With over 850 million users, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform and a goldmine for lead generation. But simply having a LinkedIn profile isn’t enough – you need to learn how to optimise it to attract your ideal clients, and have a strategy in place to leverage the platform.
In this episode of Influence by Design, LinkedIn expert Adam shares his best strategies and actionable tips to optimise your LinkedIn presence. He helps clients achieve three main outcomes: be recognised as an industry sage, provide incontestable value, and implement an “Algorithmically Activated” lead generation process.
Adam reveals insider tactics for dominating the platform – creating a compelling profile, content that gets engagement, and resources that can help you craft a presence that positions you as an industry leader.
Optimising your LinkedIn presence and consistently providing value is key. Whether you’re starting from scratch or already using LinkedIn, Adam provides valuable advice to take your results to the next level, so don’t miss this episode.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Why do some people get traction while others struggle with LinkedIn? (00:40)
- How to create a profile that positions you as the authority in your industry (01:57)
- Crafting an effective profile headline (11:50)
- How to optimise the About section (14:15)
- The importance of understanding how LinkedIn algorithms work (17:30)
- Why you need to avoid posting click-bait content on LinkedIn (20:15)
- The best time to post on LinkedIn (24:02)
- The reason why most people’s content on LinkedIn fails (25:50)
- LinkedIn pods to increase engagement – yay or nay? (29:11)
- The best ways to connect with the right people without being spammy (35:48)
- Adam’s LinkedIn Productivity Assessment (42:19)
QUOTES:
- “LinkedIn wants to understand who you are, what you’re about, and who you serve so that they can show you and your profile to the right people.” -Adam Houlahan
- “You can’t serve all markets on LinkedIn, it is very much about niching down. The harder you can niche down, the better the outcome you can create.” -Adam Houlahan
Resources
LinkedIn Productivity Assessment
WHERE TO FIND ADAM HOULAHAN
- Website: https://adamhoulahan.com/ https://www.prominence.global/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhoulahan/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamHoulahan
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adam.houlahan1
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamhoulahan
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BOOK AN INFLUENCE AUDIT
If you want to be known as the leader in your industry, book a quick 15-minute Influence Audit.
We’ll work together to identify:
Your current situation and immediate opportunities for growth
Uncover the #1 thing holding you back from not being booked as an industry leader
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ABOUT ADAM HOULAHAN
Adam Houlahan is an International Keynote Speaker specialising in LinkedIn strategies for entrepreneurs and CEO of one of the few truly global LinkedIn agencies, Prominence Global.
He hosts arguably the world’s largest free online LinkedIn training event, with thousands of people registering 5 times each year and is considered to be one of the world’s leading experts in harnessing the power of LinkedIn for business.
Adam is also the author of three Amazon best-selling books Social Media Secret Sauce, The LinkedIn Playbook, and Influencer.
He believes real and meaningful change comes through the world’s entrepreneurs. His purpose is to positively impact 12 million people in need, and has surpassed 10 million impacts on the way to that target.
TRANSCRIPTION (AI Generated)
Adam Houlahan Snippet (00:00):
So there’s no such thing as a best time because what it’s going to do if your content gets through the critical things about getting traction, then what it does, it lets your content live in your, in people’s feeds for up to seven days.
So it starts to serve your content to those people at a time, they are normally active on LinkedIn. So it’s not about when you post it’s about when your audience is active.
That simple reality and thing that people should sort of take a lot of comfort in is there’s no such thing as a best day or time. What it is, is how much traction your content gets in the first two hours. So the best time is to post when you have a good audience.
Samantha Riley Intro (00:19):
Welcome to the Influence By Design Podcast. I’m Samantha Riley, authority positioning strategist for coaches and experts. If you’re ready to build a business that gives you more than just a caffeine addiction, and you dream of making more money, having more time, and having the freedom to be living your best life, then you’re in the right place, it’s time to level up.
Welcome to the show, Adam, it’s great to have you joining us here today. And I’m really looking forward to talking about you know how we can use LinkedIn to become more influential and prominent in their industry
Adam Houlahan (01:15):
equally for me, Sam, great to be here with you and my favorite topic to talk about. So we’re a room for a good a good time, I think,
Samantha Riley (01:23):
well, that’s lucky then is I want to ask like just go straight to the elephant in the room? Why do some people get traction on LinkedIn? And most people struggle? Because that’s what I hear about LinkedIn. And I want to go straight there.
