From the Vault: Mic Adam on a 15-Minute LinkedIn Social Selling Routine - Ep 223

Speaker A: M. You're about to listen to Enthusiastically Self Employed, the podcast created for you as someone who is self employed and enthusiastic about your business growth.

Speaker B: I'm your host, Brenda Meller, and I look forward to sharing with you LinkedIn

Speaker A: tips, marketing tips and business tips. You'll hear from me in solo episodes as well as through my guest interviews. Now, let's get started. So I'm trying a different approach with my podcast. Part of it is looking through my vault, all these interviews that I've done over the years on LinkedIn Live. And this morning I was on a call with John Esperian. He holds this espresso plus community call and we were asking some different questions about LinkedIn and Mick Adam was there in the room. I met Mick in person at Uplift Live earlier this year in the uk and when I was looking through my vault of, uh, past interviews, I discovered there's just really great conversation that I had with Mick back in November of 2020 about how to make a social selling routine that will build relationships and conversations. And LinkedIn as a platform has changed

Speaker B: a lot over the years, but social

Speaker A: selling and relationship building as a principle is a core value of my success on LinkedIn, by far, and a lot of what I teach my clients and in Mick's implementation in his approach as well.

Speaker B: So it's, it is a bit of a, I don't want to say dated,

Speaker A: it's from the vault, it's from the library, if you will. But the content I think you'll still find will be completely valuable.

Speaker B: And if you are interested, I do

Speaker A: have the YouTube link in the show notes if you want to see the original interview back from 2020 with Mick Adam. With that said, now onto the show.

Speaker B: Good morning and good afternoon, wherever you're watching in from in the world. This is Brenda Meller back for another edition of Social Media Pie. I'm giggling because Mick and I were just deep into a conversation and then I looked down at my Streamyard and it says go Live and I haven't pressed the Go live button. So, Mick, I'm so sorry about that, but how are you doing today?

Speaker C: I'm doing fine. And yourself?

Speaker B: I'm doing well, thank you. It's so nice to finally connect with you. And actually where I'm at in the world, United States, it's morning, it's about 9:08am um, and where are you located and what time of day is it there?

Speaker C: I'm located in Bruges, Belgium, and it's three or eight minutes past three in the afternoon.

Speaker B: Wonderful. I'm so delighted to have the opportunity to join you here today. And in the prep, I'll call it the prep, where we tried to actually go live and we didn't go live. I asked you to say something in Dutch and I. Something like if I were to say good morning from the United States, so in your. In Dutch, could you give us that greeting?

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. In Balheer.

Speaker B: Love it. And, Mick, you're my first guest joining us from Belgium, so I love that we have an international flair to the community. And you and I, in the pre show, we were actually talking about the fact that we haven't met, but when. When we jumped into the prep call this morning, it was like talking to an old friend because of the social media.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I think the world has gotten so small and that we've come to trust or trust and people that we know online from, um, whatever we do and comment on each other's posts.

Speaker B: Yeah, great. I'm really looking forward to the conversation here today, and I want to take a mom to welcome our viewing audience. So whether you're watching us live on Facebook, on YouTube or on LinkedIn, if you could please drop a comment below and give this video a like as well. If you leave a comment, we know who you are and where you're watching from. So I already see my friend Tom Daniels. Hey, good morning, Tom. Tom's joining us from Bowling Green, Ohio, here in the United States. And I want to invite anyone, as you're coming into the video, drop a comment, let us know where in the world you're watching from or where in the household you're watching from. Because realistically, we're all kind of working from home these days. And as we're waiting for those comments to come in, Nick, why don't you take a few minutes and tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do for your business.

Speaker C: I am a social media consultant. My main focus is B2B consultancy. I would say about 60% of my time I spent training people on, um, social media. More focused on social selling, social recruitment, and employee advocacy. And I also help them, guide them, do consultancy projects for them. Now, maybe an interesting point is, how did an old man like me end up in the social media world? I have an international sales and marketing career of about 30 years. And funnily enough, in my last job as a marketing manager, I was tasked with the job of finding new clients, and you start looking at what you can be doing. And I saw that all the stuff we were doing didn't really work out right or didn't work give us the results. So I reinvented myself and saw that we really needed to go to the networking side of life. Unfortunately, we're talking 2000, 2001, 2000, no social media. So as the social media platforms arrived, I integrated those into my company's portfolio. About 12 years ago, I decided, this is so much fun, M that I decided to make it my career. And so over the last 12 years, I've been doing just that.

