Dashboard: This Is How to Use LinkedIn

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard I'm here with Shan busy who is CEO and founder of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy welcome back to dashboard Sean good to see you Lauren good to see you Sean you've been working LinkedIn pretty hard lately I follow you I read your stuff and it's obviously it's good stuff it's obvious you put a lot of time into it time and effort especially because you don't hear a lot of people say ni things about social media these days yeah I want to talk you about why why do you do it and and what are you getting out of it so maybe we start am I right you you're putting a significant amount of time into this what what's your basic process yeah um I've invested in LinkedIn for a long time like I was probably one of the early adopters of the platform I was just interested in it you know kind of from the get-go along with all other social media networks when they were first coming out um and I've actually drifted away from the other ones like I don't I don't have a Twitter account anymore or X whatever you want to call it uh I deleted my Facebook account probably five or six years ago uh I still have an Instagram account it's basically me doing artwork um but yeah so so I'm all in on LinkedIn these days that's about that's it um and it's been a really powerful tool for me in terms of uh recruiting employees es um and getting new customers and also I would say uh reinforcing relationships with customers that I already have yeah so those are those are kind of like the the way the way I see it and then we can get into the process if you'd like you know if that's if that's where you want to start well I I do want to hear more about how you use it to recruit employees and how you use it to uh get customers but but yeah tell me about the process how many hours a week and what what what are your goals I don't have a uh defined process like every morning I wake up and I log into LinkedIn and you know write a post you know I know some people are very disciplined about it and and do it that way um I treat it much more like almost like an artist would treat artwork in that I'm sort of waiting for something to inspire me and to really um you know kind of captivate what's in interesting for me and and I found that when I write posts that are built on that Foundation they're much more powerful much more engaging I get much better results um so it's it's like ardan that you don't know when the Muse is going to strike you um you know one one of my very very very successful posts um I took a photo of myself uh sitting in the lobby of a bank my my old bank it was I was a member of BFA many years ago and and I wrote a post about hey I'm leaving my bank and here's why and that was a a really popular post I didn't go into the bank with that idea in mind I was just sitting in the waiting room and I took a photo and thought hm and it just got me to like thinking about banking you know so yeah that's something that people talk about a lot do you think the photo made a difference I mean you could have written the same post without a photo did that help yeah I've done a lot of experimenting with with photos and drawings and sketches and video and um you're you're good with the red pen I like it when you play around to highlight certain elements of something that you want to emphasize you know I gotta say it's a good illustration of how authenticity and almost like really basic stuff can be way more powerful than something that's highly polished um you know we've done you know really polished videos and so forth and I put them up there and got not got a lot of traction on them on the other hand I'll do like a screen grab on my phone and I'll take my finger and I'll like draw on it be like this is a bad idea and then that becomes that becomes the graphic and honestly those are some of the most successful posts I've done uh and and I have a theory on it it's it's that there's an authenticity there and and people are desperate for authenticity And when they see it it's like they they gravitate towards it so I think I know the answer to this question based on what you just said about authenticity I don't think there's a role for chat GP in your process am I right about that yeah it is it is involved in my process 0% of the time um yeah yeah it's it's I'm making art here Lauren and and it's inspiration and observation and and things that are around me that that you know maybe I'm frustrated with or inspired by yeah well well that's an interesting part of it too because I'm sure you've had this experience you talk to business owners and you say who want to establish a larger footprint and you know create space for themselves but often they ask the question well I I don't what should I write about I don't know what to write about yeah can you tell us more about how you decide because I you know again I follow you sometimes your stuff is you know dead on target for the things we talk about on the 21 hats podcast they're very much about running a business and some times they're about woodworking nothing of the sort how do you think about that yeah yeah that's a great question um I was thinking about it as I was kind of preparing for this conversation and I and I and if I were to distill it down I would say my core strategy is this point one is I want to illustrate competence wisdom and insight you know fundamentally I want to be perceived by other people as as having good ideas and something worth listening to and that the subject matter that I'm interested in is pretty broad because I'm a human and you know I think all of us have things we're interested in we might really be into our churches we might really be into our business we might really be into hobbies and a lot of us limit ourselves to kind of like what our business is and I I'm actually pretty expansive on that so so point one of the strategy is I want to illustrate wisdom and competence it's a fairly Broad field that I'm going to talk about and then the second thing is to be a little more focused I generally want to illustrate my passion for owner run businesses and I can do that in lots of different ways but it's like