173. The 5 Step Process To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile And Attract Your Ideal Clients With Marcus Murphy From Digital Marketer

The 5 Step Process To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile And Attract Your Ideal Clients With Marcus Murphy From Digital Marketer

Links Mentioned:

• Click here to download the podcast shownotes
• Marcus Murphy LinkedIn Profile
• The 10-Point LinkedIn Audit
• www.GetMeToDone.com
• www.Productiveinsights.com
• www.PremiumProductivity.com
• www.CallAshRoy.com
• www.Youtube.com/ProductiveInsights

Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

The 5-Step Process To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile With Marcus Murphy From Digital Marketer

Ash Roy: Hello and welcome to the productive insights podcast. This is your host, Ash Roy and the founder of productive insights.com. I’m delighted to have a special guest, Marcus Murphy, and he’s somebody I’ve been very keen to have on for quite a while because he is here to change the conversation around sales by changing the sales conversation and specifically, we’re going to be talking about LinkedIn and how to achieve and more authentic approach to sales around LinkedIn. Now, just to put a bit of context around this, there is a lot of negative hype around sales in general and probably for good reason because unfortunately sales has been associated with being pushy and slimy, but both Marcus and I feel that it doesn’t have to be that way, that sales is about solving a problem and it’s about being empathetic in today’s world. Marcus and I failed. That. Being strategic, helpful and empathetic is what helps us to win as salespeople, and more importantly, it helps the customer to win. So, I’m delighted to welcome Marcus Murphy from digital marketer Dot Com. Welcome, Marcus.

Marcus Murphy: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Ash Roy: Oh, it’s great to have you on the show, man. Let’s start by talking about why it’s important to have an empathetic approach to sales and how linked in helps us to achieve this in particular.

Marcus Murphy: First of all, this topic is fantastic. The reason why it’s fantastic is because every single person, whether you admit that you’re a salesperson or not, if you want a company out or you are right, because fundamentally you need to win new business. You need to get new clients, new customers. Um, so everybody needs to kind of hear this good news of being able to bring sales back into what I believe it was meant for, which was connecting and making genuine and empathetic connections with other people. And so really, really good salespeople do that, and the majority of salespeople will do not salespeople are, are typically pushy. They follow a script, they care more about themselves than they do the person that they’re trying to sell. And typically, they don’t listen. They’re the worst listener in the world if you’ve ever come across that. So usually when I’m speaking in some kind of event, I asked him about like, hey, how many people love salespeople

Marcus Murphy: And it’s a silent unless there’s a salesperson, they usually raise their hand. When I found LinkedIn several years ago, I found a platform that was connecting and bringing professionals to some kind of social. I mean, it was a social platform for professionals. It was different. And when I found that as a sales person, I was like, wait a minute. All of my people, all the people, all the prospects, all the people that I want to connect with, not only meant for ship and potential customers, everybody was kind of coming to LinkedIn. It was almost a place where people would come to find a job originally. But what I saw was a major opportunity. So, I was a very much an early adopter of the platform. Um, I saw a lot of opportunity in connecting with people and making sure that I found ways to interact with them, engage them in a new way and looked in over the. Has built in tools that allow us to continue to be thoughtful. And it’s very much like a value first kind of conversation because if you’re on LinkedIn and it’s one sided, you won’t win. If you use the platform in the right way, you’re going to start conversation after conversation and those are much easier to monetize than kind of a one-way prospecting email or outreach.

Ash Roy: Yeah, absolutely. I like what you said about some salespeople tending to follow a script and when things go horribly wrong is when you try and force your prospect into your script instead of trying to build the conversation around your prospect’s problem or their needs. And the other point you made, which I really agree with this, talking too much and not listening enough. I remember someone said it really well to me, they said telling is not selling so right way to do it is to ask and then dive deeper, delve deeper and you know, like almost keep pulling on the string to try and understand the problem and then approach it. Almost like a doctor would approach a patient a diagnostic approach. So how does LinkedIn specifically enable us to have this diagnostic approach

Marcus Murphy: You know, first of all, if you’re not doing right now, I need to make sure that I’m kind of being overly dramatic. Okay There are 560 plus million people on this platform and the goal of LinkedIn is to have 3 billion people and they’re well on their way, so you’re sitting here going, well, should I be on LinkedIn Should have not or like most people, you’re on LinkedIn, but you haven’t ever really optimized that. You don’t know what to do with it. You kind of have a nice picture. Maybe you’ve done a few things to your profile, but I’ll tell you right now that the reason why people should pay attention the most is it’s the best conversational platform for professionals and let me say that again. It is conversational. It is value. First, when you said to me, what really separates what going to make the salesperson or the future when it’s going to be that value, first empathetic and thoughtful salesperson, and the only way you can be is being able to look at someone’s profile on LinkedIn.

Marcus Murphy: Find multiple points of interest. Mutual connection. Empathy means that you are putting yourself in their shoes, but a lot of times what that means is you found something interesting about them that you want to make sure that you, they know that, you know. So, for me it’s like I think most selling is terrible because they don’t, they’ve done no research. They no Tom Finding out who I am, what my themes are, what I’m trying to accomplish, what I’m trying to avoid as a business owner or even just, I mean like prospect all the time and just nonstop. If you’re like me, how many, how many emails do you get a day Ash

Ash Roy: Maybe 60 or 70 emails a day. Of which one or two would be pitching pitch emails. I probably got about five or six miles a week.

