Social Marketing

635: Influencer Marketing: Observe Your Competitors, Grow Your Location Based Business, and Think Outside the Box with Brand Evangelist Rev Ciancio

Rev Ciancio is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist with 20 years of experience in digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content and local SEO. He has led many clients to new levels of local, national and international success in the hospitality, financial service and entertainment sectors.

He is also former agency owner as well as a former New York City bar owner. Rev is an “expert burger taster” and pens hospitality and marketing tips on his Instagram @revciancio as well as his LinkedIn Profile.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                       

“Be awesome at two things and outsource everything else.” - Rev Ciancio

“You are failing your business if you do not manage your online listings. Three out of four transactions for a business happen online on one of those sites before it ever happens on a business's website. So if you're not managing that information, you're basically letting the internet decide where your customer should go.” - Rev Ciancio

“Having a great website is important, but managing your information everywhere it lives is even more important.” - Rev Ciancio

Takeaways:

05:48 Success comes from being skilled at your core craft while understanding enough about business to make smart hiring choices.

08:48 Track your business metrics closely and recognize when performance stalls, as this signals the need for strategic changes.

16:26 Avoid complex solutions and focus on executing 3-4 simple, targeted strategies that can help your business move forward.

21:07 Before trying advanced marketing tactics, ensure you've covered fundamental marketing bases like email lists and social media posts.

29:08 For location-based businesses, managing online listings accurately is critical since most customer transactions start with online research.

Resources

• Foodie Tribe (Website)
• Rev Ciancio (Yext Profile)
• Rev Ciancio (Instagram)
• Rev Ciancio (Twitter)
• Rev Ciancio (LinkedIn)

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547: Amplifr: Automatic, Track and Scale Your Social Media Content, Traffic and Conversions with Nate Gadzhibalaev

Nate Gadzhibalaev is the founder of Amplifr, which is a social media automation service for marketers, agencies, and brands. Listen in to hear about Nate's unique challenges in the marketplace, starting in Europe and expanding his social tracking platform worldwide, growing as a non-English speaking company, as well as differentiating his company and its solutions.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“If you spend half a year on each experiment, it might take a very, very long time to find something that actually works for you and your company.” – Nate Gadzhibalaev

“Always be measuring and experimenting. The worst thing that you can do is take zero risks.” - Nate Gadzhibalaev

“You cannot get your time back, but you can earn a lot of money if you do a lot of experiments.” - Nate Gadzhibalaev

Takeaways:

02:17 Social media scheduling alone won't guarantee business success; you need strategic marketing techniques.

10:44 Always track your social media performance through detailed analytics to understand actual business impact.

18:48 Maintaining an active social media presence requires minimal effort - just 5-10 minutes per week.

22:54 When expanding a business to a new market, you can't just translate content - you must understand cultural nuances.

24:52 Spending money on marketing experiments is more valuable than spending excessive time trying to figure things out.

Visit Amplifr: Automate & Track Your Social Media

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541: Snappa: Template-Based Graphical Content Marketing for Social Media with Christopher Gimmer

Christopher Gimmer is here to talk to us about his amazing online tool called Snappa, which allows you to create social media graphics in a snap. If you've ever had issues hiring for graphics, trying to figure out complex software or feeling disappointed with feature-lacking template-based tools, then tune in to hear about the Snappa platform and give it a try.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“The more stuff that you add on the graphic, the worse it tends to become.” – Christopher Gimmer

“Sometimes you can have a great idea, but if you don't have a clear path to getting that product into customers' hands, that problem won't go away once you launch it.” - Christopher Gimmer

“With each thing we launched, we learned more and more, becoming more comfortable with the next thing.” - Christopher Gimmer

Takeaways:

00:07 Creating graphics for social media doesn't require advanced design skills when using the right tool.

00:36 Small businesses and marketers need quick, efficient design solutions that don't break the bank.

02:15 Not every graphic needs a professional designer, especially for content that disappears quickly online.

10:41 Simple design principles like contrast and minimalism can dramatically improve visual content. 17:11 Entrepreneurial skills learned in one project often translate directly to success in future ventures

Snappa: Quick & Easy Social Media Graphic Design Software

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519: LinkedIn on Crack: Develop Authority, Network Powerfully, Find Your Voice, and Land Speaking Gigs with JD Gershbein

One of the world’s first independent LinkedIn consultants and a leading pioneer in LinkedIn education, JD Gershbein serves ambitious professionals and culture-driven companies striving to make their mark in the Digital Age. Since 2006, he has drawn upon his diverse academic background—a fusion of psychology, neuroscience, and the humanities—and the improvisation skills he honed at Chicago’s famed Second City to bridge the knowledge gap between businesspeople and the online world.

Known as The LinkedIn Style Guide, JD is widely regarded as a leader in personal branding, social networking, and social entrepreneurship, and is blazing a trail as one of the most original personalities in the leadership development arena.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“Self-confidence is our most precious commodity when it comes to ourselves, our persona, and who we are and want to be in the real world.” – JD Gershbein

“If you believe it will work, then it will. If you believe that the people sending you invitations to connect are legitimate and conscientious, they turn out to be good.” – JD Gershbein

Resources

• JD Gershbein (Official Site)
• Owlish Communications(Website)
• JD Gershbein (LinkedIn)
• JD Gershbein (Twitter)

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459: Grow a Huge Following on Social Media Through Consistent Customer-First Edutainment with Jasmine Star

Jasmine Star is a photographer and business strategist from Newport Beach, California. She dropped out of law school to pursue her dreams.

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Jasmine tells us how to get noticed on social media and how to sell with edutainment without being "salesy" ... content creation ideas (i.e. books you're reading), how to find time for social every day, and how Jasmine used social media to sell a $25/month monthly subscription "template" service.

After she built an internationally recognized and award-winning business, she began consulting with entrepreneurs how they could use social media to grow their businesses. She's amassed over 600,000 followers on all of her social platforms and believes others can do the same to grow their business and pursue their passion.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“I never aim to be popular or cool. I aim to live my best life.” – Jasmine Star

“If you don't know where you're going, you're never going to be thankful when you arrive.” – Jasmine Star

“A brand is a series of memories, expectations, and stories that, when connected, make a consumer choose one business over another.” – Jasmine Star

Takeaways:

04:40 Building a successful business requires aligning your passion with practical strategies for making money.

