Chris Norton: 0:57

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast that helps you grow your brand and your bottom line by learning from real, costly missteps.

Chris Norton: 1:05

I'm Chris Norton and my mission is to help you, the senior marketer, avoid the pitfalls that trip up even the smartest teams. Today, we're joined by Louise Brogan, founder of Brogan Partners, author of Raise your Visibility on LinkedIn and a former IT project manager whose very first business, a craft shop, went bust spectacularly. Louise will walk us through the critical pivot from a failing retail venture to LinkedIn consultancy, her four-stage profile network content conversion system for serious visibility, and how she built 110,000 YouTube strong audience to drive real leads. If you've ever wondered how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, build a targeted network or turn followers into paying clients without resorting to spammy DM blasts, this episode is packed with the tactics that you'll need. Louise is about to share her top hacks, from crafting a headline that attracts your ideal clients to strategic commenting that gets you noticed in the algorithm, to gentle outreach techniques that actually close the deals. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's see how you can turn your next LinkedIn mistake into a breakthrough opportunity.

Will Ockenden: 2:20

Enjoy mistake into a breakthrough opportunity Enjoy.

Chris Norton: 2:25

Right Louise Brogan. Welcome to the show.

Louise Brogan: 2:28

Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting me.

Chris Norton: 2:35

No, well, we're looking forward to hearing all about you so you have very recently just published a book. Right, all about nice plug straight off the bat, I think. Uh, raise your visibility on linkedin. Yes, now the clues in the name, but what's the book about? And and how did you come about setting off on that, that journey?

Louise Brogan: 2:51

so it's the. The goal of the book is really to make linkedin, to kind of demystify it for people. Um, for it's it's funny because I do most of my work with companies and teams and corporates, but actually the book is really aimed at the individual who wants to raise their visibility on linkedin. I talk about having four key areas so having a good personal profile, building a network of value, creating content that actually cuts through and people engage with and, really importantly, getting business out of all the efforts that you put into LinkedIn. I used to write for Social Media Examiner's website. They asked me to come in and do some specialist articles on LinkedIn probably around 2019, I think and it was amazing because they taught me how to write.

Louise Brogan: 3:46

So I've always written blogs, always loved to write things, but they had a very specific way that you had to write. It had the article had to be at least 2000 words, it had to be really clear, structured, it had to have lots of like, every third paragraph had to have an image, all of this stuff. It was like kind of like technically, how to write for the internet. Um, and I wrote all these big articles and I thought you know what I could pull all this together and I think I've got the bones of a book.

Louise Brogan: 4:15

And if I go back to my teenage years, I wanted to be an author, like I love reading, I love, I'm like. I think right now beside my bed there's probably about a stack of about five or six books. So I've always been a reader. I thought that I wanted to write fiction, but that was beyond me. Maybe I'll do that in my retirement, and so turning all my writing into a book was kind of like a big goal of mine and I managed to get the book out then earlier this year and I was. It was a massive struggle, I have to say, and happy to talk about that. I had a lot of issues with LinkedIn themselves, um, but now that it's out there, it's brilliant because, uh, when I go and speak at events, I'm able to say, oh, here's a copy of the book and and, um, it's consistently sells online, which is amazing to me. I love it, and strangers will go on to amazon and leave reviews about it, and it's just the little things sometimes in business that just make all the difference.

Will Ockenden: 5:14

So, yeah, glad I have it out in the world so you mentioned, um, that kind of four, four stage process, if you like, that you cover in the book and you'd have to remind me of what the middle one was. But the first one was kind of getting, I think you said getting your personal profile optimized and looking good. So what, what, what do we need to consider there and what mistakes do you see people making? I mean the obvious mistake being no profile photo, which is remarkable, the number of chief execs that still don't have a profile photo. But you know, what would you say to people in terms of really optimising your personal profile?

Louise Brogan: 5:48

Well, what's interesting is because I do a lot of training with companies is that somebody's profile that you're looking at and you think they haven't got a profile photograph. They do have a profile photograph, but they haven't set the visibility of that photograph to public. So if you're not connected to them, you see what like a gray circle. Instead, the likelihood is that person does have a photograph, but it's not set to be visible to everybody. Who's who's looking at it? And so really, the on the profiles and I go through it from complete top to bottom with people and it can take. If I do this on a one-to-one, it's a 90-minute session. If I do it with a team, usually it takes a couple of hours, which always surprises people because they think, oh, it's just your LinkedIn profile, but there's so much to it, there's so much nuance to it. So the key things are at the introductory card, which is the top of your profile making sure that you obviously you have your your name, you have your profile photograph. What most people do miss out on is actually having a background image, and that's where you see a lot of people have just got a gray block behind their heads. That is a prime space to put in just a simple image that has your company logo on it. So that's, that's the simplest way to do that. If you are are a writer, a speaker, a podcaster, then I would very much have a visual of that in the background there. So I spoke at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego earlier this year. So for about six weeks afterwards, the photograph of my banner background was a picture of me speaking on stage at that event, because that's got high credibility to my network.