Adam Houlahan (01:41):
It’s a great question, isn’t it. And the reason is actually really simple. The people who get that great traction that you’re talking about, generally speaking, understand how the algorithms work. And if you could create the best content in the world.
And if nobody’s seeing it, then it’s a hard road, someone who you’d normally think that those people have just been doing this a long time they’ve worked it out, the LinkedIn is kind of loving their content.
And they’ve got a big following and everything like that. The reality is if you know what you’re doing, which most people don’t, which is why they come to us is somebody that has almost no following has never shared content before has never really done anything.
If they implement the process the right way from the get go, they can get equally as much traction as anyone else in very quick time. But it’s all comes down to process and understanding, you know, essentially how the algorithms are going to treat your profile and also your content. Well, let’s
Samantha Riley (02:36):
start with profile first, because you need to have a profile before you can create the content anyway, what do we need to know about creating a profile that really positions us as the leader in our industry?
Adam Houlahan (02:48):
Great question again. And clearly, there’s a difference between almost anybody can have a profile that looks presentable and professional, clearly, that’s at a minimum is a necessity. However, there is certain parts of your profile that LinkedIn is using to, you know, position show, what LinkedIn wants to do is understand who you are and what you’re about and who you serve, so that they can show you and your profile to the right people. And I’m sure you’ve seen those notifications were there.
So we kind of recommend that, you know, you may be looking at these people to connect with. And what you probably find initially is that they’re quite random, you’ll like you’ll look at them and go, Huh, yeah, I know why that’s just I connect with that person, we have nothing in common, or I can’t help them, or they can’t help me or whatever it is.
But when you get this process, right, then they start to get very, very adept at showing you to the right type of people. That’s the key thing is the difference between a good looking profile and one that’s optimized correctly.
So that LinkedIn is going to keep just saying algorithm because people understand it, the what it really is, yeah, and things that are looking at you. They’re not real people. It’s the way that LinkedIn internal systems determine what they do with your profile. And what you want them to do is be showing your profile to the right type of people.
So the first thing you got to understand, Sam is people have to understand is and it’s often the first question I asked people and often people can’t answer it clearly is who do you want to be showing up in front of and you don’t know that then the chances of LinkedIn knowing that have practically zero pretty soon, you got to be very clear on you know, and again, you know, the term we all kind of knows avatar, but avatars very different on LinkedIn too.
Often when I say to people, I use that term, perfect example, I had this conversation hosting a live event in Perth last week, and someone in the audience and I said, Oh, you want to share with us what your avatar is.
And they’re really excited because they’ve done all that work that we’ve often seen, which is, yeah, look, his name’s Jason and he’s 32 years old, and he drives a white Toyota Camry and 2.3 kids and all that stuff. It’s an update on LinkedIn. Yeah. And well, I know I do. That’s why I’m here at your event. And that’s exactly right.
That’s not how you put an avatar together on LinkedIn. So the number one thing is before you start to optimize a profile, if you want to get access to what a tool called Sales Navigator, Sales Navigator is not free, it’s a paid membership subscription to LinkedIn. However, they will give you if you’ve never used it before, they will give you a month free trial.
So even if you just use it to do what I’m going to share, just get the free month and do it and you look at all the filters that they have available, which is like the size of the companies like locations, what’s their job roles? What industries are they in how active they’ve been on LinkedIn, all these different sorts of filters is what they call, that’s how you actually build an avatar on LinkedIn.
So you’ve got to be able to say, Yeah, I know that the my target market are in these locations. Now, for some of us that might be global, it might be that you, we’ve got clients who can only serve as a market within a 50 kilometer radius of a CBD location in multiple different places around the world. So it allows you to be very granular, or allows you to be very wide. Another example. Often I say to people, you know, what size companies, I work with everybody?
Samantha Riley (06:18):
How often do we hear that I can help everybody with anything.
Adam Houlahan (06:23):
And I say, oh, okay, so that means that you have a solution for solopreneurs, right up to the CEOs of 10,000 plus team member companies, oh, maybe you’re probably not, I probably couldn’t do that.
I know that nobody could and because the other thing, of course, is the languaging you you’re using is going to be very different to if your market is those solopreneurs, then if it was the opposite. So you can imagine then how you start to craft the wording of your profile, you can’t serve all markets on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is very, very much about niching down the various, the harder you can niche down, the better the outcome you can create.
