How to Leverage LinkedIn for Your Business with Tania Bhattacharyya

Have you leveraged LinkedIn for our business? If you serve other businesses, you should be! In today’s episode Tania Bhattacharyya joins us to explain why LinkedIn is the perfect place to market your brand and business, how it’s changed and grown over the years, and tips for getting the most benefit out of the platform. Plus, she’s sharing how you can be lazy on LinkedIn yet still be successful.

The Business-First Creatives Podcast is brought to you by CRM and Dubsado expert Colie James. Join Colie each week as she discusses how to build a business that brings you joy and a paycheck! From business advice with fellow entrepreneurs to sharing automation tips and tricks, Colie and her guests are sharing industry trends and resources, along with a little bit of sarcasm.

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Guest Bio:

Tania is the founder of Lumos Marketing, a thought leadership consultancy for social impact entrepreneurs ready to stand out as they stand up for their mission. She offers personal brand messaging strategy for LinkedIn along with coaching to dismantle imposter thoughts. She also hosts the podcast The Campfire Circle which explores the idea of replacing the ‘boardroom table’ as the ultimate space of leadership with a campfire circle: a place to share our stories, build inclusive community, and spark visionary ideas.

Today’s episode is brought to you by my Love Your Leads private audio training! Are you providing an experience for your leads that sets an expectation on when they’ll hear from you, provides them with tools that will help them easily say yes and book you, while also making them feel seen and heard? In my private audio training, you’ll learn how to love your leads and get more booked clients through an automated booking process.

Here are the highlights…

[1:08] Meet Tania

[1:55] How Tania Got Into LinkedIn

[6:12] How LinkedIn Has Changed Over the Years

[7:16] Building a Unique Brand on LinkedIn

[8:27] Why Brand Photographers and B2B Brands Should Be On LinkedIn

[10:26] How Users Are Engaging on LinkedIn

[12:45] The LinkedIn Algorithm

[13:57] LinkedIn User Stats

[16:59] Video Content on LinkedIn

[18:00] Creator Mode on LinkedIn

[19:15] SEO and Indexing on Google

[26:28] Building Email Lists from LinkedIn

[34:00] Email Marketing & Tracking Unsubscribes

[36:36] Being Lazy on LinkedIn

Mentioned in this Episode

14 Content Prompts for LinkedIn

Connect with Andréa

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tania-bhattacharyya
Website: lumosmarketing.co
Podcast: The Campfire Circle

Review the Transcript:

Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. Today, I am speaking with Tanya Bhattacharyya, a LinkedIn specialist. Now, if you’re a business person, you’ve probably heard of LinkedIn. You probably have a profile. Photographers, do not turn this off yet. I promise we are going to speak to LinkedIn in a way that you are going to understand, and maybe you will be like me and finally create a profile.

Tanya, good afternoon and welcome to the podcast.

Tania: Hi, it’s so good to be here. I’m thrilled. You know, I’m a big fan of this podcast. I’ve shared this with you before in the DMs and in various places. So I am so excited to be

Colie: Oh, thank you so much. I love your podcast too. It’s so nice to be able to tell my guests that. So Tanya, I don’t know if you remember this. I think we first met in some kind of system saved me arena like a while ago. And I said, very nonchalantly, yeah, as photographers, we don’t, we don’t do LinkedIn. I do finally have a profile.

I’m

Tania: Yay.

Colie: when I spoke to you initially, I didn’t have a profile, but what I still can’t get over is that. It’s just not very user friendly in the way that photographers tend to use it. So first, why don’t you give us a little bit of background on who you are, what you do and how you got into LinkedIn in the first place.

Tania: Yeah, that sounds great. So, you know, like you mentioned, I’m Tanya Bhattacharya. I, Really found LinkedIn when I was in the nonprofit space. So before I started my consulting company, I was a nonprofit executive director. And most of my time was spent marketing, fundraising, building relationships, trying to pound the pavement, getting people to, you know, learn about our mission and hopefully someday support it.

And. I just found LinkedIn was a really untapped, unsaturated place where everybody in my sphere of influence kind of was like, they had a LinkedIn profile. They checked it every now and then, but they weren’t, nobody was really maximizing it in my sector. And in my field, nobody was really sharing the stories of the organizations they worked for.

Nobody was really like sending DMS to build relationships. Right. And so I challenged myself to try and do that. You know, I figured there’s so every day there’s dozens of stories and dozens of amazing things happening that I could share and I’m just not. So what would happen if I did? And I started this experiment.

And at first, you know, I tell, I tell, I’m very open about this at first, it felt like nothing was happening like, like crickets, nothing was going on, but I kept at it because to be honest, like, I kind of found some, it was kind of fun. Like, yes, it took time, but there was a little bit of a process of self actualization, like sharing.

Story, sharing my perspective, talking about my opinion, sharing why I cared about something, right. Even if it felt like nobody was listening at first and over time, slowly, but surely I’d show up to a, you know, local conference. Someone would say, I really love what you shared on LinkedIn two weeks ago.

