Win Business on LinkedIn with Louise Brogan

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Meg Brunson

Hey. FamilyPreneurs, thank you so much for joining us again on another episode today. I'm excited to introduce you to Louise Brogan. Louise is a LinkedIn consultant, speaker, podcaster, and YouTuber. She is passionate about encouraging business owners and entrepreneurs to dive into LinkedIn. And her goal is to make LinkedIn accessible to all. Louise offers done for you marketing services and also LinkedIn one to one support to help you win more leads and sales on LinkedIn. As you know, I am kind of a Facebook addict, so I love bringing in other marketers that can shine lights on other platforms. Linkedin is not one that I'm comfortable and confident on. So that's why I've got Louise here with us today. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Louise Brogan

Oh, Meg, thank you so much for having me.I was absolutely delighted when you reached out to me. Absolutely. That'd be great to catch up and chat with you.

Meg Brunson

You joined us on an episode. Gosh. But it was probably two or three even years ago.

Louise Brogan

A lot. Yeah. I would say at least three years. Yeah.

Meg Brunson

So it's exciting to have you back. And with us again today, let's dive right into talking about LinkedIn. First of all, does everybody need to be on LinkedIn or who needs to be on this platform, if we're not already?

Louise Brogan

I'm massively an advocate of do not try and be on all the social media platforms. So if you have a platform that's working really well for you and you're getting leads and sales on that, stick to that platform and do what you're doing and keep building your business that way. LinkedIn is a B to B platform mainly. However, I have had great success with BTC clients who have understood how when you understand how LinkedIn works as a business owner, it's very different to LinkedIn as someone who's in a career looking for career progression, looking for their next job, trying to get hired by people and connecting with recruiters, et cetera. LinkedIn for entrepreneurs and business owners is a very different space. And actually, it's a really nice space to be in because it's a professional social media site, you tend to get people on their best behavior, which I really like. And also one thing that kind of draws me to LinkedIn to help my clients is that people on LinkedIn tend to have a more of an expendable income. So when you connect with somebody on LinkedIn who's interested in your products or services, they tend to have the ability to invest in whatever it is that you are selling.

Louise Brogan

Whereas on other social media platforms, you might get a lot more people who are what I call the freebie seekers or people who just aren't quite at the stage to be able to invest in your products and services. So it's a good place to be. And if you are a business owner and you have something to sell that somebody has the money to buy. Does that make sense?

Meg Brunson

It does. I love that you broke that out and that you broke out. The difference between being a business owner and entrepreneur and being in corporate employment, looking for recruiting or looking for new job opportunities, is there anything we need to do as business owners or entrepreneurs to kind of, I don't know, set ourselves apart? Like, is there a way that something we should do when we're optimizing our LinkedIn profile to let people know that we're not necessarily looking for another job opportunity or something like that? I know I get recruiters and people that reach out and want to get interviews and things like that where it's not. So I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

Louise Brogan

Well, Interestingly, Meg. Linkedin has brought a new profile mode called LinkedIn Creator Mode, which is actually perfect for us as entrepreneurs and business owners. So the difference between the normal profile and the LinkedIn Creator mode is the creator is for people who are creating content on LinkedIn, whether that is uploading videos, sharing their podcast, writing content that starts conversations, creating newsletters, doing LinkedIn lives. There's so many different features on LinkedIn, but the creator mode, when you go to LinkedIn to your profile as you scroll down as you're logged in as yourself, it'll say, do you want to turn creator mode on? And when you click that you want to turn it on, it will ask you about the five key topics that you want to be known for on the platform. Once you have a network of at least 150 people, you then will get access to LinkedIn live and LinkedIn newsletters. And LinkedIn newsletters are this secret little extra special thing on LinkedIn that you can really leverage a lot of people don't know about. When you create a LinkedIn newsletter and my recommendation is you send it once a month. You don't send you a weekly one, but you get a LinkedIn newsletter.

Louise Brogan

Every single person in your network is invited to subscribe to that newsletter. And when you write the newsletter, it gets sent to their inbox in their actual personal email. So it arrives in their Gmail or their Hotmail account or their Outlook account or wherever they've got their email attached to. And you get really high open rates on them. So it's really interesting. So you create the content on LinkedIn, but it actually goes into your connections actual inbox off of the platform, which I think is really interesting. But yes, LinkedIn Creator Mode definitely look into that as a creator myself since we last spoke, Meg, I've become a YouTuber and I love my YouTube channel, and I've got quite a few really, I've got 70 or 80 tutorials on how to use LinkedIn, but I've got specifically about three or four on how to use Creator or how to turn it on, why you should turn it on, what's it for? One of the features the people who are interested in that might want to go and check out some of these videos.

