Episode 104: Talking Linkedin With Adam Franklin

Show Notes

Episode 104 – Talking How To Use Linkedin With Adam Franklin…

00:00

Everybody, I’m Rob Cairns. I’m the founder, CEO and Chief creator of amazing ideas that stunning digital marketing. In today’s podcast, I have something a little different. And my good friend, Adam Franklin, from blue wire media in Australia, who’s going to sit down with me, and we’re gonna have a chat about LinkedIn. That is one of Adam’s big areas of expertise and LinkedIn. So grab your favorite beverage, sit down, relax, and enjoy the conversation I had with Adam Franklin. Everybody, Rob Cairns, here, I’m here with my friend Adam Franklin\t. Adam Franklin. Sorry, Adam, from blue wire media. How are you doing today? Adam?

00:56

I’m great. Thanks, Rob. How’s it over your way?

00:58

You know, across the pond, as they say is doing well. And you know, we’re all living in COVID and restrictions and masks, and I have a pile of them around here. So you know, how do you know? How’s Australia these days?

01:14

Look, it’s good. In my part of Australia. It’s okay. Up in Queensland. And we’re not all wearing masks yet. But no, it’s all. It all feels pretty, pretty normal here.

01:23

Yeah, that’s, that’s a good thing. I think we need to get back to some normalcy. I’m getting a little tired. And my wife was saying tonight, she’s getting a little tired. So there you go. So, so we wanted to talk marketing a little bit, and specifically, eventually about LinkedIn. But I wanted to jump in and say, you know, you and I have kind of conversed off and on over the last number of years, where I kind of came across you and blue wire media was your book, web marketing networks. It’s sitting on my desk here in front of me, so I, you know, good lead magnet, because out of it, I made a great connection and a good friend. So you know, and thank you for writing that. Why did you write the book?

02:08

Rob, one of the things that I learnt in business from the early days, and this is from sort of mentor, Vern harnish. He always said, you know, you need to own the ink. And that was his saying his expression for you need to be publishing content, you need to be publishing ideas. So that, firstly, you’ve got some profile, and you’re positioned in the marketplace, but also, that people have an opportunity to get to know like and trust you through the content you share. And he always advocated that one of the best ways to own the ink was to publish a book. And so it was always on our radar from the early days. And we published it about probably about eight years into our business. Okay, look, it was it was a great experience.

03:06

You know, I have the book on my radar. I’ve got several friends of mine, friends of mine that are ex journalists and stuff like that. And they keep saying, Rob, when are you going to write a book? And I I joke with my friends, I say I think my first one needs to be how the internet turns. And just talk about all the nuances and relationships of being online. And, you know, I’m an old timer, I started in the day a bulletin boards, and I’ve done everything from compuserve on up. So I’ve been in this game for a little bit. So you can, you can appreciate that. One of the thing we were talking about before we came on the call is nobody buys information anymore, right? Like and I listened to a podcast and I quoted a lot recently by Gary Vee, we all know Gary Vee the wine guy. And Gary says nobody buys information or buy results and their buys the people they work with thoughts on that one.

04:05

Look, I totally agree their information people associate with being free these days, you know, there’s YouTube and Google and all the information you could ever want at the click of a button. Which, which then begs the question, what do people pay for? And you’re right, people pay for results they pay for the person they’re working with, and they pay for outcomes. So when things transition from information, which is free, people start paying when it turns into implementation and the actual doing of the work that leads to those outcomes.

04:37

Yeah, and I would agree with that. And, you know, maybe relationship marketing is an overused term, but I really think it all comes down to relationships. I mean, look at you and I, we’ve had a couple of conversations lately, we we’ve shared some ideas either on a zoom call on me call in your group quite quite frequently, and we We kind of help out different people. And even before we got on this call, we were talking about some ideas to help each other. So I think relationships is kind of where it’s at.

05:10

Yeah, I’m a big, big believer in relationship marketing.

05:13

Yeah. So I think that’s really important. And, and I don’t know about you, but in our agency, I find that some of my biggest jobs sometimes takes me six months or a year, even to foster that relationship to get there. Do you find similar? Or is it your turnaround? A little quicker?

