Welcome to Episode 48. This episode is for you if you want to use LinkedIn in more effectively to grow your business, or to help your account management career.
James Potter enlightens me on so many things I didn’t realise about LinkedIn. We talk about:
- why it’s useful to know who could be looking at your profile
- what typically holds business leaders back from posting
- how to avoid making awful faux pas when connecting with people
- the benefits of being more selective about who you add to your network
- and lots more nuggets of usefulness.
If you’re in an agency account management role, and you’re responsible for forecasting and firming up the account growth, I’m running my next Account Accelerator programme starting on 27th January 2022. By the end of nine weeks working with me, you’ll have a repeatable, client centric approach to increasing revenue from your existing accounts. Now, if this sounds like you, or perhaps someone in your account management team, then please get in touch and let’s see if it’s a right fit for you. Email me at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:03
Today I’m lucky enough to be speaking to James Potter, otherwise known as the LinkedIn man. And he helps people build better business relationships using LinkedIn, and networking. And James is a bit of a legend in the creative agency industry for having helped so many agencies with how they use LinkedIn. James, I haven’t seen one post about your training that hasn’t kind of blow my socks off with how revelatory it’s been, so welcome to the show.
James 00:32
Thanks, nice to be here.
Jenny 00:35
Would you mind starting off by just spending a couple of minutes just talking about you James, what you do, a bit about your journey and how you help businesses?
James 00:43
Yes no problem well, let’s start with the journey. When I started my career journey, I wanted to be an accountant. Yes, there’s a confession! It didn’t really work out for me. Numbers are exciting, but people are much more interesting. So I got into a career in sales instead. And I had various sales roles through my career selling professional services for the most part. About 12 years ago, I decided I’d get out of my corporate life and started the LinkedIn app. Because I realised, even then, that you could use LinkedIn in lots of really clever ways. In my corporate life, I’d sold more than 10 million pounds worth of stuff, just using LinkedIn and a cup of coffee. That’s my two tools of choice. So here we are now 11 years/12 years later and I’ve trained 133 PLCs, I’ve been to 74 countries. And all we do is teach people to use LinkedIn, so they look good and sell stuff. That’s it.
Jenny 01:38
Wow. Through those, what did you say 12 years?
James 01:42
Yes.
Jenny 01:42
How have you seen LinkedIn evolve?
James 01:47
The core of LinkedIn hasn’t changed much. It’s always been about you being you and having a good network and keeping in touch with people. But LinkedIn has tried various things to expand that. If I go back, probably 10 years ago, they launched something on LinkedIn called polls, which you might be familiar with. But about six years ago, they stopped it because nobody was using it. And then six months ago, it came back and we’ve got polls. And there is a little bit of this. Things have a time and LinkedIn, try sometimes to copy other platform’s ideas because they think if it works over there, it must work on LinkedIn. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn’t. It’s changed a lot. But I think the biggest surprise for me has been the use cases of LinkedIn. People traditionally think about LinkedIn as recruitment, which for the record is wrong, sales, which there’s a lot of, but it’s also used for other things now, like credit checks, due diligence for mergers and acquisitions; validation is the biggest use of LinkedIn now by a mile.
Jenny 02:54
Wow, credit checks as well, I hadn’t even considered that.
James 02:57
Oh yes, I got a great sound quote from a client the other day saying it’s harder to fake a good LinkedIn profile than to buy a driving licence.
Jenny 03:06
Wow. So, I want to make this specific to agencies, so typically, the people who are listening in or agency owners or account managers, and because one is maybe a leader of a business, or maybe owns the business, and therefore sales is going to be really important, but another one is employed by the business, I’d like to kind of tackle both areas brought about what the benefits could be for both. So let’s start with the agency owners and leaders, why should they be taking LinkedIn seriously, if they’re not currently?
James 03:39
Okay, well, what I would say to anybody on LinkedIn is whether you do LinkedIn properly, or whether you don’t, it will say a lot about you. If you’re the leader of a business, when you’re not seeing there engaging your own staff, or talking proudly about what you’re doing, or just plain talking to people, think about what that says about you. You can do a pitch to a client that says you’re the most engaging agency in the world but if someone looks you up on LinkedIn, they’re going to get a feel for what you’re like very, very quickly. So it’s about being harmonious in how you’re approaching things. If you’re a nice communicative business leader in real life, then on LinkedIn, you should be a nice communicative business leader. Because for most people now, there is no difference between what they see on LinkedIn, and that real person. In fact, when you think about it, now more people are meeting the virtual version of you as a leader than they are meeting the real you.
One of the conversations I have with leaders, agencies and outside of agencies is, ‘ nobody cares about what I do James, why would anybody…?’ because you’re the boss. Your own team are going to look at you, your clients are going to look at you, everybody that’s looking at the team, the next stop will be you. You have a role to play. But you also have a role to play supporting your own team. You don’t need to go on LinkedIn and be salesy, you can comment on what your team have been talking about, which is salesy, and thus you’re sharing it with your network. You’re also going to improve the motivation of your own team to post more, because they want to be seen by you. You’ve got an important role to play here.
Jenny 05:27
So that’s what you would define as using LinkedIn properly. And I love what you’ve just said, you slipped in a real golden nugget there to comment on your team’s activities.
