In 2023 LinkedIn has over 875 million members and is 20 years old this year, but did you know that recently LinkedIn has released over 35 new features?
In this episode I’m joined by LinkedIn Specialist Kay Ridge from Dash Social to learn more. It’s time to give our LinkedIn Profiles a little love.
Kay is a resourceful Creative Director with experience in leading and inspiring design and content creation across social channels. She love balancing the creative mind with the challenge to produce quality results,
LinkedIn Content Marketing is her passion, and she believes one of the most suitable platforms on social media for business. LinkedIn works when your profile is optimum and you have all the content in the right places.
She is always looking to be challenged and to challenge her team. Driving skilled creative talent to think outside the box, and bring out their artistic abilities by creating organic content.
Kay has recently been invited to join the Canva Creative Partner Program – what this means is that she will be working with Canva on their Beta sight, obtaining the latest design knowledge, ahead of her competitors.
Over the last six years, Kay have assisted Dash Social triple its interactivity on social media, creating organic content that drives engagement and brand awareness.
Her areas of expertise include the following:
LinkedIn Marketing Strategies, Canva Graphic Design, Digital Marketing, Social Media, Creative Strategy, Communications, Scheduling, Team Building and Leadership.
Kay’s previous roles include Creative Director Dash Social, Panellist on the Digital Toolkit Q&A Panel, Advisor/Educator for the Australian Small Business Advisory Services (ASBAS) Digital Solutions Program (Federally subsidised program), Agency Alternative Partner and Lions Australia 201/Q3 Marketing and PR Chair. (71 Clubs).
In this episode we cover:
- A short intro to Kay and what led her to her passion for LinkedIn.
- The most common misconception about LinkedIn as a content platform today.
- What most people in business are doing wrong on LinkedIn.
- The opportunity she sees when LinkedIn is set up right.
- The key features that people need to set up on their LinkedIn profile.
- Her thoughts on company pages on LinkedIn.
- Her thoughts on utilising video on Linkedin.
Links mentioned in the show:
If you found this episode of value I’d love for you to reach out and let me know on Instagram @engage_ben or email [email protected]
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Transcript of the Interview: ** Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.
Ben Amos:
G’day Kay, welcome to the podcast.
Kay Ridge:
Hey, Ben, nice to be here. Thank you.
Ben Amos:
Well thanks for joining me. We actually connected in person for a coffee recently and I recently saw you at a local event here on the Sunshine Coast where we’re both based here in Queensland, Australia, where you spoke about exactly what I brought you on to talk about here today around getting your LinkedIn profile set up for success in business. So I thought to myself, Kay would be great to get on the podcast because I know, and I want the listeners to think about their own LinkedIn profile as they’re listening to this. I know that some of our LinkedIn profiles need a little bit of love. So that’s what we’re going to dive into today but before we do Kay I’d love for you to just tell us a little bit about your story, like what led you into the world of marketing and now LinkedIn as well.
Kay Ridge:
Well, as you can tell Ben, I’m not 25. What was very interesting, I’ve been in sales most of my life and it used to be linked sales and marketing. And then sales went and divorced marketing and marketing had to stand up and be counted. So I’ve always loved marketing and basically I love marketing because it’s clever. It’s a way to integrate people with a product or a service. And when social media came in, now I’m going back to even things like, you know, MySpace, it just had a way that it took off because people could suddenly connect with other people. Now it’s like anything that you have on social media, you get the good with the bad. Thankfully, if we look at LinkedIn, I think it’s 99.9% good. It’s really a business platform compared to some like Facebook social platform. You know, lots of people connect on Facebook, you don’t really do that on LinkedIn.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, yeah. So tell me about what do you do today? Like you position yourself as a LinkedIn specialist. So what does that mean? You know, whether listeners are looking to connect with a LinkedIn specialist like you or looking to connect and get help from you? What does a LinkedIn specialist potentially help people with?
