📖 The Step-By-Step Guide For Mastering LinkedIn & Driving Profit Through The Roof💰
Are you sure you are getting the best out of your business platforms? Online marketer, Scott Aaron, joins Adrienne Hill to talk about mastering the LinkedIn arena and turning online traffic into actual sales. He gained traction by establishing connections between entrepreneurs and businesses through LinkedIn Profile Optimization. Thousands have experienced explosive growth following his proven system and strategies. Listen in as he shares his secrets to maximizing your LinkedIn's income-driving potential.
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📖 The Step-By-Step Guide For Mastering LinkedIn & Driving Profit Through The Roof💰
Impactful Entrepreneur Show Guest Interview
We're here with the internationally acclaimed and award-winning online marketer, three-time bestselling author, top podcaster, and speaker, Scott Aaron. He's the go-to specialist when it comes to converting traffic, establishing connections, creating income using LinkedIn, and building personal brands there. He fully immersed himself in learning LinkedIn and social media strategies and quickly gain traction as the leader in generating big results for himself as well as other entrepreneurs, online business owners, and business coaches.
He is passionate about helping fellow entrepreneurs achieve success while building their own network organically without any complicated or costly marketing tactics. His program has helped thousands experience explosive growth following his proven system and strategies. We are so blessed to have him here with us. Welcome, Scott. I'm so excited that we get to dig into LinkedIn with you.
Adrianne, thank you again for having me come and speak. I'm grateful to be a part of this summit.
Not everyone in the audience may have met you yet. Through the bio, I'm sure they're excited to dig in. Can you tell us in your own words a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how you came to be where you are as a LinkedIn expert?
My entrepreneurship began when I was eighteen. I jokingly tell people that I've been psychologically unemployable since day one. I've never had a boss. I've only worked for myself. I was helping my family run and operate our health clubs. We had three different gyms in downtown Philadelphia. I was still going to school full-time at Temple University in downtown Philadelphia and getting my degree in HR.
How did I come to become an entrepreneur? I was ending my freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh and I was going into my second year. My father was also an entrepreneur and still is. My grandfather, who's still with us, was his own entrepreneur himself. He owned a pharmacy. My great-grandfather had a butcher shop in downtown Philadelphia when he first came over here in the 1920s. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. It's embedded in my DNA.
My father ended up breaking a partnership in a company that he owned. He went to go work for someone else owning multiple locations of the physical rehabilitation company. Things from outside looking in seemed to be going well. Money was coming in. We were living a good life. Not rich by any means, but there was never a struggle or at least we never knew of any struggles going on.
After my freshman year, it was my sister, who's three years younger, myself, and my parents and we were having a barbecue, the four of us in the backyard. My dad's like, "We got to talk about something." We said, "Okay." He said, "I'm leaving this company. I'm going to be taking over and buying a health club in downtown Philadelphia." We said, "That makes sense." He's been into bodybuilding his entire life. He still competes in bench press contests around the world to this day. He holds multiple national and world records.
It wasn't out of the scope of him wanting to do that, but what he followed that up with why he was doing that was out of the scope. He said, "The reason why I'm leaving this company is because they're under investigation with the FBI for insurance fraud. They are investigating me. I can no longer be a part of that company. I'm going to be putting my energy and efforts into growing this new business for the family." He goes, "There is the distinct possibility that I may go on house arrest. I want to be upfront with all of you." We appreciated that.
As things proceeded, my dad was ramping up this gym. I then transferred to community college for summer and a semester, and then transferred to Temple. In between that time period was his sentencing. It was not house arrest. He got sentenced to 24 to 36 months in federal prison which means he wasn't going to be there to take care of the gym. The keys to the gym were turned over to me shortly before my 19th birthday.
I was thrown into the ring of entrepreneurship to the point where I didn't have any learning curve. I had to learn as I went along for the ride, but I fell in love with entrepreneurship. I always correlate a lot of things from my journey back to health and wellness, because I had to learn about consistency, routine, time-blocking, boundaries, and defining the difference between work-life balance.
I competed in bodybuilding. I did powerlifting. I learned so many systems and structures in my career. I spent eighteen years as a gym owner, personal trainer, and sports nutritionist. I did corporate wellness speaking to various companies. I loved it, but I love people. My father appreciates my journey through his falters through his business career because out of the dark come light. People always ask me, "Would you want it to be any different?" I said, "No."
There were a lot of things that happened. There were millions made and millions lost. I went through two different divorces during that time period. Luckily, I found the woman of my dreams in my wife, Nancy. I became a father to now a beautiful little boy, Taylor. I lost a house. I had to file for personal bankruptcy. There were a lot of ups and downs, but the armor that I learned to wear every single day that I showed up as an entrepreneur primed me for facing adversities, being resilient, and understanding that the entrepreneur roller coaster is a real thing.
