Using LinkedIn for Business and Marketing 2024 with Michelle J Raymond

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth

Michelle J Raymond: Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and it is that time of year, folks, where we do the year in review, but more importantly, how do you use LinkedIn for business and for marketing going into 2024? So congratulations to LinkedIn. They reached 1 billion members this year, quite the milestone for a social media channel that's been around for around 20 years.

So it's not the fast growing quick pace of TikTok, but it's the slow and steady and I think it wins the race when it comes to B2B.

So 1 billion members. Upside, lots of decision makers, lots of businesses, lots of people active on the platform. Downside, things are starting to get a little bit crowded. So if you're seeing your numbers go down the toilet at the moment, don't worry. We're all in the same boat and that's life. That's also not your excuse to give up.

It's not your excuse to go, Oh, it's LinkedIn's fault. I can't do anything. This episode today is going to show you what [00:01:00] I'll be doing, what I'll be doing with my clients and how you can do it too, if you want to grow your business on LinkedIn in 2024. The other thing that we're up against is we're in a declining online trust kind of world.

What does that mean? Pretty much the content that brands put out our consumers no longer believe as much as what they believe, authentic content, real content coming from individuals. And I think that's going to be a monumental shift on the platform. So if you are running a business, you are the CEO of a business and you don't have your teams active on the platform, guess what? You snooze, you lose your competitors are going to start owning the space. And, it's really hard to catch up. I work with clients all the time and they come to me and they reach out and they finally made that decision because all of a sudden they see their competitors having a lot of success.

Now I'm begging you, pleading with you, [00:02:00] do not let your competitors get such a big headstart. It is so hard to catch up, but the things I'm going to show you in this episode will certainly shortcut that , but it's still going to take some time. Now, what have the other things that are going on? There is so much, negative doom and gloom going on around the world.

Unfortunately, we've got wars, we've got inflation, there's lots of reasons that we could, wipe our hands and give up. But fortune is going to come to those who knuckle down, keep hustling and work out how can we leverage the number one trusted B2B platform to win more opportunities. So I'm excited for 2024, despite all of this stuff that's going on. And I hope that you guys are as well.

Let's look at LinkedIn 2023. What did they do? What have we seen LinkedIn in 2023? First off, shout out to Kevin Turner, who has recorded over [00:03:00] 160 changes to LinkedIn. 160. Can you believe that? That is just like mind blowing that they have invested that much into bringing us new features.

Now they've also done a few head scratch things and taken away some features. Rest in peace, the pinned comment. I think that was the best new feature that came through and then they took it away. But LinkedIn certainly have not been sitting back and just doing nothing.

Of course, we've got the rise of AI. Now, I don't know whether you're on team AI or team, what is going on or teams keep that stuff away from me. Regardless of which team you sit on, the fact is this platform is going to start to see more and more features with that are AI inspired, I'd like to call them. Now, there are people that are taking this to the nth degree, and they are now automating comments, automating posts, automating connections.[00:04:00] And it makes me want to rock in a corner. That is not the way to grow your business in 2023.

I personally love AI. I love the way that I can workshop ideas. I love the way that it can refine my work. I love the way that it can save time on meaningless tasks. Nobody needs to invest time in doing things that can be easily automated. But one thing that can't be automated is relationships. So if you are a business owner and you see those people reach out to you on LinkedIn and they promise the world, like even I look at it and go. Wow, that looks pretty amazing.

Wouldn't I love to just sit back and do no work and have all of this success and results? Duh, who wouldn't want that? The problem is it's just fake. There is no other words for it. What ends up happening is yes, the systems work really well. And I do wish [00:05:00] some of the features were over on LinkedIn, but you put your whole account at risk.

If you want to know more about this, shout out to my friend, Daniel Hall in this episode. He has been doing so much work to educate people on what happens when you log into these plugins, you sign over your account details and all of a sudden they have access to your account. And I've even seen this week examples where these tools are commenting on someone's behalf without them even knowing. How risky is that?

