Episode 543 Marketing With Bridget Willard Why You Need to Publish on Linkedin

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Show Summary

This is a podcast hosted by Rob Cairns, who is joined by Bridget Willard for their monthly marketing segment. The episode specifically focuses on the importance of publishing on LinkedIn, particularly for businesses in the B2B sector. Bridget emphasizes the benefits of publishing articles on the platform for visibility, thought leadership, brand authority, and off-page SEO, noting its relevance for reaching decision-makers and C-suite executives. They also briefly discuss the difference between posting and publishing on LinkedIn, the value of building genuine relationships over intrusive sales tactics, and mention upcoming book releases by both Bridget (co-authored with Warren Laine-Naida) and Rob.

Show Notes

Rob Cairns: Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and today I’m here with my good friend, Miss Bridget Willard. There I go already. Hey Bridget, how are you?

Bridget Willard: How’s it going, Rob?

Rob Cairns: Oh, it’s going. Uh, you know, I’ll screw the evergreen up, but at the time of the record, it’s election day in Canada. So, so much fun, you know.

Bridget Willard: Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a whole thing.

Rob Cairns: Yeah, do that and between the election and just take my Amazon account away from me and I’ll be better off. You know how that goes.

Bridget Willard: Yeah, it’s going to be one of those shows, is it?

Rob Cairns: For sure. Anyway, we’re going to talk about publishing on LinkedIn.

Bridget Willard: Yeah.

Rob Cairns: After—and I have to thank you graciously. We we pre-recorded this like last week and uh somebody—me—had all kinds of technical problems which I never have usually. The second one I’ve had with you actually, years ago we had one where I lost power in the middle of it if you remember with you and Warren. So that’s happened before. So and you haven’t killed me yet.

Bridget Willard: Whatever, just practice putting on my makeup, gives me a good reason to fix my hair and whatnot.

Rob Cairns: Make yourself look pretty, yeah I hear you. So let’s talk about um, why to publish on it? LinkedIn. We’re both on LinkedIn.

Bridget Willard: Yes.

Rob Cairns: I shared with you last week, I just redid my—I just redid my profile and uh let’s get rid of noises. Sorry. We—I redid my profile um with a little bit of AI help. I have to admit, Gemini, it was a big help. Um I added oh, I don’t know, a pile of podcast appearances beside my own and some p— and some um uh blog post appearances and some articles and stuff like that. I thought it was important. Uh I just recently took out LinkedIn Premium, believe it or not. Now I’ve done all that. Why should I even bother? Why should I care?

Bridget Willard: Okay, so if you’re in B2B, you have to be on LinkedIn. Just accept it. You know, um there’s a lot of people to say—and sad sad to me super sad bad move mistake—to get off of Twitter X because you don’t like the founder. I don’t like Microsoft, I’m still on LinkedIn. Why? Because my customers are B2B companies who work in SAS and that’s—and that’s usually their customer too, especially with a tech stack. Tech SAS companies are usually c— companies who are also working with other businesses. This is where they are.

And and I would—you know there’s—we could have a whole episode on LinkedIn like, you know, only going to it when you need a job or and things like this, but I just want to distinguish from posting on LinkedIn to publishing on LinkedIn. Now I’ve been a big fan of this for a long time. I haven’t done it very—as often as I should. Um but I think that a good cadence uh for doing it is like one of your blog posts a month, repurposing it on LinkedIn as an article. And only people can do this, not companies. So, it’s really important that if it’s not you, then your marketing person has access to your, you know, profile so they can publish this.

Yeah. And, you know, and and use a header 1200 by 644 and all these, you know, regular best practices. I always put a link “Originally published on this date on bridgwiller.com” that links to the actual mother post as it were. Um, but there’s a lot of reasons. Um, just quickly: for visibility, thought leadership, brand authority, and off-page SEO. I’m gonna I’m going to go a little backwards on this. Uh off-page SEO is a is a is like a no-brainer for me. If you look up Bridget Willard, I just did this. You’re going to see um I logged in. I saw first my website and then my LinkedIn profile and then the next thing I saw was an article I wrote for BetterCloud about managing SAS. And then—

Rob Cairns: Now let me stop—let me stop you for a sec. Sorry. Um because the reason LinkedIn’s ranking so high is though is LinkedIn has a high brand authority on their domain name. Let’s be honest. And that’s that’s part of the reason.

