Marketing + Margaritas Episode 7 - Looking at LinkedIn
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This week, we’re taking a deep dive into everything LinkedIn. It’s one of those social media platforms that a lot of people know of but aren’t actually leveraging how powerful this tool could be for their business and/or career. Gone are the days of boring and corporate style profiles, we’ll show you how to add in that all-important personality, while still staying professional. Stay tuned because this episode is packed full of tips!
EPISODE AGENDA
Setting up personal vs company LinkedIn profiles
Tips on using LinkedIn to your advantage
How to get more reach with LinkedIn
SHOW NOTES
Today we're talking LinkedIn 101. So, if you are a naughty girl like me, you may have a LinkedIn account - points for that, I'm taking them - and maybe points deducted if, like me, you have failed to use LinkedIn to its advantage. Apparently, there is some. Jade's gonna go on and tell us about it. I have set mine up and it's my living LinkedIn resume, which is what a lot of people do. But apparently, there's some really cool ways you can leverage your personal profile alongside your business's LinkedIn page. So, that's what we're going to cover today.
Now a little disclaimer, we've already covered choosing social media platforms in episode five. So, if you're not sure if LinkedIn is even for you, or if you're not at that stage yet, I highly recommend pressing pause and heading back over to number five to check it out. So, Miss McAuley, who's on LinkedIn? And why should we be there?
Okay, so most people already know, but for those who don't, LinkedIn is a business networking social media platform. We have social ones like Facebook and Instagram, where we connect with friends and family and stay up to date on what our favourite brands and stuff are doing and that type of thing. Whereas LinkedIn is basically like you're going to a business networking event, except it's online.
I'm just imagining everyone rocking up to their computers with little name tags like, "Hello, my name is Stacey".
Well, these days with Zoom and all that type of stuff, we actually have been doing networking meetings online. But yes, LinkedIn is definitely a place where it's a professional audience. It is about promoting your professional brand, whether that's just for you personally - and that's obviously something of interest to people who own businesses or are the face of their business. But then also, just for your own career development too. And then, it obviously does have brand or company pages as well and so it's another platform for you to position your brand, market your brand and yeah... get seen.
So you highly recommend getting both?
Yes, I do. A personal will be for example, 'Alanna Brake'.
So it's not like having a personal profile on Facebook, where my business life and my personal life don't mix.
Exactly. You want to keep them separate. So for you, your LinkedIn is your professional brand as Alanna Brake...
Why are you laughing at me?
I'm not laughing. It's like you know, you do marcomms but you're also doing business stuff. I don't know, so... as you are 'Alanna Brake'. So, that's your personal profile, and people can connect to 'Alanna Brake'. Then you have the company pages, so that would be, for example, the "Rebel Nation" company page. And that works the same way that Facebook does where you like, or follow the company page to stay up to date on what they're posting about. LinkedIn does have the option where you can actually change it on your profile, so that instead of there being a 'connect' button, there's a 'follow' button. So if you don't want people to immediately connect with you, say bigger, high profile business people - think Mark Zuckerberg and shit like that. They don't promote connecting with them, they have a button where you can follow.
So, is that the difference? Like using Facebook as a reference point? It's the difference between friending someone isn't the same as connecting, whereas following is like, following up...
I see them. Yeah, exactly. I see their content, but I'm not actually on their list of connections.
So, you're not really friends with Mark Zuckerberg?
Me and Zuck go way back, but I'm just using that example for other people. Even though LinkedIn is a professional business networking space, the most common behaviours on there, is that we actually interact with and engage more with content from people. So, it's actually more of a people-to-people network. Even though it's for business networking. Whereas if you think of Facebook and Insta, where they're in a social context, we're there for friends and family and stuff like that. It's really, really common to follow brand pages. Content from companies and stuff like that, we interact and we engage, we jump into their competitions and we share their content, all that sort of shit.
We head over to the shop and buy their product.
Yeah, so it's really, really, even though it's the social place, it's actually where we interact with businesses a lot. Whereas on LinkedIn, people don't really follow company pages too much. So, you might have some big ones, like BMA and that type of thing, where a lot of people will follow them, even local council pages will have more followers than the average. But even some really good local businesses, you'll see might only have say, 50 followers on LinkedIn, and it's not a comment on how they're managing their socials. It's just because it's not as common of a behaviour for us to do that. It's the business networking place, but we prefer to interact with other people.
Right. So it's more where our business peers or colleagues interact and share information between each other.