Like it really made me think about this, that, and the other thing. And I was like, really? Like you never liked it. Like you never comment like what really, but that just kept happening. And then this like exponential. Peace started happening where I found that not just me, but the organization I’ve represented big, like grew a really large voice for being a relatively small shop.

And it just showed me how powerful LinkedIn could be. And so, as I started my creative business, so now I really help, you know, change makers share their stories primarily on LinkedIn, but other places as well. You know, I just tapped into the power of LinkedIn because the reality is it’s like that flexible Rolodex where so many people from our past, our, our corporate jobs are, you know, people we’ve served on panels with, you know, people we’ve hired, you know, years gone by are on there, whether or not they switch jobs, whether or not they change up what they’re doing.

It’s a really great way to stay in touch with like this, this business community that we’ve built over the years.

Colie: Okay, thinking about it as a Rolodex, Tanya, that just, I think that just blew my mind for a moment because the thing is, I mean, I’m everybody on the podcast knows I’m old. I’m 44. I was in like, the Facebook age when Facebook first came out. So. It was still when you had to have a college email account

Tania: I remember,

Colie: Yeah, and so Facebook was kind of that place that you like found your old classmates. And so what I hear you saying is that LinkedIn is that version for your old business associates. And so for myself, I think I missed the boat on LinkedIn. Because initially, when I was a college professor and I was working and I was getting all of these jobs, I wasn’t like advertising on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn wasn’t a thing. And then I spent this very brief amount of time, you know, at home. I wasn’t teaching anymore, but I didn’t have my own business yet. And I think that is when LinkedIn started to grow. But I didn’t, I wasn’t looking for a job then. And then when I opened my own business as a photographer, like I just never thought of LinkedIn as a place I needed to be because that’s not where you find photography clients, but like thinking about it as a Rolodex.

Of your old business associates. I mean, that’s fascinating because I would bet that if I looked up, you know, all the people I went to grad school with, they’re all tenured professors at this point. I bet you all of them have linked in accounts. That’s just a really interesting way of thinking about it.

So I think linked in has changed probably the most from what it started with. To what it is now. So initially LinkedIn was just somewhere that you like put your resume, right? I mean, you connected with old business people, but you put your resume. Can you tell us about the current features on LinkedIn and how it has expanded what it used to be when it was first created?

Tania: Yeah, definitely. I mean, in a lot of ways, like, you know, you talked about Facebook, like LinkedIn is a dinosaur. Like LinkedIn has been around since 2003, which is actually even older than Facebook, older than MySpace. believe it or not. And so I think a lot of people still have this concept of LinkedIn as this like stuffy, sterile, you know, Diane Mayer, referred to it as, TikTok’s corporate grandpa, which I love.

Like I say that all the time because I think it’s so funny and it’s like, there’s some true, there’s a grain of truth to that because it did used to be just that place where you’d stick up your resume. Like you said, you’d look for. For a job there, but much like the corporate world itself, much like the business world itself over the last couple of years, there’s been sort of this humanization of all of it.

And just like our workplaces have changed, like LinkedIn has changed and they have especially changed like their algorithm and different parts of their platform to really be friendly to creators. Right. And so while LinkedIn used to be focused on. Finding a job, hiring folks, stuff like that. Today, you really can build a personality driven brand on there to really promote your creative business and people are receptive.

And so one actually, like one of my favorite LinkedIn accounts to follow is a photographer and I found her by accident because I, so my dog Gary has his own Instagram account. And so one of the hashtags. Gary likes to use is, you know, hashtag dogs of Instagram. And then I got curious. I was like, is, is anybody using dogs of LinkedIn?

Like, are there any dogs with LinkedIn’s accounts? Like this was just like a weird afternoon where I didn’t want to work obviously. And so I went on this rabbit hole and I found this photographer whose whole thing is she specializes in brand photo shoots with business owners who want to take. Who want to get brand photography done with their dogs.

And I was like, this is so niche. This is so amazing. Unfortunately, she lives in the UK. So like, I can’t hire her unless I flew there with Gary. But I was like, this is brilliant. Like she has found such a unique, specific niche. And she has, she’s on a place like LinkedIn where no one else is really doing this.

Like she’s like the one game in town. So I thought that was brilliant. Right. So. That’s, I think that’s one example of how you can really showcase a really unique personality driven brand as a photographer or as a creative business owner on LinkedIn.

Colie: So I will say. You know, what brought me to LinkedIn was the fact that I now help photographers with their business. And so I do feel like if your end user is a business owner and you’re taking branding photos, I do think all branding photographers need to be on LinkedIn. That is definitely where it’s at.

I think that it’s as myself, because I started as just newborn and just family photography, like that isn’t where I would connect with. With, you know, people who would be looking for a photographer. Cause actually this is a great segue, Tania. One of the things that I’ve been discussing with people as they come onto the podcast and we’re discussing different social media platforms is.

