Top Secrets and Hacks of the LinkedIn Algorithm for Sales and Marketing Success

Eric Eden: 0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Today we are talking LinkedIn strategy and secrets and success stories. We have a great guest, leah Bliss, who is a LinkedIn strategist. She helps companies with their LinkedIn strategy and selling on LinkedIn. Welcome to the show, thank you. I'm super stoked to be here, so let's start out by you giving us a minute or two of context about who you are and what you do?

Lia Bliss : 1:26

I work with companies ranging from solo entrepreneurs to billion-dollar global enterprise companies, helping sales and marketing teams understand LinkedIn. My company helps sponsor one of the largest independent LinkedIn algorithm research reports. My company helps sponsor one of the largest independent LinkedIn algorithm research reports and, with that data, super great. But it doesn't always give you an action item, and so where I get to come in is I'm a data nerd, I want to learn, I want to develop it and then turn it into practical application and strategies that you can take immediately and use tomorrow to get a thousand views on your very next LinkedIn post.

Eric Eden: 2:09

Do you have a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says I'm a data nerd?

Lia Bliss : 2:12

I'm a data nerd, no, but I did get my one of my other sales girls and I'll tell a story about her. But I got her for Christmas a mug. That says freaking the sheets, but it's Excel sheets.

Eric Eden: 2:27

That's great, that's awesome. All right, well, we're ready to be inspired, so tell us a story about some of the best marketing that you've done You're the most proud of.

Lia Bliss : 2:38

The remarkable marketing story that I have. So with my own company. So at Bliss Point, bliss Corporation, I hired my best friend to be on my sales team. Which good idea, bad idea, who knows. We also convinced our boss to send us to Las Vegas. So me and my best friend were like we need to probably go to Vegas together on the company dime to this event, instead of showing up to the event where we would have a booth. We said we're going to do this guerrilla marketing style. And it was an event where 90% of the attendees, as far as the sponsors, were our ideal customers. So I wasn't there to target the attendees, I was there to target the vendors.

Lia Bliss : 3:30

And the trick is before the event, two weeks before this big corporate event in Las Vegas, with my best friend, we sat down and took advantage of the single most impactful thing that you can do on LinkedIn, which is commenting. So we put together a list of 100 people that were gonna be at this event as sponsors and for two straight weeks all we did was comment on their posts. We didn't send a connection request, we didn't ask or talk about that. We were even gonna be at this event. There was nothing brought up. It was only give. Oh, I love your post about cybersecurity awareness, oh, I love your post about this, and we blitzed it. Probably two to 300 comments over this two-week span.

Lia Bliss : 4:18

Then we show up to Las Vegas and when I tell you that it is the closest thing I've ever been to being famous in my entire life, it was spectacular, because now 100 of my customers that I'm looking to get sales calls with are walking up to me or introducing themselves, not saying oh hi, nice to meet you, who are you, what do you do? But oh my gosh, lika, I didn't know you're going to be here. Hi, I've seen you on LinkedIn. We had a 100% success rate in accepting connection requests because we didn't do it beforehand. It was just this give, give energy, hey, hey, increase brand awareness, increase awareness.

Lia Bliss : 5:01

Every single person on the spot accepted a connection request. Everybody was like oh, we already know who you are, we've already built trust in this relationship. Absolutely, we'll connect with you. It was so successful at one at the dinner at the very end, I'm sitting there talking to a guy on my left saying oh yeah, this is what we do LinkedIn, training, sales and marketing, training strategy. Blah, blah, blah. The guy on my right pipes up, he goes oh my gosh, you're Leah Bliss. My boss has been trying to find you for the entire event. I need to get your information. We need to book a call with you.

Eric Eden: 5:41

Wow, that's really fantastic. Gorillas in the social graph, for sure. I love it.

Lia Bliss : 5:49

Yeah, it's this whole idea of, like how to get your clients to cold call you, how to do marketing so well that you are famous when you walk into a room.

Eric Eden: 6:01

I love it. I think people should think creatively combining LinkedIn with events like that. That's a great combination. That's where truly magical things happen. So thanks for that story. I love that. Tell us a little bit about the LinkedIn algorithm. What secrets should we know that are really not well known?

