Running events helps leverage your expertise and boost brand awareness. If you’re looking for a platform to share your event information for potential prospects to see, LinkedIn is a great choice. In this episode, we’ll discuss how you can get the most out of LinkedIn events with Julie Mason.
Julie is a LinkedIn expert who uses the platform to help businesses generate sales and leads. She’s been running workshops and webinars on LinkedIn for over 12 years.
Although LinkedIn is often perceived as a job-seeker and corporate networking platform, LinkedIn is actually much more than that. When used effectively, LinkedIn allows you to create meaningful relationships with possible clients.
Utilising the LinkedIn events feature is a great way to grow your audience and your email list. It can help you to begin to build ‘know, like, trust’ with your network.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- An effective connection strategy for LinkedIn (08:12)
- Hyper-personalisation – what is it and why it’s a powerful strategy (10:10)
- What are the different types of LinkedIn events (12:00)
- The best ways to invite people and promote events (16:45)
- The three messages you need to send to ‘happy-click’ responders (25:02)
- Why stalking on LinkedIn is advantageous (39:52)
QUOTES:
- “You need to add value and build trust, and it is relationships that make a difference.” -Julie Mason
- “Business is a long game, it’s about relationships. When you spend time building relationships, you can create a successful business.” -Samantha Riley
- Rejection is not a no, it’s just a ‘not now’. -Julie Mason
RESOURCES MENTIONED
WHERE TO FIND JULIE MASON
- Website: www.juliemason.com.au
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliemason1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GuruJules
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gurujules/
SHOW SPONSOR
This episode is sponsored by Your Podcast Concierge. Affordable podcast production for coaches and speakers who want to increase their authority and generate leads from their show. You press record, and let them do the rest.
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ABOUT JULIE MASON
Julie Mason helps businesses generate leads and sales on LinkedIn easily and elegantly. Julie has been running workshops and webinars on LinkedIn for over 12 years and has helped thousands of small business owners position themselves more effectively, find their target audience, and understand how to connect and convert with ease.
TRANSCRIPTION
Snippet Julie Mason (00:00):
You can’t use the same sales strategy on everything that you’re selling. If you’ve got six different products or services that are wildly different from each other, each of them might need a different strategy or a different approach. And the same thing goes with LinkedIn for each business, that might not be the exact same approach. And it’s not necessarily the same strategy for each person.
Intro Samantha Riley (00:23):
My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for coaches, course creators, and experts who want to grow their influence, income, and impact to take their coaching business to a million dollars and beyond. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing, and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and Out, create the influence, income and impact you need to build your business so you can create your ideal lifestyle, it’s time to make a difference and scale-up. This is the Influence By Design podcast.
Welcome to today’s episode of the Influence By Design podcast. I’m your host, Samantha Riley. And I’m very excited to be welcoming a very good friend of mine and a very, very accomplished expert at LinkedIn to join me today.
And we’re going to dive deep into LinkedIn events. I’ve invited Julie Mason to join me who helps businesses generate leads and sales on LinkedIn easily and elegantly. And who doesn’t want that with the cesspool of not-so-good stuff that’s happening on LinkedIn right now? Julie has been running workshops and webinars on LinkedIn for over 12 years and has helped 1000s of small business owners position themselves more effectively find their target audience and understand how to connect and convert with ease. Welcome to the show. Julie. I’m so excited to have you joining me today.
Julie (01:52):
Thank you, Samantha. It’s such a delight to be here.
Samantha (01:55):
This has been, I think, a collaboration that has been going on for years. And we nearly didn’t even hit record because we were so excited about catching up. But then we’re like, no, no, we’ve got to do it. And when you were talking about LinkedIn events, I started to get super excited.
Before we dive into that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got into LinkedIn, because you’ve got some really cool background. And I think even just listening to something to your stories is so inspiring. So I’d love you to share how you got to be the expert on LinkedIn that you are and what you’re doing today.
Julie (02:30):
Cool. It’s fun story, actually. So I have been in sales for over 30 years, which is you know, a lifetime. And I have pretty much sold everything. I’m one of these people that just have the ability to sell. I understand what the ideal client wants to put my feet in their shoes and can pretty much sell anything.
