LinkedIn: What Small Business Owners Need to Know with Colin Hirdman

In this episode, I talk with Colin Hirdman about how to use LinkedIn as a real sales tool instead of just another platform to manage. We unpack why cold pitches fall flat and how education, consistency, and relationships create better results over time. This is a practical conversation about building momentum without adding pressure.

We also walk through the habits that actually move the needle, from strengthening your profile to starting real conversations with the right people. Colin shares a simple approach to posting, messaging, and showing up consistently without overcomplicating things. If LinkedIn has ever felt overwhelming or unclear, this episode will help you see a calmer way forward.

Colin's Website: Rainmaker

Colin's free LinkedIn Livestream Recipe

Transcript

Janice Hostager 0:04

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business, and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever logged into LinkedIn, looked around for a minute and thought, what are we supposed to be doing here? I'm sure you've heard that LinkedIn is really important for business. But when you open it up, it mostly feels like kind of a mix of resumes and job updates and people announcing promotions, right? And as a small business owner, it's easy to wonder, is this really a place where I can get clients? Or is it just another platform that's going to end up eating up my time? Well, today we're going to clear that out. My guest today is Colin Hirdman, and his path into business is actually pretty interesting because he started his first company just a week after graduating from college without ever taking a business or marketing or finance class. And today Colin is focused on his newest venture, Rainmaker, where he helps founders, coaches, and sales teams turn LinkedIn into a sales tool, one that generates relationships and leads and real revenue. If LinkedIn has ever felt confusing or awkward or kind of like a mystery you just haven't cracked yet, then this is the episode for you. So let's dive in. Here's my talk with Colin. Hey Colin, welcome to My Weekly Marketing.

Colin Hirdman 1:45

Thanks, Janice, for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Janice Hostager 1:49

So many business owners, including me, feel like LinkedIn is kind of a place for you know corporate executives or job seekers. Is that true?

Colin Hirdman 2:00

Well, those people are certainly on it, but uh you know, we know from looking at data that um LinkedIn, number one, is the only business social network out there. So it's where everybody goes. Uh and you know, having run you know lots of different campaigns for lots of different types of clients, I can say without any reservation that I have not yet found a um an industry or a service that you can't get traction on uh using LinkedIn. So we have to remember that 90% of the people on LinkedIn are lurkers. They're not actually posting content, they're just ingesting content.

Janice Hostager 2:38

Interesting. So for somebody who's barely touched LinkedIn or that maybe has used it as just like an online resume, what's the first simple step that they should take? Should they just update their profile? Is that the first step, or what would you recommend?

Colin Hirdman 2:56

The number one thing that I would do is make sure that your profile is up to date and accurate. The second thing is if you don't have 500 connections yet, you really want to push to get those 500 connections because that's kind of a baseline that shows people that you're active on LinkedIn. Because once you get over 500, they don't show how many connections you have. It just says 500 plus. So those are the two things that I would just make sure that your profile is updated, you know, having a good picture and banner image and whatnot. And then just making sure you have at least 500 connections. So that's a baseline that you want to meet.

Janice Hostager 3:28

Okay. I'd always heard that about the 500 connections, but now I know why, because I always thought, is that a myth? Or okay. So that's because after that, it just shows you have more than 500. Love it. Is um is there a type of business that maybe wouldn't benefit from being on there? Is this mostly B2B, I'm assuming, or is there a hidden opportunity for B2C as well?

Colin Hirdman 3:47

You know, I think you know, for B2C, if you have a business that people are uh passionate about and you're able to get those people to follow your company page, then I think there's usefulness of being on LinkedIn as a B2C because you can also, you know, run ads, you can create content and getting that pushed out to people that are really interested in what it is that you are providing. But all that being said, you know, it is, I think, a better match generally for B2B. And I can, you know, kind of really lay out my process for people that are wanting to leverage LinkedIn to grow their network, their leads and their sales, and also want to be seen as a more a thought leader.

