How to Run a Classy LinkedIn Outreach Campaign That Actually Generates Leads

Stream loading. Okay. Well, welcome everybody. Here we go. Let's get this thing rocking and rolling. Hey. Um, so, um, morning. Good morning. Um, welcome to LinkedIn for breakfast. This is your slice of marketing madness every single week. I hope that we can improve, help, support, entertain maybe um, your LinkedIn efforts. Um, and um, this is our wonderful place that we do this and we thank you all for sharing this group. We're uh we're very lucky to have so many of you as part of this and uh excited to be able to share some ideas with you this morning.

So, let me just kind of give you um a bit of a feel for our sinister plan um for today. So, um the first thing we're going to be talking about is a classy outreach campaign. So, the game plan is um how can we actually do this kind of marketing LinkedIn outreach stuff in a way that doesn't feel sleazy. That's the game plan.

Um, our mission here overarching mission at LinkedIn for breakfast um is to help entrepreneurs unlock two things really. So one um is to make uh to help LinkedIn to become a powerful tool for you in terms of business development. That's the lead generation bit. Getting your inboxing with inquiries. We're going to massively major on that today. And then the second thing is around brand expansion. So getting more people to recognize you. Getting your content to go further. So, not so much on that today, but if you do or you are interested in brand expansion, I'd recommend a couple of sessions we've done recently which I will reference. One was around the two-step post where we've got, you know, a load of inquiries and reach um using that tactic. So, that's a really good one to look at. And the second one, which again we're going to reference today, is things around LinkedIn newsletters, which are a absolute essential if you want to get your LinkedIn rocking and rolling. Um, cool. But we'll be deep diving on how to do outreach today.

Now, our vision for this um is to make this um the best place on earth to learn LinkedIn for free. That's the whole point. That is the mission. It's baked in. We want this to be a great free resource for you. So, tell your friends, get them along, invite them along. And the best way to do that if you are so kind, um is to invite them into our free community. Um, and there's so much going on there. There's all the replays of all the content. There's structured courses in there. There's like an engagement pod that we run, other different pop-up events. Flora is probably being amazing and lovely and putting the link to that into the chat right now. Um, which you can see if you're not a member of that, great. She has added that. And if you can't find this or if you're watching this on replay, all you have to do is go onto your Googles um and just jump into here, Google LinkedIn for breakfast, and you will find that we are um our page is at the top, but if you scroll down, oh, that's interesting that the school community is not ranking at the top. Isn't that interesting? H um I hadn't seen that before. I presumed the school community would always be at the top of a Google search. That is very interesting. I wonder if there's been um an update there. H interesting. Um all right, we need to go L for breakfast school. Just making sure I spelled it wrong. SK do that's interesting that they put that ranking factor down. Anyway, hey ho. There you go. So, LinkedIn for breakfast and school community and you'll be able to find our lovely community that you can go and join. Um, great. Um, I'm glad I did that. That's quite interesting that schools lost their geograph their ranking factors on Google. That's really interesting. Um, anyway, anyh who, anyh who, that's for me to witter the small the hours away looking at that.

So, here's our agenda, right? So, one, we want to look at why most outreach fails. Um, we want to define the campaign outcome. Um, we want to look at the five classy outreach audiences that you can be going after. Um, we also want to thinking about your opening sentences for an outreach and I will explain what I mean by outreach in a second if people are unsure. Um, and also the structure of a conversation u within it and then finally uh we want to convert that conversation into meetings etc.

Um, what do I mean by an outreach campaign? Let's have a look at you lovely people. Um, so the whole point of the an outreach campaign is if you are seeing potential opportunities on LinkedIn, people that you feel would be the right sort of target audience, the type of people that you would like to have a meeting with, the type of people should be coming to your events, joining your communities, whatever the next stages in your funnel. We'll talk about that in a second. That's the type of person that you want to be messaging, connecting with and moving into the next part of your campaign, whatever your funnel is. Right? So, a classy outreach is finding your target audience, connecting and messaging, and maneuvering that conversation into an outcome that you'd like. Right? So, that's the game plan, my friends. Right?