Marcus Murphy: Yeah. And so, for me and anybody who’s an executive at a company or anybody who, who’s kind of looking at this, I get about a hundred and 50 emails a day. A Ryan dice, which is really fun to. Our CEO of digital marketer had probably gotten hundreds of thousands a week on just people who are trying to connect and pitch ideas. I’m telling you that that’s a lot of noise and if you’re sitting around thinking, man, I’m going to pick up the phone. I’m going to get a hold of someone. I’m going to send a cold email and get their attention. You’re, you’re basically an excuse my language, but you’re. You’re basically peeing against the wind and we’re going uphill. That is an uphill battle that is very hard to win in a crowded, noisy market, and so for me, I know that LinkedIn out of $506 million people, there are probably on average, you’re getting about three to four messages from someone on LinkedIn per week that’s average and it’s a really incredible way to kind of cut through that noise and personalize that experience.

Marcus Murphy: Let people know that you know them. Let them know that you did your research. Let them know that, hey, I saw this thing on your, on your LinkedIn profile. I saw that article you shared. I saw that post you shared. I want to make sure that you know that I’m interested in you and I’m also trying to figure out how my solution, how my product aligns with where you want to go and how you can get there faster. That is the only way this platform works and the more conversation you start and show that value upfront, the more that you’re going to expedite the sales process.

Ash Roy: Okay. Now we’ll talk a little bit more about how to get access to people’s content, what they’re sharing by talking about sales navigator and the second part of this conversation, but I’m very excited. Yeah, but for now, let’s talk about the free version of LinkedIn and how that enabled us to do this research and how that is different to other platforms like say Facebook or Instagram and so on. I would like to just mention a few things that I’ve noticed that LinkedIn offers that the other platforms don’t. It’s true that Facebook has 2 billion users or close to it, but Facebook has had quite a few issues of light around the Cambridge Analytica scandal and to be honest, I personally think they’re reeling from it and I don’t feel very optimistic about Facebook’s future in terms of being the place to be at now. LinkedIn does have relatively fewer people on there, but it’s very much a professional network and the average income is much higher, so there’s definitely compelling reasons to be on LinkedIn.

Ash Roy: It’s much easier to find out about someone. It’s a far more professional platforms so you don’t sort of talk about what you had for breakfast on LinkedIn, the certain etiquette around it, which I already like. It works well for me. That said it doesn’t necessarily work for all brands and we can talk about that a little bit later on but let me throw a little bit of a spanner in the works. Marcus, and one of the objections I’ve heard from people is, oh, well people don’t check their messages on LinkedIn very often. They only check it once a week. What do you have to say to that?

Marcus Murphy: You know, they’re probably right. I’m not. Here’s the interesting thing. I’m not here to defend LinkedIn. I’m telling you what’s worked and what I’ve seen, and so whether somebody checks it and think about this, if they check their email, they check their phone incessantly all day long. I mean, this thing literally blinks every second of the day for me. I have to mute everything. When you get one quality message per week, if you get one quality message per week, does it matter the consistency of the message Think about it like this. And I know maybe this might not translate as well, and I remember kind of talking to a few of my sales managers about this the other day. I asked them this question, I said, hey, he asked me what time should, uh, should a salesperson’s start their day Should they be there at 6:00 in the morning and they’re ready to go and are calling 100 people a day I said, well, does it matter if they call 100 people a day or they have 10 quality conversations And so when you start thinking about the quality over quantity aspect of this platform, I’m going to cut through the noise, whether you check once a week or once a day and I’m going to tell you that in that kind of personalization that LinkedIn allows, it’s more about the quality of your communication than the quantity. And I think that’s really important. Remember

Ash Roy: That’s great. It reminds me of something that Ryan Guy said this, we’ll market it down under and that was conversation is the new lead. I think that we really need to think in terms of a conversation and it in terms of an interactive conversation where preferably other person is speaking about 70 slash 80 percent of the time and you’re speaking maybe but 20 percent of the time at the most where you’re offering suggestions and solutions.

Marcus Murphy: Yeah. I mean, Ryan Deiss is a smart guy, so I will agree with what he says. Uh, he’s also a really good friend and mentor of mine and I’ll tell you the conversations when and if you know how to have the correct kind of conversation, typically you aren’t the one talking the most. And I think that’s really a way that, you know, when I, when I see young salespeople the biggest mistakes that they make or that they end up overtalking. And you know what’s crazy, the number one mistake every veteran salespeople make them overtalk it’s because that you either know too little or you know too much. And so, there’s a very interesting dynamic that when you are a young salesperson, you, if you come into a sales conversation and you’re more curious, you’re inquisitive, you are the one who’s asking great questions to let people know that you, that you’re interested in them. Because people love. People love to talk about themselves. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that, but typically when anyone asks us, like if you ask him when’s the last time someone, you, someone asked you five questions about your life.

Ash Roy: Yeah.