What's the first thing that you do when you get on a roller coaster? You pull down the handlebars and you enjoy the ride. There are dips, ups, and downs. You go fast and slow. There are twists and turns. Sometimes you go backward on some roller coasters like in business. A lot of my journey has been like a roller coaster, but it's been one of the most gratifying things.
How LinkedIn came into play was in 2013, I was at the point in my career, fifteen years in, and almost 50,000 hours coached one-on-one, personal training, and nutritional counseling, I was looking for another way to diversify my time. I was tired of trading time for dollars. I want everyone to think about this question. Someone asked me, they said, "If you got sick or injured, where you physically couldn't perform your responsibility in your job anymore, you couldn't train people or get to the gym and the gym went under, what's your plan B? How would you then make money?"
For me, network marketing was a perfect model because I was already in the health and wellness space. I was already a reputable and trusted source for my clientele in the Philadelphia area. I chose that as my business model due to the high-income rewards, if done the right way, but the low barrier of entry because my last gym, the third one that I ended up closing several years ago and having to file personal bankruptcy to do that, costs $700,000 to open. You compare that to a network marketing opportunity, it's a few hundred dollars. It's like comparing apples to bowling balls, but the other thing is that I never treated it like a few hundred dollars a month investment.
A lot of network marketers and online marketers treat their business correlated with the amount of money it took to invest. When I invested $700,000 into that gym, you better believe I was going to do whatever I could not only to make that money back but make money on top of that. I was already primed and understanding that no matter where I was coming in, in the ladder of success that I was about to climb, I was going to put in $700,000 worth of effort into a $200 starter kit that I got from the company that I chose to join, or $1 million worth of effort, whatever it is.
I shot to the top of the ranks of the company within two years. I started making about $10,000 a month in that time period. It was because of a strategy that I started utilizing and created leveraging LinkedIn. I don't work with just network marketers. I work with business coaches, high performers, financial service professionals, but it started with what I knew best, and that was online marketing. I take the online marketing model and make it applicable to any business, no matter what industry that you're in.
I was at a conference and this person who was heading the conference was calling all these people up on stage. They were going over the art of connecting, conversations, and the law of numbers. He was asking each one of these individuals, "Write down on a piece of paper how many conversations you've had to have to get to where you are right now in business." The smallest amount of conversations I saw was 7,000.
The initial thought was, "Holy shit." You're only allowed "5,000 friends" on Facebook. Everyone that's reading this knows that no one has the emotional capability to have 5,000 friendships. It doesn't work that way. At the very same time, I was reading a wonderful book called Go for No. There are two versions. There's the original by Andrea Waltz and Richard Fenton and there's another one that's co-authored by Ray Higdon, which is for network marketers. Not saying that's a bad book, but the original book by Andrea Waltz and Richard Fenton is the bee's knees. That is the book that you need to read.
It's one of my Bibles outside of The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. This is a book that I come back to every single year. Andrea and I have developed a nice friendship over the last few years. We talk at least once every other quarter to check in and see how things are going. On the cover of the book, it says it all. It says, "Yes is the destination, but no is how you're going to get there."
Mastering LinkedIn: Every single day that you show up primes you to face adversities. It primes you to be resilient and understand that the entrepreneur roller coaster is real.
A lot of people in business chase the yeses and they get deflated by the noes, but I was doing the reverse. I'm like, "That's it. I'm going to get inflated by the noes because the yeses will then start to show up after I get enough noes," but I said to myself, "Where could I go through the number of qualified connections and conversations to ramp things up and get to that number of yeses to grow my business?" The answer is not Instagram or Facebook. The answer was LinkedIn. I hopped on there. I started leveraging it the best that I knew. I figured it out as I went. I'm self-taught like everything I've done in my life and I cracked the code.
I started helping a couple of my friends within the profession. I was telling them a bit of what I was doing. My one buddy reached back out to me about two weeks after I showed him what to do. He texted me, "You got to call me." I called him and I said, "What's up?" He goes, "Whatever you have figured out, it works. You should be helping people with this." He goes, "I have fourteen calls booked this week. I've never had that many calls booked in one week before."
That was the birth of me understanding that I was onto something. Most online marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners struggle in one key area. Money mindset could be a separate conversation. It could be maybe posting on social media, but the number one pain point for most entrepreneurs is lead generation.
Not having enough people to talk to and interested people in what you have. I want to point out a couple of key things to the readers that I want to make sure they land with you. For those of you reading, first of all, how amazingly brave your father had to be to have that conversation with you, but equally how brave you had to be to step into suddenly filling his shoes and owning this gym that was $700,000 to get started. Notice the bravery, but what I also want you guys to notice is his growth mindset and his willingness to learn new things and pivot.
