You know that building relationships is important to grow your business, but with us all being online…and Facebook is no longer working as it used to…where’s a business owner to turn?
LinkedIn, of course! The original online professional networking tool, LinkedIn will help you cut through the political posts and the cute puppy pics and allow you to connect with professionals who can help you grow your business (and vice versa).
On this episode of the podcast, I’m chatting with Karen Yankovich, host of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast, about how to build authentic relationships using LinkedIn as well as how the platforms tools (both free and paid) can help you grow your business and your bottom line. Karen also shares some of the do’s and don’ts to using LinkedIn. Hint: What doesn’t work on other platforms probably won’t work on LinkedIn either!
Mentioned in This Episode
About Karen Yankovich
LinkedIn Strategist, Business Consultant, and Speaker, Karen Yankovich is the CEO of Uplevel Media, LLC. Having “been there and done that” in the arena of losing (and then re-finding) a focused approach to business and life, Karen now offers coaching and consulting for entrepreneurs. Her unique specialty blends her “get it done” attitude with a passion for soulful living in her personal services and online workshops.
Host of the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast and LinkedIn Evangelist, Karen guides entrepreneurs to creating wealth by combining smart business practices with simple proven systems that develop and maintain strong customer relationships. She offers results oriented and expert LinkedIn Marketing strategies that position her clients to bring in instant results. Karen’s background includes over twenty years in the fields of information technology, marketing, and customer relationships, making social media her ideal niche. Connect with her on LinkedIn!
Transcript:
Abby Herman 0:08
Hey there, and welcome to episode 162 of The Content Experiment Podcast, a podcast that supports the idea that content and marketing are ever moving targets in any business. And it’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re doing it All right all of the time. You have permission to experiment with little tweaks and changes in your content to find what works for you, what increases value for your audience and what grows your business, and most importantly, what feels good for you.
Abby Herman 0:37
I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and consultant for online business owners who are ready to make a bigger impact online. And I’m CEO and creative director of the content experiment, a content marketing agency that offers full service content marketing, and podcast management. I firmly believe that success isn’t about what big marketing brands and so called gurus think is the right thing. It’s about you and your business, your lifestyle, and frankly, your values and belief systems, you get to do business in a way that works for you.
Abby Herman 1:10
Now, when I first went full time in my business in 2013, I had no idea how to find clients. I used job boards, like Craigslist, and freelance writing boards to find work, but many of these were small one off projects. It wasn’t sustainable to growing a healthy business to find work this way. So I eventually turned to Facebook and Facebook groups, and I met so many amazing people, many of whom I’m still connected with today. I spent time engaging with group members sharing insights, answering questions, asking questions, and as a result, I established relationships and grew my business.
Abby Herman 1:49
But as many of us know, Facebook algorithms have made it really difficult to connect with others groups aren’t as active as they used to be. And unless you turn on notifications for certain people in groups, which is a big no for me, it’s a toss up if you will actually see their posts. Besides that, as my business has shifted and grown, I’ve found that my ideal client isn’t really prioritizing time on Facebook anymore, at least not for business growth. And I know a lot of people who have noticed the same thing and term LinkedIn, that elusive professional social network that I’ve frankly, been avoiding using, I’ve been posting there, but I haven’t really dug into how to truly connect with people.
Abby Herman 2:37
Well, I’ve been following Karen Yankovich today’s guest for several years now. And when I heard her speak at the she podcast conference a few months ago, I jumped at the opportunity to work with her. I’ve learned so much from her in just the few weeks that I’ve been in her program. And I wanted to share some of that knowledge with you. You are going to love this conversation about authentic connections, building your LinkedIn network using the free tools that LinkedIn has available for us and so much more. But before we get into the interview, let me tell you a little more about Karen,
Abby Herman 3:12
LinkedIn strategist, business consultant and speaker Karen Yankovich is the CEO of A Global Media LLC, having, quote, been there and done that in the arena of losing and then refighting a focused approach to business and life. Karen now offers coaching and consulting for entrepreneurs. Her unique specialty blends her get it done attitude with a passion for soulful living in her personal services and online workshops. Host of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast and LinkedIn evangelist, Karen guides entrepreneurs to creating wealth by combining smart business practices with simple proven systems that develop and maintain strong customer relationships.
Abby Herman 3:55
She offers results oriented and expert LinkedIn market marketing strategies that position her clients to bring in instant results. Karen’s background includes over 20 years in the fields of information technology, marketing, and customer relationships, making social media her ideal niche. And now here is our conversation.
Abby Herman 4:19
Hi, Karen, thank you so much for joining me here today. I’m so excited to chat about LinkedIn with you.
Karen Yankovich 4:25
I’m so happy to be here. Abby. Thanks so much for having me.
Abby Herman 4:28
Yeah. So before we dive in, can you share with listeners who you are, what you do, and who you do it for?
Karen Yankovich 4:35
Yeah, so my name is Karen Yankovich. And over the years, I have kind of niched my service down to really supporting women to use LinkedIn profitably to build relationships with the kind of people that can change your business their life in their bank accounts. And, you know, that really comes from getting clarity and just getting clarity on like, what a high ticket opportunity looks like. Who are the people I need to meet that can help me land those opportunities? And then start meeting those people and get on the phone, that good old fashioned phone that you can actually talk to people on.
Abby Herman 5:07
I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I get it. Zoom. I like zoom calls.
