[PODCAST] How to Unlock LinkedIn for B2B Results
JSB Talks Digital Podcast #97
JSB Talks Digital is a weekly digital marketing and social media podcast hosted by author, strategist, consultant, speaker and trainer Joanne Sweeney-Burke. Each Friday Joanne shares her digital marketing and social media insights from her work as CEO of Digital Training Institute.
In this episode #97, I discuss the power of LinkedIn for B2B results.
Coming up in today’s show:
- In Social Media News
- New QR Code for Facebook Business Pages
- LinkedIn helps you connect with people nearby
- The rise of the smart speaker
- I interview Melonie Dodaro, LinkedIn influencer and two-time author, about the ins and outs of LinkedIn for B2B results
- Shoutouts: Three B2B LinkedIn Hacks
- Ask JSB
- In JSB’s column, Why LinkedIn Is My Business’s Favourite Social Network
- Find out what LinkedIn tool saved my working week
Listen now:
Social Media News
New QR Code for Facebook Business Pages
If you tuned into last week’s episode of the podcast, you would have heard me discuss Nametags on Instagram. Well, it seems the rise of the QR continues with Facebook rolling out scannable codes for Pages.
Matt Navara spotted it and Tweeted some images.
Facebook has a QR code feature for Pages
You can set scanning of code to different actions e.g: Auro-Like Page or Check-in at location
h/t @wongmjane pic.twitter.com/UcdXwFqY5u
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) April 17, 2018
The new codes allow Page managers to create a range of scannable QR images for their Page in various formats.
Page managers can choose a code that:
- Automatically Likes the Page on the users’ behalf
- Checks in to your business location
- Connects to a recommendation screen for the Page
- Connects to your ‘View Offers’ listing
- Connects to a review Page
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LinkedIn helps you connect with people nearby
When you are attending large business events do you wonder who’s there and who you’d like to meet? Often event organisers don’t provide a list in advance and any good business owner worth his or her salt will realise it’s the people you meet which can really provide the ROI on attending an event.
LinkedIn have just announced a new feature. They are attempting to help us connect with people who are nearby at events.
“Find Nearby” uses our device’s Bluetooth to “scan” the people around us.
Image courtesy of We are Social Media
This requires all users to activate the feature to be discoverable. Once activated, we can choose to let people nearby discover us, for the next one to three days – or forever – which in LinkedIn’s terms, means weekdays 9am-5pm.
What do you think? Would this compliment your networking plan?
Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn to continue this conversation.
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The rise of the smart speaker
Google Home or Amazon Echo? Do you have a smart speaker yet?
A new study in the US reports that 20% of households with Wi-Fi have a smart speaker.
While we don’t have Irish stats to hand, we do know this trend is only going one way because my friends, welcome to the “Age of Assistance” where voice plays a big role.
According to comScore, one key reason is lower price points. Smart speakers tend to over-index in high-income homes, but lower income households have continued to gain ground.
Interview with Melonie Dodaro
In this episode, I interview Melonie Dodaro, is the founder of Top Dog Social Media and a leading expert on LinkedIn and social selling.
She’s the author of two books, including the #1 Amazon bestseller The LinkedIn Code and her brand-new book LinkedIn Unlocked. Melonie has trained over 27,000 businesses and individuals and appears on countless lists as a top sales and marketing influencer.
In this interview, we discuss the power of LinkedIn for B2B social selling.
Check out Melonie’s recent guest post on our blog: Complete Guide to Generate a Massive ROI with LinkedIn
Find out more about Melonie:
Watch to my video interview with Melonie:
Listen to my interview with Melonie:
My favourite quote from our chat:
Shout-Outs: Three B2B LinkedIn Hacks
In this part of the show I give shoutouts to brands, organisations or individuals whose work online is remarkable and worth talking about.
In this episode, I share three great LinkedIn hacks.
Three B2B #LinkedIn Hacks | #JSBTalksDigital #Podcast Click To Tweet1. Get more profile visits
To get more profile views make sure you create your custom clickable LinkedIn profile badge. You can then add it to your website, email signature and blog.
To do this: Click on ‘Edit your public profile’
I have it on my website footer and all inner pages.
