Episode 126: Ten Top Social Sellers We Follow… and Why
Our resident hosts Brynne and Bob are back to share with listeners their top ten social sellers and why they’ve chosen to feature these folks.
Find out if your favorite social seller is on their list and discover new ones to follow!
View Transcript
Bob Woods 0:00
Greetings, everyone, and welcome to Making Sales Social Live. I’m Bob Woods and I’m here with my co-host, the LinkedIn Whisperer, Brynne Tillman. What’s up today, Brynne?
Brynne Tillman 0:12
Hey, Bob. Oh, good stuff. How you doing?
Bob Woods 0:15
I’m doing really well. Really well. Thank you very much. It’s time to hang out and talk about kind of influencers.
Intro
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.
0:40
So if you’ve been on social media networks for a while now, you probably know about the concept of the influencer, which you know, is like a wide variety of things to a wide variety of people. Well, for someone to influence someone else, they don’t have to be one of those influencers that people love to make fun of — people like me, for example. They can be people who have an influence on you. In our world of social selling, there are thousands of self-proclaimed experts, but the ones that we love are the really good ones, at least we think so.
And for someone to influence someone else, they don’t have to be one of those influencers. We follow lots of them. We have lots and lots of them. These are just the first 10 in our list and they’re not in order or anything like that, so you know, this isn’t like the reverse, you know, number 10, number nine, number eight, that type of thing. (Brynne: In random order, we picked it out of the hat!) In random order, and in no particular order. It’s not even in alphabetical order. So, I guess let’s get right into it. The first person that we are going to talk about is Andy Foote, F-O-O-T-E.
Brynne Tillman 1:47
I love me some Andy. I will tell you, he’s one of the two most engaging on our list today. I giggle a lot, he’s got some crazy big ideas that I think are fun. We definitely don’t align on everything. There are lots of things that he teaches that I don’t teach, but I love his perspective on so many things. One of them, which I just find hysterical, is his headline is reassuringly expensive LinkedIn coach, so be prepared to spend a lot of money. But at the end of the day, man, he puts out phenomenal content and I’m going to share my favorite content every year from Andy Foote, which are his Top 100 Hashtags.
Bob Woods 2:37
Yeah, Top 100 Hashtags are really good. The one thing that I liked about him that we actually learned from him was permission-based messaging.
Brynne Tillman 2:45
Oh, he called us out a while ago, a couple years ago.
Bob Woods 2:49
Yeah, we learned from that and now that is an integral part of our training. So in other words, rather than offer up like a link or something like that, and mainly we’re revolves around links, ask permission before you send the link because if you don’t, it feels spammy. And that was just an incredible insight for us. We even did testing around it — we won’t get into details about that, because we’ve talked about that. But when you use permission-based messaging, even if you’re just doing as something as sending someone a link to something, just ask permission ahead of time.
Brynne Tillman 3:26
Thank you, Andy, you rock.
Bob Woods 3:28
The next one is a gentleman who is the only person who I ever use an acronym for and whenever I see this acronym, I know who it is. It’s RVDB, Richard van der Blom.
Brynne Tillman 3:43
Oh my God. So Richard, I think, is the hardest working social seller in the business. He is the data king. He can (unintelligible) tests, everything. Any algorithm that we quote, we’re learning from Richard van der Blom. He is brilliant at figuring out how many hashtags get more views, what helps people see your content, things like, and this is one of my favorite tips that blows my mind, every single time: if you want someone to see your content, engage on theirs five times and they’ll start to see your content. Right. So if you are looking for absolutely brilliant insights and algorithm, follow Richard van der Blom.
Bob Woods 4:30
Absolutely. Our next person up on the countdown is Kevin Turner, who is Mr. Changes in LinkedIn, to me at least. Obviously, he’s a very successful social seller and everything else, too. But if there’s a guy who like kind of comp— whether he’s discovering it himself, or someone else discovers it, and I like that he always gives credit, which is fantastic because we always teach to give credit as well, he documents all of the latest changes in LinkedIn, especially because LinkedIn doesn’t tell us the changes, they just change stuff and expect us all to figure it out.
Brynne Tillman 5:06
They do. So, Kevin D. Turner, because I think (crosstalk) (Bob: Kevin D. Turner, that’s right. It’s Kevin D. Turner. That’s right.)
