Live Blissed Out

046 - The Value Of LinkedIn

July 21, 2020 Marisa Huston & Joyce Feustel Episode 46
Live Blissed Out
046 - The Value Of LinkedIn
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Joining me is Joyce Feustel.

She been active on LinkedIn for over 10 years. In 2010 she founded Boomers Social Media Tutor and went full-time with her business in March 2013 after retiring from a 17-year career in sales. Through her tutoring and training services, she helps business professionals to use social media, especially LinkedIn and Facebook, more effectively and productively. 

To learn more, visit https://boomerssocialmediatutor.com/

In this episode we will cover:

  • Time On LinkedIn
  • Posting On LinkedIn
  • LinkedIn Profiles
  • Who Should Use LinkedIn
  • LinkedIn Connections
  • IDK
  • Paid or Free?
  • Groups
  • Invitations
  • What Not To Do

Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. I appreciate you 🙂

Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the Feedback section.

Special thanks to Joyce Feustel for being on the show.

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So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!

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Marisa Huston :

Welcome to Episode 46 on the Live Blissed Out podcast. Did you know that approximately one in three professionals on the planet are on LinkedIn? It is currently estimated that over 50% of the population in the USA are LinkedIn users. Hello, action takers! Welcome to Live Blissed Out. A podcast where I have authentic conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help us get the scoop, the 411 and the lowdown on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping achieve bliss through awareness and action. Thanks for joining me. The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. Joining me is Joyce Feustel. She's been active on LinkedIn for over 10 years. In 2010, she founded Boomers Social Media Tutor and went full time with her business in March 2013, after retiring from a 17 year career in sales. Through her tutoring and training services, she helps business professionals to use social media, especially LinkedIn and Facebook more effectively and productively. To learn more visit www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com Are you ready for some pampering after being stuck at home? At Antoine du Chez Salon and Spa located in Centennial Colorado, the focus is on you the minute you walk through the door with their captivating atmosphere and excellent customer service Antoine Du Chez continues to deliver timeless experiences for every guest. You're invited to relax, unwind and experience their customized spa services. Choose from facial treatments, massage services, waxing, nail services and other seasonal offerings. Antoine Du Chez has an amazing offer for live blissed out podcast listeners in Colorado. Simply mentioned this podcast at the time of booking to receive $60 towards a cut and color and $80 towards a massage and facial. This offer is available for first time guests only To learn more, visit their website at www.antoineduchez.com. Joyce, thanks for being here.

Joyce Feustel :

I'm excited, this will be great!

Marisa Huston :

I am enthusiastic about talking to you about our topic, which is how we get the most value out of using LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been a platform that has been around for quite a while many, many years, you would know more than me. But I also find as a LinkedIn user, that there are so many people out there that are not using it to its potential. They are not either filling out their profiles appropriately or interacting and engaging or checking. And there's just so many different things that I know we could be doing to really maximize what LinkedIn can do for us, and particularly with our business. How much time should a person be spending on LinkedIn?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, it does depend Marisa on the type of work they do, also, to some extent how many connections they have. But I think as a general rule, if a person went to LinkedIn about two times a week and spent perhaps 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. Not a lot! That is really plenty of time. And here are the key things they should do in that 10 to 15 minutes twice a week. They should check their pending invites. Could be a client out there been wanting to connect with them or a potential referral partner. They should check their messages. I've just had two wonderful appointments, one I just had and one is next week come to me because I track on my LinkedIn messages. Another thing would be to look at notifications. Is it somebody's work anniversary? Was there a job change? It's a wonderful opportunity to all beit randomly, but still stay in front of somebody that you want to keep Top of Mind with.

Marisa Huston :

And you know, I think that's important because so many people I find, don't check their LinkedIn often and when I mean by often is there are some people out there that don't go in but once a month or something. And then you go and send them a message, and you're wondering why they never responded. So it might be a good idea to at least check to see if there's any interaction happening. Right?