So yeah, you got to make a decision, who is that you serve, even for us, I mean, when you have a look at those filters on LinkedIn, just even around company sizes, the sweet spot for us is companies around the one to 1011 to 50, size team members. And we filter out all the other stuff around that allows us to create the languaging of how we present ourselves that suits that’s dial marketing.
And that’s not to say we don’t have clients who do serve those major companies and clients who are solo operators. But we Nichelle marketing on LinkedIn to just that, you know, that sort of that band area that bands. Yeah, so Sales Navigator, it’s also your biggest friend in lead generation later on.
But at the moment, we’re just talking about the profile. So the key thing is to really understand to start with who your target market is, and optimize your profile around that. The second thing that’s super critical is leads.
And as you can put your probably see, everything leads into the next part. So this is why you have to really have a holistic view of everything to even understand each individual part. The second part is you’ve got to know what the content you’re going to be creating is and what the subject matter of those that contents going to be. Because there’s certain parts on your profile.
And there’s a very, very specific tool that everybody has access to, even if they’re on a free account that is critical to your outcome called Creator mode. And if you’re not using creator mode, then you’re pretty much gonna be invisible on LinkedIn, all the new tools and features at LinkedIn and building in the future are all designed around creator mode.
Clearly, by default, its name creator, it’s all about content creation. And what creator mode does is allows you to have up to five topics that you’re going to talk about. And those five topics have to be visible on your profile under the Creator mode section. And then of course, your content has to stay true to those five topics.
So again, you got to kind of do a bit of homework before you start putting your profile together. And this is what I mean by algorithm alignment. LinkedIn is looking at creative mode. And these are they called skills.
There’s a lot of conjecture around what’s the point of the skill, a lot of people, the worst thing you possibly do is turn those off yet you have to have them on and you can have up to 50. And then so people tend to go down the rabbit hole of is I have to have all 50 on there. You don’t but you have to have at least five and you’ve got to be not thinking of them like a skill.
Like I’m just very skilled in graphic design as an example. That’s a skill. What you’re really good to look them at is what’s the content you’re going to create? What’s the subject matter you’re going to talk about?
Samantha Riley (09:48):
So they need to be aligned, correct? Yeah, at least your
Adam Houlahan (09:51):
top five. The rest not so important, but you’ve got to have five key skills that you can expertly talk about in your content.
Samantha Riley (10:01):
Love that and the creative mode that’s just flicking a switch, essentially, isn’t it somewhere on your profile, super easy to find if someone’s listening, and they want to do this, or check that it’s done, super easy to google it and just
Adam Houlahan (10:13):
Yeah, so literally long as you’re logged into your profile, you’ll have a section in the middle of your profile that only you can see, like, if I’m looking at your profile, I wouldn’t see it because you can only see it as the admin, it’s called the dashboard very, very clear, you can’t miss it.
And the very first thing on there or say, creator mode, and probably off, clearly, what you got to tick is the toggle that goes off on this soon as you do that, it’s going to ask you to enter those five subjects that you’re going to be talking about. So you want to know those before you go and activate that.
Samantha Riley (10:45):
So get clear on Avatar get really clear on what these skills are. What about the headline? How much does that play into how much your profile is seen?
Adam Houlahan (10:53):
Yeah, so it used to be the the most critical thing as far as you’ll see a lot of profiles that are a sort of back in the day, we were telling people to do it. So not putting people down for doing it. It’s just outdated now where they’d have like, almost like SEO, like their profile.
And instead of being a flowing sentence, it would say podcast host, author, SEO, all these search keywords. Yeah, so now it’s actually looking more in the bottom section below that, which is the creator mode for those types of things.
So best way, I would advise people to use that professional headline is to talk about the outcomes that people get when they work with you. Because that’s to be honest, that’s what people want to know, like, if they’re going to take a next step with you. And there’s multiple ways they can do that.
They want to know what’s in it for them, they don’t really care that you’re an international keynote speaker, or you’re a published author, or they’re all good things, they all have their place on your profile, but in your professional headlines, talk about the outcomes like our clients achieve, you know, whatever it is, and if you can, you know, this is a guideline, not a rule, but if you can put a like a time stamp on that.
So you can say our clients achieve X within 30 days, or 60 days or 90 days, you know, whatever it is on ours, it’s we say 90 days. Now, what I would preface on this one is if it’s more than 90 days, I probably wouldn’t say that I wouldn’t highlight that you do create an outcome that a tangible measurable outcome in a seven days, 30 days, 60 days or 90 days.