Speaker B: Awesome. And I know you and I kind of crossed paths, and I can't remember if I stumbled upon and found you or if somebody mentioned your name, but I have this list that I've created, and it's called the LinkedIn Rockstars. And what I did is I identified people from people that I knew in my network and then people from around the world who specialized in LinkedIn as a part of their business, whether they're doing LinkedIn training and coaching or other areas. And I had the minimum follower count that I was tracking because I want to make sure these are people that were well established. And I don't remember, Mick, if I found you or somebody suggested you, but I know you've been on the list for at least a few years now, and you're one of the LinkedIn rock stars.

Speaker C: Thank you. I'm very grateful for being added to the list whichever way it happened, because I have no idea anymore. I think I might have seen the list and might have put up a light saying, where are the Europeans in this list? And then all of a sudden, up on the list, maybe, I don't know. But, uh, I'm so grateful that you added me to this list because that way I discover new and interesting people, too, in. In other parts or your parts of the world. And we can learn from each other, I think, because we all work in a similar environment. But yet again, it's different. Where are we? Where we all are. And that makes it interesting.

Speaker B: And for those that are watching, you might say, hey, Brenda, I just saw you talking. You know, I heard you talking to Mick, and it sounds like he does some. Some things that are similar to you. Why would you bring a competitor onto your LinkedIn Live with you? Why would you do that? You're crazy. And I would say, no, I'm not crazy. I'm brilliant. And hear me out on this one. I believe in the com with the concept of the abundance mentality. There's more than enough work to go around for all of us. And I Actually feel stronger about what I'm doing for my work when I connect with people like Mick, because we all see things from different perspectives. I didn't invent LinkedIn. I don't think you did, Mick. Right. We're all learning as we go, and we're learning different perspectives and nuances, and we're always sharing information. And that's one of the criteria that I put together for the Rockstar list. I'm looking for people who are very giving and sharing and very community focused. I don't know if you've ever talked to Jeff Young. He put together a Rockstar acronym, and all the letters of the word rockstar stand for something different. But it's a. It's a community focus, a positive, uh, uh, supportive social media karma mentality. And also it's touching on this whole concept of social selling. And guys, we're here today. If you can see the topic right above us, we're here today to talk about how to make a social selling routine that will build relationships and conversations. So as we start the conversation here today, Mick, some people might be watching and they might go, social selling. Okay, I've heard of that, but I don't know what it is. So could you help us understand that?

Speaker C: Now, let me just be clear. Um, I like to once in a while be a little bit more controversial than some other people I don't know. But at least when it comes to social selling, I think I actually am a little more controversial. To me, social selling is the extension of your current channels and tools who find prospects to collaborate with prospects and add value before you even get to know them more closely, with the intent to get them to know, of course, more closely and to work towards actually sales. So in my opinion, social selling is a tool or is a set of tools. Uh, it's an approach for salespeople, and it's not for marketeers. Marketeers have something called social media marketing. Salespeople, uh, have what I call social selling, which is an expansion of different ways they can reach out to clients, but with the intent. At the end of the day, to actually do sales, you need to build relationships for that. Obviously you need to work with your customers. But at the end of the day, it's. Let's be honest, it's about doing sales

Speaker B: and there might be some people watching. I'm a marketer, so I think about selling and I'm like, oh, um, I just, I don't like selling. I. But the. The concept of social selling is a little different. Right, Mick?

Speaker C: Yeah, it Is like I said, it's building relationships with your clients. It's feeding information into your client. Because the funny thing is salespeople are in front of clients probably most of the time, at least that's their job they get paid for. While marketeers have more of a generic. Generic, more. Let's get the word out there. But judged on the results, I think of sales, they have different criteria that they are judged on, which are fine.

Speaker B: It might be more based on implementing tactics or planning strategies versus a salesperson.

Speaker C: As a salesperson, I'm going to be judged by the number of sales I do on the whole. At the end of the year, okay, at the end of the year I got to look at my number and my or my manager looks at my number and says, you did your quota this year or you didn't. And if you didn't, maybe there's consequences to it. So what I will be doing with social selling is actually make increasing my chances that I actually get to my quota at the end of the year.

Speaker B: Awesome. So now we have I hopefully you guys that are watching you have a good understanding of what social selling is. So what I loved about your topic and I'm pointing to it on screen right now is you talk about how to make a social selling routine that will build relationships and conversations. So help us to understand that process. Help walk us through that.

