The Power of Personal Branding on LinkedIn - Advanced Strategies to get 4X the Results

Eric Eden: 1:01

Welcome to today's episode of the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. Today, our guest is Shannon Kirkendall. She is a LinkedIn guru and expert. She helps clients succeed and win on LinkedIn with their personal brand and their executive brand. Shannon, welcome to the show.

Shannon Kuykendall: 1:20

Thank you, Eric. Thank you for having me as a guest. I'm honored to be on your show.

Eric Eden: 1:26

We appreciate your time and you sharing your expertise with us. My understanding is you've been working with clients for many years and helping them be very successful on LinkedIn. A lot of people that I speak to on a regular basis have some doubts and they say is there really a good business application for social networking? Doesn't really make sense for me to spend time on LinkedIn. It just feels like to them a lot of time and effort and they're unclear about what the upside of doing that is. Why don't you share with us what you've seen and what you've been able to do with some of your clients?

Shannon Kuykendall: 2:06

First of all, yeah, it's hard and it does require effort. Pretty much anything worth doing is going to require some effort. Here's the thing If you are a business that offers a service and you offer that service to other businesses, then your clients are on LinkedIn, plain and simple, that's it. That's where you should be. You're not going to find them on Facebook and you might find them on TikTok, but I'm not there. You're not going to find them on Instagram. Linkedin is where you need to be. What most people, when they go into the platform, they think, oh, it's going to be a walk in the park, I'm just going to start DMing people and I'm just going to start pitching them my services. That is absolutely the wrong way to do it. You don't just go into LinkedIn. You don't invite people to connect and then write off the bat, say this is who I am, this is what I do and this is how I can help you, because I can tell you right now that you're going to turn people off and LinkedIn is going to shut your account down. You need to go into it with a very different kind of a mindset. You need to be thinking this is long term, you're playing the long game, and everything that I do on LinkedIn for my clients is organic, all right, which means it takes a while to build brand awareness. All right, there's two things that you need to be doing on LinkedIn in order to be a success. These are the things that I do for my clients. The first thing is you need to be creating content on a regular basis. You do not have to post every day, but you do need to post at least a couple times a week and you need to be consistent with your posting, and it could take you three months, it could take you six months. I've seen people who post in there and it's taken them a year, sometimes two years. All right, it is, it's slow and it's painful, but it works. Typically, when my clients they've typically tried to do it themselves they're struggling, they're frustrated, and that's when they typically will reach out to me. What is it that? I know that they don't, and I think for me, what I'm able to do for my clients one, I'm giving them their time back. We're focusing on good quality content that resonates with their brand. We're doing some storytelling and then, on the backside, we're doing demand generation, where we're actively reaching out to clients and we're starting a conversation. All right, I don't pitch any services. It's all about nurturing the prospect. All right, if your profile is optimized the way that it should be, the moment that you invite someone to connect with you they're going to go look at your profile. If your profile's optimized, they're going to know exactly who you are and what you do within those first three seconds, which is why there's no need to pitch slap the moment you connect with somebody. All right, think of LinkedIn as a long-term network working event. You're going to go in, you're going to introduce yourself and then you're going to ask them what they do. Let them talk, let them share with you what they're struggling with before you start pitching their services. And that's what I do for my clients On average. So it takes about a month and a half for us to really build up momentum, but on the average, I probably get my clients anywhere from five to 10 booked calls each week. All right, it's up to them to nurture those leads. Once I hand them off, the lead it's out of my hands. I've done everything I can for them. At this point, now it's up to them. So my hope is you've got some form of a sales process in place. If you don't some of my clients don't I'll help them with that. I'll help them get that set up. Are they doing any form of email marketing? All right, if they don't have that set up, I help them get that set up, because those are two systems that need to be in place when you're doing effectively generation and so that's the gist of what it is that I do for my clients content creation and lead generation and a very nuanced approach.

Eric Eden: 6:26

So, clients who have been working with you magic doesn't happen overnight, as you said, but clients who have been working with you for a while. What does living the dream look like? What does success look like?

Shannon Kuykendall: 6:39

Success for them is seeing their calendar full. For me, my calendar is orange, in the sense that when a booked call comes in, it's orange, and so I want to see a lot of orange blocks of time. That's what success looks like for my clients when they open up their calendar and like, oh yay, I've got four more booked calls on the schedule. That's success. And then, of course, the bigger success is do they have their sales in there? Are they able to close the deal and bring them on as clients? And I do, because I've been doing this so long and I do my own sales, I am able to help coach my clients, be a little more effective, make it a little more conversational and less pushing hard. What I'm noticing is it's getting a little bit harder to get them to push the go button. So it's a really, really nuanced approach.

