Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Al Kushner. Why don't you give yourself an introduction, give us a taste of your experience and what you're working on right now.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Oh, well, let's see.
I'm an author of a book. My latest book is called the LinkedIn Advantage, and it's available on Amazon as well as other places. Check it out. I've been using LinkedIn over 20 years and I realized there wasn't any books on the topic that incorporated both AI and LinkedIn together.
So I felt this would be a great opportunity to, you know, give people some the knowledge that I've used to help me to get a lot of, a lot of way to connect with more people on LinkedIn, be more impactful, and help people optimize their profile so they can make a difference when they're doing any outreach, which is something that was always important to me.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: I think it's always interesting to look at how we communicate as a solopreneur, as a business owner or working with clients and understanding the mediums and the opportunities that are out there. SEO is always, you know, it's a, you're building your castle and you're doing your things and hoping you'll be rewarded with that static traffic. But I've always felt that there's a strong interplay between the content that we create in the SEO process of content marketing and properly understanding the channels that our prospective audience actually use or utilize. Like, you're not going to be marketing, you know, signs and decor. Like, if you're metal, you know, you're making custom signs for, for mom, and you're not probably going to be targeting LinkedIn as much as if you have a much more business oriented profession or service offering or product that you're, you're pushing towards. So what's your understanding of the audience that is on LinkedIn and what type of ways can people think of that audience as receptive or useful for their marketing strategy?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: I would say the audience that I've come across has always been professionals.
They are either entrepreneurs or they're business owners, or they're accountants, lawyers, financial planners.
So they are a unique type of group that you don't usually find in other platforms. In other words, they of course are getting inundated with a lot of offers for sales and other things.
The way to approach these individuals is to really provide value to them, which means to educate them on topics that are particularly pain points for them. Let's say, if it's an accountant who may have problems with how to market themselves. You can provide them maybe with an e book and ways how to optimize their profile to get recognized on LinkedIn more. And this is just something that I find that is a good approach. And when dealing with any type of outreach, before you do anything, you have to focus on your profile, make sure your headshot looks professional. A lot of times people don't do that and it's really awful. And that's, that's first thing that people got to look at, you know, and you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. So if you can do any type of outreach, make sure your profile looks as professional as possible. And that's something that my book addresses that in detail.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: So it looks like there would definitely be niches of industry where LinkedIn would be more useful in proving your chops.
Like if you're a commercial real estate agent, you're working out of Naples, you know, what are some of the things you would recommend in a campaign on LinkedIn for a real estate professional to help them stand out or to provide value in a semi commoditized type of market?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Well, as soon as they optimize their profile with all their information and also important in their profile to have recommendations. Because people, you know, trust third party endorsements, people who have used that individual services. If they don't have any, I wouldn't do any outreach until they get at least anywhere from five to 10 recommendations because that's going to make a difference. People are going to look at that first on your profile.
Some people could have, I don't know, I was with one individual and this person had 30,000 followers but literally zero recommendations. And I asked her, you know, why aren't you putting recommendations? I mean, you've got, you got so many followers. And she didn't think there's a value in it, you know, And I told her that's ludicrous. I mean, because it's a third party endorsement, you know, that's essential. So assuming once you've gotten that in place, I would look to join groups on LinkedIn.
A lot of groups that appeal to realtors, that they might connect with, let's say referral partners, like accountants or attorneys, which are great referral partners. And I would probably post at least once a week to that group just to kind of showcase your talents. Don't really talk about the services that you're doing, but talk about things, the problems that you solve for clients in that situation. And I think that's what you'll gain some traction that way in terms of your outreach. Just off the top, what's the over.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Under of putting stuff out on social media on the LinkedIn channel?