Kay Ridge:
Okay, so LinkedIn is actually originally was created for those searching for a job. So it was a way that you could set up and put your resume in. You can still do that. However, LinkedIn is now predominantly being pushed towards business and there are 8 million users on LinkedIn in Australia. So one of the things about LinkedIn is I own a marketing company called Dash Social. You know, I help clients with their LinkedIn to get optimized. What that means is you get found. So for example, we all know that you have a search engine, say like Google. And say I’ve met you for the first time then, when I put your name into Google in the search engine, obviously all the paid advertising comes up first. Then interesting enough, your LinkedIn profile comes up before your Facebook profile. So it’s about making sure that when somebody’s searching for you, you can be found through LinkedIn. So it’s a different platform that actually also assists you with your search engine optimization, SEO. So it’s a way to get found, it’s a way to connect, and it’s also a way to network and get with the right type of people if you know the secrets on what to do.
Ben Amos:
What would you say to someone who is potentially running their own business or a manager or a senior person within a business who would say, I don’t want to be found for my name, I’d prefer the business to be ranking on search rather than my name? What would you say to that person?
Kay Ridge:
Rubbish.
Ben Amos:
And why?
Kay Ridge:
Basically LinkedIn when you’re looking at business runs in two different ways. One’s about your credibility and that’s for your profile. And your profile and your credibility, nobody expects like if I looked at your LinkedIn profile, Ben, nobody expects that you’d be in video since the age of five. Okay, you’ve had a history of work to get to where you are and every bit of that experience. helps for you to have the credibility where you are now. So when we’re looking at somebody, it’s twofold. One is to look at a company, but we also look, especially if we’re looking at something like a professional and somebody that you’re building your profession on trust wants to know where you’ve come from. How do you do what you say you can do? What qualifications do you have? What experience do you have? What type of person you are? For example, if you’ve had volunteer work, for example, That’s any volunteer work that you put on a LinkedIn profile raises your profile ahead of someone that doesn’t. So it’s about finding out about the person. And LinkedIn is, when you look at your profile, it’s broken up into sections, a little bit like a newspaper. So if you look at the beginning and you look at your banner, it’s like looking at the big photo that you’d have in a newspaper. And then you see your small, I don’t mean that small, but the profile image. That’s like… you know, if somebody’s looking at a car accident or a newspaper and then it zooms in, it’s the same sort of process. And then it’s got your heading, which is basically the hook. Why would somebody want to read on further? Where we used to have something like for me, I would have, or you know, you’d have lawyer, real estate agent, accountant. It’s now, I provide my clients with the optimum levels to reduce their… tax for the ATO. It’s about creating value for my clients or it’s about I work, if I’m an accountant, I work on creating new income streams for my clients, predominantly using past history but forecasting what it’s going to be coming or whatever the scenario may be. I mean, it takes a little bit of work to sort of work out what the heading is going to be. But it’s more a driver so that somebody will want to know more. You then go down further in your LinkedIn profile and suddenly it’s, you know, you have your hashtags, which is basically what people search for. And then it goes through and you go and find out about me. Now, where this is interesting when you come into this section is, it’s where I get to know you better. And what it does, it’s, do, have you ever heard, Ben, of a cold lead, what a cold lead is?
Ben Amos:
Yep, absolutely. Yep, cold lead. So someone who hasn’t heard of you before.
Kay Ridge:
Correct. So what happens when you’re dealing with LinkedIn, you have somebody that’s searching for somebody, say they’re searching for a videographer. And they said videographers searching the Sunshine Coast and hello, one of your hashtags is videographers Sunshine Coast. So you come up. So now what they do is they go in and they have a look at your about section. And then that about section, I encourage anybody to say two things about it. something that most people don’t know about me is the heading. And in mine, for example, I’ve got, I don’t like water, I don’t like to drink it, and I don’t like to swim in it. All
Ben Amos:
There you go
Kay Ridge:
Right
Kay Ridge:
what happens now is somebody like you, Ben, rings me and says, why don’t you like water?
Ben Amos:
Yeah,
Kay Ridge:
which
Ben Amos:
it’s
Kay Ridge:
my
Ben Amos:
a talking
Kay Ridge:
response
Ben Amos:
point.
