Doing LinkedIn the Wrong Way

I've been using LinkedIn for years now with little to show for my efforts.  Maybe you have to.  I listened to the so-called experts.  Get as many contacts as you can.   Make sure you post at least weekly.  Thanks to today's guest, I now have a good idea of why that effort of time was not giving me the results that I wanted.  You may be surprised on what you are wasting your time on also and the right way to make LinkedIn a valuable tool in your marketing arsenal.

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Doing LinkedIn the Wrong Way with Daniel Alfond
 

Speaker: You are listening to the Mastering Business Basics podcast, where we discuss how to build a solid foundation under your small business to improve your chances of success. And now, here is your host, Roger Pearson. 

Roger: Today we'd like to talk a little about marketing, and in particular, the subject of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is probably, when you talk about social media sites and you talk about businesses, that's the name that usually comes up. and, I've certainly been out there. I have my accounts there, and I advertise my podcasts on there so far, but I'm not sure that I use it correctly.   And that's why I'm happy to bring a special guest on today by the name of Daniel Alfond, and he has made LinkedIn to work for you his main, subject. So welcome, Daniel 

Daniel Alfon: Thank you very much for having me on Mastering Business, Basic, Roger 

Roger: You are welcome. Would you like to start off by giving us a little bit about your background? 

Daniel Alfon: Pleasure. I signed up to LinkedIn in early 2004. I made all the possible mistakes, and I'm here to tell you what actually works for SMB owners 

Roger: That's great. So what are some of the mistakes you made? 

Daniel Alfon: The most tragic one was, thinking I needed to have a large network. Everyone kept telling me that I needed to have a large network, and it wasn't working for me, Roger. I had a very large network, but when I needed to, get back to basics and increase my revenues, those connections were not helping me. 

I was not able to translate the virtual LinkedIn connections into actual revenues. So it took me a lot of time to clean my network, to start almost afresh, and now I have a much more limited and a much smaller network, but I know each and every one of them. And that enables me to get referrals, and my business is based on referrals. 

If someone says, "You need to speak with Roger 'cause he has helped many business owners with that tax problem or that problem," then I'm likelier to listen to what you have to say. I would be less price sensitive, and I would be more willing to work with you. So my mistake was thinking that the LinkedIn metrics were important. 

What is more important is real life metrics, our bank account 

Roger: Makes sense You said you cleaned your contacts. How did you go about that? 

Daniel Alfon: It's very simple technically. You go to your network, to your connections, and you click one by one and you remove them. They don't get any notification like Daniel has, erased you from the book of life or anything like that. and one of the best kept secrets around LinkedIn is actually Roger advanced search. 

You could run an advanced search with a free account. Within five minutes, you would find the ideal business owners around Lutz, Florida, with whom you share one mutual connection or more If, and if you identify your ideal client and you do know your network, then the secret is to leave the LinkedIn platform, to have a chat with your mutual connection, let's call him John, and to say, "John, I notice you were connected with this lady, and I'm interested in speaking with her. 

Do you know her well enough to make the introduction?" Imagine he says yes. You bypassed everything, and you have a meaningful conversation with a client of yours or a prospect of yours, thanks to your mutual connection. That only happens if you really know your network. If you don't know that, that person and you reach out to him asking for introduction, most people will not feel obliged they need to do anything 

Roger: I would assume most of the people , when you have a large network that you build up like they say you're supposed to, most of those people you don't know. 

Daniel Alfon: Most business owners, most SMB owners think they have to have a large network or the game is to have more, exposure. Exposure on LinkedIn starts when you have maybe 30 or 40,000 followers, Roger, because only, say, 2% will see what we share on LinkedIn. Most people are just like you, are not on LinkedIn 24/7, so they check it occasionally. 

And if only 2% will see what you share, LinkedIn is not exactly social media. In social media it's important to share a lot and ... but this is not social media. The reader is more interested in knowing, can Roger fix my problem or not? If you can't fix their problem, it doesn't matter what you share or whether you share at all. 

And if you are not the solution to their problem, what you share is less relevant either 

Roger: Makes perfect sense. I notice, like I said, I share my, podcast on there, and, so what's the best way for a podcast host like me to share a new episode on LinkedIn? I don't know if I'm doing it right or not 

Daniel Alfon: Okay. so let me suggest one or two different ways to look at it. The most counterintuitive suggestion would be not to share your episode on LinkedIn, but to use LinkedIn differently. Can I explain a bit more about that? 