Is there expected or is there use of putting things out that are more on the personal side that might express, you know, specific interests in particular things? Because every social media channel is different. Like you know, Pinterest is like pictures, right? And but X or Twitter behaves differently and how you participate in that medium is different as a broadcast channel of what you're trying to put out there to your audience. So what is it that is most effective in right now? Because algorithms change and we tend to think of Meta or Google or even Instagram more in terms of algorithm. But LinkedIn has a feed mechanism and it surfaces posts to audiences. So what are you seeing as effective in terms of the types of content, personal versus professional?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Well, certainly professional will definitely be much better because the platform is not Facebook, it's not other things and people can care less about what you're drinking today or what you're eating. And this is just what they're showcasing. And it's still like, I don't know. It surprises me that people post that on LinkedIn and think they're getting like wow. So you know, people will notice it for the most part. It's pathetic to say the least. And if you're going to do something on LinkedIn and you really want to move the needle, create videos that are uploaded directly to the platform as opposed to sharing a link from, let's say YouTube channel. Because LinkedIn loves the fact that you're doing it internally with their system. And the top of videos should be educational. I mean that's what I've done. And anything to showcase that is important how long the video? No more than 90 seconds. That's really the way to do it if you want to go ahead and capture it. Because when you see other posts in that group, most of them, I would say 99% are text based posts. So it's very rare you'll find somebody putting a video and when they do, it gets noticed and that's really something that's going to be helpful. So that's really what the algorithm loves. And they, and the algorithm will definitely continue to take that video and make it even viral if it's getting a lot of likes and views. So that's just off the top.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: I think there's more capabilities that people don't really think about in terms of LinkedIn and ways that you can leverage it. And types of posts. Can you give us a little bit of a breakdown as far as what are the different ways that you can put signal out there?
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Well, if you want to get noticed, focus on influencers that are on LinkedIn and if they're in your field, if you're in real estate, for example, and there's an agent out there is crushing on LinkedIn with over 10,000 followers, follow that person and as soon as they post, reply to that post immediately. All right? Because it's going to get noticed much quicker. And the way to reply reply is don't say something like, you know, thanks for sharing. You know, be a little more descriptive. If they're providing information, the influencer is providing information, see if you can add value to that particular post. I think that's always the best way to do that. And a lot of times that influencer may even reply back to you and may comment on your post being helpful. And that's really going to make a difference. And if you do it consistently, you know, every day, again, you do it in the morning with a lot of the influencers post, you can be within the first 10 or 15 minutes because what happens is they may have thousands of followers and they're posting right after him, you know, but you'll be in the top echelon when they see the post. And that's great. And that'll help get recognition for your post and possibly, you know, views on your profile, which is going to make a difference. So that would be right off the top is a good, good strategy.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: I like that. It kind of dovetails with how 10, 15 years ago, you know, every blog had a comment section and it was a real strategy where you could interact with an audience that was engaged in that particular person's content and site. There were many people that were blogging and putting out content that way.
I always kind of categorized it as like, don't be the high five guy. But instead you want to pose either a challenge to, to one respectful challenge to one of the comments or threads or implications of what they said, provide a, an addendum of like, oh yes, that's true. And also this.
And then the last is a request for clarification or request for a case study where, you know, you take something that they said and ask them to reply and go a little bit deeper or to reply and give a specific, specific example. I've always found that's the most effective way to generate, you know, a response that isn't just a oh, thanks or just you know, because you got the thumbs up or you got the emoji things which kind of help with the filtering. So if you do want to generate that engagement, then you really got to do something that, that's going to that. If you were writing an article and you sent it to somebody and said, hey, I want to feature you as a, you know, as somebody contributing to this article, think of it in that way. Like what would you say as an addendum to this chapter in the book? Would it be a challenge to something in there? Would it be a value add? Or do you want an example to kind of better understand it?
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's where AI technology comes into play. You can take the information of that individual that posted, let's say an influencer copy and paste it into ChatGPT and then ask ChatGPT to look for things that may help complement that particular post and even ask a question or two, you know, for the post and then take that information, post it exactly onto your particular into the feed, but put it in your words, you know, that would be the thing to do. Make it sound like it's you being authentic and that's really going to make a difference. It'll save you time. It'll also be good for the influencer because it adds value to the post and LinkedIn likes that because if it's adding value, it actually increases the awareness and the algorithm will be more beneficial for both you and the influencer. So that's a great technique to use.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Can you tell me, have you played around with LinkedIn Pulse or posting up articles? I know from an SEO perspective, we are seeing a strange time where you can take some of your same blog content and cut a slice out of it, or even a large part of it and post it to LinkedIn as an article and it'll actually surface up, insert results before your own post. Because Google seems to be biasing towards both Reddit and other platforms like LinkedIn favoring UGC user generated content as opposed to just looking for for blogs to rank. Is there anything else in your experience of using LinkedIn about articles or pulse or different types of posts on LinkedIn to keep in mind?
