Episode 208: Promote Your Expertise with LinkedIn Collaborative Articles

Bob Woods  00:00

There we go everyone,  Welcome everybody to Making Sales Social Live, brought to you by Social Sales Link, I’m Bob Woods, the LinkedIn Sherpa, and I’m joined by fellow LinkedIn and social selling professional who’s also known as the LinkedIn whisperer. Did they hear the LinkedIn Whisperer, Brynne Tillman. Gentleman Sup, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  00:22

Hello, my friend! I’m really looking forward to this for many reasons. And I’ll let you get started. But my energy level is so high. I’m so excited.

Intro  00:36

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! This is the recorded version of our weekly Making Sales Social Live Show. 

Bob Woods  00:36

Okay, yeah. So I got a short little intro. But I want to find out why that is. I mean, I know why, in general, but I have a feeling you’ve got some specific things going on in that brilliant mind of yours.

Brynne Tillman  01:11

Thank you bob. 

Bob Woods  01:12

You’re welcome. LinkedIn’s algorithm has changed again. Once upon a time, say a few years ago, the algo was favoring personal, let’s call them Facebook or Instagram, style posts from LinkedIn members, and the algo would then push those that type of content rather to your audience. Well, that practice is now history, Thank God. 

Instead, LinkedIn’s algorithm is back to favoring expert, helpful and insightful content that its professional audience. People like you, me, Brynne, all of us can use them in their business worlds. One way that they’re promoting this whole expert insight, content, idea, strategy, whatever you want to call it, is with a new feature called collaborative articles. And I think that these are really cool as well, Brynne, but bring that energy about why you’re so pumped about this.

Brynne Tillman  02:06

Alright, so a few things. So collaborative articles. First, let’s talk about what it is they’re AI-generated articles that LinkedIn is putting out there and is allowing us as a community to add our perspective.

Bob Woods  02:21

That’s a huge phrase to add your perspective.

Brynne Tillman  02:24

Yes. So why am I excited? Well, number one, there’s a bias in that Bob, Stan and I were part of a group of maybe 50 or 60 people that were invited into LinkedIn, a few weeks back a couple of weeks back. And we got to, like, really immerse ourselves in the collaborative articles, vision of where they want to take it, we got to talk with the three primary people who are in charge of collaborative articles. 

And we’re really excited to have the opportunity to share thought leadership at scale, number one, number two, it’s a level playing field, anyone can add insights, you don’t have to be, you know, you don’t have to have a huge audience. You have the ability to find topics that you can speak to, and have an equal voice across the platform. That’s huge. Because this is not a fight for the algorithm.

Bob Woods  03:36

Yeah, this is just people saying, “Hey, what I think here. Here’s my perspective.” Yeah. And, and I mean, of a lot of people are probably out there thinking that, you know, oh, this is just for, you know, LinkedIn experts or people who are in sales, or just, you know, business wanting to sell stuff, basically, I don’t know about you, Brynne. 

But I wasn’t prepared at that event in New York, to meet so many different people from so many different walks of business life, I guess you could say. And I mean, there were so many different people who did so many different things. I thought that was incredible. Because LinkedIn, LinkedIn is doing this part. Right. I think they are really opening this up to such a wide, wide category of people.

Brynne Tillman  04:29

Yeah, I mean, there were people in health care. There were people that were environmentalists, there were students.

Bob Woods  04:37

Yeah, I mean, just looking through the overall topics right now. I mean, you’ve got everything from marketing to agriculture, public administration, health care, like you mentioned, engineering, HR management, oil and gas, the leisure industry, science, real estate research, development. I mean, there are so many different areas. And while we’re going to dive into what we do, obviously here in just a minute, I think that that speaks to LinkedIn’s desire to really keep this around. 

So that’s something that we discussed afterwards, and that LinkedIn does stuff. And then it takes it away. It does stuff, it takes it away. I mean, just the fact that they had all of us in, and they’re really putting resources and people and everything behind this, this is not going away.

