094 - Unleashing the Power of LinkedIn: Overcoming Misconceptions and Building Relationships

LinkedIn is more than a place to park your profile—it’s a powerful platform for B2B professionals, consultants, and entrepreneurs to build visibility, credibility, and real business relationships. In this episode, we dive into how to use it with intention and personality to actually drive growth.

I was delighted to be joined by Beth Granger, LinkedIn trainer, consultant, and speaker, Beth Granger Consulting, to discuss smart, practical ways to stand out, build trust, and start better conversations on the platform

Topics included:

🔹Treating LinkedIn like a 24/7 networking event—show up and be real.

🔹Why meaningful comments often go further than constant posting.

🔹Always personalize your connection requests—ditch the generic.

🔹Avoid automation tools that spam—LinkedIn will notice (and so will people).

🔹Remember to use the first person in your profile to create a connection, not distance

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 Join me in The Lab on Substack, my space to test, tweak, and share smart ideas worth chasing, especially around video, content strategy, and showing up online without burning out (or wasting your weekends) Click Here

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For additional insights, connect with Annette Richmond and Black Dog Marketing Strategies on social media.
Substack: https://substack.com/@annetterichmond
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annetterichmond/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com...

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00.13)
I'm so happy to be here with you. so many people, people who are executives, people that I work with, businesses, entrepreneurs, they think of LinkedIn as kind of being kind of this platform. You said it, you forget it. They may pay someone like me or maybe like you to do their profile. If you're, okay, I'm good. I'm good with that. And there are other people, I used to be one of them. They think of LinkedIn as pushing out.

content and people are looking at it. And then there's kind of a debate I know you're familiar with. Is LinkedIn formal? Or is it a place to have fun? If I put on a video doing something a little kooky, is that appropriate or not? And my whole experience on LinkedIn just changed dramatically. When I started thinking of it as a

human to human, human to human interaction, where I'm not just on there looking for connections, people to connect with. But I was looking at your profile, and I know you talk a lot about things that you should do on LinkedIn. I'm going to ask you some of those things, particularly about the reputation thing. But what do you think are kind of the

some of the biggest misconceptions people have about LinkedIn and what it's for and what we're supposed to be doing.

Well, that's a good question. I like that one. It's interesting. So a couple of years ago, when LinkedIn was very sort of buttoned up, LinkedIn was wearing a suit. And things started to get a little more conversational, a little more casual, a little more human to human, as you were saying. And I think that it's

Speaker 2 (02:04.426)
what the users want it to be. In a way, LinkedIn doesn't get to decide how we use it. We decide how we use it.

No, I like that. I like that philosophy. And people are, I think, often they are just so nervous of crossing the line and worried about what people think and whether things are, as I said, just kind of like too, too, too, too, too,

I would of course look at people's LinkedIn profile headshots. Now I did see someone who was a woman and she came up in my search, looked like a good candidate. But when I looked at her profile, her headshot was actually in a bridal gown. I mean, with the veil and it looked like one of those studio bridal shots. while I, you know,

To me, think even today, something like that would be just a little bit too much. It was for me at the time, I thought my client, if that's what she thinks is good, my client is probably not going to like her.

I think a good measure or way to decide if you should do something on LinkedIn is imagine you were at an in-person event. Would you say that thing? Would you do that thing? Would you wear a bridal gown to a networking meeting? No.

Speaker 1 (03:44.13)
Yeah, I like that. I like that. Yeah, I see that too. I see still a lot of men in tuxedos and things like that. I'm glad that you brought up the idea of an in-person networking event because LinkedIn is kind of like to me now a 24-7 sort of networking event. And I have friends of mine, colleagues who I...

that they get on LinkedIn and they are more active. It's a great place to meet people. And it's not just your clients, people you collaborate with, people that you just become friends with. And they're like, it's such a chore. But the thing is, once you do it, it changes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

So I think part of it is that it can feel overwhelming at first because people don't know what to do when they're there. And the other part of it is sometimes people have a concern. I get asked a lot, if I comment on a post, who's going to see it? Is my boss going to see it or my colleague's going to see it? So there's that apprehension because it's your career at stake, essentially, right? So.

