Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Esther and
I'm Melanie.
And today we're joined by Louise Brogan from Social BNI. She is a LinkedIn consultant, podcaster and speaker, host of LinkedIn with Louise podcast, Current Small Business Britain champion and social media examiner contributor. Welcome, Louise.
Thank you, Esther, Thank you Melanie
OK, LinkedIn. Right, so you have niche all the way down. When I first met Louise, she was working on training on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and everywhere. So you niched down to just LinkedIn. Why did you do that?
Well, it's kind of funny because whenever I was doing Facebook, Instagram, I was one of the accredited trainers for Facebook and Instagram and I gave that up. So I was being trained by Facebook to help those programme. She means business, which still continues on today, and they invited me to do it for another year. And I said "No" people are like "what? Why are you turning down Facebook?" But basically the reason is that there's lots of different reasons. But I realised a few years ago that when I spent time on LinkedIn, whether for myself or working with people, it was easier to win business because people go to go to LinkedIn for business. So that was one thing I realised when I spent time talking on LinkedIn myself, sharing content on LinkedIn. People reached out to me to work with me and they were people who were willing to invest in my services. So it was kind of like easier to win business on that platform, but also, trying to on trying to be an expert in Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. Then you've got tick tock clubhouse, Pinterests, all the things. It's just too much. It's far too hard. It's far, far easier to say. "Right, pick one and just learn everything you possibly can about how to make that platform work". And that actually makes it far easier to work with clients because I can answer all their questions and keep myself up to date with one platform. So, yeah, works for me.
That's interesting. I you know, you always hear from people that still to this day will say, "oh sure, LinkedIn is just for looking for a job" or it's just your online CV. And, you know, it started out like that. But it has come a long way since then, hasn't it, because it's now got live videos and it's now got stories like every other platform. So what makes it different?
I think that so people still think it's about finding a job and people who work in corporates who come to do the workshops for small businesses and corporate clients and where they want their team to understand how to raise the profile of the business using LinkedIn. And a lot of people will say to me, oh, I created LinkedIn and I don't use it anymore because I don't want people to think I'm looking for a job. And it's not about that. It's about business networking. I talk when I talk to people about what what is LinkedIn? It's like an online version of a business conference to me. So you go to a conference to say we say we were all going to a big industry conference in Dublin and you walk in and you looked like you're turning up for a day of work. So you're dressed appropriately and you introduce yourself to people and you talk about you ask them about their business. You literally have conversations with people about what they do, who they do it for and talk about what you do. And LinkedIn is exactly the same. You show up, we put your best professional hat on and you introduce yourself to people. I am an absolute stickler for connecting with people with a message on LinkedIn. You can walk up to somebody at the conference, stick a business card in their hand and walk away without opening your mouth, would you? So why would you do it on LinkedIn? It's about building up a network and making contacts and connecting with people and relationships. And that's, you know, that's what I love about it. And people still ask me about careers and jobs. And I say I don't I do not help people with LinkedIn who are looking to change jobs or careers. That's not what I do. I help people who want to win business on LinkedIn. To me, I see those two very different and ways of working with people. So if you're looking to improve your LinkedIn because you're looking for a job, then I am not the person to talk to.
Well, I thought I'd just stop the, you know, the Esther and Louis show and put myself here, you know, so can any business use it, I mean, you know, chocolatiers and confectioner's and, you know, all the way up to CEOs of large state bodies and national bodies. Is it suitable for absolutely everyone?
Yes, I honestly think it is. And I think interestingly, they're bringing out product pages. So LinkedIn company pages are bringing it product pages for people who want to actually sell products on the platforms. That is a new thing that's coming out. It's not available to everybody yet. But I have worked with clients who sell art and who sell planners. We were talking just before we started recording about planners. I have bought products of people on LinkedIn as well as people who are senior directors, chief executives and companies who want to connect with people. Although interestingly, the more senior you go, the less likely someone is to want to actually do their LinkedIn themselves, which is very interesting. But yeah, it's if you have a product and you want to sell it to somebody, why would you not go to the place where people actually have a higher income and more are more willing to spend their money? That's another way of looking at it.