Janice Hostager 4:32

Gotcha. So for a lot of my listeners, they're busy on social media. They're posting on Instagram, they're on Facebook, not getting a lot of traction. How much of a priority is LinkedIn? That's kind of what I'm wondering. Like, is it something that people should look at right away and say, okay, this is gonna be way better for me? I should abandon the rest. Or do you because I I like to when when I see clients, they tend to be kind of overwhelmed with all the posting. So I guess I'm trying to get to how much of a priority is LinkedIn for B2B businesses?

The Three-Layer LinkedIn Philosophy

Colin Hirdman 5:04

Yep. Well, I totally hear you on the posting side. I think, you know, LinkedIn, if that's where your prospects are, then I think that's where you need to be spending time. And I think LinkedIn provides some avenues that other social platforms don't. And number one, you know, it's a business social network. And, you know, I kind of have three layers in the way that I think about LinkedIn. The top layer is really just around philosophy. And there's kind of three areas to the philosophy that I think people need to really consider. So the first is what we already talked about a little bit, which is you know, about being authentic and genuine to who you are and the brands that you represent. You need to make sure that, you know, again, your profile is up to date and that, you know, if you are doing posts and things like that or you are commenting, that you're doing it in a way that is really authentic to who you are and the brands that you represent. But that's also kind of table sticks. You know, LinkedIn's not a real toxic place. Generally, I think people do a good job of behaving and being uh real. So the second thing about my philosophy is around mindset. So the first thing is you have to have an educational mindset because nobody wants to be sold on LinkedIn. It doesn't work, it will never work. People really don't want people trying to sell them on LinkedIn. Um, but I think most people are willing to be educated on LinkedIn, and I'll touch a little bit more about that in a in a second. Um, the second thing is having an experimentation mindset where you're gonna be trying different features and functions within LinkedIn. You're gonna stack the things that are working, you're gonna table the things that aren't, and maybe try them again at a later date. But that's kind of around mindset. And then the the third and final piece to the philosophy is um, you know, as a you know, founder, as entrepreneur, or somebody that sits in the sales and marketing seat, it's really incumbent on us to understand the pains and barriers that our prospects are trying to overcome. Okay, we have to understand where they are having issues. That's where the opportunity is. Because once you understand that, then you can start to understand where your prospects might want to be educated. You know, what is it they want to learn? And most importantly, what is it that you can teach? So I think that's the real opportunity. And so, you know, again, the philosophy in a nutshell is being authentic and genuine, having that experimentation, education mindset, and then finally figuring out what it is that your audience can learn from you. What can you teach? What do they want to be educated on? Okay, so that's the philosophy that really, really works on LinkedIn. So I'll get to the second layer in a second, but I'll just pause here really quick just to see if you have any questions.

Janice Hostager 7:37

Well, I not so much a question, but just a comment that I I love that philosophy of giving first, because I think that sometimes that we small business owners were just, you know, hungry for clients, want to make connections, and not necessarily going there to share. Although that's I think at other social media platforms we do that. So I think it's a great philosophy. Um, the other thing that I also wanted to point out is that what you said about relationships, I think is so important too, because you may not find a client there or you may, but people may find you for speaking opportunities. They may be looking for somebody to be on their podcast or to be in an article that they're writing. You know, so I think there's a lot more to LinkedIn than meets the eye. But I'm gonna let you get to that because I know that you have you have a lot of of that expertise in that too.

