Episode 339: Converting LinkedIn Spectators and Lurkers into Engagers

Intro

Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast, featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson, Junior, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies. Our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show. It’s time for Making Sales Social Live coming to you from the social sales link and virtual studios.

0:00:49 – (Brynne Tillman): Hello, Stan. How are you doing?

0:00:53 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Excellent today. How about you, Brynne?

0:00:56 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I’m, I’m great. And I’m really excited for today’s conversation. You actually inspired the title. For years I’ve been saying lurker to engager, but it did get a little creepy. So now we’re thinking of a spectator to engage her. And I appreciate the new shift in even a little bit of the way that we think about this. So we’ll jump in in a minute, but I want to talk about why this is so important. There is this silent majority on LinkedIn, right? You will notice this, you may say. I have 1227 views, 3 reactions, and 4 comments.

0:01:47 – (Brynne Tillman): So who are these other people? There are people that are seeing your content but have not been moved to engage. So we’re going to talk today about some of the things that we can do to really ensure that we are converting our spectators to engagers. And I’m just going to start with it. You have to make sure that the content you’re putting out there is worthy of engagement. Right. One of the things we see all the time is people sharing content that they want the world to know about, not necessarily content their world wants to engage in.

0:02:32 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes, exactly.

0:02:35 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So that’s, you know, before we get into our little list, it is really important that you take a step back and you take inventory of your content and say if I were not interested in your product or service, but I happen to fall into your Persona, your ideal customer profile, would I be interested in this and would I have something to add to this? Right. So recognize thought leadership is not only about your thoughts, it’s about theirs too.

0:03:15 – (Brynne Tillman): So we’ve got to encourage that. So, Stan, I’m going to jump in with our number one on the list, which is to make sure we’re asking them to engage, that there is a cta, a call to action. Talk about when you post content, and what a good CTA might be.

0:03:35 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes. So the CTA is so important because most People would just read your content, say, that’s great, and then keep going. So in the end, if you ask them, please let us know what you think. What’s your perspective? Has this happened to you? So a CTA is best done in the form of a question at the end, encouraging them to add their thoughts to the discussion in the comments. And it may seem like a small thing, but it’s super important.

0:04:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Because they’re like, oh, I’m invited to engage. So I love that I have not done this yet, but our friend Joe Athelbaum has done this and so I’m going to share it for a moment, giving him all the credit until I do it like five or six times and then I’ll give him credit. But what he does sometimes is he’ll say, if you think this way, give me a thumbs up. If you think this way, give me a carrot, a care. Like.

0:04:45 – (Brynne Tillman): So he’s. It’s almost like a poll using the reactions, and then he’ll ask to comment. And I think that’s brilliant. I still to this day have not leveraged that yet, but I think he’ll even create an image that goes along with it that says how to vote with the reactions.

0:05:12 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Reaction.

0:05:12 – (Brynne Tillman): So, and when he does it, he’ll get hundreds and hundreds of reactions and all different ones.

0:05:19 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Right.

0:05:19 – (Brynne Tillman): So I thought that was a little clever. I thought I’d share that.

0:05:23 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yeah, that is super cool. It’s like pressing the easy button for them to vote. And I’m assuming he also gets a lot of comments in addition to the reactions since that’s what he’s after.

0:05:36 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, absolutely. But here’s the thing that’s interesting. So, yes, we want comments, we definitely want them, but if we want to start conversations with these folks, the most important thing is that we know that they’re there. Right. That’s the moving from spectator to engager. So even if we just get a reaction and no comment, they’ve come out of the woodwork, we’re aware that they’re there and we can begin to engage with them.

0:06:05 – (Brynne Tillman): So it’s kind of like eye contact. They didn’t start a conversation, but there’s an awareness. We both know we’re in the same room.

0:06:15 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes.

0:06:16 – (Brynne Tillman): So that’s how I might look at it. The reaction, where comments are. We’ve started a conversation.

0:06:21 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes. And then, the beauty of LinkedIn, of course, is that you can see everyone who’s reacted. So it is worth taking, you know, just a few minutes to look at who’s reacted to your content. Some of the people who have reacted, may not have commented but they may be people of interest to you and yeah, I love that.

0:06:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that we. I just have a person coming in with a question. Yeah. So I, I love that. And I think that it’s so important. I’m gonna actually move this out of order for a moment. So I’m going to, on our list, number four, which is to send content in a message to ask for engagement. I’m going to make this number two. So number one was to ask for the call to action. The next one, let’s talk about sending the content in the message using the little paper airplane.

