Hey it’s Janet Johnson with Social Media Hangout Time. I’m here today with Kimmy, our salon owner.
Hi everybody!
And we have our special guest today, Gary Kissel and Gary Kissel, welcome to our show.
Thank you so much, appreciate the opportunity.
Absolutely, absolutely. I’m excited to have you on and talk about LinkedIn because we haven’t, I know it’s such an important platform and the discussion today we’ll get into LinkedIn and how I actually connected with Gary was through LinkedIn. Directly through LinkedIn and I did not know you before and it’s a neat way to connect with people and I have brought on few people on the show just through the LinkedIn connection. But the one thing that we don’t focus on here is LinkedIn too much. We haven’t had a lot of interviews with LinkedIn. So welcome Gary and I want to get into your background a little bit but I think what I’d like to do since I don’t know you personally, I’d love to hear your story and have you explain to our viewers on exactly how did you got started with teaching LinkedIn to business owners?
Okay, well thank you so much. It’s an honor to meet you and Kimmy, as well. So…
Thanks!
I started 5 years ago working on LinkedIn and my purpose at that point was to develop a real estate business. So I discovered that you used LinkedIn search engine to search for investors, cash buyers and I was able to connect with those people then offered them the opportunity to come to Florida, buy properties for retirement, for income or for vacation. And mostly I connected with people in the northeast US and eastern Canada. So people have come down and they bought from me, they continue to buy from me but about a year and a half ago I started getting closer to a passion of mine of teaching and providing more opportunity for other professionals like yourselves. And since then I’ve been focusing more on that and I’ve been enjoying that a lot because like you say, many people don’t know understand all the nuances of LinkedIn even though it’s a tremendously powerful platform.
Hey Gary I have a question for you. What businesses do you think work best on LinkedIn?
You know I find it works for a wide variety of businesses. I would say that I worked from private individuals, entrepreneurs to financial firms. So the variety is great, the profile can be adapted to whatever your target market is.
Hmmm
Yep.
Great question, great question.
It was a good question.
Yeah. And so it depends on, there’s some businesses you wouldn’t recommend that may be better off with another platform or would you say every business should be pretty much on LinkedIn? Oh, not everybody.
Well here’s the thing, if you’re in business why not be on the number 1 business platform that’s worldwide recognized as such? It’s also the fastest growing technology company in the world according to Forbes in the last 2 years. It’s 300M people, if they were a country, would be the 4th largest in the world. So can you ignore that sort of a market, I don’t think so.
Wow. And then what about the other question I have is of of that, what you just were speaking about. Can you talk a little bit about the Google piece of it? Is there Google algorithm with LinkedIn because I’ve heard some things about that.
Yeah you’re right. If somebody was to Google you and you have a LinkedIn profile, Google, among one of it’s first two listings will be your LinkeIn profile. Google recommends, gives credibility to the LinkedIn profile as a very high priority.
Nice. So to me that shows even Kimmy, the salon owner could definitely benefit because of the search side of things with Google, correct?
You never know who’s looking for you so you definitely want LinkedIn to be your online resume, if you will.
Nice.
Well I found some speaking engagements through LinkedIn because I do a lot of training on hair coloring and sometimes you get invited to places where you just would’ve never gone, even thought to go. So LinkedIn’s been pretty powerful.
Well congratulations! Yes, there’s a million doors that get open and I’m learning new avenues all the time.
So let’s go back to your real estate experience. As a realtor, how did you become so successful on LinkedIn? What were some of the things that you did?
I targeted my market, that would be the main thing that I did. And I knew that I wanted to have a special niche in real estate. I didn’t want to work locally but I wanted to attract people from outside of my local area which is south Florida. And so I started off generally looking for investors and then I found out that there was a very rich market in the northeast US and eastern Canada because there’s a weather difference, the economies were extremely different and Florida offered a good value to them. So those targeting efforts really paid off for me .
That’s terrific!
And you did all that targeting through LinkedIn?
I did, yeah.
Okay. Can you expand on that a little more like what you did? Try to explain to the viewers exactly, like break that down a little bit?