But that there that because that’s a really powerful positioning thing that people know, hey, if I work with Sam, I’m gonna get this outcome in X amount of days. Okay, that’s what I want. So they’re more likely to take that next step with you.
Samantha Riley (12:43):
So you’ve got the headline, then we’ve got an about section that sits under that I’ve heard lots of different ways to position this or write this now you’re very much about helping people to become prominent and influential in the industry, how much weight or you know what sort of content we’re putting that about section. So
Adam Houlahan (13:01):
you the maximum you can put, everything works in character counts, not word counts on LinkedIn. So the maximum that you can put into the about section is 2600 characters. And I would, I would suggest you use as much of that as you possibly can.
Now, when you activate creative mode, your about section actually comes even further down your profile. So if somebody is going to go and read that section, then they’re really, really interested in what you do.
So give them as much information as you can possibly give them now one of the big mistakes I see people make is they’ll put their website, then or call me on this number, or here’s my email, email me here or whatever, you can’t hyperlink anything in your about section.
So what you really want to do is just really outline what the framework we always say is tell people about the three problems that you know, people in that particular industry have, how you solve those three problems, and then a bit of positioning, you know a bit about yourself, and then a call to action.
What do you want people to do next? So generally speaking, what you want them to do next to follow or connect with you on LinkedIn. So I’d always put a call to action at the end that talks about, hey, connect with me, you’ll follow me or depending on if you’re using creative mode, if connecting with people takes an extra step, if that makes sense.
I think it’s one of the reasons why people often don’t actually activate creator mode because the connect button changes to a follow tab. Now people can go to the More tab and open it up and connect. But most of the emphasis that LinkedIn is putting now is used to be you know, to get good content traction, it was all about how many connections you had, it’s no longer like that.
So someone with now there is a minimum which is 500. If you’ve got less than 500 connections, you do need to get past 500 as quickly as you possibly can, because you get much higher visibility on the platform once you get to 500 plus. So that’s always the first test but the key thing is that to content traction is now relevant to house, how true you stay to the Creator mode sort of process, which is only talking about the subject matter that you put up those five keywords.
Samantha Riley (15:14):
That makes sense, was always wondering why I had the follow rather than the Connect, I actually hadn’t known that. So, you know, we’ve created our profile, we’ve activated creator mode, let’s talk about content, because you mentioned that people, you know, can get really great traction on LinkedIn with their content.
I also and you know, seeing that it’s really difficult to get traction with publishing content on LinkedIn more than other platforms. Can you talk to us about how we actually, you know, get our content seen, because I speak to so many people that say, oh, you know, I put all of this work into creating amazing content, and then two people like it, and you’re like, well, what’s the point? And I’ve got to agree, that’s a lot of work for not very much traction, you know, and leverage is our biggest friend.
Adam Houlahan (16:04):
That’s exactly right. So the first thing is, this is where you have to have a little bit of understanding of how the algorithms work. And so the first thing is, there’s an algorithm that is well known called dwell time.
Now, what dwell time is, it’s the way that we people don’t sort of wake up in the morning and go, Oh, I’m gonna go and check out what Adams check shared on LinkedIn this week and go to my profile, right? I mean, some people do that, than 99% of people really just go to their feed and see what’s coming up, just like we do on every other bit of a squirrel have a bit of a scroll.
That’s exactly it. And so what dwell time is, is it’s measuring how you do that. So when you’re scrolling through your feed, it knows that you’re just scrolling past stuff. And then it knows when you kind of stop and say someone stopped on my piece of content.
Now, they may stop for a second. And as you you’re probably aware, when you write content for LinkedIn, it’s truncated, meaning that you can really only see the first one or two sentences. And it says see more. Yeah, so absolutely.
Marketing 101 Is that first sentence has to be super catchy, not click Beatty hates that. But it has to really stop the scroll. That’s what it is dwell times measuring when you stop that scroll. So you might have a really good catchy, first one or two sentences. And then the point being that people might see that read it and then move on. So LinkedIn, no dwell time knows that you’ve read it, but you’ve moved on.
