Story Sharing on LinkedIn | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Britta Blanski and Matt Zaun talk about why your employees should be sharing their stories on LinkedIn.

BRITTA BLANSKI BIO: Britta is the owner of Britta June & Co., where she focuses on LinkedIn corporate strategy and how companies can utilize the platform with their employees for maximum results.

For more info, check out Britta here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittablanski/
https://www.instagram.com/brittajuneco/
https://brittajuneandco.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

Welcome to the stories with traction podcast. I'm your host, what's my one of my favorite things because of the results that I've seen from this platform today we're gonna focus on corporate training in regard to LinkedIn. And for everyone that follows me you know that LinkedIn is my social media channel of choice because of the results that I've seen. And to dive into this conversation I am joined by Britta Polanski, who's the owner of Britta Joon unco. She's a LinkedIn educator focusing on LinkedIn strategy for companies. Welcome to the stories of attraction podcast.
Hi, thanks so much for having me. It's real honor and pleasure to be here. I've been really enjoying listening to your podcast. So thank you for inviting me.
Absolutely. And I appreciate what you do. And I really appreciate your content. And I appreciate all that you put out into the world that I really want to go into different things that companies can do to empower their people to utilize this platform more so they can see some really good results as well. Before we dive into LinkedIn, though, I do have a question that I want to start off with. I know you originally opened your company in Minnesota, and then you moved to Italy. So how did that how did that happen? Why Italy? Tell us a little bit about the culture shock from going from Minnesota to Italy. I'm very intrigued and interested to hear about that.
Yeah, that story goes actually quite a ways back. My love for Italy started during high school and that's where I learned to speak the language and really had a full immersion in France, the culture and so I originally studied French and Italian at university that was my major and it seemed natural to give any opportunity to be able to come over here so my husband is Italian and that would really be the real reason that I'm in Italy. Is for for that for love.
That's awesome. All right. So you you really started to enjoy Italian culture in high school. So was it in high school that you like envision yourself moving there one day? Was that one that started?
Yeah, I think after you spend a prolonged period of time abroad, you kind of have reverse culture shock that happens and you go back to your home country. And you realize, okay, I have to make a decision now, do I want to stay where I am? Or do I want to go back to where I was before? And so pretty early on. I knew that I wanted to go back to Europe for sure. If not, if not Italy did you know for sure. Another country within within Europe? Sure.
Interesting. I'm fascinated by that. All right. Awesome. So
have you been Have you visited
I've never been to Italy? No. I've always wanted to go. I'd love to take my wife one day but I have not ever been Yeah.
Okay. When you plan that trip, let me know. And I'll give you some some insider tips.
Sounds awesome. Perfect. Alright, so the second question speaking of Italy, so what what do you think separates Italian Espresso from what you could typically find in the United States.
That's a good question. Okay, I would say the intensity of the espresso. American espresso tend to be extremely bitter and they pull it too long. So you need to polish short shot so it's, you know, the actual quantity is less, and it shouldn't be not smoking, but it shouldn't be in that sweet. It's not the right word, but it's robust and full of flavor. And often, I think in the States, it's just so bitter. And they just haven't they haven't quite gotten it right. For sure.
Awesome. Alright, so speaking of espresso and energy, and, and all of these things to get us pumped up and excited. Let's talk about how companies can energize their people through LinkedIn. Was that an awesome segue? Or what?
