#67 How to Get Course Sales From LinkedIn (Even With a Tiny Following) with Sam Rathling

Think LinkedIn is just for job hunters and corporate types? Think again. In this episode, I sit down with Sam Rathling, the queen of LinkedIn, to break down exactly how course creators can use the platform to build visibility, establish authority, and sell more courses without ever feeling salesy.

Sam joined LinkedIn in 2005 and used it to land clients like Amazon before becoming a full-time LinkedIn expert. Today she helps businesses of all sizes turn the platform into a client-generating machine, and in this conversation, she makes the case for why course creators can't afford to ignore it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Who LinkedIn is really for (hint: with 1.3 billion users, your audience is probably there)
• Why your profile (not your content) is the first thing to fix, and how to make it convert like a mini landing page
• Connections vs. followers explained, and why second-degree connections are where your next client is hiding
• What social selling actually means, and why pitching in the DMs is the fastest way to fail
• How LinkedIn's new AI algorithm (360 Brew) changed the game, and why smaller accounts are now getting more reach than big ones
• What to post: carousels, video, storytelling, polls, and why your comments might get more impressions than your posts
• The one metric to track (your SSI score), what it measures, and how to raise it in 90 days
• Sam's exact 20-minutes-a-day LinkedIn routine for busy course creators

Memorable moments:

• Sam's VA had just 20 connections when a single post reached 250,000 impressions - proof you don't need a big following to make an impact
• Only about 5% of LinkedIn's 1.3 billion users post consistently, which means the field is wide open for course creators
• "You're not going to go from being connected to someone today to selling them a course tomorrow." The nurture-first approach that actually works

Resources mentioned:

• Sam's free community (100+ videos, weekly masterclasses, her best-selling book)
• LinkedIn SSI score checker
• Sam's LinkedIn tracking sheet (available in her free community)
• Sam on LinkedIn

Get started on your own course creation journey or learn how to make your existing course even better at The "Your Best Course" Build Lab, my interactive and supportive online community.

To get started creating your own online course, check out my new freebie that will take you through the steps of choosing a topic that will be profitable for YOU.

To book a call to discuss your options and see if working together makes sense.  Click here. 😊

Transcript

Shannon 1:08

I am so excited to welcome Sam Rathling to the show today. She is the queen of LinkedIn, and today we're going to be talking about how to use your LinkedIn to improve your visibility, build your authority, and promote your online course. So welcome, Sam.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 1:24

Thank you, Shannon. It's great to be here.

Shannon 1:25

Yeah, so happy that you took the time to be with us today. I know you're quite, quite busy. So before we dive into, like, the... I've got so many questions for you. Before we really dive in, can you just take a moment to let the listeners know a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 1:42

Sure. So I was a very early adopter on LinkedIn. I joined the platform in 2005, so I've been on LinkedIn for 21 years. And I was... Back in the day, I was in the recruitment industry, and that was when LinkedIn was very much a recruitment and CV kind of tool. It wasn't really being used a lot for business to business. I moved country, so I moved from, uh, Holland to Ireland and decided to set up a business. And I thought, "I wonder if I can use LinkedIn to get new clients," because I didn't know anyone in Ireland. So I used all the skills I'd learnt from finding candidates to see if I could get customers. Um, so that's when I started kind of seeing if I could use LinkedIn for getting clients. Um, spent about five more years doing that, secured Amazon, secured some really big contracts through LinkedIn. And then one day someone asked me would I share on stage at a conference, um, about my journey and how I'd grown my recruitment company. And I stood on stage in 2010, having never spoken before in my life, in front of 200 business owners, and shared how I had done that through LinkedIn online networking as well as offline networking. And I absolutely fell in love with being on a stage, and from that point onwards, I continued to work in recruitment, but LinkedIn became my passion. And then very... over the next few years, I kind of transitioned to being a full-time LinkedIn expert. So yeah, it's been a long time getting to this point, and LinkedIn obviously has changed a lot. Um, and now I focus on helping small and medium-sized businesses as well as corporate and enterprise clients to get customers from LinkedIn.