11:20 Social media marketing is about providing value through educational and entertaining content, not just selling products.

20:50 Consistent daily effort and resilience are more important to business success than any single breakthrough moment.

22:15 Treat social media like a garden that needs daily tending to grow your business effectively.

26:43 Start small by connecting with brands and creators through micro-commitments and free resources before investing.

Resources

• Social Curator: Captions and Images Curated For Your Feed (Monthly Membership)
• Insta180: Grow Your Business (Instagram)
• Jasmine Star (Official Site)
• Jasmine Star (Instagram)
• Jasmine Star (Facebook)
• Jasmine Star (YouTube)
• Jasmine Star (Twitter)

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424: Social Media Success: Build Your Presence, Engagement and Traffic on Facebook Using Reciprocity, Followup, and Marketing with Nikki Yeager

Nikki Yeager is an entrepreneur and startup coach based in NYC. Her first company, EHR Tutor, was profitable from day one and quickly reached a million dollars a year while she was leading the sales and marketing effort. She now runs a holistic products company, The Relievery, designs for a non-gendered children's clothing line, Every Bean Boutique, and spends her free time doing consulting for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“If I'm going to spend time on something, I want there to be a reason for doing it—especially when you're in those early stages, or even when you're starting to grow but don't have the resources to just hire willy-nilly.” – Nikki Yeager

“Social media is just a digital version of real life. I always imagine that if I'm going out to a networking event, I would change what I'm talking about based on the people who are at that networking event.” – Nikki Yeager

“The ones getting a lot of engagement and potentially sales from those pages are usually the people who provide a back and forth. It's not just them sharing information—it's them actively engaging with their audience.” – Nikki Yeager

Takeaways:

02:21 Social media success is about converting followers into meaningful business relationships, not just collecting large numbers.

07:35 Treat online interactions like real-world networking by engaging with people regardless of their current follower count.

13:49 Small, engaged audiences can generate more revenue than large, passive follower bases.

16:51 Strategic social media engagement can open doors to valuable business partnerships and opportunities.

33:00 Entrepreneurs must embrace sales skills as a core part of building a successful business.

Resources

• Nikki Yeager (official site)
• Nikki Yeager on Facebook
• Nikki Yeager on LinkedIn
• Nikki Yeager on Twitter

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341: Innovation and Growth Hacking: Tailor Your Marketing Message to Your Audience Using Facebook Messenger Chatbots with Nick Kullin

Tune in right now to hear from early-stage growth hacker Nick Kullin, from Second Flight Consultancy. Nick believes that most people are too close to their product (or service), and that you need to identify what makes your audience tick. Instead of being one of those marketers 2-3 years behind who merely jumps on the bandwagon, be an innovator and see how communications are evolving. That means instead of boring email marketing, focus on Facebook ads, social media content, and Facebook Messenger chatbots.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“When no one's being innovative and everyone's doing the same thing, things become more expensive. Results become stagnant, and then people start trying to figure out why it's not working for them.” – Nick Kullin

“There's so much information out there, and the majority of people, when they look at content, don't look to learn something. They look to learn how to get out of something more.” – Nick Kullin

“The more relatable and humanistic we can make the digital world, the more receptive and trusting people will be, because they feel like they understand it.” – Nick Kullin

Takeaways:

02:47 Marketing success comes from understanding what truly keeps your customers up at night, not just pushing product features.

12:15 Facebook Messenger chatbots offer dramatically higher engagement rates compared to traditional email marketing.

19:22 Personalized marketing means talking differently to different customer roles, not creating entirely separate campaigns.

23:50 Most marketers are lazy, shooting without aiming and then trying to fix mistakes through split testing.

26:02 Small customer interactions and micro-commitments can guide potential buyers further through your sales funnel.

Resources

• Second Flight Consultancy (Agency)
• Schedule a Meeting with Nick (Website)
• Nick Kullin (LinkedIn)
• Nick Kullin (Twitter)

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336: Relationship Building, Social Media Marketing, and High Ticket Coaching with America’s Leading LinkedIn Coach Ted Prodromou

Ted Prodromou, The Social Media Guy, knows why you aren't getting business from LinkedIn. Many people use LinkedIn (and social media) as a spamming tool, and you should instead spend a few minutes a day to build relationships. Treat your job title as a headline, view the profiles of people you want to connect with, and connect with a few people a day.

Ted walks those prospects up the ladder by asking people something fun about their business, then tells them about his business and websites. He adds those people to Facebook audiences, retargets them with a Facebook pixel, and sends them through three surveys before getting them on a discovery call.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“If you treat people like we're talking face to face right now, and treat each conversation on LinkedIn like we're having this one here, it works like magic.” – Ted Prodromou

“Your profile is the key to success. Sixty percent of traffic is mobile now, so the first thing they see is your picture. You can put a background header—now they have a little banner space you can use to get your message out there.” – Ted Prodromou

“Don't sell on LinkedIn. Focus on starting conversations and building relationships, which lead to sales calls—and you get much more benefit out of it.” – Ted Prodromou

Takeaways:

02:53 Treat LinkedIn connections like real-life conversations, focusing on building relationships instead of immediate sales.

05:46 Craft a LinkedIn profile headline that highlights your unique value and attracts potential clients.

07:15 Spend 15-30 minutes daily on strategic LinkedIn activities to grow your professional network.

15:25 Use profile viewing as a soft approach to connect with potential clients without aggressive cold messaging.

20:35 Pre-qualify leads through surveys and understand their pain points before scheduling strategy calls.

Resources

• Ted Prodromou: The Social Media Guy (Official Site)
• Connect with Ted (LinkedIn)
• Seven LinkedIn Strategies to Get More Clients (Site)

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182: Strategic Social Media Marketing and Paid Traffic with Corinna Essa

Corinna Essa is an internationally recognized expert in social media marketing and the owner of Social Media Worldwide, a company that helps businesses grow their online presence without having to manage the day-to-day work themselves. She is known for her practical approach to social media, focusing on building real connections and providing value before making sales. Corinna is also an author and shares her knowledge through her blog and YouTube channel, both named Social Media Worldwide.

Corinna Essa from Social Media Worldwide wants to help you and your social media marketing efforts. She has a unique strategy when it comes to social media, which involves spending $1000 on an initial ad campaign to a free offer with no call-to-action, to then retarget (cookie) your best prospects and run ads to that already-engaged-audience.

