5 LinkedIn Experts Share Power Tips That You Can Use Right Now
Tim Ash, Eric Enge, Adam Reimer, Bill Leake, and Krista Neher reveal their tips and tactics on how you can use LinkedIn to grow your business.
Have you ever wondered how online marketing experts actually use LinkedIn?
Me too. So, I asked them.
Lucky for you, I brought my recorder.
Listen in as Mica and I lead you through some of the best LinkedIn power tips we’ve heard:
- Tim Ash shares a proven technique for reaching out to people who have viewed your profile.
- Eric Enge tells you how to use the LinkedIn search tool for the best profiles to view.
- Adam Riemer talks about excellent strategies for getting people from LinkedIn to your website.
- Bill Leake doles out beneficial advice about how to segment your ads and promotions.
- Krista Neher brings us home with the practical advice about how employees can boost your LinkedIn presence.
The Show Notes
5 LinkedIn Experts Share Power Tips That You Can Use Right Now
Voiceover: This is The Missing Link with your host, the insufferable — but never boring — Sean Jackson.
Sean Jackson: Welcome back, everyone, to The Missing Link. I’m your host, Sean Jackson, joined as always by the unique and essentially awesome, Mica Gadhia. Mica, how are you?
Mica Gadhia: I am awesome. You’re right, I am awesome, Sean. How are you doing today?
Sean Jackson: Always good, always good. The worst that I do is ‘wonderful,’ but today is a far, far better day. Do you want to know why?
Mica Gadhia: Tell me.
Sean Jackson: Because we’re going to get into some tactical information on LinkedIn today, and I’m so excited. Here’s why. If you’ve been following the show for a while, you’ll realize that we are starting this idea of going from interview to tactical information, to interview, to tactical. I want to play with that for a while, Mica. Is that going to be fun? We can go from thought to practicality all in the same series.
Mica Gadhia: I love it. I think we’re geniuses.
Sean Jackson: I can’t disagree with you on that one, Mica. Here’s what I did, because I was really thinking about this one when I was coming up with this episode idea. I know a lot of quality thought leaders in our space. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to get a tip from each one of these people?”
I went to Pubcon Austin, and I took my little recorder with me. That’s why the quality sounds weird. I took my recorder with me, and I was grabbing people in the hallway that I had known and said, “Hey, can you get on the air and share a tip about LinkedIn with me?”
We have got a great sampling of power tips from some of the most influential thought leaders in online marketing. Mica, what do you think?
Mica Gadhia: That’s awesome.
Sean Jackson: Yeah, I know. It’s going to be fun. This will be a very unique episode where we’re going back and forth and sharing tips. I’ve got to be serious for a second, Mica. I owe our audience an apology.
Mica Gadhia: Okay.
Sean Jackson: I do.
Mica Gadhia: Is that because maybe you’re a Linkhole on the air, Sean?
Sean Jackson: Mica, you can’t call me a Linkhole. What the heck did you just do?
Mica Gadhia: I had to put it out there. I had to put it out there. If you’re going to give the apology, let’s just name it.
Sean Jackson: No, it’s not that. By the way, Sonia Simone, thank you for creating the new portmanteau for the Copyblogger lexicon. ‘Linkhole.’
Mica. No. That’s not why I’m apologizing. I’m apologizing because we have such a diverse audience, including amazing people overseas.
Mica Gadhia: Right.
Sean Jackson: Every time we put a plug in for our text messaging, our 41411 with the keyword ‘mylink,’ all of our international people who try to do it come back and say, “Sean, does this not work overseas?” It turns out it doesn’t.
If you are in the U.S. and Canada, you can pick up your phone right now and put in 41411 with the keyword ‘mylink.’ What that will do is subscribe you to our text messaging system, and we immediately send you a link to our very private discussion group that we have over on LinkedIn, which has been pretty wild. Hasn’t it, Mica?
Mica Gadhia: Yes. I’m loving that.
Sean Jackson: Isn’t it great? People are asking detailed questions and asking for advice, and we’re responding to them, giving great insight, but then our international audience gets a little miffed.
Mica Gadhia: I’m sorry.