Louise Brogan: 7:28

So the next thing then is to think about your headline, and your headline should. If you don't write this yourself, it literally pulls from whatever your current job title is. So if you are the marketing manager at walmart, it will literally say louise brogan, marketing manager at Walmart. So to me, that's a key space again to say what it is that you do, who you do it for, and this can be. You'll see some people's profiles where the headline takes up three or four lines of space. Whatever you have in that very first line is what people see when you engage on other people's content on LinkedIn. So that is the part that's really important. We want someone to see your name. They'll see your name, your photograph and the first line of your headline, and what you want is for someone to see that and want to click through to find out more about you, and that brings someone to your profile.

Will Ockenden: 8:19

So that's sort of a value proposition, if you like. So give us, give us a few examples of kind of powerful, powerful lines that can kind of engage, um uh, other users just got the words ai in it, hasn't it now?

Chris Norton: 8:32

everyone's like about 10 years ago. Everyone changed and went. Engineer no social media consultants and now they've all the engineers and everybody's gone. I don't want to work for bt anymore. I'm now a uh ai engineer. Is that? Is that louise? Is that what everyone's doing?

Louise Brogan: 8:48

ai rockstar, social media rockstar yeah, no, somebody says somebody has rockstar written on their headline is not somebody whose profile I'm going to click on, and I suppose this very much talks to. Who are you trying to attract on LinkedIn? Who do you want to connect with on LinkedIn? Because if that is your, I hate the word vibe, but if that is what you're aiming for, then go ahead and put that in. Think about. It's not about what you want to say about yourself, it's what does the person that you want to find you and connect with you, what is it that they're looking for?

Louise Brogan: 9:49

So an example would be this week I was working with a mechanical engineering firm and they work in something called additive oh, I've already forgotten, it's so technical, I've already forgotten the exact phrase. But rapid prototyping, 3D printing and additive something People are going shining the word at me now on screen, and so those were the key things we wanted to put in the front of their headline and then engineering or chief engineer, so that somebody who works in rapid prototyping is going to see that and immediately click on. So I'm not about cool buzzwords. I'm more about let's be found by the people that we want to connect with on linkedin, and I think that's much more important um to put in there and then what do we need to think about the um?

Will Ockenden: 10:39

obviously there's a kind of an opportunity for a lot. You know like a few more paragraphs. Is it the about section or the description it within your profile? How should we use that then?

Louise Brogan: 10:49

so, unless you are job seeking and this is where there's two, there's really two spaces on linkedin there's people who are looking for work and there's people who are looking for business. And if you are looking for business, I it's my opinion that the about section should be about helping the person that you want to work with. So, rather than a potted history of your career to date, it's here's our services, here's what we do, here's how we can help you. So that when I read it, so if I click, say I'm looking for someone to come and do SEO work on my website, and I see somebody in their headline said you know, seo specialist for small business, I'm like, oh, that's what I'm looking for I click on it and I go to their about section. If on it and I go to their about section. If it's all about them and their accolades and their awards, I'm like, well, whatever, but I'm, you know what? How can you help me? Whereas if I go there and it said we provide SEO audits for small businesses. We've worked with this kind of industry and these kind of people, that's me going, oh, okay, this is somebody I think I'd like to have a conversation with. So, about section, not about you. It's about how you can help the person that you want to work with. That's how I would look at this.

Louise Brogan: 11:56

And the other part that's really a brilliant part of your profile that a lot of people miss is the featured section, and this is kind of like your highlight reel. So if you haven't got a featured section yet, so maybe you're listening to this or watching this and you're thinking, oh, where's that on my profile? If you haven't put it in there, you won't see it, if that makes sense. So you click on add to profile and you go to I think it's called add featured. Or if you're looking at your posts and you click on the three little dots to the top right-hand corner, it'll say highlight this post. That puts it into the featured section, which sits between your introductory card and your about section, and in there, at the very least, put a link to your website so it allows you to have a clickable link with an image and some text. And if you've written an article, if you have been speaking on stage, if you a podcast, that should absolutely be in that featured section.

Louise Brogan: 12:52

If you have a webinar coming up, link to sign up in the featured section and where I'm finding this really useful now is LinkedIn are absolutely restricting the reach on posts that have links in them, and they change the way they do things all the time. But right now, if I do a post for myself or a client that has a link in it or a link in the comments, it is getting so much less reach than a post that doesn't have any links. So the way to get around this is so. I did a webinar this week, so I had posts saying I'm gonna do a webinar this week. It's talking about how to use video on LinkedIn. I had posts saying I'm going to do a webinar this week. It's talking about how to use video on LinkedIn. If you'd like to join, then go to my featured section and you'll see the link to click in to book.

Will Ockenden: 13:37

Oh, interesting. So you use that as a place where you you know almost a conversion section.

Chris Norton: 13:42

Like your link tree. Your link tree sort of section.

Louise Brogan: 13:46

Yeah, but it's visual. That's the key. It's visual first. So it's visual. If that's the key, it's it's a it's visual first. So when you're looking at someone's profile, you scroll down, there's lots of text everywhere and the visual line and it's like it's almost like the size of youtube thumbnails and that stops people in their tracks and then they're clickable. So you might have a link to your youtube channel there, link to your podcast. But how I'm using it at the minute is what's coming up and if I've got, if I haven't got a master class or a workshop coming up, what I'll have in there is here's a link to my book, you know, or something like that.

Chris Norton: 14:17

So, and you change that depending on what action you want people to take- yeah, I've got I think mine's set to um on my new my LinkedIn newsletter the podcast and then a video that we got at Christmas. Our staff staff got from jay, from the in-betweeners that takes the piss out of me and will about our podcast. Basically him doing a message going, oh hi, chris, hi will, you've got a podcast. And then he starts and he just literally rips into us for about five minutes.

