How to Leverage LinkedIn to Become an Industry Influencer

On July 25th A Better Jones founder and CEO Kasey Jones joined growth strategist and influence builder Lucas Walker to discuss How to leverage LinkedIn to become an industry influencer.

The duo shared all sorts of tips and tricks that can help you rise to the top of your industry, and establish yourself as a thought leader. The conversation touched on the following:

• Building and flexing your creativity/ideation muscle

• How to properly combine video and LinkedIn to engage with your network

• Utilizing Slack communities to boost your personal brand

• Why you should network with other leaders and stay connected

Check out the video below for all of Lucas and Kasey’s terrific insights, and get help on developing your own influence by signing up for their new coaching program!

Watch the recap:

Transcript:

Lucas Walker: Well, we're live.

Kasey Jones: Oh, we're, hey everyone. Gosh, we've got people from all over the place. That's awesome. So Lucas really wanted all of you people that joined on time to play a trick on all the people that are gonna join later and I ruined it. So he was gonna tell you all that you should say that you're all from Gary, Indiana, so that when other people join they're like, what the hell is happening, this is like a Gary, Indiana, hang, but then I asked all of you and I didn't tell you, so sorry Lucas.

Lucas: That's okay. I had played out the joke in my head probably way better than it would have been executed anyway, so I got all of the enjoyment. Yeah, Patrick knows what's up. Okay, now we're going. Gary, Gary, wow, there's just so many people from Gary, Indiana here, I didn't know we had so much demand, wow. Wow, love it.

Kasey: Gary, represent.

Lucas: Gary in the house, stand up.

Kasey: What what. Awesome. So we'll give it like another couple minutes 'cause there's a bunch of people still joining.

Lucas: Andrew, you've got to relocate to Gary, Indiana, just like everybody else.

Kasey: But so I'm curious from all of you as we get going, we're obviously gonna make this super interactive, so if any questions come up, Jeff, are you actually originally from Gary, Indiana? 'Cause that would be pretty cool.

Lucas: Retiring. That's right, after all you've learned from this webinar you can retire to anywhere in the world, and where else would you rather be than Gary, Indiana.

Kasey: Gary, Indiana. Oh, my connection isn't good. Okay. Well shoot. Voice is fine but my video. Oh, okay, Lucas was saying he was having a hard time seeing my video too.

Lucas: Yeah, you're a little pixelated. Why don't we get the slides going and you know what I look like. Here's what I look like and it's conveniently just like my picture. And then we can focus on the content.

Kasey: Yeah, sorry. We work internet, is no offense to we work.

Lucas: Huh, we not work internet.

Kasey: So okay, so just as we kick things off just know that we want this to be super interactive. If you guys have questions, guys and gals, sorry that I use that, share them in the comments. Let us know. We want to make sure that this is as helpful as possible for all of you and it's really interesting. I asked on LinkedIn a couple days ago what holds people back, and a lot of it was just imposter syndrome and fear, so hopefully we'll dispel some of that stuff today, but if something specific comes up or you've got a specific question, don't hesitate to share in the comments and we will do our best to address everything and sorry, I think we're just gonna be in and out of being pixelated, yay, internet.

Lucas: Kasey, can I say something really quickly on that about combating the fear.

Kasey: Yeah, absolutely.

Lucas: And this is more for pubic speaking, but I think it does apply to putting yourself out there. Most people want to see you succeed. There's far fewer trolls than you think. Most people are on your side, myself and Kasey included.

Kasey: Yeah. That is a really really good point. It can feel really terrifying, but most people are too busy worrying about how others perceive them to worry about how they perceive you.

Lucas: Yeah. Most people don't care enough about you to put you down.

Kasey: Yeah. It really is true and we've talked a bunch lately even about, for me, being a woman, and being public on LinkedIn, I get the occasional inappropriate message, but they're a lot rarer than you might think. And yes, this will be recorded and we will share.

Lucas: Oh look, Amanda. Hey Amanda. The dogs were barking, so I don't think they're going to make a cameo. I know that that was promised to you for signing up.

Kasey: We will share the recording after this and we will probably get it transcribed as well so that you can kind of read through it if that's easier 'cause I know that's easier for a lot of people. Ah, shoot, gosh. What, now we know why people love you, Lucas, it's just for your dogs.

Lucas: Here, we have a novelty size dog pillow.

Kasey: Okay, so I'm gonna share my screen 'cause we've put together a few slides. They're not the most, we're just kind of covering the high level points. Because in my experience it's a lot better.

Lucas: If we wanted wordy slides we would have done an e-book.

Kasey: Exactly. Okay, so I don't want to make this too small, but I still want to be able to see you, Lucas.

Lucas: That's mostly full screen.

Kasey: Okay.

Lucas: That's pretty good.

Kasey: Okay.

Lucas: That's good enough.