Eric Eden: 7:38

A nuanced approach, I think, is the right way to phrase it, because there's a gazillion places out there that'll say I'll generate leads for you. And, as you've mentioned, getting leads is only the start of the process, because you have to be able to sell them, you have to have a good product to sell them and you have to have good nurturing, with email marketing, for example. So there's a lot of pieces of the recipe beyond just getting a lead, as you've mentioned, that people have to have in order to be successful. But I guess I'm curious are there other ways that people think about it too? I think there is an interesting debate that goes on about Are people keeping score around the number of connections or followers that people have? Some people say that obviously a bigger number could be better, but then the part of the question is who's really engaged. So I'm just curious what you think about that.

Shannon Kuykendall: 8:38

So LinkedIn's about to make some changes again, and one of those. So before there was a tool that you had if you were a premium user, called Creator Mode, which would give you the analytics of how your content is performing on the platform. All right, so it'll keep track of the number of new connections you made, the number of new followers, it'll keep track of the impressions that the content you posted, and then there's an ability to create a newsletter, so new subscribers to your newsletter, and so with their change, they are giving people the option I think the follow button is now going to become the default versus the connect. All right, and this is something that I've heard rumors about for the last six months that this change was eventually going to happen. So it's really hard to say. I think LinkedIn is going to try and focus on the followers. They're also taking away Creator Mode, so everybody gets access to the analytics of how their content's performing. So it's kind of hard to say right now, because I don't know what that looks like until I have a chance to see the new user interface, because once they remove Creator Mode, they're going to put the about section right underneath the main block. So yeah, it's kind of hard to say, and this is information I should have by March, because that's when these updates should be taking place.

Eric Eden: 10:04

Interesting. So historically, linkedin has limited the number of connections you can have to 30,000. Yeah, and then a while ago they sort of pushing the followers a little bit more heavily and I'm actually in favor of them making the follow the default, because many times salespeople will connect with me just to sell me something and they've never met me before. Yeah, and I would classify that, if I did accept it, as a very weak connection, not a strong connection. So people have different strategies about who they allow to connect with them and who they connect with. Some people accept them all, some people only if they've met in person. Some people think about it in very different ways. But I think the following thing is interesting because just because someone follows you doesn't necessarily mean that they can spam you for lack of a better one. Right, this will automatically give them the right to message you and just send you. Like, I get some people who send me a message once a day for 14 days in a row and it just drives me nuts, right? So I think that that sort of no don't do that.

Shannon Kuykendall: 11:19

That is like bad, bad, bad, no. So what I would tell people. So, right now, since we still have connections and followers, what I always tell people do not accept every invitation that comes your way. All right, you need to think of your LinkedIn profile as a CRM. All right, you want your connections, you want to be able to add value to your connections and vice versa. All right. If they're not part of who your ideal audience is, like the audience that you want to have eyes on your stuff, then don't accept their invitation. There's no need to. If they're following you, great, you don't have to follow them back. You know they're following you, just simply because when your stuff comes up in their feed, they're going to see it. Hopefully they will engage, but you don't have to connect with them. So, yeah, don't connect with everybody that sends an invitation your way. Just don't. Just be really intentional about whose invitation you accept.

Eric Eden: 12:25

So let me ask you about profile pages, people's profile pages and the spirit of building a great personal brand or a great executive brand. What do you advise your clients in terms of their profile page? What makes a really outstanding personal brand page on LinkedIn?

Shannon Kuykendall: 12:49

So take one. Take advantage of the background header behind your profile picture. Have a profile picture. No blank page, no blank profile pictures. No one's going to know, like or trust you if you're not willing to show up on the platform and what I typically will tell my clients. Because I'm working in the B2B space, their profiles need to be a reflection of their website. All right, this is sort of like a social sales page and that's the thing. That's why, when you do your outreach, you're not pitching people, because your profile should be doing that already. Like I said, they're going to come and look at your profile before they accept that invitation. They're going to know already what you are, what you do and who you are. So have the conversation. Don't be that weak connection. You know, or? Yeah, don't be that weak connection. Be somebody who engages.

Eric Eden: 13:46

So on the page itself there's lots of different things you can put on your profile For your most successful clients. Is there a theme of what they do with their profile?

Shannon Kuykendall: 13:58

So where I focus is basically from the about section and the main, the main area above the fold. All right, so I'm focusing on the background header. I'm focusing on there's a sub, a Subtitle that we can use, which LinkedIn typically will default as founder of blah blah blah. There's about 120 characters there that we can use, so I always play with the tagline or something that stands out. I Don't focus too much on their past experience, but if they have case studies or any projects they can share, I do have them attach them to their profile. And then the other thing is is I want to make sure that we're creating a Company page as well and making sure that it's properly connected to their LinkedIn profile, because the second thing people do once they look at your profile is they're gonna look at your company page.