How to destroy your brand in the blink of an eye, like it is craziness. So people, any listeners that are listening to this podcast, please do not go down that path. The risk is too great to your reputation, your brand and you'll miss out on opportunities. Now with the 160 features. Let's look at LinkedIn Company page and know I'm not gonna go through all of those. Don't be [00:06:00] crazy.

What I'm gonna do is tell you what my favorite ones were and what ones I think you should keep an eye out for. So when it comes to company pages, shout out to all my friends in the LinkedIn Company Pages team that I get to have conversations with in the background. You guys have done an amazing job the way you have overhauled the layout for page admins to be able to go in and easily find where things are. That for me is probably hands down the best thing that has happened this year for pages. Now, for some of you might be thinking, it's not very glamorous or very flash, but for page admins, just the simple fact of having everything in one left hand menu that is logical, easy to find, and you can save time. Page admins are often juggling so many different jobs. And for me, I just look at it and go, this is brilliant. So I love that. We also saw one of the things that when I wrote Business Gold which is the world's [00:07:00] first and only book on company pages.

The first edition, when we wrote that, we wished that we'd be able to send direct messages through LinkedIn. So not having to send our LinkedIn community to click a button to go to a website and then have to fill out more forms that way. Being able to directly communicate on LinkedIn was something that I dreamt about.

Now it's arrived and I can't say that it's really lived up to the dream that I had. It's not that the feature doesn't work. It absolutely does. But what I'd have to say is LinkedIn don't do a great job of telling people that these features exist. So when you only see a tiny little icon up in a corner, are you as a LinkedIn user going to go clicking on things just to see what they do?

And this is similar to the bell feature. Another one that I think is amazing. So if you go to somebody's company page, or LinkedIn profile up in the top right hand corner underneath [00:08:00] the banner is a tiny little bell. Like it is so small, but if you click that, you get notified of all of that page's posts or all of that person's posts.

And I really highly encourage listeners to do that, to keep a track of your top 20, like the VIPs that are in your community. Because these days the feed is so competitive. We know that page posts aren't really showing up there anymore. I think we're starting to see the rise of the boost function on LinkedIn. I think you'll see them pushing that some more. Ringing the bell on a page that you want to follow or a person that you want to follow is your way around it. Company pages, I think they get five stars for this year for the amount of effort that they've put in the new features that have come through and I think overall pages are better for it. Rest in peace, page posts showing in the feed. That's where I give two thumbs down for that one. That's something that I know a lot of page admins are struggling with. They're trying all the [00:09:00] tricks. What do we do? And if you stick around to the end of this episode, I'm going to share a few tips on what I think that company pages should be doing and also for individuals and employees, what can you be doing as well to get more out of your time on LinkedIn?

How are you going to attract those opportunities? How are you going to create demand and how are you going to win more sales? You all know I'm a salesperson at heart. I do this because I want people to grow their businesses. So 160 new features, so many that we have talked about. If you go back to a previous episode with my friend in the UK, Sarah Clay, and we discussed what's working and not working on LinkedIn and we just did that not that long ago. But that's a place that I think people should start, but with all of these new bells and whistles, the thing that I'm begging you listeners, do not get hung up on worrying about all the new fancy bells and whistles. I want you to [00:10:00] remain focused on building your community. And I'll share why that's even more powerful going into 2024. If you want to grow your business.

 What else is happening on LinkedIn or off LinkedIn that I think is having a big impact that you need to be mindful of if you want to grow your business in 2024. There's a huge shift in the generation of B2B buyers, and now two thirds of them are Gen Z and millennials. Can you believe that? Two thirds. And we know that number is reflected on LinkedIn with the platform being roughly 65 percent of this generation . So what does that mean for our businesses, Gen Z and millennials, they look at buying in a completely different way to previous generations. And I actually really love what they stand for. They don't suffer fools and I think what they're looking for is people that align more with their values. They love self service. [00:11:00] So what you'll find is they've done a lot of their research and the stats are 50 to 70%, depending who you read.

