Episode 112: Engaging With Other People’s Content on LinkedIn

Bob Woods  00:00

Greetings one and all and welcome to Making Sales Social Live! I’m Bob Woods and with me today, as always, is Brynne Tillman, the LinkedIn whisperer, how are you doing today, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  00:11

I am awesome, Bob, how are you?

Bob Woods  00:12

Doing great, thank you very much. 

Introduction 00:19

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live as we share LinkedIn and social selling training strategies and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me Bob Woods every week, Making Sales Social Live. 

Bob Woods  00:136

Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about your efforts to start more sales conversations on LinkedIn. So social sellers, like us, should look for different avenues to engage with their prospects and there are all different kinds of avenues that you can travel. Your own posts to. your newsfeed as solo shows up in everyone else’s newsfeed hopefully, is obviously one way to do it but why not take that a step further. 

Engaging in other people’s content is a great way to amplify your own voice and reach folks you may not have access to in your own posts. So there was. I was actually on clubhouse about six or eight months ago now, where there was a gal talking, she got her first several pieces of business from doing this specifically didn’t even have any of her own content posted yet, but just by starting conversations in other people’s posts, she got legit business out of it. So this is just as big, in my opinion, as doing your own posts. Would you agree with that Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  01:41

Yeah! And not only is it powerful, you post them, we’ll talk about all different ways to engage with others, but you post content, we definitely teach you how to get in front of more of the right people. But imagine the ability to get in front of more of the right people simply by finding and engaging on the right people’s content, and the commenters of those content, it also by the way, has a huge impact on the algorithms. So when you engage on other people’s content, they’ll start to see your content. You know, it does a lot of magic things. So let’s go through, I know we have a list, and I always go rogue. So bring me back in.

Bob Woods  02:27

Let’s go rogue but I do think it’s interesting, that LinkedIn algorithm actually recognizes just your work on LinkedIn in general, because I think in that way, it keeps out some of the more Lurker people who may just you know, definitely, when you do this, just posting, you know, great answer, or great, you know, great post or whatever definitely doesn’t do it, you have to do it the right way. And we’ll go through those right ways as we go through probably the three main ways to actually execute on this. So the first way is people within your own network. That’s number one. 

Brynne Tillman  03:07

Yeah, so you can actually I mean, there’s lots of ways to do this obviously, you can look through your newsfeed but that is a lot of noise, you can actually search posts of your first degree connections within the last 24 hours, within the last week, like we can search posts specifically posted by our 1st-degree connections. I think that the purpose of this now is to get rid of the sponsored ads, to get rid of even the people in your network that are liking or engaging on posts, these are literally posts that your network have shared. So this is a great way to scroll through some of these and look at the author of that post. Look at who’s posting and also look at the content, right is this content that you can talk to that you can bring additional insights to Yeah, you can like or react, right? There’s lots of reactions. And by the way, just a thumbs up is sort of a boring reaction. If you choose the curious guy, or the celebrate, or the insights, you’re gonna stand out more. So that’s number one. 

Number two, your comment, as Bob was stating before, just saying great post is not going to get you real engagement, although it can help in the algorithm, it certainly will not help in the conversations, right? So take a look at the content and yes @ it don’t contradict the poster because we want to build rapport and relationship. You can challenge insights once you have a better rapport with someone but if you are just going in cold don’t necessarily challenge them the first time with an idea yes @them great insights. 

One of the ways we’ve done this is or one of the ways we’ve seen this or our clients do and so yes, and @them, it’s a positive response and look at the people that are commenting, engage with them as well.

Bob Woods  05:07

And that’s especially important if they’re 2nd degrees because these are people who don’t normally see you because just from the very fact that you’re not their 1st degree people. So when you engage with those people, if you start a good conversation within the comments, which happens all the time, I’ve seen it, I’ve been a part of it, then have a reason to reach out and ask for connection with them. If they don’t ask for connection with you. I’ve seen that happen as well. 

Brynne Tillman  05:37

Me too. Absolutely. Alright, what’s our number two? 

Bob Woods  05:041

Number two, numero dos, well known people in your industry.

Brynne Tillman  05:46

Oh, this is fun, right? So there are many people in the sales industry that share incredible content, that if I go engage with both that author, so it’s not just in my network, they don’t even have to be a first degree connection but we can engage on their content and in the commenters now one of the magic around this. So like, let’s say Tony Robbins is attracting your ID. 

