LinkedIn is a powerful tool to connect with new prospects. But, creating content for LinkedIn can be tough. Fortunately, Ali Schwanke, founder of Simple Strat shares all the details for mastering LinkedIn.
Ali joins Logan Lyles on the Marketing Together podcast to talk about the nuances of posting, commenting, and optimizing your profile on LinkedIn. Ali shares insights on getting her team to post regularly and helping them overcome the fear of appearing boastful. She emphasizes the importance of consistency and provides tips for overcoming common challenges.
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Highlights
00:40 How to equip your LinkedIn leadership team
01:45 What is a LinkedIn evangelist?
04:04 Building employee advocacy
06:47 Don't just repeat the company blog; build relationships
08:59 People follow people, not companies, on LinkedIn
10:06 LinkedIn is the place people go to validate who you are
13:01 Put together a LinkedIn training course for your employees
15:41 Salespeople REALLY need to leverage LinkedIn
18:38 Make LinkedIn approachable for your employees
19:35 How can leaders start encouraging their employees to post on LinkedIn
19:35 Connections, commenting, and content
20:37 Optimize your LinkedIn profile
23:16 Optimizing your profile photo
29:22 Create a list of those your team should connect with on LinkedIn
30:54 Commenting is SO undervalued
32:48 What should you share on LinkedIn?
34:07 Follow your customers and prospects
35:32 Add value with your comments
36:36 It's not about you
37:07 Comments light up the LinkedIn algorithm
39:40 Create a 30-day LinkedIn plan
45:42 Get team members to support each other's posts
50:38 Create accountability with your team
52:57 Tracking LinkedIn analytics
54:56 Building out a home studio
56:05 Optimizing content for mobile vs. desktop
58:07 Optimizing the hook, the body, and the CTA
58:27 The most common mistake newbies make on LinkedIn
59:00 Use the inverted pyramid approach when posting
Transcript:
[00:00:06] Aaron Olson: Welcome back to another episode of marketing together. I'm Aaron Olson, content manager at PartnerHacker.
In today's episode of marketing together, Logan Lyles, and Ali Schwanke dive into all things. LinkedIn marketing.
They talk about everything from optimizing your LinkedIn profile to building connections, to creating content. Get ready to take notes because Allie and Logan cover a ton of ground. I hope you enjoy this episode.
[00:00:29] Logan Lyles: Hey everyone. I'm Logan Lyles, head of Partnerships at Teamwork. I'm joined today by Ali Wanky, founder of Simple Strat. Allie, thanks for joining me.
[00:00:38] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. Think this is gonna be fun.
How to equip a Linkedin Leadership team
[00:00:40] Logan Lyles: Awesome. So we are uh, gonna be talking about how to equip the LinkedIn evangelists within your agency. And I think, you know, uh, ally, you founded an agency, simple Strat HubSpot partner, um, uh, very well known there. I was part of a leadership team at an agency that leaned into this strategy of helping people build their personal brands, get active on LinkedIn.
I think agencies have a unique opportunity where everybody kind of naturally gets involved with marketing. Um, I think if you're listening to this and you're not with an agency, the everything that you get here in the why you would do this and how to equip it might look a little bit different, but I think it's gonna be applicable, um, as well.
Um, so with that in mind, before we jump straight into tactics, let's kind of set the stage of what are we talking about in building kind of an army of individual LinkedIn evangelists is the term that I use and I think I often. Like compare and contrast that to the employee advocacy, uh, term or, or motion.
How do you think about it, Allie, in what we're talking about here?
What is a LinkedIn evangelist?
[00:01:45] Ali Schwanke: Yeah, it's funny, I was writing some notes for myself yesterday and I said, you know, whenever we think of evangelists, we think of like the crusaders that, you know, say all the things and gather all the people and um, really, like some of us get a bad, um, taste in our mouth 'cause it's like we don't wanna be those people on LinkedIn that are just filling everyone else's feet with crap.
And, um, it just, it comes across as like, I don't really have things to say. So you have LinkedIn evangelists in your company. They're just called smart people with amazing insights. Like those are what evangelists actually are and you wouldn't have hired them if you You know, if they didn't have those things. So really it's just taking the, um, the things that you already know and care about and, and putting those out on behalf of your agency and then leveraging that to create connections and really have those conversations. 'cause we're LinkedIn's the biggest industry trade show that we're at every single day, and that used to be done in person.
Now it's online. So if you're not evangelizing your content,
your insights, you know, your
problem solving scenarios, you're really just missing out on opportunities for both yourself and your clients.
[00:02:48] Logan Lyles: Yeah, and the way that I often put it, I shared this the other day in a post, is, you know, we love the old adage that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And anybody who's been doing content marketing
for any length of time, we know that content is the way that we do that. But oftentimes we jump to the know, like, and trust, which content is a great way to do that.
And we forget that people buy . From people. Right? And I like what you called out there is that evangelists your potential evangelists, even if you don't have a chief evangelist role like you, we've seen with, with other folks. You have evangelists who are just smart people who are willing to advocate for your brand.
And there's a tie in to them to building their personal brand as well. Um, you know, I always, uh, am remiss on this point. Let us know in the comments where y'all are joining from. By the way, I'm, uh, just outside of Denver Alley is not based in California, but in California today with some rainy weather in San Diego.
Anybody else in San Diego? Uh, let us know in the comments where, uh, where you're joining us from, um, and would love to hear that. And also audio and video is, is coming through clear, so we're setting the stage there. One of the things you mentioned, Ali, is uh, you know, kind of comparing this motion to employee advocacy.
Building employee advocacy
[00:04:04] Logan Lyles: Some folks might not even be, uh, you know, . Going down that route yet. And you might be thinking, Hey, I want to help people get involved, get active on social. And so you're googling things around employee advocacy. Um, we kind of view this as kind of the next evolution of what people tried to do there. What would you say to folks who haven't really gotten started and they're thinking about employee advocacy, there may be reading some things.
What would you kind of recommend them to kind of frame their thinking in how people have done things, what's effective versus not? And then we'll get into how do you start casting the vision to your team?
[00:04:39] Ali Schwanke: to set the stage. I think you have to remember the history of LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is celebrating two year or 20 years, 20 years, um, of being a platform this year, which is crazy 'cause all of us are, somehow those of us that have been using it for a while are, have been kind of, you know, on this, this soapbox saying this is a really important thing.
You should be paying attention. And there's the other half of the world that's saying like, wow, this LinkedIn thing is pretty cool. So we've got all sorts of conversations around this, but it started as a job searching platform. It still retains some of those
same beliefs and myths, like everybody on, you know, LinkedIn is in sales or they're in recruiting and that's it.
Like, I'm not looking for a job
[00:05:16] Logan Lyles: I've heard that. Oh yes. I love that you called that
[00:05:19] Ali Schwanke: mean, it's funny 'cause it's like we, we acknowledge that that's not true and yet there's still this like, commonly held belief. So I think one of the first things we, we do realize is that the evolution of the platform means we went from being able to use it to go find people, and now we're using it to connect with ideas and, and spread some of these like insights that would naturally have been spread in person and that, you know, that's really how all content is.
But, but since, since people come to LinkedIn, On a daily basis to talk business or have business conversations, it's much more appropriate to put that kind of content there than it is on your Facebook page where you're hoping to see kids and babies and you know, like your friends and vacation. And then you throw a business post on there and they're kind of like, whoa, like chill out, dude.
