Transcript for:
Building Your LinkedIn Presence from Scratch

if I lost all of my LinkedIn followers tomorrow my brand was non-existent and I had to build it all back from scratch this is exactly what I would do now before I start doing anything this would be my mindset coming into it I'm going on LinkedIn to win customers the first 30 to 60 days on this or at minimum booking qualified meetings with potential customers I'm not waiting six to 12 months before my brand builds before I start creating opportunities now what I'm talking about here is the short-term strategy on LinkedIn most people don't even know about this they just think oh you got to post content that's it there's a whole other strategy where you can start booking meetings within a couple weeks of being on the platform and so that's definitely what I would do as part of my strategy to rebuild from zero and I'm going to cover that more in depth here in a second but just as importantly and actually more importantly in the long run I'm going to be building my brand yes I'm going to be putting out quality content in the LinkedIn feed that brings awareness to the problem that I solve for my customers that makes it solvable for them because I'm giving them the strategies tactics and techniques by doing that I'm positioning myself as the go-to company in my space I'm building brand and I'm generating consistent inbound leads on a weekly basis just like I do today so I'll be covering that side of the strategy too because of course if I'm starting with zero you better believe I'm going to be creating content and building my brand I just believe in mixing these two together let's do some short term stuff that can guarantee us some short-term wins as we build the long-term brand with content so if you're at zero right now or maybe you're just coming over to LinkedIn or maybe you've got a little bit of a presence there but you don't feel like you're really making traction or generating real revenue and customers from the platform I'm gonna walk you through the four-step strategy and the exact same thing that I would do if I started from zero today so let's go through the four steps foreign step number one before I jump on the LinkedIn platform I want to understand the LinkedIn platform the people there the culture the algorithm and I'm not saying you need to spend a ton of time here but most people just jump on a platform and they just start posting content assuming it's like the platform they came from and it's not and that's when I see with people coming from Tick Tock to LinkedIn or Instagram to LinkedIn they assume it isn't it just like the other platform I'm on no it's not it's completely different I mean there's certainly similarities but there's things that make it wildly different that if you knew you could then capitalize on those opportunities you would tweak and adjust things so that your content performs better and let me just give you the breakdown on all these first of all there's 58 million companies on LinkedIn it is the B2B Hub it's the largest business community on planet Earth I always compare it to and I did a whole video on this where I compare it LinkedIn to an in-person conference or event go check out that video when you're done with this because that will provide even more context and detail on some of this but if you think about what's going on with some of the other social media platforms and the fact that there's really no other business community and terms of social media that is really geared towards businesses entrepreneurs people that want to grow there's not really another platform that's made for that and that's why we're starting to see more celebrities more big personal Brands more and more businesses more and more of your customers getting on LinkedIn they are flocking to this platform because there's so much opportunity in the mindset to go to the people real quick the people on the platform are amazing now I'm not saying there's of course there's bad apples on any platform or with any Community but the audience on LinkedIn is a completely different audience than on any other social media platform when someone opens up Facebook or Instagram or even Tick Tock their mindset is much much different than it is when it's LinkedIn they may be trying to catch up with friends be entertained just kill some time find something interesting whatever it is and on LinkedIn most people are there to actually learn now they definitely want to be edutained and entertained as well but there's a real business mentality that people bring when they log on to the platform and people wanting to have those unlocked moments where they learned something they didn't know before they've also got a buying mentality because again 58 million companies there's a lot of buyers on the platform there's a lot of decision makers on the platform now in terms of the algorithm which is really just people judging your content it's a social graph as of now versus an interest-based graph so the LinkedIn algorithm is different than other social media platforms as well so Tick Tock Instagram reels YouTube shorts those are interest graphs which means in the matter of seconds they're analyzing what do you consume what are you watching on what is keeping you on the platform and then they use that to figure out okay this person's interested in these things it's not just one thing usually it's a few different things and then they're going to continue to feed you more of that content they don't care who it's from they just hey let's get more High performing content from that particular interest and that's why it's so addicting on some of these platforms for like 10 minutes have gone by