Sean Jackson: We are.
Mica Gadhia: I’m sorry, too, and I don’t even think I’m a Linkhole, but we never know.
Sean Jackson: What we’re going to do is this. I set up an email address, MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM. If you’re international and you want to get access to this awesome private group we have over on LinkedIn, where we’re talking about LinkedIn marketing strategy, answering questions, just send an email to MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM.
If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, pull out that phone, send a text message to 41411 with the word ‘mylink,’ all one word. Don’t let it autocorrect. We’re going to then send you a link to our discussion group. You’re subscribing to our text message. We will never spam you, folks. Never. Go ahead, and take a chance to do that now.
For our international audience, you are so important to us. I feel terrible that the SMS system that we’re using doesn’t support it. But you know what, I think you got a workaround. Mica, what do you think?
Mica Gadhia: I love it. MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM. Email us, and we’ll take care of it.
Sean Jackson: Exactly. So we’re going to go to a quick break for our sponsor, the Rainmaker Platform, and when we come back, we are going to get in to all of these awesome power tips. Sound like a plan, Mica?
Mica Gadhia: I love it. I’m excited!
Voiceover: The Missing Link is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.
Sean Jackson: We’re back from the break, everyone. And Mica, you ready?
Mica Gadhia: I’m ready.
Sean Jackson: So who do we have first up on the power tips on using LinkedIn, Mica?
Mica Gadhia: It looks like Tim Ash is up first. He’s the CEO of SiteTuners.
Sean Jackson: Yes. Tim also has been a good friend of mine, a great, quality guy. I’m so excited. Let’s go ahead and listen to him and his tip for how he uses LinkedIn.
Tim Ash Shares a Proven Technique for Reaching out to People Who Have Viewed Your Profile
Tim Ash: LinkedIn has a unique feature, which I’m very fond of. Obviously, SiteTuners is one of the premier CRO agencies in the world, and most of our business is considered purchase. We’re working with a long sales cycle, and you can’t create that machine to suck money out of the bottom of the funnel. You have to just take people wherever they are in that process.
LinkedIn is the only network to my knowledge that allows you to see who’s viewed your profile. You don’t get the same thing on Facebook. You can see when someone has seen your private message, but not generally who’s looked at you. I have lots of people looking at our profile, my profile, and what I always do is take care to personally respond to each of those people every day. It’s a little time-consuming, but what you do is say, “Hey, you looked at my profile recently. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
Sometimes, it’s people I know, that I’m pretty close to. Sometimes, it’s total strangers. But once in a while, you actually get the people at the point of consideration, and they care about the fact that you care about them and reached out.
Sean Jackson: I love this strategy, and I want to sum it up again, because I think this is really important. To sum up, you basically look at your stats, or you log in, and it will tell you …
Tim Ash: How many people have viewed your profile and who they are.
Sean Jackson: Exactly.
Tim Ash: Some of them are anonymous, so you can’t reach out to those, but many are not.
Sean Jackson: You go in, you look at their profile and then you send then them an InMail message, basically.
Tim Ash: Yes.
Sean Jackson: And it says, “Thank you for looking. If I can be of any help…”
Tim Ash: “If there’s anything I can do to help.” And it’s a sincere, coming-from-a-service message.
Sean Jackson: And that’s I think the trick, though, right? It’s the trick that, “Hey, let me tell you more about what I’m doing” — no. It’s more of “How can I help you?”
Tim Ash: Right.
Sean Jackson: “I’m here. Is there something I can help you achieve?”
Tim Ash: By the way, Sean, it’s not a trick. It’s my real attitude, okay?
Sean Jackson: You mean you’re really a nice guy? Dammit, gosh! I’m completely flummoxed by this. I see your point, though. By reaching that point when they’re looking at your profile, they’re looking there for a reason, right?
Tim Ash: As a marketing tactic, it has something similar to do with abandonment recovery in email, for example. It’s been shown that if you don’t reach out to somebody within five minutes, even if you just delay from five minutes to a half hour reaching out to someone, the chances of you ultimately closing that deal go down by a factor of 30. Yeah. So you’ve got to get them while they’re hot. When they just looked at your profile, they’re thinking about you for some reason. A week later, they’re not.