Marcus Murphy: When’s the last time It’s almost impossible to figure that out. It’s a very long time because people are innately selfish and so when somebody, when someone comes against that or they’re, they’re literally doing just the opposite, it stands out. So, if you want to be a successful salesperson, period, you’re won’t ask a lot of great questions and you’re going to do the research and that’s where just being on LinkedIn free tech free account, there’s so much information on there. You asked a really important question to ask. Now I actually want to get back to you said like what’s the biggest difference between LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, and here’s the deal. Everyone should be utilizing those, right Everybody’s on Facebook, everyone is on Instagram, but they do serve different purposes. Um, if I go to Facebook, I’m looking to have connect with my family members, connect with my friends, share pictures of my family.

Marcus Murphy: I’m looking to, to interact with people on a personal level. In fact, if you send me a Facebook friend request right now, not you ash, but anybody listening to this, I most likely won’t accept it because I don’t know you, which is important to understand. And it’s also, it’s also gated, so Facebook and Instagram can be private. LinkedIn does not have a private option, but it’s also creating a professional context that allows people to understand that when they come, they’re not going to see cat videos. You’re not going to see food photos like you said, they’re coming there because they want to connect, they want to get a job, they want to have partnerships, they want to gain leads, they want to gain customers, and that is its primary focus. So, when you are putting in populating information on that page, all the areas that you populate our 100 percent professional, there is no area in there that’s asking you what were your vacationing or how many children you have. That is all really appropriate for the appropriate site. But in this case, it’s your professional persona online. It is how you’re communicating your professionalism and how you’re building out your professional network, which is very different and that’s why you’re going to see a much Nisha of 560 million as opposed to Facebook, which everyone has, including my grandmother. So that’s a very important to remember.

Ash Roy: Now there is one place that you can do some high quality talking as it was, and that is on your LinkedIn profile, so can you share with us some of the best tips to get our LinkedIn profile really firing so that when we do start that conversation and we genuinely express interest in this person that we are wishing to connect to, they go and check out profile and they find something that is meaningful and valuable.

Marcus Murphy: I will 100 percent telling you the areas that you have to optimize on your LinkedIn profile before you do anything else on LinkedIn fact. This is the number one I’m about to share. Just five things that you need to do on your profile. If you don’t do these five things, please do not connect with another person. Do not spend money on LinkedIn and do not do advertising because all of it leads back to you and your professional brand on LinkedIn. So if your profile is not set up correctly, if it’s not just these few things I’m about to tell you to optimize, then you really need to start here and it might feel very remedial, right If I’m going to tell you, hey, you need a profile photo and you need to look like this, it’s going to feel like is. I’m so much smarter than this, but I’ll tell you what, the majority of people get it wrong and it’s very, very intentional.

Marcus Murphy: So, I am going to start with personalization. Okay When you go into a LinkedIn profile, the first thing you’re going to see if someone’s photo. Most people do some kind of professional headshot, but I’ll tell you the majority don’t. The majority have the picture is way too big for the frame. It’s a circular photo. The rule of thumb is 60 percent in frame with a background. Okay And people always ask me a question like, what do I wear in the photo now So it has to be appropriate to what you’re trying to attract, right If you’re fishing, you’re the bait and this photo and if your clientele are more professional, buttoned up and, and they, you know, depending on whatever they’re actually expectations of that community are, then you probably aren’t going to wear a very casual button down shirt like I typically do in my photos because my customers are expecting that.

Marcus Murphy: Right Then you also have an opportunity which the majority of people do not take advantage of, which is a banner photo. There’s a banner photo and every single, every single opportunity you have to brand the site. You need to take advantage of that because pictures communicate pictures. We’ll communicate an image and they, they 100 percent, uh, you knew need to be consistent with your brand. So, on my profile page, if you go to my LinkedIn page, you will see a picture of me with a clean background. I’m smirking like a smile because I want to make sure that I’m approachable. And then if you look at my banner photo, it’s branded digital marketer. It’s a photo of us on mainstage at TNC last year, traffic and conversion summit, our conference in San Diego, California. And it’s just a buzz, there’s a lot of energy and it’s just a really great photo to kind of express it. So, when you see that photo, you’re like, this guy’s on stage, just guys just kind of communicating energy. He seems like he’s out there living life and that is what I’m trying to do. So, number one, it is important to make sure that you have a professionally branded on LinkedIn. Your profile photo counts and your banner photo absolutely constantly gives you an opportunity to personalize and brand yourself, which is wonderful.

Ash Roy: Let me just jump in there for one second. Just to clarify for our listeners, when you talk about benefits photo, you mean the photo that sits across behind the background on the top of field profile, so it’s not photo that’s in that circular thing, but it’s the backdrop of what is that second photo You can customize that

Marcus Murphy: absolutely, that you can customize that banner photo across the top of the page, and then you also have the ability to go in and customize and LinkedIn has filters and they have adjustments and you can crop and do that rate from your profile. When you edit, and here’s the thing, you’re going to find the edit. There’s nothing that says edit, but there’s a little pencil, a little pencil all over your page when you log in and when you click on the pencil, that was your edit option, so make sure that you’re looking for that when you find it, but that’s just number one. The second one is, is that under your name on your profile is a descriptor. Many, many people typically just put there up, CEO of digital marketer, director of monetization, but it actually gives you more characters. They’re okay to be able to tell people what when I’m scrolling through a fee.

