Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, me, and Bob Woods as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

0:01:01 – (Bob Woods): I’m Bob Woods. Brynne Tillman is off for this particular streamcast or whatever you want to put it. I’m not exactly sure but Stan Robinson does join us. How you doing, Stan?

0:01:11 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Doing excellent. Good to see you as always, Bob.

0:01:14 – (Bob Woods): It’s good to be here. Good to be here. And I’m, and I’m really glad to present today’s topic because people just don’t know how to do this right. Not only right, but do it effectively because you could do something right and yet not be effective at something. I think I’m pretty sure that that’s the thing. So, we’re going to discuss engaging with posts and with people on LinkedIn. But this isn’t about just putting in a great post reply to every single thing that you see, and I see people still doing this on LinkedIn.

0:01:52 – (Bob Woods): It goes far beyond that. Instead, you want most any engagement you have on LinkedIn to start trust based conversations with your prospects without being sales. So, we have some things you can do to really up your engagement game. But before that, any general thoughts on the, on the, on this topic, Stan, before we get into the nitty gritty.

0:02:15 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yeah you, you do need to be intentional about engagement and think in terms of adding to the conversation in a substantive way, never in a promotional way. So yeah, I’m ready to dive in.

0:02:31 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. And then, and then along with that, the best way to add to the conversation is with value. Bring value to whatever conversation that you have on LinkedIn and any reply and any reply to a reply. And we’re obviously going to be talking about how to do that, you know, some, some specifics and how to do that. But I think that mindset is important here, too. So you know, you’ve got to have that mindset to where it’s, it’s almost like the old, the old camping saying analogy is not right though, isn’t the right word. But you know, leave it better than how you found it.

0:03:14 – (Bob Woods): You’re supposed to do that with campgrounds. Why not do that with LinkedIn conversations? Why not do that with LinkedIn engagements? So, with everything that we’re going to be talking about here, keep that overall mindset in mind. Yeah, something like that. Anyhow, so let’s go ahead with, with, with number one, Stan, you’re, you’re gonna take this one. And that’s just, and, and this point, we’re not even necessarily talking about engaging with posts. This is just about engaging with people in your network.

0:03:45 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, one of the things I love about these sessions is that they always remind me of things that I should be doing more of. And even though I spend a lot of time in Sales Navigator, there are things that you can do, especially with search features on free LinkedIn, that amaze me to this day. So we all know that the LinkedIn newsfeed is very, very busy and it can be a time suck if you’re not careful. But when you’re looking for opportunities to add to conversations and support your first-degree network, you can set up a search filter.

0:04:25 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): You can go to the top search bar and just hit enter and you’ll see posts come up as one of the several choices. If you select posts and then all filters within that, you can filter posts by those that have been posted within the past 24 hours in the past week, and a couple of other timeframes. But more importantly, you can filter posts by your first-degree connections within those time frames. And again, this is free LinkedIn we’re talking about.

0:04:59 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So you can quickly get away from the newsfeed and focus on posts that your people you’re directly connected to have posted and look for opportunities to add value, as Bob mentioned, to those conversations. A couple of quick tips. When you do that, go ahead and tag the person who posted because it lets them know that you’re supporting their posts. And of course, when you comment with substantive content that adds to the discussion, it helps to amplify that person’s post because it sends a signal to the algorithm that, hey, people are interested in this post and they’re engaging with it.

0:05:45 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): And so the comment is the strongest form of engagement. You can also, of course, go ahead and like it as well, but please do not stop with just a like; add a comment. And, of course, that also raises your visibility, right?

0:06:02 – (Bob Woods): It raises your visibility. It helps them with the elusive and magical LinkedIn algorithm. I don’t know if this is still the case, so don’t quote me on this, but once upon a time- and I think we’re talking like six months ago, I think it’s the last time I heard this, which is forever an Internet time. But you would ideally want to comment first and then like because, for whatever reason, the algorithm likes that better.

0:06:30 – (Bob Woods): Don’t ask me why; I have nothing to do with the LinkedIn algorithm. If I did, things would be much different. But, but anyhow, so you know, like Stan says, it helps you get more visibility within the person’s network that you are commenting in their, their network. So, in other words, your second-degree connections are first their first-degree connections who may not be your first-degree connections.

0:06:54 – (Bob Woods): Oh my God, I just blew my mind with that one. But just overall, in general commenting is, commenting is great. And speaking of commenting, let’s get into number two. Two, which is don’t just comment. Damn it. We’ve said this many times already. Intentionally engage.

0:07:15 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yes, exactly. And it’s funny on a quick side Note, you mentioned six months is such a long time in LinkedIn years. Now we’re in AI years where six months is like the last century.

0:07:30 – (Bob Woods): Yes.