Roger: Absolutely 

Daniel Alfon: Cool. So sharing the episode would say, "Here's episode 15. Check it out." But if you consider Roger LinkedIn, the LinkedIn business community, then what you could do is identify a potential sponsor on the LinkedIn platform. 

Or instead of chasing an additional listener on LinkedIn, ask yourself, who could bring my podcast into thousands of new listeners, hundreds of n- new listeners? Who would be that person? What would be that entity? Who could be introducing the concept of mastering business basics to the world? Maybe a local chamber of commerce, maybe a marketing association, maybe an SMB, alumni, uh, association. 

And within minutes, you can identify the right person within that association, leave the LinkedIn platform, and speak actually with them. So one simple question, if you're looking for a sponsor or if you know of someone who could make your podcast known well beyond an additional listener or two, is to identify that person via search and then speak directly with that person. 

But the second thing to do in the way we share the episode, can I elaborate a bit on that? 

Roger: Sure 

Daniel Alfon: Cool. so tell me what works better. Scenario number one, check out episode 22, where I speak with Jane Doe about virtual assistants. Here's the link Version number two I asked Jane about virtual assistants because I wasn't sure I needed one, and her answer amazed me. 

Here is what she said. You start with a quote from the episode, just the beginning of the first sentence, "And when you've got me on my toes..." Then you say, "To see the rest of Jane's answer, here's the link to the episode." You start with the content. You start with a cold start instead of saying episode number five. 

Episode number five is from our perspective, like the host. But the reader does not necessarily care about episode number five. They could be interested in what you said there or what your guest said there. So just pick the most interesting cliffhanger you could Bring it to the LinkedIn platform and don't reveal the whole answer. 

It has to be something that really happened on the episode, probably your question and the very beginning of the answer. Think as a screenwriter. You're actually producing a trailer. A trailer makes us want to see the movie. Your LinkedIn trailer needs to make us want to go and check the full Mastering Business Basics episode. 

It's a very simple twist. It doesn't cost anything. Just instead of, "Here's another episode," pick something that could be interesting, and don't reveal the whole answer in your LinkedIn post 

Roger: I've been doing it correctly? I'm glad to hear that, 'cause I do. I try to make it a curiosity thing. The little blob that I put in there, and then I put the link to the entire episode. I don't put episode numbers or anything like that. It's purely about, "Hey, this is what we're gonna be talking about today. Is this gonna affect you?" That's the type of thing, to hook people that way. So I'm glad I've been doing that right. That's good.  I take to all of the social media sites also. So that's excellent. So The other thing that you were talking about is that, there's some new AI algorithm. AI is a big thing nowadays. I constantly am using AI in my web development. I'm redoing all of my websites right now, and five years ago, when I built the first one, the first major one with a content management system, I was-- It'd take me two days to figure out the right CSS to put in there, and now I can do it in five minutes with AI, and it's just amazing. And so how is LinkedIn using AI? 

Daniel Alfon: LinkedIn doesn't tell us users that much, but there's been a very interesting experiment. LinkedIn has close to one- five billion users and Roger, every second three people sign up, so it is a big deal. And LinkedIn had a system where before showing your post to the world, the AI algorithm would look at Roger's profile and ask a couple of questions. 

Who is Roger and who is his audience? And if it wasn't very clear, and we as humans do the same thing, if it's not very clear, then people would be less engaged, they would read less, they would be less, interested in working with you, connecting with you on LinkedIn or doing anything else. So instead of adding everything you've done, ask yourself, if I had to pick one specialty I want to know-- to be known for, what would be that specialty? 

And instead of sharing on Tuesday something about Italian, cuisine, and on Thursday about the weather, and on Sunday about tax, pick one specialty. That made so much noise that LinkedIn at one point decided to put it in the back seat and replace it with all sorts of other experiments, but it could be a question of time before it resurfaces and again, AI would decide, does the world need to see what you shared or not? 

Let's get back to the human side of it. Even as humans, if I bump into a profile, ideally within five seconds I need to understand, have I come to the right place? Imagine I run a search and I find three hundred results. Every second I spend glancing at your profile or someone else's profile, my-- there's a clock ticking here say, "You're missing out. 

