#8 Market Your Business with LinkedIn

Podcast- Market Your Business with LinkedIn
Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Andrew McCauley: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to podcast #8. This is
Andrew McCauley and I am looking forward to this podcast
on LinkedIn today and of course, I have the lovely Heather
Porter with me.

Hello, Heather.

Heather Porter: Hello, hello Andrew! Hi guys! Welcome back. I am very
excited about this as well because I have personal reasons
for this podcast. I really personally want to know about
LinkedIn and Andrew is an expert at this stuff. He is
amazing. Basically, with himself and our clients, he is able
to get profiles listed up to anywhere from #1 to #3 for
certain search terms. So, for example, if you type in say
„event manager‟ or „life coach‟, he has this great little knack
of getting people right up to the top and I am sure that‟s
just the tip of the iceberg of what we are going to learn
today. So, glad you joined us.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, yes, I am looking forward to it too. I do like LinkedIn
and I have got to say that so many people don‟t use it as
effectively as they should and I get a lot of work from
LinkedIn, a lot of people coming through and finding out
who I am and looking through my profile and that sort of
things and then contacting me, whether it‟s a speaking
opportunity or whether it‟s testing new programs that
somebody has created. So, I get a lot of work, a lot of
connections through LinkedIn that‟s really, really beneficial
and, as you said, it‟s really not that hard to rank well for
your industry or to be the expert in your industry. When
people do a search for you on your industry you want to
make sure you are the first person that comes up in that
search result because people like to deal with people that
are at the top of their game. So, if you can do that and it‟s
really not that hard – and we will talk about that sort of
stuff in this podcast – if you can do that sort of thing, then

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you will start seeing some traffic coming to your site and
hopefully the phone ringing for you as well.

Heather Porter: I love it, I love it. I think LinkedIn is sort of like the
sleeping giant in social media like Facebook and Twitter and
all those because time and time again people say “Isn‟t
LinkedIn a CV or resume site or isn‟t it just for
professionals?” or “I have my name in there but I don‟t use
it.”

So, I guess the first question is who is LinkedIn for?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, that‟s a good question. It‟s not going to suit every
single person but who it does suit is professional people
that are wanting to use social networks for business
purpose more so than just… Facebook has a lot of trivial
sort of stuff – what you did on the weekend or what you are
doing or sharing your photo or you favorite quotes and that
sort of thing. LinkedIn seems to be a lot more business
orientated. People say there is a lot of corporates on there
but there is also a lot of solerpreneurs or a lot of small
business owners who want to connect with some high-level
people and the great thing about LinkedIn is that it gives
you a chance to connect with some of those people in some
companies where you would have lots of what they call
gatekeepers. You want to get in contact with say the
Marketing Manager of a particular firm, LinkedIn lets you do
that without having to go through the old gatekeepers
when you used to try and ring somebody and their personal
assistant or their secretary would vet the call, so you
couldn‟t get through to them. So, LinkedIn is one of those
avenues where you can bypass those gatekeepers too.


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Heather Porter: Oh, really. Cool. So, would I be right to say that using
LinkedIn for your business and to further your career, that‟s
the best way to use it? So, think about it as a professional
space.

Andrew McCauley: Exactly, yeah. Totally spot on. That‟s exactly what it is. It
presents professional space. You won‟t find kinds on there.
You won‟t people just having all sorts of random opinions.
You will find more educated opinions and contact
information there as well.

Heather Porter: Okay. So, say you have your profile set up and I know
most people just has literally gone in, set one up, they have
checked a few things about themselves up there, maybe a
little bio, a couple of past work and perhaps even a photo
and past that they don‟t do much more. So, tell me a little
bit more about how you actually set up your profile for
success. What can you do to it?

Andrew McCauley: Well, one of the great things about LinkedIn which I really
like and not many other social sites do this is that it has a
profile checker where you can measure how much of the
profile you have completed and once you have got 100%,
then LinkedIn thinks you have done a really good job. You
don‟t have to be 100% to start with; you can start with just
a small amount of information like your name and when
you work but the LinkedIn checker that they have there is a
great start to keep an eye on so that you know exactly
what information you have yet to fill in or what information
you already have. Having said that, some of the things
that you want to consider when you are putting in the jobs
in your past history is that utilize the keywords – and
keywords have come up a lot in our podcasts because they
are so important in everything we do…


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Heather Porter: Actually, I am just going to stop you there. Let‟s talk
quickly about what a keyword is because I get that question
all the time. How would you describe what it is, Andrew?

Andrew McCauley: A keyword is one of the words that people would type into a
search engine if they were going to look for you. So, for
instance, if you are a brand strategist or you are someone
that was helping people develop their brand, what sort of
keywords would your clients use if they were going to look
for you. So, you may come up, you may have an idea of
what a brand strategist is what you really do but is that
what your clients type in because they don‟t even know
what a brand strategist is. So, keywords are the ones that
the clients are going to type in looking for you rather than
the ones that you think, sounds sexy, and really
impressive. Does it make sense?

Heather Porter: I love that. It does. So, first is brand strategist is
something like “how to improve my brand” or “what is a
brand” or “what is a business brand” and a lot of clients say
“Oh, but you can find me by using my name or my business
name” but really in reality how many people are actually
going to be your client if they already know your business
name or your name. I mean, they already know you, they
are already doing business with you. So, you want to use
keywords like you are saying.

