Episode 79: LinkedIn Live and Your Sales Content Strategy

Bob Woods  00:00

Greetings everyone, and welcome to Making Sales Social Live! I’m Bob Woods, the LinkedIn Sherpa and I’m joined, as always, by the LinkedIn Whisperer, Brynne Tillman. How are you doing today, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  00:11

I’m fabulous, Bob! How are you?

Bob Woods  00:15

Doing really, really, really good. 

Today, we’re going to learn and be talking about a LinkedIn feature that still, it’s still kind of new, not everyone knows about it but when used right can be made into an essential tool when you’re looking to connect with and start new sales conversations, and also have deeper engagement with both your prospects and those who might be thinking about doing business with you. 

It’s called LinkedIn Live and it enables you to host live streaming sessions that can be used in literally a wide variety of ways. So how good is LinkedIn? LinkedIn says that live videos get an average of seven times more reactions and 24 times more comments than native uploaded video produced by the same broadcaster. So yeah, it’s really effective. With LinkedIn Events, you can bring your professional community together safely and in real-time. 

So, Brynne, I thought that we’d start off talking just a little bit about the mechanics behind LinkedIn Live because a lot of people are like, “I don’t even know where to begin, basically.”

Brynne Tillman  01:50

So well, let’s just say we’re on it now so if you’re watching live, (Bob: We are on it now. Right.) You’re watching LinkedIn Live. I mean, the mechanics are, unfortunately, you need a third party to run a LinkedIn Live. But let’s start with how do you get LinkedIn Live? Oh, well, I’ll just finish this and then I’ll hand it back. 

If you do not know if you’ve got LinkedIn Live, some people have it automatically. They’ve been granted it. You can get it by going into Creator Mode in your profile. That changes a lot, including your connection button becomes a Follow button, but you now get access to both LinkedIn Live and newsletters. 

So we’re talking about LinkedIn Live today and you do need a third party. We use Restream. There are things like StreamYard. So you have to run it. It’s not like Facebook where you can just go live. You need to have, you need to pay for a third party to leverage LinkedIn Live. I think I was stepping on your toes, you had something you wanted to share?

Bob Woods  02:54

I just wanted to let everyone know which tools are currently you know, legally approved, or whatever you want to say. But LinkedIn, so it’s Restream, like Brynne said, that’s what we use. There’s a product called Socialive. Brynne also mentioned StreamYard. There’s something called Switcher Studio and there’s also Vimeo. So we use Restream, so if we talk about anything else with our experience today, it’s going to be in the context of Restream, essentially.

Brynne Tillman  03:23

Awesome! And Steven Farber said LinkedIn Live has been a game changer for him. And he’s used it in one of the ways that we’re going to talk about, which is interviewing people. What a wonderful way to build rapport with your targeted audience than to interview them. 

You know, we talk a lot about starting sales conversations but we really don’t necessarily want it to be a “salesy” conversation, right? So how do we start to build rapport and relationships with our targeted buyers in a way that’s not salesy? One of them is to highlight them on a LinkedIn Live. (Bob: Yep.)

Another one is to provide insights and tips. That’s what we try to do with MSSL, which is Making Sales Social Live, we do this once a week and we use this in many different ways. So while Bob and I are providing insights here live for you, this content gets reused in lots of different ways.

Bob Woods  04:26

Yeah, so I mean, just in terms of a couple of ways. So besides, obviously, if you’re listening to us live, this is one way it gets used. If you’re listening to us via podcast, that’s another way it gets used so you can actually do a “show” like this and base a podcast on that so that you get a lot more distribution channels out of that. 

And what’s really cool is these platforms like Restream they actually save the entire show on their end so that you can export it and do audio, if you want to put it on YouTube as a separate video, you could do that, you know, distribute to all of the various podcasting platforms, I mean, there’s just, there’s so much that you could do just with the entire show, in general.

The next thing is going to be like piecing it up. So if you want to take a little chunk of the show and post it as a LinkedIn native video, you can do that. We also do pull quotes out of it, too. So when Brynne says all of her magnificent stuff, and I have one of my one or two of my brilliant observations, you can actually pull those as quotes, make those into graphics and share those on social.