So, what does that actually look like? Let's jump on to the old um there. So, we want to think about what is the outcome. What are you trying to get people to do? What is the objective? Is it to book a meeting, invite people to an event, invite them to community, invite them to a resource? Whenever we're thinking about outcome or campaigns, um we want to be thinking in this kind of awareness, consider, convert, deliver. Right? So, let me just jump onto um this. So awaren oh hello. So awareness consider convert deliver right. So when we talk about awareness we want to be thinking about who are the type of people you want to connect with. Who do we want to get them aware of you? So we're thinking about who are they? Do we need to connect with them? And then once we think about that the consider piece is when they want to learn more about you. Right? So this is the bit where if you try and connect with people and doing an outreach campaign and go straight through to convert. Convert is like a sales meeting. That's what we call a pitch slap um in LinkedIn. You know when someone connects with you and then the next second they're slapping you with like a hey do you want to jump on a meeting so I can sell you some stuff? Right? So that's what we call a kind of connect and then pitch slap. It is you don't want to do this cuz like every now and again that might work. And the problem is that encourages the people that do this and then they'll put try and do you know a thousand kind of connections because that might equal one sales meeting, right? And the issue is is they're missing out on 999 potential opportunities by doing it this way. So we want to bring in this consider piece, right? As I become aware of you. I know that you're Dave the accountant, but actually if you then invite me along to something that is a long form learning piece, I'm going to consider to go, "Oh, actually, I really like what Dave is talking about in terms of his accountancy. I really like how he's laid out um his tax strategies or how he's laid out how I can put together, you know, a reporting strategy for my accounts." Right? So, I go, "Oh, okay. That's great. I I I like that. I'm considering you as being now an expert. Instead of just knowing you're a pigeonhold category of accountant, I now um consider you somebody who actually knows what they're talking about in specific things that I'm interested in. And then we can then move them onto a sales meeting. So that's that convert piece. So this is what we would call having a weekly moment. We always talk about trying to have some sort of moment each week within your marketing. So you're connecting with people. You invite people to your weekly moment and then from your weekly moment you invite them onto a meeting, right? So this me weekly moment thing, we're talking about this being maybe a podcast that you do. So if you do like a weekly podcast, you could do a weekly event like I do with this one. Um, you could do a long form video. So you could do like a YouTube video, like a long form video. Um, you could do something like a LinkedIn live, like live streaming. Um, you could do something like a newsletter, something specific that you spent time on producing so people can actually consider you can read and consume your expertise. And then once they do it, they go, "Yes, thank you so much." And then they can move on to your sales meeting, which by the way, you're not branding this sales meeting as a, "Hey, do you want to jump onto a meeting so I can sell you some stuff?" you are transitioning people from a point of interest. So for example, I do LinkedIn for breakfast and then we say to people, hey look, we invite you to our value session um where we will audit your LinkedIn profile for free. So it's a audit preface. So this is one to many and then this is one and the whole point of this is that when you transition someone to something that feels congruent with what they are consuming. So you might have a leadership round table and then you invite people to a one-to-one leadership review or a one-to-one leadership um you know workshop or whatever it is. It feels congruent. It might be a um one to many event on finding property opportunities in southwest London to then a onetoone which is a property matching you know um workshop onetoone. So it just you see how it feels congruent. It feels like, oh, I see you as being a property expert. I came to your property event and now I'm having a value session that's helping me to be able to actually look at how property might work for me. That's how we want to do this. And of course, the fourth stage is then deliver where someone says yes, thank you very much. I would like you to do that thing. And then they go and buy the thing and then you get to go and work with them. Right? So awareness, consider, convert, deliver. This is how we've got to know outcomes. This is why it's so important to start with the outcome because if we know what we're trying to move people along to then we can start to create a a a kind of pitch, right? So um so before anything think about what is your objective. Now obviously the end result is to try and book a meeting. So then what you want to look at is that where are they in your funnel because it might be a case that you've got completely cold people that you need to move towards your weekly moment or you might have weekly moment people already that you need to move towards your booking. Right? So it could be book an event, could be invite to an event, um it could be invite to a community or for them to download a resource. But know where you're doing. You might be running different campaigns at the same time. So, for example, freezing cold people, you're asking them to subscribe to your LinkedIn newsletter. LinkedIn newsletter subscribers, you're asking them to book a meeting. Get it? Because you go from awareness into consider, from consider into convert. Okay?

So, pick an audience, right? So, this is where we're you can start to ramp it up from today. Okay? So these are types of audience that you can be thinking about and thinking, well, what is the next stage? Do I have this? Now, the beauty of coming to this event is I'm going to start saying stuff to you, well, what about just outreaching your newsletter subscribers? And you might go, I haven't got any newsletter subscribers. You go, okay, well then we need to then maybe launch a LinkedIn newsletter and that will get you some subscribers. And then bam, right? You might be thinking, you know, we might say, what about your event attendees? Well, you're not running events. Okay, great. Then let's think about trying to run event. So they see how we can kind of think about, well, if we don't have one, then we can't do the other. So we need to maybe start with the one, right? Um, you might have a LinkedIn group. And interestingly, actually, LinkedIn groups I've always found as being pretty awful. Um, but I think I genuinely think that the LinkedIn group is starting to show a little bit of a sign of a um recovery or a renaissance of the LinkedIn group function. Um, and I'm I'm personally I've never had a LinkedIn group. I'm personally starting to think that I might dive in and create a LinkedIn group. Um, because I feel like they've just started to just ping it out a little bit more. there's just been a little bit more development that I'm seeing on LinkedIn in terms of groups. Um, so now could be the time if you ever wanted to start a LinkedIn group to start thinking about doing that. If not, joining other LinkedIn groups and checking out what's happening there is also really important, right? So there's a audience there. Why is this the key rule of why I'm saying this is that you should be able to reference why you're linking in and why you're connecting with that person or messaging that person because they are either a subscriber of your newsletter, an attendee of your event, you're in the same group together or you're in a group outside of LinkedIn. For example, you know, you might be going to BNI networking events or whatever. You know, you both say, "Hey, great to see you at the BNI event. Thought I'd link in with you." Right? That is still something you should really do. You know, if you go to an event and there's 40 people in the room, you're never going to have 40 conversations, but you might be able to get the attendee list and then send that to your VA and just say, "Hey, find all these people on LinkedIn. Connect with them and say, "Thanks. Great to see you at the, you know, shame we didn't have a chance to properly catch up at the, you know, the Guilford Means Business um breakfast. Um, would love to see about having a um a virtual coffee with you onetoone. How easy is that? And classy, right? And also completely delegatable as well. Um, two-step post engagement. I'm actually going to demo these for you, by the way. So, I'm going to just introduce them and I'm going to go through each one of these. Um, so two-step post. So, what is a two-step post? Where you go, hey, this is a little bit of information. Um, and then I go comment below and I'll give you some more information. So, step one, step two. Again, I'm going to show you this. So, so, so just bear with me. Um, and then also the classic, this is the cold audience, just doing a search on LinkedIn and finding your audience and then moving them across, right? Um, so let's go find some audiences on LinkedIn. And so just remember when I'm doing this, the awareness piece is where the coldest is. The best audience to be doing outreach to is the consideration audience. people who have subscribed as newsletters, people who are coming to events, people who have watched videos, people who have engaged on your content, people who have asked for content on your two-step post. That's the best audience to outreach to because they are already warm and so therefore getting them into a sales meeting is the logical next step. If you don't have this, then you want to build this so you can do this, right? And the nicest, easiest way to think about what should I build is if Richard actually shows you what he's banging on about, right? I hear you. I hear you. Okay, good.