05:31

No, absolutely. I mean, the client is ready when they’re ready. And one of the other expressions from from Vern harnish was when the student is ready. The teacher is here. Yeah, so sometimes people might be ready today, and they might stumble across you online, watch some of your material and sign up. But there might be other people who wait in the wings for months or years or decades before they are actually ready to take it to the next step. So we need to accommodate for both people. We need to be able to have a frictionless process or people that are ready, and a long term nurturing process for people who aren’t ready yet.

06:13

I would agree. And there and there’s still value, as we talked about offline, there’s still money in the list isn’t 100%?

06:21

Yeah, definitely the money is in the email list. It’s something that you own, it’s the best way to build a relationship with people. And social media is wonderful. It’s a great place to meet people. But we want to be trying to nurture people back to the email list. That is that’s where the goal is.

06:40

No question. One of the things that I’ve noticed with you, and you’ve talked about is you often give away cheat sheets tools, you’ll say in your Facebook group, message me to get some information, you’ll do that a lot. You’ll do that on LinkedIn. And often you’re not even looking for not, then you’re just trying to build that relationship, aren’t you?

07:03

100%. Yeah, I like to keep friction low. And I like to deliver value. So I try and take the path of least resistance and make it as easy as possible to have those conversations with people to deliver useful templates and checklists and cheat sheets to people. Because I know that if I can deliver value, and I can provide the next step in that journey, that’s plenty of time to get them onto my email list and just invite them into my paid community and everything else like that.

07:35

Yeah, and by the way, if you’re not on Adams email list, I suggest you get on it. I’m, I’m a market fellow marketer, and I enjoy this list. It’s one of the ones that read his facebook group, which I’ll say very publicly, I have three or four go to Facebook groups every day. And your group is one of those. So it’s the information that you provide, and the conversations that the other people have with group members that make a difference? I think so.

08:01

Thank you.

08:02

You’re welcome. Um, LinkedIn. So let’s get on to that a little bit. We all know LinkedIn is now owned by Microsoft, people, some people think of LinkedIn as being pretty spammy. They connect with it, and what’s the first thing I get? And I attach an ad message saying, here’s my services? Now, what I’ll tell you is, I have very publicly said, If you do that, to me, I’ll never work with you. So do you have any thoughts on that type of behavior? And why that does? Or does not work? Sure.

08:37

There’s two points here, I guess, Rob, first is, if we’re always getting poor, quality, spammy pitches from people that we’ve connected with, we need to take a look at who we’re connecting with. Yeah, not everybody does this. Know, if we’re connecting with? Yeah, the wrong types of people, then what do we expect, but if we are selective and proactive with who we connect with, then your feed, your newsfeed, your DMS, your direct messages, it’s going to be a lot higher quality, if we’re connecting with quality people. So that’s point one. Second point is LinkedIn is a business platform. So there’s nothing wrong with asking for the business. It’s just a matter of how we do it. And we’ve had people get it wrong. Yes, yeah. Jump in straightaway. And the reason that often it falls on deaf ears, or that it’s met with sort of that, you know, that icky feeling of all they’re trying to sell me something is that one, they haven’t looked at your profile and learn enough about you and they offer isn’t relevant to you. So I would only be making offers to people that I believed it would be useful for And I’m a big believer in asking for permission to proceed. So rather than saying, hey, Rob, you should come and buy my x y Zed program, I’d say, hey, Rob, I’ve been helping people, like you achieve this particular outcome. Would you like my help with that? If you say, No, cool, no worries you, I get the sales pitch. But I think it’s important to be asking people if they want help, because people are what I found, Rob is, people always like to be invited to something that people never like to be sold to. So if you want to invite them to a webinar, or invite them to have a brainstorming call, or something like that, if the way we frame it, that makes a big difference.

10:49

I would agree with that. I mean, and and you hit the nail on the head, people don’t like to be sold to, so to speak. So people want value, and then they want to learn and they want to trust level to build. And I know for me, I’m always in for calls. Somebody says, let’s just kind of chat about our businesses. Like if I can fit it in, I will because that to me is value, because then you’ll learn something. But I agree it’s you got to work at the type of people you’re connecting with. And honestly, people need to stop worrying about the numbers, they need to stop worrying about. I have 2000 connections. The question is, do you have the right connections? And that to me is way more important in the social media world?

