[Podcast] Personal Branding & The Power of LinkedIn with Mike Roberts

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful platforms for making business connections and growing your personal brand.

But are you leveraging its power to the full?

Join us in this episode as we are joined by LinkedIn expert, Mike Roberts, to dig deep into how to use LinkedIn to grow your personal brand for success.

Together we review how LinkedIn can help you build a powerful personal brand and what you need to do to ensure your LinkedIn profile is in tip-top condition for success.

We also get Mike’s top tips on how to use the platform, how video is the next big thing, and what you can do right now to bring awareness to your brand. Not to be missed!

Also see our Personal Branding Toolkit to help you build a brand in 7 steps.

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Transcript (Auto Generated)

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of JUST Branding. We’re really, really thrilled to have Mike Roberts with us. Who is Mike?

Mike is the Chief Amazement Officer, the title that I think is incredible. He’s the Chief Amazement Officer at Making Digital Real. We’ve got Mike on because Mike is an expert in helping people leverage the power of LinkedIn.

And since 2017, he’s been working with over 2000 business owners to basically reach more prospects, close more sales, create new opportunities, and ultimately make more money. And so we think that Mike is going to be a fantastic person to have on the show to really help all of us understand how we can leverage the power of LinkedIn in our personal branding. So Mike, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for carving out some time to be with us today.

Yeah, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Great.

Well, I think perhaps maybe we could just start off on sort of quite basic terms because in this podcast, as many listeners will know, we are used to talking about branding, usually from a business perspective, in terms of positioning a product or a service out to the market and the meaning that people attach to that. But today, I think really what we’re going to do is focus in on personal branding. So perhaps we could start there.

How do you understand personal branding? What’s your sort of take on that?

Well, I’ve been in sales for 20 years. So when I came out of college, the internet was fairly new. And, you know, I was straight into a tele sales job and then a field sales job, the usual story.

But I quite quickly grasped the concept of personal branding, as in, you know, the people buy from people and understanding that when you’re talking to a prospect, they’re talking to you, not a logo, not a brand. And that hit quite home pretty quick with me in my early 20s. And, you know, I’m over 40 now.

And I think because of the experience that I’ve had in the sales industry, personal branding to me has become so I’ve geeked out basically over it so much that it’s become my go to source every day for winning more sales. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of like, I guess it’s like your reputation, isn’t it? As you maybe put it, we put it.

But is it more than reputation? Is it the way, I suppose it’s the way that you show up, isn’t it? I guess your personal brand for your customers or your potential customers.

I think it’s the way you show up. I think it’s the way that you, you know, put yourself out there. Most people know me as the guy in the black t-shirt.

I very rarely stray away from the persona that I have, especially on Zoom and when I do my meetings. And I don’t know whether you would consider like my background as my personal branding, but everyone says, oh, you’re the guy with the records in the background. And it’s like, that’s what they remember me for.

And that’s what I just try to keep it as. I just try to keep everything as uniformed as possible.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, I guess we could, we could talk about consistency in a minute. But one thing that I’ve immediately picked up and I’m sure listeners have, and I know Jacob’s hot on as well, is this concept of, you know, managing that meaning carefully, thinking about the consistency in how you actually show up.

You know, you’ve talked about two things there, your Zoom background, the fact that you wear t-shirts, you know, and that kind of thing. And these things, you know, although are naturally yours, they’re also something that you can consciously consider and think through so that you come across hopefully in the right way to the right people. And so I think that’s a fantastic kind of lesson.

Straight off the bat, there’s value straight off the bat, Mike. You know, think about, we need to think about how we’re doing those things because you can’t be reckless in relation to this. Jake, what do you think about that just before we kind of move forward?

You know, I know you’re a keen self-brander.

Yeah, as Mike was speaking, I was thinking, well, that’s maths. And what’s my distinctive assets that people come to know? Like Mike is the black shirt and the background.

For me, Matt, like the beard and your outgoing personality. For me, obviously, people refer to pink and flamingos. And that’s been part of my brand since 2007.

Well, not the flamingos, but the pink definitely. And that stands out. So we’re just talking about little things right now, but perhaps we can get into like the bigger picture.

Distinctive assets that you personally own. Yeah, leverage them. And Mike, it’s interesting you talked about the black t-shirt that you wear and that you’ve become known for that.

And I think that in itself is really interesting. What we wear, what we choose to wear. I tend to show up, I’m not wearing it today ironically, but when I do business events, and that’s how Mike and I met actually, we were at a conference the other week, but I always tend to wear a shirt done up to my top button, which a lot of people feel is a little bit weird, right?