Karen Yankovich 5:17
Zoom to make this happen
Abby Herman 5:22
Can you share a little bit about how you work with clients? And how does the way you work with clients help you to live the lifestyle that you want?
Karen Yankovich 5:32
Yeah, interesting. So, you know, over the years, just like most entrepreneurs, you know, my business has been a little bit roller coaster, you know, doing all the things I thought I needed to do. And all the things people were telling me I needed to do. And I really, I guess, really kind of from the beginning of the pandemic, but like, early 2020, I just decided I just didn’t want to do all the things like I wanted to just take what I was doing and do a better job at the one thing I was doing.
Karen Yankovich 5:56
So we stripped out all of the other things that I was doing, and just started to pour more and more resources into my she’s linked up program, which is a nine week LinkedIn program that helps women really just learn the process. And by the way, when I say women I love, I feel like women are not as supported on LinkedIn as I’d like them to be. But I don’t really care what your body parts are how you identify, I just feel like women feel like it’s not the place for them. And I want them to understand that it really could be right. So.
Karen Yankovich 6:23
So we took some time to really revamp things and, and stripped everything else out. And started to like, I like to say I believe flip the funnel, you know, I stopped with the $10 things and the $20 things in the $50 things in the $100 things. And I said, I was looking at our program, which you know, has evolved, of course, and every time it evolved, we added more resources to it. Like for example. And this takes a little courage you guys like but in the beginning with the first things I realized was people were getting stuck right at module two, which was do your own profile, and they were just not getting past and they weren’t getting work done.
Karen Yankovich 6:55
So I was like, alright, we’re just gonna do it for you. And if I do it for you, of course, that means the investment has to increase, right? Because now I’m paying somebody to do it. So we just started to do that we started to look at where our students were where the program was working really well and where people were struggling. And we’re like, Okay, well, what can we do to overcome that struggle, and we started to add resources to it. So where we landed, you know, now two years later, is the I have my I have a podcast, I’m the host of the good girls get rich Podcast, the podcast, and I have a webinar, which I will, I’m sure I’ll tell you about later, that are both, you know, complimentary and on demand.
Karen Yankovich 7:32
And then I said we are injury offer is our she’s linked up accelerator program. And we’ve built some opportunities to work with us beyond that program. And there’s so many reasons that I did this. But one of the biggest reasons was, with the lower end programs I was offering, people weren’t doing the work, when they were paying $50 or $100, they were showing up every week, they’re coming on the call, we were having these little, you know, learning about their kids and their grandkids and talking about what we ate for dinner last night and things like that, but nobody was actually taking action and doing the work.
Karen Yankovich 8:04
So it was so frustrating to me that I literally just pulled the plug on it. So like I, I only want to do this on the back end, I want people have gone through my program first, before I started spending this invest so much of my energy and helping support them grow their business, because if they’ve gone through my program first, then I know that I can, I can dive in at a high level and help them at a high level and they’re showing up at a high level. So that’s kind of the shifts we made in the business over the last few years.
Abby Herman 8:29
Yeah, well, and I love the idea of just going for the high level offer. Because I agree. I mean, it’s it’s great to get paid. It’s great to you know, have people buy from you. But if they’re not actually doing the work, they’re not being successful, and that doesn’t feel very good.
Karen Yankovich 8:45
You know, and what they’re supposed to do, are drive full of training, you know, like, people don’t need more information. Yeah, you know, they’ve got all the information they could meet if we need if information got us the results, we wanted to be like one diet book, and that’s it, we’d be done. We’d read it. We didn’t know what we needed to do. And we’d be done right. But instead, there’s a billion diet books because we need transformation, we need people to hold our hands as we make the changes in our lives.
Karen Yankovich 9:10
So the information, which is what I thought I needed to be offering, because I could do it at a lower price point, right. It just wasn’t working for me. mm for buying it, you know, but they were doing it. And I don’t you know, it’s not the kind of business I wanted to build.
Abby Herman 9:24
No, that doesn’t feel very good. I agree. I agree. So I’m in your program, and I am super impressed with how robust it is and how many like add ons I feel like there are with all of that, you know, somebody’s doing it helping me with my profile and writing my profile for me and mindset coaching and, and PR coaching and all of that, which Yeah, makes it incredibly valuable. And I feel like there’s more, I guess like check ins, so there’s more people checking to make sure that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
Karen Yankovich 10:00
You’ve figured that out, you figured out our secret sauce, right? And I feel like I want women, I want our students to be self accountable. I don’t need to babysit you. But at the same time, I know that if I give you three weeks between the one action, another action, you’re going to take two and two weeks and eight, seven days, six days to do it, right? That’s what we do.
Karen Yankovich 10:19
So we’ve created this in a way where we’re you’re talking to probably someone every single week. But you know, that’s part of what we implemented as we went into 2020. And through today, we started to bring in more things. Because here’s what I realized, I realized that if I wanted this to be a world class Program, which I truly believe it is, I can do this stuff. I can talk the mindset stuff, right, I can talk the talk, I still do the Monday Mindset calls, because I love talking about mindset. But I also know that Carrie is a very well trained high performance mind because that coach, and you are getting better results when you work with Cary on that.
Karen Yankovich 10:55
And here’s the thing I can helps me grow the program, because I’m not doing all the calls. Yeah, it helps me grow, I can leverage the program, I could grow the program. And it’s so cool to just have these brilliant coaches on my team that work with our students. So, that was actually another kind of talking about a mindset challenge, right?