11:35

100% allow those are the right connections. And are you actually developing a relationship with these people? Because there’s no point having a contact who you made last year, if you’ve never interacted with one another?

11:48

Yeah. I one of one of my favorite things to do is if I’ve got people that I’ve lost touch with, just send them a quick note and say, Hi, how you doing? Can I help you with anything? And ask the question? And then, and keep those conversations going. And I don’t care if it’s LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, or any other platform, but specifically LinkedIn, reach out to some people don’t even be salesy. Just say can I help you? You know, anything that I think that goes real, that goes really well, in the long run? What do you think of LinkedIn groups? Adam? There’s been a lot of jury out, are these still worth it? Are they wasted time? What’s your take on that?

12:29

My take is that they’re a waste of time. At the moment, they used to be awesome. Right now, I don’t see much engagement at all. But I’m very big fan of Facebook groups. They’re fantastic. LinkedIn groups. Now thumbs down. Now, that may change. But right now,

12:48

there used to be a time where one of the techniques for LinkedIn was joined 30 groups, and that would boost your profile and 30 was enough, join 50 and just get in them. And I personally have found most of them are spammy, to say the least. It’s look at my stuff. Look at my article, I still subscribe to the theory that 75% of social media should never be about me I want to convert, but like, build the community build the relationship?

13:23

Yeah, the best thing we can do is ask other people about them. That’s a good starting point to make you stand out from most of the people on social media platforms. But if we can do that, and show genuine interest in other people, well, that’s going to help build that know, like and trust factor. Yeah.

13:41

What would you say to somebody that said, LinkedIn is a waste of time?

13:45

I would say, Why do you say that? But basically think, again, like, every single, virtually every single business professional business owner is on there. It’s not the platform that doesn’t work. It’s your approach to how you use the platform. That’s probably the thing that’s missing.

14:08

I would agree with that. I mean, if you if you treat LinkedIn as an old school media from 20 years ago, you’re gonna get old school results, aren’t you? I hate to go there. And believe it or not, and some of the biggest companies in the world the big fortune 500 they’re the worst ones that doing it not, not the people like you and I in the space right there.

14:34

Yeah, certainly. Yeah.

14:37

It’s a value on LinkedIn to having a business page or are you better off running off a personal brand? What’s your thought on that one?

14:45

I always advise clients to really focus on the personal page. That’s going to do the lion’s share. For you, the business page is a nice to have, but given how time poor we all are By just setting it up, so that it links from your personal page, but do most of your activity through your personal profile. 100%.

15:10

Okay. And and what I would tell you is, even with COVID we’re all complaining, we’re time poor, and we’re all stuck at home. And we’re still competing for time for right. You gotta laugh like I, I somebody said to me today, you must be have all this free time. I said, What free time to help me?

15:31

Yeah. Well, we’re never gonna stop getting emails, and we’re never gonna stop getting Facebook messages. We’re never going to stop having new stuff in our newsfeed. So it’s, it’s up to us to manage our time. Yeah,

15:44

I have to ask you, I know you’re a Mac guy. Do you do most of your LinkedIn on that? on his on your iPad? On your MacBook? Or on your phone? Where do you tell? Interesting.

15:55

So yeah, not my iPad, I use my phone. For a lot of the DMS, the direct message conversations I’m always having with people in my network. And I will use my laptop for, you know, my posting,

16:10

you’re very similar to me there I was, before we got on this call is sitting at my desk scrolling through, actually LinkedIn messages on my phone and said, Who did I not get back to today? Right. So it’s easy. It’s easy to I think phones are really good for quick stuff. I think a desktop or a laptop is far better for that in depth conversation person. Yep. And I don’t and I’m like you I use an Android tablet. And I don’t even have LinkedIn on my tablet. So there you go. So okay, so if somebody wanted three quick wins on LinkedIn, what would you suggest on radio,

16:50

I would suggest, firstly, get your profile up to speed. Like make sure that you are clear as to who you help, how you help them what your ideal client looks like, and what outcome you can help them achieve. Secondly, I would say, do a search of your description of your ideal client, whether it might be a CEO in Toronto or an HR manager in Brisbane, do a search for that description, and then filter it down to who’s in your first degree network. Because right under people’s noses, most of the time, they don’t even realize that they might have five or 10 or 20 of their ideal clients in their first degree network already. Then you can go ahead and contact all those people and say, Hey, how you doing what’s news in your world and reactivate those relationships. And then third thing would be just allocate 20 minutes a day in your calendar, for growing your network of your ideal future clients. And also to engage them in conversations on their messages.