those two things if I want to you know if I'm consistently showing up and letting people know hey I've got something worth listening to and that I care about this community I think that that does well I know it does a lot of good things in terms of generating interest from employees and from customers and then from that kind of large strategic that platform that I use I have a certain number of topics that I tend to kind of go back to you know time and time and time again and so if I were to Loosely bucket those topics they would be um marketing and its malfunctioning like you know I'm often talking about this is this is not working this is not the the future is not here you know whatever it is I'm talking about I might be talking about SEO or digital marketing or something like that um and and the reason I talk so much about marketing and and kind of how it's broken is that marketers are actually really good at promoting themselves and uh owners are not very good at Discerning what's good or bad and it's hard and so I try to be kind of a source of Truth and say look like you I need marketing to grow my business uh but unlike I actually know this industry really well and I'm going to call it out when I see things that are like not good for you and and I'll try to explain it and do it in a way that's easily understandable um sometimes I get caught in my kind of background of being a college professor and want getting way too pedantic but but generally I want to just help people understand why for example digital marketing especially SEO and PPC were such an amazing thing for so long and why it's getting harder and harder and more expensive and I want people to understand that because of my passion for owner operated businesses so that's a big area of focus for me is marketing and where it's broken another area I will hone in on is housing U and I know it's like I I don't I don't build house well actually I just built a house but like it's not my business but I'm really passionate about housing because I believe it's such a point of friction for business owners in terms of getting good employees you know like if your employees can't afford afford to buy a house if your community has become too expensive for them to live there you're going to have a really hard time running your business and so I'm really passionate about housing and housing policy and I'll talk about where it's working well and where it's not working and you know kind of engaging in that community and so it attracts a different person not necessarily my customer but people are interested in it do you think it I mean you you mentioned attracting both employees and customers when you write about housing or something like the you you wrote a post about the Portland airport and obviously you know business people tend to travel so it's it's hardly irrelevant but it's not a you wouldn't necessarily predict that that's going to drive potential employees or customers to you yeah how do you think about the different audiences you may be attracting by pursuing those different interests yeah the airport one's a really good example of of of cross interests right so the air Port the the new Portland Airport was built with you know a tremendous kind of unified effort by many many you know governmental and private businesses in this community it was a huge Endeavor and we used some technology in it um which is basically um cross- laminated Timber you know kind of mass Timber to build this thing which is remarkable unto the planet in terms of an airport being that's been done this way and so there's something news worthy there right like whoa this is a totally different airport and certain people are going to be attracted to that as I am right I'm attracted to architecture and buildings and that sort of thing and then what I've discovered about posting is like if you can tap into a shared cultural experience whether that's positive or negative that has a much greater tendency to like bring people to you so when I talk about the airport you know I took a picture of my sh of my you know of my feet at the at the airport which is a kind of a code among portlanders because we've done this for many many years we take pictures of our feet with the iconic Portland Airport carpet and so when people are scrolling through their feet yeah so you're an outsider you don't know but uh you know now you know if you know you know if you know you know and so when people are scrolling through their feet and they catch a glimpse of this carpet they stop it stops them right it stops those who know and then they pay attention to you so a lot of it is what are these shared culture experiences and how can you tap into it like that fast you know just like really really quick you know either with a really smart headline a really you know striking image that might be Sean scrawling his finger saying this is a bad idea you know so it's like that that shared experience those have been some of my most impactful posts out on there um and it surprises me too to find you know I did a post about about inequality in the city of Portland and how it relates to transportation and that was a hugely successful post it was a very critical post um and I got lots of people who are business owners who could be customers of mine who are customers of mine commenting on that liking that agreeing with it um so it's risky because I'm putting something out there right I'm taking a stand I'm make I'm I'm putting a position and and that could be risky and some people are Afra to do that have you had problems with that have you lost customers connections friends yeah yeah that's a great question I've gotten smarter about not getting in trouble about it um the one thing I've discovered is that there are certain targets that are universally acceptable so for example I did a post about into it and I talked about their price increase which was like the third one in like a year I me just in a very short period of time and if you use QuickBooks you hate into it I promise you you hate that product their customer service is terrible the product itself is okay so so but they they are the they're the 800 pound gorilla in the small business World they own accounting