statement by not saying anything because if you say you're an expert in whatever you do, but you never Talk about on LinkedIn but when someone's researching you, there's nothing there to make them feel comfortable moving forward with you. Right? So you want to make sure you're doing this and not cheating yourself out of the opportunity to grow your brand and your revenue. But really important, don't chase likes. You want to focus on impact. And you should never associate your self worth or the value of your content with how many likes you get. Like, yeah, sure, it's a cool, you know, key performance indicator to say how well it's doing more or less. But, but just because you're not getting engagement doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. There are some things we can tweak and we'll talk about that today, but don't feel like you're doing something wrong or something wrong with you just because you're not getting a lot of engagement, right? You want to focus on impact. Are you creating information that's valuable for your target audience and getting some kind of feedback on it as well. But if you're short on time, here's the easiest content marketing strategy ever. So get ready to write this down. Think of 10 questions your audience has, right? So for me, I help consultants, so it might be, how do I get more clients, how much should I charge, how do I scale, so on, so forth, and then answer them with your content questions. Create content. So create content that answers those questions for your audience. It can be an article, it can be a video, it can just be text based, it doesn't matter. But if you just stop and start here, think of those 10 questions. If you put one out per week, you will have two and a half months worth of content, right? This is the easiest way to get started. You get used to creating content, getting this feedback, getting this engagement, and then from there tweaking it as you go forward, right? So this is going to be your first thing that you're doing in regards to posting 10 questions. Answer them super easy, because I know you know those answers. But also realize that people are scrolling through their feed rather quickly, so if you don't grab their attention with the first line of text, you could be in trouble. And I remember one of my clients who I know and respect very well, I saw one of her posts that said, hey, are you missing group trainings? And no one's really missing group trainings. They're missing the outcome of group trainings. So I said a better way to say this would be, hey, do you need help understanding how to navigate Digital Marketing in Q4? I have this group training coming up, right? So you want that thumb stopping content. So you want to make sure you engage people with the first line of text, right? So here's a few examples of what I said in the past. Hey, you're gonna want to give up, but don't. And I talked about how challenging it can be to accomplish big goals. And you should actually want to quit sometimes when you're doing anything worthwhile, because that separates you from everyone else who did quit, right? That's why it's challenging. Another one, I said, hey, this is going to sound hypocritical, but here goes. And then I went into how I was not posting that much on LinkedIn during that time period, even though I teach people how to do it, but it's because I just had a kid. So I'm like, I'm not sleeping at all right now. And I cannot post any content, but I can still engage with content and we'll get to that later. If you can't create, you can always still engage. Right? So you want to make sure you have this thumb stopping statement to grab people's attention as soon as they see it. Otherwise they will keep scrolling. Right? So here's an example of like this, this how to content that where I'm answering questions, I'm saying, how much should a consultant charge for their services? Right? So I'm asking a question. If you're a consultant, you're going to stop and say, hmm, this sounds interesting and go deeper into it. And you also notice I have these, these hashtags at the bottom. Super important to use hashtags. That's how you identify the theme of the content to LinkedIn. And if people are following these hashtags, they're more likely to see your content. And the goal is to trend for the hashtag when you're getting so much engagement that you are being exposed to more people. So be very careful when you're looking at these hashtags because let's say for consulting business that might have like 14,000 followers, consultant singular might have a million followers. So you want to make sure that you have a mix of very specific hashtags and ones that have a lot of reach as well. So normally I don't put more than five in here. Otherwise it's like one big hashtag post. But again, make sure you're using these. You will get more reach for your content. Here's something else I've been doing. I've actually just been doing Q and A videos where I'll answer some common questions. I get and record it. And I have a lot of fun doing these. Even though I look like I'm in pain right now, I'm actually not in pain. I'm enjoying these. But you can do these in like 30 to 60 seconds very quickly. So this one, I said, you know, how do you deal with rude, difficult clients? Here's a quick tip for you. Peace out. And that's pretty much what I said in the video. But the benefit of video is it gives you more of an opportunity to show your personality, right? So me, I'm very sarcastic and stoic. And you can't always see that. The way I'm writing it, I