Samantha Riley (17:33):
Can we just dive into that a little bit deeper? Because he said that LinkedIn doesn’t like it to be click Beatty, but we want people to stop? Can you give us an idea of what would be click Beatty and something that’s going to have people click the See More just some sort of example, so that we can understand the difference? Yeah, so
Adam Houlahan (17:49):
clickbait is really where that line doesn’t align with the rest of the content. So it might trick people into thinking it’s about something, but the real subject matter is actually completely different. So that’s like a clickbait type concept.
What is, you know, where it’s something really intriguing. And I’ll give an example. So a piece of content that I shared some time ago was probably still the number one sort of most viewed and interacted on pieces of content that I ever created.
I think you’ve got like over half a million impressions about 1800 people that took up the next step of you know, what we’re asking them to do that type of thing. So the opening line was, this is not verbatim, but pretty close to what I said, my best advice was close your LinkedIn account today. Let me share the backstory.
That’s all said, yeah. So people like ah, Adams, always talking about what we should be doing on LinkedIn. And now he’s saying close their LinkedIn account what we have to know what this what this is all about.
Yeah. So and then, you know, when they open it up, I just told a true story about a conversation I’ve had with somebody who had contacted us and wanted to do really spammy, terrible stuff on LinkedIn.
And we just said, we don’t do that. And LinkedIn doesn’t need people like you doing that. Why don’t you just close your account and go. And so the point being, though, is what dwell time is looking for is that people click see more. So as soon as that click see more happens, the algorithm goes, okay, this person stopped scrolling, and they’ve been interested enough to click see more and see all the content.
Now if they click See More, and you know, a status post, which is your written content on LinkedIn allows you to have up to 3000 characters of copy I guarantee you if you use now that remember before on our About section, I said use every one of those 2600 In this case, do not use anywhere near that 3000 characters.
Now, it’s harder to write short content than it is to write compelling long content. Yeah, so that’s the mistake that often people make they say I’m creating all this fantastic copy, but it’s so long people are not reading that. and they move on. So the sweet spot is 12 to 1500 characters of copy out of the 3000. Maximum.
Keep that and in like as in a word count that’s in the ballpark of 200 to 230 words as an idea. So the second thing is keep it it’s short, short beats long, almost every single time. And it also knows how long it takes for people, the algorithm knows how many characters is in that copy.
And it knows at a normal reading speed, roughly how long it would take you to read that. So if people click See more, see it’s really long, and then move on or read the first paragraph and move on, they get okay, it knows you weren’t truly interested in that. So all these things affect, you know, how your content is gonna perform.
And the key thing is that when you post your content, now, there’s this myth, I’m going to bust this little myth today for you that and I’m sure you’ve seen it, there’s all this conjecture around what’s the best day and time to post
Samantha Riley (20:57):
100%. And you see people asking it all their time.
Adam Houlahan (21:01):
Yeah, and look, I’m not gonna dive into what the reality is on Instagram, or Tiktok, or whatever, because I don’t know, it might be a good time. But what I can tell you on LinkedIn, there’s no such thing as the best day or time. And the reason is, because we’re becoming a global community.
And like, for me, as an example, I got people that follow my content all over the world. So if you were to say the best time of the day was to post a midday on Tuesday, I go well, midday Tuesday, where exactly. And so the algorithms know that. So there’s no such thing as a best time.
Because what it’s going to do, if your content gets through that, what I’m going to share with you in a second is the critical things about getting traction, then what it does, it lets your content, that piece of content live in your in people’s feeds for up to seven days.
Because it knows that, you know, people that by you in the UK, are going to be more active at a different time, it’s going to be almost the next day before that’s the right time for them to see your content. So it starts to serve your content to those people at a time, they are normally active on LinkedIn.
So it’s not about when you post it’s about when your audiences is active. And so the simple reality and things people should sort of take a lot of comfort in is there’s no such thing as a best day or time what it is how much traction, your content gets in the first two hours. So the best time is to post when you have a good audience. So for us here in Australia, that’s probably gonna be in our morning time.
Because when you first upload your content, little bot comes along and algorithm, it’s coming to look and see for reasons why it should suppress your content. And here’s why most people’s content files, it’s because they put a link in there that takes people off the platform. They’re using it as a marketing tool.
And as soon as the bot sees that link, it doesn’t care where that link goes, you could actually be linking to LinkedIn ‘s own external blog and writing content, say this is the best content ever created, doesn’t read where it goes, Is there a link that takes people off the platform? Yes. Okay, we’re going to suppress this content, and your content just dies and natural deaths, like right from the get go.