18:10

I would agree and what I really like Adam, is you said in your calendar. So what Adam suggesting is, if you’re an entrepreneur, one of the things entrepreneurs do very badly, is they do not put in their calendar time for personal or business development. And you need to so book it as an appointment for yourself for singing the day late in the day, wherever it’s better off, and just book it and and book yourself a meeting and just do it.

18:41

Yeah, that way. It’s in the camera that people can’t book over it. Yeah, it’s there, it gets done.

18:48

Now I’m a bit of a time management junkie Adam and a big subscriber to the GTD system. We all know, the GTD system by David Allen. And I’ve probably got on my bookshelf, at least 20 time management books so much so much. So I’m actually gonna do a online course on time management. I’m working on one right now. But that’s, you know, the point I’m making is help yourself and, and make time for yourself and just be and make it easy on yourself. Like, if you’ve got stuff to do, block yourself time to do it. And, and leave yourself a little bit of slack time to things. Yeah, yeah. So that’s really good. So we do these wins. What I would suggest to listeners is get to know Adam too, and grab some of his PDFs because your PDFs on LinkedIn are our most helpful. I’ll say that. I’ve used them. I’ve shared them with some other people I’ve said Get to know Adam, because he’s he you get it and you understand the way LinkedIn should be done versus the way People are doing so

20:02

I think. Thank you. listeners, if you want to look me up on LinkedIn, Adam Franklin, and let me let me know if you’ve been listening to the show. And I can send you over some some templates.

20:14

And and you know, you and I have had several conversations. I’ll tell you Adams more than approachable, he will help you ask, just ask on LinkedIn in terms of posting time. Have you managed to get LinkedIn live yet? Have you got no

20:34

No, no, no, not yet. Anyway, I’ve applied twice. Some people I speak to say they got it on their fifth application. You

20:44

know, I I actually was that a Hootsuite event in Toronto last year, and the Vice President of Marketing for LinkedIn Kanda was there. And I said, How do I get this? And how do I get it now? And he said, You write me an email tomorrow. So I thanked him for his time. And I wrote him an email. That’s, you know, it was again, a relationship because I had things to say about this presentation. I mean, it was, you know, I think they’re trying to Yeah, I think they’re trying to be really careful. Honestly, they don’t want it to turn into what Facebook Live is turned into, or what Instagram stories have turned into, or what Twitter with periscope is turned into? They don’t want to go that way. And I think they’re being very careful. To be honest with you.

21:38

I haven’t got LinkedIn live. But I have been using Instagram. Sorry, LinkedIn stories. Yeah.

21:46

Let’s, let’s go there. How do you like that? I haven’t, I haven’t dabbled yet. So

21:52

look, it’s pretty good. It’s pretty good. I mean, it’s obviously content that only lasts 24 hours. So it’s not really adding to your body of work, so to speak. But it does allow you to have a much more much closer relationship with some of your connections. Because they can just click on the story and watch whether it’s a video or a picture or, or something from other behind the scenes or whatever else. It’s a nice, it’s good. I mean, again, you have to allocate some time in your calendar to remember to do it. But I mean, people can respond to that. And it can be a great conversation starter, especially if you’ve got the right call to action in your video, to to strike up conversations and show a different side of yourself that maybe people haven’t seen in your articles or videos that you post to the main news feed.

22:45

So let’s go to video from it. We all know video does well on LinkedIn. The metrics have shown it. What’s your thought about branding videos now? On the front end? Is it worth doing? Oh?

22:59

So do you mean like putting your your sort of logo and branding at the

23:02

splash page at the start of the video? Yeah,

23:06

those are fine. Personally, I’m not a big fan. Personally, I would much rather get straight into it. I think people develop relationships with people, not the branding. And that’s just me personally. But I, I don’t put branding on mine, I just tell my story, share the video, they can get to know me, and then they can get to know the company.

