On this week’s episode of the Social Selling Show, Daniel and Will discuss how to get attention, build a personal brand, and most importantly, attract sales leads by posting content in the LinkedIn news feed. They also share key elements of the LinkedIn content creation process.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe
- Zubtittle – an online tool that makes it simple to automatically add captions to any video.
- The Daily Sales LinkedIn Page
- The Million Pound LinkedIn Message by Daniel Disney
Transcript:
Will Barron:
Welcome to the Social Selling Show with myself, Will Barron and the King of Social Selling, Daniel Disney. Daniel, how’s it going my friend?
Daniel Disney:
It is all good, Will. Excited to be back for another episode. This has been so much fun doing and today’s topic is definitely one of my favourites. So excited to dig into it.
The Power of Consistently Creating and Posting Content on LinkedIn · [00:30]
Will Barron:
Yeah, I guess a lot of social selling, creating content and building a personal brand is based on what we’re going to cover today, which is producing content within the feed itself. We’re going to cover articles on another show. So I guess they’re the two elements of content creation on LinkedIn. But I guess if you’re not creating content and posting it on the feed, you don’t really exist on LinkedIn. Is that fair to say?
“If you want people to follow you, if you want to give value to people, if you want to earn credibility, to build a brand, become a thought leader or someone credible and valuable in your industry, you need to be giving something and content is the thing that you give through social media.” – Daniel Disney · [00:38]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. It is really true, Will. Yeah, if you want people to follow you, if you want to give value to people, if you want to earn credibility, to build a brand, become a thought leader or someone credible and valuable in your industry, you need to be giving something and content is the thing that you give through social media. Obviously, probably what we could start off with is the engagement piece, because kind of behind sharing content is engaging in other people’s content.
Daniel Disney:
That can have a huge impact in your personal brand. There’s a lot of value in commenting on people’s posts. I’d encourage people to do maybe three to five posts on a frequent basis. That could be daily, that could be a few times a week, but just writing and again, when I say a comment, not just something like, “Great post, Will.” And that’s it.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Daniel Disney:
Try and add something to it, add a layer, add a thought, add a contribution, because that’s going to help A, get your name out there. So when people are logging into LinkedIn every day or every few days, they’re seeing your name dotting up on all these good posts, but then they’re going to start to learn from you. You’re going to start sharing your knowledge through it and I see some comments get more likes than the post itself. Done right, there is a lot of value in comments, just sort of a tag on bit to the whole content piece.
The LinkedIn Algorithm and How Commenting Works in Your Favour · [01:48]
Will Barron:
Is that three to five comments on people’s posts a day? Is that a number that we should be aspiring to, no matter how big we want our audience to be? What I’m saying, is there a point of diminishing returns whether it’s regards to the LinkedIn algorithm or where your posts rank, where your comments rank on the… Because I don’t think it’s done via time.
Will Barron:
I don’t think the first comment posted kind of goes to the top of the list of the comments that are most visible, right? Is that three to five the point where we get to diminishing returns? Or if we’ve got time, should we make 100 comments a day and would we see more benefit from that?
Daniel Disney:
There are pros and cons to both. The challenge when you start to comment on significantly more, you start to risk being seen as not busy or too immersed in LinkedIn. So you don’t want to be too active. And hopefully, no one in reality has that much time to commit to doing that. But three to five is just the healthy bit. You can do a little bit more by all means, but by no means waste hours and hours and hours, put in tonnes of content, there is going to be minimal ROI to that type of activity.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, I agree, that three to five is kind of your minimum number to start seeing a positive return and then you can increase that a little bit, but don’t go too far.
Will Barron:
Yeah, that makes more sense. And again, this is a recurring theme on this show, Daniel. I never comment on other people’s posts, ever. I never do it. And I see you comment on mine. And clearly, some of my posts include content that we’ve collaborated on, so it makes total sense for you to comment on those.
Daniel Explains How The LinkedIn Algorithm Rewards People Who Comment on Other People’s Posts · [03:25]
Will Barron:
I’ve seen your comments on other ones as well. I won’t go through the name, but we’ve got a bit of a fan base going that comments on all of our content as well. So their names keep popping up. But I never comment on other people’s posts. What am I missing out on?
Will Barron:
Is it just that extra level or extra layer of visibility or are the other engagement algorithms within the larger LinkedIn algorithm that reward perhaps content I post and share. Does that get a boost, if I’m commenting on other people’s posts?
Daniel Disney:
Yes, there is a small part of it that feeds into the algorithm. The more active you are, LinkedIn is going to reward your activeness because you are essentially feeding their platform. But there’s also the other side of it and just picture a networking room, Will.
Daniel Disney:
Imagine you’re going to this networking group on a weekly basis or even a daily basis, whatever it may be. If you’re walking into that room and there’s 100 people and you’re sat there quietly every single time, people aren’t going to have the confidence to come and talk to you.
Daniel Disney:
But if you start to contribute into those conversations, people are going to start to warm to you, they’re going to get to know you and then your brand, your name is going to start to have a presence within that room. That’s kind of the bigger picture. It’s getting your name out there. That’s the whole thing around building a brand, letting people get to know you, see you, feel comfortable with you and they’re going to start to then be attracted to you and I don’t mean attracted to you in the romantic sense.
Will Barron:
That’s fine as well. That’s no problem. Sex sells, Daniel.
Daniel Disney:
That’s a different type of sexual selling. But that’s all part of that building a personal brand, if they can feel comfortable with you, then they’re going to be comfortable to talk to you and the more people you’re reaching that are feeling comfortable with you, again, that’s where you get success in a branding perspective.
Will Barron:
Yeah, for your analogy there, it’s basically me standing in the corner shouting and then when someone responds to my shout out, I have a conversation with them as opposed to actually mingling, right?
Daniel Disney:
That’s it. That’s it.
