How I Got Over 30K LinkedIn Followers (Ep 43)

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Dawn:

Welcome to Digital Marketing Made Easy with myself, Dawn McGruer, a digital marketing speaker, author, and trainer. Now, I started my academy back in 2005, and since then we have trained and certified over 30,000 clients. Now that is an amazing achievement, but I’ve been working in the world of online marketing and social media since the internet began.

Now, if we think back to the original social media sites, there are huge changes, and one of the first social networks even to get into business was LinkedIn. Now, we often think it’s Facebook because we’re most familiar with it. We’ve been using it forever. Some of you may never have even used Facebook and have gone straight to other channels, such as Instagram.

Now, LinkedIn has always been the most misunderstood and underleveraged networking platform, and what I want to do today is really chart out in this episode how I got 30,000 connections and followers. I want to chart out the process of exactly what I did, because it’s the most asked question.

I wrote an article for Forbes a couple of years ago, and it’s still one of the most visited pieces content that I have ever created. And why is that? Because people want to know, how do you use LinkedIn? How do you get leads from there? How do you get clients from there? Because it’s one of those networks that there is a lot of detail.

When you access the platform, it’s quite complex. There’s a lot of areas to visit. And let’s be honest, you could spend 45 minutes plodding around, scooting through your news feed, looking at the different features and not really achieve anything. So with social media and any online marketing activity, we need to make sure that our efforts are actually having impact and we’re getting return on investment.

I focused on LinkedIn as my key platform

Now, LinkedIn for me has generated millions of pounds. And the big difference here is, is that I was just focused on this platform as my key platform. Now, it’s only recently I’ve started to look at Instagram and other channels. I’ve used Facebook all the way through, but LinkedIn was definitely my master channel. It was my channel of choice and one that I dedicated time, and it paid off because I’ve got 30,000 direct connections and about the same in followers, and it’s growing each and every day.

Now the big change is, is that when you start to get those numbers, it’s really easy to get people commenting, liking, and sharing. It’s really easy to start seeing results.
Now, in a week, I’ve been going live every day, just for five days, and I’ve basically said that I’m going to do that up until the end of the year. So that’s 90 odd lives. Now that’s a massive, massive commitment to do. It’s just on weekdays. But what I want to showcase is how easy it is to get traction on LinkedIn.

Now, what were the things that I did? Well, I talked about obviously going live. Now, this is a huge, huge bonus on LinkedIn. Being able to stream live, have the ability to people just to hop on and see your content. Now, I went live last week, did five lives, and I increased my views of my profile by 214%. I got an 800% increase in likes, and wait for this, 1700% increase in comments.

Go live

Now, people always struggle with getting engagement. So the first thing you can do, first of all, is make sure that you’ve got some form of consistency. You don’t have to go live each and every day. If you don’t have the ability to go live or you’re not sure whether you do, it has to be done through a third-party tool. So if I’m going live on LinkedIn, I use StreamYard. I log into StreamYard. I connect LinkedIn. And if you have the ability to go live, it will say, “Great. You can now schedule your broadcast or broadcast and go live at that point.”

If you haven’t got that ability, you can apply at that point and it will come up with a link to say, “You need to apply to go live.” Takes a couple of minutes to fill in the application, and they normally come back to you fairly quickly within about seven to 10 days.

Now, that feature is a huge advantage because we know that if you are running a live video, you get about three times more views because of the nature of it. It notifies people. And I love StreamYard because what you can actually do is schedule a broadcast, and then it tells everybody you’re going live, sends reminders and gets people joining.

Post consistently

Now, for me, that has been a game-changer in the way that we work. So think about how you want to show up. Now, this is all a reach and consistency piece, and it’s about getting engagement. So what are the actual tactics that I use to grow my audience to 30,000 connections and followers? Well, I posted consistently.

The great thing is with LinkedIn is you don’t have to post each and every day. If you had three solid posts, quality over quantity, in a week, that would be fine. If you optimize your profile and make sure you’ve got your keywords in there, you’ve filled everything in. You’ve got an enticing picture. You say what you do. These things are so important because if I’m increasing my profile views by 214%, that means I’m getting me, my brand in front of 214% more people.

Now, you are going to be judged by your profile. So if you’ve got empty bits of it, or it’s a bit out of date, you will be judged. It’s like having blank spaces on a webpage. So make sure that it’s up to date, give it a quick spring clean, and judge your profile.

Share valuable content

Now, the other thing is, is if you share valuable content and think about what it is that people want to know about. So many businesses, so many brands go wrong because they’re just posting about what they want to talk about. You’ve got to think about this is your audience.