So, first thing, every profile should have something such as a header banner that is referencing a call to action. So, for me, it's saying, "Join my free group." So, LinkedIn for breakfast, a free community to grow your business and brand on LinkedIn. Scroll down to my featured section for the join link. Scrolling down, boom, featured section. Here's the join link. People can join my free group. Right? So, here's the cool thing. The traffic that I'm getting to my profile, three three and a half thousand profile views, they are all being directed into this free group. Someone can click on that, press view, and bam, they're into the free community. Okay. The next step for me will be then to be able to connect with those people and say, "Hey, thanks for joining my free community. Um, you know, would love to invite you along to an event or would love to invite you to have a LinkedIn profile audit with us." um you know so you moving people along right so you're going from free community into free onetoone one to many in a community one to one okay so that's one way of doing it every profile can do some sort of because we all we all have these lovely header banners that have like a you know um you know it looks like a business card but it's in a banner shape whereas don't this is your only bit of above the fold on your LinkedIn profile is the only little bit of designed real estate that you can actually put something that telling a call to action in a bit more of a design standing out and then instructing people scroll down to the feature section that the second thing you should have which again creates another hot is your newsletter cuz look newsletter is the only thing that gives you a one-click subscribe on your profile and I can then people can one click subscribe they go onto your LinkedIn newsletter and only you my pedigree Some predic chums can see who your subscribers are. So here's the subscribers rate. I can click on that and bam, these are my latest subscribers. And the beauty is some of them have been on my profile and have seen my you know my newsletter have subscribed to my newsletter and then they have sent me a connection request. So you can see here Patrick and Brikesh very kindly both have sent accept um connection requests, right? So I can now accept this from Patrick. Patrick, if you're on this call, I do apologize for using you as a as a as an example. I can then open his link in the new tab and I can then reference in outreach. So I can just double check. Yeah, he looks he looks cool. I can then message him and I can then send a message to him saying um hi uh Patrick and again um so I can reference. So the f the first point is I'm referencing where he connected me. So, thank you um for um subscribing to my LinkedIn Linked in for breakfast newsletter. How are things in this? Oh, in this crazy world, right? So, what am I doing here? And this is this is a a line that we use all the time, right? So I'm basically saying, "Hi, Patrick." So calling out by name, thank you for subscribing to my LinkedIn newsletter. I'm saying you made the first move. You subscribe to my newsletter. And I'm also referencing how and where we're connected. So hopefully that will ring some bell. And I'm doing it within the same day or within two days of him doing it. So he should remember. And then I'm saying, "How are things in this crazy world?" Um, and then sending him a message. Boom. The hope is now that he will go back and say, "Yeah, things are crazy." And we'll start a back and forth conversation, which I've got templated out for you to show in a second. But I just want to show you some other places. But you can see how that has now gone from him coming in from just being connecting and aware and my profile coming into this middle part. So he's now in consideration. He subscribed to my newslet. He's probably consumed some of my newsletter content. So my next piece will be to move him into convert to offer him a meeting. So he's gone from one to many. So now I want to transition to onetoone. So he's in this piece now and I'm just starting the opening conversation of the outlook route. Right? So that's step one. And you can see that I can do this with all of these people. Right? Here's a really interesting fact. Right? Although Rakkesh here and Patrick both have sent me connection requests. You can see accept. You can actually see here that Eddie has gone onto my profile, has seen my stuff, has not sent me a connection request because it's still saying connect. So I I have to send the connection request to him, but he did go and um subscribe to my newsletter. So if I didn't have a newsletter, I would have no idea that Eddie was interested. He would have just been say three part of the 3,000 people that view my profile where he's not. he's actually one person who's put his hand up to say I'm actually interested in your content. So from my perspective, if only if Eddie is target audience, of course. So I'd go on there and double check he was, then I would then send him a connection request. Same with Alex here. So I'm going to use Alex. I think Eddie might not necess I'm not sure if Eddie is target audience, but Alex looks very much like target audience. He's a consultant, right? And so he has no connection. So I go and connect. So, what I would do is I would press connect and I would do it with a note and then I would send the same note that I sent to Patrick saying, "Hi, Alex. Um, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter, how things create world in the connection note." So, it's no different. It's absolutely no different from sending a DM. This way, I'd be sending a connection note. Okay. Now, some people won't have the ability to send a connection note because they're using the free version of LinkedIn and that runs out after like three connections in the month, right? Um, so it is one of the benefits of using premium or sales navigator is that you can always send a connection note. If I didn't have a connection note, what I would probably do is the second that he connect subscribes to my newsletter, I would just send him a connection without a note. hoping if I didn't want to upgrade this is um hoping that that would then at least make it warm enough because he's obviously been on my profile that he would then set that connection and as soon as he does then I'm going to be sending him a thanks subscribe to my newsletter house thanks right so you can see how I can just eb and flow based upon the input super important hopefully is this helping guys give us a one in the chat if um if you're liking what I'm putting down here um hopefully you are hopefully you are okay good stuff. Oh, good. I got some good got some ones going on. Good. Okay. I didn't really give you another option, so it's a very biased poll, but I'm I'm going to take it. Um, right.