0:07:22 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yeah. So LinkedIn makes it super easy for you to share a post with anyone that you like in the form of a direct message. Brynne mentioned the paper airplane. So of course you want to be very judicious about who you share it with. You want to make sure, as Brynnet mentioned at the beginning, that it’s not content that’s pure of interest to you or self-serving, but that it’s content that’s very relevant to them, that will help them do their job better, help them look good in the eyes of others if they, in turn, share it.

0:07:54 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): So that is super important. And of course when you share it in a direct message, just let them know why you think this piece of content would be of interest to them. And of course, you can also encourage them to share it with others if they think that it will be of interest to their colleagues, peers, and anyone else that they know. Any other thoughts that you had on that one, Brynne?

0:08:18 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I mean I think you hit all of the major points. The one thing I’ll just add is you can blind copy up to 10 people at a time. So if you take inventory of your connections and you identify, I don’t know, 50 people that you would like to get the engagement from, you can send it, you know, five times, ten at a time and you just can’t use a name. Right. So it might be, you know, as a sales leader I thought you might get some value.

0:08:50 – (Brynne Tillman): I’d also love your perspective. Perspective on if you’re open to commenting. I truly appreciate your engagement. And then you can send that up to 10 people at a time once you do that. And I think there’s some major opportunity missed when people don’t do that. Right. We, you know, Bob Woods talks all the time about posts and ghosts. Right. So we put out content, we don’t invite anyone, we don’t really engage.

0:09:19 – (Brynne Tillman): So in this, this is very purposefully sharing it in the inbox. But I’m just going to stress, go back to what you said, Stan, because you said it perfectly. I just want to drill in. The content that you’re sharing matters. It needs to be content that they are excited to engage in that they can’t wait to share their perspective. So if your goal is to go out and just share your brilliance, they’re going to go, okay, that was interesting, and move on.

0:09:59 – (Brynne Tillman): But if your goal is to spark conversation now, you’re going to move them from spectator to engager. There are times when I’ll go through and I’ll see a post and I don’t know the person that posted, but the content resonates so much for me that I end up engaging. And a lot of times I’m going to go to this next time when I see a poll, I may not know who posted that poll, but that poll has caught my attention and I’m dying to vote for two reasons. One, I want to share my perspective, but the other is you can’t see how other people voted until you vote on the poll.

0:10:44 – (Brynne Tillman): Talk about a good poll. How does someone put together a poll? Or not tactically, but strategically, how does someone put a poll together that will attract the right people to vote?

0:10:57 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes. So doing a good poll takes some planning because you want to think about what you can ask about that is of interest to your audience. What type of question can I ask when I get answers, that’s the second part of the poll, it will bring value to my audience. So what types of issues is my audience thinking about that they would love? Feedback from their peers, and others in their industry to help them think about.

0:11:35 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Or what types of questions would I love to get answers to? But these answers will also be of interest to my target audience. So not just things that I’m interested in. But again, we keep going back to what’s of interest to my target audience. So the question is very important and then the answers. Because you can give up to four choices of answers. I’m going to go to the end. First, you need to save a place.

0:12:11 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): The last one should always be the other, you know, please share in the comments. So give them a chance to share something that’s not in your first three and think about, okay, what are the primary answers that people would answer? Those will be your top three and then others which opens it up. So if people don’t see what they want in the first three answers, they can put their own in, which is what most People like to do.

0:12:41 – (Brynne Tillman): Anyway, I love that sometimes I write other sharing comments. So not only are we saying something else, but like, tell me below.

0:12:51 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yep, yep. So others, please share in the comments.

0:12:55 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Oh, I love that. Love that, love that. All right, now we’re going to talk about this. Doing this next one judiciously. Yeah, but talk about tagging and even throwing a hashtag or two on how this can help with engagement.

0:13:11 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes. So tagging. Now, as Brynne said, you need to think before using the tagging because you only want to use it for people who you are certain will have an interest. So you need to put their hat on and think about, okay, if I were Brent or if I were Bob, would this piece of content help them be very interesting to them? Will they have a perspective to add to this content, to this discussion? Because you only want to share it with people who, you know, will have something to add to the discussion and who would love the opportunity to add something to the discussion.

0:13:58 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): The challenge with tagging is that if you tag someone and they just ignore it, it’s going to hurt your reach. So tag people. One other tip is if you tag someone and you’ve got a relationship with them, such that if they’re a first-degree connection, you can send them a DM and say, hey, you know, I shared this message with you, I tagged you in it, would love your input because I thought this would be of interest.

