Ep. 11: How to Promote Your Book on LinkedIn (without being salesy)

Welcome to the Pub Date Podcast, the show where two book broads discuss what should happen before, during, and after your book publication date. Brought to you by Broad Book Group with your host Vanessa Campos and Jen Dorsey. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Pub Date podcast. I am so excited because A, it's Friday, B, I get to hang out with some favorite people that I've known over the last few years. Jen Dorsey here joining me as always. How are you, Jen?

Hello, happy Friday. I'm doing great. I cannot wait to talk to our guest today because he's a sweetheart, he's an awesome guy, and he is a LinkedIn guru.

He really is. So Ted Padromo, we met a long time ago. Anything more than 6 months is a long time in my book. You know, first, my ever first job as a book marketing person, and Ted literally wrote the book on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn, as we all, I mean, we're all on it. It's really a powerful network with more than 740 million active users. We're all on it. We're all talking at each other, but we you may not be using the platform in the way that it was intended. You know, what really separates people from having a few hundred to a few thousand followers is really the way that they utilize it. And for people who are really savvy entrepreneurs and book authors, LinkedIn has become a new source of revenue, and it can be. They've got so many different tools and mechanisms that we just don't, A, know about it, or B, know how to use it correctly. So it's also probably a good thing that we have Ted on here because I think biggest thing that I get from authors is hesitation on promoting themselves, promoting their book. And right before we jumped on, we were talking about how your book is your business, your business is your book, and you are your business as an entrepreneur. You know, being on LinkedIn doesn't have to be a hard sales pitch, and I think that it shouldn't because I usually avoid those messages. It really should be more of an education and networking opportunity. So Welcome, Ted, our LinkedIn expert, sales expert, and author of Entrepreneur's Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business. How are you?

Great, thanks for having me.

Well, thanks for being here.

Does Friday matter when you're an entrepreneur? It's like you never seem to stop working.

Time is a flat circle, it really is.

My wife just retired about a month ago and she doesn't know what day of the week it is. I'm like, I don't know either, I work every day. So, right, always doing something.

Always. So give us a little bit of the backstory here. Tell us about how you got involved with LinkedIn and how you became a LinkedIn expert and guru in this space.

Well, I blame Perry Marshall, ultimate guide to Facebook advertising, ultimate guide to Google AdWords. So Perry had these things called 4-Man Intensive. So you go to his house for 2 days and you get to spend— 4 guys. Or 4 people, and you work on your business for half a day each, and then you help each other. So Perry— it was my turn, and Perry puts his head down, he's like typing away. And this is before social media was called social media. He says, you need to write a book about Twitter. I'm like, okay. So, you know, eventually it came around to— he introduced me to Entrepreneur Press. I wrote Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business and Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business. That was like 2012, and I had like 600 LinkedIn connections at the time, and I used LinkedIn, but I wasn't growing my network. So that's how I really became known as a LinkedIn expert, because of the book.

Wow, real chicken and egg kind of situation there. I love it. Yeah, the platform has changed so much over time, and I think it just— it continues to morph. I know when we worked on the last edition of the book together, when, when I was at Entrepreneur, you know, we were right up to the last moment of publication, you and I were making changes to book because there's just— it's constantly in flux. So talk— can you talk a little bit about that? Like, what have you seen grow on LinkedIn in terms of the ability for authors to connect with people? How is it better now? Um, because I think, as Vanessa Campos mentioned, there's just so much to know. It's, it's really become a vast platform.

Yeah, the big problem is LinkedIn rolls out all these new features, but they don't tell anyone about them. Right, which is great for me as a consultant because I like to figure stuff out. So I'll see something that's like the events, LinkedIn events down in the left corner of your screen. If you don't scroll all the way down, you don't know it's there, but it's a powerful way to create online events on LinkedIn and all of your network sees, and you can invite people outside your network. So there's all these features like that. The Creator Mode's another thing they just rolled out.

