LinkedIn expert shows how to use Linkedin as a networking tool…dirty little secrets shared

I recently got the chance to interview Jason Baudendistel, author of the now infamous (at least infamous in my world) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn Marketing. If you’re not on LinkedIn, then I’m sure there is a thing or two you can learn about how to properly use it.

LinkedIn is great as a marketing tool and as a networking tool. It’s beyond Facebook in terms of any kind of popularity contest. You don’t have to worry about people asking you to trade Angry Bird points of any kind (I know…that was silly…but you get the point). It’s professional networking. The people on there are serious about their careers and their business.

You can download the PDF transcript and the MP3 file.

You can download the MP3 or the PDF.

PS - Go check out Jason’s site or get the Kindle version of his book now. It’s less than the cost of a delicious all you can eat buffet meal.

Let your lesson in using LinkedIn as a networking tool begin….

Matt: And just out of curiosity my question for you since you just wrote a new book what kind of angle did you want to focus on? Did you want to focus on totally dive into the content of the book, what were your thoughts?

Jason: The book is definitely a good thing but we’d also go through my stories, get some background. Actually I have pretty awesome stories as far as what I’ve overcome and what I’m accomplishing up to this point and then we could dive into the book and my company and even talk about the next book that I’m writing.

Matt: Perfect, I like it. Do you want to get started?

Jason: Yeah it’s a cool thing.

Matt: I’ll do one of those cheesy introductions but this will be the start of it. My name is Matt Santi and today I’m on the line with Jason. He’s a LinkedIn Marketing expert and he actually recently released a book and Jason what’s the name of the book that you recently introduced?

Jason: The book is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn Marketing it’s the in-depth look at the strategy and the use of the tool LinkedIn as far as social media marketing efforts. It has some really awesome stuff for people that are either trying to start out a business. Another great thing is if you are a job seeker LinkedIn is an awesome tool for kind of getting your foot in the door like some of the decision makers for different companies.

Matt: Okay right on, so how did you even stumble across LinkedIn? I mean what made you fall in love with it?

Jason: Basically I used Facebook for a while and eventually got into Twitter and I had some success with Twitter but Facebook it just felt like I was throwing all this time and money into trying to leverage it to get leads and to kind of build a brand. And I didn’t feel like I was getting the return on investment that I should be getting. So I started looking for other social networks. And I stumbled upon LinkedIn and gradually started to learn more and more about how to optimize a profile and engage, start groups and stuff like that. And through networking and leveraging the tools that LinkedIn actually provide for you I had about 10 different leads, I had job offers, I started building some buzz for my book. It’s such an awesome tool especially when you are on a limited budget and you only have so many resources. Leverage and word of mouth marketing are two of the most powerful things that you can have in your arsenal.

Matt: Okay, do you have a website?

Jason: I have a personal website that I also offer my products and services and talk about my first book on and that is www.JasonBaudendistel.com. You can read my blog there’s some great information on my blog including articles on starting or growing a business, social media marketing, small business marketing. And there’s also some really great stuff for anyone just wanting to get a little bit more of an idea into marketing.

Matt: Okay, so how long have you been on the whole online world and internet marketing and social media? How did you even kind of get started into that not some other business, like network marketing for example?

Jason: The irony is the first time I actually ever did any marketing online it was when I actually was running my record label. The first ever entrepreneurial project I started was a label called Bored Student Records. I ended up working with artists that included O-Hush from Atlantic Records, [0:04:29] which involves members from [0:04:31] Records, The Dollyrots from the Black Heart Records. I ended up helping put together different concert tours, booking shows. I did a charity accomplished annually that went towards cancer research.

And in the process of building that and working with all those artists I kind of learned some of the great ways to leverage and use the internet to grow a brand on the cheap. That was kind of my first introduction to internet marketing. And then I wanted to learn more about entrepreneurship so I left that company, I shut the doors at [0:05:10] Student and I went to two different technology startups, spent time running their marketing campaigns. One was a legacies information storage company called Online Legacy that was based at Mountain View, California. The CEO actually was a friend of some of the middle management at Yahoo and then I spent a little while afterwards at a social CRM startup called Dynamictivity and really increased the base by 70% and then

Matt: Point to that real quick, how did you end up doing that?