Speaker C: One of the comments that I get from a lot of salespeople is, do I have to spend all this time on social media? LinkedIn, Facebook or whatever. But do I have to spend all that time? The answer is probably no. If you built a good routine, if you make sure you go through a number of steps or on a regular basis, whether that's daily, every other day, it's not up to me to judge how often you should be doing this. But if you build some kind of a routine just like you did before you were using social media, then you will get where you need to be to do three things in my opinion is one, make sure your network grows with both clients and prospects. Second of all, and this is probably the most important one, and I'll come back to all three actually. But the second one is keep your current network warm. This is one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen in the last few years that sales people are making is they want to connect with people and they have a nice network and then it all about it. And then the last thing is make sure you get seen. There's visibility and we all know the statement people need to know you, they need to like you and they need to trust you. So that's where the visibility bit comes in. And those are the three steps that you need to be built, that you need to build a routine around. In my opinion, it should be more than 15 minutes.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Per time that you do this, whereby expanding your network, that shouldn't take a lot of time every day.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So to me that takes three minutes.

Speaker B: Yeah. So let you want to jump into a little bit more, maybe some tips on each of those. Okay.

Speaker C: When I look at the first bit is expand or keep expanding your network. That seems like obvious, but the people you've met, add them to your LinkedIn network. By the way, I don't know what reason you joined LinkedIn for, but when I joined LinkedIn in 2004, only reason I joined LinkedIn was I wanted a place where I could keep all my business cards together.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker C: I wasn't looking for a job or anything like that. I was just looking for a tool to keep my business cuts. Today, uh, 16 and a half years later, I have a pretty nice network. But everybody who's ever come in contact with me has been added to my LinkedIn network. Now every day there are people that I say, by the way, I would like those people to, I would like to sit around the table with them to discuss business. So I'm also going to expand my network with prospects who are people that I want to spend time with in the future.

Speaker B: Mick, I'm going to grab something. But keep talking as, as I'm grabbing this.

Speaker C: Go ahead. To me that your network is, in my opinion, a very important component of daily use. Now you all get requests on LinkedIn from people that want to connect with you. Most of them probably don't have a personalized message. So I have a simple rule. If you start a conversation with me or we have had a conversation, I will add you to my network. If you didn't put in a personal message, I'll give you a second chance and ask you why would you like to be part of my network? Which means why are we going to talk to each other? Maybe you find my content good. Maybe you think I can add some value to your life. I don't know. It's up to you to decide. But to me, the simple rule is I need to have had a conversation with you before you get added to my network. And uh, whenever I invite people, obviously I give them a reason to with a personalized message. That part of my routine, which I do daily, takes about three minutes Because I don't meet that many people. Especially now in these times, the number of people you meet is very limited. So that is a routine that something you can finish up in three minutes.

Speaker B: So could I add something to that, Mick? So what I was grabbing out of camera frame as you were talking about the people that you meet at events, and this is kind of pre Covid we. Everybody's probably got. And you talked about putting your contacts online so you can keep it all in one place. Everybody's got some version of this. And I'm just showing you this is my shoe box. And literally pouring out of business cards and different people. Sometimes I write little notes when I meet them at events, but we've all got. Whether it's the shoebox with tons of business cards or you might have a portfolio or I think I started off with a mug and a desk drawer and then they make their way to different places. But that's a way to make your net make sure your network grows, Nick, is to go through, go through and see where those people are now and make sure you're connected with them. Right, exactly.

Speaker C: And one of the tips I give, I give salespeople is say you don't have to take all your business cards at once. Take a business card or two every day and by the end of the year you will probably will have added about 4 to 500 people to your network, people that you encounter on the way there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So that's step one, in my opinion. Three minutes a day and you can even do that on your mobile while you're on the go. The second bit is to me much more important, which is basically once you've built that, that network, you have a thousand, two thousand, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand, whatever number. Keep your network war, because they are the people that you are going to count on to do your future business. So make sure they know who you are and reach out to them. Don't wait till they send you a message. No, reach out to them. Send them a message. And I pride myself that every contact that I have on LinkedIn gets three messages a year from me on, um, LinkedIn. One is on their birthday, one is on their work new job, and one is when I see them passing my time away.

Speaker B: So can I ask a question on that? So I have my birthdays disabled. I don't like the birthday notifications. I don't show it on my own profile. But I'm curious, you say you get three notifications, so how do you ensure that happens? Are you just watching LinkedIn notifications or do you have software that's detecting that? Or how do you keep up with that?

