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Today I have my friend Judi Fox on the show. Judy is the owner of LinkedIn Business Accelerator where she helps others grow their businesses through LinkedIn.
Prior to this interview, I had no idea that LinkedIn could be such a powerful marketing platform until Judi opened my eyes.
Pay attention because these simple LinkedIn strategies will grow your business.
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What You’ll Learn
- Why LinkedIn is important and why people should care
- How to create a high converting LinkedIn profile
- How to leverage the LinkedIn feed to grow your business
Other Resources And Books
Sponsors
Postscript.io – Postscript.io is the SMS marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store. Postscript specializes in ecommerce and is by far the simplest and easiest text message marketing platform that I’ve used and it’s reasonably priced. Click here and try Postscript for FREE.
Klaviyo.com – Klaviyo is the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store. Created specifically for ecommerce, it is the best email marketing provider that I’ve used to date. Click here and try Klaviyo for FREE.
EmergeCounsel.com – EmergeCounsel is the service I use for trademarks and to get advice on any issue related to intellectual property protection. Click here and get $100 OFF by mentioning the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast.
Transcript
You’re listening to My Wife, Quit or Drop podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I have my friend Judy Fox on the show and Judy is the owner of LinkedIn Business Accelerator where she helps others grow their businesses through LinkedIn. Now I’m to be straight up with you. I had no idea that LinkedIn could be this powerful before I interviewed Judy. So pay attention because the simple strategy she talks about in this episode are pure gold. But before I begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode.
00:29
Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-T-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve.
00:58
I also want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my e-commerce store and it depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores. Here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who’s shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy.
01:25
Let’s say want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought piece of cake and there’s full revenue tracking on every single email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used and you can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast,
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covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.
02:12
Welcome to the My Wife, Quartermaster Job Podcast. Today I’m happy to have Judy Fox on the show. Now, Judy is someone who I recently met at a mastermind meetup and I’m very happy that we met. She is the owner of LinkedIn Business Accelerator where she helps others grow their businesses through LinkedIn. Now you might be thinking to yourself, I started a business and I’m not looking for a job. How could LinkedIn possibly be useful for my business? Well, it turns out
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that use correctly, LinkedIn can build authority and make you the go-to expert in a specific niche. LinkedIn is also a thriving social media platform with high level professionals. So in this episode, Judy is gonna teach us how to leverage LinkedIn to grow your business. And without, welcome to show, Judy, how are you doing today? Super excited, it’s my birthday. Happy birthday, I am so honored to have you on your birthday. I’m sure there’s other people that you could be spending time with.
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but this is the perfect celebration. Cause I could feel that we’re going to have good energy and birthday celebration vibes. are. And on that note, for the people who have never heard of you, I want to know how you decide to specialize in LinkedIn out of all the social media properties. Yeah. Wow. So it actually comes from a very personal spot in my life when I went through becoming a single parent almost overnight.
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And I had already signed up for LinkedIn back in 2009 and saw the power of networking during that recession. And I realized when I became a single parent, like I said, it literally was like all of a sudden overnight in one week, my whole life changed. And I looked at LinkedIn and I said, this is where I need to be to be able to figure out my next career move, my opportunities. I was currently at that time.
04:03
running my own consulting firm and realized the power of LinkedIn. But when your feet are put to the fire and you know you are the sole breadwinner, you really double down on things and you don’t have time to look around and say what could work. You really double down on what you already know is working. So I went four full years of only using LinkedIn as my only social media outlet. Wow.
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You know, to 2018. When my wife became pregnant with our child, I felt the same way even though I had a partner in all this, but I the same way all of sudden I had to buckle down and and make money and and because I had people to support after that. Yeah, I think everyone can relate to there’s always gonna be a turning point in your life when you realize, oh, wait, this. I have to figure out I can’t waste time anymore. I have to figure this out. Yeah.
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You know, what’s funny is before this interview, I hadn’t gone on LinkedIn, as I told you earlier, for several years. And it’s changed a lot, because I hadn’t used it since I looked for a job, which was a long time ago. And I want you to answer this question first, like, why is LinkedIn important? Why should people even care? I would say the first thought that comes to my mind is people do business with people, no matter who and where you are in your life.
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We are interested in people and their names first. The referral comes through people. The dropping a name, it’s the person’s name, not always the business. Like I might say, you know, oh, do you know so and so they run this company or they’re the CEO of this company. So we’re very people first in our mindset. And when I think about business today, I’m going to Google somebody. I’m going to find out what’s up with them.