Sure. Well for me it was discovery. 5 years ago LinkedIn wasn’t nearly as popular or as credible as it is now, but I started finding out that their search engine was very very powerful. And LinkedIn, by the way, is one of the top ten websites visited worldwide. So when I found out that you could more than just the name of person in the search engine, you could put a category or different topic, it will open up the world to me. So like I said I started looking for investors, people with cash, people that could buy quickly. And I started connecting to people that has those attributes and then I was able to offer them bargain properties here in south Florida and attract the investors to come and buy from me.
That’s great! So did you use the tagging functions in LinkedIn? Did you do a lot of tagging and follow up?
I did a lot of follow up, not a lot of tagging. I kept it pretty simple and I found it pretty easy. The number of connections available were enormous and I can pick and choose those people that we had an affinity together and was very easy to find common interests that we could develop our relationship on and the bottom line in using any of these social media is to build relationships.
Absolutely!
Exactly! So why did you choose LinkedIn over other platforms? Like what drew you to over to LinkedIn?
Now that’s a good question. I left the corporate world so I had a business background and to me LinkedIn as it is now is still the most focused business platform available. And I just focus on that, I continue to focus on it because it’s been successful for me and I continue to grow my business and my clients’ businesses through LinkedIn so I don’t really have a need to be a guru for all the other platforms. LinkedIn is enough for me.
That worked great for you so that’s proof in the pudding.
Exactly, exactly. Well it’s nice to be a little focused on one platform. It’s a challenge to focus on more than 1 but that’s what we do. We do many, multiple but the 1 I guess I haven’t focused on too much yet is Instagram because you just can’t do it all. And now because they’ve become so robust, just LinkedIn alone, some has a full time job just learning. Just LinkedIn and then there’s the Facebook and what changes everyday, you know. So that’s awesome, it’s good that you niched yourself within LinkedIn.
Well it keep changing, too. I play around a little bit on Pinterest but LinkedIn two months ago rolled out a whole new publishing platform, a new feature. So almost anybody can become an author now on LinkedIn. So it’s changing endlessly.
Can you talk a little more…oooopps, sorry.
I just want to know more a little bit about the publishing platform, can you expand on the publishing platform a little bit and what it can do for people?
Sure. It was a feature that was primarily reserved for very key influential people like Richard Brannigan or Bill Gates. And so they can post their articles, new information there and people can subscribe to it. But now that feature is being rolled out so that everybody can write a post about whatever expertise they have in their business or in their industry, their knowledge and they can post it and become part of their profile permanently and their whole network can see those posts. It builds up credibility, it makes/helps establish people as experts in their field.
Great and Kimmy you have a question, too?
Yeah. And the publisher, I’ve seen that you can almost do everything with publisher that you can do on a blog post like video, linking, images, so it’s not just text-based.
That’s true, yes. And in general LinkedIn has become a lot more graphic and video-friendly in the last year and a half. So it’s become a lot more dynamic and if you will, a little more like Facebook in terms of its visibility.
So profile, do you have some specific, maybe give us a couple of tips on setting up that profile and what you suggest you really have to do?
So you want some LinkedIn secrets?
Yeah.
I have 59 LinkedIn secrets but I’ll give you a really top 10 secret.
Awesome!
Okay.
Cool.
And that is at the top of your profile where people see you prominently, maybe for the first time, there’s a picture then there’s your name and then there’s an area underneath the name called the headline.
Yeah.
Most people use that to talk about their position or title – I’m the president of, I’m the owner of, I’m the manager of but if you change the mindset about that little bit and talk about your benefits and your features, you’ll be seen as a unique individual and more interesting and therefore draw more people into your profile. The other thing about the headline is it’s often under utilized. 120 characters can be put in there so almost 2 and a half lines of information, very important real estate on LinkedIn.
That is a great tip and I think how many people get that wrong.
Not 90%.
Exactly. I don’t want to look at mine right now but I will after this. I’m probably one of those 90. That’s great.
In general people should make their profile client or customer focused.
Yep.