Particularly in business settings, because you’re not wearing a tie, and if most business people when they don’t wear a tie, they open it. But I like kind of have that kind of creative edge that I don’t know, just I’ve always worn and I just always enjoy, and I kind of just like always show up like that, because I don’t know if I’m known for that, but it’s kind of like an interesting thing to think about, well, why am I choosing to wear this? Why is this distinctive?

Now, the other thing I would say on this one, just really quickly Mike, and I wonder what your thoughts are, is do you ever think, do you ever see people that make decisions and you think you’re just trying too hard there?

You know what? I’ve never really thought about that before. Maybe it’s the opposite.

Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, because I’ve sold to the legal sector and wealth management firms for the last 20 years. And I would say I was three years into my sales job and I thought, do you know what? This isn’t me.

I’m just going to be authentic. And so I ditched the suit. You know, I ditched the whole corporate trying to be someone I wasn’t.

And I just turned up with my backpack, my trainers, my vans, black t-shirt. And I was like, this is me. You either like it or you don’t.

And I’ve never looked back since. I’ve been to some of the most corporate events and meetings that you could possibly think of. And I just turned up as me, no suit.

And I’ve won the business. And I think authenticity is just as important as the personal branding nowadays. Love that.

Absolutely love that. So let’s move this conversation into where I know we all want to be, which is into the concept of LinkedIn. I’m sure everybody knows what LinkedIn is, but just for kind of those, perhaps 0.1% of people that don’t know Mike, how would you sort of describe LinkedIn?

How would I describe it? I would probably say it’s the world’s largest database of business professionals. It’s where everybody that has…

Well, I want to say where people have money are based, because we’re in sales, right? And that’s where people are. If you’re selling and they’re buying, you’re on LinkedIn.

But honestly, it’s the best digital networking site where if there’s somebody that you think could be a good fit for your business, most likely they’re on there. And it’s your chance to connect, engage, nurture and work with.

Brilliant. So let’s talk about then how that ties into personal branding. How can LinkedIn help us with our personal branding?

I guess is the simple first question.

So for me, it’s about rehumanization. I think a lot of people fall into the trap of creating a profile, connecting with hundreds of people for the sake of it, and hoping, you know, there’s hundreds of thousands of people on LinkedIn. They’re all addicted to Hopium.

They’re basically just waiting for a sale to come through, and hopefully someone will just get in touch and say, great, where do I sign? And I think rehumanization has never been more important. And what I mean by that is, yes, it’s a digital platform about you, but how can we make it even more about you and your personal branding?

And I know we’re going to come on to this shortly, but putting yourself into the other person’s world through a video message, through an audio message, so that they can see you, hear you, feel like the passion that you’re putting into what you’re doing, almost like you’re in the same room with them. That to me is so much more important than driving six hours out of my day and six hours back just to get some time in this corporate cold office with somebody when I can do it through this digital platform and save myself a huge amount of hours and time.

Nice, nice. And I suppose it’s probably worth mentioning, I know at the start you sort of talked about, of that kind of few paragraphs you talked about being in sales, but there will be, I imagine, a huge amount of people that are listening that are, that perhaps are not business owners. Maybe they’re working within a company, right?

And I guess, but even then, I think you’re still in sales, right? Because you still want to kind of level up. You want to grow in your career.

You might want to move jobs at some point. And LinkedIn is a way that you can kind of position yourself and sell yourself, as it were, in that sense, in that regard. So I just want to kind of capture that as well.

It might not just be that you’ve got a product or a service that you’re looking to sell to somebody else. It might be that you’re trying to sell yourself, right, to get to the next level of your career. So that’s probably worthy of note.

But I love what you’ve just said there in terms of getting in personally, saving time, saving effort, and making sure that you’re positioned effectively on a digital platform like LinkedIn. Jacob, do you use LinkedIn much?

Yes, I use all the social platforms. I know in a lot of places. So yes, I do.

Have you picked up business from there? How do you find it?

Yeah, well, literally just last week, I shared a course that I released, a branding course. And then within a day, someone reached out to me and said, I love your work. I wasn’t even targeting them.

It was more for other creatives. And yeah, they reached out saying, I want to work with you. So it actually works.

But to put that in perspective, I’ve got clients from all over, right? From SEO, from Google, when I say SEO, and Twitter and even Clubhouse and LinkedIn. So it’s all over the shop.

And it’s really hard to know what’s like the flow. Do they find you from SEO first and then go to social? Is it social the other way?

But yeah, definitely do use it.

No, that’s interesting. I think for me, what I find with my business is that, I don’t know if I’m honest, if anyone looks at me on LinkedIn and then thinks, I will buy Matt Davies, right? Because of the way I sort of feel that my flow works is that people tend to see me in an event, like this is my strategy usually most of the time.