Sean Jackson: Got you.
Tim Ash: It’s the same principle. It’s really important to be timely, and that’s why I do it daily. I just look at who looked at my profile that day, and I send them a quick note. Ninety-five percent of people won’t respond. That’s okay.
Sean Jackson: But it’s the 5 percent that make it worthwhile.
Tim Ash: Yeah.
Sean Jackson: So, Mica, what did you think of Tim Ash’s idea? I was blown away.
Mica Gadhia: Yeah.
Sean Jackson: I think it is so funny, because I’m such a narcissist. I love to see who looks at my profile, right? But I never did anything with it, and Tim’s advice is spot on, which is that LinkedIn is sharing who is looking at your profile, so reach back out to them in a kind, giving way to say, “What can I help you with? What can I do for you?” I just love that.
Mica Gadhia: Right.
Sean Jackson: I think that’s one of the power tips out there that is easy to pull off and so easy to do. But, that’s not the only power tip we have. Mica, who’s next up on our power tip list?
Mica Gadhia: Eric Enge from Stone Temple, one of our favorites.
Sean Jackson: I love Eric. We’re going to actually have an exclusive interview with Eric about LinkedIn in another episode, but let’s go ahead and take a listen to what Eric has to share.
Eric Enge Tells You How to Use the LinkedIn Search Tool for the Best Profiles to View
Eric Enge: Here’s the thing. People notice when you visit their profile. A lot of people, who you visit their profile, they’ll reach out to you, which is by itself a good tip. They’ll ask you if you’re interested in anything: “Do you need any help?” Some of them will immediately send you requests to connect. Some of them will follow you.
If you actually use LinkedIn Search, a very powerful tool, to locate people, and then you visit profiles of interest to you, it’s kind of a soft way of making an initial introduction of yourself to someone without doing the unsolicited email or unsolicited communication.
Sean Jackson: Let me sum that up. Basically, you go use the LinkedIn Advanced Search feature, find people in the space, and you go visit their profile knowing that they’re going to get a report that says “Hey, Eric or Sean, somebody came and visited me.” And they may end up connecting with you, reaching out to you conversely, et cetera.
Eric Enge: Right. Now they’re initiating.
Sean Jackson: Excellent point.
Eric Enge: Sweet.
Sean Jackson: Yeah, that would definitely work.
Mica, Eric almost comes up with the complete opposite approach.
Mica Gadhia: Absolutely. He says, “Go look at them, and then wait for them to respond to you.”
Sean Jackson: I think that’s a good bracket, if you will, to this whole concept of visiting people, having people who visit you, reaching out to the people who visit you, and going out and actively reaching and visiting those people out there. Again, this universe, this ecosystem, of constantly checking who’s viewing whom can actually start to lead to some very solid connections, which if you do it right, could potentially lead to business. I just love those two because they’re the perfect bracket.
Mica Gadhia: Yeah, exactly. All the while, you’re learning about your niche. You’re learning about other people, and you’re building your business. You’re building your personal knowledge base. And you’re building your network and your community all at the same time.
Sean Jackson: Absolutely. All right, but we have more, folks. We have absolutely more power tips. Mica, who’s next up on our influential thought leader LinkedIn tips and tactics?
Mica Gadhia: Next we’ve got Adam Riemer.
Sean Jackson: Adam.
Mica Gadhia: Yeah.
Sean Jackson: Oh, my word. Adam is such a big guy in the affiliate marketing space. Let’s hear what he has to suggest.
Adam Riemer Talks about Excellent Strategies for Getting People from LinkedIn to Your Website
Adam Riemer: I noticed that I was not getting a lot of LinkedIn shares or likes on my marketing blog, and I decided to play with it and see what was going on. What I noticed is that you can upload blog posts to LinkedIn, but if you upload your post, if it’s indexable, it could get indexed. And now you could compete with LinkedIn, especially if you don’t have a lot of authority on it.
You can also have all of your content there so that people don’t visit your website, which means you don’t get your newsletter opt-ins, you don’t get your monetization strategies, and you don’t get your traffic, which is what you want.