Kay Ridge:
is, have you seen what fish do in it? It’s disgusting. And of course, everybody laughs. I’ve now turned you from a cold lead to a warm lead. It’s got nothing about water. It’s the fact that I’ve given you a little insight into my personality. And it’s not meant to be a serious thing. For example, I have another client that I’ve just done work for, and hers get to know me, she’s gone “I cannot go to the bathroom in a public toilet. I have to wait till I get home.”
Ben Amos:
Okay.
Kay Ridge:
And I, pretty much every female in this world will understand what that’s like and why we don’t like public toilet. There was another one that I had who was a child star, another one had to wear a costume when they’re a teenager to some pizza. It’s about the connection, that human side about LinkedIn. So what happens from that, they’ve got, you know, they’re starting to feel like they might like you and as we all know, people buy from people they like. So they’re starting to feel more comfortable about you and this is before they’ve even had a connection with you verbally. Then what they do is that they go through and they have a look at what your experience is. How can you claim what you’ve claimed? That’s kind of the start of it. There’s more and more things that you go through, but that’s basically what they look at. One of the things that I’d like to point out, Ben, and it’s a statistic that astounded me. Did you know that out of all of the people that fill out a LinkedIn profile, only 51% fill it out completely?
Ben Amos:
You know, it doesn’t surprise me, but it’s a pretty compelling and large statistic, isn’t it?
Kay Ridge:
Yeah.
Ben Amos:
I don’t know how to say it that way, but it is. It’s a powerful statistic. I’m going to make a guess here that 51 per cent or thereabouts of the people listening to this podcast right now or watching on YouTube probably haven’t filled theirs out properly. I might be
Kay Ridge:
I’ll
Ben Amos:
one of those.
Kay Ridge:
say so.
Ben Amos:
I’m just thinking, I think I’ve done a pretty good job, but yeah, I think there’s probably some LinkedIn love that I need as well. So tell me, what’s the most common mistake that you’re seeing over and above just not filling it out? at all or only doing the very basic stuff. What’s the most common mistake that you see people who have set up a LinkedIn profile, they have got a profile image picture, let’s just get over the basic stuff here. What’s the most common missed opportunity that most people in business who do have a LinkedIn profile are missing out on because they just haven’t done it?
Kay Ridge:
They don’t do a call to action. They don’t say, give me
Ben Amos:
Okay.
Kay Ridge:
a call. Let’s have a virtual coffee. Book in here. Would love to chat with you for 15 minutes, obligation free. Here’s the link to my calendar. Let’s find something that’s suitable.
Ben Amos:
Okay, and where, like specifically and tactically, where is the best place for that call to action to sit? Okay.
Kay Ridge:
in the about section. See, only place you can put it. Oh, that’s not true, haven’t said that. I’m just gonna bring up my LinkedIn profile so I can double check. But you can put it where, again, it depends how much of your LinkedIn profile has been done. If you haven’t done a lot of your LinkedIn profile, there are a lot of things that won’t be open to you. So I can talk about some things and say, oh, you need to do A, B, and C. But if you haven’t filled out the profile, you won’t be able to do it because LinkedIn won’t give you access.
Ben Amos:
Yep.
Kay Ridge:
Okay, so, but there is an area where you can put in, you know, your website and you can put my website, when you filled in and optimized your LinkedIn profile, you can change that to be something like, I’m just gonna view my profile so I can get the right wording that I’ve got. I’ve got to content into customers and then a link to my website, instead of link to my website, which everybody Tom, Dick and Harry has done previously.
Ben Amos:
Yeah.
Kay Ridge:
So, LinkedIn addresses the fact that as you start to put in information within LinkedIn, LinkedIn will open up more things for you.
Ben Amos:
Yep, excellent. And when you talk about that call to action that so many people are missing, would you recommend in that about section that it’s in the top section of that about section? Because often when you go to a profile to read all of the about me section, you need to kind of click the see more button, I believe. So is there a certain place within that about section that you would recommend putting a call to action? Okay.