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2. Use text iconography in your profile
To grab the attention of LinkedIn users, why not incorporate some text iconography. I don’t mean doing emoji overload, but just something that grabs attention.
The perfect tools for this is: https://lingojam.com/FancyTextGenerator
A warning however, sometimes the Unicode doesn’t work on iOS or Android so check your mobile LinkedIn profile when you add the next text.
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3. Use Photofeeler to split test LinkedIn Profile pics
How often have you heard social media teachers like JSB telling you to upload a professional head and shoulder shot with eyes looking down the lens of the camera – as your profile picture on LinkedIn.
While this is great advice and you should take it, did you know you could split test two of your favourite professional head shots.
Use https://www.photofeeler.com – a free online tool that lets people vote on your headshot.
Photofeeler has separate categories for Business, Social and Dating photos and 9 traits you can test for.
Ask JSB
In this part of the show I bring the voice of my listeners onto the podcast.
In this week’s Ask JSB, my question comes from Marie Claire Byard, founder of Now Media who wants to know…
Is it worthwhile going premium on LinkedIn?
I have had a Premium LinkedIn account for about 18 months. With any paid for service, the best advice is try before you buy!
Premium has proved very useful for my own professional networking and B2B sales efforts and here’s why:
- Generate leads and build your clientele with Sales Navigator.
- Get detailed business insights and expand your business with Premium Business.
You must decide if you are going to actively use the features premium offers. However, the basic service has fantastic benefits to suit all of us.
Don’t forget if you have a burning social media or digital marketing question, simply click on digitaltraininginstitute.ie/askjsb and leave me a voicemail. You can also send me your question to any of our social networks.
JSB’s Column: Why LinkedIn Is My Business’s Favourite Social Network
In today’s JSB’s column, I share why LinkedIn has become my business’s best social-selling friend.
Social selling can be an off-putting term if, like me, you take a long-term view of business. I’m cautious about aggressive sales tactics and in fact, I’m not that good at it. I’m much better and discovering a prospects pain points and finding a solution. In fact, that is social selling but it’s the outreach that is done differently
For me, LinkedIn has proven an invaluable tool for my business. Why, I hear you ask? Well over the past 18 months, here are the results I’ve had.
- Build up connections with marketing professionals in my niche
- Outreach to find marketing pros for my new video series
- Inviting marketing pros to contribute to a blog post
- Finding speakers for my conference
- Building my influence among influencers in my niche
- Because I’m paying for the service I’m using it consistently and have built out a tailored outreach plan for my business
I’ve been actively using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for four months.
- Allows you to perform multi-faceted searches for prospects (based on company size, industry, location, etc).
- Notifies you how you’re connected to people at the prospective client company.
- Shows employment trends at the department level which can be really helpful for targeting accounts.
- I wish that LinkedIn Sales Navigator had better notifications. It seems like they just don’t function correctly (shows I have a message but I don’t, etc).
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is well suited for somebody looking to perform specific searches for prospects. It is also well suited for opening another avenue of communication with prospects through InMail.
Finding ways to be introduced can be helpful as well, or where you’re just looking for some common ground to base an introduction off of.
Find out more at https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/sales-navigator.
If you want help developing your LinkedIn strategy, then get in touch. Simply email [email protected].
Social Media Tool of the Week: eLink Pro
The social media tool that saved my working week this week is eLink Pro
I want to signal a word of caution about this tool. Its usefulness comes with its ability to reach out and connect with potential prospects more easily. It replaces a very manual process with a more systemised one.
Start by inputting the keywords that are relevant to your business into eLink pro, and it will automatically search for the right matches for you.
eLink Pro not only filters the profiles of your potential prospects in bulk, it also engages with them on Twitter for you. But beware of over-automation.
The research phase is super useful, though!
Find out more at https://elink-pro.com/
I love feedback
I’d love to know what you think about this episode. So please get in touch by commenting below or tweet me @tweetsbyJSB or send me a snap to @jsbsnaps.
Listen: JSB Talks Digital Episode #97
I would like to thank Eoghan Murphy aka The Galway Gamer for producing my podcast series and to Flirt FM on the campus of NUI, Galway where I am based for the use of their studio.