might just sound like angry or jaded. But if you see my personality in the video or I'm laughing as I'm saying these things, it's more apparent. So I think this would be great for you. Just again, those 10 questions, just whip out your phone, answer them, and that can be your video content as well. You can leverage this on other platforms such as Instagram, your Instagram story, so and so forth. So please do consider doing this. All right, Another thing, you can use this approach to promote yourself in a way that's engaging but not overly salesy. And I'll show you what I mean by that. Right now I'm promoting this free mini course that I have and I'm starting off saying, hey, do you need help finding coaching or consulting clients? My free course is launching soon. Would you like early access to the beta? If so, comment beta below and I'll send you the link now. Why am I doing this? It's because the more engagement you get for your post, the more reach you get in the newsfeed that tells LinkedIn this is good content, we should show it to more people. So instead of me just saying here's a link, I'm saying comment beta below and I'll send you the link. Beyond that, once someone comments beta, it shows up in their news feed. Kelly commented beta on Terry Rice's post and then their friends or connections might see the post as well. Now, if you look, this is really interesting because this post only got 27 comments. I'm saying only because it got, sorry, 27 likes. I'm saying only because it Got 72 comments. Normally you get more likes than comments because it's easier to just like something to the comment. But again, I was able to get people enrolled in this course, which I built on teachable, by the way. Took me like 12 hours just by saying, hey, comment beta on here. I think I got like 50 people within the first day, which is pretty good, right? Because you're doing this for lead gen purposes. So these are ways that you can get more engagement for your content. But again, I'm giving people value at the same time, I'm not just trying to sell something. So here's another one where I start off saying, hey, did you miss it? A lot of people. Well, technically, four asked for the recording from my recent webinar with Brain Trust. So I'm essentially trying to get more reach for this webinar that I did, but I'm starting it off in a humorous way, like a lot of people. Well, actually, only four asked for this, asked for this recording of this webinar. And this one got some pretty good engagement too for people asking, you know, for this, this link. But notice how I'm spacing out my text so it's easier to read on mobile. And I'm putting these emojis in here is like these bookmarks or these bullet points. You want to do that as well, to make it more visually appealing, right? So be sure to do that. But here's the thing. It can't just be all how to content. Reason being, you will never show your personality if you're not expressing it through other forms of content. Right? And that's the problem I see with a lot of consultants. They feel like they have to fit inside this box of being this rigid in this source of information, and they never show their personality. But you want to work with people that you know like and trust, and you can't do that if you're not expressing your worldview and your experiences. So the way you build your personal brand is by expressing your personality and sharing your experiences. And sure, you might turn some people off, but that's the goal. I always say you're better off being Nickelback. Nickelback. If you Google most hated band in the world, Nickelback shows up all the time. I don't know why, because I don't think they're that bad. But to the point, if you also look at the most successful Canadian bands in history, Nickelback always shows up near the top as well. So the people that like them, really like them. And I always say, you're better off being Nickelback, right? Because you're going to be very niche, but the audience who follows you, they're actually going to like you a lot more and be more loyal. So let me go into how you build this personal brand by going beyond how to content. And I got this from Taylor Offer. This guy is a really good person to follow as well on LinkedIn as per his title. And he gave me this really good framework for how to create content rapidly. That shows my personality. So check him out. Check out his content. He's someone good to follow. But let me show you the process that he introduced to me as well. The first thing you want to do is determine your content buckets. And this is your opportunity to say, you know, how would I want people to explain, you know, my personality when they meet me, you know, what do I do, what am I known for, so on and so forth. So your first content bucket has to be your craft. So maybe it's digital marketing or financial consulting or a public speaking coach, whatever that makes sense. But the other two content buckets, that's yours to explore. Maybe you're really big into nonprofits. Or you're really big on yoga. It could be anything. You're going to determine what makes sense for you to express as an extension of your personal brand outside of your craft. And then from there, what formats you're going to use. Pictures, video. It can be humor, it can be text, it can be commentary on other things you're seeing going on in your industry. And you're just going to rapidly create content based on these buckets you've created. So these are mine. So my first one is going to be coaching and consulting. That's who I help. It's