They see me at an event. They follow me then on LinkedIn. And then LinkedIn becomes kind of a way of them seeing that I’m doing this on a consistent, like you were saying, Mike, at the start, like on a consistent basis.

Like they see all of my activity, which I consistently spread on LinkedIn and Instagram and various other places. And then what I feel that that does is that it builds confidence that when they have a problem that they know Matt Davies can solve, a problem with their brand, a problem with their leadership team, a problem with growth or where to take their business next, they know that I can solve that problem for them. So then they reach out to me.

And by the time they reach out to me, hopefully, it’s not a question of could Matt do this? It’s a question of like, Matt, we want you, how much will it cost? Can we have a conversation?

Can we move it forward? And that is the best kind of sale for me, because then I don’t have to do any selling. The sale is already virtually there.

It’s just a question of cost, time, availability and so on. And that’s how I tend to use and feel that LinkedIn fits into my sales funnel. But everybody’s different.

Mike, what do you think about what Jacob and I have shared? How do you see it working? I guess you work on multiple different strategies, but how would you frame how best to leverage LinkedIn?

Well, I think what you’ve just said there was perfect in terms of you found more success from not selling on there. And I think that’s probably the most common trap that most people fall into. They go on there to produce sales materials and sales ads and sales copy, hoping that someone’s going to get in touch and say how much.

And I walked my talk, I mean, several years ago, and I still work with them now. I helped a company with a piece of software that did electronic signatures, and I still do it to this day. And at the time of coming on board to help them, I thought to myself, okay, so I’ve got me here with this piece of technology.

It’s an Outlook plugin that does e-signatures. And then to my left, I’ve got this multi-billion dollar e-signature company. I don’t know if I can name brands, but I’ve got them to my left and this one to my right, both with multi-billion dollar marketing budgets.

And I thought, how am I going to make things different? And it was purely a case of I brought on a client, and instead of trying to sell my product or my service, I was selling the client that we’ve just brought on board. So I’m telling a story.

Every time we bring someone on, we’re saying, check out ABC Limited, brilliant team to work with, great people, tag a few people in that you’ve been dealing with, and suddenly you’re promoting them, not yourself. And throwing a little bit of social proof in there, like Jacob did with his post recently, where it was just literally a snapshot of a text message, a WhatsApp message, which is perfect. And suddenly people are hearing your story about the people you’re working with, not about you and your best shiny new product that you’re trying to sell.

So I think that’s just one area where people could quite easily tomorrow wake up and think, perfect, instead of talking about me, let’s talk about them for a change.

Yeah, I noticed you did that, Mike, quite a bit. After we’d met, and as I mentioned, we’d met at the conference, I noted that you’d sort of done a shout out to various people. It was very kind of you to tag me in that.

And I guess I felt like, oh, that’s so sweet of Mike. And then I start liking your content because I guess you feel like, oh, obliged to, right? It’s just the nicest thing to do.

And then we kept a relationship going. So what a great tip. Like stop selling yourself, start elevating others and bizarrely.

And so doing, you actually will get some kickback yourself longer term. So yeah.

As you say that, Matt, so that the client that I got through that post, they actually found me because someone else liked my post and they’ll just connect it. And then they saw it. This is that connection.

And the other thing I was going to say was, that’s a really great tip for people to put into place straight away. If anyone ever says to me, I have no idea what to post or what content to put out, I’ll say, think of this then, Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. Saturday morning is a great time for posting.

Just think about the week that you’ve just had. Who has entered your business or personal life that’s made that week a little bit better for you? So me going to the conference and meeting you, Matt, that was a pure example.

So on my Friday post, you were in there, you were tagged in, exactly what you did on that day and how awesome it was. Anybody can do a post like that on a Friday afternoon. So there’s one flagship post for people every week that they don’t even have to think about doing.

Love that. I’m going to definitely take that one away. I’m scribbling a few notes there like I did at the conference.

There were so many tips I picked up, guys. I was like, oh man, this guy. So that’s a solid one.

Let’s talk about a couple of other things, because obviously we’ve jumped into actually using LinkedIn, in terms of actually developing leads and stuff like that. But I guess there’s some basics perhaps that we could start with, which is like, you’ve got a profile, haven’t you? Like everybody’s got a profile on LinkedIn.

And I know, Mike, you’ve got tons to say about how best to optimize that profile. So I don’t know, have you got like, I don’t know, a few tips that you want to run through or a few things for us to bear in mind? If you were advising Jacob and me in terms of how to best optimize it, what would you sort of suggest?

Okay, so some psychological based tips for your profile page. The first one that I love is start your about section mentioning the year that we’re in, or if we’re in December, the year that we’re about to enter. So as I’m reading your opening statement in your about section, and it says, you know, 2020, 2023 is the year that my clients are going to be working with me because a lot of them are frustrated about this.