He was this gym owner, well-respected, pivoted into network marketing because it made sense for his brand. He then pivoted into learning LinkedIn as a niche area because he knew he needed that plan B and needed more people to talk to. He was willing to learn something new and become an expert at it. He could have looked at any of these as problems, barriers, challenges, reasons to give up, and instead, he used them as reasons to excel. I wanted to point that out. Your story is fascinating.
I want to pivot off of something that you said. You mentioned the word niche, which is beyond important. For me, when I closed my last health club, I was leveraging LinkedIn and building my network marketing business, I ended up shortly after that retiring from building my network marketing business, because it didn't feel right for me to teach and charge people for something that I was using for my own business, for my network marketing.
I wanted to be almost like a consultant to the profession where there were no financial ties. I didn't have to worry about being non-compliant. I wanted to be compliant. Here's the thing, what made me and what still makes our company so unique is that I could have been a social media coach and taught social media. When people think about social media, where does their mind go? Their mind goes to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, everywhere, but what made my journey unique is I niche down from day one.
I said, "I'm not going to teach social media," even though I could. I know a lot about all the social media platforms because I'm on them every single day, but I'm going to focus on that one track. I'm going to focus on LinkedIn because I want to separate myself from everyone else. Let everyone else be a social media coach, but I'm going to focus on a strategy that has proven to work for thousands of people that I've worked with for several years and I'm going to leverage that. That's my message to anyone that's reading this.
This is something that we take people through in our mastermind called Expert Authority is we make people niche down. You may be involved in a company that offers multiple different facets of solutions, pick one. The problem is this, people think the wider they go, the more people they can help, but the wider you go, the more diluted your message becomes. You want to narrow your focus.
If you're involved in a company that focuses on skincare, health and wellness, whatever it is, pick one. Go the skincare route and become the skincare specialist. Go the wellness route and become a wellness professional. The more that you niche yourself down, the more focused you're going to be. The less mixed messaging you're going to be to the people choosing online, so people are not going to be confused about what you do.
I couldn't agree more because if you're trying to speak to everyone, you're resonating with no one. Everyone's like vanilla and they move on and lose interest. For those of you reading, the most common thing I hear too is, "I don't have enough people to talk to. I don't have a big enough audience. I don't have enough leads." Imagine going from that place of feeling like that to suddenly having fourteen booked calls on your calendar like Scott's friend did. Finish telling us the story.
I realized that I had landed on something. It was that pain point and realizing that a lot of people didn't have the resources to generate high-quality leads. They were still focusing on friends, family, and low-hanging fruit and they weren't growing their business the right way. I sat down like I would writing any routine out for a personal training routine or a nutritional program.
I started writing down my structure and what I was doing on LinkedIn as my daily order of operations, my DOAs. I put some structure around that, created some videos, purchased a domain, recorded some videos, and that was the launch of my business. I went all-in on it. My wife and I co-own the company. We're a full-scale marketing and branding firm. I focus more on the LinkedIn side and then we have other umbrellas of team members that help our clients with other things, but that's how I started leveraging myself as the expert around LinkedIn.
I didn't call myself a LinkedIn expert. Other people started calling me a guru and an expert. I adopted that from the people that I was working with because of the results that they were getting. That obviously led to a number of bestselling books and my top podcast. I mentioned prior that I trained some of the largest companies and financial firms in the world, teaching the representatives how to use LinkedIn to grow their business.
I love that not only are you willing to teach the large corporations, but you're still willing to work with individual entrepreneurs like myself and the rest of the readers. We're so blessed to have you. You found the right way to use LinkedIn. For people who are reading and the reason they're here is because they haven't used LinkedIn in the past, but they want to start, what's the right way to start using LinkedIn?
You're reading this because we titled this, The Four Layers of LinkedIn. There are a lot of strategies to LinkedIn. I don't want to dilute anyone else's strategy. What I want everyone to do is picture a layer of cake. You have the big base at the bottom and then you have your medium base, small base, and the figuring on the top, call it a wedding cake. If you remove one of those layers, the cake will topple over and it doesn't work. What I'm going to go over with you in a quick, but streamlined, and actionable way is leveraging LinkedIn from a foundational aspect to get results. This is exactly how it started for me.
The first layer is optimizing your profile. What a lot of people don't know is that when Microsoft bought LinkedIn out back in 2015, they embedded something called SEO, Search Engine Optimization, keyword searching within all of our profiles. There's a dashboard on all of our LinkedIn profiles and it will say, "Here's how many searches you've appeared in. Here's how many people saw your last post. Here's how many people viewed your profile."
If those numbers are astoundingly low, it means your profile is not optimized. On average, I appear in close to 1,500 searches a week, so 200 searches a day that I'm appearing in. Also, I have about 1,000 people viewing my profile every seven days. You want to talk about instant visibility, but instant rapport and connection, that's where you're going to find it. Every section of your profile needs to be filled out the right way.