also going to be mindset and mental health. I'm really big on that, especially when it comes to people who are entrepreneurs, because you can easily burn out if you don't look out for that. And then going into my personality, so I'm sarcastic, I'm stoic, I'm observant. So there's things that I see around me that I think are interesting. I can include that as well. But here's where the magic really happens. It's you just coming up with just the themes of topics rapidly that would fit in these buckets. You don't have to complete the entire post, just the themes. So here's some of mine. Under consulting and coaching, I could show a picture of myself speaking at south by Southwest about how to launch a consulting business under mindset and humor. How to overcome imposter syndrome. Don't be an imposter. Pretty easy. Under personality and commentary, I can look at whatever's trending in LinkedIn news and comment on that. Another one under consulting and a text based one. Hey, why should actually create text shortcuts in your phone to help you go about your day faster? So I actually came up with 60 ideas in about two hours. And that's how I've been able to post every day on LinkedIn consistently, because you're just rapidly putting it out and you're not really concerned. Again, oh, how many likes did this one get? How many likes did that one get? You're just saying, look, I just want to express my zone of genius and my personality. Sure, some of it will take off and you'll get, you know, tens of thousands of likes. That's great. Not all of them will, but they might also just reach the right person who's like, you know, you had this one post that really stood out to me and I thought it was great. So this is the process and I want you to do the same thing. Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Just get these ideas out of your head, start posting them and sit back and see the results. And then you can then optimize from there. Right? Some content works better than others. Double down on that and stop doing the ones that aren't working out as well. So here's one post I did, and this is more or less about COVID and me just always explaining why my kids are making noise in the background. And what I found is everyone's always like, hey, we can't hear them or we don't care or it's okay. So I said, I started off by saying, people don't care about your kids. That was the hook. And I said, well, here's how I found out. And then actually delivered on the statement that I started with. People say they don't care about the noise they're making. So yeah, there was a little bit of like coyness here, but you get my point. It was this thumb stopping content that resonated pretty well with the audience that saw this. It got like 27,000 views. And again, that's not the litmus test for success, but it shows, like this random thought I had in the moment. I'm like, people always say they don't care if my kids are making noise and sharing. That landed very well. Again, so that's my personality. Here's another one. This is me working out at the park and I'm doing something called a Turkish getup. And I like them because they engage your core flexibility and strength. But you also have to focus very intently the whole time because your goal is to keep on looking at that kettlebell you're holding. And I said it's almost like entrepreneurship, right? So as long as you have this focus, you can deal with all the other distractions as long as you keep your eye on the ball and you'll keep on moving forward in your career and towards the goals you have. So it's a quick video. It's only 20 seconds. People saw that, like, wow, this guy, you know, he makes a good point. And it shows my lifestyle. Like, yeah, sure, you know, dad, a bunch of kids and everything, entrepreneur. But I still care about my mental and physical health. That's why I'm out there doing this Turkish get up. Here's another one. This is a story about me getting laid off. Back in 2009, I believe I got laid off and I literally had seven bucks in my pocket at the time before I got hired on working at Adobe and went from having seven bucks to making six figures. And this story has nothing to do with me being a consultant, you know, my business as it is today. But I just realized, you know, with COVID a lot of people are going through it, and if I could give them some kind of inspiration, they that's what I want to do. And again, you're never chasing likes or views, but this one got a bunch of likes and views, right? And just my story, it wasn't anything, you know, well crafted. I was just telling a true story about how I had $7 and that landed well with a lot of people. So, again, express your personality, not just what you do, that's how you grow your personal brand, but also, don't forget to engage with content. We get so caught up creating content, we don't engage with it enough. And that's a really big problem because if you don't engage with content, people are going to stop engaging with yours, first of all. And then second of all, if you ask a question as you're engaging, like, oh, thanks for your comment, you know, how do you feel about this? You'll get even more engagement. And when you do that, it's going to show up in that person's newsfeed again. When they keep on going back and forth, it's more signals for the algorithm that you have good content that people are responding to. And as a result, you'll be able to get more reach in the newsfeed. So you want to make sure that you're engaging with content as well. Give you an example here. So this person's