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And what are the, can I type in their name, their city, their company? Can I read any reviews? And LinkedIn is coming up in Google search for people’s names. Very, very high. That’s actually what I noticed. I just Googled myself at the first time in a while. And you’re right. The LinkedIn is on the front page. And I imagine that people who are watching me on YouTube or Tik Tok, they’re Googling my name and they’re probably looking at my profile, which is madly out of date. I just wanted to add. So we’re
06:23
And when we Google, the mindset is looking for confirmation of making a good decision. So say, for example, somebody wants to collaborate with you, work with you. I think when we Google, we’re, especially if we’re already sold, if we’re already sold on the person, we get a referral, we want to host them on our podcast, whatever we want to do with somebody, we’re kind of looking for just confirmation. LinkedIn can either amplify that confirmation or it can actually create a bit of a
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want, want, want like, it less than stellar when you land on it energy where it could have actually blown people away in the opposite direction. Yeah. So what are some of the elements, assuming you’re not working full time anymore and you have your own business, what are some elements of just your profile that you, that you should have on there? Yeah. And that is the only people I work with is people who are either full-time entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, real estate agents, anyone who is
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full time in their business, that’s all that I work with right now. So from that perspective, number one, landing page. Think of your LinkedIn profile as a website extension of your own landing page. So for example, I very frequently, when I work with clients who have amazing businesses, amazing landing pages, we should create a similar
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customer journey on your LinkedIn profile as your company landing page, especially if you can merge the two concepts as much as possible. Okay. Can you give some examples? What do mean by merge the two concepts? So if I’m landing on somebody’s business website, many times they’ll have what we call social proof icons they’ll have featured in, or they’ll have
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all there as seen in press. I mean, you have that on yours, right? I saw it on yours. That’s correct. I looked at your website and what I tell people is make the same mental connection on LinkedIn. So I actually have had social proof in my banner for a while. I just recently updated it and it now contains a visual picture of me at YouTube studio filming a video at
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literally at YouTube headquarters. And it has social proof now of places I’ve been featured and it has one call to action. So your true energy from a top down is get people to go further down, get people to read the about section, which is just like your website where people click on the get to know me or about me. People love that part of a website. It’s sometimes one of the most highly clicked on. I think you
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would probably with your knowledge of SEO maybe agree with me there. Yeah, no, absolutely. I’m just curious though, know, LinkedIn is a little bit more restrictive than a webpage. So are you recommending putting these press mentions in your history or your, I can’t remember the actual Your experience section. Correct, sorry, that’s what I meant. Yeah, so you have two places for clickable links. And what I tell people is as you scroll down and I’m
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putting a website right next to LinkedIn in my mind right here. If I’m scrolling down a website, number one, visual imagery in the banner, you want to make us feel like we’re in the right spot. The second thing is as I get to the about section, again, I want to get to know you just like I wanted to get to know you on your website. The next section is the featured section. They used to call it media files.
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but now you can feature, you can actually create social sharing icons that look amazing and you can feature content that sells you. So I always recommend people have a hot, warm, cold, lead generating items, like three boxes in that featured section. And I normally keep about three in there. Sometimes I’ll put two cold ones, but lead generating links right there.
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And then the final examples to that. Oh yeah. Fine, hot, warm and cold. Yes. So cold to me is a reminder of a post. So maybe you have a post from a month ago and you can feature your own posts and that contains the likes in the comments. Very visible right there and depends on what you posted about. It might be really, really a good post that generated a lot of potential business for you. So you would want to feature on LinkedIn or can it be a post?
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on your blog, for example. So to keep it a cold link, I would make a cold post. it’s to make it a cold feature. That sounds really weird to say cold, but what I mean is a brand new person is discovering you and you just want to keep them on the platform. It feels safe to them to go click on a post of yours. Got it. Okay. So you’ve that implies that you post regularly on LinkedIn.
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Yes, or even maybe two times a year. Yeah, I know that you were telling me that and I was really surprised actually, we’re going to get into that. Yeah, yeah, we’ll talk about that. But right now you don’t have to post regularly to create what I call the cold lead generating conversation that generates public conversation, which helps convert private conversation. So when we scroll down your profile, if you feature only one of your posts, don’t make us choose between
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all of your posts because that’s overwhelming to the consumer, just give us your best shot. it, know, feature something from six months ago. We don’t care if it’s a great post, feature it, but only feature one. That’s an aggressive energy there, but only feature one. I’m people are going to be Googling you after this interview. So what is your cold feature as an example? Right now I featured one of my articles.
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And I featured the ultimate guide to LinkedIn audio events because it’s a brand new feature on LinkedIn. so personally for myself, that has been shared about 30 times. It’s also gone viral on Twitter and on Facebook. So I want to feature something that’s around the 300 to 500 likes and comments. And that’s where that post is at. And is this post like super comprehensive? I’ll go look at it after this, but is it like a blog post literally, or is it just like a blog post?