Sean Jackson: Basically sharecropping on LinkedIn, right? What did you do about it?
Adam Riemer: The first thing that I was doing was using the sharing icon. Once I realized, “Okay, that’s one thing you can do,” the next thing I started doing was sharing but also including a couple paragraphs. There was some more engagement from it.
My posts tend to be probably 2,000 to 5,000 words each, so I decided to start running another test. Instead of doing a blog post or a full post, I would go in, and I would put probably 3,000 out of the 5,000 words into the blog post or into the stream as an update. At that point, I would say, “If you’d like to see more, click here to go through,” and I would link into the post. I would have a note that said, “If you’re from LinkedIn, go down to this section where you can find the rest of the post.”
Sean Jackson: Let’s go through this. You would go in, and you would update, and you would put in a page — basically a post page — inside of LinkedIn under your status. You’d put in about 3,000 of 5,000 words that you wrote. You take a post that you’ve written, 5,000, take the first 3,000, then you’d have a link at the bottom to say, “If you want to read more, click here.” So, what happened?
Adam Riemer: I also split tested that to say, “If you want the really good stuff” or “if you want to keep going,” “you want the big finale, click here” or “find the rest here.” And it was the link that went directly into my blog. When that happened, people would actually read through and get hooked because there’s only so much you can get in a paragraph. But if they start reading, they go through. And as they hit the bottom of my post, I moved my social icons and made LinkedIn a little more prominent on the bottom. My shares and likes went up a good tenfold.
Sean Jackson: Really? On the page, right? You’re driving traffic to that page on your blog site, and you moved your social share icons with LinkedIn more prominent at the bottom of that post. So as people continued reading, go through your social shares there, LinkedIn’s prominent. And you’re saying you got a tenfold increase on the number of shares for that post?
Adam Riemer: Yes. Because — this is what I’m guessing — at the very bottom of the post, if they’ve made it through all of that writing, at that point and they came from LinkedIn — the big thing is they’re a LinkedIn user — they’re going to share to LinkedIn. That’s what I’m guessing happens. They’d see it at the bottom. It’s now more easy to see, and it’s much easier to click ‘like’ on it, and the like is also a share.
If there was a certain product, like if I’d be talking about Rainmaker, for example, what I could also do is, at the bottom you’re able to control the settings on your plugins. Depending on which one you use, you can actually put in your snippet for them to share with their followers. Then you can say, “Read this post here, and buy the product I’m talking about here.” Put in your advertising disclosure, and then you can also include your affiliate link then and monetize your LinkedIn that way, with everyone else doing the work for you.
Sean Jackson: Mica, Adam is being very tricky, isn’t he?
Mica Gadhia: Yeah, and it’s all about design too.
Sean Jackson: Yeah, it really is. Because what he was really talking about, folks, is taking these blog posts and using the ‘update’ feature — not the ‘post’ feature that they have in there but the ‘update.’ He’s taking snippets of this update, big snippets, 2,000 words out of it, et cetera, then putting in into the update, and again, drawing them into the experience on your site and providing unique ways of helping them share the content through their network from your site and trying to push product sales, et cetera. Plus, he had a nice little plug for Rainmaker in there.
Mica Gadhia: I know, I loved that. Thank him. And don’t forget, I think one of the biggest things that I got from it was when you bring them back to your site, when you bring them there, you give them the action buttons that tell them what to do next.
Sean Jackson: Yes.
Mica Gadhia: Make it easy and clear for what you want them to do, and let them do it.
Sean Jackson: Agreed, and that is something that is so important is to make sure that your entire plan is making it easy for people to go to the next stage. I think this is a great tip that he provided.
Okay, now who do we have next on the power-tip hit brigade?
Mica Gadhia: We have Mr. Bill Leake with us.
Sean Jackson: Bill! I love Bill. You know, Bill is so damn smart. Not only did he go to Yale, but he also got his MBA from University of Texas. I will tell you, every time I visit with him, he is just one of those really super smart, nice guys. Let’s hear what Bill has to say.