Yeah. 100%. That's where the benefit of having both is that, for your personal profile, when you're posting content as "Alanna Brake", then that's going to have more cut-through. You're more likely to show up in newsfeeds, than company pages.
Right.
Than Rebel Nation would.
So, if we're advertising a new position at Rebel Nation, Rebel will obviously share that because that's a part of the business. But if I was to share that?
You would get way more reach and engagement. But the reason we still want a company page is because, first of all, you can link your profile to your company page. So, it means that when someone looks at your profile, like your job history, you've got a nice little logo there from the company page, and you can click through to the company page. But it's also because LinkedIn has incredible SEO. So, LinkedIn are kind of known for - a lot of people sign up for LinkedIn profiles - then I think one of the reasons why they don't generally go back is because they then get bombarded with emails from LinkedIn, which you can actually change your settings so that you pull that back, and they have gotten better. But they're very good at push notifications. That means that they send stuff to you to entice you to click on the link and go to LinkedIn to check out whatever it is that they've emailed you about. And because they get all those clicks, they've got really good SEO. So, if someone was searching for your business, not in the LinkedIn platform, because their search is pretty shit - depending on what level you're on.
Just like in Google.
But if they're looking in Google, then there's a really good chance that your LinkedIn company page will show up as one of the top three, maybe four listings. So having it optimised from a search perspective is still really useful because then if I was having a stalk of your business through Google, I go to your LinkedIn company page, I see what you're about and I also see some of your recent posts to see what's happening in your business. I'm still finding out about you, it's just that it wasn't through my LinkedIn newsfeed.
Cool. Sidebar question that I genuinely don't know. When your staff are connected to your business page on LinkedIn, from the business page, can you see who works there?
Yes, you can.
Like obviously, you can see that Alanna works at Rebel, but can Rebel see?
If they're connected up.
Right.
So for example, we've just been going through and implementing this in our business, because marketing people are shit at marketing themselves. We had some people who didn't even have a LinkedIn profile, so we're just getting everyone's tidied up. But the overall point of doing that is so that if someone was to go to the 'Rebel Nation' company page, there's a thing there where it says, "See who works here". Or if you've got connections, it'll say, "Alanna Brake and others work here", and you can click, and then get a list of LinkedIn profiles for the people who actually work at that organisation. Again, if that's looking all professional and you can see people's qualifications, background, history, all that type of stuff, then it's just adding to the credibility of that business.
Definitely and that's going to benefit the business, whether they're going for tenders, new jobs, lead gen, that kind of stuff.
Even if you're hiring, you know what I mean? If you're looking at a potential business to work there - it's not just that the business will stalk potential people that they're hiring, but those potential employees will also stalk the business, because you want to get a sense of where you're going to, what the people are about, what the business is about, and if it's going to be a good fit for you.
Yeah and if everyone's been working there for 10 years, then that's like, "Oh, green light". That's really cool. Okay, so how do we set them up? Any red flags? Anything out of the ordinary that we need to know?
LinkedIn is obviously a lot like creating an account on anything else - like Facebook, that sort of stuff. It leads you through the prompts of how to create it, but some tips that don't appear in those prompts for your individual profile. So, definitely need a headshot. Having a photo on your profile goes a long way towards your credibility because being faceless doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence.
Definitely not on the internet.
Exactly like, is this even a legit person? And in that headshot, in that profile pic, sorry, I recommend using a headshot because you do want something where you can clearly see your face. Some people will put a photo of their business. God, some people even set up LinkedIn personal profiles as their company. And you're just like, "No, dude, that's just you being a business, being corporate in a bunch of normal people saying hey, be friends with my business." No, I wouldn't be friends with your business. But also equally important, when I said about making it a nice, clear shot of your face so people can see you - PS, there's nothing wrong with the way you look. It is the way that you look, there's nothing wrong with putting that out there. It's obviously good for recognition with people you do and don't know, like "Oh, is this the right Alanna Brake that I knew from Hastings or whatever it was?".
Yeah, if there were five Alanna Brakes, then you can see who's who?
But it's also just remembering it is a professional network. So, we're in marketing, so we get a fair amount of leeway. We could do something fairly stupid with our profile pic and I feel like that would be fine. But for most people, just think about what you're putting in there. It used to be a long time ago, this was really common, but I still see it every now and then, where people will have a cut out photo where they're trying to crop other people out of their pics. So, you see other people's hands and hair and stuff, or I've actually seen wedding photos as well. You know, on a wedding day you look very different to how you do on other days, mainly because of the tux or wedding dress that you're wearing.
