LinkedIn For Speakers
Demystifying LinkedIn For Speakers
Today we have on the show a LinkedIn profile expert who has helped companies big and small to demystify the platform and take them from being anonymous to being highly engaged. Regularly ranked by LinkedIn search in the top 5 profilers in the world he is also a speaker, workshop facilitator, and author. He spreads the LinkedIn word near and far, I would like to introduce you to Tony K Silver.
Questions:
• When did you first get involved with LinkedIn
• When did you set up your business
• What is currently going on with Linked In
• What are your top tips
• I heard on the FB whistleblower expose on 60 minutes about although there might be 5000 pieces of content you ‘could’ see, you only get to see 100 pieces based on engagement. Your world gets smaller and smaller. I wonder if LI algo heading the same route as FB?
Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript
Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.
James Taylor 0:00
I’m James Taylor, and you’re listening to the SpeakersU podcast a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host, Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode. So today we have a wonderful guest talking to us all about LinkedIn, an incredibly powerful tool for us as speakers. Today on the show, we have a LinkedIn profile expert who has helped companies big and small to demystify the platform and take them from being anonymous to being highly engaged, regularly ranked by LinkedIn search in the top five profiles in the world. He is also a speaker, workshop facilitator, and author. He spreads the LinkedIn word near and far and I would like to introduce you to Tony Kaye Silva.
Tony K Silver 0:47
Good afternoon.
Maria Franzoni 0:49
Hello, hello. Hello, Tony, how lovely to have you here. One of the top five. That’s a great aspiration, isn’t it? So Tony, tell me when did you first get involved with LinkedIn?
Getting Started
Tony K Silver 1:01
I joined I wasn’t one of the first million I’m afraid I can’t claim that. But I joined back in 2006. But it was around about 2008 that I started using it properly.
Maria Franzoni 1:14
Okay, so not that long, then Really? It started in 2003. LinkedIn started was
Tony K Silver 1:21
May 2003. So she’s over 18 years old. And yeah, yeah, I kind of my, my tipping point was being old at the age of 48. And being made redundant, therefore I stopped using it rather than just being on it.
James Taylor 1:37
Because I did write a book, how LinkedIn solved my midlife crisis or something along those lines.
How LinkedIn Solved My Mid-Life Crisis and How It Can Grow Your Business
Tony K Silver 1:44
Yeah, that this reads Now eventually hit that blog large coming through Amazon has now got it on their system. It’s taken a little while to get out there with a few complications. But yes, it certainly did. Because at the age of 48, I was made redundant, I didn’t know what to do. And I was told to do things, go networking, and start using LinkedIn not just being on it. She was kind of very, very true. So many people I meet on LinkedIn.
James Taylor 2:13
And when did you move from then using LinkedIn as a way for yourself for your networking to kind of building I guess, the business that you’re kind of known for now, which is advising other companies, other experts in terms of how they use LinkedIn?
Tony K Silver 2:26
Yeah, so say 2000 nights, I went networking. And while I was out networking, I met a gentleman who was going all over Europe, training people who had offices, and I approached him at a networking event after you’ve done a fantastic presentation and said, Could you look at my profile, please, by the way, I’m sponsored by Jobseeker’s allowance I can’t afford to pay you. And, yeah, he took me under his wings. He taught me all he knew about it. But also put me in contact with a bunch of LinkedIn trainers based all over the world, which I’m still part of that network. And that just accelerated things through for me, helped me find a job, but also gave me the tools and the backup for this network to know what’s going on on LinkedIn. Mostly for most of the people, do we, we get fed information, we beta test their products. And you know, part of this, these groups feed that information to us. So we’re always right at the cutting edge of it.