Now doesn’t mean to say nobody can see it doesn’t mean to say if I went to your profile, I couldn’t see it, I can, they’re not stopping you posting it, they’re just going to make sure most people don’t see it. So you got to make sure you don’t put links in there.
And then let’s say it doesn’t have that it only opens it up and lets somewhere around eight to 10% of your connections and predominantly ones who are in your local timezone see that content, and just leaves it like that for roughly two hours. And it comes back to see whether there’s any interaction on that content.
So what’s actually the most critical thing is that you get traction in those first two hours. And how you get that traction obviously, is in how you craft that content. So that in simple terms, you’ve got to create content that poses a question or poses a subject matter point of view. It’s got to be aligned again, to your your five topics, that you create a mode and in really simple terms, then ask a question.
That’s what it is, you’re gonna have a look at all my content always ends with a question, what’s your point of view on this? Have you seen this happen as well, you know, what would you do if this happened to you? Whatever the question is, and the reason is because it makes it really easy for people to share.
Yeah, and go, yeah, and once the algorithm sees that, you know, as people are starting to engage on it, it goes, Okay. Well, if this subset of people were interested in this content, then clearly the your wider community is potentially interested in that content. So then it opens it up. And remember, you’ve got now seven days.
So when people say don’t get traction, what they should be doing is always measuring their analytics on day seven or day eight of the life of that content because that’s where it’s at. You know, there’s certain cases where it can live for 14 days, but in what 95% of cases, day seven is kind of where it all sort of peter out and have lived its life, so to speak.
Samantha Riley (25:13):
So a lot of interaction in the first two hours, and then have a look at how that fares over seven days. My question is, is it possible to get good traction on LinkedIn with your content without being part of a LinkedIn pod?
Adam Houlahan (25:26):
Well, you know, there’s good parts, and there’s bad ones. So I’m not saying don’t use them, but they’ve got to be really good quality ones. And again, a mistake I often see people make is they create their own lists are gonna get a bunch of people in our company, and we’ll all interact on each other.
Now, if everyone’s part of the same organization, then that’s going to be clearly obvious. And you’re still going to activate these oppressions and things like that. And of course, even if it’s otherwise, I’ve seen where they’ll be part of a networking community. So they’re not all part of the same organization, but they might be part of the same BNI group.
So hey, let’s all get together. And we’ll do this thing is over time, it’s still exactly the same people every single time. And that doesn’t sort of do you any favors as well. So the answer is, I know some people who get really good traction without using them.
And I know the majority of people are using really high quality pods that know how to operate correctly. Yes. So the answer is yes, they can be very helpful in increasing that engagement. Just remember, though, you know, if it’s crappy content, then you’re amplifying, you know, you want to, again, if you’re going to use a pod, make sure you’re putting out really, really good quality content.
And I’ll be marketing style content, because there’s a big change to the algorithms in June this year. So literally, you know, only only six weeks ago, it’s the biggest change that has happened in quite some time. And so now the algorithms can tell the difference between marketing style content and thought leadership style content.
Oh, interesting. And one of the terms they’re using is Facebook, like content, which is not to say there’s anything wrong with Facebook, but they’re the type of content we might be used to, and happy seeing on Facebook, like, you know, hey, what we did on the weekend, or, you know, off on this trip, or, Hey, I’m going to this event today, that type of stuff, bind on Facebook, perfect ways to put it. But that’s not the content LinkedIn wants, well, what I should say it’s not the content, LinkedIn is going to prefer you prefer.
So they’re not going to, as I said, they’re not going to stop your posting, they’re just going to make sure that nobody really sees it. So So you got to make sure the only content they like is that thought leaders, like subject matter expertise is this term that you use. Now. It’s also their way of combating AI.
Because we all know that it’s easier to create content now with things like Chet GPT, and Bard and all these cool tools. And again, I’m not saying you shouldn’t use them, 100%, you should use them. But you should use them to get to first draft Yes. And now what LinkedIn knows is that, you know, AI tools can do the heavy lifting of creating content.
But what it can’t do is it can’t put your personal point of view your experience into that content system, you cannot do that yet. You know, the rate of change with AI? I’m not I’m never going to say never. But right now, it can’t do that. And so what it’s favoring is the content that does have that because they know it can’t be written by AI.