Will Ockenden: 14:47

So I put that on my linkedin right well yeah, so, um, we we've got the optimized profile in a moment. Um, we're dying to ask you about selling on linkedin, because I think a lot of listeners will be thinking okay, how do I sell effectively and authentically on linkedin without just being one of those awful spamming people that yeah seem to get in touch every day.

Will Ockenden: 15:09

But, um, so we've optimized our profile. How do we then build our network in a way that isn't just adding a hundred people a day that have got no real connection with us and you end up with a? You know, and again you know, using linkedin all the time, the number of random people who I've got no interest in following me, no interest in engaging with you know. They will just randomly follow people, won't they? So how do we do it in a way that's um a bit more relevant and a bit more?

Louise Brogan: 15:36

this is a. This is a drum. I will bang for the rest of my days. It is so much better to have a network of people who are interested in what you have to say. You're interested in what they have to say, you're interested in what they have to say, and you can build a real community around that. So I last week I was put on a list of.

Louise Brogan: 15:57

Somebody put me on a list of top 20 people to follow on LinkedIn and I have got the most random people sending me connection requests and I'm not accepting any of them because they are not. They're not my target audience, they're not my ideal client. I don't believe that they also work with the same clients that I want to work with. I'm quite happy for them to follow me, but I don't want to fill my network full of those people because what happens is the content I will see in my news feed. Linkedin will show me content from the people I've connected with and I know that I'm not going to be interested in their content because I've been doing this for years. I just know people like oh how do you know that? But I do know so. But I'm happy for them to follow me and engage in my content, because when they do that, I get more visibility on my content. But what I want to do on LinkedIn is go and see content from people who are going to help me move my business forward. So or they're sharing stuff that I'm genuinely interested in. So, outside of running a LinkedIn agency, I'm also a small business champion for the UK and I really like engaging in what's going on in the small business world and supporting small businesses. So my network is full of those kinds of people as well as potential customers people I can collaborate with.

Louise Brogan: 17:16

I tend to always accept podcaster requests because I've been podcasting for years and I love podcasts and podcasters. So I have an easy yes to accept connection requests based on the network that I want to build, and that means when I'm sharing content on LinkedIn, I get good engagement from my network because they're following me and connecting with me, because they know I'm showing up and talking about stuff that they can use, and I think your content should come at a place of service. So how can you help people? People are following you for a reason. They're following me because they want to learn how to use LinkedIn. So my content is either it's about 95% about using LinkedIn, and I'm a complete geek. I love to find out new little features and how they work and I make videos on those and put them on YouTube, which is I've now got 110 000 subscribers because that's all. Here's how to use all these tiny little nuances of linkedin, so people follow me for that. And the other five percent is probably stuff about maybe the local northern ireland uh business community or the small business community in the uk. So, um, I think that that then it all kind of it's all, it's all an ecosystem really. Um, well, because what happens then is selling becomes easy because people are following me and I'm showing up consistently talking about here's how to use linkedin and business.

Louise Brogan: 18:47

So when someone is in their office space this happens all the time someone will say we really should be using LinkedIn or actually, what happens quite a lot with me as a business consultant will come into a firm and they'll say, okay, right, we need to get ourselves our ship in order for going, you know, for selling in like September, october this year. What do we need to do? They'll say, well, how's your LinkedIn looking? And they'll be like oh, we don't really like, we don't really like LinkedIn or we tend to avoid social media. And then they'll say well, have you seen? There's this person on LinkedIn called Louise Brogan. She works with companies like yours. Maybe you should have a conversation, and that's where I get. A lot of my business comes through referral and word of mouth.

Louise Brogan: 19:26

Sorry, Will, I've got a question for you, Louise.

Chris Norton: 19:29

Yes, you've got 110,000 followers on YouTube and you've got how many thousand on LinkedIn?

Louise Brogan: 19:36

Far less.

Chris Norton: 19:38

Yeah, which is weird when you think that you're on LinkedIn and you think they'd all follow you on LinkedIn, and I was going to say that. So do you get a lot of business from YouTube then, as well as LinkedIn, or does it all just filter through to LinkedIn? Do you know what I?

Louise Brogan: 19:51

mean, yeah, then, as well as LinkedIn, or does it all come? Does it all just filter through to LinkedIn? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, so YouTube was an absolute revelation to me. I started my YouTube channel in lockdown because, um, so I have three kids who are all teenagers and during lockdown our school was brilliant, sent home loads of work, but we were all in the house and my kids had work to do, you know, a couple hours a day from school.

Louise Brogan: 20:12

And I'm like, okay, I can't go anywhere. What am I going to do with myself? And my friend Tom said, louise, you should really be doing YouTube. And I was like, well, you know, I've got spare time in my hands, let's have a go. And so I started creating content for YouTube on how to use LinkedIn and I have got so many leads from YouTube because, if you think about someone who is running their own business or I don't know, I've got a lot of senior executives and a lot of big, big organizations that you would like pwc, those kinds of level of organizations they were going on to on to google and typing in how do you update your, your LinkedIn profile, how do you change your photograph on LinkedIn? And my videos were coming up in the search results and then a proportion of those people would then come to LinkedIn and connect with me.