They’re anxious about that. They can sometimes get worried about this. Just by reading that opening statement, there’s a psychological trigger in my mind that says, this profile is up to date.

It’s relevant to today. And there is a box that’s ticked right there that gives me confidence to keep on reading. You know, there are so many profiles out there where you start reading and you’re thinking, is this a six-year-old profile that’s never been updated?

So just give that bit of confidence in there. So that would be tip number one. Tip number two would be, if you haven’t activated your featured section, go and activate it now and get some colorful, thumbnail-driven content on your profile.

Because for those people listening right now that knows a little bit about the LinkedIn algorithm, you’ll know that it hates you taking people off their platform. There are so many areas where you can get punished for taking people outside of LinkedIn. The algorithm wants their audience there, not elsewhere.

But there are a few little hidden gems on LinkedIn where you can throw external content, featured sections, newsletters, for example. So wherever you can find them, get the best content possible, update the thumbnail once you’ve done it, and take people to your landing page, your reviews, whatever it might be. So the featured section is a great one.

And I would say probably the final one, the third tip for your profile section. And I’m going to go back to basics here, I’ve got to, but it’s your headline, right? Most people have put their job title where they’ve been given 260 characters, I believe, to create something that’s highly unique.

And you say this a lot, Matt. Create something that nobody else can copy and paste. If you’ve created an opening statement in your headline that somebody else in your industry can simply copy and paste onto their own, it’s not unique enough.

So fill it with the buzzwords. Let it get found by Google, Bing and search engines and LinkedIn. Make it uniquely about you.

And you can’t go wrong when you start getting these things right. You’ve just got to get people on your page and stay in there.

Nice. Love that. So I guess that headline loads of people would struggle with, right?

Like, how can I write something that is completely unique to me? You got any thoughts on that, Mike? I suppose you probably come across people saying that to you all the time.

What do you sort of give them as tips?

So I would probably say, make it about you, not your business, if you can throw in a little bit of social proof. So, you know, helping business owners in the software industry or utilizing 23 hours of marketing training to help my clients with this. Just throw in a number if you can, just so I get a little bit of understanding about your expertise in what you do.

And just make it completely unique with a great call to action. How can we get in touch with you? Why should we keep moving on?

Maybe in your hyperlink underneath your headline, there is a link to a freebie, a download, a free trial, an ebook, whatever it might be, fill it up and say, click below to get this. Help people go on that journey and scroll until they get to where they need to.

Love it. Okay, so, let’s say I’ve optimized my profile page, and I’m feeling pretty happy about that. I guess there are two other angles, you might say there’s more, so forgive me if there’s not, but to use LinkedIn effectively, right?

So now I’ve set my profile up, I’ve got that in, but I wanna start to leverage the platform in order to make sure that I’m positioning myself effectively. How would you sort of talk about, I don’t know, like approaching new, potential new business, or we talked about not selling on the platform, but do you ever recommend strategies for people to begin to sell on there and to kind of to leverage that sort of direction? So maybe approach somebody on there or what are your sort of thoughts on that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let’s imagine we’ve got the best profile ever, we’ve got the best profile in the world. Yeah, absolutely.

The pink is everywhere, it’s beautiful. And we’re starting to create content, so that’s great. We’re putting in all the magic ingredients, the algorithm loves us, we’re tagging in showcase pages, we’re sending people to our business page, we’re doing all the right things.

Now we’ve got to start to get some relationships going and nurture some relationships. And that’s a two-way thing, right? So we can search for people using Boolean searches, really great targeted searches and connecting with them.

And people should hopefully be following us and connecting with us at the same time. So we’ve got this new connection. So I’m connected to Jacob.

He’s gonna be my next perfect client, hopefully. But what is everybody doing at the moment? And we all know what the answer is.

They’re going straight in with an Instapitch. It’s an awful sales pitch, black text on a white background that’s gonna be ignored, game over, relationship dead. So I like to try and, especially in the world of sales, I always try to like to do things that are gonna be the norm in the future, but years ahead of its time.

Audio messaging, for example. Audio messaging using the little microphone symbol on your app, great. Do an audio message.

It puts you into their ears. They can hear you and they can hear the passion that you’re talking about. Why don’t we take it one step further and start looking at the power of video messaging?

So for instance, I would grab my little whiteboard here and I would record a little 60-second video clip. I might even ask you beforehand, I might say, Jacob, thanks for connecting, really appreciated. Listen, I’d like to keep the connection alive and I want to cut through the digital pollution.

Is it okay if I introduce myself properly and record a 60-second video for you? Okay. And you might say, yeah, absolutely.