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Got it. It operates, literally it operates like a blog post. So, and then we can talk about that. It’s very, very powerful and it can last for years. This post can last for years. So that’s what it’s, but that’s overwhelming for people to hit the ground running. Well, no, it’s literally just make a post. So it’s not overwhelming because there’s a lot of content creators that are listening to this. Also, I’m curious what the distinction between cold and warm. What is warm? Something that’s a little bit more personal about yourself then.
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When I think of warm, I’m thinking trust. So a cold person, somebody who just met you five seconds ago, you just kind of want to do a handshake like, hey, we just got to meet each other. A handshake is a trust building exercise to go to a post on LinkedIn. People on LinkedIn will stay on LinkedIn, and they’ll trust a LinkedIn link. Okay, hopefully that makes sense. then the absolute war the the hot people.
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Okay, we’re going to get to hot people, but right now we’re going to get to like a side hug as warm, a distant potential, maybe going in maybe a little extra fist bump. I don’t know. Like, might be seeing somebody for a second or third time, right? They’ve had a couple touch points with you. They would trust clicking over to listen to a full podcast episode. They would trust going to your YouTube channel and subscribing.
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because they’ve seen you a couple of times on LinkedIn and they’re like, oh my gosh, I love what Steve has to say. I want to go to the next side hug level. I want to spend more time with Steve. So it’s like going out to dinner for the, for the hot. Yes. Yeah. The cold is like, okay, fine. We’ll grab a cup of coffee and we’ll stay on LinkedIn. Oh, but then the, the warm is, oh, you’re saying warm is, um,
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What is warm then if we’re thinking food? Check me out on YouTube. Oh, in terms of food. Maybe like I thought we going into food analogies now. Okay. I get it. I get it. And then the hot I imagine is you can try to get their email or something like that. Yes. So opt-in or right now my hot is a form and an application to apply to work with me. It’s literally my sales pitch is right there front and center.
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and people apply and they use that link and they fill out a form and then they get access to my calendar if they pass the application process. And you can track the attribution for people clicking on those links, right? Yes. do you tag them? You can, number one, you can just track the links because you can create trackable links online and you can do all of that energy to find out what’s working and what’s not. Yeah. Cool. Cool. You know, so that I can come.
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completely understand the need to do this. Like people Google you and then chances are LinkedIn always ranks on like the front page at least. So I can see the credibility factor. I can see getting people from that page over to do something or in view content. But how can you use LinkedIn to actually get more cold people just coming in on the platform itself? So that’s where there’s a couple of things happening on LinkedIn. And I’m always telling people you either have three advantages.
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Uh, expertise advantage, and I can go over that. have omnipresent advantage where you’re everywhere all the time, 24 seven, kind of like a Gary Vaynerchuk model of blast out everywhere, be omnipresent at all times. And the third advantage is early adopter status where you were early to maybe people who were early to YouTube are like, I am so grateful I got started in the early days. there’s.
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always an early advantage to YouTube shorts, for example, we have early advantage to Instagram reels and LinkedIn has its own early advantage moments and they’re happening right now during 2022. Interesting. I think for the listeners, I’m guessing that most of them want to be, want to follow the first model, which I believe was the expert model, right? Yes. So when I think about the expert space, it’s
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less about going out on LinkedIn and running after cold leads. Like, I don’t know why I have all these analogies of like meeting people on the street and hugging and handshaking, but it’s like chasing a random stranger down the street when you’re chasing down your one ideal client. Can you picture instead standing on a stage in front of 10,000 people all listening to you either speak
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on your own stage, which is really powerful. You have the mic and they’re lined up at the microphone wanting to ask you questions. Or the other visual is you’re on a panel of experts all on this stage, passing the microphone down the stage. That’s the visual I think of for people to share their expertise on LinkedIn. You are on a stage and that is what the content and the comments can do for you. So how do I fill that audience? All right.
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So a lot of it comes down to what I call leadership trust building. So on LinkedIn, a lot of people will get on LinkedIn and say, they’ll just come straight over from Instagram or they’ll come straight over from Facebook or even YouTube and they’ll have a very at us energy. They’re talking at us. It’s kind of, do you want to know XYZ? And it’s very,
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in our face at us, but LinkedIn has a different leadership tone and energy. And it’s a with us because the people on LinkedIn are getting on LinkedIn to either want to be smarter, want a network to get smarter, want to get an opportunity, get a job. They’re in a get mindset and they want to feel like they’re smart already for being on LinkedIn. They don’t want to be told they don’t know something.
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They don’t want to even be assuming they don’t know something. So they’re in your audience to have a discussion with you. So. Interesting. So you don’t just go up there and teach, you probably maybe ask questions then or. Yes. So I tell people there’s three leadership voices, the curious leader where you could get on stage at an event in front of let’s make the audience a little more intimate, maybe a hundred people.