Brynne Tillman  05:33

We hope. We hope we think about stories, Right? Okay, but we’re gonna go under the assumption that this is gonna hang around for a while. And one of the reasons I really think it will, is just exactly what you said, Bob, which is not a recruiting tool. This is not a sales tool. This is a thought leadership tool. This is a Content tool that is meant for the community to share knowledge. 

And I really believe as you know, from this point moving forward, this is a critical piece to all social media, Right? It’s really good, valuable content. So you know, we talked a little bit about leveling the playing field, there’s even an opportunity here for folks to get their voice in some of these topics, before the big voices even engage. So there’s a few things that come out of it. And we will talk a little bit on the social selling side of this, because that’s what we do. 

But before we go into that, I really want to talk about the branding side. So yes, you’re getting your advice out there, people can upvote. So if they like your advice, you get votes on that, which is lovely. And we’ll talk about strategically, where are you going to be engaging in adding your perspective, but this will lead toward badges, top voice badges, so I am privileged to have received my first top voice badge based on the fact that I really was engaging on the articles. And so again, not only leveling the playing field, it can even give you a leg up with that. Right? 

Bob Woods  07:26

And then I’m sorry, just before, just because it’s still fresh in people’s mind, these badges that Brynne mentioned actually go on your profile. So you can show one badge at a time. So if you have several badges in several categories, you can actually go in and select which badge you want to have up there. 

But just in terms of showing thought leadership, if you have a badge in your main area of expertise, and it is on your profile, as Paris Hilton has been saying in her commercials lately, that’s hot, because you are recognised by LinkedIn because of your contributions as one of the top people in your area. And it’s right there on your profile for everyone to see. And that’s great.

Brynne Tillman  08:14

Where did the performing arts fit in? That’s great. Now, I will tell you right now, this is as beta as it can get. Right now. We’re, we’re, we’re live in July, this whole programme launched in March. I have not deeply gone through all the subcategories. Yeah. But I will say they are very open to suggestions. So if you have some ideas of categories, I’m not 100% sure where to go to request them. But reach out to one of us, in the next couple of days, and we can do a little bit of a deeper dive. But oh, there is good feedback.

Bob Woods  08:57

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Brynne Tillman  09:00

So there is, well, you’ve got to go a little deep. I’m gonna put this in a chat. Hopefully, we’ll get it into the show notes. But you can give feedback on an article. Nope, I’m wrong. See, don’t do this stuff live because you go down a rabbit hole.

Bob Woods  09:19

Yeah, Exactly. So the one point that I do want to bring up is that you know, just because someone thinks a category may not be viable doesn’t mean that it’s not viable. Performing Arts is huge out there. And I think that and it’s a business, it’s a viable business. People make money in this. And I think that the strikes by the Writers Guild Association, and at the time, there’s no, I mean, I think that that proves right there that performing arts is a business so you know, and in any business, you want to show your thought leadership and that’s Ultimately what is art. 

Brynne Tillman  10:01

Okay, there is art. So if you go to soft skills, and art, their stage lighting design, commercial design, animation, design research, music technology, there’s content. So you know, do a little or there’s, you know, do a little deep dive, you may find something in there that can really resonate with the performing art.

Bob Woods  10:31

That menu is elegant so that we can tell it to people because we’ve been showing it live. But for people on the podcast, they’re not seeing it. And quite frankly, I don’t remember what it was so.

Brynne Tillman  10:43

linkedin.com/advice.

Bob Woods  10:47

Yes, that’s right. So that’s how you get started with this whole thing. linkedin.com/advice, you can go there. And then you can drill into the categories and the subcategories. And then the way that it’s working right now is that unfortunately, not everyone can go in and just automatically contribute. And this is new, this is new since Tuesday, what you have to do is you have to click on a button within the article and I forget what it says right now. 

I think it’s something like a request to contribute or something like that LinkedIn then goes over it. And then if you get approved, you can then start contributing to articles at that point. So it’s not like everyone can do it right now you do have to go through an extra step. But once you’re in, you’re in, and you can start contributing at that point.

Brynne Tillman  11:44

You can upvote, you can read and upvote.

Bob Woods  11:47

You can upvote yes, anyone can upvote right now. 

