Jumping into the world of automation to make connections might seem like a real time-saver… but nothing beats the good ‘ol human touch when it comes to reaching your ideal audience.

In Melissa’s signature tell-it-like-it-is style, she’ll explain why relying on automation tools for outreach may end up backfiring on you.

Tune in to today’s hot seat coaching episode to get the lowdown! 

Topics discussed in this episode:

• active engagement
• networking
• networking strategy
• ideal buyer persona
• quality connections
• active users
• look at the data
• ideal audience
• lack of engagement
• human connection 
• LinkedIn™

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Melissa:

Hey. Hey. Hey. I hope you guys enjoy these, what I'm calling, podcast shorts for my burnout to all out community. This is just a little peek behind the curtain of the coaching that goes on inside of my programs. We're bringing to you Some of the best nuggets and coaching I'm giving, within hot seats of all of our different programs, whether it's our LinkedIn Method Academy, our mini mastermind business basics all the way up to our higher level mastermind. If you're hearing some of these questions and you're like, man, I wish I could get my burning question answered by Melissa. Hey.

Melissa:

Guess what? You could be featured on my podcast. If you've got a question that you want answered and you submit it to my team and we pick it, we will bring you here to the podcast for our podcast shorts and, do a hot seat with you. Where can you submit your questions? Send them to team burnout to all out .co. We'll make sure we drop that in the show notes for our podcast shorts, and I hope that You guys find as much value in these shorts as our clients do inside the program. Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business, and you're listening to the burnout to all out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur.

Melissa:

Let's dive in.

Renee:

I wrote down questions, and it took me to get to question number 7 where I'm like, okay. This is the question I wanna ask. So I've been doing all the things. I'm really good at checking off the boxes, so I'm doing other things with the algorithm. My profile, I think, is pretty kick ass. I'm doing my posting. I am commenting and liking prior to posting, and nothing has changed for me on LinkedIn.

Melissa:

Yep. Okay. So when you say nothing has changed, what do you mean by that? What has not changed?

Renee:

I'm not getting any more likes or comments than what I had before. I'm not getting any engagement even though I'm reaching out. A lot of my Communication is done on the DMs where I'm inviting people to my leaders roundtable, but when it comes to just my feed. That's where nothing has changed.

Melissa:

Okay. Tell me a little bit about your network growth strategy and who you're growing your network with.

Renee:

Yeah. So I use a software called Connected, and I'm using that to I use that to vet Who my ideal clients would be, and then it's in the connection, and then I have a funnel. And then as soon as someone responds, that funnel stops, and then I Come in and I manually engage, and I follow your lead, which I never had done before, which is I leave voice memos now. Awesome. So I leave a voice and memos, but again, that's what I'm doing that's on the back end. So that my outreach is probably, Oh, 900 connections a month?

Melissa:

Okay. What types are they?

Renee:

What do you mean by types?

Melissa:

Like, who are they connecting with? You said you're using a software, but I'm curious who they're connecting with. Like, what's the ideal buyer persona that they're connecting with?

Renee:

I'm not sure about the question. The system is set up where I have it set up for, like, women. I pick the states. I pick the industries, And I'm picking their titles.

Melissa:

Okay. So my follow-up question to this, and I've seen this a couple times with automated software. Just because you get 900 connections per month doesn't mean they're quality connections. I've run into this. We had someone last year who was using something similar. And when we peeled back the onion and actually looked at the connections, A lot of them are what we call dead connections. Meaning, there are people who are added to the network that Haven't been active on the platform in over 6 months. So they'll acknowledge the connection, but they're just not really a LinkedIn user.

Melissa:

So that would be my only concern is, like, if you've added 900 connections this month And you're using the strategies we're teaching you and you're not seeing any changes. My concern would be the quality of the actual connection option that you're getting. Because we see this with a lot of automation and we see it with outsourcing someone overseas to do this for you or even using navigator to just grow at rapid speed. If they're not active engaging users of the platform, it's not gonna do anything for you as far as visibility with the content that you put out. Right? So for instance, if it sends out 900 connections and 600 of them are people who aren't really active on the platform, but they get the notification of the network connection. Right? There's a whole segment of people who use LinkedIn just to accept the connection request, And then they'll pop in every 6 months when they like, or every year when they need to update their resume or they're afraid they're gonna lose their job, right? And those are not Gonna be active engagers on the platform. Right? So that will be my only concern with getting 900 connections a month with automation is if there's a way you can go back and look at, like, the last couple 100 and maybe even a100, like, do a beta test. Maybe it's the last fifty, because that's a lot to look at.