Bridget Willard: So this is the off-page SEO. So, as long as you’re linking it to your, you know, off-page SEO is everything that that’s not on your website, every time you go to an event, every time anybody’s looking for you, pictures in the newspaper, doing interviews for um other companies, being on podcasts like this, this is all off-page SEO. And and people get all weird about it and they they think it’s like, “Oh, whatever.” It really is just business development exercises. Okay. Okay. It’s 100% branding is SEO and a story. I’m going to die on that hill.

Um Warren’s been doing it lately and um and he has um also found that in his AB tests of publishing on his blog and also on LinkedIn, the same exact article, not truncated, not a summary, just the same exact article. Um his his blog post is new—more to be found. The LinkedIn article is indexed in 24 hours and I think it was on spot five for one of them. I checked. I just wrote about this on my blog post and then put it on LinkedIn. So if you want more of what we’re talking about, you can always go to my post. Um—

Rob Cairns: And and we will link to Bridget’s blog post in the show notes. I do have it hot off the presses.

Bridget Willard: Yes. As always, I will—I’m like—I’m fire today about this stuff. I mean like—So like and with off-page SEO is visibility, right? So when you’re when you’re on LinkedIn and you’re doing Bridget’s 3-2-1 method—and not smoking baby back ribs—but commenting on three things a day, following three people, commenting on two things, and writing something original every day, then you’re going to have that visibility. The algor—you’re going to train the algorithm on how you should be. You know, it’s going to ask you, it’s going to—it’s going to start serving you the things that you’re looking for when you start following other people and commenting on their things, you’re going to be seen. I mean, yesterday I did a whole like following thing on targeting my perfect clients.

Rob Cairns: Yep.

Bridget Willard: Just follow follow follow, like their post. Write something on it. This is just business development. It’s really not that hard. It—you can do this in five minutes a day. I promise you. If you don’t make the time, if you’re—if If you’re somebody who needs um routine, then book it in your calendar.

Rob Cairns: Thank you very much. That’s the key. And and by the way, if anybody think that Bridget and I just preach this stuff some days, I will tell you in my calendar, every day from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Eastern, there’s a a an hour blocked that says “Business Development” in my calendar. And I’m a big believer that every small business, whether you’re an agency, you run a store, or you do something else for any of your tasks like this, you should book them right in your calendar so you actually have the time. So that’s the key. Make the time.

Bridget Willard: Especially if you allow people to book events. And I made a mistake. Tomorrow is my best friend’s birthday. We’re all going to Dave and Busters and I made the mistake of not scheduling that as busy. I just changed on Google calendar so every single time it’s going to be busy and somebody booked with me and I was like “Ah! It’s a family birthday,” you know?

That—because I was a secretary for so many years, this is just in me. I am a very routine-oriented person. This is what I do when—in the morning I’m drinking my Earl Grey tea—I used to drink coffee when I had a gallbladder. Now I drink by Earl Grey tea—and I go Twitter, LinkedIn, uh Instagram’s last cuz those are my friends and um reels and funny stuff. I save all my reels for bedtime to laugh or when I really want to laugh at stuff. So it’s Twitter, LinkedIn, email, that’s it. Facebook and Instagram, those are my friends. I don’t care about them. For business to business, I spend my time on X Twitter and LinkedIn, whatever you want to call it.

Rob Cairns: Y—

Bridget Willard: So that—you know when you build that routine in, you you’re having that visibility, right? So the off-page SEO is really important because those articles do show up, even your posts show up. You know, you’re a big fan of Google alerts right Rob?

Rob Cairns: I am, use it every day.

Bridget Willard: Huge huge fan. Bridget Willard, as it happens, you know, all results, and I know—I know when something’s in because I get the email, right? And I know when someone me— mentions me, too. But I love that I don’t have to be in my Google Analytics app all the time wondering if anything’s happening. I can know if something’s happening. I have, you know, there’s a lot of Bridget Willards, but there’s not a lot of Bridget Willards in marketing. So, it’s not—there’s not—I’m not usually getting false results, you know. It’s not like my name is John Smith. Um, so um but that visibility, so when you’re publishing now. Different people might be seeing it and you’re following them. They might follow you.

And you know, you just said that you gave up your premium. To me, premium is kind of spendy, but if you’re like a SAS founder, CEO or something, that’s a good way to spend your money.

Rob Cairns: I didn’t say I gave it up. I said I just bought it. I just took it out, actually.

Bridget Willard: Oh. Oh, you took it up. I thought you said you gave it up.

Rob Cairns: No, I took it out. And one of the reasons I took it out is when I’m doing searches for people I get more info on the premium. So, that’s why I do.