Yes!

Speaker 2 (05:01.186)
I think that's part of it. People don't know what to do. There are all these features, it's changing constantly. So they're not sure what to do.

lot of people, they say, you must post seven days a week, or it must be five days a week. And I think that that can be also overwhelming with people. so if someone is, they're watching us now and they say, you know what, it sounds like maybe I should do something with LinkedIn. What are some steps that they can take to just start?

Yeah. So actually a great way to start, you don't have to post. You can support the people that are your referral partners, your prospects, your friends by engaging with their content. So that's a great way to, or if you're in an industry, there are some industries that are regulated and they have to get approval for every post. So it's very hard for them, but they can engage with the content of others. So liking or commenting on posts from people or conversations that interest you.

is actually a great way to start.

Yeah, and I think people don't realize that, I mean, for me, most of the magic on LinkedIn happens in the comments, it happens in the direct messages. And they don't realize that, you know, if someone, if I comment on your post, and I, you know, some kind of a thoughtful comment, obviously not great post, you know, I think it's so funny, Brenda Miller has says this, like, if you're at a networking event,

Speaker 1 (06:39.118)
You're not going to walk up to somebody if they say something to you and say, oh, that was great. And then just walk away. But it also gets me seen by your audience. Correct.

Correct. I'll tell you a story. So I did a post once that so you can get seen both from posts that you do and comments that you make. And I've had both both happen. So one time I did a post and I said something like, I'm excited to be moderating a panel on social media and health care for the social media association. Here's what we're going to be talking about. Excited to have these people joining us. I mentioned them. And if you want to join, here's the link.

So of course, the people who I had tagged wrote back and said, hey, I'm looking forward to this, et cetera, et So because somebody had commented, someone she knew but who didn't know me saw the post, read it, called me on the phone, and said, I see you speak about social media and health care. What's your speaking fee? Now, could that please happen every day? And then with comments, it's a way to start a conversation.

Right? You could comment on someone's post that you don't know, but would like to know. So you've started a conversation with somebody that wouldn't even take your phone call.

Yes, it's so choose. I do want to start, get into this whole conversation about things that really can ruin your reputation. And there is a webinar that I watched that people can access for free in the featured section of your LinkedIn profile. So I'm going to ask you a few questions about that. I mentioned the webinar that you have, which I think is just brilliant. mean, you that in your featured section.

Speaker 1 (08:27.982)
and people, there's so many things that, people do that just drive people crazy. And they think that it's the right thing to do just because they don't know any better. My dogs agree. they, they agree with everything I say. And, know, there, you mentioned nine sort of minefields, in that webinar.

And I would like to ask you about a couple of them. I we could go through all of them, but we just don't have enough time. And one of the things, because the about section, Barry just asked about the about section. And you mentioned having the about section in the third person. People do that kind of like a bio in mind, say, Annette Richmond, blah, blah, blah. And nobody wants that. So what's the solution?

So it should be in first person because the whole idea, right, on LinkedIn is to start and have conversations that stay on LinkedIn or move to other places. So by doing it in first person, first of all, they know you wrote it. So it just sounds weird. If in my opinion, it sounds like someone else did it and you're not there, but it can start a conversation because it's like you're having a conversation with somebody. If your headline is your elevator pitch to me, you're about is

what happens when someone says, that's interesting. Tell me more. And there's so much you can do with it. So first person is always better.

You know, and I love stories about, which some people have about kind of why they do what they do. And some people I know job seekers think, you know, if you, my LinkedIn profile should just kind of be like my resume. But the truth is, and I think that maybe businesses may think that too, you know, if someone is an entrepreneur, they're looking at my brochure or my website and they know about me, but they want to learn.