What's that?

If you publish a lot of content, you turn on creator mode, and they're supposed to favor your content now that you post on LinkedIn.

Oh, cool.

And the thing I like the best, it changes your button from connect to follow by default. So more people are following me rather than connecting and sending sales pitches to me.

I had no idea. I have been seeing that where normal people who are writing content I don't connect with them, I just follow them. And I'm like, all right, I didn't think anything of it, but that's good to know. Now that we have a BBG LinkedIn account, we're going to start doing that. We're going to do that.

Yeah.

So I love that you brought up the idea of the events and putting things together. Now that we're in the pandemic and events, in-person events went away basically overnight, and they're starting to come back up. But what I really loved about the pandemic, which is— that should be a book. What I really loved about the pandemic was that, yes, we were all in our homes, but we— there wasn't a level of being together virtually. And I really do feel like it democratized a lot of the content that before you had to pay a few thousand dollars to go in and hang out with Ted or Perry Marshall. And now, you know, because you're able to reach as a content creator so many more people, that price point can come down and you can educate people on your content of your book. So have you seen a lot more of that kind of events happening, and what are the best strategies in terms of actually getting people to show up?

Yeah, I— most of my business was speaking. I was traveling and speaking and, you know, handing out books like business cards. And with the pandemic, a lot of those events turned to virtual events, and then I started getting actually more speaking engagements on virtual events. So Instead of being in a conference with maybe 100 to 150 people, I was in virtual events, had hundreds of people on them, thousands. So I was getting a lot more exposure and I did it all right here. So I built a little studio. I have sound panels behind me now and all the equipment. So I enjoy it. I just did a speaking engagement in Denver last month and I had to get on a plane. It was full of, like, just jam-packed with families and I didn't feel comfortable. It's like, I don't want to do that anymore. Yeah, you're flying to a city, you get there, you stay overnight, you speak for an hour, get on a plane and fly home.

It's like, I do miss that sometimes, but I do enjoy the, uh, what is it called, the professional mullet, where it's professional on top and you've got some pajama pants at the bottom, right?

Hey, I didn't— you didn't see my pants.

How do— how did we know?

I was just going to ask Ted, for these events, do authors have to pay to do them? Is it a pay-to-play thing or can you just do them?

It's free. You set up the event and then if you set it up on your company page, you click a little button and it says use their LinkedIn profile data as the registration information. So you can then invite up to 1,000 of your connections every week to join your event. And then you can download a spreadsheet of all their contact information right from their LinkedIn data, so you know it's valid email addresses and contact information.

What? Okay, I didn't know that.

And here, everybody knows it. They don't tell us.

I remember trying to run events on, you know, different media platforms, and then we would download the, the data and it would be like somebody99 at hotlink.com, and it's just like, well, that's garbage, and we can't sell that to the ads, the advertiser, and we can't use it to, to remarket the, the content to that person because we don't know if they're valid. So that's, that's brilliant, and shame on LinkedIn for not sharing that with people.

And you can actually— they're gonna add a feature where you can boost the event like a boost of Facebook post. Right now you have to set up a separate ad campaign to promote your event. It's like, can I just click a button and say boost this event? They said it's coming, but they didn't give a date for it.

So I've seen the boost button on Instagram and I think Twitter and Facebook. So I'm glad that they're taking note that they are actually a social media platform.

Yeah.

And an important one for business authors.

Yeah. If you post content on your company page, you can boost it, but you can't create an event and boost that directly. You have to put the event on your company page, then boost that post. Like that's a two-step process, but it works really well. I just saw LinkedIn passed $1 billion in revenue from advertising last quarter, the first time they've actually passed $1 billion in a quarter.

Well, that's because we're all on LinkedIn and we're all trying to recover some of that event and connection. And like we were talking about before we actually joined online is how lonely we are and how much we want to be with each other.