This is like personal. So on LinkedIn, the advocacy piece is, um, I don't even know that a lot of people know like what that client that com that, uh, term means. So employee
advocacy, um, like those of us in marketing, we, we have said that, I've said that to clients and they kind of go like, what, what's what's employee advocacy? But there, you know, you were, you were essentially telling your employees you should go have a profile. And they say, okay, marketing director. And they, they go create a profile. So they think that they're cool there. I'm good. Whenever the company tells me to post something, I post something. And so they were using them as more just like a distribution mechanism to the outside world. well now, so this evangelism, the, the modern way that you and I as humans and other humans on the platform expect it to work.
Don't just repeat the company blog, build relatinships
[00:06:47] Ali Schwanke: We expect it to not be this little like, you know, we'll call it mini me of the company just preaching the blogs that have been posted, because that was what, you know, three or four years ago was now I expect you to be a fully embodied human with your own ideas and intakes and insights relative to your company's expertise so that I can feel a connection and I come back to you to have
conversations. It's not about like, great, we're now connected, and that's, that's the end of the story. It's no longer about building your connections. It's
about enhancing and building those relationships, which again, sounds like it's common sense, but I think it gets overlooked in especially when you get posts that are like,
you know, five ways to do whatever.
Like, again, these are people. Your LinkedIn network is people, so let's talk about them with like
[00:07:34] Logan Lyles: absolutely. And I think, yeah, whether you're at an agency, you're at a brand, what other,
at whatever sort of
company you're at in B two B I, I think that the people aspect is often overlooked more, but it's actually more important. Right. I know, uh, different vendors I've worked with and when I was on the agency side, I knew the marketing teams I was working with.
I knew people, you know, first name basis, right? But B two c, I don't know anyone's name at, at Amazon, other than Jeff Bezos maybe. Right? Like, um, but I don't know anyone personally, if I have a bad experience that's not tied to a, a person, if I see something they're doing, it's not tied to a, a person. Um, so, uh, I want to encourage everybody in the chat.
It really cool. We've got people in Spain, Ukraine, uh, Ryan's heading to San Diego soon. Hopefully the rain lets up for him. Um, Vanessa, thanks for the . AV check. Um, so we've got people in the states, we've got people abroad. I'm loving that. Let us know in the chat if you are following some individuals, um, to this point of what Allie's talking about.
Uh, I would love to hear, uh, just to kind of illuminate this point that a lot of us are on LinkedIn. Even if you're not creating content and you're taking the next step of equipping your team to create content, the topic for today, who are the people that you're following? 'cause I would be willing to bet most of you could come up with one, two people that you're following regularly.
People follow people, not companies on LinkedIn
[00:08:59] Logan Lyles: If I said, Hey, how many companies content are you following on LinkedIn regularly? You would probably be hard pressed to come up with one, even if you thought about it more. So let us know in the comments who you're following and getting value from. And I think that will also kind of illuminate this point.
So if the old way was employee advocacy, we need to get our message out. There's this social media thing, it's just a distribution channel. It's not really connecting people. People don't go on there and consume content from other people. That's not really the case. So we want to lean into that reality and we want to equip our team to share content, to make connections.
There's benefits. For the brand. And then there's also benefits back to them as an individual. And before you go, kind of rolling this out to your team, hey, get active on LinkedIn and here's how to do it. I heard some great tips from Logan and Allie. You're gonna need to cast the vision and explain to them why they would do that.
And be clear about the benefits to the company and the benefits for them. So how do you think about this, Allie? Maybe ways you've advised your clients or ways that you guys think about it. Uh, internally at Simples. Stratt in explaining the why.
LinkedIn is the place people go to validate who you are
[00:10:06] Ali Schwanke: Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me was a realization that LinkedIn is the first place, or one of the first places that people go to validate who you are. So before you post anything, before you comment on anything, does your profile accurately reflect the person that you are and the expertise that you have to offer? And I was telling this to my kids. I said, we were talking just about him. My, my older son was looking at starting a business and I said, do you think anyone's gonna buy from you? And he said, well, you know, I'll, I'll have pictures of, 'cause he is gonna sell golf balls, pictures of my products online and whatever, this and that.
And I said, um, well, what if I introduced you to one of my friends? And he said, okay. And I said, what's the first thing that my friend's probably gonna do? And he goes, probably look me up. And I was like, yes. Even teenagers look each other up before they take, you know, they do anything. And we've just become accustomed to that, uh, environment.
So from an agency perspective, people are going to look you up and they're going to make sure that if so-and-so is assigned as an account strategist, for example, they're gonna go see, are you worth your salt on LinkedIn? Like, can I tell that you're a good strategist? Because that's my way of lessening the risk, which is one of the biggest things that comes into professional services sales is, is this gonna be a good decision for me?
Can I trust you and am I going to be better off after we work together? Or is it gonna be this thing that I regret? So that risk is something you have to balance. Um, the other thing is understanding that when people buy, um, or when people are in relationships with agencies too, the ability to build a good relationship with your client, where you're able to share both the good, the bad, and, and 'cause we're, we're just humans.
That's what human relationships are. The more time you spend with someone, the more you're likely to trust them. So if you meet with a client, once a week, but they can meet with you, quote unquote virtually by interacting with you on LinkedIn every day. Your intimacy and your relationship like status, um, goes from, I barely know you to I really know you well really fast. And the ability to sort of binge on that relationship content makes that relationship so much stronger. And then the upsells become easier and all of that kind of stuff. So I just, I think
it's so
incredible to talk about those philosophical and psychological things before you even talk about the platform.
[00:12:22] Logan Lyles: I love that and I love that you called out in professional services specifically. So if you're in an agency or anyone else who's doing client service work, where kind of, you know, the adage is the people are the product, there's that much more of like, what am I getting right? And they're kind of doing product research by looking at the people.
'cause I've literally, I was in sales for an agency when I joined Sweet Fish and they said, Logan, I'm, I'm loving the conversation with you. Who am I really gonna be working with? Like, what can you tell me there? And like that, that question was exactly what you were talking about, Ali. Whether you hear it or not, they're checking out your team to mitigate the risk, right?
Put together a LinkedIn training course for your employees
[00:13:01] Logan Lyles: To understand what am I really going to, what am I really going to get? Um, Talking a little bit about the why as well. Um, one of the things we did with our sales team at Teamwork, so we put together a training course called LinkedIn Legends. 'cause uh, teamwork's an Irish company. And the first time, uh, one of the little Irish things I've noticed is I, it's much more common to say, oh, legend, oh, that was legendary, or, you're a legend.
So the first time I got that in, in chat, I was like, oh, wow, that's such a compliment. And then I realized like, oh, that's very common. Um, so I jokingly, when I loaded that course into our, uh, L M s I called it becoming a LinkedIn legend. Anyway, sidebar there and fun, uh, American Irish cultural learning that I'm, I'm going through.
Um, but laid out the why to the team and said, look, um, . LinkedIn is, like you said, it's the conference that we're all going to. It's where our buyers are, are hanging out today. So we can go and be there and, uh, people follow people, people connect with people there. And so there is a motion for the company that if you're getting active there, whether you're talking about company stuff, sharing company content, or just being active and engaging with people that does have a benefit to the company, both from an awareness perspective and continuing to build relationships, uh, in the market.