Kasey: So, oh wait. But I want to be able to see comments, that's a little more important to me. So hopefully that looks okay. So, okay. Building and tapping into your brand. We'll kick things off a little bit with okay, who the hell are we and why should we be talking about this, not that I'm, you know, let's be honest, we all have imposter syndrome. So I'm Kasey Jones. I run a small demand gen marketing agency called A Better Jones, and the reason why we're talking about this or why I'm talking about it is I think it was a little over a year ago when I started doing a lot more content on LinkedIn and a lot more video content on LinkedIn, and it's been a really fascinating journey of getting more consistent, getting more regular, both on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Seeing what feels authentic and what feels real for me and trying a million different things and testing them out and tinkering and honing that process as I go on, and so now we help, my firm, we help clients on the regular with doing this same work for themselves and for their teams, and I will let Lucas give his background although I will just tell you he is way too humble and he always downplays what a smart and capable and accomplished human he is.

Lucas: I haven't accomplished it yet.

Kasey: But I will also say Lucas and my friendship is a really great example of how building your personal brand can lead to more than just business stuff, because it was really, yes, we are, I'm friends with John Barrows and Lucas works with John.

Lucas: Well I didn't even know your relationship with John because, and it's the perfect segue that I really want to make sure it's covered, I first saw your video talking about SDRs and it was, I can't remember what the content of the video was, but I think it was just people complaining about SDRs on LinkedIn. It was a year ago so I apologize for not remembering exactly which video it was. And then, hey, my memory's pretty good, but it's not that good.

Kasey: You don't remember everything I've ever said on LinkedIn? Gosh.

Lucas: No, no. I wish I did. I'm usually pretty good. But it was that video it was sort of, I was paying attention to you, and then I realized that you and John had a connection when we were doing the we need to talk thing, and then it was because of your presence on LinkedIn that we had sort of talking and then we actually met in person at a HyperGrowth because I could see where you were sitting because a picture that you posted to Twitter, some guy with an orange hat that was, I said hey, that's Kasey, you're coming on the webinar that we were doing, so just by putting yourself onto social, that's how we got connected. A little bit about me, I've been running a lot of marketing for John and Jay Barrows. Really building up that brand on LinkedIn. I'm finally starting to do a little bit of my own in some areas that I'm I guess a thought leader in. I know that I should be pumping myself up a lot more here especially since that's what the topic of this webinar is, but really an area that I have some experience in, and so sales, marketing, and I'm one of the few that can really talk about both as well as specifically e-commerce and the B-to-B sales and side. So I do have an e-commerce company called Tricks Happen. If you have a dog I'll post a link to get two bags free. Shameless plug there, you just cover the shipping and handling. But also I co-founded a start-up called VenGage. So if you use any infographics, don't use CanVa, use VenGage. So that's my background. And then I've also done B-to-B side sales which is where my heart is. It's what I do enjoy doing. So that's a bit of my background. Pretty much everything on the top of funnel side on both marketing and sales.

Kasey: And that's another reason why Lucas and I became fast friends is we are both marketers whose hearts are on the sales team. 'Cause I started in sales and I made the transition to marketing and so one of the things that I think is really interesting about this whole concept of building your personal brand is that so much of it is, yeah, it's marketing, but I think it's sales leaders, sales reps, and just like leaders in general who can experience serious benefit, revenue wise but also career development and connections and your network all from building your personal brand. So without further adieu, we'll start to kick this off in terms of our recommendations of how you get started and how you can build this yourself. So Lucas, why don't you break down this framework which I think is one of the most helpful and most practical and easy to get started.

Lucas: Yeah, so it really comes down to three things. Listening, engaging, and then creating original content. But before you can start creating content or even repurposing content from one platform to another, it really is best to really listen and learn the nuances of your platform, but also who your audience is. And then once you start listening, start engaging with them, and then start to create content. A lot of people just push, push, push, push, push their content out, and then they wonder why no one's paying attention to it. It's because nobody really knows who you are, and you're not tailoring it for that platform. So a quick and easy example is, a YouTube video is going to be a lot different than a LinkedIn video, because LinkedIn is very much in the moment whereas YouTube has a lot more long tail. So you don't need the same intro and outro that you would, you can just get right to it on LinkedIn. Conversely, a lot more people are on their mobile, so you might want to do things like add captions to a video, I know Kasey's much much better at doing than I am.

Kasey: Well, and a big part of why I got much better at that is I got a ton, every time I would post a video, I would get a bunch of messages of people being like, hey, you really need to add captions. And yeah, look, there's lots of us that watch or that go on LinkedIn on our phone, and often if you're sitting on, I don't know, public transportation, or in a coffee shop,

Lucas: Or in an office without headphones.