So now I’ve got full, I’ve been given full authority to send you this video message. So I’m gonna record that. It’s a 60-second message.

And the first few frames of the video, I’m holding up this hi Neil or hi Jacob on the whiteboard. And I’ll say, thanks so much for connecting, blah, blah, blah, this is who I am. I’d really like to find out more about you, if there’s anything that we can help you with, whatever you wanna say.

But the fact is, this is a video message, not text on a white background. When this lands in your inbox, an animated GIF is gonna appear, okay? Like the one I sent to you last week, Matt, right?

And instantly, the guards are down. You know the video’s for you because of me holding up the whiteboard for the first few seconds, so it’s gonna get played. Secondly, I can do whatever I want in this video in terms of helping make sure that you understand who I am as a person, not a digital salesperson that you’ve never heard of before.

And if we start going down that route, we can do more things with video messaging. For instance, if I’m talking to a prospect and they might not be the decision maker, I stopped sending quotes years ago, for example. That’s a 90s salesperson thing, not someone in 2023.

My quotes are video messages that I know are gonna get forwarded to a decision maker if that’s what’s required. And now, the person that I was originally talking doesn’t have to do my job for me. They just send me into the boardroom with that decision maker wherever they are in the world.

And these are all the things why we should be utilizing digital technology to increase our sales. But people are so stuck back in the 90s, whether it’s because of their sales managers or sales directors who are still living in that era, when we’ve got these amazing tools to help us elevate and get way in above everyone else in our industries.

That’s such a good insight. It’s funny you should say that because it’s only just drawn to me. So I don’t often work with agencies, but when I do, yeah, I always have fun.

And I was working as part of this kind of multi-discipline team on quite a big account for this agency. And they invited me in and they said, Matt, you know, we’re pitching, right? And the value of this was really high.

And they said, what we’d like for you to do is to do four videos answering these four questions. And they were all brand related questions. The project was a brand project.

And they said, look, you know, just do them via video because I couldn’t actually make the pitch. So I did these, I just recorded myself answering these questions. And I think you’re absolutely right because I think what happened was is they got forwarded on to the CEO who then saw them and were like, yeah, let’s hire this agency.

I’m not saying just off the back of my personal videos, but they contributed, right? So that, as you say, like we were in various parts of their business, we’ve just done little snippets of videos. So what a great tip.

Get videos out there and get them sent across. There was one question I had though. You mentioned something at the very start of that kind of that section.

You said a bullion search. And I don’t quite understand what that term means. So could you explain that to us?

Sorry if I’m being thick.

No, so a bullion search is basically where I’m doing a search in LinkedIn, or it can be any search really. It’s not just LinkedIn. But instead of saying, well, I’ll give you an example.

So I deal with a lot of wealth management companies. So someone like me, for example, might go into the search bar and put wealth management director or a name of somebody who they know is in the wealth management sector. So Boolean searches is where you group words and phrases, and then you can add words and take ones away.

So I would put in quotation marks, wealth management and managing director and London, let’s say. So now I’ve got a laser focus search that’s gonna come straight back to me for wealth management, managing directors in London. And if I don’t want anyone in the recruitment sector or in the recruitment industry or teams, I can add that not recruitment or not marketing or and IT.

So that’s a Boolean search. It’s just saying, I want these groups and words phrased.

I’m with you, I’m with you. Thank you very much for explaining that. Sorry if that was a stupid question, but you know, hey, listeners get used to me asking the stupid questions and hopefully someone out there will be grateful that I asked that.

Cool, Jacob, have you got any quick questions for Mike?

I was just gonna ask about the tools for the video recording. So I also do a lot of video recordings as well. I use a tool called Loom, but I was just wondering if there’s like a LinkedIn version of it or using something else.

No, LinkedIn don’t have a version of it as far as I’m aware. Loom’s good, Vidyard is really good and it’s free, free to use. Vidyard, yeah, I started using Vidyard before I went to a premium tool that I absolutely love and it’s called BomBom, B-O-M-B, B-O-M-B.

And the reason why I really like that software is because, A, it’s very quick and easy to use. So I hit record, stop record, there’s my link and it can be a link for social media, i.e. LinkedIn, or a link for an email.

So you can actually send it in an email as well. And it produces the animated gifs instantly. I like the quickness of it.

But I also like the fact that when people play the video, they are in a really nice landing page that is branded to you with a call to action in the corner. So in nearly every video message I send, I just say, you know, check out more of my stuff in the vault if you want to know more about me. And I just point to the corner of the screen and there’s a button right there that takes them to any landing page that I want them to go to.

So Bom Bom, brilliant tool.

I’m also enjoying Loon because it has AI integrated now and it sends a summary underneath the GIF. So it summarizes like a, let’s say a five minute video into like a paragraph or two when you send through the video in an email. So that found that pretty handy as well.