Clients and LI what’s going on
James Taylor 3:31
So if you take a look at your clients, then would you say the majority of the companies, what new executives trained? Or is it still leaders that are wanting to understand how to use this tool and this platform? Well,
Tony K Silver 3:43
it’s a complete range because ultimately, there are about 800 million people currently on LinkedIn. 33 million of those accounts are in the UK, which means most businesses have a presence on LinkedIn. And that can be from the startup through to the Global’s, and my clients completely cover that. I work with startups, I work with a global bank, and a lot of people in between. It can be, as you say, executives tend to speak and network a lot with partners, and sort of senior people. And quite often, when you work with them, they say well, okay, yeah. Could you come in and do some workshops for our teams? Because they need this knowledge as well. But I mean, industry-wise, we one thing we never do we go networking is say that pretty line, somebody or anybody interested in what I do, because you could slap if you ever say that, but actually, I could say it because you know, 33 million people are my potential target audience. And the say so industries, and even levels in companies sometimes just don’t matter. Because ultimately, you’re both on LinkedIn. Oh, shoo? Yes,
James Taylor 4:51
absolutely.
Maria Franzoni 4:52
Well, this is on LinkedIn live. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Tony K Silver 4:56
So when you join LinkedIn, did they send you a manual on how to use it?
Maria Franzoni 5:01
No, unfortunately not.
Tony K Silver 5:04
Right? And we know about the fabled algorithm don’t wait. We heard about that and how it changes things. So I call that the rulebook? Did they send you a copy of that recently?
Maria Franzoni 5:14
No, no, but I’m hoping you know what’s going on at the moment with LinkedIn? Because this is the $6 million question. Yes, aren’t you going on on LinkedIn, and I’ve got my notepad at the ready.
Tony K Silver 5:28
Say that that is a problem for most people I meet on LinkedIn is that they’re on it, they never had the manual, they haven’t got the current rules to play by. So they’re having a go. And they’re getting a certain amount of information from different sources. But the LinkedIn algorithm is a bit of a beast because unless you know what it’s doing, you could quite accidentally fall into its clutches and find that you’re actually in trouble. Now, when I say in trouble, what we need to do when we do posting on LinkedIn, is to get as much reach for our post as possible, get as many people to see it. So there’s a list of things you can do that will help you increase your reach on LinkedIn, it’s about that big list of things that you should avoid, do you on LinkedIn, it’s about that big. So it’s a lot easier to fall into the trap of doing something that you shouldn’t do. Now, a lot of people during the pandemic, start using LinkedIn, and they hammered it. And unfortunately, what they didn’t realize is that when you post on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, analyze it. And they then put it out to between two and a half to 12% of your network to have a look at initially. So it’s a fairly small batch. So if you haven’t got a massive bunch of connections, yet, that could be an issue there. But that batch needs to do something with it. And that’s the problem is a lot of people are connected to people that don’t get engaged that often on LinkedIn. But the algorithm is just doing different things in the background. And, unless you know that, you know, doing more than one post a day was a lot of people were doing, you know, I was seeing people put outposts, literally two or three an hour, when they look at it was the same, they analyze it, they put it out there, if you put out a second one, they may stop the reach of the first one completely. But I certainly going to slow it down while I look at the second one. So by putting out a second post and saying working day, you’re crippling the potential reach of the first post, there is a sweet spot because we have a trade secret, six hours, gate, so about six hours in between posts, will take the reach issues away. But if you do it before, then you may completely ruin the reach on the first one. And it’s things like that people just putting out stuff, because they thought it was the right thing to do cuz I didn’t know any better. They didn’t have the rulebook. And that was we just saw an awful lot of traffic over that period. So as you increase your reach on LinkedIn, probably what you want to know.
Maria Franzoni 8:03
Well, that was my next question you tell perfectly. Interesting, because
Tony K Silver 8:10
I’ll tell you the obvious big. Yeah,
Maria Franzoni 8:12
yes. I wonder what that was. So that’s interesting what you said though, coming back to that point you made because I’ve made that mistake, I’ve put more than one post out thinking it’s the same as Facebook or other platforms where you actually the more the better. So that’s interesting. Thank you. Yes. Okay, how do I increase my reach, I have my pencil ready?
