In this episode we are joined by Mandy McEwen the founder of Luminetics. Mandy is a well known speaker and an expert on LinkedIn and Social Selling and we will explore Mandy's successful strategies, techniques and best practices for accelerating your response rate on LinkedIn in just 30 days.
In this week's show, Mandy takes us on her journey from entering the LinkedIn game in 2015 to becoming a pro at humanizing content marketing. Get ready to absorb her unique insights as she shares how she transforms businesses by building personal brands on LinkedIn.
In an age where digital communication often supersedes face-to-face interaction, our conversation emphasizes the need for a human touch. We explore the power of crafting a personal brand, discussing the importance of understanding your why, what, and how and sharing this information with your network. We shed light on the potential of personal engagement in networking. The value of digital deposits, like comments, can go a long way in creating lasting impressions, meaningful connections, and potential customers.
To wrap up, we delve into the realm of LinkedIn content engagement. We discuss how to kickstart your sales teams with content creation, the importance of content curation, and a practical three-step approach towards it. But that's not all. Mandy shares a golden nugget on how personal comments on profiles and posts can triple engagement. Finally, we touch base on the significance of sending connection requests on LinkedIn and tips on how to do it effectively. So, whether you are a seasoned LinkedIn user or a newbie, tune in to level up your LinkedIn game with our deep dive into humanizing content marketing.
Welcome to Social Selling 2.0 Live Show and Podcast, where each week, we explore the future of B2B sales. Social has changed the B2B and professional services landscape forever. Capturing and keeping buyer attention has never been more challenging. Our mission is to help you discover new strategies, new technologies, new go-to-market systems and stay up-to-date with what is working now in B2B sales. Your hosts are Carson Hedy, the number one social seller at Microsoft, tom Burton, a best-selling author and B2B sales specialist, and Brandon Lee, an entrepreneur with multiple seven and eight figure exits and a leading voice in LinkedIn social selling. Brandon and Tom also leads Social Selling 2.0 Solutions, which offers turnkey consulting, coaching and training to B2B sales leaders. Now let's start the show.
Speaker 2:Everyone, welcome episode number 53. Is it 53, brandon, or 52? Am I getting ahead of myself, I think?
Speaker 3:it might be 52.
Speaker 4:It's 52.
Speaker 2:Well, it's 50-something, it's 50-something on social selling.
Speaker 4:We can't remember things, so it all works out.
Speaker 2:Right, Mandy. What number is this? You probably know.
Speaker 3:I know right.
Speaker 2:Exactly 53.
Speaker 3:It is 53.
Speaker 4:53. There we go. Carson looks very different today, a big upgrade for Carson.
Speaker 2:Yes, welcome, mandy. Thank you for filling it, and what you're not filling in for Carson, you're just going to have to make up for Carson. Here I am in a truck stop in Syracuse, new York, outside of Syracuse, new York. Mandy, where are you?
Speaker 3:I am in Crete, Greece, on an island.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think that wins. Brandon, would you like to try and compete with that?
Speaker 4:No, not at all. I'm not even going to attempt it.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, we have Butch in Atlanta too, so welcome Butch. If you're on, let us know where you are. We'll see how many states or countries we can cover here today.
Speaker 4:Let's see who's closest to Mandy geographically today.
Speaker 3:Yes, that'd be fun.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm pretty far out here, or if you're driving yes, or if you're driving in Buckeys.
Speaker 3:Buckeys. Yeah, are you at Buckeys, tom? I don't know if Syracuse, do Syracuse have Buckeys I? Don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 4:I was at Texas. I will be at a Buckeys on Saturday as we drive to Birmingham to visit our daughter for family weekend.
Speaker 3:This other thing I love Buckeys. It's the best.
Speaker 2:Is that a truck stop?
Speaker 4:Oh no, it's not a truck stop, it's an experience.
Speaker 3:It's an experience. Yeah, it's something like you've never seen before at a truck stop.
Speaker 2:Okay, this place is not an experience. This place that I'm at is not an experience, so it is not Buckeys and we have Ken from Canada. Welcome.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:That's true, it is spelled Buckeys, buckeys. Right, I was spelling it wrong too when I first went. It's okay, tom, you don't even know You're missing out.
Speaker 2:I know. I know I'm in search of Buckeys now. All right, let's get started. Mandy, welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got involved and linked in and what you do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Thanks so much for having me both of you, I'm excited to be here. So I have been doing this for a very long time. I started my agency Mod for Marketing back in 2010 and kind of fell into the LinkedIn game, probably 2015-ish, and I was using it to get clients for my agency. And then I started telling other people about how I was getting clients and then they were landing clients Like, oh my God, whatever you told me, Mandy, I just landed 15 appointments in one week and this was like 2016,. You know they're like you should make a course on this. So I did. In 2017, I had a couple of LinkedIn courses for agency owners and consultants that did really well, had mastermind groups, and then fast forward to 2021. We were already kind of doing this for clients and I saw a massive need for this post-COVID and I was like why don't we create another, a separate brand, to focus solely on LinkedIn for companies, so we're not getting confused with our social media and organic marketing agency, ModGirl? So I created Luminetics in 2021. And now we help sales and executive teams succeed on LinkedIn with training, some done for you, profile content, content, et cetera, and really our whole goal is to help teams kick ass and build personal brands on LinkedIn that drive revenue for their companies.