Quotes:                                                                                                                                   

“When everyone starts doing the same thing, then it stops working. Marketers destroy everything, because they overdo things and then it stops working for everyone else who jumped on it a bit too late.” – Corinna Essa

“Getting cold traffic is easy—almost every social network now offers advertising tools. Getting clicks and traffic isn’t the hard part; the real challenge is driving conversions.” – Corinna Essa

“People forget the importance of warm traffic, and they don't take the time to turn cold traffic into warm traffic.” – Corinna Essa

Takeaways:

00:52 Social media works best when you focus on giving value and building trust before trying to sell anything.

04:42 Paid ads should first send people to useful content, not straight to a sales page.

12:33 If you post for free, aim for about 80% helpful content and only 20% promotion.

16:01 Using retargeting lets you show sales ads only to people who already showed interest in your first ad.

21:49 Turning cold traffic into warm traffic takes time and money, but it leads to better results in the long run.

Resources

• Social Media Worldwide (Website)
• Social Media Worldwide (Blog)
• Social Media Worldwide (YouTube)

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179: Strategic Content and Advertising: Increase Social Media Presence with Marty McDonald

Marty McDonald from Bad Rhino Inc. stops by to share some interesting social media marketing strategies that can apply to any business, online or offline. Marty shares some case studies with Victory Beer and Blind Squirrel Apparel and how he's been able to track improvement with his clients while being entertaining with his content and marketing specific calls-to-action.

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154: Crush It On Instagram: Build an Audience, Generate Leads, and Increase Sales with Luke Bender

Luke Bender from LukeBender.com shares his Instagram expertise. Instagram is a super popular social network (500 million users, second only to Facebook), where users can only post pictures as content. He shares his 30 minute per day strategy to get the most out of this high traffic social network:

• post between "every other day" and "once a day"
• research hashtags: find huge Instagram pages similar to yours and copy those tags
• follow people to get followers (you're limited to 60 per hour but shoot for 100 per day)

Resources

• Typorama (generate quote pictures)
• Later app (for posting)
• Iconosquare (analytics)

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Luke Bender is going to talk to us about Instagram. He's an Instagram marketing expert. He helps businesses and online entrepreneurs build a targeted audience, generate leads, and make sales using Instagram. Luke, what's happening with Instagram today?

Luke Bender: Oh exciting things are happening.

Robert Plank: Cool. I'm glad to hear and I can't wait to get all the details on that. Instagram. I know next to nothing about it. I know about Facebook, Twitter, maybe a little bit of Pinterest. I know that Instagram is a place where I guess people share photos and they can like stuff and there's hashtags, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Could you explain to us what is Instagram exactly and how does it fit in with Facebook and Twitter and all these other platforms?

Luke Bender: Yeah. Instagram is a huge social media platform. It, I think, just recently reached 500 million users, so it's about second to Facebook. It's strictly photos, so you upload photos and it goes into a feed. It's a great place to just connect with your audience and build an audience and grow your business. I'm really excited about it and I think the future of Instagram still looks good.

Robert Plank: Awesome. It seems to me like one of those weird sites, sort of like Snapchat or something where maybe I'm too old to understand it. Like you said, 500 million users, and I see on some of these sites where there's a lot of people using them, a lot of people just really cleaning up on it. Okay, so Instagram. You can only post photos. In the context of us, internet marketers, business owners, stuff, people who have things to sell, what do we do there? Because I can understand if you're Kanye West or Kim Kardashian or like a celebrity, but if we're a business, what kind of photos are we posting on Instagram?

Luke Bender: Yeah, definitely. It is interesting because it's mostly photos. You actually can't post a link in the caption. You only get one link on Instagram and that is in the bios. When you're on the main page viewing someone's Instagram page, you get one link there. It is interesting in that aspect. I would say if anyone's creating educational content or content around a certain niche, you can take like, what I really like to do is take quotes. If you're writing blog posts, you just take original quotes that you create and you can kind of use apps, there's one I use called Typorama, so you can actually create quote pictures within this app and those do really well, especially if they have to do with your niche and you're providing value or motivation or inspiration, any type of those pieces of content.

Then I like to, if anyone's building an audience around their own personal brand, I really like to encourage people to give a little bit of their personal life and actually really establish that I know I can trust with their followers because I think that's key when people start following you. You want them to really know who you are. That way, you can engage with them and they'll be more interested in your stuff. Mix it up between, I really like quotes and then personal life stuff. One thing to keep in mind is that content on Instagram does need to be good pictures because it's primarily pictures. It needs to be good looking stuff. I would just encourage people to maybe learn how to do a bit of editing on their phone and frame up a picture nicely, but yeah. Those are some tips on how to post good content.

Robert Plank: Is Luke Bender your Instagram user name? Is that right?

Luke Bender: It is, yup, just Luke Bender.

Robert Plank: Cool. I have it pulled up right now and I'm seeing like your water skiing, you're doing a back flip. There's like surfing. There's all kinds... Like you said, there's some cool shots to begin with. Then there's the color or the filters or whatever make it look even slicker. Then on top of that, I'm seeing that you have your quotes like "Adventures are the best way to learn" on top of one. "You can stop the waves but you can learn to surf them." I mean yeah, I'm getting what you're saying in that the photos have to look pretty slick.

Luke Bender: Yeah. It's not too difficult to create those quote pictures if you check out the app called Typorama. That's what I use. Yeah. You can kind of take pictures. All those pictures are mine, even the ones with the quotes. You can use your pictures and then use your quote. That kind of really is a unique piece of content that will do well on Instagram.

Robert Plank: Right, because I have seen on Facebook and Twitter, I've seen people take like a generic picture, like a picture of a mountain or of the ocean and then grab some Zig Ziglar quote or something and put that on there. I guess that's a pretty good way of generating content, but what you're saying is on Instagram, it's better to have something that's completely original. Is that right? Your picture, your quote, all that stuff.

Luke Bender: Yeah. I would say for the most part, try to keep it original, but at the same time, it is definitely okay to curate content for your audience if you find something that will really be valuable for them. Then definitely curate a good picture and a good quote, even if it's not yours. Definitely try to come up with your own unique content that people can really start to notice your brand and you can continue to build on that.