Joyce Feustel :

Exactly! And I do tell people if you really want to get in touch with someone because just of what you said, do not message them on LinkedIn, unless they just messaged you. Send them an email, pick up the phone, text them if you know they like to be getting a text message, but don't rely on a LinkedIn message to get through to them in a timely manner.

Marisa Huston :

That's a good point. I think we need to make sure we're communicating in more than one medium. You can start with email, for example, and then follow up on LinkedIn or do different things to make sure that the person is getting the message in the first place. Let's say I'm using LinkedIn and I want to interact with the people that are on LinkedIn, and now I want to provide valuable information and I'm ready to put a post out. But oftentimes, we're confused about what we should be posting about, because LinkedIn is very different from other platforms. What should we be thinking about if we were to put out a post on LinkedIn?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, several things come to mind, but the bottom line is you should be providing value to the people who are your connections on LinkedIn and anyone else who might happen to see your post. You don't want to go on at length, there's actually a character limit. I believe it's around 1300 characters 200 worth roughly, so I wouldn't even go that far. So keep it pretty succinct. Oftentimes, you find an article, something in your industry that you think would be enlightening to people. So take a copy of that URL, copy it, as I said, and then paste it right into your post that you're telling people about. So you might have a paragraph or two on a particular topic. Read more here, at so and so's article. Then listen to this, if you happen to know the author of that article, you can do what's called mention them in a post. That's similar to tagging on Facebook, where you put the little @ sign then their first letter of their first name snuggled up right next to the @ sign and just start typing their name. And pretty soon you'll see it in a drop down, then you click on their name. Depending on the settings of people, sometimes even folks you aren't directly connected to LinkedIn can be mentioned. So that is a wonderful way to get more attention to a post that has this great value is because you reference that person, maybe somebody you heard speak, maybe somebody you just saw at a networking event, whatever it may be, if somebody helped you with something you paid the money you're their client, whatever it could be. But when you involve other people in your posts, you're going to have more traction with the post and you just always want to provide value.

Marisa Huston :

Yes, and it's almost like acknowledging the person right? You're basically letting them know that you are sharing their valuable information with other people as well. So I think that's just a wonderful practice to apply when you're using LinkedIn.

Joyce Feustel :

Absolutely.

Marisa Huston :

Let's talk about profiles. Because this is a touchy one. They run the range. You have profiles where I literally go in, and it's either they don't have a picture at all, or they may have a picture and the title of their current position and company and nothing else, all the way to profiles that are so well put together, where they have complete resumes and the background of their entire lives. How do we strike a balance and what essentially should we include in our profile that's going to make us look our best on LinkedIn?

Joyce Feustel :

Such a critical question. I will use a few examples from the client I just saw. This is a woman whose job is going to be wrapping up at the end of this month, so she's still going to be helping this trade association but not as their executive director, she's going to be a consultant for them. Well, she already has her consulting company, she had it all along kind of on the side. So now she'll be moving that position up to the top of all of her entries, and then once that job is over which it will be shortly it will naturally drop down. So one thing we talked about, she has this company where she helps people get cleaning services and related services, but it's very different than the main consulting work she does. So even though she has this company, I suggested she deleted it from her LinkedIn experience section. Because she's a business owner. You don't have to be telling people every job you had for umpteen years and decades. Now, another client of mine was really rocking it back in the 90s. She was the president of our local Chamber of Commerce out here in the western suburbs Lakewood, WheatRidge, etc. that was more than 20 years ago. I would say keep that because it was very relevant to the work she's doing now with her communications consulting company. So I think for the business owner, it's different than for the job seeker because a business owner can keep what's relevant and what's not. And if what's relevant goes back aways then do keep it. But now the job seeker, it's trickier because they don't want to go back too far you want to think about your age do you want to reveal that. There by the way, in the education section, you can hide the year you graduated college. You do not have to populate that field. A lot of people don't know that. So that is right away a trigger for people like Oh, she graduated 87. So if you don't want people to know that. Even young graduates have told me that they don't want to be perceived as too young for some type of job that they're applying for. So that's just a thought. And I think that you should always have a current headshot of you on LinkedIn. It should be professional, but not super fancy dancy, but just like you'd show up in a job interview or show up with a client. And then for the business owner, that cover photo at the top of your profile is a really wonderful place to brand yourself. The name of your company, show a picture of you and action, something related to what you offer your services, your products. And the headline to just want to stress that. The default is normally simply your position. It would say like founder for me Boomers Social Media Tutor. Well, what does that tell people? Instead you put in who you serve. I serve business owners. I serve jobseekers, I provide LinkedIn training, social media training, that type of thing and just separate it out like so search engine optimization, you got to think SEO. So you want these little phrases. There's a simple key you can use to separate them. I think for the job seeker, I probably wouldn't go back much more than 10 years, possibly 15 years, depending on what you were doing back 10 to 15 years ago.

