Lessons

Lesson Info

What is Thought Leadership?

Thought Leaders are actually an individual or a company that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field. So an authority. A lot of people are runnin' around saying they're Thought Leaders, but you're an authority in your field and you're an expert. So, if you're saying like, "Man, I just want to get really get into "this Thought Leadership game," "Do you have an authority in that area and are you an expert?" Is what you ask yourself, because it's actually OK to not be one. There are so many Thought Leaders on this platform that you don't necessarily need to be one and you can start sharing your, sharing their content and it works just as well, right? So, if you're a Thought Leader think about this. Start with your profile, optimize your profile. You have all that space in your summary of all that media. Leverage articles, so leverage other people's articles, be able to share that piece. Daily posts, make sure that you're out there and you're doing daily posts of either redist...

ributing content or you're personally posting on LinkedIn, that is a really great way. 'Cause some of you actually do have authentic expertise. And if you're the authority and you're also an expert, then you want to make sure that you're active daily on here and you're sharing your articles and a lot of your own content. You want to join groups and you want to be active in those groups. So, you want to be the person who's actually striking up conversations, asking really good like-- You want to start being very active and making sure that other people are connecting with you on those groups. You want to nurture your contacts. So you want to make sure that you're sending people messages like we just mentioned. You want to make sure that you're also writing on their content or you want to make sure that you're sharing their content, so that's a big one for nurturing. And then finally, You are writing individual, unique long-form content and articles. So, in this case, I wrote this article called "Why cold calling is dead and Jeff Weiner is my hero," it kinda went crazy. You can actually go write articles here right within the feed. They make it very easy for you. You can add data, you can start writing, and you can add media to these posts. They make it really easy for this long-form content. And then they put all of your articles in one spot. So, under the "Articles" section, you have everything that you've ever written, and if you actually write or click on one of these articles they give you all the data of what happens and how people engage with this article. So if you click on the stats it shows you, here are the 42,000 people that viewed it, here's all the information about them. They were 153 people from LinkedIn. They give you all of the information about how far it went and making sure that the right people are reading it. So if I'm looking for more executive leaders to start engaging with, I get to see that they are absolutely reading my articles and making sure that they're engaging with that in the right way, and that I have the right people that are engaging with it. And here's the stats on it. Long-form content wins. 51,788 ... 51,788 ... in terms of the word content and then how people engage with it. The how to and the lists perform the best, so this is how you do something. These are the five things that you need to do in this area. Those always perform the best on the site. Titles between 40 and 49 characters perform the best. So if you're looking to try and figure out, "What's a really compelling title? "How do I get that, usually 40 to 49 characters?" That's definitely something you want to rule-of-thumb there. Visual posts perform the best. Eight images is the key number. Eight. Eight images within your post. It gets the most engagement out of 57,000 total views on a piece of long-form content. And then you want to make sure they're original. You want to make sure on your original post that you write out, you're linking businesses that you're referring to, you're also tagging people, and then you're using the appropriate hashtags for that when you're starting to post original content. And that does, that picks it up. So if I hit "sales," "SDR," and "prospecting," and this is all about sales and prospecting, the four things I think somebody should do, I'm tagging the person who did it, I'm tagging the company it's referring to, and I'm using the appropriate hashtags that are relevant to the information. So compelling opening, provide value, tag companies, that's a big one, tag people, and then make sure that you're using the applicable hashtags. You're probably figuring out, like, where do I come up with this information? Like, where did I come up with that post? Someone sent me an email that I thought was a fantastic prospecting email. I got in my inbox and I'm like, "Man, this is thoughtful, this is great. "Let me break this down." This is a fantastic company called "Lessonly," And I'm like, "You know what? I'm gonna call this person out." See what I'm saying? Not only did I not, I didn't go with them, but what I did was, I went and took it and I used it as content. I said, "Here's what she did well, "Lessonly, you're doing a great job training your people," and they loved it! It went incredibly viral, OK? 26,000 people viewed that post. And here's-- LinkedIn, Indianapolis, Indiana is where Lessonly is. You guys starting to see how the content, like how the algorithm is working? Because when someone liked it there, or I liked it, or they shared it, or somebody commented on it, it just started to go out to their networks as well, and then this thing just grows and grows and grows and grows and all I did was say, "I love this email that I got. "Here are the reasons why I loved it." I tagged them, I used the applicable hashtags, and there I am at 26,000. And I only have 4,000 connections, by the way. I