The guru’s guide to selling on LinkedIn - Richard van der Blom

Richard van der Blom is the Bob Dylan of LinkedIn.

Recently I was lucky enough to get to talk to Richard van der Blom. Richard is THE recognized expert in the LinkedIn/ Social selling space.  

Richard van der Blom is the Bob Dylan of LinkedIn. Bob Dylan is usually listed as a major musical influencer of many of the great musicians of our time.  The Beetles, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Jonny Cash etc.

He has been responsible for some of the best IF NOT THE BEST research on how LinkedIn works, across the last three years. 
 
His 2019 research has been viewed 1.2 MILLION times. 
 
The reason Richard is such a legend in the industry is that people like me, people who think they are pretty good at LinkedIn and social selling take all of our cues from his research. 
 
He has impacted (My guess) 90% of the LinkedIn & Social selling trainers out there. This means he is indirectly training millions of people on LinkedIn – therefore his research shapes the way LinkedIn is used by millions of people.
 
We cover a lot of ground on this episode so make sure you hang in until the end. It’s definitely worth it.
 

Richard van der Blom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardvanderblom/


Research of note:
https://www.slideshare.net/RichardvdBlom/full-report-linked-in-algorithm-july-2019

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/newsletter-4-linkedin-algorithm-research-2020-you-van-der-blom/ 


Mark McInnes
www.markmc.co
www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mcinnes/ 

POW Workshop
www.markmc.co/pow 

Tactical Pipeline Growth
www.markmc.co/tpg

Catch all versions of me here.

https://linktr.ee/markmcinnes
LinkedIn profile
VIP sales mailer
Tactical Pipeline Growth
BOSS Podcast
1 on 1 Consulting

Transcript

Mark Mcinnes: 0:00

Okay, Richard welcome to the boss podcast.

Rich van der Blom: 0:03

Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

Mark Mcinnes: 0:04

So listeners tonight, we're joined by Richard Vander, is it Vanderbloem or bloom, Richard, which prefer.

Rich van der Blom: 0:10

like industry say Vanderbloemen, so, yeah, but I've been called like various names. So I listened to everything.

Mark Mcinnes: 0:19

You're quite famous on LinkedIn aren't you?

Rich van der Blom: 0:22

outside my own country outside Holland. Yes. No, I'm kidding. No, yes, yes. Yeah. I think, I think the research has done a lot of Of my positioning outside the outside Holland.

Mark Mcinnes: 0:32

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Look, sorry for those of you who don't know, Richard's done some really interesting and quite in-depth research. Which answers a lot of those nagging questions that people have that people that use LinkedIn quite a lot, or even a medium amount of times. And we've when I say we other people who use LinkedIn along differ to Richard's research as the basis of things like LinkedIn training and that sort of thing. So Richard is like the Bob Dylan of LinkedIn, you know, like the musician's musician. So here's the LinkedIn guys, LinkedIn guy. Do you like that?

Rich van der Blom: 1:05

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the metaphor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Continue Mark.

Mark Mcinnes: 1:11

So apart from being pretty clever, you live in a really cool part of the world. So how do you pronounce the name you're in the Netherlands what's right.

Rich van der Blom: 1:19

actually that's mine. That's my birthplace. it's still on my profile because otherwise my, domestic market in Holland, they will not find me anymore. I'm currently living in Spain, Valencia.

Mark Mcinnes: 1:29

Okay.

Rich van der Blom: 1:29

I went down about 2000 kilometers now in Holland, it's about minus one in Valencia. It's 20 degrees. So that's a Celsius. So that's, that's more like

Mark Mcinnes: 1:38

much, much smarter. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. So when I was doing some research, I thought, Oh, where is this town? And I realized it was only what about 15 kilometers from

Rich van der Blom: 1:47

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. We live in a, we used to live in the South part of, of, of Holland. It's a really nice area because in 15 minutes, you're you, you pass the Belgium furniture. So you unleash. And if you go 20 minutes to the other side, you enter Germany and you under city of AFAN and those three cities the Roman cities, all three of them. So it's very nice to be there.

Mark Mcinnes: 2:06

Yeah, it's beautiful. I've been there a couple of times. I actually really like it. So I'm a bit of a, I'm an ex-army, so I'm a bit of a military buff and of course, you know, there were some really significant battles around that area. I think liaise was

Rich van der Blom: 2:17

Yeah, definitely.