Louise Brogan: 21:00

And the first, the biggest client I got from it in lockdown was actually an Irish man who lives in China, who has a med tech business Wow, and he was in a hotel, locked down in a hotel in China for two weeks because he was flying from Ireland to China to stay with his family. Right, had to go into isolation for two weeks in this hotel room, was bored out of his mind, went on to Google, found my YouTube channel, binged the whole thing, messaged me and said can you teach me how to use LinkedIn? So I did. And then he said we need a company page on LinkedIn for our company. Can you Do that for us? And we did. We worked with him for a year and that is not it's not an isolated project. So, yes, I mean YouTube is a brilliant source of business for companies who?

Chris Norton: 21:55

are how long are your videos on there? Then your little walkthroughs.

Louise Brogan: 21:58

Short, because the secret to YouTube is just answer one question. How do I change my profile photograph? How do I remove my hiring frame from LinkedIn? How do I set up a company page? My second most popular video is how do you post on LinkedIn?

Chris Norton: 22:20

That's the most basic question. Yeah, and no one dares ask it.

Louise Brogan: 22:25

We'll tackle that question later on but, all joking aside, I have 3.3 million views on youtube wow, from that channel, which is crazy. And I have I have less than 16 000 followers on linkedin, so it's mad, it is mad it's mad, because you'd think like, yeah, a higher percentage.

Chris Norton: 22:45

But then I suppose people on YouTube it is a very um, how can I do this? Watch a video off you go. But then I suppose, like you say, that some people just go. Actually, I love that. I mean. My point here, louise, is he binged on your channel and then he still had to call you up to do to use your skills. So he he'd obviously watched all the videos but still couldn't be bothered to do it himself and that that is.

Louise Brogan: 23:08

I mean, that's not how I would word it, but that's how we get our business. Yeah, it's like you know, people who don't have the time, who want to. They want the visibility. They have more money than times. They'd rather pay to get it done than spend the time doing themselves because they're busy running their businesses and we have the same with our clients, with whatever we do in terms of pr and social media yeah

Will Ockenden: 23:28

so, um, going back to linkedin then. So talking about selling on linkedin, so I think a lot of people think it's a bit of a dirty word, isn't it selling on linkedin?

Louise Brogan: 23:38

and people just think about kind of spammy direct messaging how dare you, how dare you want to make money in your business?

Will Ockenden: 23:44

yeah, exactly so. Are you saying selling should predominantly be about having a relevant, engaged network um, producing great content that builds trust and you'll get referrals or is there a role for something a bit more proactive, like direct messaging? And and if there is, how do we? How on earth do we do that without being spammy? Yeah, that's a very long question.

Louise Brogan: 24:05

I think there's absolutely room for both. I have been very lucky in my business that I've had most of the former. So I get booked, I get inquiries for my work through the content, showing up and sharing the content. But I think when you get to so that was that's brilliant. Whenever it's just I started out, it was just me in the business, but since um in the last four years, I'd say now um, I've had, I've got a team, so you want to grow the business and scale beyond your you know, 150k or whatever um, that's very nice when it's just you, but when you have a team, you want to grow beyond that and at that stage.

Louise Brogan: 24:47

So what I would do this is what I do, but I did it this morning is, if you have a LinkedIn premium account, you can see who's viewed your profile on LinkedIn. This is on your personal profile. If you have a business page which, as hopefully everyone who's watching listening this, does have a business or company which, as hopefully everyone who's watching and listening to this, does have a business or a company page, which I am that's another drum that I like to bang you can see who's following your page without anything premium, so you can go to your company page, go to your analytics and you can see exactly who's following your page and those are people you should be reaching out to. So it works in both ways. But on your personal profile, if you have a LinkedIn premium account which varies in price, but you can get around £45 a month you can see who's viewed your profile. Now, nobody is going to view your profile if you're not showing up, networking and sharing content. So, as I say, it all works as an ecosystem. But when you look at who's viewed your profile, who is showing up, who's standing out on there who looks like a person of interest that you might want to do work with.

Louise Brogan: 25:54

So, for example, the reason the Walmart name popped into my head earlier, it was because somebody who works in business development in Walmart had looked at my profile and I don't have any connections there. I was like, oh, that's interesting, who's that person? I put money on it that they've come to me through YouTube, I would imagine, because that's very standard. They see the YouTube video, they go look at my profile, but anyway. So what I've done with that person is I have sent them a connection request and I have connected over the part of America that they're in. I actually spent a little bit of time in when I was younger, so I sent them a connection request and said oh, I see you live in X Y Z, had a few holidays there when I was younger, visiting family, would love to connect with you, right?

Louise Brogan: 26:38

So if that person then connects with me, the likelihood is they won't send anything back. If they do send something back, that's their hand razor going. They're obviously interested in what I'm doing. At that stage, if I have something coming up like a webinar, I will invite them directly to that webinar, at the end of which I'll be selling something. If I don't have something coming up because I do webinars, maybe, well, I'm trying to get into the habit of doing them monthly, but it's not. It's not always the case. I might say oh um, I recently did a book about raising your visibility on linkedin and if you'd like to check it out, here's a link through to it. So for me it's very gently, gently, bring it, bring them on offering value.

Will Ockenden: 27:21

Offering value rather than yeah so just to kind of break it down then yes they're already a warm lead, in effect.