Speaker 2:And are you mostly B2B or B2C, or small business or all over?
Speaker 3:It's usually mid-sized B2B, but we even have some luxury real estate clients that use LinkedIn to connect with executives, to land, you know, to sell multi-million dollar homes to them, right? But it's primarily B2B, saas and usually like mid-market enterprise.
Speaker 2:Good, you're in the right place, excellent.
Speaker 3:But it's, you know, mainly tech teams with, at least you know, five minimum, 10 minimum sales SDRs, bdrs.
Speaker 4:Right, right. We have the right moment to talk to our audience today.
Speaker 2:Yes, we definitely do. So we're gonna get into a lot of things on personal brand and, obviously, what we talked about how to 3X LinkedIn engagement in 30 days. But as we start, Mandy, there was something on your website that really intrigued me and I thought it was really interesting was a term you used humanized content marketing. So talk to us a little bit about what that is and how that kind of fits into what you do and LinkedIn and everything else.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we live in an age where we are all striving for human connection and business. We are not doing business with logos, we're doing business with people. So it is really important that everything you do has a humanized elements. I don't know about you guys, but if you see boring corporate LinkedIn posts that are linking to white papers or webinars and they're just using the same jargon over and over again, it doesn't really resonate right. So what we like to do is help companies and individuals from teams leverage storytelling, leverage their own experiences. You can even do this at the corporate level, but it's really getting the humans behind your content. So leveraging more of your team members so even if it's from getting them on camera or getting your customers involved with creating content, making case studies is like the bare minimum of this. But even storytelling from a customer perspective, storytelling from your company culture and what it's like to work there. And then, of course, when you're an individual either in an executive role, sales role, et cetera you need to be sharing content that humanizes you as a professional and lets people know who you are as a human being and not just a bunch of business jargon. So this goes both for the company side and the individual side as well. It's really just resonating with people in a way that actually works, instead of just posting a bunch of boring stuff that doesn't resonate really.
Speaker 2:You know, Brandon, I know you have a thought on this, but before you jump in, I have a question. Mandy, we hear a lot Well God, but Facebook or LinkedIn is not Facebook. Right, we shouldn't be putting you know personal staff and things like that on LinkedIn. What's, what's your take on that, when people tell you that, yeah, I mean it shouldn't.
Speaker 3:It isn't into Instagram, it isn't Facebook. I don't care what you ate for breakfast, right, that's not what LinkedIn is for. But again, we are human beings that are doing business with other human beings, and so you don't have to get personal if you don't want to. But if you don't, then you need to show your personality when you're posting valuable business posts. So I'm not. This is all comfort level. I have some people crushing it that have never shown anything about their personal life at all, but they show their personality when they're talking about certain things. They leverage storytelling, and so that's what. That's what really stands out. So, and and I was just on right before here in another Session where I gave like an 80 20 rule right, like 20% could be personal content, 80% could be business, right, or. But you can think of it as like, if you're posting four times a week, maybe make one of them more personal. But even when I do personal posts, I'm tying it to something inspirational or motivational. I'm not just posting a selfie or posting a picture of the sea that I'm looking out at right now Like there's something with it, and you can always apply some sort of Tips, whether it's business related or not, it could be life related to anything that you post personal. So this is not Instagram, it's not Facebook, but you can still be a human being on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love hearing that we, we, we talk about a lot and some of the questions I get I'd love to hear your take on. It is and you explained it a little bit there but why is adding our personality or adding a little bit of personal discovery or personal Information about ourselves? Why is that so?
Speaker 3:important Because you're gonna look like everyone else if you don't. That's the easiest answer I have. It is so competitive. This, like any, any Anything that you're in right now, the landscape that you're in, really most industries are uber competitive and you are competing against of a bunch of people, whether you're trying to get a job, or whether you're in sales, whether you're a founder, which you're still kind of in sales, you're up against a lot of competition. So the more that you're letting people know who you are as a human and showing your personality, the more you're gonna attract People that are like that and that resonate with you and like your energy. Like this is all. This is all about energy, right, and so when we are boring and no one knows who we are as a human being, we're gonna look like everyone else and we're not gonna increase our chances of landing that job, landing that opportunity right like at the core. That's what it is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I like that and you helping people understand. At the core, it is a human heart connecting with the human heart, and I know we're not supposed to talk about hearts and feelings and all that and linked in which is total bullshit. Right, we talk about it because it's important, yes, but it's we've got to put ourselves out there and let other human beings, other human hearts, find something to connect with us. And, as I like to say, if we only lead with our title, we're only giving them our title and our boring work spiel to connect with. And that doesn't happen. And For anybody that is, you know, second guessing this, I ask what's the percentage of conversations you have with customers when you're at dinner? How much is personal and how much is business? Or over a cup of coffee or at a networking event having a drink? Just look at that and you can clearly see that it's through the personal Discovery and conversations that we connect, we bond, and then opportunities not only happen, but they happen more and they accelerate once that bond is connected. Yeah, thanks for sharing all that.