Brynne Tillman  11:50

Yeah. And what I, the interesting thing around this right is now we have to start thinking, does our profile earn us the right to be a contributor, is the content we’ve been sharing, earn us the right to be the country a contributor. So make sure you’ve got those pieces down too.

Bob Woods  12:09

Yes, so you do need a really, really great profile, especially because people who are reading this stuff are naturally going to want to click through to your profile. So that’s where you need to start proving that you are the thought expert in your industry, and that you can back up what you have said in the article that you contributed to in the first place that you collaborated on the first place, I always want to call them contributed articles is that contributed articles, it’s collaborative articles. So collaborative.

Brynne Tillman  12:40

But it’s called. 

Bob Woods  12:41

Exactly. 

Brynne Tillman  12:42

So just a quick couple little tips around this. Because some of us don’t know the total algorithm around what’s gonna get you to the top voice. But what we do know is the more you engage and the more you share content, that’s reasonable, you get upvoted the or the, you know, that makes sense. And it will bring you closer to that. Here’s the thing, if you hop and you see an article, and there are 223 contributors and you go and you add your perspective.

You’re gonna be way down in the list and the chances that people ever read or let alone vote on your comment is really low. So a little trick in this is the social selling brain of mine is you know, find the right topics but then find the questions that have very few contributors. So that your first second or third and people are actually reading your contribution that’s why we think contributors because we’re contributing.

Bob Woods  13:45

Yeah, And I have a major yes and to that and, and I was going to talk about a little farther down but I’m going to bring it up now. So this is my if you ain’t first your last strategy and that comes from murky Bobby from Talladega Nights. There is one section that is almost never used in these articles and that’s at the very bottom and it’s a generic, have we not covered anything else go ahead and list something here. 

So with that, because no one else does it you can gain that first top spot within that by offering you know basically anything that kind of hasn’t been addressed up top. So if you have a slightly differing thought about things or if you want to some.

Brynne Tillman  14:46

Summarize it. 

Bob Woods  13:45

Summarizing. Yes, some summarize it, You can do anything like that down there and because so few people are using it and like I said. In any article that I’ve been through, no one is using that variable bottom spot, you can dominate that bottom spot so that you are listed there. So if you ain’t first you’re last it’s not quite like that. But I mean.

Brynne Tillman  15:09

Be first on the last.

Bob Woods  15:10

Be first on the last. Exactly. And then if you’re kinda like, Well, this has all been covered pretty well. But I’m not really sure exactly what I can do if you go to my profile Bob Woods, in LinkedIn, in my featured section, I have got an article in the very first position there about this whole strategy. 

There is a Chat GPT prompt in there that I’m not going to read right now because it’s a little long, but you can copy that out, you can fill in the blanks. And that will give you some ideas to contribute to an article based on what’s in the article too. So there are some blank spaces where you can enter in some information based on the article. This works because I’ve been using it.

Brynne Tillman  16:01

So, I Love You said something other than I’m just gonna stress, which will give you some ideas.

Bob Woods  16:08

Yes, yes, exactly.

Brynne Tillman  16:11

So do not copy and paste, you’ve got to get your own voice around that. I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. I’ve been jumping. So I’ve done a lot of this on my mobile, like when I was out. And so what I’m doing is I’m voice text, I’m reading it. And I’m voice texting or voice recording, I just my ideas. And I’m not, I’m just sharing voice-to-text. That’s the word, voice to text, my ideas. It takes so little time for me to talk, it takes so much time for me to write. So I just put my thoughts around this invoice to text and it’s taking no time at all. So that’s my little tip.

Bob Woods  16:55

Yeah, So that’s great. So, my other little tip is the domination strategy. So at least in the things that we contribute to and this may or may not be in the categories that you might want to contribute to. But this is the domination strategy. And that’s where an article may not have any contributions at all, if you find an article like that, or if it has like maybe one or two, that’s it, fill in the rest of them dominate that article with your ideas.

Brynne Tillman  17:27

That’s a brilliant tip. So Judith asked, I have liked an article, but how can I comment? There is a short Application button, Correct? 

Bob Woods  17:37

Yeah, yeah, there is. I’m going to try that language. 

