LinkedIn Marketing Strategy
Episode 1028: LinkedIn Marketing Strategy, with Mandy McEwen
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LinkedIn Marketing Strategy? Learn tips to boost your professional network and enhance brand visibility. Guide on LinkedIn marketing strategy.
LinkedIn marketing strategy is our focus on today’s topic here at Onward Nation — Our special guest expert and I today are going to dig into and slice apart strategies and tactics you can take and use to build a Facebook Group and how to find and engage with your right-fit prospects on LinkedIn.
Mandy McEwen is the Founder & CEO of Mod Girl Marketing, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in California. She has been marketing successful brands online since 2007. In 2010, she decided to utilize her online marketing skills to start a marketing agency, Mod Girl Marketing.
Mandy and I are going to cover both Facebook and LinkedIn Marketing strategies. We may meander a bit between the two topics, but there’s no doubt you’ll walk away with several golden nuggets that you can apply to your business.
What you’ll learn in this episode is about LinkedIn marketing strategy:
- How Mandy started her agency in 2010 after discovering her love of marketing, and how she uses her marketing skills to help business and agency owners
- How Mandy came to focus on Facebook and LinkedIn marketing strategy, and how Mandy’s agency excels in helping create impactful personal brands for clients
- Why Mandy believes that leveraging your connections, mailing list, and friends is the key to launching a thriving Facebook community
- How Mandy grew her business to six figures entirely through organic growth and through her Facebook group
- Why Mandy is focused on mastering the LinkedIn algorithm and utilizing LinkedIn to help humanize brands and tell their stories
- Why LinkedIn’s algorithm is focused on personal connections and conversations more than anything else, and what changes you can make to improve your ranking
- How to do keyword research through LinkedIn to help your content gain visibility on the platform
- What steps to take to maximize the visibility of your content on LinkedIn, and how to slice and dice bigger content into smaller pieces that can be repurposed
- How to get assistance from others on LinkedIn to help boost your posts while helping them boost their own
- Why all of Mandy’s LinkedIn messaging and marketing strategies can work just as well on Facebook
Resources:
- Read this blog from Mod Girl Marketing to expand your knowledge about LinkedIn marketing strategy: How Often Should You Be Posting On LinkedIn?
- Learn more about the newest and most effective LinkedIn marketing strategy, and you can find Mandy here.
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mandymcewen/
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/mod-girl-marketing-llc/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/mod.girl.marketing
- Twitter: @MandyModGirl
- Twitter: @ModGirlMktg
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Full Episode Transcript
Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.
Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, And your host for Onward Nation, where I interviewed today’s top business owners. So we can learn their recipe for success and how they built and scaled their business. So, okay. Onward Nation. This is one of those conversations that you literally need to buckle in for. This is going to be one of those action-packed discussions that afterward will be like one of those things as you look back on it and ask and say, holy heck, what was that? That was amazing. Our special guest expert and I today, what we’re going to dig deep into, and then slice apart strategies and tactics that you can take and use to do a couple of different things.
One, build a Facebook group, and two, learn how to find and engage with the right prospects, like how to create content that matters on LinkedIn. So why do I want to focus on those two topics today? Well, a couple of weeks ago, Eric and I decided to focus on one of our specialized trainings inside ASM. So we did this training. We do that a couple of times every month for ASM members. The topic that we focused on was how to create an engaging Facebook group that nurtures your audience, and the discussion was awesome. The participation was awesome. We invited Alex Edwards from our team to lead the discussion.
If you’re already a member of our Facebook group, and if you’re not, it’s called How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline. You’re already familiar with Alex’s handiwork because she manages our group. It was super helpful training, and it sparked a bunch of other questions, as any good training session does. And then, so switching gears, and coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago, Laurie Hy-Vee, founder of Keystone Click, joined us for one of our open mic Q and sessions on Wednesdays and shared best practices for how you can rock your LinkedIn profile, the content we should all be creating, and then how best to connect with our right fit prospects, a Q and a was beyond awesome.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Mandy McEwen Introduction
And the number of questions from everybody in the room was off the charts. Okay. So now, let’s fast forward. I then got introduced to Mandy McEwen, our special guest expert, today, and we’re having a call. So she and I had this kind of introductory call the other day and got to know each other with the typical. What do you do? Oh, what do you do all that? So I’m just, you’re seeing, so that could really be helpful. Then she mentioned the Facebook group that she built and then dropped the bomb. Number one, when she said there are over 11,000 agency owners inside the group, like holy bananas. Yeah. Our Onward Nation audience is going to want to know how you did that. Would you be willing to share? And she said, yes, but that’s actually not what I’m really excited about and what my team and I are crushing now.
And I’m like, okay. And sorta my intrigued tone in my voice, what’s that? She said, we’re helping the sales team use tools like LinkedIn sales navigator defining connect with their best prospects. And they’re crushing it. Yeah. So Onward that was bombed number two. And I thought, holy bananas. Yes. Yes, yes. And yes, I want our audience to know all of that from you. Would you be willing to share so onward buckle in Mandy and I were going to cover both, and yeah, we may meander back and forth between the two topics, but there’s no doubt you’re going to walk away with several big golden nuggets. That’s kind of contradictory.
There are big golden nuggets that you can take and apply to your business. So, without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Mandy.
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.
I’m very excited to have you here. So before we dive in with what I’m sure is going to feel like a barrage of questions coming your way, Mandy, actually take us behind the curtain and give us maybe two or three minutes. It gives us some context about your path and journey beyond the bio, and then we’ll dive in. Sure.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: From Affiliate Marketer to SEO Guru
So, I started my agency Modgirl Marketing in 2010 in Kansas City. I’m from Kansas originally. I was an affiliate marketer playing around dabbling with some online marketing on the side when I had a full-time sales job and then discovered how much I loved online marketing, self-taught HTML websites, SEO, all of the things and realized I couldn’t really make a living selling $10 dog treats online. So thought maybe I should help business owners with my newfound online marketing skills since I was talking to them at my sales job. And that’s kind of how modgirl came about. I already have a lot of skills in web design and SEO blogging.
