Position Your Company on LinkedIn | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Celeste Berke Knisely and Matt Zaun talk about LinkedIn (LI) strategy and how you can position your company on LI to get incredible results.

CELESTE BERKE KNISELY BIO: Celeste is the VP of Sales, Training & Operations at TLR Consulting Group. She is on a mission to empower organizations to leverage their online authority to start more conversations that convert into referrals, increase revenue streams and create long-lasting results.

For more info, check out Celeste here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/celesteberke/
https://www.tlrconsultinggroup.com/

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun here:
https://youtu.be/pflQtzgP7X0
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzaun/

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

I am so excited for this episode because we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is LinkedIn. And the reason why it's not one of my favorite topics is because of what I've seen in the marketplace with business leaders that utilize LinkedIn. Today I'm joined by Celeste Burke nicely, who is a b2b consultant, and LinkedIn trainer at the T L. R Consulting Group. Welcome, Celeste.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. To be here. I think we're going to unpack a lot of great statistics as well that your audience will really resonate with and hopefully take away the importance of having a strategy and what that can do to their bottom line and with their employees and teams.
Awesome. So I love that where they use strategy. So let's go with that. So one of the things that I have seen, which to me is absolutely mind boggling. I've mentioned this numerous times in the past and there's still a lot of individuals that haven't quite caught on is they are still looking at LinkedIn, like it is a glorified resume that the image that they have of LinkedIn is what it was a decade ago. They're willing to pour money into targeted ads on Facebook, on Instagram on the whole I mean, I see people that are starting to invest heavily on Tik Tok. And they haven't even really thought of LinkedIn. When LinkedIn organic reach is off the charts. A lot of different individuals that I work with their prospects are on LinkedIn. So it's mind boggling to me that a lot of companies don't have a good LinkedIn strategy and I've seen even massive companies that have failed to properly utilize LinkedIn. So yeah, let's absolutely talk some statistics. So what are some statistics that you believe that business leaders need to be mindful of regarding LinkedIn?
When we think like, you know, a business owner or a business leader, we are in a decision making seat. We absolutely cannot ignore LinkedIn. Yes, LinkedIn is the longest standing social media platform 20 years old. It was originally known for this place where people went to look for jobs, and that still is the case today. 50 million job seekers. use LinkedIn every single week to look for jobs. But if you're a CEO, please take note. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this 80% of business to business leads happening today in the marketplace are results of LinkedIn. 80% So when I work with sales teams, when I work with teams and come in and say like, what is your LinkedIn strategy? Let's unpack that. Let's dive into it. If your sales teams if your leadership sales teams specifically aren't spending 80% of their time on LinkedIn, you are absolutely losing out on revenue opportunities. So we talk about, you know, what, what does that mean? Where do we even start? And it's really about having a strategy but I think understanding those numbers, four out of five individuals on LinkedIn influence a decision and this is across all disciplines. So from our CEOs to sales teams, to marketing to talent, action to payroll, it impacts every single area of our team. It's just this big elephant that people are talking about, but they don't really know how to digest. So that's, you know what we're going to talk about today. I will say that, when we look at decision makers 45% of content readers on LinkedIn are in this decision making role managers, EP CEOs, and another alarming statistic and then we'll get on with with that and you know, what do we do with this 46% of your social media website traffic is coming as a result of LinkedIn so we do not have a dialed in presence across our workforce. We are absolutely missing out on like you said that organic opportunity to drive visitors back to our website. We always suggest, like if you're a CEO, something that's great to do, is to Google yourself. You know, Google has actually become like a verb, right? Oh, did you Google it? Did you go. Google and LinkedIn have this perfect relationship? LinkedIn has 100% Moz rating with LinkedIn so if you go and open up a Google browser, you put your name in most likely, your LinkedIn profile is going to appear before your own company website in so here you are as a CEO, as a team who's spending 1000s upon 1000s of dollars on a website, and you're paying no attention to LinkedIn and your branding and what it means. Each one of you in the company is showing up before your own website you need to be looking at how do we utilize this as a business tool in addition to and I know you named Tiktok excetera Sure sistex to go through right there. But I think a lot of times that's you know, we make decisions based on hard facts. So to share those hard facts. Yeah,
no, I appreciate that a lot. So I really appreciate what you said regarding content readers or decision makers. I want I want people to recognize the power of that. So I'm a big storytelling guy. I love sharing not only stories, but having people impact stories that definitely have traction. About a year ago, I shared something on LinkedIn and it got one like, and one comment from the same person. That was an unbelievably successful post because that one person ended up being one of the largest clients that I've had so far. So when I shared really resonated with this individual I mentioned that because I've had five personnel that have gone viral. So to me, I think everyone has a different perspective. What viral means to me viral is when you can't control the posts anymore. There's tons of people commenting it's radically expanding the network and the followers that you have. So I do have 10s of 1000s of followers, but these five specific posts got close to a million views for each one, which to me is going viral based on my audience that I have. I've gotten more business from the post like I mentioned with the one like and the one comment I've gotten more business for posts like that. Then even though viral posts, and I mentioned that because the more specific I am to my target audience, the more that I'm going to be bringing in business and I think it's really really important for business leaders to recognize because sometimes business leaders set this this incredible expectation. That we need to have this massive LinkedIn machine and oh my gosh, what kind of resources do I need to pump into this and what and all these different things when in reality, if you're really focused on the target audience that you're delivering value to, you're gonna get more buy in from that you don't need to worry about about having all these different posts go viral. It's good to go viral in my opinion, because I've expanded out a lot more followers which could lead to more business in the future. But it's just amazing. When I look back and I say Hey, this post this post this post landed to contract with for me, a lot of times those are the posts that didn't have exceptional rates. I don't know if you want to speak to that law, but I just I find that fascinating.