Will Ockenden: 27:28

You know they're interested in who you are and what you've got to say. You, you know you connect with them, with them with a message, rather than a cold request, and then, rather than kind of leaping in with a sell you, you offer value, which ultimately will lead to some sort of sales message yes, and if, if they come back well, with something like, oh, yeah, we were looking at you know, doing something with linkedin with our team, at that stage I'll say, well, I'd love to have a chat with you.

Louise Brogan: 27:50

Um, you know, if you'd like to have a call, let me know. Yeah, that's where I move it from linkedin to a call. Um, but yeah, trying to say, um, maybe I've done, because I do do this is where creating content is so helpful, because I might say, oh, I wrote an article about LinkedIn services pages this week. You might find that useful and send them the link to the article. You know that's the conversation. So LinkedIn is really a place to have conversations about it. That's, it's in my book and it's why I like to. It's what I talk about on stage is if you treat LinkedIn as if it is an in-person industry conference so I'm hopefully going to be speaking at a B2B conference later this year, and how am I going to approach that conference is how I approach LinkedIn. So, number one, I will be dressing appropriately, which is having your profile looking professional, right. So your personal profile is you going to the conference? When I get to the conference, I want to know who's going to be there, connect with people who are going to be of interest to me something that's going to move my business forward, that's me building my network on LinkedIn. I personally want to be up front and center and speaking on stage. So I do pitch to speak at conferences and I do speak at conferences. So if you are the speaker on stage, you're the person that people are then driving the conversation afterwards.

Louise Brogan: 29:20

The equivalent of that on LinkedIn is you putting a video up of yourself on LinkedIn or you start the comp. Your post starts a conversation that other people start feeding it underneath, um, and you are seen as the thought leader because you're the one on stage or the one starting the conversations, and then you've got all the other stuff you've got, if you so say. Well, you do a post about this podcast and and then I go. I will go to the comments, you'll tag me to say our podcast is live now, louise, and I will go and I'll look and see who's in the comments and are any of those people people that I might want to connect with or have conversations with?

Louise Brogan: 29:58

That is the equivalent I think of. I'm sitting listening to someone speak on stage. Their talk ends, everyone starts to file out to go for coffee. I meet somebody in the coffee queue, start a conversation and you never know where that leads. That is the equivalent of having conversations in the comments. So if you look at it that way, it's a nice way for people to kind of visualize. Well, if we treat LinkedIn like we're going to a conference full of our potential customers, clients, and we're going to have conversations with people there that are going to lead to business, that that's how to approach it.

Will Ockenden: 30:32

Yeah, really interesting way to look at it. What about cold, cold prospecting then is is there ever an opportunity for you know, let's say we have an amazing case study in in a relevant sector and we tap up 20 marketing directors we think might be interested in that case study in a relevant sector and we tap up 20 marketing directors we think might be interested in that case study because there's parallels with their own business is is there a role or a place for that cold prospecting or is that a waste of everyone's time?

Louise Brogan: 30:54

no, I don't. I don't think it is a waste of time. I think it's again. It's you.

Louise Brogan: 30:58

If you did a post about it and you said here's the. We ended a case study. Um, here's the. Here's, like the key messages in the case study. Um, the key is this would be on a post, by the way, sorry, not a private message. Um, the key was always, when you write a post, to ask a question at the end, so that sparks a conversation, because the conversation begins when you actually ask a question.

Louise Brogan: 31:21

Um, but anyone who engages in that in any shape or form, so they've looked at your profile after that or they have clicked the like button, those people I would then say, oh, hi, hi, bob, I saw that you liked the post that I did about the case study. Would you be interested in getting a copy of it? Or people who are already in your network? So I wouldn't connect with some. I've got my case study. Now I'm going to send it to 20 marketing managers. I would look at my network and see what marketing managers do I already have in my network who have been connected to me for a while, following me for a while? Absolutely, I would say you know, hi, barbara. Um, you know, we've been on linkedin together, networked on our network together for the last three months. We just did a case study, um, about mechanical engineering, and I know that you're in that space. Would you like, would you like, to see a copy of it? That I think that's perfectly fine. I mean, what's the worst they can do?

Louise Brogan: 32:15

no thanks or just ignore you but the worst thing I do is is block you, report you and remove you from the network that wouldn't happen.

Chris Norton: 32:24

Yeah, I didn't tend to block that many people, but it's just the relentless amount of there is a lot of spam on linkedin, isn't there? Like you said before you, I found it quite interesting what you were saying about your parameters of who you accept and don't, because, like at the very beginning, it used to be like I, you. You'd look at people and go. It's difficult now, with a, with a podcast, people connect to us, they're listening to the show, so I have to like do what you're doing, which is like assess, like do I? This person is a recruiter, do I want a another recruiter to send me a load of messages about have I got enough talent in my agency? Or this person is an ai company. They want to ai 10x your agency. It's like I get six of them a week, you know I mean yes loads and loads of spam and it's it's.

Chris Norton: 33:08

It's such a fine line because I don't want to annoy people that listen to the pod and then want to connect and it's quite what you said about you allow them to follow you because we, I've got followed, my people can follow you and then. But I tend to accept a lot of people, but then I hate those ones that accept and then immediately message you and go thanks for connecting to me, because it says I want to grow my net, I'm looking to grow my network and you look really fascinating or something, and then they'll say thanks for connecting to me. Chris, do you want to buy some painting and decorating for your office? You know, like completely random sales pitch that doesn't really fit.