Okay, cool.

Andrew McCauley: Exactly.


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Heather Porter: That explains it. So, back to setting up your profile. So,
you are saying choose keywords as part of your profile.
Where do you put those?

Andrew McCauley: Well, when you are setting up your profile, they will ask you
“Where do you currently work and what‟s your job role?”
Now, you may have a specific job role like brand strategist
for instance. You can use that term because that may be
important somewhere but there is nothing stopping you in
LinkedIn to also put in “helping people find their brand” or
whatever the keywords are that your clients look for. Put
that in your job title as well. So, make it sound like a
general sort of basic… whatever you are trying to say… the
words that make sense to the common person, put that in
your job profile as well and you will be surprised how you
start getting ranks for that sort of things because that‟s
what people are looking for.

Heather Porter: Now, when you say job profile, is that the little „About‟ click
that‟s right up at the top of your profile or is that actually
deeper down into your past experiences in jobs?

Andrew McCauley: Okay. In your profile there is a number of sections. There
is a summary section at the top and then there is a further
section which delves deeper into that particular part of it.
So, for instance, at the top you will see that there is a small
section which gives you an overall view of… if you land on
somebody‟s profile, you will see what they are… and then
further down if you scroll down the page there is a big grey
box, the big grey box is almost like the quick little
summary, the quick synopsis of what you do. And then if
you want to delve deeper into that person, you scroll down
past that summary which is more like a text document and
then you can see what sort of experience they have had
and you can look at that and see what connections they


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have got as far as that goes as well. Your LinkedIn profile
can keep extending as much as you like it to extend.

Heather Porter: Okay, okay. So, you use the keywords kind of everywhere
you can – in the summary and then in the jobs and in the
boxes, everywhere.

Andrew McCauley: Totally.

Heather Porter: Everywhere you can, okay.

Andrew McCauley: The more keywords you can have, the better. Now, you
can have a number of current jobs at the same time; you
don‟t have to just have one current job, you can have a
number of them. You can have past jobs and if you can put
your keywords in the past jobs, then that‟s even more
beneficial as well. So, what you can do is if you had a… the
only problem with the past job is you can‟t go back and
update it. So, you can‟t go back and fill or stuff your past
jobs with certain keywords. So, once you have clicked on
past or you have left that job, LinkedIn will say “Okay, you
left it, you can‟t change it now. That‟s what you did, that‟s
where you were at. No more changing on that one.” So, if
you are working somewhere and you are about to leave,
make sure that the role has a lot of keywords in it and then
you can click on the left leave button in LinkedIn and you
have those keywords in your past job as well.

Heather Porter: That alone is really interesting little tip because I actually
never knew that. So, that‟s a great… I think that‟s a really
good tip to think about across the board. If you are going
to make any big life changes, especially in your jobs or


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career or your business, to think about updating all your
different across the internet as a rule of thumb.

Andrew McCauley: Exactly, exactly.

Heather Porter: Okay.

Andrew McCauley: I am really just trying to keep on the profile for a second.
One of the other things that people don‟t change often is
the websites. You have got a space down the bottom on
your profile where you can link your website to your
LinkedIn profile and many people wills see that it will say
“website 1” or just “website”, I think, it is and they leave
that there without having any call to action. Now, if you
can be smart and you have got a call to action like “come
and visit” or “visit my free e-book” or get a free e-book or
free report, when you are editing your profile, type in the
words “free report” and that will automatically link to your
website. So, it‟s almost like a call to action rather than just
having the word “website” on your profile.

Heather Porter: So, you can actually change the words “website”, you can
change that.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It‟s in the dropdown called “custom”, I
think, it is and then you just change the words to whatever
words you want it to be and then you load it up and link to
your website. So, it‟s a pretty cool little trick to do.

Heather Porter: Wow! You know, that‟s a very good point. I think I know
exactly what you are talking about. Most people use that


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and they will just type in “My blog” or “My website”. Am I
right? But that‟s where you would actually…

Andrew McCauley: So, I am looking at somebody‟s profile right now and it says
“Company website”, it says “Blog” and it says “Facebook”.
So, they have got those ones connected like “Company
website” takes them to the company website. However,
they can change the words “Company website” and make it
a call to action like “Get my free download”. So, it‟s a
pretty simple trick but just not used effectively by many
people.

Heather Porter: Okay, I love that tip. Good. More and more please,
Andrew.

What else? So, as we are going to the profile I also want to
talk in terms of sort of chunks because I know at the top
you keep referring to the profile but then there is a lot of
other things that people can stack on. So, we are still up in
the profile, the top area that has your “who you are”. Is
that where we are?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, there is a „Home‟ tab. The next one of course is
your profile, that‟s what we are talking about right now.
The profile tab is where there is a range of different stuff
you can have and this is where you start really swooping up
your profile so that people can start finding you on the
search results.