Robert Plank: I can see that, kind of clicking through your page here, I can see that I can, if I see a photo, I can like it, I can leave a comment, but there is no re-tweet or re-share on your own page, is there?

Luke Bender: No. There is not.

Robert Plank: Okay. It's kind of like old school stuff where the stuff on your wall is all yours and only yours, right?

Luke Bender: Exactly.

Robert Plank: How much of a time commitment are we talking about with Instagram? How much time would you say that you spend on this? And how often do you update your Instagram page?

Luke Bender: Yeah, so I probably spend more time than maybe someone in your audience needs to just because I've really chosen that as my main social media platform to focus on. But you can get it down to 30 minutes a day of just engaging your audience and building your follower base. I think that's doable.

Robert Plank: When you say 30 minutes a day, what actions specifically would somebody be taking to build that follower base and engagement? Would it be a matter of replying to comments? Would it be liking other stuff? In those 30 minutes, if someone were to like repeat the same say 3 or 4 actions every day, what would they do for 30 minutes every day?

Luke Bender: Yeah, definitely, so posting is the first one. I would say at least posting every other day. You can post once a day on Instagram as well. I wouldn't go more than once a day. Posting is something that you gotta do and creating the content. Besides that, what you really want to do is find out where your audience is. You can use hashtags to research and I would just say find big pages within your niche. If it's like business motivation, you can find tons of pages on that. If it's travel, there's tons of pages on that as well as health and exercise. Find big pages, find out where your audience is hanging out. Then what you're going to do is go to the latest picture that that account has posted. You're going to go to all the people who have liked it. You click on the likes for that picture. Then you want to start following people who would be your potential audience.

This works well because then they'll get a notification that you've followed them, and almost 100% of the time, they'll click your profile to see who you are and if you have content, and they can see that there's someone they'd want to connect with and be interested in your stuff, then they're going to follow you back or they're going to click on the link in your bio to your website or your lead magnet. That's how you're going to build your email list and build fans and build your brand.

Robert Plank: The way you're describing that, it kind of reminds me of LinkedIn a little bit where every day you go in and make new connections or view some of these profiles and things like that.

Luke Bender: Yeah, exactly. Some people feel weird about following people just to get followers, but it really is you have to notify people that you actually exist. That's just the best way to connect with your followers. You make tons of connections, and you can do... With LinkedIn, it's a little different because you can only do a few, but with Instagram, when you go to those likes, thousands of people liked this picture, you can follow 60 people per hour on Instagram. You can get a certain percentage of those people will be interested in your stuff and then follow you back.

Robert Plank: When you do this technique, when you go and follow all these people, do you have a goal or a set number of follows that you want to do? Or is it just a matter of however many feels good?

Luke Bender: Well I try to hit 100 new followers per day, but usually I'll follow around 60 per hour and Instagram will block you from following more people if you do it too much. Yeah, I would say my main thing is the targeting, to figure out where my audience is hanging out. If I can target them and then get a good amount of engagement and people that follow me back, it just varies so it's not too specific.

Robert Plank: When you personally, when Luke Bender goes to find these high traffic Instagram pages to see the popular stuff and follow all these people, what keywords and what hashtags are you personally looking up on a given day?

Luke Bender: I am looking up a couple different pages, but I like to look up any type of motivation or luxury pages. There's a ton of those ones. A big one is millionaire_mentor. He just posts a bunch of motivational stuff and I just find those people to be really active on Instagram. They really like checking out anyone who's providing valuable content. If anyone is educating people on personal development or business or things like that, that's a great page to check out. One thing to note is when you find a big page that really lines up with your niche, you can click the drop-down arrow next to the Follow button on that account and it will give you all the similar pages. Once you find one, you just click that drop-down arrow and you'll find all the similar pages in that niche. Once you're on one that has a large following, all those other ones will also have large followings. It's just an unlimited supply of people that might be interested in what you have to offer.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Just to make sure I'm following along, what you would do on a given day to build these followers is you'd go to... You log in to Instagram. You go to the search box. You type in pound sign motivation or hashtag motivation, and then there are all these high ranked photos. One of them is this millionaire_mentor page and then I could click on a button and follow them, or next to this follow button, there's an arrow that drops down a lot of similar popular pages. I'm seeing like a think and grow rich page, ask a millionaire type of stuff. Then you can just add those to your hit list, I guess. Is that right?

Luke Bender: Yeah, definitely. That's exactly right.

Robert Plank: There's all these daily actions to be taken, and I'm seeing near the bottom of the page that there's some kind of API or a way to hook into things. Are there tools the same way there are tools for Twitter but for Instagram to schedule posts and follow people? Is there stuff like that?

Luke Bender: Yeah. There's a tool that I use called Later. It's an app and also it's a helpful website as well, got some helpful information. It's just later.com. That is an Instagram scheduling tool. The thing with Instagram is actually there's no third party resource that can automatically post to Instagram, so you have to manually post on your phone. You can schedule your posts out with the pictures and the captions. Then it will send you a notification when it's time to post. You just slide that open and it will put it into your Instagram and you just click post. Yeah, you can organize things that way. At the beginning of the week, sometimes I'll schedule out posts for certain times when your following is active. That's one, you got the scheduling.

Then there's a couple other tools, like analytics tools. One called Iconosquare, which gives you all your Instagram analytics. Also something interesting is Instagram just came out with business profiles, so you can link your Instagram to your Facebook business page and that is super easy to do. You just go into the settings and you go down to Link to Business Page. You get actually analytics about your followers, what time they're most active, what day they're most active, countries where they're from and cities where they're from, so that's a really helpful resource if you haven't already switched your Instagram to a business profile.

Robert Plank: That sounds awesome because you could just start off and as you're picking up speed, you could kind of post things any time of day and try things out, but once you have your analytics, you can say okay now that I have some content, now that I have my followers, here's what they like the most. Then you can just optimize for that.

Luke Bender: Yeah, exactly.

Robert Plank: Then looking around this, is this next thing correct, that there's no way to post... Is there a way to post via the browser or do you have to use the app for this?

Luke Bender: You have to use the app. You can't post from a computer.

Robert Plank: Interesting.

Luke Bender: Yeah it is interesting.

Robert Plank: One of those little quirks I guess that they probably did on purpose for some reason.