Speaker C: Oh, uh, did we use LinkedIn notifications?

Speaker B: Okay, we're getting a little bit of a frozen glitch here, so hang on just for a second. Nick. It looks like our WI fi is

Speaker C: a while a little bit and I.

Speaker B: There we go. I think it's working. We have a little bit of a hiccup. Mick, you're freezing up on screen and it's going in and out for just a second here. Let's wait and see if it passes. It's like the WI FI waves sometimes, you guys, right? You just kind of wait for the wave.

Speaker C: No, I mean, but what I try. I try and collect data along the course of the years on people. And if it's not in your profile, then obviously I added to notes that I keep. The old index card system still works, so that I do have reminders of when people have birthdays. And if I don't, uh, I find other reasons to keep in touch with people. But I think a lot of the people do get. Now, the other thing is, I don't send them birthday wishes.

Speaker B: Yeah, okay.

Speaker C: I will congratulate them on their birthday. But what actually I will do is I will add a question to start conversation.

Speaker B: I like that.

Speaker C: So one of the things I did last year with a number of people was basically saying, great, today you have a birthday. But what was the most memorable moment of the last year? Now, the funny thing about this message was I got about a 75% response rate.

Speaker B: That's great.

Speaker C: People tell me where they went on vacation, which apparently is a memorable moment in the year. Definitely this year, people were telling me about their family situations that changed. Whether it was having a baby, whether it was getting married, whatever, even people telling me they were divorced. And there were also people who share very personal things with me that I had to sit back in all honesty, and think about. How am I going to respond to this? Because this is really personal. But by asking the question, I actually showed some empathy. I actually showed some interest in them and that continued to build the relationship with these people.

Speaker B: That's a good point. And I think what you're showing there is you're not just using. I like that LinkedIn gives us the helper answers and the helper prompts, but I kind of feel like let's. In the US we used to have something called soup starter. It was like soup in a can. It was like all the dry stuff and it was like the dehydrated vegetables and the dehydrated chicken broth. But you had to put it in a pot with water and then actual chicken meat and noodles in the. LinkedIn is kind of like soup starter. It's not good. It's dry powder by itself. It's kind of nasty, right? You gotta add, you gotta add a little bit of something to give it flavor. Nick. And I love that you're using a personalized approach.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, there's a bunch of messages that I use over the course of the years that I vary, of course, with different people, because whenever I saw that was the message I sent you last year, I'm not going to send you the same message if that was the message last year. This year you might get something like, and what are you looking forward to in the next 365. Five days?

Speaker B: But you can also see that in messaging. And I think that's kind of funny because there are some people, Mick, on that note, that only wish me a happy work anniversary. That's the only messages back and forth. And I always will. And I can tell they're using the templated congratulations on your work anniversary. And I will always reply back with something personal. I just had a work anniversary at my social media pie company and I, I reply back and I say, thanks. I'm actually publishing a book soon. Here's a list where you can, uh, link where you can read more about what's going on. So I give them a little something like, it's kind of like I'm trying to get them into the conversation, right? To get them back and forth. And I think that's what your prompts are doing, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm trying to say by keeping your network is try and start, um, bring the conversation to the other person. If they don't reply, they don't reply. There's nothing I can do to twist their arm, but at least I'm trying to start that conversation. And people, some, not all of them, but, are open to starting. The important thing is they know I care, so they know who I am. Um, it's a good touch point. It's a warm touch point, which means I can use these people whenever I need, when I need an introduction or whatever. If I need some help on finding something, they will be there for me, as opposed to the 12,000 people who have no clue who I am. I mean, I'm not going to get ahead with that. I do spend a good amount of time trying to keep my network warm. And to me, that's about 10, 10 minutes. 10, 12 minutes a day. I do limit that. I just said, this is my 12 minutes. If I'm not finished, I'm not finished. At least I did the effort. But I don't want to do this all day because I could be doing this all day. And that's not a good idea because I lose track of my objective, which is selling my training programs and consultancy. I will obviously do it for 10, 12 minutes a day. Okay. And the last thing, what I'll do is I'll, uh, give myself some visibility, which means I will post something on LinkedIn, which I have done for the last three years. Every day I write a post on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Great. So every day. So let's pause on that because I get some people missing or saying, I

Speaker C: have to be honest. Yeah. Three days a week ago. And that was because I was in the hospital.

Speaker B: That's right. Are you doing better now? You had, uh, concussion.