Now, the search results, just let me touch on that because
there is a couple of interesting things with the LinkedIn
search results. On the top right hand side on the LinkedIn,
there is a search bar, you click into the search bar, you


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type whatever it is that you want but on the left of that,
there is a little dropdown and it sort of says “where do you
want to search” and there is a number of choices – you can
search for people. So, if I was to put in “Heather Porter”
or… if I was to put in actually… Let‟s say, Heather, you call
yourself “online architect” and I type in “Online architect”
and the little people sign was there, then I would find
everybody that has that term “online architect” inside their
profile. Now, if that‟s a term that you want to be found for,
then that‟s great because people are finding that particular
term in the search bar. Now, if you look at the dropdown
where it says “people”, there is a whole range of other
things that I can look at.

The next one is „updates‟, there is „jobs‟, there is
„companies‟, there is „answers‟, „inbox‟ and „groups‟. Now,
what would you change? If I was to go and type in “online
architect” and then do little dropdown box that said
“updates”, what I would do is I would end up… I wouldn‟t
be finding you or your profile but I would be finding all of
the updates where somebody mentioned “Online architect”.
Does it makes sense?

Heather Porter: Wow! It does. You know how you search for terms, you
put that little brackets, little quotes on either ends. Does
that work the same in LinkedIn?

Andrew McCauley: Yes, it does. Exactly. So, if you are looking for jobs,
Heather, as an online architect, you could type in “online
architect” and make sure that you got the „jobs‟ dropdown
checked and you would find all the jobs that are available
for online architects.


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Heather Porter: Okay, okay. And as we are having this conversation, you
know what I am loving, I have to practice what I preach
because that‟s just cute little word I came up with when I
was meeting with some clients, that‟s how they described
me but let‟s face it, people don‟t know what that is and they
are not going to search on it. So, as soon as this podcast is
done, I am going to be changing that.

Andrew McCauley: It‟s a good example of what we were talking about before
with brand strategist, although I think it‟s fine and it‟s cool
and it‟s chic but if nobody‟s looking for it, then there is no
real reason to have it as part of your search strategy.

Heather Porter: Exactly, exactly.

Okay, good. I love this whole thing of using the search.
So, tell me a little bit more about the search bar without
going too far off the topic of the profile still but when you
are searching in there, what are some tips or techniques
that you can use to, I guess, find people that you might
want to do business with or potential clients?

Andrew McCauley: You can really narrow it down. If you use the advanced
search, you can really narrow it down to industries, you can
check what sort of industries you are looking for.

Let‟s say you are looking for somebody in social media, for
instance, and you only wanted somebody in social media
who is in the airline or the aviation industry. Now, it‟s a
pretty narrow field but you may be looking for someone like
that. So, you can go and check the industry, whichever
industry you are looking for that person in. So, it really


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narrows it down and gives you some great narrow targeted
search results too.


Andrew McCauley: You can go and search groups – we will talk about groups in
a few minutes – and you can also search your relationship
with those people. So, if you wanted to have – and this is
something that we should touch on before we I get too
much deeper into it – there is „connections‟ in LinkedIn; the
first-degree connections are people that you know
personally and you have connected with each other and you
have agreed to accept each other‟s connection. A second-
degree connection is somebody that maybe… let‟s say, for
instance, Heather, that you have got a friend, let‟s say you
have got a friend who lives near you. I don‟t know that
friend but I know you and we are both connected by you;
so you are second degree connection.

Heather Porter: Okay, yeah.

Andrew McCauley: And then you have got third degree of connection which is
maybe that friend which we are talking about has another
friend who‟s in marketing, for instance, and although I don‟t
know that person, they are three degrees removed from
me, so they are a third-degree connection.

So, going back to the search – you can go and search for
people that are first-degree connection, second-degree
connections and someone like that as well.


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Heather Porter: And how do you do that because I am actually looking at
LinkedIn as well while we are speaking.

Andrew McCauley: Okay, cool.

Heather Porter: Where is the connection?

Andrew McCauley: On the right hand side, you will see the advanced tab in the
search.

Heather Porter: Yeah.

Andrew McCauley: Click on the „advanced‟ and you will see that those options
pop up there.

Heather Porter: Got it. Okay, okay.

Now, are we going to talk a little bit more about
connections later down in the podcast or…?

Andrew McCauley: We can talk about connections now if you want to talk
about connections or we can come and get it wrapped up
later if you want.

Heather Porter: I am sure it will come up in future but I guess I will just ask
my quick question right now. Is it true that with
connections, if you want to try connect with somebody


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that‟s removed from you, not your first connection, you
have to be introduced to them? Is that true?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, there is a safety mechanism for LinkedIn where
you can‟t just go and grow your base ridiculously quickly
without really knowing or making connection. Remember,
social media is all about building relationships with
everybody. It doesn‟t matter whether it‟s LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter or Google+ or any of those. There is a
requirement to build a relationship and that‟s why LinkedIn
is so cool because it makes you go out and introduce
yourself before they will accept you if you don‟t know them
personally.

Heather Porter: Love it. And that‟s such a good point because that makes
it right there, the level of seriousness and the level of, I
guess, integrity that you have to have to use this tool is
amazing. You really need to be yourself and have great
intentions when you want to connect with people, not just
to spam them.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally, yes.

Heather Porter: Love it.

Okay, good. So, anything else on that quick question of
connections before…?