James 05:38
Absolutely, absolutely. Different roles in the business will do different things. I think the thing that surprises most people, particularly if they’re in a leading role, is how many people care about what they talk about. And also things that they might not find interesting other people are fascinated by. And I think it’s the curse of doing what you do. If you’re running a creative agency, you’re doing creative stuff all the time. It’s not that impressive because it’s not that new to you. But you don’t buy what you do, other people do and to them this stuff might be revolutionary, or rocket science, but to you, it’s what you do every day. So don’t hesitate to talk about the things that are just normal, because to other people they might not be.
Jenny 06:25
And what do you think some of the biggest reasons to stop an agency leader, because that was very compelling what you’ve just said that everything about what you’ve just said is very compelling. And presumably now given what’s happened over the last 18 months, where everything’s gone online, presumably even more important?
James 06:43
Well, it’s interesting when you say everything’s gone online. So I’m a bit of a LinkedIn nerd. So pre pandemic, the average user on LinkedIn was 10 minutes and 21 seconds each day- average. As I sit here today, the average user on LinkedIn is 11 minutes and 25 seconds each day. And that’s a normal progression part of LinkedIn, this is not a massive step change because of pandemic. It’s just kept on trucking. But I think the visibility of the importance of LinkedIn has gone up. So there’s a lot more interest now we should do this stuff. Yes, you should. But equally, you should have been doing it before. There’s lots of people that are leveraging LinkedIn to get really useful and powerful conversations at all levels of a business. If you’re a leader of a business, you’ve got a great network, that’s a given. It’s part of why you’ve got to where you’re at. And you want to make sure that that network is a good reflection of you on LinkedIn as well. One of the trends, if you like on LinkedIn, is it’s becoming quite divergent. There is one school of thought that says to be impressive, I’ve got to be surrounded by 20,000 people. And there’s another school of thought that says to be impressive, I’ve got to be surrounded by good people. And those different approaches means completely different ways of making LinkedIn work. One is quite time intensive. One is quite time light. One is reputationally risky. One is reputationally safe. One is very comfortable, when you’re trying to get your next client, the other one becomes a little bit uncomfortable for people. So you’ve got to think about strategically, what approach you’re going to take. How do you want to make it work for you? And what are you going to be comfortable with? Particularly at a leadership level, you have to be comfortable on LinkedIn because if you’re not, you’re not going to do it, and then it’s not going to work.
Jenny 08:39
So do you recommend that people are a little bit more selective about who they have in their network?
James 08:45
Oh, absolutely. If I wanted to give you a laugh, I would say if you take no other action away from today, please go and play snog, marry or avoid with your LinkedIn connections! You’ve got to think of LinkedIn being like a room full of people. Now please try and stop thinking about it like a social media channel. It’s not. It’s a social Network, the clues in the title – Network. Now you imagine if you wanted to talk to me Jenny, you made a beeline for me at a conference, for example, and I’m talking to these two people that you think are prats? What does that make me look like in that room full of people, in your eyes? Well, not as good as I am. Now think about LinkedIn. If you look me up, you can see the people that you know that know me. So that makes it really obvious, really fast.
Jenny 09:34
Thank you for sharing that James, because that hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t think that, and I think I probably fall into the the former category, thinking that it doesn’t necessarily… I mean, do you say that you should have met someone in person before you accept them in your network?
James 09:51
I’m far more selective than that. I want to have met them. I want to spoken to them. I want to know they’re nice people because I’m being associated with them. I want them to be nice people because I want to keep in touch with them. That’s an investment of time going forwards. I want to trust them with my address book. Everybody you connect to on LinkedIn, you go, here’s my address book, you help yourself by default. If you think hiding your address book hides your address book, no, it doesn’t wake up – there are other ways of doing it. So yes, you want to almost recognise these people if you bump into them. They should be people that you know. Stop thinking about it like they might get my eyes on what I talk about, and start thinking about it as can I use these people as a doorway to get to other nice people?
Jenny 10:38
That’s super interesting. Again, gosh, I’m so far behind with LinkedIn, I obviously need to come to one of your training programmes.
James 10:44
Don’t ask me about account management, we’re all going to different things!
Jenny 10:47
But I thought that if you hid your contacts, then they wouldn’t be accessible. Obviously, you’re shaking your head….
James 10:54
No, it would take me about three weeks to unpick about 75% of your network.
Jenny 10:58
Is that because you’re particularly proficient and a bit of a hacker? Can anyone do that?
James 11:03
No it’s not a hack. Anybody can do it. One of the very interesting things for me with what I do is I get to teach all sorts of people. And I have previously taught to different countries, spies, how to use LinkedIn. Yes, they are on LinkedIn no they don’t have redacted photographs. But the way that people look at LinkedIn is amazing. Outstanding. So to give you an extreme example, very appropriate, if you’re a leader in the agency world, you might have that nice holiday photograph cropped on your LinkedIn profile, because it’s a nice photograph of you. I’m not going to argue with that. Would I put it on LinkedIn? No, absolutely not. Because that procurement person that’s just sent you a connection that you’ve accepted is looking at your profile picture to work out where you went on holiday, because it tells them how much you earn. If you accepted that connection invite, they’re looking at your network to see if there’s any competitors, they can get a quote against you from.
Jenny 12:01
Okay, this is really interesting stuff. James, I can see why people are sort of, this is revelatory, obviously to me, but maybe other people have already kind of, are more clued up on this. What else can you share, as a compelling reason to kind of use LinkedIn properly, rather than just not have a strategy for it?