Luke Bender: Yeah, so then you do have to... It is a good thing to note that most of the engagement on Instagram is going to be done through mobile. If you are linking to your website or a lead magnet, it's been talked about that mobile's huge, so just make sure everything is mobile-optimized.

Robert Plank: Okay, yeah. Fair enough. If they click that one link that you're allowed off of Instagram onto your webpage, it wouldn't make sense. If they're clicking using the app onto your webpage, it wouldn't make sense if the page wasn't optimized for mobile.

Luke Bender: Yeah, exactly.

Robert Plank: Are you doing anything with outside traffic? Or is this 100%... To build up your Instagram, your following and your traffic and your likes and stuff, is there anything outside of Instagram coming in or is it all just marketing within Instagram?

Luke Bender: I just build up my Instagram following using Instagram. Now it depends if you have other social media platforms that have a big following. I know a lot of YouTubers build up their Instagram from their YouTube, or if you have a big email list and you want to work on your Instagram, you can always promote it to your email list and make sure people are following you on Instagram. Yeah, it just depends. If you have reach elsewhere, you can utilize those, but I didn't have reach elsewhere so I just built it all from Instagram.

Robert Plank: Fair enough. I'm looking at your profile and some of the other ones. What's a decent following? What should... If someone's new to Instagram, maybe what should they shoot for in the first couple of months? Is 1,000 followers good? Is 10,000 good? Is 100,000 good? What's a good number to shoot for?

Luke Bender: Yeah, if you're starting from zero, I would say just focus on getting your first 1,000. Don't worry about too much after that, but, I mean, 10,000 is the first big goal after that. Then from there, the sky's the limit. Just focus, if you're starting from zero, get to 1,000. Figure out where your audience is and your content strategy and your branding. Then just take it from there, from 1,000 to 10,000.

Robert Plank: That makes sense.

Luke Bender: I would say shoot for 10,000 within a year.

Robert Plank: Okay. I'm looking at your page. You have what, about 11,000 followers and the photos get about 1,000 likes or so on average. Is that something that you've seen that's pretty consistent? If you have X number of followers, can people count on about 10% or so of their entire following liking something? Or is this just... Are the numbers I'm seeing, is this high or low, I guess. 11,000 followers, about 1,000 likes per photo. Is that normal?

Luke Bender: It depends. My engagement's pretty high compared to most other accounts that I see. That's just because of the way that I build the account, is because I only engage and get people to follow me that are also engaged on the app. I would say it's a little higher than normal. You should shoot for about 10% engagement, but I would say yeah. My engagement's probably a little bit higher than normal. You definitely want to make sure the engagement, you're getting likes and comments too. It's really good to get comments on your pictures and that gives you a little bit of insight into your audience as well. You can kind of communicate with them that way.

Robert Plank: That's cool. You just... In a lot of ways, you calibrate towards what they want from the comments and analytics and all kinds of... Also modeling based on what you see the higher traffic people getting. That's kind of cool. There's very little guesswork involved, it sounds like, right? You kind of look at what's there, and then add your own flavor to it.

Luke Bender: Yeah. That's what I really like about it. You can really tell what's going on by looking at those analytics and things.

Robert Plank: With Instagram, what big mistake are you seeing a lot of other Instagrammers making?

Luke Bender: I see a lot of people just not building their following as quickly as they can. I see a lot of people who post good content even. I see pages popping up with great content and they'll be posting all the time, but they're just not growing. I think that's the main thing to focus on, is that you're growing. By doing the research and following people who would be interested in your stuff potentially, just over and over and over everyday and staying consistent with it, just making sure you're getting people to follow you back, I think is the most important part. Yeah. A lot of people will just post and think that people will find them eventually somehow, but I think you gotta focus on actually finding them first and growing your following.

Robert Plank: That makes sense. Even kind of going back to your 30 minutes a day thing, you said that you should be spending 30 minutes a day on Instagram and do the research and the liking stuff, but only post every other day. If posting a photo takes 2 minutes, and if that's every other day, then people should only be spending about a minute posting that content and then the 29 minutes leftover doing all the marketing stuff. Cool.

Luke Bender: Yeah exactly.

Robert Plank: A lot of interesting Instagram stuff. Let's talk about you. What kind of websites do you have set up and how can you help people who are looking to increase their Instagram reach?

Luke Bender: Yeah, so right now I'm just focusing on building my Instagram and I'm working with clients and also working on using Instagram to grow my YouTube channel. You'll see that in the link in my bio. LukeBender.com is a place where I'm going to be posting helpful Instagram tips coming up here in the near future. That should be all set up if people want to check that out.

Robert Plank: That way you don't have to spell out all the links to Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Twitter, all that stuff, so cool. Lukebender.com gets everyone there. What is your coaching offer specifically?

Luke Bender: I can do a couple things. I can do one-on-one coaching with people or consulting, or I'm even offering businesses to actually do the growth and the management of the account on a monthly basis. Either one of those. I will be coming out with an Instagram marketing course here, hopefully within the next 6 months or so. That's where I'm at right now. Feel free to message me on Instagram or email me with any questions. I'm happy to help people get started, but if anyone's interested in more in-depth coaching and really taking Instagram to the next level, I'm definitely available for that as well.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I'm looking at lukebender.com. If someone lands on this page and they want to hire you for coaching, either in the context of the done with you like you said or a full on done for you, once they get to lukebender.com, is there a specific page or link here? Or should they just go to the contact form?

Luke Bender: I actually will be adding that here shortly, so if it's not there, just do Contact Me, or I will have it listed like Work With Me or something like that.

Robert Plank: Lukebender.com. Thanks for stopping by the show, Luke, for explaining to us this mysterious Instagram thing that... It was easy to ignore up until now, but now that it has 500 million users, now it's a thing that a lot of people should be looking into to increase their traffic. Thanks for telling us what you had to say today about Instagram.[/showhide]

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105: Leverage LinkedIn and Network Your Way to New Connections with Mike Shelah

LinkedIn master Mike Shelah talks to us about the ABC's of LinkedIn: Always Be Connecting, Always Be Cultivating, and Always Be Customizing. Use the LinkedIn social network to find your dream job or get an "in" with whatever joint venture you want to achieve.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We're going to be talking about LinkedIn with Mr. Mike Shelah. Now, Mike is a LinkedIn-made man. He is a sales pro who rocketed his way to the top. Thanks to effective networking skills. Mike teaches others how to harness the power of LinkedIn, infectious, enthusiastic, and practical. I can't wait to talk to this guy. Hey, Mike. How are things today?