Kay Ridge:
Yeah, there is. It’s right at the bottom. And there’s a reason why you put it right at the bottom, and it’s all to do with algorithms.
Ben Amos:
Okay.
Kay Ridge:
So that’s kind of what LinkedIn uses, almost like it’s old programming, to see what is interesting and what is not. So by putting it at the bottom means that the person reading stays on your page longer. That improves your search engine optimization.
Ben Amos:
Okay, excellent.
Kay Ridge:
So even if they don’t buy from you or connect to your website, anybody that stayed on to read your profile is actually doing you a favour.
Ben Amos:
So the assumption there, Kay, is that even though the action that you want as a business person is for someone to take that action that you have in your call to action, there’s more benefit to encouraging them to spend more time on your page to find that call to action. Is that the way you think about it?
Kay Ridge:
Exactly the same as when you do a post if you can make the post long enough that they have to click see more
Ben Amos:
Mm-hmm.
Kay Ridge:
That will also help you get raised in the ranks for searching
Ben Amos:
Excellent.
Kay Ridge:
So so one of the things that we look at when we do a profile and things like that is You need to put information in that’s interesting so that they do want to stay and you know one of the best things that you can put in this humor You know life to serious
Ben Amos:
Yeah.
Kay Ridge:
And we can have humour in business. It makes you human.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think obviously you need to be authentic and true to who you are though as well. So humour is something that I would recommend that is used naturally and authentically but. but with caution. Obviously it is a professional profile and it is a professional space, but I absolutely echo what you say is that professional doesn’t mean dry and boring and personality less, right? So you could still have some personality in there for sure.
Kay Ridge:
It has been, but let’s also remember that it is a digital platform. And anything that gets on a digital platform is there forever.
Ben Amos:
Mm-hmm.
Kay Ridge:
So you can’t show all this credibility, for example, on LinkedIn. And then when somebody goes to search for you, find your Facebook page and you’re laying on the ground drunk.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, absolutely.
Kay Ridge:
The two don’t match and you won’t get any business.
Ben Amos:
Mmm.
Kay Ridge:
So it really, you have to, if you’re going to use LinkedIn as a business platform. You have to be true to the digital footprint that you’re leaving.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, absolutely. And hopefully you’re not personally seeking any work in the water industry, Kay. Ha
Ben Amos:
ha ha. Ha ha ha, there we go. Yep. depends on how much they’re paying you to consult on their LinkedIn strategy, then maybe you’ll work with them, despite the water connection. Anyway, so I just wanted to talk a little bit about, I know from my own experience on LinkedIn as well, that there are some features that LinkedIn have rolled out over the last six to 12 months, that if people haven’t been actively, maybe they’ve been using LinkedIn, but they haven’t actually spent the time to look back at how they’ve got their profile set up, Can you talk walk us through some of these more recent developments in LinkedIn that maybe people have overlooked?
Kay Ridge:
Sure. There are 35 new features
Ben Amos:
That’s a lot.
Kay Ridge:
coming out this year. And what is a little bit difficult is I might get to see a new feature, but you won’t then. And there’s no rhyme or reason. It’s just the way that the LinkedIn is releasing it.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, and it depends on where you are in the world as well. Like in my experience, they might test something in the Australian market and then it’s not available in the UK market, for example, for a while, or it might never get to the UK market because it’s a test, right?
Kay Ridge:
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Amos:
So yeah, so we’ll take what you say here with a grain of salt, but what are some of the main new features that you’re seeing?
Kay Ridge:
One of the new features that they’ve done is a thing called creator and creator mode you actually turn on and you’re able to create a newsletter. Now it’s not like an email marketing newsletter. This newsletter is done twofold. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is all about your credibility. So you write the newsletter and you can choose either to write it on your personal profile or write it on your company profile. But it’s talking, it’s an opinion piece. And the purpose of it is to classify you as what they call a top of voice. If you get a lot of reaction to your newsletter, LinkedIn polls can pick it out and they can actually send it out to people that are not on LinkedIn. So in other words, they’re not part of your network. What does that do for you? Suddenly you can wear the title top of voice. And again, it assists you, you know, a hundred fold your credibility. So they’re doing lots of things because LinkedIn is also owned by Microsoft. They’re mirroring a lot of the things that Microsoft does. For example, you’ll be able to start messaging and in Microsoft you have focused on other. You will have the same when you’re looking at your LinkedIn profile.