Marisa Huston :

Should everybody have a LinkedIn account? Who benefits most from LinkedIn? What are some considerations to decide whether or not you should even set up a LinkedIn profile?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, first off, if you really don't care for LinkedIn, don't have a LinkedIn account. So don't be on any social media that you're not going to pay attention to, and at least periodically jump into put up a post comment on other people's stuff. So don't let it just languish. So that's kind of a rule of thumb across all social media. But I'll give a couple examples where you might think, why would a Realtor be on LinkedIn? Why would a travel agent be on LinkedIn? Here's why I think they would consider being on it at least somewhat nominally. When you network with people, you don't necessarily want to be their friend on Facebook. I happen to be a friend on Facebook with my own travel agent, but because we become friends in real life. A Realtor again you might become close to them and just by matter, of course be their friend. But what about every mortgage person that that realtor works with? What about the title people think about all the whole support system around real estate. You are perhaps better off being on LinkedIn with these people and then when they have a work anniversary, they go to a different title company. whatever it might be, then you can notice that in your notifications. Say, hey, Bob, Oh, that's so cool! I know that mortgage company, I'm so excited for you. And you know what you can do. Marisa. You can be public. There's two ways to congratulate someone, when you see it in the notifications. If you just click on congratulations, it'll just be between me and Bob. But let's say I know that Bob is very well connected in the business community. If I click on the statement, Bob, so and so has this new job. Then I click on that I see it's public. My comment is public in front of anybody who's congratulating Bob. So I like that because it puts me out there with other people. I might even se the name of someone and I go, oh, there's Jill. You know, I was thinking about Jill the other day, and Bob might know Jill then and she's connected with him I should reach out to Bob ask him, if he knows Jill well enough, maybe you can do an email introduction. But see, this is where I think that the people who are in your business circles are good people to be on LinkedIn with.

Marisa Huston :

Well, this is a good lead into a question that has been on my mind for a while because there's a huge controversy. Do we accept everyone that wants to be connected to us on LinkedIn? Or do we stick with the people we know?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, you and I already know we have different styles on this. We have different parameters. And I think that goes back to it depends. So for example, lawyers CPAs other people who are dealing with very sensitive material may have clients in their connections list and don't necessarily want to hide the clients. But they I would think, would be very strategic and super careful about who they would accept as a LinkedIn connection. We are who we associate with, so that's just an example of a set of people that I would advise to be super super selective. Now me because I figure for many people, even if I don't know them, I might be okay connecting with them because I think you never know who they know who might need LinkedIn. Or the other way I think about it, Marisa. I put out these little posts to educate people. They are not salesy posts, they're educational type of posts. And I think that person might benefit from what I have to offer. If they never ever pay me money, they still can learn things for me. I see it more broadly. However, what I like to do, if someone is sort of on the cusp, I don't know them, but I think well, maybe I might want to connect with them. There is a simple way that you can go in to that pending invite area and click on a little button that says manage or sometimes it'll say like, select one of three if you have three pending invites. And that takes you to this interior page where you click on the word message right below their picture. Now, even without a paid account, you can still write them a note like thank you for the invite. What prompted you to reach out to me? Nowm you would have a different response. It would be...Hey, let's get on zoom or phone and get to know each other and then I'll see if we are fit for connecting. That's another great response to these people. So you have to think what your best response is and realize. Generalization now, a lot of younger I'll say 20 and 30 something at least they don't bother with these little notes. They kind of think of LinkedIn more like Twitter, Instagram oh follow, follow Oh, LinkedIn is the same. But I think in some extent the older will say even they 50 and up maybe, they like a note they like to send a note. That's my style. And I appreciate the note. So someone doesn't send you a note I still feel in my opinion, they are accountable to writing me back and telling me why they reached out.