Yeah, that was I thought I found it. I was like, Oh, he's connecting the dots. Yeah, I think especially since we're talking about LinkedIn, one of the great things is LinkedIn is a free tool, right? You don't have to pay for it. And so when it comes to companies and businesses, if you just imagine that most of your employees already have a LinkedIn account, they're sitting you know, probably unused, and you don't have to invest any more money in it. But if you could encourage your employees to use it, you would have a really incredible, powerful tool at your fingertips. That would just really help you become more visible and really speak to your company culture and your brand. Sure,
sure. Yeah. So and just so people can kind of conceptualize just how powerful this is, and I've spoken about LinkedIn, quite frequently, just because I've seen I've seen results by taking the stories that I have putting my stories on LinkedIn and then gaining a following and that following has significantly led to business. And I tell people I have I've invested a lot of money in advertising of the year is on Facebook, like a lot of advertising. And I'm not knocking Facebook, Facebook, to me is really, really good for strategic targeting. So like if you have a low ticket item, you can get really crazy almost like creepy weird with how specific you can target people on Facebook. But I always let companies know it takes a significant amount of money. Like you have to have a pretty good chunk of change earmarked for advertising to actually see traction with us. So you know, you invest $100 And they get X amount back you're going to be investing quite a quite a lot of money. I've spoken with small businesses that have invested upwards of half a million dollars on strategic targeting ads on Facebook and they've seen a lot of results. Well what's interesting to me, and why I'm so like, unbelievably amazed and excited about LinkedIn is at one point I saw people get traction on LinkedIn. I cut off all of the the the ad money I was spending on Facebook and plus I was getting pretty frustrated with Facebook and every time I felt like I figured Facebook out they changed the algorithm like in a big, big way. So I started putting time on LinkedIn. And back to your point about being a free resource. It was all organic reach for me. Like I post something on LinkedIn and I post something on Facebook and I was getting so much more traction on LinkedIn through three posting versus the amount of money I was spending on Facebook and I was bewildered. So I shifted all of my attention to LinkedIn. I started really intensively I believe it was September of 2019 on LinkedIn actually right before COVID hit and thank God that I did because you know we know the story. What happened in the months that followed. And LinkedIn like my business started blowing up because of what I was purchasing on LinkedIn. So with that said, I mean obviously if companies had a entire sales force of people that were buying into, obviously more on LinkedIn, they would gain a lot more traction too. So what's a way that people can empower their employees to spend more time and focus on LinkedIn?
Yeah, and well, and to your point there, I think a big difference between maybe a Facebook ad and actually utilizing LinkedIn is the fact that it's not just about the sale. So of course, you know, we want we want to make money and we want to land more clients. But LinkedIn is so much more than that. It's really about building relationships. And so when you encourage your employees to actually start utilizing the platform, with the perspective that I'm here to not just promote myself, we're not just talking about personal branding. It's all about me, me, me, me, me. But I'm really here to demonstrate how I can help others and how we can be like a mutual help to one another. And so it's really taking that shift and like focus from you know, off of yourself and putting it on to others and it's going to bring in valuable people into your network that's going to be beneficial to both of you. So we you know, the employee really is the greatest asset to your business because it's what they're saying when they're not in the office, right. So when they go out or if they go on LinkedIn or on other social media websites, platforms, or you know guys talking about publishing on Glassdoor and whatnot, it's so what are they really saying behind closed doors? If someone's going to talk about business, you know, and how it is to work for your company? What would they say? So if you get the conversation moving, and you're encouraging them to talk about, you know, what's happening in the office, what's happening outside of the office, as I always say, the professional is personal, right? We're all people and so, you know, really putting that personal touch on the content that you're putting out. You're gonna get positive results and you can you're gonna see encouragement within your employees between each other. And they can say, hey, like, it's a really great way to also kind of team build within the company as well. Like I saw that you posted that one thing you know, I didn't know that you had that going on. That's really exciting. Or, you know, I'd love to support you and other projects that you have going on. So it just extends, you know, it's not only who's outside of your company, but it's also encouraging them to support one another on a personal level within that. But when you go beyond that, you're going to start you know, making those connections, building those relationships, and you have that person focus, but then word of mouth, as we know, is the most powerful form of marketing. And so that's how, that's where you're gonna see the result.
Sure, sure. Well, yeah, so I feel so there's a lot to unpack with what you said. And I feel like we're making the comparison between Facebook and LinkedIn. It's almost like Facebook is like a one way street. You're posting stuff very targeted. Again, if you're if you have a really good chunk of change for ad dollars, it's awesome for companies that want to do that, but LinkedIn, if you reframe your perspective from I'm gonna post stuff to build relationships that comes back into networking. So LinkedIn, I like saying this because I think it does capture at LinkedIn is a networking event on steroids like it is it really content X people's ability to network and I really liked what you said about professional is personal by taking experiences that one goes through whether in business or in life, developing that story. And if it's a personal story, you can intertwine a business theme in that personal story that's going to speak to your network. And then you also said me, too, you focus so instead of me focus, it's really you focus from the audience perspective. And I think a lot of that goes back to content marketing. And what can companies do to empower their team to really be good content marketers? And it's amazing how some companies still buying to archaic marketing practices like I still see this and it's just mind boggling to me that you know, we are where we are in history, but yet people still are doing marketing like it's the early 90s Like there are still people going door to door I still am seeing people put stuff on people's windshields, right from an advertising perspective, I would say at least once a week, if not twice a week, someone knocks on my door trying to sell myself.