Ben Amos:
You’re linked in inbox that’s referring to that, in the
Kay Ridge:
LinkedIn
Ben Amos:
inbox
Kay Ridge:
inbox,
Ben Amos:
section,
Kay Ridge:
that’s
Ben Amos:
yeah.
Kay Ridge:
right. So you can comment for example as a company, you’ll be able to comment from one company to another company. At the moment how LinkedIn is set up is that you have your personal profile, then you have a company profile. You cannot have a company profile without having it connected to a personal profile. All right. So then you have a company profile and at the moment from a company profile you can have what they call showcase pages. Now it used to be 12 of them, they’ve now raised that to 25. So it’s a little bit like you can put in their case studies. You could put in there, let’s say you have, you’re a service-based business that have five arms to your business. Well, each one of those could have a showcase page. What LinkedIn are now doing is that they’re going to introduce product pages, and the maximum number you can have of those, I believe, is 10.
Ben Amos:
Okay.
Kay Ridge:
Again, it’s what you would feature. It’s a little bit like going to a supermarket, and you know at the end of each aisle, they have that feature product that they wanna promote? It’s kind of… You work on it in the same process. And again, it’s looking about features and benefits.
Ben Amos:
Can we just pause on that one a moment because I think that the showcase pages on company profiles and the product pages is something that my illusion is is very underutilised by many business pages
Kay Ridge:
It is.
Ben Amos:
and I’m speaking for myself here as well. Can you talk us through what that looks like? What do you mean by a showcase page or a product page? What do they look like?
Kay Ridge:
Okay, so basically, I’ll give you an example of mine. So I have a showcase page that comes up actually as what they call an affiliate page. It’s the same thing. LinkedIn has two words for the same thing. For example, if we look at your LinkedIn profile, it’s called About, or it’s called Summary. It’s the same space, depending on your terminology. But if I have a look at my profile, if I go home, actually it hangs off my company page. So if I go into my company Dash Social, sitting in the top right hand corner will have my affiliate. Now my affiliate page is called LinkedIn. I’m just trying to get to it at the moment because you got me a little bit off. I didn’t have prepared, I’m sorry.
Ben Amos:
That’s right, I’m throwing it at you. For those
Kay Ridge:
Oh, you
Ben Amos:
playing
Kay Ridge:
threw it
Ben Amos:
along
Kay Ridge:
at me.
Ben Amos:
at home, they can open up their own profiles and dig into it while they’re listening. Don’t do it while
Kay Ridge:
So
Ben Amos:
you’re
Kay Ridge:
you
Ben Amos:
in
Kay Ridge:
go,
Ben Amos:
the car, everybody. If you’re listening and driving, don’t try and do this.
Kay Ridge:
if you hit the me, which is at the top, your little picture and it’s got me under it,
Ben Amos:
Mm-hmm.
Kay Ridge:
you will see that you have a company page and then under that, if you’ve created one, you’ll have a showcase page. And mine is called Marketing Strategy 123. So in that, you have what they call followers. They do not have to connect with you. What they do is they follow. And if they have clicked the notification bell that’s on your LinkedIn profile, they’ll be able to see anything that you write in this section. All right. So in that, for example, I would talk about anything that’s to do with different marketing strategies. I could have another page that’s just purely LinkedIn. And I would talk about the 35 new features that are coming in from LinkedIn. Or I might in particular talk about one aspect of LinkedIn in that picture. So somebody that’s very interested in LinkedIn would follow simply that showcase page. I do not have to connect with them for them to be able to do that.
Ben Amos:
Right. Interesting.