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And instead of just getting up there and just starting talking with everyone, you could say something like, today, we’re going to cover what are our thoughts on self care. Let’s go around the room. And that’s the vibe of that energy of that post. And you can create those posts. Cause I had a post like that go to about 50,000 views on LinkedIn, where I literally said, what do you think of the term self care? And then the whole comment section lit up because everyone wanted to share their opinions and.
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you’re making them look smart for being part of your audience. That’s the energy there. You’re not trying to be the expert on stage, but you’re crowdsourcing expert opinions. The Interesting. How does that make you an authority then in that example that you just gave? We’ve thought-
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And I can look back over examples of really, really great leaders and leaders can really pull out and be the curators of great conversations, kind of like the mastermind we joined. didn’t need the person creating the mastermind to do all the talking. He was opening up with really curious questions, which I really, really appreciated. Interesting. So the approach is a lot different than the other platform. So just flat out teaching is
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is something that’s not going to work well is what you’re saying. I would say the teaching voice has more of a coach or resource language. So I’m actually thinking I’m making a post for my birthday on LinkedIn and I’m going to tell people my top three Chrome extensions that I love for LinkedIn. That’s going to be my birthday post today. And I’m going to film a video and just say, here’s my top three Chrome extensions. And it comes across as a great resource for people.
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21:51
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.
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And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a $100 discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show.
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So you’re trying to be helpful, but just not like, I’m the man, I’m the boss, I’m the guru type of thing. Okay. It’s permission-based type marketing where you are being either a resource, a coach, a curious leader, or the final one I like to say is what I call the creator energy, where you’re creating the action steps for people. So the final one, instead of teaching somebody, you might say something like,
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These were the three steps I took to start my business. Here’s what I would recommend you try if you’ve tried other things. You’re not shoving these three steps down people’s throats, but you’re giving them access to the three steps you would take if you were starting your business over today. Got it. Got it. So you mentioned posting videos and whatnot. Is it okay to repurpose content that you’ve posted on YouTube and TikTok onto LinkedIn? Like what are some of the guidelines for just posts?
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Well, number one, a thousand percent. I love watching TikTok videos and I’m constantly in the career videos, LinkedIn videos. I’m always on that side of TikTok where it’s like giving an Amazon find or something that might be helpful in your home. I just love all of that. So I can see those doing so well on LinkedIn, but to be honest, it would take somebody just kind of
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throwing out the rule book of what quote unquote belongs on LinkedIn and just deciding, you know what? This falls under one of those leadership categories. I’m telling somebody my experience in life, which is the storytelling we see on TikTok, which is powerful for LinkedIn, especially if it’s a career story. All of that belongs on LinkedIn. This conversation that I see on TikTok, again, I don’t know what side of TikTok you’re on, but I see posts about
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What was it? You know, Erica, the lawyer, we just met her and it was learning about the fine print. And I would love to see those on LinkedIn, not manipulated or changed, just the TikTok video. And she might actually change the language of the caption. For example, you might change the language to saying like, number one tip you need to know when you’re reading the fine print for
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this XYZ brand or something like that. don’t know. Like if you’re an airline, for example. So those are short clips. Does long form content work well on LinkedIn? It can. I would say everything on LinkedIn is built on trust. So the best long videos I’ve posted and I’ve been able to post a couple 10 minute videos that have done really, really well, like 20,000 to 60,000 views in that range.
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then I would say the trust came into play because I, in the text of the post, I would timestamp what value they were going to get from the different timestamps. We see people do that on YouTube when they’re, and that’s the same concept translates over to LinkedIn. Okay. All right. Well, let’s, let’s pretend that everyone listening to this hasn’t touched their LinkedIn account for like a decade. Okay. What are the steps to kind of maybe revive that account?
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and get the ball rolling, so to speak. Step number one is think of your LinkedIn profile like a landing page and think of your profile as very SEO optimized. You want your headline to be SEO optimized and your experience section titles to be SEO optimized. Cause that’ll just ramp you up in visibility and search. So, people are just searching for broad topics like e-commerce or business or. Yeah, whatever.
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Whatever your ideal client types in to that search bar on Google or even YouTube, whatever you think they’re searching for, that’s what you want to optimize. Okay. And in terms of building that following though, what are the steps? Yeah. So let’s go into turn on a new feature called creator mode on your profile. And the reason why you want to do that, there’s a couple of things happening. So LinkedIn launched, we’re talking to people who haven’t touched LinkedIn and they’re like,
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what the heck is creating a So there’s a new, you have a private dashboard on your profile, only you can see it. And there’s a button that you can toggle now that says turn on creator mode. And that’s going to create features for you that are going to give you that early adopter status. So what it’s going to do is number one, you get to turn your profile picture into a video.