Lia Bliss : 6:24

Oh my goodness, there's hundreds and hundreds. I do a three hour marketing training where it's just content dense, but the very short answer to that is A couple of things. So if you want your next post to get a thousand views guaranteed, take this to the bank, write this down. Here's the formula for success and there's a bunch of reasoning behind it, but truly the formula is if you can make a post, go live on LinkedIn with no links and no reposting do not repost. That's the worst thing you can do on LinkedIn. No reposting, do not repost. That's the worst thing you can do on LinkedIn. Make an original post 200 words, no links, three to five hashtags and a personal photo whether it's a selfie or a group photo, some sort of very organic imagery and if you can get 10 comments on that post and respond to them within the first 90 minutes of that post going live, absolutely without a doubt, guaranteed you will see a thousand views or more on that post within 24 hours.

Eric Eden: 7:39

Interesting. That's all I've read. I've read some of the things about that. Like they don't like you to link out to any other sites. That's really bad because you're taking people off LinkedIn. That I understand. I've also understand having an image in there, because I think that makes all the difference in the world. That makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised about the reposting thing because I think they would want people to repost.

Lia Bliss : 8:01

I'm surprised about the reposting thing because I think they would want people to repost. So everything we know about Instagram, tiktok, facebook. It's the opposite for LinkedIn, and it comes down to where the money comes from on the platform. So if we take Facebook, for example, a huge majority of their income, their revenue stream, is through advertising, where I always like to say if it's free, you're the product. And so Facebook or Instagram is selling your eyeballs to companies so that they can put advertising in front of them. Linkedin gets 80% of its revenue from a subscription-based model, where some of my clients have spent over a million dollars outfitting their sales teams with Sales Navigator or having the HR team use the recruiting tool. And so LinkedIn is very particular about the user experience, because the users are paying for a good experience. And so when it comes to reposting, linkedin runs and if you're a techie nerd, you'll know there's a dedupe algorithm in the background, basically saying, if you click the repost button, you are duplicating content that already exists on the platform without ever adding to the conversation or providing additional value. So what's interesting is, when you make a post, go live on LinkedIn, it will organically go to 10% of your network. That's it 10% to see how well it's engaged with. If you get a lot of good engagement, especially comments, that's going to skyrocket. If you repost on LinkedIn, it goes to 1% of your audience organically Now the person who made the original post. They'll see a little bit of a bump in their engagement, but you will see nothing as far as the repost.

Lia Bliss : 9:48

But when you make a comment on LinkedIn, that post and your comment is organically shared to 30% of your audience. And so comments like great post, love this, congrats, thanks for sharing cool. And so comments like great post, love this, congrats, thanks for sharing cool. You've missed a huge opportunity because 30% of your audience is going to see you out of context, essentially say great post, thanks for sharing. That didn't really do anything. And so a lot of times we talk about find a post, whether it's your company's post, your executive's post, but go comment on one of your executive's posts, tag them, restate the key points, right. Tldr Too long didn't read. If I'm in your network and I don't want to read this whole post, I should be able to get a full synopsis from your comment. But then add your own insight and expertise. You can also do that with prospects or with people in the network that you're trying to influence in any way, and it's going to give such a broader reach just because you are actively participating in that conversation.

Eric Eden: 10:58

Very interesting. I never realized the power of comments. I love it. The other thing you said was hashtags. I thought hashtags were dead on LinkedIn, are they not dead?

Lia Bliss : 11:06

They're not dead. So hashtags don't go viral. It's not the same way, like it is on Twitter or whatever, where you can click on it and things are trending and it makes an impact. But the way that hashtags are used on LinkedIn is to categorize your posts based on content, and so you essentially are saying oh, this is the theme of this post and I want it to be associated with other posts that are around those similar topics or ideas, and so not having them will hurt your reach a little bit.

Lia Bliss : 11:39

but having too many, this is not Instagram. Do not go hashtag crazy. Three max, You're good.

Eric Eden: 11:47

And so, similar to putting pictures into posts, is putting videos into posts, video clips into posts, good.

Lia Bliss : 11:55

Not as good as other platforms. A lot of people talk about that video is the be all end, all right now as far as content, but most of us are on LinkedIn with the sound automatically set to off. We are scrolling through LinkedIn while we're standing in line at the DMV or we're laying in bed We've got the Sunday scaries and we're just scrolling through. Most of us aren't going on LinkedIn to watch videos, and so it takes a lot of work to format them correctly. It has to be pretty much under a minute, you must have embedded subtitles and the thing is, video doesn't often get people to comment, and that's truly your only goal. Can I get people to comment on this? And so unless it is like super dynamic and you are really pulling in a conversation, video is not going to work. Any kind of traditional marketing with words and images and a promo the human behavior, the human nature side of us doesn't look at that video and think, if I leave a comment, this video will respond to me because it's too dehumanized at that point.