Wow, that's incredible. Actually, it's quite high. Yeah,
it's it's really annoying. Like really annoying, especially with having young children having a dog and so like, you know, they knock my dog barks. It's never gonna pause and yeah, working from home. It's never a positive experience. I'm never excited to go up upstairs so my office is downstairs to walk upstairs, open the door and figure out why is this person knocking on my door? At
least real estate person is interesting question is irritation and probably not a very good way to, you know, start off for
sure. Yeah, it's not excitement. And there's still even if companies aren't doing that, so for everyone listening they may be just bewildered by that like, Wow, there's so people knocking on doors. I mean, check your marketing, more than likely. There are people listening to this that your marketing you're still marketing in a different decade. They're not focused on you focus on marketing. And that's a huge difference in where we are as a society. There are some people that they post stuff from a content perspective that I cannot wait to read their stuff because it's so beneficial. So there's a major difference between annoyance on I really want this person to go away because I'm in the middle of a meeting and they're knocking on my door my dogs barking, why do I need to talk to them to I cannot wait to consume this person's information that's going to benefit my life. So can you talk about the you focus marketing today from a content perspective? What do you recommend companies do from a content marketing perspective?
Yeah, I mean, it all comes down to giving value and I feel like sometimes that can feel like a really watered down phrase because we use it all the time. But it's giving concrete examples and really simplifying it down and kind of I want to say going behind the scenes, but always explaining the why behind something. So for example, like if you have some conference or event coming up, and you're gonna have many different, you know, representatives there, they're going to be speaking about something instead of just publishing on your company, page, like come to our event on this day at this place. I want to know, why is it beneficial to me? Like why should I be there? I feel like there's often an assumption that when you're publishing on LinkedIn, you're only publishing for people who are already within your industry. You should have the goal in mind that you want to reach beyond those other people and bring new people in. So you can't I mean, it's so easy to make assumptions. But like really break it down and be like, you might feel a little bit ridiculous and silly writing something out. So plain and simple, but instead of saying, you know, just be like, here's a date and time and location of some event that assume you know everything about already. You want to like excite your network about what's going on and give them a reason to be there. So explain like why the events being hosted whom is someone that you can meet at that event. What can you do there is a person that you should possibly you know, stop by and say hello to in particular and why? Or even giving an explanation on how something got started, you know, this started five years ago because of this. You don't really bring them into stories I'm sure you can speak into so if you give them context, giving an context explaining why. And then we have to talk about you know, when we say give value, it's giving them practical takeaway action steps. If I can give you two suggestions or three suggestions that's appreciated. Not every industry might have practical takeaway action steps. But if I can feel like I have learned something, if I read your content, it's going to make me feel good about what I read. And it's going to be, you know, beneficial, again for me, because I feel like oh, that was intriguing. I didn't know that. And then that person will have caught my attention.