But they do a lot of research before they reach out to sales. Now, if you don't think this is true, let me share my own experience in sales. So I spent 20 years in B2B sales. Back in the olden days when I was just a wee little sales rep, all the power was with me.

So if clients wanted something, they came to me. I was the keeper of the knowledge, keeper of answers. And with that it meant that the power was with me and the buyer was almost at my mercy. Fast forward 20 years. And I saw this in my own role , when people in the B2B space, these younger buyers were reaching out, they already knew what they want. They wanted to know about logistics, like how much is this? When can I have it? Maybe a few technical documents. They'd already done their [00:12:00] research. They roughly knew price points. Because they have the world at their fingertips with Google and all the tools that are included and AI is just going to take that to the next level.

 As a business, are you digitally ready to deal with these change in buyers? So going out and doing customer visits, old school things like I was always measured on these types of things. They don't go away, but if you don't have a digital strategy that aligns and shows the kind of business that you are on LinkedIn, then you are going to get left behind again.

And people think, Oh, Michelle, is it really like that? And I don't want to be doom and gloom. I want you to look at this as this is a massive opportunity for your business to get out on LinkedIn, have your employees active, your company page active, bring them together and really stand out. So this generation can think of nobody but your business because you've planted those seeds you've been [00:13:00] watering it with consistent content and you are ready when they are ready to buy. And that's the important thing that we need to keep in mind. Old school thinking of, it's just bragging on LinkedIn. I don't want to be salesy, I'm scared of it. There's lots of things going on that now you need to embrace as a business. If you, don't want to get left behind and have other people take your opportunities. And these are the things that I've been thinking about a lot.

Now with this generation as well, brand values are going to be even more important and you are going to shine that in your content. Not just because it's world such and such a day, but because your company lives those values. If you want to know more about the impact of brand values and generating a return on that investment, what actual impact it has on the numbers. Then there's an episode I did with Melissa Packham on brand values specifically and how we can utilise [00:14:00] that on LinkedIn, but I think it's just a really fabulous resource.

 If we think about the buyers change, the world has changed, the platform has changed, then it is completely obvious that we need to change with it, those that take the methods that they've done from 2021, 2022, 2023 into 2024, I think you're going to fall behind.

If I wanted to set my business up for success, which I'm absolutely doing, the thing that I encourage everybody to do right now is take this last week or so of downtime or the first few weeks into the new year it's time to do an audit. It's time to do some planning. Now, everybody that has been listening to me for some time knows that these two words aren't exactly my two favorite words. I love to fly by the seat of my pants. I love to wake up and think, what will I do today? But when you have big goals and you want big [00:15:00] achievements, they don't just happen by magic.

And so doing this audit, going and having a look, when was the last time you checked out your company page? Does it really reflect you if you look at the banner, you look at the headlines and of course the about section. Now I've been through Operation Rebrand this year for B2B Growth Co for my company.

And I've got to tell you, I was absolutely rocking in a corner going, wow, there are so many things that didn't reflect who I was, who my business was and where I wanted to go. And when it's not clear for me and I know the business inside out, it means that it's not clear to my potential audience as well.

Are you missing out on opportunities because you haven't updated things? Now I found that I dropped some services. I added some new services. I had new target audiences. I had new business name. I had everything new with all of my new rebrand with [00:16:00] the colours, logos, these kinds of things and that was pretty drastic. But what I noticed with my clients is you all grow and change over time and things drift and that's okay, but just make sure you go back and analyse. Have I made sure that my company pages kept up with this?

If we come across onto personal profiles, I often find they're the ones that we know the importance of LinkedIn profiles. They're your mini personal website. They are your business card. They are the thing that people will come to check out to see if you're the real deal and old school talking in third person LinkedIn profiles are out. If you haven't updated yours in the last two to three years at the most, it's time to go back and have a look. Now for your employees a lot of employees are sitting there going Michelle, why bother doing this? I've got a job. I'm not looking for a new job. I don't need to [00:17:00] update my LinkedIn profile. I'm not in sales, so it's not my job to even do that. Why should I bother? I'll tell you why as business owners, the magic of creating LinkedIn Dream Teams comes from having as many people as possible, active,social selling on LinkedIn.