When you say that you show up in 1,500 searches a week, it's not that they're searching for Scott Aaron. It's that they're searching for some content area and your name pops because of that.
You have to use specific keywords. LinkedIn will even show you as you start to get analytics because your profile is optimized. They will show you the keywords that people put into the search engine in order to find you and have you appear in that search. Creatively, what do you do? You take those keywords and you flutter them all throughout your profile to optimize it even more. LinkedIn is literally handing you the keys to the castle. This is the free version of LinkedIn.
I don't believe in paying for a premium navigator or recruiter. Everything that we have done with our company and all of the thousands of clients that we've worked with, no one has to pay-to-play. LinkedIn is a free platform. If I'm going to use a platform that offers a free way to do it, you better believe I'm going to figure out how to use it. That's exactly what I did.
Mastering LinkedIn: A lot of people in business chase the yeses and get deflated by the nos.
Many platforms now are pay-to-play. If you're not putting money down, you're not going to get anything out of it. You might stay real busy, but you're not going to make any money. I love that LinkedIn provides the opportunity to do all of this organically and free.
The fourth layer is where you do the investing. That's in your content. The true value of the time that you're giving is the real value of what you're investing on LinkedIn. The time that you give people and the content that you provide. Making sure that you fill out your profile the right way, where it's optimized, where you're exposing your brand, not a company that you partnered with. Even though Nancy and I own our business, we are still on LinkedIn as our individual selves. We are the business owners, voice, face, and the reason why people want to connect with us.
You need to make sure you have a proper headshot. Your headline shouldn't be one of those typical headlines that you see on LinkedIn, where I help entrepreneurs scale to 6 and 7 figures doing this, that, or the other. That is a statement that is not a keyword-searchable headline. If you look at my headline, it says, "Expert Authority Mastermind, Business Coach, Branding, Marketing, Podcast Host, Lead Generation."
You have to think about the person that you want to connect with. If I was that person, what would I be punching into the search engine to find me? When you start thinking about it from the external point of view, I call it the passenger side perspective, not the driver's side. Don't think about it as yourself, think about it for that person that you want to connect with. What would they be searching on LinkedIn in order to find you?
You use those keywords in your headline and about me section, which is the section of your profile where you can tell people who you are, about your journey, how you got there, what you're doing now, and why you love doing what you're doing. It's a way for you to share your story and your experience. The section under that is your experience section. This is your business journey. You don't list things in the experience section like you would a resume. You want to bring some life to it.
You should list at least three different experiences. The top experience is what you're doing right now that you want to be most visible. Within each experience, there should be a 3 to 5 sentence description for each of those experiences, so when someone goes to read about what you do, they understand what it is that you do because you've provided a description of that.
That's fascinating because so many people assumed that LinkedIn should be like a digital resume and that they should just list all their jobs. Once you put on the hat of realizing it's an SEO engine, your entire profile can become a lead magnet for you.
Here's the cool thing. Microsoft bought them out. They connect everything to Yahoo, Bing, and Google. If I google myself, one of the first things that will come up on the top page, if not the first thing, it's not my website, it's my LinkedIn profile. Google is driving traffic back to your LinkedIn profile. You're getting external views, not just from people on LinkedIn, but for everyday people searching for business coaches. Google is going to recognize professional networking platforms and profiles to connect people with. LinkedIn is a professional social media platform.
Only if you have SEO keywords working in your favor.
If you're not appearing on the first page or one of the first results, your profile is probably not optimized.
Is there such a thing as a wrong way to set up a profile? Let's continue walking through because I'm fascinated already. There are things in here that I didn't even expect.
If you are reading this and you maybe are part of a network marketing company or affiliate marketing, or whatever it is, you don't want to mention the company or the products that you represent. What people fail to recognize in network marketing, you're a sales rep of that company, you're not a business owner. The company that you've partnered with own the products that you distribute. They own your downline. They control the pricing and compensation plan, but the only thing that you do own that they can't own is your personal brand.
You need to go all-in with your personal brand, call yourself a health coach, a wellness entrepreneur, whatever it is, but you never mention the company or the products that you're distributing, because that will push people away because there is a negative narrative around network marketing, because of the people that do it wrong, not the people that do it right.
It raises resistance and you don't ever want to do that.
You want to lower the wall of resistance and you want to raise the level of connection and attractability, so people will want to reach out to you. Underneath the experience section, there are three other sections. Licenses and certifications, whether they relate to your business or not, you can list. I still have my health and wellness certifications listed, because again, it shows my business journey of how I got to where I am.
You want to lower the wall of resistance and raise the level of connection and attractability so people will want to reach out to you.