Kasey: Yeah, you're not necessarily gonna listen to the actual sound, but the other thing too is it's the right thing to do to make your content more accessible to people that maybe have hearing challenges or those kind of things. So I highly recommend it, and it's really easy once you get in the habit of it. There's a great tool that I really wish I had a referral agreement with because I recommend it literally all the time. It's called Zubtitle, so it's subtitle with a z. Really easy to use, it's not expensive, and it's AI so it transcribes it for you, and it's very, very easy to edit. And I think what Lucas is talking about of listening to people in your industry and listening to your target audience, you want to listen to the other thought leaders that are talking about interesting things, that have a good following, because what you're gonna end up finding is there's gonna be certain people whose message and content you really connect with, and you can start to engage with our content, and every time I guarantee it, you start doing this and you'll realize that there's a point that you know they're missing, or there's something else that your experience tells you, there's another element that should be added, or another thing that should be included in this conversation and that they're not doing, and so it will give you a wealth of ideas of ways that you can expand on the content that is already out there. But the other thing, really quick, the other thing is that when you, you can then do a follow-up post or a follow-up video, and expand on something that someone said, and then you are totally justified for tagging that person in your comment or in your content, and it helps expand your reach and the people that then are following that person are more likely to engage with you and it helps you get more exposure and more engagement on that content.

Lucas: And the other thing too, from listening, is not just the people who are involved, but the topics as well. So not just the social graph, but the topic graph as well. It's funny, sales people love whenever someone does a post calling out people who call out sales reps. Or like yours that blew up. Or certain topics always tend to do very well, for example leaving a voicemail always seems to have a really heated debate, or texting prospects. For the record, you should always leave a voicemail unless their voicemail says to text or email them. If they've set up their voicemail, you might as well leave them one. Oh, Diego, Diego, are you sleeping? Wake up Diego, wake up! I don't know why Diego put this sleeping z's in there.

Kasey: I don't know, I think he thinks we're boring.

Lucas: Booo.

Kasey: Oh well.

Lucas: But yeah, so really listening first to learn the nuances of the topics and people and then let's jump on to that next slide, Kasey.

Kasey: Yeah. And while we're talking about this, I am really curious, who are the people that you all are finding super engaging? Whose content you're finding really interesting, are there thought leaders on LinkedIn who you look at what they're putting out there and you're thinking, God, I want to emulate that, or they're a really good model that I want to follow, or even they just make me think a lot about my industry or my space. Ooh, Jacob Morgan, I don't know that name. I'm gonna have to add that to my list. So I think, and one of the things that I think is really helpful on the listening side is also, oh, employee experience, interesting. So is really hunting out some of the, maybe not the biggest ones, but the people who are being consistent. Maybe it's somebody that you know personally. Maybe it's someone that you don't. But I encourage you not only to ask a lot of questions of people in your space or your industry of like, hey, who are you following, who do you find helpful. But also looking at when you are following that content, looking at what they are posting and how it's structured. So one of the things that I think is really interesting is that it can be really tempting to just put content out there to share your insights or your bright ideas.

Lucas: That worked nine years ago sharing a blog post. And by sharing good content you could be seen as a thought leader and an expert, but now people want your take on it and your opinion on it. Just sharing a link isn't enough. If you noticed that whenever we share this webinar we always gave some context behind it, it wasn't just we're doing a webinar, here's what to expect. It was always the content behind it. And part of it was we've seen what other people do when they're promoting their stuff, we see what works, so we don't need to waste a bunch of our own content and our time putting that effort out there for something that doesn't work. So I cannot stress this one enough, is just spend time on the platform. If you see a good post, take a screen shot of it. If you see something that works really well take a look and deconstruct, why is this post working out well? Usually there's something that stands out. For example, we saw one person that her content was really standing out on LinkedIn, and she always starts with a little dance, which a lot of people on LinkedIn don't do. A lot of people do videos from their friends to their car in the parking lot, so those don't really stand out as much. And it could be things like just seeing the nuances of different backgrounds. Is it a professionally done video? Are there subtitles, are there not? Is it text based? Is it links, is it images? What works? And just really listen purposefully to see what works. And on LinkedIn, most of that is in the feed. A question I get a lot is what about LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn Groups have been on the next big thing for the last three, four years. There's not a lot of activity in them. Now they're starting to push it, but I wouldn't spend too much time on LinkedIn Groups. You can use it to build your network out a bit, but they're all just kind of cesspools of people self spamming. There's not a lot of well-moderated highly-active groups on LinkedIn. And the other thing on this too is, if you do see someone's post that you like, send them a connection notice. I think people are simultaneously very afraid to connect and very liberal with connecting. They'll line up all their prospects, and just say, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect with no real reason, but if somebody's posting a content, they're putting themselves out on the platform, they probably want to engage with more people, so feel free to shoot them that connection request. I mean, if you're on this webinar and you see me on LinkedIn, just shoot me a connection. Oh, great question. Where do you see those active groups if not LinkedIn. Facebook's not as big as it used to be, but it does depend on the industry. There are some really good groups on Facebook. I know that there are some private Slack channels.

Kasey: There's a lot of great Slack channels, and so I highly encourage you doing some research. So there's a bunch of great digital marketing ones and there's a lot of local ones and niche industry ones.

Lucas: I think the best one that I'm in is an alumni group of a company that I worked at.

Kasey: Oh, really? That's awesome.

Lucas: Yeah. 'Cause all in the trolley taxing. But you kind of have to have worked there to join. So there's a lot of exclusive ones. And don't look for the biggest ones either. A lot of times the best conversations happen in the smaller groups. If there's a thousand members, you're not gonna see anyone or really know who's who.

