Episode 245: Top Ten LinkedIn Activities for 2024

Bob Woods  00:00

Welcome to all sales and marketing pros out there to Making Sales Social Live, coming to you from the Social Sales Link Virtual Studios. I’m Bob Woods of Social Sales Link. They call me the LinkedIn Sherpa. They call me Maurice, or whatever that line was; I forget what that is.

 Brynne Tillman  00:20

Oh, I had to play that song afterward.

Bob Woods  00:22

You know? Absolutely. Yeah. And now it’s stuck in my head. And the co-host whom you just heard is about SSL and a LinkedIn and social selling strategist, trainer, coach as well, who is known as the LinkedIn Whisperer. Sometimes I call her Maurice too, I think – Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  00:40

Maurice. I can’t do that. I have it in my head, but it won’t come in.

Bob Woods  00:44

Yeah, I know.

Brynne Tillman  00:48

Everyone, yeah. I am in a Friday mood.

 Intro 00:54

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  01:17

We are in a Friday mood, Friday mode. And if you’re listening to us live, [we’re] in a pre-Thanksgiving mode as well. If on the podcast, you’ll be listening to this after Thanksgiving. But I guess you could chalk that up to Christmas, probably at that point. So, anyhow, let’s get into today’s topic because it actually addresses the future. So Brynne and I have our top 10 activities you should consider doing on LinkedIn in 2024.

So everything we’ll be talking about today will help you start those all-important sales conversations easier than before when you might not have been doing some of the things that we’re going to talk about. You may have been doing some, not sure, but probably not all of them. So we’re gonna get right into it with the first thing.

And it’s probably the biggest one just from an overall sense because, as we’ve said before, everything that you do on LinkedIn drives eyeballs and drives people to your profile. So now we’re just going to talk generally about profile refreshes and why we do it, and then we’ll get into a couple of the specific elements. So Brynne, what do you think about a profile refresh for 2024, just in an overall sense?

Brynne Tillman  02:33

I’m gonna, before we do that, I have one thing to share. As we go through these, these may be things that you do all the time. But the idea of today is for you to look at each of these and be positioned to make sure that you are entering into 2024. Ready, there are rumors of a difficult invite sales environment, a buyers environment, I am a very optimistic person, and I think it’s going to be awesome. But by putting some of these suggestions in place, it’s going to give you that competitive edge, it’s going to help you make sure that you are in the right position to attract, teach and engage the right buyers, and have an awesome 2024. 

So just want to start with that, then I’m going to go into profile, which I’m very excited about. And your profile, this is your landing page. And Bob, you are the master of profile. So I’m so excited to hear your thoughts about this. But conceptually or strategically, the goal of the profile is to convert your visitor to a conversation, and I’m gonna have Bob go through the elements that do that. 

But I want you to keep in mind, this is not about you making a sale, this is about you starting a conversation. This is about when someone shows up here, that they’ve learned so much that they know if they take your call, it’s going to be well worth their time. So Bob, I’m gonna give you the tactics behind this because that’s some of your expertise.

Bob Woods  04:09

Sure, absolutely. So that you know, 10 that we’re talking about number one was just a profile from a general sense. Now we’re going to get into some of the nitty gritty. The first one is going to have to do with what we call the top of the fold. So that’s your headline, your photo and your banner. So first things first, the first really easy one to knock off your photo should be how you look during the business day. 

So in other words, if you’re wearing a suit in your photo, but you don’t look like that during the day, you may want to you know, maybe just throttle back on that look just a little bit, but make sure that it’s what you look like today and not a profile photo from like five or 10 years ago when you look completely different. That’s probably the most Important thing there. And just make sure that it zoomed in enough so that people can see what your face looks like. 

Because keep in mind that whenever you see your photo on your profile, that is the largest that you’re ever going to see it on LinkedIn, it will get, it gets sized down to several different sizes. Beyond that, if your face is a tiny part of that, rather than a significant part, no one’s going to be able to see you when it appears elsewhere. The next thing is the banners. So your banner is a very important piece of real estate, use it wisely. 

There are so many different things that you can do with banners that we can’t really give it justice with the only thing that I can tell you is probably what not to do. A lot of times people just put in like a generic skyline. And on unless you’re an architect, that may not be the best thing to do a beach type of thing, that may not be the best thing to do unless you have, unless you have a logo there or something like that, Brynne. 

Brynne Tillman  06:04

Yeah, so I’m going to say you can use this banner in so many ways. This is your billboard, if you have an event coming up, if you’re going to be at a conference. And even if you have an online event, this is a great opportunity to leverage that banner like your billboard. So that’s what I’m going to add .