Education, you want to list undergraduate, associate's degrees, Bachelor's, Doctorate, Master's, but leave the dates off that you went. List the university and don't put dates in because there are age discriminations going on with specific things on LinkedIn. I work with people of all generational ages. I work with a lot of Baby Boomers, new entrepreneurs, and older entrepreneurs.
Below is the volunteer experience. It is the philanthropic side of your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn loves philanthropic activities that connect you to other people that are also partnered with specific, maybe nonprofits that you've done some work with or organization. I've partnered with three different organizations where my wife and I are very philanthropic. We love giving back as much and as often as we can. You do want to list those charities as well.
The one section that gets pushed to the side on your profile is your personal recommendations. This I called the better business bureau of LinkedIn. This is where your credibility is defined. I have close to 470 written recommendations of people that I've worked with over the years that share their experience of what it was like working with me and how it's helped their business. What I always encourage people to do is as you work and connect with people, whether they're friends, family, people that you know, did work with, currently work with, an old boss, a new boss, ask them to write you a recommendation based on your character.
People look at your credibility. Something that you and I were talking about is you want your credibility to speak for itself. You want the credibility to sell, so you don't have to. We create client acquisition in our company every single week based on how our profile looks. That happens with our clients every single day. That's the first and most important layer, which is the pure optimization of your LinkedIn profile.
There's a lot to unpack in there too, but I could see how if done correctly, it's doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. You take the time to set it up once, but then all those search engines are running based on everything you plugged in. You're getting found thousands of times a week simply by filling out your profile correctly.
People continue to try to discredit LinkedIn because everyone talks about Facebook and Instagram all the time. LinkedIn gets pushed to the side. It's one of those things that once you start focusing on it, you start seeing the power of it. You may be saying to yourself in your head right now, "I don't know how to use it," but remember, you didn't have to use Instagram or Facebook either until you learned. That's why we're here now.
When you start focusing on something, you start seeing its power.
Mastering LinkedIn: The number one pain point for most entrepreneurs is lead generation.
If we take a page out of Scott's playbook, we have a growth mindset, and we're willing to learn something new, there's no reason we can't learn how to use this amazing platform. I can see why your profile would be the base layer of the cake, the foundational piece. Without that, nothing else is going to work for you.
All the sections have to talk to each other.
What's the next step? Once someone has their profile optimized, what should they focus on next?
It's the build of their network. This is where I always tell people, "There are two types of connection buckets on LinkedIn." You're allowed 30,000 connections on LinkedIn compared to the 5,000 on Facebook. It's six times larger, but the average age and income of someone on Facebook and Instagram are 18 to 29, with a yearly income of $30,000 a year or less. The average age and income of someone on LinkedIn are 30 to 55, with a yearly income of $100,000 a year or more.
If you're looking for business-minded people that have a healthier money mindset, you're going to want to start spending some time on LinkedIn. There are two types of connections that you want to have within your LinkedIn network. The first bucket is your ideal client. You need to think about whatever your business is, product goods, or service you're selling, who is that dream client, who is that person that I don't want to say as a lay-down sale, but if they follow whatever you're going to teach and offer them, they're going to rock it out.
Again, you want to have that narrow focus. You want to niche down. You don't want to spread too wide because then everything is going to get drowned out. You need to think about, "Who is that person that can best benefit most from what I'm offering with whatever business I have?" You want to connect and search for those types of people by putting them into the search engine. If it's other personal trainers, nurses, accountants, whatever you best relate to, you put that in the search engine.
You want to have that narrow focus. You don't want to spread too wide because then everything is going to get drowned out.
The other connection bucket that a lot of people don't focus on is the power partner. The way that I described this is that if a personal trainer was your ideal client, a gym owner would be your power partner because gym owners employ personal trainers. You start connecting with all these high businesses thought leadership type gym owners that you make connections with, establish rapport and trust. "Do you have any trainers that would be open to connecting with me, where I can do some networking? I have something to offer them," or whatever it is.
You need this healthy balance. Sometimes, in all honesty, your power partners play a more vital role than your ideal client because the power partners have networks. They know people. You want to connect with people who know other people. That's why I always take people through in my coaching program, getting clear on your ideal client and your power partner avatar, because with clarity comes results.
If you have clarity, then you have clear action. Clear action equals clear results. You don't want anything foggy or too basic where you're throwing darts at a dartboard with your eyes closed and hoping you hit a bullseye. That would be the secondary layer. Optimizing that profile and then inviting the right people to connect with you, so they're seeing the profile that you've created.
If you have clarity, then you have clear action, and clear action equals clear results.
That makes sense to me because the network is all about those connections. The first layer, second layer connections, people go there to network. That's what they go there for. It makes sense that these power partners should be the people you could network with to find your perfect people. That's so helpful. My mind is going down this spiral of how I would create this for my own business. Assuming that you have that base foundation of your profile, you now know who your ideal client or customer is and the power partners that can help you find them, what do you layer on next in this cake?