Marcus Murphy: All I see is your photo and your name and your description, so your profile description here should be more than just your name and your job title. It should actually say something like, for mine says, EXEC executive sales leader, but my sales team says we are here to help agencies grow because that’s what they’re selling. They’re selling an agency program that is helping agency PR agencies grow across the world. So, when I look at this, I’m like, wow, there’s real estate here that you can start to personalize and tell people how this is the very first place you can start a conversation. Okay, so the second thing that you can do here under your name is put in a personalized description that allows people to understand what you’re about and allows you to even kind of start the conversation. So, when they’re scrolling through, they see exactly what you do and who you help,

Ash Roy: but would it make sense to then have that line talk about the benefit that you offer to your target audience. So, if you’re, for example, an agency growth specialist rather than saying sales director, you might say agency growth specialist at digital marketer.

Marcus Murphy: Totally. You can say aiden’s growth specialist or you can even take it a little bit further and tell people exactly what you do with agencies. So, in our case, when we have our sales people say we help agencies grow or we’re here to double the size of 10,000 businesses, they also can incorporate their mission and what they’re about. So that headline, which is what it’s officially called, is a LinkedIn headline, so your first name, your last name, then it will have your headline and you can use that real estate to be able to make that description. That’s very, very, very good. Second Point,

Ash Roy: if you want to know more about missions and how digital market has mission of doubling 10,000 businesses by 20, 20 came to be. Definitely have a listen to the conversation with Ryan dice because we had a great chat about that, and you can access that a productive inside self-comfort with slash one seven zero.

Marcus Murphy: Oh perfect. So, the third thing on your profile, so now you’ve got your photos, you’ve got your banner photo, you have a personalized headline that’s telling people why they should connect with you. The next piece is that you have 2000 characters in your summary Section to be able to tell the world, but you’re about. This is where you say, this is my mission, this is my vision. You’re going to insert personalization and then you’re going to end with a clear call to action and they have. They give you so much space to do that. Let me give you an example. I’m going to read a bit of my summary so that people understand because it’s not. It’s not just a bulleted list. It’s not a bulleted list of your lives. This is an opportunity for you to tell a story because people do connect to the stories.

Marcus Murphy: They absolutely want to know more about you. Oh, literally like five to six different people per week. Now we’ll reach out just because they liked my mission statement and what I’m about. They’ll connect with something inside of that summary and they’ll start a conversation. This is what I’m telling you, every single piece of personalization should be an opportunity for someone to have a conversation with you, and if you do it right, the people who absolutely identify with this are your perfect customer, they just are or they’re a perfect partner that you can work with because they are aligning with your vision. So, for me, I read it really quick, but it’s quick. It’s simple, and it’s to the point I’m on a mission to overcome the stigma of selling. All right That’s the very first line. Then I insert personality. I said when I was a kid, I didn’t dress up as a salesman for Halloween and I certainly didn’t ask for sales training for Christmas.

Marcus Murphy: Okay. It’s basically saying that I just accidentally salesperson because of my skill set right now. The next one is unfortunately, no one wants to be a salesperson even though it’s the largest profession in the world. Okay It is the largest fashion. People hate being sold, but they love to buy. People need salespeople, but equally hate them. Right That is very important because it’s like, I love to buy, but I don’t love people that are selling me this stuff, so there’s a disconnect in understanding that salespeople are typically the problem. Okay, and so people identify with that. The next line is even with all the other job options, here I am a sales guy trying to escape the thought was pushy, untrustworthy reputation that has ruined countless before me and then in quotes Isa, Hey, what do you do for a living Me Whispers, I’m a sales guy because it’s embarrassing, right as it is. That stigma is so hard and then I ended with I’m here to take sales back, to restore, teach and up level the sales profession. It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is today. The strategic, helpful, empathetic salesperson wins. It’s time to put thoughtfulness back into the sales process and I’m ready for the challenge. Does anyone want to join me, And I have countless, countless messages of people who absolutely have wanted in that mission and it gives the opportunity for the conversation.

Ash Roy: Okay, Marcus, I got to tell you some things that just jumped out at me from that story that I absolutely loved. So, the first thing was I loved that juxtaposition where you said people hate being sold to, but they love to buy. No one wants to be a salesperson, but it’s the largest profession in the world. So, I really love that contrast and how you put those paradoxes forward. Then you took me on a bit of a journey. You told me about your story as a as a kid and then you turn that into how that graduated almost into your mission and then you concluded with an awesome call to action saying, who wants to join me Put your hand up and I think that a powerful story shares the journey, delivers some kind of a transformation which you’ve done in your profile very skilfully and then ends with a call to action where you’re asking them to put their hand up and that’s probably why you’re getting so many people reaching out to you.

Marcus Murphy: And I’m telling you that every single person can have a profile like this. Like I said, 2000 characters here, insert your personality, start with your mission, get people on board, insert your personality with little pieces of who you are, and then end with something that allows people to start a conversation. Ask a question, make sure that people know that, that that not only are you just giving them information, but you care about them as well. If you relate to this, if you like this, you send me a private message, right Write me a comment, connect with me here. These are all free things that you can be optimizing, and this third one is massive because there’s one little piece of it to hear Ash. That’s important. I’m also on that. On that same summary page. Now they let you add rich media, so they let you add in photos now, because I’ll tell you right now that percentage of readers in the world is very low. Okay I don’t want to say, I mean probably mostly in America, which is probably. I think it was like an average of four books a year, but when you take out children’s books, it’s more like one book a year per household per person, and not to say that everyone’s dumb or uninformed or ignorant, it’s actually that we’ll learn in different ways and we’ve moved from that to more of like missing generation or generation.