responding, saying, hey, I'm going to go to Terry's webinar. It's the third one I've attended. Hey, to my network. Terry's a great speaker and motivator. Great insights on growing your business to maximize your whole your effort while maximizing returns. Well worth an hour of your time. So how can I not respond to that? Right? I can't be like, hey, whatever, dude. Also super important, don't forget to engage with content. People often say, hey, how come no one's engaging with my content? And I would say, well, are you engaging with other people's content as well? Or when someone comments on your post, do you comment back and say, hey, thanks. And then ask another question? Your goal is to keep the conversation going because every time they comment on your post, it shows up in their newsfeed. Again, this person commented on Terry's post. So don't ignore them and do your best to keep a conversation going. So here's an example. This guy Allen was talking about a post, I Had about a webinar coming up and he said, hey, this will be the third webinar of yours that I've attended during the stay at home period of our lives. To my network, Terry is a great speaker and motivator. Great insights on growing your business to maximize your effort while maximizing returns. Well worth an hour of your time. So how could I not respond to Alan's comment? Right, Obviously I chimed in and said, hey, thank you so much. And joking around a little bit, I was like, hey, fair warning, I might start repeating some of my jokes, which actually is kind of true. But again, when someone comments, make sure you like and respond back. You also want to engage with relevant content that other people create. So you want to follow relevant hashtags for your target audience. Maybe it's digital marketing, public speaking, sustainable manufacturing, whatever it is, and then like share and comment on relevant posts. The most impactful thing you can do is to comment. So leave a real comment, not just an emoji. Don't just say cool. You actually want to chime in with some kind of impactful comment. And here's why. So this is Simon Sinek. He's someone I follow. A lot of you might have heard of him from that speech he had about starting with why people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it, so on and so forth. And I know people in my target audience engage with him as well. So your goal here is to find these thought opinion leaders that you align with in your audience aligns with and comment on their posts. And if you're lucky, you'll become the most relevant post on there and get more visibility. So in this case, I had 52 people like my comment and 13 replies. Some of them actually went to my website or sorry, my website, my LinkedIn profile, and said, hey, I saw your comment, I thought it was great, would love to connect. So and so forth. You're going to do this by design. You're going to identify again, 10 people who you, your audience aligns with and you align with and just keep on commenting on your posts, their posts. Especially again, if you're someone who's like, ah, Terry, you know, it's still kind of hard for me to come up with content. That's fine. They'll give you the context for your content. Right. You're just going to respond to what they have already moving on here to making the right connections. Right. It's a social media platform. It's not just you talking about things and posting content all day. It's also making the right connections to grow your knowledge, your brand, your career, or just have people to, you know, to communicate with who understand you. So let's go through some of the steps on how you can do this as well. One process is just creating and then connecting. Really simple. You're going to post content and then connect with anyone in your target audience who engages. So if someone likes or comments, you could send them a note saying, hey Tim, thanks for commenting on my latest post. I really enjoyed your insights. Would love to connect and learn more from you going forward. Now be very selective about who you do this with because it can be tedious. I mean, if you get 13 likes, do you want to reach out to 13 people? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But if it's someone in your target audience that you really want to connect with for one reason or another, then this is a perfect excuse to reach out instead of just saying would love to connect. Right? You always want to have some kind of reason for connecting with people because you can proactively reach out to other high impact members and again provide value in exchange for their attention. Why are you reaching out? It could be some really good guide tips or tools. Maybe you say hey, based on what you do. Here's this great article. You might want to check out or listen to this podcast. It's amazing. Maybe you yourself are offering something such as a free webinar. And I've done this all the time and I always say like hey, by the way, I'm coming out of the blue here, but I see that you're a consultant, so you might want to check out this webinar. Happy to send you some information or just connect in general. So you have a character limit here. I believe it's 299 characters, not 300, 299. So you have to get to the point rather quickly when you're doing these connection requests. So say it succinctly, but just be very upfront about why you're connecting. They'll either pass, they'll say, would love to connect, can't make it to the webinar or do both. Right? But this is why you should always have something planned or available