I suppose you can reach the decision makers on LinkedIn. Now, it's interesting. You mentioned the product pages. I didn't know about that. So that's coming soon. Head to Ireland, I assume. And what about company pages? Do you find they actually work?
Yes,
short and sweet.
And what do you different that makes them work
if you know what you're doing with LinkedIn. Yes, it does. They do work. So if so, say if you're a solo entrepreneur, let's look at a solo entrepreneur and then let's look at a small business or solo entrepreneur. I really think you need a company page because multiple reasons, search engine optimisation getting found by more people. To me, the company page versus the personal profile. If you are a solo entrepreneur, your company page is going to list kind of what your company does, your products, services, and you can put like a weekly broadcast of updates about whatever it is that your company helps people with in your personal profile you use for building the personal network and connecting with people and starting conversations. If you have a team of people, then the company means you can connect all of your team to that company page and everybody who has company page can pull that company logo across the personal profile, whether they work for a team or work for themselves. But if you have a team, you can then get your team to share the content across into their news feed and get the message of the company out to more people. You can host events in your company page. You can set up webinars. When you host an event using LinkedIn events as your company, you get people registered with their email address. And that gives you people for your newsletter and your e-mail list. So there's is so many features since the start, 2020, it's unbelievable. We literally could talk for a week about all the different things that they do. But I really think everybody should have a company page.
Yeah, we've got a Monday morning marketing company that says you can go and notify employees. And so that's being really handy to spread the post out between us.
Yeah,
Yeah, no, there's also groups on LinkedIn. How would those differ from groups on, say, Facebook. And, you know, if you for example, you're running a course on how to use LinkedIn, would you use a group on LinkedIn to communicate all the information or would you still use a group on Facebook?
Well, I both my groups are on LinkedIn. I have a free grip on LinkedIn for people who listen to the podcast and people come in there and ask me questions that I'm happy to answer and then I have my grip. So I have a course called LinkedIn Lerner's lab that people purchase. And they those people are added to a private unlisted group. And obviously I help them more. And groups have a long way to go. But I, I really think that there will be more improvements made to groups. You can see little changes, little functionalities appear in on different things. And LinkedIn and functionalities appeared in groups. You can chat to people within a group. If you're in a group with somebody but you're not connected to them, you can send them a message because you're members of the same group. I am in three groups that I think are really, really good on LinkedIn. The rest are not good. And if you manage a group on LinkedIn like so if you set up a Monday mark Monday morning marketing show group for listeners, you have got to and you've got to help people in there. There's a group that I'm in for CEOs that the owner will tag people. If he thinks someone's asked the question, he thinks somebody else in the group, he'll tag you and say, "Louise, I think this is something that might interest you". And I don't mind that because that group is really the ethos of that group is helping everybody where there's other groups that you're in that are enormous. They're not being managed. People are just spamming them all day long. So it's, you know, choosing the right groups.
And LinkedIn groups take a bad rap because of groups like that. I've got to say, though, because we are all going to have company pages by the end of this, aren't we? But that's not the point. So tell us about LinkedIn ads. How effective are they? And in a way, why is this cheapskate over here so worried about how expensive they are?
OK, Melanie, I do not do LinkedIn ads. I'm not an expert on LinkedIn ads. And I would be very happy to refer you to check out a guy called AJ Wilcox. So he is a LinkedIn ads expert. They are more expensive than Facebook ads. I have dabbled with them, but I don't run them for clients and I don't know enough to talk about them properly.
Well, that's that conversation. OK, so what about OK, let's start again. LinkedIn reporting and analytics. Do they tell us enough.