Ash Roy: Well, people that are reading through audio books now, people are listening through listening to podcast, so at knowledge transfer is happening a lot more to voice and video.

Marcus Murphy: Yeah, we’re doing it right now. Right. So of course, LinkedIn will allow you to, to add in media to your summary and to all of your job descriptions as well, which I’ll get into as my fourth point, but you can now add photos to your summary to tell that different story. So, in mind if you go to my, my, my summary, and you read that, you’re going to get the idea of what mission I’m on. That’s when you look at the photos at aligns. It shows pictures of me speaking at LinkedIn, speaking at different conferences. Picture with Richard and Ryan at our agency events and just opportunities for me to literally share this message with the world so when you look at those pictures or you that you get a clear idea of who I am and what I’m about and I think that’s a really, really wonderful piece that everyone should optimize.

Ash Roy: Awesome. That’s a great tip. Now I do have a question about video. I know that if you upload a video natively to LinkedIn as opposed to uploading it to YouTube and posting a link in LinkedIn to that YouTube video, uploading it natively to LinkedIn, which means uploading the MP four file as a media file inside your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn, right Algorithms prefer that because obviously it means you’re going to stay more on the LinkedIn platform. I have seen someone uploading videos on LinkedIn and then offering a pdf without requesting an optin, but the asking them to leave a comment underneath that video requesting the pdf. However, they don’t send the pdf and the comment, they send a pdf as a private message. So, what that does is two things that increases the ranking of that particular piece of content because it’s video point one, point two, because people are commenting, and the person is responding. Each time they comment, that’s increasing. The number of comments and LinkedIn algorithms are thinking, oh wow, this is a valuable piece of content. So, it’s been pushed up. My question is this, do you recommend that Is that a good practice and is that gaming the system

Marcus Murphy: So, this is the wild west Ash. This is what Facebook was three, four years ago. So, you should take advantage of it. Here’s some insight that you’re going to need to know as a listener and someone who wants to take advantage of that algorithm. There are 9 billion. Listen to my words, 9 billion content impressions per week on LinkedIn. Wow. So that is not only $9 billion per week, but that is roughly being driven by one percent of the population. So, if I told you there were $506 million people on there, that’s being driven by around three percent of the entire. I mean 33 million people. Excuse me, $3, million people are driving the majority of all content on LinkedIn, so when you see a post go viral, okay, if it’s a video, it’s even less than that. So, if you think about three percent, it probably makes a point five percent as video.

Marcus Murphy: So, when you. If you want to start seeing things take off, if you want to do an early influence on the site, because you could sit here and go $546 million, it feels like I’ve missed the boat. It feels like I’m not an early adopter. If you listen to what LinkedIn said and they’re trying to get to that $3 billion mark, you are an early adopter. If you’re on the platform now, you just need to get ahead of the curb. That’s why I’m waving my hands and doing fires and jumping around is because this is the opportunity to become that. This is the opportunity. When someday your clients are going to say, well, how do I leverage LinkedIn and you’re going to. Be like, well, I listened to that podcast with that ash guy and he had that weird guy on there from America and whatever, and he was talking about how you pay attention to this.

Marcus Murphy: I’m telling you right now, if you start to share content video, if you start to encourage people to comment on the video, if they liked the video, it’s like old school Facebook where it’s showing all of your activity on that person’s page. So, if Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, like one of my articles, he has 9 million followers, so every one of his followers is going to see that he liked and commented on my piece and article and I’ve had. It already happened when he did that. I had 47,000 views to that article in the first day, right the first day. So, it’s traditionally looking at that content and sharing it based on activity feeds. So, you have an amazing opportunity. You’re not gaming the system, use understand it. Right And so if you’re a marketer out there who’s trying to break stuff and figure it out, then you’re doing the right thing by trying to say, okay, I need to see how to make this content go further.

Marcus Murphy: So in your case, when you were talking about the video and having them send out something private, you can even be, you can do a simpler version of that and basically go ahead and share that piece of content, that native video, because you’re right, the algorithm does like native video and it seems so I can’t speak definitively, but it does. And if you write the comment section where you want to put a link or you want to share an article or in that download, um, underneath, in that comment section that takes them over to a downloadable pdf where they have to enter their information. That is a perfect strategy. And one that if they comment, the comments are ranked in the algorithm so much higher. So, if you get 100 likes that won’t get you the views. If you get 100 comments, the thing is a viral. Because comments are ranking in terms of activity and where they show up in the feed, much higher than likes. So, I will say that the content strategy is where you really want to focus, especially being that the majority of all these impressions are being driven by such a small amount of people. So, there’s a major opportunity here, Ashley.

Ash Roy: So, to give you some perspective, that particular video that I’m thinking of, it had about 20,000 views and 545 comments.

Marcus Murphy: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a really healthy one. It’s funny because you, you want to know what type of content I post and that video is very important, but the comments were really important. I have on here that have done 100,000 views. Um, and, and I’ll tell you, some of them are, will sound really ridiculous. You ready for one that did the extra day, like this one got that 70,000 views. I literally wrote a, a question and I said, I only drink ginger ale on airplanes. That’s what I said. And I said, are there any other road warriors out there that do the same thing or me going insane because I would never buy it and put it in my refrigerator, I just wouldn’t do it. And so, all of a sudden, I’ve got 20, 30, 40, 50 comments of people telling me that I’m not there.