 This is going to come that all people are somewhere along a spectrum. Some people will never want to be active on the platform. Some people are your superstars. And there are people everywhere in between. So it's a matter of meeting people where they're at and I've seen some people that when I started working with a company 12, 18 months ago, they were at the beginning of that spectrum where they did not want to be active on LinkedIn could think of nothing worse.

Fast forward as time as we've built the brand, they now see the value of everybody working together. They didn't want to be left out and they could see how by working as a team, they had much bigger impacts [00:18:00] and who doesn't want to be, part of a team that's winning. This is why I do what I do because I want your business to win.

 One of the things that I want you to have a look at, so you're auditing your company page, your LinkedIn profiles. I want you to also audit your competitors. I want you to make sure that your branding alignment is also done, not just on LinkedIn, but aligned in all the places that your brand shows up.

Take some time out and just make sure that everything is in alignment. Do you have the best offers for your audience that you want to work with? Now, I did a podcast episode with Wanita Z on brand strategy assessments. So if you've never done one before, it's a really cool episode to go back to.

Shout out to my LinkedIn bestie, Michelle Griffin. We did a whole episode on LinkedIn branding tactics, which is about how do you bring your company page and your personal profiles into alignment with your brands. Angela Tsai, we did one on [00:19:00] having offers that sell. So if you're not sure whether your offers are right, or they're a little bit off and go back to these episodes.

When it comes to company pages, the other person that I have to do a shout out to is Lynnaire Johnston, who is the co author of Business Gold, which is the world's only book on LinkedIn company pages, and it's just been updated in November, 2023. So if you haven't got your copy yet, go and grab that it steps you through this whole process.

And we also did an episode or two, I think this year where we talk about what we would do with company pages. There's another special episode that I did, and it really stood out to me was with Professor Jenni Romaniuk and this was about building distinctive brand assets. This episode for me, I was scribbling things when I went back and had a look at the actual episode and I was scribbling things down because I think now when we want to stand out in the platform and we want to protect our brand so we don't end up [00:20:00] looking like everybody else. Distinctive brand assets are where they are. She has written a book on this, which you could go and check out., For all of these episodes, I'm going to list them in the show notes so that you can go and check them out because honestly all of these people have taught me so much and I didn't realise it until I sat down to record this episode. And I went, wow, these guests have really delivered so much value.

When we wrote The LinkedIn Branding Book, we actually devised the Brand Squared System and the Brand Squared System is comprised of four parts and the very first part of that system was mindset. And that's something that I want to talk about right now.

It is so critical going into 2024, if you want to grow your business and you want to use LinkedIn for marketing, you need to get your mindset in the right place. I would be a very rich person [00:21:00] if I took one dollar from every person this year who owns and runs a business that said to me, Michelle, I don't want to be salesy.

Newsflash sales is the lifeblood of your business without it you don't have a business. You have a hobby. Now I understand that not everybody loves selling as much as what I do, but having a powerful context for selling is going to be critical going into the new year. Now you might not be selling products and services. I work with some clients who they're selling an idea. They work to save the planet. That is an idea that you need the whole community on board so that you can get the whole of industry on board so that they can achieve big things for the environment.

So for those of you going, I don't sell a product or a service it might be an idea or an outcome that you're trying to achieve. Either way. Powerful context and mindset for [00:22:00] selling is so important. Couple of my friends that came on the podcast over the last few months have absolutely nailed this. So first shout out to Niraj Kapur. He speaks about his context for selling, which is being of service and there is nothing being salesy about what he does and how he goes about this approach. And he specifically talks about how he changed from one to the other on LinkedIn and it's a really cool episode. So go back. If you're one of those people that says. I don't want to be salesy that episode is for you.