Jason: A big part of it was as tough as word of mouth and leverage is a big part of it was just listening to the customer, asking what can we do to improve the product, getting feedback, asking people to actually be engaged and to actually interact with you. Engagement interaction if you actually act with your listing and not just shouting it makes a huge difference because there are so many companies today just shouting at people and posting advertisements and all they do is advertise, advertise, advertise screaming listen to me. And one of the marketers I’ve actually learned from that I love his approach to things and the way he looks at it is Seth Godin and he believes that if you engage and interact and you actually care about a better product or a better service the profits will come. That shouting at people is not anything more than just a great way to be in business for a very short period of time.

Jason: I have someone that does this Web design work for me and then I have somebody else that helps me with SEO but good freelancers are actually pretty hard to come by and it’s always changing. Freelancing is such an awesome thing because you have skills that either aren’t your best skills or you don’t know how to do it and you can find somebody that’s like really awesome at it and you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg.

Matt: SEO and social media, everybody thinks that you have to outsource it first. Do you rent outsourcing social media and if so how would you go about doing it?

Jason: There are certain aspects of marketing I would outsource especially if the technical skills aren’t the greatest but social media is one of those things I really don’t think you should have somebody else doing it unless you absolutely don’t like talking to people. If you are the kind of person that just doesn’t like talking to people and you don’t really like interacting then maybe it’s a good idea to have someone else do that for you. If you are not being sincere it’s going to be very easy for people to tell that you are just kind of pretending to talk just to get people to talk.

Matt: And that kind of goes back to the whole so things are happening instead of one on one conversation?

Jason: That’s actually one of my favorite parts of LinkedIn is groups. You target the niche that you want to target within and you want to be as specific as possible with them. And then you go into those groups and provide content. You engage you make conversation and as a means of increasing leads it’s okay to drop your link in there whenever you are talking to people or adding content. But content is one of the big things, you have to actually be talking to people not just talking at them.

Matt: So what do you mean content what kind of content are we talking about here?

Jason: Text content is actually the big thing that works really awesome for search engines but video and audio also work. You just want to provide some type of value that shows your positioning in the marketplace and why somebody should actually want to listen to you. And then the more content you create the more you get there and actually show what you have to offer the more people will start to listen.

Matt: So what’s a given with social media? I mean am I supposed to do Twitter posts, do a LinkedIn posts and repeat hours from now?

Jason: Really the big thing I’d say for every social network you can probably just do two or three posts a day. People have been guilty of posting too much because if you post too much once you kind of burn out the people that are paying attention and they just get tired of seeing so many posts. So that’s a big thing you have to work on, is try not to get too [0:11:17] and try not to post too much but you don’t want to like not post for a week and people think you’ve just disappeared. You have to find a balance so probably post about two or three times a day and spread it out. A great tool that you can use that is actually affordable and provides you a lot of the extra is Social Oomph it’s actually the tool I use to build my Twitter base and also shoot out messages to Facebook.

Matt: Is that like a paid subscription yearly and things like that?

Jason: They have a bi-weekly and I believe a monthly subscription plan. They actually do have a free account which will let you manage your Twitter account but it’s just a really, really bare bones tools. It provides you a lot of the bare bones tools for your Twitter but if you don’t pay for an account at either one of those it’s really bare bones. I have the trial right now on Social Oomph and even the free tools I would say out of the social media management tools it’s the one I like the best.

Matt: I can tell right now this interview is going to have a lot of oomph.

Jason: One of the big things as far as the free section of it is like it actually allows you to look at when your streams set up. There are analytics that show you like how people are looking at your tools and how people are actually reacting to that specific account. On the paid account a couple of things I really love is that you can actually see who is following you and who’s not, you can actually manage your friends’ list in an automated fashion and you can actually automatically search for friends through their friend finder tool and it actually allows you to build your friends list without having to manually go search for different topics.