How do I increase my reach?
Tony K Silver 8:30
Well, this the stuff that is hasn’t really changed with the faces algorithm, it’s always been there. And when you do a post, you have little icons on the bottom, so you can add images, you can add a video, then you can have what they call the documents, okay, by adding an image to post surely increase its reach by 10 to 20%. By adding a video to it, you can add 20 to 40%. And if you add a document you can have between 40 and 60% to the reach. Pretty straightforward stuff to do that, of course, there are rules around this. Images. Yeah, pretty much straightforward. I would always say that people use an image, you know, why wouldn’t you get an extra reach. But a picture doesn’t always pay 1000 words. So you might have to add some words in some software onto it just to let people know what it is when it goes through their feed. Video Yeah, video and we all love video. Some of us even like doing video and don’t mind appearing in front of a camera. A lot of people don’t. But there are rules around that as well. And two minutes, once you go beyond two minutes, the reach starts to drop away. And the time you get to 10 it’s virtually disappeared. So it’s short, sharp, it’s still that attention span thing that we suffer from. So I tell people, you know, keep it a minute-ish, maybe even less than that. But then another problem with that. You see videos in your feed, I’m sure. Can you hear them? No, no, there’s a 42 mute by LinkedIn. So unless the person at the other end viewing it He’s going to go in and turn the volume up. They’re not going to get the benefit of what you’re saying. So again, with my clients, I say, you don’t want to be that person, that networking event who has the volume turned up, and he plays out on your phone. So you’re going to mute it. Subtitles? You have to have subtitles on videos these days, therefore, you’re getting your message out to everybody, because they can not only hear it, if they are in an area where they can listen to it, they can also see it if they’re not. And there is plenty of software out there. And I use a particular one, which gives me 10 minutes of free video every month, I do 10 more mini videos. doesn’t cost me a penny, but I’m getting them out there. And it’s useful. It’s getting extra reach.
Tips LinkedIn
James Taylor 10:47
What about in terms of so that’s in terms of the posting and the on the kind of feed and everything? What about the bit, it’s only when I started using Facebook, LinkedIn, I wasn’t using it so much for posting a lot of content on I was using it more in terms of connecting with people having conversations with people in the messaging, more than anything else. I’m just kind of building relationships and having conversations there. When it comes to that side that bit that’s kind of more hidden. What would your top tips be for speakers and experts and people that are wanting to use it for that as in them more of what we think the more traditional networking side?
Tony K Silver 11:22
Okay, so yeah, messaging, first-line connections, start using the audio clip version of it, you know, you can record audio. Now, I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have messages come through to me, and I don’t quite understand what they mean by the words that they’ve used. And certainly, if they use an exclamation mark, I’m never too sure what they are trying to emphasize by doing it. But if you go into there, where you normally would type in your text, on the right-hand side, you’ll see an icon to pretty much like a microphone. Yeah, click on that, you’ve now got a 62nd audio clip that you can send to that person. But let’s go one step further. Go to the other end of the message bar, and click on that it opens up a little sub-menu. And right in the middle, the top it says the video. Yeah, send a video message. That’s far more powerful. Because ultimately, I can now completely understand what they’re saying because I can see them as well as hear them. It’s a bit disruptive. A lot of people don’t see it. And actually, if you’re messaging someone because they don’t see it very often. It’s also a way of getting yourself noticed. So yeah, but it’s been around. It’s been around for a long time. But yes, did you get an email about it? And he was there? No, he didn’t, unfortunately. But it’s I use it regularly. It’s disruptive because people just don’t see them don’t have a particular message to me. And then, of course, the latest. You can snap a video call with someone directly from your message feed now as well. I saw that Yeah, yeah. So what you’ll find in the top corner of your message, you’ll see a little camera icon, you click on that. And it goes into a client, which is a link to native clients, you can also choose to use zoom and also use teams. If a person is online, you can tell because of the green.is full, then you can send them a message and they get a message straightaway. And then you can jump on a call straight away with them. Or you also have the option to schedule it for later as well. That’s very interesting because obviously, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft Teams is owned by Microsoft. Yeah, maybe trampling on each other’s toes there to a certain degree. But I guess that’s an interesting development that has happened in the last couple of months.