The Best Types of Content to Post on LinkedIn · [05:20]
Will Barron:
Okay, so let’s talk on… Because this may be covered in one episode, it may be covered in two episodes. We’ll see how we go with this. Let’s touch on posting content out from our own feed. Am I right? Tell me if I’m wrong here. Am I right to thinking that there’s… I just copied and pasted this from LinkedIn. So hopefully, I’m right. Are there five types of content? Is there plain text, text with image, text with presentation, text with video and text with GIF. Are there any other content types that we need to cover in this episode that go on our feed?
Daniel Disney:
I guess there’s a couple of others. You’ve got LinkedIn Polls that are relatively new and you can add text to those to sort of flesh them out. But the poll itself is the core bit. You’ve got LinkedIn Stories, whilst they’re not in your feed, they’re only in the mobile app, they sit above the feed and technically are a form of…
Daniel Disney:
I call them micro content, very much associated. You could class and should class LinkedIn Lives as a form of content. Again, more newer form of content that already really burst out last year. Yeah, I think that then covers it. It’s a slightly bigger list than LinkedIn’s five.
Will Barron:
Yeah. Literally, I’ve copied and pasted that from a LinkedIn blog post. You’re more of an expert on the platform than what they are, which bodes well for this show and this episode. Okay. We’ll just go through them in that order then and we’ll come on to the… Because for example, I do have the mobile app on my phone, so I don’t know if… Does everyone have access to stories or is it being rolled out slowly?
Daniel Disney:
Everyone, I believe has access now around the world. There may be some countries that don’t but the majority do. So yeah. But you have to have the mobile app to benefit from it.
Will Barron:
Sure. I will download the mobile app after this episode and dive into that. And then Lives again, I don’t have access to that. But I probably could get access if I applied to it. It doesn’t seem like it’s… There’s lots of people who have smaller audiences than what I do who have Live. So I guess we will cover those two at the end. They’re seamless.
Will Barron:
Not less important, but less prevalent at the moment. But let’s start with what… I think I’m right in saying this, because whenever I turn on LinkedIn and look at my feed, this is always the top post. There’s a few people that tend to always be the top post as well, which is interesting, yourself, Josh Braun, Dave from Privy.
Why Text Posts are Still The Easiest Way to Drive Engagement on LinkedIn · [07:29]
Will Barron:
Maybe I’ve clicked on these posts, maybe I’ve engaged with you guys more than other people. But you and these individuals seem to always have a text post at the top of my feed that it gets a tonne of attention. So our text posts are the starting point for our content. Is that the easiest way to get engagement on LinkedIn?
Daniel Disney:
I think it’s a great starting point, Will. Text posts are, have been for the last two years and probably will continue to be one of the if not maybe the strongest performing form of content. LinkedIn has always been a sort of a reading platform and then if you remember, when I started using it properly, about eight years ago, it all revolved around articles, that whole thing revolved around articles. Now that kind of died out as they pushed other more consumable forms of content. But text, reading type story posts definitely are at the heart of LinkedIn.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, they perform really well and we’ll cover video in a minute, but I definitely think there’s more results in all areas with text posts, more visibility, more engagement, more reach and more ROI.
Will Barron:
Now, this is a topic in its own right and maybe we’ll do this in the future, because I’m fascinated by this. This leans on kind of teaching and learning design. There’s a book I always recommend on this subject, I think it’s called Explainer. We’ll cover that perhaps in a second or in a future episode.
How to Craft Memorable LinkedIn Posts That Inspire Action · [08:44]
Will Barron:
But is there a structure to creating these text posts? Because clearly, we can’t just throw up some nonsense and expect to have thousands of likes, like I’ve had on a few of my posts. I know you’ve had on a whole bunch of yours, Daniel. Is there a formula for success here? Can you share your secrets with us?
Daniel Disney:
Of course. That is why I’m here Will. That’s why we’ve put this show together. We text posts, a couple of top tips. Number one, you get a 1,300 character limit. There are two types of text posts in reality, short form and long form. I made up these terms, by the way.
Daniel Disney:
Short form is where you get one sentence, maybe a couple of sentences. They’re small text posts and then long form is what I refer to when they use most, if not all of those characters that you get the 1,300 characters. Long form text posts have ruled for the last two years. So there’s long stories, people set the scene. It is a story, start, middle and end. They set the scene, they take you through a journey, they have a nice, inspiring or debate-provoking and built to kind of give value but also drive good engagement.
Daniel Disney:
What I’m seeing this year and 2021 this is certainly a newer trend are the shorter posts are starting to gain traction but I give a word of warning, you need to earn the sort of right to be able to do short posts. I’ll give you an example, Will. There is a very famous sales author, I’m going to do that thing where I teach and then I’m not going to name names.
Will Barron:
Last time you did this Daniel, I got a high… Maybe five, six people afterwards, begging me to know who it was. I just referred them all back to you. I said, “If Daniel wants to share, he can do.”
Daniel Disney:
That’s fine. Anyway, I might do it in a one to one basis. Anyway, there’s a very famous sales author who came on to LinkedIn, tonnes of books, huge name, but when they came onto LinkedIn, all they started doing was sharing short form text posts. But because they had no brand, they had no presence and they had no audience on LinkedIn, those text posts didn’t perform well.
Daniel Disney:
So they kind of flipped the process, put more value giving longer text posts up front, built an audience, built a brand, then when they started going back to doing the short ones, they were getting the traction. I feel like you need to earn that sort of place to be able to do shorter posts. You need to give more value upfront before you can get away with doing those shorter posts. But those are two types of text posts. 1,300 characters, tell a good story and two biggest tips that I can’t stress enough.
“You only see the first three lines in your LinkedIn feed. Those three lines need to stand out. If they’re not interesting, if they’re not exciting, no one’s going to click and open and read the rest of it.” – Daniel Disney · [11:07]
Daniel Disney:
Number one, you only see the first three lines in your feed. Those three lines need to stand out. That’s your hook. If they’re not interesting, if they’re not exciting, no one’s going to click and open and read the rest of it. So have a good opener. The next important one and everyone will hopefully resonate with this, you need to have those spaces between the sentences. Remember, we are scrolling, whether it’s our laptops, whether it’s our phones, we are scrolling and those spaces help make it a lot more engaging.
