Search Interviews:

Jeremy Weisz 5:24

I mean, similar to like, if you eat it, or Italian restaurant or something, and it was terrible. Yeah. I’m never doing this. Again. I’m never eating any Italian. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s very valuable. And so don’t let other people’s actions on the platform taint you.

John Corcoran 5:39

That’s right. So let’s start with one of the most important first pieces, which is optimizing your profile before you do anything else, you got to optimize your profile? And Jeremy, do you want to just start with a couple of points or tips or

Jeremy Weisz 5:55

Yeah, people for me, it’s like, because listen, if you’re reaching out to people you in basically, they’re going to check you out on LinkedIn. And by the way, in John, you know, this, too, if you a lot of times when you search people’s name on Google, LinkedIn, your LinkedIn profiles is typically in the top three search results. So even if they’re not on LinkedIn, like, well, I don’t use LinkedIn that much, it doesn’t matter. Like if someone’s searching for you, and trying to find information about you, LinkedIn may come up in their search results, and they’re going to go to LinkedIn. Yeah, and see, this person’s not credible. So you really want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile shows the your expertise and its full capacity. And so some of the things to look at is, I think I told someone this last week, and I said in a nice way, but I said, your LinkedIn profile is a disgrace. I mean, it’s an absolute disgrace. And I said it in a loving way, because it doesn’t represent how amazing you are, you know, and one, people don’t even put a picture, like if you were to think of a website, your what your landing page, your website, your homepage, you wouldn’t just not have a banner on your website, you just would not have a just leave off what you do. Okay, that’s what people are doing with LinkedIn. So make sure you have some kind of banner that actually displays what you do. I’ve seen people do flowers and rocks and mountains, this is like nothing to do. So they have something there which is better than just the default blunt like blue, whatever comes in LinkedIn, but it doesn’t give you your your authority. And so you want some kind of banner image that shows that you’re an authority in the space, it may show, you know, shows social proof logos on there and you know, shows what you do you in action in front of a crowd, whatever it is. The next piece is your the title underneath your name, you know, you want something people are often looking at your name, they’re looking at what you do, and people put founder CEO, that’s it. That’s it, they have like, you need something that displays that shows people what you do. You know, like for us, it’s helping b2b businesses connect to their dream 100 clients and get it making sure you get ROI using a podcast. So what we do, I don’t say, founder or CEO, or whatever it is, the next piece that you should think about is the about piece, what do you do and remember, as you could see, if you’re watching the video part, you only get like a sentence. And when I say that, you can click see more and opens up but most people aren’t going to click the See More button, they’re just going to read what you have there and move on. I don’t remember the last time I click the See More button on someone I just kind of got a general gist of them. So you really have that one sentence so look and see what actually shows up in that one sentence because when you click pro John, you want to click the see more but I mean it opens up into like a lot of stuff, but which is great, which is it’s good to have and you want to have it but make sure you pay special attention that first sentence the next piece is the video right? If you scroll down, if you’re watching the video, there’s the featured section and this is people may look intimidating if you don’t have anything there. It’s really just a link to a video. Okay, this is a link to a YouTube video and it shows up very nicely on LinkedIn. So you should if you don’t have them, you should have some video you should create videos. It could be if you have a podcast you can create you know have podcast videos, if you um, you know don’t have a podcast, get it started startup I guess no but um, have a video to podcasts or if you have client testimonials right? client testimonials have those made you know, our friend Ian Garlic is is awesome at creating that if you have questions about that, ask him and he they will actually help interview your clients and create a nice video for you. And

John Corcoran 10:13

we have Ryan Howard here who volunteered. Thank you.

Jeremy Weisz 10:16

All right, let’s bring him up. Yeah, there you go. Ryan Howard. We’ll do it real time here. Yeah. Ryan Howard. I have to I have to bring it up on mine because it’s a little smaller than yours. But But you could see like, actually, um, it’s pretty good. He’s got like some kind of customized banner that’s really good. Learn more free masterclass it see still doesn’t tell me exactly what he does, in that, in that headline. Your faith at work transformed the way you work. So maybe to him, it’s clear to me, I’m wondering, should I hire him like who is a good fit for for him. And so maybe the headline could be a little clear to me. Discover how your work fits into God’s plan. So I’m still not sure if my business is a fit for what he does. So make sure that you know, we have how helping Who do you help like helping blank, do blank accomplish blank. So more maybe a little more copywriting a good, so he’s got he’s got a great picture there, he’s got at least a banner with something with a website, which is good, more than 95% of most people may be a little clear on who you serve, and then discover how your work. So you’re, you’re Ryan, you’re doing a good job. Overall, I think there’s a few tweaks you can make to make even better. And I think, if you scroll down, so I would probably he’s got over 500 plus connections. That’s another thing. Sometimes people if you see 197 connections, it just, it just doesn’t look like this person is authority in the space, like you have no connection. So you want to get to that 501 502 so says 500 plus connections, just get to that point, at least I know, John, you have like 17,000, or more connections on LinkedIn. But it still says 500 plus, so it doesn’t really matter. Um, so I would say get really clear with who you serve, and how you help that person. Because I don’t know who you serve from the get go. And in John and i Who do you know, make a lot of referrals to people, it’s helpful, even if we’re not a client, like, oh, when we hear of this, you know, Ryan serves this type of person, we can recommend them.