James 12:26
Well, let me give you a laugh, because we all need one of those, right? So this is how most people demonstrate their value and impact to all the people that they know on LinkedIn.
Jenny 12:39
You’re hiding, right?
James 12:40
Simultaneously wondering why the only attention they get is freaks and MLM and recruitment consultants. It’s a bit like going to the biggest networking event in the planet, and then standing on the outside of the room doing this.
Jenny 12:53
I’ve done that, by the way!
James 12:55
Doesn’t work well does it?
Jenny 12:56
No!
James 12:59
It’s the more like YOU, you can make your LinkedIn and I mean, like you through profile, through network, through what you say, the better it will work. The core of LinkedIn is always about having a real network and keeping it real. So if I come back to this, I want to build an audience type thinking, one of the things that LinkedIn will do when you post, everybody thinks, so for example, if this was my post today, everybody thinks if I do my post on LinkedIn it appears in front of all of my connections. Well, it doesn’t. When you do your post on LinkedIn, it shows it to a small sample of your connections to see if they read it. Now, if your network is a roomful of strangers, they might just go – no scroll past. At which point LinkedIn goes, oh that’s not interesting, we won’t show that to so many people. So it doesn’t even get to all your connections.
Jenny 13:56
Got you. Okay, so this is making total sense. So, someone listening to this because I’m all for the action points, someone listening to thinking, okay so James makes total sense. I’ve got a myriad of people that are connected to me that I don’t know, and don’t really particularly want in my network. Is there any detrimental effects from going through and just deleting people?
James 14:17
No, but I would give them a chance to survive. If you’ve got people in your network because you’ve connected to them because you want to have a conversation or you want them to be a client, perhaps it’s time to drop them a message – just going through my LinkedIn connections and realised I never got to speak to you, it’d be great to have a conversation and learn more about the people that YOU find interesting, and how I may help YOU meet some people because I know some interesting people too. Do drop me a note, we’ll get a call sorted, that will be great. But then if they don’t come back to you in a month, take the hint. Because then if you do get rid of them, and if there is some miraculous way that somebody realises you’ve removed them, probably never going to happen, you can say I dropped you a note and you didn’t come back to us. I assumed you didn’t mind being deleted. Have I ever heard of that happening? No.
Jenny 15:06
Brilliant advice. Thank you. Out of interest, do you have any examples of agencies or agency leaders that are using LinkedIn particularly well? This might be an unfair question.
James 15:20
Yes, I do lots. Would I tell you who they are? No. For a couple of reasons. Firstly, I haven’t asked them and I don’t think it’s fair. Secondly, I don’t want you to copy someone else. Your same as someone else. Your personality is different, your style is different. One of the mistakes that people make on LinkedIn is they copy other people. Well, you’re different. Your profile’s different, the way you interact is different, the more like YOU you are, the better it will be. Don’t make someone else, be you.
Jenny 15:53
I think this is great advice for people listening. And everything that you’ve said so far, is about just being real. And being in a real networking environment. Right? So you’ve just got to imagine that you are. What other reasons do you see people holding themselves back? They either want to hide, they don’t know how it works? What other things? What other challenges?
James 16:17
The normal thing is fear, it comes down to it. If I wanted to be nerdy about it, it’s Athazagoraphobia – the fear of not being good enough. It’s taken me years to learn say that properly. And what it is, is people are worried that if they say the wrong thing, somebody might pick them up on it. But they’re worried if they say something, it might annoy people. They’re worried if they say something in public, somebody might argue with them. That’s the ones I normally find or why would somebody find what I find interesting?
Jenny 16:52
How do you help people overcome that fear?
James 16:54
Oh, that’s easy. In real life, you would never say the wrong thing. You’re good at what you do, you’re not going to say the wrong thing. If someone wants to disagree with you on account management process, you just go, no there’s different ways of doing it, it’s all good. But they don’t, because you know what you’re doing, you wouldn’t talk about it otherwise. People don’t argue on LinkedIn, very, very rare. Because in a room full of business people, I wouldn’t walk up to someone and start an argument. It’s not how we work as people. So all of the fears that people have are often unfounded, and they’re in our heads, it’s all that sort of self sabotage stuff kicking in. The only way to do it is to try. But you know, I still remember doing my first post on LinkedIn, it took me two minutes to write it. I spell checked it about six times. And then it took me 20 minutes to push the Post button. But
you’ll be amazed at how many people read what you write, just because they’re curious about you. And to back that up, LinkedIn’s own research is what you say as an individual on LinkedIn, has 10 times the impact of what the company says, because companies aren’t interesting. Companies just go I’m a company, and I’m fabulous. And a week later, still fabulous, and a week later, still fabulous. And everybody gets disengaged with that quite quickly. Whereas you’re having experiences, you’re learning things, you’re having interesting conversations, you’re talking about nerdy bits of the agency world that people hadn’t realised you’ve got involved with. And they remember.
And that’s one of the things that really catches people out when they meet someone next time around, they go, Oh, how was the trip to Russia? And you’ll go well, how did you know? It was a LinkedIn update. Oh, my God, people read it. They may not interact. But they read it. And it goes in. And then next time, I’m sitting talking with a business leader, and they go, I really need to find an agency to help me with this change. I’ll go well, that one did some work in Russia recently. It’s about reminding people about what you do when you’re posting on LinkedIn, it’s about being in front of mind. It’s not about a pitch. If I bump into you a roomful of people, you don’t go, ‘Would you like to buy my things?’ You don’t do that in real life? Oh, also in real life, you don’t go – can I introduce some content? Would you like some content – email address, white paper, email address white paper. You just talk to people, can we just have a bit more talking to people on LinkedIn?
