In this episode, we're going to help you actually get clients from

LinkedIn. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist

and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weeniecast.

I'm doing this episode of the Weenie cast for extremely selfish

reasons. I no longer want to hear from people that

they are making these faux pas, which is french for f

up on LinkedIn. Okay? It hurts my soul

when it's such a magical platform and

when used correctly, can attract hundreds of thousands of

dollars worth of business. But if you're making these simple

mistakes, you're actually keeping that money from coming to you.

Because a, you're not attracting your ideal clients,

b, you are spending a stupid amount of time

doing stuff that isn't going to move the needle in your business.

And in some cases, these may actually be

hurting you rather than helping you. If you're a business owner and you

have not gotten on the LinkedIn train yet, let me tell you here are some

of the perks of promoting your business on LinkedIn. Number

one, the average active user on

LinkedIn makes $70,000 a

year, okay? That's the average. Many users on LinkedIn

make a lot more, which means your speaking to people

who have the money to buy your services.

Number two, there's not a need to

dance or lip sync or follow

trends like there are on other platforms. I'm talking to

you, Instagram and TikTok. In fact, you don't even have to create

graphics for your posts on LinkedIn. It helps to occasionally have a

picture of your face so people feel like they're getting content from an actual human

being. But genuinely, if you're creating content

on LinkedIn and you're doing it well enough, people are going

to form a relationship with you and they're going to start trusting you. And

if they're your ideal client, they will more than likely end up booking a

sales call with you. If they're not your ideal client,

then they will still be supportive of your content, which

as a result pushes it to their network. Or if they know your

ideal clients, I bet you they're referring them to you.

So if you're not on the LinkedIn train yet, I hope this will

convince you to get on there and start promoting your business there. If you

are on the LinkedIn train and you're doing any of these things wrong, I want

you to forgive yourself. You didn't know any better. But after you listen to this

episode, you will know better. So no more of these things, okay?

Deal. First and foremost,

LinkedIn does not like it when you share links in your posts,

okay? LinkedIn wants to keep its viewers on the

platform for as long as possible. If you're sharing a link

to, say, your YouTube channel or to an article

you wrote in a magazine, you're sending people off of

the platform. LinkedIn does not want that.

So the LinkedIn algorithm will actually kill the reach

of any post you share that has a link in it. This is

also true for you re sharing other people's

LinkedIn posts, which sounds absolutely nutso,

right? But LinkedIn is a janky ass

platform. It can't tell the difference between a

link to its own website and a link to another

website. Okay? So if you're someone who shares other people's posts

and you do it because you really want to promote them, you are a golden

soul. You are so kind and so supportive, and you're doing it from just

a really beautiful place. Keep going if you want to. If you're not trying to

get business from the platform, if you are trying to get business from

the platform, this is killing you. Killing me. Slowly with

his blinks

the next bit. Formatting if you're

formatting your content so it's not accessible to people with

vision issues, you are missing out on a ton of business. And let me tell

you why. On LinkedIn, when you use special character,

that post is no longer usable to any programs

that help those with vision impairments. You know, so those text

to talk kind of programs that read it for them, they can't read

that stuff. Likewise, if you're just writing

everything in big block paragraphs, and this goes for LinkedIn,

Instagram, Facebook, wherever you're creating content, there are

folks like me out there who actually have a really hard time

reading big blocks of text. You may not know this about

me. I had a minor traumatic brain injury back in October of

2017, and for about two or three months, I

literally could not read because the part of my brain that got bruised

was the part that deciphers what my eyes see now. It's gotten a lot

better. I can read now. It's great. Like, I'm back almost to normal,

but I'm still challenged when I see a chunky,

big paragraph that has no breaks in it. So, you know those posts where it's

like one sentence is a paragraph and then there's a big space and then there's

another sentence that's a paragraph, that's what is actually accessible

to people. And it feels weird to write that way. But

let me tell you, you will get so much more engagement on your posts

if you write that way, even if your content kind of sucks, it's also

really friendly to people who skim. I don't know about you, but I'm not, like,

sitting down in a quiet room with my nice cup of tea just to go

and read stuff on LinkedIn. No, I'm reading stuff on

LinkedIn when I'm sitting on a park bench with my dog who's barking at a

squirrel. I'm distracted. I'm looking at

LinkedIn when I'm watching tv at night, and I'm only half paying

attention. I'm skimming stuff. If it seems interesting,

I might read the whole thing, but I also might just, like, read the top

bit and then the bottom bit and then comment and, like, something. Not your

reader's job to invest their time and energy

into figuring out what you're trying to say. It is your job

to make it easy to read.

Another faux pas that many people on LinkedIn

do is they get preachy or salesy in

their content. And I'm saying that as someone who

trains my clients on how to write sales content.

Salesy and sales content are completely different things.