Sure. Absolutely. So you had mentioned an event, like people posting about an event. I'm going to pick on a friend of mine. He listens to this podcast religiously. So I know that I won't refer to him by name, but he's doing a great job. He really started doing a lot more on LinkedIn and he's starting to see the results. And the other day he had asked me about that, about the traction that he's getting from posting his stories on LinkedIn. And he asked me my perspective, and I said, You're doing awesome like you like just, you're you're starting to see LinkedIn and all its glory. You're starting to see the traction, you're starting to see your followership grow people reach out to you messaging, that's awesome. But he said your content is so content rich that you can actually split it up and have even more of an effect. So basically, like one of his posts a day, it's so content rich, he could split it up into 234. And basically start like, hey, every single day, you could be posting based on a couple of your posts, right? So that's music to his ears because it's less time for more results. And I really like to use the example of a digital billboard. And when there's a convenience store in my area it doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone outside of the Pennsylvania New Jersey, Maryland area and the United States. So I won't even name drop this company, but it is a it's a convenience store that has a cult like firewall. And they have billboards everywhere. And someone may ask like they already have a big following. Why do they need billboards everywhere? And I mean, my response would be every time you're passing that billboard, that name is in your mind and in your mind, and it's playing the soundtrack on your mind. So whenever they're rolling out a new sandwich, or they're rolling a new coffee, it's like I'm thinking about it all the time. And that's like, the beauty of LinkedIn is that when people start seeing your name again and again and again and the comments or different likes or whatever, however, you're going to engage with them. It opens up doors and a built in brings down barriers and creates trust. And there are people that I have met all over the country, and they'll come up to me and they'll say, I know your name from somewhere. I don't know where but I know your name from somewhere. How do I know your name? And I'll say Well, do you do you follow or are you connected with me on LinkedIn? And they'll look and they are? It's like, because they've seen me post month after month after month and week and so it's really making that digital billboard connection. Okay. So but I also want to focus on this because once companies grab a hold of this companies are really good at policies and cookie cutter stuff. So I'm seeing this more and more we're basically and I really want you to speak to this because you said about professional is personal. They'll give things to their people to post and then all their people post the exact same thing. They're like Alright, we're gonna get LinkedIn Here's an article right so they'll have like, a bob 150 sales rep all posts the same thing, same time. And it's it's it's hysterical to me. So for companies that they buy into the importance, they're like, alright, you sold me on the importance of LinkedIn. Now we're gonna get someone to come up with this content provided to you and you're gonna post that what would you say to that? Well, let's start there. What would you initially say to that?
I would say don't do that. Don't all post the same thing know what? So that's what that's what your company was doing. If you had a copywriter. You know someone who works in communications, you have a social media manager, and you want to encourage your employees to use LinkedIn. So maybe you do have an article or piece of content. I mean, what's the beauty of having a diverse team is that we're all going to have a different perspective. And so it's really easy to share that same article, but just add your two cents like everyone's going to read that and have a different takeaway. Everyone's gonna read that piece of content and something different is gonna stand out. And it might make you think of something else and be often laugh about how LinkedIn posts you know, they turn into these like little these little blog posts that are you know, going back to the very beginning I did this and I want to thank this person they turned into kind of exaggerated posts that can really just be much shorter, which is true. So when we say that you don't need to write a super long thing, but just share your perspective and why again, why are you sharing it? Why is this relevant? So you can still share the link but then like the copy that actually goes into the post, it's going to be different for everyone. And that's where you can really, you know, mix things up. So, I also think, a lot of times, with many of my clients, a lot of the work that we do is actually just building up the confidence to start sharing on LinkedIn and I know a lot of people get nervous about sharing that personal aspect. And I think as well, from a corporate perspective, they might be a little bit nervous and anxious of having their employees start being more active on the platform for various reasons. Maybe they would even say I'm intimidated. If my employee starts publishing good quality content. And one there's a risk that okay, maybe it won't fall in line with the culture and brand of that company. That would be one risk, which may be if you think about it, is that really so bad? Because I could offer open up, you know, an opportunity for conversation. Why do you think that or why you know, why did you respond to that one event in that area, so it could be a very good discussion starter and a way to get good feedback. But there's a risk to that. Maybe they're going to get noticed, right? If they are a very talented person, then maybe someone else is going to recruit them. But at the same time, why would you want to hold your employees back from demonstrating their knowledge? It's a good way to actually kind of get the competition out there. But I want you to demonstrate your skill because if you are reflective of our company, and like I hired you, because I do think you're a good fit. And I think you're very capable, then I want you to demonstrate that skill because it will reflect well on us.
Sure, sure. So when you when you train companies, are you training individuals to post on their personal account or are you training them to pose through a business account? And can you can you explain to listeners the difference?