This was way back in 2007 when I started, and then 2010 rolled around, and I created Martin Girls and started getting clients just for the Kansas City local business area. My first client actually was a cold email that I sent to a bunch of chiropractors and Overland Park, which is where I lived. They were on the second and third pages of Google, and I emailed them all. And I said, Hey, you’re not on page one in Google. I can get you on page one in Google. All you have to do is pay me $500. When I get you in the top three spots, it’s free. And then you just paid me 500 bucks when I gave to the top three. And that’s it. Holy buckets. And that’s how I got my first client. Yeah. So he was awesome.
This younger chiropractor in Overland Park hired me, and then I got another one, and then that one needed a website, and then I got a roofer, and then they needed a website, and then they had friends, and then it just blew up. Right? The Kansas City community is amazing. And so supportive and close and tight-knit. So it was a lot of word of mouth just went around, and before I knew it, I had a business, and I was like, oh crap. I think I have something here. Like, I think I might need to quit my job and start something here. So that’s really how Modgirl was born, is an SEO agency with free SEO in the beginning. Then I started charging people $500, and they would charge $500 for a WordPress website, which was ridiculous. Before I knew it, I had my own web design company and SEO company.
And this was back in the day when you didn’t need social media per se. You know, like it was nice to have, but you didn’t really need it. You could get away with just doing SEO, and then that quickly changed, as you know, so then we kind of, I’ve kind of molded into a full-service agency, and I’m the type of entrepreneur that I’m extremely add. And I want to know, and I want to do everything, which is why, like, when you and I were talking, you were like, wait, what? Now you’re doing the. Do you know what I mean? I have a lot of expert knowledge and a lot of things digital. Okay. Now, finally, all these years later, I’m really hyper-focused on what I’m doing now, but that hasn’t always been the place case. So we were full service. My first hire was on fiber.com.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: From Solo to Full Team
I realized that I couldn’t do all of this myself. And it was when fiber first came out. You know, when the glorious days when it was not as crazy as it is now, we could still get some good stuff on fiber, but it’s gonna take a while to weed through some of them, you know? So, my first hire, she ended up becoming a full-time employee. Actually, this was five, or yeah, she worked here, and another writer worked with me for four years. They were the first hires I ever made there from fiber. So we kind of molded into this full-service agency. I started ranking in Google at the top of Google for white-label online marketing, which got me working with bigger agencies because SEO was my jam. I met these guys in Kansas City who were one of my clients, and they did white label and mobile marketing. And I didn’t even know what the hell white label was.
I was like, what are you, what is this? Like, what is white label? And they had to explain it to me. Oh, well, we’re doing stuff for companies, but we’re behind the scenes, you know? So you can resell your SEO services to other big agencies, and their clients won’t even know you exist, but you still make good money. And I’m like, okay, awesome. You know, so that’s actually how I got, I think, accelerated so quickly is because I was partnering with these bigger agencies, and I was really, really good at what I did SEO and blogging, SEO, friendly, blogging, content marketing, and all things SEO. And then once I started doing that, I started getting a taste for how agencies work, bigger agencies kind of behind the scenes stuff and mentors that were just hiring me, but also like kind of taking me under her wings and showing me how this works, which was incredible.
And then I started getting agencies to hit me up because if we were, of course, ranking number one for white label, online marketing. So I started doing all these agencies coming out of the woodwork. Can you help me? This isn’t asking me questions. And so I started just helping them out of the kindness of my heart. Cause I like helping people and I would give them tips on how to get clients. And they were like, those LinkedIn tips you gave me, like, I just use them. And I landed 15 calls in one week, and you got something here. I’m like, okay, well, maybe I should have courses, but I was like 15. That’s a lot. I was like, but awesome, good job. Good job. Cause I was surprised they actually did. You know what I mean? I told them at work, but then when they executed, I was surprised. Like, while you executed every day exactly what I told you, that’s awesome.
And it works, you know? So that, I think that was the more of the surprise, like, oh, you did it. So then this whole time, we’ve been having clients, local clients, and national clients, doing all the things full service. Then I got into coaching agencies, making courses, programs, LinkedIn courses, growth courses, white labels, how to hire people, and all of the things. Then I had a Facebook group, and I still have a Facebook group, but I mean, I watched the Facebook group, a company with the courses, et cetera. And I kind of made a name for myself as an agency coach in the space. So Jason Swenk and Carl Steak have all the OGE agency coaches out there befriended them and are still friends with them and collaborated with them.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Transitioning from Courses to LinkedIn Mastery
They came on my Facebook lives and my Facebook group, et cetera, and then fast forward. So, right before the pandemic hit, and so this was the end of 2019. I decided that I kind of wanted to focus more on the agency side of things. I was kind of getting burnt out with the course world, doing webinars nonstop, and liking the really hype-y sales on the webinars. But wait, there’s more like it was just a bit much, and so I was a lot of the revenue that was launched. It was launch revenue. So we make a lot of money, and then you wouldn’t, and then you’d have to have these automated webinar funnels. And then it was just a lot, right? All the automation, all of the little tiny things that go into that, the conversion rates, et cetera.