Andrew McCauley: I think that‟s the main one. Your first level connections are
great. If you have got some people that you really want to
connect with but you don‟t know who they are, look for the
people that are connected to them that you know. That


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way you can just send the e-mail to a person you know and
say “Hey, I know you are connected to Mr. Smith on
LinkedIn. I would like an introduction. Would you mind just
giving me an introduction because I would really like to
meet that person?” So, using your list of people that you
have got on LinkedIn to make you introductions to the
people that are going to really ramp up your business.

Heather Porter: Very, very cool. And while we are on this topic of search as
well because now I am very excited, I am seeing this other
thing in there that says… under the search bar we can do
the dropdown arrow and it says “search answers”. Now, is
this searching what people are answering like their answers
to questions? What exactly is that?

Andrew McCauley: Well, you have opened up a Pandora‟s box. I got a whole
section on answers. If you are looking for answers, then we
can do that.

Heather Porter: No, let‟s cleanse the profile section because I am thinking
suddenly when I am seeing that, I am getting very excited
on the possibility, what that could become. So, we will
wait, we will cover that next.

So, take a step back into profile – just want to make sure
we finish this up here. What else in the profile when you
are setting up? You talked about keywords. Is there
anything about the photo that you consider about?

Andrew McCauley: Like any social media account or platform, you really want
to make sure that you are representing who you are and
you are a person. People want to do business with who you
are, not a logo or anything like that. So, make sure your


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photo is clear, it‟s relevant, it‟s up-to-date and it gives an
indication of who you are because people when they are
talking to you, whether it‟s just on e-mail or messages and
that sort of stuff, they want to have a picture of who you
are when they are typing that message to you. So, make
sure that your picture represents exactly who you are.
Don‟t fill it up with a logo because you are not a logo, you
are a person. If you need to put a logo in there
somewhere, you can maybe put on bottom corner of the
photo if you want that brand recognition but remember, we
are building relationships here with people, not inanimate
objects or brand logos.

Heather Porter: Got it. Okay.

Andrew McCauley: One more before we go, one more before we wrap up the
profile – there is a whole range of other cool apps that you
can put on your profile, not a massive amount like
Facebook or Twitter but there is a small amount of apps
you can put on which really let you do some really cool
things with your profile and you can find them at the
bottom of your page. One thing that you can do and I
would recommend you do do is connect… there is room for
status updates a bit like Twitter handle – you can put in
relevant information to let your people know what you are
doing currently. Just like a Twitter or Facebook update,
just people know what‟s going on. If you have got a great
resource for them, put the link in and let them see what it
is. If you have got some great tips, put your tips into your
updates so that people can see what‟s going on and those
updates will start flowing from other people‟s news feeds as
well, news feeds on the LinkedIn profile.

Heather Porter: Got it. And also – because I am looking at my profile right
now – I am noticing that one of my last tweets has come
through but I have also noticed that they don‟t stay in there


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for a while and then it will just go blank again. Is there
some sort of rule how long each of your status updates
stays in that little box?

Andrew McCauley: That‟s a good question. I don‟t know if there is an actual
time. I was under the impression that there was no time
and it just stays there until you update it again. So, I am
not sure. I think the one you are referring to looks like it
has been there for a day or so.

Heather Porter: Exactly. I think it‟s only a couple of days or a few days but
then the box would just go blank again and kind of inviting
you or enticing you to leave another message.

Andrew McCauley: Interesting, yeah. No, I don‟t know if any… I haven‟t come
across that. So, I am not sure what‟s going on there.

Heather Porter: So, I suppose that brings me to the next point then. If I
am talking about a tweet being inside that status update,
how would that help us? This is where you were talking
about apps where you are actually adding your other social
media accounts to pull in data from them.

Andrew McCauley: You can do that. You can link your twitter account directly
here. So, everything you post on twitter can go directly to
your LinkedIn. There are other apps like HootSuite. I think
we have spoken about HootSuite on one of our other
podcasts. HootSuite can link in LinkedIn and you can send
information directly from our HootSuite account straight
into your LinkedIn account.


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Now, one thing that you want to be careful of taking about
HootSuite and linking all this stuff is that remember
LinkedIn is a little bit different, it‟s got different clientele.
So, your funny status update on twitter or your current
news feed for Facebook may not be relevant to what‟s
happening on your LinkedIn account. So, just be mindful
that the people that see your funny Facebook, the LinkedIn
people will also see that as well. So, if it‟s not relevant,
then be careful you are not posting the wrong message out
to your LinkedIn followers as well.

Heather Porter: Another jewel of a point as well. So, only hook your
accounts that make sense for your professional image.

Andrew McCauley: Exactly, yes, yes.

Heather Porter: Got it. Good point. What else about applications? Do we
have that on the agenda to come in later or can we talk
about it a little bit?

Andrew McCauley: I didn‟t have apps on there but we can cover that.

Heather Porter: Not to go too deep I suppose but I guess the main question
because I know that apps is a constant sort of thing, a
confusion across social media. So, without showing a whole
“how to do the app” episode, how would you or where do
you go to actually add your social accounts into your
LinkedIn profile? Where does that occur?

Andrew McCauley: Okay. So, when you go and edit your profile… I am just
scared that I have got… I have got an app on my which is a
video that starts up automatically.