Meg Brunson

Brilliant. And so glad I asked that question. I had no idea about Creator Mode. This is why you are here. I'm so happy you're here. Okay, now that I get that out of the way, what are your other tips? Actually, let me just ask one more question. Can you switch back? If you decide for whatever reason you don't like Creative Mode, can you switch back?

Louise Brogan

Yes, You can just turn it off again.

Meg Brunson

Awesome. Now let's talk about our LinkedIn profile. Beyond that, whether we're on Creative Mode or not, what are some tips for optimizing that LinkedIn profile so that we can make the connections that we want to make?

Louise Brogan

Oh, absolutely. Okay, so the key things, two major things are your headline and your about section. But if you kind of start from the top down, you want to make sure that you're leveraging every part of that profile that you can. So you have your profile photograph, which should be a close up of your head and shoulders of you looking at the camera. But also don't forget about the background image that goes in behind your cover photo. Use that space and what I recommend. I work with clients one to one, and we do this whole LinkedIn profile optimization piece. And on that, I recommend that you have key things that you want to be known for so it can be visuals. If you want to go and check out my profile, it's Louise Brogan on LinkedIn. On mine, there's pictures of me speaking on stage, and there are a couple of images of the big conferences that I've been invited to speak at because I am a speaker and I want to be hired as a speaker. I also have keywords across the top of mine that says, I think LinkedIn consultant, podcaster, speaker.

Louise Brogan

It's really clear and obvious what I do on first glance at the profile. Then your headline is if you set up your LinkedIn account ten years ago and you've never looked at it since, your headline probably is whatever your current experience is. So it could be Louise Brogan, project manager or Meg Brunson, podcaster. So you want to make sure your headline really attracts your ideal clients. So it's going to have keywords in there that somebody reads and goes, oh, I want to know more about running a family business. So I'm going to click on Meg's profile to go and look at her profile. And then once they get to your profile, your about section is where you really want to get somebody's attention, and that's where they're going to decide whether they want to connect with you or not. So this is a big difference between people who are in corporate careers and people who are business owners on LinkedIn. Your about section on LinkedIn is not about you. It is about how you can help the people who are reading it. That is the major difference. So you want to write your about section in a way that grabs the attention of the person and they are literally reading and going, yes, I need help with that.

Louise Brogan

That sounds really interesting. Oh, that's how I can work with Louise. And then at the bottom of your about section, make sure you have a call to action. So you can say, go and download my free ebook, or connect with me here on LinkedIn, or visit my website or whatever it is that you want someone to do. So fill out your whole profile. But the key areas you need to really think about are your headline and your about section. But then once you've got those bits in place, you want to fill out the entire profile and make sure you've got your skills in there. Ask for some recommendations and your experience section. There's a whole lot of the LinkedIn profile. When I work with people, it's a 90 minutes session, we spend going through it together. So for those of you who have just created a profile, we've got two lines in your about section and the College that you went to. It's time to go and take a second look.

Meg Brunson

What do you recommend when it comes down to your work experience? Things like that, colleges. How far back do you recommend people go?

Louise Brogan

Okay, this is really key. When people are searching for whatever it is that you do on LinkedIn, you want to appear in the search results so you do not have to fill in all of your jobs that you ever did. Okay. You want to put in. So, for example, I work with people who- I do coaching training programs for corporate. So when you look at my profile, you can see that I have corporate experience. So someone can check through and say, oh, right, okay. She didn't just leave University and suddenly become an entrepreneur. She has 13 years experience working in corporate in the UK. So she understands how a corporate operates. But those corporate roles I did, were IT project manager and software engineer. I don't want to be found by somebody who's looking for a software engineer in Belfast, where I live. So software engineer is there. But there's not a lot of detail about that job in my Experience section because that's what the algorithm pulls up whenever it's trying to find people who are searching for a software engineer in Belfast in Northern Ireland. So the key things in the Experience section are really use that to highlight what you want to be found for.