Mark Mcinnes: 2:18

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the audience. Yeah. And I'm also a cycling fan, so is one of the best races.

Rich van der Blom: 2:25

So we do, you know, the MSO gold raise then because it mustard it's it's yeah, it's the gold. So is from that region. So we have a lot of cycle towards there. Yeah. It's the only Hills we have in Holland. It's like 300 meters. That's the highest Hill we have in Holland, so yeah.

Mark Mcinnes: 2:39

Yeah, but it's still a pretty tough rice by the time they finished it. Lots of climbing. Lots of Hills. Yeah. So yeah, we've probably just lost half our audience because they don't understand what we're talking about, ha ha ha but, but anyway, you're not, you're not there. You're inspired, which is fantastic. Okay. Good stuff. So you've done a bunch of research, Richard and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that, but let's start with a post I saw you put up. I think it was yesterday when you were talking about what happens if you post too often or what the, what the optimal frequency of posting is. And this is a question that I get quite a lot, so I'm really interested in, in what you've been able to find out and how you found out. Can you share some information with them?

Rich van der Blom: 3:18

Yeah, of course. The reason why we did the research was that and you probably recognize this. In my trainings, a lot of sales people, they are already like, glad if they can produce like one or two posts a week. Okay. So that's like, it's for them, it's not a topic, but on the other side, we have very energetic sales people and they share stuff from the company page to create their own stuff. They have subscriptions to like online magazines and they're posed the URLs of this. So those are the people that, for example, posts like two, maybe three times a day and I, myself did sometimes, you know, I posted something in the morning. Then I saw an article in the afternoon and said, okay, let's, pose that as well. And then I saw a serious drop in the engagement and views on my morning posts. So that's when I thought, okay, let's, let's do some research because more and more people said, if I post multiple times a day, it's not that, for example, if I have an average of 5,000, it's not. Whenever I publish like three times a day that I reached like three times, 5,000. It's more like accumulated 5,000. So what happens there? So we did a research and what we did, we posted tree, same format post. So we had three texts posts with a single image. Okay. So there's no external link, no video, no document, just the textbooks wouldn't image. And in this research on average, this post. If we pose it, let's say at, noon, then in 24 hours, this will reach an average, 10,000 views. Okay. Now what we did, we posted again, noon, four hours later, we posted another post. So this is the second post within four hours. And what we saw is that it must have to do something with the algorithm because LinkedIn, whenever you post something new, they want to test. Weird. It's like a test panel, your first organic batch. They want to test that new piece of content. Now what happens in order to test that new piece of content, they like almost delete your morning posts from the feed. So they only show one post, which is the most recent post. So this really kills the views on the morning posts, not what we saw. If you like post two times within 24 hours, is that. Accumulated, they will only reach about 70%, so 7,000 fuse for the boat of them. While if you post once 10,000 views, again, average in this research, then we did not experiment. We posted again four hours later. So we had a morning post four hours later, second, and again, four hours later, the third post. And then you could see that accumulated to transpose. It won't even reach 60%. Of the views, the third posts didn't reach 200 views, which for example, in my network, it's like ridiculous because I have like 17,000 followers. So if we pose a third post and a day that won't even reach 200 views, there must be something wrong. Like LinkedIn is not showing me the PostNet time feed. Okay. So based on the research and based on what we thought before, it must be that LinkedIn values that you're active, but reduces the visibility of oversharers because they actually want to have a single post in the timeline. If you scroll on three years, Mark. It's very rare that you see a second post of the same network contact in your feed because they only want to show one post a person. what happened more or less.

Mark Mcinnes: 6:32

Yeah. So, so I would've thought at the very worst, it would have taken those 10,000 views and divided it by three, but you're saying you're actually penalized.

Rich van der Blom: 6:40

Yeah. Yeah. With the tree posts, we were accumulated 24 hours. We were on, I think about 5,800 views. So this is not even 60%.

Mark Mcinnes: 6:53

What do you think about. You know, it's 24. So we post once every two days, like, would we get, would we get 20,000 views that extrapolate out? That makes sense. That way.