Shannon 3:11

Awesome. So you really are the queen of LinkedIn. Um, and I find it so interesting to see people who are early adopters of a platform and who have that experience to, to know how the platform has changed and grown and evolved over, over the years. The very first question I want to ask you is, who is LinkedIn for? Because some of the listeners are new course creators, other experienced course creators, some are creators and makers and maybe more on, like, Instagram and Pinterest right now, whereas others may be more like me and just hate social media entirely. So who is LinkedIn for?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 3:52

I think I'm gonna flip that question and just r- answer that by saying, if your target market is, um, busin- is business oriented, you'll probably find that your target market is on LinkedIn. So if... doesn't matter who you're selling to, behind every LinkedIn profile is a consumer, first of all. So if you're selling B2C, um, and you're selling your courses to individuals, obviously there are 1.3 billion people on LinkedIn, so there's a lot of people there to go for. So whether you're selling to mums or dads, or whether you're selling to, um, you know, people who are individuals working in corporate, for example, it doesn't matter what your target market is, you're probably gonna find them on LinkedIn. And then if you're selling B2B, so if your courses are for business owners, 100% you need to be on LinkedIn. So it's less about what you're selling and more about is your audience there. So I always say to people, "Go where your audience is hanging out."

Shannon 4:43

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What would you say are the first things that someone should do if they're just moving onto the platform for the first time? Like, let's pretend by the end of this episode we've convinced everyone that they need to get onto LinkedIn. What should they do first? What's the most important thing when you're getting started?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 5:02

So when you're first getting started, your LinkedIn profile is the number one thing to focus on, and that is the, kind of the fundamentals. There's no point in posting content or connecting with your target audience or doing anything on the platform unless you actually look the part. So you mentioned at the front end of the podcast, it's about credibility, authority, visibility. That's going to come from having a really amazing LinkedIn profile that totally speaks to your target audience. So whoever is buying your courses and whoever you're targeting, we need to set that profile up for success, and there are 20 different elements of a LinkedIn profile. Um, and the great thing about a LinkedIn profile is it's like a mini webpage.

Shannon 5:39

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 5:40

can have lots of different ways to convert people from visiting your profile, actually getting into your marketing ecosystem. So if you have a landing page for your web- uh, for your course, or you have a, uh, a, a giveaway or a lead magnet that you use to get people into your email list that then sells your course, they can all be utilized inside your LinkedIn profile. So there's many ways that you can set your LinkedIn profile up to actually start feeding potential clients to your, uh, to everything that you're selling

Shannon 6:08

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. What are some of the differences that you've seen between, like, the really great profiles that are super optimized and hitting, and the ones where you just look at them and go, "Oh, they really need my help"?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 6:24

I love doing a profile roast. Um, so, I think a few things. Visually appealing, so there's a big header image at the top there. You've got your headshot. You know, the last thing you wanna do is... You know, even if you're not using LinkedIn as your main platform, people will go check you out before they buy your course. So they might Google you, or they might, uh, put you into AI and go have a, you know, go do their research. Your LinkedIn profile's going to come up when someone goes to do their research on you, so it's really important that your profile is oozing credibility. Your professional headline, um, is really demonstrating how you help your clients, not just what you do. Um, keywords are super important. So if you're going to start creating content on LinkedIn, your profile more than ever with their new algorithms needs to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is set up to get found when someone goes looking for what it is that you teach or the courses that you have, and really just visually st- visually stunning, but also credibility building. You've kind of got to put yourself out there in a way that sets you apart from everybody else. So you don't wanna blend in with all the other coaches and all the other consultants, and all the other people that are, might be selling something similar to you. When I hit your LinkedIn profile, I wanna think, "Wow," like, "I really wanna be connected to this person."