Brynne Tillman  17:42

Yeah, it just rolled out Tuesday before that. I think it was beta. A lot of people had access to it. Some didn’t. It rolled out kind of funky. But you know, that’s what we’re used to from LinkedIn. And, but when you’re in there, it should end because I’m already contributing, I haven’t seen it. I’m gonna go test it out. And I apologize for not being prepared. Usually I like to. 

Bob Woods  18:10

Kevin, our friend, Kevin Turner actually covered this on Tuesday. And he has, I need to go into it. Yeah. So when you get to the article, if you can contribute, it will say contribute your, your perspective, or wherever if you don’t have that, it will say request to contribute. When you click on that, it will then say as it loops through request pending. 

Brynne Tillman  18:41

Ah, okay. 

Bob Woods  18:42

So that’s how that’s working right now. Whether that changes or not in the future. I don’t know. But I think that they’re probably anticipating a lot of people are going to do this. So they’re, so they’re kind of gatekeeping that a little bit. I get it’s kind of frustrating, but yet I get it from their standpoint too.

Brynne Tillman  18:59

Yeah. And I still think there are a tonne of people that have a don’t that don’t realize that I agree with like a strange rollout. So you know, if you have any questions here, I’m gonna put in if you go, I’m gonna put this in in chat. If you are welcome to join us at our next bring VR guest to share if you go to social.

Bob Woods  19:23

Thursday, the 20th at 1pm Eastern. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  19:26

Yeah, if you’re listening to podcasts, just go to socialsaleslink.com/event and scroll down and just register for our next coaching. So socialsaleslink.com/event Scroll down, it’s free. You’re our guests, and bring these questions, share your screen, and we can help walk you through that. 

Bob Woods  19:46

Yep. So we’ve got a couple more comments really quick. How much time does LinkedIn need to invite contributors after engaging with existing comments? I mean, we just wait.

Brynne Tillman  19:57

No you’re gonna be invited. Anyway, Yeah. I think that’s the point. I think they rolled out to folks pretty randomly, maybe who could contribute. And I think now you have to request it. And again, Bob and I are going to do our best to learn from someone who doesn’t have it yet and go through those motions so we can tell you better how to request for that. But please come to our next VR guest coaching socialsaleslink.com/event  When you can share your screen and we’ll take a look at your specific situation and do our best to help you get access.

Bob Woods  20:37

Then the other one is I’m excited to start working on some articles as well. How can I boost my skills?

Brynne Tillman  20:44

I guess we want to understand skills on what is it writing skills, one of the things you could do is go to “Bob’s profile,” go to his “Featured section,” download that ebook and look at the prompts that you can use with Chat GPT to get you started and then you add your voice to.

Bob Woods  21:02

Add your voice, it is huge. 

Brynne Tillman  21:04

Yeah, add your voice. The best way to build your skills is to do these two or three or four times a day right it’s practice collaboration. I highly recommend you’ve got Grammarly. So that can help you know the grammar. And if you pay for Grammarly, it’ll even help with context. So you know, there are a lot of things that you can do. But the best thing is increasing your skills.

Bob Woods  21:36

Is doing it just doing it. Just do it as fast.

Brynne Tillman  21:39

I mean, I hate to say that, I’m sure there’s a tonne of places where you can take writing classes as well check out Udemy for writing classes or LinkedIn learning for writing classes. I’m sure there’s a ton out there.

Bob Woods  21:52

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I am. So with that. I mean, collaborative articles are definitely an evolving thing. We certainly don’t have all the answers right now. But there’s enough there that once you’re approved, if you’re not approved already, you can really go in and start building thought leadership with that, because it’s again, this is really cool. And both Brynne and I are very excited about it. Yay. So thanks again, for joining us on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter right now, we do this every week. Sometimes we do it even more than once a week depending. 

So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast right now, which means we’re recorded for you and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button. If you want more information on our podcast, go to socialsaleslink.com/podcast.  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 about many many different things that can help you with your LinkedIn and social selling. So when you are out and about this week or any week, make sure to make your sales.

Brynne Tillman  23:16

Social. 

Outro  21:52

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