So, do you mean that not everyone gets an updo?
I mean, maybe the fancy hair is fine and the wedding makeup but honestly the wedding dresses and the tuxes, or like ones where they're holding their kid or something like that - unless you were working in childcare. Yeah, might be okay, even then it's your kid - do you really want them in your profile? Everyone's got a different opinion - I'm not a parent, so I can't really weigh in on it. But just having a nice clear headshot of you where you can see your face and it looks like you sound simple, but not everyone does it. So please do that.
And when in doubt, enlist a professional photographer, they do a wonderful job. And if you're concerned about how you look, because we do get a little attached…
I hate my neck. Everyone has a thing that they don't like.
Express that with your photographer. They know how to use Photoshop in a way that won’t make it look like they use Photoshop. So they can like tidy that up without it being a glamour shot, or a mug shot or a wedding shot.
So I can get Fi to tidy up my neck for me, is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
Yeah, then I think we should do that.
If that's what you want, babe.
So, the next part that you come down to is your contact information, which is fairly straightforward. But again, it's one of those things of making sure that everything is filled out. Because if someone was trying to contact you, don't make it hard for them to get that information.
And the more fields you have filled out, the better the SEO?
Yes, yes. That is overall for the whole profile. You'll notice there's a lot of different sections that you can add in, that doesn't mean that you have to add in all of them. But if you're on Rotary, or a Chamber committee, or if you helped organise a fun run or pink… what do you call them?
Pink Ribbon Day, or something?
Oh, yeah, I was gonna say Pink Breast Day and I’m like, “That is not what that is called”. If you've done any volunteer stuff, fill it out in the volunteer section - all of that stuff is relevant and builds a complete profile of who you are. The more sections you fill out, the more relevant terms and everything you have in there, the more searchable you are, so it's good for your SEO as far as people being able to find you. It's also good for user experience. If I was gonna look at Alanna’s profile, and she just has the bare minimum of a bit of job history that practically looks like a resume and nothing else - that's not really giving a sense of who Alanna is. So Alanna is involved in a lot of things, she does a lot of things, she's an interesting person, but then her LinkedIn profile looks dull as dishwater, then that's not really going to engage or inspire me.
We might need to add my name to that list. Especially before this goes live. Don’t go searching for it, people. Just in case we haven’t got there yet.
But yes, definitely fill out as much as you can for SEO and user experience. Under contact, we've then got the ‘about’ section which used to be ‘summary’ and that a lot of people don't fill out. Or they fill it out in a third person sort of really corporate-y away. And they just reiterate what their job history is.
Alanna is a conscientious worker, that enjoys writing social media strategies.
There you go. No, that’s not what we want. I think most people have heard about the fact that storytelling is a really big thing in marketing. Everyone has their story and being able to communicate to other people why you do what you do - how did you get interested in it? Why do you stay there? What do you find interesting about the work that you do? Your clients? All that type of stuff. That's the sort of stuff you can't necessarily just get from a job history. Your about section is a chance to inject some personality in there. Everyone uses it differently. I've seen one that was a haiku poem. Very clever. But that was her brand, that was who she was.
If you're someone who is quite succinct, you’re not a rambler like I am, you keep things short and simple, then that's your ‘about’. Your ‘about’ should be short and simple too, because that's who you are and what you're about. Whereas if you're me, and you tell 50 million stories and anecdotes about everything all the time, if you went to my LinkedIn profile, you will see it's the story of how I got into marketing. So, it is that chance for someone to get to know you, get to know your story, get to know a bit about you, in a professional sense, obviously. Sometimes it can be nice to put a bit of a personal injection in there, too. Like outside of work, I really want to write a novel. I know that's still a professional goal for some people, but to me, it's a very personal thing. So that's something that I could pop in there. Some people say things like, “When I'm not at work, then I really enjoy bobsledding with my family and my five year old Chihuahua”.
That's a very specific example.
Okay, so then next, you've got the actual job history. So, your job listing is not your resume. You don't need to put in - not that you put everything on your resume - but you don't need to put in every single job that you've had. You can just put what you think is relevant. But also remembering - if you're in HR, and you're now a business owner, that doesn't mean that your HR experience wasn't…
Valuable to get you where you are today. It's relevant to what you're doing.