Shannon 7:38

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think we all kinda eat with our eyes first, like we-- that initial first impression and that visual i- it do- it's so important in whether or not you're going to even read more or,

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 7:51

Yeah, absolutely.

Shannon 7:52

yeah, the professional, um, impression that you get of someone as well. Okay. I'm gonna make a bit of a confession here. For years, people have been telling me, "Shannon, you need to get on LinkedIn. Your people are on LinkedIn. Like, what are you waiting for?" So about a year ago, I was like, "Okay, I think everyone is right." Like, and in my past career, I, I planned on retiring there. So I never used Linkin- LinkedIn, like not even for a resume. Like, I just wasn't there at all. Um, so I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna dive in. I'm going to do this." And I got on, and I was like, "What is this place?" Like, it made no sense to me. I, I couldn't get the feel for it. I was like, "Why is everybody writing essays?" Like, I just... And I, and I kinda bounced. So what are the differences between, like, LinkedIn as a platform and some of the other platforms that people might be, um, used to, and what's kind of the culture, and, like, what should we expect and how should we expect to interact with people on the platform?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 8:55

I think p- a lot of people think that LinkedIn's quite a corporate, stuffy kind of place and quite professional and all that kind of stuff, which it used to be years ago. But I think through lockdown and through- You know, some of the last few years, it has become a lot more human, and it has become a lot more real and authentic. So I think it's perfectly okay to show up as both the professional side of you and also the outside-of-work version of you as well.

Shannon 9:17

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 9:17

I talk about multiple things. So of course, I talk about my LinkedIn and social selling expertise, but I also talk about my cancer journey. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, so I use it as a platform to raise awareness. I talk about my sobriety. I talk about being a single mom of neurodivergent teenagers. Like I talk about lots of different topics, and it's a lot more acceptable now to talk about multiple things. Um, you know, my, my best friend Lucinda, she was the same as you, like not really on LinkedIn. She became my VA, and she had never been on LinkedIn. She had, like, 50 connections, and last year, about October, she decided to start using LinkedIn to talk about her journey with domestic violence. And, um, she, in Domestic, uh, Violence Awareness Month, wrote a post and put some pictures up of her story, which happened about three, four years ago now, but she wanted to get her voice out there, and her post hit two hundred and fifty thousand impressions. Um, she had messages from over two hundred people across the world that she'd impacted with that one post, and she only had 20 connections when she did that post.

Shannon 10:19

Oh, wow.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 10:20

you know, that's the power of the organic reach. You know, you don't have to pay to play on LinkedIn. You don't have to put money into ads. So I think there are... You know, if you have a message or you have, uh, something you're passionate about, you care about, there are ways for you to share your story, um, and get that onto the platform. She's speaking in Parliament this year. She's on N- Netflix. She's on podcast documentaries. She's being given so many opportunities because she started to use her voice to, on something she cared about. So I think it depends on, you know, what you're focused on. But the smaller accounts are actually getting more reach and more traction than the bigger accounts at the moment

Shannon 10:56

Oh, wow.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 10:57

news for everyone that's not really built

Shannon 10:59

Yeah.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 11:00

but I just think, you know, it's, it's one of those places where you can, you can bring whatever it is that you want to that platform. It isn't a place where you should be really selling. Um, so if you're used to being in a place where you would constantly pitch

Shannon 11:16

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 11:16

or you would use 80% of it would be pitches, so I know a lot of other platforms, it's a bit more okay to do that. That's what I talk about, this thing called social selling. So you're not gonna go from being connected to someone today to selling them a course tomorrow. There needs to be this nurturing process in between. So you