There are two hundred other people. So make it clear, ask yourself a simple question, who's your ideal reader on LinkedIn? if you're a business or small business owners, then usually your ideal client would be your ideal reader. And second question, if you could make those ideal readers visit your LinkedIn profile when they're looking for someone with your skill set, your specialty, but they don't necessarily know you personally, Roger, what action would you like them to perform? 

What is the single most important action you would like people to perform? And in many cases, it should be going to my website. And you make it very clear and very simple to go to Seagull Technologies, because when I visit your profile, there is a link I can see before I scroll, like what we used to call above the fold There's another way to show that link, and it could take us less than a minute. 

Would you like me to walk through you through it? 

Roger: Absolutely 

Daniel Alfon: Cool. 
 

Okay, so I'll just walk you through it. Could you go, Roger, to your profile, please? 

Roger: To my profile? 

Daniel Alfon: Yes, sir 
 

You see an Add Section button below your profile photo? 

Below your name, do you see end profile 

Roger: it says Mastering Business Basics, there under 

Daniel Alfon: so just below that, please. Below the number of connections, 

Roger: Here we go. 

Daniel Alfon: Let's go to the ad section, please. So first click would be just Ad Section. 

In the menu that shows, could you please click on Recommended and select the very first that needs to say Ad Featured. Do you see anything like that, Roger? 

Roger: I got it 

Daniel Alfon: Good. When you click on Ad Feature, there's a plus sign to the right. 

If you click on the plus sign, the third option should be Add a Link 

Roger: Link 

Daniel Alfon: Would you like people to buy your Amazon book, to go to Seagull Technologies, or to go somewhere else? If you had to pick just one, which link would you like people to go to? 

Roger: Probably my website because that has links to everything 

Daniel Alfon: But so all we have to do now is to paste direct link to your website, and what will happen once you save that is that LinkedIn will show a large image, and anyone clicking on that image would go directly to your website. So it takes really four clicks, and it will make people stay longer on your profile, discover your website. 

It will increase traffic to seagulltechnologies.com, and there you have a whole system. 'Cause it's important to remember that LinkedIn is rented territory. LinkedIn could change the rule. LinkedIn could disappear. You want people to move to your system. So use LinkedIn as a way to generate more interest in Seagull Technologies, but make people go to Seagull Technologies because there you have a way to capture their information and to do other things. Once you save this, anyone visiting your profile see the featured section. 

Roger:But II did see where you went in and did the link, and it was... That's easy. That's so easy. So where does the link appear then? 

Daniel Alfon: So on your profile, when people scroll, they should see the featured section. I can, I can show you in the featured section. 

Roger: Okay. 

Daniel Alfon: Cool. Yeah. It is... there's a new section called, featured section, and when people would visit your profile, they would see the word featured, and then if you had one link, they would see one image and the link itself.   So it takes a minute. It's important to guide people towards the destination you want them to go to. In that case, Seagull Technologies 

Roger: Outstanding. I'll make that change. good to know. So Ah, here's what I wanted to ask you about. I'm constantly getting invitations to, from these, I don't know, advisors or whatever they are, but they want to schedule a meeting or they want me to attend a seminar and everything. It's constant. It's constant. and I'm a small one-person business, and I know they're looking for somebody that's got the, it's a corporation or something. they're trying to get into that, that large business and, I ignore most of them. would you even bother with those or would you accept them or do you write back to them or 

Daniel Alfon: No, I hardly do that. And one of the greatest advantages of knowing your network is that you can basically disregard everything else. Maybe once in a blue moon, there would be an interesting opportunity, not because of the name, but because someone mentioned, "Roger, I've spoken about you to Jane Doe." And then if Jane Doe contacts you on LinkedIn, it makes you remember the person who said she may be in touch. 

But unless there's something tangible like that, you don't have to look at them at all. It's basically spam. 

Roger: Yeah, that's the kind of the way I look at it as spam. They're just doing a mass broadcast out, you know. 

Daniel Alfon: Unfortunately, yes. it's usually automated. Those people have never even bothered to visit your profile, and they tell you, "Roger, we have snow equipment and maybe it's interesting for you." Hey, if you're based in Florida, maybe snow equipment isn't the first thing you need, on a daily basis 

Roger: Yeah, that's true. That's true. so what else do you think people need to know about working with LinkedIn? 