Understanding LinkedIn Dwell Time and Feed Ranking · [11:35]
Will Barron:
Can you share with us… It might have different names. I don’t know if this is the correct name. I know on Facebook, they call it dwell time. Can you share with us what that means and why perhaps this might be the reason why longer posts will work before you built that brand and that audience built in. What is dwell time on LinkedIn?
Daniel Disney:
So dwell time is the amount of time a user spends essentially with that post on their screen before they scroll down or change page or whatever it may be, it’s the time they’re actually on your post. Obviously, for any social media network, that’s valuable time, because that means they’re obviously getting value from the content.
Daniel Disney:
Now, what was really exciting, people might know and this is probably another episode four as well, but LinkedIn Pods have been a big thing for the last few years, the sort of micro communities built within LinkedIn Messenger platforms that have rules where everyone in that group and that could be 10, could be 50, could be hundreds of people has to like and comment on every single user’s posts that they share on LinkedIn.
Daniel Disney:
That’s quite damaging. It has many more negative impacts than positive. LinkedIn changed the algorithm last year. The reason pods worked was because it was based on initial engagement, not dwell time. The sort of success of a post would be based on the initial likes and comments within the first sort of 5-10-15 minutes. LinkedIn’s now switched that around and focused the algorithm on dwell time. So it’s less about that initial engagement, which is the core benefit of a Pod and more actually on the quality of the post. You actually have to engage the reader, you actually have to engage an audience. So, it’s more on the quality, which I think is a really positive thing.
Will Barron:
Sure. That makes a lot of sense. I was invited to a couple LinkedIn pods and just refused them all. I feel like I may have missed the boat a little bit, if they were useful a year ago, that’s when people were kind of reaching out to me. But maybe we’ll do another episode on LinkedIn pods just to clear up some of the myths behind them because having not been in one, I get a lot of people… I’ll keep them anonymous for the moment, but I think he’s quite public about it.
Will Barron:
He’s got quite a big audience and he used Linden Pods to… He claims to grow his audience very rapidly. But now he’s also selling a product on LinkedIn Pods. So maybe he’s slightly skewed in his opinion on some of these things. But there seems to be less black magic going on behind the scenes on LinkedIn. What they used to be, maybe a few years ago or we’ll call it [inaudible 00:13:52]. It seems to be less black hat kind of optimization going on versus the white hat stuff that I know you and I focus on.
Why Text Posts do Better Than Video on LinkedIn · [14:01]
Will Barron:
Okay, with that then, why seemingly then if text does well because a long texture creates a lot of dwell time, it can do well with engagement because you perhaps asked a question or start a debate at the end of it. Why is text more efficient than video? If we put a three-four minute video on it, it doesn’t take three or four minutes to read a 1,200 page word kind of post. Why does video seemingly do less well than a text post with the video? Seemingly we’re creating more dwell time than what we would with just text alone.
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, the thing to realise with video, Will, is video is still really new to LinkedIn. It wasn’t that long ago that video in itself came on, LinkedIn Live. Live video has only been a sort of a new one of the last 12 months. So video is still very new to the platform and this is a historic platform that’s been focused heavily around text-based posts, whether it’s articles, or long form text-based posts.
Daniel Disney:
What we’re seeing, what I’ve seen is a very slow climb for video engagement. Numbers are growing, have been since the day one that video launched and they will continue to grow. I think LinkedIn is continuing to try and focus the algorithm on it. But I think it’s going to be a transition process. Just, I guess it’s looking back at the history of LinkedIn and how people are using it. LinkedIn isn’t YouTube, it’s not Facebook. People are at work. They are usually in the office, or even if they’re working at home, they are having other things to do. So I guess it’s the psychology of it, they are less likely to look for video content on LinkedIn, whereas they’re scrolling through their feed, looking for those quick fixes, things that they can consume on their time.
“It takes a lot less time to consume a text-based post than it would to sit and watch a one minute, two-minute, three-minute plus video.” – Daniel Disney · [15:39]
Daniel Disney:
It takes a lot less time to consume a text-based post than it would to sit and watch a one minute, two minute, three minute plus video and some of the videos, they go up to 10 minutes long. That’s not how people tend to use LinkedIn. I think that will change slightly and video will grow and become quite an equal form of content. But it’s LinkedIn, it is different to YouTube.
Video Specifications and Format Recommendations for LinkedIn · [16:07]
Will Barron:
Sure. Well, let’s [inaudible 00:15:59] some video. If it’s not so important right now, perhaps this show next year, we can do a deeper dive into it. But I guess there’s a few basic questions. Should we be doing 16:9 widescreen videos or should we be doing square videos? Clearly 16:9 is better on the desktop, but square videos perhaps are better on mobile. Is there a preference for the LinkedIn algorithm or from a user perspective?
“In any form of content, focus more on the quality of the post than some of those technical aspects.” – Daniel Disney · [16:23]
Daniel Disney:
There isn’t. And again, this boils a lot down and this will be a common theme in any form of content, focus more on the quality of the post than some of those technical aspects. The first question I always get asked Will and I’ll answer this anyway but, “When should we post? What day? What time? What slot is going to get me massive engagement?” And if you focus too much on the when, you’re taking your focus away from the what and that’s where the key is. So it doesn’t matter, I’ve seen people create amazing videos that get tonnes of engagement and they’re literally doing it on their phone whilst walking around their neighbourhood or out in the woods.
Daniel Disney:
I’ve seen people do proper ones on their desktop, where they create studios with digital backgrounds and stuff. And then again, it’s the quality of the video as opposed to some of those technical aspects. So focus more on what you’re saying, that’s where the value really lies.
The Truth About Subtitles on LinkedIn Videos · [17:10]
Will Barron:
Sure. I guess the final one on video, then probably move on, do we need to subtitle the videos? Now, I don’t subtitle any of our content because it’s a pain in the ass. There’s a cost to it. I’m not worried about the cost. But it’s just another step for our editors, it’s another kind of thing to faff around with. My personal experience is this, video is not doing that well anyway, versus a text post. One of my videos might get 1,000, 2,000 views versus a text post.