Kasey: The big ones can get pretty noisy. Oh yeah, so yeah, Patrick, I'm not sure what industry you're in, but there's a lot of really fantastic Slack groups. So if you just do a little bit of Googling of, yeah, so if you do Googling of Slack group for whatever the industry is, or you can also just search best public Slack communities, those kinds of things. There's a bunch of aggregated lists and you can kind of go through them. There are ones for literally every type of topic. So if you're a marketer there's a great one called Online Geniuses. It's a little noisy, it's big, but it's really good, and I've learned a ton in there and whenever I need to freelance somebody I almost always go there first. I live in Portland. There's a great one for the start-up community here in Portland. I highly encourage looking through those, and what's really nice about most of them is that they have, they'll usually have a channel for self-promotion. So I think in Online Geniuses they call it the Hype Channel. No, that might be the Portland start-up one. Where you can just share, hey, I'm doing this thing, and you'll always get people clicking through. But you can also get great feedback on the other stuff that you're doing, and there's a great resource for just learning what people are talking about, what they're doing. Oh, the other one I will say. This is not a Slack community, but one of I think one of the best groups for marketers is the Daily Carnage. They have the best marketing newsletter I think out there. They're a small, I think, Pittsburg-based marketing agency and they've got a Facebook group called the Daily Carnage, and it's phenomenal. Highly recommended.

Lucas: And if anyone is in the e-commerce space, there's a couple of really good Shopify Facebook groups as well. So all over the place. MeetUp as well, if there's a local enterprise sales form or interim of sales TO. I'm surprised there's not a sales TO Slack channel, but I bet a lot of the MeetUp groups too have some sort of online community somewhere. But yeah, I just posted in the channel, I did a quick search of best Slack communities for marketers or something, that was the eight best Slack communities for inbound marketers, so you get pretty specific and really niche down into it.

Kasey: And just know you'll probably join some and be like eh, I don't care, and you will stop going into it. That's totally fine. It'll take you a little bit of time to find some good ones, but there's lots of really, really great ones out there. And I also say, another great source that's not a group, but another great resource for learning about what people care about, Reddit is awesome. There's sub-Reddits for damn near everything, and you can find some really great content and ideas for content on Reddit.

Lucas: Can I give my two biggest Reddit strategies away?

Kasey: Yeah.

Lucas: So number one is go to an interest specific sub-Reddit and search by top all time and you can see a lot of the common questions and themes that people really do like. The other thing is, if you have a geographical sales territory or you're going somewhere, subscribe to that city's sub-Reddit. You will learn a lot about the local nuances and little things of the culture that you can reference, and especially if you're on the sales side of the house, it does help you really stand out from other sales reps when you can make some sort of local reference that you have no business knowing.

Kasey: Yeah, awesome.

Lucas: Cool. So on that, should we talk about engagement?

Kasey: Yeah, let's do it.

Lucas: So once you start listening for the type of content that you want to see and you really start to build up your network with who you want to engage with, start engaging with them more and more. You can use Sales Navigator to create some lead lists. That's a lot of work, and I'm assuming that not everyone has access to Sales Navigator. So once you start to see some of the people I saw a Keenan mention there, really engage with it. So leave a comment, leave, give a like, it takes two seconds. And it does two things. One, it tells that person that you want to see more of their content. When you start adding value in the comments section people start to recognize you which as you start posting your content will mean people are comfortable engaging with it and recognizing it. I have a feeling that a lot of times people just engage with the content because they recognize you and know who you are. And a big part of that is they have to know who you are before you start posting that. So engaging with that content is an easy way to do it.

Kasey: And one thing I will just say, there are now a lot of people on LinkedIn that think that the best way for them to expand their influence on LinkedIn is to just post a comment on everything, and so there are certain people who I almost always will post something that has literally nothing to do with what I've said on LinkedIn, and it's like, and they will be one of the first ones to comment and it'll be a bunch of random emojis. Don't do that, okay. Actually take 30 seconds and write something specific. Write something that actually has to do with what they've said. Make sure you watch the whole video 'cause it's often that someone will read the first line of a post, they don't read the whole thing, and their comment has nothing to do with what the person is saying, and that doesn't add value.

Lucas: Or it asks something that you clearly address later in the video. On that note, do you want to go to the next slide where we've got a couple of good examples of comments I've made.

Kasey: Look at Lucas bragging to all of us.

Lucas: I've got to call out myself, I don't want to give some one else too much credit. But if you see, so someone made a comment about would you rather spend 20K on a key note speaker or give the audience $20,000, I said can you have a speaker who throws two quarters at everyone in the audience, and that really resonated with people. And again, there the value add was a little bit of humor. The other big post on the right here was something that DG from Drift posted. What are our sales or our biggest things with marketers? And for me, and it goes to show you don't have to be professional all the time, I'm dropping a minor swear word in here, but I said marketers thinking their beautiful designs are the shit when really it converts like shit. But I think a big part of that stems from marketing for vanity and not necessarily what's best for the team, and that comments got 39 likes, five replies, and other comments referencing it also getting a ton of engagement. So this does two things. One thing, it gets me engaging with other people, but it also helps me come up with topics that I want to talk about that I might want to talk about later. So whenever I have a good performing comment like this, I always add it to my notes in my phone or Evernote to do a post with this later. And that's one of the other big challenges, and that's that A, people are afraid of running out of content, or they run out of content, so every time you do something well, put it into your thought folder and good content will give you ideas for other content.