Jenny 19:24
So I mean, you started using LinkedIn in sales, you’ve 12 years experience of using LinkedIn.
James 19:32
A bit more than that now. I’ve been training people to use LinkedIn for about 12/13 years. I’ve been using LinkedIn for about 16/17.
Jenny 19:40
Wow. Okay. So when it comes to sales, because I think there is a misconception that LinkedIn is used for sales.
James 19:47
Oh yes.
Jenny 19:48
Give us some other insight into. I mean, we’ve all seen people who use it badly, because we’ve been pitched to or …
James 19:56
I had one today.
Jenny 19:58
Go on.
James 19:59
Dear Paul. That’s how it started.
Jenny 20:06
What do you do?
James 20:09
Make it work properly, start talking about the things you’re doing to help the people around you. It doesn’t have to be work you’re doing, really excited to talk to somebody in technology today about one of the challenges they’re having around getting some content that actually engages their audiences. One of the things we’ve been doing recently is to do all these interesting things where we got all these sort of good things happening. So it’s really good to be able to share that today. I’m not talking about work I’ve done, I’m talking about a conversation I’m having. If you’re doing work with, let’s say, a top 10 FMCG Company, then say on LinkedIn, absolutely delighted to be working with a or perhaps another top 10 FMCG company. Don’t go, I’m working with THEM. Because my perception of THEM may not be as high as my perception of a top 10 FMCG company. If you say top 10, I’m thinking big ones, Unilever, these sorts of guys, so my perception goes up. It might be bigger than your reality, if you just say a top 10, I want you to be appropriately vague. Now reasons for that, my perception is greater than your reality. And secondly, you’re probably connected to other people in top 10 FMCG companies who will probably look at your profile going, I remember when they pitched to us, I wonder who they’re working with? Of course, you can see the people that are looking at your profile on LinkedIn, it shows you five every day, if you look every day, and that might give you some ideas of some people that perhaps you should get back in touch with to say, ‘Thanks for looking, how’s life? Did anything prompt you to look?’ Who knows where that might take?
Jenny 21:43
Thank you for sharing these tips. I think anyone listening to this should be taking notes because you are dropping some great bombs of knowledge here. I mean, we’ve been talking about posting, what are your views on actually doing a direct message with that kind of narrative?
James 22:00
Okay, let’s make me the chief executive of a big company. In fact, even better, let’s make me the managing partner of a law firm because I can make it very real. I recently swapped InMail messages with the managing partner of a law firm. I’ll tell you what I put on my InMail message in a moment. His InMail response to me was James, thank you for that I get 40, yes four – zero InMail messages a day. And that’s the best InMail message I’ve ever had. Okay, now, let’s just think about this for a minute. If you’re a business leader getting 40 InMail messages a day, what’s the chances of you differentiating by writing an even better message? Slim. Now ultimately, I got that person as a client. But for the record, I sent him an InMail message saying he had a spelling mistake in his profile. Because I was doing some research for a talk, I couldn’t let it go. It was too big. I just had to tell him it’s fine. That whole keeping it real and keeping it human thing. It’s amazing where it gets you. If I’m the leader of a business, am I going to respond to someone sending me a message that I don’t know? Am I going to respond to someone that sends me a connection invite whether I accept it, or I don’t?
Now just for the record, 86% of people despise getting a message just after you accepted the connection invite to ‘Buy my stuff!’ So don’t do it? Or am I going to respond when one of the people that you know, and I know, introduces me to you. James, you should meet Jenny, she’s lovely. Jenny, you should meet James he’s lovely. Chances of us having a conversation at that point? Extremely high. Instead of thinking about LinkedIn as being a route to message somebody, think of it as a map, a relationship that you can leverage to get the next relationship. Who do you know, that knows that business leader, that you could talk to? Yes, I said, talk to. Pick up a phone and really talk to people or ask for a cup of coffee. I see that, you know Sheila is she a nice lady, do you think I should have a chat? You know, human stuff. Works so much better.
Jenny 24:09
I think this is so refreshing actually. I didn’t expect you to say all this, but it is very, very refreshing. In a world where everyone’s talking about number of views or number of connections or, you know…
James 24:22
Let’s confuse it with some metrics that don’t matter. As opposed to thinking about what’s actually done for us in some sort of tangible outcome. Yeah, that’s a good distraction.
Jenny 24:30
Exactly. I mean, you’ve shared many, many tips for agency leaders running the business. Let’s talk for a moment about the agency account managers, many of whom are listening to this. Just give me your thoughts on why you think LinkedIn is relevant for them.
James 24:46
It is as relevant for them as it is for the leader. Indeed there is almost no difference here. Different reasons, different drivers, but you’re a great person, therefore, your profile should be great. There needs to be some evidence in there that you’re a great person. LinkedIn is got mechanisms like recommendations, people that say thank you, ask them to write your recommendation, that sort of thing. But also there’s to a lesser degree endorsements – bit of a game, but they’re kind of there. But also, you could always write in your own profile, that you’ve done some great work. And when I say do that, don’t write in your profile, like a West Coast American, ‘I’ve done some fabulous things!’ don’t do that. Just say – really lucky to have helped 10, out of the top 20 companies in this space. If you’re not comfortable writing in that way, just write ‘My clients tell me’, put some speech marks, and then you’ll find you can write anything you like, and you’ll be comfortable, as long as it’s true. So try and get some of that evidence in there that you’re good at stuff as you’re working through your career, the evidence is a great place to start, as well as talk about the good conversations you’re having, talk about the good work that you’re doing. Talk about the self development things that you’re learning. It’s all part of you.