To paint the picture of what this looks like, I want you to imagine that

you go to a networking event. It's like 05:00 p.m. It's in maybe

downtown at a hip bar. And you go there and you get your

little name tag, and you walk into the room, there's like a whole

wall of hors d'oeuvres. And there's, you know, the bartenders that are

pouring glasses of wine and beer, and they might be making cocktails with the

stuff, but they're not doing anything fancy. And you look around

and you see all the people there. And instead of going and

starting a conversation with anyone you like, pull one of the chairs out from a

table, and you stand on it, and you start saying, do you have a

problem with this? Do you ever struggle with why?

Do you notice that other people are more successful in this area

than you? Well, I have the solution for you. No, that's like,

that's what the oxiclean guy would do. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel.

It's amazing. Watch how oxiclean unleashes

the power of oxygen, making tough stains disappear

like magic without fading or bleeding the

colors. Or pet squirrels. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Do

you think anyone at that networking event is gonna look at you and be like,

oh, my God, I have to buy from this person? No, they're gonna look at

you like you're a nutjob. The preachy person pulls out a

chair, stands on it, and starts telling people, like, here's how you solve all your

problems. Here's where you're actually screwing up your life, and here's how you solve your

problems. And here's what you really have to think about. No one

in that whole event is looking at this person, be like, wow, they're so

smart. Wow, I really want to talk to them. Wow, I really want to give

them my money and work with them. No, they're like, don't talk

to that person. They're telling their friends, if that person comes over here, let's pretend

we have to go to the bathroom. If they follow us to the bathroom, then

let's just leave. We're not dealing with that person. LinkedIn operates

best when you. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to

keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

LinkedIn operates best when you treat it like it's actually a

networking event or a neighborhood, meaning you have actual little

conversations with people. If you were a normal human

going to a networking event, you'd get your name tag, you'd walk in,

you'd kind of, like, scan the room for who seemed approachable. You might go

up to the bar and grab a drink and then head over to the hors

d'oeuvre table and grab a little plate and fill up and then start some

light chit chat with whoever was nearby. If you knew someone, you might

go up to them, be like, oh, my God. Hi, Tiffany. It's so great to

see you. And then whoever she's talking to, you kind of join into that

conversation. You're not going to go and be like, here's who I help, and this

is what I do, and this is how much I charge. No, you're going to

ask, oh, cool, like, where do you work? Oh, what do you like about it

there? You know, someone might compliment you on your blouse and you'd be like, oh,

yeah, I got this on sale at Bloomingdale's. Did you know that they have a

sale every quarter at this time? Like, it's amazing. Someone might be

talking about how they went on vacation last month to the Maldives.

You might start asking them questions about it and start saying, oh,

I've always wanted to go there. You're building actual

relationships and. Sure, yeah, sometimes the conversation comes back

to, what do you do? Oh, my God, I really need that. Sure. Can we

book a call? Absolutely. But you're not jumping there

first. If you jump there first, no one's going to go with you on

LinkedIn. When you go and you try to just be salesy and just

preach at people, and you don't invest some time on

having those conversations first. It's the equivalent of walking into

that networking event, standing on a chair, shouting some shit at them, and then going

to the hors d'oeuvre table with your tupperware, putting some stuff in and piecing out,

and then expecting that you're going to get a job or a client out of

it. It's not going to work. When you create content for LinkedIn,

you have to make it kind of conversational. When you're writing content, you have to

think about what would make this easy for someone to comment

on. And before you even post it, you actually have to go and

comment on a minimum of ten other people's posts.

And here's where so many people get tripped up. Okay, well, I have to

go and comment on my ideal client's post. No, you do not

go and comment on posts that you find interesting, that you find fun,

that light you up, that you want to be part of the conversation. People

are not scanning the interwebs for the person who is the most bland

version of whoever can solve their problems. They're

looking for people that they want to be in relationship with, that they want to

be friends with. You. Showing up as your actual human

self on LinkedIn is giving them that chance to

recognize you as a human and think, yeah, they seem

cool, I want to hang out with them more. The beautiful thing about

LinkedIn is that when you comment on someone else's post, even if they

have nothing to do with what you do, and they respond to you, and then

maybe they come and comment on your post because you supported

them, your content actually gets pushed to all

their people in their network. Anyone who's active on the platform is

more likely to see your stuff. If you have this

reciprocal relationship with this person, this content creator

whose stuff you're commenting on may not be your ideal client, but

I guarantee you they're connected to your ideal clients,

and they're connected to your ideal clients, spouses and

siblings and work besties. And when you

create content that's personal, that

empathizes with your ideal clients, you make it so much

easier for them to feel like they know you. And once they feel

like they know you, they'll start paying attention to what it is that you actually

do for work.