Bill Leake Doles out Beneficial Advice about How to Segment Your Ads and Promotions
Bill Leake: There are a couple very strong things you can do with LinkedIn ads. First, if you have any content that you’re trying to promote, you have the ability to do sponsored and promoted content. For example, let’s say you’re trying to do a survey, or you have a webinar or something coming up, you can promote that like the dickens throughout LinkedIn and with ads and get exactly the right people to that content.
If all you have is an ad and not rich content, you can do a great deal with that as well. Do you know on LinkedIn you can choose by company? You can target different ads for company A or company B.
Sean Jackson: Really?
Bill Leake: If I’m trying to reach of all the decision-makers who have a VP title at Walmart, I could have an ad just for them.
Sean Jackson: Really? It follows them around a little bit, right?
Bill Leake: If I’m trying to recruit employees from a competitor, I could have an ad just for them.
Sean Jackson: Right. Just for them. Zeroed targeting just on the company. I’ll be.
Bill Leake: If I’m trying to target any sort of VP of e-commerce title, or VP of digital title, I can do titular-based advertising on LinkedIn.
Sean Jackson: Sure.
Bill Leake: I can do it by company size.
Sean Jackson: Nice.
Bill Leake: People are not always on LinkedIn to purchase. A lot of them are there for more HR-related reasons, but it’s still a very, very powerful targeting platform, and it’s distressingly left up to the recruiters. There’s often incredibly fertile B2B mileage to be gained from LinkedIn, especially since normal search engines, Google and whatnot, can be a lot of wastage when you’re doing B2B marketing, especially when you get out of the SMB space.
Sean Jackson: Summing up what you talked about, really look at LinkedIn as very much a micro-targeting vehicle, and really think through, especially in the B2B space, hitting on those companies, hitting on those individuals in the companies, either as an individual or as a group to go and target them.
Bill Leake: Great way of summing it up, Sean: micro-targeting, heavy B2B focus, and also a great way to focus outside of small businesses. If your ideal client is not a five-person firm, but it’s a 500-person firm, or 5,000, LinkedIn is a great way to go straight for that without having all the wastage of having two-person, three-person firms call you up when that’s not your sweet spot.
Sean Jackson: Mica, completely different, talking about ads on LinkedIn.
Mica Gadhia: Yep. This reminds me of the Nissan ad that Jason Miller was telling us about.
Sean Jackson: Yes, the fact that you can go in using that advanced targeting and go after not only SMBs, but after big companies, individuals in big companies — whether you want to sell to them or recruit them — is just amazing to me.
Mica Gadhia: It is. Yeah. This one blew me away. I love it.
Sean Jackson: Yeah, exactly. Because again, as marketers, understanding our audience is so crucial. Being able to have a tool that we can drill in and find that detailed information and more importantly, target not only the individual, but entire companies or ranges of titles, et cetera, is huge and important. Great tip from Bill. Really appreciate it.
All right, Mica, I think we’re coming close to the end, and we saved the best for last, I hope. Who is it?
Mica Gadhia: We did, we did. Krista Neher, the CEO from Boot Camp Digital, is with us.
Sean Jackson: Love Krista. We speak on tons of panels together. Dynamic individual. Let’s hear what she has to say.
Krista Neher Brings Us Home with Practical Advice about How Employees Can Boost Your LinkedIn Presence
Krista Neher: Sure. A lot of people on LinkedIn focus on their profiles, but something marketers forget about is the power of LinkedIn Pages. The first tip is just regular status updates, even if they’re scheduled. Something interesting is that we’ve looked at brands that have 10 percent the size of the following on their LinkedIn Page as they do on Facebook, yet their LinkedIn updates are organically reaching more people and generating more interactions. We spend all this time on Facebook, but people forget about LinkedIn.
Sean Jackson: Right.
Krista Neher: A power tip related to that is one of the things that actually works really well in boosting your organic results of Company Page posts on LinkedIn is as simple as having your employees share them. I know, it seems so obvious.
Sean Jackson: Right.
Krista Neher: But a lot of people don’t update their own status on LinkedIn, right? So the LinkedIn status update idea is big to begin with because the newsfeed is underutilized by so many people. Just by posting a Page status update, having your employees re-share that, you can see huge lifts in your reach, and most people are super surprised to find out how effective that is.