Building First Connections At Scale

Colin Hirdman 8:30

So yeah, no, no, you're you're spot on. So so that that kind of that middle layer then is around focusing on who you want to build relationships with. Who do you want to start targeting? I'm typically using sales navigator for myself and my clients if they don't have sales navigator, or we'll use their sales navigator account. What's what's nice about sales navigator, it just gives you more features and and filters to use when you want to target people on LinkedIn. You can use regular LinkedIn search as well. You just don't have the same amount of features and filters available to you. But really, what you want to hone in on that middle level is just thinking about, okay, who are the kinds of people that I want to be connecting with around geography or industry, title, et cetera. And once you hone in on those audiences, then it really primes you for being able to start taking action on them. So, and I like focusing on multiple audiences at once, you know, ideally you're thinking about maybe two or three, but over the last year and a half, I've focused on founders, sales executives, business coaches, fractionals, and EOS implementers. So those are the five that I've been focusing in on. And what it allows me to do is to kind of hone in on those different audiences at different times. But that's kind of what that middle layer is is just saying, okay, who do I actually want to start focusing in on? So then the bottom layer is actually activating that audience. Okay. And what you'll notice is everything I'm going to talk about, none of it has to do with posting. None of it has to do with kind of the organic side. What I'm going to be talking about is how you start to focus really in on that audience that you want to be in, begin building relationships with. And the first thing that you need to do is start building out more first connections. So you when once you have that audience defined of who you want to start building a relationship with, you need to start reaching out to connect with those people. So for myself and my clients, we're typically reaching out to around 100 people a week and we're not using a connection message. You'll actually get a higher connection rate back if you don't use a connection message, unless there's some real reason, like if you're getting referred to that person, of course, or maybe you're going to the same conference and you know you're both going to the conference and you're going to put that in the message before or after the conference is over, fine. But generally speaking, you don't want to use a connection message. And then if somebody doesn't connect with you within 30 days, you're going to want to withdraw that invite because then there's a three-week period of time where you can't re-invite that person to connect. But what it allows you to do then is to reconnect with those people potentially down the line. You'll have that ability to reconnect with those people. And a lot of times people aren't connecting with you. It's not that they don't want to, it's just the alert gets pushed down, they don't see it. Uh, so it's good hygiene just to remove those invites that don't get connected within 30 days.

Janice Hostager 11:18

Can I uh interrupt you here for a second? That's one of the things that I've always kind of been frustrated with LinkedIn about is that it's not an app people check every day, or some people don't. I think people will often go to it if they're looking for a job or if they want to maybe share something, maybe a promotion or something they're doing in their business, but don't necessarily go there frequently enough to like check all of these things. I don't know. But I'm just curious if that's something that you've encountered or yeah, yep.

Platform Habits And User Stats

Colin Hirdman 11:49

So um I think that some of the people uh go to LinkedIn infrequently. Some people might go there a couple times a week, but there are absolutely large chunks of people that are going there every single day. Um I think one of the stats that I have with LinkedIn that I do when I'm doing my presentations is LinkedIn is growing. Every second, two people are joining it. There's over a billion users. 30% of US adults use LinkedIn, 16% of US LinkedIn users, they log in every single day, like they're going every day. Um, you know, one and a half billion people visit it every month. So the other two quick things is, you know, it says that four out of five people on LinkedIn quote unquote drive business decisions. They're people that can make business decisions. So they're the kinds of people that you want to connect with. And um 40% of B2B marketers say that LinkedIn drives high quality leads. And I think that part of it is how you're using the LinkedIn platform. Um, so I think you're right to a certain degree that some people just don't use it very often. I think that can also be by industry. So people that are offline quite a bit, where you might be like a doctor or a dentist or something, you're probably not on LinkedIn as much as you would be if you're in digital marketing or if you're in like commercial real estate or things like that where you're trying to put out content and generate a presence. So but the key thing is is reaching out to that 100 people a week to build out new first connections. Because what you want is that pool of prospects to be growing week in and week out. Okay, so that's really important.

Janice Hostager 13:29

So then there's Can I ask you one more quick question here? You said that's really important. Is that something that affects the algorithm on LinkedIn, or is it just it just in general a good policy?