LinkedIn is not a quick game. It's not something where you're going

to post once and get a gazillion clients and then be done. It's a

long game. There are so many LinkedIn programs out

there that guarantee immediate results. And what they do is

they're essentially engagement pods, which is another big

faux pas that you do not want to do on LinkedIn. If you're not familiar

with what an engagement pod is, it's a group of people that you

join and you oftentimes you have to pay to join. And

anytime a member of that group with something, they share

the link in the pod and everyone in the pod

jumps on that link and goes in. Comments. Now, this hurts you

for multiple reasons. Number one, it's against the terms of

service on LinkedIn so you can get kicked off the platform. Number

two, everyone in that pod is not your ideal

client because they're all obsessed with getting their own clients on the

platform. They're obsessed with growing, growing their followership. Unless that's

your ideal client, you're basically training the

whole algorithm to show your stuff to more people like them who will

never buy from you. The ugly thing here is that your

newsfeed is going to be chockaback full of boring ass

content. Oftentimes, people in these groups are not trained on how to create

good content that's fun to engage on. So instead of going

onto LinkedIn and creating, creating real relationships and real friendships and

having some fun and attracting some clients in the mix, it

becomes this arduous task that you have to spend hours on

and you get more followers, but you never get a client out of it. And

that sucks. Unless you're a masochist and you really enjoy making yourself

suffer, then absolutely go for it. You do

whatever knocks your socks off, buddy. The last bit that I will

name here is, ooh, what am I gonna say next? Well, you'll

have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

The last bit that I will name here is

dming. Cold. Dming. Specifically,

never have I ever sat at my desk wondering, you

know, I really want some weirdo who knows nothing about me

and nothing about my business, nothing about what I'm struggling with, to send me an

unsolicited message trying to sell me their thing.

God, I just really want that today. Never, never have I

ever. And I've never gotten that initial message and been like, oh, this

is interesting. Yeah, I would totally love to hear about your cryptocurrency

kind of thing. Tell me more. And then appreciated

the 17 follow up messages that get sent after that, trying to

sell me their thing? No, that doesn't work that way. One of the things I

train all of my clients on is how to create content

that will actually attract your ideal clients to book with you without

you chasing them down. And we do this through a few different ways. Number

one, we edit your profile so it operates like landing page

your profile. If you're running a business and selling services and trying to

attract clients on LinkedIn, your profile should not

be about you. And I know that sounds completely nuts, so,

but your profile has to be all about your ideal

client and what they're struggling with and what they're afraid of and what they're

frustrated with and what they want more than anything. Because when someone

comes to your profile, they're not going to care that you were on the lacrosse

team. They're not going to know how you helping your company get

to like 400% of their corporate goal is going to be at all

relevant to how they're struggling in their life right

now and how you might help. They're not going to understand how you are on

the advisory board for some nonprofit is at all relevant

to how you can help them solve their problems. They are going to

recognize when your profile is all about them and

calls out the things that they struggle with that they don't think anyone

realizes that they struggle with, and says, by the way, if you're done

with this and you want something different, book a call with me.

Once we have that dialed in, we then look at your content

strategy to be successful on LinkedIn. To get clients from

LinkedIn, you actually do have to share about yourself. And I

know you hear so many content gurus out there being like, be

vulnerable, share authentically. And what the f. Does that mean?

It doesn't mean that you have to share all of your deepest, darkest secrets on

LinkedIn. It doesn't mean that you have to share all of

your traumas and all the weird, fucked up shit that's ever

happened to you. Okay? It doesn't mean that you have to explain exactly how you're

struggling right here in this moment, but it does mean that you have to give

people a little idea of who you are. And so when I think

about what makes LinkedIn so successful for people is when you treat it

like a neighborhood. Right? If you moved into a new neighborhood

and you wanted to get to know your neighbors, you would not go door to

door and hand out your very professional resume and then give them a whole little

lecture on what makes you special. You wouldn't. You're like, oh, hi,

I'm Katie, and this is my dog, Luna, and we love going for

walks. You'll see us around the neighborhood. You know, I'm a big fan of having

people over, so I hope you like cheese and wine, because I'll probably have

a nice cheese and wine night. By the way, are you obsessed with Bridgerton? Because

the new Bridgerton season is about to come out. It's dropping in two parts.