Matt: And then also that’s a that distributes to the networks

Jason: Yeah their free program is only relatively manual. You can type in something you want to post and schedule a time for it but you can only do one post at a time. It kind of sucks but a lot of the tools are like their free program is really bare bones. But if you have a paid account you can schedule out as far as the features that you want and completely automate all of your posts for that account.

Matt: Cool, I like that idea. So that’s the perfect idea that you can use if you say like an info product that doesn’t necessarily involve a whole lot of database and one of the things to touch base on is with the groups, give a lot more information. So I’m in a group, it’s very specific to what you are doing how do I go about breaking to that group?

Jason: It really depends on your niche and whether there are closed or open groups within that niche. If you find groups all you have do is hit the Join button and you are automatically added to the group. If it’s a closed group that the moderator has set the group where you have to ask permission to join, you send a request you tell them why you want to join if they require you to put that in and then assuming that they think you fit into what they want to be at the group they’ll add you.

And then you’ll have full ability to post in the group, make conversation, tell people about content that you either created or you think is cool that fits into what could help people and you just start to build trust and interaction and build a brand of that group. And then as you build some trust and interaction the people in that group gradually become either coworkers or friends and that’s the huge thing about promotional marketing. You turn people into people that trust you and respect you and that actually know that they can come to you for great information. And when you put together a great product they take advice from you.

Matt: So it’s promotional based marketing so you can take log into my AWeber right now?

Jason: You could do that, you are more than welcome to do that if you want to. But I think your best thing to do is to not just send people that know you just because they know you stuff. A better way to do promotional marketing is your AWeber list give people a reason to sign up for it. Give them content or an offer that entices them to sign. Like right now like my book I’m actually offering half of it for free. If you sign up for my AWeber account right now if you go on to my website and sign up for my list you get the first half of my first book completely free. The book has been selling from anywhere from $20 to $40 in various places. I’ve slashed the prices for the holidays and it’s down to $10 but that’s actually short term not permanent. So you are getting anywhere from $20 worth of free content and there’s a lot of great information in it that I’m pretty much giving you in order to sign up for my list.

Matt: Okay so I’m an entrepreneur four days a week, give me three or four tips I know I can immediately implement using www.LinkedIn.com. How can I gain compliance or I can generate some leads?

Jason: A really big thing would be to create your own group around your niche that you are just wanting to target and give people a reason to entice them to join the group. Offer content or discount on a product or service and go on and interact, find groups that fit into you and give people a reason to want to talk. Another great tool I love that actually helps you with leads is recommendations. If you actually have people talking about products or services you provide on your profile it’s like free advertising for why someone should actually want to use your product or service.

Matt: Okay so on my profile I’ve got several recommendations and connections and all that but I don’t want to [0:18:04]. They say build it and they are supposed to come that’s at least what my last Click Bank product I just purchased, said.

Jason: It doesn’t really work like that. You have to entice people to come to you and you have to go out and actually find leads. There is no such thing as just sit there and the leads will just come out of nowhere. Unfortunately people buy that the next big thing and they get sold on the idea that all I have to do is just build it and $1 million will be here tomorrow and they are being fed a fantasy which is sad and horrific.

Matt: In that scenario I was playing devil’s advocate obviously. Another interesting feature within LinkedIn itself is actionability is in-mail how do you use that feature explicitly or to connect what would be deemed as a high powered individual?

Jason: I’ve actually used in-mail in a lot of great situations onto my connections and it got me actually in a conversation with the CEO of Coca Cola. I actually did a decent number of proposals because I’ve offered to do 30 days worth of free service for their company in exchange for the possibility of a possible contract. So that’s pretty exciting because you get a client like that on board and it’s going to be a lot easier to get clients obviously.

Matt: Okay wait, back pedal here for me. So you used a free tool for www.LinkedIn.com to send an email to send a connection with the CEO of Coca Cola. Did you say hey my name is Jason do some social marketing media I mean how did you initiate that conversation?