And I was like, I’m over it. You know? So I still have those things that are not launching them, though. And so then we pivoted to what I have kind of made a name for myself over the years as the LinkedIn Girl LinkedIn’s own marketing team has collaborated with me. I’ve been in their in-person events, hosted their webinars, a been on their blogs, et cetera. Because I’ve been using LinkedIn for a while, I took a course on it that was super successful back in 2017. And that kind of molded into a massive need right now. And B2B marketing that is not being filled. And I think we can fill it. And I think we should focus here. There are a million SEOs out there. I know SEO back of my hand, I’ve been doing it for so long. There are a million social media just general marketers out there, but there are not a lot of people who really, really really know the ins and outs of LinkedIn and can work with corporate teams and empower them and train them on exactly what they need and give them what they need to completely dominate on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy — You know, there are just not as many people doing that, and we were really good at it. And so that’s what we do now. So, we launched our brand. Luminetics is not meant to confuse anyone with Mod Girl Marketing. So Modgirl is like the umbrella company where we develop holistic digital marketing strategies for technology companies. So we still do full service, but it’s a strategy, not actually execution. So we’ll go in and we’ll take a look at the big picture analytics website, UX data, all of it, content, everything. We’ll put together a really robust strategy and advise and consult technology companies on that front. And then we have really amazing LinkedIn training programs and strategies for SDRs and BDRs. So, sales development reps, business owner reps, and technology teams, and content marketers.
And we basically just empower them and give them everything they could possibly need to kick ass on LinkedIn.
Okay. I want to make sure that I didn’t miss this in my notes. Lumenetics is the LinkedIn piece.
That’s the LinkedIn brand that we got it.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Unlocking LinkedIn’s Potential
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy — So there are so many things that we’re going to cover here, but just when you mentioned SDRs and BDRs, let’s say that a technology firm comes to you and says, Hey Mandy, this, this is really great, but we want to add more SDRs and BDRs. Can you be helpful there, too? Like helping them recruit teammates so they can actually implement the smarts that you share with them.
Yeah, we can. And we’ve actually helped on the LinkedIn front on how to do that and position it because the cool thing is with what we do. Like these, these companies that are investing in our programs, they’re investing in their people because they’re essentially giving them a personal brand, right? We’re building up and teaching these reps these skills that they will have for the remainder of their careers. Right. So we’re building their personal brands. So it’s a really great value to add for hiring. Like we, you guys need to work that in there, like that’s gonna make you guys stand out when these people are looking for jobs, you know? And so we help them kind of with that and then how to better leverage LinkedIn a little bit, not a ton.
Okay. So we’re going to, so onward nation, we’re going to spend most of our time in the LinkedIn piece, like, for example, one of Mandy’s LinkedIn lives yesterday that, that I was watching his studying and getting ready for our conversation. There were so many golden nuggets around. I’ll just kind of go to the high level, and then we’ll break it down. Essentially, what is the algorithm on LinkedIn? Like what doesn’t, what, what it doesn’t like, and how to avoid that. So we’re going to come back to that in a second. So we’re just going to put a pin in that for a minute. And first, let’s go back to the Facebook group because I’m sure when you said Mandy, that there were a lot 7,000 people in the group, a lot of eyes got really big, and like how in the world did she do that?
So, are there a couple of highlights that you might share on what either worked well or didn’t for that?
Yes, definitely. So, I’m actually going to pull up so I can give you the exact number of members we have. So my Facebook group, for those of you who are curious, is called mod agency insiders, and it has 11,300 plus members in it. I started it, and this is my pin. It is on February 16th, 2017. Okay. So it’s aged a bit, which is why we have a little bit of those numbers. However, you can easily grow 11,000 members in less than 12 months if you’re really serious about it. There are lots of people that I know who’ve done that. So how I grew it, mind you, is that I already had a decent-sized email list of marketers and agencies because of what I’ve been doing.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Leveraging Your Network
I’ve been doing this as 1,010. I have lots of lead magnets and stuff. And so I already had a community and following, right? I already had a decent following on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So what I did was put it in my email list, and I leveraged all of that and my other agency friends. And so the key here for you guys is to leverage. The word leverage is probably the number one, the best word here. You want to leverage everyone that has your people. So, I obviously launched the Facebook group via my email list and all my other social media channels. And also via my friends who have agencies in their communities, right?
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy — So, they already had Facebook groups. So, Hey, can you know if I can come live and announce my new Facebook group and give your peep some tips? And so it’s like, how do I leverage what I’ve already built up over the years? Cause at this point, I launched it in; what did I just say? 2017, I would have said 20 17, 20 17. So I’d been doing this for seven years, so it’s not like I just started yesterday. So, I leveraged all of that and all of my connections to launch my Facebook group. I also had a decent Facebook page on Modgirl with 11,000 likes or something, so you can easily sync those up. And now, there’s a new thing that Facebook just came out with, which is that you can literally sync up your Facebook business page with your Facebook group.
And so that way, every time someone likes slash follows your Facebook business page, it’s going to ask them automatically if they want to join your Facebook group, which is pretty cool; that’s a new feature. So I highly recommend everyone go in there and do that. You should be able to see it. I don’t have it in front of me to give you step-by-step details. But when you go into your Facebook business page and hit edit and look around, you should see where you can sync it up, and then you can select that option. So that’s a great way to grow your another way, great rate and grow it. Right. And then I literally had it called action and everything: my email signature, all my other social media channels, my profiles, my Facebook group, and my face for correction.
It was constantly the main call to action to join the Facebook group everywhere, you know? So, I just leveraged it like crazy. And even in our lead magnets, right? So we would have lead magnets for agencies and at the call to action at the end, of course, buy a course, but join our Facebook group, join our Facebook group. You know, so it was just a very heavy emphasis on this is what we gotta do. We gotta grow this Facebook group, you know? And so that’s, I would say leverage is the biggest thing, though, for anyone the fastest way to grow a Facebook group is to make friends with people who have your audience and ask if you can go on Facebook lives with them asking, you can collaborate on content pieces with them, ask if you can do an email blast get a value about you.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Organic Growth, Organic Results
You don’t want to pitch anything at all, right? You want to come to them with, Hey, I have this awesome XYZ resource. I think your audience would really find value in it. What do you think about this? You know, and it’s really just making friends with those people. And then I was on Facebook lives all the time. I was going in other people’s groups all the time and giving value. Like, I am here, and then people would say, wow, this girl’s awesome. I’m going to join her group. You know? So that’s the fastest way for anyone to do it. If you’re, if you’re trying to do it alone. And just internally, you have a long road ahead of you. You have to leverage other people’s networks. Yeah.