Isn't that annoying? I just want all of it all at once. But if you

like Bridgerton, I might be having a Bridgerton viewing party. And you can

dress up as a Bridgerton character. You don't have to dress up as a Bridgerton

character. I'll send you that invite if you watch Bridgerton. And what do you like

to do? It's stuff that you know about your neighbors that makes you trust

them and know them and feel comfortable with them around. It doesn't

necessarily have to be super deep. Growing up, my family lived in this

really cute neighborhood, and we had some really nice neighbors, and I didn't

honestly know what half of them did. Of course, I was. I was a teenager,

but, you know, I knew one of the neighbors was an ex parole officer. I

knew that another neighbor had some kind of consulting firm, but he really liked

cigars and whiskey. I knew another neighbor had chickens,

and some other neighbors really liked having parties on the weekend that were a little

loud and we'd get annoyed with, but they seemed nice enough. Every single one of

those neighbors my family would have trusted with a key to our house in case

of emergencies. It's the same on LinkedIn. You're not trusting people on LinkedIn with a

key to your house, but you're giving them enough so they feel like they

know you. In combination with that, you're sharing about

your ideal clients. You're empathizing with where they are right now.

You're talking about what they're struggling with and what they're afraid of and what they

want more than anything.

And sure, you're sharing testimonials, but you don't have to bang

on about how incredibly smart you are. When we interact with other

humans, we just assume everyone else is as smart as we are until proven

otherwise. Right? And so unless you're an absolute moron,

don't worry about proving how smart you are. People are just going to assume that

you're the same level of smart as they are. You know, we're also coming up

with some kind of system so that you can be consistent.

Like I said, you're not going to post once and attract all of your clients.

You're going to have to post for several months consistently,

anywhere from four to seven times a week, which seems like a lot

when you first get started, but trust me, it has an impact. And

after a few months, you're going to start attracting clients who just see your

content. They may not like it and they may not comment on it, but

all of a sudden, they're going to show up on your calendar having booked a

sales call. I've had numerous people book sales

calls with me, and I got on with them and started talking

to them, and towards the end, they were like, listen, I didn't book a call

with you to say no to working with you. I've watched every single live

you've ever done, which, if you have at all, followed my lives over the last

four years. That's like seven seasons of a Netflix show. It's like

watching suits, all of the seasons of suits, and then maybe a bonus

season. I don't know, there's a lot of content on there.

You're going to have people in your audience who are following you to the same

degree, but for them to do that, for them to follow you

and watch you and absorb what you're saying, you have to actually show up and

post. You have to be consistent. And the key to all of

this is you have to invite people to book a call with you. You have

to invite people to become your client.

When I first started posting on LinkedIn, my dad started bragging

to everyone that I had a LinkedIn blog. I spent the pandemic with them. And

I remember he came home one day and he's like, oh, I ran

into so and so from this committee in the town, and they were

telling me that their daughter worked at LinkedIn. And I told him to ask his

daughter if she knew about you because you have a LinkedIn blog. My dad had

no idea what I did back then. It was so cute. He was so proud

that I would post stuff and get people to comment on it. And

I don't know if he understood that I didn't get paid for it. He

understands now. He understands how it works now, but it took a while,

but to the point you can absolutely treat it like a blog and just write

stuff and put it out there. But if you don't tell people, hey, I'm for

hire, and if you have this problem and you want to solve this problem, I

can help you with that. Book a call with me they're not going to

know. We are very simple creatures, okay? We take things at

face value. I want you to think about all the different, like

Instagram people who post about cooking, like cooking different

dishes and baking and all this stuff. Would you assume that you could

hire them for catering? You know, would you assume that this fitness

person who's posting about healthy meals that they could come over and do

meal prepping for you once a week? No, of course not. You're

just watching their stuff, thinking they're sharing valuable recipes that they use to stay

in shape. You're not going to know that you can hire them to come over

and do meal prep for you unless they tell you. And it's the

same across every single industry. So if you are for

hire, you have to tell people that you're for hire and give them

explicit instructions as to how they could inquire about working

with you. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

And I want to acknowledge this is the weeniecast. It is a podcast

for ADHD business owners, but this is something that is

widely applicable to business owners everywhere. But I will

say if you have ADHD, this is

where you actually get to share all your freak flags. All the

weirdo things that you're interested in or have been interested in in the

past. Those are such cool conversation starters

that let people feel like they know you and help

them connect with you on a different level. And eventually they may end up being

your client or they may end up referring business to you.

But the fact that you have all these, like, varied weirdo

interests that you can talk about and share about and

get excited for, that's all stuff that is going to make

people feel like they know you. So full

permission here to go and share about all of it. Maybe not all of it.

The really weird stuff you and I both know you want to keep to yourself,

unless that's part of your service. But unless you run

like a dominatrix s and m thing, maybe keep that stuff to yourself.

Although I have to say, I would be tickled to see an

actual, like, dominatrix or something out there

trying to promote their services on LinkedIn. I think that would be hysterical. I don't

know if they would be like, in accordance with the terms of service, but, you

know, that would be so much fun. That would really mix up the conversation a

bit. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that

makes money, go ahead and book a generate income strategy call with

me by going to

weeniecast.com/strategycall.

On this call, we will talk about your goals, your dreams,

and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit

for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together.