Mike Shelah: Robert, things are wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Robert Plank: I'm glad to have you, and the big reason is because ... I mean, this site called "LinkedIn." Maybe I should get logged in right now. LinkedIn. I have an account. I filled stuff out. I've made a group. I've done a couple different things, but I really don't get it, so I'm hoping that you could clear a bunch of things up about it today.

Mike Shelah: Yeah. I am happy to do so. Because of people like you, I have a career, so I am grateful for that.

Robert Plank: Nice, so tell us about it.

Mike Shelah: The first thing that I like to say is what LinkedIn is not, and it's not Facebook. A lot of people are very familiar with Facebook. They enjoy it, and they engage on it on a regular basis, and then they look at their LinkedIn profile almost next to never. They occasionally log in to see if they have new invitation requests. They'll use it rather heavily if they're looking for a job, and sales professionals to some extent are better at using it, but even most sales professionals really use LinkedIn incorrectly.

Here's what I mean by that. Over the years, I've developed what I call the "ABCs of LinkedIn," and I don't mean always be closing. Most people think of Alec Baldwin in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where he goes, "Always be closing. Coffee is for closers." I think that might be one of the most despicable things that's ever happened to sales because people really look at sales that way that you have to beat people over the head with a hammer in order to get them to buy your product, or you have to trick them, or you have to manipulate them, and that's not what sales is.

The most important piece of sales is if you imagine the products and services that your company offers as a circle, and then you imagine your customers' needs as another circle, and then you imagine your competitors' needs as a third circle.

Robert Plank: Okay.

Mike Shelah: There's a spot where all three of those circles lay over each other, and specifically, there's a spot where your circle lays over your customers' circle and your competition's circle doesn't, and that's the value edge. That's the differentiator that makes you the preferred vendor over your competition, and LinkedIn can do such an effective job of helping people sell. When I say sell, I like to remind people that looking for a job is temporary sales. Very rarely are salespeople out of a job for a long time because they're used to selling themselves, and most people that are not in the sales world, they don't embrace the sales mentality because they don't want to be viewed as salesy, and I can appreciate that.

Robert Plank: Got you.

Mike Shelah: There's a lot of horrible examples, but LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool to find clients and to find your dream job, and I'll start with the first ABC which is "Always Be Connecting." I did a speaking engagement for the Baltimore Business Journal here in Maryland a couple weeks ago. I had a great audience, and when I began speaking, I told the audience, "I want you to look to your left. I want you to look to your right, and what you should have seen are people."

Human nature inclines us to sit next to people we already know, and if you do that, you're doing networking wrong. The whole idea of networking is to sit next to people you don't know and strike up a conversation. It doesn't have to be a sales pitch, and it doesn't have to be deeply probing, but let people know that you're not a stalker, and that you're friendly, and that you're human, and that's the connection. That's the first piece.

What I tell my audience is, "You go to that event. You collect 10, 15 business cards, people you never met before, and the first thing you should do when you go home is send them connection requests on LinkedIn to say, ‘Hey, Patrick. It was great meeting you at the event last night. I hope we have the opportunity to do some business together this year.'" What I just touched on there were the other 2 ABCs which are "Always Be Cultivating" and "Always Be Customizing."

Here's what I mean by "Always Be Customizing." LinkedIn has all these generic responses. For example, if you send a connection request, it says, "I would like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." If the person you're trying to connect with has any level of stature, meaning they're not regular people like you and me, but they're an executive level, they're not going to accept that connection unless you're higher on the totem pole than them.

For example, if you're Dale Carnegie and you send a connection request to a C-level executive, C-level executives probably are going to accept that connection request from Dale Carnegie if you're still alive because he's a step above the totem pole. Anybody below you on the totem pole, you're not accepting from. You're just not, unless you're introduced to that person or that person sent you a message that had a direct value to you and your company.

Robert Plank: Could you explain that a little bit because like one of the first things you said here was that LinkedIn is not like Facebook? When I go on LinkedIn like I had a profile to fill out, I ... and other people to like I guess friend request or connect, but then I've noticed this too like some people I'm connected like 2 connections away or something, and there's some kind of a link for the person in between us to do this introduction thing.

Mike Shelah: Introductions are probably the most valuable piece of LinkedIn. It's what they call the "second degree connection" because my network is valuable to me. My network is probably more valuable to you because it's potential. It's the potential to do great things, and the way I explain this is ... Again, this can work for a salesperson. It can work for a person in a job market. Come up with your top 5 accounts you want to go after or the top 5 companies you'd like to work for.

You could do that just as a general search right at the top of LinkedIn, and then you search the job title. It could be a hiring manager. If you're in finance, you would probably work for a controller or a CFO. If you're in technology, you might work for a director of IT or you might work for a CIO. Depending on your industry, what's the title of the person that you would report to? Then, do a search for that title. The nice thing about LinkedIn is if you type in "CFO," it will also pull up everyone that says, "Chief Financial Officer." It knows certain abbreviations like that, the more common ones.

Robert Plank: Cool.

Mike Shelah: You've got that ... Go ahead.

Robert Plank: Go ahead. I was going to say like ... This is all new to me because to be honest like from what I had seen of LinkedIn, I honestly didn't even know until right this second that there were jobs ... There were actually like real-world jobs on LinkedIn like this was new to me. All I thought that was that you could fill out your own basically resume. You could make like a blog post on there. You can make your connections.

As you were saying that, I just searched ... I was searching in the search bar like Google and Dropbox, and it shows me all of the job openings, and then there are a lot of tiny things like there's a thing that shows me who ... Like people who went to the same college as me who also work at that company. That's huge, and even as far as what you're talking about as far as like the middleman basically like the people making the introduction, so now, if I really wanted to work at a certain company, I really wanted a certain job, now I know who I can maybe talk to about that.

Mike Shelah: Absolutely, and you bring up a great point. You have to leverage your tribe. Seth Godin, famous writer, wrote a book called "Purple Cow," wrote a book called, "Linchpin," and he wrote a book called "Tribes." In that, he talks about how we are naturally comfortable of other people that we perceive to be the same or similar to us, and my favorite example of that is sports. Patrick, you're a sports fan?