Oh my goodness, what a good question. So I like, for most people going and looking at the analytics on your LinkedIn posts. People don't even do that. But looking at those analytics on your post and seeing who's so you find out various things. You find out what companies people are coming from. They're looking at your post, who's shared your post, what cities are the people coming from and what are their job titles. So you can find that out on all of your posts for free. You can also go and see if you have a video on LinkedIn. You can see how long they've been watching it for and those other metrics that I just mentioned for ordinary posts. Everybody has a personal dashboard on LinkedIn and nobody looks at it. If you go to your so I have a video on this on my YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com/C=SocialBNI but it's hard to look at your personal dashboard and you've got three figures on there. The first one is how many people have looked at your profile in the last 90 days. If you click on that, you will not know who they are unless you pay for premium. All right. Which is actually one of the reasons, the main reasons to get premium if you are at that level of already using LinkedIn really well, the middle one is how many people have looked at your last post? That one I'm not so bothered about. But the third one is really, really important to look at. I would check it maybe once every couple. And it is what are you being fined for? So if you if you click on that number, it's how many times have you showed up in the search results for LinkedIn? And it will tell you what companies you're showing up for, what rules the people who are finding and search, what rules do they have? So are they executive directors? Are they marketing people? Who are they? not the actual names, but what level of job have they? But the really good point is at the bottom of the screen, when you click on this third number and you only get this data if you're using LinkedIn enough to kind of trigger the data that shows the key words that you are being found for. So for me, I'm getting find for things like speaker, consultant, trainer, and you can't be found for LinkedIn because it doesn't allow that, which is really interesting. But when I do this work with clients, they're getting found for things like Microsoft CarPoint and they're like, but I don't do that. That's not what I do. And I said, well, that's because you haven't updated your LinkedIn profile enough to be found for the things you want to be found for. And that's when we dive into reviewing their profile and updating all their skills and experience section and all that stuff. So I think that's really valuable.
So jumping back in because now it's become the Melanie and Louise. But there's also a thing that a lot of people don't know about your SSI, your social selling index or sales index. How important is that to go in and look at and improve and
how important is it? it's like a fun feature that people like when I bring it up on workshops, how much attention to be paid to it? Not a lot. It's a number out of one hundred mark for four things. One of the key things is so one of the numbers is how many times you engage with insights on LinkedIn, which means LinkedIn has like a daily news, top news stories and top courses that people are looking at. The more you engage with those things, the higher your score gets. So like there's nothing in the news that's relevant to your business and the rankings, you're going to drop your rankings. I think my score for that is like 15. I was looking at this last night of the client is fifteen out of twenty five. Where I scored full marks is for building relationships. So that's one of the things as well. And that is about when you connect with somebody on LinkedIn and you don't bother, send them a message request. So don't know why you're connecting with them and you accept all the connexions that you get and then you're not interested in anything that they talk about or say or do. So you never interact with them and vice versa. You're going to have a really rubbish relationship score. So it's far better to connect with people that you actually want to hear from and actually engage with their content for better. Not a small but mighty network of people on LinkedIn who are interested in what you have to say. You're interested what they have to say. You can build a business together rather than connecting with all and sundry because all you care about is send people. Yeah, you have twenty thousand LinkedIn connexions that will. When's the last time somebody asked you to work with them? Out of those twenty thousand. And so it's a bit of a, you know, it's about building relationships. So the SSI social selling index, it's a fun thing to look at now and again. It ranks you and your network by your score, it ranks you and within your industry. So you want to be in the top one percent of your industry da dadada, my network, the average SSI is 40. I think mine set surrounds seventy nine or 80 without me engaging and all the insights LinkedIn wants me to engage with, it's not going to go about it.
So I'm taking the wooden spoon back. Thank you. So you did talk about, you know, certain data that was made available to you if you used it enough. And I was quite reassured, OK, I get the keywords I'm found for and I didn't think I was using it enough, but I must be because
It shows you the keywords.
Yeah. So the key was what we found for and like a lot of people on LinkedIn, I've got several hats. OK, so I'm not I'm not here to talk about me, but I've got several hats so I know why some of them are contacting me or looking for somebody like me. And sometimes I can't always guess, but nine times out of ten, I do not connect with other people at all because I've always felt when I've tried to do it readily before, people kind of get the hump because. I'm trying to connect with them because I want to try and. You know, training them in social media, maybe I've picked up that they've done something wrong or they're not doing something right and I do the same on Facebook, I never connect with anybody, ever.
Do you do you mean, Melanie? If somebody sends you can actually request you ignore it or do you mean.