Sean Jackson: To parrot back, on my Company Page, having my employees re-share what’s on my company page — is it really as simple as that?
Krista Neher: Bingo.
Sean Jackson: Unbelievable.
Krista Neher: Yeah. Train them: “Every time you log into LinkedIn, pop in to our page, and re-share the top one or two things.” You’ll see huge lifts in your reach from that.
Sean Jackson: Krista, I loved that advice, because we talk so much about profiles et cetera, but we’re going to get, folks, more into other tactical things. I think we talked enough about profiles, and her advice is spot-on, Mica.
Mica Gadhia: Yep. Use your community to get the word out.
Sean Jackson: Exactly, and especially employees. By the way, I am going to talk a little bit later in other episodes about the new tool coming out from LinkedIn called Elevate, which is going to make that process of putting content into the hands of your employees so they can instantly share it out a lot better. It’s going to come out in summer of 2015. Once it’s out, we’ll talk about it more.
The basic thing that got me is that you can lift up your page and make it so easy for your employees to come with new status updates by just updating that Company Page and sending an email saying, “We updated the company status page. Share this through your network.”
Mica Gadhia: Right. Making it easy. Again, you’re making it easy.
Sean Jackson: Exactly, making it easy, and again, especially with those Company Pages, allowing you to not only put your information in there but making it easy for your employees to share so that their audience can get it. It amplifies like crazy.
Mica, this has been a good little episode. Lots of power tips through this, aren’t there?
Mica Gadhia: I’ve loved it, yep.
Sean Jackson: I really think that one of the things that make our podcast unique, quite frankly, is …
Mica Gadhia: Besides you and I.
Sean Jackson: Yeah, exactly. But I do think it is the SMS messaging system that we put together, the private discussion group that that SMS is tied to. Again if you want more tips, techniques, and ideas just like what we had on the episode, then get your phone out, and send a message to who, Mica?
Mica Gadhia: 41411.
Sean Jackson: With the keyword?
Mica Gadhia: ‘Mylink.’ Do not let it autocorrect and put a space in there. It’s just one word.
Sean Jackson: We will go ahead and send you a link to this private discussion group on LinkedIn where we have all sorts of tips, tactics, and advice, and if you’re international, like I said at the top of the show, just send an email to MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM, and I’ll get you into that group. Again, to my international audience, I am so sorry that that text messaging doesn’t work there. But you know what? We’re going to take care of you, MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM. And Mica?
Mica Gadhia: Yes?
Sean Jackson: We’re coming to the end of the show, but I do want to give a little sneak peek of who is going to be on our next episode.
Mica Gadhia: That would Eric Enge, am I correct?
Sean Jackson: Eric Enge from Stone Temple. Now, if you don’t know who Eric is, I will tell you. I think he is the hardest-working man in content marketing. This guy is everywhere. He’s doing video, podcasts, writing, Stone Temple. He’s even written a book for goodness sake called The Art of SEO. The guy is a phenomenally smart though leader, but what really I like best about him is that he is — much like Copyblogger — putting all of his into action and sharing everything that he’s doing to grow his business. He’s going to be on our next episode, Mica.
Mica Gadhia: That’s exciting. I’m really glad.
Sean Jackson: I think we have come to the end of the hit parade for tips and tactics from the influential online marketers out there. Mica, any closing thoughts?
Mica Gadhia: I just want give a shout out to you, Sean. I have seen some of the questions that have come in to our LinkedIn group and the incredible, detailed answers. I really want to invite our audience to write in with your questions because we’re all learning with you, and we thank you for leading us. I’ve been impressed with your answers, and thank you very much for them.
Sean Jackson: Mica, thank you so much, even though you did call me a Linkhole at the beginning of the show. I think it’s okay.
Mica Gadhia: We’re still cool, right?
Sean Jackson: We’re still cool. I’ll talk to you about it after the show. Folks, you have a good week. We’ll see you on the next episode of The Missing Link. Take care.
Mica Gadhia: Thank you for being with us.
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