Louise Brogan

And again, if someone goes to look at my profile, you'll see, under my current role, Lincoln consultant. I actually have sub-roles under there too. So it's got the podcasting, it's got it's  own place, speaking has got it's own place, all underneath the one section of Louise Brogen, LinkedIn consultant. So it's really key to have your history there. But not to worry too much about things. If they don't relate to what you do now, then just keep it minimalistic.

Meg Brunson

So they don't need to know that I worked at Old Navy.

Louise Brogan

No, don't need to know that I did fruit picking in Australia when I was in my 20s. Of course not.

Meg Brunson

Right. I just want to mention here, too, that I'm going to put the link for your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So if people wanted to go back and look at yours for that templated example. Right, or pull it up, go back, start this episode over again, because then you can really follow along with all of these tips. Now, when it comes to building your network - again, I'm coming from a Facebook space right, where it's like adding friends. And that's not what you're doing on LinkedIn. You're not adding friends, you're building a network. So how do you go about doing that? In a way that's going to best serve us as a business owner and also not come off as, like, spammy, just requesting random people that you don't actually know? What's the balance there?

Louise Brogan

For me, what's key is building a network full of people that you want to be connected to? Basically, LinkedIn at its heart is a platform for building relationships. So think about, do I want to connect with this person? Are they a potential client, potential collaborator, or somebody who's sharing stuff that I'm interested in and I want to follow. So in my network, I have people who are into how to create really good video because that's something I'm building out inside my own business. And I'm interested in what they have to say. I'm interested in what podcasters have to say. So building a network strategically full of people you're interested in, they're interested in what you have to say, their potential customers or clients or potential collaborators, I think is a really good place to start and do not feel that you have to accept all the connection requests that come through to you because you don't. You will see other people who do. I do. Meg, you'll see, I've got 100,000 people in their network. Well, it must be really challenging when they go to LinkedIn to find stuff that they're interested in. If they're viewing content from all of those people, where would you even start?

Louise Brogan

For me, I have about seven and a half thousand people in my network, and I unfollow people on a very regular basis because they're in my network. I want them to see what I'm talking about and they're following me because I'm talking about LinkedIn. But if they're talking about something that's got nothing to do with me, my business, I don't think they're going to become a client. Then I unfollow them. So I can really focus on seeing content from the people that I want to become more connected with and build relationships with. And those are quite often for me. They are people who serve the same audience that I serve. We're going quite down a path here of how I would work with people that if you have people in your network who also serves the same clients you serve and they are creating content and you comment on their content, that's how other people see your name and your headline and become interested in you and click on your profile to find out more about you and decide if they want to connect with you. And that's a really nice, simple way of getting visibility in front of people that you actually want to then reach out to hire you.

Meg Brunson

And I feel like it's still mutually. I, for one, don't like to think of it as competition. Like there are people in your same- you think of it as competition, but I like to flip it because there's also collaboration opportunities. There's likely slight differences in who you're actually serving or what your actual area of expertise is. So I think that there is a benefit there for everybody involved. I love knowing other people who offer Facebook marketing services because I can't serve everybody. So then you can recommend them off. So I love that that's a recommendation too is to follow other people in your same exact space as well as that.

Louise Brogan

Yes, I have several other LinkedIn consultants in my network and it is brilliant because there's so many changes in this platform in the last two or three years as we've seen and somebody will share something. Oh, that's brilliant. And we'll have a conversation about it. It's not that I'm going to go, oh, I have to post about that now. I have genuine friendships with these people and as you say, we send each other clients. I cant possibly do this this month. Maybe you should speak to Louise and vice versa. There's also I do a particular kind of work I do done for you services, and I do LinkedIn coaching with female entrepreneurs. So if somebody comes in who doesn't fit the client base that I am working with, I say, oh, my friend Sarah actually works with those people. You should check her out. In fact, my friend Sarah is a real person and she has a LinkedIn membership for people who want to join a membership and learn as they go and be on monthly calls. And I don't offer that service. So for those people, I can say, well, here, they don't want to pay my prices, maybe, or whatever.