and you're like what the hell am I doing linkedin's different where it's a social graph where it's sure it's based on content too but they're also basing it on things like who you're connected to who's following you what content have you engaged with or have they engaged with your content who have you messaged on the platform all of these different things come together because they're trying to socially kind of connect this community content is very important on that platform but they also want it to feel like yeah you're at that in-person event right where you're seeing people that you know that you've connected with that you've engaged with so once I have a basic understanding of that I'm moving right on to step number two which is turning my basic LinkedIn profile into a client attracting machine now if I'm truly starting from zero I'm just going to update the things that matter most first I can always tweak other things later so here are the things that matter most on your LinkedIn profile this is the difference between someone landing on your profile and bouncing off versus landing on your profile and booking a call with you or going to your website or consuming more content first thing I want to do is I want to make sure my messaging is very clear and I'm talking about your headline your banner and your about section and it's funny because you just use common sense speak to your customers about the things that they care about don't talk about you and your company we've been around I've been in this industry I've done this work for so many years nobody cares nobody cares speak directly to your customers about their pain points about their desires and about the results that you get for them that simple another important section that I would look at right away is paths to conversions and I'm really talking about two key areas here at the top of your LinkedIn profile there's a section where you can add in the URL could be a landing page could be a website and then you can customize what that says so for example mine says services and pricing here now when people book calls with me I ask how did you get to my website how did you get to booking a call with me and many of them have mentioned this is the link that does it so I know it's important always ask your buyers how did you come to me what was the journey like because you're going to learn more on what content works and how to set up your different profiles and what I mean my path to conversion is just where do you how do you want to convert somebody where do you want them to go next and typically there's a couple different ways right for someone that's not ready to buy in my featured content section we've got our Content Library there a lot of our customers try to do content first before they end up buying from us so I want to be that resource for them I want to build trust and credibility by giving them all the stuff that they could do it themselves with knowing that when they don't get the results or they're frustrated or they've been at it for a period of time and it just doesn't work or they want the shortcut to success they're going to come to me so make sure that top link is set up and then load up that featured content section potentially with a link to your website a link to a Content Library or another their content Channel I also believe in putting customer testimonial videos there so if they're looking for that social proof they can find it which leads me to the next section social proof and recommendations definitely do put some of that in the future content section but also scroll down to the recommendations section if I could just get a couple of customers recommending me there just to build up some credibility again I'm not trying to fix everything because I'm starting from zero but if I could get a couple in there the first week I'm on LinkedIn starting from zero I definitely would do that step number three this is exactly where I would go next as soon as I updated the profile I'd go right into this so I'm probably one day in at this point remember that short term strategy that I talked about this is that this is how you book meetings on LinkedIn the first 30 to 60 days are on the platform it's called The Core 4 strategy search engage connect message video message so what I mean by search is just finding your potential customers again LinkedIn is a social graph right so we want to be engaging with other people that are potential customers of ours we want to be training the algorithm to show us more of those people and when we start posting content we want our content to be seen by them so I need to search for the customers where are they they're not going to magically end up in my feed sometimes they will but definitely not right away so I'm going to use sales Navigator which is a product of LinkedIn now you don't have to use this you technically can search just on regular LinkedIn but the search features on sales navigator on LinkedIn are insane and I think sales Navigators like 99 bucks a month well worth it if you know how to use it you go to sales Navigator you start searching for potential customers you connect with 100 people per week it takes 15 minutes if you've got the right workflow there's no automation here there's no spamming here none of that crap I'm doing everything personalized doing it the right way now I can drill down that search by job titles Industries I can even go to companies and drill down by Revenue by company headcounts by if they're hiring or not there's so many good filters that you can use there and here's something really important I'm going to drill down by people that have posted content on LinkedIn they are actively