Eric Eden: 14:56

Okay. So the other question I have is do you recommend to your clients that they make the investment and the LinkedIn premium, because a lot of people feel that it's pretty expensive I think it's around $600 a year. Do you do you recommend the clients do that is? Is it worth that investment?

Shannon Kuykendall: 15:18

Yeah, make the investment. If you're working with me, I require you to have sales navigator, which is $100 a month. I require that investment because that's that is the part of LinkedIn that's really gonna allow me to hone in on who their ideal target audiences. I have 33 filters to play around with, versus standard LinkedIn, which is 17, and I think premium, which is just a tier down, and premium, will work as well, but I just have a lot more Opportunities to target if you make the hundred dollar investment, but the six I think it's 70, 69 dollars or 65 a month For premium. So, and they've got about 20 25 different filters, so they do work, but I do recommend paying, paying to play, and the reason I say that is if you try and do lead generation on a free LinkedIn account, linkedin will shut you down and they will not give you your account back. They don't care. So if you put a lot of effort and work into your account, don't risk having it shut down by Spraying and praying your lead generation and pitching every Tom Dick and Harry Right.

Eric Eden: 16:40

So, in terms of the content creation, if you have a great profile, you make the investment to subscribe to LinkedIn premium or or sales navigator. You said you help clients create quality content and I think it's interesting because I see some people who go post a volume of content but it's clear they don't know what to say. Some of the content is sometimes strange is a way to phrase it, perhaps but the quality of the content does matter, right? If you're posting frequently, how big of an impact is that and what makes quality content?

Shannon Kuykendall: 17:26

Quality content is going to require the writer to step out from behind the scenes and show up, because part of good content is storytelling. Talking about your entrepreneurial journey, talk about the ups, the downs, the fails, the wins. People want to hear about that. In between that, you throw in a promotional piece. People are way more engaged when they're here about your personal story. They feel like you've invited them into your life and you get a lot more engagement that way. People who are posting content every day I don't believe you can have good content every single day that you post. It's about quality over quantity. I post three days a week and I get just as many views, impressions of my content that I do if I was posting content every single day and it was just ho-hum. I know I'm getting good impressions based on the quality of the content that I'm writing and putting out there. I coach my clients with this because some of my clients will come to me they've already got content. We're going to repurpose their content. Huge proponent of that repurpose your content, rewrite it, update it. You don't have to start from scratch.

Eric Eden: 18:54

That makes sense. Starting from scratch is painful. I've noticed that, in terms of getting the content to be seen by all the people that are following and connected to you, you mentioned the creator tools that tell you what the reach of each of your posts is. I think part of that has to do with equality, because if more people engage with it, they give it more impressions.

Shannon Kuykendall: 19:25

Yes, believe it or not, when you first do your post, there are human eyes on it, and it's just a fraction. One of the things that they're looking for when you post is do you have a link in your post that's taking people away from LinkedIn? If you do, you're going to get less impressions. The trick to that is to put up your post, wait about 10 minutes, then put in the link in the comments, ask a question that maybe gets people to engage, and then include the link that you're trying to send people to.

Eric Eden: 20:01

That's a nice trick. I like that.

Shannon Kuykendall: 20:08

Yes, Videos do really really well. Do a quick two to five minute explainer video on something. Again, you've got to think about that. The content you're writing needs to be targeted towards the audience that you're trying to engage. If you're targeting women in tech, make sure your content relates to women in tech. What are the pain points that women in tech might be dealing with? Those are the things that you've got to be thinking about when you're writing your content and sharing your story. There's so many questions you can ask to get that information.

Eric Eden: 20:48

I think the idea of including a video is really interesting. Here's a sample and I know it's just one data point, but I've seen this across a number of examples. But just to bring in how, I'll give you one example, I shared a one minute video clip from one of my podcasts. I'm connected to about 10,000 people on LinkedIn. When I just put a text post out there I would normally see I maybe get around 1,000 and somewhere in that area of impressions 1,000 out of the 10,000 people will see. If I just put up a text post over like a hundred posts that I've done. That's the average, slightly a little bit more, a little bit less. I put in a video clip with just a small amount of text at the top, just two lines of text at the top about the video, and it got 4,000 impressions, so like 40% of the people. So it was like almost a 4x multiplier to put in a copy of a video clip and if you click did not link away to YouTube, it was. I actually uploaded the video to LinkedIn.

Shannon Kuykendall: 21:58

Perfect, perfect. Yeah, if you're linking it from YouTube, you're gonna it's not gonna get the same kind of reach.