Louise Brogan

I can say, oh, well, check out this other form of learning how to do LinkedIn. And if you don't want to do one to one and you'd rather be in a membership, go and check out Sarah's membership. And it's just I don't know, I think it's women. It's a rising tide, lifts all boats. We're very supportive of each other in my experience. Anyway. And that to me is going back to the networking question on LinkedIn. The people in my network, I genuinely like a lot of them, and I want to see them do well. And if you have somebody who is in your network who is like that, a really easy way to help them do well is by you commenting on their content on LinkedIn. Because one of the great things about how the LinkedIn algorithm works is when you comment on someone else's post, your network get notified of that. And you're literally going to your friends, come here, over here and see what this person is talking about. Because actually you're not literally doing it, but by me commenting on your post, my network get notified of that. And more of my networks suddenly become interested in what you're doing and go and check out your profile.

Louise Brogan

So you're helping people when you comment on their stuff as well.

Meg Brunson

That's awesome. Now, we've talked about optimizing our profile and building our network. How do we without again, being spammy. I'm all about doing things in, like, authentic, feel good ways. How do we turn our people into leads and sales? I know you mentioned the call to action on the about section. Are there other strategies do you recommend?

Louise Brogan

Oh, my gosh, 100%. So this is what I love doing. This is what I do with my clients. We build out a content strategy that shows you as the expert you are by helping your network. And then you become so referral. And this happens time and time and time again. If you talk about the area that you work in, like Facebook ads or PowerPoint presentations or how to build a LinkedIn network when someone connects with me on LinkedIn, my posts are all about helping them get better at LinkedIn. And with the email newsletters, like 2% of your audience buy from you or whatever. So you'll start building up a reputation of somebody who shares really helpful, useful content on LinkedIn. And then somebody will say, oh, we need somebody to help us with our LinkedIn because we're not really getting any leads from it. And they'll say, oh, you need to speak to Louise Brogan. She knows all about how to use LinkedIn. And it'd be the same with my client, Fiona, who's a PowerPoint specialist. All of her content is how to use PowerPoint. This month, I think she's doing how to make your PowerPoint accessible to all.

Louise Brogan

And there's so many features that I didn't know anything about. And if anybody says to me, I have to do a big presentation and they need to put Slideshow together. Oh, you need to go and check out Fiona. And she gets work from that all the time. And it's the same for me. I get people messaging. I got two messages today from people saying we really need some help with our LinkedIn, Louise, could we possibly set up a chat? So by being consistent and sharing with people tips, advice, how to do things and asking questions, starting conversations about your subject area. You're an expert in. People will Interestingly, Meg. They don't comment below your stuff. They send you a private message on LinkedIn. And they say, actually, we need a bit of help with Facebook ads. Can we maybe have a conversation about this? And that's where all the business on LinkedIn happens in private messaging, for sure.

Meg Brunson

Oh, great. Now I'm curious. You talked about sharing all that value. I know on other platforms there is typically a balance, right? Like you'll share some personal stuff, you'll ask some questions, you'll be promotional, you share value. Where is that line drawn on LinkedIn? Like, if I'm making a post about my family on LinkedIn, is that unnecessary? Should I focus purely on business stuff or should I include personality type content?

Louise Brogan

If we're talking specifically about you, Meg, your business is about building a family friendly business. So I would expect to hear something about your family. So I think there's definitely a nice mixture. So if you were doing, say we were doing like a month's worth of posts, this is the other great thing. About two posts a week is absolutely perfect. You need to do more than that. So you could say, okay, with this month I'm going to talk about how to manage your business during the summer holidays. So if you had eight to ten posts in that month, I would think that you should probably be doing five or six of those posts would be literally here things to think about. Here are tips or tools you can use. Then you'd maybe have one post that's about you and your plans and taking time off and doing stuff with your kids. And then one of those posts would be, here's how we work with clients, here's a testimonial, here's a case study, and then another post could be, here's an offer we've got coming up. And I think that'll be a really nice mix. So people are following you because you're being helpful, you're sharing a bit of your personality.

Louise Brogan

I don't put my family life on LinkedIn, but my business has got nothing to do with that. I have a really good friend, hers. She's a life friendly business podcast must connect you up with her, actually, Meg. So she talks about life being life friendly and balancing stuff. So it makes more sense for her to talk about things that she does outside of work. I talk about how to grow your business on LinkedIn. So that's what I talk about. And yeah, of course, every now and again I'll throw a picture of me and my dog in or I'll talk about here I am doing something listen to a podcast, but people are generally following me because they want to know how I can help them with LinkedIn. So I hope that answers your question.