only have 4,000 connections on LinkedIn. Because it's not about 40,000 people that connect with me, it's about the right people, so their networks and who follows them. That's what you should be thinking about when you connect with people. Cool. So, here's some more examples of these original posts. And you're sittin' there going like, "Well, what's the best one?" I ask questions, I use gaps, because I only want them to see this. I only want them to see the best sales question of all time. "Would you like some help with that?" Best sales question of all time. 133 likes, 21 comments, 20,000 views. On this side, it's looking for good interview questions. So I'm asking for people's help. 16 likes, 58 comments. Everybody's sharing their best interview question with me. Every single person. It has 10,000 views! People love engaging with actual pictures in your comments using hashtags. So we have six comments down here, 4,000 people. And then they also like really ridiculous things. I have observations on the plane all the time, like, "Am I the only person that "drinks ginger ale on only airplanes, and I don't buy it?" Like, it's like buying a hotdog at a baseball game, but you don't keep hotdogs in your fridge. Maybe you do, but I usually don't. And people, for some reason, 32,000 and counting. That one is going, like it is unbelievable. And everybody's like, "Man, I don't drink ginger ale, "but I drink Bloody Mary mix with no alcohol." And I'm like, "Sodium, no fun?" Like, what is this? Right? We're weird people. And then also people that I wanna be strategic with. Partners that I wanna be strategic with, I usually share their content. Databox here, Drift over here. I like to share their content, especially if they're looking for someone to hire, I'll share it. I'll be like, "This is an amazing company! "You guys should check this out," and I tag them, OK? Let them know that I'm actually paying attention to what their business is doing. And then Native Video, this is massive. This is where we're gonna kind of round out our day here. I only have a few slides left. But Native Video is massive for us. They allow you now to add video in to your platform. Now, you can do it on your phone. You can actually go on your mobile device, go onto your LinkedIn profile, hit the video and be able to show a live video. If you guys, if we connect after this-- If y'all connect with me after this on LinkedIn, you'll see a video I made today about-- just being at this Creative Live session, the set, it's pretty cool. But you can literally now start going in and doing Native Video, whereas before, you had to link out to like a Wistia, you had to link out to a YouTube. So Native Video is also kind of a telling point of what's going to happen in the future. So, being able to do live videos is something that I predict is going to happen very soon. You can also do different types, so on the mobile site it looks different, because on the mobile site you're thinking about LinkedIn provides these contexts, like a professional context. So, no cat videos, right? So even though they're "purr-fect," they're not perfect for here. Perfect for: product demos, man-on-the-street interviews, industry event coverage, how-to videos. Those are really, your kind of, like, key areas where these are getting a lot of engagement. And I just pull it out, this was just a celebration thing I did at one of our conferences. Televisions in a sports bar effect, right? If people see movement, they see a screen, they're gonna look at it. You ever been there and you're trying to have a conversation with someone, but there's a freaking TV over your head? You're like, "Are you, hello? Like, I'm right here." It's a new consumer insight, so they're gonna give you new stats that you otherwise wouldn't have. It's like consumption. How long did people stay on the video? How long did they watch it? Who watched it? Where were they in the world? These are all new data points for you as a company and as a person. And then video is coming to business pages. It wasn't previously, for a very long time it hadn't been. DigitalMarketer has it right now, so we're just kinda beta testing it out. And it's been unbelievable to have it on the business page 'cause business content is very different than my personal content that I share. And then the last part is just kind of an example of some of this Native Video that I've used. Yep, me, cool shades, in a car. I was with someone, I was like, "You know what? Here's my friend Charles. "Him and I are sittin' in a car. I'm like, "What do you think about this sales thing?" He just said something great that I loved, And I'm like, "On! "Yeah, man, let's talk about this for a second." Posted it up, and literally people, it was like 9,000 people that just started to engage with it pretty quickly. And remember, I have 4,000 connections. This isn't like, I don't have a massive following. It's the people that engage with it and take it to new places. And then introducing Active Status. So anybody been on LinkedIn and see these green dots that are by people's profiles? Anybody trying to figure out what they are, or a way to use them? Active Status is where basically, the green dot is where it's telling you that somebody is available. It means that they're on their profile and they're available. The green dot with the white dot in the middle means they're on their mobile phone right now. So I don't know about you, but I have-- People have my cell phone number and still, like, send me messages on here. And I'm like, "What are you doing?" They're like, "I was just here. What are you doing tonight?" I'm like, "You have my phone number!" Or like, they write on my Instagram story, I'm like, "What are you--" People are having conversations where they are. They don't wanna switch around, alright? And they just wanna be able to do that. And same thing's happening on LinkedIn and we see it over and over again.