Jenny 26:04
Great tips again, I mean, ultimately, for an agency account manager, I’d just be interested in your view on this, what do you think the driver would be for them personally, to do this? And to be consistent?
James 26:17
Simple? Would you like to get some nice easy to reach referrals and more clients? As opposed to having to cold call people or do all that stuff that everybody finds any excuse to not do? You know, if I’m running an account, I can get LinkedIn set up for free to say – tell me all the other directors in this account that my mates know. And then I can keep broadening my relationship in that account. And you’ll never get me out because I know too many people. So it’s just a case of thinking about how will you use the tools to help you. People are buying you. You might work for a good agency, a good branded agency behind it, but people are buying you. So it’s really important that the you that’s on LinkedIn is you with your positive pants on being as good as you are, it’s not the time to be kind of okay at something. Because nobody will go on LinkedIn looking for somebody that’s kind of okay at something.
Jenny 27:12
Do you think also it opens an account manager up to you attracting future employers as well?
James 27:19
It attracts all the attention that you could want. Future clients, future employers, people looking at you to being a mentor in their junior start of their careers. It’s just you, being you, as attractive as you are. Look what I got to work with, and I still managed to attract people’s attention, something must be going on, right? Just be you.
Jenny 27:41
Brilliant. I think I can imagine people listening to this feeling a little bit fired up now and thinking, oh, I’ve got to take this seriously because James has just dropped so many reasons why I need to take it seriously. I’m wondering, you’ve said a couple of times about consistency. So if people do want to start using LinkedIn more consistently, how do you keep people, how do they stay on track? How do they, in order to make the make it work for you the best, how should you be approaching this?
James 28:16
Think of LinkedIn a bit like an exercise bike, alright, everybody’s got one. And quite often, it sits in the corner with a washing hands on it, it doesn’t really do anything, you don’t get fit! Now, you’re only going to get fit when you keep pedalling it consistently in the right direction. And keep doing it. LinkedIn is just the same. Keep your network real. Keep your profile up to date. And as good as you are. Keep talking to people. Like you talk to people. Use LinkedIn to identify the people that you’d like to meet that your network know. So you can let the network help you. Simple stuff, do it consistently, it will work. Am I saying someone should go on to LinkedIn and post every day if they’ve not posted before? No, you won’t do it, you will fail. You know, if you’ve not posted on LinkedIn regularly, start by posting twice a week. Now post on a Tuesday and a Thursday. That’ll do. Don’t worry about timing but obviously don’t do it at midnight, because everybody’s asleep. But start by doing it twice a week. And don’t overthink it. Imagine you’ve bumped into someone in the street that goes lovely to see you. What are you up to? And whatever you would say, is probably a good start. Don’t overthink it. The more you polish it, the more you make it good content, the less human it will be. And the less people read it.
Jenny 29:39
This is great advice. Very sound. I’m wondering if because LinkedIn algorithm changes and different things used to work and now they don’t. You know, maybe you’re going to poopoo this talk about tactics
James 29:54
No no it’s all good.
Jenny 29:56
Obviously James, it changes all the time, but can you share a few sort of insights into what’s working best now?
James 30:03
Yesh, sure. Okay. Firstly, let’s talk about the algorithm, right? The algorithm doesn’t change that often. Right? And it’s only half of what makes LinkedIn work. Yes, half. All the algorithm does is decide who in your network gets to see what you post. That’s what it does. After that, there’s a second force at work in LinkedIn, everybody forgets about called Interaction. If I interact with your post, it goes to my connections in that homepage feed that they see, which is shaped by yes, another algorithm. If you drill down, what does the algorithm want? Nobody knows, is the reality of this. Lots of people will guess. What we know for sure at the moment, it changed about 16/17 weeks ago, it doesn’t care what you post- links, pictures, videos, text, doesn’t care. What it cares about is something that LinkedIn calls ‘Dwell’. Does someone actually read it? So when you’re writing things, keep it interesting for the people that you’re talking to. Not interesting for you, because you don’t need to read your own update, it’s everybody else’s going to do that. In terms of the algorithm for you getting found, another one of those things I get asked about a lot, LinkedIn indexes every single word of your LinkedIn profile. So as long as the word is in there somewhere, it will find you. Oh, by the way, nobody goes on LinkedIn going, ‘Oh, can I find an agency that does this?’ and the first one in the search is the one they engage, that’s not real. They’re looking for people that their mates know or people that they know or people that have attractive profiles when they go looking at people. So don’t agonise too much about search result. You’re talking about SEO stuff, you’re not talking about LinkedIn.
Jenny 30:04
Okay, this is interesting stuff. So it doesn’t matter if you post a video and link, a document, it’s just about whether someone reads it. Do they read it? So if they read it and don’t interact, they don’t like it or they don’t comment…
James 32:17
That doesn’t matter. It’s how long someone spends reading what you’ve posted. If they scroll straight past it, not so good. Of course, the people whose updates you read, are probably the people that you know, because we all read the network’s updates from the people that we know. So just think again, why have you got all those people that you don’t know?