Too often it’s more focused about themselves or their position, you know, what I’ve done, blah blah blah. That’s a mistake.
Love it! Kimmy you have a question?
Yeah. I just wanted to say I noticed you have your phone number in your headline. Have you noticed a difference when you put that in as not having it?
I sure do. To me, it sends out a message that it says I’m open for business. A lot of times when I try to connect with professionals I’ll find that they don’t have a phone number, they don’t have an email that’s easily find-able so I’m forced to look at their website or sign up for a newsletter and why should it be so difficult? Yes, my number is in the headline very prominently so very easy for people to connect with me.
Nice. Now that sounds great but I’m always nervous about that. And maybe because I’m a woman, I don’t know. It’s just I don’t like to put my phone out there because I actually use my personal number for business, too, so it’s kind of catch-22 for me. I don’t need the whole world calling me.
Well, did you want me to tell everybody what your phone number is Janet? C’mon! I’ll do it right now.
So I don’t know, I mean that’s the only thing I would say unless you have a 1800 set up specific for your business or that kind of thing. What would you suggest there? Is that…
I would say you’d want some sort of screening system. But you want to make it easy for people to reach you one way or the other.
Absolutely, absolutely! That’s a good point.
Certainly nobody wants to be harassed.
Yeah, exactly. Okay and then we were going to keep going. Go ahead and keep going, you gave us a couple of tips. You said you have 59 and you’re going to give us 10, let’s keep going.
I will give you another tip about growing your network.
Okay.
LinkedIn policy is they don’t want you connecting with people you don’t know. Well, hello, it’s a networking tool so how do you do that? You do that two ways. One by knowing the email of the person you’re trying to reach, that’s not always easy to do as I have mentioned before. But one really easy way of connecting with people without knowing their email is to join groups. And there’s 2M groups to join on LinkedIn, 2 million. You can join 50. And so ones you become a member of a group you can post to discussions, start a conversation or you can connect with members of that group. Just because you’re all members of the same group, you don’t need to have an Inmail or an email to send an invitation. So that’s a big tip, you can grow your network really quickly that way.
Great! Love it, love it. So the groups then that way you can connect. Does that make it a first connection or second connection. Well you’re actually, you don’t have to put an email is what you’re saying when your’re connected to them in a group, correct?
You’d be connecting with your level 2 or level 3 contact and keep it for your level 1.
Perfect. Love it. Okay well let’s keep going and what’s your next tip?
Let’s talk a little more about groups because we’ve talked about how many there are but the size of them varies greatly. There could be 10 people in a group, there could be a hundred people in a group, there can be a hundred thousand people in the group. There’s a social media group for example that has almost 900,000 members.
Wow!
900,000 members.
That’s a lot of people but is it the actual group you wanted to be participating in? Like for us, should we participate in a social media group or should we participate in groups where our clients are going to be?
Depends totally on what your target market is.
Yep.
I would think you’d benefit from the exposure of 900,000 people however you can have a mixture of interests and targets where your customers are hanging out. I’d recommend some diversity in the choices of your groups.
Love it. Yes, you can learn from peers, too, so it can be a learning experience like one that I really like is the Social Media Examiner. They’re a large group and it’s peers. So that’s a great question though Kimmy because you want to mix it up, is what you’re saying. So do some of your target market and some maybe peers where you can learn and teach and get to know other people., right?
Right.
Kimmy’s pretty savvy there.
Hey I’ve been working on this I tell yah!
That’s great! Okay. Well what other strategies, what if somebody came on and needed to really grow their, they’ve never, you know, they set up their profile. What would you say the first steps to do after, is it the groups, is it your profile looking good supposedly? What other things would you say would be their next step?
Well I think that the primary attention needs to be on your profile. So there’s a lot of categories that many people miss when they’re setting up their profile. For example they have certifications or honors or groups that they’re involved in, organizations. All those things can be added and once they’re added it will give your profile a lot more prestige and credibility to yourself. So that’s something a lot of people miss, they’re anxious to get on to growing their business but it’s going to come back to your profile so the time spent there is well invested.