Shannon 11:34

Yeah. Pins.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 11:40

and that's the difference between LinkedIn and some of the other platforms. You're handpicking- Who is likely to see your content versus if you just post reels or you post, um, Pinterests or... I, I think that's what you call them, isn't it? Um, I don't really know. Um, so let's say, and you've got people following you, you're, you're kind of relying on the algorithm to show that content to those people. Whereas with LinkedIn, you can literally handpick. So if your course is designed for women who are 40 to 50, who live in Louisiana, who are lawyers, you can go to LinkedIn and add 200 of those people a week to your network who are,

Shannon 12:14

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 12:15

target audience. So it's not just about putting out content and hoping someone sees it, it's about handpicking specifically your ideal avatar or ICP or ideal client and making sure that those people are in your network every single week, and that means that your content that is super relevant for those people and the courses you're selling are going to be seen by the right people.

Shannon 12:36

Okay, you just said a million things that, like, blew my mind there for a minute because... So first of all, I wanna talk about connections because I... That was something that really confused me. I was like, what are connections and what are followers, and what's the difference, and who am I supposed to be sending? Like, am I supposed to be sending connection requests to people I don't know but I want to know? Like, can you explain how that works and what does it mean? Because, and then my understanding is, like, I'll send a connection request, but they have to accept it, and then are they automatically my follower? Like, so I'm, I'm still very confused about it all.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 13:11

break it down. So

Shannon 13:12

Okay.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 13:13

question. So a connection is someone you are, uh, you are both following each other, so you're connected to each other, and they call that a first-degree connection. So we can message each other, we are connected to each other, we may see each other's content in the news feed. Um, we automatically become followers. Uh, so if you connect with me, you're automatically a follower of mine. I can choose to unfollow anyone at any point but still be connected to them, and so could you. Uh, but you automatically become a follower when you connect with somebody. but when you start to build your influence and your authority, you start to get more followers than you have connections. So I have the maximum number of connections, which is 30,000 first-degree connections,

Shannon 13:54

Wow.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 13:55

nearly 38,000 followers. So you can have unlimited followers. So Bill Gates has got something like 8.5 million followers on LinkedIn, but he can't be connected to more than 30,000 people.

Shannon 14:05

Wow.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 14:06

are the people you can actually d- have a dialogue with and have m- m- conversations with in the inbox, but you can't have a dialogue with a follower necessarily unless you're connected to them.

Shannon 14:16

Okay. That's good to know. So why would you... I'm sorry for getting so granular, but I've re- literally been confused about this for a year. Why would you connect with somebody but not follow them, and why would you follow somebody but not connect with them?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 14:31

Um, well, some people don't have any space left,

Shannon 14:33

Right

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 14:34

you want to follow someone who's, like, a big creator. So if you wanted to follow Mel Robbins or you wanted to

Shannon 14:38

Gotcha.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 14:42

that's one thing. Um, most of the time you would want to be following your connections. So in most cases it's just a straight connect, and you, you follow that person and that's where it is. Sometimes though, you might connect with someone and they start posting things, you're like, "Oh, I don't really wanna see that on my newsfeed." So you can stay connected with them but unfollow them. You... The reason why you might wanna stay connected with them is LinkedIn works on six degrees of separation. So let's say you and I connected, and let's say you and I are not maybe perfect customers for each other. But there could be lots of people in your network, Shannon, that would be great clients for me, and vice versa. So I might wanna stay connected with someone, because when I go looking for my perfect client, LinkedIn's gonna show me all the connections of my connections. So I can go fishing for potential prospects in the pool of all the, what we call second-degree connections. So if you know Facebook, that would be like mutual friends.

Shannon 15:39

Mm, okay.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 15:40

so if that's, if that's a good language to use. If you're familiar with, like, Facebook friends,

Shannon 15:45

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 15:45

see friends of friends. That's basically, in LinkedIn land, that is second-degree connections. So most of the time your best next client is going to come from a connection of a connection.