Kasey: And here's the other thing about this. Creativity, ideation, it's a muscle. You've got to build it over time. I remember pretty recently somebody posted something where I don't really remember what I had posted, but I said something, oh, it was about how do you come up with great ideas for content. And someone responded and said, oh, you can't force it, you have to wait until creativity strikes you. Oh my God, no you don't. Yes, forcing it sometimes it's gonna be awkward, but forcing it is going to get you to those great creative moments, right? So there's a guy, James Altiger, he's kind of a weird guy, he's got a great podcast though. He interviews really wonderful people and he has this argument that you should write ten ideas down every day. And ideas about whatever the hell you choose, but his argument is that you build up that ideation muscle over time, and no joke, I'm a big believer in the bullet journal, because whenever I have an idea for something I write it down and I flesh it out. And it's made me so much better and so much more creative over time of coming up with ideas for content, for projects I want to work on, all these other things. You gotta just get in the habit of doing it, and so when you have an idea, when somebody says something that makes you think something else, write it down. Write it down and build on it. I promise you you will get better and better at doing this, you've just got to get in the habit and get in that practice.

Lucas: Sorry, there's a question coming in. If you have good content is it bad to repeat it multiple times? No, not at all, just not in too much succession. So don't post the same thing on back to back days. Spread it out a few weeks at least. Also get high and go for a walk with your audio recorder on, am I right? No, we don't condone content with marijuana references on this webinar despite it being legal in both Oregon and here in Canada. But hey, you know what, if that works, then yeah, absolutely. You have a great point, Ben, of just stepping away and going for a walk. Your phone probably has an audio recorder in it. The alternative if you forget your audio recorder is just convince yourself that those ideas were not good anyway and you can come up with some better ones when you get back.

Kasey: Yeah, and can I just call out, Ben is my homie, we used to work together years ago, so it is very refreshing to see your face and your sense of humor again, Ben, I appreciate this. But, if you know what, if you can kind of rip and come up with some good ideas when you're a little bit stoned, go for it, right? There's definitely some folks on LinkedIn that you'll see they record a lot of content at the end of their workout. All right, I'm not gonna get on a treadmill with my airpods on and all sweaty recording something, but if that's when the creative juices are flowing, you do you, okay?

Lucas: Yeah, exactly, and it's, another good, as a fairly creative person, another good idea is just practice your creativity for stuff that has nothing to do with business, whether it's writing a novel or playing music or doing some magic or whatever it is, flex that creativity muscle elsewhere and you can start to see those patterns come up of what works and what doesn't work. Perfect example, Shane, here, of being creative, there's a website called cameo.com where you can buy shoutouts from celebrities, and I bought one from Chris Hansen. So Shane definitely saw that and tried to make a reference to it there, Shane told himself to have a seat right over there, so.

Kasey: So for those of you that don't remember, Chris Hansen of To Catch A Predator, you should all,

Lucas: Now Hansen Versus Predators is a new show.

Kasey: Okay, so you all need to go find Lucas on LinkedIn and watch this video, 'cause it's freaking amazing. It's incredible. Oh, Cindy and Craig, thank you. I knew it was you even though it's saying you're UpTop. You're not the entire company you work for, you are a human being.

Lucas: And that's a great segue into the topic of people buy from people, not necessarily the companies behind them. Even look at Apple or Tesla, it was Steve Jobs and it's Elon Musk, it's the people behind the companies not the brand themselves.

Kasey: Absolutely

Lucas: But there are very few brand brands that people are loyal to. And most of us aren't Nike, we're not Starbucks, we're not SalesForce, it's the people behind it. Like we see Chris Rollup from Gone, we see John M. Morgan, we see DG Drift. There's no reason that none of us can't be doing that and that's really what we're here to talk about today.

Kasey: Yeah, and so on that note one of the reasons why we're doing this webinar is we wanted to announce that Lucas and I are launching a beta of a new coaching program to help you all build your brand and create a consistent and sustainable personal brand building and thought leadership plan for yourself. And because what we are seeing is genuinely I am really passionate about this, I think that the next level or the next evolution of what HubSpot did with inbound marketing, HubSpot what they really said is through inbound marketing you want to build this trust relationship between your ideal buyers long before they even want to buy from you so that when they have a need they're not gonna go anywhere else 'cause they trust you. And I think the next generation of this is instead of it being company based, it's gonna be people-based. And we're seeing all the examples that Lucas just shared, I think Ally McKee of Styck is a really good example as well. I think for those of you

Lucas: For background on the Chris Hansen video, why I did it was we were trying to find great examples of females that are putting themselves out there. And there's not that many, and a lot of it is the creepy messages, so in jest, but also from a very serious place, that's why I did the video.