And I forget to go back in there, too. I kind of think it’s another… How often would you say people should go back and just take a look at their profile? And I’m 100% guilty of not going back but…
Yeah, at least once a month.
Once a month, okay. Or if event happens where they want to add that, correct, because they can change and add different clients, add different milestone-type things to it too.
Of course you can edit all the time. And there’d be things that you’re thinking about that you haven’t thought about when you first set it up, then you’ll say oh I can have that. So it’s kind of a living being, if you will.
Hmmmm. Okay. Not like a website where you just want to sit there and you actually want to update once in a while, huh?
Exactly true. And you want to change up your headline and change up some of the pictures you have so that it’s always dynamic and exciting.
Can you expand on, I always see somebody when they do update their profile I get an alert and it goes sometimes things come out to me, people I’m connected to. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Sure. You have a news feed so all of your posts and changes can be seen by your entire network if that’s what you want to have done. If you don’t want to have every change seen by your network then you can change your settings in your profile so that only certain things are shown. All of your updates don’t necessarily have to be broadcast to all of your members.
Do you see a benefit to broadcasting it?
I do because the more I’m seen, the more opportunities I have. So I like a big funnel. You may want a more restricted or precise type of audience but the bigger the better for me.
Okay. That was something I, it’s kind of like on Facebook. The more you do things to get seen, it will kind of remind people that you are there, too.
Yeah.
Okay. Good. Wow, I’m loving this. I’m learning. So hopefully Kimmy. We have to relist it a few times.
You are a good coach, if you need one.
Yep, absolutely. And let’s talk a little bit about your coaching and what you do and how you work?
Okay basically I have a 90-minute session when I’m working with an individual. And I go through the profile optimization, filling out of all the different categories that are available so it’s a robust profile. And then I get in to strategies about what to do because everyday I hear ‘well I’m on LinkedIn but I don’t do anything with it’. So there’s two parts, it’s not like posting a resume and leaving it there and hope that people are going to come and engage with you. Hope is not a good strategy. So that’s the complete package I try to provide and then I also speak to a lot of groups so I love to do workshop networking and launch-and-learn type of events. It opens up a lot of opportunities and it’s very interactive, usually.
And what people where you’re located so that they know…
I have clients all over the world, all over the states. So I do my workshops or I do my individual session via phone, in person, via Skype and maybe now that I know a little bit about Google Hangouts I can do them on hangout.
There you go. Exactly, exactly. The hangouts are awesome. That’s great.
I’m learning from you folks, as well.
Great! Well that’s what we’re here to do. We’re all here to learn from each other. So Kimmy you know let’s finish up. Kimmy you didn’t ask him our special question at the beginning
Okay.
So we do want to always bring that out.
I know, I’ve been dying to ask.
I know you have and then we want to finish up, too, and we’ll wrap it up, too.
What’s up Kimmy?
Okay, I got a question for you. Have you ever been interviewed by a puppet before?
Ah, never.
Oh, yey! I’m almost like dying to nineteen and twenty.
You’re the first and you’re the best.
Thanks so much and I appreciate it because when we talk to people like yourself it just opens our minds to the ability that connect with all kinds of professions. And you never know who’s good referral partner so LinkedIn I think is going to be very valuable.
And I appreciate the opportunity of getting to know you too Kimmy.
So if we want to get hold of you Gary for coaching or somebody’s interested in having you speak, where should they go? How can they get in touch with you?
Well I have a phone number which I’m not afraid to give out. It’s 561 716 4359. You can check out my LinkedIn profile, I have hundred recommendations there which you could look at so you can tell what kind of benefits you can receive from my coaching. And that’s simply Linkedin.com/in/GaryKissel.
That’s awesome!
Great! Well thank you so much Gary for joining us and teaching us, I feel like the audience has a lot of work to do. So take these tips, write them down and go apply them because that’s our goal with our audiences to take what they’ve learned here and go apply it. So thank you very much Gary.
My goal has been to grow your business beyond belief so good luck to you all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
http://socialmediahangouttime.com/