Shannon 15:56

Right.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 15:57

our first-degree network with... And let's say you start and get, you know, let's say we've just

Shannon 16:02

Gotcha.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 16:06

liking and commenting on your posts. Well, your connections are going to start seeing that you are liking and commenting on my posts. So suddenly my brand is not only with you, it's also going and filtering out into your network, and vice versa. So if I start liking and commenting on your posts on LinkedIn, network is going to start, start seeing Shannon show up in their newsfeed. So there's this kind of interconnected thing that happens, where that doesn't really happen on all the other platforms.

Shannon 16:33

No, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. The other thing that you mentioned and you just kind of slipped in there was about social selling, which I know is your big thing. Um, but what blew my mind was when you said it's not a place-- it's not a sales place. It's not a place for sales. Because when I go in now, I do have a profile now, I do have an account. When I go in, um, I feel like almost inundated with like people DMing me and people wanting to sell things to me, and it feels like a place where it's a- about a lot of sales. So can you talk a little bit more about that? And then if we're not asking people to buy from us or we're not selling and promoting in that way, what are our CTAs or do we have them at all?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 17:21

Okay, so lots of people do LinkedIn badly, and lots of people DM and outreach and just see it as a place to just pitch and spam people, which is not how to get business on LinkedIn. So unfortunately, that is most people's experiences. They're like, "Oh, everyone's just trying to sell me stuff," but that is not how you actually get business from LinkedIn. So it is okay to

Shannon 17:44

Right.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 17:48

very conversational kind of way. So if you sell courses on a particular subject, so let's say you sell courses on brand strategy, you might start a conversation about what someone's favorite brand is, or you might start a conversation about something related to brand that is, you know, "I'm doing some research, you know, do you prefer this or this?" And it's less about going, "Hey, buy my course." Like, "Hey, I do this and I do this, and would you like to buy my course?" You've got to... Social selling is about building relationships. So I might spend one or two weeks following your content, liking, commenting everything you're doing, supporting your

Shannon 18:23

Right.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 18:27

So it's not about directly pitching, it's about turning strangers into friends and leveraging those relationships and building those relationships over time. Because most people need to spend between five and seven hours with your brand before they'll ever part money with you. That's why people that consume a lot of YouTube video... You know, if you've got a YouTube channel, or you've got an Instagram channel, um, or you post blogs, or you write articles, or you have a free community, whatever it is that you're using to move people into your world, they need to spend quite a few hours with your brand before they will ever part money and buy your course, depending on what price it is, of course.

Shannon 19:02

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 19:04

so this idea of social selling is it's about building relationships and nurturing relationships before you go... before someone's ready to buy from you. So it might be that I connect with someone today who is my perfect client, but I, over the next few weeks, I do posts that are going to- Give them intrigue. Going to help them. Gonna add value to them. So I'm posting things that are super valuable to my exact target audience, enough for them to start going, "Oh yeah, that person's making a lot of sense. Oh yeah, she's..." You know. And it might be three months down the line that they message and say, "I've been following you on LinkedIn, Shannon, and I'd like to have a conversation with you about this topic, because I've been e- I've been enjoying your posts."

Shannon 19:44

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 19:45

an instant thing. It's not gonna be like you connect today and tomorrow they buy your course. Uh, social selling is very much about planting seeds. If you were to imagine LinkedIn's this big kind of meadow, you're planting seeds in that meadow in this bustling ecosystem of lots of people who are all interconnected with each other. And if you do that long enough, you'll start to build a pipeline of people that are actually going to come inbound towards you. Um, but also you can create those opportunities outbound as well by starting conversations with your perfect customer.