Bridget Willard: Right. Right. And I was going to say if if that’s your thing, then you should spend the money on it. I’m on there all the time. So, I know when someone viewed my profile, it’ll tell me like so and so, so and so, and so and so just viewed your profile. I know because I just viewed theirs and they got the notification, too. Or I just commented on their thing and it’s like, “Oh, look, they’re looking.” You know, that’s something you don’t really get with Twitter. That’s something that’s really important on Twitter is like those profile views because they’re more likely to go to your website.

However, we’re talking about publishing, right? So, now publishing versus posting, there is a really great CEO who who posts every single day great insights about his SAS company and and and the learnings from that. Not just for other tech bros or other SAS founders, it’s for customers and investors. It’s really important. I do link in my article. You can find that out. But like I want—I want him to publish those as as articles on LinkedIn because they’re long posts and they’ll get more visibility as articles. So you know that’s for—if that person was asking me that’s what I would recommend and because it’s a huge huge piece.

Now the the um third and fourth reasons, brand authority and thought leadership. This is like closely tied. So, you’re piggybacking on the brand authority like we talked about of LinkedIn, right? Um but then it depends on what you post. So, like to build up your new brand, you know, whether you’re in the SAS space or WordPress plug-in or even a small business, if you have a new business or a new thing, Nobody knows about it. They don’t know about it because it never existed before. So, when you’re posting and writing about this stuff and publishing on LinkedIn, um really poignant articles with data, you’re going to be impressing many people.

So, there was this study that was done in 2024 by Elderman and they found that executives trust the thought leadership to the point that 75% of them say in organizations, I’m quoting, “say an organization’s thought leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for asserting—for assessing, sorry—for assessing its capabilities and competencies than its own marketing materials or product sheets.” And this is why I’m always saying like however you can download the founder or CEO’s brain if he or she or they are are publishing on LinkedIn and it’s coming from them and they’re giving statistics about their platform and their product and their business and their industry. That should all translate over to your website, your email marketing and your sales pitch decks, you know, because then you’re downloading that founders’s brain. Whereas the marketing team and the sales team, you know, we talk about this all the time. It’s like a Hemi engine in a Dodge each other. They’re just fighting each other.

But like when you’re seeing the founder write like this, this is huge. This is huge. Um they also found that 90% of decision makers and C-suite—90% Rob, nine out of 10—are more receptive to companies sales and marketing efforts. So cold calls um and those kinds of things when they see consistent thought leadership published.

Rob Cairns: 90%.

Bridget Willard: 90%, like this is hard data. So it’s like why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you take the time you know? And if it’s—and if it’s to the point where this one person I was mentioning, he’s just going [mimics dictating] and then somebody takes that from the marketing team and then expands on it in the article and publish this under his name or her name or their name, then do it. This is huge monk— This is a huge deal.

Um it’s like um this other thing, this other stat it said more than 75% of decision makers and C-suite executives say that one piece of thought leadership has led them to research a product or service they weren’t even p— looking for. That um to research a product or service they were not previously considering. Like this is a big deal. This is, you know, that um not only did you invent something or or develop a service or whatever the Uber of this, you know, whatever, but when you’re when you’re talking about it constantly on LinkedIn and publishing these articles and being an engaging human, then you’re really persuading a lot of folks, investors, early adopters, innovators, maybe even the early majority because you’re still in that accessible phase as a CEO and founder, right? You’re not at the top, you know, in a boardroom somewhere, nobody can ever have a conversation with you.

Rob Cairns: One other guy, you mentioned that about people post. I was thinking and there’s a marketer out there, uh, well-known marketer by the name of David Gerhardt. You probably know him. You’ve been around a long time. He was at Privy and uh before that he was somewhere else and now he runs his own show and he posts—and he runs his own company. He probably posts once a day without failure. Without failure, and that’s part of his strategy.

Now we we talked about publishing on LinkedIn versus posting. What kind of content should I be posting? Should it be a blog post? Should it be a video? Should it be a live stream? What should it be?

Bridget Willard: So, I was specifically speaking of the publishing which is an article.

Rob Cairns: An article.