Rich van der Blom: 7:00

yeah, we're currently investigating what the same pose does that feel like 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours. And maybe after a week, because we have seen that based on dwell time, which has been implemented in the LinkedIn algorithm. I think it was March, April, last year. Now, what you see normally is your post takes off in the first day. And, if it's a good, performance, then it will for two, to three days. It will get engagement, then it drops. And we now saw that after a week, you get a little hiccup again. So revitalized it's a bit like 20%. Okay. So that's why we are still looking. what is the impact if we track the posts even further than a week And another interesting thing is that I always advise people if you have a well-performing post. So if you get a lot of views, you get a lot of engagement, dosed don't post anything new, unless you know that this new piece of content will also be like, sky-high. Okay. So for example, and I posted the research of the algorithm, I didn't make a new post for a week. Did it have good content? Yes, but I just didn't want to kill my engagement on this post. That was still well performing. And on the other hand, Mark. If you have, for example, you make a morning post and after four hours, you see that, the views are like lagging. So it's, not performing. There was no problem whatsoever to do a second post because whenever you do the second post, it will Kill the first bullet, but even hasn't taken off there's no harm. Okay. And then you can see that the second post might take off in the afternoon, but then again, don't pose anything new. So just actually the frequency is looking on the performance of your own posts. If something is not performing well, go ahead and make a new post. But if something is performing well, you might reconsider posting like too often or too fast after the first post.

Mark Mcinnes: 8:47

Yeah. Okay. Look really interesting. And I think you've just answered a lot of people's questions. So I know that's, you know, there's some serious doubt about what works and what doesn't work. So, so Richard. what is it that you do professionally and who do you help? You know, so how do you come to these? I mean, obviously you spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. You're a LinkedIn expert. You help people use LinkedIn to drive business and give us a little bit of a background about who it is that you help and, a bit about your business place.

Rich van der Blom: 9:12

Yeah. I started my business in 2009. Actually. I was the first person in Holland to start a business where I would provide like LinkedIn training. And, mind you, 2009, it was more like, what is LinkedIn? It was not, how can I use LinkedIn for lead generation, but just simple. Tell me what it is, you know, and then in 2012, we started this strategical part of our company where it would advise companies how to use LinkedIn for marketing sales and even recruitment. In 2015, I decided to specialize like 100% completely online then before we also did Training advice on Facebook, Twitter, everything, and business to business, but we will like multichannel. And in 2015, I made a decision for myself to specialize 100% of LinkedIn. And what I'm currently doing, actually, you could say it's like training on the one hand mainly sales teams, business to business and marketing departments and 25, 30% it's strategical advice. So it's advise on. For example, how to implement social selling and organization. So this is where strategy, tooling enablement programs and in this enablement program, of course it's like coaching training, mentorship. So this is actually the two questions I get. So that's to do with marketing sales, lead generation brand awareness, even the launch of new products, new services for LinkedIn. That's where I help companies to action to leverage the power of LinkedIn.

Mark Mcinnes: 10:28

And just in Europe or all over the globe? Do you help people all over the globe?

Rich van der Blom: 10:32

I started in Holland. It became in Benelux and Europe is very small, so, and I speak four languages, like English, French, German. So in 2017, 2018. It was half Holland, half Europe. and as we discussed, with the COVID situation, because now I used to do like a lot of trainings offline. So I would spend a lot of time on airports and airplanes. And now I do like 96% is online. So now I'm also have clients in the U S I have clients in Asia, even in South Africa. So actually around the world, and also in all industries, for example, I have clients that are in law practice that are industrial companies that are staffing companies. And I liked that. I liked the, diverse type of clients, diverse type of question challenges. That's what really challenges me as well.

Mark Mcinnes: 11:16

Yes you have to think don't you? You have to really be able to engage your brain I find it's really good when I get a client that's outside my obvious area of expertise. You've got to try and figure that out and I really relish those opportunities. I'm sure you're the same. It keeps you very fresh.

Rich van der Blom: 11:30

Yeah. And what I really like is that for example, the strategy that we have developed for a law firm, Which is a completely different business than for example, a staffing firm. If you translate it to staff, it might work as well with the staffing. So it's like you learn from all different challenges and different industries. So you become very creative in, your solutions for your clients as well.