So that’s the thing you’ve you’ve also got to by all means use these tools to do the research, do all the heavy lifting. But then you’ve got to make sure it has your own personal sort of thought leadership style of subject matter expertise is the term I probably prefer. And also ask a question at the end.
That’s the type of content LinkedIn wants to five, to promote. And when it does get through all that, LinkedIn will then start to show your content. And this is what I mean by as people even with only say more, let’s just round it off. And let’s see you got 1000 connections, the maximum you can have is 30,000.
You can’t have more. So people commonly say, Oh, someone’s got 100,000 connections on LinkedIn, or you know, they’ve got 100,000 followers, not not 100 connections, there’s a big difference.
But you can only have a maximum of 30,000 connections. So I have 30,000 connections, almost near the maximum. But someone with 1000 connections can get equally or more traction than I can because it’s not about numbers anymore. It’s about how relevant you how much you stay true to those creative mode, subject matters and how much subject matter expertise you’re putting into that content.
And as long as you can just get that initial, you know, couple of hours worth of interaction, then LinkedIn is actually then going to stop shut. This is what I mean. You help people say well, how can Um, you know, someone with 1000 connections can have their content, you get 10,000 15,000 impressions, they don’t even have that many connections.
And the point is, is that LinkedIn knows, again, if we’d looked at, you know, we’ve heard the term look alike audiences. So, you know, look alike means that you might have a certain audience, but the platform knows all the other people that look like that audience.
So the look alike is that LinkedIn will knows all the people that are interested in that particular topic. And so they’ll start to actually show your content below far and wide beyond just your own network. It’s not a not a matter of I mean, it’s a good thing to be building your connections for your lead generation purposes. It has no bearing on your content.
Samantha Riley (30:46):
Interesting, let’s make the switch to lead generation. Because, you know, as business owners, everything we do has to have that strategy to getting clients, we’re not just creating content for the sake of creating it, it’s to have our ideal clients find us or how can we use LinkedIn to connect with those right people.
And I’m going to add a little piece here without it being spammy, because my God, there’s some horrible stuff and really saw then there are some really horrible tactics on LinkedIn right now
Adam Houlahan (31:17):
there are and for anyone sort of watching or listening, just run that through your own filter, like, if you’re thinking about doing or have done that type of marketing in the past. Think about it in reverse, like, because I guarantee you you’ve had it done to you as well. But how often did you interact on it?
Like, almost almost never. So spamming out that type of approach will rarely ever work, whether it’s on LinkedIn or anywhere else? Yeah, exactly. But we’re just talking about LinkedIn today. So I guarantee that that does not do well, there’s also now and again, a lot of people are not aware, there’s actually an inbuilt spam filter into the direct message inbox.
And if you’re using, say, automation, or if you’re just using employ, you could even be doing it yourself. Or if you’re using an assistant or someone to just punch out, say, I’m gonna send 100 messages a day, and it’s exactly the same message to every single person, then they’ll pick that up that it’s really the same. It’s a marketing message.
And the thing is you they won’t again, they’re not going to stop you punching them out. They’ll let you waste all the time you like. But they’re actually those messages are not even going into those people’s inboxes anymore.
They’re just getting diverted into the spam. So yeah, definitely, that is not a valid strategy anymore for multiple reasons, which is not to say, there’s not decided there isn’t a place to be doing direct messaging. But what really works well on LinkedIn, is you’ve got to first position yourself as that subject matter expert.
So our profiles are optimized, like we’ve just talked about, we’re creating this awesome content that people like and interact on. And then of course, you’re going to invite people to take that next step with us, the next step is never buy my stuff. It’s you know, because you know, in marketing, everything is about people to just take one next step and one next step. And one next step.
So think about that very first interaction you have with people on LinkedIn should just be that one next step, which is to bring them off LinkedIn to something else. Now that could be you know, that you’re hosting a webinar as an example. So it’s, Hey, I’m hosting this free webinar. Would you like to come and a link to the webinar?
It could be that you have a free course. It just deepens the rule. Yeah. Hey, you’ve got this free course. Yeah. And it clearly it needs to be very targeted to the people. I remember getting one just recently that someone said, Hey, we have an amazing solution for accountants like you.
Samantha Riley (33:46):
Really, yeah, really done your research. They’re
Adam Houlahan (33:49):
nice one. But so make sure you know, if you’re gonna do these messages that it is, you know, targeted to the right type of people course. So yeah, it could be a free course. It could be actually, you know, it’s not what’s not working that well is for authors saying, Hey, would you like a free download of my best selling book?