So I'll tell you something. I don't want LinkedIn to hear this. So don't let anyone at LinkedIn hear this. You can search for events in your niche. Like, I search for LinkedIn training events. There's one guy has 30,000 people signed up for a LinkedIn training event. He's doing like a webinar.

Wow.

And if I say I'm going to attend that event, I can see all 30,000 people and their contact information. So it's like going to a conference with thousands of people and then they hand you the roster. Here's all the people that attended our conference for free.

That's mind-blowing.

Yes.

You can start going through that list and connect with all those people because you know they're interested. Like, if you're looking for people who want to promote their book, find books of events about that. You can connect with those people and your LinkedIn audience will be your target audience. It's like a bug. I know they'll maybe fix it someday, but I'm going to use it as much as I can while we can.

Absolutely. Those are the type of lists that you'll get as a business owner. You'll get this random email that says, hey, we have a list of X number of people who would be interested in that. And that's, that's actually something that direct mail marketers use a lot to target audiences and really get niche. So that's wild.

Yeah.

Jen, are you writing this down?

I, I, my mind is still being blown by it. So that is amazing. I love that. And, you know, I think a lot of people kind of talk themselves out of using LinkedIn and some of these more creative ways because they're either a little, um, intimidated by it or they feel like they have to pay big bucks to do some of these things, and they don't. They don't.

It's free.

Wow, I love it. What are some other things authors can do on LinkedIn to sell their book, to kind of get out there without feeling like they're being too salesy? What have you seen that's worked really well?

One thing that worked when I wrote the second edition of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business, I hired a social media writer on Upwork.com and there's like amazing amounts of work at home, stay at home moms now that are well educated and great writers and they want to just work part-time. So I hired a woman, she had a master's degree from Northwestern. She charged me $30 an hour. I gave her my manuscript. I said, write me some social media posts. She wrote like 100 social media posts that I had graphics made then. And so I post those on LinkedIn using Sendible, is a like Hootsuite.

Okay.

So I am dripping out excerpts of my book and then she added a little, you know, a little to each one. So that generated a ton of traffic. So my last book, the third edition, I hired 5 writers. They were all US-based. I went with the top tier. They were like $30 to $40 an hour. I said, you each have 2 hours to write, go through my manuscript and write some excerpts, and I'm going to hire the top 2. So I made it a contest and they could see they're all competing against each other. I have over 300 excerpts of my book from 5 different perspectives that now I use as social media content, and it cost me less than $1,000 to create all that.

You guys, that's brilliant.

That is brilliant because not every author, A, has the time to do that, or B, you know, not everybody's social media savvy and like creating cool little snippets or interesting little excerpts. It's not— writing the book was their talent, their business is their talent, but being their own social media person, not necessarily their talent. I love that idea. Shop it out. Sure. Yeah.

And hire the best writers. I got the US-based. I've offshored stuff and they just don't write as well as— they don't know our business.

I love that you got different perspectives because it's almost like a little book club. Yeah, every— nobody is going to read the same line the same way. Yes, we all know the same language, but we're going to interpret it differently and we're all going to have different opinions and perspectives on it, especially based on our individual experience with the platform. And I think that that's one of the big things that, you know, as you're thinking about writing a book, you think, oh, well, there's already been a book written about that, but it's not— that's not the point about writing a book. And you're selling yourself as a business, as an expert, and your experience in that platform. On that topic is what sets you apart. And I'm sorry, I'm just— I'm stunned that I didn't think about that because we used to do book excerpts and social media tip pull quotes and I love doing this, but you took it one step, like you one-upped everything.

I was just like so proud of myself.

I am proud of you too. Yes.

No, I posted the thing on Upwork and all these people kept applying. Boy, that— she's really good and he's really good. Why don't I just hire 5 of them and put a time limit on it? And I made it a contest where I'm going to hire 2 more of you to write more excerpts. I ended up actually writing— hiring 3 of them because they were all so good and I couldn't decide.

Upwork people.

Yeah.