Jason: Part of the conversation was obviously that but you have to lay out a proposal, here’s what I think I can do for your company, here’s how I can work for your company. Free is a great tool if you only have so much of a brand up to this point because if you can get some bigger clients on board even if you have to work for free for a month just to kind of gain their trust free is such a powerful thing. Because if you can show a company like Coca Cola or Microsoft the value of your product or service people come in that will say well Coca Cola was willing to trust him so I will give him a shot. And it builds up a little bit of extra trust and sincerity with your brand and the more value people perceive with your brand the more powerful it is.

Matt: So obviously without going into detail of it you basically said to Coca Cola I’m willing to do XYZ for 30 days if you don’t mind sharing what are the things you said you were willing to do to obviously capture their interest?

Jason: I offered to increase traffic conversions and to increase the number of people the brand was influencing. And with a company as gigantic as Coca Cola even a 1% increase is just like a huge number because they have billions of people across the world that use their product. A much smaller company you obviously can choose from a much larger increase because there isn’t as much of a brand already. That’s why I prefer to work with really small companies and entrepreneurs and small business owners because if I can just give them a 50% increase and their brand or their sales within a certain timeline it’s a huge improvement because there’s starting at a much smaller to begin with.

Matt: That’s pretty awesome, congratulations on that. So if you managed to get one of those guys it’s only just growing.

Jason: Yeah it’s a momentum that I have growing at this point it’s really awesome. I have a couple more interviews lined up, I have a radio show that I might be doing an interview for technically I’m trying to do a review of my book by that time actually.

Matt: Who did your Book review?

Jason: Technorratti it’s the third largest tech blog. I believe in the internet so that was pretty awesome.

Matt: That’s awesome, sounds like you have some things going on for you.

Jason: Yeah the momentum is really starting to build around my book and my company and it’s really exciting because I do have one more book I’m working on which I plan to probably release in about a year and a half or so. And that’s the one that’s actually going to tell my story, all the projects I’ve done, kind of like walk you through everything that has happened with me in entrepreneurship. And I really think that people are going to love it because it’s like this incredible motivational and inspirational story about what I overcame, how I got myself to where I am today and why I think you can do it too. That’s one of the big things that’s close to me is I want to educate people and provide people with how powerful leverage and technology can be and maybe one day if we educate enough people we can eradicate poverty.

Matt: That’s so visionary, I love it. So what I was going to say is going back to the subject of LinkedIn is so you’ve got in-mail you’ve got groups. One of the other things from time to time people say I’m alive at LinkedIn Open Network. What’s your philosophy your take? Is there really a benefit to it or is it more of a popularity contest?

Jason: I’m actually a huge fan of networking in general although if you are more targeted I’ll admit you get more value at social networking if you target within niches that relate in the products or services you are willing to offer. Although since my current company is business and service related in all honesty even once I built all the product lines so I don’t have to trade time for money I pretty much offer to anyone that runs a business because things like marketing, designing, building websites every business is going to need that product or services at some point. So that’s basically the great thing abiut my niche is because it’s really not that sub-niched. But you want to lay it out in a way that you have a game plan for what you are willing to offer.

Matt: So I’m on LinkedIn, posting a couple of times a day and stuff and I’m starting to gain traction. Is there like a 90-day maybe kind of that’s the focus say the result will potentially be say after a 90-day period?

Jason: Any form of marketing is really trial and error you want to do things like create a group, get people to join the group, interact, give them content that has value to it and then within a 30 to 60-day period you should start to see people joining your list, people starting to build some level of trust but the numbers are going to be pretty small at first. Over the first couple of months on my list I had 15 signups they don’t all come in one massive way but it’s more of a trickle especially when you start building. But as you gain momentum and people gain trust that trickle will snowball and as that snowball builds and builds. It’s a really awesome feeling to see the numbers just kind of shoot up. T the traffic on my website actually just doubled the other day which is like a really awesome feeling.

Matt: Really? Was LinkedIn responsible for the traffic?

Jason: Part of that traffic is actually SEO and then the other part I would say a big chunk is social media in general. LinkedIn definitely is a part of it though because LinkedIn and Twitter are like my two biggest social media traffic generators and then the biggest traffic generator outside of that is actually SEO, link building, commenting on blogs and article marketing.