 My other friend who loves sales as much as what I do is Laura Khalil. And we talked about cold outreach on LinkedIn. For those of you who think automation tools and spamming people at a million miles an hour is the answer, then please, this is a must listen or watch episode for you. We talked about the right way to do things. We [00:23:00] talked about how do you generate conversations with people on the platform without doing those underhanded or creepy kind of sales tactics. So both great episodes, both great people. I love them both.

For me, my context for selling. Which is what I'm doing every week on LinkedIn I show up is for problem solving and helping people. The more people that I can find that are having problems growing their business on LinkedIn, the more people that I can help. So whether it's employees or the leadership team, the more I can coach them and create their LinkedIn Dream Team, the happier I am and the sales take care of themselves. Now, there are processes that you can follow, but having your mindset in the right place is step number one.

Let's move on to what else I think is going to be so important when it comes into next year. And what that is going to be is collaboration is key. Trying to do everything by yourself, whether you're a [00:24:00] company or a solopreneur, I'm talking to all of you trying to get everything done by yourself up against a crowded platform I don't think it's going to work on LinkedIn in 2024. Those businesses that will stand out, will collaborate, whether it's with other people in the industry, maybe it's your supply partners, maybe it's industry bodies, maybe it's other experts that have complimentary services, but it is really time to start working together.

The other way that I absolutely love seeing businesses do, and when they do it well, it's just priceless. And the return on that investment. Is, it just bucks the trend of things going down ways is, getting your employees, it doesn't matter which department, company brands and personal brands working together. It's not always easy because let's be clear. If I'm not paid to do it and I'm really busy, am I going to help out another team? You all [00:25:00] work for the same company. The more that you work together, the more opportunities you win. It becomes like this flywheel . The more sales means that there's more investments in the business. The more investments means that you stand out more in the crowd and you know, you'll start leading your industry and that leads to more sales. And then happier people, and then more people want to work for you, you attract the best of the best.

And so you can see that there's nothing but upside when it comes to this kind of stuff. When I was talking about creating LinkedIn Dream Teams, which is what I love doing, that's what I'm going to be doing in 2024 is working with businesses collaborations. The next evolution beyond that is also building communities.

 That might be your own paid community. It might be free communities. It could be a branded community that you have for your business and your products and services, depending how big you are and where you fit on that scale. Now, two episodes you [00:26:00] absolutely will love because I love both of these guys as well.

I seem to be saying that a lot in this episode. But Joe Glover and what he's created with The Marketing Meetup is mind blowing .How an introvert created, a global community that is thriving and built on good people. And, I just think it's one of my favorite episodes to listen to him talk about how he overcome what he was going through personally created something, a networking event that he would want to attend. And it's amazing how many people have jumped on board. And also to John Esperian, a friend of the show who went from paid consultant out into his own paid community, and it's just been so cool to watch how he's done that. And he shared lots of the lessons that he wished he'd known going back before he started. And so if you're considering growing your business by a paid community and give that episode a listen as well,

 [00:27:00] Probably you're all sitting there thinking, sure, Michelle, this is all great community collaboration, getting everyone worked together, but what's the best form of content that's going to work in 2024, what should we be doing?

Content going into 2024. I know you want me to say, Oh, it will be polls. It will be images. It will be short form video. I'm going to tell you just push all of that aside because I don't know what you enjoy. The content that you enjoy is the content you will do consistently. It's the content you'll do persistently and that for me is more important than anything else. I have just seen so many people jump on board some of these, you know, latest crazes and they burn out very quickly because it's not something that they actually enjoy. So I want you to do things that you enjoy first and foremost , the same applies with your employees. They need to learn how to crawl before they can run. So don't go trying to get people in front [00:28:00] of video cameras if they're not comfortable. Let them start, maybe it's just text. Maybe they like to reshare posts, meet them where they're at and don't force them.

If you want to stand out with your marketing on LinkedIn in 2024, you have to get creative. Creative doesn't mean you need to have huge budgets, but you have to start doing things that your competitors aren't doing.