to give to people. Maybe it's your lead magnet, again like a handy guide or something like that. You should always have something available of value to give to your audience. Here's another thing you can do. Reach out with a genuine question or compliment. Now this part is harder because you have to do some research on the person. What have they done recently that you can ask a question about or give a compliment on. But again, you'll be much more bespoke in how you connect with them because they can tell you're not just sending out random connection requests. And I'll give you an example of one that I got. So this person said, hey, Terry, I saw your article in a recent edition of Entrepreneur magazine, and I have a question. Did you mean for there to be a typo in the first sentence so that more people like me would engage with you like I am right now? Well, Max, no, I just messed up. But thank you very much for calling that out and asked. Reaching out with a genuine question. Right. So this guy read the magazine, saw that I had this post. There, there was a typo, which I'll admit, and he's like, did you do that on purpose to get more engagement? No, I just messed up. But again, at least I know this guy wasn't just randomly sending out information. And I. And I appreciated that. Here's what you don't want to do. What you don't want to do is automate your outreach to the point where you're relying on a machine not to mess up like this. So this person sent me another connection about one of my articles. It said, hey, oh, I saw your article. Type your message containing the common mistakes made on LinkedIn. And it's really nice. I mean, this one. Type your message containing the URL. I didn't know what was going on for a while when I first saw this, and I was like, is it me because I am sleepy? No, it's just messed up, right? So there are tools you can use to automate this process, and I think some of them work well. But just do some due diligence to make sure you're using the right one and you're not sending out messages like this, because you can't be the number one LinkedIn marketer to follow if you're sending out stuff like this. So I did not accept that connection request, as you might have guessed already. All right. What I want to do now, though, as we're wrapping things up, is just kick it up a notch. I want you to use LinkedIn for surveys and research, for you to learn from your target audience in a way that we never could before. Because I used to do research when I was an intern in college. I was calling all these various organizations, trying to get them to answer these surveys. They normally didn't care. You can use LinkedIn now easily, from the comfort of your own couch. Reach hundreds, thousands of people to ask them questions. So what I would say is this, you can reach out to 50 people in your target audience or that are key opinion leaders in your industry and say, I would love to interview you about something, maybe it's the state of sustainable manufacturing in 2021, and then interview them, compile the results and then share that with your audience. So, so if you're a sustainable manufacturing consultant, you can say, I interviewed 50 of the leading minds in sustainable manufacturing. You know, they write for these magazines, they go to this, they teach at this university, so and so forth. And here are their findings. Great. Now you have this amazing information to share with your audience. It can also get you on panels, on podcasts, on webinars, on stages, so on, so forth. And it's gonna boost your brand because you're this source of information just from curating it, right? So super important to consider this because people always wonder like, hey, how do I, you know, get mentioned in various magazines? Or how do I get on bigger stages? It's from you doing all this work to curate the information and then distilling it down in a way that people can digest it and take action on it. So I'm challenging you on this one. If you do it, please do reach out and let me know. I'd love to see the results and what your process is like and I can answer questions about it. But this is what separates people who are really trying to stand out and become thought opinion leaders. It's doing this, this lonely work that no one sees, right? Because it's just you reaching out to random people on LinkedIn. But the results cannot be denied. So here's some sample research and findings you could do. Top 10 money tips for next year. Personal branding tips from industry experts. How SaaS companies can increase revenue during the new normal, how to land a job at a tech company, so on and so forth. I'm just giving you ideas here, but this should be the key takeaways you're getting. Like these top things, how to do this in the new normal, how to get this job, so on, so forth. So seriously consider this because this could be one of the fastest ways to grow your brand, your network and your revenue, right? You're going to share the results, show them to relevant organizations, and from there you can get media and speaking opportunities as well, right? So if you want a shortcut to building that brand and your revenue, this is a great way to do it. And again, if you need help with that, please do reach out. And I'm not just Saying it from my experience, one of my clients, this woman, Lindsey Howell, did the same thing. She is a pilot, but she also realized that only 6% of pilots are females. So what she's doing now is she's consulting flight schools on how to attract and retain more clients. But the way she's building her business and her curriculum is she's interviewing 50 female pilots in reverse engineering what made them successful. So what did she do? She reached out to them on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I see you're a pilot. I'd love to interview you and just get some information from you. And these aren't short interviews. These are like a half an hour. And the cool thing is she got about 20 yeses. And the other 30 interviews that she was able to complete, they were all by referrals. So if you look at the hashtag 50flygirl interviews on LinkedIn, you'll see what she's up to. But again, once you get in the right networks and say, do you know anyone else who might want to help me with this? You can get a lot of referrals too. So you don't need. In her case, 50 yeses. 