KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• LinkedIn is the perfect platform business professionals who want to create better conversations with potential prospects.
• If you’re a small company selling B2C, you probably don’t need to invest a lot of time in LinkedIn. In the B2B industry, however, it can be incredibly powerful.
• LinkedIn is a great place to showcase your work, your personal brand and your recommendations.
• One of the most trusted platforms is LinkedIn, with 64% of B2B executives trusting the content they see.
• The first thing you need to focus on when it comes to your LinkedIn is your profile as this is what people are going to look at first. You don’t need to create a whole new profile, but you do need to find a way to reflect your brand.
• You need to think of your LinkedIn as a mini sales page. Think about your header image, your profile image, your headings and your experience. It’s important your information is buyer-centric so your potential clients can identify themselves in your content.
• Make sure you’re adding resources. Whether it’s blog posts, videos or places that you have been featured.
• When it comes to LinkedIn, it’s a great way to showcase your knowledge and experience without coming across as though you’re constantly selling your business.
• Share other people’s articles that you think your connections would enjoy. Not only does it show that you’re interested in the industry, but it encourages shares and engagement. Ultimately, this will help increase your overall visibility on the platform.
• Be aware of your audience and know what is suitable for LinkedIn and what isn’t. Just because other people are posting personal photos, it doesn’t mean you have to.
• Ads are great if you want to target micro-markets. If you want views, pay per click. If you want more clicks, pay per view.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

One of the most trusted platforms is LinkedIn, with 64% of B2B executives trusting the content they see. With various different platforms being known for fake news, it’s important you’re focussing on the platforms are trusted.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Viveka – 04:26
• Why Should You Be Considering LinkedIn? – 07:55
• Who Should Be Using LinkedIn? - 11:30
• How Do You Get Started with LinkedIn? - 18:40
• What Should You Be Posting on LinkedIn? - 27:17
• How Much of Your Personality Should You Be Sharing on LinkedIn? - 32:50
• Growing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - 42:00
• Using Ads on LinkedIn 49:11
• Should You Be Using LinkedIn Articles? - 51:36

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

• Viveka von Rosen Website
• Viveka von Rosen LinkedIn
• Viveka von Rosen Book

Transcript below

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Marketing That Converts Podcast, and thank you for joining me here today. It is always a pleasure to have you with me and to know that you're listening. I just wanted to say a very heartfelt welcome and thank you. While I'm talking about this actually, I'm always really keen to hear from people. I think I mentioned it in the last episode, but I'm going to mention it right here at the beginning before we get started, so I know that you're listening.

I'd really love you to come and reach out and find me, DM me on your favourite platform, I'm on them all as you know, or hit reply to one of my emails if you're on my email list and come and find me and say hello, tell me who you are, tell me where you're listening from and what you do because I'd love to find out more about you, and with the podcast the stats are really difficult, so it's really hard to get a good idea of who my audience are.

Now, I think I have a fair idea, but I just want to get as much information as I can so that I can make sure I'm bringing you the episodes that you want in the future. And also while I'm in the asking mood, if there's any chance you could head over to iTunes and drop me a review, I would appreciate that so very, very much. You just go to your main podcast page, you find me, I think you scroll to the bottom of the page and that's where the reviews are and you'll have the opportunity to leave me a five star review and if you could say something lovely, that would be absolutely amazing. I see them all and I appreciate them greatly.

And also from a podcasting point of view, it obviously helps me get found and get more listeners, which again I would really, really appreciate. I know you're busy, I know you've got stuff to do, so if you could find that time then I honestly do appreciate you very, very much. Like I said, do let me know what you want me to talk about. Do let me know if there's anything that you think, "Teresa, an episode on this would be so helpful," it would be great to hear from you.

Okay, so today is actually one of those episodes that I think you're going to love, because it is something that we've not really done before, but I know you guys have been asking for it and I know that this is something that we should have talked about for a long, long time. Today we're talking to the amazing Viveka Von Rosen, and she is a ... Of bestselling books, LinkedIn Marketing, An Hour a Day, and LinkedIn 101 Ways To Rock Your Personal Brand.

She really is the expert when it comes to using LinkedIn for your business. We have a really good chat about LinkedIn, and what it is now, and why you should think about it and not just if you are looking for a job or a recruiter that really why everyone should be considering their LinkedIn profiles and thinking about how to use it. She talks us through the main things that you should make sure your profile is doing, so literally the top three things that you should be focusing on.

And then we talk about content. What should you be putting on LinkedIn? What shouldn't you be putting on LinkedIn? Because as you hear me say in the interview, I once had a LinkedIn requests from a guy with no top on and quite honestly I'm not sure I'd accept that request anywhere, but certainly not on LinkedIn. It's not the place for it.

This is going to be a really, really good one. Like I said, if you're not doing too much on LinkedIn, then it's definitely worth thinking about this and definitely worth listening to this episode. Also if you are B2B, then honestly LinkedIn is a real winner for you, because right now it's really hot. It's really working well. You're getting seen in much more on LinkedIn than maybe you might be on your Facebook account.