Karen Yankovich 11:15
Obviously, we had to increase the investment, again, if I’m paying coaches, to work with my students, as opposed to me doing it all. So I still do a lot of the calls and a lot of the coaching. But even at some point that’s probably going to have to change. And that will be the biggest mindset shift is how do we do that? How do we get to the point where there’s not enough, there’s not enough hours on Karen’s calendar, right to do this, because I can bring in a second or third or fourth mindset coach, or as our program grows, or a second or third or fourth PR coach as the program grows?
Karen Yankovich 11:40
So is it going to be the strategy stuff, that’s going to be the challenge for me, but me personally, I know that we’ve got great people that can help our students, but it’s good to be able to let go of it.
Abby Herman 11:50
Yeah, I bet Carrie can help you with that.
Karen Yankovich 11:56
I’m gonna have to hit her up for that Carrie, right, get ready for that call.
Abby Herman 12:01
So LinkedIn is where you support people. And I remember so back in the day, I left my day job in 2013, to grow my business full time. And back in the day back at that time. A lot of people were on Facebook and what people are still on Facebook, but Facebook was the tool to build connections and grow your online business for those of us in the online space.
Abby Herman 12:27
And now, it doesn’t quite work that way anymore. And people are moving over to LinkedIn. And I mean, I think that, you know, there are a lot of reasons to be on LinkedIn. Can you share a little bit about why LinkedIn is a more lucrative place to be and to grow? versus Facebook?
Karen Yankovich 12:48
Yeah. So you know, when I first started doing this LinkedIn work, the real reason wasn’t the reasons that that there that are there now, right? The real reason was because I with my background, and just all the years in sales and marketing that I’ve been in, I knew relationship marketing, and LinkedIn was the closest thing that I knew to relationship marketing. And at the end of the day, we’re more interested in the people that we do business with, than we’ve ever been before.
Karen Yankovich 13:12
So to me, LinkedIn made sense from a marketing standpoint, because when you create a strong personal brand, and immediately elevate your business brand, so that’s kind of what got me started really focusing on LinkedIn. But certainly the universe has chimed in to support that decision. Because so many things have happened with other social media platforms like Facebook, they just have a mind of their own, and there’s absolutely no support.
Karen Yankovich 13:35
So you know, for example, my Facebook Ad Account got shut down over a year ago, it’s still shut down, it got shut down, because I got hacked. Like shame on me, I didn’t have two step authentication on and I should have. So that’s where I take accountability, right, but it got hacked by somebody from Vietnam. They know that it got hired from somebody from Vietnam, because they were billing ads to my credit card. And they credited me for all of those ads. But somebody somewhere didn’t do their due diligence and just set up these ads against our terms of service and suspended me permanently, and I have not been able to get anybody to look at it.
Karen Yankovich 14:07
So at the end of the day, who can operate a business like that, right? My business page, which I invested a lot of money in ads to grow, had like 20,000 likes on it. I lost like 15,000 likes during that whole process. I had no control over that. I’ve heard in the last couple months, I’ve heard people losing their Instagram accounts, like for no reason with no explanation without the ability to get them back. So we’ve always known, you know, it’s kind of like saying, you know, like, Oh, my this is a terrible example.
Karen Yankovich 14:36
But like, it’s kind of like we you know, we take birth control pills, you know, they’re 99%. You know, for effective, you know, there’s always at 1%, but you don’t think about it. So we’ve always known that. We didn’t own our social media and anything could happen at any time, but it wasn’t happening. So we didn’t care but now it’s happening. Right? With LinkedIn.
Karen Yankovich 14:52
Now the same thing could happen on LinkedIn. However, the difference is on LinkedIn, you’re building relationships, you’re meeting people, and when you meet those people that doesn’t change, you know, that doesn’t change. If you lost access to your LinkedIn account, you can export all your content. So you can export everything that you’ve done on LinkedIn. So you always have a record of all of that you have. I mean, it’s not easy to find, like you can’t export it and easily find information, but you can export it and know you own it, you have it somewhere.
Karen Yankovich 15:19
And, you know, I think to what’s happened over the last few years was when the world that went virtual, the virtual noise got deafening. And it just got crazy. So, to me, I think that what I saw, and I remember, even in my own world, I was telling like my students and my staff, you if you guys need me, you have to come through this source, like my staff needed to go through slack and my students needed to go, I was getting DMS, from everywhere, and I just couldn’t keep up with it. I was like, It’s not that I don’t want to respond to you. It’s like, I can’t, I can’t find it. I forget that I’m like, heavies messaged me, I saw it somewhere where it was that message, right? Like, I can’t, I don’t want to operate like that.
Karen Yankovich 15:56
So I kind of had to shut down all the DMS and all the other channels and just say, you’ve got to get me, you know, reach me this way. And then, of course, use the DMS when I’ve got time and you know, from a marketing standpoint, but not from something that’s important, right? So, at the same time, when the world went virtual, we realized that our personal brands were important, right?
Karen Yankovich 16:15
When you’re, when you’re when you meet somebody at a networking event, you’re not sitting there with your phone, Googling them while you’re talking to them, right. But when you’re virtually meeting with them, you might be doing that, right, they might be checking you out, right, so people are checking us out more online than they ever have. And LinkedIn is a place to really showcase the all the amazing things that you do so. So I think that that really is why that even though I started LinkedIn way before any of this happened, I think that it’s even more important.