So smart. Okay. So I know our listeners are going to be thinking, wow, okay. That’s a really great organic way of growing the business. Excuse me. Growing the Facebook group, love the keyword leverage super smart. The hooking of the business page to the Facebook group. Super smart. I didn’t know that, that’s a big golden nugget. So, the call to action is everywhere, including joining the group. So I’m sure our listeners think, okay, so she built the group. Was that actually good for her business? So take us down that path, and then we’ll switch over.
For sure. Definitely. And you mentioned having the main keyword in the title; it was good. So, when I launched this, there weren’t a ton of agencies or Facebook groups out there, and Facebook groups were all the rage. And so when you have the main keyword, and people are looking and perusing, like I’m going to show up as other groups you might be interested in because I have the word agency immigrant, right? So it’s like, timing is a lot of this too, like just luck of the draw, kind of with timing and stuff as well. But yes, it was. So at the time I was very, I’ve had an agency with my clients this entire time. Right. I’ve never stopped having clients for whom we’re providing services on the agency front. With that said, there was a period of time where I spent more of my personal time and my focus on growing my products and my products.
I mean, my courses, my memberships, my et cetera. And that Facebook group, all my revenue came from that. So I had a six-figure course business, 100% for my Facebook group and 100% organic. I leveraged ads a little bit, but here’s the thing. When I would leverage ads, it was marketing to the people in my Facebook group, like it was basically retargeting. I never really leveraged ads to get new people in front of my products. It was just when I would launch that I’d have a big launch for my remote agency society membership. Right. I would throw up some Facebook ads, but it was just targeting people who were already on my list or my Facebook group. Right. So it was purely organic six-figure course business, all for my group.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Decoding the LinkedIn Algorithm
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: So, when I launched my Facebook group, I would have these whole launch weeks where I would go live, and I would give loads of value. And then the last life I would do on, like, a Thursday or whatever, was the call to action to sign up for whatever it was that I was selling at the time, whatever program or course that I had. So it, what it, 100% was the only reason I was able to have a successful course in business
That is awesome. Okay. Thank you very much for your generosity and for taking us behind the curtain. That’s really good. Okay. So, let’s switch gears to LinkedIn because there’s so much to cover. And I’m just shifting my notes around. So yesterday when, when you first went, I think this is actually a really cool behind-the-scenes piece to you record and put out so much video content that is super, super helpful, but Onward Nation she’s doing that, or Mandy is doing that in LinkedIn live first. I think if I’ve understood the process correctly, that’s like forcing some discipline, right? To do that in life, but then it gives you a ton of video content that you can slice and dice.
It might help understand the process.
Exactly. Right?
Yep. Yeah. That is awesome. So yesterday’s topic was under the sort of overarching umbrella of some updates. Everybody that you need to be aware of is going to be taking part on LinkedIn. And then there were a lot of valuable chunks. The one that I’m keying in on right now is about the algorithm. So, first, just give us the basics of the algorithm and what controls it. I think our listeners are certainly aware of what algorithms do because it’s a popular topic, but then we’ll get into the do’s and don’ts. But why are you studying that one so much? I guess let’s start there first.
How, why, and what is LinkedIn marketing strategy algorithm? So we are big on, obviously. I haven’t really talked a whole lot about this since we’ve been chatting, but I am really big on humanizing brands and humanizing companies. And the best way to do that is by leveraging the human beings in your organization to post valuable content. So it’s not corporatized content where it’s just like clicking here and downloading our white paper, join our webinar, or just linking the blog posts that have zero personalization or human elements at all. You know, so with that said, everything comes back. If you’re going to humanize a brand, it has to have content like that; the only way to do it really is to have valuable content. And so with valuable content, you have to know how the algorithm works because if you guys are putting out valuable content, you want to ensure you have maximum eyeballs in that content.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Cracking the Code
Otherwise, it’s kind of pointless I mean, it’s not pointless, but it’s not nearly as impactful. You could still randomly post here and there just to look good for the sake of posting, just to have it from a brand perspective, which is fine. If you’re not spending hardly any time doing it, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re actually spending time and you want your content to have an impact, impact, revenue impact and thought leadership impact on the value that you’re providing to your community, then you need to know how this dang algorithm works. And that’s why we put so much emphasis on it. And this is why I train teams, marketing teams, and sales teams on how to best leverage content to win over the algorithm.
That kind of answers your question about why it’s important. We want to make sure that your content gets maximum eyeballs. If you know how the algorithm works, you can tailor everything you do to maximize your chances of having people see your content.
Much more eloquent answer for my fumbled question. So thank you for cleaning that up, but Onward, the reason why I wanted a Mandy to walk us through there, that piece first, and now we’re going to go into deeper of the do’s and the don’ts is because it’s not about trying to fake the system. It’s not about white hat or black hat tactics. Like if you are thinking about SEO, it’s not about gaming something, right. Your description there was all about being helpful to your community with things that are helpful to them, right?
Yep. Yeah.
So when I went through your video, and you talked about what does, like, let me give these three back to you and see if I was tracking correctly. And I’m sure there will be a whole bunch of contexts here that you can add. I think that the three that I walked away with were it’s really important to develop personal connections, both with yes, first degrees and people in messenger in the inbox. Second is ensuring that it’s interest-relevant, like keywords, hashtags, and so forth around your content. And third is engagement probability in that first hour being key. We could probably have three episodes just on those three points.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Building Meaningful Connections
Let’s start slicing those apart because I know they’re big and meaty. So when you say personal connections, give us some, give us your point of view around that. Give us some additional context.