Brynne Tillman 5:12
We absolutely appreciate the hard work that he puts in to keep us in the know of LinkedIn’s new feature. So I believe if you visit his profile under Featured, you’re going to see the 60-plus new features just in 2022. Love him. Okay.
Bob Woods 5:31
Okay, the next person who is actually in our chat room right now because I messaged her last week, I said, “Hey, you may want to show up,” is Beth Granger. She’s probably having heart palpitations right now. (Brynne: No…) No, she’s not. She’s fantastic. We’ve actually worked with in the past and one of the big reasons why we’re bringing her up right now is because she has added something that I think is really, really interesting to her practice and that’s exactly what to say. That’s actually a program. It seems to me the way that she’s integrating it is taking things beyond social selling by teaching exactly what to say in LinkedIn messaging, in LinkedIn conversations, and things like that, which is absolutely huge, especially on LinkedIn, because you’re generally not face to face with someone.
Brynne Tillman 6:22
Yeah, I will tell you, Phil M. Jones wrote the book Exactly What to Say, I have it on audio. It is brilliant, and the fact that Beth has partnered with him is beyond exciting because one of the biggest challenges people have on LinkedIn is, “what do I say?” and Beth can teach you how to do that, which I’m very, beyond thrilled for her.
She also, by the way, is amazing at the networking side of LinkedIn like, well, we definitely teach networking and social selling, but she’s got this dialed in and I love, we have a very similar way of presenting where, picture you’re in a real-life situation as you engage, and so I completely treasure her and her friendship because even personally, I think she’s a fabulous human.
Bob Woods 7:10
There is definitely a reason why that we work directly with her in the past and everything that Brynne said is exactly (unintelligible). The next person is Joe Apfelbaum. Ap-fel-baum, that, in case you’re looking him up, it’s A-P-F-E-L-B-A-U-M. that’s why— it’s not Applebalm, which is what I’ve typed (unintelligible).
Brynne Tillman 7:29
I feel like you’re saying M-I-S-S-I-S-S — yeah. So, Joe. I cannot say enough about how much I adore this guy. First of all, incredibly engaging. Different than Andy Foote. He has the most positive — Andy has like an edge, which is fun. Joe is the most positive human being, always has a smile. But I mean, well, what, there are lots of great people, he’s a great person. Why I absolutely adore him in the social selling aspect is he has the most creative brain. He shares little legal hacks that blow my mind every single time.
My absolute favorite, although I’m not using it, I think it’s amazing, is he said, “Hey, you want to book appointments with people search the word (unintelligible) and your first-degree connections, or you can even do second- with all the right filters, and you’re going to get a list of people that you want to talk to, that has their calendar link right there for you to book. So I don’t play that way but it’s brilliant. And (unintelligible), thousands of brilliant ideas that this man brings to the social selling world.
Bob Woods 8:47
100%. I love that one too. Next one is Teddy Burriss, who, I mean, if absolutely nothing else, I love the title of his book, LinkedIn is a serious — or his teaching, I should say — LinkedIn is a Serious Business Tool.
Brynne Tillman 9:04
Yeah, and, so I have known Teddy for quite some time and we have engaged a lot, I mean, a mutual admiration for sure with us. But one of the things that I really, really love about what Teddy does — two things. Number one, he makes it so simple. He breaks it down in ways that make it just easy to understand and easy to follow, and he has, similar to Beth and to us, he’s got this human perspective, right? Like he’s not looking at LinkedIn as a lead generation tool but a relationship building tool. And I can’t say enough about how much I adore Teddy Burriss.
Bob Woods 9:47
Yeah, excellent, excellent. So our next two are kind of similar in terms of what they do, so Sandra Long and Cher Jones are both personal branding (crosstalk) (Brynne: No, no, no, totally different, separate them out.) Oh, really, they’re not? Okay, that’s what I got from them, okay.
Brynne Tillman 10:02
Nope, totally different and I want to talk about them separately for sure. So let’s start with Sandra Long. (Bob: All right.) So, Sandra Long, so proud of, I know her in person as I do, Joe and Beth, and I, actually we worked on, we’re both Rutgers professors on there, we worked on a project together. But first, number one, Sandra is the first LinkedIn TEDx speaker. So, I love that and she did a phenomenal job, and you can find that on YouTube. She wrote a great book that is really about branding and it’s fabulous. But she’s also really brilliant at corporate Sales Navigator and not a lot of people get Sales Navigator the way that she does. I think that we do and there are a few others out there but, you know, she works with very large corporations with their teams on Sales Navigator, and she has that dialed in. She’s just amazing. And again, just an amazing human. I, you know, everyone we picked are amazing humans, it was part of our criteria, for sure.