I love when I see people trying new things, I get it feels weird. I get you probably have to convince a manager that is standing there looking at you going, are you sure about this? That sounds a bit risky. Those people that are marketing leaders, you have to support your teams being creative and If creative is not your strong point, if you're sitting there thinking, yeah, that's all well and good for other teams, but it's not really our strong point, then go hard on thought leadership that is original and considered and valuable, so when the reader [00:29:00] reads it, they walk away better for having invested their time. I don't think many businesses realise that we're trading attention for other people's time. And I respect that so much. I would rather not put out content and put out something just for the sake of it to tick a box, because I said I'd post five days a week that was written just to tick that box and not to help give value to the people that read my content or watch it.

And so thought leadership is not the same as posting content. So it's not your everyday posts and maybe it's not suitable for everybody in the business. And it's different to subject matter expertise. And if you want to know about all of this in more detail, then there's a really spicy conversation that I had with my friend, Ashley Faus on thought leadership.

I think that says everything that I would want to say about thought leadership. I know it's a word gets thrown around so much on LinkedIn. That's the problem. People tend to jump on [00:30:00] words like personal branding and thought leadership and demand generation and they become cliches. But there's actually business goals and business drivers behind them we need to be mindful of . We also want to create content that's values based. I want to see what it's like to work at your workplace. What do you stand for? It's all well and good to say that you're amazing, but people will pick that up and they will pick it up, whether you're just doing it to tick a box or whether you genuinely live those values in your business.

If I was to think about what kind of content works really well with that behind the scenes content speaks volumes, candid photo shots. So just grab a phone, take a photo of people in action. They always perform really well, especially on company pages. And I think we'll continue to see photos of people in action on LinkedIn do really well going into the New year.

I think part of that is too, because we're sick of the generative [00:31:00] AI posts that are coming through that all sound same. Don't stop me on collaborative articles. I've spoken about those enough on The LinkedIn Branding Show about how I think they're just distracting. So consistent and persistent, what have you put in place to make sure that you can create good content consistently?

And I think the scheduled posts feature on LinkedIn is a really great new feature that came this year. I know it's got a little bit further to go. I'd love to be able to edit those scheduled posts. I think that's the one downfall that prevents people from using it, but you can really batch create content and help your employees to do the same.

 It takes far less time to create content if you sit down and do it all at once. Now, of course, I'm going to shout out to a few episodes, which absolutely have helped me to up my content creation game this year. And those people shout out Cher Jones. We talked about how you can help [00:32:00] employees to build personal brands.

Jess Cook inspired by Taylor Swift. How do you put sparkle in your content? How do you create moments of surprise and delight? I absolutely love that. Of course, I just mentioned Ashley Faus. We get a little spicy about thought leadership. My friend, Travis Tyler, if you haven't seen him dress up in his panda suit he works for a company called PandaDoc. This is not a paid sponsorship. He's just a friend. But we talked about the power of edutainment. How can you combine educating people and doing fun stuff? A really great episode. And again, it's not something that needs to be really expensive. It's not something that you need huge production. It's a really cool way to learn how can I bring this in to the content that I'm already doing.

And I also talked with Kelsey Kloss about removing the buzzwords and having content that's got clarity. And I think that's a really important episode [00:33:00] because as businesses, we tend to get swept up in our own language, our own industry language and nobody's got time for that. Make social content and when I talk about creativity, there's an episode that I very last episode that I have done with a guest in 2023 was with Laura Erdem. And we talked about not doing boring content at events, the typical one with everybody standing in front of a stand. Sure. Get that one over and done with, but she gives us lots of other cool ways that we can do it again without breaking the bank.

If you're listening to this episode, you do not have any excuses that you don't have big budgets. If your budget has been reduced, you don't have big creative teams. This is not an excuse for not doing some of these things. And all of those people have certainly helped give so many ideas.

