Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 8 Episode 38. This is a recap of my interview with Dan Knowlton where we talked about how to create content for Linkedin.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
02:40 The moment Dan started taking Linkedin seriously
03:30 Biggest misconception about Linkedin
04:10 Linkedin ranking in terms of other social media platforms
04:30 Where Dan is more active on
05:10 Biggest mistake that people make on Linkedin
06:10 Dan's posts on Knowlton's business page
07:10 Dan's tips for business owners\
07:50 Hashtags on Linkedin
08:50 How to use Linkedin to network
13:10 Quickfire questions
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Transcript from the Episode
Dan runs a digital and social media marketing agency called Knowlton. He runs it with his brother Lloyd. They help brands, businesses organizations to create entertaining ad campaigns that sell stuff. They mainly do that through kind of creative video and paid social media campaigns. Dan also speaks at events around the world and share the insights we learn from working with brands and running campaigns. Obviously, at the moment, not really traveling, he had quite a few speaking engagements postponed.
The moment Dan started taking Linkedin seriously
LinkedIn from about five years ago, Dan just schedules automating content to go on it and not taking it seriously. About two years ago, they started thinking that they can't just automate content on this platform, just because it's something they should be doing whilst they're focusing all their attention on other platforms. They started taking it seriously and completely changed their strategy.
Biggest misconception about Linkedin
People think that LinkedIn is just the place where you go to get a job, or you sort of upload your CV, to get a new job and it's a fair understanding, because that's what it started. And it started as somewhere where, mainly for recruiters and people searching for jobs where you go and you get a job, or you apply for jobs, whereas now it's completely evolved into this sort of social media powerhouse. It's so much more than that.
Linkedin ranking in terms of other social media platforms
It is definitely a more than Twitter. And it's not quite up to Facebook's 2 billion yet. But it's there. It's in the top five social platform.
Where Dan is more active on
Most of Dan's time is spent on LinkedIn. It's where they get the most reach the most engagement, the most conversations and it's, it's their ideal target market. A lot of decision-makers are on LinkedIn. But because it's the place where they get the most engagement on the content that he publishes on his personal profile. He spends a lot of time having conversations and engaging, whereas Facebook for the brands that they run campaigns for is hugely powerful.
Biggest mistake that people make on Linkedin
It's important to understand the differences for each platform, it's a completely different audience. One of the biggest mistakes that Dan sees people are posting on LinkedIn is that they try to be all corporate. For some reason, people get this mentality that LinkedIn is a business platform, which is known for a b2b platform. But people get in this this kind of corporate mentality where they need to be very stiff and have no personality. And especially when kind of setting up your profile and writing your bio and producing the copy for posts. They have seen through experience the content, and the angles that work really well. Or when you do the opposite to what you think you should be doing on LinkedIn,
Dan's posts on Knowlton's business page
Almost all of Dan's posts are on his personal profile, and they've got a company page set up because when you put in your job role on your profile, it links to a company page. So when people click on it, it goes to a company page, and then there's a link to your website. So it's, it's quite a good way to drive traffic. However, you know, across the board, you can generate so much more organic reach organic engagement, organic opportunities through posting on your profile, compared to if you post on a company page. It's definitely how the algorithms configured.
Dan's tips for business owners
The first key thing is if you want people to be engaging with your content and commenting on your content is really basic. But so many people don't do this, you need to be proactively engaging with other people's content, right? You need to be investing time, you need to be scheduling time every single day on your calendar to be adding meaningful comments to other people's content on LinkedIn.
Hashtags on Linkedin
You can follow hashtags on Linkedin. If you follow the marketing hashtag, then content tshat publish using that hashtag, a percentage of that will be shown in your feed. So it's definitely a strategy you can use to generate more read.
How to use Linkedin to network
Firstly, there's really three core pillars of your LinkedIn strategy that you should be thinking about. So these three core pillars are your profile, optimizing your profile. Secondly, your content strategy. And the third thing is your engagement strategy. The first thing you need to think about before diving into those three pillars is Who are these key decision-makers that you want to be reaching on LinkedIn? Right? Once you know who they are, then you can start to dive into those three pillars of link. Firstly, your profile. So you need to optimize your profile in two ways. Firstly, you need to optimize your profile for search. So there's a number of things you need to do to ensure you're found by these key decision-makers on LinkedIn. The way you do that is through keywords. So you need to do keyword research.
Once you've done that research, you can then start to input those keywords throughout your profile on your headline. So that's one stream of being optimising your profile.
The other stream is optimising your profile for conversion. So once this pa lands on your profile, they discover you, you know, that's the first bit of work, but then you actually need to convince them that you're worth speaking to convince them that you're credible, convinced them that you can deliver whatever it is you're saying you can deliver for them. So there's a number of ways you do this. So visually, you know, things like your profile photo, your header, image, header images, and other big bit of collateral on your profile that you can optimise to clearly communicate that you can deliver what you say you can.
So for example, if you're saying that you can, you've got great accommodation for businesses and people within the business world, what image could you produce at the top of your profile to reinforce that message? You know, could it be a lovely photo of that of your accommodation with the extra strong Wi-Fi because you know, they're going to be connected to the internet, with the something saying about they can check-in and out late and early, whatever, whatever, whatever a business person wants, from this day, clearly communicate that it could it be, you know, other big or credible organisations, their logos on that on that header image because of that that communicates credibility. So you need to optimize your profile for search.
And for conversion, that's the first real pillar and the consideration stage when they're considering you as an option. You need to be thinking, what questions are they having in their head before making a purchase decision? What do they need to see to be convinced that you're the best solution to their problem? So the simplest way to describe this is, think of like the Amazon product page. As an example, on an Amazon product page, you have every single piece of information you could ever imagine that you wanted to make a decision that if that product is right for you or not, you've got reviews, you've got testimonials, you've got all the information on specs are the product, you've got other people saying what they think of it asking questions with other people answering loads of videos, those images, think of yourself as an Amazon product page, on your LinkedIn, what can you produce to give them all the answers they need at that stage.
And finally, at the purchase stage, once you've produced these different layers of content, and someone's ready to buy, what can you do to make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch with you. So things like adding a call to action into your LinkedIn profile. If you're interested in a business booking message me today, or whatever you want to say, having a call to action in your content, that just gives you a bit of an idea about that. And finally, engagement to ensure your your being seen, you know, if you're starting from scratch, you've got no audience, no one's gonna see you How can you get people to see your content engagement is so important, proactively engaging without other people's content is so so important. So you need to schedule 10 15 20 minutes a day, to proactively comment and add meaningful comments that other people's content people are going to convert because you've optimized your profile for conversion,
Quickfire questions
If you could be on lockdown with just one celebrity figure or famous figure dead or alive. Who would that be?
Ricky Jabez
What TV series or movie Have you watched over the past few months that you can recommend?
What is the one thing that you've missed the most since being on lockdown?
Socializing and going to the pub.
What is your favourite purchase in the past 12 months, but it's got to be on the 100?
Beer subscription service.
Favourite podcast or an audiobook?
One piece of advice that you could pass on to hospitality owners to increase direct bookings
Rather than a marketing hat. think of it as a consumer. Think from a consumers point of view is, what's your value proposition to book direct?
Know more about Dan on his Linkedin.
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