Yeah, so it's both because I think that it's important that the company is putting out their own content. But then you also want your employees to be actively utilizing the platform in a way that's not cookie cutter. So you do have various events and articles that are being put out. But then if you can supplement and fill that in, it's great. So the company page is talking about events that are happening within the industry, other things that are happening within the company. Often you see I mean for like if you go back years ago on LinkedIn, what did you see you just saw, like reports, statistics data, and I was like, Well, this is really boring, you can still share that. But again, giving it context, bringing people into the story. So you're talking about what's actually happening within the company and within the industry, and then your employees still take that they sprinkle it throughout their feed as well but then they're supplementing it with their own personal experience, both professionally and personal. And I think the personnel is really important. I'll never forget this example. Someone told me Yeah, you know, I follow this person on LinkedIn and they're always publishing this one product that they come and sell to us within our business. So like, we have relationship because they come regularly to sell this product. And of course, you're always gonna buy it. But when I follow them on LinkedIn, that's all they share. And it's kind of just a transactional, you know, experience. And I said, Yeah, but imagine if that person that's coming into your company regularly posted personal information that we actually that connection, that interaction that you have is going to be so much better and you'd actually have something to talk about and discuss instead of just their product because it's hard to set up a conversation solely on product or data, but you can start a conversation on so many other things that are personal.
Sure. So let's talk about the word personal. And I think it's important because we think in pictures, so someone's picture a personal and your picture on my picture probably going to be different. So let's kind of talk about what that means to you. So when you say personal, can you give us some examples of what personal might might be posting on LinkedIn?
Yeah, I think when we say personal the general idea is like, Oh, I have to publish something about my family or something that I do in my private life. And I say personal can simply be the fact that you listen to this podcast, and you listen to an episode and you share that, you know, it was enjoyable to you and you had this takeaway from it. Or it could be that you recently read a book or that you decided you were looking at like for example, when I was looking for a new car I posted on LinkedIn about it because I don't know very much about the car, you know, car industry. So I said, Hey, you know, give me give me some feedback and some advice and which direction actually go so you don't need to, you know, dive really deep far into your personal life. You're going what's going on in your home and like your it's not your private life. They're just things that attribute to your own growth as a person, again, whether that's in the professional realm, so did you attend a conference? Who did you meet at that conference? So you're gonna share a personal post that's related to work, but you're saying I was at this event, it was really nice because I got to meet this person with this person and we were able to, I don't know go out for a coffee. We chatted about this. It was really great to make a friend while on a business trip. You've now taken a professional experience and made it personal.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense. So thank you for using the example of people posting this podcast. Absolutely. That is, that is an awesome thing for people to do. Thank you for the promotion. Everyone should be posting about this podcast. That's a joke. Alright, so I appreciate you separating between personal and private life because I think sometimes people get intimidated. I don't want to I don't want to talk too personal about their different things happening in my life and people don't need to do that. But I would also say the vulnerability is very powerful in many ways. And some of the most traction I've gotten on LinkedIn has been sharing personal stories with business themes intertwined. That ends up getting a ton of traction. So like for example, I learned a ton about empathy for my grandmother. My grandmother was one of most empathetic human beings I've ever met in my entire life. Unfortunately, she passed away a decade ago, but she hurt her empathy was forged in pain, through financial pain through the Great Depression, right? So she was able to connect with every single person didn't matter who they were. So often when I'm crafting stories regarding empathy, my mother's not my mother. My grandmother is the hero of that of those stories. So I'm positioning her as the hero She's teaching me all these life lessons. It's empowered me to be more of an empathetic person. And there's there's a business principle intertwined and I make it relatable to different elements in business, and me being vulnerable sharing different elements that I learned from my for my grandmother, I mean, those those posts take off. And what it does is it increases my following. I get messages about posts like that, that lead to discovery calls and more business. So I appreciate you separating the difference between personal and private life, but I also just want to mention that you don't have to get super, super, super private, personal but it's sharing vulnerabilities and connecting with people in that manner is good for business.