So I’ve sold all sorts of things over time both personal you know, cosmetic type things through to commercial stuff to even patios, believe it or not, where I’ve been able to go in and measure up engineering draft patios and sell those. Yeah, I know. Right?
I don’t tell people that one too often. Yeah, I’ve pretty much sold everything. And I have done 15 years in Door to Door cold calling. And so I always used to say I was the queen of rejection because I got more rejection than most people eating a meal in their life. And for me, it was always a joy because it was just them saying it’s not a no, it’s just not now.
And I always made it a pleasant experience for us regardless. But I noticed a big shift at towards the end is that time of door-to-door cold calling. And Google was becoming more of a thing. And the internet was starting to come out. We had things like Google Earth, which I actually used to use when I was cold calling if I had to fly down to Melbourne, I would zoom over the industrialist states and see who hadn’t more cars out front.
Samantha (04:05):
Oh, that is so cool.
Julie (04:07):
Yeah, I’d flip down the street view and write down all the names. And then I knew where I was targeting. So I wasn’t wasting a lot of time in an area that I didn’t know. So I was using technology for cold calling back then. And I remember that it was getting really hard to make cut through and the door to door it was starting to get tougher.
And I’m thinking, You know what, this whole internet thing is starting to disrupt this whole, you know, process that I’ve been used to, I think I might need to go and learn it. And so I invested heavily into my learning how WordPress you know, or how websites worked and, and I went to these three days seminar and how to get on the first page of Google with a guy in the Gold Coast.
And I remember on day one, he was talking about these places like Facebook and in like Twitter and LinkedIn and I’m like I have never heard of these things before. What are these magical things?
So when he talked about LinkedIn, he said that 73% of the members were the decision-makers in their business. And I was like, kidding me. I’ve just done 15 years of cold calling, getting all the receptionists and the gatekeepers and all a knock-backs. And you’re telling me that there’s this platform where I can go straight to the decision-maker, move out of the way, let me add it.
Samantha (05:29):
Julie’s coming through.
Julie (05:31):
Pretty much. And so I just gobbled up, I think I got home, and I was up to like, you know, one o’clock in the morning, setting up my LinkedIn account and looking at all of the things that you could do on this amazing platform.
And this is like, this is 14 years ago. So it was a long time ago. And I was less like fully into it. It was really exciting. And then I about a year later, I started my own web design and SEO agency, and I didn’t have to read cents to rub together. So I use social media to grow my business. I use LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. And yeah, I love and it was amazing.
Samantha (06:11):
I love that. And you know, when we’re talking those early years of the internet and those early years of social media, I almost think that every one of those years is like seven dog years. Like it is a long time ago. It is like it moved fast. But in those early years like it will I can’t believe how much it’s changed in what seems like such a short amount of time.
Julie (06:37):
Yeah, it has grown enormously. And it’s this very deep and quite complex platform, actually, there is a lot of depth to LinkedIn. It’s not just what a lot of people, you know, have this idea, oh, it’s for job seekers, or it’s for corporates or something like that it is this very deep, complex website with lots of facets to it, that can really help your business to grow.
But most people just, they have this very surface-level view of it. And they don’t understand how to use it effectively. And so always excites me when I can switch on people’s light poles and go Yeah, look, LinkedIn is far better than that, you know, you just need to know the right strategy.
And Sam, you would know like when you’re in sales, you can’t use the same sales strategy on every, you know, thing that you’re selling, if you’ve got six, nine products or services that are wildly different from each other, each of them might need a different strategy or a different approach.
And the same thing goes with LinkedIn for each business, it might not be the exact same approach, you know, if you’re looking for thought leadership, then you’re going to need to do attraction marketing, which will be content strategy.
If you’re in sales, if your role is a business development manager for a company, and you’re in sales, then you might need to build relationships. And so that’s going to require connection strategy and, and trust strategy along potentially with content, but it’s not necessarily the same strategy for each person. Right?
Samantha (08:12):
I’m so glad that you read my mind and answered that before I even asked because what I was going to ask is what is effective, because what a lot of us are seeing on LinkedIn right now. And what is turning a lot of people away from the platform, which really upsets me, because it is such a fabulous platform is that people are just using it for I’m going to connect, I’m going to send you a copy, and paste by my thing. And I’m just going to not even think about creating relationships.