Robert Plank: My name is Robert, and no. I like a little baseball, maybe a tiny bit basketball, but that's where it ends.

Mike Shelah: Okay, so not a sports fan, but let's talk about baseball just for a second then.

Robert Plank: Okay.

Mike Shelah: You know people that are crazy about baseball, right?

Robert Plank: Yeah, like fanatics.

Mike Shelah: Sure, and if you are from a certain area ... I live in Maryland. I'm an Orioles fan. If I'm out of town, I'm in North Carolina, I'm in Florida, I'm in California, and I see someone wearing an Orioles t-shirt, or an Orioles hat, or an Orioles jersey, the likelihood of me walking up to this total stranger and saying hello has gone up 800%, right?

Robert Plank: Right.

Mike Shelah: Think about your favorite musical band. It works the same way, something that you're passionate about. You're a comic book fan, if somebody has on a Superman t-shirt. Whatever your passion is, you identify with that group even though the person is a total stranger, and colleges are a great tribe. The bonding that comes from that, even if somebody went to the school 20 years before you or 20 years after you.

Robert Plank: It's still something.

Mike Shelah: Yeah. I got a meeting last summer with the CIO of a pretty big real estate company here in Maryland because when I looked him up on LinkedIn, I saw that he was a graduate of UMBC, which we referred to as the "Retrievers." That's our mascot, and so when I sent him a message, the message I sent to him didn't have a title about, "Bob, I'd like to tell you about my business." It didn't have any of that. The title of it said, "Go Retrievers."

Robert Plank: Nice.

Mike Shelah: Right there, I had that little something that 99% of the other salespeople didn't think to put in front of them, and I got the meeting, and I got the opportunity. When you think about leveraging relationships that way, think about getting a job. How much easier is it if you have the secret handshake, if the person sitting behind the counter went to the same college as you, went to the same high school as you, likes the same football team as you? The list is endless, and the best thing about LinkedIn is it gives you that ammunition ahead of time, and if you just have a mutual connection with them, that's my favorite because if it's somebody that you know well and they know well, you're practically guaranteed to win the opportunity.

Robert Plank: Cool, so about LinkedIn and all the stuff. What kind of big mistake other than these couple of ABCs like the lack of customizing and lack of being personal, what's like a huge, huge mistake you're seeing all over the place with other people on LinkedIn?

Mike Shelah: The 3 big ones are, they are not having a complete profile. For example, there's a section that you can add that's called "Advice for Contact." Why on earth wouldn't you add that? Put a phone number in there. Put an email in there. Make it easy for people to engage you, and I've had some people say to me "Mike, I don't want my personal information out there," and my response to that is, "Well, first of all, it's probably out there. If somebody really wants it, they can find it."

If you're uncomfortable, and I appreciate that, it's very easy to set up an alternate email just for LinkedIn. You could do that through Google, Yahoo. Any number of platforms will give you a free email that you can create just for your LinkedIn account, and you can get a Google Voice number to pair with your cellphone. If you go to my profile, the number on there is my personal cellphone. I don't have any problem sharing that, and I think I can count on 1 hand how many times somebody has actually called me that I didn't know already.

If you want that extra layer of protection, just go to Google Voice, sign up for your phone number, and the best thing is you can get that number from any part of the country. If you are in Maryland and you want a California number, you want a Los Angeles number, you can pull that from the dropdown menu on Google Voice and it will give you a Los Angeles number. The nice thing is you could turn it on and off. You could do a customized greeting. Whenever anybody calls you, before you accept the call, it gives you an announcement of who it is calling and gives you the choice to accept the call or send it to voicemail, so that's one of the first things.

Robert Plank: That's pretty powerful stuff so far.

Mike Shelah: That's the first piece is make sure your profile is full and complete. Put in your volunteer experience. Put in your interests because interests act as keywords and can help people find you through a keyword search. In addition to ...

Robert Plank: I like that, and even, I'm looking at ... I'm on LinkedIn right now for the first time in a couple of years, and I'm looking at my profile, and there's like some pop-up where you can check off like, "Do you care about these certain causes?" like, "Do you care about animal welfare? Do you care about disaster relief?" That's cool because it seems like with LinkedIn like the more information, the more stuff that's indexed, the better because then, like you're saying, if you're making some new connection with someone for whatever reason ... Even if you haven't gone to the same school, even if you can't find any music, or sports, or location in common, then maybe you have the ... like education, or human rights, or politics in common. Like there's all these different things it seems now that they have listed where you can find something in common with someone.

Mike Shelah: Yeah. I'll share a quick story with you about that. About a year and a half ago, I was working with a director of IT for a transport company here in Maryland. They had the big armored trucks that take the money from the retail stores to the bank. One of those companies.

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Mike Shelah: I got a call set up with the director of IT, and it's her and me, and I'm waiting for my manager and my sales engineer to join the call. While waiting, I said, "Mary, I just have to ask you. I looked at your LinkedIn profile and it says under interests that you play Guitar Hero." I said, "Tell me more about that." I said, "I'm a huge Guitar Hero fan," and we spent the next 20 minutes talking about Guitar Hero.

Robert Plank: Awesome.

Mike Shelah: She had played it at work one day as a goof, and she loved it so much, she ended up buying it for her grandkids, and they have the guitars, and the drums, and they sing together. I said, "Oh, what's your favorite song?" She said, "Oh, I do Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi," I never met her before, and we had that connection, and I ... gave me something to fuel the fire even though we had never met before. After the call, my manager says to me, "I was on the call for about 15 minutes, but I kept silent because I was listening to you engage the customer."

Robert Plank: That's cool.

Mike Shelah: Yeah. It's just another great little piece about LinkedIn. The other 2 things that people really want to be aware of and be proactive about is keywords. What I mean by that is you want to create your profile for the job that you want or the client you are seeking, and I'll give you a couple of examples of that. I worked with a lot of college students, and they will tell me, "Well, Mike, my degree is engineering, but I don't have any experience in engineering." I'm like, "You absolutely have experience in engineering. You have 4 years of school." He said, "But that's not real-life experience."

Here's the thing. You have the skills. You have the certifications. You have the accreditation. You were to put those terms throughout your profile. You want them in your summary section. You want them in your headline at the top of the page. You want them in your school experience. You want them all over your profile because that will move you up the link in search rankings, and it will move you ahead of the other people that want that job.