Eric Eden: 22:07

So, but I was just like wow, like I got four times more people to see it and, by the way, the engagement was also then the likes and the reactions. The comments were like also 4x, because 4x number of people saw it. So I thought that was really interesting and I think a similar thing is true. I don't know if it's a same 4x factor, but I do notice that if I do a LinkedIn post with an image, it always does significantly better than if I only do text.

Shannon Kuykendall: 22:40

So it really depends because I play around with both. Like I have some long form LinkedIn content that has no image. That does really really well. Actually, last week would really worked really well. That got me up in the 4,000 impression range was I have a LinkedIn newsletter and the LinkedIn newsletter. When that goes out, it not only goes out to the feed but it goes to their inbox, their email inbox, as like a LinkedIn newsletter. And oh gosh, I think I did a promotional email and linked it back and did a post and I had over 4,000 impressions with that because people were coming. Oh, and I also did a cross post on Substack. All right, like just different ways to bring people in to my LinkedIn account to view what it is that I'm writing. Like there's also slides, like creating a slideshow. Those work really well with LinkedIn as well.

Eric Eden: 23:44

Yeah, so the LinkedIn newsletter you're saying is a hack to get significantly more people to see it for the reasons you mentioned? Right, absolutely you treat.

Shannon Kuykendall: 23:54

Here's the trick to creating a newsletter that gets good subscribers. Have a good name, like don't call it, don't call it by your name, and then call it a newsletter because no one's gonna sign up, all right. So my newsletter is called In the Feed and the moment that I announced In the Feed, which was last year, I had 600 people subscribe to it. And that was just the first day I announced it and I think I posted two more newsletters and then I put it on hold for the rest of 2023. I relaunched it in December and I'm now above 2000. So every time you send a newsletter, it grows. But here's the thing don't take advantage of that, because you will lose subscribers. What I have read is it's best to send two newsletters a month, so maybe one in the middle of the month and one at the end of the month or the beginning, whatever you wanna do, and that's typically what I do, and I'll do a promotional newsletter and then I'll do a newsletter that just has the best stuff I posted in the last month.

Eric Eden: 25:04

That makes sense. The other thing is sometimes in posting longer content, I have seen great posts that got reactions from long form content, but a lot of times the first two lines are really what people read if you're linking to something else. So is it the case that the first two lines of the post really matter in terms of a hook to catch people's attention?

Shannon Kuykendall: 25:35

100%. No one's gonna click the read more if you have a boring hook. So the way that I get people to click the more is I ask a question. I always ask a question to start my posts. There's only been a couple posts that I've done where I didn't, and they still did really well, but my statement was a jarring statement, all right. So that's kind of what you have to think about. What is the thing that I need to say that's gonna get them to click on the read more button or see more button?

Eric Eden: 26:08

Okay, are there any other insights? Broadly, that I haven't asked about that, like any other hacks or tips, that if you were having coffee with your best friend that you would say this is what you really need to do on LinkedIn to win.

Shannon Kuykendall: 26:26

So I would tell, I think, because I actually just did this with a really good friend of mine. I told him I said you need to get on LinkedIn and you need to start telling stories about your job experience, because he's looking for a job. So you gotta show up. First of all, you gotta show up A cool. So if you're somebody like you do podcasting and you're on Restream or you're on StreamYard. I use Restream. Something cool about that is I can take the video from this, upload it into Restream and it will create an event for me and then, on the day of the event, it will replay that video. And in the meantime that I've put that post up, I've invited people my connections to come and watch it, all right. So that's super cool thing to do. You don't have to be live. They have audio events now. If anybody's familiar with Clubhouse, audio events on LinkedIn are similar to Clubhouse. I'm doing my first audio event tomorrow, but I put the post up yesterday and what I'm doing is actually doing a replay of another audio podcast. I did talking about LinkedIn and I'm just going to pause it and interject as the audio plays. So it's just about showing up really.

Eric Eden: 27:59

Okay. Well, if you find these advanced LinkedIn strategies helpful for growing and driving your business, share this episode with your friends and if you'd like to learn more, go to Shannon's website. It's linked here in the episode in the notes. You can just click on it and go to her website. She does consultations. She can continue this conversation with you. There's a lot more nuances to LinkedIn. I'm sure that we haven't covered here, but she's had a lot of success with her clients and you got to come up with a winning. You got to show up and come up with a winning LinkedIn strategy. Please rate, review and subscribe so that we can keep bringing on great guests like Shannon to share these things. Shannon, thanks so much for being here with us today and sharing all these great ideas and insights. Appreciate it.

Shannon Kuykendall: 28:49

Thank you, Eric, for having me.