And I think that it’s such a shame because as you and I know, and anyone that’s been in business for a while, business is a long game. It’s about relationships, I believe that business is all about relationships, when you’ve got relationships you’ve got you can create a successful business. And the way that I talk about LinkedIn, and I know you are definitely the same is that we use it should be used like, and it is a networking platform.
But think about it as if we were at a networking event. And we wouldn’t just walk up to someone with never met and say, hey, buy my thing. I mean, some people do, but they don’t get very far right. And the platform’s the same.
Julie (09:17):
Exactly. I’ve been saying exactly that for years. It is like being at after-five events for business network, you need to show up you need to add value first you need to build trust, you know, and it is relationships that make the difference. So it’s about strategically connecting with your ideal client and building that, you know, real deep connection there.
And you know what the stats are in when COVID hit, LinkedIn usage went up over 40%. So everyone kind of it swapped onto LinkedIn. Everybody did exactly what you were saying. Let’s connect. Let’s drop our copy and paste the message and hope that somebody will find my book to join my webinar. You know, by my program come along to whatever it was, you know. And the response rate for messages on LinkedIn, tell us went down 25%. At the same time,
Samantha (10:11):
I’m surprised it wasn’t more over that time surprises now, when I saw it happen, and it happened very quickly. And you’re right, it was at the beginning of COVID, I actually changed up my strategy. And I was sending voice messages to people saying, Hi, thanks for connecting my name. Sam, I just want you to know that you’re not speaking to a VA, I’m a real person, I really want to get to know you had to really change it up. So that and you know, some of the messages coming back were like, Oh, wow, we’ve never had someone do that before.
Julie (10:40):
For those who can. And that’s what we’re calling it nowadays, it’s hyper-personalization, right? It’s taking the time to not try and this isn’t a strategy. Again, this strategy is for clients that might be a higher-paying client. If you’re targeting that and you want to build a relationship with that, then hyper-personalization is great, because you’re not trying to get 1000s of people into your program, you might be looking for 10 or 15, at a particular point in time.
If you’re doing a low-price product, then you’re going to need a more content strategy and attract people to you. Because you don’t have the time to hyper personalize necessarily like that. But for people who are doing high ticket items, or you know, who are coaching, etc, then doing that hyper personalization, whether it’s doing the voice message, which I highly recommend to my clients at the moment, or whether you’re doing a loom video message and sending that through, which is even better, because then they get to see that you’re a real person to see the voice or just the voice is great for those who are a little gun shy on the video do the voice, right. But the video is even more powerful. Again, it takes it up just that next level and can really allow you to build that connection quickly. So yeah.
Samantha (12:00):
Love it. Let’s jump into events. This is something that I don’t know a lot about, what are the types of LinkedIn events? Or even actually, let’s take it one step back further, what is a LinkedIn event? And then I guess, what are the different types of events?
Julie (12:12):
So going way back to when you and I first started on LinkedIn, we had events back then. And then for some dumb reason, LinkedIn decided no, no, no, we got to, you know, discontinue that feature, which to which we all do? No,
Samantha (12:28):
Of course you did.
Julie (12:30):
Of course, you did, give us the best thing and then take it away. You know, they have a bit of a play with that. But they brought it back in last couple of years. And it’s been incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful. In fact, some just some stats around that. There are more than 24,000 events created and over 1.5 million RSVPs to events each week. Oh, wow. Just take that in for a moment, right? 24,000 events and over 1.5 million RSVPs per week, that should immediately say to Hello, it’s an opportunity, right?
Samantha (13:10):
You can see I’m already quiet going. Okay, this is I’m listening.
Julie (13:18):
So LinkedIn have given us this ability to do events, there are different events that you can do on LinkedIn. So we’ll cover those in a moment. But the main thing that people need to know is that you can do an event, you can set up an event on your personal profile. Or you can set one up on your company page.
So they are two different, you know, places to do events on LinkedIn. So let’s start with a personal profile first, right, and the benefits of doing it on your personal profile. If you are wanting to be a thought leader, then doing events on your personal profile is absolutely my recommendation because it’s an all about thought leadership, right?