Will Barron:
I guess it’s another question as well, a text post might get 5,000 views but I’d probably rather 1,000 people watch a video, that’s probably more impactful than 5,000 people skim past a post. So we can touch on the engagement and what that means later on, perhaps. But back to my original question, as I ramble on here, Daniel, do we need to subtitle our videos? Is there a massive benefit in doing that?
Daniel Disney:
There used to be a much bigger benefit than there is right now. This is COVID times, people are remote working, the benefit has dropped slightly. If you go back to when everyone was in an office, the reason subtitles were really valuable is because a lot of people were listening or I say listening, watching videos on mute, because they’re in an office, they can’t sit and listen to the volume, they can’t listen to what you’re saying. So subtitles had a huge value.
“A video is going to show a much deeper side to you as an individual, as a human being, which is a lot more valuable from a buyer perspective and influence perspective than a text-based post.” – Daniel Disney · [18:28]
Daniel Disney:
You are right to question the reach and engagement. But actually, you’re right in the sense that yes, a video is going to show a much more deeper side to you as an individual, as a human being, which is a lot more valuable from a buyer perspective and influence perspective than a text-based post. So yes, they were really valuable, they are still very valuable because even though as I said people are working from home, a lot of people will have their kids or their families or partners or friends also working and there’ll be a slight decrease in the amount of people that are watching videos on mute, but it will only be slight and it’s not going to be long, touchwood, that we’re all going to be back in offices and that’s going to come back.
“If you’re going to do a video, then it is worth the time and cost to get it right.” – Daniel Disney · [19:15]
Daniel Disney:
So I would definitely recommend looking into subtitles. I’ve always used Zubtitle. You’re right, there’s a cost. It’s not a huge cost. It is a bit of a time thing. You have to do your video, upload it, check through all the wording. But when you’re doing videos that realistically shouldn’t be any more than one to three minutes, if you’re going to do a video, then it is worth the time and cost to get it right.
Will Barron:
There we go. Well, Adam who’s editing this video right now kind of a few days after we record it is now going to be tasked to do some subtitles. Adam, [inaudible 00:19:31] breaking the fourth wall or the third wall, whatever we call it here, Adam kind of listening to this, we’re going to do subtitles from videos now on.
The Preferred Length For LinkedIn Videos · [19:40]
Will Barron:
Okay, now you mentioned it. I’m trying to think on videos here. Is there a specific time, length of the video that performs better? I’m assuming you said one to three minutes then. Should we be aiming for one to three minutes rather than trying to max out those 10 minute videos?
Daniel Disney:
100%. One to three minutes is your optimum time and again it varies depending on what you’re doing. Sometimes some nice sub-one minute videos can be really good, bite sized, easy to digest. But sometimes if you’ve got a good story to tell or something worthwhile, then extending it to sort of two or three minutes can work but you need to make sure you’re hooking them in.
Daniel Disney:
If you want them to watch to the end, which is ultimately what you want them to do, then you need to make sure you’re engaging them and sometimes that can be a lot more challenging when you’re pushing your two to three minutes, you do risk losing them before getting to the end. So yeah, make sure you’re utilising that time wisely, but short and sweet, over long and boring.
Will Barron:
Sure. We’ll go on to text with images in a second, but you’ve teed me up just a bit here. So I could produce, the Salesman.org team, just from this show alone, Daniel, could produce probably like 30-40 clips, one, two minute clips and episode and it would be me teeing up the question, [inaudible 00:20:46], you giving us the answer as opposed to me giving my opinions on things.
Daniel Describes the Number of Times You Should Post Content in a Day · [21:01]
Will Barron:
It would probably make a relatively engaging video because it’s very specific to the platform, it is very specific to my audience and your audience of mainly sales professionals and users as well as, some sales management. Let’s get to the question. How many times should we be posting in the feed per day? Should I be posting and tagging you in 30 videos a day? It’ll probably do your add in and your notifications will be like getting spammed. But is there benefit to that or is the ideal number of posts a day that LinkedIn wants and then we can touch on what users want as well?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, it’s a really good question Will, and I was asked this in a slightly different framing, but it really made me chuckle. Someone said that Gary Vee recommends you post tonnes of times every day, get your name out there. My kind of response with that was often what works for Gary Vee doesn’t work for everyone else. Gary Vee could be as noisy as he wants, but he has that brand, that name, that audience. He is a star celebrity status and it kind of works for him, but it won’t work for most people.
“LinkedIn’s algorithm is optimised for one post a day. The moment you then start posting additional posts, within 24 hours, you’re going to limit the reach and benefit that that first post or any previous posts had and you’re going to kind of dilute the impact it’s going to have.” – Daniel Disney · [21:47]
Daniel Disney:
LinkedIn’s algorithm is optimised for one post a day. The moment you then start posting additional posts, within 24 hours, you’re going to limit the reach and benefit that that first post or any previous posts had and you’re going to kind of dilute the impact it’s going to have. So one post a day is optimum, that’s what I’ve been doing for six, seven years now.
Daniel Disney:
I’ve tested posting more than once a day and yeah, there really aren’t any positive ROI to come from it. One a day is good. What I recommend though, if someone isn’t posting content at the moment, one a day is quite a stressful to think about.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Daniel Disney:
So even just start with one a week, build it step by step one. One a week, and then as you start to get confident, two a week, three a week. You will get more confident the more you do it. But take baby steps. Don’t feel like you need to jump in the deep end and suddenly right, “This week, I’ve got five posts that I need to think about.” That could be quite daunting.
Will Barron:
Sure. And a slight sidestep here. So obviously you run the page, the Daily Sales which a massive and incredible page. Well, we’re following for everyone who’s watching, listening to the show right now. We’ll link it in the show notes. Does everything that we’re talking about now apply for pages as well? Because maybe some people listening to this. I know, we create content for B2B sales, people and sales, leadership, but loads of marketing people listen to the shows that we put together so they may be running a page as well as an individual profile.