Colin Hirdman 13:40

It it's generally a good policy. You know, LinkedIn does have like a social selling index where they're trying to understand across four vectors, you know, how often are you building out your network? How often are you messaging your network? How often are you commenting on your network's content, right? How often are you posting your own content and being active? LinkedIn wants to see you engaging in various activities, and that will help. But what this process that I'm laying out, it doesn't even matter what the LinkedIn algorithm necessarily is doing, as much as it is you taking the steps that I'm that I'm talking about. So again, that number one thing is you know, just continue to grow out your first degree network week in and week out. Um and then once you're kind of building out your first degree network, then you want to provide different forms of content. So one of the main things that we'll do is run message campaigns where one of the message campaign types would be like a drip message campaign off of new first connections where you know you're reaching out to connect, and once they connect, you're sending some messages where that first message is just authentically thanking them for the connection, where you're not selling anything, but you're not even trying to help either. You're just thanking them authentically for the connection. And then, you know, message two and three would be messages where you're using that goalgiver mindset, kind of what you had talked about, where you're really trying to help. And that could be through a thoughtful question you're asking. It could be maybe an asset you built out that you want to share, or maybe there's a third-party asset that you want to share with them that you think they would find really valuable. So, though, that message sequence where you're not promoting yourself or or doing anything that feels salesy, you're just simply trying to build a relationship and be helpful.

Janice Hostager 15:22

Uh so I had to interrupt you again. So, would you recommend in that situation it would just really be authentic and look at the profile and say, hey, I noticed that you went to school here, or was that feel a little too voyeuristic? I don't know.

Why Live Streams Build Authority

Colin Hirdman 15:36

Yeah, I mean if if you have the time to do that, but again, if if if if I'm reaching out to connect with sales executives, and let's say the ones I'm reaching out to are here in where I'm located in the Twin Cities, my first question or my first message might be, hey, thanks for connecting. You know, I always enjoy growing my network here in the Twin Cities. Okay. Second message might be, as we're both in sales, wondering if you have any local networking events that you'd highly recommend. So starting to build a little bit of relationship with them. Or like I have a PDF that kind of talks about how growth-led sales teams should be using LinkedIn. So maybe in my third message, I'm sending them, hey, I created this resource around how sales teams should be analyzing and utilizing LinkedIn. Here's a link. Hope you find it valuable, something like that. Okay. So those are examples where I don't have to know the person specifically, as long as I kind of have an idea of what kind of tranche they're in in terms of who I'm reaching out to. And the instance that I just gave here would be people that are I'm reaching out to that are in sales, sales executives. So gotcha. So besides messaging, LinkedIn polls is another fun one to do where you can target a specific audience, you could create the poll, you could send a direct message inviting them to participate in the poll. And when the poll is done, you can even see how they've performed in terms of how people have answered. And you can even break down the results of the poll and have that as like a LinkedIn article or LinkedIn post, or even message the participants to kind of give them a recap of how the poll ended. So LinkedIn polls are just a kind of a fun way to utilize different style of content on LinkedIn. The third kind of main one that we use, this is the one that I use the most and that I like the best, are LinkedIn live streams. And the thing about LinkedIn live streams is we're all aware of AI and AI content and how much of what's even getting written these days is AI. But with LinkedIn live streams, they're AI proof, essentially. It's you doing the live stream, it's you educating your audience, it's you taking any comments or questions while you're doing the live stream. And through that whole process, you're getting established as a thought leader. And what I would recommend in how people utilize live streams is to number one, think about the audience that you want to build the live stream for. And then think about the topic that you want to use. And the topic is really, really important because you want to choose a topic that is as relevant now as it will be ideally six or 12 months from now. Okay, you don't want to keep creating new topics for live streams all the time. As you talked about at the beginning of kind of our conversation here, people get burned out on trying to think about like, well, what should I create a post on? That never-ending cycle of trying to come up with new content is very tiring. So when you think about a live stream, pick out like one topic to start with. So the original topic that I've been using on LinkedIn is learn how to grow your network leads and sales using LinkedIn. And then my second topic is learn how to do LinkedIn live streams. So those are the same two live streams that I've been doing over the last year and a half. And I've made incremental improvements to the deck that I'm using, but I'm using the same topics over and over again. And I'm typically getting, you know, between 30 and 100 people a week attending or registering for my live streams. Okay. So the process is, you know, think about who your audience is, think about the topic that you want to present on. And it can almost be like a college level 101 course where you're addressing some form of pain that your audience's your audience experiences. And then you need to create the event on LinkedIn. So you're going to create the event on LinkedIn. And once the event is created, now you want to drive attendance. And so LinkedIn has a function within the event, which is a LinkedIn event invite function. And it's really, really key to understand that that function, when you invite someone, when you invite someone, they get an alert coming to their LinkedIn account about the event. And that's getting bundled in with all these other alerts that people see. So they're not getting a direct message. It's not going to their inbox. So you're not going to burn your audience out. You can invite the same people over and over again to the same event without burning them out. And what you'll find is that people will register sometimes for the event multiple times. I've had some people register four or five times for the exact same live stream because they couldn't make it previously or they want a refresher. The other thing is every time you do a LinkedIn event, uh LinkedIn is not only sending out the invite that you can send out the invites and people would get notified on, but then LinkedIn is also notifying your network that you're doing this event. So LinkedIn is doing some of the heavy lifting for you.