If you want to grow your email list and do leads and sales, then my advice is, you’re probably going to want to do it on your company page, right. And you’re gonna get super excited about this in a moment, Sam, because you and I know some of the restrictions around LinkedIn downloading CSV files of your contacts. And that’s an absolute no-go.
So on your personal profile, you can set up the event, but you can’t download the CSV of those attendees. However, you could send them to zoom, you know to register for a zoom webinar, or you could send them to a landing page to attend a live in person event where it might be paid or free event, you can send them to a LinkedIn live, so you can set up a LinkedIn event direct to a LinkedIn live event that plays automatically on LinkedIn.
So there are a number of different ways that you can set up your event depending on what where you want to drive your traffic to, or your audience to. But on your personal profile, you can’t download those attendees. That’s step one, to understand on the company page if you have a privacy policy set up on your website. So for example, Julie mason.com.au/privacy would be the URL for that.
And you pop that into your setup on your LinkedIn event on your company page. And check yes, I want LinkedIn to register. All of the attendees, LinkedIn will allow you to download the CSV file of all your attendees, and upload that into your MailChimp or Active Campaign or Constant Contact or Infusionsoft or whatever else you’re using. Or there is one Zapier and it’s the only one that’s approved by LinkedIn, you can connect it to that event, and it will automatically add those people into your email list.
Samantha (16:05):
Oh, hello.
Julie (16:09):
All right. It’s pretty exciting stuff. Hey, totally. For people who are wanting to build an email list who are wanting to do that for leads and sales, then the company pages definitely a way to go. And so that’s the two different ways you can set up a LinkedIn event. Is that cool?
Samantha (16:27):
I love it. I love it so far, absolutely. frothing already. All right. So once we’ve decided either we’re going to do an event on our personal page on our business page, we get it up. And it’s super easy to set up a LinkedIn event, we don’t even need to go into it, because we just follow the bouncing balls. How do we then invite or promote people, because just creating the event is not going to do anything on its own?
Julie (16:52):
Really good questions. So LinkedIn will allow you to invite 1000 connections per week. So it’s limited. So for example, if I set that up on, let’s say, for the moment, we’ll just use a personal profile to start with, right. So I have an I’m not saying this to Skype, and I’m not the most connected LinkedIn expert in the world, it’s not my aim to be that, in fact, I curl my LinkedIn regularly and get rid of the ones that really aren’t my target market.
And so I’ve got about seven and a half 1000 people that I’m connected to on LinkedIn. So if I’m running an event on LinkedIn, let’s say I’m running it to a Zoom meeting, let’s just say it’s going straight to a Zoom meeting. And from your personal profile, I would definitely if you’re doing thought leadership, then I would prevent as many barriers as possible to getting people from the LinkedIn event to actually join you.
And what I mean by that is put the direct zoom link there in the event page, don’t have a registration page on your Zoom meeting, just let them attend, if that makes sense, right? Because that’s, it reduces down all the barriers to getting people there. So that’s one of my first suggestions. But when it comes to inviting people, all you do is you have this invite, once you’ve set up your LinkedIn event, by the way, once you’ve done all of the filling, LinkedIn must get you to post about that event, in order for it to be live. If you decide not to do that. Everything disappears.
Samantha (18:33):
Right? Okay, you actually
Julie (18:39):
have to put it in draft, you have to set it up and then go, Yep, I’m ready to hit go on this and send it live. Otherwise, it doesn’t hold a draft, it just, you know, will delete everything there if you decide to back out of it cancel. So it’s a bit of a pain. But it’s Lincoln’s way of forcing you to take that next step in accountability and get your event out there.
So then you can invite once your event is live, and you’ve posted about it, LinkedIn will give you this button on your event page that says, invite and it says, Hey, do you want to invite now you can invite you can filter your connections. So for example, if I’m doing an event that I just want people in Brisbane where I’m located to attend, then I could filter it by location and say, just want people who are connected to me in Brisbane. And I’m just going to invite those people and all you have to do it’s a little bit manual.
It’s a pain in the neck. But you just go and check, check, check, check, check all those boxes. So yeah, it takes a little bit of time to check 1000 boxes, but seriously, it’s worth it. It’s worth it. Yeah, yeah. So what will happen?
This is what people need to know, when somebody has been invited to attend an event. They will get a notification that will come up in their mind Network tab on LinkedIn that says, It’s like we’d get invites to connect with people that will get an invite to attend an event.