Speaker C: Yeah, I felt on my head with. And they put staples in it and stuff like that. But I was three days out and I didn't post those three days. But other than that, I post every day.

Speaker B: Okay, I'm glad you're doing better. And the posting every day. And you hear some people, Mick, they will say, and these are the guru experts, they might have 5 million followers and they'll say, you should post 20 to 30 times a day on LinkedIn. What are your thoughts there?

Speaker C: No, my thought is you post once a day, not more. If I posted twice yesterday and I regretted it because I shared your post on my timeline and it was so abysmal that I've gotten. Because I got less views in a day than what I would get in the first 12 minutes of a normal post. So that's really sad. But that's the.

Speaker B: Explain that a little bit because people watching might say, wait, why didn't that work? What is your experience with the algorithm and posting too closely or resharing content? Explain that for people if you can.

Speaker C: Of course, LinkedIn can only or will only push one of your posts at a time. If you post twice a day, LinkedIn will make the choice of pushing the last of the two times. That's one, one thing. That's why I only post once a day on. On LinkedIn. Anyway, normal circumstances, once in a while I do try again, but it's. I keep getting worse and worse results. So it up. So I post once a day. I try and I've tried to figure out what the best moment of the day is for me. Which is different because there is no good moment. In all honesty, there is no good moment because you got to do trial and error to find out what the best time in the day is for you. Your audience is different than my audience and is different than somebody else's audience. So algorithm, if you want, will work for you. Uh, because I think we shouldn't look at the algorithm as working against us. No, we should be working with the algorithm. And so we got to try and understand what the algorithm likes and when it likes it to be served, which is what is the timing. And I've come up with my time slot, which is between 8 and 9. But it could well be that, uh, some other people have more luck at 4 o' clock in the afternoon. It's up to you to try and figure it out. But there is no one answer fits all. When it comes down to the algorithm, I think that's just one thing. And sharing multiple posts on a day, no way, no more.

Speaker B: I think like that works if you have 5 million, 7 million, 10 million, 20 million followers maybe. And you're not worried about the algorithm at that point. You got people coming in and out. Even at that point it's automated. So I, I think you and I are both, we're more genuine. I don't schedule. I actually type in every time I'm posting on LinkedIn as Brenda Meller. You guys, it's Brenda Meller typing in it. I don't have a team. There's nobody behind me running the show. Probably same for you, right, Mick? It's you, it's your voice. Right?

Speaker C: I'll let you in on my little secret. Mhm. Which is I create my posts one week ahead of time.

Speaker B: Okay. Uh-huh.

Speaker C: So what I'll do is on the Friday afternoon or the Friday morning, I will create the posts for the next week, which I will put on LinkedIn manually.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: So I'm not going to plan them in, but I'm going to write them up ahead of time. That way I don't scramble the day itself in terms of how, what am I going to write about? So from my point of view is it's, it's not necessary to, to plan them in a tool, but it's a good idea to have a process by which you create your content and you have the content ready to go, which then saves you time when you.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's basically the same thing we do when we are writing a to do list and whether you are using post it notes or a notepad, whatever you're using to plan out your day. You're doing that with your social media content. You're kind of saying, here's what I want my focus to be next week. And you're probably taking into consideration the next time your course is launching and anything that's happening in your world and any changes that are happening on the platform.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You're pulling from all of those things, right?

Speaker C: Yeah. And recently what I've done is I've created somewhat more of a template in the sense on Monday and on Thursday I will post something around employee advocacy. On Tuesday I'll do something around social selling. On Wednesday, I will always do a poll on, um, whatever the, the ideas that I have.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: And then on Friday, it's most of the time I'm beginning to do LinkedIn lives, which is actually my post for the Friday as we go along. And then the weekend that's free for all in terms of content topics. But weekends are important too, by the way.

Speaker B: So I'm pulling up. You said today you posted a poll, so I want to pull this up on screen here. And I'm just going to take one of these little ticker boxes off so we can kind of read this a little bit. So there are some people on this platform, Mick, that have never done a poll.

Speaker C: This is a. Oh, I'm sorry. Explaining people what. How you can actually set an expiration date to your. To your. How should I say?

Speaker B: Certificate.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Uh, what I do often is I. When I do training, you can scroll down to the poll if you want. What I often do is I listen to the questions that I get from my customers and turn those into posts on LinkedIn for the next week.