Shannon 20:15

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And I think for a lot of the listeners who feel uncomfortable with that more pitchy kind of put yourself out there sales, this is a more natural way of doing it that potentially could feel better for some people.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 20:32

Imagine you're, you know, imagine we've just met at a networking event or we're in real life and we're at the water cooler or we're at the coffee station. You're not gonna go up to someone and start vomiting your business on them, are you? You're just gonna be like, "Hey, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you." And you're like, "Hey, I'm Shannon." And we might have a chat about things, and we might get to know each other a little bit. It's no different to in-person networking, and that's

Shannon 20:53

Yeah.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 20:57

you can open up conversations, where you can start conversations. Another great way to get visible with and start conversations is just by simply commenting and liking on other people's posts, you know? If you sell courses about leadership or you sell courses about, I don't know, dog training or whatever it might be, go find people on LinkedIn that you can like and comment on their posts who are talking about those subjects. And before you know it, you become someone that's visible on those kinds of topics, or other people that have already followed and liked on that post will start to follow you. Your profile starts to do the work. So I think there's a few pieces of the puzzle that people need to be doing, but it isn't just about, you know, connect with someone and pitch them something. Like, that's not gonna get you business over there.

Shannon 21:40

Yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. For course creators and experts, sometimes they worry about giving away too much educational content for free or providing too much value. What is your opinion on that? Where is the line? And yeah, what do you advise?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 21:58

So I believe that you can never give too much away.

Shannon 22:01

Okay.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 22:02

Uh, and I want to be the most helpful, the person that gives away more than anybody else in my niche, because... Or niche, I don't know how you say it. But, um,

Shannon 22:13

I say niche.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 22:14

both audiences, for, uh, yeah, so for- Because information's everywhere. Someone could go and ask a question about LinkedIn or Sales Navigator or social selling to any AI tool and get the answer, right? They can go to, uh, YouTube and get the answer. They can go to 100,000 people and get the answer to their question. But what people need help with is implementation, execution, accountability, and support. And if you're a course creator that has a course but also provides that additional re- you know, additional resource to get somebody through the process and get them the outcome from your course,

Shannon 22:48

Mm-hmm

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 22:49

I believe in being the most helpful version of you out there. You know, so I have tons and tons of free resources. I've written books. I have a free community with hundreds of videos. I have lots and lots of things out there. I post on LinkedIn all the time, but I still get clients because there are always going to be people that need that extra hand-holding or need that extra bit of confidence or need the extra bility- extra accountability and support. So, those are gonna be where your paying customers come from. Um, you know, it depends obviously on what type of course you're, you're selling, but if you are selling something a slightly higher ticket, there'll always be people out there that are willing to pay for that extra, uh, support. So I am very much a giver.

Shannon 23:31

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I feel the same way. Um, let's talk about what we're actually posting.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 23:38

Mm-hmm.

Shannon 23:39

posts, long, short videos, carousels, what are we doing? You mentioned about the new algorithm a little while ago. What should we be doing? What's working, and what does it look like? Okay.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 23:53

algorithms are changing regularly, but they're... Recently, LinkedIn introduced something called 360 Brew, which is an AI algorithm, and this basically looks at the 360 degree version of you as a professional. So it's now... Previously, the algorithm would just look and see, oh, that post's doing well, it's got lots of likes and comments. We'll give that post lots more likes and comments and more eyeballs, and it didn't care whether the post was good, bad or ugly. It just put more eyeballs on it based on the numbers. So it was a very quantitative thing previously. Now, with 360 Brew, the algorithm is looking at context. So the, the AI algorithm is looking at everything on your LinkedIn profile, all the keywords that you're using, everything about you as a professional, all your last three months' posts, um, who's interacted with them, who's engaging with you, who are you adding to your network? And it's, it's d- taken all that data and then when you post, it's deciding who should see that content. what's happened is everyone's reach and organic reach has come down, so a lot of people are seeing less impressions, which is eyeballs on their posts. But what they should be seeing is more of the right people seeing their content. So- A lot of people tried to game the system. There was a lot of engagement pods came to LinkedIn. There was a lot of AI slop came to LinkedIn. There was a lot of things that started to happen in the platform. So LinkedIn Corporation decided they needed to get rid of a lot of that. So now you can't really game the algorithm in the same way that you used to be able to, which was that you could have 200 people go and comment on your post, and suddenly your post would have, you know, hundreds of thousands of impressions. That can't happen anymore, thank goodness. So they've It's a good thing. So if you're seeing that your reach is down, your impressions are down, don't panic about that. You will start to see more second and third degree followers that are, are not even connected to you seeing your content. You'll see a lot more of the right people seeing your content. So in terms of what types of post, carousels do particularly well, things that are save-worthy, so useful information, insightful information, stats, infographics, guides, checklists, these kinds of things will always do quite well. Um, video is, uh, one of the best ways to get your trust built in terms of it's one of the only things that can't be or maybe not yet. Some of them are AI generated. But, you know, get your face in your, into the newsfeed, um, because I think people do buy from people, so images will always do well if there's strong imagery with, with a strong post. Um, storytelling, like if you're a good storyteller, that works really well on LinkedIn. If you can bring emotion into it, if you can bring the, the kind of story in there. There's lots of different ways. Polls do s- still do quite well. I would just say for each of you, just try different things and see what's working for you.