Yeah, that’s really cool.

All right, just coming back to personal branding and LinkedIn. So we’ve talked about LinkedIn and some profile tips and how to set up a profile, but I’d love to know the process that you go through with your clients. How do you actually help them with position their profile, improving it and everything?

What’s the actual steps that you go through?

Yeah, so my most popular service is, I call it a power hour, but it’s more like 90 minutes. It’s never an hour, it’s always a little bit more, but power hour sounds good. I’m not one of these people that does five-day boot camps or ridiculously overpriced three months to get to this stage.

I’m more of a straight to it kind of guy. If I’m sat down with a client, we will bring their LinkedIn profile up, and I guarantee within 90 minutes, I’ll give them a notepad full of things that we can change, or they can go away and change instantly. So there’s probably around 60 to 70 brilliant, useful hidden gems within LinkedIn that not many people know about.

And we’ll go through all of those in fast succession. And if somebody wants me to do it for them, like I’ve done for you, that’s fine. But to make it more cost effective for the clients, I just say, look, let’s just sit down, let’s go through it step by step, and hopefully you’ll have everything you need to go and change everything to make it better for you.

Okay, so you have a one hour or 90 minute call and that’s suggesting some things, but like what’s the next step? Or is that just, that’s what your go-to service is?

Well, the next step would be that, well, in an ideal world, that person will suddenly increase their sales, increase their branding, get more visibility. They now know the algorithm and how it works and they’ll just start to become the type of person that loves putting content out there on LinkedIn rather than being afraid of it. But there are always more things that we can do, such as I can create content for them.

I can help them get their content seen and triggered more by the algorithm and things like that. So we can start with basics and we can go all the way through to automation and Pro Tools if that’s what they want to do.

Okay, let’s dive into how we can get seen more because I’d love to learn what are the red flags and how do we actually get more reach and any other insights that you could share.

Yeah, yeah, of course. So if there’s any listeners out there that know a little bit about the LinkedIn algorithm, they’re gonna know what I’m about to say. So I’m gonna go through some basics just in case there’s people that don’t.

So for instance, let’s avoid external links. Let’s not take people away from the LinkedIn platform because the algorithm still doesn’t like people doing that.

So I have a question about that. So in the post, you don’t put the link, but what if you put it in a comment? Is it the same thing?

That used to be the go-to answer and it still is kind of, but after lots and lots of studies recently, it turns out that if you’re the first person to comment on your own post, it can hinder your reach. So wait for somebody else to like and comment, then throw your own in. And to make your comment stand out, just hit the emoji keyboard, put a little picture of the pin and then do your content, just so it stands out from the rest of the content.

Comments.

Next one.

Yeah. Next one would be, if you can, throw PDFs into your posts. Images are okay.

Videos aren’t very good still. Videos really don’t get that much impressions. PDFs are doing really well at the moment because they’re known as carousel posts, which means that people can flick through the slides as if it’s a presentation.

The algorithm sees these clicks, the interactivity, and you get to name the PDF as well before you upload it into LinkedIn. So you can give it a title so you can fill it with keywords. And if you want to go one step higher, make those PDFs tall rather than perfectly square, because if they’re slightly taller, it’s gonna take up more of the screen on the person’s feed who’s reading it.

Your content needs to take up more of that screen than anyone else’s. So the taller the image, the better it’s gonna be for you. Next up, think about the first two lines of your post.

So for people who are kind of like flicking through the feed on LinkedIn on their mobile, they are showing you only the first two lines now. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a text only image or a PDF post, you will only ever see the first two lines. So make those first two lines as engaging as possible so people click on see more.

How to posts. This is what just happened to me today posts, you know, those types of things. And the other thing that I would say is think about something called word art.

So one of the things that I try to do that’s very different to everyone else is rather than just put in a load of text on the page, no matter how good the post is, it’s still just text. Think about your audience’s eyes and the way they scroll down that post. So for instance, if you’re doing a top 10 tips, for example, how about having those top 10 tips in descending or ascending order of character count?

So their eyes kind of go down and down and down and they’re following a pattern and a structure as their lead reading. You’re basically winning with the algorithm because the dwell time is counting up, people are spending more time on that post because they go into the bottom. And you also want to have a think about, let’s just say if you are talking about your product or service, obviously it removes problems from your clients and it gives them benefits.

So give me five problems and five benefits. Maybe you’re asking ChatGPT for something like this and it’s giving you that information. We’ll go back to your emoji keyboard and put the red cross and the green tick in five multiple times.

Just so that we’ve got like a pattern emerging here and it’s easy on the eyes of what you’re producing. So rather than it just being text and bullet points and things like that, make it structured and make their eyes really want to see that and it flows nicely. There’s just a few things there that’s gonna go down well.