LinkedIn Page Versus Personal Profile: What’s The Difference and How to Get the Most Out of Both · [23:12]
Will Barron:
Now, does everything that we’re talking about translate to pages or do they have their own rules or do we need to do a separate show on them in the future?
Daniel Disney:
No, pages are different. You’re right to bring that up. It’s a good question Will. Pages, the rules do change slightly. On the daily sales, I post anywhere between four and six posts a day. I see a lot of good company pages that have built an audience and are giving a lot of value posting anywhere similar numbers. The key is in the value.
“The key is in the value. There’s no point posting four to six times a day if all you’re doing is posting about your product and promoting offers and stuff like that because it’s just going to be falling on deaf ears.” – Daniel Disney · [23:35]
Daniel Disney:
There’s no point posting four to six times a day if all you’re doing is posting about your product and promoting offers and stuff like that because it’s just going to be falling on deaf ears. If you’re giving value, if you’re creating content that’s valuable to your prospects, your customers, your audience, then yes, you can post more times on a company page because they are a brand, not a person.
Daniel Disney:
It’d be like, again, going back to the networking analogy, a company might have a stand with lots of different flyers, but no one wants one person to just keep talking over everyone all day, all throughout that meeting. Contributing once is more than enough.
Will Barron:
Cool, that makes sense. I’ll just give a bit of feedback that I’ve had on this. I’ve experimented posting multiple times a day and this was a few years ago, to be fair and I had multiple people, it wasn’t just a one-off, say, “Hey Will, love what you’re doing. I’m going to have to unfollow you because you’re just taking up too much of the feed.” Whether the content was good, bad, however they want to describe it, they felt like they were being spammed to.
Will Barron:
Now, there’s pluses and minuses of this because someone who’s really consuming the content, it might be the vocal minority who is complaining about the quantity. It’s difficult to judge it on that basis. But that was definitely feedback I had when I was posting say four or five times a day and I was posting a lot of images, which we’ll come to now. Basically, I was doing was reposting images that we were posting on Instagram, quotes from people who’ve been on the show and famous sales authors and leaders and stuff like that.
The Benefits of Posting Images on LinkedIn · [25:05]
Will Barron:
We’ll go on to images now. Should we even bother with images? The reason I asked this is should we be just focusing on these text posts and maybe videos because I agree with you, videos have gone and become more and more important to LinkedIn over time, because most bandwidth on the internet is video from both websites we can’t talk about and websites we probably should not talk about in this video. Most bandwidth on the internet is video.
Will Barron:
So it’s only going to become more and more important and more and more people are going to start to consume it. And from a personal perspective, I search for how to solve problems, how to learn things on YouTube to get videos more than I even do on Google anymore. That’s [inaudible 00:25:46]. But with that said, is there any value to a picture at all or should we just be focusing on, again, the text that is working right now and the videos, which is going to be more important in the future?
“If you want to build a personal brand, you want people to get to know you, the only way they’re going to really get to know you from beyond your stories is to see you.” – Daniel Disney · [26:03]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, images have huge potential Will and they have their real place. There’s a few benefits to really stand out from an image. If you want to build a personal brand, you want people to get to know you, the only way they’re going to really get to know you from beyond your stories is to see you. Now, obviously they will see you in a video, but remember only a percentage of people like or have time to watch videos. Photos reached that other part of the audience that don’t have time or don’t want to sit and watch you in a video. But actually, if they can see you in a photo and there’s a few examples I can give.
Daniel Disney:
Let’s say you want to do a book review, take a selfie holding the book and then write your thoughts about the book. The beauty of it is you’re going to get value from the post and they’re going to get to see you. The more they see you, the more they get to know you. And then as a salesperson, when you have those first conversations with prospects and customers, they feel like that relationship is so much stronger even though you may have never spoken to them before because they followed your journey and the more they see you again, the more they get to know you.
“We are visual consumers. And on LinkedIn, the audience responds very well to visual posts.” – Daniel Disney · [27:09]
Daniel Disney:
There are tonnes of opportunities. It could be a photo of you in the office, it could be a screenshot of a virtual team meeting that you’re having, tonnes of different opportunities. Again, it goes beyond just photos of you. Again, if you were to do a book review, taking a photo of the book is going to make it stand out a lot more than just writing a post about it. We are visual consumers and LinkedIn, the audience responds very well to visual posts. Yeah, there’s a lot of potential in imagery. What I will say, Will, I guess it’s kind of almost a summary to this whole episode, what ties content together, the best strategy and advice I can give is variety.
“The people that last on LinkedIn, the people that are growing brands over years, not just weeks and months are the ones that choose a variety of posts.” – Daniel Disney · [27:27]
Daniel Disney:
The people that last on LinkedIn, the people that are growing brands over years, not just weeks and months are the ones that choose a variety of posts. I see a lot of people just do one type of post and there will be a bit of a climb, then they’ll plateau and then they often fall. People want variety. So if you go onto my feed, you’ll see, I might do an image once a week, I might do a story post once or twice a week, I might do a video once a week, maybe a poll once a week, but it’s variety. It helps me reach the maximum amount of people, helps me to provide the maximum sort of coverage. Yeah, that’s just the key tip. Images have their place and should definitely be a part of your strategy.
Will Barron:
As we go through this episode, just for the audience, everyone listening now, there’s a doc that both Daniel and I tend to have open and I jot things in the documents just so I don’t lose track and then I use a document to make show notes. I literally wrote as you started to transitioning then your answer into the content mix, I literally wrote, “Content mix? Number per week?” So you’ve answered that one perfectly for us.
The Pros and Cons of Scheduling Content on LinkedIn · [28:34]
Will Barron:
This, again might be an episode for another show in the future. But should we be scheduling our content? Now, I know there’s tools to do this. So again, we’ll go into that at another time. But should we be thinking hey, should we have like a document with, “On Monday, we’re going to post this. Tuesday, I’m going to post this, Wednesday, I’m going to post this.” Or for the average sales person, I was speaking about now, as opposed to someone who’s focused on building a brand to sell books or whatever else people are selling.