Karen Yankovich 16:41
Now. You know, I used to say that your profile was, you know, it’s always great if you have a great profile. Now, I don’t think it’s optional. I think if you want to be a strong business professional, whether you’re an entrepreneur or a business professional with a paycheck, you need to have a strong LinkedIn profile, because people are checking it. People are googling you. And it’s what comes up when people Google you.
Karen Yankovich 17:01
Now, beyond that, do I think that there’s a ton more value to use LinkedIn to build your career? I absolutely do. But at the very least, you got to have a great profile.
Abby Herman 17:10
Yes. So just a personal example, I was looking somebody up on LinkedIn just today. She’s a guest on a client’s podcast. And I was trying to gather some more information about her to include in the show notes. And in some of the social media that we’re putting out there, I found her name, but there is nothing on her profile. So I so she she missed out, I’m just going to have to include some very generic stuff, the little bit of information that I could find on her website. So yeah, which is really unfortunate. But that’s the way it goes.
Karen Yankovich 17:42
Yeah. So throw your name in a Google search, everyone that’s listening and see what comes up and see if you are telling the world what you want the world to know about you if they’re searching for you. If not, you can use LinkedIn to change that.
Abby Herman 17:55
Yeah, yes. So I am all about building relationships. Also, I know that that’s a huge part of that is that is what you teach is building relationships on LinkedIn. But I’m connected with a lot of people and receive a lot of connection requests from people who I don’t know at all.
Abby Herman 18:12
Sometimes there’s a message attached to a connection request. Sometimes they’re not plus, I have probably 600 connections who I don’t know, I don’t know the people, I don’t remember how we got connected. Is it valuable to remain connected to those people? And if so, how do we start to build relationships with some of the people who were connected with who we may have just kind of forgotten about or they’ve forgotten about us?
Karen Yankovich 18:37
Well, first of all, you know, you as a podcast host, the whole point of being a podcast host is to get your message in front of people that don’t know you, right? So if people so what happens when you’re getting LinkedIn connection requests from people you don’t know, that means your market, your digital marketing works, so hooray for you, right? That’s what’s supposed to happen when we do this stuff. That doesn’t mean that they’re all for real, right?
Karen Yankovich 18:57
Obviously, sometimes they’ll be people that are just whatever, you know, scraping LinkedIn or just trying to spam, whatever. But when but I think generally, if you approach that with the cool people know about me, and I don’t know who they are, that means the stuff I do is working. That’s the attitude I kind of want you to go into that with. But I love that you said you know, what do you do? How do you build relationships with them from there, and as you know, that’s, that’s the very first thing we do. Once we’ve gotten past your profile in our program is like, Who are you connected with? And let’s find that low hanging fruit.
Karen Yankovich 19:25
And it’s so funny because I’m gonna say 70 or percent or higher of the time people say to me, Oh, my networks, just not it’s all who I used to know. It’s all not valuable. Like, I don’t know any of these people. But then when we sit down and look at they’re like, oh, wait, this person, and like, oh, wait, I haven’t talked to this person a long time was I didn’t know they change jobs. Right.
Karen Yankovich 19:42
So when you dive into your purse, your existing LinkedIn network, and just to see who you’re connected with, and what kind of cool things can you know can what kind of cool things can you talk about with some of these people? That’s low hanging fruit, like that’s a that’s an amazing way to just again get on the phone and You know, Abby, you know, I want this to be micro targeted, I don’t want you to connect with 100 people a week, I want you to connect with such a small number that you’re actually following up and getting on the phone with people.
Karen Yankovich 20:09
If you connect, if you message 20 people that you’re already connected with, and 10 or 12 of them respond to you, you’re, you’re already getting swamped. Right, and you’re not gonna have time to do that. So do the research, find 50 and then reach out to five at a time, so that you’re starting to have a consistent stream of conversations with people that again, can change your business and your bank account
Abby Herman 20:30
and reach out to them in what way so how do you approach somebody who you’re not sure how you’re connected? And Dave, can we find out how long we’ve been connected? Is there any way to figure out where those people can?
Karen Yankovich 20:43
But here’s the thing, you don’t need to do this with everyone, right? So you want to cherry pick only the people that you think could be valuable. So if you see someone that you’re connected to, and you’re like, wow, I don’t know how I’m connected with this person. But I totally want to really get to know them better than I would say exactly that, you know, I we’re connected here on LinkedIn, we’ve been connected for two years, I don’t remember how we actually got connected initially.
Karen Yankovich 21:02
But I love that you’re doing this or this or I just listened to your show, or, you know, I saw that you were speaking here, I saw you in the news. They’re like LinkedIn paid tools. Like it feeds you this information, sometimes which of your contacts have been in the news? Right? So you can, you can use that. So you can say exactly that. Right? I’m not really sure how we’re connected.
Karen Yankovich 21:21
But we are and I see this and this, and I’d love to learn more about you and what you do. You know, I’m gonna say 99 out of 100 times people are very responsive to that. But there is the person that’s gonna say, why, why? What do you want to know? And then you’re just like, okay, you know what, let’s move on. Let’s get this one. Nevermind, we’ll skip this and go on to the next person.
Abby Herman 21:40
So you mentioned paid tools. Can you talk a little bit about what Page tool because LinkedIn itself is free? What are the page tools that we can use to help elevate our connections?