Jenny 32:40
It comes back to what you said at the beginning, doesn’t it? And actually, I hope a lot of people are listening to this with the same revelation as I have because I think I haven’t been very selective, let’s say, in who I put into my network. And what else can you share with us that you think would be most useful for anyone listening, particularly from an agency perspective.
James 33:05
So a little bit of research, which was not done for LinkedIn’s benefit. A lovely chap called Grant Leboff, you’ve probably come across, wrote a book called Sticky Marketing back in 2013. At the time he updated, Dale Carnegie’s original research of 7 to 10 interactions before someone would commit to working with you. He updated it to being 24 from a cold start, before someone will commit to working with you. So if you’re connecting with someone thinking, this is the start of a relationship, the research is 24 interactions. The same bit of research said, if someone else says you’re a nice person, I should talk to you, Grant’s research says that number of interactions goes down to three. So which one would you rather have? 24 activities before you get to speak to someone interesting? Or three? One of them uses the network, one of them makes an audience. Make a choice.
Jenny 34:02
Okay, that makes sense as well. That’s a hugely compelling reason, isn’t it? James, I’ve noticed that they have a Creator Mode.
James 34:17
Yes.
Jenny 34:18
Can you talk a little bit about what that is?
James 34:21
Yes. So this is LinkedIn’s divergence. If you’re going to have an audience, it becomes all about you. What you’ve put out there, your themes. This is Creator Mode. When you engage Creator Mode on LinkedIn, the Connect option gets hidden. It’s all about following. You want to be followed because followers makes a difference. So follow becomes the default option. You can be followed by anybody. Oh, hang on a minute, that might not be so good. Because you could be followed by people that are interested in what you’re up to for less than positive reasons, like competitors and those sorts of people. You didn’t realise that one -just bare in mind. If someone looks at your profile, and they don’t know LinkedIn, all of your visible content is about you – I’ve done this, I’ve done that, I’ve done this – it looks like you’re a little bit self-centred. Be careful with Creator Mode. I know it’s new. I know it’s shiny. And whenever new and shiny things go into LinkedIn, everybody goes, I must do that because it is new, and it is shiny. Please think before doing these things. If you’re trying to leverage your network, as a network, stick with non Creator Mode. Because then your default option is connect. You can manage the connection invites when they come in, you can reply to people say thanks, let’s have a chat. If they don’t come back, take the hint. You’ve got a bit more control over it that way. I always find followers, quite an odd concept. It’s a bit like someone following you around your house or sort of peeking in the windows. In that context, it all feels a bit uncomfortable. But on LinkedIn, suddenly it feels fine. I don’t get it.
Jenny 36:00
If someone comes to your training programme, and they’ve already activated the Creator Mode, because it was new and shiny, do you tell them to turn it off? Or do you say work with what you’ve got?
James 36:13
I’m always very careful. I try not to tell people anything; it’s not my job. Everybody’s LinkedIn is different. But I would explain the pros and cons. Creator Mode looks very much about me, and it is very self-centred. Is that how you want to come across? Because if you’re trying to build a personal brand, and that’s the thing that you’re going, and that’s what you want to do, and that’s your trajectory, it might be right for you. But if you’re trying to use a network to build your remit to build the business, to get the right valuation you’re trying to get when you exit, whatever it might be, then you probably want to network. So Creator Mode might not be the best for you because you could end up with a whole heap of followers that aren’t positive. And all of your interaction is not interaction, it’s very one sided when you’re in Creator Mode. So you have to think about it. It’s not an instant decision. So now I’m quite careful to not tell people what to do. It’s explaining why.
Jenny 37:12
Who would you say that the Creator Mode is made for?
James 37:16
People that have lots, lots of connections and think that’s what LinkedIn is about; audience builders.
Jenny 37:24
What about paying extra to be…
James 37:26
Ah! one of my favourite questions!
Jenny 37:28
Is it Sales Navigator?
James 37:30
Yeah. Okay, so Sales Nav, fascinating. Let’s start by saying I spent 2% of my LinkedIn life in Sales Navigator. That’s me, I’ve got Sales Navigator. What does Sales Nav do really well? Well, if I am stalking new clients, so I’ve identified some accounts, or some individuals that I want to work with, and I have no access directly, or through my network. Now to start with, let’s be honest, quite rare. All right. But let’s imagine that’s the case. Sales Nav is brilliant. Because it’s got separate interface. It’s got a separate thread of activity from the leads that you’re tracking and the accounts that you’re tracking as well. So that’s really good. What else does it do really well? Well, it elevates what you get on a free LinkedIn account search. So on a free LinkedIn account, you can find Marketing Directors of PLC’s that your mates know, that talk about content for free; no probs. If you went for a paid Sales Nav account, you can also find the ones that have posted on LinkedIn in the 30 days, or have a company with this many heads in it. So it’s making what you’ve got a little bit more elegant. But it’s extending what you’ve already got. The big thing for LinkedIn is InMail. If you talk to LinkedIn on anything that’s sales related, they’ll say InMail is the answer. All I would say with InMail is imagine yourself in the client seat. Alright, if someone sends you an InMail, do you think ‘Yay, an InMail, I’ll buy that’, because maybe everybody else feels the same. The way to differentiate on an InMail message, by the way, is just be human. If anything, try being honest- I want to have a chat with you about this, because I’ve got a target to hit and people are reading through it, share some experience.