Now that you're connecting with those ideal clients and power partners, you're getting people to accept and you're growing your network, you have to message these people. My wife always says, "Lead generation is a contact sport." You need to have conversations and get out there and talk to people if you're going to grow your business.
You and I talked about this that we've received those eighteen paragraph-long drunk logs of people trying to pitch, sell, check out this video, watch this link, go here, and schedule a call. People skip right over the dating portion of connecting with someone on LinkedIn and they ask them right to the bedroom. That's not how it works. You're not looking for a one-night stand on LinkedIn. You're looking to build a meaningful connection and relationship.
I've created something called the magic formula. It's a three-step process to crafting a message that is best for you and your network. It breaks down like this. You never want to start your message, "Dear Adrienne." If you make it too professional, it mimics some of the software and automated messages that people are sending through marketing companies that they shouldn't be using because it goes against the user agreement.
Everyone's getting these too professional-type messages and it leads to a lower response rate than if you wrote and crafted a much more relaxed and neutral message such as, "Hey, Adrienne. It's so great to be connected to you." It's warmer, inviting, and more welcoming. That's the first part of your message.
For those reading, who are thinking, "I can't get started on LinkedIn. I'm not like a super stuffy professional." The great news is you don't need to be. In fact, if you try to be that, you're going to blend in with everyone else. You're not going to stand out. You can be more relaxed. That's what's going to work in your favor.
People are on LinkedIn for two reasons, to network with other business professionals and to engage with other business professionals through content or messaging. You want to be on there. It's so much fun because it's a global networking event every single time you log on. It's not like Facebook, which is like a barbecue where people hang out and commiserate. It's not like Instagram, where it's more of a reality TV show. It's the actual reality of what's going on in the business. If you want to grow your business, you need to network with other business-minded people.
After you have your warm opening, the second part of your message should be bridging the gap or I call lowering the drawbridge, where you're establishing a connecting point between you and the person that you're messaging. Say my ideal client is another business coach like Adrienne. I'm going to establish that connecting point as being business coaches. "Hey, Adrienne. It's so great to be connected to you. I noticed that you were a business coach, as am I. I would love to hear how things are going. Share more about what's going on with me and how we can support each other here on LinkedIn."
I've done two things. Number one, I've established the connecting point between myself and Adrienne. When she reads the message, she's going to be like, "That makes sense. Scott's a business coach. I'm a business coach. That's why he's reaching out to network.” Any high performing business professional loves to network and they love connecting with other people.
The second thing I did was I used the second, most important word in the English language, outside of someone's first name. That word is support. It's been scientifically proven that when someone reads the word support and says it in their head, it triggers their brain to release a chemical called oxytocin. For people that are not familiar with our brain chemicals, serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, cortisol, oxytocin is our feel-good brain chemical. This person is feeling good as they're reading this message.
The third and final part to put a bow on the message is something that I call a CTA, a Call To Action. Questions lead to answers, statements lead to nowhere. If I was to say, "Adrienne, let me know when's good for you." She's never going to let me know because I haven't asked her when is good because you have to ask to get. I would simply finish with, "Do you have any time this week or next week for a call or a Zoom?" You state the person's name, bridging the gap, reaching out to them, letting them know the established connecting point, and you finish with that call to action to get them from online to offline as quickly as possible.
I get inundated with messages where it's very clear the minute I start reading, someone's trying to sell me something. If you sent me that message, I would think, "He's like me and he wants to connect and help me, not just sell me something. I could meet next week." I wouldn't even hesitate.
Mastering LinkedIn: The more you niche yourself down, the more focused you're going to be, and the less mixed messaging you're doing, and people will not be confused about what you do.
The big key there is when you do connect with the right person, it becomes a very organic natural conversation where you're flowing back and forth. When you share your story about what it is that you do and you strike a chord with that other person's pain points that you may know they now have, you're filling a gap or a void in something that they're looking to improve upon. They may take an interest in what you're doing right away. "Tell me how you help people. I'm looking for something like that." I can't tell you how many organic clients I've acquired that way, where it was having a simple conversation.
Connecting with the right person results in a very organic, natural conversation where you're just flowing back and forth.
I was on a podcast with one of my old friends and I was doing training. As soon as we got off the podcast, she goes, "I need to work with you." She hired me the next week. Again, when you add value and you make an organic connection and you let people what it is that you do and how you help other people not, "Here's what I could do for you." It's more about having that organic connection and how you can serve one another because people don't want to be sold to. No one buys anything from anyone that they don't know, like, and trust. You have to build that know, like, and trust first and foremost, so the sales start to happen on the backend.
Prospecting is important in business, but already what you're describing is so much more authentic. It's about caring about the person on the other end, thinking about, "What's going to make them want to be receptive to even talk to you in the first place?" You're not trying to jump to the sale. You're just trying to connect.