Yeah, and I and I think you've hit the nail on the head there of in the last few years this term impostor syndrome has been thrown around a lot in the coaching industry, but honestly, it affects a lot of us, myself included. You go on LinkedIn, you're looking at your news feed. You see all of these people who are posting, they have comments, they have likes, and then you don't take any action because you don't feel like you're you're ever going to be good enough. And this happens even at the C suite level. I don't know what to pose. What am I going to talk about? I'm not going to start today. When we work with clients we talk about it is not about the numbers. And really when you start to unpack what is happening here. There are a lot of millennials on the platform, roughly 80 million millennials and decision making seeds. But there are also a lot of Gen Xers. I'm on the cusp Gen X Gen Y and baby boomers, we are lurkers, we did not grow up with social media. This is a something that we have learned. Therefore we take in a lot of information, but we don't necessarily respond with a like or a comment. So you know that one post that you had that had one like one comment you have and you can look at your statistics and your analytics on LinkedIn, which is another great tool that has been rolled out and you can see your reach your engagement, how many people were lurking in viewing. I've had plenty of clients who have never engaged with me on LinkedIn, who will reach out and say, Hey, I've been following you for a year. Really? You know, I've never seen him comment. I've never seen you engage, but they're looking so there's this concept of, you know, things going viral, which is great and that's a whole nother beast in itself. But for the majority of us we live in this place of in the middle area where we want to help build an and we don't even call it an audience or a community. Because really there's this place that, you know, we're not speaking to people. We're inviting people into our community who can help us with XYZ and we can help them. So I would encourage you know everybody who is listening to take you up on yes why while going viral is rate, putting out content, building a community, talking to your community. And then teaching your team to do that as well and giving them the tools is going to create interest. It's going to create that know like and trust factor. LinkedIn takes 10 pieces of content before someone does something. So they need to see you 10 times before they do X. So like you said you've had clients who have come from a post, that's probably not the first post that they saw you right. They saw you showing up. They know what you're talking about. You're talking about a pain point. Something you can solve. You've added a personal touch to it. They know that you're human and not just trying to sell, sell, sell, and then they take action. I will stop rambling here but just say that there are only 3 million content creators, people who are consistently creating content which probably means over two times a week, and they're creating 9 million impressions. The LinkedIn platform is 800 over 800 million users. There is plenty of room for you and your team to get in the content game and start talking and we can talk about like well, what do you talk about trading strategy? Because it is still a blue ocean of opportunity.