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Heather Porter: So, we might hear it, everybody, but that‟s okay.

Andrew McCauley: I am going to hit „stop‟ before… I got it just in time.

Heather Porter: Nice.

Andrew McCauley: There we go, there we go.

So, I use an app called SlideShare. SlideShare is a website
you can put different slides on. So, if you go to
presentation, if you have ever done a professional
presentation, you may want to upload that presentation
into your profile so that other people can see your
presentation. You can also sneakily add YouTube videos
into SlideShare so that if you have got a video that you like,
a welcome video or something like that – currently, on my
LinkedIn I have a testimonial that starts up automatically
and it‟s quite funny because I have had many comments
about this. When people come and look at my profile, all of
a sudden this voice comes up at the top and starts talking
about me. They are like “Well, well, well, what‟s going on
there?” So, go in there and search for social media, you
will find me ranked up there. Go and check out my profile
and you will see this booming voice of Ben Harvey come
across the top; that‟s a testimonial. So, that‟s one that I
currently like to use and that‟s called the SlideShare
presentation.

Heather Porter: So, how do you add them?


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Andrew McCauley: Okay. Adding them is pretty simple. You can just go to the
apps section. If you do a search for apps up the top… I am
just going to do this as we speak just to make sure I am
giving you the right information here.

While we are talking I am going to find this…

Heather Porter: I was going to jump in and say for me, on my profile right
now I scrolled all the way down to the bottom and there is
a section that actually says “applications”. Tell me if it‟s on
yours as well but it says “applications” down towards the
bottom of my profile page and it says “add an application”,
there is a little + sign within a blue saying “add an
application” all the way towards the bottom. Do you see
that on yours?

Andrew McCauley: I have got a number of things here. If you click the
magnifier that‟s where it is.

Heather Porter: Yeah.

Andrew McCauley: My profile is pretty expanded. So, I have got a lot of
scrolling to do to get to the bottom.

Heather Porter: Gotcha.

Andrew McCauley: But that‟s where it is. Does it pop-up for you?


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Heather Porter: Yeah and then opens up into an “applications” page and it
has all sorts of crazy things like „polls‟, „get hired‟ and all
sorts of things.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. Now, you are finding this… there are probably about
20 or 30 apps in there. One of the other apps that I like to
use is a WordPress app that pulls in my WordPress blog.
So, if I have got a blog that‟s coming in, it automatically
grabs the content that I write as soon as I publish my
WordPress blog, it sucks it into my LinkedIn so that people
can read my blog from inside my LinkedIn profile which is a
pretty cool way to get your message out there as well.

Heather Porter: Yeah. And you know what, I know about apps on LinkedIn
is that they are really, really easy to use. I mean, once you
get into this application page that I am in now, there is
FAQs, there are feedbacks, there is browsing so you can
browse through different types of applications as well that
you want to add. I think a good way of thinking about an
application is it‟s like a little mini tool that you can add on
to your profile to let people know more about you. So, as
Andrew was saying, you can suck through your tweets with
an application for Twitter, you can suck through your blog
posts with a WordPress application, you can put videos with
video application or the SlideShare thing that he was
talking about. So, think about all of your content that you
have right now on the internet and how you can use it on
your LinkedIn page and then you will go and get
applications to show that. Am I right?

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally. And one other thing is that there is actually
there are apps for certain industries as well. I think you
will find that there are apps for real estate agents, there are
apps for travel if you have got a whole bunch of travel and I
know people hook up together where they travel together
or they would like to let people know where they are


20


traveling and they actually… let‟s say they are landing in
Sydney for a meeting, they can find out who is landing in
Sydney at the same time and they can hook up and link
together which is quite cool as well.

Heather Porter: Very cool. And before we move on from that, I did find
another place where you can find it. So, you can scroll
down on your profile page when you are logged in as
yourself and you will see an “add more applications” or
right at the top under the “more” in the menu where it says
“home”, “profile”, “contacts”, “groups”, etc., “companies”,
“news”, “more”.

Andrew McCauley: “Get more applications”.

Heather Porter: You got it. Yeah. So, you can hover over and it‟s just
down there “get more applications”.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s right. So, have a look for these apps. Some of them
are great. Others you probably won‟t have a need for but
they are definitely putting in… pimping up your profile.

Heather Porter: Love it! Alright, so let‟s keep moving on because I am still
very excited to get to this “answers” section.

Andrew McCauley: Okay, okay.

Heather Porter: What about „connections‟? I just want to make sure we
have covered all the little tips and tools and strategies that


21


you have about adding connections. So, anything else you
want to add on that.

Andrew McCauley: Connections – one of the things you make sure you do
when you are adding a connection is when you out and find
somebody and you want to add them as a connection, you
can leave it as default where you are just saying “Please
add me to your network”. One of the things I strongly
recommend is actually putting a little message in there, tell
them how you know them or how you found that person,
just a simple little message… I am always checking my
connections… like anyone that asks me to add me as a
connection, I always just check to make sure if they have
written something, I have taken the time, even 10 seconds,
just to say “Hey, we are on the same group together” or “I
know that we are both into this sort of things”, then I will
take the time to write back and build a relationship. It‟s the
people that just don‟t write anything and just expect to be
connected like Facebook or Twitter which I really don‟t have
a lot of time for. So, if you are going to do that, just make
it human, connect with them on a different level than
everybody else.