Marcus Murphy: You’re not alone. And you know what Actually I don’t drink ginger Ale, but I have bloody Mary mix with no alcohol. And I’m like, oh, that’s disgusting. Right But people were sharing their experiences because you’re posting a question and that’s where conversations happen. So not only the people competing, but when you engaged with it, it’s an additional comment. So, all of a sudden there’s 50 people riding my wall. Now there’s 100 comments because I just responded to everyone. All of a sudden that takes a crazy viral turn and you see an uptick in a hockey stick in terms of engagement. And so that one has been going and still gets comments. A friend of mine over at drift, if you’ve never heard of them and drift off name, uh, uh, David, David cancel. And there’s also a Dave Gerhart, Dave Gerhart has been experiencing on LinkedIn all the time, and if you follow him as a marketer or a business person, you’re going to be blown away. But he basically put up a video and he said, hey, if you’re a marketer here, I’m starting a private group. If you get into this private group, you just have to make sure you comment here and let me know this thing had almost $200,000. It’s insane. So yeah, it’s, it’s worth it.

Ash Roy: It’s definitely ask another question. So, I communicated with Seth Godin and about a month ago we’ve been exchanging emails. The communication was around this particular blog post where he said he should write every day. So, I’ve been writing every day since then for the whole month of November. And I’ve got quite a bit of content in the form of blog posts, fairly short blog posts. So, if I was to create videos where I essentially use those blog posts as a script because I’ve tried to create engaging content in the form of a short blog post, would that be a good idea for me to do

Marcus Murphy: They did. That would be the best thing that you can do. Um, I’ve tried a bunch of different video strategies on here. I’ve done full, you know, 10, 15 minutes piece of content. I’ve done quick one minute 92nd versions and split those up into 10 different videos on the same topic, which was really great. That worked the best because consumable information in the feed right now is kind of hovering around 90 seconds. You can get people to go to a longer version. So, here’s what I would suggest, do the smaller micro video and then in the comments link to a longer video, um, that seemed to work really, really well, especially for YouTube users out there and people that really want to use that and start getting the most out of it. Um, but I, I, the 90-minute video, if you go to my profile and look at some of the content, they’re expected, the video, you’ll see 92nd clips that literally grab people’s attention and then the CTA and the comments and that’s really where we’re getting kind of the best of both worlds. People consume it really quick and if it’s interesting to them they’re going to click on that link and take them to a landing page or take them to a longer form video of that extended content and it seems be working really well.

Ash Roy: Well, is it okay if I link to your profile in the show notes of this episode

Marcus Murphy: Oh yeah, absolutely. I always tell people, you know, I know I have, you know, 8,500 followers or whatever it is on there, but I, I literally get just hundreds of messages a week and I, I still spend a tremendous amount of time getting back to people. In fact, I get back to them even better now because I can respond in a voice message on my mobile phone. So, when I actually go into my, yeah, I can go into my LinkedIn messages and click on and hold a voice note down up to 60 seconds and I can just quickly respond to people and that’s how I do it. I say, hey, thanks so much. I looked at your profile. I really liked what you did here. I’ll give a quick example of what I think that they should update or do that. And that’s kind of an open invitation because I’m always learning, right Every person that asked me a question I, I do go to their profile, love to look at it. So open invitation, give me a little bit of grace on the timeframe, but I do get back to everyone who messages me.

Ash Roy: Awesome. We’ll link to that in the China. It’s now another question that I’m sure our listeners have and that is, what should I wait to do these videos Do I need to dress formally, or can I just wear a t shirt I’m wearing now

Marcus Murphy: You know, authenticity is king. I’ve met people that I feel like she’d never dress up because that’s not who they are. And I like ended up before, I do think it’s attractional as well, so I think it’s one-part authenticity, attractional, right If you’re authentically gothic and were black everything and whatever, but that isn’t who you’re trying to attract. Then you need to adjust your authenticity. But but I also think that there are, there’s a lot that shows in your confidence. There’s a lot that chosen just who you are. Like I, I unfortunately don’t wear tee shirts all the time. Right. But had I done that and the base that I was trying to connect with also expected that and thought that was totally socially acceptable. I would be doing it all the time, but I also might adjust if I’m trying to connect with someone that is less formal because I come in to button up and I’m trying to connect with someone who is less formal, that’s going to be a turn off for them in a, in a major way. So, I would definitely try to be sensitive to who you’re trying to attract, but also try to stay as authentic to who you are because people really respond to authenticity. Yeah,

Ash Roy: exactly. Because you’re more comfortable in that advert as well. So, my target market us small business owners, entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals, so it’s a bit of a mix really, but I think the aspiration of most self-employed professionals, business owners are to be independent. So as long as the tissue doesn’t have holes in it and it’s not raggedy and I guess it’s okay. Right.