Staying Namic doesn’t have to be the same week after week. And make sure it’s branded, I believe that you should have if there’s no event coming up that you’ve got a great tagline so that people know how you can help them. And that it looks like your website and everything else. So you have that consistent branding. Okay. 

Bob Woods  06:45

Yeah, absolutely.  And if you want good examples of that look at mine or brens profiles, because we both have two very different banners. But yet, they’re both very effective in what they do. And then probably the most important part is your headline. So your headline has four functions, who you help. And you need to tell them who you help, how you help them, the services that you provide and the results that you bring. 

And you got to do that in 220 characters and spaces. So the old you know, account executive at Acme widgets company, that doesn’t work, you need to tell people who you are and how you help them. And basically everything that I just listed. Otherwise, they don’t have any reason to scroll down and to some of the other sections that we’re going to be talking about. So and again, if you want effective headlines, examples, obviously for our company.

But you know, check out Brynne and mine, because both of ours follow that exact pattern. And it’s not a it’s not a template, it’s a pattern because I do headlines all the time for many different types of companies. It follows the same kind of formula and pattern, but they look different every single time because everyone out there is unique. So don’t feel like that this is just a template, it’s really not.

Brynne Tillman  08:05

Awesome. Anything else on profile, before we go to number two? 

Bob Woods  08:09

Item three is going to talk about the featured section. And then item four, we’re going to quickly go over the about section and experience. So your featured section should be educational should lead to either posts about education that you’re providing or something preferably on your website. So in other words, don’t post don’t necessarily post a Forbes article there. Because that will take them away from you and will land them on Forbes and God knows where they’re gonna go from there. 

If you have a blog or something like that on your website that you can point people to that’s much better because at least they’re on a property of yours. So you’re not going to lead them away. Think of your featured section as like the produce section of a supermarket, they always keep the freshest and best stuff there that people are interested in. Your feature section is the same thing. And people are interested in education. So make sure that you have the best freshest educational things in your featured section.

Brynne Tillman  09:10

We always say you’ve got to show up as a resource. This is one of the best areas to be that resource. So we’re gonna quickly go through about and then.

Bob Woods  09:20

And then yeah, and then we’re gonna go through everything else. So you’re “About Section”. Again, this is where you identify that, you know, “Hey, I’m the person who can help you. And by you, you’re talking about your audience.” So you need to attract your audience initially by identifying them and saying the equivalent of the old phrase that I absolutely hate, but I cannot think of a better way to say it. I feel your pain. 

So you have to identify that you know what they are feeling and probably the reason why they’re at your, your profile. What you do then is offer some education and offer some tips that they can take away and do on their own without them even having to contact you vendor agnostic tips. And then from there, you can get a little bit into how you help. And then at the bottom, you can have a call to action. 

I’m not sure if you’re interested in this subject. But if you are, please reach out. If you have a Calendly account, you can put that in there at least have your email address in there if nothing else, phone number is fine. Unless you’re sensitive about having your cell phone number out there. Some people are, some people aren’t. I come across both cases all the time. Awesome.

Brynne Tillman  10:38

So what’s next? And listen? No, I did not do my homework. And so I apologize if I don’t even know our list. So. So are we going into content next?  

Bob Woods  10:50

Yes, we are finding new sources to curate content. 

Brynne Tillman  10:53

Awesome. 

Bob Woods  10:54

We have all types of sources. Go ahead.

 Brynne Tillman  10:56

Can I talk about the three legged stool of content? Yes. Okay, awesome. So there’s a content that is a three-legged stool, it is about engagement. It’s about curating content. And it’s about creating content. All three need to be leveraged in order to show up as the thought leader and the subject matter expert. I’m not sure how much engagement is in our list, but I’m going to add it to our list now really quickly, engage 10 times a day, now you may go, that’s insane. 

10 times a day. And engagement is a comment or reaction. It could be on a company post, it could be an event, it could be a person’s post, but go out and ring the bell of the companies and the people that you’re prospecting. So those content, that content when they share content will come into your notifications. And that’s the content to engage on. So it might take three to five minutes a day, just to engage 10 times at the most. 

But what happens when you’re engaging. When we start posting content, the people that we’re engaging with, will start to see our content. I did not, that was not a mistake, that is exactly how it works. We can help control who sees our content. So engaging is absolutely foundational. Next is curating right. And that’s what we’re gonna go into, I’ll throw that back to you.