Kasey: So we are putting together this program and so I've just added the Find Out More button. It'll tell you a little bit about the program that we're doing and why, and there's also, we want to make sure that anybody that signs up for this beta is someone that we feel really confident we can help. So we included a little bit of an application. So if you click that link that just showed up that Find Out More button, which I love how Crowd Cast animates this glitter that goes across it, but anyway it'll give you a little bit more info about what we're doing and a link to the application, and so if you are at all considering going down this path and you want a little bit of help or guidance, check it out and let's talk about us all working together and us all connecting on this 'cause I think that there's a real way for us to help one another.

Lucas: It's crazy the value that so many companies are leaving on the table. Just if their executive teams posted more it's let's say the CP of Montana is I think it's 26 bucks. So you have to pay $26 now in advertising to reach 1,000 people the last time that I saw it. So that one video, so I paid Chris Hansen $50 to do that video, it's reached 3,000 people, so there's the direct ROI there. I paid $50 to have $75 worth of reach.

Kasey: Yeah, and I can say also, so we've figured out over time that when I do videos to promote a webinar or to promote an event or a project that I'm working on, what we've seen, and this isn't true every time, but the average is basically that one percent of the number of views that I get on that video on LinkedIn will convert to a lead. So that means if I'm getting 20,000 views on a video, I'm getting 200 people that are signing up and actually engaging. And that is free, first of all.

Lucas: Well it's not free. You have to put in the work with creating the content. It's not free, but it's doable that all of us can do it. You have to pay with your time and your creativity and putting yourself out there, but it's absolutely doable and as the cost of advertising keeps going up and up and up, it's a great way to drive that top of the funnel. Even look at this webinar, we had a few hundred people sign up and we spent zero dollars promoting it.

Kasey: And what's really great about it is then when you read through the comments then we have a much better sense of what the content is gonna look like when it's really valuable. What are the things that you guys are thinking about? What can we bring to the table that's gonna make this a worthwhile exercise for everybody, and that's also really key. When you're having this dialogue with your audience, your ideal buyers, your prospects, your whatever you want to call them, one, you're gonna build a sense of trust with them, but they're also gonna teach you a ton of things about what they care about, and that makes it just that much easier for you to deliver value to create a better relationship and yeah, let's be honest, to make more money. And so there are so many benefits besides just the exposure to doing this. And if you are not an executive at a start-up or not a founder of a start-up, this is also an incredible way to develop your career. The next time you want to look for a job, somebody is going to be able to look at that, to look at your social media feed, and they're gonna have a way better sense of who you are and how capable and smart and insightful you are about the work that you do.

Lucas: One perfect example here is look at how many people that showed up in the comments who we recognize, like Shane who commented on my post and sent me a message about it. Amanda who, unfortunately was the inspiration for that post. But I recognized Amanda before from the content that she was putting out about speaking at Inbound and HyperGrowth, and it was a tongue-in-cheek comment about, I think Amanda posted a selfie from HyperGrowth, and I said, oh, we took a selfie together because I was somewhere in the background of the photo.

Kasey: So, and Amanda has a really really good question. How do I convince my leadership team at my company to support my influence or aspirations? I don't think they even know how to use LinkedIn, so it's been difficult to get them to understand the importance of it. Amanda, click that link, that Find Out More button, because I put a bunch of statistics that I think are compelling AF about why this matters. The data is seriously backing up that a company, so when employees share content, it has a much, much bigger reach than when a company does. And my company does marketing for start-ups, and without a doubt, we see the biggest lift when it comes to the executives on their teams really being vocal and really being out there, and I can even say for my own business, my company Twitter and it hasn't been around for that long, so bear with us, but it has 600 followers, mine has almost 6,000, so we connect with people, not with companies, and I think, and Amanda maybe we can also take this offline of some of the other ways that you can talk through this with your leadership team, but truly there is an ample amount of data that backs up how incredibly valuable this is to their bottom line.

Lucas: And if I can chime in as well, it has to come from the top down and that's why we're launching the executive program and not just the employee program, is that to hopefully create a culture where it's not just permitted but encouraged to really have your employees sharing out there on LinkedIn, but most of us in our career are probably not going to be at the same company in three or four years. Do it for yourself, like keep putting yourself out there. It will pay dividends down the road, whether or not it's your current company who reaps the benefits or a future company, keep doing it for yourself. It's your personal LinkedIn profile. Keep putting yourself out there.

Kasey: Yeah, and I think look, there is a way for you to make the case to that leadership team so that they do support you of how your personal brand is in line with their corporate brand. And so think through that what are the things that you can talk about and that you can say that don't just make you look good, but make them look good as well and make it clear that you are furthering their brand and their mission. But I will point out and Lucas and I were addressing this a little bit before, I think there are more women that worry about this than men. I've got a good friend here in Portland, Nina Church Adams. She did a video maybe eight months ago now where she asked hey, who are the marketers that are doing great video content on LinkedIn, and she noticed that of all of the people that were referenced in the comments, the only women that were referenced were women that were leaders of their own companies. So their company brand and their personal brand were one and the same. And that wasn't true of men. And I don't think it's that men, I think women are just more reticent to take that leap and to be bold there and I'm not 100% certain why that is, but I think that there is a lot of room for the women out there to build a more public brand even if they are part of a larger entity. We need to catch up.