The cherry on top is content creation. This is where a lot of people don't know what to do. The easiest thing they do is, "Whatever I'm posting on Facebook and Instagram, I'm going to put it up on LinkedIn. It's social media. I'm going to put out selfie and risqué pictures up," and whatever you're doing. The rule of thumb is whatever you're posting on Facebook and Instagram, don't post on LinkedIn.
What people should be posting on LinkedIn is anything that educates and informs your audience. How-to posts, list posts, or educate your audience on something new that relates to the business that they're looking to grow. If you're a meditation coach, "Three simple ways to get started with your meditation practice, A, B, and C."
That can be done in multiple different facets. You can do that through a general post, video content, or an article. You share that content in a group that you're in on LinkedIn. You can create a poll. In ascending order, what my favorite to my least favorite, video is number one for me, polls are number two, posts, articles, and then conversations in groups.
At a bare minimum, here's what people need to do as far as content creation. Post three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that's it. You don't need to post multiple times a day like other social media platforms. You don't even need to post every day. The algorithm is much different on LinkedIn. I'm still getting traction now from a video I did a few weeks ago. You need to decipher, "What should I be doing?" You can say, "I'm going to do a video on Monday, post on Wednesday, and a poll or an article on Friday." I like doing polls because it's all market research.
I did a poll that asked my audience, "Do you work on weekends? Yes, no, and I wish I didn't." People were commenting why they can't take off on the weekend, because I believe in work-life balance. Nancy and I stop at around 5:00 PM on Fridays and we do nothing until Mondays at 10:00 AM. We have all that time off. Almost 100 people have already voted. I'm seeing the disparity of what people are voting, not the people that are, "Yes, I'm off," but the people that aren't off.
I can reach out to them and give them some tips on how to create more work-life balance, what they can start doing to create boundaries, where they don't have to work on the weekend. It's all about getting that market research or even better, I can see all the people and if there's a big disparity of people that have voted, "I don't take the weekends off." I can do an educational video next Monday on the power of creating a schedule where you don't have to work on Saturdays and Sundays.
As long as you can wrap your heads, hearts, and arms around the fact that everything that you should be doing on LinkedIn is value-added, "What can I do to pour into people?" Going back to the passenger side perspective, instead of the driver's side perspective, "What information can I provide each week on LinkedIn that is going to leave that ideal client or power partner that I've invited in better?"
It's a push-pull method. The push is you organically messaging those new contacts, the way that I went over in layer number three, the right way, but the pull are those people that are not sure about you yet. They want to get to know you through your content. The pull is you engaging them through content creation, writing content that speaks directly to those two different buckets of people that have come into what you're doing.
People wonder why no one's engaging. They're not engaging because you're not writing content that speaks to that person that you've invited in. If you're building a network that's built around wellness professionals, you better be producing content that speaks directly to wellness professionals. It's all synergistically connected, starting with the optimization of your profile, the building of the right network, messaging those people, and providing value-added content at least three days a week with whatever methodology you want. It could be 3 posts, 3 videos, 2 videos, 1 poll, whatever it is. Block off Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to engage with your networks.
One thing that I'm hearing that's unique and different that I'd love to pester a little bit to make sure that I'm interpreting this right, on a lot of other platforms, a lot of the experts will tell you, "Share tips or value-added content about whatever your niche area is, but also show them who you are as a person because they need to see the person behind the business." I'm hearing on LinkedIn, it's fine if it's a little heavier on the value-added content, the tips, the list, or the checklist. Is it accurate to say that you don't have to share as much of your personal brand, you can be a little bit more business forward?
Correct. If you want to look at the social media platforms with how they're being used, you share a little bit more of your personal life, story, and journey through Facebook and Instagram. That's where that visual attraction comes from. LinkedIn is not a visual attraction platform. It's an educational and information platform. I'm going to warn all the ladies, if you start putting risqué pictures that are showing a little bit too much cleavage or a little butt, you're going to get a lot of creepy old dudes liking and commenting on your stuff.
I always tell people, I don't care how much engagement that stuff gets. What is it doing for your business? Is it leading to conversations? Is it leading to transactions in your business? A lot of people do focus too much on the vanity metrics of social media. LinkedIn has the highest percentage of engagement, visibility, and reach out of any social media platform. It's not based on the vanity metrics that you see. It's the external engagement that you get from people reaching out to you, messaging, and consult calls that are booked by how you're showing up on the platform.
It's such a different platform and audience, and what they're expecting is different. The reason they're there is because they want it to be different than other platforms. It's perfectly acceptable and in fact, it's expected to be a little bit more business forward. You don't have to put as much of your personal brand out there. You want to be who you are as a person, but you're not having to share stuff about your kids, family, pets, and all that stuff.