Upwork for the win, for sure.

What else?

What about how you engage with some of the groups on LinkedIn? I've seen a lot of people, you know, join different groups, whether it's in your own profession or it's a book marketing group. How do you suggest authors interact with those kind of people? Is there a good way to do it, or there's some best practices for that?

You know, I don't even go near groups anymore, really.

Okay.

Because they just turn into spam buckets. Yeah. People have software like Hootsuite, and that you can blast an article to 50 groups or 100 groups that you belong to, and they just look and there's nobody engaging with that content. There's a few groups that are really good, but They really changed the moderation a couple years ago where I can't even have a group of 10,000 people. I can't email the whole group through LinkedIn anymore because people were sales pitching their groups, basically.

Got it.

So you can't do mass emails, you can't promote events as easily. You can boost posts. I just find there's very little conversation going on LinkedIn groups. Actually, my LinkedIn class that I teach, I have a Facebook group that's much more active than my LinkedIn group.

Okay.

Facebook is becoming the new conversation starter, although it was always a little bit about that. Yeah, I think, I think that's really great. And I love that, you know, that's where the conversation connecting with professionals needs to be. But sometimes you need to take it outside of that. So tell us a little bit about how you went. And I don't know if you're willing to share with us how many LinkedIn connections you have, how you went from 600 to now your current level.

4,000.

Wow. What?

Oh my God.

Yeah, that's wild. And is— was that all just organic, or were you like a— what they call a lion?

After the first book, I thought, yeah, I need more than 600 connections. I'm gonna get to 30,000. It was just the limit. So I started connecting with everybody, like, oh my God, what a mistake that was. You get so much noise, and people are always reaching out to you and trying to sell you something. So that's why now I don't even invite people to connect unless I see they're going to be at an event. So I'll say, hey, what do you want to learn at the LinkedIn marketing event? Or something like that.

Or you will go in and talk to them individually.

Oh, yeah. Start conversations and then invite them to connect. Say, hey, I see you're going to the LinkedIn marketing event. Let's connect. So I know they're interested in learning LinkedIn. So I'm going to build my network with people that raise their hand and I want to learn LinkedIn.

That's wonderful. What, what has been your favorite LinkedIn feature and your least favorite LinkedIn feature over the years?

LinkedIn messaging for both.

Love and hate relationship.

For some reason, people treat us like we're bots when we're online. Before, years ago, I fixed computers for a living in the '80s and '90s. If I'd go on service calls, I'd call up the customer and their system would be down and they're like yelling at me to get out there, treating me like a piece of dirt basically. Then I walk in the door and they're like, oh, oh, thank you for being here. They treat you totally different in person than when people are blasting these LinkedIn messages at us. Like they're cold calling or they're robo-calling, literally. Maybe I'll send 1,000 messages today, and if one person signs up, I did my job. I say treat it like you're at a networking event or at a conference. When you introduce yourself to someone and exchange business cards, how do you treat that person? Do you try to sell them? No, you try to get to know them. And people, I don't have time to build relationship, I need to make sales. I'd rather have a good relationship and get a lot of sales from one person than one sale from somebody I tricked into buying from me by spamming them. Yeah, that's what it feels like. You feel like you're The Hunger Games, they're hunting you down.

So less transactional, more relationships is what you're saying.

If you're a small business owner, an entrepreneur, you don't need 1,000 clients a year, right? Like 10 really good clients can carry your business for a year.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not sure that I could, I could take on 1,000 authors. 10 would be great.

Yeah, we can do that.

3 or 4 a month, one a week, wouldn't that be great?

Yeah, that's wonderful, right? Yeah. So it's not always about the massive quantity of people, it's not really relationship. And so if you have a lot of followers, so is your strategy to go in and find their mutual likes and then start reaching out? Or do you just kind of like group set, like, I'm going to talk to these 10 people this week and these 10 people next week?