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I would focus it on newsletters. Newsletters are available through your LinkedIn profile. You can do up to five newsletters. And what's great about newsletters is that whoever subscribes to will get notified immediately when it gets released. And what's also interesting about newsletters is that those individuals not only get notified on LinkedIn but get notified outside of LinkedIn too. And what's great about it, LinkedIn has such a high authority that usually bypasses a lot of spam filters in the corporate emails. So it gets directly to them and it gets noticed. I mean it's incredible. So if you're frustrated sending out newsletters and it ends up getting caught in the spam filters, just use LinkedIn and create a newsletter and it'll go out to whoever follows that and directly into their email boxes. That's an incredible reach that you won't find in any other platform. Platform.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: That's definitely a good tip when it comes to looking at other types of, of posting. I know there's like a carousel type of image. Is there anything in terms of, of taking your content and trying to, you know, take that same post and, and putting it into different formats to get different types of engagement?
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Well, the best format, as I mentioned before, is video.
So take that post that you were going to do and create a short video of it, usually anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds and you will find that you will get a lot more receptive audience for the video itself.
If it's educational, that's always going to be a plus. And when you do post, people get notified and particularly it's effective in groups that you're in and those groups could have thousands of members.
And a lot of times what I found interesting is when you do post a video into that group, it's usually automatically accepted versus if you did a, you know, a text type post, sometimes it takes a while before they will accept it, if at all.
So it seems to be almost automatic when you do a video. So that could be to your advantage. So I would definitely recommend doing videos.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: I like that. And it's also, you know, it's more humanizing like to, to grab a video, you know, because there, there are so many more channels that are, they do have AI messaging, you know, and people are just copying and pasting from, from, from these tools and it's not very good. There is kind of an AI powered augment within LinkedIn. Do you recommend using that at all or skipping that functionality? I myself haven't let it write anything for me.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean a lot of the so called automation tools that are available are really very primitive at best and I usually don't recommend something because again, you want to be authentic as possible and those things don't really generate any type of authenticity that I found, at least at this time.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: I'm curious about the LinkedIn Pro.
When do you recommend upgrading to that next level? And when is it worth it? What are the downsides?
What's the plus and minus? Because I think it's. Is it like 50 bucks a month? I think for, for the LinkedIn Pro level.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Well, the pro level is kind of like a basic level. I usually use the Sales Navigator, which I believe it's about 99amonth, depending how if you paid in advance, they give you discounts. And what I like about that particular premium version is that you get notified who's checked out your profile, which is great. So you can actually kind of see who's looked at your profile and reply back to the individual and say, what got you to check out my profile?
What also is a good feature about the Sales Navigator is that you can tell it to find who has been active on LinkedIn in the past 30 days.
Because for a lot of times people are not really active on LinkedIn. And when you're doing an outreach, all of a sudden you're not getting a response and you're wondering why that person has probably not been on LinkedIn for months. And that's something that feature Sales Navigator will tell you exactly if they are active or not. In addition, you can find, depending on industries, the titles of individuals, whether a CEO, president, where they're located, how many employees they have, zip code you can do within a certain radius. So you can get very specific depending on what your approach is. If you're looking to example, I'm looking for speaking engagements, so I'm doing an outreach to people who are in charge of hiring speakers. So I look for associations and I feed in the information that have a certain amount of people who are working in that association, at least five or more, and that can afford to pay speakers to be part of the program. So for me that was really helpful in knowing when they're active on LinkedIn, if they are, and then do an outreach to these individuals. And it's been really great to get the opportunities to speak at these organizations, which I couldn't do any other way.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Another advantage that comes to mind because like, if you don't have the pro level, then you have to be able to connect with them first before you can send a message. But I think at the pro level level, you're allowed to send X number of messages out even if you're not directly connected them to them at the moment, right?