Mark Mcinnes: 11:50

Hmm. And for those who aren't aware, I'll post a link to the pieces of recent I think three main pieces of research 2019 2020, and then a smaller piece about mobile Yep. So I'll post three of those in our show notes So if anybody has not looked at your I mean literally there's twenty good points in each of those. You know what I mean? Like, we could spend three days talking about those and we won't, you know, but it's, 20 good

Rich van der Blom: 12:13

Actually, I,

Mark Mcinnes: 12:13

we could

Rich van der Blom: 12:14

yeah, I agree. I did the research in 2019. I did in summer because in summer, like in a normal year, summer is where I have time enough to do all the things, because then everybody's on holiday and some holiday in Europe and I could not provide in-company training. So I started a research first time in August, 2019. I launched it without any expectations. And then it become like massive. I think it was close to at 1.2 million views, it was downloaded from a website 12,000 times. And then just like half a year later, I got questions from clients, but also from my network. When are you going to do it in your research? It wasn't my intention to do it on an annual base. But then again, I thought like last year, September. Okay. Why not? You know, so we do the second one and actually it has been better because now you can look back to what happened last year. How does it change? and the small research about mobile versus laptop was actually also based on two questions from clients. They said, Hey, we see different things on mobile than on laptops. Is that true? So that's why I posed the questions to my research team. And they came up again with some great conclusions.

Mark Mcinnes: 13:18

Yeah. So and look, we're so grateful to have you know, you and you're team, with the ability to to do this level of research because most of us just don't have that capacity and I'm not talking about You know, 10 people working for I just don't have the mental capacity to be just don't have the mental capacity to be able to break that down. You've obviously got a got a really thorough brain that breaks things down in to details. And so, you know, you're the absolute benchmark when it comes to that stuff. that's fantastic. Can I ask you quickly one question? Myth or truth at any time was posting the link in the comments a thing? Remember that, you know like don't post the link in to the main part into the body of the post. Was that ever a thing or was it just a minute?

Rich van der Blom: 13:58

Yeah, I think it did misled the algorithm. I think it did because LinkedIn algorithm is known even LinkedIn confirmed it, that the algorithm was only looking at the body and under the comments. So yes it did. I personally never did it. two disadvantages. First one, if you get a lot of engagement, the first comment will not be the link anymore. It will be the most relevant or the one that gets the most engagement. So I wonder if I have this great piece of content with an external link and I put it in the comments. How frustrating would it be for my, followers they need to do like three additional clicks to find somewhere to link. And with every click you lose a certain percentage of people that just don't bother anymore. The second thing I've seen it so much with my clients even on company pages said, okay. Like the link in the first comment, and then their employees started to share the post. But if you shared the post, the comment doesn't come with the share. So then they have this post and obviously they, were not aware of it. So it says like, okay, this is a great piece of content. See the first link and there's no, there's no comment. So this looks really silly. It looks really like not professional. So this is the biggest two disadvantages. the thing that still works with regards to the algorithms. taking a piss on the other room actually is to make your posts and edit your posts in the first three seconds. And then put the link after editing is because once again, once you publish the algorithm looks at it, and if you edit it like a few seconds later and put a link in there, the algorithm will not see it, I'm now on a page where I know that if I have a good piece of content and I have a good external website, I just posted in the buddy.

Mark Mcinnes: 15:34

Yep. Yep. it makes sense now but, you know, a lot of us were doing that role for a long time. So, So, Richard we've got a lot of sales people and and business development people that sort of thing that listen to this podcast I think you've got a couple of really cool strategies that you'd like to share could we investigate that a little bit? So I think, what do you call it Convert with Content is one of your plays is that right? Do you want to share a little bit about that?