Louise Brogan: 33:46

There's so much of that on linkedin isn't there. There is, and you know. So this week, because I had like five minutes, I looked back to the guy and said so, basically it was, it was like a I'm sure it was written by ai, that's okay. This guy messaged me and says hey, uh, louise, uh, he connected over something random anyway. But then he said, oh, I see, you have a podcast. And I said yes, I do. He said do you have a team or do you do all yourself? I thought, oh, for flip's sake, um, and then I just thought I'll play along with this and I says, yeah, I do have a team.

Louise Brogan: 34:19

I'm thinking this is what we do for clients like why are you? Have you actually looked at my profile? Obviously he hasn't. So then he asked another question. I just replied back and I said look, let's call him Lars. He wasn't called Lars, lars, I'm very interested in being sold to. Thanks anyway. And then I just removed him as a connection completely, because I just thought please, this is so. You know, we're not stupid, we can see where this is going. So I'm with you though, chris, because if someone's following my YouTube channel, I, I think it's a wee bit rude of me not to accept those people because they're literally supporting my business, yeah, by doing that, but I tend to err, and that flood of connection requests that came in was definitely off the back of the fellow saying this is one of the top people to follow on LinkedIn. Interestingly, of the other 20, a couple of people untagged themselves from that post because they're obviously getting the same thing and didn't want, didn't want to be bothered with it all, so, yeah, it's funny spam, spam, spam and be great if you use it

Chris Norton: 35:28

linkedin, if you're listening, create an anti-spam button that you could press and just stop spam, and that'd be good, because we do want to do business but we don't want to be bloody spammed, like if we say we don't want recruitment messages every you know, I literally get them all the time and it's yeah, I don't if and the worst bit is, if you do it, you do a due job advert and then you're in the process of recruiting.

Chris Norton: 35:50

So we've got like 30 consultants as I said earlier to you, and I was like we might be recruiting, and we're three quarters through the process and I've already interviewed sort of the team, have already interviewed 20 candidates. We've got it down to five. We're going through the final stages and they come to hi, chris, I see you, you're recruited, and then you start getting to this sequence of all these email messages going well, are you struggling to recruit somebody? It's like no, I'm already in the prep, just please. Oh, and it's not one of them, it's three of them, because they've seen that you're advertising for a role yes, exhausting's exhausting.

Chris Norton: 36:17

So if you're listening to any recruiters, please don't do that.

Louise Brogan: 36:20

Well, Chris, what you can do with those people, because if you think they are a podcast listener and that's why they're in your network, you can just move them to the other in the inbox. So when you look at your messages, you've got inbox and you've got other. So, you just shove them into the other and then you'll not even see them oh great, that sounds good.

Chris Norton: 36:36

I'm gonna do that.

Will Ockenden: 36:37

Yeah, there we go pro um pro tip for you there, chris yeah, I'm gonna use it.

Chris Norton: 36:41

I've just got a question about your you've you? You said in your in your feedback to us that you one of the obviously embracing my mistakes. People share their mistakes that they've made in business um on linkedin. You could make loads, but um. One of the ones that you said that you'd made um was you started started a business that you weren't interested in. Yes, please tell me more about this. I find it fascinating. How did you start a business that you're not into at all?

Louise Brogan: 37:09

So I grew up. So I live in Northern Ireland, in Belfast in Northern Ireland, and I grew up with a father who ran his own business. Now his business started in the 1970s northern ireland very different place then very, very hard to have a business in northern ireland in the 70s and 80s. And he said to me never work for yourself, never. But entrepreneurialism runs in the blood. Like my cousin has a business, my little sister has a business. It's something. Sister has a business, it's something. If it's in you, it's in you. So I started selling Avon to my mum's friends when I was like 16. So it was always something in me when I look back at my life. You were the Avon lady. I was the Avon lady. Yeah, you used to knock on people's doors. No, no, I used to be in um, a church organization, and I would literally go on a Monday night and hand out my little things to all the the mums and the other adults there and they would buy anyway. It's a whole thing you were pre-linked in networking.

Louise Brogan: 38:11

Look at that yes, that's what I mean always. It was always in my blood, so anyway. So whenever I had my kids on my first maternity leave, I'm just not the kind of person who, when the baby's asleep, you're meant to be asleep. It's just not who I am. So my little sister is very creative and I thought, oh, why don't we? We ended up having a card making business and then we sold craft supplies online in 2000. When was my first child born? 2005. So, 2005,. We had a crafts website.

Louise Brogan: 38:51

I then, like a crazy person, decided the only way to build this business was to open a bricks and mortar craft shop. But I wasn't the creative, I wasn't the crafter, it was my sister and she had zero interest in turning this into an actual shop. But I was convinced that I had something here. So I opened a bricks and mortar shop and I made no money at it. So I had three small children, worked part-time as an IT project manager in the health service and had a shop. Now I think this all came off the back of my dad, passed away at 59. And if that hadn't happened, if he hadn't died so young, I don't think that I would have started a business so fast. It was definitely a thing about. Life is too short. You've got to go for what you want to do. I want to have my own business. I thought my own business was this craft shop and we had no money at it.