Matt: Do you use like 20% of like track on average?

Jason: I would say that Twitter is probably a rough guess about 25% of my traffic I’d say about 25% from LinkedIn and maybe about half and a rough guess from SEO. So I’m not going to sit here and say that if you just do LinkedIn your traffic is going to keep growing and you don’t have to do anything else but it is a great free tool that you can use to add to your marketing and SEO efforts.

Matt: Okay that makes a lot of sense so outside of the two basics have any profile with your picture, with your web on, any other social media Facebook properties. Do you have any other tips for say enhancing your profile with LinkedIn, make somebody actually read it?

Jason: You have to look at your LinkedIn profile pretty much as a form of advertising. You want to craft like a short pitch that says who you are, what you do, what you can provide, like what your unique proposition is. You want to actually put that on your profile and your summary and you want to keyword research your profile. You want to take the niche or the sub-niche or the specific niches that you are targeting and you want to breakdown your profile targeted to those niches, add those words within several different parts of your profile, put them in your specialties, your headline, put them in some of the job descriptions that you have. And if you do that you are actually optimizing or SEO ing your LinkedIn profile for Linked in and when people search for that term you actually have your name come up a lot higher.

Matt: Cool, so if I want to go straight to Jason on LinkedIn do you have any words off the top of your head you can look for?

Jason: I show up believe on the second or third page for LinkedIn expert and I show up I believe it’s in the first five pages for small business experts. One of those I have to say actually might be rental but they are literally hundreds of thousands of pages of people for those categories.

Matt: That’s awesome, do you do SEO LinkedIn too with other sites?

Jason: SEO and optimize on LinkedIn profile. You notice that I snuck in the keywords but I made sure that they actually fit in with the flow of the page and the top section of my story and my pitch. Because it’s okay to show some personality or show that you are still a person in your LinkedIn profile, you just don’t want to be robotic with what you are doing, some sincerity actually goes a long way.

Matt: Okay so I don’t want to look like just like the guy who sits, I want to look like a [0:29:47]

Jason: People that shout or that seem to be saying the same thing again and again and just seem to not be really willing to, people that you tell are not passionate about what they are trying to build you just know they are out for the money and it doesn’t give the greatest impression. I’m not saying those people can’t still be successful because obviously there are some great opportunistic entrepreneurs out there. But it really comes down to the message that you want to send and do you want to be successful because you maybe want the most honest or do you want to be successful because you’ve built something that you love and because building that you never felt like you worked a day in your life, that’s my take.

Matt: Awesome, well do you have any kind of as we sort of wind up, do you have any final tips or parting advice or mind shifts people should think about that could actually honestly bridge [0:31:00]

Jason: My big things that I’m really huge on I actually have this in the article I did on my blog but it’s Five Ways That You Should Include In Your SEO. And one of the hugest things I think is absolutely necessary is content. You have to deliver content that has value to it. You have to give people a reason to want to listen. Passion is a huge thing, you have to have a stubborn desire to not quit when you have adversity or challenges because I’m somebody who basically grew up on welfare, was homeless at one point. I mean I shouldn’t be a successful entrepreneur I shouldn’t be newly accounts graduate. There’s so much that I’ve made happen in my life that most people coming from my situation would have given up a long time ago but it’s the fight, it’s the refusal to quit and the ability to provide value with a unique respective on how you respect that value that will be huge in your success.

Matt: Awesome [0:32:20] more time just people website

Jason: Well the book is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn Marketing it has a great collection of information tools, strategies for harnessing LinkedIn as a marketing tool for yourself in your job search or growing or starting a business. And I really think that if you pick it up especially if you pick it up for the hot special of $10 that you are going to be getting a completely steal and you are going to be getting a lot of information that probably would cost you thousands of dollars if you went to a consultant for it.

So pretty much a screaming deal and my website is www.JasonBaudendistel.com, if you are strapped for cash you can check on my blog I provide a lot of great free content there. And I also have a list of my products and services if anything on there interests you.