Yeah. So, personal connections are a couple of big ones here that LinkedIn looks at your colleagues. So, anyone who has on their profile that they worked for the same company that you work for, you guys are going to be seeing each other’s stuff all the time. Okay. That’s how LinkedIn works. People that you are communicating with in your inbox they’re to see your stuff more. So if you’re having ongoing conversations with a handful of people or lots of people, those people are going to see your posts more than your other peeps people who are engaging with you consistently. So, people who consistently post or comment on your LinkedIn posts are going to see your stuff more than anyone else.
That’s kind of how Facebook works do it’s similar regard. So that’s kind of what it means by personal connections. With that said, they are placing a bigger emphasis on just all-around first-degree connections. So if you get more first-degree connections, leaving comments on your posts versus someone who has a bunch of second and third-degree connections, leaving comments on their posts, LinkedIn’s algorithm is going to say that your post is more relevant and they’re going to give more weight to yours.
Yeah. Okay. I didn’t, I did not know that. I just assumed that every comment was weighted the same, but you’re saying no.
I agree. Connections are more valuable. I don’t know the degree of how much; I don’t know if it’s even possible to know that without asking LinkedIn.
Right,
Exactly. But they, they do, and this was just recent, like in the last year or so, they came out and said that there is a bigger emphasis being put on interactions from first degree connections. So this is also encouragement for people to build those connections. You know, like, I’m a huge fan of sending connect, custom connection requests with anyone who is a valuable business professional that you feel like you could have some sort of win-win relationship with. It doesn’t have to be a prospect of the customer. Doesn’t have to be prospect of partner, literally a business professional. That’s doing awesome things in the world, and they could refer you business or whatever, even just interacting, you know? So pay attention to that.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Unlocking LinkedIn Success
You know, it’s not just about followers. If you switch your LinkedIn to create or mode where you get followers now, instead of connections, you can still get both, but you know, the follow buttons more prominent now than that connect button, but it’s still very, very important for you guys to be reaching out to people and sending those custom connection requests. So don’t wait for people to do that. For example, if you see people commenting on your stuff consistently, or even a couple of times, and you’re not connected with them, send them a connection request, and it’s going to help.
Makes sense. Okay. So, did I understand you correctly in yesterday’s video, by the way, if you haven’t checked out a Mandy on YouTube, you totally should because she’s got a great library of super helpful videos, but, or I should say, and did I understand correctly about there’s a Midwest or Wisconsin accent again anyway, so little green room chat there an Onward Nation? We were talking about accents beforehand, but actually going back and forth with people inside your inbox. Does that somehow tie into the algorithm and people seeing your content? Yeah,
It does. Yeah. The more conversations you have in your inbox, the more people will see your content. So, if you and I chat on LinkedIn Messenger, you’ll see my content, especially that week. If we’re chatting that week, every single time I make a post, it’s going to show up for you. Amazing. Okay. All right.
A lot of times.
But that’s, so that’s a great encouragement for people to be having conversations in the inbox 100%. Right. And, okay, so now let’s take that to the SDRs and BDRs. So presumably they’re having a lot of conversations potentially with prospects inside those inboxes. So is that then helping their company as a whole, what they might be putting out on company profile. So, so does that help the visibility of those posts?
Not the company if the individual is sharing the company posts. Yes, but it doesn’t they would have to be following the company the actual company page to be able to get so not directly, but if the SDR and BDR that they’re sharing that, which most of them are, and we train them on how to do that. But yeah, it’s 100% I’ll be in the company because they’re seeing the company content.
Part. So then your second point, and I kind of jumbled this together, my notes. So, hopefully, you can parse this out a little bit. What I wrote really quickly in my notes was, yes, your interests, relevant keywords, and hashtags. So, tell us a little bit more about your strategy around that second piece.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Leveraging Keywords and Hashtags for Engagement
Yeah. So, as an SEO nerd, obviously, I’m all about keywords, right? And figuring out what people are typing in. So, you can use LinkedIn as a search engine. It’s just like Google; it’ll tell you related searches, just like Google tells you related searches. So you type in a keyword at the top of LinkedIn, you scroll all the way down to the bottom. It’s going to show you, these are the types of phrases related to that keyword that people are typing in. You know, so you can do your own LinkedIn keyword research, and you can also use Google keyword research with LinkedIn because, at the end of the day, hot topics are going to be searched for on any network, right? Any platform you can Google, YouTube, whatever. So it’s kind of one in the same when it comes to like topics; people are more likely to type in than others.
However, LinkedIn search is number one, right? So you want to ensure your topics are relevant to people, right? And then you can just do the same thing for hashtags. So it’s going to show you how many hashtags, how many people are following certain hashtags. So, the key here is to use between three and five hashtags. I like to use three and five hashtags. That’s kind of the sweet spot. I feel like everyone has their own kind of personal preference there, but that, to me, it’s enough, and it flies under the spam radars, and it doesn’t look spammy, you know? And then it’s just like the words, the algorithms looking at just the phrases and stuff that you’re using and how relevant that is to your audience. You know? So your audience likes it, and they know what our audience likes.
We don’t, right? So the audience knows that our audience has been liking and commenting on certain stuff like that. And so they’re going to take that into consideration. Is this something that your followers typically engage with? Know that’s kind of that, and they find that from scanning the keywords and hashtags used.