Whether or not the users are using it as like a social media tool to connect with others, or they’re using it as like a search tool, because I think my mind was blown. Again, I’m showing my age. I think my mind was blown when someone told me that the millennials are using TikTok like we use Google. And I was like, wait, what?

I was saying that again. And she was like, yeah, she’s like, if they want to know how to make chicken noodle soup from scratch, they’re not going on YouTube. They’re not Googling it. They’re looking for someone who did a 32nd reel and gave a recipe. And I was like, shut up. I mean, clearly I’m not on Tik TOK enough, but so I think that’s the other thing that I find so fascinating about LinkedIn is that initially, even though.

You were finding connections with your old business, associates. Like it’s really a search tool. Like if you’re looking for some information about a company, you might go find their LinkedIn page so that you can find out more information. And as LinkedIn has grown, it has become more of like what I would consider to be a social media tool humanizing, as you said, the connections between the people.

But like, I just, do you think that people. Are using LinkedIn more as a social media tool or are they still using it as like a search tool?

Tania: you know, I think that’s such a great question. I love this question and I think that it is. A beautiful blend of both. I really do because I think, it as a creative business owner, right? Because like, you can use it as a social media and post your stories, your perspectives, your pictures, right? Like your case studies, your insights, your opinions, your how to’s, you know, like how to prepare for your newborn photo shoot when you are a full time entrepreneur, right?

Like that would be a beautiful thing to share on LinkedIn. I see you with your little pencil. Yeah. And, you know, as you do that, you will get inbound opportunities over time for sure. And you can use it as a search tool for lead generation and to find people with the title, people in the geographic location that you’re in, which is especially important.

I think for photographers, cause they’re a little bit more geographically bound than say like me, who’s just an online business owner period. You can filter down those searches by. People who have common interests, people who have common connections and so on and so forth. Right. So like, if I hired you to do a brand, a photo shoot with, I don’t have any kids, but maybe me and my dog, like, let’s say you did that.

Colie: I like dogs.

Tania: Yeah. He, he’s my firstborn son. So what you could actually do is do a search for the people that I’m connected with and then see, okay, these are all people like she’s connected with a lot of people that. Could hire me as well, right? And then you could ask me, like, Hey, can we do a case study? Can we feature you?

Can we highlight you? And you could do a whole piece about that. And then linkedin would organically show the people in my network that piece. And so people would start to lean in and see this as an option for themselves, start to think about how they might want to hire you for this kind of thing.

And then as a follow up, what you could do is like. Use the search tool to see the people that I’m connected with, maybe the people who engaged in the post. You know, I think, I guess what I’m trying to say here in kind of a roundabout way is I think that it’s great when you use a combination of both.

’cause LinkedIn really does have a super, super powerful search tool to find people. Not so much TikTok in terms of finding like concepts, like I wouldn’t use it like a Google or a YouTube, but I would definitely use it as a, like, like we said before, like it’s a Rolodex. You can just search everybody you’re connected with people, your second degree connections with, you know?

So I think it’s a beautiful blend of both.

Colie: And the 1 thing that I didn’t think of just until right now, when you were speaking was, I think that the algorithm is a little nicer on LinkedIn in terms of networking than it is on, like, Instagram and Facebook, because Instagram and Facebook are currently so saturated. But when you go on LinkedIn. If I, for example, did something with you and I tagged you, it is actually more likely that your network on linked in is going to actually see that content rather than if I tagged you on Instagram.

Like, it’s just, it’s not so oversaturated to where the platform is still helping you. Reach people that are connected to the people that you are tagging and interacting with in a much more organic way than it is on Instagram. Cause like right now on Instagram, in order to get like more than 1% visibility, you’ve got to like boost a post or do something else in order to like.

I recently heard someone say you have to give it a blood sacrifice. I feel like LinkedIn is still blood sacrifice friendly. Okay. You don’t have to do it in order to use the platform wisely.

Tania: 100% and your, inclination is super correct there. Like there’s some stats that have been shared that, you know, 900 million people are on LinkedIn and 12% of use of people that are on LinkedIn actually log in on a daily basis. So it’s like, people are definitely using LinkedIn. I’d say it’s one of the big social media platforms for sure, but.

Even though that’s the case, only 3% of active users post content of their own. So we’ve got a lot of lurkers. We’ve got a lot of people who are on there that we don’t necessarily know are on there and, but they’re watching, right? They’re consuming, they’re internalizing, they’re building trust in you. And I feel like that stat really showcases the fact that you can still have a very beautiful, organic.

Imprint on LinkedIn. And you’re right in that the whole algorithm was designed to get you in front of these, like these business contacts to like increase your network. And one sort of, I guess you could call it a campaign or a strategy or something like that. Something that I really use as part of my pre launch content that I think photographers could lean into, whether they’re having like a launch or whether they’re just looking for a couple of clients per month is I do this thing every Sunday, I call it social impact Sunday store. It’s really long. It’s a long hashtag But pretty much all it is is I invite a past client to share who they are what they do I highlight them on my LinkedIn and I include a little like a sentence or two Testimonial about their work with me and so every Sunday I post that and I noticed that every every Sunday or so I get You know, maybe a dozen new followers Just from that, because it’s all of the people that that person who has been tagged in the post, right?

Like the LinkedIn algorithm is showing it to people that I don’t know yet, but because they have like trust built up in that person and that mutual connection, they trust me as well. And so that’s a really organic way to just increase our followership over time. And I think that would be great for photographers who want to showcase different case studies and things like that.

Colie: That’s amazing. I mean, I feel like what you’re describing is what we all wish that Instagram would still do. I mean, I’m I, myself, I don’t even have that, you know, a large following, but I have 3, 500 people who have like raised their hand and say, Oh, I want to follow you. But like, when you think about the fact that less than 1% of those people see anything that I post, even though they’ve said, Hey, I like your content.

Instagram, show me more of it. It doesn’t get seen. So the fact that you still have that organic reach on LinkedIn, I think means that many more people should hop onto the LinkedIn bandwagon and start posting content. Speaking of content, let’s talk about videos because I feel like, you know, everybody loves videos.

Everybody is video heavy and LinkedIn now lets you do videos, but I feel like I can’t take. Not just the reels. Let’s, I’m not talking about like the fun reels. I’m talking about the more informational videos that I put on Instagram. I feel like I can’t just take those and put them on LinkedIn.

I feel like they don’t do as well. So how do you see the video aspects of LinkedIn in terms of content creation and content marketing, if you will?

Tania: it’s such a great question and I think it’s really strange because on every other social media platform and every other kind of place where creators share stuff like video is so important, like video is a big part of people’s strategy on LinkedIn. It’s just not, it’s just not that way right now. And I don’t really have a reason why I think it’s just the way the algorithm is set up.

But that be, so I really haven’t seen anyone kill it like with a video specific content strategy. That doesn’t mean that you can’t share it. I just, you know, I haven’t seen a lot of people get a ton of engagement early, like kill it with videos. Actually, as I say that there’s one person who comes to mind.

He’s literally a video marketing agency owner. So if somebody is going to do it, it’s going to be

Colie: to

Tania: guy. Yeah, it’s going to be this guy. All, all he posts are really videos. Like you’re sharing of him talking, sharing information, but he’s changed his profile settings so that the default is for the videos to show up.

And so this might be interesting to

Colie: even know you could do that.

Tania: You can do that. So like, if you have, if you turn on creator mode, which I encourage everybody who uses LinkedIn to do. Like if you are going to be creating content for LinkedIn, there’s only positive. So turning on creator mode, it gives you some additional discoverability.

It gives you additional act like access to analytics. It’s just, it’s all good. It’s all good. There’s no downside, but you can adjust your profile to show either like all of your posts are going to show up on your page and that’s what the default is. Or you can show, or you can have all it, all of the images that you post show up on your page, all of the videos you show up.

So you can kind of like change up your profile to make it super specific if you’re going to go heavy on videos. But I have found for myself, the thing that works the best is just like a photo and some text, which for all the photographers out there. I mean, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words and you have access to the tools that, you know, you can really, really use to make your content shine.

So, you know, I’d recommend trying out a couple different posts. I personally, and really no one I know except for this one guy has really found success using video, but try it, you know, try just text posts. Try a photo plus text, try polls, maybe take a video, like one of the videos you were talking about, get it transcribed, using AI and turn it into a LinkedIn article, which has some s e o benefits, you know?

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

Colie: Tanya. So you kind of segued, we were, we were going to hit something else first, but we’re going to talk about this since you brought up SEO, cause I love SEO. We have common friends who were recently on the podcast for the simple SEO series that I did. And. You were on the talk copy to be podcast and I listened to this episode and I loved every bit of the episode, but I was laughing to myself because I’m like, Tonya is not going to be able to do that to me.

Do you remember in that episode where you were trying to explain to Aaron the importance of LinkedIn? And when you Googled her that her LinkedIn came up second.

Tania: Yes.

Colie: that to me?

Tania: No, I’m doing it right now.

Colie: I’ll save you. It’s 10.

Tania: Okay.

Colie: My LinkedIn is number 10. And so one of the things that I wanted to bring up with you is, you know, you’re saying SEO is great on LinkedIn.

And that is a reason to start posting more content because like Instagram is not an SEO friendly platform. But when I, when I heard that, you know, Erin came up, her LinkedIn profile was number two. I was like, I wonder where mine is. So when you Google me, everyone, I did it in an incognito window. Mind you, uh, the first thing that actually still pops up is my photography website, my dub Sato certified specialist systems expert website is number two.

Photography is still number one, which makes sense. Everyone, because that business has been open way longer. I mean, I 2012, so it’s got a lot of longevity. But that comes first and then it’s my new system strategy website, coleyjames. com. And then it gets into like the other social media platforms. So Instagram, Facebook, my YouTube is much further down than I’d like.

One thing that I found was interesting is my own podcast is not coming up yet. Like

Tania: mm

Colie: podcast episodes for me being on other people’s podcasts are in that top 10 and then LinkedIn is number 10. So I think my goal. Tanya, now that you’ve mentioned the articles and the SEO capabilities is I might try a little experiment.

I love experimenting for my audience. I might try my hand at writing a few articles and doing a little bit more work on LinkedIn to see if there’s any change. From being number 10 to coming higher now, I think that that is a reasonable expectation for myself because as I work in my business to do less photography and do more systems, I would hope that the platforms where I’m actually focusing and highlighting on my system services would come up higher than it is right now.

But like, I would say that right now, when you search for me, it is pretty photography heavy.

Tania: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that one thing that you could do to really like make that go quicker is think about the searches that people are looking for when photographers are looking for when they want their system set up specifically and like title your LinkedIn articles with that query, right? Because LinkedIn articles are indexed by Google.

And so like oftentimes when I’ll search something and this is very meta, right? Like I did this the other day, cause I wanted to prove this to someone. I Googled,

Colie: kind of girl,

Tania: yeah.

Colie: I mean, when someone asked me a question, I’m like, no, just give me a little while. I’ll do the experiment for you and I’ll come back and give you the data.

Tania: right, right. Uh, what did I look up? I looked up something like how to write a LinkedIn article, so this was very meta, but the first thing that popped up was a LinkedIn article from 2015. And so this guy

Colie: of

Tania: yes. And so I noticed that like every, so now and then he’ll go and do a little update and the very first thing in that article is a link to his program about.

Whatever his program is. So he’s getting leads from that, like seven, what, what, eight years later on this, like one LinkedIn article. So if you can find the right query or the right, like keyword or the right headline, I think a LinkedIn article just for SEO benefits alone would be like fantastic.

Colie: See, and I would like, okay, so you know what I’m, you just got my mind going, Tanya. So I’ve been trying to write more blog articles because one of the things that I’ve admitted on this podcast, at least in the last few months is that what made my photography business so successful was I really. Like honed in on my SEO.

I worked on my SEO nonstop. I constantly updated my website. I blogged at least every week. Like I did those things to build my photography business. And then when it came to my systems business, it was like, I all of a sudden forgot that I knew how to build a business. Like I was still running Dubsado setups off of my photography website for a year.

Tania: Yeah.

Colie: crazy when you think about that could have been a year that I was building the SEO. On this new website, just with my name instead of Colie James photography, but one of the things that you just got me thinking about was I’ve written a few articles that are like things that people are searching for.

How can I set my Dubsado up quickly? How do I know what to put in a workflow like those kinds of things and I have blog posts, but they’re not, they’re not getting up there yet. Right? But I wonder if I wrote. Different, like same topic, but not copy and paste. Cause everyone that will not help you to copy and paste from one platform to another.

But I’m wondering if I like rewrote an article with the same kinds of topics, if I could see how it did on LinkedIn for SEO versus my website for SEO.

Tania: Absolutely. I would try it, you know, why not? Why not? And then these become like pillar pieces of content that you can share over and over in different places. Like there’s so much there’s that’s a whole rabbit hole that I’m, that I’m just like a new on, but I’m learning about actually, yeah. So SEO is a whole nother thing.

And that’s, you know, earlier when you asked like, is LinkedIn more of a search engine or is it more of a, uh, you know, social media, that’s another way how it’s really like all of it. It’s all of it all at once.

Colie: So let’s, let’s talk about the content. Cause you want to write articles that will help you with your SEO. It just also helps you be seen as an authority in your space and all those good things that we all want. But what about the other content? I feel like everyone talks about. A good balance of your content on any social media platform.

Like how much should you be informing? How much should you be entertaining? How much should you be selling? Because selling is not a dirty word on this podcast. But what have you seen that is most effective for people who are actively trying to connect and also sell on LinkedIn? Like, do you have any ideas of the different like buckets?

Like how much should I. Do informative pieces versus entertainment pieces versus just thought pieces. Any, any, anything for the audience.

Tania: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I think that that’s like, you know, you get to find your own balance. I mean, I think some people just naturally are really, really good at like, you know, they’re activists. They’re like soapbox kind of people. Like they’re really good at sharing their perspective and getting people like riled up and like, you know, towards a vision, like people just have a skillset in that.

Whereas other people are very like they’re teachers by nature. They’re very good at explaining difficult, like nuanced concepts. In a very like easy to understand way, you know, and so I think a lot of it depends on your strengths and your abilities and your preferences, but, you know, as you ask this question, I started thinking back to when I launched my, LinkedIn contents print back in April, and I did a little experiment.

This was my, this was my first foray into like UTM codes and really like getting into the data. Right. And so at that time I had about 8, 000 followers on LinkedIn and I had about 800 email subscribers. So I had a ton more. Uh, going on on LinkedIn, right? Or so you would think, but because of the UTM codes that I set up, I was able to see that even though 10 times, as many people were on my LinkedIn than they were on my email in actuality, 10, and this is like a, a weird inverse thing, this is like, this couldn’t be more perfect, but 10% more of the people who visited my sales page came from my email than they did LinkedIn.

And that just showed me like. Email is the place where I think that you’re more like selling content lives, but people have got to get on your email list somehow. And like, really, my entire email list has been built off of LinkedIn. So kind of my thought, my strategy, my way of doing things is I think of LinkedIn as that place where I’m really sharing, like.

In like valuable, valuable information, like spicy status quo, shifting content. Like you want to show up as that approachable authority that go to values aligned voice for your audience. You want to build trust. You want to build excitement. You want to be enthusiastic. You want to build connection through your content so that you’re like consistently being shown to new audiences that are following you and then over and over thinking about new ways to share.

Ways to get on your email list, whether they’re freebies, lead magnets, webinars, joint venture webinars, just, there’s so many different ways to get people on your email list from LinkedIn. Right. But over time, like the right people who are willing to raise their hand and say, like, I want to know more, we’ll travel from LinkedIn based on your content to your email list.

And so that’s how I think of it. Email is where I kind of sell, still do it in a value. Forward way. Like, even if you’re not going to buy anything, you’re going to learn a lot. But I think of LinkedIn as a place where I really get to be like that cheerleader that like, you know, um, just that, that enthusiastic approachable go to voice.

You know, does that help?

Colie: It does. It does. And the thing that I was thinking about as you were talking about this is that I feel like in so many ways, we feel like we don’t need to move people from the social media platforms into our email because it’s like, well, no, they follow me on Instagram. Why do I need to email them when I’m posting similar things on Instagram?

And I would just direct people back to like the algorithm. Again, all those people that raise their hand, even on LinkedIn, because not everyone is seeing everything, even though I truly believe, you know, a bigger portion of your audience and your audience’s connections are seeing your material on LinkedIn.

They’re still not being seen by everyone. Literally the only platform that you have complete control over for everyone to see everything that you put out is your email. And so we all need to be a little bit more focused and like, maybe we need to put it in a calendar. I’ve been talking a lot about calendars and like pink sharpies.

I feel like at least once a month, at least a couple times a month, you need to actually do the deed of asking people on your social media platforms to join your email list. And as Tanya said, sometimes you give them a juicy freebie. Sometimes you just need to remind them. That you have emails that you send and if they want to hear more from you, this is how they can do it.

Tania: Absolutely. 100%. And there’s a resource that I know you’re going to be graciously putting in your show notes. And that includes like different prompts for, you know, like prompts for content that really does well on LinkedIn. And I believe that 1 of them is like a way to kind of like, share your lead magnet, even if you have.

Don’t and don’t feel like you have to create new lead magnets every week or every month. Like just share the old one in a different way, like share a different story surrounding it or share like a testimonial from someone who downloaded it and what they got out of it. Like there’s so many ways to share the same thing.

And just keep doing it. Right. I love that pink Sharpie idea. I I’m kind of rummaging around here cause I have a pink Sharpie and I have this like paper calendar. If you’re watching the video podcast, you can see it, but I’m all about like old school, like just write it down, put it in your face.

Colie: Yes, well, and I said it recently and I wasn’t actually talking about asking people to join your email list. I was talking about sales. I was saying that, you know, when you’re planning your content, you have to be very intentional on how many times you’re asking your audience for a sale. Like not just, you know, coyly mentioning that you did like seriously, like if you would like to join me in my program, this is the link to click.

And so if you do those on your calendar and like a certain color. Then you can look at a glance. And like I said to do it in green, cause they’re going to pay you money. But like, if you don’t see any green on your calendar, then you know that you haven’t done your job for the month. I would, I would argue strongly that just as much as I’m telling you to actually ask for the sale, you have to ask people to join your email list.

I mean, I did a very big promotion last month and I only ended up with like 10 unsubscribers the whole time. And I sent so many emails. I think we’re afraid. To send emails because we’re afraid that people are going to unsubscribe or not open. I mean, but if you don’t send emails, you won’t know how they’ll land.

Just like, you know, every other aspect of like social media, you have to do the work. And if people don’t like it, believe me, you will know. And then you will know to do something different.

Tania: You know, I couldn’t like, please, like, say it louder for the people in the back. Like I’m obsessed with this concept and I’ve really been thinking about how it ties into our fear of like being too much, like being too much, being not enough, which at the end of the day is just the fear of being us being ourselves.

And it’s like, if we can figure out a way to celebrate the unsubscribes, if we can figure out a way to like, give ourselves a little treat when we send. You know, you know, like more emails than we think, like, we need to celebrate ourselves for doing these, this work. Cause that is really important. And then I think it trickles down into other areas of our life.

Like what we are doing is so important. And for the right people, it is exactly what they are looking for. And if we aren’t going to speak up about it and talk about it, like no, one’s going to do it for us. A hundred percent send emails, send emails and use LinkedIn to add you to your list.

Colie: Yes. I mean, it is really strange. I haven’t actually shared this anywhere else cause I just discovered it in the last few days. I was looking through my unsubscribes because what I like to do for unsubscribes is I just basically want to know how long have you been on my list? Like what freebie brought you in and what email did you leave my list on?

Because if the email that you left, Was like a drastically different content than the freebie that you came in on. Maybe you were in fact interested in the freebie that brought you in, but this other content that I’m sharing just isn’t hitting with you. And I saw a name, I’m not gonna say it out loud because that would just be rude, but I saw an email and I, I have a good memory.

It’s going, but I used to have a really good memory and I was like, no, they’ve unsubscribed before. So I clicked on the profile This particular person joined my list in May, stayed on my list for a month and then unsubscribed and then rejoined with a different freebie, like a couple weeks later, stayed on my list for a month and then unsubscribed.

That person has done this 3 times, but instead of being offended that they’re unsubscribing, I’m like, okay, there’s something about my content, the freebies that I’m actually sharing, that’s like bringing them in and they’re actually opening all my emails. And what I realized was. Every email that they’ve unsubscribed on has been a podcast episode, email.

Tania: Sure.

Colie: So maybe they just don’t like podcast content, which is okay. But like I just, I wouldn’t know that if I didn’t actually look at the unsubscribes and do more than like whale and scream and be like, bye Felicia. ’cause really it is. Bye Felicia. But also, I feel like there is value. Looking at your unsubscribes, because at the end of the day, if they unsubscribe, that’s one less person that you have to worry about entertaining selling to.

All of that good stuff. They’re actually doing you a favor by unsubscribing because they, if they unsubscribe, if they are bold enough to hit the unsubscribe button, they were never going to buy from you in the first place ever. And so it’s okay. We just, what’s that phrase? We bless and release

Tania: We bless and release. That’s exactly it. I learned this as a fundraiser. Like not everybody is going to get involved with your cause. And like, if, if that’s impossible anyway, like if everybody loves what you’re doing, then I don’t know. It that’s just impossible. That’s just impossible. You’ve got to draw a line in the sand and like.

Really, you know, have parameters around what it is that you do and the right people will self select in and the right people will self select out and it’s all good. It’s all good.

Colie: I mean, and unless you have one piece of content that you put out and like 10% of your list unsubscribes, it’s never about you. It is always about the person who is unsubscribing again. Maybe they’ve gotten what they needed from you. Maybe this particular email wasn’t what they needed to hear that day, but it is almost never about you.

And it is almost never an indication that you need to send less emails. Because if I can send, I think it was like 10 emails, if I can send 10 emails in 4 days and less than 10 people unsubscribe, those people are still interested in what I have to say enough. To stay on my list, maybe now was not right, was not the right time for them, but they’re staying on my list indicates that perhaps in the future it will be the right time for them.

Tania: Absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s so much that you can’t really see, right? There’s so on email, you can see a lot more than you can on, say, a platform like LinkedIn, but on email, like people are forwarding your emails to their friends and saying, Oh my gosh, isn’t this cool? Right? You don’t get to see that people are maybe like saving it in their, you know, great emails folder.

You’re not seeing that. So there’s a lot more like energetic resonance that’s happening behind the scenes than, on LinkedIn or sending emails. Yeah.

Colie: Okay, Tanya, I think we’re going to jump into one more topic and it’s something that again, I heard you say on the talk, copy to be podcast, uh, can I be lazy on LinkedIn? Actually no, I know from you that I can be lazy, but I want you to tell the listening audience exactly how lazy they can be on LinkedIn.

Tania: Yes. I love talking about being late. I love being lazy on LinkedIn. So right now, as we record this, it’s August and I’m calling it easy August because I’m not doing a whole lot. Like, I think I have like this podcast interview with you. I have like two clients that I’m kind of working with here and there.

I’m working like two days a week. I’m like chilling. August is like, I’m like chilling and it’s so nice. And you know, like you can do that and be pretty active on LinkedIn and like, it works out. Like, so. I guess what I’ll say about being lazy on LinkedIn is the LinkedIn algorithm itself, and the fact that it’s still so unsaturated, like we talked about before, really lends itself to you only needing to like, if you just show up once per week, that is like golden.

That’s like chef’s kiss. Like that’s like enough. That is so enough. And part of the reason for that Is because there’s more, there’s a greater ratio of users to actual content still on the platform. So your posts linger longer in the feed. Like if you post something on a Monday, you’re still going to be getting hits on it on Thursday, Friday, the following week, every time.

Somebody leaves a comment. It gets a little boost. So other platforms where, you know, it’s best practices to post every day. Like, you just don’t have to do that on LinkedIn. Right? And the other piece around it, too, is like, content is important. Like, content is king, as they all say, but engagement is really.