And that is what I call a happy click at that point that people might just click Yeah, I’ll accept that invite. And they’re all I’ve done is a happy click, they probably 95% of them have not looked at what your event is about. So they haven’t even gone to your event page, they haven’t clicked through anything, they’re not looking at anything. They’re just looking at the title of your event, which is a key thing here, because the title of your event is going to make or break the response rate. Right? We both know that as marketers, so
Samantha (29:32):
Well, I won’t say never. But it’s very rarely the deliverable. That’s the problem. It’s normally the message.
Julie (20:42):
Yeah, so getting a good title for your event is really key. And then making sure you’re targeting your audience’s second thing and inviting them through. Once the invitation is gone. And they’ve got to happy click your start to see the people who are going to attend on the event page, it will have a networking tab, which will show you who is attending.
And at that point, we have to then transfer them from being a happy click into being excited and motivated to show up for the event. Right. And LinkedIn, really conveniently put in the My Networking tab, a message button next to each person’s name for you to then say, Hey, I am super excited that you’ve wanted, you’ve expressed interest in this event, you know, there is one more step for you to take.
And that could be putting it in their diary, adding the Zoom link, you know, showing up live, whatever it is that you want them to do attending, going to the website and purchasing a ticket to your event, whether it’s your website, or meetup or whatever it is that Eventbrite is that you’re sending them to, you can send them there and encourage them to buy the ticket.
But you’ve got to show up with, Hey, I’m super excited that you’re showing interest in this event, we’re not there yet, if you want to attend, we’ve got one more critical step to do right, than to do that next critical step, whether it’s adding it into their diary, or going to your web page and clicking on whatever it is that you need them to click on. So you’ve got to message them with that.
Samantha (22:17):
I know how important this is. Because the very first time I did an event, I invited my 1000 people, I got so many RSVPs but failed to do that Moodle or this thing. And because in my head, in my head, I was thinking it was like when you register for a webinar, you know, you get the email and you get the link. But it’s not the case. People have just clicked yes, I’m attending and they’ve gone on with their day, and have not, no not even remembered it. So it’s like this part, I know is crucial.
Julie (22:50):
That’s why I cook that happy click.
Sam Riley (22:52):
Absolutely.
Julie (22:53):
Point they’re just happy clicking. That’s it. Yeah, just be a good LinkedIn citizen. Oh, yeah, that looks good. Oh, I know, Sam, or I’ll click Accept on that, you know, but at that point, they’re just happy clicking, they really have no idea what they’ve accepted or shown interest for in many cases.
And so you need to then do the follow-up. And the thing with LinkedIn that people need to understand and you mentioned this earlier, this is LinkedIn is a marathon, not a sprint. I always say out of the, let’s say, the three main social networks, right? We’ll call Twitter, one of the main ones still Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
If we look at that as the auto bands of you know, superhighways in Germany or wherever, where you’ve got the lane that you can do 360 kilometers an hour in and the lane that people do, you know, maybe 200 kilometers an hour in and then there’s the Nana lane where all along at 9080 kilometers or 100 kilometers, right. LinkedIn is firmly in the narrow lane people.
I have to tell you this because if you’re running events, you need to give him longer lead time we have more restrictions on LinkedIn for example, you can only invite 1000 people per week. So if you want to invite your 5000 connections immediately you’ve got a five-week you know period that you cannot speed that up. There is no way to do that.
So you have to be patient and that’s why I say LinkedIn is this slow lane Twitter is like it speeds on by you know if you move away from Twitter for 20 seconds and come back that conversation is gone it’s moved on Yeah, you know long time ago even though it was only 20 seconds it’s gone. Facebook and Instagram little look not so fast. Just Twitter but it’s still a fast it moves quickly. Right. So LinkedIn definitely the slow lane does that into your time frame people.
Samantha (24:52):
Yeah, love that. Love that. Love that. So we’re inviting them. We’re promoting them. We want them to attend. We need to send them the invite. Is there anything else? I guess any other tips that we need to know? Like, is there extra follow-up? Do we need to be posting about it? Is there other little, little tips and tricks?
