"If you want to win on LinkedIn, you have to go to market with your skin in the game as an owner and CEO. Engage your name and your personal account. That will get you real results."
They'd all like him to bring them business. Ideally, they don't have to do that much to get it. They don't have the time. And they certainly don't want to share any of their personal or professional lives with anyone. They have nothing. They're not influencers. And they're not writers.
That's still a pretty common perception of LinkedIn. In my experience ... the further you are from the big cities, the more common it is.
But if you want something from LinkedIn, you have to do something for it too. I would almost poetically say that as you call LinkedIn, you hear from LinkedIn. In order for it to resonate in a business-interesting way for your company, you have to step in it yourself. Especially if you're the owner or CEO. Because you don't have a more interesting and important channel in your company.
I don't have this off the top of my head. I learned this information, backed up by data, from Jan Kyselýl, COO of FUTURE SALES solutions s.r.o. and a long-time specialist in B2B marketing on LinkedIn. I also learned a lot of other things. For example ...
🔸 How has LinkedIn changed in the last 2 years?
🔸 How to work with the CEO profile of a small and medium-sized company?
🔸 What topics to share as a CEO?
🔸 How to identify your audience?
🔸 What is the point of paid advertising on LinkedIn?
WHY A CEO SHOULD BE THE STAR OF A LINKEDIN COMPANY (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. Before we get into today's topic, I'm going to ask you a traditional favor. If you like anything you've already seen on Zážeh, please subscribe or like it. That way you won't miss any more episodes and you'll help me navigate the social media algorithm more smoothly so I can invite even more great guests like today's. Today's topic is LinkedIn. Make sure you don't leave because we're going to discuss LinkedIn today from a little bit of a different perspective, we're definitely not going to talk about the basics that we already covered here two years ago. Today we're going to look at why you, as CEO, should be, or should be, the star of LinkedIn in the coming months. For that, I've brought in Honza Kyselý, hi.
Jan Kyselý
Hi, Martin.
Introduction of the guest and what attracts Honza to the mountains?
Martin Hurych
Honza is a co-founder of Future Sales, an expert on LinkedIn and B2B marketing, all of which I found on his linkedin profile. On my behalf, I'd like to add that he is a guest on Zazih from two years ago and a guest on one of the top 3 most watched episodes of Zazih in the entire time Zazih has been on the air. I found out from preparing for you that you like mountains. What is it about them that appeals to you?
Jan Kyselý
That's a tough question, I don't really know. It's the feeling of this enormous freedom and the mountains are beautiful, they're big, you feel your humanity because suddenly you're so small and the adventure, w h i c h I think is a bit lacking in everyday life today. I go there to relax, to get a bit of perspective on life and, above all, to experience a bit of adrenaline.
Martin Hurych
What do you bring from the mountains to the business?
Jan Kyselý
Too many things. I like to climb rocks, high mountains, and I learned a lot of things there. One of them is patience, because this business is very much about patience, about enduring the hard times, and it's the same in the mountains. You have some stressful crisis situations and you have to come out of it.
to grind his way back. The other thing is to try things differently if they don't work. When you're climbing a rock, sometimes a move just doesn't work and you don't know how, and then you try putting your foot at a slightly different angle and your hand a little bit differently and it works. In business it's similar, you have a goal, to climb up somewhere and if you can't, you try something else.
Martin Hurych
Where have you climbed in the mountains?
Jan Kyselý
I'm not really a hardcore climber, but in my opinion the highest mountain was Mont Blanc, but the Italian way. Connoisseurs may know it's called the Pope's, it's much more beautiful but a bit harder, so it's probably the highest mountain I've climbed here in Europe.
Martin Hurych
Where have you climbed with Future Sales?
Jan Kyselý
It's probably not quite Mont Blanc, it'll be slightly above some base camp, but it's still a long way up, so it'll take a while to get there.
What does Future Sales do?
Martin Hurych
So let's ignite the journey to Mount Everest today. A lot of viewers and listeners heard and saw you here those two years ago, so let's just briefly recap what Future Sales does and then we'll get right into the topic.
Jan Kyselý
Future Sales focuses mainly on the social network LinkedIn. We help companies to implement this social network in their communication, communication strategy in marketing, sales or HR.
other things, but this is 90% of our business and that narrow specialization has helped us grow and gain some position in that market, so we're still sticking with that.
How has LinkedIn changed in the last 2 years?
Martin Hurych
How has LinkedIn changed over the past 2 years?
Jan Kyselý
Some of the subparts have changed, one of the main things that has changed is more pressure to monetize the tool. They've clearly made a commitment at Microsoft that LinkedIn is going to be their cash cow and it's been terribly evident in the last couple of months. There's a huge push to buy one of those premium accounts, even now one big new thing is a premium account for the company page. There are new formats and paid advertising aimed at personal profiles. There's a clear push to squeeze what you can out of it and especially in terms of some cash flow.