John Corcoran 12:23

So one other thing I’ll point out here is it’s kind of buried down here, but it says he has a PhD. So I’m wondering if maybe it shouldn’t say Dr. Ryan S. Howard at the top here, or? Yeah, he cuz that’s a real common PhD or something. Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah. Don’t say that anywhere until you get further down, you know? Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 12:44

Yeah, that’s a good point. Follow Ryan to discover how your work. So again, same thing, I would, I would probably work that, if that headline of who, you know, follow Ryan, discover how your work fits in, it doesn’t really tell me who’s an ideal client for you, when they’re reading this, that would speak to them. Like if you said, whatever organization, we help this type of organization and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So and if you want to, so you have some featured stuff there, which is good. I don’t know, one of them’s an E-book. And one of them is actually that is a podcast. So that’s, that’s good. So you can see, you know, you have around, you know, 1000 connections. And that’s really credible, like the John Deere, that obviously, it’s a well-known brand that you have there. So it’s good that you have that in there 13 years, you could even add some some stuff about what you do in there, where it’s like seeing your supplier development engineer, add some details in there. But I mean, that’s, that’s kind of a low hanging fruit. I mean, this is all good, good stuff that you have in here. So those

John Corcoran 13:53

I’ll point out is sometimes you see people where they have a company written in under experience, or a university, it happens with the universities as well. And there’s no logo next to it. And sometimes you see it up here, too, or you see the company name, and there’s no logo next to it, it just has the default. One. The reason for that is either they don’t have a LinkedIn page, which immediately gets company pitch a company page, right, exactly. A company LinkedIn page. And and and so when I see that, and I think a lot of people say that they question is this person legitimate? And sometimes the reason is because they’d have their LinkedIn page for a long time. And if it’s if the company does have a company page, all you need to do is go edit your profile, go into where you’ve listed that university or that company, delete it and type it out again, and LinkedIn will will automatically suggest other official pages, and then you can connect it and then that will bring in the logo and it just gives you a little bit Arab legitimacy. It’s um, surprising to me how many people that are really established, you know, Authorities and experts, but they haven’t done that one thing. And it’s one of those subtle things that kind of diminishes their credibility. One other thing I would just throw and then I’ll get back to you, Jeremy, throw out here is you mentioned earlier, the backgrounds at the top. This is a beautiful background, Ryan, that you’ve created here, or Dr. Howard, I should say. But you see, how is the city backdrop? A lot of people, they just put their city’s backdrop in the image at the top there. And I’m not sure that it doesn’t really hurt you, but it doesn’t gain you anything. And I don’t know if he’s from Waterloo I was I don’t know if that’s Waterloo. But other people do this. They’ll put Seattle as a background or Chicago’s skyline in the background, or San Francisco Skyline’s background. And what you want there is to convey to someone who’s just landed on your page, Amelie, who you are and what you do. And the city of San Francisco background doesn’t do that doesn’t accomplish that. So I just wanted to bring that up. But back to you.

Jeremy Weisz 15:56

The other thing I was going to talk about, if you go down, you brought up a good point about the John Deere thing. So it seems like from from looking at this, he’s still working at John Deere, but he has helps he has this helping discover how your work fits into God’s plan thing. But like you just mentioned, he may not have a LinkedIn company page. So that’s not showing up here. So right, he should have a LinkedIn company page for whatever that whatever his, you know, company is that helps, you know, discover how your work fits God’s plan. And then that should come up first is as the actual company experience, along with john deere. Yeah, it looks like he doesn’t have you know, that company page set up, or he doesn’t have a link to his profile here.

John Corcoran 16:45

Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, I think that’s great. There’s a great, great overview. Ryan, thank you, Dr. Howard, for being our guinea pig on that. Appreciate that. Hopefully, that will be helpful for all of you for forgiving, you come with the background on that. So we talked about optimizing your profile, let’s mentioned about building your connections, you want to make sure you have at least 500 plus connections, because then it will say 500 Plus, it doesn’t say exactly the number that will say the number of followers on there. And the next phase we want to talk about is what your outreach message should be. So when you’re proactively reach out to reaching out to people, whether it’s part of a consistent, dedicated effort to reach out to people in your industry, or it’s just one person or two people, like someone you casually came across, and you just want to connect with them. What should it be? What Shouldn’t it be? So Jeremy, what what’s good outreach etiquette?