Eric Eden: 13:10

Interesting. So what about the tactic that a lot of people have been practicing and talking about, particularly in the last year, is post something on LinkedIn every day. Do you recommend that to people?

Lia Bliss : 13:26

So with LinkedIn, linkedin thinks about your posts as the opportunity for conversation. So, if we shift away from the word post and think conversation, should you start a brand new conversation on LinkedIn every single day? Probably not, because LinkedIn is only going to give you the opportunity to have one conversation at a time, going to give you the opportunity to have one conversation at a time. You will never, ever, see more than one post from the same person on your feed at any given moment, and so you can post every day. It's one or the other. Because once you make a post, linkedin tracks it for that first 90 minutes to see how well it's engaged with, to determine how far it's going to move it beyond your network and expand your views, but then, the second you make another post, it shuts that first post down completely. No more production, no more distribution, nothing.

Lia Bliss : 14:26

So automatic posting tools are awful for LinkedIn. One LinkedIn can tell and will thwart your efforts to get more reach. Two, you're less connected to what your post is actually doing. If I have a post that I put out on a Monday and I look at it on Tuesday and it has gotten some traction, people are talking, it's going places. I don't want to step on my own toes and post on top of it, so I'll wait. I'll check it on Wednesday, maybe I'll check it on Thursday and for a lot of the clients that I work with, I'll do executive support, where I work one-on-one with solo entrepreneurs or executives to maximize their LinkedIn strategy, do some posting and ghostwriting for them. Twice a week is pretty much the maximum that we'll do, because we want to have space to have those conversations.

Eric Eden: 15:19

Interesting. So I see a lot of really bad sales tactics on LinkedIn. They get pointed towards me, unfortunately. So I'm curious when you're training your clients on the best in class secrets of selling on LinkedIn, give us one or two tidbits. People should take your whole course, like you were saying, to get all the secrets, but give us one or two of your favorites that are really best in class for how to really sell on LinkedIn.

Lia Bliss : 15:47

Let me just give you the cadence that I use for my own business and that I train other businesses on. This outbound cadence that you should use for LinkedIn is really this give before asking concept. You should be leaving two or three comments on your prospects posts over the course of several weeks. So leave a nice heartfelt comment using that commenting strategy. Do that two or three times, then send a connection request with a note referencing the posts that you'd already engaged with. Hey, eric, really love the posts you've been putting out here over the last couple of weeks. I'd love to stay connected and have you in my network. No one's going to say no to that. You've already proven that you care about them. Then a couple of more comments.

Lia Bliss : 16:36

At that point, sales really is figuring out how people like to be engaged with If they're not posting a ton. But you can get a couple of comments in there, maybe get a connection request, then possibly send an email. Hey, I really have enjoyed the content that you've been putting out on LinkedIn, especially around this topic. My company solves this problem specifically and I'd love to get the chance to chat more with you about it. That can either be an email or a direct message, but at this point you haven't taken advantage. You don't need to pay for marketing, you don't need to pay for Sales Navigator to get any kind of access to free messaging. All you're doing is paying attention to the prospects that are important to you. So two comments a connection request. Another comment an email or a direct message. That's going to build enough social rapport that your prospects are going to be really open to a conversation with you.

Eric Eden: 17:33

I think that's great, and almost no one does that strategy with me. They just try to connect with me. And can I have 15 minutes of your time for something you have expressed no interest in?

Lia Bliss : 17:42

Yes, yes, that's the worst. Yeah, I get that all the time.

Eric Eden: 17:46

So the other question I had was around marketing For people who want to marketers leveraging LinkedIn. It's a little bit different than the sales side. What is your most interesting tactic for marketers outside of commenting, to get engagement for people, which is a great one?

Lia Bliss : 18:12

in a larger corporation and you're struggling to get people to participate. I often see companies using things like Bamboo or other social advocacy platforms to post on your behalf. Right, marketing team puts out some content, it's distributed to all the team members and they're asked to go do that or they're being told to repost. Stop doing that right now. Just save yourself all the headache being told to repost. Stop doing that right now. Just save yourself all the headache.

Lia Bliss : 18:32

Something that's really impactful for marketers is to put together social squads, which is you assign whether it's sales teams, marketing teams or whatever collective. You can get together and say okay, instead of all of us doing this independently trying to figure out the messaging, we're going to present one person on the team with a marketing-generated post for them to do from that individual's perspective to that individual's vertical. Say, okay, here's your post. We're going to schedule it for 9 am local time on Wednesday. Here is the text of the post.