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So a 30 second intro video. Number two, you get to create your custom hashtags that you want to be seen and known for talking about. So you get to pick five custom hashtags for your profile and for your content. The next one is they plan to roll out and they already started any new feature that comes out on the platform. They’re only rolling it out to creator mode people who have turned on the feature creator mode.
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because they want to give access to LinkedIn live, newsletters, audio, social audio rooms, just like Clubhouse. They’ve already started on LinkedIn and a short form video similar to TikTok and Reels is coming out in 2022. And they’re only going to give that to creator mode. So you want to turn it on. And it turns LinkedIn into a follow platform. So instead of connecting with everyone,
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it’s going to direct people to start following you, which I think is very similar to other platforms that have allowed, know, Hey, we don’t have to directly connect, but we can stay more closely connected. Do you lose the other features that you already had before when you can? No, I don’t. Okay. I can’t think of anything you lose. only gain. Okay. All right. So
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Step one, turn on creator mode. Yes. And I do have a video, I have a YouTube video on how to turn on creator mode and I show you me literally turning it on. You know what I mean? Like, love those kind of videos. the show notes for sure. I’m sure a lot of people listening haven’t probably touched their LinkedIn in a while. I want to talk about like the actual posts. Yes. How often do post? The post frequency? Yeah. I’ll let you talk.
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So the easiest way to start on LinkedIn, and it’s always a little counter counterintuitive to some people, we just want to get on the platform and start posting and talking. And what I tell people is picture yourself on a panel of experts on stage. Have you ever been asked to speak on stage and you’re on a panel? I can probably see people nodding their heads through this audio.
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And what I would want you to do on LinkedIn is to replicate that. And the way that you replicate it is you find people on LinkedIn that you would actually be happy to share a stage with in real life, talking either on a similar topic or a parallel topic. Maybe for you, it could be e-commerce or it could be maybe having, you know, a thriving business with your family or something like that. I’m just kind of playing out random topics.
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There’s obviously the tech topic. There’s so many topics, but just imagine yourself on stage next to a few key experts. For example, we could be on stage together. you would actually join LinkedIn and collect maybe five to 10 accounts that are active and position yourself as a leader in their comments. For example, you might comment on mine, what I call a high quality comment, just like I
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pass the mic to you. And on that topic, maybe because you comment on the social audio posts that I made and you say, really love that LinkedIn’s generating this new feature. I’m excited to check it out. Let me know when your next room is. So you’re saying something really nice on stage next to me. And if you consistently stay on stage with some of the five to 10 people you pick,
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you actually gain a ton of following and a ton of visibility by doing that instead of just hopping all around LinkedIn and commenting on the newsfeed and just being super random. So does this start to make sense? Yeah. So, so it’s interesting. I mean, it’s kind of like blogging in the early days. The people who left really thoughtful comments would actually get traffic from the other readers. So you’re suggesting to do this even before posting your own posts on your own LinkedIn account.
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Yes, I feel like I’m about to give you another really random analogy, but it’s like going to Dave and Busters. And I love skeeball. And I love collecting all the tickets before they had the cards, you know, where it prints out the tickets and you have to say so much more satisfying. Oh, my God, it’s so I, I don’t feel the same satisfaction from a freaking credit card thing in my head. So I want a big stack of tickets in my hands and feel really powerful walking around with that big stack. And
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Then I get to go to the counter and I get to cash those in. That’s what you’re doing by commenting. Commenting is collecting all of those tickets from all those games that you’re crushing out there at Dave and Busters. And then you go up to the counter and that’s your post. You turn in all those tickets and LinkedIn’s like, good, good job. We’re going to show your posts to all lot of people who saw you in the newsfeed because you were commenting. Interesting. Okay.
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Yeah, I’ve actually seen. Okay, I’ll give you some numbers just because I’m a numbers person. My background’s in engineering. If I didn’t say that. So is mine. You’re chemical, right? Yes. What’s yours? I’m electrical. Okay, perfect. So some numbers I had somebody document because I really wanted the results. So 15 high quality comments over three days generated a
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5,000 % increase in their profile visibility and their next post went to, and they only had about thousand followers. Their next post went to 5,000 views and they got, I think at this point it had 120 or so likes and comments, but they went from zero. They were getting zero likes and comments, zero engagement. They were just posting and posting and posting. It was just 15 high quality comments.
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to turn around, to turn their whole account around. I mean, in many respects, this is like joining a brand new Facebook group and then posting really helpful comments and basically ingratiating yourself into the community so that when you actually post, people listen, right? Yep, go give what you want to get. And it works for the algorithm. But I don’t like to tell people that there’s algorithmic.