Again, definitely, definitely worth having a listen to this episode. And Viveka was so lovely, we had such laugh and we had a good chat beforehand, and a good chat afterwards and she was such a nice lady. I really did enjoy having it on the podcast and enjoyed talking to her about this.

You know what, I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to let you jump straight into the episode and listen to her because there's some great stuff in there that you're going to get from this episode and I'll see you on the other side.

Introducing Viveka

It gives me such pleasure today to welcome Viveka von Rosen to the podcast. Welcome Viveka. How are you?

Thank you so much, excellent.

Good, good stuff. Viveka, I'm really pleased to have you on today because do you know what? Somehow I have got to episode, I think we're on episode 80, and we haven't really talked about LinkedIn and I've had no one on to talk about LinkedIn. You know what's really funny at the moment is my husband is leaving the military after 25 years, and suddenly he is asking me question, after question, after question, about LinkedIn and I'm like I think this is how you do it or I'm trying to help about it but it's just so funny, because he's all over LinkedIn at the moment and he was so excited when he heard I was interviewing you today. Yeah, this is kind of very good timing for me in a personal point of view.

Viveka, if my audience don't know who you are, which I'm sure they do, but if they haven't heard from you, can you give us just a little bit of a bio as to what you've done and how you've got to do what you do now.

Sure. Sure. So my name obviously Viveka Von Rosen. My Twitter handle, LinkedIn handle, Facebook handle, Instagram handle, YouTube handle is LinkedIn Experts. If you've heard of me, it's probably because you once Googled LinkedIn expert and my name came up first, so thank you Google. Wonderful SEO there that I never-

Yeah, that's awesome. Good idea.

Right. The problem with that is having to prove it's true now for the past 15 years or so but, yeah, I've been teaching and training on LinkedIn since about 2005, 2006. I've had my own company, I just started a new company with my partners which is a whole other story in and of itself. Yeah, I'm a huge LinkedIn advocate, even when I'm mad at the platform, I'm still a huge LinkedIn advocate and I still think it's such a powerful tool for business people, business owners, people like your husband who are in transition, folks who are in sales and marketing.

It isn't just for job seekers anymore. And it's not just for spammy network marketers anymore either. It's really, it's for the business person, either a professional within a company or owns their own company who wants to create better conversations with prospects. And that's the one thing that LinkedIn can really help you do.

Yeah. You know what, LinkedIn has had a bit of a rocky past, hasn't it? In the sense of, it wasn't great for ages and it was ugly and it was like not intuitive at all. It was a really difficult platform to get rained. And so it didn't do itself any favours, did it? For ages and ages. And then suddenly, I think probably in the last, I mean maybe even longer than this, but it's three, six months, it's like, no, no, no, honestly, this is a real contender.

I think you can explain obviously lots of reasons why it's a real contender, but suddenly now people are going to LinkedIn to do their live videos, to put videos up, to do their marketing rather than necessarily just looking straight at Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Suddenly LinkedIn is now really coming into its own really, isn't it? So yeah, just sort of give us a bit of an overview on why we should be even considering LinkedIn and thinking about it for our businesses.

Why Should You Be Considering LinkedIn?

Sure. Well, from 2003 to about 2010, really for seven years, it was such an ugly platform and it was ... Yeah, it was really mostly for job seekers. Salespeople were beginning to understand that [inaudible 00:08:15] Rolodex on steroids. It was using a lot of, integrating a lot of third part apps to make its features and functions work. It was okay, but it certainly wasn't nearly as much fun as Facebook, Twitter and then later Instagram and YouTube and all of the other ones. It was, it was ugly and boring for a long, long time.

And then right before my book published with the old platform, they decided to overhaul the whole thing [crosstalk 00:08:44] that was 2011. They hadn't made a change to it in like seven years.

You are kidding.

Viveka's publishing a book, let's change the whole thing.

Yeah, she says she's a LinkedIn expert, we'll see.

We'll show her.

That is [inaudible 00:08:59].

Planning a book a week while we took a whole bunch of new screenshots. But yeah, and that was kind of my favourite time up until right now, of LinkedIn because it had a better platform, it was better looking, it still had an open API, you still could use it with a lot of third party apps. And then they decided we're going to sell LinkedIn and we're going to make lots of money, we're going to go public, and then they locked everything down. And then it was a kind of a sucky platform honestly, for three or four years, I think, until even while it went public, because they were just doing what needed to be done to keep the Stockholders happy, and I think it really restricted visibility of LinkedIn. Then went back down into the dumps again a little bit, and I was like, "No, really, it's a good platform."

But then Microsoft bought them. A lot of people were afraid of that and they thought, "Here it goes, LinkedIn's going to suck now." But really, they put their resources, they put their people, they put their money behind it and it's still pretty close. We can't use a lot of third party apps with it, which might be a good thing because there are a lot of spammy apps out there. Nonetheless, it's still a very functional, I think it's still a very functional platform. It's not as intuitive as it looks, but that's why I have a job. But it's still much better than it was, and I think people really are beginning to realise what a good platform it can be and how powerful it can be, whether you're in sales, marketing, business owner, job seeker, whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Today what is really interesting, I was actually really positive about Microsoft buying it, because of the fact that they needed money. Take Facebook, I always say, I feel sorry for someone like Twitter, because Twitter comes up with these great ideas. They were the first to live stream, and they were the first to come up with some of these amazing things they have, but they weren't very good at it. So then Facebook took a look and went, "Oh, we could do that way better." They had the money and the time to invest.