Sales Navigator
James Taylor 13:31
So most people are probably using LinkedIn for free. But then there’s this other thing, different tool Sales Navigator is one I use a lot, which kind of making that transition from just doing kind of basic networking to now using it more as a research tool for looking for opportunities and potential new connections. And any tips around that particular tool of Sales Navigator side how potentially maybe speakers could be using a tool like that?
Tony K Silver 13:57
sounds okay. It’s fantastic. It’s a brilliant product. The issue I have with it is it’s extremely complex. It takes a lot of time to master, but also a lot of time to use it to get the information you need out of it. A lot of people, I talk to don’t have the time don’t have the resources to spend the time doing it. And you know, I’ve got your sales. I’m a public speaker and I go on stage and I did this last weekend. I’ll talk live in Brighton last week. We real people were buddies. It was fantastic. I just said to them, you know, it’s fantastic that LinkedIn is available. But you put searching so I often say to them Now where was the audio side, of course, you were looking at when HR directors quite caught and have been for a long time. You put it in, I put it up on the screen behind me, I think was 2.7 million last week when I put it out there and I dangle little car keys. This is a red tiniest postcard short if you can go through that list for me. course I’m joking because you can’t. But I mean, if you go into really cheesy at sales and talk, I’m sorry, laziness, what I’m gonna do to you now, show you a way of doing that 2.7 million to about 15 essays 90 seconds, would that be of interest? And that’s what I do. And for most of my clients, that information is used them. Because I put a search in because people don’t search very effectively. I get these massive numbers, he puts them off, but I’ve shown them how to literally in less than two minutes get down to a list of maybe 10 to 15 people. Yeah, so then we get will give you far more information. If you’ve got the time to use it. For a lot of people just doing that light touch within the free version will give them some accurate results. To go look at the person’s profile, see if you want to connect to them.
James Taylor 15:46
The one I would love to say I haven’t figured out how to do get Sales Navigator do it yet, maybe you know, a workaround on there. So there’s that is already available, I kind of have to do a bit more manually is when I want to find my competitors. I other speakers may be speaking the same topic as me, or the people that they know who are their first connections who have certain job titles, companies with certain sizes. And I have tried the life of me to try and do that way Sales Navigator in the advanced search and I can’t is your way of doing it I do I still have to do it all school and go sit and trawl through their profiles.
Tony K Silver 16:22
Yeah, it’s kind of old school or just, you know I might be more accurate searches on the standard version just by using Boolean search. Because a lot of people don’t even know what that means. And I get some very blank faces when I mentioned it, the people that are said to move in, if you put that actually into a search in the standard version and use the Boolean side of it, you can get some targeted searches. Yeah, again, you know, never get this fantastic tool. Yeah. For most people, maybe 88 pounds a month, not getting the full advantage of and it’s taking them an awful lot of time to get frustrated, but it sounds like you might be
James Taylor 17:04
Yeah, so there you go, everyone, you heard it here first, that search bar is very powerful, the free one as well. I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach and this is the SpeakersU podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business fast new thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discuss marketing strategy, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode as well as free speaker business training at speakers u.com. This week’s episode is sponsored by SpeakersU the online community for international speakers, SpeakersU helps you launch grow and monetize your speaking business faster than you thought possible. If you want to share your message as a highly paid speaker, then SpeakersU will teach you how just go to SpeakersU.com to access their free speaker business training very shortly how we’re using LinkedIn, Maria,
Maria Franzoni 18:02
I love LinkedIn, I use it a lot. And I encouraged speakers to use it. And I find I’m amazed how many people just put up a profile, and then do nothing with it and don’t develop the connection. So I think it’s fantastic. It’s the bit the things I love is that if you connect with someone, you never lose them because they you know, you’re always connected. Whereas if you’ve got somebody in your database, you can lose them because they move company. But this way you don’t keep up with what’s going on. I think there’s some really good content on there. And the people who tend to be on LinkedIn, are there their thoughts about business as opposed to sort of sharing cat videos, although I do like the odd cat video and the dog videos, so that’s all good. But uh, yeah, I do get frustrated at times when I don’t know if I’m always doing the best. Like, for example, we’ve got this new, not new anymore, but we’ve got creator mode that came out and then you’ve got the sentiment, I didn’t move to create a mode, because I didn’t see I didn’t understand the benefits of it. Maybe you could give us some insight into that. Tony.