Martin Hurych
The principles we talked about here those two years ago, basically we can say they're still valid, nothing has changed in that regard, and we can make that top 3 episode a top 1 episode?
Jan Kyselý
The basics are still the same, LinkedIn is still the same. It still asks you to share interesting things in terms of some professional topics, your know-how, statistics, company life, it's still the same. The algorithm is still the same, but somehow the sub parts are changing, let's say some pressure on the organics. The results of your content are a little bit bigger today, it's dropping since last year, but again it's linked to the fact that LinkedIn is trying to get you to monetize that, to get you to pay for something and not just use it for free. So, what we said two years ago applies and then there are some sub things that have changed.
Why should the CEO be the star of the company on LinkedIn?
Martin Hurych
What I've seen in the 2 years I've been on LinkedIn is that thanks to you, it's changed mostly because people know about it and almost everyone in my bubble wants to be on it. There's still a big bubble of people who I don't think are considering LinkedIn and I also hear a lot that there's no time for it. You're also coming out now with the theme that it should be the CEO directly who should have the time to do it. So come tell me why the CEO should be the star of LinkedIn for the coming months and years.
Jan Kyselý
You're right that the social network has gone mainstream on professional topics. Companies are starting to see it in a big way especially since Covid, because we're seeing a huge increase in activity especially on those corporate accounts. Firms have realized that some channels, especially physical ones, can be blocked at times and the digital world doesn't just get blocked. So since Covid, we've seen a huge increase in activity on corporate accounts, plus top management getting involved in communications. The reasons for that are basically twofold. The first is the power of personal accounts. Probably everyone who uses LinkedIn realizes that we can get many times better results on those personal accounts compared to the corporate ones because LinkedIn doesn't block you as a user as much. It doesn't put those barriers on you and those results are much better. The other thing, why CEOs or top management specifically, is the power of that position. You're the CEO of a big company that people know from their day-to-day life, so they're going to start following you because your decision can affect their life. Even from those results we can see that it's the ace up their sleeve, that golden channel that those companies have at their disposal.
How to work with the CEO profile of a small and medium- sized company?
Martin Hurych
You are talking about big companies, I understand that if I am the head of SIKA, Tomáš Vala was also here, or I am in charge of Skoda and really big companies, banks, then I can see. But how to work with my profile as a CEO in a small, medium-sized company, when I am just starting out with LinkedIn?
Jan Kyselý
It's a lot like that, the person still has a little more trust in you than in the salesperson. When you're approached by a salesperson asking you to connect, you're suspicious that they're going to ask you for something, they're going to want to sell you something. When a CEO approaches you, you don't expect it at first. Those results when we do some campaigns for clients and we take the CEO profile at the expense of that salesperson are always better. You can even play with it more, because it doesn't have to be just the topic of that sale, that product, but it can be the topic of the leadership of the company. That person's story is much more interesting and credible to those people.
What topics do you share as a CEO?
Martin Hurych
What types of topics should I share as a CEO?
Jan Kyselý
I would divide it into 4 basic categories. The first one is the personal topics, people love that. A lot of people don't want to do it, but to open up that professional and personal life a little bit and show those people that you're a human being too is very interesting to those people. The second box is your know-how. I just wrote about this on LinkedIn last week, we've been sharing 90% of our know-how publicly for free since the beginning. We've built our marketing on that and we're just now starting to lick the cream. Don't be afraid to share your know-how, keep it top, get paid for it. Those people who read it on the internet and prefer to do it themselves will never pay you for it anyway, you'll just waste your time with them. The third box is definitely the company and the product itself. That belongs there too, but it can't be the exclusive part of that content. If we break it down into quarters, I think it'll work out nicely. That last one can be outside stuff as well. Somewhere you see something interesting, you share it, you comment on it, even the interesting media like Ekonom, E15, CzechCrunch, because who is not in CzechCrunch today, it's like he's not. Even these things can be shared, you can show that you have a perspective on the matter, it might be interesting to those people. If you break it down into four boxes, you can have a nice content plan.
What is the correct frequency of sharing?
Martin Hurych
Still paying one allowance a week?
Jan Kyselý
I wouldn't say that, it's such a minimum, but if you want to win on LinkedIn, you really want to be that top voice and you want to be seen, the people who are dedicated to that are going 3, 4, 5 posts a week. The only thing you don't do is share two in one day, then they'll cannibalize each other. But feel free to share something every work day if you have the time and space.
Which profiles to follow?
Martin Hurych
What's a positive example from a small business of someone doing it right? We don't have to completely name names, but maybe segments, industries where someone is doing well. Because I would hate for this to end up here with Skoda, Erste, SIKO, where we were talking before the shoot that we know of some CEOs who actually pay their own way. These people have marketing teams behind them that are doing it for them. I'd like to at least try to point people in some directions here where it really works on a much smaller scale.