Bob Woods  06:14

Actually that’s influencers on LinkedIn is going to be the third one. We actually have a separate one. So like, in your industry, yes. So if you’re in mechanical engineering, and there are voices in mechanical engineering, I don’t know who they are personally but I wouldn’t doubt for a second that there are those influencers, take everything that we’ve said in your own network, and just apply that to those well known people in your industry, whatever that is, because they are also attracting the type of people who you want to start sales conversations with but you’re going beyond your own network at this point. 

So each point that we’re bringing you is kind of expanding your reach more and more. So first of all, we started with your own network, which is smaller yet it could still be very influential. Next, you’re going to the well known people in your industry, wider still has the people who you want to talk to and you know, you could get a very good chance of starting conversations online that could be then taken offline into sales conversations.

Brynne Tillman  07:25

Awesome,So Adela asked, “how do we use the search tool to see 1st degree connections posts in the last 24 hours? Do we need Sales Navigator to do this?”

You don’t. If you go to the search bar and hit Enter, so just put your cursor in the search bar and hit Enter, you’re gonna see posts is one of the things that you can search on and you’ll see other filters one is, will give you.

Bob Woods  07:48

Yes, 1st degree is definitely one of them and what’s nice is you can search your 1st degrees. And let’s just say you want to see if your 1st degrees are talking about one, let’s go back to the mechanical engineering one, something in mechanical engineering, you can type that in as a keyword and that will then show you all of the posts that your 1st degrees have been talking about, about whatever subject that is in mechanical engineering. So you can search by keyword by using that as well.

Brynne Tillman  08:17

And that may even be a way for you to find subject matter experts. Yes. Right. So absolutely, yeah. So that’s awesome.

Bob Woods  08:25

All a big old circle folks, all a big old circle. And it’s and it’s all there to help you.

Brynne Tillman  08:30

So can I just share one more thing for subject matter experts, if you’re challenged in finding them? Consider walking in some, you’re going to think I’m crazy, Bob, but consider joining groups, industry groups, I know I said it. So because you can find you will find, the groups are difficult to engage in but you may find posts of subject matter experts inside of those groups and those are people that are posting on those topics. So it’s a great way to do that.

Bob Woods  09:05

Yeah, exactly and you know, sometimes we harp and gripe on about groups just because what LinkedIn has done to them and everything but keep in mind, there are still some very good LinkedIn groups out there and that are very active and have good conversations going on. You just got to go and find them.

Brynne Tillman  09:24

Okay, can I talk about Tony Robbins now?

Bob Woods  09:26

You could talk about Tony Robbins now because now we’re talking about the more general type of influencers on LinkedIn. So kind of think Instagram, or Tik Tok influencers, but specifically for LinkedIn, and specifically for LinkedIn related topics, please don’t dance in videos on LinkedIn. Go ahead. 

Brynne Tillman  09:45

Oh, bummer.I was thinking about dancing in today’s video. I’m dancing on LinkedIn don’t tell everyone.

Bob Woods  09:51

Oh, no, no, actually, actually, it was good.

Brynne Tillman  09:55

Okay, so one of the greatest ways to engage on other people’s content on LinkedIn is to find the big influence the people that have 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, and even millions of followers. So there’s a few things that we can do on this but when we find their content, not only can we add our thought leadership around that topic, but when we’re, it’s a magnet of hundreds of commenters that allow us to engage.

Now, we’re going to take it from engaging. So we engage put our two cents in, then we go in and we look at the commenters and they have smart comments, we hit like we vet them, we open and I right click open a new tab, take a look at their profile and say is this someone I want to connect with? If it is, you’ve already liked their maybe even commented on their comments. But now reach out if it’s Tony Robbins and say, you know, “Hey, Bob, I noticed you’re engaging on Tony Robbins content. I think he’s brilliant. I recently listened to a podcast he was on around the topics X, Y, and Z, I’d love to connect. And if you’re interested, let me know I’ll send you a link.”

And now we can move it from being a comment to a connection. And then our goal is to turn that connection into a conversation. And we do that by bringing value but start with a conversation around that subject matter expert that you have in common, then you can ask them what other content do you consume? Do you like content around in sales or so in my case, social selling? If they say “yes,” I can offer, you know, “hey, we’ve got some great free resources are you interested” all permission based, and we can lead them to our solution. So engaging on the content in a smart way with not randomly, have a plan while you’re going to do this. And now one last thing, which is go, you, you, you, you.