So, the next thing I mentioned is a two-step post. So, again, what we're doing is that we're using something, a content piece to be able to get people to take the next step. Okay? So, if I look at say my my best post so far in the last e x amount of days um I jump onto this post here um and say what has it got? So, it's had 52,000 impressions and 800 comments, right? So, when did I post this? Maybe one week ago, right? So, this is just simply a post that says um about a problem. So, I'm talking about um around LinkedIn's update, algorithm update. And so the content here is about what what I'm going to be discussing at an event and then I'm putting the word if you want to have this tool comment event below and we'll send it to you personally. Right? And what it means is that lots of people are going oh there's Patrick again fantastic going event event event. So that's the two steps. So step one is they are saying here's the um they are doing it. And then step two is I can then connect with people and I can then message. So I've created a post, I've given some value, I've asked people to type in below to comment and when they comment then I can then send a connection to them and I can message. Right? So I can go um to Charu here and I could then go and like this comment. I can then message her and say thanks for commenting event on my post. um here's the link to the free event. And so I'm simply starting my outreach essentially saying thank you for commenting and here's the link to the event that we discussed and then I'm going to be moving them into stage two which might be then um and I'd love to have a chat with you onetoone or whatever it is and you're just transitioning. So you you're using this this moment, this two-step post, this engagement post to again do the hop over, right? So this is what we're looking at. Okay, so lots of different ways there. So you do the same with people who are applying for your events, um people who are joining your groups, um targeted audience. So the targeted audience search is where you're going more along the lines of finding people here and then moving them to the next stage. Okay.

So, so let me give you an idea of a targeted audience search. I would be simply going, if I didn't have any of these other things working um in my favor, um I would be doing something like founder plus um um let's just say um in in highlight so so exact match business coach, right? Something like that. Okay. And so now I'm doing a search. So I'm saying the role plus the type of um company. So the founder is the role plus and then this is exact match for business coach. So I don't want like um you know someone who's a football coach, right? Um and so then I can look at here and then I can do a full search and then what I'm doing is I want to remove first degree. So I can go second degree and so people who are second degree to me and I can change location and I can make it United Kingdom and I can show results. So now I've got a good search from here. Now what people make the mistake of is they would go out to Vivian here and go, "Hey Vivian, um, you know, would you like to go and jump on a call with me so I can sell you something?" you know, and so that's the that that's the kind of direct straight to the point piece that we don't want. Whereas we want to be sending Vivian a connection request and instead of doing anything, I'd be going connect, I would add a note and I would say, "Hi, um Vivian, um um just a fellow coach to coach." Hello. How's things in this crazy world? Okay, good. Right. So, what I'm doing here is going just a fellow coach. Coach, hello. So, non-threatening. We're both coaches. Just thought I'd say hello. And then I'm saying, "How's things in this crazy world?" Right. So um and and you can I I quite like sort of abbreviations and stuff just to kind of um make make it just casual non non to AI right um this hopefully will just open it up to see it's like a non-threatening thing and then once I do that then I'm going to move to the next stage of the conversation which I'm going to talk about the conversation flow in a second right bam so I'm not trying to sell to people I'm just saying hello cuz when you get your things within your network this is what you'll See, if people aren't on premium, you're not getting any message in here. In fact, if I just show all hopefully someone on premium who No, in fact, nobody in my current inbox is on premium um or is using the ability to send an actual message with this. Right? So, if they are, you'll see at the bottom underneath here a little block that actually shows up with what the message is. So again, I would sit head and shoulders above all of these because I've been able to put an actual message in. And the second thing is I've also um make sure that your um your your profile header or headline is really telling what the problem and solution is because that will really help you stand out as well. So that's where these things really come into their own to be able to make sure that we get a nice message. We're not trying to sell. We're trying to use the premium features if we're going to use it to actually then put a sentence in there and then your likelihood of getting this which is people that will then connect and then the whole point is once they do connect then we can start a series of messages to invite them along to a weekly moment not try and invite them into a sales meeting right so classy right let me just do um just jump onto that slide so demo demo kind of done on that procure what I want to do is just go over the conversation structure and I'll take some questions Right?