So I would say as you're presenting this, don't shy away from that, like lead with that. Right. But don't stop there and say, please, please, please. Can you just. Can you do this thing? Like can you just post? Like really? Can you just, no, just let them know, like, look. And what I shared with our team is, look, I got active on LinkedIn about five years ago.
Um, and it has changed the trajectory of my career. It has changed my network. Um, it has led to different jobs that the last two jobs that I have, I directly attribute to LinkedIn. And not like the, this job, LinkedIn helped me get this job by like applying with LinkedIn. No, the connections, the relationships that I built there.
So cast that vision for them. And then what you said there, it's not just for marketing folks, for salespeople, like you said, let's say you're a salesperson or you're an account manager. and Ally, I, you're either a current customer or, or a prospect of mine. We hop off a call and I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna connect with Ally.
And then even if I'm just posting once a week, um, there is actually, not to jump too tactical here, but I've literally seen that when you're on Zoom calls and you're emailing with people because of the link between our email and how we sign up with LinkedIn,
[00:15:34] Ali Schwanke: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:35] Logan Lyles: LinkedIn says, oh, Logan's emailing with Allie, I should put her content in his feed, and vice versa.
Salespeople REALLY need to leverage LinkedIn
[00:15:41] Logan Lyles: So salespeople are actually really, really in a good spot to do exactly what you said to show up and be more consistent just in kind of a passive ongoing way, even if you're just sharing something somewhat regularly. So I wanted to circle back to, to what you said there. Anything else more on the why before we start to talk, Allie, about how do you start doing this?
How, what are the steps you need to take to start equipping people to become what we're calling LinkedIn evangelists for the brand?
[00:16:10] Ali Schwanke: Sure. One of the biggest things in your why is people will also look to what you do. So you, we can't be the leaders that say do as I say, not as I do, because people will say, well, you're telling me to be active on LinkedIn. You're telling me to have a more, a bigger presence. But if you as the leader aren't doing that, you're gonna be missing out. That's not to say like there is a fine line. So I'll tell you there's a fine line between, as a especially agency leader, you don't want to give the perspective to your clients that you just like hang out on LinkedIn all day and answer comments and things like that, but, It's also a place where engagement's important.
So it's okay if you need to respond to comments, you know, in the evening, but never responding to comments is not the way to showcase your expertise and insights to your audience. So you do need to think about this somewhat methodically and, and put some framework around the idea of also sales team like you.
You can't be just chilling on LinkedIn all day either. So just like in your email, like figure out structured times to go in and have these networking conversations. But do not, do not, again, ask your team to make these
shifts in
their behavior from a sales perspective or agency perspective, and then not demonstrate that yourself.
[00:17:25] Logan Lyles: Yeah, I,
and that's exactly where I was gonna suggest starting too, is you've gotta lead by example and you've gotta also gotta address some of the common concerns of like, where should I start? What should I post? Which we're gonna get into some tactics on that as well. But also what's kind of expected, because they might be hearing like go get active on LinkedIn, but they're also like
I know you don't want me to spend four hours a day there, you're gonna come down on me if I'm doing that. So just speak to that and like throw out some,
not necessarily a long list of rules, but I would say kind of some guardrails of, Hey, here's kind of what it looks like for me. And if you're willing to, to lean in here for the benefits of the company and for the benefits that you're gonna get.
Here's kind of what we, what we would suggest. You know, block 30 minutes a day or whatever the the case is. And I think leading by example and then setting up some of those guardrails will give people a little bit more comfort. 'cause even if they buy into the why, if they're not quite sure on the direction from you on the how, then they're gonna be hesitant.
They're gonna err on the side of caution and safety. 'cause that's just human nature, right.
[00:18:37] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. Absolutely.
Make LinkedIn approachable for you employees
[00:18:38] Logan Lyles: Awesome. So my next advice for folks is to really to start making it approachable. Uh, because if you explain the why and you lay down these guardrails, there's still that, well, what do I post? I, I'm not sure should I, and how should I do it?
Should I reshare company stuff? Where can I go for inspiration? Um, and I actually spent a lot of time in the course that I rolled out for our sales team at Teamwork. I was like, do I really need this much time on optimizing your profile and following the right people? And just starting to comment. But I realized like that's actually helped people kind of get an on-ramp.
So where would you suggest Ally, um, 'cause I know you and I have some very similar thinking on this, how for leaders to then start making it approachable if they've explained the why, they've laid down some guardrails. Um, giving people the on-ramp to start building their personal brand on LinkedIn and becoming that evangelist.
How can leaders start encouraging their employees to post on LinkedInConnections, commenting, and content
[00:19:35] Ali Schwanke: Yeah, if you're not a LinkedIn super user already in as a leader, that's the first thing to recognize is you don't have to go learn all the things you can learn alongside your team, but you may need to bring in an external resource or something to help you. So even if that's a, for example, we've got a 30 day LinkedIn posting plan that we created to help provide an on-ramp for some of our clients. We do this for other folks as well. Like you might just need somewhat of a sort of workshoppy session where you need to, to help come up with those ideas. But, um, really the three Um, levers that you pull on LinkedIn to get results are connections, commenting, and content. So we talk a lot about content, content, content.
What do I post? What do I post? And really, if you think about, so take a step back and look at LinkedIn as a place that's filled with multiple data points. And as a human, you're trying to connect those data points to make sense of those relationships and that that information. So if I see Logan, you comment on a post on LinkedIn, the first thing that I see is your profile picture.
Optimize your LinkedIn profile
[00:20:37] Ali Schwanke: The next thing that I see is your headline, not your title of your current company. It's your headline. So if your headline says SDR R at company xyz, my first thinking as a human that's in self-protection mode with the
amygdala is this guy's in sales. If I create a relationship with him, he might try to sell me something. So your headline is
[00:20:57] Logan Lyles: He's gonna come in hard with that pitch.
[00:20:58] Ali Schwanke: I know watch out, like your dms are gonna explode. I can do all these things. So your headline is just as important. If not more important than the rest of your profile. Because one of the first things when you're doing on-ramping on hubs or on HubSpot, I talk about HubSpot a lot too, uh, on LinkedIn is on-ramping means before you come to the party, you need to participate in the conversation. So you're not gonna come to a party, go to the mean start of the room and start talking about stuff. You're gonna earn the rights to have a seat in the middle where people wanna listen to you. So commenting is the first on-ramp, but before you comment, you have to optimize that profile. And this is where as a marketer, like agency owners, like, you guys should, you should get this. We can't say things like, I optimize this and whatever. And buzzword, buzzword, your headline needs to be the way that your customers speak and your clients speak. So that's, I mean, on-ramp 1 0 1 would be profiled. And, and I walk through this, I actually bring up comments and I show them. Look at this.
What's the first thing you, you see here? And that awareness from their perspective means they've now learned it. I haven't told them that. So if you can walk through those scenarios with your team, that on-ramping will help you get the buy-in for, oh my goodness, these little things matter versus like, okay,
ally told me to update my profile.
Fine check. Like, they just think it's a to-do thing and instead need them to understand. That's like you going to a party in your pajamas. Like you cannot wear your pajamas to
a gala.