Marcus Murphy: You know, it’s funny, I, um, I’ve learned from people who are dressed to the nines and I’ve also learned a tremendous amount of people from people that have holes in their shirts. I think it’s really interesting, you know, you know, Ryan, I said something to me that blew my mind one time and kind of really stretched me goes along with this. If you can only learn from people that you like, you’re missing out on a lot of really good information. I think you have to start thinking that way because if you sit around and you can only relate to an only from people who look like you and sound like you are acceptable, then you’re missing out on eat about 70 percent of the information because the majority of the world doesn’t look like he doesn’t talk. You don’t dress like you. So, I would challenge people to lean more on their authenticity because you’re going to build more people on authenticity than you are unreliability in terms of what you look like. Yeah.

Ash Roy: That’s very helpful to know. There’s one quote I want to say and then we’ll come back to points four and five. I remember someone wants to hold me. I thought people in suits were very powerful until I realized that they work for guys in shorts and t shirts should say guys and gals and shallots and patients.

Marcus Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. It’s true though. I mean a lot of those people represent people who are in shorts and t shirts and relaxed, you know, and I think that is really good. Well, we’re kind of into that more so now than ever on the way that us. The way we present ourselves.

Ash Roy: Okay, so let’s get back to our five-point checklist. So, we up to point four now.

Marcus Murphy: I’ll tell you the next, next one is your experience section on your profile. It’s overlooked because a lot of people just use this as their cv or their resume and so they just throw up a title. The company, if they’re on LinkedIn, the link to it, they’ll put up when they were two when they didn’t and that’s it, and they’ll put a little bit of a description of what they did. I wouldn’t challenge that to the summary. The reason why people respond to it so well is because it’s written in a narrative format. Okay It’s written as a story. It’s written with that and in the experience that gives you the same exact opportunity. So, if you go through the experience section, you can also write about the company’s mission. We can start to talk about what you own and what you’ve been a part of.

Marcus Murphy: What are you proud of in your organization that you’ve done What kind of responsibilities do you have and then in that with a call to action as well, you’d be silly not to tell them, hey, this is what is great. I’ve, I’ve, you know, if you want to connect with this, this is what we do. This is another great place, but also, I want to say this, and I need to tread lightly because some people try to do some black hat seo stuff. Content is king on LinkedIn. I will say that multiple times the more content you have, the characters you have the site looks for all that information, so it is to your benefit to maximize these areas where you can add content. So yeah, I would. And then also inside, just like the summary, you’re allowed to add videos and photos to every single experience that you’ve had and that means work experience that you’ve had. And so that can also tell an additional story and if you do link to my profile, my profile, please use that as an example and steal all the ideas on there. I’m constantly updating and trying new things and so far, this is the one that’s given me the most momentum

Ash Roy: man. This is a master class and how to accelerate LinkedIn and people will pay thousands of dollars for this stuff and listening to getting this for nothing. So, thank you Marcus. I appreciate it.

Marcus Murphy: Yeah, no problem. And I only have. Well, one more thing. I’m going to loop together. It’s going to feel like too, so it’s almost a bonus, but my fifth point. Yeah. My fifth point is a is a, is a section that’s very much overlooked. A lot of people don’t think about it, but it’s the skills and endorsements and the recommendations. Now the skills and endorsements section. Yeah, the skills and endorsements section. If you go to that little pencil that I mentioned before, if you click on that pencil, which is the edit button, you can actually pick the three endorsed skills that you want to display because there’s actually many, many, many more skills that people can endorse you for or you can start to add to that list that others can put. The top three are the ones that are going to show, so it’s very important that you’re the one picking them.

Marcus Murphy: So, for me on my, on my profile page, it’ll say skills and endorsements, leadership. My top three are leadership management and public speaking and after 99 after it’s like whether it’s $99 or whether it’s a hundred or 1000 people who have endorsed you for that at 99 plus it just says 99 plus, which is what you’re trying to get to. It means that a lot of people are agreeing, and this is wonderful, right Because we’re in a world of selfishness and people would talk about how great they are. This is an opportunity for other people to tell you how great you are and other people to tell the world how great you are at what they think you’re great at. So, I love this session. A lot of people will have skills on that may maybe outdated, you know, like, oh I’m, you know, maybe they were paying.

Marcus Murphy: They were in photography years ago. So, I would say that makes sure that skills and endorsements section is there. And another question that people ask me all the time, ash is like, how do I get my endorsements up How do I get more endorsements That was what I was about to ask you. Absolutely. It’s a fair question because it’s the most popular question when I talk about this. I would say it’s the biggest thing. It’s a reciprocity rule. The more that you endorse others, they will endorse you and I’ve literally, without fail, I’ve seen it over and over again. If you connect with people in your network, you need to cultivate your network. The best thing you can do for other people is to go and endorse their skills. When you do that, I’ve seen it over and over again. They will come back to your page and endorse you for your top three or whatever they agree with on your top three and people constantly. When you speak more and you do more and you work with people in business and you kind of continued to get out there, more people will go there and start to endorse those skills, but I would say if you want to start getting that up quickly, is that you go endorse others now. Am I better off

Ash Roy: having fewer skills there Does it just become noisy and confusing to LinkedIn If I have a ton of skills

Marcus Murphy: now, you can have a ton of skills. It’s actually not a bad thing to have lots of skills. For me, I have. This is really interesting because management and leadership almost sound like the same thing and public speaking is always going to be on there because it. It quickly went up fast as I started to speak over the last 10 years, but easily I have other skills like sales and social media and business development that are all very highly ranked and sometimes depending on the season of my life, it may be more advantageous for me to have business development or sales in my top three. So, when people come to the page, they’re like, oh, so this, this guy is actually really great at sales. This guy knows what he’s talking about with businesses. Don’t look, I mean hundreds of people have said that he is great at this or she is great at this. So, understanding that really, it’s an integrity piece and its a, it’s another place where people were going to come. They’re going to say, oh well they actually, other people were saying that this person is who they say they are and they’re at this. So, it’s not just them telling me, um, which is really, really important. So yeah, it doesn’t matter how many are in there, but the top three are the ones that matter, and you can adjust those, you can drag those up and pick what your top three are.