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there's always a risk that comes with being vulnerable. And so, you know, on your journey on your journey of LinkedIn of deciding, okay, now I'm going to start posting and I'm feeling more confident and comfortable posting, I'm going to now start to be vulnerable. And there I mean, the risks that you're going to take with sharing that is also going to get a return. So the more vulnerable you are, usually the better response you're gonna get. And actually that I think, personally, that's the beauty of LinkedIn is that so many people really like gather around and like resonate with that by not just resonating like they're really honestly actually supportive and I got to say like, you get messages on that, because people actually care. And I think when it comes to companies and corporate, this is where it's actually really key. Because if you're encouraging your employees to utilize LinkedIn, and they feel like it's safe to be vulnerable, you're going to you're gonna get a good insight into what moves your team and your business and like, what the culture is, what they're interested in and what they're reacting to. So if you're, if you're going to really dive into LinkedIn, and you're going to make the space comfortable for them to do that, and then you're going to take the time to actually, you know, we're not stalking people, but you can see people's activity on LinkedIn. So if you're going to see okay, what do our people in our company what do they enjoy what moves them what gets them excited, what causes them to react? What pushes them to go into a certain direction? And then you would take that information? And you would then use that within your team for various for various reasons, whether that was team leadership, team building, and so on. Sure,
sure. That's really good point. One of the things from a mistake perspective that I learned early on when I started and it took me quite some time to learn this. And I know this is gonna sound like really simple, but I do think it's almost like a journey that people have to take. So me saying this, everyone listening is going to probably take it and say, Oh, that sounds so simple, of course. But really you have to do this to really start to understand. When I first started posting, I was trying to be everything to everybody. And I was trying to capture like everyone's attention. And then as I progressed through my journey, I recognized and this comes back to like data and actually sitting down and like really brainstorming about this. I recognized that 95% of all of my clients hit very, very, very specific categories. Okay. And then there was this other 5% that there's almost no way that this other 5% is ever going to be a client of mine. But then 95% Of all the clients that I was doing business with really fit within these different categories. So when I'm crafting my story strategy on LinkedIn, I'm very unsure in stories that is going to really speak to that 95% This is what some people refer to as an ICP or an ideal client persona. And I don't care about alienating the other individual. It's not that I'm trying to go out of my way to be offensive, but I don't really care if they don't understand the story or if it doesn't make sense to them because it's really not part of their lives. So here's a prime example. I don't even I don't even like if I if I'm thinking about it right now. I can't even think of a client that I've had in the last few years that has not had children. Hey, almost all of my clients have children, like almost all of them, and at various specific ages too. So one of the things that I've done when it comes to my story strategy is I do share stories in regard to my children, but with a business theme intertwined and what I mean by business theme intertwined is I have a seven year old son that is obsessed with marketing videos on on YouTube. It's like the funniest thing in the world to me, he watches all these YouTube marketing videos, and he's actually taught me how to be a better marketer, my seven year old son, so I would be a fool not to talk about that like I would be so dumb to not like it would be fuller so I'm constantly talking especially in my trainings about different things that my seven year old son has taught me and it's like the new things coming out in marketing. So it's it's it's personal back to your point about like professional as personal it's a personal thing. It's I'm talking about my son different than the lessons he's taught me. But it also speaks to people's intrigue regarding marketing stuff. So I really want to I just I want people to recognize that they don't need to be anything to everybody. They really could focus on stories that relate to their target market. And I want to talk to you a little bit more about that because I do I have seen two different thoughts. When it comes to LinkedIn. I've heard people talk about just cranking out content and all costs, and there are people that do receive results. From like a big followership are their posting everything under the sun. And then I've also seen people that really get more super niche and they they're really focusing on speaking to their target audience. Where do you fall from, from a philosophical perspective?
I really do. Believe that we condition or audience so if you're constantly posting everything, you're just going to that's what your network is going to expect to see from you. And so I would much rather see someone posts less often, but it's really high quality and it's very specific. So I think there's a lot of power actually, in very consciously deciding to repel. So yeah, and it's not that you're like, Okay, I purposely want to send these people away, but you know that your content is so specific, that it's not going to speak to everyone, but in what you are doing it's it's quality. And so it's going to reach the right people and it's going to be what, what they need to hear. And from a corporate perspective, that's particularly important, I think, especially post COVID. We keep talking about the great resignation everyone's realized where a lot of companies have been lacking in certain areas and other people now want to look for specific things if they're going to transition in their career. And so if your company decides, Okay, we're gonna get super crystal clear on who we're trying to reach. You know, also including bringing in people into your company, if that's so clear to you when you are recruiting and you are hiring people, it's not going to be difficult for that person to take a look at your company page and decide if they're aligned with your business or not. Like on a smaller scale, people coming in for an interview, and they're like, Oh, it was just like turned out that they weren't qualified, but they're just like, not the right person. Like we probably could have even avoided that interview. If you had been much like if they were, you know, active and visible and they had kind of their own personal brand going on at LinkedIn that you could kind of bet them beforehand. And for that person to see what your company is all about it would have saved both of your time. So definitely in the camp of niching down being super clear and not being afraid of repelling people.