Daniel Alfon: In a word, quality over quantity. Instead of trying to share every week or every day, make what you share count. 

Roger: Now, if I'm going through and all the contacts that I've made and determining what they're doing, I basically have to determine, is this person on... that I've put on this list somebody that can help me, increase and grow my business? 

Daniel Alfon: Yes 
 

Roger: if you determine that person is there, is there a way you would want to... what would be the best way to go about, contacting that person from that to see if they would be interested in, working with you? 

Daniel Alfon: I believe networking is the engine that SMB runs on, and I believe SMB owners have a real-life network. So before we reach out to someone saying, "Hey, I have a solution for you," let's start with our own backyard, with our own sandbox. Do you manage to keep in touch with people you have connected with on LinkedIn? 

Come September 19th, will I take the time to remember that it's Roger's birthday, that I haven't spoken with him in a while, and I will check him out, I will try to find a way to help him, and I would message him or call him or send him a WhatsApp or offer beer or coffee outside of the LinkedIn platform? 

And what I just described is time-consuming, and we all have a certain bandwidth. There is no way people can do that for thousands of people. But Roger, you can be very successful if you have 43 connections whom you know and keeping in touch with 43 people is something most people would find okay. 

So you don't need a larger network.  You need to nurture your existing relationships 

Roger: It's all in the follow-up, basically. 

Daniel Alfon: It is. you met with that person, you did something. Before you move to the next shiny object, try to make that relationship more meaningful. A good question to ask is, who would you like to be interested in being introduced to?   And remember to make the connection and to maybe introduce you to each other 

Roger: Makes sense. one of the things they have on LinkedIn, of course, is they have a lot of metrics. people love statistics, but most statistics don't really tell you much. of all of the statistics and the metrics they have on LinkedIn, what do you feel are the only ones that are really valid to pay attention to, if any? 

Daniel Alfon: Can I make life, simpler for the Mastering Business Basics audience here? 

Roger: Sure 

Daniel Alfon: Cool. So forget about the LinkedIn metrics. None of them are important. What you need to focus on is your business metrics. And the LinkedIn machine should help you grow your bank account. Let's say you have a system where every week you have maybe one discovery call with a client, and you manage to convert maybe half of those calls. 

If by using LinkedIn, Roger, you can double that number, you now have two discovery calls, and you still convert 50%, then within weeks you will be able to trace actual revenues to the activity you performed on LinkedIn. And it-- You haven't changed any metric in the LinkedIn system because the biggest secret is to remember when to leave the platform. 

LinkedIn showed you the name of the potential customer. LinkedIn show you the name of your mutual connection, but everything else happened outside of the LinkedIn platform. I haven't posted anything. I haven't shared anything. I spoke with one person, and that person helped me increase my leads and increase and improve my bank account. 

So forget about the LinkedIn metrics. The LinkedIn metrics that LinkedIn pushes at us are artificial vanity metrics. The number of impressions we have, the number of followers we have, the number... It doesn't really matter. We're in a real life. We have a business, and those impressions will not put food on our table 

Roger: You mentioned the word discovery call. What do you mean exactly by that? 

Daniel Alfon: You have a service where you provide, financial advice, in case of, I don't know, inheritance. So I have lots of questions, and I see that I can jump on a call with you. It would maybe take 15 or 20 minutes, and I would come with my basic questions, and you would answer my questions. In some of those cases, I understand that I need to work with you. 

I need to hire your services because what you told me makes sense, and you didn't try to push things at me, and now I'm willing to work with you. So the term discovery call is not the only term. You could call it any, any way you like. It could be, an introductory call. It could be, ask me anything. 

It could be any way you could communicate with potential customers If you make the LinkedIn machine feed your marketing machine, you're doing great. If there's a disconnect between the LinkedIn machine and your marketing machine, the one that counts is not the LinkedIn machine, it's the marketing machine. 

That has... That is the north metric, the, the North Star metric you need to look at, not the LinkedIn metrics. LinkedIn is a tool. It's important. I make my life out of it, but it's a tool. Just 50 years ago, maybe it would be the phone, but the phone is not important. The phone was important because it enabled me to chat with Roger or to chat with Jane. 

The tool helped us communicate. But was what was more important is the communication itself, not the tool we use to communicate with each other 

Roger: One of the other things that you hear about LinkedIn is that, you need to be posting on a regular basis. Do you believe that to be true? 