So Mike, you mentioned chat GTP. Massive question coming up, which I know you get a lot, but I think it’s worth asking. Like what are your thoughts on using chat GTP in order to kind of create content to then ping onto LinkedIn?

I love it. Yeah, I absolutely think it’s an incredible tool. The first rule is don’t just copy and paste it into LinkedIn.

You need to, again, branding, right? Put yourself into it. So make sure that it’s written by you and it sounds like you.

Just use this as an engine to help you create some amazing content that you would never have thought about before. But also don’t just go to ChatGPT and ask it a question and expect it to give you the best answer. Have a conversation with it.

Do you want me to give you a quick example?

Yeah, give us some examples. I think that would be helpful.

Okay, so I’ll go back to eSignatures then. So I will type into ChatGPT. I’d say, hi, I’m Mike.

I provide eSignature software to law firms. And it’s gonna say, great. Hi, Mike, nice to meet you.

And I’ll say, thanks. And then I’ll say, I’m about to create a LinkedIn post and I want it to be around electronic signatures and its validity in the legal sector in the UK. I want to look at some of the reasons why law firms should use eSignatures compared to getting documents signed by paper and pen.

Can you give me 10 good reasons? So it’s gonna say, great. Here’s 10 really good reasons for you.

So I’ve now ultimately got 10 posts that I can create from this. But before I do that, I’m gonna say, cool. I really like point number three.

And you can just say that I like point number three. Can you expand on this and give me 10 reasons why people should use it, okay, based on number three alone? So now your post is becoming purely on, let’s just say GDPR now with eSignatures and it’s, or whatever it is, but you’ve niched it down to a specific sector.

And then it will give you a post and then you’ll say, thanks, but I’m not done yet. I want you to create a great opening statement that’s gonna really catch people’s eyes, especially for law firm owners. Secondly, I want you to create a brilliant call to action at the bottom of that post that’s gonna make people want to try a free trial of this software.

And finally, could you just rewrite it again for me, but include these 10 keywords because you want this to be keyword-driven. And that’s how you would have a conversation and to come out with a really, really great piece. And then there’s loads of software where you can help get it rewritten, but I would just say as a human, as a personal brand yourself, just go in there and make it you.

And there’s no way, and this is probably, I don’t know if this is, you can even answer this, but there’s no way that LinkedIn can tell that it’s been produced by GTP, is there?

Well, there’s a few pieces of software out there as well. I think reader.com might be one of them, if I’ve remembered it correctly, I might be wrong, where you can, once you’ve created your content and you’ve made it your own, paste it in there, and it’ll give you a score out of 10, whether it thinks it’s human or AI written. So there’s loads of tools out there that are free to help you, just like with mailtester.com, for example.

If I create a really great mail shop for my audience every weekend, I can send something to mailtester and it gives me a score out of 10 on whether it’s too spammy, whether it’s got errors in it. So there’s loads of great tools out there to use.

Love that. I just really feel sorry for people that write in a really dull and straightforward manner. Like, is they going to start getting penalised left, right and centre?

Sorry, I sound like an AI. Get out. I’m not an AI.

I’m a human. I just talk in a very boring way. Yeah, get out.

Anyway, move on. So, okay. So where are we up to on this then?

I think we’ve covered huge amounts of ground. I don’t know where else we could really take this in terms of how we can kind of add more value or squeeze more value out of you, Mike. Have you got any sort of other tips that you think or other sort of areas you think that we should cover off?

Why don’t I go with three really good top tips?

Let’s do the three top tips. Mike’s three top tips folks.

Three of my favorites.

Great, go for it.

Okay, number one, do a profile video. Where your profile picture sits, grab your mobile and upload or record a 30 second video. As soon as people land on your page, if they see that there’s a video inside there, let them view it, make them understand who you are.

They can hear you, they can see you, just like with a video message, but this happens as soon as they land on your page. Couldn’t stress it highly enough, the profile video. Secondly, if you’ve got a service or a product or an ebook or a podcast or whatever it might be, give it its own page on LinkedIn.

Create a showcase page from the business page because this can be hyperlinked in every post that you do. And that page could take people straight to your podcast or your landing page. So the more content that you’ve got on there, the better.

It’s rare that I speak to people who know what showcase pages are. Nobody’s using them still. It’s such an untapped hidden gem.

And finally, I would say my final tip of the show would be, I would say LinkedIn Groups. It’s another untapped resource. If you’ve got your clients or prospects, I’ll use wealth management firms again as an example, and they’re all sat there in the Wealth Management Discussions Forum or group on LinkedIn.