Heather Porter: Yes, like you are handing somebody your business card,
what would you say to them in a party or a networking
event, exactly – the common courtesy.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, exactly.

Heather Porter: Okay. So, anything else about connections as far as…?


22


Andrew McCauley: No, I think that‟s the main thing that I want to cover
without getting too much deeper into connections. We will
get some other cool stuff to touch on in a minute.

So, I think connections – just be human, be nice, tell
people who you are when you are connecting with them.

Heather Porter: Cool, like it.

Alright, what else? Let‟s see. Ah, yes. Here‟s another
thing that I always see on profiles and I always question
how valuable it is. I guess it‟s like having testimonials
essentially for you but the recommendation section.

Andrew McCauley: Yes. Recommendations are very good. Recommendations
are almost like a testimonial for you and it actually makes
up part of your percentage of completing your LinkedIn
profile. Now, a recommendation is a great way to get the
word out from other people about who you are and what
you are. Now, one of the cool things about LinkedIn is that
you can go and ask for recommendations as well. You can
go and connect with people and say “Hey, I would like a
recommendation about my work.” Now, that‟s pretty
brazen, I think, particularly if you don‟t know the person
too well but what I love to do, I like to go and write
recommendations for people and you find that they will
come back and write one for you without you even asking.
Not every single person but importantly 3 out of 10 will
come back and write a recommendation for you because
they feel like they should because you have already written
one for them. That doesn‟t cost you anything to write, it
costs a couple of minutes of your time but if you truly know
that person and you work with them or you have worked
with them and you want to just give them some kudos,


23


then go and write them on; it doesn‟t have to be very long,
it can be a couple of sentences, that‟s all; it still counts as a
recommendation because what happens is when people are
looking at your profile, they will see if you have got a lot of
recommendations, people will start thinking “Wow! If
everybody‟s recommending this person, they must be
pretty important.”

Heather Porter: Yeah, it‟s a whole social proof thing, isn‟t it?

Andrew McCauley: Totally. Yeah, totally. So, recommendations are quite
good.

Heather Porter: I do like the idea that you just said where you just go find
people that you have worked with and leave them a
recommendation because, yeah… because I get bombarded
quite often actually with people saying “Hey, can you
recommend me?” and I am thinking “Why? For what?” I
am kind of confused here. So, yeah, it‟s kind of… it‟s a bit
aggressive at times especially if you don‟t really know the
person and you didn‟t do business with them either.

Okay. Leaving recommendations, how do you do that then
if you want to go out and start to do this strategy? Where
do you do that?

Andrew McCauley: You look at someone‟s profile and it will just say “leave a
recommendation” or “recommend this person”.



24


Andrew McCauley: If you look at your profile right now, on the right hand side,
just where you photo is, on the right hand side of that there
is a couple of options for me – one is to send you a
message, one is to recommend you and the other one is to
save your profile. So, Heather, I can recommend you to
whoever. Now, a good thing about it is if somebody
recommends you and you don‟t like what they say, you
don‟t actually have to make it public. You get the last say
about that too. So, you get to say whether you want to
publish that recommendation or not.

Heather Porter: Got it. Okay, sounds good. Wonderful. Any other little tips
or tools to add for recommendations?

Andrew McCauley: No, keep them positive, keep them honest and if you do
take the approach of going to recommend people without
asking them, then don‟t expect them to recommend you
back but if they do, just take it as a bonus and say “Wow!
That‟s great.”

Heather Porter: Great. Okay, good. Love it, love it, love it! All these little
tips and tools of the trade, we love it.

Alright, moving on, moving on. Let‟s go into… what do you
think, should we go into groups?

Andrew McCauley: Groups. Okay, let‟s go to groups.

Heather Porter: Yeah, tell me what is a group, first of all.


25


Andrew McCauley: Groups are like a bunch of likeminded people that all have
the same sort of interests as you. Now, there are literally
thousands and thousands and thousands of groups on
LinkedIn and there are groups from all sizes, from 3 people
to 300,000 or 3 million people. It‟s a great way to start
becoming authority in your industry. It doesn‟t matter
what sort of industry you are in, there will be a group for
that already. If there is not, you can create one.

Now, let‟s just talk about groups at the beginning first.
When you go to groups… you can go on search for a whole
range of groups, there is a groups directory and a group
directory will show you all of the different categories of
groups that are out there. Currently I am looking at 1.27
million results for different groups.

Come up with some pretty non-mainstream for a group and
I will see if I can find one.

Heather Porter: Well, how about… let‟s try „day spa‟ since my sister runs
day spa.

Andrew McCauley: Okay, „day spa‟. I don‟t think there are any groups on „day
spa‟.

Heather Porter: We‟ll see.

Andrew McCauley: We‟ll see. I have 90 results for „day spa‟ groups.

Heather Porter: Really? That‟s amazing.


26


Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, let me tell about these day spa groups. The
great thing about this little directory is you can quickly go
through and see which groups are going to be relevant for
you. So, for instance, the first one, it‟s called the “The day
spa association”, it has 1583 members, it has 65
discussions this month which is pretty active for a group
and it tells you who in your network is also in this group
which is pretty cool.