Ash Roy: Okay, well that’s great. So that’s, that’s the fifth

Marcus Murphy: and kind of the plus. The added-on piece on is the recommendation section and then I’m done it. The recommendation section a is basically where other people can write long form a recommendation for you. If you go to that section, it says ask for recommendation. Okay, so you can click on there and it will say, well, who do you want to ask and that says this person and it will start a message for you to that person saying, Hey, can you please take a moment to endorse me for this section when we worked on this thing together and you know, recommendations is interesting because most people don’t have any but three to four is typically where you kind of want to be because as I’m scrolling through your profile, I not only want to know that other people endorsed you, but I want to know specifically why you enjoy working with you or why they hired you or why they hired you as a client.

Marcus Murphy: When, when I talked to most businesses about this, this is your review section. This is your review section. When you look at Amazon, are you looking at, you know, I don’t know if yelp is prominent in Australia or not, but it used to be there. When you start looking at a lot of these google reviews, they have algorithms that don’t let people kind of know, go ask their mom to write them a great review for their business. This is an opportunity if you go to your clients as well and ask them to read review for your business in a mass those and here’s the thing, same rule. You give them, you get them or do you ask for recommendation and start sending these to people and if you go to like my page and start looking at some of these recommendations, these groups like heartfelt, these are people that I truly loved working with and so I would start there and really start with people that had a good experience

Ash Roy: and how many of you say we should aim for in terms of recommendations

Marcus Murphy: Yeah. When you start, I think it’s. It’s definitely going to be that three to five range is definitely where you want to start and that’s literally your whole everyone’s homework listening to this is to go on there to adjust your skills and endorsements section and go on and ask five people in your network to write you a recommendation about something specific when they worked with you and I’m telling you that it’s going to boost your profile and it’s going to be one of the biggest integrity pieces that you can have when someone’s coming in. They either want to work with you or hire you a hands down. I look at that section all the time.

Ash Roy: Awesome. Well, I’m going to actually do a nice little roundup that we have. So here are the five key things that you can do to massively improve your LinkedIn profile. I have a photo that takes up about 60 percent of that circular, a little profile photo so people can see it clearly, preferably smiling rather than gnashing your teeth. Have a nice background image and that is the backdrop where the photos sits and that background image can be something showing you taking action or doing something quite compelling that communicates the energy of you and your brand. The next thing was having a very clear descriptor, so a descriptor that’s preferably client facing that demonstrates to your client or your potential client, how you can help them rather than be you facing, which is, oh, I’m the CEO of so and so company. Rather than saying that, say something like, I help agencies grow their businesses quickly through content marketing. For example, the other suggestion you had is add some rich media into your profile. We will link to Marcus’s profile in the show notes of this episode so you can check that profile out and you make connect with him, but please be patient. Marcus gets a lot of requests.

Marcus Murphy: Next thing is that I will work it out with you.

Ash Roy: See that you’re very accomplished LinkedIn guys, so the next thing is getting your experience section firing and use it. Well. Make sure that you use it as much of it as you can because LinkedIn values content, you don’t have to just use text, you can use other forms of content and then the last one is skills and endorsements and make sure you pick the top three skills and drag them up to the top so that those are the most visible and then request recommendations and the way to get more recommendations and get more skills and endorsements is to start by giving them which nicely brings us back to the original point of this conversation which is selling is not telling. Selling starts with giving value and as long as you’re a good listener and you have a diagnostic approach to selling where you’re being helpful and genuinely are interested in helping somebody, you can’t really go wrong.

Marcus Murphy: Wow. That recap was fantastic. I mean that is a. That is thorough and then the part two, I’m going to send this over to you, ash, but I also created a pdf that has a seven-step process. Everything that I just did all the examples of the profile piece, so I’ll send that over to you so you can send it out to everyone that literally every breakdown in each step that they need to update. And how can we actually link to that pdf in the show notes too Absolutely. Please do. We’re just linked to your website. Sure. It’s actually, um, it’s not, it’s a, it’s a digital form, but I, uh, I literally put it together because I speak so much about LinkedIn and everyone is asking me these recaps and I was like, you know what, we are designed, created it and it’s just a really good asset for kind of creating an all-star profile.

Ash Roy: This episode. This is pretty much all you need to get your LinkedIn absolutely firing. I’m delighted at how much value we’ve been able to bring to this conversation. So, it was awesome having on the show and I can’t wait to talk to you about sales navigator and the second part.

Marcus Murphy: Oh Man. I’m really excited. And, and as always, I’m a, we’re always thankful to be on shows and it’s always really great to be able to, to kind of share this evangelism of the things that are yet to come. So really excited to be here. Thank you.

Ash Roy: Thanks for being on.