Kay Ridge:
Okay. Yes and it’s been very underutilised because unless you make space, nobody knows that.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the illusion that I have is that some of this, I think one thing that LinkedIn doesn’t do well is, and maybe because they’re constantly changing things, is they don’t really make it as clear to a user about things that they have rolled out and things that can be used. So often you stumble across it, I feel, or you need someone like Dash Social and Kay here to tell us what to do. Do you find that, that sometimes you just stumble across things that you’re like, that’s new?
Kay Ridge:
I don’t, but I live in this space. All right, where I find that there’s this frustration is from what I hear from my clients, oh my God, can you just do it? I just don’t have time.
Ben Amos:
Mm.
Kay Ridge:
And that’s a problem. There is so much information that needs to go in here that, you know, businesses, if they’re working on their LinkedIn profile, they’re not actually making money. They’re not doing their business. But they are in a back… in a backward way because they’re supporting their business and their credibility. But I totally understand their frustration.
Ben Amos:
What do you believe is the missed opportunity or the potential return on investment of investing either a good amount of time or investing money into working with a consultant to get your LinkedIn sorted? If you are a business leader or you are owner of a business, if your LinkedIn profile isn’t up to scratch or isn’t optimised, what are they potentially missing out on?
Kay Ridge:
Well, they’re potentially giving business to their competitors.
Ben Amos:
Hmm, no one wants that.
Kay Ridge:
There is really no way, Ben, you can measure that. And unfortunately, when you’re looking at organic, which is unpaid social media, it’s what we call a slow burn. Because people sit on the outside, and it’s a little bit like this. Nobody needs you until they need you. So I could be sitting looking at your business, Ben, for the last year and not do anything. Okay, because I at that stage didn’t need video. Suddenly I have the potential to gain a lot more business. I’m looking at doing some Facebook advertising. I’m looking at promoting and I know that video ranks higher than any other type of posting on social media. Suddenly, hello, Ben, you’ve come into my life. You’re my new best friend. And about a year ago, I couldn’t have cared less about video.
Ben Amos:
Yeah.
Kay Ridge:
So it’s all about being what we call front of mind. Okay, there’s different ways that you can use LinkedIn. So once the first thing that you need to do is get your LinkedIn profile optimized, which means that the bar that you have when you start using LinkedIn, that’s completely full. All right, that’s how you become optimized. Then what you can do is that you actually go and seek out industries that you want to get in front of. So I’ll give you an example of how you do this. Let’s say I didn’t know you at all. I needed to get a videographer and I go in and I say, okay, LinkedIn, I want you to search for me through my network. I want you to search for me a videographer at Sunshine Coast Australia. And your name pops up. But I don’t know you. I have no connection with you. Actually, I’ll swap that around. You’re me. All right,
Ben Amos:
Okay.
Kay Ridge:
let’s do it the other way. So you have, for example, you’re a videographer, you know that Kay Ridge, you need to find somebody on the Sunshine Coast that does LinkedIn, and you want to promote your business to somebody on the Sunshine Coast because you know it’s a need, you just don’t know how to get in front of the right people. So you search for… LinkedIn or social media on Sunshine Coast and Kay Ridge comes up. Now we are not connected. So you go through and what LinkedIn will do is it will say to you, oh Ben, could you click on my name and it will come up and say you have seven connections in common and you’ll look at one of the names and let’s say her name is, I’m going to make a name up, let’s say her name is Alison McMahon. So what you would then do is you would send a message to Alison and say, hey Alison, hope you’re well. Listen, I noticed that you’re connected with Kay Ridge. I’d really like to get in touch with her. Are you okay? Do you think she’d be okay if I connected her directly? And would you be okay if I used your name? Nobody comes back and says, no, Ben, I don’t want you to use my name. They come back and go, yeah, not a problem. Say hi from me. So now you come back and you say, Hey Kay, I believe that we have a connection in common. Alison, I would love to connect with you. That’s all you do at that stage.
Ben Amos:
Yeah.