Bridget Willard: So, like just keep it that way. Now, this study by Elderman from 2024, which is linked in, you know, you can get the link to it, you know, even if you’re like, “I don’t want to go to your blog post,” just holler at me at on Twitter. I’ll send it to you. Um, but it talks about thought leadership as being video, podcasts, uh, white papers, um, keynote speakers, that, all of it, all of it. But I’m like my main thing on this subject, uh, is publish, publish, publish. Even if it’s just one out of four of your articles, post on LinkedIn every day, publish at least once a month. That’s a good like first, you know, measure, like just, you know, just see how it goes. And then um try it for a whole quarter and see what happens. You know, I’m I’m sure it’s going to really help.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. And I think a lot of companies the problem with LinkedIn and I think what scares LinkedIn is there’s bad marketers on LinkedIn. We all know that. And it’s so frustrating when some guy sends me a connection request and I accept the connection request despite my better judgment. Right? We’ve all done this. And then what is the first thing I get within minutes of pushing that accept?

Bridget Willard: A DM.

Rob Cairns: Here’s a here—here’s a DM, a private message saying here’s what I sell and would I—and that’s what gives LinkedIn a bad rep. But it happens on Facebook, it happens on X Twitter, it happens on Blue Sky, it happens everywhere. The bottom line is, I’m going to say this nicely as I can. Do not—do not be a douchebag marketer. Do not turn around after you’ve connected with me and try and sell me. Take the time and publish. Take the time and build the real relationship and then maybe let’s have a conversation about what you offer after you build that relationship. When will these douchebags—and this is my show so I can say whatever I want because I’m on a roll with this today—realize that, as Bridget laughed at me, realize that the relationship is more important and will go to better sales than just slamming me old school way.

Bridget Willard: It’s it’s basically a scraper, automation, people on Fiverr, um people outsourcing to companies in um India. um for pennies on the dollar to by volume do cold emails. And I—you know sometimes I run them back and I said “No I’m not interested at this time” I’ll just you know keep going but like I’m not—I know it’s not real spam but it’s spamish. Like to me real spam is um harmful um link bait that goes to malware and stuff like this. But yeah it’s very inappropriate. Um, it’s a good way to turn people off. And I think that not only are people just trying to pour, you know, some low-effort energy into like maybe they’ll get one lead. And there’s—there’s people who still believe in cold calls and mortgage brokers live off this stuff. It’s fine. I mean, salesmen need leads. I get it. But that’s not the same as business development. That’s—that’s just—

Rob Cairns: Yeah,

Bridget Willard: volume intrusion and a really poor use of it, you know, like sometimes.

Rob Cairns: But it must be working or they wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. It just doesn’t work with savvy marketers like you and I.

Bridget Willard: Well, you have to define what works. So, if somebody’s spending what, $200 on somebody to DM a hundred,000 people, the right people, and scrape their information off the internet or use AI to scrape their information, on the internet either way and just—and just go copy paste, copy paste, copy paste and they get a customer that’s going to spend $3,000. Well, then they won, you know? So, they’re not caring about their brand reputation, right? So, this is the mistake.

Now, sometimes what I’ll do if I have a client that I think would be good together or somebody that I think would be a good guest on the podcast or something is I’ll go, “Hey, I work with this so person and you guys probably have a lot in common and I think you should know each other.” That’s what I do. You know, I’m people broker. Like I’ll match people up like a matchmaker, but I’m not going to get in their DMs and be like [makes negative sound]. I might ask them to send me a recommendation, but that’s different. That’s somebody I’ve actually had as a client.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. So, the ones that I don’t mind are are the PR people that reach out to me and on LinkedIn on DM. I get them an email, too. By the way, we’re running a big podcast that’s done well and they’ll say, “I’ve listened to this episode. I pulled these three things out and I know somebody that I can live with because at least they’ve done their homework and they’re trying to build the relationship because they’ve—they’ve actually done the work and said, “Hey, in a DM, I listened to this and I saw these three points.” So that’s different than just saying shove shove.

Bridget Willard: Yes. And nobody likes a shy salesperson anyway. I mean, I don’t know how it is where you are, but In the malls here, there’s all these kiosks with different things. And I hate them, especially when I used to walk in the mall, which is a really good way to walk in air conditioning, by the way, or controlled climate if you’re in the snow.

Rob Cairns: Yeah.

Bridget Willard: Just cuz you can just power walk. “No, I don’t want to buy your loofah, dude. I’m walking. Just leave me alone.” Like, it’s—it’s so much worse. It’s like when you go to Tijuana and all of a sudden everybody’s at your car wanting you to buy stuff. It’s too much. I just came here to be in the sun and to eat a burrito. Leave me alone. Like that’s—that’s a mistake. That’s a huge brand mistake.

Rob Cairns: You You think it’s a mistake for me? His is even worse. So there you go. But I’m going to do something a little different that I told you I didn’t tell you I was going to do, but I’m going to switch gears on you because I want to. That’s my show.

