Leveraging LinkedIn for Brand Growth | Daniel Alfon

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Daniel Alfon, author of the book, How to Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. Daniel is an experienced LinkedIn strategist with a passion for debunking myths and helping individuals and businesses succeed. Since joining LinkedIn way back in 2004, he has empowered thousands of business owners by sharing his expertise and enabling them to grow their ventures. His unique approach doesn't rely on cold connections, premium accounts, or advertising. Instead, he teaches leaders how to authentically leverage LinkedIn generating leads and revenue organically. Daniel, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Daniel Alfon: Thank you very much, David. It's a pleasure to be with you. David McBee: Daniel, I think that most people think of LinkedIn as the place to network, and certainly brands and advertisers have a presence on LinkedIn, but I don't often hear about LinkedIn being one of the top tactics for advertisers to generate leads. I feel like SEO and paid search and display advertising, the other social media networks get that glory. So are agencies missing out on a great platform that could help their advertisers? Daniel Alfon: That's a great question. I think LinkedIn may be sort of a blue ocean for some agencies who simply don't play on that field, and it's a pity because it's the world's largest business community where decision makers are hanging out. So LinkedIn should be one of your elements, one of the channels you are using. It doesn't have to be the only one, but it matters because when you Google the agency's owner's name, then David, in many cases you'll see that their LinkedIn profile will top the Google results. David McBee: That's very true. I often find that when I'm doing a Google search on an individual, their LinkedIn is their number one Google result, if not one of the top five. So can brands leverage this relationship between LinkedIn and Google to help generate more business? Daniel Alfon: That's a great point. I think brands often do not empower or do not leverage their own employees to the extent they could on LinkedIn. Because if you think of brand employees, then in many cases those employees can help the brand grow by representing the brand by if a media buyer is looking for an aid and they're leveraging the LinkedIn platform, then you could get a connection or you could get a good candidate simply thanks to the fact that you're posting that you're looking for a media buyer or something else. So it doesn't have to be a silo. It needs to integrate with your strategy. And the easiest thing to do would be to look at your employees and to make sure that they know enough about LinkedIn to represent the brand professionally. David McBee: So that's where brands are missing out. They're not empowering their employees to leverage the platform effectively, is that what you're saying? Daniel Alfon: Yes sir. Yes sir. It could take basic training or even awareness of the brand and helping champions or ambassadors from the agency or from the brand itself is a great way to get more exposure, more organic exposure and better sales. David McBee: So what are a handful of tips that these employees of the brands should be implementing with their LinkedIn profiles? Daniel Alfon: Excellent. So when you visit someone's profile the first two seconds are basically what you see as a banner and a photo. If you look at the brand, then many employees could upload a banner representing the brand. It could be of their workplace, it could be of them speaking at an industry event. It could be anything that's related to the brand and their work within the brand. David McBee: How does having conformity among the employees' LinkedIn profiles lead to more business? Daniel Alfon: When you run a search, you mentioned SEO as being one of the channels every serious brand should consider. When you think of LinkedIn, billions of searches are run on the LinkedIn platform. So have you enabled your employees to use the right keywords you'd like people to find your brand for? You probably know the keywords by heart, but many business owners are forgetting that their page and their employees' profiles could also reflect the same keywords that you'd like your website to have. Like LinkedIn SEO is free and immediate because when you add terms, the next second, anyone searching will find you and they're one click closer to visiting your website and having a conversation with you. David McBee: Yeah, that totally makes sense. What about paid media on LinkedIn? I know that in your introduction you talk about being authentic and not using advertising, but is there a role for paid media to impact brands on LinkedIn? Daniel Alfon: Yes, I think there should be. Your paid media should compliment the organic use of LinkedIn. If you are only paying dollars for paid advertising on LinkedIn specifically without having anything organic, I think that's wasting a lot of resources. For example, if you have a time sensitive event that's expensive or interesting for you than having paid advertising on LinkedIn could make you get a lot more attendees and a lot more people to discover the event and register for it, and then it makes a good business case. Not all paid advertising is created equally if you'd like on LinkedIn. In some cases, it makes a lot more sense. David McBee: And what is the biggest mistake you see individuals and brands making on LinkedIn? Daniel Alfon: So to keep this under 30 seconds for people, it's not deciding whether they like to be the most connected or the best connected. So they have something like a few thousand connections and that's not enough to get exposure. And on the other hand, they don't know those people well enough to help them get through the door to a client. If you know 300 people on LinkedIn, then they can help you get a meaningful conversation with a client, if you have 50,000 followers and you get a lot of exposure, but if you only have 4,000, then you miss on both counts. That's not enough exposure, it's marginal exposure and you've lost the ability to help get an introduction from someone you're connected with. This is for the person's perspective. From the company's perspective, sharing content that's related to the employees is probably one of the easiest ways to get more authentic exposure to the brand. And the larger the company, the easier it is. So you probably have a champion at Simpli.fi TV. It may be David, it may be someone else. Make that person shine on LinkedIn and your brand, Simpli.fi TV will not be hurt by that. Your brand will actually have more meaning in the eyes of that person's connections. David McBee: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. What is your best advice for brands? Daniel Alfon: Look at your brand presence from someone else's perspective, like your ideal reader on LinkedIn, and simply visit your LinkedIn page or your LinkedIn profile through someone else's account, someone you're not connected with. And ask yourself, "If I had 10 seconds, where would I click?" And you would see that in some cases, it doesn't make sense. The content you're sharing is not exactly interesting for your followers. The content that I found to work best on LinkedIn is educational, top of funnel, evergreen content. Brands should have some content that's evergreen, some content that's educational and some content that is top of funnel. This can convert on a long-term basis, have a look at this and make sure they're nicely represented in what you and your employees share. David McBee: That's great. Thank you. Before we go, do you have a book or a podcast that you'd like to shout out? Daniel Alfon: Thank you very much. I'd like to mention Podcasting Made Simple. I'm not a podcaster. I know you've spoken on many podcasts and you give a lot of seminars, but this is an interesting podcast for me to listen to because Alex Sanfilippo, the host, always brings interesting people. And the sort of discussion, organic discussion I listen to there are great. So I think it's good for any business owner. And in addition, you'll get some extra points if the podcasting industry is interesting for you. This is my shout-out. David McBee: All right, perfect. And if people want to reach you, what's the best way to do that? I'm going to guess you're going to say LinkedIn. Daniel Alfon: Wrong. That's the first time you're wrong, David. I'll say go to danielAlfon.com because LinkedIn is the tool. David McBee: That drives traffic to your website. I totally get it. Daniel Alfon: Because conversion happens better on your website, on davidMcBee.com rather than on your LinkedIn profile. That's another discussion. David McBee: All right, well Daniel, thank you very much for being my guest on Simpli.fi TV today. Daniel Alfon: Thank you very much, David. It's been a pleasure. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simpli.fi. I'm David McBee, thanks for watching, be awesome and we'll see you next time.