Karen Yankovich 21:51
Yeah, so there’s a few LinkedIn has. So LinkedIn is very, very, they’re very picky about who they associate with, they do not offer their network out too many paid or paid tools. So you really need to use their own paid tools, you can use things like you can do posting tools like the Hootsuite of the world, you can do that. That’s legitimate, and that follows their terms of service. But the vast majority of the LinkedIn tools that people are using are against their terms of service, and people will get shut down for using them just to be clear, you will I’ve seen it happen over and over.
Karen Yankovich 22:20
So I’m not here to you know, be the LinkedIn police. But just know that if LinkedIn is an important platform for you then follow the terms of service, you don’t get shut down, right. So that’s why I think let’s use the tools LinkedIn gives us. So they have a few levels of their premium service, there’s just regular premium. And then there’s specific ones to job seekers, recruiters, and then LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Karen Yankovich 22:42
And LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the one that I like, I think that IT services it serves, it serves the purpose for all of those things. Obviously, if your job is a recruiter, then get the recruiter program. But if you are, you know, general business owner, and occasionally you, you’re going to, you know, pop a job description up there, you know, job opening up there, you don’t need recruiter to do that, you can do that with Sales Navigator, and just some regular simple tools.
Karen Yankovich 23:05
But what Sales Navigator does is it gives us the ability like so because LinkedIn is so protective of their platform. And if you think about it over the last few years, right, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, all of the owners of these companies have been up on Capitol Hill testifying as to you know, all of the crazy stuff. LinkedIn was not there. Right? Because LinkedIn does not allow other people to log in as you and they know if that happens, like I had an assistant one time that was in Maryland, and I’m in New Jersey and I she was getting messages. Why are you in this account? I was getting messages. Why are you in Maryland and in New Jersey at the same time, you know, they know by your IP address where you’re logging in.
Karen Yankovich 23:41
So at this moment in time, nobody on the planet has my LinkedIn login, but me, because it’s too important to me that my account doesn’t get shut down. So because of that, me as the CEO of my company, there’s a lot of things I need to do myself that I might normally have given to an assistant, right. But I can’t do that if I don’t want to give them access to my LinkedIn. So how can I leverage my time? Well, I can leverage my time by using their paid services.
Karen Yankovich 24:05
I can you know, part of the some of the things the paid service the Sales Navigator service does is it lets you narrow your search down by who’s active on LinkedIn. So if you have a search of 100 people, you’re not connecting with 100 people over however long it takes you to do that, knowing that 50 of them are probably not even active, you can search you can drop that down to 50 people right off the bat. And now you’ve just leveraged your time because you’re not sending connection requests to people that aren’t even active on LinkedIn. Right.
Karen Yankovich 24:29
So to me that right there is worth the investment in Sales Navigator because it’s saving me time and I you know, so whenever I can do to save time on LinkedIn, I’m happy to do. There’s all kinds of other things we can do there. We can save searches and the searches repopulate themselves. There’s a lot of really cool services that you get. When you get Sales Navigator. You can do searches by zip code.
Karen Yankovich 24:50
So you know, for example, you and I met at a conference a couple of months ago, and the she podcast conference in Arizona and one of the things that I did was I like I did a search of a 25 mile radius of the the, the, the Scottsdale, zip code, and then put the word podcast in the search bar. And then came up with like 25 First Degree network people that I was already connected with, that were within 25 miles of Scottsdale that had the word podcast in their profile. Right. So then I could reach out and again, it was she podcasts.
Karen Yankovich 25:22
So those 25, you know, 15 of them are guys. So I had 10 women that I was connected with that I could say, Hey, are you going to be a cheap podcast, you know, like, we’ve been connected, and we never got to meet each other, let’s have coffee, while we’re there. You know, or even better, I’m speaking, I’d love for you to if you can, sometimes you get to get free passes as a speaker. Right?
Karen Yankovich 25:39
You can do that with Sales Navigator with the regular with the free version. I live in New Jersey, I’d have to use New York City Metro Area, which gives me like 200 mile radius, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just huge. And then I’m also smack between New York and Philadelphia. So then there’s the Philadelphia so it’s just too huge if I’m speaking at a conference, and I can do a 25 mile radius, because somebody might say, Wow, it’s really it’s in Scottsdale, I’m only 10 minutes from there, where they might not say, I’ll drive an hour to see you, Karen, you know, so.
Karen Yankovich 26:08
So you can do those kinds of things with it that you can’t do with the free version. So it’s just it just adds a little bit of fuel to the powerful work that you’re already doing.
Abby Herman 26:17
Yes, I it’s so important to be really intentional with who, who you’re spending time connecting to. And there was a time years ago when I got on a lot of virtual coffee chats with people through that I met through Facebook groups. And my main requirement was, if it’s somebody who I might want to be friends with in real life, then I will talk to them.
Abby Herman 26:42
And, and I may, you know, I made some really great business friends doing that. At the same time, it wasn’t really strategic for my business. This is just the little bit that you and I have played with Sales Navigator together, has really shown me the power of using a tool like that in finding the right people and really good business connections. So
Karen Yankovich 27:05
Yeah, I love that. So here’s another thing now that you’ve got this great LinkedIn profile, when people in these Facebook groups say, hey, let’s all connect on LinkedIn, you can mind those posts, because there’s a ton of those posts, right? You can mind them, you need to connect with all those people right now. But you can sit down. And that’s even something you probably can give to an assistant. Right, go through this profile, pull out 20 People that have podcasts in your case, right that have podcasts.