So we're gonna the gala, get your shirt on. You know, or get, get your dress on. You need to look the part before you start talking.
[00:22:29] Logan Lyles: Mm-hmm. , remind me, what are those three C's again?
[00:22:33] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. Um,
now that you put me on the spot, I'm
like, uh, connections, um, commenting and content.
[00:22:39] Logan Lyles: Okay, awesome. And the connections, the reason we kind of jumped there to the profile is if you want people to connect, if you want to send those connection requests, what are they gonna see first? Right? And I love that party analogy. Don't show up in your pajamas and also don't show up and just start hogging the conversation.
'cause we've all been there. Um, a couple of things there, 'cause you and I are very much in line in where I've been helping our sales team think about this and how you've been equipping clients in your team is start with the profile photo, right? The, what I, what I liken this to is that is the logo for your personal brand.
Optimizing your profile photo
[00:23:16] Logan Lyles: Um, so you wanna be thoughtful about it. You don't want to change it too often, right? Uh, because there're
Uh, that is the first thing that, that people see. Unfortunately, a lot of people, they take that group photo from the last wedding they were at and they crop it. And I understand why. That's when, you know, you had the last professional photo taken.
Your hair looks good, your dress nice to our point here. But, you know, it's, it's just not really the, the best look you can actually do. Uh, better with that, even with your iPhone, with just some, uh, you know, some thought to it. Face an open window, get a nice clean wall behind you. Uh, take a picture like that and then I.
If you're in an agency, you probably have a designer who can do a little clipping mask, put a, uh, brand color behind you that, uh, especially if you're talking about across a team, I know there for a while, I think Gong was one of the first teams I saw, do this, put that same brand color behind everyone's photo, even if they were taken differently and they didn't all, you know, have professional photos taken in the office.
If you can't do something like that, have everybody, you know, have that consistent background. Use a designer on staff or, or someone else. So those are some tips on, on profile photo. I just, uh, I have to preach on a bit 'cause I see too much and I'm like, come on, come on. Um, the second thing that I think a lot of people don't think about is your headline.
Probably the last time that's been updated is when you change jobs. And then what LinkedIn will do is take your job, you know, founder at Simple Strat, head of partnerships at teamwork, account executive at. You know, wherever, and it will put that as your headline. This is Free Marketing real Estate that follows you all over LinkedIn.
Every time you leave a comment, every time you post, the first thing they see is your profile photo. The second thing they see is that headline, and what I suggest people do is make it very clear in the first part of that headline, you can make it longer and put like your title after it and stuff, but there's a first part that that follows you all over LinkedIn like we're saying.
And make it clear who you serve and what you do. So a couple of examples. The first part of my headline says Project management for agencies. I work at Teamwork. We're a project management platform. Agencies are our I C P. So I want people to associate me with, Hey, that's, that's what we do. When I was at Sweet Fish, our, um, we had everybody have the same headline that says We produce podcasts for B two B brands so quickly people look at that and they don't see, oh, you're a producer, or you're, you know, VP of cx, which is my title at that point.
But they see, Hey, I'm a B two B brand. Wait, they do podcasting. There's more likely them to connect with what you do. Any other good examples or any other tips around profiles and headlines that you would give there too? Ally?
[00:26:07] Ali Schwanke: profile. When you're looking at the, the picture, the biggest thing that is a, it's almost, it's hard to tell people this and that is, if you don't look like your profile picture, that is going to be a source of distrust. Again, regardless, I don't care, I'm not gonna judge you on how you look every day, but if you glam up, For your LinkedIn profile and every single time you're on a Zoom call, you have glasses on and your hair is in ponytail, whatever, people naturally go, wait a minute, am I re meeting with the right person? So if that's the case, consider your profile picture something that is approachable and relatable, but the old stigma of you have to be in a studio with all the things like that is gone. It might still be around in things like medical device sales. They tend to still wear a lot of, you know, business professional, uh, attire when they visit their customers. But if you're in an industry, I mean, like us here, you know, we have, we're not dressed sloppy, but we definitely aren't in a suit right now. So if you look like that every day, find a profile picture that's more appropriate for how they're going to interact with you on a call. Even at conferences, I'll tell you, because I, I've gotten this, this note multiple times 'cause I have a YouTube channel also and whatever, but. They walk up to me because they can see me and they know who I am. 'cause I look like my profile picture. And as a, I've at a conference now and one of the things that happened is I wanted to find somebody, but when I met her, she didn't look like her profile picture. And so it's, it's, it's fine if you want to, again, glam up a little bit, but be careful about that. The other thing is when you're a founder or a C E O, so you have an executive level title, usually I'll recommend that you put that first on your headline because that carries a lot of social credibility. Founders typically wanna connect with other founders. It doesn't bode well when you're not in the
founder position because then founders
typically try to figure out whether they're not, whether they're on the same level professionally
[00:28:03] Logan Lyles: Am I talking to a peer? Am I connecting with a peer here?
[00:28:06] Ali Schwanke: Yes. That whole peer-to-peer analysis on LinkedIn is important. So I love what you've done in project management for agencies because now I can I can trust you and there isn't any sort of like, is he gonna sell me something and whatever. And then the next thing they do once they get past the headline is they're gonna go look at your content, your summary, what do you do?
Like they're gonna pull all these little pieces of insights
into their
analysis. But that headline is gonna be super important as a founder if, if that's first.
[00:28:32] Logan Lyles: Absolutely. So going back to your three C's, the structure of the rest, rest of the conversation, we've been talking about connections. So prep yourself for those connections, like getting dressed for the party, your profile picture, your headline. Um, there's some other things that, um, you're about section you, you might have some resources we can share after this if you want to go kind of deeper into a full profile audit, something like that.
Um, the other thing I'll recommend on connections though, before we get to commenting and content is, um, start following. What you can do is. It. There were some great examples. I can't believe Ryan McKesson, you know, listed me with Josh, Justin Wilson and Josh Braun. Thank you for that, Ryan. I, uh, I'm punching above my weight there, but whoever you're following, going back to where everybody was, listing people they follow.
Create a list of those your team should connect with on LinkedIn
[00:29:22] Logan Lyles: Um, if you're active on LinkedIn and you're leading by example, create a list. Create a Google Doc or a Google sheet, um, with 10 to 20 LinkedIn profiles of people who are your I C P or who are reaching your I C P with their content. And encourage your team, go follow these people. 'cause if you start following them, you're gonna see people in your target market, commenting, reacting, that sort of stuff.
It's gonna be, again, a natural on-ramp in this connection phase. So prep yourself for connection. Give them some easy wins, and then also just make it part of their regular to-dos, like, You not to go off on tangent, but you know, Allie and her team are really great at HubSpot workflows, all those sorts of things.
You can have a task in HubSpot to connect with this prospect on LinkedIn after your discovery call. Those sorts of things. So I think that covers connections really well. Let's start talking about commenting. 'cause I think a lot of people don't realize, um, how different LinkedIn is when it comes to new users.
Getting visibility and commenting leading to visibility. Like it doesn't happen the same way on Instagram and other platforms. And it's also, again, to go with this theme of on-ramping helps set you up to creating content without like rolling out this and sharing all the why. And then the team's like, I don't know what to post.
I didn't really have an on-ramp to like become a daily content creator on LinkedIn. So it must not work. This stinks. You wasted my time and uh, all that sort of stuff. So let's talk about Commoning for a bit and I'll let you take it away.