posting content that is an actual filter because what I want to do next when I go from search to engage is I want to start engaging with their content I'm going to start warming up some conversations that'll start training the LinkedIn algorithm but it also allows me to build some Rapport and a little bit of a relationship with a potential customer so that when I go to connect with them they now know who I am and I've got some context I can reference their post or something I saw of them or something in their profile and then once they accept my connection request at that point I will send the most powerful tool in Social selling which is LinkedIn video DMS it's in the form of a video which almost nobody is getting on that platform they're getting spammed with text messages and AI based stuff getting a personalized video message is very refreshing and that's why it converts so well that's how I'm booking meetings in the first 30 to 60 days I'm on the platform now keep in mind with LinkedIn too as I mentioned it's a social graph right so you can't jump on LinkedIn and just start posting content or updating your profile and think everyone's going to come to you or your content is going to perform we're going to get the content here in a second you got to be actively engaging not just responding to your own comments but jumping in with other creators engaging with their content because yeah you want to be learning about the platform you want to know what works and what doesn't work so by engaging with other people's content you're going to start to figure that out but you'll also be pulling people into your feed so that when you do start posting you get more traction finally step number four I'm implementing my content strategy now all four of these steps are happening within 24 to 48 hours so I'm not dragging this thing out making this some big long thing I'm just saying what I would do first I would understand what is LinkedIn how do I maximize my opportunity there I do a quick update on my profile so I attract clients when they land there I'd start the core 4 strategy right away and then I'd start putting out content so what kind of content should you be posting on LinkedIn I don't care what anyone says some of the highest performing content on LinkedIn right now is picture post with a compelling story and if you want to drive real business results and revenue from it that story should have something to do with your business and I don't mean promoting your business but I mean you're talking about some of the pain points or desires of potential customers could be sharing a customer success story I had one picture post with a customer success story whereas me and him in a picture wasn't even anything super nicely done it booked me four meetings three of them turned into customers if you're gonna do pictures of yourself personal Journey stories work best or maybe you talk about where you started to where you are now you talk about some of the real stuff the failures the authenticity let that stuff shine but again you got to find a way to tie it back into your overall content strategy and your business goals otherwise you're just trying to get attention to get attention and how much would I be posting on LinkedIn I'd be posting five days a week Monday through Friday that's pretty much what I do it now anyways I'd also be leveraging videos it's very underrated still most people still aren't using enough video on LinkedIn and it's such a brand Builder if you're on LinkedIn and you're only posting text or picture posts you're very service level with your audience as soon as you make the jump to video You're now going extremely deep with your audience they now get a sense for your personality you're connecting with them in a more of an emotional level they feel like they know you and I get on calls with people I post so much video content they go I feel like I know you so the amount of trust and credibility and likability that you can build a video is always going to outweigh text and picture post only but I would leverage both of these so I'd probably post one picture post a week maybe two a text post to get in there because I'd want to learn how copy Works what performs what doesn't and then I'd post probably three or four videos a week now if you're wondering what types of videos I would post they'd typically be around one minute for the most part maybe it's 45 seconds maybe it's a minute half two minutes two and a half minutes probably the most and it's mostly educational videos but the videos that perform best on LinkedIn are when you're unlocking something for your audience you've brought to their attention a problem that they didn't even know they had you've brought to them a unique solution that they didn't even know existed and you better believe I'm gonna insert some edutainment in there educational message mixed with entertainment that stuff works extremely well on LinkedIn and I would argue with some of the highest performing content on the platform I'm going vertical videos 9x16 for the most part because I want to take those same videos most of them and I want to potentially get them on Tick Tock or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts so I'm maximizing my content efforts so those four steps right there are exactly what I would do right this second if I started over from zero on LinkedIn and I know you have questions right now so if you do please drop them in the comments I'll go in there and answer them but I also use questions and comments and thoughts to create other videos from that I appreciate you being here make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next video and we'll see you around