Melissa:

But look at the last, like, 50 people that were added to your network and go to their profile, and see when was the last time they posted, when was the last time they engaged. And if the automation is sending you stuff that is like we were talking about earlier where people haven't been active in less than 2 months. That's gonna be a huge reason why you're not seeing an ROI on the software. Then the other thing is, are you looking at impressions? Have your impressions gone up at all? That's a

Renee:

good question. Let me see. They've gone up only by, like, a couple 100. When I was in another community, when someone would post, like it's all about, like, who's in your connection. Then when like, what you were talking about earlier, Someone likes my comment and they have a big network, all those people see it. And so I used to have, like, I don't know, like, 25 100 impressions. Now, I have, like, under 500.

Melissa:

That's okay. That's okay. So what we're gonna wanna see is so you added about 900 connections per month and Your content is your content similar in style of what you've always posted? Is there been a shift, like, it's the same?

Renee:

No. There's been a shift.

Melissa:

Okay. So here's my 2¢ at the end of the day. And I I stand by this. We never wanna change too many things without enough data. Right? I'm still curious out of those 900, how many are actually active viable leads that would engage in your content in the 1st place? So before we assume the content needs to shift or anything else needs to change, I would be really curious to know What kind of network is being added to your network? So do that research. If you go in and you find that, oh my gosh, These are like awesome women who are engaging weekly, they're posting, they're active. Then it's like, okay. If you're getting 900 fresh leads of, like, ideal audience and no one's engaging, then We're gonna wanna go look at your content and ask questions around the content.

Melissa:

Right? But I would not need your change anything that you're doing around your content right now until you actually assess if your audience has actually shifted or if you just have a bunch of dead bodies in your network. Right? Does that make sense?

Renee:

Yeah. No. It makes sense. As today, I was actually going through and manually Connecting and sending messages versus using the system for people, so we're on the same wavelength on people who are engaging and who are actively posted as well.

Melissa:

Yeah. LinkedIn, people don't wanna hear me say this, but automation on LinkedIn, it just doesn't work that well. I've just seen it go south for most people. What does work well is I don't know what you're paying for connected. What's it costing you monthly to use it?

Renee:

It's a 100. So the best way I use it is I use sales navigator. So that's 99 plus connected is 99. So that's $200 a month. And I will say though, for invitations to my round leaders roundtable every week, It's working.

Melissa:

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I just I know the value of, like, I have a human that does all this for me, And it's a kid who's just graduated college. She's launched her own little social media business. I'm paying her $25 an hour, and she goes in there for an hour a day. And there's something to be said about just like the humanness of, like, the guidance of what she's connecting with and how she's engaging and prequalifying before she brings new leads. But that's just my own 2¢.

Melissa:

I've never been a huge fan of automation. I know why people use it, but I think that out of all the platforms, LinkedIn is the hardest one to actually get the results that you're looking for through automation.

Renee:

So what I'm getting from this is go back to the old school way of doing it.

Melissa:

It's still working for us and a lot of our clients. I just if you're pay and that's the other thing is with Sales Navigator. And you say it's working for your leadership roundtables, which is amazing. But a lot of people I don't know if anybody wants to attest to this themselves, but I get spammed so much with my the navigator inbox stuff. It's just like, I don't even really look at it. To me, it's so inauthentic and feels like not direct to me that it's kinda like the last resort of anything that I look at versus the direct messaging that I get from in my inbox. And Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this. He did a whole chat about this with sales navigator.

Melissa:

And he said, Authentically connecting on LinkedIn and growing your business doesn't necessarily mean, like, spamming the shit out of everybody using navigator. You actually use those words. Right? And this is again, I'm I'm just sharing my own 2¢ because I've built a multimillion dollar business without Navigator, but you don't need 900 people a month over the year to make $1,000,000. You only need a thousand over a year of the right people. And when you have a thousand of the right people. You don't need 12,000 in your network. And as a matter of fact, if you have a 1,000 highly engaged women who love the content you put out and are highly active. It's gonna create so much more energy in your feed and keep your content top of mind find than 12,000 people who aren't engaged.

Melissa:

Right? So the numbers, it's a different game on LinkedIn than it is on, like, Instagram and Facebook where it's like, if you can get 10,000 followers and get the blue check and all these things and, like, the algorithms, they don't create favorites like that on LinkedIn. Content. And actually, Bloomberg there was just an article 2 weeks ago on Bloomberg about this. Like, they just don't favor that type of stuff, But having a niche audience that loves what you put out does create virility. It does create high engagement in the platform. And that's why you can see people, like, with less than 2,000 connections shins with a really active fee with a lot of engagement because they have a super niche audience that really loves and appreciates what they're putting out. Right?

Renee:

Got it. Alright. Well, thank you.

Melissa:

Melissa: