Business Gold: Awareness, Authority and Advantage with LinkedIn Pages with Lynnaire Johnston

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined by a friend and also my co-author for Business Gold. Lynnaire Johnston, welcome back to the show.

Lynnaire Johnston: Hello, Michelle. It's very nice to be here. Thank you so much.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, we had to get together. I spoke about, my top 10 FAQs on the podcast for Company Pages last week, but you and I over the last, oh, probably six or eight weeks have been busily writing the second edition of Business Gold.

Can you believe we're at the second edition? Launched 2021 second edition, 2023. Kind of crazy, right?

Lynnaire Johnston: It's amazing. It's amazing. And I think that partly that's because of the changes to Company Pages, your success and making sure everybody knows about Business Gold and the fact that people now see more value in Company Pages than they did. When we first started, Michelle, nobody really liked Company Pages, did they?

They were persona non [00:01:00] grata. Look how that's changed.

Michelle J Raymond: When you say they didn't like, I'm going to go a bit further. They were hating on them. Remember they thought we were absolutely crazy. But let's go there for a moment. Because when you approached me to write Business Gold, there was no other book on Company Pages, and there still isn't any others dedicated to Company Pages that I'm aware of anywhere. Listeners, if you are listening to this and you know of another one, please connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know that you found one. Cause I would love to give it a read.

But Linnea, can you share the story about how we got together to write Business Gold? Cause I think there's a pretty powerful lesson for people to understand the real power of LinkedIn and how these collaborations can happen.

Lynnaire Johnston: So I wrote my own book the year before Linkability. And I realised at that point, the power of collaboration. I was then casting around to try and find an idea about what to do to [00:02:00] follow that up and realised that there was a gap in the market for a book about Company Pages and then coincidentally heard a woman from Australia from Sydney called Michelle J Raymond on a podcast talking about that very subject. Now she seemed really knowledgeable. She seemed to know a bit about Company Pages and I really liked the way that she spoke about them.

So I organised a zoom call with her and within 15 minutes, you and I had agreed to write a book together. It was as simple as that, but it does show you the power of LinkedIn, doesn't it?

Michelle J Raymond: Oh my God. I am still laughing when I think about what person in their right mind on a zoom call agrees to write a book with someone they've literally been speaking to for 15 minutes.

Now, yes, I'd been following your content for a little while but inside my head, I am freaking out just going Is this woman crazy? Does she know I've never written a book? And of course you did. And I confess, I was like, [00:03:00] look, I don't know a lot about book writing, but I do know a lot about Company Pages and I would love to do it.

And I'm so grateful for that experience. But in hindsight, it was the power of being known for that one thing. It was the power of a comment because I ended up on that podcast, Lynnaire because a comment that I wrote, which was contrarian to the original post, which said Company Pages were a waste of time.

And, it went from there. So you stand out in the comments, someone else connects, they invite me onto that podcast. You start listening to it probably while you were doing your gardening on a Saturday. And here we are two years later, back for round two for the second edition. But how much do you think has really changed in LinkedIn Pages in the last couple of years? We've just gone through the book. What did you notice has really changed? And has there been that much?

Lynnaire Johnston: I think the fundamentals are still the same. You've got to have a good Quality Company [00:04:00] Page with everything complete.

All the details are in the book about how to do that. But I do think there have been some significant changes. One of them is the way the page admin is laid out. So if you're an admin on a Company Page, it looks so much more streamlined. It's easy to find things. There have been some new features, which I really, really like.

And of course, I think that too, we have got access to events. Now, we already had LinkedIn lives on Pages before when we wrote the first edition of Business Gold, but now there are audio events as well. What I'm seeing on Pages is a lot more opportunity than there was two years ago, Michelle.

Michelle J Raymond: I think you're probably right.

If I think back when we wrote Business Gold the first time, it was more a please pay attention to this. Please don't ignore your Company Page because it literally was about convincing people that there was some kind of value to explore this. And in [00:05:00] fairness, LinkedIn hadn't really given People that managed Company Pages that much to write home about.

There wasn't that many great features and as an admin, it was pretty clunky. And I think that's the thing I agree with you. The layout behind the scenes that makes the managing so much easier. And I think that's the thing when I was rewriting, with you for the second edition is that I went oh, things are in logical places now. They're so much easier to find.

And the other thing that kind of blew my mind was in the first book, we thought it was mind blowing that we had Company Page articles. And now it's like newsletters and like you said, LinkedIn lives and LinkedIn audios, all these other features but just two years ago, no articles even. I remember writing the first Company Pages article. That's my claim to fame. How crazy is that?

Lynnaire Johnston: How cool is that? And now of course we can do newsletters as well. So a lot has changed in two years. It's been [00:06:00] surprising. Mind you, a lot has changed on LinkedIn generally, of course over that time.

And particularly in the last year, with the emergence of AI I think, which is a very interesting development when it comes to LinkedIn, but certainly I think the conversation has changed. You're right, it's not, what do you mean we need to have a Company Page too? Yes. How do we make this really work for us and make it sing?

Michelle J Raymond: In general, would you say that on Company Pages, things have changed for the better or for the worse in that time? Because you're right, the whole platform changes. No secret that getting reach on a Company Page is challenging to say the least, but do you think overall we're in front or we're going backwards?

Where do you see things?

Lynnaire Johnston: Overall, we're in front. Yes, I agree with you. Organic reach on posts is now in the weeds, and I think that's a real shame. But there are other opportunities, and I think what that's doing is forcing companies to look at other alternatives. Events, I think, is a major area where I think companies can do more.[00:07:00]

I think, too, that there can be more employee advocacy, and I'm seeing a lot more of that, too. There've been other changes, I think, to do with promoted and sponsored posts. Thought leadership posts that make things a lot better. As we've already said, the new layout looks good. In general, I think that we are moving in the right direction.

Michelle J Raymond: I agree. But there's an interesting thing, which I put in the book, and I'm starting to say it out loud in my posts, and I've gotta say I was a little bit nervous about sharing it, but I think we're moving into the era of pay to play for Pages, if you don't have employee advocacy programs in play. Now, someone questioned me on that and said, look, Michelle, we're still getting good impressions on Company Pages and I've worked out different things.

And I'm totally on board with that. I don't say it's impossible, but here's a few of the clues and why I'm saying things like this. I received this morning hot off the press and email from [00:08:00] LinkedIn because I clicked attend on one of their upcoming events to explain how the boost feature works. So for those of you who don't know, essentially you can grab a Company Page posts and you can pay to have that shown to more people.

And it's really easy. One click of a button just above where you're writing your posts, really attractive and off you go. It's not as complicated as the normal LinkedIn ads functionality. I clicked attend to go and, keep up to date and see what's going on from a LinkedIn perspective. But I also received an email from them this morning, Lynnaire that gave me 150 US dollar credit to use on boosting.

So I have had conversations with some Pages team members in the background, which I can't go into, but not in detail, and not on this particular topic, but one little word slipped and they mentioned boost. And so if I'm LinkedIn, I'm looking at where else do I make money? I make a lot of money off ads on [00:09:00] LinkedIn.

How do I get people started? Press that boost button. What's your thoughts on the boost button in general?

Lynnaire Johnston: I'm like you, I've not used it myself. So I can see some definite opportunities for companies to use it well, and I'm really keen to see posts by employees be boosted. I'm much more interested in seeing posts like that than I am promotional posts from companies.

So I think if you're going to boost a post, you need to be very careful about what it is that you're boosting. Well, that 100 credit, Michelle, is going to get eaten up very fast. And you'll want to make sure, if you decide to use that, I think, that the right audience is going to see it. And that you really do a good job of writing an advert that, or a post in this case, that appeals to people and gets people to click or take some kind of an action.

And in a [00:10:00] way, it's quite similar to normal posts, in that you do want people to take action on a post, if you possibly can swing that. But, in this case, you're paying for it, so you've got money in the game, right? You want to make sure that that is going to work. And I think that can take a bit of experimentation.

Here's my question to you. Are you going to give that a shot?

Michelle J Raymond: I don't think that the actual boost button I am going to use. Now, we always defer to our friend, AJ Wilcox, who is the LinkedIn ads expert. And I always ask him, what do you think? You've raised some really important points there that if you don't know your target audience, you don't know what kind of content resonates with them.

You haven't done your background in where they live, what they do, those kinds of things, so you can target them. You are literally making a donation to LinkedIn. They must clap their hands and say, thank you so much for that donation. Because without those goals and without that strong setup, you are [00:11:00] literally going to go nowhere.

It is not a I pay, I get guaranteed results scenario that we've got on here. From this perspective, I go back and I think, why would I want to use Boost? Literally when I'm working with my clients or people come to me and it's the first conversation that we have, they are sitting there going, If I throw money at it, can I shortcut all the learnings?

And in my conversations with AJ, the simple answer is no, you can't. Even if you're active on other platforms, if you come to LinkedIn, it's a different kettle of fish. Things work differently here to other social media platforms. You mentioned the thought leadership ad. So for people that don't know about those there's a special new type of ad that LinkedIn launched recently, where as a Company Page, you can almost sponsor an employee's personal posts and make sure that it's seen by more people.

And I love that idea. So if I've got money, am I going [00:12:00] to put money in boost or am I going to put money in thought leadership ads? I'm going to thought leadership ads because I think getting my own content seen by more people is where I would rather do it. Will I use LinkedIn's free 150 and report back on the results of that? Absolutely.

But in general, we've got to look at why is the platform free for us as members? So we can see more ads. LinkedIn has to make it more attractive to us. So they're going to keep, here, look how easy it is. Just press this magic button. But yeah, I've never used it. I've never wanted to use it.

But I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there, but it is not a fast forward button, I think is what I want to say. Anything else that you want to add around this?

Lynnaire Johnston: A company that we're associated with has an agency doing its ads from the Company Page and prior to that, they were only doing organic posts and now they're boosting the posts and they're getting between 50,000 and 70,000 views. And you and [00:13:00] I both know that a view, it doesn't mean to say 70,000 people have seen it. It's just been put into 70,000 news feeds, which is great, and that looks really good on paper, except that nobody was clicking through from the call to action.

There was no actual movement apart from people seeing it in their feeds. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't look at my feed an awful lot. To be fair I work off my notifications, and so... what's in my feed in terms of ads often just gets passed over. And I think that's often what can happen, which is another reason why you need to be really certain that you want to spend the money on ads, if that's the way to go, because you're right it is becoming a pay to play. And so as LinkedIn generally.

Michelle J Raymond: I actually find that most agencies that are not specialists in LinkedIn or LinkedIn ads are not able to generate the results of working with specialists. This platform [00:14:00] does not work like all of the others. And the reason I've never gone down the ads road is I didn't want to experiment with other people's money.

I was just like thinking, how do you learn to be good at ads? You have to spend somebody else's money. Oh, and I'm not prepared to do that at this point. I've got lots of recommendations and as I said, AJ Wilcox, friend of the show has been on a couple of times before and I am very happy to point people back in that direction to listen to our conversation about how organic and paid can work together.

And that is a powerful combination, but if you can't afford paid everything Lynnaire and I talk about in Business Gold is all about organic strategies. IE, you can keep your money in your pocket and put it towards some other things.

Lynnaire in general, why should companies be paying attention to Company Pages going into 2024? We've got these challenges, we've got these new changes, but why pay attention going into the new year?

Lynnaire Johnston: Because the business world is [00:15:00] changing, Michelle, and businesses need to keep up. And LinkedIn is changing, offering more features, as we've already talked about. And I think that people are generally looking for new ways to reach audiences and LinkedIn is an excellent way to do that.

It's got very high trust with Google. So anytime your company is Googled your LinkedIn Company Page with luck. We'll come up there right up the top, like your personal profile does if you put your own name and I think that there is a real move towards trying out new types of ways to reach reach customers.

So I'm a great fan of collaboration. I know you are. Look at all the huge numbers of podcast you do with guests. It's astonishing. And that kind of collaboration, I think between organisations that are in a symbiotic relationship is a really good way to move forward. I also think that those companies that don't have a good Company [00:16:00] Page and are not active on it and aren't using all the features that are available, are just missing out and their competitors are going to be the ones that step up and say, thank you. I'll have that one.

And they'll be the ones that set up the events and bring in the audiences and consequently bring in the business too. I don't think businesses in 24 can afford to be without a LinkedIn Company Page at any level.

Michelle J Raymond: I was just having a giggle to myself as you were saying that, cause you sparked a memory of mine. A couple of years ago, when I first started out and I was, pretty confident in myself and out I went and I literally would write on my post and say to people.

Hey, you got two choices. You can believe what I'm saying and know where this is going and get in now at the ground floor and get a head start on your competitors, or you can wait until the crowd catches up by then it'll be too late. And your competitor that I'm working with is now two years in front.

And I've seen that [00:17:00] happen with, a couple of my clients that I've worked with I'm just laughing because it is near impossible to catch up. I had a conversation yesterday. A young girl reached out to me and said to me, Michelle, I've got a Company Page. I'm in charge of managing it. I don't have anyone else in the team. We're trying things.

Our competitor is at let's say 50,000 followers. We're at 3,000. My boss has asked me to catch it. Now without paid ads and without, a huge team that you can get involved with employee engagement. And without that, I was like sitting there going, I'm not sure that anything I do will have that big a jump while that other team is still active, that you'll catch them. Unless you've got a huge brand that you've got, off LinkedIn that you can bring to the table.

But yeah, playing catch ups, not a spot that I would recommend for any business going into 2024. So I think even if you hear [00:18:00] reach is down or words to that effect or ignore your Company Page, I don't think you really can afford to ignore it and be wrong because this is the number one B2B platform. The platform where business is done.

I don't know. I think that's the case for it in itself. I think the time is done for wondering if Michelle and Lynnaire are right. We're right. I'm just going to put it out there.

Lynnaire Johnston: We are. I don't think people realise that LinkedIn takes time for things to work really well. It takes time to build a network. It takes time to build trust. It takes time to build the right audience. And you remind me of that famous adage. When is the best time to plant a tree? I'm a gardener, Michelle. When's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. When's the next best time? Today.

And that's exactly how it is, I think with LinkedIn Company Pages. So for anyone listening who doesn't yet have a LinkedIn Company Page, it's not too late, but [00:19:00] you do need to start now. And we do have a very good book about that, don't we, Michelle, that we have just updated and is, just about on the market.

And in fact, by the time you hear this, it probably will be.

Michelle J Raymond: It sure will be, which is why I want to keep having these conversations about Company Pages, because I don't want people to ignore this. When you get a Company Page working in tandem with building employee personal brands, or maybe you're the founder and a solopreneur. Working them together is where the magic happens.

And for me, I always tell the story Lynnaire. I got started on LinkedIn back when I was selling raw materials and ingredients that go into skincare and haircare and beauty products. And for me, I built up like a community about 5,000 people. Niche, totally and utterly focused on that, whole industry.

And it was amazing. And then the company I work for, they were riding on the back of my coattails. Oh, [00:20:00] wow, look at this thing Michelle's doing. And they didn't want to know about it. I was trying to teach them, Hey, come over here, do this. We're talking 10 years ago now. And ultimately what's happened is they didn't.

And what do you know? An opportunity came up and I left and those 5,000 personal followers came with me. Then the company's left with nothing. Now that happens every day in businesses, whether people are laid off, whether people choose to change jobs, whether, anything changes internally.

Ultimately, you can't just put all your eggs in the employee brand basket and you also, if you're replacing those staff, they come and do their research. Does the Company Page, give them insight into what you do? Or does it look like a ghost town that they don't want to come and work there? And I think that's the other piece of the puzzle.

If you want to attract the best people to work for you. They want to see what's going on behind the scenes, but yeah, I don't know. I think 2024, I'm hoping maybe as [00:21:00] people read the second edition that they will start to consider it's no longer optional, whether you want a Company Page or not. You mentioned earlier about it being indexed, things being indexed on Google and your Company Page is one of them, but I just don't think you can ignore it anymore.

Have I got that message through Lynnaire?

Lynnaire Johnston: I think we still have to work on it, Michelle. You can liken it to a website. Companies don't have No website, do they? Every company has a website. Every company needs a LinkedIn Company Page. It is social media for business.

Let's be clear. Why would you not want to do that? It doesn't cost you anything to set it up. But I do think, Michelle, that one of the areas that companies are also missing out is they are not training their staff on LinkedIn to understand the power of LinkedIn and what it can do, the opportunities that it can provide.

And so that when someone like you who has done really well with LinkedIn, who may be running their LinkedIn page leaves, [00:22:00] there is no one to pick it up and move it forward. And I think that not training their staff on LinkedIn generally and on Company Pages specifically, is a mistake that also needs to be looked at for 2024.

Michelle J Raymond: I'm hoping that my listeners have heard me talk about Company Pages enough this year that they see the value in it. So let's jump onto something else. When we talk about Business Gold, the book the subtitle to that is Build Awareness, Authority, and Advantages with Pages. Now, if someone is looking at their Company Page and wondering, you know what, how do I do any of this? What should I try? What would you encourage page admins to give a go coming into the new year or even get started now?

Lynnaire Johnston: Newsletters. I think newsletters have really got legs for companies and on Company Pages. We're used to companies doing them by email. Some companies probably still do them in hard copy form.

But I think newsletters are a given [00:23:00] on Company Pages. And that's because everybody who subscribes gets every issue notified to them. And if they've got it switched on, they'll also get an email. I think that Company Page newsletters are the way to go because you can use them to promote, to educate, to inform, to tell people about events that are coming up.

There's no end to it because, of course, based on the article format, newsletters allow you to embed videos, add images do all kinds of nice formatting tricks. And so I am a great fan of newsletters on Company Page, Michelle. And that's what I would be suggesting that page admins have a look at.

Michelle J Raymond: I love them too. I think everybody should take advantage of them if they've got probably at least a thousand, 1500 page followers. Just because I think that's given you enough time to set up some other processes internally to keep up with the day to day demands, then you can move on to those newsletters, but I love repurposing the podcast as well. Goes into newsletters. [00:24:00]

There's so many different ways that you can incorporate images and videos, like you said, and they look great. And I realised I actually have a confession, Lynmaire I've been thinking it's a little bit quiet on LinkedIn recently, I haven't really been getting that many newsletters sent to me. Haven't really seen that many notifications and I'd accidentally turned off notifications about a week and a half ago and forgot to go back and turn them back on again. I turned them off while I was doing some training with a client, forgot to turn them back on again and thought, wow, it's really quiet around here.

Now with newsletters you may have, at some stage, there's a pop up that comes up. If you say no to subscribing to too many newsletters in a row, it thinks you don't like them and it'll ask you, do you want to receive more notifications like this? And if you hit no, because back in the beginning, there was just an absolute avalanche that came through [00:25:00] when the feature was launched. I encourage people to go back and take a second look and see, did you actually turn off newsletter subscription notifications because you won't be receiving them. And I think it's a really huge missed opportunity, like Lynnaire said.

So shout out to everyone. Go and check your settings. You may be a unpleasantly surprised as I was, but boy, is it busier on LinkedIn now that I've got them turned on.

Lynnaire Johnston: Lots of bedtime reading for you, Michelle.

Michelle J Raymond: I think I might do that a little more often. I think I should do a forced turn them off and have a week of, uninterruptions.

Lynnaire Johnston: I did have to turn them off from my emails though. I was just getting deluged and I found that I was getting email notifications about newsletters I didn't think that I'd subscribe to because I'd been fairly careful about what I had said yes to.

And I found that I was getting a lot more that really had no interest to me whatsoever. So I was very pleased to get rid of that. That halved my incoming emails. I [00:26:00] think just that one little tip. So if you find you don't want them in your emails, just turn them off and you'll still get notifications about them.