No, no, no, I don't, I don't instigate the connexion ever. OK, unless. I've actually met that person and have got something in the works with them in mind. OK, so I've connected with people have gone to events, you know, when when we were let out, you know, remember that it was a while ago now. And so I've connected definitely have connected with people. But almost always when people want to connect with me, they want to sell me a website or, you know, do I want an app or and I'm like and now I don't even connect with these people now because I look at who they are and I know what you want. So is there any way that you can stop the spammers?
So this fascinates me endlessly because I do not get very many of these and a lot of people get a lot of them. So I tend to get Conexion requests from people who say, oh, I heard you on a podcast, or they watch my LinkedIn live and they want to connect with me after that. I don't get very many of the the spammy ones, the software ones. But also you can kind of see, you know, if you've got if you go into LinkedIn and you've got five connexion requests, if you don't send me a message with your connexion request, I don't really want to connect with you because I'm thinking, what are you why you connecting with me? But you can kind of see like so for example, if somebody's sitting in my connexion requests at the minute, she didn't send me a message. I can see she's connected to several people that I know, but not that I know them well enough to think that she doesn't want to sell me something. So I haven't really decided about her yet. And the ones that say, look, if it's literally someone who sells software for an app, well, you know, that's what they're going to do, is you just ignore it, just click ignore don't accept those people.
That is exactly what happens. Now, before we finish up, there's one question that hasn't been asked, and I've been telling people this for years. I really hope this is true. Is LinkedIn considered a good search engine optimisation tool?
Is it considered a toll?
Well, a search engine optimisation tool,
so what I know about LinkedIn is that Google loves LinkedIn because of the sheer volume of content that is on LinkedIn. So I think it's one of the biggest Hoses of content on the Internet because everybody who writes content shares it on the LinkedIn, the big media sites. Social media examiner will share their blog posts on there. When I write an article, I'll share it on there. So it's massive for content, one of the largest Hoess of content on the Internet, like Google loves it, which is why when you Google someone's name, their LinkedIn profile comes up near the top unless they're like really active elsewhere on the Internet, it's usually the first thing that comes up is their LinkedIn profile if they've got one. So it's it's huge for content. That's another reason why you should be using it using the company page so people can find your company on there as well.
OK, and last last question. How long should people spend on LinkedIn? Daily, weekly, monthly
Hilarius question and I actually have a free guide what is a routine on LinkedIn if people want to go to my website, Louise brogan.Com/download but basically I recommend with clients that you post two to three times a week and go in the other days of the week. I don't go on the weekends, so it's up to you whether you want to or not go in the other times the week and just check your notifications and try and comment on people's posts who are interesting to you. And potentially your potential clients will see your name and your headline and you're raising your visibility that way. So 10, 15 minutes a day and two to three posts week is plenty to get yourself noticed on LinkedIn.
I'm rapidly seeing a need to do a two parter here.
Yeah.
Now, the last last last question, OK. How do you schedule to LinkedIn?
I don't, I don't. Well, interestingly, my assistant my blog posts to recur post and they just go out on Twitter and Facebook because I don't spend any time putting stuff
It's like missing letter post, it sounds like.
But I don't schedule anything on LinkedIn. It's all organic. And that actually is a throwback from my days when I went to Facebook in London. And they recommended that you posted natively on the platform because they said then that your content had more chance of getting seen by people than using a scheduling tool that lots of other people were using who had different levels of. Content quality and you will being measured against those people as opposed to your own content, whether that's true or not, I don't know. But I just I prefer to go in to LinkedIn and just write my posts and post them.
And you can schedule in Facebook now as we create a studio business suite. So I suppose if you're natively scheduling, that might help you. No, no. I just wanted to know because it's really hard to find scheduling with LindekIn. OK, well, thanks so much, Louise. We've been slightly over there, but you stop being so damn fascinating.
Well, everyone wants to know more. They can go check out my podcast.
Exactly. Exactly. OK, thank you very much for joining us today, Louise. It's been a pleasure. And we'll make sure to put your links into the comments iin our podcast so people can go and find you and subscribe to our YouTube channel and learn more about LinkedIn. That's it for today. Guys, talk to you next week. Bye bye.
Bye, Thank you.