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a advanced feature. I believe up to 50 inmails you could send in that regards. And in addition to that, I believe when you are trying to connect with someone directly, it gives you the ability to provide a 300 character word message in that when you want to connect with someone to do that outreach, where a lot of times it's sometimes people send it out blindly and they hope they'll get accepted. But if you can say some words in that, you know, message you're sending out and ideally you want to be able to use perhaps a reference point, if there were, let's say, a second connection, you may want to share the individuals you have in common with, which is a good thing. And, and sometimes they may increase your acceptability that way.
You don't want to basically try to sell them off the bat, you know, just simply, hey, want to connect, you know, we're friends with such and such and thought we'd like to, you know, connect this way and that would be a good thing in that regards for connecting. So yeah, there are certain features with Sales Navigator that allows you to add that ability to send a message. In addition, on your profile you have a background image that you have, which is pretty static. But with Sales Navigator you can actually have almost like a slider image, I would say almost like a billboard, up to five images in the back. If you see my particular profile, it actually showcases five different areas of expertise which I put in, which makes it really, you know, better than most other people who don't have that because it really tells a lot more information to those who are checking out my profile about other things that I offer.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: I like the outreach advice because I, you know, I'm constantly getting bombarded with, you know, the next link builder trying to sell me links.
And let's see, people want me to join their, their board or their recruiter for boards.
So I always find this, this methodology more successful. I haven't used it on LinkedIn. I used it very successfully on Twitter, which is take a week's time of building a list of prospects and on the first day you're going to like something they say on the next day you like two things and you reply something that doesn't need a reply necessarily. But on the third day you, you go a little deeper, you like some other things and then you reply with trying to engage them. And then by the time that Friday rolls around, when you send them that connect, they know you like, they're familiar with you. There's a part of the human brain that recognizes patterns and if you have already shown up, you've liked something, you like something, you replied a comment, oh yeah, he had this question, then it's not going to be unusual and it Gives you a touch point for you to connect to, you know, something that they posted.
You could even take that thing that you'd reply to and said, oh, I know you gave a partial answer. Can you follow up a little bit more on that viewpoint to open up the dialogue and then hit them with your best shot? You know, that way it's not a cold open.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, sometimes when you even reply to a post, a lot of times they'll even read like if you ask them a question, they'll just say thank you without answering the question itself. So I think at least half of the time they don't even read your reply to that. But I would say that, you know, it's a good way to connect with someone is just really follow them on LinkedIn and then see when they're posting, try to be the first to post. If you get some recognition and they're even responding to a question that you've asked, then you've got some engagement going on, at which point you may decide to reach out and do a connection and just keep it friendly. And the first thing you don't want to do is pitch slap them.
And that's what you're probably experiencing.
And I would say at least 9 out of 10 times that's exactly what I, or what I get on LinkedIn whenever I connect with someone.
So I'm really careful who I select, depending on, you know, I look at their profile and I see what industry they're in. I mean, if they're SEO optimization or something already, I'm not going to accept them. But if they're an attorney or if they're an accountant or they're a small business owner, you know, I'm open to that. And you know, maybe they have something to offer that could be of value. So that's important to be selective on who you want to connect with.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: That makes sense.
Have you had any experience or success or utilize the ads side of LinkedIn and when do you recommend pulling out those guns? And if you have used it, is there any particular recommendations to make it effective for for return on ad spend?
[00:24:34] Speaker B: To be honest with you, I haven't really used any type of paid ads at all. I find my method to be effective, even more effective than ads. Because when I post, it's not an ad, it's educational, it's informative. When I send out newsletters, it's always going to be informative and educational. And I don't really advertise or promote my services because I find that to be be a Lot of money spent which I can use in other, other areas.