0:07:30 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So it’s just funny how fast things move. So I realized I already started talking about comments. We started by talking about okay, find your posts from your first-degree network and commenting and adding value. How do you add value? You can share a personal experience that’s relevant to the conversation. Something that you actually did where you can speak personally. You can share everything from statistics to your own particular perspective on a discussion.

0:08:06 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Just make sure that it is substantive and right. Another way that you can engage is by looking for other people who have commented. So you know, 100 level is your comment with a good comment level. I guess the 200 level is looking at other people that have commented and if you can comment on what they have talked about, again that raises your level of visibility. It adds to the discussion. I don’t know that it does much in the way of algorithm love, but not everything is about algorithm love.

0:08:52 – (Bob Woods): Exactly.

0:08:56 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So when you engage with another commenters content, you become visible to them as well and it adds to the discussion. So, Bob, any thoughts on that? On that?

0:09:08 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So I mean, you know, just, you know, just fly the proverbial bird at the algorithm, man. Because there are, there, there are days when I just think about the algorithm, and it’s just like man, I just, I just, I don’t want to deal with it anymore. Which Stan suggestion about filtering by your first degree connections is great. You can also filter by your first-degree connections and the people you’re following as well, who you may not be connected to, but you’re following them.

0:09:39 – (Bob Woods): You can, you can actually set up a search that’s like, you know, past week, most recent first degree and follows. And then once you get that search up, you can either bookmark that or drag that URL to your desktop so that it pops up every single time you just click on it and it’ll be the latest it should. And, and I’m speaking a little out of turn, but I’m almost positive that it bypasses the algorithm completely and it just serves you up with just those results. I think you may see an ad in there every once in a while. But I mean, in terms of the people who show up, it’s only going to be your first degrees, and it’s only going to people you’re following because hey, your first degrees with these people, you’re following these people. Why are you seeing all this crap from other people that the LinkedIn algorithm is.

0:10:26 – (Bob Woods): I’m sorry, I am just on a tear when it comes to the algorithm today. I just, I just read something about the algorithm. It really ticked me off, and it’s just like, just let us have what we want, and you can with what we talked about just now. So, was there anything else about commenting on the people you want to comment on and engage with?

0:10:46 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Just one thing that you mentioned, Bob, that I want to encourage our listeners not to sleep on and that is bookmarking the search that you’ve set up so you don’t have to go back every time and do go through four or five clicks to do it again. Once you bookmark it, all you have to do is go to the bookmark and the latest results come up there for you. So it’ll save you some time.

0:11:12 – (Bob Woods): They’ll save you, yeah, a decent amount of time. And I mean, you know, we, we all know how attractive one click is when it comes to, to a, buying things. I mean this time it’s, it’s getting straight to exactly the content from people who you want to see. Yeah, so we’re, we’re going to get me off the algorithm because otherwise, I’ll go for another 20 minutes with, like, red raw meat in my mouth as I’m, as I’m talking about it.

0:11:38 – (Bob Woods): And we’re going to talk a little bit about engaging with influencers. So not just influencers on LinkedIn. I mean, you really shouldn’t be worrying about those people as much as influencers and well-known people in your industry. So, so you’ve got influencers in your industry, and you probably have known people as well. They’re those two Venn diagrams those two circles in the Venn diagram probably intersect a lot.

0:12:10 – (Bob Woods): But, but there may be some well-known people in, in your industry who aren’t seen as influencers. So always keep that in mind too. So when you are engaging with these people, you know, first of all, make them first degrees or follow them so that you get an initial ping on their radar that you’re actually following them. And just make sure to stay updated on their posts and engage consistently with those people to attract your ideal audience because chances are really, really good that your ideal audience of prospects are following those influencers, are following those well-known people within your industry. Oh, and by the way, you should try to connect with not only the people you’re engaging with but with the well-known people in your industry as well. Because you know, when you amplify your reach, you open doors, and that’s what LinkedIn is all about.

0:13:09 – (Bob Woods): And we are here to help, to help you rather open those doors. And, of course, how are you going to do that? Engage thoughtfully, showcase your expertise, but not in a salesy way. Remember, no sales, no pitches, no nothing like that. Just leave insightful comments that expand on the topic so that you’re positioning yourself as a valuable contributor to the conversation. I’m going to take breath, Stan, because I’ve been talking.

0:13:42 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): No, that’s good. If, and just one note, if you’re in sales and you’ve got a specific book of business or set of target accounts that you’re going after, make sure that you include those on your list of people and companies to look for their content and look for opportunities to engage. One great way to start to form relationships, even before you try to invite someone on LinkedIn, is to comment on their content and tag them.

0:14:14 – (Bob Woods): So before we get to our final point, Stan and I have been so engaged with this conversation we totally forgot that we have other people who are commenting. So, apologies to everyone for that. We’re going to get to those right now. The first one is from Allison French. The content on LinkedIn is getting so boastful. You are so right, Allison, that it’s becoming so hard to find an authentic way to engage.