If you've got so much content and so many ideas managing how you keep a track of all of that, so repurposing I think is a good thing for [00:34:00] businesses going into 2024. Make sure you're tracking the best content that you've got. Now, when I say do that kind of stuff, then from that, I want you to reach out and follow Stephen G Pope and Irit Levi, who I will make sure that these episodes are also tagged in the show notes, but they have some really great systems they can help you with tracking contents.

What kind of content would I be doing in 2024 and encouraging you as listeners to go into some more, I would be encouraging go hard and double down on LinkedIn events, such as LinkedIn live and also LinkedIn audio rooms. I think I'd add one more. I think LinkedIn newsletters tie in nicely to having that community vibe and generating a community around your content.

Why am I picking these things? The feed's really competitive. If you post on the feed, the numbers are, significantly lower than what they have been historically [00:35:00] shrug. That's how things are .LinkedIn lives and audios. You can invite per person up to 1000 people per week. So if you plan your events and do your work you can send out those event invites and my plea to you is make sure that they are targeted. Make sure that if you have an event, you think that the person that you're inviting will get value out of it. And when you create these valuable events, then it just creates another space for you to show up authentically, to interact with your community and do things that most people still aren't embracing.

I am not seeing enough B2B companies embracing either of these. And you go and pay these companies thousands of dollars to do customer research, and you could hold a LinkedIn audio room and literally have your audience, whether it's your personal audience or your company's page audience. You can ask them the questions for free and get answers in real time.

Now, [00:36:00] again, I'm always hoping that there's things like being able to record LinkedIn audio events come through. We haven't seen it yet, but I'm very confident that we'll see that going into 2024. When we're talking LinkedIn lives. I have to talk Gillian Whitney. I absolutely love and adore Gillian who is a friend of the show.

And we talked about how you can get confidence on camera for your employees. She's got a great book that she's just launched about that. And also Tanya Smith. We came at it from a couple of different angles, but go back and have a listen to those.

Okay. So what else would I be doing in 2024? I would also be making sure that you're proactive. If you are sitting there scrolling the feed and waiting to see your ideal opportunities pop up by magic unless you get a nice wand with brand new batteries going into 2024 it's not going to work. It's time to be proactive. So what I mean by that, sending direct messages, [00:37:00] finding people's posts to comment on, using the search bar, following other company pages, if you're a company page admin, making sure that you're actively commenting as a company page as well.

So doing these things rather than relying on a feed, it's not designed to show up your ideal opportunities for business growth it is designed to keep you distracted, so you watch more content and more ads. That is LinkedIn's job. Keep you on the platform so that they can show you more ads, not, Hey, come onto LinkedIn so that you can win more business just by scrolling the feed.

It is absolutely the place where people come to do business, but LinkedIn's job is to keep you distracted from that. So it's our job to stay on track. The other thing that I would say as, we're wrapping this up shortly is if you don't invest in your team and you assume that everybody knows what they should be doing, they're all across 160 features that have launched [00:38:00] this year, plus all the existing ones, like when I think about that, I'm lucky to keep up with them. I'm just so lucky I'm surrounded by a really great community of other LinkedIn trainers, where we support each other and share information so that we can give you the listeners, the best information and most up to date information.

If you think your employees are invested this much into it, absolutely they aren't. And if they are, you have a bigger problem .Because that is not where their time should be focused. So I want you to invest in their success. I want you to have teams working together, LinkedIn success and LinkedIn marketing does not come from any one person or any one team. You have to bring everyone together and it starts with those people from the top.

And if you're thinking, Oh, but Michelle, the cost of training with you is too much. Have a think about what's the cost of missing out on one opportunity of working with your business. What's the cost when you [00:39:00] look at the average lifetime value of a customer? Think about that and think about if that customer goes to your competitor and you lose that business.

It is so hard to win things like that back these days that again, you've got to work harder and harder to bring that back and try and make up for that lost opportunity and as, budgets are constrained all around the place because of high interest rates and cost of living and inflation, I'm sure that's a global phenomenon going on right now. You have to work around that.