Bob Woods  12:26

Yeah. So I mean, basically curating is bringing in content from other sources. So and then. And then when you do that, though, you’re not just saying, you know, “Hey, here’s a great article,” read it, you are offering your opinion on it, you are education, you are educating potentially beyond what is in that article, or you can offer a comment on what you think what’s about whatever the topic of that article is.

And then you’re inviting people to comment within you know, comment within your share, Essentially. So that way you start building, you know, building up relationships with people who comment, because you should be commenting on the comments that come into your articles as well. And that’s very important.

Brynne Tillman  13:10

So I’m gonna piggyback on that I’m gonna Yes, and one of the most fabulous things that LinkedIn rolled out in the last year is if you click some people to paper airplane, some people to narrow right now at the bottom of your curated kind of any piece of content that you share, you can actually share this up to 50 people blind copied. 

So if you’ve curated a great piece of content, and you’d like the insights of people in your network, you can go in, you can add 50 people you can share separately, there is a creative group, you don’t want to do that. You want to share separately with a little message. And actually it will become 50 messages inside of your inbox or your messaging. 

So you’ll be able to engage with each of them. This is absolutely foundational for business development and staying on the radar folks. I’m going to hand it back to you to create. But guys in 2024, I want you to put this on your radar about reaching out and getting folks to want to engage, getting folks too excited. And this is where content is engaging, curating and now creating content. So, back to the start, and I’ll piggyback on your thoughts.

Bob Woods  14:37

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So many people out there are worried about the LinkedIn algorithm by doing everything that we just said, you not only take the algorithm kind of out of things at that point, but all these actions that you’re doing actually helps you with the algorithm, because it sees that you’re commenting that you’re commenting on other people’s content, what’s helps you with the algorithm and several other things that Brynne just said, help you with the algorithm. So you’re not. So you’re not depending or dependent on the algorithm, but you are reaping the benefits from the algorithm. I think that’s probably it.

Brynne Tillman  15:15

Yeah. And I’m going to rephrase that slight reframe. But that’s exactly right. So I’m going to try to sloganize that. So when you stop focusing on the algorithm, and you start doing the activities, the algorithm will benefit you. That’s your focus on the rules of the will to get there. Don’t focus on the rules of the algorithm, focus on the right engagement. And the algorithm will bless you.

Bob Woods  15:50

Yes, yeah, something like that. Something like that, we will, we will have that down pretty quick. And you want to know, what’s really cool about this is that we’ve actually taken care of several points within this discussion, because one of the things we talked talked about, we’re going to talk about it is ringing the bell, the people you want to see stuff from, that is really, really important. Engage with your targeted audience, Absolutely. 

Engagement is really important. So let’s talk really quick about the different forms of content that are available to you, you should really be putting out more than just content shares, or just text posts. And we’re not saying eliminate those, but get more into video, get more into documents, because the algorithm still, algorithm still kinda likes those things. Although like you said, we’re not really dependent on the algorithm anymore. 

But just having a different variety of things for your audience is definitely going to help you especially with video, because with video, you are talking essentially one on one with each person in your audience. At that point, they can see you, they can hear you, they know about your personality, they see that you’re a likable, knowledgeable thought leadership-based person. And that alone should bring you additional benefits and start sales conversations.

Brynne Tillman  17:09

I love that. Can I just add in a few like a poll is.

Bob Woods  17:14

Polls are still good. 

Brynne Tillman  17:16

A poll is original content, you could actually give someone a kudos for doing a great job, and that’s gonna post as original content. So, you know, I have one client that gives a kudos a week like I don’t know, maybe it’s kudos Wednesday, I’m making that up. I don’t know what day it is. But they’re out there. Giving a kudos. It’s kind of fun, right? Like that? You’re engaging with people. But original content is that post right? That, that that you created? That’s really what it is that you’ve created. Canva makes Canva your best friend. Oh, hi, our friend, Jeff Young is here.

Bob Woods  18:02

He says variety is definitely the spice of life and of content. Obviously. We could not agree more with that.

Brynne Tillman  18:09

That’s awesome. Yeah. And, you know, Bob, we work so hard with our clients to create content. And so not it’s not even really hard. It’s pretty easy, but don’t tell them that. But here, I’m just gonna give a quick, like overview on this right? Interview yourself. Go ahead, jump on a zoom. Talk about a subject that you’re passionate about that you’re really great at. Grab that transcript, take that transcript into Chat GPT and say, “Write a LinkedIn post using this transcript only” highlighting five bullet points, share relevant hashtags, and keep it under maybe 1000 characters because I think you can have up to 2000 I can’t remember exactly..