software if I recall correctly that was one where you used a screenshot and the red pen to highlight their uh address you as dear valued customer dear valued customer I'm so valuable they don't even know my name um yeah so so I've kind of when when I go after something I try to go after something that's big powerful that people are frustrated by and you know I'm trying to give voice to our community you know so you know I'll talk about things like uh you know things that really drive small businesses nuts so one thing you haven't mentioned is writing about your business Kinesis how often do you do that and is where do you when you do where do you draw the line between just describing the business and actually making some sort of pitch I would say that of the topics I have or of the strategies I use it's probably the least impactful um so anytime I get I have to really pay attention that I'm not going into sales mode you know anytime I get into the like well at Kinesis blah blah blah and give me a call today if you're interested in doing something like I don't think I've seen that post from you Sean well you don't see it because the algorithm won't promote them so there's a couple of factors there one is even if it's an effective message for our com audience I've generally found that the algorithm somehow sniffs out uh the self-promotion um so you so if you're going to promote yourself you have to do it in really kind of these like adjacent ways um so the most successful way I found to actually promote Kinesis is actually to promote my clients so oh interesting yeah yeah so like I have clients doing really awesome stuff and so I'll Point people to them and be like it's so cool to work with this company look at this thing they've just done it's remarkable and I love that because I believe it and also it helps them a little bit um and then to the right buyer they look at that and go huh that's cool I I like what Sean's doing with that company I kind of want some of that you know so that that's a really important thing for professional service providers to understand is that a lot of customers buy out of desire to be like others you know they want to be like somebody else and if you've helped them achieve if you've helped a client or an industry or businesses achieve something really remarkable other businesses will see that and want to be part of that and that's a really a really good business development strategy I think that's a great point you did mention that you think LinkedIn has helped you in recruiting employees is that something you deliberately set out to do or is that just a byproduct of the process you've described well not to sound self-promotional but that's a thing we do at Kinesis right so we help clients with what you would call employer branding and so I I believe LinkedIn is a really really important place if you're going to focus on on recruiting top talent and positioning your brand your individual brand as an owner a leader and the brand of the company and that space is it there's nothing like it there's no other place you can really position who you are in a relatively authentic way than on LinkedIn um and the exposure is great so but how do you do that I mean I I don't think I mean I understand your answer about why you wrote about the Portland airport um and that makes complete sense to me I think it fits into what you're trying to do but it it doesn't clearly suggest attracting potential employees right so this gets into a little bit of the operational side of social especially on LinkedIn so I have my own account right and I'm running it and I'm doing my artsy thing you know meaning I'm inspired by this I'm motivated by that and I'm writing this and I'm provocative in this way we also have our company account which is which is doing stuff in not a lot because honestly Company accounts they don't function very well um but it is a place to put things like hey Michelle happy anniversary you've been here 19 years we really appreciate what you've done here look at some of this cool these cool projects she she's done and so you can share that through your company account and then like I can repost that through my own individual account so I think celebrating employees talking about the work you've done um celebrating clients that's all a really good activity for your team to do it's good for your company page to do that too because it's it's an archive and so for somebody who's looking at your brand they're going to go to that archive right and and their expectations are probably going to be kind of low because most company pages are pretty crappy but if you've got something that like shows people motivated is unique helps them see this is a big part of employer branding is showing what the work is like most companies do a very poor job of actually showing what the work is like and spend much of their time like marketing how great they are and that's okay but what employees care about is they care about what is the work like what am I going to be doing you know and who are the people I'm going to be working with so the more you can show that the more you're going to be like kind of revealing what's behind the doors and the worst thing for recruiting top talent is to have it obfuscated is to have a black box and a lot of companies don't realize how how much obfuscation they're creating in their hiring process which you know somebody who's really good they have a job you know they aren't they aren't desperate and you need to get them to leave and to get somebody to leave you got to provide a really compelling landing pad and you know one way to do that is through is through social and and I think you know we do a really great job of it I think our clients do a great job of it um showing what you do as part of that how do you convey what it's like to do the work what do you write about if you want to display that really depends on the business so uh I'll use a couple different examples so like our our client who's a robotics company is is like a lot of B2B companies working with the Fortune 500 they can't talk about their projects it's it's all under NDA it's all super super secret so what do you do right how do you how do you talk