Julie (25:13):
Yeah, absolutely. I will be doing at least three messages to each of those people who have done the happy clicker 10 days. So the first one is to encourage them, motivate them, excite them, you know, and get them to take whatever the next step is, which would be the very least adding it to their calendar. Right?
Because that commits it in their diary. That would be the very least thing if you’re doing a three-day event, which is what I’ve done for a client recently. So I’ll share that case study because I think it’s a really important one. They had left their promotion time a little bit too short for their three-day in-person event. Oh, my God, what a joy it was to attend an in-person event again.
Samantha (25:58):
Absolutely. People energy hugs.
Julie (26:05):
It was amazing. I’ve just got to point that out. I was it was like being in a whole another world that you hadn’t been to for a long time. Anyhow, he contacted me and he literally had not opened his LinkedIn account for three years. We had messages invites that had not been attended to for three years, no content posted, he had 1700 connections. And that was it. That was the working space.
So I moved into to promote this event. And I had roughly two and a half weeks to promote it, which is a short time. And we were doing it to the promotion was to a web page where they could buy a $97 ticket to attend an in person three-day event. Right? There was a low cost ticket, but it still had skin in the game, right. And a wonderful three-day event, which was incredibly amazing. And so I sent out he had 70. And under connections I sent the first 1000 invites out the first week. And as soon as the seven days was out, I was in with the 700 because I had a short timeframe, I had two and a half weeks.
So I needed to maximize that. Once that first 1000 People started to accept do the happy click on the invite in my network box, I started to message and say hey, don’t forget the next step, the exciting step to attend is go to x y Zed website, make sure that you get the bonus upgrade that we’ve got for the early bird or whatever it was that was on, you know, the special for them that they could get the next 700 unfortunately missed out because the early bird finished by them, but you still need to get them through.
And then I would, I did another one about a very special guest speaker that was coming. Some testimony I did, I think three messages. The third one was reminding them, hey, don’t forget, it’s just two days time or something like that. So it was reminding them what was going on. Now, the stats of this were 1700 connections. So not a lot of connections, but not no minimal. You know, it was medium-level connections, they haven’t been spoken to in three years. They no contact from him in three years. It’s a bit hard.
And so it was reactivating all of that, essentially. And then we did some posts on his profile so that, you know, we’re reminding people in the newsfeed as well about the event. And also then the private messages for the follow-up. So I think we got about out of 1700 there were just over 100 people did the happy click of that, just under a handful went to the event. But it’s still generated $60,000 in sales. A very simple, organic LinkedIn campaign, compared to the three and a half 1000 He spent on Facebook ads with generated zero leads and zero attendees. It was a pretty outstanding result for something that this wasn’t an act of personal linking.
Samantha (29:17):
Absolutely. It is outstanding is almost understated, really to for just to, you know, an organic strategy. Two weeks work. Sure, there were a lot of messages and there was a lot of a lot of manual bits and pieces there. But if you think about it, would you be happy to do that work for $60,000?
Julie (29:38):
The reality of it is Sam is that everyone goes oh my god, I’ve got to do all messages to each of those people. I think maybe I spent less than five hours of work on LinkedIn to generate. So we’re not talking lots of hours guys, we really aren’t we talking minimal amount of effort. But if you have got the strategy to do that, and even if you haven’t been active on LinkedIn for a while, it still works.
Samantha (30:05):
Yeah, yeah, totally. And that’s the big thing. Because, you know, my brain would have gone well, we haven’t been active on LinkedIn, it’s not going to work. But I guess you’re going straight to these inboxes.
What sort of, you’ve talked about live events, then just quick, really quickly before we move on just to get people’s brains thinking about this? What other types of events? Could you run through events? You know, are we talking meetups? Are we talking webinars, you can do all what are some different ideas?
Julie (30:35):
Yeah, you can do meetups. So if you’re running a meetup event, you can send it straight to your Meetup page, you could send it to an Eventbrite page or a sticky notes page, or wherever you set your event up on whether it’s your website, or even direct to a zoom page where they can just straight log on without actually having to register, you can do a zoom webinar, if you want.
You can even do it directly on LinkedIn, love this directly to LinkedIn live. Now I have to say I haven’t done that yet. I’ve been putting off LinkedIn live for the last little bit because I’ve been in hibernation, as you know, set up a Mother Bear that’s coming out of my hibernation now. And I’m very excited about that. But I’ve been resisting LinkedIn live for a little bit at the moment. And I’m not going to explain the reasons why.