Will Barron:
The individual sales contributor, should they be planning out their posts ahead of time so that they’re not left in the lurch on a Wednesday morning when it’s just snowed and they’re feeling a bit miserable and, “I can’t be bothered.” Should they be planning ahead of all this so that they don’t get caught out by a kind of lack of inspiration one morning?
Daniel Disney:
Let’s definitely do an episode, Will, on social selling software. I think that’s a great episode. We can get to get into all the different types, auto scheduling included. It depends on the person in answer to your question. Some people are far more effective, posting something in the day, something that’s happened inspiration within that day and that’s the strategy I had for probably the first four to five years of being active on LinkedIn. What I found now is I’m more of the scheduling person.
Daniel Disney:
So I find it a lot more easier and a big part of that might be being insanely busy, and actually that helps me kind of keep organised. I’ve met a lot of people that do prefer to be more strategic in their approach and plan a week, a month, whatever it may be with sort of themings. Some people go the full hog, sometimes and again, I’ll do this if I’m travelling or if I’ve got a very busy week training or even if I’m taking a holiday. I will write and schedule content for that time that I’m not going to be able to be physically active on LinkedIn.
Daniel Disney:
That can help because it takes that pressure away. Again, it depends on the person. For a lot of people probably watching this, they might be quite new to content sharing on LinkedIn. So I’d probably recommend, get comfortable with it first, get confident, practise, perfect your tone, etc. Get used to writing and sharing content, but then scheduling and planning in advance can help you in two ways.
“It’s easy to start putting out content, but then you quite quickly can get sucked back into what you were doing before being active on LinkedIn and suddenly that consistency dies. Consistency is one of the most valuable things you can have on LinkedIn.” – Daniel Disney · [30:36]
Daniel Disney:
Number one, stay organised, but also keep to consistency because that’s the biggest trap. It’s easy to start putting out content, but then you quite quickly can get sucked back into what you were doing before being active on LinkedIn and suddenly that consistency dies, where at least if you plan or schedule ahead, if it’s in your calendar, if it’s in a bit of software, at least you’ve got consistency. That’s one of the most valuable things you can have on LinkedIn.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Can you give us a one liner because we will do a full show on this, a one line of does it hurt the algorithm? Does it hurt our reach if we do use automated tools to post for us, even if we’re creating the content and they’re pushing out?
Daniel Disney:
No, it doesn’t. And I can tell you that for a fact. But we can cover that in another episode and dig into what platforms, how to use them, etc.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Okay, so should we wrap up this episode here, Daniel, and treat this as a part one and record a part two in a minute? Because there’s a few audience questions that we should get through as well.
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, definitely. I think we’ve covered content quite well. And we can dig deeper in the next episode. But I think that’s a comprehensive episode. I’m really keen to get into these questions.
Will Barron:
Cool. Let’s jump into the questions and I’ll pitch it for you. I’ve not wrote this down. So I’m going to do this off the top my head. If you want a copy of Daniel’s, I’m right in saying best-selling book, aren’t I?
Daniel Disney:
You all right in selling that. The Million Pound LinkedIn Message, best-selling on Amazon, yeah, we’re going to be giving away… I say we. I’m going to be giving away a signed copy of my book two questions that we feature in these episodes. If your question makes it onto a show, you will have a signed copy coming your way.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, I’ve had a few questions come in for this episode. You can submit your questions by either just dropping Daniel or I message on LinkedIn or by going to socialsellingshow.com. There is no website there right now, but there will be a website there hopefully, by the time this show airs. I might have also said that last week, so I need to get my finger out and get cracking on this.
Clever Hacks to Increase Engagement on LinkedIn Without Necessarily Asking Questions · [32:35]
Will Barron:
There’ll be a form on there. If not a full website, there’ll be a form that you can submit your questions to. Okay, so let’s start off with the… I’ll use people’s first names here as opposed to both their names just in case they’re asking a question that they wouldn’t want their sales manager to hear them say. Here’s a question from Stuart, who is a head of sales. He asks, “Asking the question, does encourage engagement from your connections, but are there any other tried and tested post types that you or Daniel have found to work exceptionally well?” And he says, “Pearce, really enjoying the episode you and Daniel are creating together. Thank you and keep them coming.”
Will Barron:
So I guess we’ve kind of covered this. But asking questions in posts is a good way to get engagement. Are there any other ways that we should be getting engagement? Any other things, I guess we’ve not covered in this episode?
“If you’re always asking questions, then your audience will get bored of them. They’ll get sick and tired that you’re always asking for something from them. Remember, every time you ask a question, you’re asking for something from them. That’s not you giving, that’s you taking.” – Daniel Disney · [33:04]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, it’s a really good point. I would adopt a 50/50 mentality. If you’re always asking questions, then your audience will get bored of them. They’ll get sick and tired that you’re always asking for something from them. Remember, every time you ask a question, you’re asking for something from them. That’s not you giving, that’s you taking.
Daniel Disney:
What I would recommend is having a 50/50 strategy. So sometimes have posts that encourage debate, that ask for contribution, but do have posts that don’t ask for anything, that just give, just give a story. Share a story, share an insight, share some thoughts and let it just be a pure value giving exercise. If you’re always asking, people will soon tyre from that, you want to have that sort of balance and again, goes back to the whole variety piece.
Will Barron:
Perfect. So thank you for that Stuart. Another one from Scott who is a CEO and a founder. He asks, “Will Barron, I think branding yourself, making yourself a valuable resource to potential customers is a long game.” I think we’d all agree on this. “Most companies will not give salespeople the time and they will put pressure on them to get back on to what they thinks works.” Which he says, “Cold warm prospecting,” quoting, “You have to hit the numbers this month.”
How to Strike a Balance Between Cold Calling and Personal branding in Sales · [34:03]
Will Barron:
So Scott’s question is how we put together a hybrid game plan of what Daniel Disney recommends on Social Selling whilst continuing to cold and warm prospect? How do we do both at the same time when our sales managers are, I guess, on our backs to be dialling the phone?