about what you do right so one of the things we've helped them to develop and and build out is is a platform for kind of presenting work that's their own projects that are their own things they want to do you know so they're they're doing like experiments and like showing that in action so that somebody who's thinking about working there is like oh they're doing that kind of work that's really cool I want to be part of that and that like it's almost like speculative work speculative experimentation now a lot of companies won't do that because it's not billable work and and so what happens is is you're you have no idea what the work is like and because these companies aren't investing and showing you they have to hire recruiters and pay tons of commissions on the recruiting fees but that company has a huge advantage in that they do something that's incredibly visual ual they can create videos of robots doing really cool stuff most of us don't have that opportunity including Kinesis what do you do with Kinesis to to show what the work is like uh when you have people who are you know going out meeting clients or writing we're easy we're so easy just go to our like clients page and like you see our work all over that right you like see websites we've built Brands we've built you know the the manifestation of strategies um you have testimonials from clients talk talking about what we did for them and the impact it had with them so so that's a for for me that's easy you know that's like duh you know and clients want to see that too um but what the day-to-day is like you know if if I really wanted to push on that a lot um I would probably interview employees you know I would have video interviews and say hey what's it like working here and we've done that in the past or or we've had you know employee testimonials saying this is what it's like to work at Kinesis this is you know what kind of person is going to thrive here um I haven't looked at our application forms in a while but I think there's even a whole section that's like employees are saying these things about what it's like to work here and it's not all sunshine and puppies right it's like if you want to work at Kinesis you've got to be motivated kind of self-directed you got to have a strong sense of agency you know this is not for somebody who uh needs a lot of direction we're you're not going to win here if you need a lot of Direction so you got to be really candid with people and but if you do the those things you'll track the right person yeah interesting how much of your time do you put into the company page the company page on LinkedIn yeah uh I have the team do that they manage all that um and what the we we built a slack Channel and so um on the slack channel the team will share the post that is on the company page that they're about to put up and then I will either just copy and steal it and post it as my own um or or I will go and reshare the company page um but the key thing is the team is alerting me that this is going on and the individual pages of employees and people working at the company are way more powerful so that's why we want to like share them through individuals and and that's another thing too is you especially if you're in B2B you got to activate your team to participate in this if your team isn't participating in this if it's just one owner doing it all forget it it's just you're you're missing out in a big way why do you say that I mean you it sounds like you have created a meaningful space for yourself there I understand that you also have the company page but but even if you took that away you'd still have something meaningful in what you've done why do you say it's so important to get the team involved couple reasons one is if the team is involved for for candidates especially they're going to see that they're going to see like hey the team is participating right they're engaged in things that's a signal right that's a that's an unspoken signal of Employee Engagement which is really what I think we're all looking for in our jobs as co-workers who are engaged so so there's there's that value too and then the second piece is is just simply Network effect you know that the you know the exponential nature of reach uh is is manifested when you have more people participating and so you know you take my company which is relatively small but if I get you know half of the company you know sharing and participating and connecting let's say that's let's say that's just five people for us right let's say it's five people and let's say they've only got 300 connections each right that's 1500 connections right you know so now you're talking right and then those connections they have connections of their own so that's the power of network effect that you're leveraging on LinkedIn and why you're crazy not to in involve your team in that um now I know a lot of companies you know they're really they don't want people to know who works for them because they're worried they'll get poached by recruiters and all this sort of stuff and it's like dude they forget that that you just got to lose that attitude you know I mean if you're worried about your people being stolen that's a different problem but you're missing out on I think a lot of opportunities all right so bottom line how often do you actually get a get business out of what you do on LinkedIn and and how do you think in terms of Roi on the time that you invest in it well this would be one of my posts about lead attribution and the myth of lead attribution so the I don't want to get too Panic too too scholarly here but okay the traditional way of thinking about business generation is that there's a single source of business oh we got that lead from that ad we ran we got that lead from that event we had we got that lead from a word of mouth referral and the truth is and especially in B2B leads happen through multiple touches multiple points in time and so that's why you actually need to be doing a lot of things not just one thing so as an example I have a new customer called me out of the freaking blue I hadn't spoken with him in years probably seven eight years easily he's got a new Enterprise he's thinking about buying a new