How are you going to entertain them? Think of it like a networking event. How would you walk into a networking event? You wouldn’t walk in and say, “Buy my product.” You would build a relationship. You would start to get people to resonate with what you were saying. You would establish yourself as a key expert in your field. An industry leader, a thought leader, somebody who was a savvy networker who is bringing something valuable to the party.

So you have to think about what content you are creating, what it’s giving your audience, and why would they want it. If there’s demand for your content, that’s half the battle.

Use story-based emotional content

Now, the next one is really using story-based emotional content. This is what I post all of the time about. Talking about my journey. When I started my second podcast, which is Dawn of a New Era, I talk about marketing, motivation and mindset.

Now in that podcast, the reason I think it ranked so highly when it went live, and I think it ranked at number 17 in the entrepreneurial charts, was because I’m facing people’s challenges. I’m actually addressing it. I’m showcasing the good, the bad and the ugly of entrepreneurial life. I’m talking about some of the epic fails that I’ve experienced. I’m talking about what honest, authentic business life is about. And I think this is something that when you are posting, you need to be aware of. That to get that relate, to get that resonation and to get that relationship, people need to buy in to what you are doing.

Actually engage with people

And the next one is actually engaging with people. You can’t show up on LinkedIn and just think, “Right, I’m just going to broadcast. I’m not going to interact with anyone else.” You wouldn’t behave like that in a networking event. So try and think about the principles that you take when you are networking face-to-face and bring them online.
Now, you need to also think about you can’t sit there and be the chosen one and wait for people to connect with you. Nor can you on the other side of things, when people try and connect with you think, “Well, I’ve never met this person. How dare they send me a connection request.” Be sensible about it and look at their profile and if that person looks like a valid person and you’ve read the profile, connect.

But you also have to reach out and start to build that fact find. Okay? Think about that first touch point. Someone sends you a connection request or vice versa. Okay? Look at the profile, get to know the person and find out what commonalities you have. If you can, reply back and say, “Oh, hi Rod. I’ve just been on your profile. Yeah, can’t wait to connect. That’s brilliant. Saw that your offices are based down the road.” Showing some form of commonality builds the relationship. Okay? So get to know these people, fact find. Don’t just mindlessly add them to your network.

And then last but not least, do it all again. Consistency is key. Creating solid content, creating content that there is demand for, creating content that people actually can really bond with, and building that relationship. Engaging with other people and being a savvy network, showing up in a way that people see what your views are, that you are helping, that you are absolutely a key part of the community. And again, LinkedIn will reward you for your efforts.
So, I did exactly these things and I still continue to do these things. Now, my target is to hit 100,000, and I know I will absolutely smash it. Why? Because I’m following the same process. The process that served me back since I started in 2002.

I didn’t build my network overnight

I didn’t build a network overnight of 60,000 people on LinkedIn. It’s taken time. But I’ve got a mighty, powerful quality network that I am super proud to be part of because these people are key to my growth. These people are going to push me forward, and these people have helped me grow my business and generate millions of pounds of business because I’m leveraging LinkedIn for lead generation. And the thing is that if you follow all of these points, you start to build connection. People understand what you do, how you can help them, and you are relating to their pain problem and challenge by creating content and forming this bond.

Now, it becomes near impossible at that point for people not to reach out, for you not to start generating incoming leads. But one of the things I would say is that I managed to increase my engagement by 373% by doing just one thing. And this is my final point on the podcast because it was a game-changer. I started reaching out and talking to people. So remember I said about finding the commonality, fact finding, opening conversations, asking people what their biggest challenge was right now. How the business was going, congratulating people on their work anniversary and actually looking at these people.

So slow it down and start to make these important connections and think about, instead of just rushing. When everyone else is doing the normal kind of respond by email, switch it up and make it more personalized and really look at who these people are. Check their website out, look at their posts, engage in their posts, reply back to them.
Guaranteed, the more you do and the more activity, positive activity you have and interaction, the more visibility. It’s like sending a ripple of a radar out. You’re amplifying your presence. You’re increasing your brand awareness. You’re building a personal brand. You’re growing your business because you’re leveraging LinkedIn for lead generation.

Now, these things for me have been the solid strategy that I’ve used on social media, not just on LinkedIn, for many years, and I will continue to do going forward. So come and join me on LinkedIn, check out the content I’m posting. And remember, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram as well. And let me know what is working for you and your business, and I’d love to see how your personal brand grows.

Now, if you’ve not used LinkedIn yet, biggest challenge for me is to you. That you need to go and do a quick profile overhaul and just start posting. Even working up to one post a week and gradually getting to three or maybe five is going to be a big impact. You can’t go backwards from that point. You can only go forwards. So I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode, and I’ll catch up with you next time.

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