Rich van der Blom: 15:55

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can share with you, we call them like this three step method. so, you probably recognize this, you have sales navigator or maybe you don't have sales navigator, but at any point you find that you can reach out on a relevant, with a relevant message to your potential client. So you send this message and based on statistics, not mine, but LinkedIn, if you mentioned, for example, words like meeting appointment, demo in your invitation. The acceptance rate drops with 90%. Okay. So first thing, if you reach out to a client you're not selling, you don't have any trust. There's no loyalty. So don't talk about your business, but talk about the mutuality is talk about your added value. So for example, I would reach out with sales director with a message like. Hey, Mark. I've seen you working in sales, like I am. I regularly share my vision on social selling on LinkedIn. Maybe this is of your interest let's connect. So I have valuable content which could help you with your challenges. I get an acceptance rate of 70, 75% on that one. So this is like really high because I don't know the people. All right. I say, Hey, Margaret, just saw your leader's article on this topic. Really interesting. From my point of view, like social selling point of view, I would like to connect. Okay. So again, 70, 75%. Then when your potential client accepts a lot of salespeople in my training about 80%. They just skip anything about loyalty or trust and they pitch in the second message and they go like, Hey, thank you for accepting. We have this great product. I want to, if you have done. And then I said, no, no, because he accepted, but there's no trust. So what you need to have second step, you need to have a valuable piece of content. Preferably. Not available on your website because I see the salespeople say, Hey, we have this grade, white paper or ebook I would like to have you because it's packed with insights. But then again, if it's for free on your website, it's for anybody to have. So make it exclusive. Okay. So I worked with clients and this is where marketing comes in, because if I work with clients, I ask marketing to create content. That is exclusively for sales. It's not yet on the website and sales can use it for several weeks before we'll be on a website. So the second message is more or less like, Hey Mark, thanks for accepting. we have made this benchmark about the status of social selling in Australia or in Europe. And we see that our clients value with a lot. Let me know if you want to have a copy. Yes or no. This is very important. Don't send it because people have not asked for it. Don't send it because you will be pushing. Now, if you ask the question, just let me know if you would like to have it. Yes or no. Then two things can happen. That's obvious. First people are not going no three things. First people are not going to respond to your message. Don't matter because they are connected. Okay. Now they will see your content in the feed. Second group, they reach out to you and say, Hey Mark, or, Hey Richard, thanks for, but I'm not interested at this moment. Okay. Nevermind. You just scheduled them for two weeks or two months or three months later, the group says, Oh, that sounds interesting. Please send me a copy. Okay then of course, third message. You send the copy. You send the article, preferably via smart link. If you have sales navigator, because then you can track if people open it. If people share it within the company and your schedule one week later to call or message or email and say, Hey, what about the content? Might this be the right moment to schedule? I get 30 minutes to get to know each other even better and see what could be the added value of any collaboration. So this is what he said. Three step reach out. Follow up with an exclusive piece of content. Don't send it, ask if they want to have it, because if they say yes, they have already engaged two times positively, they accepted your connection request and they say, yes, I want to have the piece. So if you follow up with your message and your follow-up message about 70 to 80% will respond to the follow-up because they have already said that they're interested.

Mark Mcinnes: 19:53

Yep. So that's called the frequency of exchange and I'm sure you probably know that. Yep! So the more that we that we talk to each other so the more that we talk to each other that So, I love this strategy and I actually use exactly the same one And for years I was connecting with people and sending them an infographic that they didn't request And what I found was exactly that If I said, Hey, Richard, thanks for connecting I've got an infographic on our using LinkedIn for sales, You know, let me know if you want it I'll shoot it through. And you're right acceptance rates and the conversation rates went through the roof. Marketing however you know, we'll go how can I reduce the amount of clicks and the amount of interactions And they'll tell you to try and send the link in the second conversation. But what it does for a relatioship And that's what we're trying Trying to drive here LinkedIn it actually ruins the relationship So, its not about you know speed to content as a term that marketing might use its about speed to relationship and speed to relationship means we actually need slow down to speed up So, that's a great strategy. And one that I certainly

Rich van der Blom: 20:46

I love Another great discussion which I have had times with marketing is that marketing wants to have the conversion on their website, where I, as an external adviser, I don't care where the conversion takes place. If it takes place on an individual profile, if it takes place on. A smart link I don't care. As long as we convert, I don't care. It should not be the marketing is being like judged on the conversion of the website that the procedures should all direct to the website. No, because I think. Individual profiles, the best performance salespeople. They convert on their own individual profiles by using great content, valuable insights by going the extra mile for the client. So one of the first discussions I like really, I swipe in front of the table is we need a conversion on a website. We need our sales people to drive traffic to the website. Now. it's not 2021. We need to convert where our clients want to convert. And if this is on a one-on-one message, then it's on a one-on-one message.