Speaker B: Ah. Uh, okay, that's great. So here's an example of a poll on here. And these polls are nice little features and I try to use them more kind of conversational, getting people talking about a topic. And you're talking about, have you had a COVID 19 test? That's definitely top of mind for people. How are things in your part of the world in Belgium right now, Mick? Are you guys pretty locked down? Do you guys kind of feel like you have it under control? What's going on over there?

Speaker C: We're actually in day two of lockdown 2.0.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Yeah, we're in fairly extreme measures. I don't think they're extreme enough yet, but okay, they're already extreme. Stores are closed, food stores are open, that kind of stuff. There's a curfew from, I think, midnight till about five in the morning. So that kind of. Yeah, we're pretty much in lockdown mode here, too.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's unfortunate countries. Yeah. Someday we'll look back and we'll go, gosh, that happened. But we're right in the middle of it right now, and it's just been challenging, but hopefully we'll move past and the. The vaccine will come out or the virus will go away on its own. Maybe a combination of both. Right. We'll get back to life as normal. Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, I hope so, too, because that's. Now, it's a very strange time, but this is the time that my work network has actually paid its biggest return on investment.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Because I have had actually, over the last few months, nearly no drop in business, not to say an increase in business because of the fact that my network that I keep work started referring people to me.

Speaker B: That's great.

Speaker C: So it's worth the investment. It's worth keeping that network warm. It's hard work. I didn't say it wasn't hard work, but it's hard work to keep your network work. But it's the key to building that routine. And if you do this on a regular basis, it becomes job second nature.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it sounds like the steps are pretty simple, and I'm just going to flash them back on screen. Make sure your network grows.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Keep your network warm. I'm summarizing these in my words, but I'm hopefully I got the essence of there. And then make sure you get seen, be known, liked, and trusted. And that's talking about posting on a regular basis. So what I'd like to do now, Mick, we've got a lot of folks that are watching us live on, online right now. So I want to shift the conversation and I want to see if our audience has any questions they'd like to ask of you or if they just want to simply add to the conversation. So I'm going to flip to the comments right now, guys, but if you do have any questions for Mick, pointing over here. Right, Questions for Mick. Now is the time to ask them. And I see we've got a couple other rock stars on here. Joe Saunders watching for us from us. Um, watching us, I should say, today. Sandra Clark is also a LinkedIn rock star. She's watching today as well. I'm trying to see if there's any questions that have come in yet. And what happens is it takes about 30 seconds, Nick, as you say, hey, drop your questions below. And then it's a little bit of a delay from the Point. I say that to the point you guys hear me say that. And then you have to think about your question and then type it in and then it goes up on screen. So it's going to be a little bit of time. Yeah, I'm waiting. I'm going to go back through previous comments and I have Tom who's saying, like Mick M. He likes to send random notes to someone if I haven't talked to him a while and I see them pop up in my timeline. Is that a technique you do as well, Mick, as you're seeing?

Speaker C: Yeah, like I said, I still have the old index card system going. Not that I use it very often, but there are things that are not on social media and, um, I'm definitely not on LinkedIn or even on Facebook for that matter. Once in a while you still have those notes popping up.

Speaker B: Yeah, great, great. Yeah, it's. And pay attention to who's in your homepage feed. And I will notice if there are people like, like Mick that I'm not seeing regularly or Sandra Clock or Joe Saunders. I don't see them. Or John Aspirian or Andy Foote, like the people on my Rock Star. And I'm like, why am I not seeing their posts anymore? I realize the algorithm is always changing and evolving and I got to go back on their timeline and comment on a couple things and then they start seeing them again. So little technique. Right?

Speaker C: The thing is, you can only see so much on your timeline. People easily drop off and then all of a sudden, like, you, light goes on. I haven't seen John for a while. Let's go see what he does. That does happen.

Speaker B: And then you start seeing him. M. So question from Tina. How to reuse an old post. Should you reshare it or repackage it? What are your thoughts there, Mickey?

Speaker C: My idea is repackage it. The old information is still valid. Repackage the information. Just to give you an example, I had a post I did last year, maybe had a couple hundred responses to it or likes and comments and stuff like that. And one day I find myself this year without, uh, a post. So I took a post from last year, looked at it, updated it and reposted it, and all of a sudden I got a thousand reactions to it. So it's the matter of taking what you have in the past, reusing it in a smart way. It's not copy paste, it's like, take a look and update it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great point. And it's. I'm going back to my soup starter. And Christine remembers soup start. I don't think they sell it anymore. I went at the store recently. I'm like, I don't think they sell this. It's like a little cardboard jar. I don't think they sell it. But it's kind of when you make something on the stove, you can heat up leftovers, but they're not as good. But in here in the United States, we've got Thanksgiving that's coming up, and then after Thanksgiving, there's the Thanksgiving leftovers. And sometimes you can make really great dishes from m things that are different combinations of the turkey and the cranberries. It's kind of the same thing. It's like if you repackage it, it sometimes can be more delicious than just warming it up. There was another question from Tom, and this is college students. Any recommendations for college students that are looking to build their network on LinkedIn?