Jan Kyselý
So let's look at the example of Martinus, it may be a medium-sized company, I don't know how many people they have now, but probably not that many in the core team. Check out the profile of the CEO of Martinus. He's on sabbatical right now, he's handed over the reins of the company to his wife and he's gone off for six months to finish some PhDs at Harvard and do some traveling. The content is kind of very personal right now, but check it out. Even compared to Czech CEOs, he's at the absolute top of his game and I think he's doing it interestingly and well. I know a lot of people who have Martinus as number one among booksellers just because they feel like they know their CEO. So that's one example I can think of right now.
For the even smaller companies, I would say it's even more linked to that person's name. You'll probably know the Martinus brand too, that can help a lot, but when I see successfulCEOs of small companies, for example, up to 50 employees, so it's very much built on their name. It's very much based on them and it makes sense. Most people don't know the brand, but I don't think that's really need. You mainly need to know the people inside the company and have trust in them to get trust in the product.
Should I be on LI even as a "mere" owner?
Martin Hurych
Now I realize we're probably talking about CEOs who are also owners or co-owners of those companies. What if I have a professional CEO and I'm afraid that he's going to disappear somewhere with the history? Should I, as the owner, take on that role?
Jan Kyselý
I think it definitely is. It should be the owner of that company and if he has a professional CEO, he might have more time to do it. There's always that risk of that employee running away, that's true, but that's something we dealt with maybe 3, 4 years ago. At that time it might have been a problem, today there are so many of those people active that I think that's kind of the standard and I think you should try to keep those people rather than let them run away but not prevent them from being visible on LinkedIn. It can help you tremendously to be seen as a brand as well.
How to leverage the synergies of different profiles on LI?
Martin Hurych
How to work with an owner or CEO profile in a coordinated campaign? I suppose it shouldn't be the only voice of that company, marketers should be visible in some way. How do you couple these synergies to make the company as visible as possible?
Jan Kyselý
It depends a lot on your market and how you have it divided. If you have one single homogeneous target group, for example Czech HR managers in medium-sized companies, one profile will be enough. If you go abroad with the same product and need to communicate in English, you can't do it with one profile. So the first thing I would do is draw out my target groups, see if they have common criteria and decide how many profiles to include based on that. There doesn't need to be many profiles, just one or two for the smaller companies. Even if you're looking at those big companies, for example, where there are hundreds of active users, you'll find that 60, 70% of that reach is still done by 5 profiles. The rest of it kind of lags behind them and it helps a little bit sometimes to like, to reshare, but there's really only a few ambassadors that are doing the vast majority of that reach. If I'm a small company, 50 employees, I have an active CEO and I want to be more active on the company page, I share the vast majority of things on that CEO's profile first. Then I copy them in some form, rewrite them a little bit, and republish them on that company page so that people feel like there's something going on there and also want to follow it. That's good enough for you. The marketers can then support the CEO with some liking, some commentary, and especially with that CEO, they can also somehow follow those conversations, take those leads and start processing them.
How to build a network of merchants in a synergistic company?
Martin Hurych
Writing is one thing, networking is another. Amateurishly, I can see that one without the other doesn't make much sense. When a marketer builds his own network, how do I work with that, do I connect the same audience to take over those conversations, or should I build a network completely next to my CEO, not duplicate those contacts, or what's the recommendation?
Jan Kyselý
Again, you should sit down and say, we're going to work with your profile now like this, you're going to focus on this target group and maybe go one level down within those companies. The CEO can connect with that top management, but again, they're not going to be the decision makers on that contract, and they're going to be showing them that brand. He the trader takes a level below the contact persons who decide on the contract. He will then connect those people and you will influence the whole buying committee from all sides. So you need to sit down, have it aligned so that it all makes sense and that network expansion is extremely important even in the course of publishing that content because it just supports that algorithm.
Is there still a chance to get good visibility on LinkedIn?
Martin Hurych
You are, among other things, data analysts on LinkedIn. Is it possible to tell if I'm going to be at the front of the peloton, or if I'm already in the pack, or if I should be waiting for the collection bus? For example, how many CEOs are on LinkedIn at the moment?