Karen Yankovich 27:30
And then you can then connect to them on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I’m connecting from that post on the Facebook group that blah, blah, blah, right? So you can use. So there’s just so many ways to use LinkedIn, we can still use Facebook and other people to feed our outreach, right like because like I said, because in addition to we talked a little bit about diving into your existing network, but I still like when you want to I still like people to build their network, because in six months, if you’re building your network intentionally, you’ve got some pretty cool people in there, right? You’ve got a network you’ve created.
Karen Yankovich 27:58
So I think that using like other platforms like Facebook, and things like that, to find the targeted people to connect with, that’s a warm connection, you’re not randomly sending out cold messages to people that say, Hey, I think we should know each other. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, you know,
Abby Herman 28:15
yeah, so that actually brings me to my next question about some do’s and don’ts when it comes to connecting on LinkedIn. So that sounds like a slimy don’t that we that we don’t want to do. Right? Can you share some big mistakes and some big wins that people maybe have had by in different ways of connecting on LinkedIn?
Karen Yankovich 28:35
Yeah, you know, it’s so funny because we’re so we’re also looking for magic wands. And what we don’t realize is that the magic wand sometimes give us create more work for us than then just doing the actual work would have right so I think that you know, so many people use these these these scraping tools the ones that I said are against LinkedIn in terms of service, but they have these like sweet sexy promises like you’re going to get free you’re going to get leads you’re going to pay me you know $1,000 a month and for that $1,000 A month I’m going to promise you 100 qualified leads but here’s the deal.
Karen Yankovich 29:07
Qualified says who you know, because at the end of the day, okay, so you didn’t want to take the time to do the research which was what we just talked about to reach out to five people every week based on those few little things we talked about to research that you got some qualified people so you’re going to pay someone all this money to spam basically the world with your profile and hopes that at some percentage of those people are going to say Sure I’ll talk but now you as a business owner gonna have to talk to 100 people that are so not qualified.
Karen Yankovich 29:36
So now they might be leads but they’re not really qualified leads and I don’t want to talk to people that I haven’t qualified. So then they people call me up they’re like oh my gosh, I’ve gotten all these leads but I’m not nothing’s happening with them and it’s swamping me the service works really well cuz I’m getting all these leads but I just don’t have time to keep up with it. I’m like, no, no, no, the service doesn’t work really well. You know because you’re getting all there swamping you in the name of I’m giving you leads, right so, you know, when it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Karen Yankovich 30:04
You know, another thing that I’m seeing a lot is people that are doing these, like pods, these engagement pods and posting parties and things like that. And I have zero time to post on people that I don’t know his profiles to in hopes of somehow beating the algorithm. But then they come in like, oh, no, but you don’t understand my posts got this. Many people saw it and they love my content is they’re saying all these great things like, yeah, they’re saying all these great things, because that’s the rules of your pod. You know what I mean? They don’t really care about what you’re doing.
Karen Yankovich 30:33
So you’re just wasting your time. And, and I just, I don’t understand that. I think if you just are genuine, and you’re genuinely building relationships, it’s going to be amazing how fast you’re going to land clients, compared to all this crazy stuff we think we should be doing because it seems sexy and easy and magic wand like, you know, yes.
Abby Herman 30:53
Yeah, those pods do not work on Facebook, they don’t work on Instagram. They don’t work on LinkedIn either. And I agree and you know, to be totally honest, I have been in one of those pods before, I think it was for fate, I think it was on Facebook. And it didn’t work because I was not the people in the pod were not my ideal clients. I was not their ideal client, I was having to spend time and energy like stretching myself to find something to say that would be like an engaging, and engaging comment of some sort.
Abby Herman 31:29
And, and it felt super slimy. I only lasted a couple weeks because I was like, this is not this is not benefiting me. And, and generic comments like, Oh, I love this article. That’s not helpful at all. So yeah,
Karen Yankovich 31:43
right. And you know, saying the same thing here. It’s not, you know, honestly, I want you to post because I think it’s important that when you do this work, and you do this research, and you connect with these people that they you stay top of mind with them. But I could care less about the algorithm, I don’t care how many people see my posts, ever, ever. Because that’s another thing that I see a lot of people worried about, like, Well, yeah, but how do we get more eyes on our posts?
Karen Yankovich 32:04
Like, yeah, so like, I suppose there’s something to be said, if 1000 people or 100, people see your content that if 1000 people see it, that you have a bigger chance of somebody wanting to engage with your services. But honestly, I don’t think it’s a big enough chance to worry about the algorithm, I think you want to be the people that are going to see your content or the people you’re engaging with. And if you’re engaging with people, Lincoln’s gonna show them your content, that’s what you want to see.
Karen Yankovich 32:27
And that’s where the bigger opportunities come. And you know, I’m not just looking for people to overcharge and charge $20,000, for something that’s worth $5,000. I want them to remember that when you think about how much you can over deliver, when you have enough budget, that it’s Win Win Win, that, that you’re not you don’t have to do this times a million, because you’re, you know, you’ve got these higher priced services. It’s not over pricing, it’s over delivering. And I think that’s where, where the that’s where it gets hosed a little bit when people are thinking about high ticket services, that’s just a crap.