Daniel Disney:
Really good question, something I battle everyday, talking to senior leaders and trying to get them to open their eyes. Here’s the reality. If we’re talking about content and branding, this is an activity can be done in 15-20 minutes a day. That is not a big amount of time. Most salespeople, most sales leaders can find that within their team’s schedule because what we’re talking about… If I was to write a text post, I did one yesterday I wrote a text post and it took me nowhere more than five to 10 minutes. That post went out.
Personal Branding on LinkedIn is less about time, it’s more about doing the right activities at the right time.” – Daniel Disney · [35:10]
Daniel Disney:
I think it’s got 27,000 views within the first 24 hours, 5-10 minutes activity. Now, I then spend the rest of the day obviously, I’m not sort of cold calling like most teams are, I’m on training, etc. But they then have the day to make their cold calls, to send their emails, to work with prospects, clients, customers, etc. So yeah, the personal branding is less about time, it’s more about doing the right activities at the right time.
Daniel Disney:
You can be doing those things for the first 15-20 minutes of the day, you’ve got the whole rest of the day to continue doing what you’re already doing. So it doesn’t take a lot of time is my answer Will. And yeah, sales leaders just need to kind of understand that. Then you will look at the whole outbound piece, the messaging, things like that, which should be then embedded within the rest of the day. But that branding and content could be done at the start.
Will Barron:
Yeah, I think a lot of it is and this isn’t an age thing, necessarily. But when sales managers haven’t been selling for a period of time, that landscape changes, what works changes. Some of this might be reflection on how talented your sales manager is.
“Ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Just do it. If it works, no sales manager is going to tell you off for driving more revenue building a personal brand and making the sales process more effective.” – Will Barron · [35:56]
Will Barron:
I always go down the route of ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Just do it. If it works, no sales manager is going to tell you off for driving more revenue easier, building a personal brand and making the sales process more effective. They’d be crazy to do that. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission and just get on with it. So thank you for that question Scott. We’ve got a couple of more questions here.
How To Make Your Video Stand Out on LinkedIn · [36:15]
Will Barron:
One from Amy, who says, “How do you get two people who usually scroll past videos or have auto load turned off so they can’t watch your videos?” I guess what Amy’s asking here is, how do we get more attention from perhaps a video thumbnail or something like that?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, I mean, Will, you’re definitely more of a thumbnail expert than I am. But the whole purpose of a thumbnail is to make it stand out. Another way to get video to stand out is have text post attached with it that captures their attention.
Daniel Disney:
Think about those first three lines, just draw them in. Give them a reason to watch the video. Either the first five to 10 seconds of your video needs to draw them in. But a lot of people, as they say, they might not have the volume turned on, they might be scrolling, so there’s no text attached to it or even subtitles, why are they going to click on that video? Lure them in, have a bit of text that brings them in and then hopefully, you’ll be able to get them into your video. Once they’ve watched it, you’ll capture their attention and keep them watching.
How to Structure Posts that Promote Content In and Out of LinkedIn · [37:10]
Will Barron:
Perfect. I’ll ask you about this as well, because for each of these episodes of the Social Selling Show, our team creates a trailer. So I post the trailer, we’ve probably quite lazy from [inaudible 00:37:18]. We have four or five lines of text of what’s coming up in the show, basically a copy and pasted from the show notes.
Will Barron:
Now when you post, Daniel, you post a long form post breaking down exactly what we talk about, you call out a few people, you perhaps ask a few questions. Now, clearly, that’s more effective than what I’m doing. But again, do you use a structure for that? Or do you make this up every time you post a piece of content or is there a structure? Or are you kind of like unconsciously competent enough? Now after doing it so many times that it just comes out of you?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, a lot of this is autopilot for me, Will. I’ve been doing this consistently pretty much every day for the last five, six years. But yes, I mean, there’s no sort of structure as such. All I’m trying to do is create an engaging bit of text that’s going to help encourage people to watch the video and obviously come and watch the entire episode. All I’m trying to do is break down the key points in as an engaging way as possible, that’s going to make them want to watch it, just to highlight the value that they’re going to be to get from it.
Daniel Disney:
That’s all I’m trying to do. That might be in a few sentences, that might be in a long text, whatever I can do to make sure they understand what value is going to be by sort of digesting the larger form of content. That’s all it is. Focusing on on sharing that value.
Will Barron:
Sure. Okay. So when this episode goes out, I promise now to myself and everyone listening, I will do a longer form post. I’ll put my effort into it and then I’ll see what the reach is versus last time. We’ll see if it’s any different. Perhaps we can… Do you know what would be an interesting episode? Because you just corrected me with loads to think about. My profile needs updates, the way I produce content, I need to do more of this, more of that. It’d be a cool episode and perhaps me and you, to sit down off air, to go through some of the things we talked about on the show for me to correct a bunch of stuff and then start posting more content and have that running in the background for maybe a month, eight weeks or so. And then we could do a whole show comparing the reach I had at one point versus the reach I had at another. Do a real life case study with some of this. Would you be down for that?
Daniel Disney:
Will, I am 100,000,000% down for that. Let’s definitely do that. I will happily coach and support you. I’d love to see the results we can achieve by implementing some of the stuff that we’ve covered in these episodes and nothing speaks better than real results. Let’s definitely do that.
LinkedIn Company Page Versus Personal Brand: Which Is Better and How to Maximize Both? · [39:30]
Will Barron:
I think that’d be cool. Okay, so a couple more questions here. One from Max who is a sales development representative. Max asks even, I’d love to hear your thoughts on balancing talking about the company you work for and building your own sales brands. I have a strong opinion about this which I’ll share in a second. But for Max here, Daniel, should we be focusing on… Or what’s the balance between our own personal brand and the company we work for?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, I tend to teach the 80/20 split. 80% of the content you put out should be valuable and that should be more based around use stories, insights, knowledge, etc and then 20% can be about your company, your product, the service that you sell, you need to give a lot more than you take in that that percentage can drift slightly, but the focus needs to be on value.