Creator Mode
Tony K Silver 19:05
Yeah, creative mode. I don’t know what to say about it. Really. It came in again. Did you get an email letting you know? No, I have a lot of fun with it, to be honest with you. Because if I’m in a group of people, I say, who’s got creative mode and I can increasingly more people put their hands up. And I said actually, some of you got it you just don’t know you got it. And I said we’ll get your phones out. Go into it on your dashboard. Right at the top is his creator mode off, they just turn it on. And therefore you’ve got it now. Analytics show that what it was brought in for it has not been achieved for most LinkedIn trainers, they’ve now got 3040 days off the cover story. Yeah, I kind of liked it. You know the little video behind your head that you could do if people knew what to do with it. So there you go into my profile. You see a little three-second clip of me muted doesn’t mean an awful lot, you don’t know you got a click on my head, then select play, it was a full-blown 32nd video with audio. But most people don’t know that. So I quite like it yet again, it’s slightly 45. hashtags, right? Super lock clickable, gain points. And, when I look at someone’s profile, I’m not I want to see about them. the about section to me is quite valuable. It’s an area I do a lot of training around getting it right. So they have their feature section was what everyone’s got, some people don’t even know exists. And then the activities for me don’t work. So yeah, create a mode, the best thing about it is word mode, you can turn it off.
Maria Franzoni 20:47
What do you think of LinkedIn live, which is what we’re doing at this very moment in time?
Hashtag
Tony K Silver 20:52
LinkedIn lives yet again. It’s a great tool. Engagement levels, not too clever on it, and say, some of the rules around where you have to qualify to get it. They don’t seem to apply anymore. And it’s a little bit random. As I say, I think the figure I checked earlier, engagement levels about 3.6%. It’s not, it’s not high, it’s not massive. But like yourselves, if you repurpose it, then it can become quite useful. But yeah, it’s, I’ve applied for it, haven’t got it.
Maria Franzoni 21:26
That’s crazy, top 5% profile. I know
Tony K Silver 21:31
a lot of people speaking to a lady the other day said that she’s been applying for it as well. She’s also a speaker, her husband apply for he got it in two weeks, and his profile is mediocre to be nice.
Algorithm Feed
James Taylor 21:44
So we’re not a criticism I’m hearing kind of start to get leveled in LinkedIn, and you kind of touched on it earlier there is if someone posts something, obviously, only a very small percentage of their audience or their connection will initially see that in their feed. And then if it performs better, gets the better level of engagement and a little bit more, and so on. And one thing you will kind of start to see a little where we already see on YouTube, which is very frustrating, where I love sometimes just going on somewhere and just seeing something that I just wouldn’t have expected something just in a completely different space, a different world, different discipline, different idea. And so what I ended up having to do though, is I had to have to lock myself out of YouTube, because the algorithm is just funneling me into wanting me to show me certain types of content, like what likewise face, but I use Facebook now because it just felt you were just getting channeled into a very small and smaller space. Because the people that understood how to use the algorithm, it was the stuff that we’re just getting focused on. Is that a worry for you with LinkedIn in terms of you just becoming this little group think box?