Karen Yankovich 33:02
No, it’s not when you are delivering at such a high value that people are getting to people, I want people to get at least five times the value of whatever they invest in, in my services, right. So as long as you’re doing it like that, and then you’re very micro targeted Lee reaching out to these people, you are you have a higher chance of landing contracts like that then you do of spamming your network hoping 1000 People see the post and somebody is going to buy something. And you know, you asked earlier, how does all this fit into the life that I’m building?
Karen Yankovich 33:30
To be honest, it’s, the more I don’t, that’s why I don’t want to do things like pods, I don’t want to spend a minute of my life posting on somebody’s content that I don’t care about. I have like one of the things Sales Navigator does is it allows you to save your search your save people, so that you can see what they’ve posted. I have all my clients saved because I want to serve you guys, not necessarily just spam and get I mean, sometimes I’ll save somebody that I think is a good prospect as well. But generally, I use it to just continue to serve to the people that I want to build relationships with.
Karen Yankovich 34:02
And honestly, my business has never been more fun to run than it is now that is full of people that I so love engaging with. So, you know, I get to be picky. And I get to be picky not only about the people I hang out with, but what about the work that I’m doing in a day and, you know, it allows you to work less and, and bring in more. So I don’t know who doesn’t want that. But right.
Abby Herman 34:28
I want that to yeah, yes. So you’ve talked a lot about Sales Navigator and how to build relationships using that. I love the idea of saving, saving people and especially clients and going in and making sure that you’re interacting with them and with prospects and all of that.
Abby Herman 34:46
What about some of the free tools that LinkedIn has? So I know that there’s LinkedIn live, there’s the newsletter that you can use in LinkedIn as well. Are there any other free tools and what’s the benefit of using Doing things like LinkedIn live and the newsletter?
Karen Yankovich 35:02
Well, you know, here’s the thing, just like any other platform, the more you engage with the things they give you, the more LinkedIn loves you, right? So, so why not use link if you’ve, by the way, LinkedIn is approving live more quickly now than they ever have. So if you’ve applied for live in the past, and you got denied, apply again, because at this point in time, I’m seeing people get approved, but they’re only approving people that are active on LinkedIn. So I’ve seen people get denied, but then they’re like, why haven’t posted on LinkedIn and a few months? Well, that’s why you got denied, right?
Karen Yankovich 35:29
So get active on LinkedIn, stay active for a couple weeks or months and then apply for LinkedIn live. But what LinkedIn live does is it I mean, LinkedIn shows your content to more people that way, right? It plays in your I don’t even know if you know this happy but you know that it plays in your header image live while you’re live. So when I’m live notice that right, yeah, that’s kind of cool. So it just gives you some cool tools.
Karen Yankovich 35:52
And then LinkedIn live is not like the other platforms live, you can’t go live directly to LinkedIn, you need a third party tool. So I use stream yard. And, you know, obviously, it’s another. It’s another tool, I think I paid for it, I think you I think there is a free version. But you know, it really lets you show up at a higher level, lets you show up at a higher level versus just recording a bunch of video. And then, you know, showing it as if it’s live.
Karen Yankovich 36:16
Now, here’s the deal, you can do that you can record video, and then send it out as if it’s live. But you don’t get the opportunity to interact with your network. And that’s at the end of the day, what we’re looking to do. We’re looking to build relationships with people. So why are we fake, loving, live streaming, you know, let’s just do it real, when you can and how you can. So I think that that’s really a valuable tool to use when you can.
Karen Yankovich 36:38
And you mentioned newsletters, newsletters is so huge, so powerful. So the other thing you mentioned is newsletters and newsletters is so powerful, because what it does is it allows you to get content that you’ve probably already created, like if you send out a weekly email to your email list. You can reformat that weekly email, same content and send it out to people that subscribe to your LinkedIn weekly newsletter. And I you know, listen, I have a lot of connections on LinkedIn because I teach this stuff.
Karen Yankovich 37:02
But I just looked, I just looked a little while ago and I published my newsletter a week and a half, maybe two weeks ago, and I have 2000. I’m looking at it now 2283 subscribers, that’s adding 2200 people to my email list in a week. Yeah. And they chose to subscribe. This isn’t me pushing it out. Like what happens when you create your first newsletter, it says, Would you like to ask your network if they’d like to subscribe to newsletter? So it sends out a message to everyone you’re connected with? And they get to say yes or not. Right? So 2300 283 People said, Yes, they’d like to subscribe to my newsletter.
Karen Yankovich 37:35
So that gives me the opportunity. Like we’ve to reach them. So LinkedIn is paying attention. They are asking what we need, and they’re paying attention. I’ve actually seen and engaged with a lot of the LinkedIn product developers and marketing team and even like C suite members on clubhouse, they come up, they jump on clubhouse, and they say what do you guys want? You know, and they and they pay attention. And then they try to implement some of that stuff. So it’s pretty cool.
Abby Herman 37:59
And love that. So a newsletter I thought the newsletter was you create an article and you send the article out as a newsletter. Is there another way to use the newsletter tool?
Karen Yankovich 38:09
Well, yes, that is true. But you can create the article, as if like when you create an ad, it is creating an article but you get to create an article but call it a newsletter. So same format, but you get so you get to but you can still create like headlines in the middle of things and you can still kind of format the article like it’s a newsletter gives you like this blog kind of interface to to create it.