Speaker 2:I wanted to touch on a couple of the comments. Here is Andrew was saying you know you want to build rapport right, and the only way to build rapport to your point Mandy is rising above the crowd because otherwise you're not going to build anything other than create noise along the way. And I don't know. Captain Kirk here seems to think that Brandon is anything but boring. But so that's a thumbs up for Brandon today and Going for me. And he said he thresh and he freshened his breath before logging in today.
Speaker 4:All right, captain's on the captain's on the deck, he's on the, he's on the roll today, yeah, so let's talk a bit about personal brand.
Speaker 2:You know, I think this ties into this, because I think this is another question we get a lot is why is it important to have a personal brand online? Or even is it important to have a personal brand online? I have to say we're getting more and more questions about it. But yeah, go ahead, brandon. Well, I'd say, and Mandy, what, when you answer that, what exactly is?
Speaker 4:a personal brand. I think there's still a lot of confusion About what we mean, and could you kind of define that in a concise way to help people understand it?
Speaker 3:So first of all, I hate to break it to you, but every single person has a personal brand, like if you are on the internet, you have a personal brand period and your personal brand is your social media and in the B2B world, your personal brand is your personal brand and in the B2B world, your personal brand is the home of your linked in profile. So, whether you want one or not, you have a personal brand. So you need to start owning it, otherwise it's just gonna sit there and do nothing for you. So you know. Back up, like your question originally, tom is like do you need a personal brand? Like? You don't have a choice. You already have one. You know. Whether you are doing anything about it or not is irrelevant. You have one, so it's in your best interest to actually pay attention to it. And to answer your question, brandon, I like to think of a personal brand as the intersection between your why you're what and your how. So you know why are you doing what you're doing, like, how are you doing it and what do you do Right? So you're doing these things, how are you doing it differently and why do you do it? Why are you passionate about that? And that's your personal brand and you can easily Portray all of those on your linked in profile, and so it's the intersection of those things that makes you who you are and why you do what you do as a professional, and then you you need to optimize your linked in profile to portray those things that I just mentioned. I love that. My favorite quotes personal brand is when you're being talked about and you are not in the room.
Speaker 4:Yeah, is that? Was that a Jeff Bezos quote?
Speaker 3:I think that is Amazon homie. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's the one that said that.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's good.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the why. I think that's awesome, the intersection of what you're talking about. Do you see that, the why, that it's really important when people are kind of looking at this for themselves, that they're looking at that why first, or does that take any precedence over the other two? Or do I need to look at all three of those the why, the what and the how?
Speaker 3:You know kind of yeah, I mean, simon Snack always says lead with why right, of course. So I mean, it's gonna help if you understand that and you have clarity on why you do what you do and like, what fires you up to Actually wake up and do what you do every day, hoping that you do actually enjoy what your profession is, and if not, I hope that you're working to change that. So, yeah, I think it's important to to lead with that. But all of them are important, right, but when you lead with that, everything else is gonna come together, like they're gonna know what you do and they're gonna know how you're different from your why you know. So your why is going to differentiate you with the what and the how. So, yeah, I think they're all important, but you know, obviously you need to to have clarity on those things, and then you need to let people know. And even if you have clarity on those things, that doesn't matter if no one knows it, so like you can have it up here, but if you're not letting the world know those things, and it's kind of pointless, and so that's a whole. Other topic of conversation Is like, how do we let people know those? And that's where your profile comes into play. That's where your content comes into play. That's where conversations behind the scenes come into play.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of different elements here to let people or the world know that this is what you do and why you do it so when you're working with a client and let's say they've worked out their personal brand, the what, the why and the how, and you've updated their profile, do you work with them on their content strategy then to align with that? Or how do you think about your content strategy and even maybe your commenting strategy, right, not just your, your, your posting, but how you comment and how you engage and how you interact?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, I mean it all. It all kind of goes hand in hand, right. But you know, backing up, before you even start thinking about content, you need to start thinking about your network, you know. So when I'm training teams, contents actually the last one I'm training sales teams is different. When we're working with marketing, right, but what an executives. But when I'm training sales team specifically, the content is the last thing that we talk about, because I want to make sure that they're nailing down their, their copy on their profile and that they understand how to build real relationships on LinkedIn, because when you do that and you engage with people, you're leaving comments, you're building relationships, you're adding connections. Every single day, the content ideas become easier and easier because you're having conversations, you're seeing what's happening online, you're you're following certain people that are giving you inspiration that you can then take and make your own post from right. So there's so many elements that come into play here before you even get to the content. When you are in that now, when it's just marketing or it's executives, you know that's a whole other ball game. When it comes to the content strategy and yes, that is when we're working with what is important to them, what is their expertise? What do they want to be known for? So that's a big thing with personal brain is like what is what do you want to be known for? So if you're a marketer, great you're a marketer, but there's lots of sub marketing niches, right, like I'm a marketer and I know lots of things. I know SEO and social media and PR like. I content marketing, like I've done a lot in my 15 plus year career as a marketer, but what I want to be known for now is what I'm doing on the LinkedIn front and personal branding front as a social seller right. So you need to get really specific on what you want people to know you for, because we have all, everyone has a job title and we're in a certain industry. But you have to drill down and like what do you really want to be known for and that's what you need to build your content around.