The next one down has 1700 members. The next one down
has 1500 members. Then there is 900, 966. One down
here is 5400 members. So, yeah, it‟s very active, it‟s a
very cool group to be hanging out with these day spas
because they seem to be very active on LinkedIn which is
great.

Now, why join a group on LinkedIn? Well, here is the thing.
You can find out a whole bunch of different resources, you
can find different people in your industry, you can connect
with people. I know a lot of people have done joint
ventures with people that are in the same industry that
may work on the other side of the world or other side of the
country but yet they might have similar things that they
can work together and make their businesses grow.

There is a number of groups that are open, they are called
open groups which are free for you to join. You don‟t need
to have any special considerations to join. These closed
groups make sure the administrator checks who you are to
see if you are relevant or fit for that group.



27


Andrew McCauley: I know, I tried to join a group once for speakers in Australia
but because I was living in the US, they wouldn‟t let me
join the group because I wasn‟t living in Australia at the
time.

Heather Porter: Wow! Yeah, and I have had that as well actually with a lot
of groups and even though they say they are closed, they
probably just approve you very quickly and it generally
takes 24 hours at the absolute most I found to get
approved to different groups.

Andrew McCauley: So, here is a couple of tips for joining various groups. Look
for a group… now, if you are an expert in spa industry and
have joined a group with 5000 members, that‟s a lot of
work you have to do to get it in front of a lot of people. So,
by saying that, when you are in a group, they will have
things like discussion forums where you can answer
questions or pose questions so that people can answer your
questions for you; and if your group is really large, then
your name is not going to be as prominent as it would be if
you were in a smaller group constantly answering
questions.

Heather Porter: Ah, okay.

Andrew McCauley: So, make sure the group is still active but if you have got a
smaller group then it‟s easier for you to post or write
answer or question to a discussion every day or so, so
people start to get to know who you are.


28


Heather Porter: So, when you say smaller group, what sort of size are we
talking?

Andrew McCauley: Anything from say 50 to 1000 people.

Heather Porter: Oh! And that‟s a smaller group?

Andrew McCauley: That‟s a small group. Not all the people will be active in
those groups.

Heather Porter: Yeah, okay.

Andrew McCauley: But sometimes a smaller group, if it‟s not very active, will
be stale, so you may not get much out of it anyway.

Heather Porter: So, initially to start you are looking for sort of 50-1000
people, you are looking for active groups. And when you
say they are active, how are you telling that they are
active? You are looking for discussions, you said?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And when you do a search on the group directory
that actually tells you. It will say “this group is very active,
it‟s got 65 discussions this month” but you don‟t have to
rely on this to tell you, you can just log in and see when
was the last time someone posted a discussion, when was
the last time somebody answered any questions on the
group wall. So, you can quickly find out whether people are
actually involved with it or not.


29


Heather Porter: Okay, that makes sense.

The other thing too is often times I and probably some
listeners into this exact episode, we get very excited by the
concept of groups and think “Oh my Gosh! I am going to
go create my own group right now.” Now, I would advise
against that. I always say the best way to learn is by
getting involved, being mentored or modeling or jumping
into something that‟s already working and then seeing if
you want to do it yourself. Would that be a good thing to
say here?

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally. There are benefits to staying here in group
but as you have said get in and see how some good groups
are really responding and reacting and working because it‟s
those groups where you will learn the most about creating
your own group and what to do and what not to do as well.
So, the good thing about creating your own group is that
you can actually message all of your members once a
week; you can e-mail your members. So, maybe an e-mail
about a webinar you got probably out, a teleseminar or just
a piece of information but you can e-mail those people once
a week which is a great way to go. So, the owner of some
of these day spa groups who have 3000 or 4000 members
can e-mail their people at least directly every week.

Heather Porter: That is a big benefit.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally.

The other thing about owning a group is that you have
control over who comes in and who gets kicked out sort of
things. So, you can moderate but just remember, it does


30


come with a little bit of work. You do need to manage the
group a little bit and if you don‟t have the energy or the
time to manage a group, then they will only fall apart and
you suddenly start getting a whole bunch of even non-
active participants or spamming sort of people which you
don‟t want in a group.

Heather Porter: And that‟s the other thing I was going to say is starting a
group is one thing but to actually get people into it and
engage in it is quite a bit of work. It‟s like moderating a
forum or anything really online where the concept may
seem good but you have to think of the plan, what you are
going to do, how you are going to market it, how you are
going to get people in it as well.

Andrew McCauley: You have to almost treat it like a business plan – how you
are going to spend time do it. It‟s all great to start a group
and say “Yeah, I have started a group” but if you don‟t
have the time to do enough the next week, then you are
only going to be putting egg on your face because people
are going to say “Well, that person wasn‟t very good.”

Heather Porter: That‟s a good point actually and in the space of LinkedIn
where you are positioning yourself as an expert or your
business as the place to go, you want your stuff to be
rocket, you want people there and engaged and a place for
you to sort of stand up and talk about your expertise. So, if
no one‟s listening, then probably not a good idea to create
one in the first place.

Andrew McCauley: Exactly, exactly.