In addition to that, even though you don't have experience working as an engineer, you have plenty of valuable work experience. Most college students at one point or another worked in a restaurant. They either bus tables, or they're a waiter or a waitress, or they're a bartender, or they're a cook, and you want to talk about a high-pace environment with extreme pressure, and working as a team, and collaborating. It's some of the best experience in the world.

When you can convey that, when you could convey that you're promoted from just being a waiter to being a shift leader, that you were promoted from being a bartender to an assistant general manager, when you could show those leadership skills in your profile, companies want to hire that. They want to hire people that can think and can lead in addition to having the technical expertise to fill the specifics of the job.

Robert Plank: It sounds like there's all those little tidbits to look better than all of your other competitors trying to get that same job?

Mike Shelah: Yeah, the better job you do of completing that profile and putting your best foot forward. LinkedIn has search algorithms built in to it, and if somebody searches keywords ... For example, nobody searches for telecom salesperson. They don't do that. They look for the things that the telecom salesperson could sell them, and if you have those keywords in your profile enough, then you will move higher than the person whose profile says they're a telecom salesperson.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense.

Mike Shelah: Then, the last piece is the profile picture. The short version of this is, again, this is not Facebook. It should not be a picture of you with your spouse, you with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you with your kids, you leaning on a car, you drinking an alcoholic beverage, you at a party, you in a bathing suit. It shouldn't be any of those things. It should be a clear, up-close picture that shows you from about the shoulders up, and you should be in professional attire, and preferably, it should be taken by a professional. That's usually about a $100 to $120 investment.

For people that are on a budget, what I say is, "Find a wall with a neutral background that's well-lit. Have somebody take a fairly close-up picture." Don't make it a selfie. Do not do that. Have somebody else take the photo, and use that until you can get a professional to take your photo. If you're on a budget, there are a couple of ways to get your photo less expensively. Here in Maryland, the Baltimore Business Journal does an expo, a business expo twice a year, and once of the things that they offer is there's a vendor right by the front door that is set up there that does photos all day long, and they do them for roughly half price. They do them about $50 or $60. That's one way to get it less expensively.

Last year, LinkedIn actually had a tour bus that went around the country. I think it made 12 stops across the United States. The big ones, New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles. You could register ahead of time to get a free LinkedIn profile photo on the LinkedIn photo bus.

Robert Plank: That's awesome. Just think, once we figure out drone technology, you could just say, "Fly a drone over to me," and it will come, and hover over to you, and snap your picture, right?

Mike Shelah: There you go. Someday.

Robert Plank: Cool. I think that I'm starting to get LinkedIn. It seems to me like ... You keep saying that it's different than Facebook, and I think that just from what I'm hearing, it's like ... There's a lot of times when Facebook is inappropriate, and a lot of times when like you don't really know someone. Like you said, like there's the time when you talked to the woman about Guitar Hero, and it's like you're going in and trying to find a job. We're going in for a job interview like you're not going to go and add someone on Facebook. That's almost creepy, but it seems like with LinkedIn, it doesn't have the creepiness of Facebook or the ... Like you said, the party or the extra weirdness of Facebook that might turn people off or disqualify you, but it has all these little details, and things, and more like stories about you. Things that break the ice, I guess.

I really like everything you shared with us today, Mike. I really liked about the ABCs of LinkedIn, "Always Be Connecting," "Always Be Cultivating," "Always Be Customizing." I like how you told us to have a complete profile and put an email address in there. If you're afraid of sharing your email address, get a forwarder. If you're afraid of sharing your phone number, get a Google Voice number. Put some keywords in there for the job you want, and for different skills and things you have, and put a profile picture.

Even earlier in this call, I was ... As I said, I logged in to LinkedIn for a minute, and I noticed that there were a couple of people that I'd known from college like in the list, when I searched for like jobs or places that will be cool to work, and near the bottom, there were a couple of people who I knew but didn't have a profile picture. They filled out a couple of things, but no picture, so guess what? There were at the very bottom of the search results. Even them, like I didn't ... I wasn't compelled to even go and talk to them and say hi because I'm thinking, "Man, if they don't have a profile picture, they must not even be using this. If I send them a message, there's going to be no one there to even see it because they haven't even spent the 10 seconds to put a picture on there."

Mike Shelah: Yeah. There's a lot of truth to how human nature makes us perceive that sort of thing. We trust the face. You really ...

Robert Plank: Yeah, because ... Yeah. You're on a website, you're on a computer, and you see someone's profile without a face or a picture, it's just like, "Oh, it's a machine right there. It's a computer." You see the face, "Okay. Now, it's a real person." Man, I really like all the stuff you've been talking about us with LinkedIn, Mike, so could you tell us where people can find out more about you and get more of your LinkedIn training?

Mike Shelah: Absolutely. Thank you, Robert. I tell people I'm very "googleable." I'm very easy to find once you know how to spell my name, Mike Shelah, which is S-H-E-L-A-H. You could go to my website, which is mikeshelah.com. You will find me on LinkedIn naturally. You will find me on Twitter, @Mikeshelah. You'll find me on Instagram, @Mikeshelah. You'll find me on Facebook, Mike Shelah Consulting, and for your listeners today, 2 things. Anybody listening to the show can go to my website right now, mikeshelah.com, and they could sign up to get a free 3-page review of their profile where I customize it, I review their profile, and I give them my top 12 items for enhancing their profile as well as my 5 tips and tricks for really getting the most value out of LinkedIn. That's first. That's for anybody listening to the show.

In addition to that, I do one-on-one coaching sessions with people. I could do them in person or I could do via Skype, and those sessions are 90 minutes for $500. The first 3 people from your show that send me a connection request on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, Mike. I heard you on Robert Plank Show. I loved it. I want you to coach me," they get that first session half price for just $250.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so where can they go to get that, that specific offer?

Mike Shelah: They go to www.mikeshelah.com.

Robert Plank: Okay, and they can get to the coaching offer and all that from that page?

Mike Shelah: Yeah. All they have to do is when they connect with me on LinkedIn and say, "Mike, I heard you on Robert Plank Show," and they will get the 50% discount.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Cool. Lots of golden nuggets about LinkedIn, Mike, and thanks for being on the show and sharing everything you have to share with us.

Mike Shelah: Robert, thank you for having me on the show tonight. It's been a lot of fun.[/showhide]

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