So let's speak about that a little bit because I want to give an example just so companies listening or leaders of companies listening can really conceptualize understand the power behind what you just said. So I'm thinking of two accounts in particular, I won't drop any names. I don't want to belittle anyone, but just for example sake. There's an individual that I follow on LinkedIn and this person has a million followers, 1 million followers. There's another individual that I follow on LinkedIn. And this individual has 10,000 followers. And it's an awesome example because like it's very simple math. So one is 1 million followers one has 10,000 followers. The person that has 10,000 followers is absolutely crushing it right now on LinkedIn bringing in more business than this person even knows what to do with. The person that has a million followers is actually struggling right now on regarding business. Okay, so I know both of these individuals, I've had numerous personal one on one conversations with both these individuals. I know where they are in business, I know their ideal. So that's why I can speak with confidence regarding this example. The one with a million focused on creating all kinds of content all all under the sun, like just everything under the sun regarding content. And because of the way it was structured. It was posted with the intention of trying to go viral, and the person did a really good job and built a nice following. So this person absolutely has social proof. One of the things that they have going for them is when someone goes to their LinkedIn account, wow, this person has a million followers. The person with 10,000 is so laser focused with one specific topic now they they're doing what you're what you're saying regarding the personal aspects, different elements of storytelling. So it's not that they only talk about this one topic, but they're so focused on it, that they're literally turning business away because they can't then and during that they're in the midst of hiring right now. This person I'm thinking of that has the 10,000 they've been hiring and hiring and hiring because they literally have so much business coming in. They don't even know what to do with at all. That's the difference. So what I'm seeing is, I look at the one and I think to myself, I don't even really quite understand what this person does because they're trying to be everything to everyone. And the person over here. I clearly understand what they do. So have you also seen that as well? Have you seen accounts where they may not have the biggest following in the world, but they're actually doing very well from a business perspective?
Absolutely. Almost, I mean, not those numbers but almost the exact same example. I have a client who has a very large following. And it's actually quite frustrating for her because if you're going to actually utilize your account and she she's, she's an entrepreneur, so she's working for herself. This is a little bit different when it comes to speaking about you know, corporate corporate usage of LinkedIn for your employees, but you should be looking at what's happening to your content, right. So who's interacting with it, who's engaged who's commenting, and for her, it's actually extremely frustrating because she has to weed through all of that. And it's just it's a time suck. So it's not it's not beneficial and like I would actually suggest that she go through and just clean up just remove and unfollow and clean it up because you want there's like no way you can have that many people who actually want to buy from you. I mean, 1 million is great. You know millions of people you want to be known like you want to be out there you want to be known for something. But my clients that have had a much smaller following and it is very, very specific. They are getting the inbound messages because they're speaking specifically to that one person. And that's all it takes.
Sure. Well and this should excite everyone listening, that you don't need to have this massive following the example that I just gave with the comparison of a million to 10,000. The million is 100 times more than 10,000 100 times more, and the person with a smaller following is actually crushing it right now. Right? So you people don't need to have like this massive following to actually get results. So I learned a lot through this conversation. I just want to touch on three things and then I want to dive into you know where people can can check you out for more information. I really appreciate you talking about building relationships and taking it from a we need to be seen by everyone to reframing and focusing on networking, like actually using it as a networking tool. I really appreciate you saying that. I also really appreciate you talking about going from me focus to you focus so you focus marketing that content marketing piece and then I really, really appreciate what you said about professional is personal. I think that is a really, really powerful statement that people should focus on personal stories with business ideas and themes in our twine. So I really much appreciate your time and all the value that you gave us today. If people want to get a hold of you, they're interested in your corporate trainings. They're interested in having you come out and teach their staff how to actually utilize them.