Exactly.
Maybe that time that you've worked at McDonald's for two weeks. You can leave that out - you know, it's not really relevant to your career, 10 years down the path, then that's totally fine. We're not going to go, “You've left information out”.
I worked at Kmart when I was in uni, and I love Kmart. So maybe I should put that back in there and then I'll be on Kmart’s radar. I’ll do all the marketing for Kmart.
Still not sponsored yet. And we won’t tell you why Jade no longer works at Kmart either, because that's another story.
Oh, I forgot I told you about that.
Moving on.
For that job history, it's your relevant workplaces, but you also want to be putting in there things like… It’s not about the “This is where I learned to use Excel, and I have customer service experience” and all those kind of resume type things. Just imagine if you were reading it, what would interest you? You know, if you're reading it, and you find it boring, PS, other people will too. A good thing to put in here are things like learning curves. “When I was in this position, I had to work across 30 different locations across Queensland and it really helped me to understand the benefit of streamlined communication, getting back to people in a timely manner”, you know what I mean? How did you grow as a professional in that role? Also any highlights or milestones, things like, “Implementing the company's first ever project management system was a great experience. Since then, I've gone on to develop further in that area”, or whatever it might be. So, learning curves, highlights, milestones. And highlights can also be like, “It was incredibly exciting at this position because we were able to work with brands like Kmart, Samsung, and I don't know, Telstra” or whatever. You know, like “I worked with Mark Zuckerberg”, all those kinds of things. Anything that you actually found interesting at the job. That's what you want to put in there. Again, it doesn't have to be huge. It can just be one or two lines. Anything that you write, if you're reading it and you find it boring, other people will too. So, that really is your guide as to whether it's something that's interesting or not.
Sounds good. Okay, so next we're going to talk about how to set up a company page.
Right? Yes. So company pages, there's really not a lot to them. They’re something that you can put together quite quickly. So, company page is like a profile page where you can have ads like Facebook. You've got your banner but the banner is really skinny. Unless you really feel the need to, don't even worry about getting something designed for it. Just put in a brand image, something related to what you do that works in that landscape version.
Yeah, something like - if you've got a landscape photo of your building, if it's quite nice, or a worksite, depending on what you do. If you do decide to design something up, use Canva. That way, you've got the right sizing specifications because it is a pain in the butt.
It is, it's an awkward space. Then your profile pic should obviously be your logo. It's like Facebook where it doesn't have to be your logo with the full name or anything in it because the name of your page - which is obviously the name of your company - will always be beside that profile pic. Whether someone's on the page, whether you're commenting or you’re posting, they're always together so that profile pic can just be your brand icon or something like that. Again, it's like with the headshots, it needs to be clear and recognisable. Some people will put photos of the front of their business, or a group photo of their team...
And then it's like three megapixels.
I know, when I'm on my phone, I cannot see who the hell that is or where that is. Make it an opportunity for brand awareness and brand recognition. Use your logo for your profile pic.
So, what you're thinking then is McDonald's "M"? Because we know what that means without the word McDonald's being written next to it. So your icon, your image, your logo without the word.
Yeah, so like the Nike... *hand gesturing*
Tick?
Yeah. I'm glad you said it, I just did the symbol, the hand symbol, which you can't see on a podcast... useful! Then your individual profile, you want to fill out all of your sections for both searchability and user experience. Keyword friendly blurb about your company and, just because there's contact information fields, obviously you want to fill those out. But that doesn't mean that you can't put a call to action into your blurb as well. So you can talk about your business, you could bullet point what your services are and then you could say, "If you want a no-obligation quote, or if you want to come visit our workshop", or whatever it might be and put your contact details again. There's no law against doing something that's a little bit more prominent there. And then lastly, is linking your staff. Like I was saying before, so the way that you do it is that in someone's personal profile, when they add a job history, when I start typing in the company name, it will come up with suggestions of company pages on LinkedIn. So they would then select your company page from there. So obviously, it needs to be created before they can select it. Then when they hit save on that job history segment, then they will show up as connected to the company page. But it also means that people can click through from their profile to the company page. Like I said, your company logo, or your company profile pic will show up on their page as well, which just looks nice.
Awesome. Cool. So, next thing we want to cover is some tips.
Yes.
Alright, so Jade? Do you have tips on actually using LinkedIn?
Yes, Alanna, I do. The top one being... use it.
Whaaat?