You'll see people trying to do that. They'll put on the heartstrings of people. Again, it's for vanity metrics. They're doing it for likes, comments, and engagement. If you want to do that, that's fine, but how's that converting into your business? If it's not converting into your business, you're wasting your time. It's better to take that slow road than the easy road, because Les Brown says this all the time, "Those that take the easy road end up living the hard life, but those that take the hard road end up creating and living an easy life."
I can see how that would be true with this platform. I'm sure the readers have been inspired at this point, realizing how different and unique this platform is and how it can be simple. You need to nail a few fundamental steps and you can be successful, but the foundation has to come first. If people are looking for a way to figure out how to build that profile correctly, how might they do that? Do you have anything for us that could help us there?
I do have a free gift for all the readers. It is my Free LinkedIn Profile Optimizer. It's a four-page PDF that goes into visual depth, everything that we went over in the first layer. How your headline should be structured, the summary section should be written, the about me section, your experiences should be structured, the group to join if you choose to join them, and all the other key sections. It's my free gift to everyone. It's the most important layer.
If you don't have the right profile optimized, to begin with, you're not going to have an engaged network and the right connections. Your messaging is going to fall short and the value-added content that you provide is going to fall on deaf ears. It has to start with your profile. That's why I want to start everybody with that free gift.
Thank you for sharing that. For those of you reading and you're realizing that you're brand new to LinkedIn and wanting to start off the right way from the very beginning, you're going to want to scoop that up. Even for those of you who have been around a little bit longer and realizing now after reading this, that you've had a LinkedIn profile forever, but you're not leveraging it to the top of its capability with some of the SEO features and the profile setup, scoop this up because this can take you to the next level of status and help you to start getting some results. Speaking of results, with all the clients that you've worked with, who are following these four layers or strategies, what types of results are possible? Can you help paint a picture of the transformations that people can see if they start following this path?
Mastering LinkedIn: Show them who you are because they need to see the person behind the business.
There are a number of stories that I can share, but I'm going to share one. This should solidify why you need to follow these steps. My wife, Nancy, and I did a LinkedIn workshop back in May of 2021. We broke down these four layers into four separate nights. We went in-depth in profile, searching, connecting, messaging, all that stuff. The crazy thing was on day three is when the messaging begins and they start booking sales calls.
One of the people that attended that workshop closed a client two days after they messaged them for the first time following this free simple strategy. When people say, "Scott, this works," we're giving you the keys to the castle. This is it. If you optimize your profile, if you connect with the right people, if you message them the proper way that leads to them responding back to hop on a call, it's a numbers game at that point. If you provide that value-added content, which will engage them in a whole other way, you're going to succeed. The long and the short that I tell people is that the only way this system doesn't work is if you don't apply it. If you apply it, you will see the results.
It's so simple. I love that within days of implementing it, you could have customers and clients rolling in. I love that you said it's a numbers game because I say this all the time, when it comes to online business, especially using social media, it is a numbers game, but only if you play the game correctly. You're giving them the keys to the castle. You're showing them exactly how to do it correctly. For those people who are ready to get going, already scooped up your freebie, and they're starting to think about content, how do they make sure they have their content correct? Any tips for them on that?
My wife and I, Nancy, we're doing a simple content creation workshop. What we're going to be taking people through is a custom routine that Nancy and I have created for ourselves and our clients, showing you how to create simple pillar creative content that can be repurposed and restructured into multiple pieces of content for all social media platforms, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
If you're that person that conceptually understands what they should be doing, but you struggle with bringing your voice behind the content that you want to provide, we invite you to join our free workshop. It's a lot of fun. It's done through Zoom, so people can see us. We do live Q&A at the very end of the workshop on day five. It's a great way that we can pour value into every one to show them how simple it is to create content once they have the foundational pieces.
You can scoop up the free gift of learning how to set up your profile and then jump into the content challenge and take it to the next level. We appreciate your abundance and willingness to share your expertise with us. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I'm pretty motivated to spend more time on LinkedIn. I personally found it to be extremely helpful. I'm sure the readers did as well.
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About Scott Aaron
Internationally acclaimed and award-winning online marketer, 3x best-selling author, top podcaster, and speaker, Scott Aaron, is the go-to specialist when it comes to converting traffic, establishing connections, creating income using LinkedIn, and building personal brands.
Fully immersing himself in learning LinkedIn and social media strategies, Scott quickly gained traction as a leader in generating big results for other entrepreneurs, online business owners and business coaches.
Scott is passionate about helping fellow entrepreneurs achieve success while building their own network organically and without complicated and costly marketing tactics.
His program has helped thousands experience explosive growth following his proven system and strategies.
People-focused and result-driven, Scotts strategic approach to teaching others how to create wealth online and organic traffic is the game changer when it comes to competing in a saturated digital world.