Speaker C: The advice would be, get started on LinkedIn. Start building your network from the places that you visit, the places where you do internships. Build it from there. Add to your LinkedIn profile things like, what did you learn in school? What are some of the specific special papers you did? So there's a lot of stuff that students also do. So I would definitely take that content and integrate it in one way or another into my LinkedIn profile. You don't have the sales experience. If you do, if you work jobs, why not add it to it? I mean, uh, it shows that you're trying to move ahead.

Speaker B: And I think for college students, too. I remember I did my grad degree a couple years back in different phase of my life, but still, I would use the technique of whenever I would be reading an industry article from Forbes or Fortune or USA Today or whatever, I would look up the authority of the article and I would look them up on LinkedIn and I would reach out and I would say, I'm reading about your article in my management class right now. Great insights. Let's connect on LinkedIn. Because you never know. You never know where your future is going to lead. And you can, to your point, Mick, use the content you have that's in front of you to try to build your network and build up. Um, so, okay, so one final question here, and I think we're going to start to wrap. This is a question from Joey, and he's asking, that list of three suggestions you had, are those in order of importance? So I'm guessing Joey might be saying, if I don't have enough time, which one should I be focusing On That's a good question.

Speaker C: In my opinion, you should always focus on number two. It's keeping your network warm. The visibility part. If you post once a week, if you post twice a week, okay, that's probably the lowest in priority. But make sure you're visible. And building your network is important, but keeping it warm is to me. If I have to make a choice which one I would do if I have limited time, I would focus on working my network, especially since it is already a decent sized network. You know, why throw away what I've. We put so much time into building just in. That would be my number one priority. The second one would be adding people. And three, make sure I get visible to the rest of the world. Okay. I think that they're equally important in my mind. But I understand it's 15 minutes a day. It's 15 minutes every other day. We can find that time.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's not too much time. You just got to make it part of your routine.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That's the important.

Speaker C: It's like you read your emails in the morning Instead of scrolling 15 minutes through Facebook, do it on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's totally. I totally agree. And I said the same thing myself. We all have the same 24 hours in the day. Mick, you and I have 24 hours. I don't get more, you don't get more. Even with time zone differences, we get the same 24 hours. Oprah gets 24 hours in a day. There's national suburb. We all get the same 24 hours in a day. It's how you use them. And then I did see another question come in, but I'm gonna point to Mick's profile where you can learn more about his. Mrs. Because Steven is asking, would Mick share a couple more of his templates for keeping your network warm? And this was not a staged question by any means, but I think at this point, Mick, this might be your opportunity to tell us a little bit more about if people want to work with you. And you mentioned some courses and things like that. I'm guessing this might be a part of what you do as your business offering. Is that correct?

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And the funny thing is all of that stuff is on my LinkedIn profile, some, somewhere either uh, in posts or in, in my, in articles that I've shared in the past. I think I have about 130 or 140 articles. So you can find all. You can find a lot of that information back on my profile if you can find it. Just drop me a note and I'll always be more than happy to answer you. And if you have questions, interesting questions, obviously, you know, I will turn them into posts.

Speaker B: There you go. I do that a lot, too. When someone, when one person asks me a question, rather than respond to one person, I will either post or blog about it and then I will send that person a link to that and I'll say, here it is. And I don't say Nick asked me this question, but I say, someone asked me this question.

Speaker C: Yeah, it depends on who it is. Sometimes I do mention the person if it's a very specific question, but most of the time it's just be a, uh, generic. Somebody asked me this question last week.

Speaker B: Yeah, good point. So I'm showing you guys Mick's profile up on screen and he just said there's a lot of nuggets of wisdom in there, so go visit his profile. Lots of great information about LinkedIn, but also employee advocacy, social selling, social recruitment. Look up his profile and you can learn more. And Mick, are you open to accepting connections from anyone who's watching the show today?