20 was enough. Right? So don't let that hold you back. Here's something else you can do. Let's kick it up another notch here, right? What else can we use LinkedIn for? You can survey your audience to build better products and services. So again, you're gonna identify your target audience by their title, by their engagement, relevant hashtags. So, for example, if I'm trying to find people that are into sustainable manu. Sustainable manufacturing, I can go to the hashtag sustainability, sustainable manufacturing and seeing who's engaging with that content, and then say, hey, Candace, I noticed that you engage with this post around sustainable manufacturing. I'm building out this new program to help people understand that. I would love to get your input on the biggest hurdles you're seeing in regards to addressing that. And if you could just wave a magic wand, what would that solution look like? And I can give you a copy of the script if you want, because I've done this before. This is exactly what I did to build my group coaching program. And I'll show you what my outgoing script looked like. And I said straight up, hey, I see you're a consultant, and I'm wondering if I can ask you a few questions about your daily challenges and potential solutions for an article and coaching program I'm working on. If you're able to help, I'll pass along a brief survey which take about five minutes to complete. And this is Candice saying, sure, I'll help. I sent this to 200 people on LinkedIn by filtering for the job title consultant and self employed and just sent this exact same message and actually saved it as a text shortcut on my phone so it was easier for me to send these. It took me about three nights. I was just watching Netflix and I kept track of how many I sent per day. I was always aiming for 70 a day. So I sent 200 of these requests out. Within a week, I got 45 responses. Not bad at all, right? It's like a 22% response rate from someone straight up saying, I'm trying to write an article and build a coaching program. Can you fill out this survey? And the survey was pretty brief too, fortunately. But I got some really good information from it. On your end, you can do the exact same thing. Is it going to be challenging? Yeah, because you have to sit there and, you know, send off, you know, hundreds of these, these, these, these connection requests. But the information you get is so valuable and it's going to help you build a much better solution going forward. It's going to help you avoid building solutions for problems that don't exist or are not impactful enough for you, your audience, to partner with you. Right? So please do this because right now you're wondering like, hey, you know, how do I get more clients? You know, how can I sell more stuff, so and so forth. Let your audience tell you what they want and then build it. It's that simple. And all you have to do is sit there and just keep on asking people to please fill out this survey, so on, so forth, and people are willing to help you as well, but also just play the long game, right? You don't want to be so short sighted, thinking, how can I get more clients, how can I get more money, so and so forth. Because again, your goal here is to build relationships. And if you're in a B2B, B2B consultant, you might have a much longer sales cycle. It could be like years before you actually get a. Yes, but just focus on building those relationships and you'll also build your revenue at the same time. But if you project lack or scarcity, people can smell that a mile away and they're not going to want to partner with you. So next steps, here we go. Use keywords that your audience searches for in your profile, in your headline in order to show up for these searches. And also create content for your audience. Right? You're not trying to appeal to everyone on LinkedIn it's just your audience and use those hashtags to get more visibility. Also engage with your audience so through comments and connections as well and provide value when you're connecting. Don't just say we'd love to connect with you, love your content, just actually give a reason that shows that you're not just sending out these random connections. But lastly just stick with it because you're gonna find your rhythm over time but but you won't get there if you quit in the middle of the process. So it's going to be a challenging process but I hope I've given you some clarity through that and again if you keep on pushing through you're going to come up much better on the other side. So I wish you the best of luck. Here's all my contact information, my email, my Instagram, obviously my LinkedIn. I would love for you to join me there so I can watch your content as well. But thanks for your time and I hope this was helpful.