Marisa Huston :

I get both sides of it, and there are definite pros and cons to it and you just have to decide what you think is going to be the best fit for you.

Joyce Feustel :

Well the lady I just came from seeing sent me this invite and she had a sweet look about her. She used to be in the legislature. So you know, my husband's worked in that arena for a long time. I kept her in my inbox for the longest time just waiting to see what happened and finally I got around to writing her that note. I took a little while. And she writes me right back and said I want to call you can we talk about today. That was Sunday, and now we had this appointment this morning. She just turned out to be a client. So how about that?

Marisa Huston :

Imagine that.

Joyce Feustel :

Because I wrote back, What prompted you to reach out to me? And she goes, I need your help.

Marisa Huston :

And we were talking about whether we should accept everyone, or if we only accept the people we know, and you can have an opinion either way. But I know that LinkedIn is really designed to connect with people that you know, that's really what they prefer. So there is this button that you can press, which is I don't know this person. When somebody reaches out, you literally have the power to say to LinkedIn, I don't know this person. What happens when somebody clicks that?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, it's my understanding that when you click I don't know or often called idk them, that's a mark against them. If a person gets enough of those marks, LinkedIn could shut down their account. Possible. So for me, I still rarely do that because I don't want to get them in trouble on LinkedIn. Now that said, if they are like super salesy, I mean I will block people if they go against the terms of service, I will report them to LinkedIn.

Marisa Huston :

But if you innocently click on that, not realizing that you're marking them somehow, because it's just an innocent question, do you know this person and then you click on I don't know, it's important for us to understand, and I think there's gonna be some people out here listening right now going, I didn't know that that was a mark against them, because it's just asking us a basic question. Do you know this person? You say no, and then apparently that's not a good thing to do. So what you're saying is, even though it is an option for us don't really do it unless you really want to take it to another level or this person is treating you inappropriately.

Joyce Feustel :

Right. And you know, I have a friend of mine who was trying to broaden her network and she was reaching out to a lot of people she didn't know, and she had so many of those marks against her. LinkedIn did shut down her account. So she had to work with LinkedIn to get her account back.

Marisa Huston :

It's just good to be aware of exactly what that button is all about, because so many of us don't. The other controversy I hear a lot...Should I stay with a free account, or should I pay and get an upgrade on LinkedIn? How do I know when to make that call?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, there's a couple kinds of people who I would advise to get some level of paid account First realize there's different levels. $30 a month is what you pay if you're a job seeker. If you pay $60, you get more bells and whistles, you pay $80, you get access to something called Sales Navigator, which is lots of extra bells and whistles. So if someone is a job seeker for $30 a month, and you can get the first month for free, I would spend the money and here's why. You can see 90 days back who has looked at you, there's a recruiter you are gonna to call, there is a hiring authority. So that might very well be worthwhile. Also get more searches. A lot of people don't know that there is a limit on the number of people you can look up and look at their profile on LinkedIn. So you might get about 25th of the month, they'll say, whoa, you're approaching your commercial search limit. Of course, they'll never tell you what that is. So I think if you find yourself searching a lot on LinkedIn, you want to know who's looked at you, you get these inmails to that's where you can communicate with someone on LinkedIn you're not connected to. The other kind of person is a business to business, a b2b kind of salesperson who is looking for very specific kinds of people or even a business owner who deals with very discrete people. I want to have people who've been at that company for at least 10 years, I want to talk to a CFO who's had that role for five years. I want to talk to somebody in a company that's between this number of employees and that number of employees, these are all what they call filters and you will not get those filters with a free account. However, with a free account, you can get filters, they call it, by geographic location, by their current company, by their past company, by their industry. So many different types of filters so that I think for probably the vast majority of people a free account is just fine.