Commenting is SO undervalued
[00:30:54] Ali Schwanke: commenting is one of those. It's just so undervalued and so powerful. I think, again, back to that idea that We look at LinkedIn as a plat, a social platform, and when we think social platform, we think the first word that comes to our mind is posting, which is terrible because social platforms are supposed to be social. So to be social, that means you have interaction and interactions come from commenting back and forth, like that's just how it's manifested on the platforms. But as a new user, again, back to that analogy of you can't come into a room and just suddenly start preaching your philosophy if you haven't earned the right to do that. So commenting is the way to one, when you comment on someone's profile or comment on their post, that gets reed to your network. So there's two things to think about there. One is be careful what you post on or comment on If you're commenting on a bunch of kind of random things off of the I C P, like you might get engagement, but it might not be the right audience. And then two, when you do comment on that, the things that are gonna make people pay attention to you are insightful retrospectives in light of whatever that content was. So if, like, I know yesterday, uh, or a couple days ago, Logan, you had a fantastic carousel about commenting. So again, like if you're on this webinar and you have not gone into that post of, of Logan's like, holy cow, you're missing out. Go read the best practices there. But when you comment on that, it's not just gonna be like, Great post Logan. Like that's not gonna
be super helpful. That is okay if you
ha if you are just super scared
If you're super scared and you just need to get out on there and
you're
[00:32:29] Logan Lyles: Start with great post, thanks for sharing. But we wanna get beyond that because you could literally have a bot do that. Um, and people are starting to realize, just like the spam dms that we're getting from automation tools, there are even some of that happening. So how do you get beyond that? Good. Good point.
Start there if you have to, but get beyond there
What should you share on LinkedIn?
[00:32:48] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. And then share a, share some sort of insight. So in, in our case, like I think I commented on the post about these are great, you know, commenting is simply one of those three Cs that we talk about, which we're talking about here. And then you and I had a short conversation about that within the thread of that, of that comment. So then that shows up to my followers, and then Logan gets a benefit of his content being seen by other people. So now he feels that reciprocity toward me, which is that superhuman psychology piece, and, and it just becomes kind of this like flywheel that continues. So if you haven't thought about who you want to comment on post again, that, that list you just mentioned, Logan is great. It also is a good thing of like, if you're an account manager or an account executive, you should probably have the LinkedIn profiles of your clients identified and go every now and then and make sure that just because the feed didn't show it to you, You go and
seek out
a post that they made and interact with it so you can build that good, that goodwill with the people that you already serve.
[00:33:45] Logan Lyles: Absolutely. Um,
I know, um,
one of my connections, Robert, who's on, uh, if you're still on, shout on to, to Robert. Um, uh, Robert, I've never pronounced your last name, so I'm not gonna try. Ellen and I were talking about that lately. We don't like when people mispronounce our last names. Um, but he was mentioning I usually follow the companies where my customers are at.
Follow your customers and prospects
[00:34:07] Logan Lyles: I think especially if you're in, if you're in sales, follow the individuals, um, that are your customers, your prospects at those companies. There's some different tools. There are some ways to optimize sales Navigator for that. But without getting too deep, if you're just starting there, if you connect with them, you'll naturally be following them.
Um, but the second thing you can do is, uh, within the last 12 months, whenever it was LinkedIn, . Rolled out the bell notification icon, and now there's even different levels to that. So, uh, ally, if you and I are connected, if I hit the bell notification every time you post, um, I can say, only show me Ally's top posts, or Show me every time ally posts, or you can not have it on.
And then, They, the feed may or may not show me your posts. I've done that with all of our teamwork partners like you, Allie, and, and other folks. So that, hey, I want to support your content every time I can and every time you post. So whether it's a partner, a prospect, a team member, um, whoever it is, follow them and hit that bell icon.
That way it's gonna show up in your notifications feed, um, when they do post, and it can take away from some of that manual checking and then go leave a thoughtful comment. Um, and then to, to Ally's point, there are some ways that you can comment, um, very, um, more easily without having to write a complete novel.
Add value with your comments
[00:35:32] Logan Lyles: Right? Um, some of the tips I share with folks is quote, part of the . Post and comment specifically on that, especially if it's something insightful, you might be like, oh man, there's so much to, to respond to here. Quote, part of it, it also, to your point ally, like commenting is a value to the author. I appreciate people that leave comments because that helps my content, uh, reach more people, um, in the, in the algorithm.
So you're adding value to the author. Um, and if you quote it, it reinforces that. Like, oh, they actually read it. They're not just saying, thanks for sharing. Right? So there are a few things you can do there to make it easy. Um, and like you said, every time you comment, a lot of people haven't noticed this, but as you're scrolling through your feed, if you're not connected with Ally right now and you're watching this, you might see one of Ally's posts if you're connected to me, and up at the top it says, Logan Lyles commented on this, right?
And then it shows Ally's Post and you're like, why am I seeing this? I'm not connected with Ally. Um, that's essentially what you're doing, showing up in the feed, um, when you comment. Anything else you'd add there, Allie?
It's not about you
[00:36:36] Ali Schwanke: I love the idea that you're giving value to the author. 'cause again, it's, it's not about you. And that's the biggest mindset shift on the platform is that this all, all of this activity is not about you. And that is fundamental to marketing. That's fundamental to sales. So by helping elevate other people's visibility, you naturally earn more from the platform. The other thing, I think that's a, uh, it's not a myth, it's just a misunderstood
conception. And that is people will think, well, I'm just gonna share the company's page, or I'm just gonna share Logan's post. Which
[00:37:06] Logan Lyles: I'm gonna hit repost
Comments light up the algorithm
[00:37:07] Ali Schwanke: Uhhuh, yes. And they hit repost. But the comments are the things that light up the algorithm. So if you haven't acknowledged that, you can share as well. But if you're gonna share, share and comment, if you're going to share from the company page, also comment on your company page and tag someone you know. Tagging's gonna be like, If you don't know anything else to say in the comments too, tagging and saying, Hey, at Logan Lyles,
I thought you would love
this post.
That's super powerful, and a way to get your team engaged as well.
[00:37:35] Logan Lyles: I'm glad that you, that you called that out, uh, because that's another way that you're like, ah, I want to comment, but I'm not sure what to say. Tagging is a great way. It not only is benefit to the author and you like the first example that we said, but like . Allie, if you post something and I tag someone on our marketing team and like, Hey, I think you would, you would have some thoughts on this, or you might want to check this out.
Um, kind of both of those scenarios work really well. Now I've got benefit because I'm showing up in the feed by commenting.
[00:38:06] Ali Schwanke: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:07] Logan Lyles: I. Um, the author appreciates my comment. The author appreciates it even more because you're helping someone else who wouldn't have seen their content. And the person, if you do it right, who you tagged is like, oh, I'm flattered you actually thought of me.
So this is just one of those ways. I love what you said earlier, Allie. Uh, social platforms are meant to be social, um, tagging and not in a spam mass tagging sort of way, um, can be a very easy way to actually lean in, be social, add value, and now you're earning the right to contribute more to the conversation and lean into the third C.