You know what I've been doing lately is searching for content people have posted, and if I like what they said, I'll jump into the conversation. If a lot of people are commenting and liking it, and I'll try to meet people that way, say, hey Joe, I like what you said about Bill's post or whatever, and actually read the content if they posted an article and make a thoughtful comment. I was just on one of my mastermind group calls and somebody said he got a new client from another one that was in the group because he commented on his post. I said, Tom, how long did it take you to make that thoughtful comment? He goes, maybe 22 seconds. And he got another client because someone recognized that he made a thoughtful comment.

That's some good ROI.

Yeah. So you spend 15 or 20 minutes a day scanning through. You can actually search for specific content now on LinkedIn. Find something people are posting in your niche, join those conversations, and then invite them to connect maybe, or let them invite you to connect. Instead of— I used to do this, I had automated software. I'd search for job titles and company sizes, and then I would just blast invitations at them or view their profiles. I used to view like 1,000 profiles a day with automation, and you'd get, you know, building up your network, but It's all on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's caught on to that now, thank God.

Well, now they don't tell you exactly who has viewed your profile to connect. They want you to pay up for that. I think that's really interesting. One of the things that as you're talking, I'm thinking about all the things that I'm doing wrong on LinkedIn. I'm connected with a lot of professionals within my network, which means people who make books, people who market books, and people who sell books. But my problem is that I need to connect with more people like Kent. More people who are out there doing the business. So really your target audience and who is going to buy that service from you, because there is a comfort in knowing that you're talking the same language with people that are already doing the same thing as you. But that's not the point of LinkedIn, right?

I used to connect with a lot of marketers and a lot of web developers, and I think, oh, they'd be great referral partners. But you connect with a marketer, what are they going to do? They're going to sell you something.

Yeah, right. Or they're going to sell you something that their client is doing, right? That's me. I'm the marketer selling you the things instead of selling you my services. So if you're out there and you're like me, stop it.

Just build relationships, get to know people, have fun.

Is that right? In your pajamas.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I got my shorts on.

It's been warm, so yes.

Yeah. I wanted to ask a really quick question about LinkedIn Learning. Can you talk just very quickly because we're almost wrapped up here? Do you use that? How do you use that?

I would love to get a course on there, but you have to be invited, and I've reached out quite a few times and I've never been invited. To be honest, I've never watched a LinkedIn Learning course even though I have it in my subscription. I've got a grandfathered premium account from like, you know, 15 years ago, right?

I'm really curious.

I know some authors Like no more cold calling. Yeah, she's awesome. I just have— I've been working with her a lot and she's got a course and she gets lots of business from it.

Can she invite you as a course creator?

It's hard because they have a lot of turnover in people, so the person that got her involved isn't there. And I actually go down to LinkedIn headquarters. I was going like once a quarter because they found me through a press release or a Google alert. They invited me to come down to headquarters so they could pick my brain, and I was going once a quarter till the pandemic hit.

Wait, so they didn't invite you to come on virtually?

Not anymore. They're all working from home. They're like, hey, when the office opens up, come on down, we'll have lunch. And so, but Google Alert because of my book.

Hmm, all the little things that just make the difference. It's not about the big rush, it's about that small piece of effort, that thoughtful post, that thoughtful response, and just being human again.

People do business with humans. What is it? Oh my gosh, concept. Write that check or fill out the credit card application, right?

Right. Well, thank you so much, Ted, for joining us today. It's been lovely as always. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. If we have listeners who want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Yourlinkdincoach.com.

There you go.

Yes, but tell me that you heard me on this show, otherwise I probably won't accept your invitation, to be honest.

Yes, he's exclusive, people. He is exclusive.

24,000 exclusive friends.

He is now exclusive. Well, thank you again, Jen. Thank you again for joining me, and thank you to Paul Roberts of OC Talk Radio for being our producer and Emily Carpenter Polskamp for being our executive producer. Until next time, keep writing.

Keep writing.

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