So, the structure needs to be like a fourpart structure for this type of conversation. So this is the theory and then I'll show you an example in the next slide. Fourpart structure. So one the context. So why are you reaching out to these people? So hey you just subscribed to my LinkedIn newsletter. Wanted to say hello. Nice and simple. Hey you just we just attended an event together. Didn't get a chance to speak to you. Thought to say hello. Right. So simple. Second P observation. This is something relevant um about their business. Um so you ask a question. Get the small talk going. Just just get something that really kind of go. So um notice that we're both connected with Dave Smith. You know, how do you know Dave? Or um noticed um that we we you know we both share an interest in X Y and Zed. um notice that we both went to University Southampton. Something along those lines that get the conversation going. Um, if it's ideally it's just more in flow, we don't need to necessarily bring in another thing. And then the next piece is the value or insight. So this is the bit where you can go, oh by the way, you know, I'm help doing this. Would you like to come along to an event about it? Would you like to come and download a resource about it? And then that transitions into the call to action. Probably best for me to show you how that looks, right? So, I'd say something like, "Hi, first name. Thank you for subscribing to my LinkedIn for breakfast newsletter. How's things in this crazy world?" The idea is that they'll reply and go, "Yeah, it's crazy. Can't believe that Trump's blowing up another country. Um, you know, how are you?" And I will go, um, I'm I'm great. Yeah, it's blooming crazy, isn't it? Right. So, now we've done the small talk. We've done the relevance. We've kind of done that. It's absolutely crazy, but also exciting. So now we're going to introduce the new thing. So many new AI tools to play with or toys to play with. Um, you must feel the same in your role. So this is the kind of relevance. So you know we're kind of in this section here where we're talking about observation, something relevant about their role, business or situation. You just want to kind of what I've done is I've gone big picture like the world's crazy into now specific category of which I am an expert in. I do stuff in. So I'm transitioning them into the type of conversation I want to have without it feeling sleazy. Right? So so many so for me AI toys is great because although I don't have an AI company, we do a lot of kind of um you know training on using tools and AI and software stuff for things like LinkedIn. So it's a nice transition subject. It's sort of gone big picture into now sort of a narrower um subject title, right? They reply. So the idea is that they go, "Yeah, we're using these cool things. God, it's amazing, isn't it? what AI can do. That's the sort of thing they come back. And so now what we do is add a sentence in reply to their reply. Then transition. So the whole point is yes, it's great. Oh, I love Claude. Yes, I think it's great. Um, and then I go, we actually have an event coming up all about how to harness AI on LinkedIn. It's specifically for business owners looking to grow their reach on out on LinkedIn. Um, would you like to come as my complimental guest? And so now I've kind of moved that whole conversation into a nice call to action. Super simple. And they'll go, "Yeah, I'd love to." Great. Here's the link. It's Wednesday or whatever it is, you know, 9:00 a.m. And then suddenly you're moving them into um your event. Or you got a or you can say, "Hey, I've got a a free newsletter where we do a free, you know, um learning thing on that every single week. Would love you to, you know, become one of the subscribers. Would you like the link?" you know, or you can say, I've got a free community where we talk about that all the time. I think you'd be great for it. Would you like the link? Whatever the thing is. I've got a YouTube channel where I talk about that every single month. Um, would you like the link? So, you see how I'm just transitioning. And remember, these conversations are happen happening on mass. You want to be connecting with 20 people a day, 100 people a week. You want to be doing these messaging. You want to be outreaching to people. This is systematic. The more that you can do this, my friends, the better your outreach will be because you are bringing people from connecting and you're bringing them into a weekly moment where people are attending and enjoying it and you're getting fulfillment because you're actually teaching it to people and then you're transitioning people into the next step. Um, super super important. If you can get that nailed, then not only does your LinkedIn outreach really step up, but also your entire LinkedIn and marketing strategy steps up because you need to have those consideration assets as well. Love it. Hope that has helped. Let me take some questions from you because I know that there's a few in the chat. Um I haven't been able to kind of keep up um uh with um the questions. So, if you guys have been able to, if you want to, you can use your digital reaction hand thing like this, the raised hand bit, and you can line up across the top to ask questions, or if you just got one that's on the tip of your tongue now, just unmute yourself and just ask it um whilst I look through this. Um, girls very kindly said, "That Brew 360 tool was great. Took two days for me to completely change my profile." Good. Okay, great stuff. Um, so who's got um, so, so who's got a question? Who's got a question? Who, who wants to just unmute and answer ask a question? Okay, go for it, Tina. >> Um, yes, I joined the LinkedIn pod um a few weeks ago. Hello, Richard and everybody. Um, I joined a LinkedIn pod um quite a few weeks ago and um it it seemed to be working really well with my with my reach, but suddenly it's it's dropped and everybody um the only comments I seem to get are from the people in the pod. Um, what's your what's your view on a on a LinkedIn pod in trying to get to the outreach of people that you need to get to? So, so the point being is um pods pods are only half the story. So, if we're thinking about using pods, the whole the whole point of as a pod is it helps you to get through the growth curve of a post. So, let me just kind of show you the the life cycle of a post on LinkedIn. Um, and so, here we go. So, if I if I just get get rid of this marvelous um sketch here. There we go. Um, signed copies are no longer available. Um, and it the whole point of this is you have a life cycle. So a post this is the amount of um reach um you're getting and then this is time. Okay. And so over time what you've got to do when you first start is you need to get a good reach when you first post because LinkedIn will then will be showing it. And at this point if you've got enough if your post only got this much reach you won't get the next piece. will then LinkedIn will then show this. It will flatten and then it will show this to second plus third um degree connections right and then you'll have another line here. So what you do is you want to kind of it will give you a test. This is kind of the test phase um in the first kind of two hours. Um, and this sort of test