Okay. Like that very much. So I can put the SEO hat on you cause I know you have a depth of expertise there. So does that mean that I should be going to like Moz or SEMrush and actually doing keyword research when I write a LinkedIn post or, or does the research that I might find there because, you know, the daily searches or monthly searches on Google is not really relevant within LinkedIn or is there some sort of corollary,
There is a correlation, but it’s more about like the broad topics, and it is the specific keywords. So when we’re talking about, I say that it depends, right? So I know you shouldn’t, don’t wait, don’t spend time doing that for every single post. That’s kind of not the best use of your time, right? At the end of the day, like you want to discuss topics that like you feel passionate about that are going to help people. And I don’t want you to get caught up in SEO nonsense, but we always have a really large SEO research document for every client. So people know these are the topics that are most searched for on LinkedIn. These are the keywords, and I’m not saying you got to use those keywords in every single post, but it will help you even with topic ideas. The same goes for MAs or Google-related searches; it’s still going to give you those topic ideas that people are interested in, especially the question ones and the longer tail keywords that people type in that will really give you those great ideas for content topics.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Crafting Effective Profile Keywords and Content Topics
I am more specific on the exact phrasing of keywords in your profile, more so than in your content and the content. I’m just talking about it more broadly. Like if it’s a phrase, maybe you’re using like a word here and a word here from the phrase; it’s the same topic, but I’m not saying you have to use these exact phrases as you do on a page on your website. You know, like the title has to be this exact phrase, but that’s not necessarily the case. I’m talking about like making content. You can do that, but it’s time-consuming, I don’t think it’s necessarily the best plan of action. So, I’m talking about it more from a topic perspective, as these are what people are typing in. These are the questions we are asking, and this is what we can talk about.
Okay. So let me, let me hook that into the example or one of the many examples that were in your video yesterday here, again, to make sure that I’m tracking with you because you were talking about, like, let’s say you have a piece of content, a blog piece of content let’s say, or a blog post, excuse me, for example, and then how you could take and slice and dice that into them. Maybe a longer form post on LinkedIn. So, let’s say that one of our listeners or some of our listeners have a blog post that ranked pretty well on Google. So we know that there’s some interest in that content and maybe not just ranking, but there was also garnering some traffic and so forth. So maybe taking that as, okay, there’s some interest in this content is helpful.
Google likes it, and it ranked well. Now, I’m going to take it and slice and dice it. I’m going to use it as long-form LinkedIn posts, not linking back to the post off the platform but putting that content into the LinkedIn platform. What do you think? Give us a litmus test. Like, is that, is that what you’re suggesting?
It is. Yeah. And so there’s a couple of different angles here that I want to talk about. Do not confuse people here. LinkedIn articles are okay. They are good for reposting blogs with a link back to the original blog for SEO juice to the blog. And also because it’s evergreen content that shows up at the top, right? But it’s not good for getting loads of views on LinkedIn. Okay. So you guys are more than LinkedIn; it just doesn’t favor articles anymore. They used to put a really heavy emphasis on articles. For some reason, the algorithm has changed; they don’t have articles that perform well on LinkedIn anymore. However, they are good for keeping that evergreen content up there because you have sections where you’re like Mandy’s post-Mandy’s articles.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Maximizing LinkedIn Engagement
Mandy has an activity. So, if you’re not, most people don’t post many articles. So it will stay prominent in that section of your profile, which is good for certain things, but for SEO purposes and branding, it’s fine with what you said. I prefer that way. I’ll talk about that now. So here’s how I like to repurpose blog posts and how I train teams to do this. Especially the sales reps, because they don’t want to be. They’re not marketers, so they don’t want to be coming up with these loads of original content themselves. So it’s a really easy way for them to post content that looks like original content from them, but it’s really from the blog. So what you do is you go to your company’s blog posts, and you take an image that you like; you don’t have to, though, if there’s an image that is valuable, a statistic or a graph or a screenshot of your platform, whatever it is by all means, use it.
If there’s no image, then don’t worry about it. You don’t have to have an image. It’s fine. It could be text only. And then what you want to do is you want to use the same type of headline, but maybe frame it in a way that’s a little bit more interactive for social, but you can use the same type of blog title if it’s it. Especially if it’s catchy, here are the top seven ways to XYZ or whatever it is. Here are three tips for doing ABC. Those are all good, like blog titles that you could use for the hook. The hook is the very first sentence in your LinkedIn post. So, make it catchy. And then you just want to summarize it in a much shorter version. So take out a couple of sentences and the very beginning of the posts, and then you want to put it into bullet points or your top one to three points from that.
You can use emojis; you can use little arrows just to break it up and space it out that way. It’s easier to read than after that. So that’s like your meat, right? Those three little nuggets, if you will, then after, tie in with how your company relates to that. So you just gave them tips on how they can solve this problem and then tie into, by the way, our company also solves this problem for you by doing what I just told you that you need to do yourself, but we can actually do it for you. You know, then you can have a CTA, a call to action. In the end, it says to click the link in the comments to schedule your time, go through your interactive demo, schedule a time to talk or send me a message on LinkedIn to learn more.
It does; it can be whatever you want it to be. You know, you can even send them to a page on your website. It doesn’t matter, but if you want to say anything, click the link in the comments to XYZ, learn more about the schedule, demo, schedule calls, send me a message, whatever it is. And then that’s when you can link to wherever you want. So, there’s still a call to action. You’re still kind of telling people, this is what I do; this how I can help you, but it’s value, value, value. You’re going to get way more views because you’re not linking to anything. That was one of the things we haven’t done yet, right? It is like an algorithm. Doesn’t like when you’re linking to third-party websites. So, you’re still taking that same exact blog content that you or your team already spent time doing. And you’re repurposing it in a way that will get way more eyeballs if you just share the link directly on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Boosting LinkedIn Engagement
Oh, that’s so awesome. Really, really awesome. In the SEO world, we have to worry—maybe not so much today, but we used to worry a lot about duplicative content. So, let’s say somebody has a team of three SDRs and four BDRs. Do we have to worry that they might post that same content on their respective profiles? Does that matter at all in the LinkedIn universe?