And so now let’s talk about Cher. Did we miss somebody? I though we had Cher near the end? But Cher Jones is creative, adorable, engaging — is adorable, I don’t know if that’s appropriate to say. She is, like, she’s so much fun to watch and also makes it so simple to understand. She’s got great bullet points, she runs incredible live streams. Absolutely hands down the best live stream of anyone beyond her. The way she shows up, the professionalism, she’s got agenda in this very cool PowerPoint. I mean, it’s the most professional of all the live streaming, Cher Jones, absolutely brilliant, and she helps people become influencers.
Bob Woods 12:08
Next is Gunnar Hood who both Brynne and I work with in terms of our group coachings that we have twice a week here and he is 100% brilliant when it comes to marketing and content on LinkedIn, especially the way that we do things in terms of being s— and not only being social but being authentic and leading with yourself and all that type of thing.
Brynne Tillman 12:35
I met Gunnar in, originally in Clubhouse audio chat, brought some really good insights, then was reintroduced by one of our absolute favorites, Steven Farber, who had a great conversation with him and he said, “Hey, Brynne, I think you guys should collab.” So we chatted and now, I mean, he brings amazing insights. Here’s the thing about Gunnar, first of all, he’s kind of a sleeper. Not a lot of people, like, I mean he’s got under 2,000 followers right now. We’re gonna raise his profile because of all the social sellers in all the land and I will put him at number one, I learned the most from him every single time we talk.
This man does deep dives into new features, so we learned about the new features from Kevin but Gunnar really does deep dives into how to use them, strategies around them, he’s got clever marketing ideas, so he doesn’t just do LinkedIn training, he does websites and email and a whole bunch of other stuff but he understands the marketing message, he understands Sales Navigator rather well — I’m just blown away at his creativity in the sales and marketing side. So I can’t give a big enough shout out to Gunnar Hood. Go follow him.
Bob Woods 14:01
So the number 10, and our number 10 again, in no particular order, is Alex B. Sheridan and yes he does use the “B” on LinkedIn. So, this is kind of more my contribution because we’ve actually followed each other for a while now. He’s on TikTok as well. So, he’s a video guy. So, he and as everyone who has heard us in the past knows we are big believers in video as well, not only in shares and things like that but in like one-to-one messaging.
The reason why I like him is that when he uses videos and shares, and he preaches this all the time, too, he does it in a really authentic way to demonstrate value. So, he is all about authenticity and demonstrating value in order to start those sales conversation, which is just perfect for social selling. And he hits video like really hard, too. He is out all of the time sharing videos, especially in that authentic way, demonstrating value, which I mean, you know, we should all be doing that in social selling. We certainly try our best to do that here at Social Sales Link. So, if you really want to get really, really good advice when it comes to video and sales, definitely follow Alex B. Sheridan and he just agreed to come on to one of our interviews in the Making Sales Social interview side of this podcast as well, so I am really excited to really delve deep into into videos and what he’s talking about.
Brynne Tillman 15:37
Awesome. Well, we went through 10 and we’re going to keep building this list over time and you know, we’ll do pop-up top 10s because there are so many really good voices out there and we believe high tide rises all boats and we embrace the best social sellers out there. Highly recommend that you go follow these folks because there’s so much to learn.
Bob Woods 16:03
Yep, absolutely.
Brynne Tillman 16:04
All right, let’s bring it in for a landing, Bob Woods.
Bob Woods 16:08
Exactly. Thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re live with us right now, we do this every week, so keep an eye out for those sessions. If you’re listening to us on our recorded podcast and you haven’t subscribed yet, hit that Subscribe or Follow button to access all of our previous shows and to be alerted when new ones drop. If you want details about the podcast, go to SocialSalesLink.com/podcasts. As I said before, we do two shows weekly, this one and our interview series where we talk with a whole bunch of different people involved in sales, marketing, business, and many, many more areas. So when you’re out and about, be sure to make your sales… (Brynne: Social.) Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye, guys.
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