Michelle J Raymond: I was thinking the same yesterday as the avalanche came through yesterday again. I was like, Whoa, what happened here? And I thought the same, but the other cool thing that I like about newsletters that you mentioned is because when you follow a page, if I'm not mistaken, it will also ask you, do you want to subscribe to the newsletter.

Now I don't know whether that's still working or not, but I have noticed that historically when I followed a new page. Just like when you follow a person, it brings up and says, Hey, let's go into those newsletters. And, we did some research and it's all about thought leadership. Brands need to lead the way in your Company Page newsletter as a way that you can do that.

For me, I'm going to go with events. We both love a good LinkedIn live or a LinkedIn audio. Those two things I think for Company Pages are a game changer and they move us away from being so focused on the performance of posts in a home feed, [00:27:00] which is now crowded by a billion members, 68 million Company Pages.

Stop fighting over it, look for other more creative ways. And so when the book comes out, you'll be given insight into that. There's a spoiler alert. I'm not telling you here on the podcast, you need to buy the book. So from that perspective, they are the cool things. Lynnaire, I like to end every single podcast episode with one last actionable tip. When it comes to Company Pages, what is one thing that you think people should go and do or maybe check or try to get more out of their Company Page going into the new year?

Lynnaire Johnston: Every month, they need to use all of the 250 page invites. Leave none at the end, is my advice. And anytime somebody connects with me, the first job I do is invite them to my Company Page.

And that's a really good way of, quite quickly, building up your page followers. So don't let that number still be sitting at 250 at the end of the month, [00:28:00] because you lose it. If you haven't used the numbers or used the invites during the month it will just return to 250 at the beginning. So that's my advice. Always use the full allocation of follower invites every month.

Michelle J Raymond: That is brilliant advice and a really quick way to grow a brand new Page. That's why I love those invite credits using those filters so that they're targeted. It's a big ditto from me, no surprises on that one. And a bonus tip, you also get 30 invite credits if you're an employee that you can invite people to come and follow your Company Page too. So help your team out. The more everyone plays together nicely, the better the results are for the whole business, which is only upside for people.

 For me, look, I am so proud of the second edition that we've put out. I'm just putting that out there again. There's a reason that you and I have put so much time and effort and a little less Friday afternoon, gin and tonic and cosmopolitans.

Lynnaire Johnston: I've noticed that. It's a dereliction, if you ask me the ceasing of [00:29:00] Friday afternoon, gins and tonic, I'm not at all happy.

Michelle J Raymond: I know this is the whole thing when I realise, Oh, I'd love to get this updated before I speak in Social Media Marketing World next year. So how about I just crash tackle Lynnaire, like she did the first time around. Oh, by the way, I want to update this in about the next six weeks cause you know, I'm a bit of a narcissist and want to release the book on my birthday again. Cause you know, it's a tradition now.

I'm having a book launch party with thanks to our friend Gillian Whitney. So I'll take that one. Ask someone in Vegas to throw a good party.

Lynnaire Johnston: Yeah, definitely. Be there.

Michelle J Raymond: Exactly. For those of you who have enjoyed this podcast and want to stay up to date with all the latest info on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Company Pages. Do make sure that you go and give Lynnaire a follow, reach out and connect and let her know that you listened to the podcast and the value that you took away. It always helps us to keep going as creators. We appreciate listeners reaching out and saying, Hey, it's me. I enjoyed it and I got value.

So, [00:30:00] Lynnaire thank you for coming back on the show. I appreciate you. Thank you for saying yes. Just to get this done so quickly. I appreciate it. And I can't wait for the second edition to go out into more hands to help people get more out of Company Pages going into 2024 and beyond.

Lynnaire Johnston: Thank you for being such a great collaborative partner on this, Michelle.

It's always a pleasure to work with you. And so it's been a lot of fun. Not quite so much gin, but a lot of fun. And thanks for having me on today. And I'll see you at the party.

Michelle J Raymond: Indeed you will. Cheers, everyone.