That wasn't a pointed remark at anyone in this room…
Shoosh your face. My goal is to use our... Well, obviously, clearly I need to use my personal profile a little bit more, but starting by using our business one as well. So, we want to be posting on them at least once a week.
Yeah, so for LinkedIn, because it doesn't have the volume that Facebook does, as in it doesn't have as many users, that means that it's not as competitive. So, even though there's less people on there, so you're potentially getting seen by less people, it's easier for you to get seen because there's not as much content being shared. And even more so in regional areas, in the Mackay region especially, there's a lot of activity these days from Mackay locals on LinkedIn. But still, if you post once a week from a personal profile, as long as it's not shit, as long as you actually do write something half decent and interesting with visuals and stuff. Hashtag no-shit-posts. Then that once a week is a good goal to aim for, to get you that visibility without swamping people's newsfeeds.
Whereas for a company page, the chances of your stuff showing up in people's newsfeed, you can show up potentially for the people who actually do follow you, because following is not a common thing. Even if you just post once a fortnight, and repurpose some of your Facebook content for that LinkedIn page, so that if I was to go to the company page - because I've found it through Google or whatever - then it's not too old, the information that's sitting there. One client recently, who we hadn't started working with at that stage, but their last post was from 2017 or something and I was just like, "This does not look good. This looks like you are no longer in business."
That's a long time.
Yes, yes. But yeah, repurposing, even for your personal profile, you can just be repurposing. If a piece of content worked really, really well on Facebook, and it has a business context, then you can just give it a tweak, add your own personal angle, put it in first person, whatever, and repost it onto LinkedIn.
On your personal profile?
Yeah, a few weeks later - you already know it’s content that resonates with people, because if you've got a lot of reach and engagement, then you know it's not a dud piece of content. And you don't have to do too much to it to just repost it to your personal or your company page.
Okay, awesome. And you've got a tip on how we can increase reach?
Yes. So basically, Facebook and LinkedIn and those kind of things, they work off what's called a 'relevancy score'. This is between different profiles, whether they're company ones, or personal ones. Okay, say that Alanna was someone who I really wanted to do business with...
Of course.
Why would I not? My God. Then as well as me posting once a week to get my content there, I would also be looking for her content so that I can like and comment on it. Then when she acknowledges that and comments back, then we start to build a stronger relevancy score, and LinkedIn goes, "Ah, you two are interested in each other. I'm going to show you more of each other's content", which is exactly my master plan.
Feels like matchmaking and stalking all in one.
Yeah, isn't marketing cool? But yeah, so if you want to be doing business with people - yes, posting is a way to get that visibility - but as I think we've spoken about in previous podcasts, being visible is not the end game. That's not going to get you anything. It's about connecting with people and converting. Whether it's a customer or a hirer, or whatever it might be - if you want to be working with someone, then you're not just pushing content out there. You know how people tend to talk to each other? That’s pretty much what you need to be doing on LinkedIn as well. Liking, commenting on their content. Most people will kind of comment back. If you were DMing, like messaging each other, that increases your relevancy score as well. If someone does comment on your post, hit them back a comment or at least acknowledge it in some way as well.
Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Sounds great... and like I've got some work to do. So, to wrap up today folks, if you were sitting down and getting into a better habit of using your LinkedIn...
Which everyone will do now. Obviously, that's exactly what's gonna happen. They're gonna click this off and go straight to LinkedIn.
Well, I will be. I'm not even kidding.
So kidding, not kidding.
So, sitting down and using your content calendar for planning is a tool we've talked about before, it makes batching your work easier, it makes planning what content you're going to have coming up much easier. If you're only doing a fortnightly post on your company profile, then going "Hmm, this post went really well on Facebook, and this one went really well on LinkedIn", and they both had a business element to them, then tweak them and chuck them on your corporate LinkedIn page. The other tip is, while you're sitting down and doing your content planning, is to check out Episode One - we talked about theme days. It's still relevant for LinkedIn, if you're struggling with content ideas, and it's gonna really help. So, check out episode five if you're not sure if you should be on LinkedIn and to find out more about it. Check out episode one for theme days. Otherwise, head on over to your LinkedIn and start utilising it as a stalking, relationship building tool for you and your business.
No! A way to genuinely connect with people and build relationships and do business with them, which is the purpose of LinkedIn.
Is LinkedIn paying us for this? I don't think they are. Anyway, thanks for joining us for Marketing + Margaritas. We hope you stick around for another episode.
Cheers.