0:14:38 – (Bob Woods): This is why I think, personally, this is why authenticity without being boastful. So being genuinely authentic is going to end up winning the day because people are going to see through that boastfulness, and they’re going to think, hey, this is bs. I didn’t say the actual word because I don’t want to get an explicit rating on this particular episode. But they are going to see through it, and they’re just not going to pay attention to it. I do believe that authenticity shines through, and if you’re authentic again without being boastful, without being salesy, without being pitchy, people are going to notice that, and they are going to listen.

0:15:20 – (Bob Woods): Any. Any thoughts on that one? Stan no.

0:15:23 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Which. Which you described perfectly. I do see the other questions in there, so I just want to make sure.

0:15:28 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah, let’s do those. Lisa F. I probably screwed up her name. Hello there, Michael P. Lead the LinkedIn conversation better than you found it. I’m going to put that on a T-shirt somewhere. Milton. Sup Milton. Milton’s Milton is. It is in our paid community. Welcome him. Tanya Buram, Love this tip on how to search on first-degree posts. You’re very welcome for that. I’m a big believer in sharing personal experiences and stories. Elisa, I would agree to a certain extent.

0:16:05 – (Bob Woods): So. And this is something that I’m not seeing as much of on LinkedIn anymore just because I think that the algorithm. One of the few good ways the algorithm works, by the way, is that it’s really dinging those like purely po. Personal posts that just have like a selfie in there. There was a time when I saw a lot of those on the feed, and they. But because they were so personal, they didn’t add anything to any conversation. It was just someone being personal. If you have a personal story that can be related to your business and is genuine and has value 100% do those types of things.

0:16:46 – (Bob Woods): But the purely personal Facebook type of stuff, I think that people are finally stepping away from that and not really doing that as much.

0:16:55 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Good deal.

0:16:56 – (Bob Woods): So the next one, do we reply to the other person’s comment or had or add a whole other new comment to the author? I mean, that’s a big yes. It just depends on what you want to do. You can do either, or you can. You can do, you know. You know, let’s say you add a comment initially, and then you’re scrolling through other comments, and then you see someone else who’s commented that, that, that you agree with or you want to add to that.

0:17:19 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, do them both. Absolutely. 100%. Bobby Clark loves the first-degree strategy, and he says hey. We say hey back. Here’s a good one for you. This one’s for Tanya. And by you, I mean Stan. Sorry about that. How Does Sales Navigator Fit In?

0:17:35 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Sales Nav includes the ability to search from the many search filters for leads, which are individuals and accounts which are companies. You can search under leads posted within the past 30 days. And so if you’re doing a search, say by geography and title and maybe years at company and any of those other filters, you may come back with results of like 2000 people. Super unwieldy. But you can also further narrow that down to the people who’ve posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days because those are the people who are active and most likely to see anything that you’re doing on LinkedIn.

0:18:26 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So that’s one way that Sales Nav fits in.

0:18:29 – (Bob Woods): And that, yeah. And that, and I think that that 30-day filter is huge. It’s not available on the free LinkedIn, it’s only available on Sales Navigator. But a lot of times we do things and it’s like, is this person ever going to even see this? When you engage that filter in a search and you bring up the, that, that past 30 day thing, most of the people, a vast majority of the people who are in that result are on, are on LinkedIn, you know, at least once in the past 30 days and probably more than that.

0:19:00 – (Bob Woods): So we’re going to keep going here. What do we mean by tagging? Are we supposed to tag the person in our comments even though we are obviously responding to what they said? So when you click reply, it will automatically put their name in as a tag. So I wouldn’t back over that, especially because LinkedIn already has it there. Just go ahead and just type your, your, your comment in there. I don’t remember, Stan, when you said tagging, were you talking about just the original person? I mean other people in.

0:19:34 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Just the original.

0:19:35 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah, you can bring other people in. That gets kind of dangerous, though, because they’re not necessarily expecting to be brought into the conversation. So you know, we talk about tagging in general content where you should probably get the other person’s permission before you tag them. I would probably stay away from tagging in comments just because it’s, it’s the real-world equivalent of grabbing someone by the shoulder and dragging them into a conversation. They may want to be in the conversation, they may not want to be in the conversation.

0:20:09 – (Bob Woods): So I probably wouldn’t do that with someone who is not participating anywhere else yet. You know, again, you don’t want to drag them and bring them in. That’s just my opinion. Stan made. I don’t know how Stan feels Quite frankly, I’m not sure how Brynne would feel about that, but that’s how I feel about it.

0:20:26 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): I agree. You need to be, be careful about it. One of the things that can be a little bit confusing is when you comment on a post, when you click on the comment, it doesn’t automatically tag the poster. You have to.