Lia Bliss : 19:09

Everybody else on the team needs to pre-write their comment. Then, at the date and time it's in your calendar, it's a 15-minute slot. The person is sent the post from marketing. They post it. Everybody else gets a link to that post, goes and leaves their comment. You now have a post from an authority within the company that has already got 10 or more comments. You're going to see one to 5,000 views on that post, leveraging your people versus just your technology. Something else that's interesting for marketers specifically if you're using the company LinkedIn page, there is an option to set up a campaign where you are, instead of having the company the people repost the company page, can repost the employees posts, and that switch makes all the difference.

Eric Eden: 20:10

I love these hacks. These are great, excellent. There's so many things about the LinkedIn algorithm that are a mystery, if you will, especially if you haven't studied as closely as you have. Yes, but I guess I'm just curious. What is one of the most surprising things that you've learned in terms of digging into the algorithm?

Lia Bliss : 20:34

I think for a lot of people, the reposting thing blows their minds. What do you mean? Reposting is the worst thing I can do. That is counterintuitive. So that's really interesting.

Lia Bliss : 20:43

Just that the algorithm is always changing. It's never just static. It's never just static. What's nice about LinkedIn is that once you understand them as a corporation and their why and their goals for the interactions, you can really play in all of that big space where the algorithm changes. A couple of years ago it was like seven hashtags. It was like seven hashtags when polls first came out and everyone's feed was full of the most asinine polls. Right? Do you prefer coffee or tea? I don't care. Stop showing me polls.

Lia Bliss : 21:21

Linkedin is always growing and developing and changing.

Lia Bliss : 21:25

But if you get down to the core of it, linkedin wants to continue to provide a space for business people to do and succeed in business and where the algorithm goes, what's promoted, what's changed?

Lia Bliss : 21:42

There's a full algorithm research report that comes out every year. It's done by a man named Richard Vanderblom. If you look him up on LinkedIn, he's got a ton of content around all the different changing strategies, but at the end of the day it comes down to we forget that LinkedIn is essentially the world's largest and never-ending networking event, and all of the skills that we have as marketers to interact with people, all of that personality and just sense of connection gets lost because it's removed. We're not speaking to each other in person, all of the subtle cues and the body language, all of that's gone and we have to be more intentional about the way that we interact with people. And so to think of LinkedIn as just another social media is absolutely going to ruin your chances of success. But thinking about it as a chance to network effectively and use all the skills that you've built over your life, that's where you're going to see a lot of success.

Eric Eden: 22:53

That's a great analogy, because I've been on LinkedIn for a long time I think like 18 years and I recently discovered how you can go in and you can export everything you've ever done on LinkedIn and that was a really big file for me over 18 years. Yeah, and it was interesting because you could see the date of all your connections, that you got all your connections and you could see every email you sent and every post you've made and I was like, wow, 2007 was a long time ago.

Lia Bliss : 23:25

Yes it is. I've been on LinkedIn probably since 2006, 2007. No-transcript, you don't see a ton of cats writing Roombas or whatever else dumb things that are on Facebook writing Roombas or whatever else dumb things that are on Facebook. People aren't getting into heated arguments about things because LinkedIn actively works to keep this as a high quality professional networking system.

Eric Eden: 24:22

Yeah, I think that's correct and I've observed that. I do notice that, along the lines of your tips and suggestions here, some of the most successful posts are the ones that are a bit controversial, where there's a lot of people going back and forth in the comments not necessarily over politics, but over business sort of issues.

Lia Bliss : 24:43

Right, but over business sort of issues right, sure, and we call it the rage economy, right, if you can get someone angry and participating, you're going to drive views because you're getting people to participate in conversations. Now, the controversy that exists on LinkedIn is very different, whether it's talking about these strategies, right, I've been in comments where people are like what do you mean? Reposting is dumb, explain yourself, or they'll get all up in arms about something. But at the end of the day, it's never, or rarely, I should say you're going to see personal attacks. You're going to see people engaging in ways that are unprofessional, because this is a professional place and, like you've highlighted every single thing that you do, right, the internet never goes away.

Lia Bliss : 25:36

I remember there was a guy who left a really nasty comment on a client's post, like really just not cool at all, very unprofessional, very inappropriate even, and I went and looked. You can see every single comment that someone's ever left. There's a whole section on LinkedIn where you can see the comments and I went through and looked and it was just nasty comments coming one after the other and he just was a hateful kind of person. And then a post asking people to donate towards a nonprofit that he was supporting. That's a dude, you do know that a huge portion of your network has seen you. Your comments aren't a secret. They're actually the most visible part of your activity, and so you've been hateful for months, and now you're asking all these people to support you and give you money.