business he wants to bring us into help him with it I had no idea this was going on right so I sit down with him and I'm talking to him he's like yeah man I haven't seen you in forever he's like I've disconnected from everything I'm not on any of the apps I'm just I've gotten so much technology out of my life the only thing I do really is join LinkedIn like maybe once a month I pop in for a few minutes I see something you've written and then I'm out and he's like and by the way it's really smart you're killing it over there and I was like I I had no idea this guy is like looking at what I'm doing now you could say oh that was LinkedIn well the truth is I worked with him 15 years ago 10 years ago at a different company helped him with their brand and strategy so he got to see how we worked right and uh you know gave a positive impression So In traditional like lead funnel you would say well is the source of that lead LinkedIn or is the source of that lead Sean's network is the source of that lead a former client and the answer is yes you know it's all of those things but I firmly believe if I hadn't been pushing on the LinkedIn Boulder every day I don't know that he would have remembered I don't know that he would have said oh I'm gonna call Sea right he might have like reached out to a buddy and said hey do you know anybody could help me with this thing you know because we forget we forget things and so LinkedIn is a really good way to kind of stay top of- mind in front of people and that's really important because a lot of people are not ready to buy today and no amount of like pushing them to buy is going to make that happen but if you're staying in their orbit if you're you're doing like I'm saying my strategy of illustrate wisdom and competence passion for owner operated businesses over and over and over again in a non- obnoxious way um I think then you get opportunities and so that's that's how I see the ROI on that is it's part of of the whole system of business model generation which is potentially frustrating for somebody who might be trying to jump in and do this now you made clear you've been active on LinkedIn for a long time you developed a following so you're not new there somebody who's trying to use LinkedIn as a strategy um you know putting more time and effort into it now how would you guide them in terms of thinking about realistic goals how how would you encourage them to stick with it and not get frustrated when they don't get the kind of results you get in the first two months or six months or years yeah I mean I think it's like a lot of things in business you know where I mean that old parable of like when's the best time to plant a tree it's 50 years ago and the second best time to plant a tree is today and I I really believe that a lot of these things people just have to start and and no they're not going to see probably anything for a year at least because not only is their participation but it's actually honing in on like what is relevant to our customer and that takes experimentation and effort it also takes a really strong kind of brand strategy and good positioning and messaging things we help with for sure so we can help that be more successful but just like doing it is the first step and doing it can start easy right it can be like I have an account I'm maybe commenting on other people's things and congratulating them or um you know offering some uh support um a couple a couple pieces of guidance around that that I would say for folks want saying congratulations on somebody's work anniversary is a non comment um so you know anything that the that the app tries to automate and make easy for you is probably not worth doing you know to just to be totally honest now if somebody has a work anniversary and you say hey Bob it was so nice meeting you five years ago I can't believe you've been there for you know the last 15 what a what a privilege it is for the company to have you working there that's very different than congrats and so I'm of the mindset of like if you're going to do it do it with depth and sincerity as opposed to just this kind of cursory liking congrats that kind of stuff so I would say participate in like a meaningful way I think less and better is way better than more and mediocre um that's that's been my experience at least so I would say start there uh commenting on other people's things um asking questions that's always a good thing like hey you know if like I don't know somebody wanted to follow me and say hey Sean that's really cool you wrote a book what motivated you to do that what was your experience what what came out of that and then I could share like it was good in this ways and this ways it was not so awesome or whatever you know so like you're starting to build a relationship there and I've met lots of really great people just by that you know um again it's authenticity uh and you know connection and commitment as opposed to my most recent post which is about somebody saying I'd love to connect with you and you know learn more about your industry and blah blah blah and I promise not to send you a sales pitch and I was like oh cool somebody's actually not going to sell something to me and then like the next I accept his invitation and he sells something to me so it's you got that's not the way to do it Sean it's not the way to do it like if you really want to see a bad example go check out my account and look at like one of my most recent posts that is like off the charts popular people are just like it's gotten the kind of velocity I've never seen before and I because it shows how not to use LinkedIn on LinkedIn yeah and and and the thing we are all being kind of victimized by which are people trying to make transactional sales without having a relationship you know trying to make it happen in no time and that's that's when you run into problem because you only get kind of one shot to do that and once you screw that over you're done so I I think there's no Silver Bullet here um but there is doing the work and it's really rewarding if you're willing to do the work Sean busy is CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy thank you Sean thanks Lauren have a great week everybody [Music]