Lucas: No, absolutely. Speaking of catching up, I was afraid that we weren't going to have enough content and now I'm afraid that we're running behind 'cause we're already three quarters through and it's getting to creating the content where I have the most notes, so first off if you take away anything from the content creation, you're probably not creating enough. And a big reason for that is you're probably worried about making it perfect and flawless. There is no way to predict what will do well and what will really resonate, so just put it out there and take notes of what as well. I was catching up my YouTube channel, but I have it running, so I reached out to a friend of mine who's a pretty good YouTuber, and he said that some of the stuff you can see the engagement early on, but for the most part you have no idea what will work. He spent a ton of money producing videos that get 3,000 views, and then he does one that's the dumbest thing in the world, and it gets over a million.

Kasey: Oh yeah, and I can tell you on LinkedIn in my experience, the content that I take the most time and most preparation with and I feel is the most dialed in usually does the worst. It's the stuff where I'm off the cuff and more passionate that does better.

Lucas: Yeah. And so don't worry about lighting and everything. If you have one of these, one of these fruit phones or the little robot phone you can create good content. Try to get good lighting and decent audio, and you're set.

Kasey: And I will tell you my first video on LinkedIn that went viral, it got 175,000 views in a week or a week and a half, it was my iPhone on a stack of PostIts leaning against my computer monitor and I just clicked the button and I didn't edit it and I had no captions. So don't let thinking about equipment and stuff like that is just you delaying. Just do it.

Lucas: Yeah, exactly. People want to hear from you it doesn't need to be overly produced. You don't need intros and outros and all that stuff. Like I said, get good lighting and decent audio. And then maybe if you want, spend a few bucks to put captions on it, but don't even worry about that as you're getting started. Just do it.

Kasey: Just do it. And the one thing that I will say though is that if you are doing video make sure that you are setting it up in a way that you can be yourself. So think about how, let's imagine you're at a bar, or a barbecue or something and you're with a bunch of friends and you're talking about something you're really excited about. How do you talk? I have a super expressive face and I talk with my hands. If I don't do that on a video, I am boring. How I communicate is loud, I make big facial expressions, I'm moving my hands around like this, so figure out what you look like when you're really passionate and engaged, and figure out how you do that on video.

Lucas: Yeah, and get comfortable on video. We all have flaws. I have this weird thing where I breathe through the side of my mouth, and instead of stopping it it's my thing, no one's caught on to it yet, but it's so true. The same YouTuber told me if anyone watches AJT, the champion of champions. All right Josh, take care. But the champion of champions Shin Lim in all his videos he's playing with his hair and stuff, and he does that to ham it up because he knows people notice it. But that's him. You don't have to try to be someone that you're not. You're not playing a fictional character. You're not trying to be the Marlboro man or something, you're just being you. And the best thing that I did in the last couple years was just being myself. Having said that, it does take a bit of practice to be comfortable on video, so I know there was a question earlier about repeating content and practicing. If you're just starting out and you've written down some ideas, maybe practice on your b ideas for the first few videos until you're comfortable and talk about stuff that you know that you are comfortable with. And even have some people around you because it is weird watching yourself and seeing yourself on video. I've never met a single person who likes the sound of their own voice or doesn't start pointing out their little flaws, Oh man, I didn't realize I breathed so loudly. I should really stop breathing next time. It's an eight minute video, you have to breathe. Get comfortable with it 'cause nobody else notices it. However, on that note, funnily enough on LinkedIn text-based posts do tend to do pretty well, so if you have an idea you can schedule it in buffer and just share that, but that's why it's so important to start by listening because you realize that you see a lot of text-based posts and maybe people respond better when it's broken up with one or two sentence paragraphs. Maybe add in an emoji. But you don't really notice that if you're not paying attention or you have to create a lot of content to find out what works, but text-based does do very well, and then you can sort of recycle and reuse some of that content by turning that text post into a video or doing a text-based post about that, or like I did with the Chris Hansen video, I did a follow-up post that was all text-based today because I could quickly get out five key learnings about that.

Kasey: And I will also say check out buffer what it lets you do, and I'm not always the best at this but I'm getting better is about once every two weeks I will sit in buffer for about 30 to 45 minutes while I'm watching TV or stuck in traffic. Not while I'm driving, not while I'm driving. When someone else is driving. And I will just rattle off a bunch of different posts, and it schedules them for you, and so there is absolutely a way where you can sit there for an hour once every two weeks and cue up a bunch of content, and so you can really minimize the time investment and the challenges associated.

Lucas: And with that, pay attention to when that does get published and how it gets published. I know with images on LinkedIn and videos sometimes it's a little bit janky.

Kasey: Yeah, I've done some videos there.