Speaker C: Yeah, but please do a little personal note so that maybe refer it to this session. So I know that you've seen me and I know where to refer you to or where I would be able to know you from.

Speaker B: Excellent. And then your website, I think, is this the website right here, Vanguard Leadership? Is that right?

Speaker C: Yes, it is. It is. It is.

Speaker B: Okay, so this is a place where if people wanted to look up and learn more about your company, and I'm just navigating to bring it up on screen. So I'm vamping, I'm vamping right now, guys, give me just a second. When you're in the co pilot or the pilot seat, it's like you're trying to coordinate all the things so they could go to vanguard-leadership be and tell us what, what could we find here?

Speaker C: If we're looking, it's what kind of services we provide or what I provide. I have a business partner in this business which is called Yoris the Sutter. Uh, he is more of the admin type of person in the background. But basically what we do is we try and say this is what we do in terms of social media, this is what we do in terms of mobility and have substances around that. For me, my website is more of a placeholder than more than anything El really. My main focus is my social media channels, which is LinkedIn, Twitter. You can find me on Facebook too, and you'll find what my passion is on Facebook. You'll see it on LinkedIn too, but to a lesser degree. But my. I, like I said, for me, my website, or the website is less of a, yeah, lead generation tool, it's more of a, uh, like I said, the placeholder. So that if people want to get all of me, that's what they do.

Speaker B: Awesome. We'll definitely check that out. And as we start to wrap the conversation here today, if you guys enjoyed the conversation, I would love it if you could just leave a comment below for Mick, let him know if there's something that you found particularly helpful. I, for one, I loved the three steps because I often get people asking me, what should I be doing after I'm, um, set up on LinkedIn, what should I be doing to keep growing? And I love that you've broken the social selling thing down into something you can do into three categories in 15 minutes a day. So, as we wrap here today, Mick, any final comments you want to offer? The group, shout outs you want to give, anything you're working on, you want to tell us about anything else?

Speaker C: The shout outs that I want to do is I've seen a few people's names pass by that I do know, and I want to say hi to all of these people in one go because I'm not going to name them. I've seen a bunch of people there that flash by and it's great that you joined the session today. Hello from Belgium. And let's connect on one way or another. Yeah. For the rest, it's flu for fluid. Time flew and it was a very happy time.

Speaker B: Yeah. All right, guys, thank you so much. Mick, it has been an absolute delight chatting with you today. Hopefully at some point in our future we'll be able to meet in person, but until then, I know we'll see each other online.

Speaker C: Definitely. Thank you for having me, by the way.

Speaker B: All right, thank you. And for all of you who are watching, I'd like to ask you for just a couple of final favors before we wrap here today. One is, before you leave, you saw my little. My comment that's going on the ticker below. If you enjoyed the conversation and you haven't left a comment yet, please give a comment below and give this video a like, this is going to help us to. To get this message out to more people. It all feeds into the algorithm and it helps to show the video to more and more people. So do that. And then we also know that you are watching because later on, Mick and I will probably go back on the playback and we'll look and see all the comments and make sure that we responded to you. So do that so we know that you are watching and we can acknowledge you. And I see a couple people leaving comments that they really enjoyed. Christine, keep your network warm. Really great feedback there. And then the other thing I'd like you guys to do is if you could please, after you're done watching, go back and share the video and you can, if you haven't posted on LinkedIn today to mix point, you could share the video and that counts as a post. And maybe when you share it, you comment on something that was particularly helpful. Maybe you summarize mix three step process to social selling, for example. So share the video or maybe you share it in a message or share it in an email but help to spread the word. And then if you'd like to join my VIP email list, go to mellermarketing.com subscribe so Mick, thanks again for joining and stay safe and stay healthy. Hopefully the lockdown restriction lifts soon for you and you're able to get back out in the world again there.

Speaker C: Yeah, same over there. And good luck on this difficult day

Speaker B: today in the U.S. yeah, it's, something's happening here in the U.S. today. I'm not, we're not talking about that.

Speaker C: It's also going to go away.

Speaker B: So like, we're just talking about social selling here today, that's all. It's a politics free zone.

Speaker C: I didn't say it was about politics.

Speaker B: No, I hear you. So on that note, everybody stay safe and stay healthy. And if you have not already done so, this will be my only time I say, uh, it, please go out and vote. This is the last day that we can do so. And thank you guys for watching. Have a wonderful day. We'll see you on, um, LinkedIn on the flip side. Take care everybody. Thank you.

Speaker C: Thank you. Bye.