Janice Hostager 20:48

Right.

Follow-Ups, Recordings, And CTAs

Colin Hirdman 20:48

So once the event is built and you're sending out the invites, now when people see the invite in their LinkedIn alerts and they click to the event, now they just decide on the event page do I click attend or not? If they click attend, within you know minutes, they get an email from LinkedIn saying you just registered for this event and with an add to calendar link on it. Okay. They will also get subsequent emails from LinkedIn reminding them about the event, including the day of the event. Okay, so LinkedIn is doing all this brand awareness, all this kind of marketing activity for you around these events. You're not having to do anything. LinkedIn's doing it all. Okay. So then you actually have to do the live stream. Okay. My live streams are usually 30 minutes. I'm usually using a deck and I'm also showing my face. And I move pretty quickly through my content because I want to keep it highly educational, but I also want to keep the audience engaged. And then I'm also answering any questions or comments that might come through. And then the live stream, I'm using StreamYard to do it. That's a product that you can't use LinkedIn to do the live stream. You have to use a third party product. Okay. So you now you're doing the live stream, and then the live stream ends. When it ends, the recording now lives on that event page forever. So there's a recording there. Anybody that clicks into the alert that you had sent about inviting them to the event, if they click that alert after the event is over, they just land on the page and now they can watch the recording. Perfect. But now, after the event is over, you can see all the registrants, right? You can see everybody that registered for the event. Okay. And the beautiful thing about this now is it gives you an opportunity to message all of these people. So what I will do is after my event is over, I will message everybody that attended, you know, that registered for the event, and I'll say a message like, hey Janice, thanks again for registering for the LinkedIn live stream I led. Here's a link to the recording, and it'll link back to the recording. And then you can put a call to action underneath that if you want. Sometimes I use a call to action, sometimes I don't. And but you could use a call to action, something to the effect of like I views, where it says, if you'd ever like to chat LinkedIn strategy, feel free to grab some time convenient for you here. And then I'll put my calendarly link in there. Okay. Because people are clicking attend on your event, they've crossed the threshold now where they they trust you enough to click attend. They find your content compelling enough that they click attend. So now they're opting into you. And so when you send a message, like I've said, even with like a calendar link in there, it doesn't come across as salesy or spammy or icky in any way. It's just a natural next step people might take after they have registered for your educational live stream. Okay. And that's why these live streams have to be educational in nature, where you're not selling anything, you're teaching, and your audience is learning from you. And we know that in terms of sales, people are very likely to buy from where they get educated because all this trust is built and authority and thought leadership. Okay. And so that's why live streams are so important. And so you can just do this over and over again. And that's where I think you can really establish your business on LinkedIn in a very meaningful way that also allows you to engage not only with marketing activities in the way I've described, but also sales activities in the way I've described.

Janice Hostager 24:14

I love this for a lot of reasons. First of all, I because I have a process that I use from my clients and my students called a Trail to the Sale. And it starts with awareness, consider, and goes from there. So those first two phases of making people aware of your business and who you are and what you do is covered in LinkedIn. And then there's consider is next. And you've covered those first two bases really well, all within the platform of LinkedIn. So they never have to leave that platform or go anywhere else. So my question would be, though, when somebody registers for that webinar, do you have access to their email? Do they become on your list as well? Or is it just completely encapsulated in within LinkedIn that you can only message them within LinkedIn and that you use the call to action to get their email?