Yeah, I really appreciate you mentioning that. And I also appreciate talking about the different generations and I want people to recognize why this is so important. So you mentioned the 80 million millennials and a lot of them are the ones engaging and liking. So there's a few things there one, a lot of business leaders that I'm talking to you right now are talking about winning the talent war, and they're bringing on millennials in leadership positions now and if they're not utilizing LinkedIn to show different individuals what their organizations doing. They might be boxed out by an or an organization. That is that's one, too. You mentioned Gen Xers and baby boomers. So me personally 99% of my clients fall within Gen Xers or baby boomers. It's really important for me to recognize not to alienate those generations when it comes to my content. So I'm always focused on what they do. Okay, so I want everyone listening to this. This might sound very freaky to people and I've mentioned this before and a lot of times it turns heads. I know my target audience through and through, inside and out. Here's what I mean by that. I look at every single client that I've had and I do strategy sessions regarding them. I do research on them, what books do they read what movies to read, what podcasts do they listen to? What's their family dynamics? So as an example, the overwhelming majority of my clients have children. So whenever I'm talking to my kids, and something comes out that I think could be an awesome business principle. I share it so like as an example my eight year old son is obsessed with marketing videos on YouTube. He's actually he's expressed to me different things that I need to do in to be a better marketer. I've shared that. And the reason why I share it is I'd be a fool not to it. Most of my clients have kids and my talk because it's building that connection that relatability now I don't do it in a way that's going to alienate baby boomers. I do in a way because I know you'd mentioned you refer to them. Sometimes it's a lurkers. I know the reading, and I know more than likely they're gonna be the ones that become my clients. But I want to figure out a way to get millennials to engage, but I want to figure out a way to get Gen Xers and baby boomers to read. So it's really important that everyone that dives in to the LinkedIn game they need to understand their target audience on a very deep level. And that's where storytelling comes in. I'm able to strategically position my stories to connect with that audience. Find out what books they read. I know what podcasts they listen to. I know what shows they watch. So a lot of my audience they were watching Game of Thrones years ago. They love Game of Thrones. I utilize different business concepts that I learned in Game of Thrones while I was putting that out on LinkedIn right to be a fool not to a basketball my audience is watching. So I really appreciate you mentioned the generations because I think it's really important to be mindful that how we structure our stories matter when it comes to sharing on LinkedIn. So do you want to talk a little bit more about about target audience? So as an example, there, there are individuals listening right now. They already know primarily you know who they serve. What would you recommend a starting point is would it be questions that they're constantly asked? Would it be different pain points of their clients? Like where were they even start in the content game if they if they already have a pretty good idea of who their clients are? You
have a good idea and a little caveat here is LinkedIn takes you seriously as a profile once you reach 500 connections so we want all of our users to be at 500 connections. That's when the algorithm picks you up. LinkedIn did gate how many connections you can send, which is 100 per week. So for some of you, we may never reach that for others who are in you know, business development partnerships, any type of growth mode, we absolutely want to max that out. So think about that, as you're looking across your week. And we can talk a little bit more about you know, how do you get a team started because typically it starts with a very small number of individuals and a team. So when we talk about content, this is typically where people just don't do it because they don't know. And as a leader, we can pick up content in our daily lives. There's almost like a run running commentary of Yes, I go live on another platform almost 100 days in a row here. And every day, it's difficult to come up with content. But I walk around my house, I see things that relate to my toddler, my husband, I put a business spin on it. So it really is looking at your day to day if you're having watercooler talk and you're talking about something that's happening in the industry, you had a golf game you are networking with someone a lot of business is still being conducted on the golf course. These are all pieces of content. You can start small. If you have 20 years of experience as a CEO, you started somewhere start sharing your stories we typically tell people Let's carve out a couple of pillars. What what is it that your audience community resonates with? What is it about you and how do you help them? Lessons learned are great, you know, during COVID As a CEO, XYZ impacted our company, these were the three things that I took away that helped strengthen the growth of a company. If you're in talent, you can be talking about what is your talent process? How does someone what can they expect when they go through that experience the culture so it is breaking down the daily things that you do I mean, simple as Why do I choose this pen? I love these types of pens. How does that relate to you know my my business, I'm able to make notes, jot things down it comes out with ease. It doesn't every post doesn't have to be this brilliant masterpiece. It is about sharing the story relating it to your business, relating it to you your leadership, and then putting that to paper. So it's like being at a networking event 365 days a year. You can choose to stand as a wallflower and observe everything that's going in or you can start just chatting with people like you would. So we always say a great place to start is you know some lessons learned in your career. What's happening currently in what are you facing right now? Is it supply chain issues is at risk issues is that talent shortage? I know a lot of your clients are absolutely facing that the talent shortage and then small snippets of what you're doing and asking your community to weigh in, you know, what are their thoughts on this? So it's really having a two way dialogue even though it's a one on one way right? Output at first. So I would say start small day to day. Life lessons you've learned tips that you have, like you said a story. You worked with a client. This happened. There's no shortage of content. It is more there's a shortage of competence.