Lia Bliss : 26:26

I don't think that's going to work out how you think it's going to work out.

Eric Eden: 26:30

I think that goes to the importance of knowing how this works. Right, If you don't know how it works, then you're going to be stepping in it like that. So, yes, I think that makes sense. So what is the thing about LinkedIn that frustrates you the most, if anything?

Lia Bliss : 26:45

The thing about LinkedIn that frustrates you the most, if anything, the thing that I, me and pretty much anybody, is that we want to use LinkedIn to go and interact with people that we want to influence, whether it's prospects, customers, clients, partners, whomever. Only about 10% of the users on LinkedIn post, and so finding ways to engage with someone who never, ever is actively posting can be really difficult. And because, right, if my strategy, I'll go comment two or three times on a connection request. Comment again Leah, they don't ever post, ever. How am I supposed to do that?

Lia Bliss : 27:27

And I created a strategy where you can directly access a prospect without them having to post, and it is slightly contrived and it does feel a little bit manipulative, but it's exactly what you would do in real life. So the example here there was a sales guy that came to me and was like this prospect's not on LinkedIn, I don't know what to do. Like he is on LinkedIn, he was liking a bunch of posts and he was like the CIO, the chief information officer for a very large company, and I said, okay, here's what you're going to do, you're going to Google him. So we Googled him and then the word podcast Found a podcast episode that this prospect had been on. Listen to it, right, and you can cheat was and tag your prospect in your post this person, right.

Lia Bliss : 28:34

So, eric, if you're my prospect, recently listening to a fantastic podcast episode where Eric Eden, tagged, talked about the importance of storytelling and marketing. This is so impactful for the way that I deal with my clients because, when creating marketing content on linkedin, storytelling is the best way for things to go. If anybody ever want share your stories about marketing and storytelling and you post it. Okay, I'm not trying to get a bunch of people to comment. I'm not even trying to get anybody to comment. My only goal is to talk to my audience about this topic that this very brilliant person brought up. This very brilliant person that I tagged to give them credit. This very brilliant person that I've tagged to give them credit, who also happens to be my direct prospect, who now they know exactly who I am, they know exactly what I do and they know that I'm paying attention yeah, I think it's great because it really makes your prospect look good.

Eric Eden: 29:42

you're recognizing them right and they'll get a notification when they're tagged and they'll see that you're recognizing them and assuming that you're being authentic and that they did a good job on that podcast episode and didn't really mess it up.

Lia Bliss : 29:55

I think it's overall really good. Yeah With that as subject.

Eric Eden: 29:58

I think it's a great strategy From your great course that you have, course that you have. What is the one or two things that you hope people really come out of that training?

Lia Bliss : 30:12

knowing? Ooh, good question. The goal always for me is that a little bit goes a long way. At the end of all my trainings, whether it's with big companies or one-on-one, the goal is always you should be leaving three comments a day. That's it. You don't have to change your entire marketing and sales strategy to revolve around LinkedIn. This can be something that you implement 15 minutes a day, maybe. Sit down and plan out your next three months of content. Spend a whole day writing LinkedIn posts and then you're going to post them twice a week, but then every day. All you have to do to start is leave three comments a day, five days a week. It's not a huge effort. It's just a consistent effort for LinkedIn.

Eric Eden: 31:02

That's great. I think that is awesome advice. I'm going to encourage everyone to check out your training course. I'm going to link to your website. Is there anything you want to share about the course you have?

Lia Bliss : 31:15

link. Link over to my linkedin. Come connect with me on linkedin so the training course is done live. So there's really two offerings here. If you've got a big company and you want your sales and marketing teams trained and structured for a LinkedIn strategy, I'm your girl. Call me. If you are an executive looking to increase your presence on LinkedIn, because we now know that you as the person, have more impact on LinkedIn, or if you're a solo entrepreneur, I work a lot with coaching companies to develop a strategy and really get down to the nuts and bolts. It's not just oh, these are great ideas, but let's do the thing. So if you need support or if you just need your company trained on some of these strategies and your marketing team needs some framework to work on, come talk to me. We have a lot of fun.

Eric Eden: 32:08

Awesome. Thank you very much for your stories. I think you've shown in this episode your vast amount of knowledge about the algorithm and shared some great tips and secrets in advance, even of people taking the training. So thank you for doing that. We appreciate you being on the show.

Lia Bliss : 32:27

Of course, Eric. Thank you so much for having me. This is delightful.