Mark Mcinnes: 21:51

Yep. I love that, I love that I love So, let's say we've got sales people listening right now and you know, most and you websites have some great material have let's say there's a report or a case study on my website and my business is XYZ What are your thoughts Do you have any ideas around how you might a salesperson might be able to convert or change that case study to be something a little bit unique? Do you have any ideas about that? I've got some, but I'd love to know what you think.

Rich van der Blom: 22:16

So is your, is your question about how can you make use with a piece of content, a website in his messages or in his outreach or you mean

Mark Mcinnes: 22:24

Yeah and how can you make that a little bit more exclusive? you know increase the level of scarcity Which is really what we're doing when we're saying its not available on the website, right? Website about What about if he took took the case study, summarized it and then made it into like a little a five piece infographic like a one pager with the highlights And used and used it and said something like Hey Richard, you know, thanks for connecting. We've done a bunch of case studies I've got a infographic that's just a simple one- pager just that's not available on the website. So, to highlight its level of scarcity, level You know, if you'd like, I can send that through That might be a cool way that people could If they don't have the skills to write or they don't have the research skills like your wonderful skills, they could then take content that already exists. but create a little bit of scarcity around that and make it a bit special.

Rich van der Blom: 23:10

Definitely. you know and I have seen some great sales persons, business developers, who. Just as you told, summarize it, or make like a four slide presentation with the key takeaways, or even do a, let the video and say, you know, this is like, I'm just going to tell you something about this. What happens if the challenges of a three tips? yeah, I agree with you. However, I think this should be one of the duties or one of the tasks of marketing because when marketing post is on the website, their job is not done. Now. They need to like repack the content. And, maybe even teach or show the salespeople, how they could rewrap the content and make it more Nick, make it more of themselves more authentic, where the inside. So the content doesn't change, the message doesn't change, but the package change. also what I teach people in my, trainings is People have different reading motives. Is this something I also have shared like a few weeks ago, there are more or less like five reading motives we have first category is the people that have like formal. Okay. We have people, our networks, potential clients that they don't want to miss anything. So if you start your post with braking or with you, you know, then they want to have it. It doesn't matter what it says. They click because they see, Hey, something is breaking. Something's new. Then we have the second group, and this is more based on social proof, social evidence. So don't click on new. They don't click because of former day click. If you start your post with already 500 downloads already more than 10,000 views, then they think, Hey, something is happening here. I might check it out. So it's this social proof group. Then we have the third group. They want to be like, Invited to give their opinion. So if you start, like we have made this ebook with three trends about staffing in COVID time. but what do you think is the best trend? Do we miss anything? So if you ask questions in the first three lines, then you invite the third group of people who always want to have their opinion and will always want the country and they're going to respond. Then we have the Ford group and this is more or less the group that is, more on emotional base. So if you say something like proud to be part of this company where we have created this great video about if you start with proud, if you like, celebrate things with your colleagues, So, if you have an emotional component in your post, they will respond because those are the people that, you know, those are the people that send out birthday greetings say, cheers to everybody on the timeline. and at this moment I forgot about the fifth. but, or like if you work with his motives then you can use one single piece of content, like four or five times, every time. I know people will click on it and it's all has the same call to action.

Mark Mcinnes: 25:57

That's Great, well, what do you call that? Is that some sort of model? Do you call it

Rich van der Blom: 26:01

I've called it like the five psychological reading motives of your target audience why do they click why do I want

Mark Mcinnes: 26:08

I think you're right. I hadn't I think you're right I hadn't thought about that before Richard you're very, are true. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that, but I liked the way you've structured that. And I think that gives you the opportunity to, like you say, post the same thing in a number of different ways to appeal to I have heard of something or read about something quite a few years ago that talked about skippers, dippers, and divers about the way that we read through content. Are you familiar with that So people skip through the article, or they dip into certain areas or or they dive right into the details And, you know, so basic content needs to, needs to,

Rich van der Blom: 26:41

I remember the fifth. remember the fifth Mark. The fifth is about So for example, if I make thought leadership, so if I say something like, as Gary Vaynerchuk stated yesterday in his movie about blah, blah, blah, Uh, we have found and that because you you quote Gary Vaynerchuk of, because maybe you say we have invited this really known person in our company to make it's about thought leadership. If they see peers and they see people, they want to follow in your posts, they engage on a click.