Bob Woods  19:02

Something like that. But just because you can do something shorter do something so yeah, definitely keep it shorter. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  19:08

You can ask it to add emojis, add bullet points, don’t add emojis. Right and and it will take your words. There’s nothing cheating about this because you were saying use my transcript only do not research. And now you have a post, then you could say “Now give me 10 quotes.” And now you have quotes that you can put into Canva posts. You can actually say “Create an eBook,”  a 10 page ebook out of this and it will be like It’s insane how easy today it is to create posts. If you want our ChatGPT this is off the cuff Bob I know I’m I’ve gone wild you can’t control me. It’s just you know, one of those days, so poor, Bob.

Bob Woods  20:00

That’s okay. No, we’re doing great.

Brynne Tillman  20:03

All right, cool. So, I’m going to socialsaleslink.com/chatgpt. And you could get 101 of our, and they’re not even older ones. But we need to update that because by the way, Bob is brilliant at ChatGPT prompts. So if you need help come to one of our br guests to coachings. And he can help you prompt engineers. And I’ll probably throw in my two cents because I can’t help myself.

Bob Woods  20:30

Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re all getting really good at that. 

Brynne Tillman  20:34

Okay, so original content, just record yourself and use ChatGPT and life is good, Okay.

Bob Woods  20:42

Okay, next. Take inventory of your connections.

Brynne Tillman  20:47

Yes. Should I start?

Bob Woods  20:50

I yeah, this is you. So you do it? 

Brynne Tillman  20:54

Oh, you’re awesome. All right. So you can export your connections, or even in the free LinkedIn, you can search your first-degree connections, by location, by industry by title, all kinds of things. So we need to take inventory, why 10% On average, 10% of our existing network are people that we’d want to have a conversation with, they might be clients, prospects, referral partners, you name it, it could be any of those folks living in our network now that we’re ignoring. 

And so for 2024, I’m gonna bring it back to like the title for 2024, I want to make sure that by the time January 2nd hits, that you have a complete list of the people you’re already connected to, that you’d like to have conversations with. And there are lots of ways to start conversations and make sure I’m going to add this, we’re gonna go back, ring their bells.

Go into those folks before 2024. So we’re ready. And ring the bells of the 10% of the people in your network that you want to engage and come up with a little like, what kind of content? Do I want them to vote on polls? What am I going to do to re-engage them and get a conversation going?

Bob Woods  22:16

Well, 100% 100%, so we’re, so we’re going to wrap things up with our last point, because it’s a real simple one. We’ve thrown a lot of stuff at you, we know we’ve thrown a lot of stuff at you, no matter what you do. Keep showing up. If there’s nothing else that you do, keep showing up. Try to implement some more of these things as we go along. If you’re like, “Oh my god, I have no idea how I’m going to do all this stuff.” 

We have a book called “The day in the life of a social seller,” which walks you through step by step daily and weekly activities that you need to undertake to start sales conversations by using social selling, that is available at socialsaleslink.com/day that’s why socialsaleslink.com/day That is up if you’re live with us right now, if you are on the podcast, we will make sure that that address is in the show notes. 

Download that. will take you so far in terms of not only seeing how to do it, but to look at this and realize that this is not as difficult as it may seem like and I think that that’s really, really important to know, even if you’re not doing everything. If you’re doing some of these days, you’re already way ahead of the crowd, and you will start to stand out more. It’s not that you may get some stuff immediately. Don’t know. But as you keep going, you will definitely see benefits from this.

Brynne Tillman  23:48

We’re six weeks to 2024. Right now, as we’re recording this by the time he listens to the podcast, we may be in 2024 or very close. Not quite. Not quite but close. Right? Well, they could watch it next year. Who knows anyway. But the point of this is we need to get this competitive edge in 2024. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to bring value to our network so that we are seen as subject matter experts and vendors of choice.

Bob Woods  24:21

That is a fantastic way to end this episode. So thanks again for joining us on making sales social live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or x the weird network that was formerly known as Twitter 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, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button if you already haven’t. 

If you want more info on our podcast, it’s socialsaleslink.com/podcast we do two shows weekly, this one that you’re listening to right now and our making sales social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales marketing business and many more areas and we’ve got some great people coming up to I’m interviewing a couple of people that I’m really excited about. So when you are out and about be sure to make your sales social. Thanks everyone, have a great day. 

Outro  25:16

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