If you're starting with connections, then you're commenting, now content comes, you're set up for that. So just sometimes you could just scroll LinkedIn or show your people like, I love what you said earlier about show and tell. Just like, Hey, I'm scrolling my feed and I'm thinking like I, I know people in sales, I know people in marketing, I know people in ops and product, and I'm just scrolling through to see
Who would I tag? Who would I think of and start commenting in, in that way? So that's a tactic you can lean into and show your team to do really, really easily.
What's kind of the springboard from there as you've, uh, consulted a lot of your clients ally, going from connections to commenting, to getting started with content.
[00:39:22] Ali Schwanke: Sure there's some really big road, I'll say roadblocks or obstacles when people like the first two sound good, the first two sound kind of again, like I'm just on the periphery and, and now
if you think about like, you're gonna be at a football game and now you're being pulled into the game. Okay, alright, now, now I have to figure out
[00:39:39] Logan Lyles: Wait, coach me,
Create a 30 day LinkedIn plan
[00:39:40] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And so, and I think sometimes one, going back to that mindset is when you follow people, like, okay, I have no other example here, but you know Gary V because everybody knows him regardless of where you are on the planet. Well, but, but I don't, I don't have a ton of things to say or they have this negative idea of that type of person. And I don't wanna be like walking down the road, you know, recording videos and being all like crazy like that. The challenge of LinkedIn. Um, I've done a lot of work on this, so again, if you don't have this LinkedIn 30 day posting plan, let me know. 'cause I can, I can get this to you, Logan, and you can,
put it in the show or the not show notes.
This isn't a podcast. You can put it in the webinar notes or whatever, the LinkedIn live notes,
[00:40:20] Logan Lyles: Yeah. Yeah. So let's, let's do this for anybody who wants that 30 day, uh,
posting plan, uh, just, uh, comment plan in the, in the comments right now, and we'll use that as our way to make sure we distribute that. Um, so comment plan, just p l a n. Um, and we'll get that 30 day posting plan, uh, to you from Ellie and the team.
So, alright. Quick sidebar, keep going.
[00:40:43] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. Yeah. So the, the reason that I created that plan was I noticed this behavior where they would do connections, they would do commenting and then like the car would literally come to a stop when it comes to the content piece. And so I, I was thinking there's definitely a couple things there and I, I had some ideas and I thought, well, what if I just made it easier by telling you, here's 30 days of content you can post. It's not, again, you gotta do a little bit of effort here. People like, I'm gonna give you the buckets and the examples. You gotta think about it for yourself. But putting your content into common categories, like when our brain has places that they can go and see examples. Like I always say, when your box gets smaller, your creativity gets bigger. So when your box is smaller, and I say, your post today is thanking a mentor in your life, all of a sudden you go, oh yeah, actually I have a boss five years ago that I should tag him and thank him for teaching me about X. You suddenly have a content idea, whereas five minutes ago you didn't have one. So this, this posting plan, like there are infinite amount of categories you can use. I gave you some of the most common ones. Think a mentor, share a resource, ask about a book recommendation. Share an article you just read. Like we don't go into, and we won't on this, on this live here, of all the different ways like carousels and images and videos like. People will often ask about, should I post a video or should I post a carousel or should I post a text thing?
That's the wrong question. The right question needs to start with what is the content and who is the person that's going to be reading, hearing, watching, and how can that be the most helpful to them? So, uh, one more thing on that is we did, so we did this, we, that posting plan's been downloaded over 3000 times. We've got three things that we'll ask people. 'cause then we did a LinkedIn challenge. So if you're interested in that, like, let me know. That was interesting. But, uh, ask them three things that, what is your roadblock when it comes to creating content on LinkedIn? And the top three are, I dunno what to say. So you're not alone if that's your thing. The you're afraid of looking boastful or like If I were to make up a word braggadocious. Uh, so you're, you're afraid of being that, that person, right? We all can think of that person and then they're not consistent, and so they either need accountability or think about it.
Like, if you're not consistent, you then don't see results, which then you don't believe in the platform. And it's this like negative cycle. So if you don't, if you can get the first two things figured out, you have what to say and you're able to say it in a way that's not, you know, brag or whatever, if you're not consistent and you don't have accountability there.
So that's sometimes where an external
resource makes it possible for you to stay consistent. But if any of those three things sound familiar, you're not alone.
[00:43:27] Logan Lyles: Uh, I love it. One, one other one I would add
to that, I actually just got this from one of our sales reps, um, yesterday. It was like, I've heard this twice on sales calls, and I think this would make for a great post on LinkedIn. Um, my prospects are saying, we need, you know, we need a new PM tool. We need help with our tech stack even beyond that.
Um, but my boss is stuck in their ways and I was like, wow, that would be a great, like, quote, my boss is stuck in their ways, but uh, we, you know, we need a new elements to our tech stack, but my boss is stuck in our ways. I've heard that two times in the last week. Here's what I would do about it if it were me.
And he's like, I, I love that concept and how I would post that. I'm afraid of offending people. Um, and I'm like, well,
[00:44:13] Ali Schwanke: pending. Okay. That's interesting. I
[00:44:14] Logan Lyles: So that, that could be another one as well. I think the not sounding braggadocio and not knowing what to
say definitely occur more often, but that was interesting to me. You know, some of my feedback for, for him was, you know, well the more specific you are, the more it's gonna draw people in.
Um, and so you are going to risk offending people a little bit. There was a good comment earlier, I think from April of like, yeah, you know, give people some guardrails of like, don't go getting political and, and all sorts of stuff, um, on LinkedIn that could get you and or your company in trouble. But, um, you know, I think that you have to let people know that, hey, your content is gonna be for some people and not for others.
And, and that's okay. And maybe that's a good example. I think I could go back to him and like to go to your advice of show and tell like, Hey, let me show you this post that was maybe a little bit, um, provocative, just a little bit. Like, were you offended by this? Look at the comments. Like even the people that disagree, they're not like, oh my gosh, I'm calling your boss.
Right. And so I think that there's, there's some of that you can, uh, you can address as well. Um,
I. So one of the things we did on our team as well is, uh, tying it into the course that we rolled out, LinkedIn legends. We made a chat channel internally called LinkedIn Legends so that folks when they do post, um, they can share a link there so that, you know, we can support each other.
Get team members to support each others posts
[00:45:42] Logan Lyles: But not trying to just do kind of the engagement pod thing, uh, that worked a few years ago, doesn't work now, actually hurts you. So don't, don't do that. But, um, to give feedback of like, Hey, this, your hook was a little bit weak there, you could have done this. Um, so I, that's another tip I would recommend to folks is that create some internal community and conversation around the content so that once someone does, they, they make that first post and so they don't get crickets.
So they at least get some internal feedback. Maybe they get a few likes from the, the team internally. Um, just so, like you said it, the car doesn't come to a complete screeching halt. Right.
[00:46:22] Ali Schwanke: Yeah. Yeah. In the calendar, if you get that resource, we do have, we call it a, I think, answer, a common question. Like a can. Common question is, is the prompt there? And I think your point about having people that agree with the content and disagree with the content. I think one of the hardest things for us as people, not marketers, but as people to understand is there are gonna be some people that don't think like you, and that's okay. When you're embracing that from a marketing perspective, and again, if you're in the agency side, you know this, like you have to find the people that believe what you believe, because those are going to be the people that align with you as a customer. So there's also going to be somewhat of an element of a personal belief system. So we call this point of view when we're talking about content, what is your point of view? So our point of view as we talk about here, is LinkedIn is a powerful tool. If you're not using it, you are missing out. And here's how, here's how to do that. Now, there may be other people that are like, LinkedIn's terrible.