0:20:39 – (Bob Woods): It does for me, usually. Oh, oh, when you comment. Initial comment. Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Someone else’s comment. Yeah, that’s then, yeah, that’s, that’s a very good distinction to make. That’s good, accurate. And, and, and, and you think it’s picky until you actually do it, and it’s like, no, that’s actually really important. So with that question, let’s see, we’ve got two more. Elisa Elizabeth, again, probably gnarling up your name. Keep the stories in a business lens.

0:21:12 – (Bob Woods): Glad we actually got that out of the way. Hope you are very welcome. So with that, you know, we’ve actually talked a lot about engagement and that was going to be the, and, and that was going to be. The last point is just engaging, but engaging with the followers of well-known people in your industry. So this is a little different because you actually use LinkedIn’s search, and again you can use the free search for this.

0:21:43 – (Bob Woods): You can actually select a filter when you go to. And I can never remember where this is, so I’ve got to do it while I’m doing it. So you, so you do search, you go, you click on people, you click on all filters and then one of the options and all filters is called followers of. At that point, you can type in the name of a creator and then you can, and then you can select the second-degree filter and see all of the followers. All the people who are following that creator who are second degrees to you can also do that obviously with first degrees.

0:22:19 – (Bob Woods): So you can, you can search that to either connect with like-minded individuals if they’re second degrees or to strengthen a relationship if they’re the first degree to you. And then you know, you can leave meaningful comments, conversations on their post and then follow up afterwards. And there’s just, there are so many different things you can do. But I mean, when it comes to that, though engaging with the followers of well-known people in your industry, in your industry and the influencers as well, all that can be very important. It’s a very quick way to build your network as well. Especially because if you’re interested in what the influencer is talking about, they’re interested in what the Influencer is talking about.

0:23:01 – (Bob Woods): Chances are there’s a pretty natural connection right there. Anything to add to that, Stan?

0:23:06 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): No, that. That is pretty thorough. The last point that I have is that we’ve talked about engagement. I guess reposting someone’s content with your comments could fall under the category of engagement. Hadn’t really talked. Yeah, you do have that option as well.

0:23:26 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, so, yeah, yeah, it’s a really good one. So, so we’re going to take this final question and we got to wrap it because we’re coming up on time. Our, our own personal, personally inflicted time, which, you know, we could go for eight hours if we wanted to, but, but we, but we try to keep these things to a half an hour, so. Margie, Margie. Agent, sorry, says authentic means different things to different people. Can you give us an example? I mean, why don’t you go ahead and take a crack at that one, Stan?

0:23:57 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): One. One thing that comes to mind right off the bat is in the age of AI, yes. We always tell people, do not to copy and paste AI content because you can use AI to help you generate comments. So make sure that it’s coming from you, even if AI is helping you with some of the wording, and that it is your opinion. Authentic for some people. You know, different companies have different guidelines and policies, so adding your viewpoint on something rather than quote, unquote, the company line, so to speak.

0:24:43 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): As long as you’re not stepping outside.

0:24:46 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:24:47 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Of company’s guidelines. Yeah, so those are things that come to mind for me.

0:24:53 – (Bob Woods): So I would say just. And I’m going to wrap this up with a really broad yet concise statement. It’s pretty good for me, especially considering this, to this episode today. Authentic to me is either in the content of what you’re saying or the tone of what you’re saying, or actually what you’re going to type into LinkedIn and whatever that is in a post, in a comment or whatever, either the content or the tone of what you’re going to be typing in.

0:25:27 – (Bob Woods): Would you say that in public, face to face to someone else? If you would, it’s authentic. If you wouldn’t, it’s not. I think it is. I think, you know, there are obviously some layers you can build into that, but just from like a broad standpoint, I think it’s that simple.

0:25:49 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): I like that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Giving us. I think that’s the mic drop for the something.

0:25:56 – (Bob Woods): Yes, yes. And, and as, and as, and as they used to say on the British version of Stop of Top Gear, on that bombshell. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live, sponsored rather by ASKSSL AI. If you’re with us on YouTube or LinkedIn Live right now, we do this every week, so keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast, which means we’ve recorded Memorex, and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or Follow button to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop and, you know, likes and comments.

0:26:35 – (Bob Woods): We were just talking about those. We, we, we would love those there, too. 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 all sorts of other areas that you can shake a stick at. If you’d like more info on our podcast socialsaleslink.com podcast again, that’s socialsaleslink.com podcast. So when you are out and about this week, in any other week, be sure to make your Sales Social Social, baby. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we’ve been talking about. So keep everything in mind.

0:27:11 – (Bob Woods): You’ll do well. Have a great day, everybody. Bye-bye.

0:27:14 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Thanks by all.

Outro:

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