For me, when I saw that Microsoft, my only disappointment was I thought they'd go crazy straight away. I thought they'd want to put a huge stamp on it, change everything and make it beautiful, and they didn't, and it seemed quite slow going, which possibly was a really good thing. But I was always quite positive. And also I felt like, because Microsoft hadn't got a social media platform, so I felt like this is going to be their thing to get in on and be like, yeah, you know, this is awesome.

Who Should Be Using LinkedIn?

But like you said, I think LinkedIn still, and it's interesting, I was having this conversation with my husband, is still very much seen as a platform for jobs and salespeople and recruiters, because obviously we all know about being bombarded by recruiters. But actually it's so much more than that, isn't it now, for any. Is there anybody that you wouldn't be sat there going, LinkedIn isn't good for you, or industries that you think, not the LinkedIn?

I think there's a place for LinkedIn, for almost every business or industry, because you can use it in some way, shape, or form. If you made me say that there's someone, probably the smaller B2C with the smaller product skew. If you sell $5, $10, $25, $30 things, if you've got a store front and you're selling to consumers, groceries or whatever, you probably don't want to spend a whole lot of time on LinkedIn. But with the bigger skew, certainly within the B2B market, I think it's a very, very powerful programme for everybody.

It's funny because marketers get it, a lot of marketers, not all marketers, especially the independent solopreneur, entrepreneur, marketer, or business owner and marketer, they kind of get it. They see the power of it. Some corporate marketers don't get it yet. They're still not bought into social. They're still paying for ads, and they're still putting up billboards for heaven sakes. So some of those marketers don't get it yet. And then a lot of salespeople don't get it yet just because they haven't been educated in the right way and they haven't been educated in the right way to utilise the marketer mindset and the marketer resource as a salesperson.

I think that shifting, I'm doing my best to bring that [inaudible 00:13:34], but it's still not 100% accepted, I think as a tool by sales and marketing people, even though as modern consumers, especially as a modern B2B consumer, they're using LinkedIn left, right, and centre. Whether you're a B2B marketer or a seller and you think LinkedIn's a spot or not, rest assured, the modern P2B buyer is absolutely convinced in LinkedIn.

They're using it to just research their sellers, they're using its research company. They're using it to look for constant, so it is a really, really powerful tool that hopefully people will adopt more and use more strategically than just a Rolodex on steroids or more strategically than just like, let's connect, and by the way, here's some spam.

Yes, yeah, because obviously like every platform, there's that isn't there? And like any platform, there are people that are using it really well and people that are using it and not so well. There's a couple of things that when I think about LinkedIn that I've said in the past, and now you can tell me where I'm wrong or right, but for me, one of the things I would say about LinkedIn is that it's the one place you can show off without looking like you're showing off. This is the one place where you can go, look, I've ... Look at all this experience, look all these things, people saying nice things about me. It feels to me that you can be very confident about you and your offering without looking like you're being a real show off.

That's so interesting because yes, I agree 100%. I mean they have recommendations for heaven sakes [inaudible 00:15:15] a feature that actually pulls those in your profile, which not enough people use and more people should use those. But to your point, yeah, it's a great place to showcase your knowledge through the content that you share, to showcase your personal brand through your profile, and then of course recommendations and things like that.

What's interesting is, and it tends to skew male, female and then also some country's culture. It's like, Oh I couldn't possibly say anything about myself, and I would be too braggy. So you get a lot of women or you'll get a lot of country culture that people won't allow their brilliance to shine through their LinkedIn profile, and there's so much opportunity lost there. And sure, there's ways of going like, "Oh, I'm a quota crushing sales guy and I'm awesome, you should totally buy all my stuff all the time, because I rock the most."

But, there's also like, "Hi, would you please buy from me."

There's a lot of grey area in between those two and unfortunately most profiles seem to be like one [inaudible 00:16:21]

Yeah, they're either one or the other. The other thing I heard or read or made up, I can never tell, but isn't LinkedIn one of the most trusted platforms?

It is. Especially by B2B executives. I'm probably going to make this one totally up. I'll be off by a few percent [inaudible 00:16:41].

Yeah, I have no idea.

[inaudible 00:16:49] something like 64% of B2B executives trust the content on LinkedIn. And then there's a really high number, it's like 98% of B2B content that they read comes from LinkedIn in some way, shape or form. That's too high, but it's somewhere between 60 and 90. It's really high anyway, and it's two or three times that of any other social platform.

Yeah, and that's just amazing.

If you really want to look it up, look at HubSpot, B2B, LinkedIn stats, you'll see them.

Yeah, and honestly, in a world where at the moment no one trusts Facebook to do anything, our trust is very down.

[crosstalk 00:17:24].

Yes [crosstalk 00:17:26] what's going to happen there, and then also, we even take something like Instagram, we don't trust what each other's putting on because we only put the best of everything on. And so we do feel like, because it's more...