Lucas: Yeah, it embeds it with their own buffer video. It might be native now, but I didn't love it. So just pay attention to the little nuances like that. And also paying attention to when it's scheduled so you can start engaging with the people who engage with you. One, it's the polite thing to do. People showed up to your party, you should welcome them. It also encourages more engagement which means the more engagement you have, the more people will see your content, and especially if you're encouraging people to engage with you, that tells LinkedIn, it tells the platform, wow, Larry really likes to see Lucas's content. We're gonna show Larry more of what Lucas is posting.

Kasey: Yes. And so that's the other thing. You have to tell your audience what you want them to do. So tell them to comment. Ask them a question. Don't just share an idea and hope that someone's gonna think it's really smart. Most of the time if you share something really smart but you don't ask a question or you don't ask for comments, people will maybe like it, but they'll just keep going. So please, tell them what you want them to do and they're a lot more likely to engage and that's what drives views.

Lucas: And it can be as simple as saying, hit me with a thumbs up if you agree, or asking for, has this happened to you? It doesn't need to be a long winded tell me about a time when this happened to you, it can be yay or nay. Did this resonate? And it's cliche, but putting the do you agree in the post, it works. People do tend to agree with that. So I think that that's the most of it. Really, I would say,

Kasey: No, so you can tag people if it makes sense. Do not be one of those people that tags random people that you don't actually know and it's not really related to what you're saying.

Lucas: Same thing with hashtags. Don't use every hashtag in the book. The way to use hashtags is once people can find your previous content, so if you use your own personal hashtag for your posts, you can do that. Or if it really is relevant at the end, so hashtag inbound marketing might help, but don't do hashtag webinar, hashtag women, hashtag sales, don't hashtag LinkedIn. Keep it at three max, 'cause hashtags really are a way to categorize things. So if you're talking about women in sales, don't do hashtag women, hashtag sales, hashtag in, hashtag networking. Don't do that. And then don't tag a bunch of female leaders that you know. That one sticks out 'cause I've seen multiple people do that.

Kasey: Yeah, but I think Patrick, I think if you, what you're looking for is you're encouraging people to respond. So the other thing I will say is especially as you're starting to get going, I guarantee you got maybe five to ten friends that no, you're not gonna do this with every single post, but when you've got one you feel really passionate about, send an email to your friends and be like, hey, I just posted this, would you mind checking it out and if it resonates with you at all please leave me a comment.

Lucas: Or even Slack it to some coworkers.

Kasey: Slack it to coworkers

Lucas: Or Slack it to people you engage with on LinkedIn, say hey, I would love to get your feedback on this. And it doesn't need to be every post. It doesn't need to be everyone in your contact book, but if you engage with other people's content it can be a great way to start driving that engagement for your stuff.

Kasey: Yeah. And Jeff, it's surprising, but I think afternoons I tend to get the best engagement quickly because I think it's at the end of the day when people are maybe they're on their commute home or they're winding down for the day and that's when they're checking LinkedIn. But I would also encourage you to post, try it at a bunch of different times, and see what works.

Lucas: And good content rises to the top. It's the time of day matters a lot less than it used to, especially with time zones.

Kasey: And one of my videos that did the best I posted on a Friday afternoon so not when you would have thought, but it did really, really well, so it just depends.

Lucas: Yeah. No, exactly. Patrick Malone. Would you mind commenting on all of my content? Thanks, guys. Send it to us and then loan us some money if you really want it on content. I need some skin in the game, I feel the guilt if I don't otherwise.

Kasey: Buy our affection, Patrick.

Lucas: Our engagement is for sale. We accept dollars. Cash money. But no, yeah, if I see it I will, I mean you showed up to the webinar, the least I can do is like your content if I see it showing up on LinkedIn.

Kasey: Deal. We will send that in an email in case you want to bribe us.

Lucas: I should have picked a service that I can use in my country to get money.

Kasey: Oh yeah, does VenMo work in Canada?

Lucas: I don't think so, no. I don't know anyone that uses it and I've never used it, so.

Kasey: Cash App?

Lucas: I don't think so.

Kasey: I don't know. Okay, so everyone this was a really fantastic session. I really appreciate everybody sending or sharing your comments and your questions. Again, if you are thinking about wanting some extra help either for you or your company, click the Find Out More, fill out the application, we'd love to work with you. We're really excited about launching this beta program, and if you've got additional questions for us send them our way. We will send out an email with a link to this video and we'll get the transcript going as well and I'll share the link in that email as well, so if there's somebody that you think this would be interesting for, please share it with them. The more the merrier. And we'll see you on LinkedIn. So absolutely, if you guys are getting started, send us a quick LinkedIn message with a link to your new content and we will be more than happy to engage and give you some feedback 'cause I'm a big believer that rising tide lifts all boats and we can do this all together.

Lucas: Yep, absolutely. I think that's it unless there are any more

Kasey: No.

Lucas: But I don't think there is.

Kasey: We'll give you your three minutes back.

Lucas: Perfect.

Kasey: Thanks everyone, it was really really great.

Lucas: See ya.