Matt: Okay awesome, well everybody this is Matt from Matt@MattSanti.com and Jason I do thank you for your time today and definitely wish you the best of luck over the Christmas season go get that Coca Cola contract, that’s awesome.

Jason: Definitely, I’ll be working on it and probably get a chance to talk to you.

Matt: Alright I think doing this there’s some good stuff

Jason: The other interview that I’ve done so lasted about 10 minutes we actually got that one past 30 I’m getting better at this.

Matt: Yeah you know it does help to know who you are interviewing like the questions you’ll be asking. It’s more conversation hence what we were talking about now I’ve done this before and I think if anything should be doing is they should be sending questions ahead of time 40 to 60 minutes because it kind of just keeps the flow of the conversation.

Jason: I’m doing one for a site that’s on actually business networking and they asked me some basic questions ahead of time and asked me for questions that I’d want to be asked and it’s like in four or five days. I’m pretty excited about that and then the regular interview will probably be in January.

Matt: Is it a radio for something local?

Jason: It’s actually a retired police lieutenant who runs his own radio show and he features fire fighters, the traffic police or ex-military on his show because I’m a veteran and an author I’m on third directory for veterans and authors and I’m going to be doing the radio show that features veterans that are involved in entrepreneurship or authors.

Matt: Okay awesome and then are you doing other interviews was that with someone else or?

Jason: The other interview I did was for Financial Bend, it’s a site that does like entrepreneurship and stock market education as well as advice. So it kind of fits into those related niches altogether. And the founder is actually part of an entrepreneurship networking group with me called the Under 30 CEO and I did an interview with them, we talked about my new book and my story and it’s actually pretty exciting. That interview actually went up three days ago. I actually have a link to it on my blog and then I have a couple of more interviews I’m working on and I’m really hoping to keep the momentum going and keep generating buzz because the more people that hear about me in the book and the company the more potential clients I can gain so it’s pretty exciting.

Matt: Cool, good stuff how about actually going into LinkedIn network itself who you could potentially interview because they have a market related blog?

Jason: Actually I probably will ask around my network because I did send out a few messages to a big chunk of network one was on the book that I’m doing. That’s actually how I got one of my interviews I actually was just messaging people letting them know I’m doing a sale on my new book if this could help you check it out, let people know and that’s how I got one was guy called Rob Brown who runs his business networking site. He does interviews with people that are experts in different fields and he relates the interview to how business networking has helped your business or your product or your service. And the really awesome thing about it is just going out there and talking to people and going hey check this out, let me know your thoughts. I got another interview out of it.

Matt: Awesome, cool alright I do got to get running next thing so where do you live again.

Jason: Right now Missouri which is close to St. Louis and remember next time when we talk that I’m two hours ahead of you. I used to live out in Seattle. Yes I was stationed out there when I was in the Navy and went to Seattle a bunch of times. It’s a beautiful city I actually loved it out there.

Matt: It’s great during the summer, during the winter not great.

Jason: You know their winter at least is more mild than the Midwest because I’m from the Midwest so I’ll take 40 degrees and raining over that. I was out there running around in a t-shirt and people were looking at me like I was crazy. I was like if you were from the Midwest this would be heaven too.

Matt: So I’ll get this off to you and it’s fair game, do whatever you want and I’ll be available on my blog too [0:39:20]

Jason: Okay awesome and I’ll probably the guy on Financial Bend because he’ll want to do some interviews too so I’ll have him hit you up if you are still looking for people to do more interviews.

Matt: I love talking to people I just love to know where it’s my thing and as a side benefit I’m like hey you get some content out of it you don’t have to keep it for 12 hours.

Jason: Yeah that’s why I like doing more in video or audio other than typing because if you do a video you actually get to show off your personality a little bit. If you are typing all you do is take text, I like to write but I don’t like to just write and write.

Note…And so then the interview just rambles on for a bit after this. So you get the meat and potatoes. By the way if you send Jason a message he’ll respond to you. Great guy to chat with.