phase will go out to your immediate network and it will then push it out. Now if the content is correct for your current audience, your first degree connections, it will you should get some reach and some engagement from your first degree connections. What we do with a pod is we try and also during this time give you likes and comments to be able to artificially help to get up to this kind of critical mass. But here's the thing with the pod. If the people in the pod are not your target audience and not the people that the content is meant for, then the reach and the engagement won't be congruent with the type of engagement you need to do the next stage. So what will happen is you'll get this initial reach and then when it then says, "Okay, that's good." and pushes out to second or third degree connections, you just will your your post might just do this, right? um because the second and thirds aren't engaging with it because the algorithms got confused because the people who are engaging with it aren't target audience because we want that target audience to actually do it. Now, if they are target audience, great. That's where you then start to see this spike. And also, here's the other thing to the post also has to be good, right? So, I'm not saying that your posts aren't good, but it it needs it. Not every post is worthy of getting good reach anyway. So, so we got to that's that's another factor obviously, but let's presume it's a really good post, very engaging, nice picture, good headline, very catchy. Then then if it goes out to a second degree, it gets that extra push and then it will find it has another sort of flatten as it's kind of doing it as it's kind of you working out actually is this going to go viral and then the next one it will do a huge push and then you you're basically off to the races in terms of this is all about the quality of the post, right? Um, so that's how a flow works for this. And if the post is not great, the initial audience is not aligned to the pod audience, um, then that's we do. So you might make a decision, I don't want to go in pod because it's the wrong audience. Um, which is why in the LinkedIn breakfast group, we have a B2B pod. Sorry, a B to corporate pod. So if you're selling to corporate, we say use this pod. So if I go into LinkedIn for breakfast community here, these are a pod. So here's the pod for B TOC plus B to small business. So B to people who are saying to consumer and small businesses work in this pod and then people who are selling to to corporate work in this pod. So if you're saying to corporate, you should be using um and then you're liking and commenting and sharing on each other's posts and making sure it works. The other thing as well which we do say and I don't think there's any examples directly here is if you're sharing a post that's still got the qu here you go. So Justin has shared post and then there's this question mark. So everything after the question mark that's basically what we would call a LinkedIn um there's there's LinkedIn um tracking tools on these um on these links. God knows what this so this sort of link is a bit long. Uh, yeah, here you go. So you can see how here after this question mark here it says UTM source equals share under this member. So what that is that's telling LinkedIn that Maria has shared that post which means the traffic will not look natural coming to that post. Um, and so that will also be detrimental to your reach by including this tracking code on it. There's a few in there. Um, cool. So that's how the pods work and you know how you should approach them. >> Is that in the school community, Richard? >> That's in the school. That's in the free LinkedIn prep school community. Yeah. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you. >> Um, look guys, um I'm going to take Simon's question in a second, but just as a reminder, we do offer these free um one-to-one LinkedIn profile audits. So the whole point of this is that we will actually look at your LinkedIn profile and we you know I was talking about you should have the newsletter, you need to have this headline, you have the featured section, we also look at your about section. We look at your experience section and we tell you all the things that need to change are being improved. There's no more sessions left today. There's only one tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. There's only one at 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. on Friday and then a couple next week. So these are limited. um they are for people that haven't had one yet um or haven't had one for a very long time. Um, and the whole point of this is that we will look and improve and give you some great tips on how to actually get your LinkedIn up to speed. So here's the LinkedIn profile audit link in the chat. Do jump onto there before it's too late. Okay. Um, I'm going to stick around until uh for another 10 minutes or so. So Simon Banks, over to you, sir. >> Thank you. Thanks, Richard. Always good stuff. Um, quick question because I'm doing a bit of an outreach at the moment. It's it's working well but it's hard to how do you scale it because it's just spending a lot of time with um messages. Is there an AI tool you can use or not or do you just go to start we just do this you know manually onetoone and then maybe outsource it to a VA. What's your thoughts on AI particularly? There there's definitely AI tools that will send the connection requests out for you, but as soon as the conversations start coming back, when we think about this conversation flow, it is relatively easy to to kind of articulate this to to a VA or another human to be able to answer in this way. For someone to be able to kind of say, "Yes, the world's crazy. Yeah, think about this." And then transition into that. That's good. But but an AI tool is not there yet. an AI agent is not there yet and I wouldn't want somebody just, you know, an AI agent just blasting stuff without me knowing back and forth um on this stuff. I don't mind if it's the initial connection request to a cold audience that uh an automating connection tools doing cuz that that is just a time save because it's the same message usually o over and over. But as soon as the conversation comes back, all the LinkedIn automation tools stop anyway as soon as a conversation actually someone replies and then you're manually replying anyway. So in our opinion um if like for example for us cuz you can only send 100 connection requests, we get thousands of people who are commenting, liking, talking on our stuff. So we actually can't get through with our 100 connection requests everybody anyway. So, I need my VA, who does all my LinkedIn stuff for me, um, to be able to know what the priority is. So, we see people who are engaging on two-step posts as the most priority because they've obviously asked for a resource. We see people who are working on events and LinkedIn newsletters as a second priority. And then final priority is a cold audience. So, Ugo is working that out for me and he's working on which ones he feels is the best priority to be working on. So again, that's where a VA really can come into handy. And of course, he's also really flexing the um, the conversation. And what we've built is like a custom