Tony K Silver 22:55
I’m not worried about it, because I know the rules. But what you probably don’t know is my link to your face. Do you think you have
James Taylor 23:06
one feed? No, well, the one main feed, but it’s being
Tony K Silver 23:10
you’ve got three, oh,
Maria Franzoni 23:12
yeah, you’ve got your activity, your post,
Tony K Silver 23:15
just you’re just normal feed, normal feed that you’re looking at. As you go on to the homepage, you’ve got three. This simply if you just go and refresh the page, it will give you a different feed. But also, the algorithm on the app is completely and utterly different. And they feed on that will be different as well. So you’ve got potentially three lots of feeds you can look at. But here’s an easily a nice little tidbit is that, on average, people spend about 30 seconds scrolling down if they get to about maybe sort of 12 or 13 posts and go away and do something else. If you continue going for up to about 25 to 30. Also, you’ll start to see people’s first eye connections you haven’t heard from for a while, we’re not being in your feed, because you only see 10 to 15% of your connections in your feed. You think Oh God, yeah, I honestly I think for Maria for ages, I’d like to get it back in my feed, we can if you engage with that person twice in eight days, and that could be going and commenting on that piece you’ve seen messaging them sharing it. LinkedIn will then put them into that 10 to 15% mix, so you can now start to mold your actual meet as well.
Maria Franzoni 24:37
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. I like that.
James Taylor 24:40
It does feel that with LinkedIn if I compete with other platforms, and later on, we’ll move tool by tool the week. The algorithm is changing constantly. It doesn’t feel as smart as the Google algorithm or some of the other kinds of video-based algorithms at times. It just feels like a little bit more It’s almost like a manual stuff kind of going on behind the scenes. I’ve injured like, how often is the algorithm changing for LinkedIn?
How often Algorithm Changing
Tony K Silver 25:07
It has a major one about every six months,
James Taylor 25:09
every six months.
Tony K Silver 25:10
But in between a Tinker. Yeah. So if you go into LinkedIn now and again, you’re probably really glitchy in a certain part of it, and you go and visit my computer, what’s going on? Notice we say do it live. So they’re playing around in the background with the actual piece of software that you’re using. So it can get glitchy, very glitchy, sometimes.
Maria Franzoni 25:31
Any other tips you’d like to leave us with before we share with people that are off or that you haven’t had to connect with you, Tony,
Tony K Silver 25:39
what are those tips? Really at the moment in time?
Maria Franzoni 25:44
Have we squeezed you dry yet? No, no, I
Tony K Silver 25:47
think it’s not it’s nothing. It’s nothing outrageous. It’s consistency. Okay. All right. Okay, so one thing that, again, you probably would have heard this and a lot of rumors on LinkedIn, I often debunk this one’s very real. The region article is Yeah. Okay, so people will stop doing articles. It doesn’t need to be okay. And the secret about an article is yes, it does get very limited reach. But, you know, it’s a positioning document to position yourself as an expert in your field, the average sweet spot is about 500 to 700 words. So it’s not a big piece either. For quite simply, again, remembering not to do too much in a day. Do your article, make sure it’s engaging, you know, ask questions, put some pictures in there, don’t just move lower blocky text, because I’m gonna fall asleep reading it. The following day, go in and cut and paste the URL into a post, and I get wording I use is, as you probably haven’t seen my recent article, because basically, you didn’t link to it. And because it goes out with posts, it gets far more engaged. Reach on it, you get far more engagement. And I did it deliberately recently. I’ll put one out there where I didn’t do that at all. I put in looks at the stats, and they’re atrocious. The previous ones were I did that the following day. I posted about it. Yeah, it’s a sword. I got lots of lots of engagement from an article that normally would just die by the end of the pier.
James Taylor 27:20
Yeah. Yeah, the article was interesting. I think suffering Maria.