Speaker 1 (10:31.354)
more about you. And LinkedIn is one of those places if I'm hiring for a job, I'm director of marketing at Diagio, we'll say. They're local to me, so I always think of them first. And I'm trying to hire someone and you say, Annette, you you ought to talk to Joe Smith because he'd be great. I'm going to his LinkedIn profile, right?

It's just, it's the whole, and if you meet someone anywhere, that's where they go. I have a question for you with the idea of some personal information in the headline. Now, I was strictly pretty much business business, but I recently, as I was doing some work and shifting my brand a little bit, I worked on it myself, and I added that I'm sort of this proud dog mom. so what do you think about that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2 (12:42.328)
So that whole, there's this line of between the professional and the personal, right? And everybody has to figure out where their line is and what they're comfortable sharing. It's also a personality thing, right? So, and if you, think if you have your own business, most people are more comfortable sharing something personal or fun than if you work for a corporation, you might feel a little nervous about doing that. And I can understand that.

But it's a personality thing. If you're the kind of person that when you meet, again, go back to the, we're in person, we're at a networking event. When you first meet somebody, do you share that you're, you know, are you wearing a pin? That's a picture of your dog. So I think it's up to the individual, but it certainly makes, it's again, a conversation starter. So if somebody comes to your profile, they see that they can start a conversation with you by saying, what kind of dog do you have?

Yes, I think that is so true. you know, yeah, I do talk about my dogs all the time. You know, it's part of my part of my thing. And I think it's a great point you brought up about how personal you want to be. I know for me, someone I know, Valerie had had mentioned months, months ago, when I first met her, the idea of being personal versus private.

And I am comfortable sharing a lot about me. I'm happy to share my mistakes and hope that people can learn from them, et cetera. But although I'm everywhere, I am private in a lot of ways. And some people really lay it all on the line. So I don't know. I guess it's an individual decision. What do you think?

Absolutely. Individual, you know, it's, it's, you can share things, for instance, about interests that you have. And that's not private. That's not sharing, you know, something going on in your life that you don't want people to know. So I think that's a good place to start, right? Either an interest or like that you're a proud dog mom or things like that. and I find that over time,

Speaker 2 (15:04.894)
my, I've added more personal things over time. So I've gotten more comfortable with it as well.

Yeah, I have as well. I try to work it in and it is difficult. don't know. I think you've been working online for a long time and I know I have. I've been online in other businesses and things since like 2000. And so I feel like I'm out there so much. I'm one of those people who has like 50 friends on Facebook because I have to have one little place.

That's kind of my personal. I want to ask you about the invitations with no note. And I think that's something that people do often, and they just don't know any better. Correct. They just don't know any better. So what's your advice?

So my advice is unless it's your brother or sister, always include a note. And there are a couple of reasons. So maybe you met somebody at an event, in person, virtual, whatever it is, you connect with them. But if you don't talk to them for a while, you may not remember who they are or why you met them or how you connected.

So that note will be the first in the chain of messages. If you click on the messages button, you'll see that note. So you'll say, we met at the XYZ event. There's also, if you're going to be trying to connect with somebody that you have not met or don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:45.742)
You have to tell them what I have a hundred. I'm bad. I have tons with no note that I haven't had the time to, to review, to decide who are they and am I interested in connecting with them? So tell somebody why you want to connect with them, how you found them something and not the automated type of thing and make it about them. So how many times have you received a note that says something like, I'm looking to grow my network of insert what you did.

Well, I don't care what you're looking to do. Who are you? I don't know you.