Shannon 26:38

Hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 26:42

gonna resonate with your audience. Um, I would say ideally post about three to five times a week. But if

Shannon 26:48

Okay.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 26:49

at all, start with one once a week, then build it up to two, then build it up to three. Commenting on other people's posts is just as important as posting. You know, some people are getting more impressions on a comment than they are on their posts right

Shannon 27:04

Okay, interesting.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 27:06

see how many impressions your comments are getting.

Shannon 27:08

Okay.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 27:09

a value-adding comment on a post, then other people like and comment on that post, you can sometimes get more reach on the comment than you did on the post that you'd spent ages

Shannon 27:18

Very interesting. Very interesting. Okay, so let's talk about those metrics for a minute. What is reasonable? What should someone expect? S- so if they're doing what you're suggesting here, where they're trying different things and they're looking at, like, what works and what doesn't, what are some reasonable metrics? Uh, first of all, what should we be looking at in terms of metrics, and then what should we be aiming for or expecting?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 27:42

So there is a great, uh,

Shannon 27:44

Hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 27:48

It's called the SSI score. You can find it at linkedin.com/sales/ssi, stands for Social Selling Index, so This is a score out of 100 points that gives you an indication as to how well you're doing with this thing called social selling, and, um, you wanna be aiming for 70 plus. Most people, though, if they're inactive on LinkedIn, they haven't re- don't really know what they're doing with it, are probably gonna be somewhere between 20 and 50. If you are quite active on LinkedIn and you're already doing a bit of posting, a bit of engagement, your profile's not too bad, you'll probably be somewhere between, like, 50 and 60-something. Um, on the free version of LinkedIn, most people co- could get to about 80 points, but you, you get an immediate uplift in visibility just by having a decent social selling score. So if you become, like, a top 1% seller or social seller on LinkedIn, which is 70 plus usually for most people, that's gonna elevate you and put you way above most of the other people that are out there posting. A lot of people think it's quite saturated, LinkedIn, but only about 5% of people are actively posting consistently. So of 1.3 billion people, only 5% are actively posting, so you can get quite a good leverage on your competitors and other people that sell similar courses to you. A lot of course creators are not even on LinkedIn, you know? There's a lot of brands that are not even there. So, so the SSI score's one thing. You then have things like your profile views, uh, which are analytics you'll find on your profile. update, uh, and it's a 90-day stat. So let's say you are not active on LinkedIn and you start posting and you start improving your profile, you might start to see that suddenly you're getting hundreds of profile views whereas

Shannon 29:29

Hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 29:34

impressions, they're the main things that I would recommend most people track. But i- if you go from being inactive to suddenly starting using it, you'll suddenly start to see all your stats will go in the right direction. Um, if you can pull eyeballs to your profile with your content and with your commenting then let your profile do the conversion to your course, that's the, the key thing. If you can- Start to do that. And then the other thing I always track obviously is results. So how many DMs are you sending? How many responses are you getting? What kind of sales meetings are you getting? So I have a, a tracking sheet that I give to everyone. It's in my free community if people want to use that to track everything. I'm a metrics kinda girl. What gets measured gets done. So if you are wanting to track everything on LinkedIn then, uh, yeah, I can get that out to anyone that's listening.