31


Heather Porter: So, what else if I have a group that we can keep in mind? I
know that there are RSS feeds in groups as well?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, one of the cool things if you own the group is
you can go and put your own RSS which is a feed from
anything, it can be a feed from a blog site; you can put
your RSS feed inside a group so that… let‟s say I write an
article on my blog. That article will automatically get
posted to the groups so they can see it. So, it‟s a pretty
cool little spinoff that you don‟t have to own blog. Let‟s
say, for instance, you have got a group about finances and
you may want to grab the blog feed of the CNN Money for
CNN, so you got the feed for that and you can just put that
feed inside your group so that‟s a constant source of
information coming into your group so people can talk
about and discuss it in your group. There are ways to
automate some of that stuff.

Heather Porter: Very cool. For anyone who doesn‟t know what an RSS feed
is, it‟s basically whenever something‟s updated, it
automatically is pulled through and posted. So, if it‟s like
CNN blog, for instance, your website, any new article that‟s
up on there will automatically come through to your linked
in group and be posted in the group there. So, handy little
tools.

So, what else about groups?

Andrew McCauley: One other thing about groups is that a lot of them will have
spaces for promotion and this is where you can sell your
stuff. If you are a member of a large group and you have
got a webinar coming up, you have got a sale coming on or
just want to tell people about something that‟s going on in
your business, there are walls where you can promote


32


things where it‟s not frowned upon because the groups
know that people want to talk about what they do. The
discussion rules of a discussion is not posting your sales
stuff but the promotions tab is exactly that – it‟s there for
you to promote your stuff – and if people want to go there,
then they can go there and choose to know that there is
going to be stuff being sold too so they look at that, they
can look at this. It‟s a great little wall for keeping the
control on the spam.

Heather Porter: Okay. And then how do you… if I am joining groups, how
do I find out if they have this promotional area? Is it easy
to find when you are in a group?

Andrew McCauley: Essentially at the top of the group there is a number of tabs
across the top and if they enable the „promotions‟ tab, you
will see it up there on the top there, „promotions‟. There is
also „jobs‟ and that sort of stuff too if you are looking for
jobs. Whether you want to post a job, you are looking for a
job or you need a job, you need someone to work for you,
you can put that in your „jobs‟ tab as well.

Heather Porter: Okay, okay, great. So, it‟s almost like its own little
community hub where it has its classified ads and has job
boards and everything.

Andrew McCauley: Exactly. And then you will have roles for groups, there will
certain rules that the administrators will make so that you
can know exactly what you can and can‟t do in the group
and that‟s a great way just to manage that group. There is
a lot of tools there to help manage the group. I set up a
group not long ago, a couple of days ago actually, and it
took me probably about 30 minutes to 45 minutes just to
go through and make sure it‟s set up correctly in the first


33


place including templates that I wanted to send out to
people. As soon as they join my group, there is a welcome
letter; it says “Welcome to the group and this is what we
do”. There are rules that you want to put up there as well.
So, it takes a little bit of setup but once the setup is done,
then it‟s just now about maintaining and welcoming people
to the group as they pop in.

Heather Porter: Now, is your group an open group or is it a closed group?

Andrew McCauley: This group I set up recently was an open group. This is an
open group for an event that‟s coming up in June, so we set
that up just so that we can get attraction in there. We
haven‟t promoted it yet, we just wanted to make sure it‟s
up and running. So, as soon as we promote it, I will then
about it.

Heather Porter: So, you can even do groups for events. They can actually
be for a moment and time.

Andrew McCauley: Totally. You can do groups for conferences. There is a lot
of groups out there for conferences. If you have got a
conference or a group conference coming up, you can have
everyone connected who has ever been to the conference
or who is going to the conference – a great way to connect
for and after the event.

Heather Porter: Oh, that is wonderful because we all know when we go to
conference you always say “Oh, I am going to do all this
network, meet people” but you run out of time and it just
gets crazy. So, what a great way to stay in time and
expand the network!


34


Andrew McCauley: Yeah, it really is.

Heather Porter: Okay, cool. We are giving you guys so many ideas of how
to create your own group but again just before you dive
into that, please just pick a few groups that you can hang
out at first and then look at doing that later.

And back on that note of joining in groups, what is the best
way to use a group? So, I have joined a group. Now what?

Andrew McCauley: Okay. Again, when you join a group, just watch for a few
days and how the discussions go back and forth, look at the
questions that are being asked, look at the answers. You
can go and check out, you can go and add answers any
time you are ready. So, as soon as you are ready to start
participating in that group, then jump in, go and add some
answers so to the questions that are being posed, go and
add your thoughts, go and add some information. Just
remember like anything else don‟t go and spam. If you go
to a party, then jump into the part and before you should
introduce yourself start telling people what you think. So,
make sure that people who you are, just an introduction
but then go and get active on the discussions and you will
start seeing people who will go and check you out because
they will see “There is a new person adding some great
information to the discussion. Let me go and see what they
are like or let me go and find out a little bit more about
them.”

Heather Porter: And so when you say “introduce yourself”, what do you
mean? When you join the group you say “Hi, I am so and
so and this is what I do” or do you actually do that as part
of your answer?”


35

#8 Market Your Business with LinkedIn

#8 Market Your Business with LinkedIn

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