Just as important, like engagement is queen, if you will. So like, I encourage everybody who’s listening, if you’re thinking about using LinkedIn, but you’re kind of like, Oh, like another platform. Like, I don’t know. Like, I don’t know, like, just do what I did when I was, you know, nonprofit ed, like figuring this out and just put like a 45 minute chunk on your calendar.

Right. And just play with it, play with it for like four weeks, six weeks and see what starts to happen, right? Like maybe repurpose a piece of content from another platform and share it and then start engaging with people, right? Like engage with the people who are engaging in your post, look at who’s viewed your profile and like start, you know, building relationship with them.

See, you know, think about five people who have the audience that you want to be in front of and start commenting on their content, right? Use the search bar to find, you know, think about the people that you love to serve, like think about what titles or professional keywords they would use to describe themselves and search for them in the search bar and like, send them a message and become their friend.

Like, like a lot of this stuff is very simple. It’s not easy. It’s not easy because fear gets in the way this whole thing around like, Oh, like, what are they? What if I, what if they think I’m spammy? Like all of these, like. Worries get in the way. But really what I have found is LinkedIn is a very friendly platform.

It’s not like a Twitter. Like it’s not, people are not going to troll you in the same way that they will on, in the YouTube comments. Like people are, it’s a professional platform. It’s kind of like. Thinking, think of it as going to like a conference or a networking gathering. I really think of LinkedIn as a 24 seven professional networking gathering and people are nice, right?

They’re drinking their glass of wine. They’re having a charcuterie. They’re there to meet people. They’re there to shake hands and build their network. And so, you know, show up, say hi, make some friends and just do that for like a little chunk of time, consistently week over week. And like, and I like, honestly, it’s, it’s kind of fun.

It’s kind of fun to go to a conference in your pajamas.

Colie: Okay. I’ll be all about that. I do really feel, I mean, and this is going to be one of our last thoughts, but I really do feel like LinkedIn is the place for you to do that. We’re all talking about reaching out and networking and doing more of these kinds of things, because again, all of the social media platforms are getting very,

congested with all of the content all of the time. But I do feel like people expect you to reach out on LinkedIn way more than they expect you to reach out on like, say. Instagram and Facebook, even though that’s really how Facebook started. I feel like Facebook has just really gone away from the, you know, making friends and adding those kinds of things.

But LinkedIn is still very much the, Hey, reach out to me. Let’s have a one to one conversation. Um, let’s build a connection so that we can perhaps work on something in the future. I do think that like for the business world, LinkedIn is definitely where that’s at right now.

Tania: absolutely. And I think that, you know, even if you feel like your clients are not on LinkedIn, I will say, first of all, I’ll say they probably are, even if they’re not like searchable by the way that you can, if they’re like just a straight up business person. What I will say is I think that you can absolutely find amazing referral partners on LinkedIn.

So let’s say you were a newborn photographer, right? So like, who are some of the people that would refer to you? Maybe people who own newborn baby boutique stores, right? Or like,

Colie: Doulas and, um, like nurses and things like that. Yes, anybody that works in the realm of people having babies like people who offer. I mean, I don’t know why this is coming to mind. I think I must have seen a post on Facebook or something, but like people who run music classes for toddlers. I mean, I used to take Chloe to Gymboree and some local ones all the time.

Those people who own those businesses are on LinkedIn with profiles. You’re right.

Tania: They are. They are. So again, even if you don’t think your clients are on there, like I a hundred percent can guarantee that some amazing referral partners will be. And so maybe that’s how you use LinkedIn, you know.

Colie: So if you guys got anything from this episode, it’s, you are allowed to be lazy on LinkedIn and you can in fact make amazing networking opportunities and connections on LinkedIn. Tanya, tell the listening audience where they can find you on the internet.

Tania: Well, definitely LinkedIn for sure.

Colie: I wanted to see if she was going to say that first guys.

Tania: I would say that was a great place to get in touch with me and kind of hang out with me. Right. That’s my playground. Um, and the other place might just be my podcast. I have a podcast called the campfire circle, and we really explore what it looks like to change the concept of like the ultimate. of leadership being the boardroom table and changing it to a campfire circle because that’s where we share our stories.

That’s where we build community and that’s where there is always room. So I’d say those two places are great. And then I’ve got that resource in the show notes as well. If you want to take a stab at sharing some LinkedIn prompts,

Colie: Tanya, thank you so much for this insightful conversation. This was amazing. Um, I’m going to have to have you back because you know what, if for anything, I’m going to run a few experiments and I’m going to bring you back to see if my LinkedIn is still at number 10.

Tania: I love a good experiment. I love a good debrief. Like I’ll bring my Erlenmeyer flask. Like, let’s get into the, let’s do it. Let’s do it.

Colie: All right, everyone. That’s it for this episode. uploading.

Tania: Bye.