Jenny 39:27
I’ve had, just a side note, I’ve had in the last couple of weeks, three messages from someone who for some reason thinks I’m an agency. It’s obviously cut and paste, but they’re so persistent.
James 39:41
It might not even be a human; it could be automated. It could be a robot. I had a great one last year about geology. As a geologist, I might find this interesting. For the record, I’m not a geologist. What it had done is spotted one of my connections is a geologist. So obviously it’s spotted the word and gone “Bosh I’ll hit him with a message”.
Jenny 40:03
So are bots becoming more prevalent now? Are they being used more?
James 40:06
LinkedIn is very anti bot, very, very anti bot. Because it’s that humanity being removed. LinkedIn just wants it to be real. The more real, the more genuine, the more it loves you. So the less real, the less genuine, the more it will take countermeasures against you. So I’m not a fan of bots in the slightest. Yes, it automates the tasks that humans don’t want to do. But it also impersonalises, all of the interaction and can rapidly destroy your reputation. It’s very easy to get a reputation for being good or less good, just by what you do.
Jenny 40:46
So for agencies listening, avoid automation, because at the end of the day, what we do for clients is more bespoke anyway.
James 40:54
If the nature of your client is that it is personal, then yes. If the nature of your client is it’s volume based, automation might have a place for you. But it’s possibly not in LinkedIn.
Jenny 41:08
How do you keep yourself up to date with what’s changing?
James 41:12
I play. A lot. But also, I spend most of my life looking at LinkedIn in some way. And it changes a lot. So recently, we’ve had things like Dark Mode come into LinkedIn. So if you want a black interface or a white interface, you’ve got the choice. They’ve done things like putting service reviews in if you’ve got the service provision option on your profile, you can get reviews against those. Now, again, something that was in LinkedIn, if I go back probably eight, nine years ago, it’s come back in a different format. They renamed the way of finding freelancers to marketplace so you can buy those services in there. They’ve changed the way that stats come through on company profiles in the last six weeks. And they’ve killed stories, which is a brilliant thing. So yes, it changes a bit. But that’s only half of it. Because the other half is – how do people look at LinkedIn? What do they look for? And you need to keep hold of both bits. Because for example, the thing that horrifies me on people’s profiles, ironically, I was speaking to an agency leader this morning. I asked serious question. Why do people like working with you? And they immediately talked about the business? And I went no, no timeout. Why do they like working with you? Oh, it’s because I’m passionate about what I do and I care and I do all these things that are brilliant. You’ve got that in your LinkedIn profile. No. No in fact, 86% of the last 16,500 profiles we looked at left their personality out. They write about what they do.
Jenny 42:53
I’m just thinking, doesn’t it feel a bit self centred if I’m talking about me, me, me?
James 42:58
Yes, but you’re not going to go ‘I am fabulous’. But you’re passionate about account management. Why are you passionate about account management?
Jenny 43:07
Are you asking me?
James 43:08
Yes.
Jenny 43:09
Okay, I’ll tell you why. I started my career in account management and I’ve been in account management, most of my career, 30 years. And when I started out, I was bloody clueless, right.
James 43:21
We all are.
Jenny 43:21
And I was clueless for a number of years, before I got proper sales training. And I’ll give Marcus Cauchi a plug because he was my sales mentor- worked with him for three years. It was game changing. And I just thought why the hell is no one training this stuff earlier in their career. So when I, frankly, have a client who’s an account manager, I see myself and I want them to succeed. I get more excited about them doing stuff and being successful than I do. So that’s my answer.
James 43:51
So make sure you’ve captured that and put it in the About section of your LinkedIn profile. Because the About section is about you. And it’s what makes you tick. So you talk about your passion for account management, the fact that you get quite parental about seeing account managers develop their skills and go on and get the success that they should. It’s about you. It’s not about what you do at work. It’s what makes you tick. It’s about you. And people often like working with you, and each of us because of the way that we do things, our personality, our style, our approach. It’s not so much about what we do. It’s how we do it, why do we do it. And people forget to write it down.
Jenny 44:34
Maybe it comes back to this imposter syndrome thing, James.
James 44:38
There’s a bit in there for sure.
Jenny 44:39
Of what I do because it’s more useful and I’m too scared to kind of show fear as you come back to. This has been so fantastic. The principles that you’re talking about, I think are sound, and they are permanent. What else horrifies you?
James 44:56
People don’t post. That’s a real sadness for me. I get to meet some fabulous people and you don’t see them. One of the things that I’m always doing when I’m training people is I’ve always looked at their LinkedIn profiles first. So let’s put them over here. And then I get to talk to them in real life. And then lovely people, warm and communicative, let’s put them over there. These two things need to come together. Because until they do, it’s not going to work properly.
Jenny 45:25
Lovely. What else do you see? I’ve got 10 more minutes with you. What else do you see? Because this has been so valuable and it’s given me a massive revelation. And I’m sure other people listening too. What do you see changing in the future, just a final question?You know, given what you know about LinkedIn, how you see it’s changing, what do you think is needed? I just want to add something Groups, what about Groups?