Is it because they’re all doing it slightly differently anyway? Because this is more of a process for telling people to do, the chances of them copying and pasting the exact same bang are slim to none. You know? And even if it is, I don’t think you’re going to get deemed as much for duplicate content like LinkedIn. However, I think there are filters that will show up. If they’re noticing a lot of people are posting the exact same thing over and over again, that is going to raise some sort of flag. But with what we’re talking about regards we’re talking about, no, it’s not gonna matter.
It’s amazing. So you see what I mean? Onward Nation golden nuggets galore, whole lead bananas. Okay. So then there’s the engagement probability. You were talking about how the first hour is really key, and then you gave some tips about leveraging colleagues and then maybe some pods or something like that. So, give us some more context there if you would.
For sure. Yeah. So, the third thing that the algorithm looks at is engagement probability, which is basically whether you are getting engagement and what the probability is that you’re going to get more engagement if we keep showing this to your followers. And so they’re looking at things like quick likes, quick comments, and quick means within the first hour, which is key. So what you can do, if you want to ensure this is working in your favor, are a couple of things. One every time you have a post that you really want to get maximum eyeballs on, send a text message to a friend, whatever. And if you have Slack, Microsoft Teams, or whatever platform you guys use internally on your work colleagues, send them a message to ask them to leave a comment.
And like it’s really simple. So I’ll get into pods here in a second, but I don’t encourage you to do this and annoy people on every single post. Don’t do that. You’re not going to make friends that way. Your colleagues might be annoyed, but if you have something that you like, I really want to get maximum eyeballs on this. You can do it even once a week or something; that’s fine. You know, a couple of times a month, whatever. This is a really good way to just shoot over a text message and email a Slack message, whatever, to people who actively use LinkedIn. I mean, it’s not really relevant if you know you’re talking to someone who hasn’t logged into LinkedIn in six months, right? So, you only have those people you know who are using LinkedIn. So that’s the easiest way. You don’t have to be a part of any pods or anything. It’s just asking people to comment, which is super simple.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Leveraging Pods for Quick Likes and Comments
Most people like you and value you and are going to do it. If you ask them to do it right, the second way that you can do this on every single post is by joining a pod. They have these pods for every single social media network: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. What this is essentially is a group of people who are active on LinkedIn and get together. Every time someone makes a post, it goes up, and a community, whatever platform you use, could even be a LinkedIn message thread. And then everyone in that goes and likes and comments on it immediately. So typically, like I’m in a pod where we do, I only do it on Mondays and Wednesdays. And it’s 9:00 AM.
And so you have 15 minutes to post and then 15 minutes after that to like, or I don’t know what it is actually, it’s one of my girls does it. You have 50 minutes. Suppose I know I’m so horrible. Like I’m not the one post. And then I don’t know how long you have to comment, but they encourage you to comment rather quickly, right? Within that hour, like 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM Pacific, you need to comment on people’s stuff, but you only have 15 minutes to post. I put that 15-minute window like you’re, you’re done. If you didn’t get your cutoff, that’s how it works. Right. And it’s a really well put-together, like a professional pod; you can make your own. We had the mod pod, is what we called it. We just shut it down last week, actually.
And it was a Trello, it was a Trello board. Some of our Facebook group members, my remote agency, and society members were active on LinkedIn. We just got a Trello board going, and we had our own mod pod. And so every time we had a post, we’d go in there and leave it. And so I know what an app is. I’ve been in one that uses WhatsApp for a pod Slack. I mean, literally whatever method is easier for you and you can do, or you could literally just do, I’ve been in ones where it’s just as simple as a LinkedIn message thread with ten people. And every time you have a post, you put the link and the order in there, like you just look at the order, okay? I have to go back up; it’s Monday morning. I see, I have five people above me. I have to go and like and comment on their stuff. If I’m going to get likes on mine, you know what I mean?
So it’s like the law of reciprocation here. Like you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, but it’s a very methodical way of doing it, you know?
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Boosting LinkedIn Engagement
Well, let me give you a scenario here. And I, and I know that we’re quickly running out of time, but so grateful for your generosity. What if somebody has an engaged email list like you had or had when your Facebook group, and that was something that you leveraged? Awesome. So, let’s say that somebody wants to get really great about the engagement probability piece. So, they make a post; they send a broadcast email to their email list with a link to the direct post or a direct link to the post. Excuse me. Yeah. Is that something that you would say, like, would that even,
Yeah, yeah. That would 100% work. Yes. It’s funny you say that because I used to do that on Facebook, on my Facebook group on my lists. So if I had, it’s the same thing on Facebook and LinkedIn; it’s literally like everything I’m telling you about, like the engagement in the comments and the strategies. You can literally take the same bang and apply it on Facebook, it’s the same thing.
Okay. Wait, wait a minute. Let me, let me make sure I’m tracking with you here because I’d never thought of that until you just said that. So, are you saying that you could do the same thing, so you basically build and tag all your Facebook members inside your email list to the best of your ability to figure that out? When you post something to the group that you think would be valuable to them, you send them an email with a direct link to the post.
Let me back up: you can build an email list of your Facebook group members, and here’s how to do that. Okay. So when creating your Facebook group, it asks certain questions, and you want to filter people, right? You want an application essentially to join your group. If you just don’t want a free one, then you’re going to get spammers. Galore seems to be really careful about who you add in. So, you have these application questions: Why do you want to join this group? Whatever, make it easy for people. Our rules are super simple, and it’s just like, do you agree with them? Here’s our rules. You can’t span, you can’t post external links. You can’t do this and this. Yes. You know? The last question isn’t really a question, but how Facebook works is that you’re supposed to ask a question.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: Insider Tactics for Explosive Growth
They can fill it out in the form. So instead, we say, get your free lead magnet. I need to go and see what it is. it’s a call to action for a lead magnet. Right? So, as a thank you for joining our Facebook group, here are the top seven ways to start getting leads immediately from email marketing. Brilliant, check it out here. And it’s a URL. And we literally say, copy and paste this URL in. And it’s the only URL we use for the Facebook group members. So then they go, and they do that. They’re now on our list. And now I know 100% of them came from the Facebook group. Now, we have an engaged, active list, including an email list of Facebook-only members.