So being top of mind. Working together as a team. Honestly, even with small teams, the opportunity is there to make you appear much bigger just because you're the ones that are putting in the effort. So if you don't know how to do this, reach out to me. This podcast is a taste of what I do with my actual clients when we're coming up with game plans to get the best out of your team, working together.

And, when I think about examples on LinkedIn of people that do this really [00:40:00] well and companies that do this really well Olga, Andrienko, who is heading up the marketing team over at Semrush, that team does such a great job in building personal brands of employees, social selling, getting the company page involved.

It's a really great example and one of the ones that we mentioned in Business Gold. So if you're looking for other good examples of companies that do this, grab a copy of Business Gold, and we've got a whole chapter dedicated to company pages and teams that are doing this really well.

I not only spoke with Olga, I also talked about employee advocacy with Andrew Seel. Employee advocacy is another one of those buzzwords that seems to get thrown around and people jump on LinkedIn. Getting your employees active on LinkedIn is not as easy as you think. So again, invest in your team, invest in your people. Employer branding so if you're having a talent crisis and you want the best people to work for your business, you can use LinkedIn to attract those people [00:41:00] and use your content to create a strong employer brand.

 The best person I know that talks about this all the time is James Ellis and his episode honestly made me laugh so much. That guy is on fire which is super duper cool.

 All of the things that we're talking about right now are about building B2B communities. It can be your internal community with your staff, your external community with your industry. And I don't want people to get so narrow focused on their ideal client. Imagine if everybody's ideal client is the CEO or the HR manager or the marketing manager. And there's a billion people on the platform, however, many of them are in sales and they're all chasing those decision makers.

Imagine what the experience is like for them. So start to spread your circle, build a bigger community. And that's where you're going to find the opportunities. So sometimes opportunities don't come from going straight and knocking in the front door. Sometimes it's about going in the [00:42:00] side door because you found someone else that's an employee, that's passionate about what you do, that you relate really well to, and you've invested in building relationships.

So relationship building in 2024, empowering your teams, getting your dream team created. Is how marketing will work. I've covered off the different types of content that I think will be most valuable. I've given you the tips to make sure you go back and do an audit and a strategy session before you even get started in 2024.

So that's, you know me for this episode. I know it's a bit longer than what I would normally do. But I think it's important. I think we need to invest time into setting ourselves up for success rather than getting to the end of 2024 and going, Oh, I didn't end up where I expected because I didn't have plans in place to get there.

And so from that perspective I'm going to wrap this up by saying thank you to[00:43:00] Lil, who is in the background, bringing these episodes to life every week, supporting me, helping us grow B2B Growth Co together. I couldn't do any of this stuff without you. I will tell everybody in the world at any chance that I get because I'm so grateful.

And I'm also excited for what I'm going to be building in 2024. So if you listen to this podcast. I would encourage you to come across and check out the YouTube channel, which is @LinkedInForB2BGrowth. If you're on YouTube watching this, then don't forget, then I've also got this over on the audio podcast, but for everybody, if you are listening or watching, please, my favorite thing that you can do for me is come across to connect with me on LinkedIn, reach out, tell me that you enjoyed this, that you got value. Don't forget. Of course, I love likes and comments. That's what makes these algorithms go around so that I can share it with more people and help more people grow their business in 2024.

I appreciate all of you that have listened. I hope that you have enjoyed this, but yeah, reach out and connect and don't [00:44:00] forget if you can stop for a moment, a five star rating. Or a recommendation is also what will make the world of difference to me. So I look forward to catching you all on the flip side. And if I can help with training your business, then please reach out. I have limited spaces in January that are opening up before I head to social media marketing world in 2024 in San Diego in February. So if you haven't got your tickets to that, then I'm going to put the link to that in the show notes as well. And if you're going make sure we're connected so that I can come and meet with people, 'cause that is the thing that I am very much looking forward to starting my new year with. So on that note, I wish you all the best and a prosperous 2024. Cheers.