Jeremy Weisz 17:42

Yeah, I mean, you want to reach out in a giving fashion, okay. And you want to customize it, I mean, I actually go through. And when someone writes a good message, right, to connecting, this is not an inmail message, right? I’m talking about when you connect with someone, you can write a customized message. And, I mean, I, I don’t accept everyone I wanted to, like, what’s the reason I’m, I’m connecting with this person, that the person connects with me. So you know, there’s the, I guess the the best all the way to worst, the best is customizing it. Like if I said, John, I see your you know, you know, just find some common commonality, and also the best outreach messages to give to someone. So if I said, John, I saw, you know, from your, you know, you’re looking, I saw from your comment somewhere that you were looking good places to eat, I found that this is a great place, you know, just something serving them. And it’s, you can see one I read something that you’ve written to, I’m answering something that you’ve written in a giving fashion, and how can I help, you know, obviously, if you have a podcast, you can, if that person’s a fit, you can give, you know, ask them to be on the podcast and give, you have to give a backup of all the social proof elements of why they should say yes, but it doesn’t have to be right off the bat, you can, you know, serve them in some fashion, if you actually care about looking at what that person has posted. So any giving message, whether it’s, you know, I’m going to feature you and you know, we’ve written articles and say, Hey, we want to feature you in this article, we want to feature you on our podcast. There’s people are still skeptical, and they get that so you have to back it up. The you know why guess on the other end of the spectrum, what things not to do is, you know, just throw a pitch of three paragraphs. we’ve all gotten those like a three paragraph pitch on all the services. Someone does go, Hey, we have web development, we have this we have that we have this we have that and I’m like I didn’t even ask you that I didn’t say I need for that in order to ask you. And then kinda like the laziness factor in is it I think I customize every single one of my connection requests. So I will at least put their name, I’ll find something their profile or their company that I admire or like, and a reason why we should connect. People sometimes put zero message. So just says I forgot what the default message in LinkedIn is. And sometimes it’s just people. Right? You know,

John Corcoran 20:24

you came up very generic. Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz 20:27

you came on my search or something. Yeah, you came on my show, Mike. Well, that’s not a good reason of why I should connect with you. Right? So we’re trying to be compelling. You came up in my search, and Mike will, so I just came up to you, you thought I’d be good. Or, you know, we share a mutual connection. I give the name someone I actually know that’s different. But they go, we have a lot of mutual connections. Well, you know, John, you have like, 17,000 connections, like, you probably could have 100 mutual connections with a perfect stranger. So if they said, Oh, I see you’re, you’re also connected, you know, Jeremy, so do I, like you’re obviously going to respond to that, because you know, me. Yeah,

John Corcoran 21:10

or the The other thing, you know, you see one of them here that I’m showing on the screen. Alyssa, hope you don’t mind me, using you as a guinea pig. But, you know, people will say I’m looking to connect with insert, you know, who whatever type of person you are. So if you’re a lawyer, and you see an incoming message that says, I’m looking to connect with lawyers, and it’s from a web developer, that doesn’t benefit you, that doesn’t benefit that person in any particular way. Rather, it’s to your benefit. So why you would say, it’s like saying, like, I’m looking to, like, grow my sales leads, and you are a lawyer. And I saw that you wouldn’t say that, but that’s basically what you’re, you know, telegraphing to that person. So I think you want to be careful about but you

Jeremy Weisz 21:56

want make sure, good guests for you. Right. So she could say, John, I see you have a podcast, I have some rock star guests that you may be interested in, I’d love to connect and, and that could be a benefit to you.

John Corcoran 22:09

Right. And the other thing I just want to point out is that when you do a short message, it’s 300 characters. That’s it, it’s you have a very short amount to communicate. But it’s actually much less than that. Because as you see, from my screen here, it’s really more like, I don’t know, this is 45 characters or something before you have to hit that see more button. And not everyone’s going to do that. So you really got to grab them in that short amount of time. You know, one person here intervene again, apologies for using you as a guinea pig here. But he says, I hope you’re doing good. And these difficult times. Well, you know, that’s a nice sentiment, but it’s it’s rather general, a lot of people are saying it these days, it doesn’t really stand out in terms of a rationale for why we should connect with one another. It’s just at best, it’s wasted space wasted opportunity. Yeah. I

Jeremy Weisz 23:03

mean, if you talk to some of the best copywriters, they, they, you look at their work, they invoke curiosity. And so if someone invoke your curiosity with that first sentence, like Spencer, Spencer Walters there. Yeah. says, I like I mean, I like the picture. But like, it’s almost there, like something about if they open some kind of loop there, and you really Oh, what are they? What are they talking about? And you have to see more. but not quite. I mean, it’s not quite, not quite, not quite reality-based. But yeah, but I could see you really only have a sentence.