But I will be back on there very soon. So stay tuned. But but there are a number and I know, you said that you do LinkedIn live really well. I’ve seen and attended some of your LinkedIn live, because I think you’re amazing, my love.
Samantha (31:37):
Thank you. And I think, on my very first LinkedIn live, so I was like, oh, there’s a friend here. Say thank you.
Julie (31:48):
You’re welcome, but essentially, you know, that might be a little bit more of a technical setup for some people at the moment, you can keep it as simple as just sending them to a Zoom meeting, you know, it really simple stuff. This doesn’t have to be complicated. And I think sometimes, the more complicated we make it, the less people will do it.
So I did a test run as well, just straight to a Zoom meeting, where they didn’t have to register for the Zoom meeting, the Zoom meeting was, you know, put into the event page. And it was really interesting. I invited just 1000 of my connections that was just, you know, let’s invite that 1000 No particular, you know, strategy. I had people in the states in New Zealand across Australia in it.
So I didn’t even filter it by location, I just went yeah, let’s do a blanket. I actually even had, I even had somebody in Asia join in as well. So what I ended up with from the happy clicks, I got about 90 people registered 10 people showed up on the event. And I actually had to because of circumstances, there was a family friend who was dying. And we had to I had to delay the event by one week.
So I sent them a message thing, guys, I’m really sorry, I’ve got to attend, you know, a friend’s, you know, passing, unfortunately. So I’m delaying this by a week. But don’t be afraid. I’m bringing all the good stuff in a week. So please mark your diaries, I can’t wait to see you. And because I’ve had to delay it. And that might be short notice, I will send a recording to everyone who registered. Well, that’s been phenomenal, you know that the numbers are what I would call the sexiest numbers 1000 invites about 90 people
Samantha (33:33):
So it’s around about 10% of people that are in
Julie (33:38):
And off that about 10%. In fact, we had 10 Show up live. And of those, I only knew two of them. Eight of them were people that I was connected to that I had never met I’ve never had other than maybe a short LinkedIn message. I’ve never had an engagement with that.
And so I was able to showcase my value to them. From that I’ve done a recent post out there now in my email list because I’ve added that into my email list through zoom not through the other way through the company page, but through zoom. And from that I’ve sent out a promotion this week and one of those people who have actually applied for one of my higher-end programs, which is fantastic.
Samantha (34:21):
Awesome. So, so good.
Julie (34:27):
There is that as I say to people, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon but if you’ve got the game plan if you’ve got that strategy in place for LinkedIn, then it can be an incredibly profitable thing really profitable. Ladies LinkedIn event that she and she does something really interesting. I’m going to share it with you because it’s quite sexy. And we love sexy, right?
Samantha (34:50):
Absolutely give us the sexy
Julie (34:55)
She runs it on her company page. She’s doing a regular weekly zoom. And it’s for women networking who Want to be, you know, high profile women network, right. So that’s her target audience. And what she does is as soon as the event that week’s event is done, she just edits the event for the next date and the next zoom link, and just has it continuously running. On her company page.
Here’s the sexy thing, Sam. Now you think about what we talked about earlier, where, if you’ve got it on your company page, and you’ve added in your LinkedIn, your privacy link from your website in there, which allows you to download those emails of people who are registering is very good, sexy. She’s had over 22,000. Yeah, right. I
Samantha (35:49):
I know where you’re going. Where do you better finish that for people that are not that haven’t caught up?
Julie (35:59):
A heart attack? Have you been? I did? Where are you? 22,000 people have clicked the happy except button, which means that she can immediately have them added into her email list. Do not tell me that that is not a sexy strategy. Right.
Samantha (36:15):
That has got to be the highlight of my week, Julie.
Julie (36:20):
Oh, I have one more for you yet.
Samantha (36:25):
Oh, my goodness. Oh, share away.
Julie (36:33):
Right. So that’s pretty sexy. Yeah. And here’s the thing. Remember, I said there are 1.5 million RSVPs on LinkedIn events every week. Every week and very few people are doing LinkedIn events. We’ve got 830 million members, and a 24,000 events per week are going up. Wow. You do that math? It’s not a lot. Yeah, right.