Brynne Tillman  05:43

Yeah, I love that. So let’s recap some of this right, so we have the LinkedIn Live like you’re either listening on a podcast or watching right now, it records and you can download it from, we use Restream, but I think they all record so you have a recording.

You can get that transcribed, some of the platforms will give you the transcription, others, you may have to upload the video to Otter.ai and you can get a transcription. From that transcription, you could clean it up and put it up as a blog post if you’d like. 

You can take the video, add that into your website, you can embed it. So you can take that video, maybe you upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and embed that video with the transcription into your website. It’s great for search engine optimization. If you don’t want to edit it, just put raw transcription and paste it, which is pretty cool, right? Like there’s lots of ways that you can use that and then you’re getting the search engine optimization of all of your work.

Grab some of those insights, the line or two. And I love what Bob said, you can create in Canva, that quote, slide every one of these, Bob and I each get a quote that goes out in a slide. But you can use it in a question. You can put it out to your audience in a text post.

There’s so much that you can do with that content and as Bob said, take those mini clips, if you have a video editor, there are lots of people out there that can help you on Fiverr.com. Lots of places where you take out these little clips, and you upload that as–

Bob Woods  07:31

Vignettes or yeah, clips or whatever. Yeah, exactly. So I’m actually having a couple of questions come in already. Is LinkedIn Live considered a post once done on your personal page?

Brynne Tillman  07:43

So when you create a LinkedIn Live in your Restream, StreamYard, or Vimeo, it automatically creates an event. In that event, that event is now posted to your page. So when this gets created, it gets created on my account and in YouTube. 

So automatically, it is a post when the event goes live, it will run inside that event and it will run in my banner on my profile, live. It will then stay as an event in your activity and you can continue to reshare that and such.

Bob Woods  08:30

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I mean, it gets promoted in a lot of different ways that you may not necessarily think of doing all these steps. LinkedIn does it automatically, which is really cool and it will push people who see that in their timelines, you know, you’ll get, you know, you should get more and more organic reach from that as well. 

So Cindy asks, “What is the ideal duration?”

And that’s an interesting question. So for us, personally, we like to keep these around 10 minutes, although we’re coming up on 10 minutes already. 10 to 15 minutes, we think in general, is a good duration. But if you’re talking about something, and it’s really compelling, and you feel like everything is in a real group, you know, there’s not necessarily, I don’t think there’s a maximum time, is there, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  09:19

I don’t think so. I mean, I wouldn’t go more than an hour but the 10-minute minimum is what LinkedIn recommends. And most of ours are somewhere between that 10 and 15-minute window.

If you do them too short, what happens and you may have noticed for some of you that are live, is you got a notification that this started, but it may be two or three or four minutes before the folks that get notifications even show up. So if you do them too short, by the time they show up, it’s over. So you’ll lose a lot of people moving forward if that’s the case. 

The other thing is they recommend a minimum of 30 seconds to 1-minute countdown. We have a custom video that we run in our countdown. All of the platforms allow, they have like general countdowns. And again, the reason is that by the time people are alerted that it’s LIVE and they show up, there’s a little bit of a delay.

As I’m speaking now, you’re hearing what I said about 30 seconds ago. So that delay you want to keep in consideration when you’re starting that you do have that countdown allowing people to show up nearly the beginning of your talk.

Bob Woods  10:43

That’s a really good question. A very good question. We got one more that’s come in via Live on where I’m live, “Can be used for boosting your SEO for sure.”

That’s an excellent point, especially when you start to, you know, take it into pieces and parts, for lack of a better term, you can get so much different types of content out of just one live. It’s ridiculous. 

So and then obviously as you’ve been seeing us do here, we have been taking questions and answering questions. That’s where the whole engagement thing comes in because you got us now live and you can toss questions, as you know, people do it here. People have done it in others, it’s a great way to respond to questions live and then if you want to follow up with somebody or someone wants to follow up with you — I can’t tell you how many messages and how many connection requests I’ve gotten and I’m sure Brynne’s the same way from a live after it’s done. I believe those metrics that I mentioned at the top and that LinkedIn has put out, it’s tremendous for engagement.