So I really just focus on providing content videos that are hopefully go viral and be able to, whoever I connect with, just provide value to them. You know, whether it's an ebook or an introductory introduction to someone that they want to connect with, I'm happy to do that.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: So I was talking to my friend Michael McDougald about AI and about how it views content in kind of vectors or groups or groupings. Is there anything that you know about on the algorithm of LinkedIn as far as aside from just the type of it type, but coming to, you know, post about particular topics or making sure you include particular terms or phrases or creating your content, is there anything specific that you've come across aside from, you know, trying the video type? But when it comes to just like a text based post, is there anything in terms of like research or strategy for a particular niche or a type of content? Like are studies more popular? Is making your post more data centric going to be more effective or showcasing case studies, anything like that?
[00:26:29] Speaker B: Well, when I post articles there, I would say keep the word count about 750 words, maybe a thousand words maximum. Because nobody's going to take the time to read a 5 or 10,000 word text. I mean they really, you know, time is of the essence when they're on there. So you want to keep it concise, use bullet points so they can scan, you know, the article to see if they want to read it in its entirety.
And I would focus on certain industries. If you're using your newsletter like I have different newsletters, one for accountants, one for attorneys, one for financial planners.
These are what I call centers of influence, referral partners. So I address those individuals and those who are subscribed to that newsletter. To be specific, you know, you can't be a jack of all trades. A newsletter is not going to appeal to everyone. But if you segment that out and keep your newsletter within the guidelines of the words, you'll be effective and people will be looking forward to each week, you know, receiving information that's of value to them.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Is posting just a text, like posting text, less effective or more effective than posting text with at least one supporting photo or image to go along with it?
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Well, that's a good question. I guess I would say an image is always going to be something that would, I mean, look at, if you look at magazines, for example, they always have a photo with the, with the article.
So you can assume that's what people are used to doing and therefore they would appreciate that and you can use services like Canva to find find a photo that may appropriate be appropriate for that article.
So I think yes, that's definitely helpful to as composer just text itself.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Is there any particular strategy when it comes to like emojis to like there's this one guy that I see like on there's one line like SEO is dead now and we need to learn AI SEO. Here's my brand new strategy with like down pointing hand arrow. Is there anything you've seen that's effective in getting the people to click that more? Because if, if it's a text post then by default it only shows is it one line? I think it's one to three lines it seems is something like. And then you have to click the more to expand the LinkedIn post. Have you seen anything effective in that? Or is. Or is it just cheesy? Is it cheap? Let's put it this way. Is it cheesy or good to use emojis and is that part of an effective strategy to try to get people to click that more button and keep reading?
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Again, depends on your demographics, who you're trying to approach. You know, if you're approaching tweens and you know, you know, people on a certain age, under 20 perhaps, they love that stuff. I think most of the older generation find it to be cheesy, as you said and you know, the effectiveness is diminished if you use a lot of them. So I think if you have to go that route in moderation, I mean I do use some of the those emojis in my profile. But again it's just something to use it, you know, strategically in a way that it, you know, helps to get the eye flow moving, you know, keeping bullet points. Sometimes in a bullet point I'll use, you know, a finger pointing to an article.
But for the most part I usually try to limit the amount of emojis when posting.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Makes sense.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: So.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Making you come up with some something new that we haven't talked about yet. But as an action item for people go do this thing. It's of value. After you listen to this podcast as we go kind of wrap up here at the end.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Well go to my website, linkvantage.com I have a ebook that's free that helps you to optimize your profile, give you ways to improve it, enhance it. Because I think that's crucial to do first before you do any outreach. So it talks about things on how to use things like if you've done volunteer work, for example, or if you have any other experiences or awards that you have, those things you can put as part of your profile. It's all about making it look as good as possible so whoever reaches out to you and connects will see that your person then of substance and should be taken seriously.
Particularly recommendations definitely is going to be crucial in the effectiveness of any outreach program, so that is essential. So definitely go to my website, it's a free ebook available and it'll help you at least get you in the right direction before you do any outreach.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Well, thank you so much for your time. I'll make sure to link in the show notes for anybody that's interested.
Thanks for your wisdom.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Welcome. Thanks for the opportunity.