Maria Franzoni 27:25
Sorry, you’ve led me to another question there. Actually. Sorry, James, I’ll come back to so now that I’m thinking of other things. With that link that links to an article. What about links that take you off? LinkedIn? Are those a problem? Yeah.
External Links
Tony K Silver 27:42
Yeah, they are. Yeah, they keep changing the rules. So you probably heard, probably last year was put a little note saying for link see comments, and you put it in the first comments. And the problem with that was if you get a decent post, you got engaged, the first comment disappeared and people couldn’t see it. Therefore, they wouldn’t bother scrolling. pointless, then it was okay. Do your post, post it, go back and edit it straightaway and insert the link there that got around the issue. That doesn’t work anymore. The actual, what they’re saying now is that you’re going to get about a 10% reduction in reach, but the best way of doing it is to insert it in the post originally. But I found a way around that as well. But that is. That’s me that’s my 1000 pound ticket. You can’t have that.
James Taylor 28:36
So talking about offers, tell us where’s the best place people to go to learn more about you and your work. And I know you’ve got something called LinkedIn scorecards we want to hear about as well. Where should they go and learn about all of those things? Tell us all about the scorecard.
Tony K Silver 28:51
Okay, so yeah, I mean, the K in the middle of my name is there for a reason. There is only one turning silver in Google and LinkedIn, I’m fairly easy to find. So that is useful. The scorecard. Yeah, that is, I know you I’m sure you know, Daniel Priestley. And it is this little toy that he was in a couple of years ago, and I was one of the early adopters as I have known quite well. And it’s a lovely little lead magnet if you want to use that sort of terminology. It’s a series of questions where people answer they get a score, and then by the score, they get what potentially they should be doing. If you score quite low, then you know, pick up the phone and speak to Tony. It might put them at another product on my product ladder. So it’s Yeah, I think scorecard is a fantastic lead magnet. It’s highly moldable. It’s a really useful thing put together and it’s just, I don’t see, I don’t see many of them. So it’s quite disruptive. I like disruptive things. So another question to you too. When’s the last time you saw Oculus? Go for your feet. Again, when’s the last time you saw a cute OS go through your feed? Cannot Maria. Maria is blank she doesn’t think don’t think she knows what it is.
Maria Franzoni 30:12
I don’t know, a LinkedIn
Tony K Silver 30:14
Right? LinkedIn kudos is digital. Thank you, God. Okay, so if you have a look in your feed later, you might see one from the right. What it is, yeah, there are 10 templates. But the great thing about it is, the graphics are fantastic, but they’re okay. They’re quite sweet. I can mold and change the wording in it. And when I send it to you when you accept it, it goes out in your feed and your connections and your followers can potentially see that I’ve given you kudos because it’s disruptive because you haven’t seen it. Yeah, normally people see them. But the other advantage to it is, goes out on my feeds, and all my followers and connections can see that I’ve given it to you as well. So it has a double-edged effect. So it’s quite useful. Because you don’t see a bunch of them. It’s Yeah, it’s quiet, it’s quite powerful as well.
Maria Franzoni 31:05
I’m looking forward to seeing that. And we’ve just had a message here from Ian Berberich. Thank you, Tony. very insightful and some useful tips for getting my post more exposure. lovely to see you Ian, haven’t heard from you for ages. There you go. How am I starting to reconnect? Yeah. So, Jessie, you were saying that the LinkedIn scorecard and also what you mentioned in the book, how LinkedIn solve my midlife crisis? and how it can grow your business? available on Amazon? Yes, yeah, I got to understand. And do you have any tips or tools for us as well? I mean, we’d take everything we can from you today. Try Georgia
Tony K Silver 31:41
for like everything out of me for Yeah,
Maria Franzoni 31:43
I know. I know.
Tony K Silver 31:47
Okay. company page. Have you got a company page? Yes. How many followers have you got?