Speaker 2:That's great, and I love what you're saying about thinking about the network first, and even in Brandon, obviously, you talk a lot about this is Comedy. Is comedy is like listening right rather than coming out and saying here I am, look at me, you're building a network, you're building the relationship here, as Andrew said. You're building a community here on things as well, and then you're working out what's the best way to actually Then figure out how you communicate. Am I getting that right?
Speaker 3:That's 100% accurate, and I was the session I was just on. I was telling people like For those of you who aren't super comfortable posting right now, just get in the habit of commenting. Leave five comments a day. Leave five meaningful comments a day on prospects. Post, industry leaders, post if you're getting a job, maybe the companies, that people at work for those companies. Get in the habit of leaving comments, because then that's going to warm you up for making your own content and what you can do is you can take all those comments that you leave. You can copy and paste them into a word doc or a Google doc and then, when you're ready to post content, go back, look at your comments and then, voila, all you have to do is copy and paste one of your great comments, add a little bit more to it and, bam, you have a post. Because the way our brains work, it's easier for us, as humans, to respond to someone else than it is for us to come up with our own content. So when you're getting the habit of posting consistently and commenting on people's posts, it just makes your life so much easier when it comes to posting your own content to not to mention you're going to open up, multiple you know people to see you visibility, other goodwill with LinkedIn people, not to mention, when you're posting content, the people that you're leaving comments on they're most likely to also reciprocate. It's this is how we work as human beings, like the law of reciprocation. Like you scratch my back, I scratch yours right. So that's how it works. We build community, we help each other out, so there's so many benefits of commenting on a consistent basis.
Speaker 4:Mandy, how do you, how do you answer the question when and I'm sure this has never happened to you, but you know be to be sales people that you're working with them, coaching them to comment, that they get on their computer, they get their hands on their keyboard and they go. I don't know what to say.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It never happens, right Never.
Speaker 3:Never, never, heard that one more. The basic like. Here's a couple of tips. At a bare minimum, you can literally copy and paste a sentence that resonated with you most Literally. Copy and paste it, put it into the comment and be like yes, right on, totally agree with that. Like that's at bare minimum. You could also recap what they said. So, in your own words, recap what the post just said. You can also ask a question right related to the post. Like there are a million ways where you don't have to use your brain that much to actually leave a meaningful comment. You know so, if you're having a moment, then there's also AI tools. You can literally copy someone's post into chat GPT and say write a three, a meaningful, three sentence comments response to this post and see what chat GPT spits out and then tweak it and make it your own in your own language. And then, bam, you have comment. There's plugins that do this too. Like AI is your friend when you can't think you know. So use AI, yeah.
Speaker 4:And that's in use AI everybody. But don't use AI without editing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no.
Speaker 4:Use it to get started Because, like what you said earlier is, a lot of times it's easier to create from other people's content because we're not creating from scratch, and that's how I find that AI is really good. It's a great way to get started. Give you you know, throw some paint on the canvas and then let you move it around and set a staring at a blank canvas.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Yeah, Please don't ever. It is so obvious and I get probably every post that I make now has very obvious at least one chat GPT comment and it is so obvious.
Speaker 4:What do you do with it? So we have these conversations like should we start calling people out on it? Do we ignore it? What do we do?
Speaker 3:I think because now I'm just like me and my team, we're just like liking it and like that's it, or maybe we won't even at all. If it's really bad, we'll just ignore it. But I haven't called anyone out yet because I don't know. I don't want to really be that girl right now you know, like I got your fish to fry than like calling people out for cheating with chat GPT. I don't know. What do you guys think?
Speaker 4:You know I have on a few that were very obvious. I've asked the question and I preface it with just out of curiosity Was this AI created? But what I found is nobody ever responds.
Speaker 3:Of course they don't Right.
Speaker 4:But what it tells me is they're using some sort of a commenting tool with some automation, and their concept is speed, not engagement, and they're not in it for the human to human communication. They're in it just to, you know, spray their, spray, their stuff as wide as they can which is like so counterintuitive, like it actually does more harm than good.
Speaker 3:You know, it's so obvious. And if you're not like genuinely building relationships and leaving meaningful comments and having dialogue with people, like in real time, then it's completely. You're wasting your time for one and you're making yourself look like a fool for two.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so that makes me think of another question for you, mandy. Maybe you have somebody that comes to you. They're interested in your services and they say well, how is this different? Or how would you compare it to the automation tools that send out the call connection request with you know sequencing direct messages. How do you coach people or answer that question?
Speaker 3:So back in the day, when I first started out in LinkedIn 2016, I 100% was testing out automated tools.
Speaker 1:It was the wild wild west.