Kay Ridge:
Except you go back to Alison and say, thanks Alison, I’ve connected with Kay. And you leave it and you keep adding value and adding value and adding value that you know that Kay’s going to see. Then when Kay starts liking or commenting, at some point you actually send her a message to say, hey Kay, I noticed that we’ve been connected for some time, look, I’d really love to have a cup of coffee with you. I believe I have something that would be beneficial to your business.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, I love that.
Kay Ridge:
It’s the waiting game. You can’t go as soon as you connect. This is what I’ve got to sell you because I’m for one person, I disconnected. I’m not interested in you just connecting with me because it’s what you can gain.
Ben Amos:
Yep. I think anyone on LinkedIn has had those connection requests that are immediately followed by a pitch. Nobody likes that. That’s an awful way to use LinkedIn. I block those. I delete those connections as soon as I make them. What I love about where you’ve shared their case, it’s very simple and it’s actually taking, I believe, LinkedIn back to its roots because earlier on in LinkedIn’s interface and the way that they encouraged connection requests to happen was that idea of seeking connections, shared mutual connections, and asking someone to connect you. I can’t remember the language they use. You might be able to remember, but it used to be almost part of the platform, which has somewhat disappeared as far as the language around that introductions. But now you’re basically doing that anyway just through LinkedIn messaging. And I really like that because it’s how real business is done offline, isn’t it? to
Kay Ridge:
It’s
Ben Amos:
someone
Kay Ridge:
about building rapport.
Ben Amos:
and you build a network and you use your network to build your network into the directions that you needed to go for your business. Then added to that is the idea of not pitching hard, but then using your profile and posting valuable content, and we’ll get to video in a moment as well, but posting valuable content that means that you’re showing up regularly and staying top of mind with that new connection request. that new cold connection is getting a little bit warmer, a little bit warmer, and then before you know it, it’s an appropriate time to further that relationship and make that connection a bit more formal into whatever that may be, a coffee catch-up or add some more value in person or a phone call or whatever that may be. So I love that, it’s a human way of doing business in a digital
Kay Ridge:
It’s
Ben Amos:
space.
Kay Ridge:
exactly what it is. It’s human. It’s human networking.
Ben Amos:
Absolutely, and it aligns with everything that I had to talk about as well. I don’t know if you see my shirt that I’m wearing today if you’re watching
Kay Ridge:
update
Ben Amos:
on YouTube
Kay Ridge:
soon.
Ben Amos:
has one of my key slogans here which is lead with value and it’s how we do business and how we encourage our clients to do business as well. So I’m glad that aligns with you Kay. I want
Kay Ridge:
It does.
Ben Amos:
to talk a little bit about video. This is the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. There is a lot of value in just looking at LinkedIn and getting your profile set up so that’s why I wanted to focus on that today, but I want to hear from you Kay in your experience, how has video on LinkedIn changed over the last couple of years and how important is it right now as we talk in 2023?
Kay Ridge:
There’s two types of video. Like when you get professional videos done, it’s the wow factor. It’s the, I prepared to invest in my business. Okay, now, so my strong encouragement to anybody is to put in the investment and have a video done. Because there’s so many people that don’t, again, get ahead of the curve. So, you know. Have your video, for example, a short message at the end of your email, especially as an introduction to say, look, thanks so much for connecting. It’s really, really important to show that you are professional, you have got skin in the game. Now we have the professional video, and then you have what I call the amateur video, and it’s not meant to be professional. And it’s a way that you can also just pick up, we’ve all got smartphones, and pick it up and go. Hey, look, just stepped out of your meeting. Great meeting, thanks for connecting with me. I’ll get that quotation to you, talk to you soon. Oh, by the way, I’ll just send you a quick professional video that was done by Ben Amos.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, and here just to clarify for the listeners and the viewers here, you’re talking about using video messaging within the LinkedIn messaging features, not within the feed, that type of video specifically, you’re not talking about the LinkedIn content feed, you’re talking about direct one-to-one messaging with your connections, yeah. Yeah, excellent. I mean, that’s super powerful, and that’s one of my favourite ways to either re-engage with a prospect or a connection that I’ve had for a while and we haven’t talked for a while or we haven’t connected for a while. I love just reaching out with some value via a LinkedIn personalised video in that way. And I also love with new connections, particularly when we’ve got to that point where potentially that phone call or that meeting or that coffee is a good time for it, that’s where I like to reach out with video because it’s personal and it really humanises that reach out.