Louise Brogan: 39:49

Somebody from the council came out. The economic development officers would have mentors and stuff. This mentor came out and sat with me and said Louise, can we go through your, your books and your spreadsheets? And she said to me you are like not killing yourself, but you are doing so much work and doing putting so much effort into this and it's exhausting, but you're not even paying yourself. Because I had to hire people to work in the shop, because I was working in the health service as a project manager, so the money was going into the rent, the rates, the stock, the staff and I was maybe walking away with a couple of hundred pounds a month. It was brutal.

Louise Brogan: 40:31

And she said I think that if you can get out of your lease, I really think you should. Because she basically said to me are you open to what I have to say? And I said, yeah, of course I am. I mean, I need help here. I just thought it was going to turn a corner because I didn't really know how to run a business. Anyway, she said one thing you are really good at, louise, is social media, and I meet so many businesses who haven't got a clue how to do social media. She says I actually think you could run a business teaching other companies how to use and back in 2000 and this is now in 2010 how to use Facebook Instagram didn't even exist and she's, but I think you could do Facebook pages for small businesses. So I was so lucky that I was able to get the lease because it was within a.

Louise Brogan: 41:20

A non-profit was the landlord, so I got out of the lease, closed the shop. My customers were devastated and I was like, going jesus, you pay a hundred part. They come in and tell me I just spent 110 pounds on, um, one of those qvc channels and I need a 99p double-sided tape. I'd be like, okay, couldn't you spent 100 pounds in here anyway, um, but part of the issue was I was not passionate enough about crafts to have those conversations to make the sales easy. And then I went into social media and I am like I love tech, I love, uh, figuring out how things work, and so it just became really fun, couldn't you?

Chris Norton: 42:06

someone who's just tech and social, though. Couldn't you have gone completely e-commerce, though, and just taken away all the costs and run it like a shop if I don't know. Shop if I existed, then shop if I didn't exist then.

Louise Brogan: 42:17

But yeah, maybe, but I didn't care about the crafts. I love that. I didn't care about the business, I just want to get out. No, I cared about making money. I wanted to make money, but I couldn't get over how to make the perfect scrapbook for your 18th birthday party, because I just didn't really. I wasn't that creative and and the customers probably realized that word whereas when I went out to like I have worked with a kebab shop and I remember going into the kebab shop and talking about like Facebook so passionately to this kebab shop owner and he was like, yeah, do whatever you want and I get carried away with it I thought, oh, she was, the mentor, was right, there's something in this, and kind of took it around from there.

Chris Norton: 43:01

So the message is follow what you're passionate about, not where Actually. Well, follow where you're passionate. I was going to say not where the cash is, but there wasn't any cash anywhere.

Louise Brogan: 43:10

There was no cash in it.

Chris Norton: 43:13

So would you follow the cash? If you'd have been making loads of money, you'd have found a passion for it, right?

Louise Brogan: 43:23

Honestly, I don't know that. I honestly I don't know that I would have, so I don't think, I don't think it would have worked anyway. Um, so yeah, and teaching, I think, if I because I did a degree in geography and so I'm a very stubborn person, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs are and people would say to me so I graduated in my geography degree in 1996. And people would say, oh, you should be a teacher, you should teach geography. And I'm like I am not going to be a teacher, but actually now what I do is teach people how to use LinkedIn, and I love it, like I actually am a natural teacher.

Will Ockenden: 43:54

I just find a different way to do it.

Louise Brogan: 43:56

But the students are a bit more well behaved.

Chris Norton: 43:59

Yes, there's a few geography teachers listening to this now thinking I'm gonna get my linkedin profile looked up by louise that would be a very niche market. Yes, um will any questions?

Will Ockenden: 44:12

I was going to ask one technical question and then I'm going to also ask you whether we can, whether you can, get michael stelzner on the show for us. Yeah, talk to us about um, linkedin creator profiles and and should we all be converting our profiles to to a creative profile?

Louise Brogan: 44:34

they don't have it anymore. They did away with it oh god, listen to me.

Will Ockenden: 44:38

We won't include. When did they get rid of that?

Louise Brogan: 44:41

um, about a year ago they took it away.

Will Ockenden: 44:45

They I mean they change things constantly so, which is also people were like can you, how do you set your account up? So does it just default to the follow or connect option?

Louise Brogan: 44:56

oh no, yes, so you, you go in and you can change that yourself. I have a video on on youtube on how to do it. Uh, but yes, mine is set to follow first so that you get more of the follow requests and you get the actual the connect button, which is actually maybe what you should do, chris, so you get less connection requests and more people following you, which is much nicer, so people are more likely to follow and then then you don't necessarily need to see their content.

Will Ockenden: 45:22

Is that? Is that the thinking there?

Louise Brogan: 45:23

yes. So um, people will take the path of least resistance. They, if they look at an account and they see a follow button, they'll just click follow. They don't actually realize that. If you go to um, the more so. If you look at someone's profile, says follow, to the right of that there'll be a button that says more. If you click on that, a drop down appears and it'll say um connect and it might say it'll say personalized invite. You can only send a note with your connection request and you can send one or two a month, but then you have to have premium to do it, which I think is really a missed opportunity. On linkedin, I think this. I think they should rewind that, because people send most connection requests with a note nowadays.

Chris Norton: 46:03

So you don't know what it's about, do you?