0:14:34 – (Brynne Tillman): Fantastic.

0:14:36 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yeah. So, Brynne, I’ll let you take it. Because I’ve been talking, let you take hashtags because even though LinkedIn’s DE emphasized them, they are still valuable.

0:14:45 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, so. And I appreciate that. So this is sort of a sub-topic because as you mentioned, LinkedIn does not seem to care much about hashtags anymore and they have totally de-emphasized them. However, there are people that are following hashtags and they will begin to see some of your content when you’re using those hashtags. So does it create engagement? Not directly, but it does get your content in front of people who are interested in that topic.

0:15:16 – (Brynne Tillman): And so they’re more likely to engage if it’s a topic that they’re following. So I’ll just leave it at that.

0:15:24 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yep.

0:15:25 – (Brynne Tillman): Okay. So we talked about having a call to action. We talked about sending in a direct message. We talked about polls, talked about tagging, and hashtags. We’re going to end with what I think is the most important one, hands down, if you want engagement, engage on their content. Talk a little bit about that.

0:15:49 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes. So we always talk about Giving before you ask for anything and contributing which, which works in the overall scheme of things. You know, give before you ask. It raises your level of visibility and it also helps to amplify their content when you engage. Because of course, it indicates to the algorithm that people are interested in their content. So one wonderful thing about Sales Navigator is that you can use a filter that shows you who’s posted in the past 30 days.

0:16:29 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): So that makes your life a little bit easier in terms of figuring out, okay, who has posted content that I can look to engage on. And then when I do engage, tag them to let them know that, hey, by the way, I’ve engaged on your content, I’ve added to the discussion, so it supports them and it also helps you.

0:16:54 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. And you know, and you may have said this, I heard algorithms and I went into my own brain. So if I missed what you said, the more you engage with someone else, the more they see your content, right? So if we want them to engage, number one, they have to see our stuff. So by engaging with them, they will start to see our stuff. But if someone engages with me two or three times and then I see their stuff, I engage back.

0:17:27 – (Brynne Tillman): I have a gentleman who engages in almost everything I put out there. I’m now seeing his stuff. And it’s not that I feel obligated to engage, but I feel like it’s the polite thing to do. So, when you’re out there and you’re sharing that content, I’m on it, right? We’ve never actually talked. I don’t think we have, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually talked. But he has really thoughtful comments that he puts on my content, like every time for the last couple of weeks. He is high on my radar.

0:18:04 – (Brynne Tillman): So if he would happen to reach out and say, hey, I love your content, I’d love to meet you and talk, I’d probably say yes, right? So not only with his engagement in my content create my engagement, but it also creates these trust-based conversations. The engagement will actually move to a real conversation. If you’re patient with it and you’re leveraging it in an authentic way, you don’t have an ulterior motive other than to start a conversation and see where it leads.

0:18:44 – (Brynne Tillman): And this is where. But you know, as we end this, as you’re doing this, and your goal is to move them from spectator to engagement, make sure that you don’t have the motive of moving them from spectator to client. Because if that’s what you’re thinking, you will lose every single time. They will, in the words of Larry Levine, smell your commission breath even through the computer. Right. So really you’ve got to look at this as my goal is to start authentic, trust-based conversations.

0:19:24 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s the first step. And so the only way we can do that is if we detach from what that prospect is worth to us and we attach to what we are worth to them.

0:19:34 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): Yes, exactly. So it is a long game.

0:19:38 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And it’s not that there’s no short game. Right. There is a short game and that’s referrals. Identifying who your clients are and your network, your networking partners know that you want to meet and get referrals. But when it comes to moving them cold spectator, well, by the time they’re a spectator, they’re lukewarm. But moving them right from lukewarm to spectator to engagement. You are 100% right, Stan.

0:20:08 – (Brynne Tillman): You know, it’s the long game and you have to be okay with that. Right? So yeah. Any last thoughts before we bring this to a close?

0:20:21 – (Stan Robinson, Jr.): This has been great. As you said at the outset, the vast majority of people on LinkedIn are spectators, but they are reading your content. So take heart. Even when it doesn’t seem like people are commenting, people are reading your content. So just stay consistent with posting. Do not give up.

0:20:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your brilliant insights today, Stan. I always love learning from you and running these programs. And for everyone who’s listening when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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