James 45:51
Groups are a tricky one. The problem with groups is everybody joins a Group because they want to learn something, some golden nugget, some competitive advantage. But let’s get a reality check in here can we? How many of you I wonder have started a discussion in the Group? Not many probably because you’re busy. Okay. Hang on a minute. So if you’re not starting discussions because you’re busy, does that mean that people starting discussions aren’t busy? Are these the people we should be learning from? Let’s move on. If you find a real smart way of doing some account based marketing in your industry, that no one’s ever thought about that gives you a competitive advantage, are you going to run to a LinkedIn group and post about it? No, of course not. Everybody waits for everybody else to say something useful. They don’t ever say anything useful. Groups is something that LinkedIn has always struggled with, and that Group think is consistent on every platform it’s not a LinkedIn thing. I think LinkedIn is a little bit worse, because everyone thinks they must be stoic and British and sort of formal. They don’t, they should just be human. But you know. So Groups have always struggled on LinkedIn, they have a purpose, they have a place. It’s where audiences come together. It’s a good way of finding another way to talk to people, some things about people that you can talk about when you meet them in real life, all of those things drip. Will they ever get Groups to move? It comes down to the moderator of the Group and the people in the Group. It’s not the size of the Group. That’s really important. I’ve never forgotten that joining the Social Media for Lawyers Group on LinkedIn about six or seven years ago, my first update on the Group never forgotten – 548 new discussions, no comments. It was full of people just shouting and putting content in the Group. So I started a discussion in the Group the following week going ‘Is this a discussion group? You know, I’ve been here for a week, it seems to be a shouting group!’ Next week, 500 odd new discussions, no comments. Second week, I started the discussion. I think this Group’s rubbish. I’ve been here for two weeks, all people seem to do a shout at each other. No one seems to interact. And I’m confused by this. Is it just me? 18 responses. Now, the interesting thing for me was 18 responses is nice, you know, it’s nice to get a conversation going. It’s the most interactive, with thread, I’ve been in that group for about a year. What was more interesting was I got three clients, not intentionally. They were interacting my thread going, ‘Yes, this group is rubbish. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m gonna leave as well’. I’ve dropped them a note. ‘Try this one over here because this one over here is really good. You might enjoy that because they’re also in your world. It’ll be cool’. And then they drop, you know, bang, ‘Thanks for that. James, that was brilliant. I’ve just been looking at your profile? Keep it here. Where do I think LinkedIn will go? I think LinkedIn will do something that relates to location. Because about two and a half years ago, when LinkedIn changed the terms and conditions last time, they included an option to see where you are in the terms and conditions. Now, there’s two ways you can look at this. There’s a way that goes, Well, if we do conference ticketing, which is I think another thing they will do, because they’ve got to get more income in somewhere. You know, they’re only making umpty billion, then it would make sense to say that you’re at this conference to give you the ability to network in a physical location, that would make sense. I’ve also got to say privately, I’m hoping that there’s some sort of warning that someone that you don’t want to meet is coming down the street so you can dive into a shop or something. Might just be me. So yes, there’s definitely things afoot. LinkedIn is constantly evolving.
Jenny 49:29
James, I just want to say a huge thank you, you’ve dropped so many, like knowledge bombs, and I’m sure people are listening to this are going to listen to it again, so that they can capture all the notes. I think, fundamentally, what’s come through for me, is just keep it real, be yourself and be authentic. I mean, that’s kind of what you’re saying. Think of it like a room full of people, you’ll be in a better place.
James 49:47
Absolutely.
Jenny 49:47
Just you working as if it was physically… Yes, and you’ve also shared some massive opportunities and benefits for why agency leaders and agency account managers should be taking LinkedIn seriously. So please could you spend a couple of minutes sharing how you help agencies and how you help account managers? What are your programmes that you run?
James 50:13
We do a few things. The thing that we do the most is we run what we call a programme, which runs over 10 weeks. And we run five live sessions in 10 weeks. But in between the live sessions, we also monitor and mentor all the people that we’ve got in our charge. So we’ll send a little email in between sessions going, you’ve done that, that’s really good, you might want to think about doing some of that stuff. Oh and by the way, your second or third out of your group of 10, whatever it might be. If you want to go up, do some of this. And we throw boxes of chocolates and bottles of champagne and stuff in there occasionally as well. Because a longer period of time and gets you to embed the behaviours that go with LinkedIn, not just sort out profiles and networks and talk to people about algorithms and all that sort of stuff. We also do training courses, which can be much shorter, we can do a training course in a day, or we can do it in four webinars over time, where we’re giving people the capabilities, understanding and skills that they need. Because we think that’s quite important for people as well sometimes. Apart from that, I stand on stage a bit and talk at events, people need their staff motivated or not falling into some common holes. That’s the other thing I get pulled into a bit. I do the odd strategy sessions for companies so they understand what LinkedIn really i and why they should care. The latter one is more important in my perception. And then we do odd bits of consulting here and there as we need to as well. But that’s what we do. It is all LinkedIn centric, around ‘look good’ or ‘sell stuff’.
Jenny 51:36
Okay, so if someone wants to pursue this and get booked in, how do they contact you because presumably you’re going to be very selective about who you link in with or who follows you?
James 51:45
There’s a free lesson if you ever try to connect with me on LinkedIn, that’s for sure. If you want to get in touch with me, you can just drop me an email. I’m very easy to find james@thelinkedinman.com. Feel free to give me a shout. Look at the website. I’m not difficult to get hold off. It’s all good.
Jenny 52:02
Thank you so much, James. I will put that in the show notes so people can get in touch easily. It’s been really, really valuable. So thank you so much for joining me.
James 52:12
You’re very welcome. Thanks very much.