Speaker 3:People didn't know. You had no clue that it was automated. Now, first of all, it's against LinkedIn's TOS, right, I'm not, like I will admit like I 100% back in the day, use them because why not? Everyone else was testing them out, right, but I haven't in years. And it's so obvious, not to mention it's so noisy now, that you have to stand out. Right, this is all about standing out and making yourself, differentiating yourself from the crowd. So when you take two seconds like do you know how many people that I've connected with on a deep level that we're not really good friends with Maybe I've done business deals with because I took two minutes out of my day to look at their profile, engage their content and leave a meaningful connection request, you can't do that with AI, right? It's very. If you're just sending a blank request like hey, tom. Like hey first name, it's going to send to Tom. Hey first name is going to send to Brandon. Came across your profile today. See that you're a leader, would love to connect. Like that's so generic and it doesn't stand out. But when you take two seconds to call out the podcast episode that you just had with Mandy McEwen and how it was insightful and how much you learned? Guess what you know. That's not AI, and nine times out of 10, y'all are going to accept that connection request right yeah.
Speaker 4:Plus, if we go back to you know the Bible of human engagement, here you're hitting the dopamine. The serotonin are getting kicked in because we people love to be listened to and when we comment I believe commenting is the digital equivalent of listening they don't know that we've read their content, unless we comment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then you mentioned that in the connection request. I love the post that you just had yesterday about X, Y and Z. You're stroking their ego. You're making them realize that you actually read it. You're a human being, You're not a bot. I mean, there's so many advantages to taking two minutes out of your day to do this versus automation. And so what happens to when you're using automation and you're only going to get a small person to be able to accept that right? So let's say you had three bad ass prospects in that automation sequence and they are really sharp and they know it was automated and they don't accept your connection request. Well, guess what? You probably completely lost out on that. Or if you would have done it personally, you could have landed them as clients because you took an extra you know what I mean Two minutes to stick to them. So like it just doesn't work that way anymore with automation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it reminds me when Tom Anthony and Irina was on our show and he said something that a lot of people kind of stopped. I'm like, oh, he said I would rather be effective than efficient. Right, let's, let's use our time to be more effective, and then we don't have to worry so much about how fast are we getting stuff done. And I believe that speed is the biggest challenge for people, and one of the mindsets that we talk about for modern sellers is go slow to move fast, and that's what we're talking about Be efficient and when you, when you take time to engage with people, to be authentic, to, as Mandy says, take two seconds to read it and write something personal, first of all, for everybody, it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't mean that every single person you customize something to is going to go oh my gosh, here's my wallet, where do I buy? Like it just doesn't work that way. But get into the groove of it and all of a sudden you start I mean, mandy, that's the way you and I got connected. I, I mean in full disclosure I wanted to meet Mandy, so I started commenting on her stuff.
Speaker 2:And then I said I said did you use AI? Did you use AI? Did you put like a bunch of emojis in there from AI?
Speaker 4:I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But that's, that's the way I got connected to Mandy and then we we chatted a little bit on post and then I sent her messages and invited her beyond the show. And here she is, all the way from Greece.
Speaker 3:Yeah, brandon was putting in the digital deposits before he withdrew, right, Okay, Before you do the withdrawal, Like this is what. This is what one of my clients just said, right, so it's like you you have to put in those digital deposits before you are asking for anything. You have to decide value and act like a real human being and don't pretend like everyone else or or a bot, or you know, like people know and it's very obvious in the same age like who's actually doing it and is, and who's meaningful and taking time and who isn't. And unfortunately, there's so many people that are still trying to shortcut it and they are using bots, they are using AI, they're using automation or they're just blasting impersonal emails or impersonal in-mails on LinkedIn and they're not getting results. And they wonder why, you know. And so you do have to slow down a little bit, take a little bit extra time, and when you do that, your results are going to be through the roof compared to if you're just doing it the old school way.
Speaker 4:Hey, mandy, could, would you mind? Could you think of a? A story we're all storytellers, right Of a customer that experienced that aha moment in commenting and being more human and social. So I'll put you on the spot.