Bob Woods  12:09

I am just so excited about this and I’m pretty sure that this is what Brynne was going to bring up. But I think this is so exciting that I am taking control. I’m going to mute right now. I’m kidding, I won’t do that. I don’t even think I can. So you can actually take this one step further with your 1st degrees in that you can search like Tony Robbins followers of. And this is a special filter that anyone has access to in LinkedIn in the regular LinkedIn. And by the way, this is not available in Sales Navigator. This is just LinkedIn.

Brynne Tillman  12:46

Right now that could change

Bob Woods  12:48

right now. Yeah, yeah, as of this date, right now, it could change. But when you go to search for people, and you go to all filters, there’s a section that says followers of you can add a creator, you can type in Tony Robbins there. And then for connections, you just click your 1st degree connections there, you can see who among your first degree connections follows Tony Robbins, and then from there, because they’re already connected with you. But let’s just say you haven’t spoken to them in a while or they might be a prospect of yours that you’re taking through your sales funnel, you can engage with that person on Tony Robbins related stuff, because they are followers of Tony Robbins. So and that’s any creator. So you can see. Or I mean, you can engage with them on stuff that Tony Robbins has posted. It’s absolutely brilliant, because they’re first because they’re your 1st degree already, they should know about you and because you have a shared interest, it’s much easier to start that conversation.

Brynne Tillman  13:53

So and yes, yes and in the comments of Tony Robbins because they’re you know, well, you could use @mentioned them @Bob woods, thought you’d love this article, thought you didn’t I as a Tony Robbins a follower of Tony Robbins, I thought you would love this. That is an appropriate way if you know them, and they know you and you’re a first I mean, you could do in a 2nd degree if you know them, but then you should be connected but you can mention them now. Don’t go mentioning 75 people, maybe two or three and don’t do them all in one unless they know each other or maybe you can do two or three.

As Tony Robbins fans. I thought you guys would enjoy this and you can mention them. It’s not self promoting. So they’re not going to feel the same spam but make sure they know you, don’t search your 1st degree connections and say gosh, I have absolutely no idea who this person isn’t. I’m gonna mention them. What you can do is send it to them. So beneath the post, there’s a send button so you can send it into their inbox and type it to your not publicly mentioning them but you’re privately saying, “hey, as a thought leader, as a Tony Robbins follower thought you might really enjoy this. Let me know what you think.” And they’re like, Wow, no, like they really know who I am. And a lot of times, you’re like, Wow, I’m pretty impressed. I don’t remember this person but they know I’m a Tony Robbins fan. That’s pretty cool.

Bob Woods  15:20

100% So I mean, all of the I don’t get dancing on any platform. Maybe it’s me, well, well, that’s probably because the algorithms and those platforms know that you don’t like dancing or you don’t like watching Dancing. So anyhow,

Brynne Tillman  15:34

I’m obsessed with some of them. But that’s  up except with dancing

Bob Woods  15:37

Some of them are really good. I won’t deny it, some of it are really good.

Brynne Tillman  15:41

Every once in a while when I’m walking my dog. I’ll go through some of those dances on Tik Tok now. Anyway, did we go through everything? 

Bob Woods  15:49

We went through everything. And I like how we did it too, because we started small and then we built and then we built even more to so you can work on your own network at first. And then when you kind of, you know, tap that out or whatever you want to say you go to well known people within your industry and then influencers on LinkedIn to or  run all three of them at once and see and see the results you get. But I but I’ve got a really good feeling that you will get results from this because you’re already using your trusted authority, adding value and showing these people that you are the person that you say they are and you know, they they may want to have a conversation with you

Brynne Tillman  16:28

and deal with a plan. Don’t do random acts like go in with the purpose right? That’s I think that’s really, really important.

Bob Woods  16:36

We’re gonna take this home. Thanks again, for joining us on Making Sales Social live. If you’re with us here live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter right now, we do this sucker every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast, which means you’re listening to the recorded version, and you haven’t subscribed yet, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop. If you want more information about our podcast, go to socialsaleslinkcom/podcast. Again, that’s socialsaleslinkcom/podcast. 

So we do two shows weekly, this one and our Making Sales Social interview series, where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many, many more areas. So thank you, everyone, we appreciate it. Thank you to everyone in the comments who commented today with us live as well. And remember when you’re out and about, be sure to make your sales social by everybody. 

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