Bridget Willard: And the gear is?

Rob Cairns: The gear is you and Warren have something special coming out next month.

Bridget Willard: Yeah. Yes, we do. We do. So, we do. I—

Rob Cairns: So, what is the title of that book? And I know you’re looking at me and I’m glad—so happy for you guys. And uh go ahead and—

Bridget Willard: It’s called The Only Social Media Book That You Need. Um we have some guest pieces by uh you—you’re wrote our introduction. Chef Sarah wrote wrote about X. Amy Donahghue wrote about Reddit. I’m just waiting on Paul Tobey’s bio because he wrote a blurb on YouTube and it is like you know in the same vein—in the same vein as the only um online marketing book you need—

Rob Cairns: Which I wrote the—which I wrote the introduction for for that book as well.

Bridget Willard: Um it’s the same thing like it’s not only education but it’s also a reference like there’s a cheat sheet chapter for how social post should be formatted like you could just flip there and go you know and um Oops. And so we—we are doing that. Um I’m in the final stages. Everything’s formatted. Um we kind—The good thing about writing with somebody else is especially if they’re seven hours ahead of you. It’s like while I’m sleeping, Warren’s working. This is a great collaborat—I mean, this is the ultimate use of Google Docs. So um as soon as we get that bio, which will be any minute, maybe by the time it’s—this goes to production, Um we will offer it on Kindle and um also on as a as a um paperback and you know then yeah it’s a great—it’ll be a great book. It’ll be really easy. It’s all updated for 2025 and um—

Rob Cairns: And what I would encourage anybody to do is when it comes out go get them. I have uh oh I pro— I have every book that Bridget or Warren have put out. So, you know, just a few.

Bridget Willard: Yeah. Talk about off-page SEO. Amazon’s a great link. You do the work.

Rob Cairns: Yep. Go get them. You have a book coming out?

Bridget Willard: I do.

Rob Cairns: I actually—I have my first volume uh called Words from the Pod, Volume One, coming out on May the 1st. It’ll be a PDF. So, the little secret is if you want to join either of my two Substacks, you get them free. If you don’t join the Substack, you get to pay for them. So, and it’s only coming out in e— E format. And I should tell you Bridget and Warren have both written me introductions which will be volumes two and three. Um the uh the uh book—the series is dedicated to my partner Tiz uh for a multitude of reasons. You can read why. But uh you know I I very often share the story that uh after my hospital scare last year it wasn’t for her inspir— I probably wouldn’t be doing the podcast still, so amongst other things. So, you know, I love her for that amongst many other things. So, I I’ll tell you that uh yeah, it’s it’s well—it’s well—well-deserved. So, uh and by the way, she hasn’t—as of the time of this record, she has not been shown the introduction yet. So, there you go.

Bridget Willard: Oh, yeah. Don’t don’t spoil it, everyone.

Rob Cairns: No, no, no, no. She’ll see it probably Thursday. So, you know, that’s release date. But, but anyway, so but you know what? Um, writing’s fun. I mean, I’ve uh I got to know Warren through uh one of his books. Um was funny story. Uh he was giving a few away on Facebook and I said, “Oh, would you send me one, but I’ll make you a deal?” And I think I’ve shared this story with you. And he said, “Oh, what do you want?” I said, “You can send me one, but then you got to come on my show to talk about it.” That was the deal because I’m very much a—if somebody does something for me and I love talking to authors. It’s always fun. So, you know, that’s—

Bridget Willard: Writing is a really good way to teach. I mean, everybody learns different ways. Sometimes you want to hear it, sometimes you want to see it on video, sometimes you want to read it, sometimes you want both, you know. Um, so it’s it’s just a great way for us to teach and to help more people than our actual clients because I love small businesses, Rob, but they’re not my clients.

Rob Cairns: No. And I—and I love you guys and I wish you all the best with the book as always. And if somebody wants to talk to you, get them to do some marketing because I’m sure Bridget’s got room for a coin or two, rumor tells me. How can they find you, Bridget?

Bridget Willard: Um, you can go to bridgetwillard.com. I just launched my SAS marketing um package which is at slash sash—sassy marketing. You’ll find it. Just find me on there. Just type in bridge word. You know where I am.

Rob Cairns: What I’ll tell you is if you’re—if you’re looking for somebody knows marketing, go go find Bridget and as you can tell, she’s a lot of fun. So that—that’s a bonus that comes with it. So, hey Bridget, thanks as always and you have yourself a wonderful day.

Bridget Willard: You too. Thanks, Rob.