James Taylor 31:57
on that company page. Okay,
Tony K Silver 31:59
my tip is don’t bother posting from it. Because I 3% of your followers will see what you post. So if you’ve only got a few 100 followers 3%, a few 100 followers are three dogs and a cat is not worth it.
LinkedIn Learning
James Taylor 32:14
Yeah, okay, comm companies pages, they like many of those things is a place that I can idea went to die with company pages. But I think one of the great things and it’s been fantastic having you on is just, it’s LinkedIn is just such a huge beast in its own right. And we didn’t even talk about what my most favorite thing about LinkedIn, which I think you have to be a paid member is LinkedIn learning. Which some of them look kind of broad. But if you want to get a good, broad introduction to a topic, I like LinkedIn learning there as well. So yeah,
Tony K Silver 32:49
you get, I think you get 2830 day free trial, or even with the free version of LinkedIn. And, if you’ve got the licenses and certificates certification section on LinkedIn, you can do some of their courses and add those to your licenses as deification which I’ve done for a bit of fun. So yeah, this is it. Yeah. But yeah, there’s a massive, massive collection of courses on there that you can take is useful, because it used to be called Lynda in the old days, and Nick Gordon.
Maria Franzoni 33:18
Yeah. Oh, my goodness, I remember that. But, James, you’ve got a tip or tool for us as well, haven’t you this week?
James Taylor 33:23
Yeah, so we have just been talking about algorithms and things. I love LinkedIn. But I think the smartest algorithm that I’ve seen just now in terms of social media tools and things is that is with Tick Tock. And I sign up for Tick tock, when it first started, someone told me about it. And it just looked like lots of kids posting stuff, and I didn’t pay much attention to it, and then kind of deleted it on the phone. And then I started to have a conversation with a friend of mine, David JP Phillips, who’s a fantastic speaker. I believe he has a TED talk video, which has got millions of millions of views. And he started using proposing just very simple tips every day on his topic, which is around communication skills, and self-leadership. And I think he now has about 1.8 million followers about 16 million views or something. But it’s a completely different audience from the LinkedIn world. People are going onto Tick Tock for different reasons. But if part of your mission your not everyone has this mission as a speaker, but as part of your mission is to introduce a new generation to the topic that you speak on and connect with folks in different countries in different ways. Not just the people that are going to book you as a keynote speaker that I think is a great tool so that’s kind of where I’m using I’m just gonna sing it to we’re posting about twice a day pieces of content there and it’s really fun we’re trying out different things and it’s kind of no stress too. You can just do it all on your phone you don’t need any particularly fancy tools for it so that’s my tool of the week is picked up
Maria Franzoni 34:49
your site is such a rebel James we’re talking about LinkedIn and you bring Tick Tock in you just like you’re as bad as Tony you too like to disrupt don’t you? I like to throw one more
Tony K Silver 34:59
tip in if I may. got time go Yes, yes, yes, yes, because it, it is very much on from the social media. And we know that LinkedIn keeps trying to adopt social media because Microsoft Word keeps, it doesn’t work most of the time. So we have hashtags on LinkedIn that are now very, very, very clear rules around hashtags on LinkedIn. So those of you that are not doing them, and those of you that are putting on more than five people, because you’re immediately getting a reduction in reach upon the post, the sweet spot or even the sweet spot the rules three to five, okay, three to five only Don’t tag every single person in the dog. Because unless 50% of those people engage with your post, you’ll get a reduction in reach. And if you tag someone into a post, and they remove themselves, that would completely disrupt your reach. So yeah, tagging and hashtags, be very careful how you use them
Maria Franzoni 35:52
is such good advice. This has been brilliant. I’ve got three pages of notes Tony, and I will be coming to you for some paid consultations as well. Thank you so much. Thank you.
James Taylor 36:05
You can subscribe to the SpeakersU podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts while you’re there. leave us a review. I appreciate it. I’m James Taylor, and you’ve been listening to the SpeakersU podcast.
Demystifying LinkedIn For Speakers