Speaker 3:No, it's all good. I have a really good one I like to share. It's super simple and short. So I trained a team and one of the individuals took what she learned and went out and she left one comment on an industry influencers post. She was one of the first ones to comment and by the end of the day she had 400 new connection requests from one comment. One comment, oh yeah. Because, it was timing and it was a. It was a lengthy, really well thought out comment. Okay, it wasn't just two sentences, it was a long comment that was very insightful and she added her own two cents to it. And this guy had lots and lots of followers and it was a timing thing too. She happened to be one of the first that commented and it was a really, really good, well thought out comment. That took her a little bit of time to do and she had 400 targeted connection requests from her specific industry by the end of the day.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's awesome. That's a great story. I know I'm not the guest, but let me add this story to it too, because it just happened. Last week was something I was Maybe I was working with, and you know, v2b sales looked at a post that happened to be a post from the company for one of his tier one targets and he did the. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And I said look, read it again, close your eyes and say it out loud, or say it to yourself and then tell me where it resonates with you. And he said well, he started laughing after he did it and he said well, it resonates with me on a personal side, not a business side. And I'm like, hold on, like you should be. Oops, sorry, I'm gonna beat up my microphone. You should be totally okay that you resonated on a personal. What is it? And it was a picture from the company's barbecue, like employee event, and one of the pictures was a jumpy house. And he said well, I got this memory when I was a kid and I went to my dad's company picnic and they had the jumpy house and I just remember the older kids were like sending us to the moon, all those younger kids. So I felt like I was going it and I said write that. And he went in. He's like feeling awkward and he writes it and like within 20, 25 minutes, something like that he pings me and he goes. The CEO of the company commented on my comment and you know something about that is one of the reasons why we do company pickets, you know. We wanna make sure the kids and the families are having fun too. Thanks for sharing your story. Like dude, you are now digitally having conversations with the CEO of one of your tier one targets, because you talked about a jumpy house.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4:Being a human being and we gotta remember there's two paths. You know, look at a post. You can go straight down a business path, but you've got that personal path and if you can go personal and then bring it back to business, bonus extra points.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean you should always lead, like you mentioned it earlier, brandon, you know like we are, we want to connect with human beings on different levels and it's not just about business, right? So one of my good friends I connected with years ago and he's you know, we're working together, et cetera and has landed I've landed clients because of him. I sent him a connection request and I lived in California for 10 years before I started my Nomad life and he was in Fort Bragg with his dog and he posted a picture of him and his dog in Fort Bragg and I just happened to be in the area too, in the Mendocino area, and I was like you know, I sent him a connection request, you know, and it literally just mentioned like hey, first name, I saw you and Cooper, his dog's name. We're just in, you know, fort Bragg. I was also there with my dogs a couple of weeks ago. It's so beautiful there, but happy to connect. Nothing about business whatsoever. He replies back wow, you're the MVP, you're the first person, the last few thousand requests I've got. That even took time to look at anything on my profile, you know, and it had nothing to do about business at all. So prime example, like everyone resonates with personal stories. We are humans, you know. So I think we overthink that Like we forget about that sometimes.
Speaker 4:I think we get in LinkedIn and we think about our title and our company and we get so caught up and rigid into you know we're this person in business, but we never do that when we're at networking events or cocktail parties or dinner. In fact, it's just the opposite. We actually tend to go to personal as much as we can and then know that business will come from it. It's just kind of a mind blow that we can't seem to really connect those dots. I think that's one of my questions for you, mandy is what are some of the best ways or how we? You know we've got an audience of people and, tom, I know you wanted to bring up some comments, but how do you help them get to that place of embracing, understanding and even being enthusiastic to teach me how to be more human on LinkedIn?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, practice makes perfect, right? Like practice and look at what other people are doing and use their kind of formats to help you, right? So, like most people, if you look at a lot of creators on LinkedIn, aside from, like their personal stories and stuff, like they're depending on their niche, they're all kind of talking about the same thing. It's just their own unique take on it, right? So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to come up with, like OMG, content that no one's ever heard before, some ground breaking tip that no one's ever heard. Like no one's really doing that, right? So you just have to feel comfortable and sharing your own experience and putting your own take on a tip or something. But it comes with practice, you know. So I always say, like, follow people who are really good at this. Follow creators on LinkedIn, obviously, but you could follow them on any channel whatever you want blogs, et cetera and learn from other people and how they're doing it, Consume that content and then just go out there and do it, because the more you do it, the easier it's going to become. But also be a master of content curation. So, for those people who aren't super comfortable with posting content. Obviously start commenting, like the tip I gave earlier it's going to help but also start curating content so you can take content from anyone and any company on LinkedIn, but you can also take content from anywhere on the internet and you can post it on LinkedIn I know right, Ground breaking tip here and then you can add your own two cents of what you found helpful about that piece of content. Like that is super easy and that is content curation. Like we don't have to all come up with this crazy thought leadership content all the time. Like I'm training sales teams and my goal isn't for them to become the next LinkedIn influencer they won't be, they don't want to be the next LinkedIn influencer. So my goal is to help them put themselves out there a little more and to get their feet wet. I have them share other people's posts, their company content, but I want them to add their own unique spin to it and their own take and what they found helpful from that. Right.
Speaker 4:That's good. I like the three step approach on curating content. Read an article, step one. That's probably the hardest part for people, right, actually taking time to read it, but read something. And then step one is I read this article because, right, this article is important to put in your prospects titles, because tell them why it's important to them. And then here's three key points I took from the article and explain them Like, just start. I like what you're saying. Just start, keep getting started.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that you know lines with a couple of comments here. You know James was saying I get it to display, here it goes is I think content could be overwhelming and it freezes people into an action. Keep it simple, right. I think the complexity a lot of times is as much of the barrier than I'm, you know, fearful of saying anything is like this is overwhelming. Let's just keep it simple, which I think is exactly what we've been talking about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I would say with that too, remember it's so much of social media and life in general is we compare our true self to other people's projected selves and when you're looking at like Mandy's comments, you might get overwhelmed. But Mandy's been doing this a long time, so don't feel like you have to be as good as Mandy. Use it as an example to get started and be okay with where you're at right now. But the key that in Mandy keeps saying I'll just reemphasize her words just start. Practice makes perfect. Get going and you get more comfortable. It's like anything else, and more we do it, the less scary it becomes.