Samantha (36:59):
Yeah, this is really untapped.
Julie (37:03):
Right. Because if we look at content stats on LinkedIn, 830 million members, about 3 million people post on LinkedIn, which is .045% of members. That’s how many people are doing content, which is nothing in the scheme of things. It allows your content to get great reach. But if only 24,000 events are going up per week, that’s even less again. And now we get some scope of how exciting and juicy events can be.
Samantha (37:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
Julie (37:40):
But here’s the thing, for those of you who are listening on Sam’s podcast, if I haven’t already blown your mind already. But you might be sitting there thinking that, hey, I don’t really want to run an event. I’m not my business isn’t set up to do events. All right.
I’m gonna give you this example. I have a client who’s very niche who’s very niche. He is a geotechnical seismic engineer, for underground mines. There are only 100 underground mines in the world.. There’s only one or four people in the world. You do what he does. He does what he does, right, whatever that is, you know what I’m talking about, right?
Samantha (38:25):
We all know where you go. We’ve picked up what you’ve put down.
Julie (38:30):
How many events do you think there would be on geotechnical engineering?
Sam Riley
Well, I’m thinking with those numbers, not many.
Julie (38:39):
Two. That I found within a month, okay, one of which had 685 attendees. Okay, on that LinkedIn geotechnical event, right. Now, my client has no desire to run an event. It’s not his game. He’s definitely the introvert that likes to be behind the scenes and do what he does, technically, brilliantly.
He has no desire to be on camera or doing any kind of event or anything like that. He’s saying, if you find somebody’s event, now, whether it’s the geotechnical event, or whether it’s this lady who has 22,000, women wanting to be networking with other high profile women, when you click Accept, on that invite on that event, it actually allows you to see everybody who’s attending.
Samantha (39:42):
My brain is
Julie (39:47):
So if you’re struggling to find your target audience and where they might be hanging out, I love what I call stalking on LinkedIn. And I’m going to share my stalking joke because I just I have a fun set Human stalking is soaking real life. It’s where two people go for a walk, and only one person knows about it, right? totally creepy in real life, people don’t do that.
On LinkedIn, it is totally acceptable to stalk people. And what I mean by that is if you’re looking for sales or leads to your ideal client, or where they’re hanging out, having a look at what events are happening on LinkedIn, and you can go on the search bar and type in geotechnical, and click search, and then search events for that keyword geotechnical, and it will show you the events are coming up for that keyword.
Right. That’s how easy that is. Then all you have to do is click the happy ACCEPT button and see all of the attendees in the My Networking tab on the event page who don’t go now, please note, it does not allow you to download that CSV of those people. It does allow you to go through it and go, who here should I connect with?
Samantha (41:02):
Who can I connect with? And who can I start a relationship with? Exactly? How that, Julie seriously.
Julie (41:12):
So for those of you who don’t do events, I have something for everyone today?
Samantha (41:17):
Wow, you have just dropped so many value bombs as I knew you would like every time you have ever opened your mouth in front of me and my brain is always blown. I appreciate you so much. For people that have loved this as much as I have. Julie, where can people go to connect with you?
Julie (41:35):
Well, I’d be crazy if you if I didn’t say LinkedIn guys on LinkedIn, send me a private message saying I listen to you on Samantha’s podcast. Right and that will be amazing. I’d love to connect with you there. Yeah, connect with me there you can go onto my website Juliemason.com.au or reach out to me my most social networks, but I’m not on there very often LinkedIn is where you will find me the most. go to
Samantha (42:03):
Go to LinkedIn connect with Julie who will connect her profile up in the show notes over at influencebydesignpodcast.com So that you don’t even need to go hunting, you can just go there and click the link. Julie, thank you so much for all of the value bombs that you have dropped today. I will definitely be going back and listening to this episode myself and getting me some LinkedIn event juice. Give it to me. Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you today.
Julie (42:33):
Thanks so much for having me. It’s been a joy.
Outro Samantha (42:37):
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more, head over to samanthariley.global/podcast for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other coaches and experts who are growing and scaling their business to come and join the coaches course creators and speakers group on Facebook, the links are all waiting for you over at samanthariley.global
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