Kay Ridge:
It does that Ben, it’s also memorable. So, you know, when somebody sees something that you’ve done on video, and then they get an email from you, it triggers. And it’s, oh, I remember him, he did such and such. And again, it’s another touch point.
Ben Amos:
Yeah, absolutely. And can we talk a little bit about video as a content form within the LinkedIn feed as well? So video posts, I don’t know if you have specific thoughts on the value in posting video content as well.
Kay Ridge:
Well, posting video content actually rates higher, again, with your SEO, but it’s also more engaging. People tend to look more at a video than they do at text. I mean, you know, one way to prove that is just the fact that TikTok has become so popular. It is a way to engage when we have so much noise around us, white noise around us in regards to what we do. Video actually makes you stop and look.
Ben Amos:
Yep. Yeah, 100%. And we talked before around the algorithm. There’s an SEO factor there that you mentioned. But I think importantly as well, the content algorithm on LinkedIn favours and pushes video more readily through the feed, particularly with users of LinkedIn that are spending time watching videos. So if you’re a user of the LinkedIn content feed and LinkedIn notices that you dwell a bit more when a video pops up in front of your eyeballs, they’re going to very quickly show you more video content and you will see that very quickly the way that the algorithm changes your feed. So the benefit of, and this is just adding my own thoughts to this as well, Kay, the benefit of video is that it’s a fantastic way to get in front of new audiences that potentially aren’t even first level connection requests of, not connection requests, first level contacts of your LinkedIn profile because if you post a video as a content with some interesting value, adding some informational value or entertainment or whatever it may be to the audience and one of your first tier connections comments, likes, reacts to that video it will then be shown into those second and third tiers feeds. So you’ll be seeing content from people in your feed that you’re not first level connection connected to, getting my terms mixed up here. And likewise, if you’re posting content to LinkedIn, your content will be shown to people who are outside of your immediate first level network, and that’s the network effect on steroids. It’s a superpower.
Kay Ridge:
It certainly is. And don’t forget also that on LinkedIn profile, pin it to your featured section.
Ben Amos:
Yep, absolutely. So, Kate, this has been awesome and I know we could talk about. probably 35 different potential new features and ways that people can be optimising their LinkedIn profile. But really, I guess I wanna leave people with the idea that if you haven’t looked at your LinkedIn profile for even six months, or anything less than six months, if you haven’t looked at it and you haven’t fixed things and you haven’t tweaked things or updated things or seen what things you haven’t completed, then I highly encourage our listeners and viewers here today to jump into LinkedIn, sort things out, connect with a LinkedIn Specialist in your area or even better reach out and connect with Kay Ridge and Dash Socials. So Kay just to wrap us up here where if people do want to reach out to you and maybe seek some advice or get some help with their LinkedIn profile, where can they reach out to you?
Kay Ridge:
Funny place, Ben, LinkedIn.
Ben Amos:
There you go. So Kay Ridge, K-A-Y-R-I-D-G-E, it’s not tricky spelling. And Dash Social is the company, if you’re there, probably are some multiple Kay Ridges out there, but give her a search.
Kay Ridge:
Actually, Ben, there’s only three of us in the world.
Ben Amos:
Oh really? There you go. That’s a win. There’s many more Ben Amos’ than I thought there were, but anyway. So I encourage you if you’re listening to this, connect with Kay. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that Kay. And let her know that you, in that little add a note to the connection request box there, just let her know that you heard her on the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. Kay, thanks for being here today and for sharing your knowledge and your insight about LinkedIn. It’s been great.
Kay Ridge:
Thanks for inviting me. Bye.