23:29

Yeah, I would agree with you. I think people’s attention spans these days are so tough, that if you go into a 30 seconds, ask page, you’re gonna lose your your viewers very quickly. So I don’t like that opportunity. I’d rather get into a video and just get to the point.

23:49

Yeah, and I mean, there’s so much more to branding than just a logo. Like if you’re, you can have branding behind you. Or it can be the clothes you’re wearing or the way that you speak or the way that you look what sort of content you share. That’s all I think, much more important to being consistent with your professional brand or your company brand than wasting people’s time with that with a big intro.

24:12

And what I would say to most people is with video, get over being on camera. It’s easy. I I don’t know if I’ve ever told you I come from a debating background back 40 years ago, and I and I actually learned to speak I was a Quebec provincial champion in high school. And I learned to speak by spending hours in front of a fully mirror. full length mirror because my theory always was in my coaches serials was if I can deal with myself for hours at a time, it won’t matter who’s in the audience. Here’s your

24:49

way out always critic every time.

24:51

Yeah. And the other thing is if you’re going to do some video, the best video device sitting in your pocket it says smartphone got, like, use it. Do yourself a favor, go get a tripod, go get a smartphone mount for the tripod, and start with that. And then you can go up from there.

25:09

Right? Yeah. Yeah, doing getting comfortable with video is one of the most valuable parts, I believe. And it’s, it’s, it’s kind of good because a lot of people are so scared of it. And so in their own way that that it opens up the opportunity for those that are brave enough to give it a go. Yeah, there’s a lot more attention a lot more opportunity to share those videos and people can get to know like and trust you through them. or more. Alternatively, they may not like you. And that’s okay, too, because they may be better suited to work with somebody else.

25:48

Yeah, I actually do video. It’s funny. In my business, I do mostly video on podcasting. I don’t think I’ve written a following blog post on my blog in two years now, Adam, if he.

26:00

And I’m actually probably the same.

26:03

People look at me, and they say, but the SEO value and I say, Well, if I want traffic, I’ll just pay for ads and be done with it like and I woke up one day, and I said, I’ve written I’ve changed my domain name three times. And the last change was about six years ago. And it’s not going anywhere, folks, and I’m done. And I finally said, I’ve written over 5000 blog posts. And I sat down and said, What are relevant to what my current site is, I need to get rid of them. And by the way, I need to do video on podcasting and do what I want to do and be done with the rest of it.

26:38

Yeah, stick to your strength and do the stuff that comes easy to you. And I mean, we can get a transcript of a video or this podcast. That’s great content for SEO.

26:47

Yeah. And I’m having I have to tell you, I’m having more fun in my business since I made those decisions two years ago than doing what I have to do. So that’s a really,

26:58

it’s liberating, isn’t it? When you can let go of the stuff that is always a bit of a chore?

27:03

Now, besides we’ve talked a little bit about that. Let’s move on to posting. Is there any good formula that posts like what time of day on LinkedIn, depending on your audience and where you are in the world? How many times a day? Should you post? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah,

27:21

I’ve got a few thoughts, Rob, in terms of time of day. To me, that’s not a big consideration. And the reason I say that is because I find with LinkedIn, when you post, it doesn’t necessarily have any correlation to when somebody is going to see it. So LinkedIn algorithm will be sorting out, okay, when is this? Firstly interesting, and engaging. And if it is, then they, they may not show it to somebody for two or three days. And that’s outside of my control. So no need to worry about? Exactly, I’d rather post something and get it done, then trying to get the perfect time. Whereas you know, Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, like when you hit post, pretty much people see it in their feeds straightaway, I find there’s a much bigger delay on LinkedIn. So no, no, nothing too important about when you post. But how you post I find that makes the biggest impact. I have noticed that, you know, with a post, if you link off to another website, LinkedIn is not going to give you much visibility. And that makes sense. Because why would they be giving more visibility to oppose, it’s going to take people off their platform. Of course, what I’ve always what I’ve always recommended to clients. And what I do myself is I try and keep most of my LinkedIn content on the LinkedIn platform. If there is, and I do normally like to have a companion resource. So if I do a video, I’ll say if you want more information, or if you want this marketing template, hit me up in the comments or direct message me, and I’ll send it over to you. It keeps the conversation on LinkedIn, or LinkedIn gives me more visibility. And they like it because there’s engagement in the comments. And I can attack that conversation privately to deliver that companion resource. So yeah, there might there might tips. It’s much more about how you post and when you post.