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interaction happening because at the end of the day, algorithms will change. They’re always going to change. So if you just think, you know what, this is a long-term strategy. I’m going to map out 10 people. love their posts, love what they’re doing on LinkedIn, love their vibe. Would be honored to join a stage with them. Go support them. Go do what you just said, the early days of blogging. And I remember I launched a blog in 2007, I think. Okay. And yeah, that’s around when I started.
34:17
Yep. That was when I had my first viral shared blog post. think I had about 7,000 shares on a blog post and I was hooked on social media ever since then and on content creation. So I come from that same mindset that you’re thinking, which is like, wow, that can live beyond you when you go viral or you have people share your post or your blog. So if you’re starting out doing this,
34:43
That implies that you don’t have that many posts, but it’s going to be hard to fill out that featured section on your site. So would you suggest first then posting some really comprehensive posts for your Cold, Warm and Hot Leads first and then start doing the strategy? Yes. Most people that I work with, you are correct. I do start with some people who are just getting started to kind of ramp up. The easiest two things that we do is their website.
35:12
wherever they’re hot lead. So say for example, it’s a contact me page on the website as an example, that can be as simple or calendly link. can be as simple as a direct link to your calendar with some questions, just so you can not get everyone just clicking through and randomly booking a call without asking them any questions about what is this call happening. I have found a lot of success by just putting somebody’s calendly link there and then maybe a
35:41
post they made on LinkedIn and keeping it really simple. So you don’t have to have the cold, warm, hot, but if somebody is already up and running in their business, that’s why I tell people to do the cold, warm, hot. Right. Okay. Can we talk about post frequency or is that kind of not? I mean, you mentioned to me that you post very infrequently. Yeah, I know. I think it’s
36:05
thinking about my return on investment. If I can get a big return on investment with one post, why would I? I’m more into sustainability. I got my master’s degree in business sustainability. And a sustainable human is one that doesn’t burn out. A person that doesn’t constantly try to feed a monster of an algorithm thinking that’s what keeps them relevant.
36:32
So I have thought through so many ways of staying visible without having to hustle for that visibility. mean, I feel this way about social media in general. Like Instagram, I could never really get into because it just requires like my friends who are successful in that, they post multiple times a day. I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that either. So I my last post on Instagram is from April of 2021. But for LinkedIn.
37:01
I’m just trying to get an idea. you’re just saying that it seems like the way we’ve been talking, you’re going to be having traffic from other people Googling you naturally and you’re taking advantage of those people. But in terms of actually starting from scratch and building an audience on LinkedIn, you want to ingratiate yourself with other people who already have a following and get followers that way. But at some point you should probably start posting, right? Or does it even matter?
37:25
you can start posting and I would say a very sustainable schedule for most. Again, I work with clients that are just getting started. I wouldn’t say they’re just getting started on social media. I don’t normally start with like zero knowledge of social media in general. Yes. But what I will say is most people are moving over from the mindset of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. And I actually have to dial them back from how often they want to post because here’s the problem.
37:55
If you post too much, burn out your audience that you’re generating. Even if you’re at a 500 followers, those 500 people will be exhausted trying to keep up with your content. And a lot of times they really do want to support you, but you’re overwhelming them with too much content on a platform that isn’t operating like that. So what I tell people is one post a week and instead of
38:23
what you would spend the time doing for posting on LinkedIn, you would just go out and strategically comment on those 10 people or go spend time now in a LinkedIn audio event room and raise your hand to get on stage. I was in a event with Guy Kawasaki. I hope I’m saying his name correctly. When I joined the event and when I attended, there was only 20 people attending that event. Guy is huge. I’m surprised that he only had 20 people.
38:53
Well, okay. So one, it’s not his fault. LinkedIn is rolling out LinkedIn audio events and they’re trying to make the audio events not crash. So even though he has like 2 million followers, they didn’t show it to all his 2 million followers, but that’s what I mean by early advantage. You’re able to raise your hand and get on stage and talk to guy and you’re only in an audience of 30 or 40. It’s an intimate like fireside chat at that point. So.
39:23
So does that imply- rather people, oh, you were saying like how much content people need to do. I’d rather somebody do one post a week, just enjoy the conversations that happen on that post and go out and engage on the platform. Go join an audio room with Guy and raise your hand and talk with him. Does that imply that when you make a post, a large frequency of your followers will actually see that post, unlike Facebook and Instagram who has purposely nerfed the reach?
39:50
Yes, I can get a hundred percent. So I, I was telling you before we got on this call, I took four months off of posting. That was probably my biggest chunk of time from zero posting on LinkedIn. And all I did was comment. So I did stay engaged, but I needed a break. I went to the beach a couple of weeks. I took time with my kid. We went for walks. I needed a break from just trying to be a content creator. And what I
40:19
found is when I posted back again, my audience was like ready for season three or something of Judy Fox. And that post went to my entire audience and beyond. It got 100 % visibility. So I’m at about 40,000 almost followers and it reached over 40,000 views. Okay, that’s amazing. How can they do that? Is it because the culture is just to not post that much?