So that’s how you do that. Okay.
That’s smart. Oh, that’s amazing. Right. That’s how I got all these people in my funnel to begin with. Is that right? Then, we would sell them on the back end. So, going back to what you said, this is what we would do. If I had a launch that I knew I wanted loads of engagement on because I wasn’t, I was, I’ve never been in any Facebook pods, just so everyone is aware. I’ve only been in LinkedIn bonds. I’ve never, ever been in any sort of Facebook pod. So, literally, what I would do was all 100% organic. So, if I had a post that was important to me, let’s say it was a video clip, and it was super valuable, and I’m getting ready to launch something. So, I only did this around launch time. I would send a valuable email to my list of Facebook group members and mod agency insiders.
It was we use an active campaign. So it’s all segmented out mod agency insiders Facebook group members send any mail to them, have some value in it, hype it up, what we’re doing. And then, I would send them to the link. And then that link would have them comment, comments I’m in if you want to get XYZ. Okay. So, are you following here? This is, I’m totally going off into a different, which is now 100% Facebook, not LinkedIn; by the way, it is a hundred percent Facebook tactic. So the key with Facebook is that it’s a little bit more hype-y than LinkedIn for engagement because you want to say things like you want to get people to engage in comments. And the way you do that is by telling them to comment on something.
And then you give them something of value. So you can send them a message privately. So you hype something up. And then you’re like, I just released this X, Y, Z. And I’m going to give it to anyone who comments. I want this below. I’m going to send it to you on Facebook Messenger. You know? So that’s how you get people to comment like crazy on your Facebook group posts. And then you can send that in an email, and you hype it up, and you’re like, I just, I’m getting ready to launch XYZ. But as a teaser, I will give you one chapter of this. I announced it in my Facebook group, so click the link to grab it. And so you literally send them a link in the email. It takes them to the exact post in the Facebook group. And that post is hyping it up again, giving them value.
And then it says, if you want this now, comment below: I want it.
And we’ll get it.
And then all, and then you just have loads, hundreds of people commenting. I want it, I want it. I want it. And you get them all excited, and then it just goes viral. And it’s just cause every single time you get a comment, it starts blowing up. So that’s how you, yeah. That’s how you really blow up a Facebook group.
Ridiculous.
LinkedIn Marketing Strategy: A Blueprint for Success
It’s a lot of work that you need virtual assistants. If you’re going to do this, don’t do it by yourself. You’ve got to have virtual assistants helping you manage this because it can get out of control really crazy,
But okay. And I can’t wait to. As soon as you and I finish our interview, I’m scheduling some time for Monday morning with Alex on our team, who runs our Facebook group. And we’re doing that as part of an event launch and so forth. So I think that’s a brilliant strategy. When you want more people in the group to be able to see that you’ve got something valuable that is going on like maybe it’s a launch, or maybe it’s a live event or something that they’re going to find super helpful. It’s a great way to add additional visibility to it. Brill yet
If you liked it. Yeah. It only popped into my mind because you asked me the question about Facebook. I’m like, oh, I have more.
In my notes with highlights right there. No joke.
That’s awesome. You should, when you do it, send me, and I’ll check it out. I’ll give you feedback. And my thoughts are more than not to be. No, it works. It works like crazy, so try it.
You have been so extremely generous with your time and in sharing your smarts. I am grateful for that. I know we covered a lot, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice or anything you think we might have missed, then please do tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you.
Yeah, definitely. So my takeaway is to really just be a good human being, not weird, awkward, or salesy. Just be genuine with everything you do. Like people overthink how to message people on LinkedIn, or what should I say? And at the end of the day, just be a nice, kind human being who encourages and supports people and always engages with people ahead of time. Before you send a connection request, always engage with their content, like it, and comment on it. Then, in the connection request, tell them you appreciated and enjoyed their content. You know? So, any time you guys want to build relationships with people, the best way to do that is to help them first. You can help them out with a simple comment. That’s helping them out.
You know, before you ask for anything, you need to provide value. So that’s my tip. And the best way to follow me is, of course, on LinkedIn, right? So, Mandy McEwen is on LinkedIn, and I’m active on every single social media platform at Mandy Mod Girl, but LinkedIn is where I’m most consistent. And then Monica marketing.com. If any of you have any clients with B to B technology or clients looking to maximize LinkedIn, we partner with many agencies. So, we are more than happy to partner with you, collaborate with you, and help your clients dominate LinkedIn. Okay?
No matter how many notes you took in holy bananas, I took a bunch or how many times you go back and re-listen to Mandy’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do, the key is, and she talked about this when she was sharing steps and so forth, you have to take action on it. Like, she literally just gave you blueprint after blueprint after blueprint that you can take and apply on Facebook and LinkedIn. That’s amazing. You will be a rockstar if you do exactly what she just said, but the key is you have to do what she said.
I have to do it. And don’t worry if some of it doesn’t work. Like, you just gotta be consistent. Like every other thing, when you do some of this stuff, it will fall flat, but you have to keep your confidence up. Still, you have just to be consistent because, at the end of the day, the people who take action and keep doing it are the ones who win, the people who get scared because they post once or try something, and it fails. They’re not, they’re not succeeding. So you guys just have to go out there and make it happen. And don’t worry about what other people think. Don’t worry about it. If something falls, spot it; just keep doing it. And eventually, you’re going to get it.
Amen to that. Mandy, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. Thank you for saying yes and generously sharing your time to be our mentor and guide. Thank you so much. My friend.
Thank you for having me.
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