Karen Yankovich 38:30
You can add images, you can add videos, you can add links, there’s things you can add. But the difference between the article and the newsletter is when you send out the newsletter, they email, they email and link to every one of the people that subscribed to your newsletter, saying Karen’s new newsletter just came out. So I’m getting in their inboxes and their LinkedIn inboxes, their email inbox and their LinkedIn. So it is the same interface as the articles.
Karen Yankovich 38:55
And literally when you go in to write an article, you’ll get a drop down, do you want to write an article or a newsletter, like you just get a drop down? It’s the same interface, we just pick which one you’re doing. But you do have to set up the newsletter the first time.
Abby Herman 39:05
Yeah, I love it. I love it
Karen Yankovich 39:07
Me too. I’m really excited
Abby Herman 39:08
I’m excited to use it.
Karen Yankovich 39:09
about the newsletter feature. So much. So that is I’ve actually I did the first one and then I pulled back and said, No, I want to figure this out. Like for example, you can create like a header image for each episode. So we’re creating like a template that has the name like I create. I call the newsletter that she’s linked up diary, I might change it to she’s linked up diaries.
Karen Yankovich 39:28
Like I’m thinking I might change it to that because I feel like that’s a little bit intriguing, right then just newsletter. But I want to create a header image that has like a special logo for she’s linked up diaries, and then a space that I can also put like what that one is about. So I would customize it for each different week.
Karen Yankovich 39:44
So we’re actually putting some time and effort and thought into setting it up the first time but then once you set it up, it’s just you just bang it out. Here’s the thing, because again, I don’t want anybody let me log into LinkedIn. It’s got to be me. So I got to I need to in my world I need people to feed me this stuff so that I can just go in And then pop it all in.
Abby Herman 40:01
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. This is so, so great. I love all of the information and you actually have a webinar, a free webinar that people can attend to get more information about all of this. Is that right? Can you share a little bit about that?
Karen Yankovich 40:17
Yeah. So you know, a lot of the strategies that I teach or say unorthodox strategies, because a lot of it is shifting your mindset and your energy from LinkedIn as your online resume to LinkedIn as a place to build a brand and to build relationships at a high level. So I’ve created a work on demand workshop, that is just five shifts that I think you need to make to have the success that you can have on LinkedIn, we don’t sell anything on that webinar.
Karen Yankovich 40:44
It’s just if this all resonates with you, here’s a link book a call, let’s talk and see if it’s a fit to get some to help you get some support for this. And I refer to LinkedIn as my money tree. And I think it absolutely can be the same for you. So you can find that at water that money tree.com. Because like all living breathing things, all the things we talked about today needs consistent attention doesn’t need to be, you don’t need to be doing a lot every week.
Karen Yankovich 41:07
But if you want to have a consistent stream of like, I had a call today with somebody, one of our students who said, she’s having so much success diving into existing networks, she doesn’t even really want to build out, move into building out her network. And I was like, Well, here’s the thing, at some point, it’s going to dry out, right? So then you’re going to be then you’re going to be dry so even if you’re doing two or three people a week, still do that outreach, because that’s what I feel like is watering that money tree.
Karen Yankovich 41:31
Because if she reaches out to somebody that maybe was running conferences, she’s going to speak at maybe the conferences in May, right? So she’s reaching out now that’s like, kind of watering that money tree, right? Always doing, always setting so that you’ve got a you know, you’ve always got like a pipeline of opportunities that are happening and people to get on the phone with.
Karen Yankovich 41:49
So if you don’t water that money tree, then at some point, you’re not gonna have you’re gonna look at your calendar, there’s not gonna be anything on it. Right. So WaterThatMoneyTree.com
get you to the On Demand masterclass, with the five shifts, that I think if you just make these five shifts, you’ve got you’re setting yourself up for some serious success.
Abby Herman 42:07
Awesome. And where can people find out more about you and connect with you online? I’m guessing it might be LinkedIn,
Karen Yankovich 42:17
Yeah I’m at Karen Yankovic everywhere on social media, but definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. And, you know, let me know this is where we connected that you heard this, this interview. And, you know, I’m happy to I’d love to connect with you. And and if you’re looking to just get some little feedback on your profile, or what tips you can do, if you ask me that in the connection request, I’ll be happy to take a quick look at your profile and give you a quick tip, you know, as to what I think might be able to help you but I don’t just offer unsolicited advice you got to ask me.
Abby Herman 42:46
Awesome. Well, Karen, thank you so much for being here. This has been so much just a plethora of information and tips and all of that, and I can’t wait to learn even more from you in your program.
Karen Yankovich 42:58
Yeah, thanks so much for having me here. Abby, it’s been great talking on you know, I love talking about this stuff.
Abby Herman 43:02
Yes.
Abby Herman 43:04
Such a great episode, right. With so much information about LinkedIn, I have to say just the little bit of poking around that I’ve done in Sales Navigator has me totally sold and it’s worth the price hands down. Be sure to connect with Karen on LinkedIn because she is telling the truth. If you ask her for some feedback, she will give it to you because I did that with her probably about two years ago.
Abby Herman 43:33
If you found value in what you learned here today, be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. You can tag me @TheContentExperiment, and be sure to share it over on LinkedIn and tag Karen as well. The more you share, the more we can get the podcast into the hands of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone.
Abby Herman 43:59
Until next time, take care
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