40:44
The culture is if you are a successful business person, you shouldn’t be that accessible for LinkedIn. You actually should be too busy to talk with us all the time. And we’d rather get the vibes that we’re getting a micro moment of, my gosh, I just ran into Steve in the elevator and I got to ask him a question. It’s like that energy of, oh my gosh, the CEO is coming into the office. Everybody, oh my gosh, the buzz.
41:13
So we’ve got content creators like a Gary Vaynerchuk, but we know that’s not Gary making all those posts, right? We know that’s his team. And we’re fine with that. The mental space of trust has been built and we know that that’s his audience and that’s his world. And we’re not truly getting a chance to talk with Gary like right that second. But for other people who…
41:39
To be honest, at some point, we’re not all at that level of having a team like Gary Vaynerchuk. Sure. So if you’re not at that level, we want it to be you. We want it to be a micro moment with you. And that would be more powerful than you trying to be omnipresent on the platform. Okay. LinkedIn is sounding much more attractive to me now. Yeah. know, before we got on this call, I was thinking, okay, great. I got another like.
42:09
social media platform where I got to post like every day. I can’t handle this unless I can just take what I’ve already done and post it on LinkedIn. But I like this. I like the culture actually, now that you’ve described it better. I will say, and this is why I appreciate the conversation with you, Steve. I feel like I’m always, I don’t know what the word is. Maybe I’m very counter culture to what the language is on social media to
42:38
I will just tell you, I see so many people talk about LinkedIn and how often you have to post and you have to keep people on the platform and you have to do this and you have to do that. And I have lived in my, you know, like we started this conversation. I, as a single parent running my own business, have certain, I wouldn’t call them, I have challenge points that say, you know what? That.
43:06
language of how often you have to post and you have to do this and you have to do that. Cause I remember somebody early on in my journey said, oh, LinkedIn’s a content monster. You have to constantly post to stay relevant. And I looked at that person and in my brain and in that night I wrote in my journal and I said, I will find a way to post as infrequently as I want and still generate visibility.
43:31
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the main difference here is that more people will see what you post. So you can post less frequently. The reason why people post so much on Instagram and Facebook is because they’re only reaching like a percent of their audience, right? A single digit, I should say. So, yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I will say I’ve had a chance to talk with the senior executives at LinkedIn and talk to them about the algorithm and their
43:58
You know, the myths and breaking down some of the myths, like you have to put the, the, a big, big myth is put the link in the comments because links in posts don’t work. I would bust that myth so hard. And I think to be honest, if somebody is giving that advice these days, they’re not the best coach for LinkedIn because you should be putting your links in the post.
44:27
I will generate just as much visibility. I’ve had a client go to 50,000 views on a post, a direct link to sign up for her course, which was 3K, and we made her about $90,000 in a week.
44:42
Okay, so the traditional rules for other social media do not apply for LinkedIn. yeah, go for the link in your post. Don’t try to move it to the comments and do all that kind of, I don’t know what to call it, but LinkedIn themselves have said, we see ourselves as a news source. We see ourselves as a resource. So if you have a resource to send people to an external site, send them to that external site.
45:09
go. We are not holding back your posts. We’re not limiting your reach at all. The things that people are messing up. And here’s the key. The reason why people’s because people will come back on this episode and be like, that didn’t work. And I’ll say, what did your social sharing icon look like? That is a huge problem because people just use stock images and things that don’t actually convey what you’re clicking on. So we need to know what your
45:38
image if it’s, like for example, thumbnails of YouTube’s videos can do really well in that social sharing icon spot. Or I tell people just freaking remove the social sharing icon. There’s a little X in the upper corner because you do not want to slow down that post with a bad image. Own your social image of that post, if that makes sense. Right. I’m just thinking to myself and again, I’m
46:05
I’m not an expert at all, but based on what you’ve said, it seems like it’s probably better to keep people on the platform, especially if they’re cold people, right? I mean, the friction is less and people will just naturally look at your profile. They like what you had to say, right? Yes. And I would say that’s a really good strategy to be a traffic director. So on your content, if you actually look at my content and you read to the bottom of the post at the bottom of every single post for anyone who’s doing LinkedIn really, really well, they’re doing
46:35
the same thing. There’s some same, I don’t know what to call it. It’s like having a pattern on YouTube when you upload your YouTube video. tagline kind of. Exactly. So my tagline for a long time has been to give people directions to follow my custom hashtag. So I have hashtag Fox rocks and I’ve grown that to about over a thousand followers at this point, which means every time I post, I’m at the top of the newsfeed for a thousand people.