John Corcoran 23:44

Yeah. But you know, these are better than the ones who don’t say anything at all. Yeah. Then the person, the person on the other end me who’s receiving the incoming message, all you have is their tagline their headline to go off of, and sometimes people’s headline is like, Vice President.

Jeremy Weisz 24:01

That’s it. Sarah, that’s a good example. Like, I’m looking to expand my network, please accept my connection. Like, it’s not a compelling reason. Because you’re looking to expand your network exam. It’s just not that compelling.

John Corcoran 24:16

Yeah, so apologies like

Jeremy Weisz 24:17

a pick. It’s like the pick on anyone. I mean, it’s, it’s just to demonstrate if you if one, if you’re just blanketing a lot of people, it shows like, if you actually, you’re reaching out because there’s a deliberate reason that you should connect your gift to that person. If you write that reason it will show

John Corcoran 24:38

right so just to kind of sum up what we’ve covered so far. So first of all, you want to up to optimize your profile. That’s incredibly important, because people are being people other people are recommending you to other leads out there. They say talk to Ryan Howard or whatever they Google Ryan’s name. Boom. One of the top three results in all likelihood is LinkedIn. They trust LinkedIn, they land on that And then they’re making a split second decision whether to go further with that person, if that person doesn’t email you, or doesn’t pick up the phone and call you, because they were confused or not sure about what your LinkedIn profile said, You don’t even know about it. So optimizing your profile is important. Second, you want to build your connections over 500 plus connections and keep on going. I mean, jeez, like, it gets really interesting, really powerful when you get into the 10s of 1000s, like Jeremy and I have. And so it’s really valuable. That point, outreach message is critically important. So we talked about that as well. And then finally, the last piece we want to talk about is once you built a bit of a network, in your industry, people you want to connect with you want to deepen relationships with, you need to be sharing content on this platform, LinkedIn has really moved towards a content sharing platform. And we of course, are huge fans of creating podcast because you talk out your content, which is wonderful, your networking, your content. And then you can share that content very easily. One of the really powerful tools we’ve used is interactive dynamic audios, we call them, which is you’ve probably seen them before, they are basically a video of a static, you got a static image of someone, a guest on a podcast, he’s got the words kind of going across the screen, I’ll pull up an example for you here, got the words of transcripts kind of pulling across the stream, and you’ve got a headline at the top, I’ll pull it up for you here. There we go. This is kind of what they look like, they get a ton of engagement and interactivity and conversation with people. And most importantly, it brings you up in other people’s feed. And then you can take that and then you can proactively reach out to people who’ve commented, I am a big fan of doing that as well. So reaching out to people who’ve commented, or who’ve liked it, just checking in with people and seeing how they’re doing. Because a lot of times that’s how people will raise their hand they’ll like something, but they might not send you a message and say, hey, let’s talk about doing business together.

Jeremy Weisz 27:01

Yeah, I was talking about someone the other day too. And and what’s important about that is a lot of times at least for me, let’s say I’m in bed searching through social media and responding. I’m not having my volume on. So having those words going across the screen for something like that. Really, if I’m stopping on it, there you go. I’ve heard of Double Dare or being slimed. There’s Marc’s now John interviewed Marc Summers. I don’t know if he’s, you know, was a part of Nickelodeon or whatever it is. But I love that. I love that show.

John Corcoran 27:34

I worked with Mark in college on on a game show. So Game Show.

Jeremy Weisz 27:40

Yeah, those are. Yeah, you can see the words going across. And so allows me to consume the content without having to turn my volume on and get yelled up on my wife that why you turn the volume on? I’m trying to sleep while I’m sitting here. So

John Corcoran 27:56

yeah, that’s that’s really important that you add that, in fact, it’s interesting. We’re doing this as a LinkedIn live. And LinkedIn recently added a feature where it transcribes the words as we’re doing a LinkedIn live. And the reason that they did that the reason they added in that feature is because of the importance of how many people are going to be scrolling through, they’re not going to unmute it, at least not right away. But if they’re able to see the words they might, they might watch it all the way through or it might encourage them to unmute it and then actually engage with it further. So that’s it for this episode. Jeremy, where can people go to learn more about us?

Jeremy Weisz 28:33

You can go to Rise25.com Learn More About page you can email us if you have questions about LinkedIn, podcasting, these dynamic audios that we also produce and everything else, but we’re here to help. So feel free to email us with any questions.

John Corcoran 28:48

All right. Thanks, everyone. We’ll talk again soon. Bye bye