Yeah, and I appreciate you mentioned that and what's fascinating to me about the shortage of confidence is a lot of that happens even with the CEO that has been a CEO 20 years using the example that that you shared it's amazing to me there's a there's a lot of quote unquote influencers solopreneurs individuals and the content game where hope to post content all day long, all day long, and they're seeing the value in their businesses are increasing. They almost started with nothing, and now they're exploding. But yet sometimes when I talk to those CEOs that have had very successful careers, they don't see the value in it. And what's interesting to me is the same individuals will talk about how amazing of a brand Steve Jobs had always talked about all if every CEO could build this incredible brand and have these these on fire people and build this cult like following and and Steve Jobs learned how to connect with his audience through sharing stories on a stage like he literally studied how to share stories how to market I mean, Steve Jobs was a marketing genius even though he was the CEO of a massive organization. And I find it fascinating that a lot of CEOs aren't willing to conceptualize experiences in their own life and ask themselves, where's the story in this that I can share with my audience to build that brand? And then they complain that they're not winning the talent war. People like working at organizations that have an incredible culture they love incredible leadership. So if you're a CEO out there, and you want to build this incredible team around you, what are you doing to connect with your audience and build an audience on LinkedIn? So I really appreciate you mentioning start small, and you know, start small sharing these stories you mentioned, you know, your daughter, your husband, different things that you're watching, you're paying attention for that can be turned into stores. I really, really appreciate that. And I
will I will no to I mean, I'm almost in tears here because you're singing my song every single day. It's I'm getting asked, okay, well who can do this for our CEO who can do this for our C suite and I want to bang my head against the wall. That's awesome. Your thought leadership, your experiences are your own. And as a CEO, we want to get to a point where we're able to offload whatever administrative tasks but I would never offload this. This has the power and I'll tell you here in a moment, a couple of stories, if you will, to just completely change your brand. So there is a company I can share the case study with you or six employees decided we're going to gamify our LinkedIn experience. We're going to completely put our company on the map. Six of them went in through a Slack channel and they were like we are all in on LinkedIn. We're going to post daily this is what we're going to share. One of the individuals picked up a comment Chris Walker was like the end all be all on LinkedIn if you're in any type of marketing or growth. It then went from there. It's snowballed from there. They hit 30,000 views. I think they all went off to a steak dinner they have these different benchmarking, so to speak that they put in place six people completely changed. They had more visits, I think in a whole entire year in one day to their website from them going all in on LinkedIn. But they got it they got the they needed to put in that we call it the dirty wraps right now if you actually lift weights like the 30, the 60 to 90 day plan to get there. I worked with a large company over 60,000 employees in here recently. They have roughly 70,000 followers on LinkedIn on the company page that's managed by one person. We looked across their employee base which is very small, only about 10% of their employees. The rest or line level are on LinkedIn. So this would probably be regional you know, management decision making and above. They have the power to impact at a first level 3 million individuals versus the company page. So if you're a CEO thinking and you know I'm really still not understanding the strategy and the power, it literally takes a few people in your company and then that ripple effect of getting visible and this is free. It is absolutely free. You do not have to put any money behind this. If you're spending marketing dollars on ads, talk about I have this grassroots effort that may take some time upfront, but I can completely change the bottom line retention talent. There statistics around employee happiness, I have one here. 72% of salespeople outperform their peers that they are used by 23% if they are using LinkedIn as part of their business development process. So I don't I think what's going to happen is if you do not get in the game, if you're listening to this and your CEO that still thinks I don't have time, trust me, you have five minutes today. You're gonna start thinking, why didn't I do this sooner? Why didn't I get my employees on LinkedIn sooner? Why didn't I have a strategy at least from the C suite? So yes, we cannot talk about it enough. Because can continue to go on and on and I know I went off on a little tad little tangent there. But I think you and I both are very passionate about the opportunity that companies have to completely drive bottom line results by doing something that's just that like one degree right atomic habits. 1% Sure. 1% 1%. Sure.
No, I very much appreciate you mentioned that. And what's fascinating to me is a lot of times decision makers, let's say CEOs will be doing something and it's their day to day so they don't see it as being radically interesting. And what I mean by that is I can't even tell you how many conversations I've had with CEOs where they'll tell me that they're doing something and I'll say wow, that's That's amazing. And they'll say really? I say absolutely Are you are you are you touting that? Are you sharing that with your team? Are you sharing that with your clients? Are you sharing that in the world to potentially bring in more prospects? No, because they don't think it's a big deal. I was recently talking to a CEO that was doing incredible stuff with different nonprofit organizations building all these different partnerships, and like it was it was amazing, absolutely amazing what this individual is doing. No one's talking about this in the company. But yeah, there's there's complaints that they're not winning the talent war, and they can't bring on top talent. I mean, so I think it's so important for individuals like that to be sharing those stories on LinkedIn. And another thing