Our industry doesn't use it. I'm, I refuse to believe that. I refuse to sit here and convince those people that it's valuable because it's not worth my time. There's plenty of people that agree with this side as a personal content creator, or if you're in sales, you may have some point of views that are based on your experience.
So if you're in sales, my point of view as a sales professional as well, is that people wanna buy from people that they feel have not sold to them in the first couple of meetings. That's my belief. So I'm not a hard sales person in those first initial meetings. Now you might be, because that works for you in the past and here's why. So again, as a point of
view, you can come up with your own points of view, but they shouldn't be in violation of the company's points of view.
[00:48:02] Logan Lyles: I love that. Um,
we just got a really good, uh, comment from April. She said that fear of crickets, uh, response is another, uh, good reason to add to that roadblock list. Um, one of the things I did, thank you for calling that out, April, um, because I, I, I feel like I just kind of
by happenstance tried to address that with the team, um,
in the course that I put together and one, uh, I tried to let them know like, Hey, if it's, if it's crickets, don't worry because no one actually saw it.
So if you're afraid like, oh, it was a terrible post. Well, yeah. And so no one saw it. So like, just kind of like explaining that of like, it's not like it went viral. Oh my gosh, Allie had a terrible post look at this. Um, so kind of, uh, explaining that a little bit. Um, and then I think again, if you can create some community, uh, around it and that natural encouragement, um, and just normalizing it of like, look, this is, um,
You know, our first couple of posts aren't gonna get much. Um, if you are already active, go back to an old post or show one recently that didn't get much. Actually, I think what I did is I took someone, um, so I took Dave Gerhart, who has over a hundred thousand followers, big name in B two B marketing post very consistently, um, built his brand while he was at Drift, and then has done several things since then.
Um, and I scrolled through his feed and normally, you know, you'll see a hundred engagements and, and a hundred comments, something like that, sometimes more. But I found one, it was like 20 likes and, and five comments. And I told our team, I was like, you might be aspiring to get to that point. And that's, that's fine, but just look at this like, this was a dud, quote, unquote post from an influencer, a content creator who has a massive following.
Like not every post hits, you see the ones that hit. Because they are hitting, because they are going viral. Right? And it kind of reinforces that other point of when it's, when it is a flop or a dud, um, then no one sees it. And it's not like being plastered everywhere of like, look at Ali's post. That didn't work.
So, um, thanks for, uh, having us double down on that for a little bit. April. That was, that was good stuff. Um, awesome. Allie, as you are kind of laying out this posting plan for clients, what are some of the, the next steps, um, and the common advice that you're seeing after you get, maybe you get some momentum, you get some folks who are seeing some wins.
Um, how do you, uh, capitalize on keeping that wind in their sails, I guess?
Create accountability with your team
[00:50:38] Ali Schwanke: Yeah, really accountability around that as a team is, is important. So if you've committed as a company to Post, let's say twice a week. That channel that you just talked about internal to, to teamwork is a good idea of that. So like you should be posting in that channel twice a week. Great. Just as a, like, I did this, guys, I did this. Now the thing that's gonna create that flywheel effect, at least in our experience, is the ability to pull up as a team and talk about the results that you're seeing. So, you know, Logan, what did you post about last week? Which one do you think hit? And that's gonna force you to have to go to your LinkedIn analytics and just take a little bit of a, you know, a swim around. So how many connections did you add? If you don't know how to do these things, seek out resources that will help you. Like we've got some resources that help you find those things. But if you go to your, um, like one of the things that I, thought's interesting is going to see what content was the most impressions versus the most engagement. And so you kind of study that a little bit. You should have one insight out of that to share as a team. And then those insights just continue to build because you don't wanna be the person that comes to a meeting with no insight. So everybody we're gonna get together, we're gonna share what we're learning on LinkedIn. Plus, it's really important, I think, as agency owners, that our teams know this because it is a fast growing social platform that we should, we should know about, even if we don't have B two B clients. 'cause
there's always some sort of application that we need to have in our periphery. Um, just to be educated about the industry. So the accountability in a team. And then from a like me perspective, um,
this is super nerdy so you don't have to do this, but I have spreadsheets tracking like the, the,
you know,
uh, all the things like the engagement, the number of connections I have, followers like rate of growth, all of that kind of stuff.
[00:52:18] Logan Lyles: Very cool. Well, we've got five to 10 minutes left here.
Um, there's a, there's a little bit delay, uh, as there always is with LinkedIn live, but if you have questions for me or Ally on something we've touched on or something that we haven't touched on, you're like, Hey, y'all, can you, can you answer this question that you kind of skipped over?
Let us know in the comments. And we will take some time, uh, to answer questions here. Uh, I don't have a super hard stop, so if we go a few minutes past the top of the hour, I wanna make sure we answer some, some questions. Um, . And in the meantime, while we're waiting on any and all of those to come through, on your point there, ally, a good tool if you're interested, um, is shield.
Tracking LinkedIn analytics
[00:52:57] Logan Lyles: Um, I think there are some others that are, that have been coming out that are competitive to that as well. But SHIELD app.ai, um, is a great tool for automating some of that. Um, if you don't want to build the, the Google sheets, um, and it will show you your analytics, it will show you, it allows you to kind of group things of like, oh, and kind of see at a glance video versus a text post.
What hashtags did you use and kind of analyze it. I would say it doesn't like give you, you know, 10 x the amount of information you can look at versus just natively looking at your LinkedIn analytics. But the visuals and the graphs, um,
can be a way. I know when we built an evangelist program at Sweet Fish, our social media manager, we ended up getting several people on shield and all have licenses.
And then on one of our company all hands, we literally were able to say like, we generated 500,000 views in the last, you know, 14 days because of this and this. Um, so it was a good, uh, analytical tool, but it was also a good tool to reinforce, um, hey, we are actually seeing some things from this and like, celebrate those wins as a, as a team.
Um, awesome. So we are getting some, some questions. We got one more who wants that posting plan? So thank you guys for, uh, commenting there. Uh, Ben, if I'm saying your name, uh, correctly, uh, what is your camera set up? Uh, Ben, if you, uh, if you send me a, a DMM with your email address, I've actually got a, a HubSpot email template with some links on my camera set up.
But I am using an external Sony mirrorless camera, an a 6,600 for any of those camera nerds like me out there. What really is the Cuda Gras on? It is the, is the lens. It's a 30 millimeter f 1.4 for, again, all the camera geeks. That's what gives that shallow depth of field. People have been like, whoa, what is that background?
No, it's actually my, my
[00:54:52] Ali Schwanke: the 1.4 is gonna kick it every time, regardless of camera. The
Building out a home studio
[00:54:56] Logan Lyles: Yes. exactly. That's really what it, what it is.
Um, for anybody who's looking to build out their,
uh, home video studio, a friend of mine, Dan Sanchez, uh, if you look him up, he's at a, a ed tech company called Element 4 51. He just released a $37 course on building a home studio set up.