Marisa Huston :

Most people on LinkedIn are in there because they want to expand their network for business purposes and groups just sounds like they're spending time having fun. Kind of like we do on Facebook, we find groups for our hobbies or whatever, when we go in there and chat up with all the people. How are LinkedIn groups different and are there any tips you can share with us as to how we should manage that to be as effective as possible for our purposes?

Joyce Feustel :

Well, I think groups are on the decline in LinkedIn, we still have them, but I want to make a general statement about that, because they don't seem to be used like they were used five or certainly 10 years ago. I've been in the Toastmasters International Group since the late 2000s, since about 2008. So for something like that, which is almost like a hobby, like you were saying on Facebook. That's where you could really find valuable information about leadership in Toastmasters, particular types of speech projects. But that's not really work, but still, it's kind of neat. And some of these people over there on LinkedIn might not be doing this kind of thing on Facebook. So that's a very niche kind of group. Another idea is you could have a group that people meet say once a month and they want to be in touch and it's very business oriented so you'd rather have it on LinkedIn than on Facebook. But unless someone really pushes people to comment and interact, it's going to be kind of dormant. I mean, I've been involved with groups like that. One thing I think is an unrealistic expectation is to get into a group and think right away, I'm going to get business. Right away, I'm going to get them into my sales funnel. I think not. I think that's more where you're going to learn things often from people say, in your own profession. I could be in a group of other social media people, for example, or maybe broadly in a space, like the real estate space could have different groups. But groups have a very specific description of who is eligible to be in that group. And unlike in the past, you can't just waltz into certain LinkedIn groups like you could before. You have to essentially apply to go into that group, and then you have to be approved. So I would say there is perhaps a limited utility of groups. I think it just depends on the person. And for me, I don't have the bandwidth. So you also have to look at your own human nature and maybe it would be rewarding to get to know people better in a group, maybe it wouldn't be worth your time. It surely does vary.

Marisa Huston :

If you're going to join a group, you need to be active in it, and it needs to provide value to you and the group members. Otherwise. Don't waste your time. The other controversial topic is inviting people because obviously, that's what LinkedIn does. We go, we look for people that might have something in common with us, maybe they're power partners, maybe they're people we met, whatever the reason, and we reach out to them. And there's different types of processes that people utilize to connect with people like whether or not they're going to decide whether they want to accept that invitation. And at the same time, it's also in the way they extend an invitation is there etiquette or any kind of no no's that we should avoid when we're either accepting or extending an Invitation on LinkedIn?

Joyce Feustel :

So when I go to a networking event, whether it's in person or course now it's typically virtual through Zoom, I will have the information from the attendees. A business card if I saw him in person on the chat, maybe I'll have their name, their email address, etc. So if I feel l resonated with them during that networking event in person or virtual, I will reach out to them, hopefully within two or three days. I mean, soon. I will say, oh, Marisa, it was really interesting meeting you at the Denver Chamber of Commerce, when they have that after hours for the leads group you're in. I was intrigued by the kind of business you do. And I'm thinking, let's get in touch, maybe set up a cup of coffee virtually or in person and get to know each other better. Now, you have to put all this into 300 characters so you gotta be succinct. But I would say reference how you met them so that you're just giving them a context in what you even talked about. That type of thing. And then make a suggestion about not just being on LinkedIn doing something else.