There’s 18,000 members in there. Join that group. Firstly, you can message anybody in that group once you’re in there without even being connected with them.

Great opportunity for a video message. And secondly, when you’re producing a piece of content or a post on LinkedIn, and this might be about e-signatures for the wealth management industry or whatever it might be, when you’re part of a group, you no longer have to worry about the algorithm for these posts. You can say, I’m going to send that straight into the group, into those 18,000 members.

So you can forget your hashtags and your tags and all these magic sprinkles that the algorithm loves. It’s going straight into the group. That’s where they’re all going to see it.

I did one recently and it went into the Law Society Gazette. I think it had about 10 and a half thousand views within the first hour. Incredible.

But again, nobody uses these things.

Oh, amazing top tips.

Well, I have one more question around algorithms.

Go on. That’s a spotless, go on Jacob.

You share a lot of tips around algorithms. I’d love to dive a little bit more into that. So we’ve covered, you know, not sharing links and you said keywords, but are you researching these keywords?

Like how, like I’m very familiar with SEO, but I don’t know how it relates back to posts on LinkedIn, for example. Are you purposely fill in your posts with certain keywords that they get triggered to show to certain people? Is that what the idea is?

Well, I’m using keywords in my posts that are way ahead of their time. Again, it’s trying to be different than everybody else in my sector. So I’m using keywords such as, well, there’s all sorts really.

There’s things like, if I’m talking about email encryption, for example, everybody’s talking about email encryption or email security. Very few people are talking about no portals. Well, let’s talk about the words that people don’t want.

Hassle free, all of these words, which some people just forget to talk about, we wanna put an emotion on these words rather than just standard. So if we can start getting into people’s mindsets about emotional words, then that’s gonna help. So that’s what I mean by keywords.

And when I talk about hashtags, I always stick to the power of five. So never do more than five hashtags. It becomes spammy and it can hinder your reach.

I always go for the power of five. Three hashtags, which have a huge following. My website, for example, has the top 100 hashtags, which I update every week.

So I go for three nice big numbers. And then the other two are quirky ones, which are relevant to me. They might not have any followers at all, but at least it’s mine.

And I want to see that growing. Making digital real. It’s a hashtag that very few people follow, but do you know what?

If it starts trending one day, great. I’m doing my job well.

My little follow-up question was, how frequently do you think we should be posting? Like do you think it’s a daily thing, an hourly thing, like a monthly thing? Like what’s the, what’s the sort of algorithmic rule on kind of how frequently you go on and pop a post or an article in there?

So consistency is key. And if your consistency is once a week, great. Go for it.

If that’s what you’re comfortable with. Because if someone says to me, I’m not comfortable at all doing posts, but I’m going to try and do one every single day, I’d say, don’t bother. It’s not going to be authentic.

It’s you’re going to be trying too hard. Just stick with one a week. Do your Friday afternoon shout out if you want.

Because what I want to see my clients do is create a piece of content. Let’s say it gets 500 impressions. And I might come back to them and say, just do these little tweaks, put these little magic sprinkles on and see what happens to your next one.

Suddenly, it’s doubled to a thousand. And you want people to get into the stage where they’re almost excited about putting out their next one to see if they can beat that impressions number on the previous one. Because impressions are views, right?

And as long as those views are going to the right audience, everybody’s winning. And if that means an extra lead, an extra sale, then that’s what it’s all about. And people say to me, you know, what are the best days and times for posting?

There’s no rules. I mean, there’s a scheduling tool now. So if I want to do a great post and schedule it for two o’clock in the morning to reach my Australian audience, great.

If I want to do a post on Saturday or Sunday morning, even better, the algorithm’s still as hungry as ever, but there’s less people posting. So you’ve got more chance of getting more views. My best posts are always on weekends.

Well, listen, folks, that was, I hope you’ll agree, a really interesting and an exciting episode just to focus in on the LinkedIn. Mike, I’ve got a ton of things to go away and absolutely focus on over the next week or so. And so thanks so much.

And final question, how do people find you? Say someone wants to grab one of those one-hour sessions with you, how would they do that?

Yeah, so if you just search for making digital real, I’m sure you’ll find me, I’m Mike Roberts on LinkedIn, but the actual web address is vault, vault.makingdigitalreal.co.uk. That’s where you’ll go into my member vault page, where you’ll see a load of free downloads, free videos. There’s some secret hidden offers in there.

But yeah, grab my ebook, book a power hour with me. I’d be absolutely delighted.

Power at 90 minutes, not great branding, wording hours.

No, I need your help with that.

Well, we should have a chat. No, no, it’s all good. I think I just want to end by saying thanks so much for carving out some time and for sharing all those tips.

We’ve really appreciated you coming on the show. And all the best continuing to leverage LinkedIn. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.