Colin Hirdman 25:03

So there's two answers to that. One is if someone is a first connection to you and they have opted to allow first connections to see their email address, then yes, you could go to their profile and get their email address. Yes, for sure.

Janice Hostager 25:28

That's right.

Colin Hirdman 25:29

Yep, everything, everything's within LinkedIn. But you're getting benefits with the LinkedIn algorithm. LinkedIn is going to promote LinkedIn-based activities more than it will things not happening on LinkedIn. Right. So now there is one caveat to this is that if you create the LinkedIn event from your personal profile, you can only give people the option of clicking the attend button. If you create the event from your company page on LinkedIn, you can use a registration form on your event, which would force people to put in their email address in order to register for the event. But the upside is that the people that do register, you'll actually be getting their email and you'll have that as a downloadable list after the event is over.

Janice Hostager 26:30

And they're presumably a little more serious about learning if they're willing to give you their email address versus, oh, that sounds interesting. Maybe I'll try it out. You know, so I think you're right. I think there's downsides. Yeah. Yep. And upsides. Yeah.

Colin Hirdman 26:42

Yep. And that kind of goes to that experimentation mindset that I talked about where you might want to do it with just the attend button. The next time do it with the register button. So it that there is a minimum number of followers you have to have to your company page in order to do live streams. Um I can't remember if it's like a hundred or a hundred and fifty people or something like that. So um Okay. But you can you can invite people to follow your company page. That's a function within LinkedIn too.

Janice Hostager 27:11

So Okay, okay. Is this something that's available to a free member or do you need the whatever the sell.

Colin Hirdman 27:17

You don't need to pay in order to do live streams.

Janice Hostager 27:19

Okay.

Colin Hirdman 27:20

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And if from your personal profile, if you're not able to do live streams right away, you could contact LinkedIn and have somebody help you turn it on.

Janice Hostager 27:31

Gotcha.

unknown 27:32

Yeah.

Colin Hirdman 27:32

Gotcha. But for a lot of people it's on as a default.

Janice Hostager 27:36

Are there any other hidden little benefits of LinkedIn that they have that maybe people don't know about? I know I I for a lot of viewers I did a lot with the groups, LinkedIn groups. And don't do as much for that anymore, but that was just me. You know, so I think those have value. Is there anything else that you feel like this is a real benefit that people should be aware of and using more?

Colin Hirdman 28:00

You know, I think you know, you still want to continue to post. And I know that's not like a hidden thing, but part of what LinkedIn wants to see is that you're um posting and that you're engaging with other people's content. That's going to help your own content. But with kind of the process that that I've laid out, it's a hundred percent focused on your ICPs, right? Your ideal client profiles in the process that I've played out. It's about building out more first connections. It's about then using messages, polls, live streams, et cetera, to build relationship with those people that could actually be your customers. Uh the only other thing that I would say would that would be another way that you could a little bit more specifically sit in the sales seat using LinkedIn in an authentic way is that if you have people that are participating in polls or are registering for your live streams, you could create a secondary live stream that's a little bit further down your sales funnel, where maybe you're creating a live stream that's talking more specifically about your business's process or case studies, or if you have software, there's some kind of a demo. But what you could do is like once a quarter, grab everybody that has attended one of your live streams, and then those people have already clicked attend on your educational live stream. So then you could invite those people to a live stream that's more specific about maybe what your company does and sharing some of that educational information. It's a little bit more about your company and start to see what kind of interest gets percolated from your audience in terms of who's registering for that.

Lightning Round Tactics

Janice Hostager 29:42

All right, great idea. Okay, so now we have a ton of questions here that I'd love to go through real fast, the late-in-year. So if you're ready for that, I would love to get your answers quick one after another. Yeah. Are you ready?

Colin Hirdman 29:55

Yep.

Janice Hostager 29:56

All right. Post or comment, which grows your visibility faster?

Colin Hirdman 30:02

Post.