GPT that is built in my voice and looked at all my previous conversations that I've ever had on LinkedIn. Um, upload, well, not every single one. I've tried to get as much as possible out. Uploaded a document into my voice and so he uses that to be able to respond to the kind of outreaches. And then as soon as something is um seems like it's personal, seen as something that is information that he can't handle or anything that he feels um needs my attention, he will just send a link to that person's profile to me on Slack and I'll just go on to it and I'll continue the conversation there because it's re it's probably reached a point of being too technical a conversation, too personal a conversation. Um, someone that you know is asking if I can, you know, an opportunity maybe to go and speak. Um, so that's where he does. So it's a lot of the kind of the the the the leg work is done. Um, and that's where a VA certainly would help. Um, and um, just just because you brought it up. So if anybody is looking for a VA, my business offers clients VAs. That's what we do. That's that's the day job if you like. We're a VA company. Um, and so if you're looking for someone to take over and do all this LinkedIn stuff for you, um, we can help to fulfill that for you for just £5 an hour. Um, so do feel free to DM me on that. Thank you, Simone, for allowing me to uh to shoehorn that in. Um, I'm going to go to Flora next. Um, and be able to answer her question. Hope that helps. Sim. Um, Flora, to you.

"Good morning. Hi, Richard. Hi, everyone. My my question is actually about newsletter. So, you touched it uh this time and last time as well. So, you mentioned that we should try to release once a week. Uh, mine is pretty new. I think I've done it. The first one I've done it two weeks ago and I got eight subscribers. So my question is how can I increase this subscribers number?"

"Um, I guess you suggest?"

"How many subscribers?"

"Eight."

"Eight. Yes."

"Oh, okay. That we would expect you to get far better than that."

"Yeah. So I I will probably include the link to the banner as you mentioned. That was a good suggestion but I was pushing the link into my post as well and I was wondering if it's a good thing or not really. When when you launched it, um, did you um, was it all brand? Let's have a look. LinkedIn, where's your? Okay, so you're not even on the featured."

"Is it not? Great."

"No. So, you're not on the featured. So, that's super important because you'll get natural. You haven't got a LinkedIn newsletter."

"You don't."

"Wow."

"So, post, comments, video, images. So, if you had a newsletter at the top, so the fastest way to find out if someone's got a newsletter. Um, if I just go on to my profile, view profile. Um, you'll see here, content types, um, you'll see here newsletter."

"Okay."

"And so, you you do not you do not have one, which is good because if you only had eight subscribers, then that is no good. I tell you what you might have done. You might have launched it on your company page. Did you launch it? So, do you have a um your your company isn't linked up to your experience, but Empire Residential Consulting? Do you um, is it do you have a company page? Empire Residential."

"No, I don't. I don't. It's very."

"Where is your LinkedIn newsletter?"

"Uh, if you if you actually click on one of my posts, probably the one from today as well, should be the link there. Let's have a look. Yeah, the Yeah, let's see what I did because I got no idea now. Oh, you haven't you haven't done any additions. I think this is the problem. So, you you've set this up, but you didn't have um any people uh you didn't publish at the same time. Property behind and I'm subscribed to it. So there you go. So there's obviously something going wrong here. Um, so what you want to do is um, yeah. Isn't this interesting? Have you got two profiles?"

"I don't."

"You just haven't posted You just haven't posted a newsletter. So when you when you launch a newsletter, you need to launch it with an actual post, which is why your probably your launch didn't kick off because it should have been pushed to all your subscribers."