It's so true. Some of my favorites are, you came up as someone that I might know or I should know. We share so many connections and you click on their profile and you don't share any connections at all. There's so many things like that. it can make such a difference. And I would think too that it's

Try, you know, don't be intimidated to approach somebody. I have someone now who's a good friend of mine who I met, gosh, a decade ago, and I contacted her. She was, you know, high up in the career industry. I wanted to know her, and I just was commenting, I read your post and this and that, blah, blah, blah. I'd love to know you. Well, she accepted my invitation. We had lunch. ran a little career.

conference, yep, he helped me get speakers She's now she and her wife are good friends of mine. We celebrate together and you know, and I I mentioned that partly because people think you know, you can't social media It's just social media or linkedin and they don't think that anything more than a superficial relationship

Speaker 2 (18:40.226)
Yeah, no, it's true. And I'll tell you a career story. So 12 years ago, before I started my business, I thought I was looking for a new job. I saw a listing. I did a little digging around on LinkedIn and thought I found the hiring manager. I reached out to her and I didn't say anything about the job. I just said something about having an information interview. She was open to it. We had an amazing conversation. She wasn't the hiring manager. She hated working there and she was leaving.

And we've kept in touch all these years. We've had lunch, we've referred people to each other. So can you reach out and someone doesn't want to connect with you? Absolutely, but you have nothing to lose by trying.

No, I agree with you. I want to, if I can ask you to talk a little bit about the whole automation. And I get things like that. I get a lot of in-mails and messages, people wanting to connect with me because they want to help me with my LinkedIn profile. Or sometimes they have the wrong name or they're

contacting me about something. So I don't know what to say about that.

Yeah, so so the first one, there are two kinds of automation. I like to clarify that automated tools that allow you to post. Yeah, those are allowed. The tools that we're talking about are these products that will promise to do it for you and like grow your network and get your clients and all this stuff. If it's too if it sounds too good to be true, it is plus it's against the terms of service and get can get you kicked off of LinkedIn. And you can often tell

Speaker 2 (20:24.398)
you know, based on the wording or mistakes that they make, things like that. It's unfortunate. I'm not sure why people are taken in by these tools. They're looking for maybe a shortcut or they're told that it works, but it's not the way to go. And people hate it when they realize that they're being scammed, essentially.

I think that too. I occasionally, if I'm in a bad mood, I will write back to somebody and say, would never, I would never work with anybody who's hiring me. And, you know, while it's not automation, I also see this, I'm sure it happens to you. I know it happens to me. I have friends who have used this type of thing where maybe they're looking for a job and so they connect with someone.

and the person accepts their connection and right away it's like, know, do you have anything available in your company? I've had people connect to me and then say, can you introduce me to so and so? And it's like, well, I don't even know you.

Yep. You haven't earned the right yet. Again, it goes back to in person. If you met somebody in person and would you ask for that? Would you ask for an introduction? No, it wouldn't be appropriate.

So what are some of the things that people can, if they're watching us now or they're listening to the replay or listening to this on my podcast, some ways that people can approach someone, like if they wanted to connect with you and they don't know you, what are some things that people might reference in a note that they send?

Speaker 2 (22:08.216)
Well, first of all, how about before that, I'm going to share a very, I don't know whether to call it sneaky or strategic technique. If the person you're trying to connect with is active on LinkedIn, and by active, I mean they share content. What you do is you go to their content and you read it or watch it or what, depending on what kind of content. And then you make a comment and here's the magic. You ask a question, a real question. It has to be authentic. It can't be.

just to do it. What are they going to do if you ask them a question about it? They're going to write back. You've just started a conversation with somebody that you don't know. And so then if you want to connect with them, they're much more likely to want to connect because you've already had a conversation and you can't do it in a creepy way. I once had somebody look at my profile, follow me, follow me on Twitter, tweet to me, like three posts. It was just too much at once. It was clear that it wasn't

They weren't trying to build a real relationship,

Yeah, they're like stalking you. know. I know. Or the random. I know you mentioned this in your webinar. And we all get this, like, hello, or hello, I like your smile, where people for some reason think that LinkedIn is like, don't know, match.com or something. while the whole formal versus fun line is a bit, I should say, very blurred at this point.