No, it’s not working? Well, no, because if the and again, if you think that through, the reason is, is, okay, you’re me, or I might be willing to give away a copy of our book for free, but recipient has to invest five or six hours to read it.
So again, I’m not saying you don’t do that. But normally how we would do that is this amazing assessment that it’s going to show you where how well you’re doing in these four different areas of LinkedIn, which are the ones we’re talking about now. And when you complete that if you’d like, you can have a free copy of my best selling book influencer or whatever. So we added as an add on Yeah, okay. So it’s things like that.
So assessments are things that that next step has to be something of value to people and where they see value in taking that next step with you. And generally speaking, you want them to probably give over their email address, you know, put them into your into your CRM. So every strategy We do is always as two main goals.
One is to bring them to an event that we’re running. So 10 times a year, we host an online events. And six times per year, we host live events, which are around Australia, New Zealand. So our entire strategy is just to get people to come to one of those events.
And secondly is, of course, is by registering for those events, then they’ve given us permission to, you know, put them into our CRM, so that we can then be sort of interacting with them off the platform.
So LinkedIn has a goal in lead generation, you should be using the platform to position your authority in the in the subject matter that your authority of using that authority to get people to willingly take the next step that moves them off the plate. almost zero times will you ever see us promote?
Now, you know, we have programs and things that run from $200 a month, up to $6,000 a month, but we’re never promoting those on LinkedIn. They’re always the next step people will tell you, they’ll come to our webinar, and then they’ll be interested in one of those after that. So it’s always next step, next step, next step, you’ll sell more by selling less
Samantha Riley (36:11):
love. It’s just like dropping the breadcrumbs that lead to the gingerbread house. That’s it. Now you just mentioned you’ve got an assessment. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think that this will be super helpful for people to put together everything that you’ve talked about today.
Adam Houlahan (36:27):
Yeah, exactly what it is, Sam, we put this assessment together so that people can get a ranking. Or there’s four different pillars that we’re talking about the other key to a successful lead generation strategy.
And so it will give you a ranking of how well you’re doing in each of those four, it’ll just ask you some simple questions that just all tick boxes can’t type of answers and take about five minutes to do it. And then it’ll give you a very detailed report at the end saying, hey, look, you’re doing well here.
Not so well here. If you’re not doing well here, then this is what you should need to do next. And at the end, yes, you can also get a free copy of one of my books. So yeah, I think there’s over 2000 people have taken that assessment now.
And it also aligns with the rankings that LinkedIn give you in their like what they call SSI, social selling index scores. So it’ll give you a ranking like that, like where you need to be little spoiler alert on that one is you need a score above 70. If you scores below 70 or below, then there’s work to do.
Samantha Riley (37:25):
Ah, awesome. So where can people go to be able to do that assessment,
Adam Houlahan (37:30):
if you like, I’ll share the link to because the URL is super long. Or they can get it if they go to my LinkedIn profile, go to the featured section there. The very first thing you see in there is a link to that assessment. But I’ll share it with you and you can share it out with everyone afterwards, if you like
Samantha Riley (37:46):
perfect. So connect with Adam on LinkedIn, say Adam Hoolahan on LinkedIn. Otherwise, just scroll below in that you’re listening to we’ll make sure the links there, or get the link over influenced by Vincent podcast.com.
Adam, thanks so much for sharing everything today. I’ve certainly opened my eyes up to a couple of the little tips and tricks that are going to be able to make a LinkedIn presence more popular.
And I think there’s still a lot of well, actually, I don’t think I know, there’s still a lot of opportunity on LinkedIn, even though there’s some people that are saying it’s, you know, not a fun place to be at the moment. I’m sure you’re hearing that too. But there’s still a lot of opportunity here on LinkedIn if we can get it right. It certainly
Adam Houlahan (38:25):
- And it just literally comes down to knowing what you’re doing. That’s and that’s the difference, as you mentioned, right at the very start. What’s the difference between the people who are getting good traction and not is the people who know all the stuff we’ve just shared. They’re the ones are getting good traction and the people who don’t know the ones who aren’t.
Samantha Riley (38:41):
Yeah, love it so much. Thank you so much for coming and sharing all the value today. Really appreciate it.
Adam Houlahan (38:46):
Absolute pleasure.
Samantha Riley (30:18):
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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