Daniel Alfon: You mentioned, fortune, companies and, corporate America. Then in those cases you have a whole warehouse with content, and maybe it makes sense. But if you're a small business owner, you don't have time to post, and frankly, most of your connections are not keen, and they don't want to see content coming from a single source. 

Not Roger, not Daniel, not anyone else. Because the first time I started working with you, and you sent me an invitation request, and I accepted it. And then I see that Roger has shared something on LinkedIn. So I'll check it out, and I'll see it's the Mastering Business Basics, and I was listening to the episode with the analytics, and thanks to that I went to my website and installed Microsoft Clarity, and thank you very much for that. 

But what will happen in the, the second time I see that you shared something? Instead of listening to the whole episode, I'll just check it out. I'll glance at the title and I'll wonder, do I have time for this? And by the fourth or the fifth time I see you share something on LinkedIn, I may have the impression that Roger is hijacking my feed because I see him coming all, all the time. 

This, and this, and this. You don't have to share unless you want to. If you have high quality, educational, top-of-funnel, evergreen content, excellent. One of the simplest way to do it would be to answer basic questions your ideal clients have You know the questions because you keep hearing them. 

Just showing your clients that you know what they're talking about, even without providing the full guidance of your services, would help them understand that thanks to you, they moved a- they've taken a baby step from point A to point B. And now they're eager to discover point C. They did not consider it point C initially. 

They didn't know anything about that. Let's take the example of the podcast. Imagine I want to launch my podcast, and you offer services like that. So the questions people would ask, "How do I even start? Where do I find the guests? What sort of gear should I have? Do I do video? Do I do it bi- biweekly?" 

All sorts of questions. If you provide them with the answers, by the time they trust you, what happenas is that you don't have to sell, they want to buy 

Content should be top of funnel, educational, and ideally evergreen. Not 30% discount till midnight Pacific Time. no, no. This is not going to go very well. Help people by understanding, by showing them that they're able to do that. If tax planning sounds something awful, show them the first step. Show them it's possible, and when they feel empowered, they will remember you, they will reach out to you and they will say, "Now I'm ready. 

Six months ago I wasn't, but now you helped me. Now I'm willing to... I'm interested in seeing what the next step is. Please, Roger, tell me what the next step is. 

Roger: And that's the exact direction I've tried to go in the last couple of years, because I used to be topical. And, When I started writing my book, I found out that no, topical is not it. Evergreen is the way to do. And I got actually a review on the book that he actually said that. 

This is an evergreen book. This is not a book that you read once. This is a book you get off the shelf at least once a year and review, because it's the basics. It's what you have to know. And, that was probably the greatest compliment that I'd ever received because of that. And that's the same mindset that I've tried to take into the podcast. The things I talk about, 'cause I don't have a guest all the time. The things I talk about, are basically, as you said, they're the things that people ask me. They're the things for, that for a quarter century I've helped people solve, real world scenarios, the problems to solve. and, I don't care about sensationalism, all that. I just wanna help people do a better job at building a small business, because I truly believe the ... of two things. being a small businessman is probably one of the greatest things out there that you can achieve. And  in this country, it's one of the main things. 

Even if you fail, it's still, a worthwhile thing. And, the other thing I always say at, And this probably comes from being 75 years old, I've learned a few things. the other thing I say, is basically, at the end of your days, the only thing that's really matters, is how many people's lives you've helped along the way. That's the only thing that matters, that's my entire thing, And that determines everything that I do, I think that keeps me on an even keel. So, I appreciate you coming on. 

So if people wanna get hold of you, how would they do that? 

Daniel Alfon: Thank you very much. They would go to danielalfon.com and they would say, "I discovered you on Roger's website and I have a question." And I'll be glad to listen 

Roger: Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate our conversation today, and I did learn a lot, and I've got a lot of work to clean up my LinkedIn account and to use it properly. So, I kinda learned what I did and what I didn't do, and I really appreciate that. So because there's a lot of bad advice out there, I can tell that. 

But, you sound like you definitely know what you're talking about, so thank you very much 

Daniel Alfon: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be part of the Mastering Business Basic community 

Speaker: You have been listening to the Mastering Business Basics podcast with your host, Roger Pearson. For more information about all of the business education options that are available, we invite you to visit seagulltechnologies.com and continue your journey.