Speaker 3:Exactly and don't worry about. Even when we're talking about posting here, I think people get analysis paralysis also because they're afraid of what other people will think. And they're afraid of not getting likes and comments, but I don't worry about that. Like, these are all vanity metrics. Like, everyone who started off had zero comments and likes on their posts. Everyone starts from zero. And guess what? Hardly anyone is really doing this. Like, there's tons of people on LinkedIn and you might think that, like, there's tons of creators, but there's really not that many people posting consistently on LinkedIn. There's really not. And so when you do that, you're already going to be in the minority and kudos to you. So, like, I hope that you're also taking away some confidence from me being here today, because I want you to just go out there and do it and don't worry about what people think, don't worry about how many comments, don't worry about how many likes, because the more consistent you are, it's gonna come. You're gonna get engagement and then the more your comments and other people's stuff, they're gonna notice that and then they're gonna comment on your stuff. So you have to like, put in the work and be consistent and it will all come to you to tenfold. But don't get discouraged when you first start posting and commenting and you're like oh no, one's seeing it, I'm gonna quit, no one likes it, that's. Don't do that, because that's what everyone else does Like. You have to stay in this, you know. You have to be consistent.
Speaker 4:No good words. You have someone else you wanna pull up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to touch on David here. You know, back to our conversation about AI and commenting and so forth. I think he brings hours communicating with people. We just know intuitively when it's genuine and when an effort has been made. I think there's two points that he's bringing up there. One is we know if it's genuine, right, we can see it in a second if it looks like some AI generated thing. But then also, you know, is there an effort that's made to actually make a good communication, versus just put something down there? To say, I put something down there, as you said, just to kind of spray, I think was the word you use. Mandy is kind of spraying myself out there. That's not really a very good communication there.
Speaker 3:Right, I think that's a great point. Yeah, it just doesn't. It's not as effective anymore, and I'm talking about everything from cold calls to cold emails to cold LinkedIn outreach like it's all the same. You know, like if you think about the general concept of connecting with other humans, it doesn't matter what medium you're using to do it. You have to do it in a way that resonates and they know that you actually paid attention to them. Like Sam McKinnon says show me, you know me. Right. It's, it's like a mantra, and that's what we're talking about here. Like, show me that you took the time and you actually know who the hell you're talking to.
Speaker 2:You know that's good, and Captain Kirk would like to see your book again.
Speaker 4:Brandon, you're a lot of influence people. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as we're kind of getting to the end here, mandy, now I think we have the big grand finale question for you, which is how to three X your LinkedIn engagement in 30 days. We've all been waiting for that.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes, you've been waiting for it right. The grand finale, okay, so obviously, everything that we're talking about anymore.
Speaker 2:Tonight you had this your last thing you have to say.
Speaker 3:Night 11 to almost 11 11 pm here in Greece.
Speaker 2:So that's, it.
Speaker 3:Here we go, okay, so step number one is you need to be taking advantage of LinkedIn's 100 connection requests per week. You have to be sending connection requests every single day, at minimum 50. But how you do this is first, you find the people. So, if you have sales navigator, build out a list of prospects. If you don't, you can do this manually, but find people who are actively using the LinkedIn platform. There's lots of other ways to do this If you don't have sales nav, and use my friendly leader method, which is, essentially, they go and comments on their post or their comments. So some people don't post content consistently, but they comment consistently. You guys can engage with other people's comments. So like or respond to a comment, like a post or and or comments on that post. Wait a little bit till they see it Either they respond to it or they like it, whatever. Then send a custom connection request mentioning what it is that you engaged with, whether it was their comments or their posts. And then, obviously, they accept your connection request nine times out of 10 because it's personalized and you're boosting their ego and helping their content or comments in the algorithm. And then you start the dialogue from there and you continue to follow up, but this doesn't work unless you are consistently sending connection requests every single day. So that is the key. This actually has nothing to do with posting your own content at all. That helps. What this has everything to do with is engaging and building meaningful relationships by sending connection requests, and the majority of people are not even anywhere close to sending a hundred connection requests per week, which is what you're allowed to do. So when you do this, I guarantee you, I promise you that you will three X your engagement, because you're probably sending maybe five connection requests a week, maybe 10, you know. So if you're 10 Xing what you're doing and you're doing it by also leaving comments you're naturally going to create tons of engagement and lots of connections and goodwill in the community. Bam.
Speaker 2:If we're doing a hundred, if you're doing a hundred a week, could you be making a personal comment on each of those? Do you recommend making Not everyone?
Speaker 3:is yeah, not everyone's going to be posting content. So if they don't post content consistently, just call something out from their profile that stood out to you. Or maybe their company was just mentioned and you can mention something about their company, right? Because not everyone that you send a connection request to is going to have content or comments to engage with. That's just not realistic. It's only going to be a percentage. So for those people that don't have anything, find something else on their profile to mention. Or, if you can't find their profile, look at what's happening in their company and mention something about their company, right? There's so many different ways to call to make a personalized request for people that aren't consistently posting content.
Speaker 2:But always say something, always say something, whether it can always say something.