Brynne Tillman  11:46

Absolutely! And people get to know you, right, like, LinkedIn is pretty static. Without video, you don’t really get to know someone and so when you do this LinkedIn Lives, there are folks that I talked to, for the first time they feel like they already have a relationship and a connection to me because they’ve watched these Lives, they’ve listened to the podcast, they really connect human to human. And I love that because my whole goal is to bring value to folks and to build these relationships. So video is a perfect way to do this. So Bob, bring this out. 

Bob Woods  12:26

There’s one more question that I think is an excellent question that I’ve already got the answer to:

“Do you know, of a resource of consultants who are looking to team up and do live streams?”

I know of the perfect place to go, your network. Team up with the people who you already know, who are obviously complementary to what you do, determine the topic ahead of time, and maybe discuss a little bit about what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t over script things. So I mean, like for today’s for example, I think Brynne and I, I think I had the intro written and we kind of knew what we’re going to talk about in general. But this has been very organic. 

And I think that you know, not sticking to a script and being organic is the best way to not only bring out excellent points, but you can also tell when something’s scripted. I mean, let’s face it. So being organic, and you know, going to your network first, I think is a great way to get started. Once you start to build momentum, you’ll probably have people reaching out to you to want to be on this. 

Brynne Tillman  13:27

So gonna circle back to Steven Farber, who mentioned something at the top that LinkedIn Live has been transformative for him. 

He reaches out to folks that sell into the same buyers but are not competitors. So he has interviews with folks that are selling into HR or to leadership, whether they’re recruiters or otherwise because what he teaches, is one of the things is DISC for, you know, for personality types, which help in both recruiting and in retention. 

So when he has these conversations with like-minded folks, people also selling into those HR departments, he gets to bring additional value to his network, because he’s bringing subject matter experts. They’re talking about content that his buyers care about, he can bring a whole other level of expertise. And the value that he’s bringing into his network is exponential and then he’s building relationships with these potential referral partners. Great way to use this. So just a heads up for that. 

“So how can a B2B real estate in a specific company boost its sales through LinkedIn?”

That’s a wonderful question. I’m going to just briefly touch on this and then we’re going to wrap this up but we talk about this all the time, I would go to socialsaleslink.com/podcasts and listen to some of the other things, you can also go to socialsaleslink.com/library and get free access to our LinkedIn library with lots of content. There are five things that B2B people need to do. 

They need to have their profile as a resource, not a resume. They need to do social listening to understand what’s important to their buyers. They need a content and engagement strategy so that they’re attracting the right people. They need to nurture their existing connections, and they need to leverage their clients and networking partners to get referrals. 

Those are the most important things. So I think it’s a great way of showcasing viewpoints on a topic. LinkedIn Live absolutely is. Thank you, Cindy.

Bob Woods  15:52

It’s a lot of fun. We have a blast on these things every single week. If we weren’t having fun, folks by I mean, I shouldn’t say we wouldn’t be doing them but it wouldn’t obviously show that we’re having fun if you know if these were dragged out and we’re like, “Oh my god! it’s eight minutes, we got to talk for two more minutes to meet the 10-minute thing” and all that stuff. We, you know, (Brynne: We just love it!) Yeah, love doing it. Love doing it.

Brynne Tillman  16:16

So we are over our 15 minutes (Bob: I know, it’s funny) Let’s wrap this up, guys.

Bob Woods  16:23

The moment we said 15 minutes, I said to myself, “Ahh… it’s  guaranteed that we’re gonna go in 15 minutes today.”

So, thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Live! If you’re with us live on LinkedIn right now, as a lot of people are evidently and we’d love that, we do this every week. So keep out keep an eye out rather for our Live sessions. 

So if you’re listening to us recorded on the podcast, and you haven’t subscribed already, we invite you to smash that subscribe or follow button to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones dropped. We do two of these things weekly, the Making Sales Social Live and we have a Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many more areas. 

So with that, we’re going to send you out with a smile and a laugh, and some good knowledge, hopefully. Just remember when you’re out and about, make sure that you’re making your sales…

Brynne Tillman  17:14

Social!

Bob Woods  17:16

I think that’s how we should do that in the future. So, all right, thanks, everybody. Have a good day. 

Outro

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Resources Mentioned:

• Restream
• StreamYard
• Socialive
• Switcher Studio
• Vimeo
• Otter.ai
• Canva
• Fiverr
• DiSC