Daniel Disney:
The problem is when you talk about your company, you’re selling, you’re pitching, you’re advertising and people get turned off by that. You need to earn the opportunity to drive value through doing that. So I recommend sharing more stuff. But when we say personal, that doesn’t mean sharing random pictures of what you ate for dinner last night.
Daniel Disney:
It could be about stories relevant to your industry, relevant to work, but just not put in a way where you’re promoting the company directly. Share professional stories, but they are about you as a person.
Will Barron:
Sure. I will go one step further. By all means, listen to Daniel, because he is the expert on the subject. I don’t want to mention a product ever. Now, I want to talk about the industry, I want to share my expertise, I want people to come to me for advice, which then starts the sales process organically. But if I had a sales manager who’s putting pressure on me to talk about… Say I built a large audience, perhaps I’d put in a lot of effort and time into this, maybe I had done some of this on the company time, maybe I did some of it on my own time.
Will Barron:
I don’t want to be talking about products, because I don’t want to be… It’s obvious who you work for. It’s in your LinkedIn profile, I don’t want to be so affiliated with a product or service that then that will hold… It could be held against me in the future or if the company I’m working for goes to absolute crap or something happens or some kind of scandal, I want to be able to separate myself from that, because I own my LinkedIn profile. It’s me. It’s my personal brand. It has nothing to do with the organisation and I’m allowing them to leverage it to get deals done.
Will Barron:
I don’t want to be in a position in the future where I regret having been, again, affiliated with a brand or something. I’ve had this happen. It was kind of before the days of LinkedIn, but one medical device company I worked for, a Japanese company, anyone who’s watched the media and consume Business News at the time will be aware of this Japanese company. There was a massive scandal with the being involved with the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza, the CEO was British and he was kind of half wrapped up in it and he was a whistleblower.
Will Barron:
I had customers come to me and ask me questions about this. It was super awkward. I felt in an awkward position and had offered to do me really. I was… There were so many rungs down on the ladder from what was going on. Now, I feel like if I was in the age of LinkedIn now, and this happened again, I would get absolutely hounded by people trying to ask my opinions on things and it would not be a good position I’d want to be in.
Will Barron:
For me personally, I want to keep my LinkedIn profile mine, my expertise, my business expertise and narrow down the conversations I’m having about a product or service until they come up organically or until I choose to engage someone with that specifically via message. So that’s that. We’ve got one final question, then we’ll wrap up the show with this. This is from Robert, this was emailed over to me.
Do you Really Need an Individual Domain Name and Website as a Salesperson? · [43:00]
Will Barron:
He says, “Hi, Will. I just listened to your Social Selling podcast episode. And I have a question. I work in hygiene selling services. I work in hygiene services selling them to businesses. Would it be worth it for me as an employee to pay for a domain and a website for myself and what content would I put on there?” That’s a massive question and we’ll kind of do a quick answer to it. But Daniel, is it worth individual salespeople having their own domain name and then having their own website as well?
Daniel Disney:
It is, but I would do it at the right time. I guess there’s no harm in doing it early and I have heard some sales managers doing it for their team, buying domains for their entire team, because there are a lot of benefits for us. But the key would be build your personal brand on LinkedIn where you’re able to drive traffic to it.
Daniel Disney:
But of course, most domains shouldn’t cost you a lot of money. It is worth doing, setting up a quick, easy website, your marketing team might be to do it or you might be to do it yourself doing one of the free platforms. But there is definitely value in doing it. If you’re going to be investing in your personal brand, then absolutely, it’s a tricky one, you want to be driving people to it. But you also want to be driving people to your company website and other places as well. So it has its place. But your bigger value is definitely going to be from the personal brand side of things.
Will Barron:
Sure. My opinions on this, everybody should own their name .com if possible. If not, because some else has it, they need to own… For example, a designer, a web developer designer in Sheffield owns willbarron.com. So I own willbaron.net.
Will Barron:
Now, if you’ve not got a website, if you don’t go down that route, just redirect it to your LinkedIn page. So when someone says, “Hey, I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn.” Just say hey, go to raybarron, willbarron, barrybarron, whatever.com and you’re automatically redirected.
Will Barron:
You should own it from a perspective of if I own Danieldisney.com, I mean, Daniel Disney full out. And I put something horrific on that page, you can… It’s slander, you can go to court over it and there’s opportunities to have it removed via legal proceedings, but don’t leave that as an opportunity to crop up in the future. The Internet’s not going anywhere.
Will Barron:
If you can’t own your domain, it’s for the sake of 11 quid a month or whatever it is, to order a domain on GoDaddy, 11 quid a year even to own a domain from GoDaddy or other hosting providers, other domain providers. It’s a no brainer just to have that little bit of security and hopefully when someone Google searches you, even if you haven’t redirected to LinkedIn, your name will come up probably on LinkedIn first in the Google search results, then it may come up with your name, which redirect to LinkedIn and then anything else underneath it Facebook profiles, things like that kind of get a little bit buried which is always good.
Will Barron:
Cool. Daniel, we’re going to cover in part two of this episode just to get the audience riled up to consume next week’s content. We’re going to cover hashtags, Lives, polls, Stories, whether content lives forever on LinkedIn or whether it dies after seven hours of being on there. Whether we can reuse posts, the time of day to post, maybe we’ll leave articles for a second episode, viral content and a whole lot more. Is there anything you want to add before we wrap up this episode and we record the next one that the audience will hear next week?
“If you want to build your brand, if you want to build your audience, if you want to generate business, start sharing content” – Daniel Disney · [46:08]
Daniel Disney:
No, but the moral of the story, Will, for this episode is go and share content. If you want to build your brand, if you want to build your audience, if you want to generate business, start sharing content. Hopefully, in this episode, we’ve given you a bit of confidence and some tips on how you can go and do that effectively. So yeah, excited to dig into a bit deeper in the next episode.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, that was Daniel Disney, the king of Social Selling. My name is Will Barron, founder over at Salesman.org. With that, we’ll speak to you again next week on the Social Selling Show.