29:27

I I would agree with that. And like, in the old days, what people do was take video for an exam, they upload a video to YouTube, they take the YouTube link, and they dump it on every platform. And I always say to people don’t do that. If you’re going to read first of all, make your video gear to a certain audience. First of all, because the audience has changed. We all know that. But also do it natively upload the video natively. I mean, because you will keep people on the platform and people don’t understand that. They just More people miss that tip than any other tip as far as I’m concerned.

30:04

And that slight difference makes just a tremendous difference in terms of how many people are going to say it. Yeah.

30:12

Yeah. And that and that holds true for other platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter as well. But

30:18

Oh, definitely, it’s.

30:21

So that’s really great information. So what are you working on these days, we were kind of talking about some of your coaching programs, which are more aware of and some other things, what’s the big thing on LinkedIn, you’re working on these things.

30:37

Look, on LinkedIn, I’m, I’m making a conscious effort to be very proactive and reaching out to people that I find interesting, and whose work I want to see more of in my newsfeed. So that’s one big project, and also being proactive with actually developing a relationship with those people. So spending the time messaging people and seeing where I can help learning more about their business. Yeah, it’s, it’s a huge opportunity there. And it starts with the relationships and it starts with connecting with the right people. So that’s where I’m focusing a lot of my attention. And then on the other end, I guess, with my private clients on, I’ve got my my coaching program, and there’s a great group of people in there that we, you know, we, we meet up once a week, for a group session, we help them troubleshoot, I help them troubleshoot any challenges that they’re facing. And you know, you’ve seen the power of a group. I love the saying that none of us is as smart as all of us. So, you know, you get the smart to other people. It’s a great, it’s a great environment, and I thoroughly enjoyed outside of it.

31:49

And it’s so true that there is something about the power of numbers isn’t or Adam, like we, one of the big tech journalists in California, a guy by name of Leo Laporte, who you may or may not heard of, he often the goat refers to his chat room is his brain. And and it’s the same thing. It’s like, it’s like, Yeah, he’s really good at what he does. But he’s not afraid to say, I don’t know at all. We all don’t know when I’ll do it. And what I know. Yeah, and what makes you and I really good is I think we’re always learning too. And we learn from the people we work with, as well. So that helps. So somebody needs to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to get ahold of him?

32:31

All right. So LinkedIn is a very easy one, Adam, Franklin, just search for me there. But my website, blue wire media.com.au is a nice, easy place to start. If you want to get my marketing templates. They’re all free on my website, just click the button, pop your email address in and then you’ll be sent them and that email comes from me. So if you hit reply, I’ll be there and responding to your email. So there are two very simple ways to get in touch.

33:05

And you do and there’s no question Adam does reply to emails, I can testify to that over the years. He like he likes them good, bad or indifferent. I mean, Bad. Bad is important, too. Because it’s feedback. Right, Adam? So yeah,

33:19

Yep. Yep. Now, there’s been some interesting replies over the years from from certain people. But yeah, it’s more about them and their time and what they’re going through at that point in time, but it’s feedback. Absolutely. Yeah.

33:32

Thanks very much, Adam, for joining you joining me today. I appreciate you. And I appreciate what you’re doing so much, and what you give back to the community and have an amazing day, my friend.

33:43

Likewise, Rob, thanks for having me.

33:45

Thank you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time. It’s all thank you, Adam, for joining me on this week’s podcast. It’s always a pleasure to have a conversation with you. Because every time we chat, I learned more and more. I’m sure our listeners did too. If you want to know more about the services we provide, check out stunning digital marketing.com. If you want to email me about this podcast, or any other digital marketing endeavor, you can email me at VIP at stunning digital marketing.com. You want to look me up on Twitter. I’m at Rob Cairns. For other social media links go on over to our website, scroll down to the bottom. And there’ll be links to all the web platforms that we’re on currently. That includes Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more. As always, this podcast is dedicated my late father Bruce Cairns. I love you very much and I miss you. Keep your feet on the ground. Keep reaching for the stars and make your business succeed. Have a great day. Bye for now.