You know, that is just not, I mean, it's just, you just don't want to cross. I'm glad you brought that up because I saw on your profile at one of the things that you share with your clients is these sneaky strategies. So since you shared that, can you share another one with us?

Speaker 2 (24:04.27)
Okay, here's one of my favorite things. If we were in a Zoom meeting, I'd be having you raise your hands right now, but people like to look at who viewed their profile, right? But they don't do anything with the information. So, and I don't even think LinkedIn necessarily thought about this, but this one trick tip has led to so much work, stronger relationships for both me and my clients. Example being,

Some first connection. So somebody I knew but hadn't talked to in a while looked at my profile. I reached out and I said, hey, how you doing? Notice you stopped by my profile. And I think that wording is important too. It wasn't like I saw you on my profile. What do you want?

Hahaha!

But he went back out and he said, yes, Susan said, you're the person to talk to about LinkedIn training. Susan was a common friend of ours. Now, because I noticed that, what if Susan had given him three names and he called someone else first? What if he got too busy and never called me? So by seeing that, and even if it was not for a reason like that, maybe you want to see how to spell my name if I had a complicated name, it allows me to reconnect with somebody that I know and have a conversation. So first connections.

you haven't talked to them in a while, reach out to them.

Speaker 1 (25:23.374)
 the last thing that I want to ask you about here, this indiscriminate tagging. I think people do that. What I think is, because I have people sometimes who tag me constantly, and I don't know them that well.

Why do think people do that and what is the lesson that, you know, it's just, it's not really a good idea.

No, it really isn't. So I had a similar situation. I actually met somebody in person and they started tagging me on every single post that they did. And when you tag somebody, yes, you're trying to get their attention. And in many cases, what you hope they will do is respond by liking it, by sharing it, by commenting. So by doing it all the time, you're trying to get somebody to show your content to their network essentially.

It's annoying. So the appropriate way to tag is when it makes sense. When we were promoting this event, we tagged each other so the person would know. If you're thanking somebody publicly, tag them. If, like I did in that example I told you before, I was moderating a panel, I tagged the panelists because it makes sense. If you had just had a conversation with somebody and you know they would be okay with you publicly tagging them. But there are other ways. If you want people

Speaker 2 (27:26.318)
to be sure to see a post, you can send them the link to the post. Say, hey, you might not have seen this because of the algorithm, and I wanted to make sure you saw it.

No, I think that's a wonderful idea. And, you know, I partnered with Jillian Whitney for the creators, celebrating other creators on LinkedIn. We did a thing and we celebrated people that we knew. And, you know, she actually shared, I hadn't thought about that, shared that idea with me. And we did individually, we sent the post to all the people that we were celebrating. And they did come, you know, obviously, and support us. But

I think that's true because it can be a little bit, and I'm not a huge fish on LinkedIn, but I have some friends who have massive followings, tens of thousands of followings, and get tagged all the time by people that they don't even know. So as we are kind of winding down, and I thank you so much for all of the information that you've shared. Is there anything that you'd like to?

anything that we should have discussed that we might you would be helpful.

Wow, I don't, that's great question. I mean, there's so many things. I know, I know. It's a talk for hours about LinkedIn, right? But to me, I just think the key thing is always thinking about it as if you were in person and the behavior and to not be afraid of taking little steps, share a post, comment on someone's post. It's, you know, I know both of us have met people on LinkedIn that are now good friends or collaborators.

Speaker 2 (29:04.39)
or it's a great place to support your network. there are people, know, how many, before pre-COVID, how many coffee meetings could you have in a day? So there are things you can do to support people that you care about on the platform.

Yes, yes, that is so true. Thank you so much, Beth, for being here. I am so excited that you did say yes. I'm always grateful when people say yes. I really appreciate you sharing, giving me your time, giving us all your time, and sharing your knowledge.