Meg Brunson

Yeah, those are great examples. And I think it definitely answers my question. And I think the listeners are going to be able to take a step back and reflect on the scope of their business and what should and shouldn't be shared. I also love that you mentioned just two posts a week. So that is definitely less stress than what you're doing on Instagram or Facebook where you feel like you have to be constantly producing content, don't even get me started on Twitter. So LinkedIn definitely seems like it's a manageable amount of content that you have to produce.  Now, you've talked a little bit about how you work with clients. What is your recommendation for the listeners, the viewers today who want to learn more about LinkedIn? How should they connect with you?

Louise Brogan

Oh, so I figured the main page is my website, LouiseBrogan.com. And then if they connect with me on LinkedIn, it's LinkedIn.com/in/LouiseBrogen. But for anybody who's like going, well, I'm not quite at the space to invest in working with you, Louise. I have so many free videos on YouTube, it's ridiculous. I think over 80 - on everything. People who are DIYers, who want to go and look at those videos. But I love working with my clients. The Lady I talked about the PowerPoint presentation. Her and I worked together for three months. And at the end of the three months, she messaged me to say that she'd been invited to go to London to speak at a conference about how to do PowerPoint presentations. I think it was the PA show, London with thousands of people. I was like, this is exactly what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to make LinkedIn approachable simplify it. I've got my word of the year simplify. You can see it, Meg. Simplify it so that people can go on there, really get visible and get business as a result. And that's the whole goal of my business.

Meg Brunson

And I'm going to put all of those links in the show notes. I did remember I had one more question I wanted to ask you, and that is about - I've noticed that there are other businesses, plugins/websites that offer like automation tools for LinkedIn to automate outreach. I can already see in your face. And my gut was like, I don't usually think automation is good, but I wanted to run it by you because there are a handful of them and I have clients who are considering using them to increase their outreach. And of course, they're all trying to do things from a non spammy, non scammy, aligned, just trying to make it easier to do some of the outreach. But tell me what your thoughts are.

Louise Brogan

Okay. I don't like them. I think- I totally get it. People are like, well, I'm trying to work on my business. I don't have time to have all these personalized conversations. However, my number one tip is when you connect with somebody, send them a personal message, because you never know where that can lead to and also you're starting that one to one conversation with somebody. But automation tools, I don't like them. Linkedin doesn't allow them. So you're not supposed to use them anyway. But I do get it, people want this - is all well and good at least. But I don't really know what to say to anybody, so it's not better to use a tool. And I think, if you work with somebody like me, we can work on not templates, but kind of here's three or four kinds of posts that are conversations, starting messages you can send to somebody. But I was doing some work on my writing earlier and I realized I have a blog and I have to get you the link. It's got five different ways to connect with people on LinkedIn. It's got sample messages so people can relate to that.

Louise Brogan

But that's like something else I help people to build, right, so that they don't have time to think of something personal to say to everybody I connect with. You are only connecting with two or three people a day to build up your network in a really nice way, to get network of value rather than network full of people you don't know. You can make two to three messages a day, I think. Can't you? If it's going to lead to some good business, right?

Meg Brunson

I mean, that sounds like 15 minutes a day ish right.

Louise Brogan

Honestly, I am not on LinkedIn that much. It's really funny. People are like, oh, I've heard other coaches say, oh, you have to be on LinkedIn three or 4 hours a day to make it work. I'm like, no, you do not!  On those other days. Honestly, 20 minutes. Go in, send connection request to somebody who wants to connect with, comment on a few other people's posts and respond to the notifications that you've got. You're done and you move on and do the business that earns you the money that keeps you in shoes or whatever.

Meg Brunson

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. We shared all the links where people can connect with you. They will be in the show notes. I appreciate so much, you being here with me today. I'm glad we found a time that works for both of us because we have quite a time difference between us, but I'm always willing to make it work for you, Louise. I'm glad you were here and I learned a ton, so I know our listeners and viewers did too.

Louise Brogan

Oh, Meg, thank you so much. Yes, I know you are very accommodating with me because I'm over here in Northern Ireland. We've got quite a time difference going on, but it's a lovely way for me to finish my day. Thank you so much for having me.

Meg Brunson

It's a goof way for me to start mine. Thanks again, Louise.

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