Louise Brogan: 46:05

Yeah, you don't know what it's about. And another little tip on that actually is if someone connects with you and they don't send a connection message, it's not because they're being rude, it's probably because they don't have the opportunity to send a message in that connection request. If they connect with you and they look like somebody who could be your target audience or maybe it's Mike Stelzner and you want to get on his podcast then I send them a message after I accept the connection request and that starts the conversation with people, because the business all happens in the private messages on linkedin good tip that.

Will Ockenden: 46:43

I love that tip this is full of full of value, this podcast. What is it? Yeah, what is that?

Chris Norton: 46:48

what is the like? What is the one hot hack tip that you would give to like a marketing professional to get the most from the linkedin? Like the? What is the? What's the biggest thing that they should think about? Because everybody's got their CV on there, everybody's got most. You know, they probably did. I find, with what I'm speaking to a lot of marketers, they probably go on it, like some go on it twice a week or something like that, because you can say that's the annoying. That's one of the annoying things about LinkedIn. You send a message and you think, oh, I'll get a reply like an email, but it doesn't work like that because sometimes they just don't log in for two weeks, do they? I suppose what's the one hack that you can? Yeah, that's of the most benefit to people.

Louise Brogan: 47:34

Well, the easiest way to get your visibility up on LinkedIn once you've got your profile all optimized. Way to get your visibility up on LinkedIn once you've got your profile all optimized, the easiest way is to comment on other people's content. But if you're a marketing professional, be strategic about it. Comment on posts that relate to your field in marketing. There is a lot of people spend time on LinkedIn and are wasting their time because they're commenting on nonsense or you know, or complaints.

Louise Brogan: 48:01

Oh, my goodness, people who go on a rant complaining about stuff on LinkedIn, like I'm thinking is this actually moving your business forward or your career forward? Probably not. So, yeah, if you're only going to go on twice a week, then well, well, I personally think you should be posting twice a week at least, and I think you should be uploading video content talking about um showing up as a thought leader in your space. But if you don't have time to do that, then at least go in and comment on people's posts. That where your target audience is going to see your name, your face and your headline and going to. Because of what you say, because it's a thoughtful, well thought out response, they're going to click on your profile and they're going to go to your about section and they're going to read about how you can help them, and then that's how you start moving the whole thing forward they call them social media watering holes, don't they where everyone goes to to drink?

Chris Norton: 48:58

that's the.

Will Ockenden: 48:59

That's what the expression I've heard before isn't it, that one I'm showing me so, um, uh, louise, we always um ask our guests um for kind of recommendations for future guests on our podcast, so ideally people that that have got expertise in a particular field but also a kind of an interesting mistake they could potentially share. Can you think of anybody we should have on the show next, and why?

Louise Brogan: 49:27

yes, actually, um, my friend isabella russell, who is an expert in podcasting, and I think she'd be an excellent guest and I have no doubt she'd have mistakes to share. Um, yeah, izzy izzy russell, I think she'd be a brilliant guest oh, I'll have to drop you in it.

Chris Norton: 49:47

I'll drop your linkedin. You probably haven't connected to me because you just allowed me to follow you, but I'll have to drop you a line and get you to introduce me to isabel um we'll do that sounds good. Yeah, we'll get her on the show we love talking podcasts will do that sounds good.

Louise Brogan: 50:00

Yeah, we'll get her on the show. We love talking podcasts. Well, yeah, I mean, who doesn't? You know what? I have always loved podcasts and meeting podcasters. Um, I did a. I was on the panel for podcast movement during the pandemic. That was the funniest thing about the pandemic was I ended up on the biggest stages I'd ever been on, but like from from where I'm speaking to you now. So I was on. I spoke at VidSummit alongside Mr Beast, but I was literally sitting in my home office in Northern Ireland.

Louise Brogan: 50:28

I'm like, oh, imagine, imagine actually being on stage at VidSummit. That'd be so cool. Um, but, social media marketing world. I've made, I've made it. I'm at social media marketing world as a speaker.

Chris Norton: 50:40

So, yeah, it is weird being on virtual um webinars with, like, we were on one the other week and there was hundreds of people on it and you're like, and you can't see who the people are, you're just presenting to you. There's me and will presenting to like our strategy on, you know, whatever it is, yes, and then you can't see anybody and there's a few chats but there's 200 odd people on it.

Louise Brogan: 51:00

And you've no time to look at the chat either.

Chris Norton: 51:03

No, no, no, we have to take it in turns. When he's speaking, I do it, and we've got like a rhythm down, because otherwise you never reply. And then people say why aren't you answering our questions? Anyway, right, thank you so much for coming on the show, louise. That was absolutely brilliant. If people want to get hold, I mean, this is a ridiculous question. Where could people get hold of you, louise?

Will Ockenden: 51:25

And what can they buy from you? Twitter, Facebook.

Louise Brogan: 51:28

Yes, so come and connect with me on LinkedIn. What Chaka Okay.

Chris Norton: 51:34

And then where can they get your book from?

Louise Brogan: 51:36

Oh, so my book is on Amazon, or actually, if you've got a global audience, because, interestingly, it's all you have to send them to the specific country website, so it's louisebrogancom forward slash book and then yeah, and then there's I have like free, free. I have so much free content for people, obviously on YouTube. But if they're interested in looking at company pages as well, we're doing a new service where we're doing audits for companies on their LinkedIn company page that people might be interested in. So just reach out and ask me if they can find out about that.

Will Ockenden: 52:11

Cool, fantastic, great to have you on the pod.

Chris Norton: 52:13

Thank you.