Shannon 30:20

Awesome. That would be great, and I'm going to download that tracker there. So what, what, uh, I think maybe you've kind of, um, answered this already, but I wanna be more specific. What affects our SSI score, and what can we do specifically to raise it? Is it just, like, consistency and...

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 30:39

that's So the-- it's made up of four different elements. So there's an orange part, which is basically your content and your profile. So if you start posting more content and sort your profile out, the orange score will go up. The purple score is to do with building your network and who you're adding and how consistently you're adding people into your network proactively. then you have the green score, which is about engagement, and you have the blue score, which is about building trust and building relationships. So each of those areas are weighted 25 points, and those are all things that LinkedIn deems to be good activities to be doing. So obviously consistency is, is important as it is with all social media platforms. Um, you know, logging in consistently, logging in every day, you know, making the right changes to your profile, commenting, engaging, all the things we've talked about really. These will all see your score move up, and regardless of where someone is, even if it's two points right now, within about 90 days of consistent application, you will be able to raise that score to 60 to 70 points. Yeah.

Shannon 31:36

Wow. I love that. I love that there's a score that's based on a lot of different things that, like, tells you if you're moving in the right direction, because I don't, I just don't like those vanity metrics. They hurt.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 31:49

hours. It's great 'cause you can You know, I had someone in my community, he's just posted. I get people to do, like, a screenshot of where they are, where they're at when they start, and he's just moved it from, like, 50, I think 52 to 67 in about two weeks.

Shannon 32:02

Wow. Yeah, that's highly motivating. That's amazing. Okay, this has been so incredibly insightful and eye-opening, and hopefully inspirational for people who ha- are not on LinkedIn, or I know lots of people in my community have a profile. They created a profile because they felt like they should, and it's just kind of sitting there. So I really hope that this is the impetus for people to dive back into it and get back on there again. Last question for you. If a course creator only had 20 minutes a day to spend on LinkedIn, what would you recommend they do with that time?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 32:36

I would recommend they would connect with 10 people a day Invite 10 people who are in their target market to connect with them. would be, um, engaging with 10 comments a day. So doing 10 comments on the posts of people in their target audience, and I would spend the rest of the time on creating those couple of posts a week that they need to be putting out there. So those three things, but first get your profile sorted before you do those activities.

Shannon 33:01

Okay, awesome. Can you tell us more if people wanna know more about your free community, how to work with you, how to learn more from you, what should they do and where should they go?

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 33:09

Sure. So obviously, my LinkedIn profile is a good place to start. So there's only two Sam Rathlings in the world, and one of them is a guy, so I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. And then it... You'll see on my LinkedIn profile that I have a route through to everything. So my free community is on there, which is just school.com/samrathling. So everything is Sam Rathling.

Shannon 33:31

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 33:31

same thing with all my other social media. So, but LinkedIn is usually the first place. In my free community, I have tons and tons and tons of free resources. There's a copy of my best-selling book. There is, uh, over 100 videos. There are master classes every week with me. Like I give away tons and tons of stuff. So that would be the best place to start.

Shannon 33:49

Wow, that is absolutely incredible. I am in your community, and I'm now going to become more active in your community,

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 33:56

I'm

Shannon 33:56

because I need this, and I think we all do. Um, we will put the links to everything in the show notes as well. Um, thank you so much, Sam. I know you're very busy. Appreciate you taking the time to be with us here today and sharing so much of your wisdom. What a great example and testament to how to provide value. So thank you so much for being here.

Sam Rathling - LinkedIn Expert 34:17

Thanks, Shannon. Thanks, everyone.