Mark Mcinnes: 27:13

Okay. Okay there's a couple of really good takeaways in this episode Richard This fantastic Yeah, absolutely, I knew what I was doing. ha ha ha Look, I want to let you go. Are you open to connecting with people from you know, Australia, New Zealand, from Asia Asia You how can we get in contact with you What What if

I've got you know, : 27:35

) a big bank or something listening to this now and they think this sounds like our guy, how do we get in contact with you, etcetra?

Rich van der Blom: 27:41

Yeah Now normally like our my website, which is WW w just connecting.nl from the Netherlands. but to be honest, like 80% of my clients, they just go directly to my LinkedIn profile. My name, Richard Vanderbloemen. There are my contact details, my phone number, my. Everything. and if they're just reach out to me with a message, I will get back to them. because a lot of things we do. or website is always behind on what we develop. So we develop faster than our website, you know, can follow us. and definitely if there are companies that want to know about, you know, about LinkedIn, social selling, maybe even more about the algorithm to like strengthen their content strategy, just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I will get back to you soon. And of course they can visit the website that my conduct there as well.

Mark Mcinnes: 28:28

Okay. And are you open to connecting with

Rich van der Blom: 28:32

no no no no I have salespeople from all over the world and I really over the world One of the next researchers Mark this is like this is like a cliffhanger for your next episode I am intrigued like you I've traveled a lot around the world And I have been in a rabid countries and Asian countries in the U S and you probably know that doing business is different based on culture and intercultural differences you but we can also see this intercultural differences all linked in. You can see how people, for example, sending invitations, like some people do the caps locks, you know, the Americans have kept slot. They go directly to AME. They say, Hey, I have a demo. When can I call you? Well, Asian people, for example, they don't send any, any messages. They're just, they just send an invite. That's it. And one of the research I'm really looking forward to, we are now like setting it up is. Can we tell something about these intercultural differences? So this means if you're like a salesperson in Australia and you want to do business in Africa and Asia violin in, okay. How, you know, how did these people connect? How do these people engage? And can you take lessons from that in, order to increase your efficiency? So this is, where I'm really looking forward to. And, the more CS people I have in my network from all over the globe

Mark Mcinnes: 29:51

Wow. That's a bit of a scoop. I'm looking forward to that. of course. we work a lot down here in Australia, nearly everybody works you know, into Asia and like I was mentioning before we started recording you know, bump bumps all over the place, so, we're very aware of the different cultures that'll be interesting to see what that looks like on LinkedIn because there's definitely different ways that people like to interact you know Japanese very, very polite don't ask you know, you have to offer. and you're just saying it and I'm just wondering in some of these these Asian countries not accepting a LinkedIn connection is probably a bit of an insult Yeah, that's it So that's they don't put any effort in the message because they know the other person at least in Asia its to accept while we Europeans. I, whenever I get an invitation from Asia, I always go like, yeah. You know what's in Yeah And another thing when I moved from Holland in Holland we are very direct It's more like almost like dare Americans of Europe We're very direct We could be very blunt Okay and I can send your message I could say Hey Margo wants to do business with you and you can just say yes or no That's how we do in Holland but I moved to Spain here the culture is you need to establish a relationship not once but two three four times I've been on so many lunch appointments And we didn't discuss any business And I became a little like nervous because you know what's wrong with me And then I discovered that like in Mediterranean countries you need to establish a relationship You need to talk about your wife and like the family about the moving about the world about football And then the third meeting you can discuss business and you can see more or less the same on LinkedIn as well So they have like they need more more reach out more messages before they begin to respond So this is like very interesting So, I used to work for a Southern Italian based here in Australia so very high on hospitality and the brand that we distrubuted here in Australia was Danish so very blunt had this this classic of you wanted sit No like when So money Richard I really appreciate you coming on the boss podcast There's so many tidbits here, there's some real, real value. Please, keep up the good work I mean so many people will you know, hanging on every thread that you tie Thanks for coming on, I really appreciate it.

Rich van der Blom: 32:11

Thank you for inviting me, Mark. Nice to be here.