Janice Hostager 30:03

Profile mistake that you see the most often.

Colin Hirdman 30:07

People that don't use a good banner image on their profile.

Janice Hostager 30:11

It's kind of underutilized real estate.

Colin Hirdman 30:15

Yeah, because if someone's gonna check you out, the very first thing they're gonna look at is your banner image and your photo. And then they're gonna start reading content.

Janice Hostager 30:23

Do you recommend a professional photo or do you recommend a more personal one?

Colin Hirdman 30:27

I think you don't need you don't need a professional headshot for LinkedIn. If that's available, fine. But I think more than anything, people just want authenticity.

Janice Hostager 30:37

How many times per week should someone realistically post?

Colin Hirdman 30:41

Once or twice. You don't need to do it any more than that.

Janice Hostager 30:44

Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Is it okay to talk about your personal story on LinkedIn?

Colin Hirdman 30:50

Absolutely, and you should. I think at the end of the day, LinkedIn is a social network and it's about human beings. So sharing personal things on there, I think, is something you should absolutely intersperse into the other posts that you're doing. And you'll find a lot of times that personal posts perform way, way better than business posts because LinkedIn knows that there's emotion and there's humanness behind the post. So I need to experiment with those kinds of posts for sure.

Janice Hostager 31:20

Is LinkedIn Premium worth it for small business owners?

Colin Hirdman 31:24

If you follow the process that I laid out and you really want to start honing in on your audience and use sales navigator, then yes. But if not, then no, you don't need to. I would never use LinkedIn in mails. I would follow the process that I laid out around just building out more first connections and then using those messages, polls, and live streams as a way to engage with your audience.

Janice Hostager 31:49

Gotcha. Hashtags? Yes or no?

Colin Hirdman 31:53

They're kind of deprecated in certain ways, so I wouldn't worry about using them.

Janice Hostager 31:59

Okay. One simple LinkedIn action that somebody could take today that might lead to a client down the road.

Colin Hirdman 32:06

I would start building out new first connections. So start honing in on connecting with ideally around a hundred people a week. So

Janice Hostager 32:17

Love it. I do have a couple questions that I just came to mind that are actually more in-depth than lightning. So the first one is talk to me how relevant is SEO or search engine optimization in LinkedIn?

Colin Hirdman 32:32

You mean like if around posts and things like that?

Janice Hostager 32:36

So around your profile or- Oh, I see. Yeah, your Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If Google is already doing a pretty solid job showing LinkedIn profile when it senses that the person searching is looking for a specific person, LinkedIn is really going to be pretty, pretty highly regarded. But again, if your goal in using LinkedIn is to have LinkedIn become a revenue driver for your business, then they should go back and re-listen to what I had laid out in terms of my process. Like that's what you want to use. Don't worry about Google SEO. Gotcha. And I I'm trying to remember if I've heard this or not, but using AI searches, so AEO or answer engine optimization. Are they able to crawl LinkedIn as well?

Colin Hirdman 33:22

Not unless LinkedIn's giving them access because you have to be signed in in order to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn also wants to make sure that their data isn't getting ingested into AI unless there's approval for that. So Gotcha. All right.

Janice Hostager 33:37

So where can people find out more about you?

Colin Hirdman 33:40

Well, certainly LinkedIn. I'm the only Colin Hirdman on the internet. And then my website, RainmakerGrows.com, uh, built that out to be more of a resource. So you can download a PDF of my entire live stream process from beginning to end on there. And you could also book time with me from there if you want to chat or connect with me on LinkedIn. Perfect.

Janice Hostager 34:06

Thank you so much, Colin. I hope you enjoyed our talk with Colin today. At the end of the day, I love that LinkedIn isn't really about the algorithm or posting perfectly polished content or you dancing or anything like that. It's really about relationships. And for business owners, relationships are often where the best opportunities come from. So if you had enjoyed this episode, I'd love if you shared it with a friend who's trying to grow their business right now and might be wondering if there's something they can do on LinkedIn. For more information about anything we talked about today, visit myweeklymarketing.com forward slash one four nine. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.