47:05
which is a super cool spot to be. So grow your custom hashtag. And then there’s a new feature that literally just rolled out two weeks ago. I feel like I’m just constantly like, there’s new, there’s new, but there’s a new feature called the bell and you can actually ring the bell on somebody’s profile and get notifications every time they post. my new call to action is getting people to ring the bell on my profile. Cause
47:30
I mean, first of all, I’m not going to overwhelm you with 30,000 posts. I’m just posting like once every couple of weeks. So I would actually want that energy of people trusting that bell, knowing that I’m not going to overwhelm them. And when I do post, it’s important. That makes sense. So it’s kind of like YouTube now. It’s kind of like having subscribers on YouTube. Yeah. your content first. OK, this makes a lot of sense. And that’s why you don’t want to post so often also.
47:58
Yes, if you make everything important, the audience starts to think nothing’s important. This is great. So, hey, if people listening to this want to see a perfect example, like where can they find you and get ahold of you? Go to LinkedIn. You can start with my website. It’s j-u-d-i-f-o-x.com. That’s kind of a great way to spider web out from me to all of my content.
48:26
The most consistent place I’m showing up is two places because I am all in on social audio. love it. I could talk your ear off all day long if you can’t tell. I do a regular clubhouse room every single Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern and I do a Thursday room now on LinkedIn audio every single Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern. I’ve got some kind of vibe with 4 p.m. Eastern. Last question. I mean, is LinkedIn audio versus
48:56
Clubhouse is Clubhouse still on the up and up because I’ve heard some things. I think less of what is happening on Clubhouse, but more about the fact that it’s just another tool on social media where I can gather people. OK, so I would say LinkedIn audio, the power of LinkedIn audio so far for the rooms I’ve been in and one of the rooms is an NFT room, which I think is.
49:25
interesting when I listen to their perspective. So they’ve been running some big rooms on Twitter, know, tons of people in these rooms in Twitter, and then over on LinkedIn audio, because it’s in beta, and it’s just starting. But those NFT spaces on LinkedIn, maybe they’re getting around 50 people, maybe 100. But what they said is more business deals are actually happening on LinkedIn from those rooms that are smaller, because the
49:51
decision makers are in the room. The people who have the financial resources to invest in NFTs are in those rooms. So they’re doubling, they’re actually like changing their whole strategy. This entire NFT group that I’ve been following these people because I’m interested. like, where are the results happening? And I’m so excited to hear that it’s coming true. And for myself, it’s coming true. And my clients, LinkedIn audio rooms are very, very successful. I mean, voice and live always converts better.
50:21
Yeah. So yeah, it’s really exciting with LinkedIn and I’ll give one more plug to your LinkedIn profile, but you can say anything in your clubhouse profile. can tell us you’re the most amazing person on the whole planet and you can write almost anything in that bio on clubhouse, but on LinkedIn, there is some social capital and kind of feet to the fire. If you list that you’re an employer of a company and you put that in your experience section and it’s not true.
50:50
It can get removed. It’s not, you’re less likely to get away with faking yourself. Can you still do it? Yes, but there’s a lot more social capital happening on LinkedIn. And one more thing about the mindset on LinkedIn is we very quickly will message each other to say, have you worked with so-and-so? Where I don’t know if that happens as much on the other ones, but on LinkedIn, that’s the mindset is check referrals or check their recommendation section.
51:20
Click on who recommended them and then go over and ask them a question and say, hey, you recommended you work with Judy Fox. How was that? Can you personally tell me about that? And I would say that’s happened to me from a couple of audio rooms. It’s happened to me 10 times where I’m finding out they’re booking and paying to work with me from that behavior, starting from a LinkedIn audio room. I love it, actually. I love the accountability.
51:47
Yeah, it is. It’s so smart and I’m very happy for it. So. All right, Judy, you sold me. I love it. It’s it’s changed my life. I wouldn’t talk like this if it literally wasn’t the thing that makes my life able to be what it is today. Well, Judy, I’m so happy I met you at this mastermind and thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. inviting me and on my birthday and on your birthday. I’m really touched.
52:16
A little birthday gift if anyone’s listening is to ring the bell on my profile. That would be so great. Seriously, I mean, everyone listening to this should just go check out her profile and see how she has things set up. I know that after this, I’m just going to literally go and copy her profile. I’m going to change the name, of course. I like the words model after success instead of copy. I was taught that by a coach one time and I said, that’s a very nice phrase. All right, Judy. Well, thanks a lot.
52:46
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, if you thought that LinkedIn was only for people looking for a job, then you were dead wrong. Follow Judy’s tips in this episode to get free leads through LinkedIn. For more information about this episode, go to mywebclipporjob.com slash episode 403. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot.
53:13
So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve.
53:40
Now we talk about how to use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.
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