So if you wanna spend $300 or $3,000, he's got like a small, medium, large for your home video set up. So, um, Yeah, Ben, send me a DMM with your email address. I'll send you that. Um, but then any, you and anyone else, uh, listening as well, I would direct you to check out Dan Sanchez. Um, he just posted the course here in the last week or so, so.
Awesome. Um, April, good question here. Do you have any recommendations ranking what to put in your posts, images, bullets, max words, um, just any of those sorts of guardrails as you're kind of teaching folks in general? This is what works on LinkedIn. I think, ally, you made a good point earlier of think about the content and the audience and then think about the format, but if you're getting some wins there, what are some of those formatting things that you're just kind of educating clients on?
A lot to April's question here.
Optimizing content for mobile vs desktop
[00:56:05] Ali Schwanke: Yeah, one of the biggest realizations is that your audience is likely, maybe not all the time, but a lot, a lot of them might be looking at LinkedIn on their mobile, you know, their phone. So when you're putting words into a graphic, like we've seen people post a, um, something where it's, you know, part of a blog post and it's put in the graphic, no one's really gonna read that.
It's too much, you know, think like you do with, um, content standards. And that is, can I quickly skimm this in three seconds and get value from it? And that needs to be our guideline. So bullet points are good. Um, memes tend to perform well if there's some sort of humor involved, if you wanted to use that.
I don't suggest using that all the time, but that's one thing that performs well. Um, if you have videos as a team, equipping your team with those short video pieces, but then also training them on, right now, the thing that's kind of tricky is LinkedIn will add captions to your videos automatically, which seems like it's actually a good thing, but a lot of us have been trained to actually upload videos with captions, and if you haven't been, like your captions are much cleaner because They're still not the best captions when they're auto-generated. So if you upload a video, if nothing else, make sure that you
either have captions or
you enable those captions. 'cause people, 90% of the, the users are gonna keep their
sound off as that, as that rolls through.
Um, the other thing is that the importance of teaching your team about the see more, which is you only get so many characters before it's gonna truncate your entire post. And the biggest, I would say, the biggest
training that I've done that has had the biggest impact is understanding the mechanisms of like, hook and copywriting to make sure that they even want to click the see more. So that's where like, again, think about all of the pieces on your LinkedIn post as a recipe, you can throw in an image. But they're still not gonna click on see more if your image says everything that they're supposed to see. So every one of those pieces is an invitation to experience the content at a deeper level. And again, if that's something your team struggles with, like drop me
a, a dmm, I'd be happy to share some like tricks that have worked for us.
But, um, definitely like
how to engage that SSM more, um, is, is a piece that they need to understand.
Optimizing the hook, the body, and the CTA
[00:58:07] Logan Lyles: I love what you said there. I've seen it, um,
shared the three parts of your
LinkedIn post,
if you wanna break it down. The anatomy of a LinkedIn post is the hook, the body and the c t a. And so
you want to think about that hook. And one of the things I've been coaching some of our sales team at Teamwork on, they're like, Hey, I want to post this.
The most common mistake newbies make on LinkedIn
[00:58:27] Logan Lyles: Like, and they've written out stuff and sent it to me via chat and, and said, Hey, you know, what do you think of this? And the most common mistake I see with this, and this will probably be the same for you and your team if you're new, is you write in uh, chronological order. 'cause that's how we think. So let's say you were posting about this event.
The other day I listened to Logan and Allie and, um, it got me thinking about this, and I learned this about posting on LinkedIn. And then you get into the things, right? You want to flip that, you want to think like a journalist.
Use the inverted pyramid approach when posting
[00:59:00] Logan Lyles: One thing I learned in journalism school is the inverted pyramid. When you read the first few lines of a news story, it's the most impactful, the most relevant, or the most recent.
Um, and then you give the backstory. It's like this happened here. You know, leading up to this da, da, da, da happened. You don't read it like a novel like once upon a Time this happened and then this and this. So think about that inverted pyramid. What's the most relevant? And that should be what you lead with in your hook, which is usually the one to three lines you can get in before that see more button.
The one thing that's a little bit tricky is I used to know exactly where that cutoff was gonna be and I feel like it's a little bit more variable than it used to be. And it does change if it's a text post versus image versus video. But if you're following that advice, you'll get the hang of that. Like don't overthink it of like it's gotta be perfect before the Seymour if you are saying, like, to take that example.
Three things I wish I would've known about LinkedIn before this week. Right? And then the see more is, I was listening to Logan and Allie on this LinkedIn Live and they shared this, da da da. Don't lead with that setup. You can provide it in context. Um, by the way, uh, huge kudos to anyone who actually makes that post.
Um, shameless plug. Um, uh, but, uh, I, I hope y'all are getting value from this, and I love what you said there. The hook is the most important thing, and it's the thing that, um, is kind of easier to train people on once you just call out. And I, I would encourage everybody to . Take Allie's advice from earlier is do some show and tell, um, find a post that doesn't have a good hook and find one that does, um, and kind of break it down like why would you not hit see more?
Do you see where the hook could have been in this? And in it's usually in line four or five. So, uh, kind of went off on a tangent there, but the hook, the CTA or the hook, the body and the c t a. Um,
the last thing I'll say there on the C T A, what I encourage our team to think about is end with a question.
Now it's kind of become a meme on LinkedIn of saying thoughts disagree, right? But there is a fine line that if you can do it well, you can ask a question that doesn't require someone to think too much, but it's more than just a yes or no, um, like kind of an obvious answer. That's kind of the needle you want to thread in that c t a with a, a question.
Um, anything else on formats of posts you to add there? Ally, as we wrap.
[01:01:26] Ali Schwanke: No, that's great. I, I agree with all those things. And again, for those of you on, on this webinar here, like Logan does this very well. So
if you. need an example
of, of who to follow to model this, I mean, you're great at this, Logan, so definitely go check it out.
[01:01:40] Logan Lyles: Oh, thank you. Um, well, Allie, I, I love what, what you've done in putting together some resources for folks to really action this, because I've definitely seen that as much as, um, even when I was at an agency, we were trying to help our clients think about this and we throw out a lot of these ideas, but we didn't really kind of codify it in the way that you guys have done with your posting plan.
So for everybody who commented, plan we'll definitely, uh, hit you up there, Allie. Um, you have put a lot of thought into not only doing this well, but equipping teams to do it well. What would be the best way for people if they want to stay connected with you? Um, other than the posting plan and, um, just making sure they're following and connecting with you two.
[01:02:21] Ali Schwanke: Sure, yeah. LinkedIn obviously is the place to go. I'm the only Ali wonky on there. And, uh, if you, if you happen to be a HubSpot user, you can find us on YouTube under our channel HubSpot Hacks. But we do have, uh, a free consultation. If you're looking to get some more, uh, feedback or, or insight on your, on
your LinkedIn program,
happy to, to just drop me a, a DMM or visit our website@simplestrat.com and we'll hook you up.
[01:02:43] Logan Lyles: Awesome. Well, everybody, thank you so much. From Ukraine to Spain to, uh, the West Coast, we had, uh, a lot of representation across geographies today. Um, and for those of you needing a little bit more coffee, it's still, if it's still early, go get that. Thank you for, uh, spending time with Allie and I today. Uh, really appreciate it and we'll make sure everybody gets that posting plan that commented.
So thanks so much everybody. We'll see ya.
[01:03:08] Ali Schwanke: Thank you.