Marisa Huston :

In other words, you're basically just reminding them how you met in the first place, and then you're giving them some sort of action or what's the next step? You're telling them, Hey, can we get together? Or asking them for some thing so that you can take it to another level.

Joyce Feustel :

But what I would not do is go into your sales pitch. It is so annoying! In the actual invite, or I'm doing research or I see you're a coach, and I offer this. Man, I am so quick to either click ignore. If they're really annoying. I just block those people, because I don't want to have them ever sending another invite again.

Marisa Huston :

Correct. And basically you're jeopardizing the relationship from the get go. You haven't even started a relationship. Your first impression is already that of I'm trying to sell to you, and we all know none of us want to be sold to.

Joyce Feustel :

Exactly! So then you get to now you're connected with that person. Hey, Marisa, I'm so glad we connected on LinkedIn. Let's plan to do again, sort of going back to the coffees, home session, whatever. And then before we meet if you want to get a few tips on LinkedIn, here's a link to my ebook. Feel free if you're interested. Now, I think usually that doesn't come across as salesy that comes across as helpful. And then I might say, I really want to learn more about you, so it's more balanced. It doesn't have to be long. In fact, Sherry, the woman I saw today said, you know, I was so surprised when you wrote me back. Hardly anybody does that. Huh! Look at that! A simple thing took me two minutes. And she was like touched and right away, wrote back. So I found that very interesting. So I'm looking say for a business coach, and I'm looking for people who are not first level that's like a friend on Facebook right? A LinkedIn connection is first level. So I'm specifically searching for a second level people, meaning I'm not yet connected to them, I likely don't know them, but there's somebody who is a shared connection between me and this second level person. Now I've identified five people who do know this person so it's not just one I have several shared connections. So rather than send that second level person who doesn't know me at all, send them a LinkedIn invite, however carefully worded I would go to whichever one of those five people I know the best, start with that and say...Hey, John, I've been wanting to get in touch with Ellen here and I find her on LinkedIn. I was wondering if you could do an email introduction of the two of us, John, depending, of course on how well you know her. I would email John, I wouldn't message him on LinkedIn, I might even call him because if this person looks like really someone I want to develop a relationship with, she shows up like on LinkedIn, I want to really nurture this reaching out to her. So it's a warm invite. And I wouldn't still send her a LinkedIn invite. After John does the email introduction, I would email her back, of course, and say, hey, let's set up a phone call. Again, going back to that, let's set up a Zoom session. I was hoping we could get to know each other because it seems like we could be of help to each other. And John has already warmed up this introduction. Does this all make sense?

Marisa Huston :

Oh, totally. It's about engaging with people. It's about providing value. Also being very strategic. Are you trying to connect with power partners? Are you trying to connect with people that you serve directly? So having a plan and following a consistent process I think is very important. There's people on LinkedIn who just use it sporadically. And then they wonder why am I not getting the connections that I'm looking for or the business that I was hoping this was going to help set up for me? And it's primarily because they don't have a system. I mean, if you're going into LinkedIn once a month and checking a message here, and they're never responding, what do you expect is going to happen? So like anything else, you have to have a plan and you have to work the plan. I'm sure our listeners are going to take many tidbits that you just shared today and be able to apply it when they use LinkedIn so that they can be more successful with this platform, because it really is powerful if you use it the right way. Thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it Joyce.

Joyce Feustel :

Oh, you're most welcome. It was truly a pleasure.

Marisa Huston :

That's all for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks for listening and thanks to Joyce Feustel for being my guest. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speak pipe.com/LBOVM or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show, please visit www.liveblissedout.com to reach out, subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!

Time On LinkedIn
Posting On LinkedIn
LinkedIn Profiles
Who Should Use LinkedIn
LinkedIn Connections
Paid or Free?
Groups
Invitations
What Not To Do