Have you ever wanted to leverage LinkedIn the right way to create strong business relationships and generate revenue? What are the biggest pitfalls to avoid while growing your network?
In this episode, Chris and Ryan talk with Nathanial Bibby, a global LinkedIn expert who is going to tell you the exact proven strategies he uses to boost his brand, the importance of social proof, his personal success stories to help your business drive revenue, and some of the biggest pitfalls to avoid!
Nathanial is the Managing Director of Bibby Consulting Group, a global digital marketing consulting firm which has built a reputation of delivering cutting-edge strategies including Australia’s first LinkedIn lead generation service. Bibby Consulting has generated over $400 million in sales for their clients using LinkedIn strategies alone.
Here are some of the podcast episode highlights:
Nat Bibby: I think LinkedIn has grown. It’s become a great platform that you talked about over the recent years. What are some of those sort of changes or additions that you’ve noticed LinkedIn has done that either you like, or you just think are the most valuable that you can do on LinkedIn? Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting. When they first started thinking that it was going to be a recruitment tool and people would post a CV. And so there was only a 200 content creators to start with Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, guys like this. Bill Gates.
And then they could, they said, okay, we’re going to let people write articles. And, you know, we could let people decide based on engagement, which ones show up in the newsfeed. So it’s only more recent, you know, that we actually are able to post things like video content, you know, which I found really exciting because you watch what happens on the other social media sites and then LinkedIn do it two or three years later and they generally follow the same sort of trends. So I found it quite easy to predict what’s going to happen on LinkedIn. I was generating a lot of leads. I’ll have a hundred leads a month, or thereabouts without posting any content, you know, so I’ve got, I’ve still got the system where we do direct outreach and get really good results.
Whereas I think a lot of people come over from Instagram or Facebook and they didn’t really know the background of LinkedIn. They just think it’s a content play and that’s it. But there is a big networking side to it as well. But the ad advertising like lead generation forms, website, retargeting, things like that have made a big difference. We’ve just got LinkedIn stories, which is, you know, same as Instagram stories here in Australia and in Brazil and UAE, there are rolling and out of those three countries to start with, and then globally, I think that’s gonna be huge. It’ll be very similar to what Instagram stories, whereas like at the stop.
Chris Casale: Individuals are coming over from other platforms like Facebook and Twitter and things like that. And I think one of the common mistakes that we see in this space is that entrepreneurs and businesses treat these platforms as if they’re all the same, right. They, the type of message they publish on Twitter is the same as they publish on Facebook and LinkedIn. And obviously that’s, that’s not the right approach because different social platforms have different strengths. What are some of the things that you see users are doing correctly versus incorrectly on a tool like LinkedIn?
Nat Bibby: Well, I think it, it does depend on your industry and your brand and, you know, everyone’s got a different audience, but you’re exactly right. The nuances of the platform are really important. What, what you’re gonna understand about the LinkedIn algorithm is it’s still very immature, which means that it’s quite straightforward to not manipulate, I guess, but just to under, if you understand the nuances of how LinkedIn serves content, then you can just do a few things that make sure that the algorithm doesn’t miss it, miss your content. So you need to get Like engagement relatively quickly within the first hour is things you can do to encourage people to do that.
For example, like if you show up in people’s notifications, so if you tag relevant people in the post or use some hashtags, or obviously posted in the, in the morning where your audience is not near evening, things like that will make a big difference. But I think like this is there’s this big stigma that it has to be very professional and very professional, like, you know, writing an email, a formal email or a legal document, and it’s still a social media site. So there’s a balance. Yes. Okay. It’s more professional with Facebook, Instagram. I don’t suggest that you post pictures of your, you know, yourself down at the beach with, you know, in your bikini drinking Heinekens but yeah, actually like, you’ll get, you might get in trouble if you do that LinkedIn, but at the same time, you don’t want it to be like long sentences, long words, boring.
It’s still social media. It’s about networking. It’s not necessarily just about selling yourself.
Nat Bibby: So if you’re in an industry where you want to target, like you only want to deal with dentists that have got a budget of $5,000 a month, for example, then you know, you’re going to have to deal with all this other stuff. When you get inbound leads on your website or any other platform. Whereas on LinkedIn, you can literally connect with 50 or a hundred dentists that every single day, and then what will happen is as you get more connections in that industry, when you go to connect with the next dentist, they’ll see, Oh, wow, he’s connected with so many people in my industry. He must be the expert for helping dentists with their online marketing, for example.
And they will see your content as well. So if you make the content relevant, then it’s a really, it is a winning formula.
Ryan Smith: I think there’s all different types of successes that you can have. Some of it is just building a personal brand. Some of it is very strategic outreach, kind of what, what you were talking about, you know, and I know you’ve talked about Apple and, and that was, you know, share a little bit about that because that’s a huge, huge obviously company that you know, of a success story that you have.
Nat Bibby: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. So like when I was targeting these guys, you know, I, I look at their marketing department and you’d be amazed how many people are in Apple’s marketing department in the, you know, Australia or APAC region. And so I’m literally firing off hundreds of messages to people that work at Apple. And it got to a point where they actually were discussing their LinkedIn inbox with each other around the water cooler. And they’re like, you, I’ve got this message from this, this LinkedIn guy, Nathanial. And they’re like, Oh, I’ve got one too. And so they got me in there because I was, I guess I was practicing what I preach
Ryan Smith: What is one takeaway that you’d like somebody to have listening to this? If there’s one thing that they learned about LinkedIn, what would that be?
Nat Bibby: I think quality.Your network is something that you don’t want to just leave up to chance. I think most people, when they log onto LinkedIn and they’re like, okay, I’m going to do some stuff on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the place to be. First thing they do is they look at the connection request and they go, Oh, look, I’ve got 12 connection requests and they accept them. And then you hear people go, Oh, you know, I’ve had 4,000 people at me and you know, they’re building this network and they’re being very reactive. If you, if you use the advanced search feature on the free LinkedIn and you know exactly who your target audience is. And like, if you don’t have a niche, I’d encourage you to think about getting one.
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