"I think I did, but um, yeah, I guess if it's not showing, something went wrong."

"When when you do an article, so if you on LinkedIn, you're going to do a LinkedIn newsletter, you do an article. Um, so if I go onto here and I go in and write an article, um, top left it gives me the option to just write as an individual article or as to publish it to my LinkedIn newsletter. And so that's what you do. So you need to go write an article and actually publish it to the newsletter and then that will then push out the newsletter."

"Okay. No, I didn't do that. That I didn't do. So maybe that's what it was. Okay. Thank you."

"What I would do, I think personally, do you know what I would do is I would actually delete that LinkedIn newsletter."

"Okay."

"And I would then give it a few days and then I would relaunch the LinkedIn newsletter as a as a new newsletter. Make it different title different and make sure you launch the newsletter with an article at the same time and a big post and a push and I can guarantee you'll get more than 15 subscribers."

"Okay. Thank you. And you recommend a weekly newsletter as well?"

"Yes. Well, I recommend a weekly moment. So, some people will do like a monthly event and then so they'll go newsletter, newsletter, newsletter, event. Some people will blend in a two-step post and an event. So, they might go newsletter week one, two-step post week two, newsletter week three, event week four, and then repeat. So, it just depends on what you're doing. Now, to start off with, do the weekly newsletter or fortnightly newsletter if you're finding it too too much work, but then you can start to blend in these other things. Um, because a nice blended way of doing it, which is perfect."

"And would you keep the link in the post as well just for people to see it or it's not really a thing?"

"Um, potentially for people to subscribe to it, but I think in its own right it would stand up. Yeah. Subscribe to that way."

"Thank you so much. Thank you."

"No worries at all. No worries at all. Look, these are all sort of things that we talk about on that onetoone LinkedIn profile audit. So, thank you by the way because my phone's pinged a few times um with people who are booking onto this. Look, that Thursday one has gone now and also the 9:00 on Friday has gone. So, um, do jump onto there before you miss out, um, on getting your LinkedIn profile audited. So, there's the link into the chat one more time for you. Okay, good stuff. I'm going to take another question, um, from the chat. Um, so, okay, so this is great. So, thank you, Julia. My friend did this and so we canceled it and relaunched it with a compelling article for the newsletter. Went from two to 700 subscribers. So Julia um Felton there um her her friend did that um and so they got that update. So actually you know definitely do delete it, give it a week and then go back there. J Julia is in the chat there. You might you'll be able to find her in the LinkedIn breakfast community as well. Um, Rebecca over to you."

"Yeah. Hi. Um, just like two small questions. They may be linked. So one is is it really important to have a company page? Because um I'm new into this whole building company thing. It's only like 18 months. So I always lived on my normal LinkedIn profile. So is it really important to have my business page separately?"

"So so I would say it's important to complete your profile to have the company page. um where the reason why is that you can see here with with Flora's for example um you've got this um Empire Residential Consulting Limited and just no logo um and so the no logo means I can't click on it and go through to that thing. So if I scroll down and then I can find here on um experience and again when we go into here and see more um I can't I can't actually click on that page whereas if we go on to um another kind of company page if I scroll down I can click on this logo it takes me through to a company page and on here I can then start to actually post content I can invite people to events I can have my own LinkedIn newsletter. So, it does help and it means that you you actually can flesh out your experience better. Um, so I'd say it's good, but don't don't ever think that it's going to replace your current profile. People buy people, people connect with people. It's all about your personal profile on LinkedIn, but the company page is a nice asset to kind of back that up."

"Okay. Thank you. And then"

"The second question is linked with the the newsletter and post. So, you mentioned this. I don't do newsletter because I'm always worried like I don't have enough content to write. But what's the difference if I continue to post?"

"So, so newsletter there's only two things that can be found on a Google search or you know AI search that's LinkedIn based. So that's one is your profile and the second is articles on LinkedIn. So they are SEOable, they are findable on searches. So it helps to direct traffic to you from outside of actually LinkedIn. So articles are great for that. They do have tend to have a slightly less reach than a post when you're actually looking natively on on LinkedIn because posts tend to have a slightly better reach. Um, but that's that's fine because you do an article, you can launch it, it goes out to your subscribers. It's really worth doing. And then you've obviously got posts which you can then share stuff. We think you should be creating a piece of content every day um but different media. So Monday might be a poll, Tuesday could be a current affairs post, Wednesday might be your weekly moment newsletter for example. Throwback Thursday share a case study on a Friday, something like that, like a nice blend. Um, that can work well and that will also hit different types of media. So you might have, you know, polls, videos, u articles, posts, um, all that sort of stuff, image based, video based. So it just it blends it out a little bit for you."

"Okay. Good. Thank you."

"Cool. All right, my friends, that's us. Um, if there are other questions, feel free to continue to ask them in the LinkedIn for breakfast group. If not, um, we'll see you on a onetoone um profile audit or we'll see you in the community all next week at 9:00 a.m. UK time LinkedIn for breakfast. Thank you all for your time. Appreciate it. Have a good day. TZ."