Speaker 3:If you can't. If you can't and you're in a hurry, then just send the connection request without saying anything. I mean, it depends on the person. But if you have a solid profile, if you have a really highly optimized profile and you have a decent connection request or decent amount of followers, you could probably get away with not saying anything and then connection requests for some people. But if you don't have an optimized profile and you don't have, you know, if you have under a thousand connections and your profile is crap, then you're going to have to take the extra. So but but don't have a crap profile. Like there's no reason for you to. I have a free checklist you can download. You don't even have to often do it. You know like, optimize your profile, stuff number one and that'll help. But we've done tests and some executives actually accept connection request with nothing in it more than they do with stuff in it. But that's only because they get a bunch of crap generic you know reactionary requests are personalized. That's why right.
Speaker 2:Kind of like, if you keep, you don't going to say something, good, don't say it at all. Don't say it at all.
Speaker 3:Why don't you ever say it?
Speaker 2:Tom.
Speaker 3:That's, that's my thing, Like if you, if you literally cannot come to anything to say, then I would rather you send a blank connection request than say something that's annoying or spammy or makes you look at your desperate, you know so.
Speaker 2:No, great point, Brandon. Any final question before we let Mandy go to sleep?
Speaker 4:No, I would just say my fan status of you went up, mandy. I really appreciate how you explain and take on that human approach. I love, obviously, with our Fist Bump tool, that we're building around commenting. I love how you champion commenting and it's not. Oh, we're doing Fist Bump. You talk about commenting. The foundation of it is commenting. I believe, and I think you believe it's the most important activity that we can do. So much comes from it and, yeah, it can be hard, it can be overwhelming, it could be a little intimidating. Your imposter syndrome can kick in all that stuff. Fine, but if you want to be different than anyone else, go comment.
Speaker 3:Yep, you have to, and that's how you stand out, you know is be a human and build those relationships and leave meaningful comments, because it's going to come back to you. You can build relationships of people that you never thought you could, that have loads of followers and you would have thought that they would never even give you the time of day and just by commenting consistently on their posts, you can have conversations with them, I promise you. Most people are really nice on LinkedIn, and especially when you engage with them, you know, and so like, don't be afraid to go out there and engage with you know, influencers and people that have a lot more followers than you, because they will see it and they will notice it, and that's a Gary Vee and like. Those types of influencers, right, but the niche influencers, right, that don't have millions and millions of followers. I promise you you'll be able to stand out when you do this.
Speaker 4:Gary Vee did respond to my tweet about seven or eight years ago and I chatted with him a little bit and I thought it was like the coolest thing ever. But I don't know if I'd get that status these days. So if you're going to comment on Gary Vee, just use an F-bomb or two and you might fit it right in.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly. Well, thanks, andrew, for your comment. You're sweet. I appreciate your support. He's the best. Yes, andrew.
Speaker 2:Andrew has made some really great comments. You have definitely have some fans here, Mandy. If somebody wants to know more about your business or anything about what you do, where would they best check you out? I know LinkedIn, of course.
Speaker 3:LinkedIn, obviously, yeah, I mean, linkedin's the best place. Yeah, but MontrealMarketingcom is my main company website and that will link you to a lot of information too. But if you want to, if we're not already connected, hit me up on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4:Comment first. Right Okay, Comment first before you send her a connection request.
Speaker 3:You can do that, or you can just send me a connection request you are on this, you can say you attended this and you don't have to comment and I will accept. Okay, just by that alone.
Speaker 2:You can even go into chat GPT and say write me something that said I attended this show and I want to connect to Mandy, Add lots of emojis. We could say that Exactly. Any forward, I think you said he's down on my check.
Speaker 3:Yeah, If you guys want my free checklist again, you could just go to my profile and it's pinned on my featured section and you don't have to opt in or anything. It's right there for you. So go check it out and optimize your profile, Every single one of you. If you have not done this already, that is step number one and I'm happy to help. If you want me to review it anytime, send me a message and I'll help you out.
Speaker 2:I think one of our new mantras Brandon is don't have a crap profile.
Speaker 4:I was just going there. I was about to say the quote of the day is don't have a crap profile. Exactly Like you said, if you have a crap profile, well, don't have a crap profile. Pretty much, yeah, I like it All right. I mean we're going to let you get some rest. You've had a long day. Thank you for staying up late, for us.
Speaker 2:Thank you and yeah, for your listening. Please get the podcast. Go check out the podcast, download it. Leave us a rating. We're really trying to get to number one. We're kind of going between number one and two on social selling, so we're really trying to push to get to number one. And next week we have another awesome guest, Morgan Ingraham. Right, Brandon is next week, so the party will continue.
Speaker 4:I may even try and pull him in live, since he's here, he lives. I don't know, we're like 15 minutes apart, that'd be fun. Yeah, maybe I'll figure out how to pull that off. I will not be in the truck stop next week. That's a good thing.
Speaker 2:That was a good thing All right.
Speaker 4:Randy, thank you again. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Of course, thank you guys for having me. I had fun Absolutely.
Speaker 2:All right. Hey, tom Burton here and I wanted to personally thank you for listening or watching today's episode of Social Selling 2.0. If you enjoyed or found value in today's show, please share with your friends and colleagues. Also, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast outlet. And please also subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our free online community at socialselling20.com. There you'll get free access to the latest social selling resources training sessions, webinars and can collaborate with other social selling professionals. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.
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