Jan Kyselý
I don't know the exact numbers right now off the top of my head, but if you go for it, you will definitely be able to finish the peloton. It's not like he's already far away at the finish and you've only just started. The amount of people out there is growing and if you look at the active ones who are publishing something every month, it's still around one percent. It's an estimate of course, we're able to track how many of those people are active a month back, that's how it's around 2.5 to 2.7% in the Czech Republic, but that's just once you publish something in that month. If you take people who actually publish something on a regular basis every month, it's still around one percent. That's awfully low, 1% of people influencing the 99% who use that social network. We know from those statistics from last year, when the European Commission forced LinkedIn to publish the number of monthly active users, that of that total amount of registered accounts, only 30 to 40% are active on a monthly basis. Out of that mass of people, there are still an awful lot of people who are active on some sort of regular basis, and they're influencing those people who are just reading or giving you a like or something like that. When you get down to it, that space is still huge. It depends on the target audience you want to influence, but you can still be among those top profiles.
How to identify your audience?
Martin Hurych
That means you're actually posting to the wall, because a lot of times the mass of people don't interact. I often see people give it a chance, nothing happens, friends or former clients do it, and that's 5...the people are not worth it. What does being active on LinkedIn mean in this context? You said 30% of the community is active.
Jan Kyselý
He logs into that network at least once a month, which doesn't mean someone will like you. It is said from those general marketing lessons that 1% are active creators on a regular basis, ±9, 10% are the passive ones who give you the occasional like, comment, share it but don't post and the other 90% are the passive readers. I'll read it, but I'm definitely not going to give it any likes, no way. They're invisible to you and you don't actually find out who it is that's listening.
You can go a little bit the other way and put those soft conversion points in their way to reveal who they are. Those options are different, one of them is the LinkedIn newsletter. You can create your own newsletter, you can reach out to all your followers with that first issue, and every single one of those issues will become a post in a little bit. That goes around that network and you can see who is following your newsletter at the level of those individual users. That's maybe a way to uncover those passive users, because maybe that person doesn't want to follow you, but why wouldn't I follow that newsletter. The other thing is LinkedIn groups. They're dead as a medium, they always have been, but when you have an interesting group and that person wants to join it, again you see all the users, all the members of that group. Another one is company page tracking, again I can see who's following my company page. With these soft conversion points, I can reveal who's reading, who's watching, who's interested in my topic and then work with those people in some way. But you'll never uncover the vast majority unless those people respond themselves.
What KPIs to track?
Martin Hurych
For example, if I have an unpaid LinkedIn, the lowest standard, what numbers should I track to know, at least in a frame of reference, whether I'm doing well or not?
Jan Kyselý
We all have a huge advantage now because LinkedIn has made creative mode available for creators, which last year was still on demand or you had to activate it through some process. When you go to your profile, one of the parts of that profile is called stats and in those stats you see 3 or 4 basic numbers. The first is the amount of people that have visited your profile in the last 90 days, and that's one of the key things that I would track. How many people are seeing your content is kind of an estimate. LinkedIn itself says it's some sort of estimate that can give you a hint as to how many people have seen your content. Now those numbers are falling vehemently because something is happening with that algorithm. Big creators are seeing their reach drop vehemently, but that number of people who have come to your profile is extremely telling of how much attention you're getting with that content. That's something I would track on a regular basis and try to keep pushing that number higher and higher.
Next is post reach, you can look back today at the number of impressions last year and s e ew h i c h posts performed the best. That's a huge advantage for those creators, because now I don't have to go post by post and dump that into Excel somewhere. LinkedIn will show it to me on its own up to a year ago. We do it by taking that annual reach, dividing it by 12, looking at the average monthly hits and we track that number again on some monthly basis and we try to keep that average growing. Of course some months it can take a huge hit, you have a baby, you put it on LinkedIn, people love it, you get 1,000 likes, but that's not going to happen every day. So it needs to be tracked in some kind of averages over a longer period of time.
Then there's one more number, and that's how many times you've appeared in a search result in the last 7 days. This number should also be growing because it tells you how optimized that profile is, how much LinkedIn trusts it and shows up in other users' search results. It's about how polished you have it, how much LinkedIn trusts that content.
Then I'd watch another number that's not in this statistic, it's a little bit off and it'so Social Selling Index, which can be found on a separate page. If you put the Social Selling Index into Google, you'll find it, and it will link to your profile and show you an index score from 0 to 100. That index shows how much of a credible user you are and how well you are leveraging the value that LinkedIn gives you. People who have a higher index are given more space by LinkedIn.
Martin Hurych
How much SSI should I have?
Jan Kyselý
They say that 60, 70 is such a better standard that the algorithm is already taking more notice of you there, so I would try to get to that 70. It's not that easy to maintain that, but if you're active on all those fronts, not just the content creation part, but expanding your network, commenting on other users' content, engaging in discussion, the quality of your profile, you'll definitely get there.
Why is LinkedIn driving visibility numbers down?
Martin Hurych
This number has also fallen relatively a lot recently. I just saw some discussion onLinkedIn and virtually nobody had over 74, 75 and there were very big names. What do you think is behind the algorithm generally pushing all these numbers down? What could be behind that?
Jan Kyselý
I see it as a push for monetization. We've been giving you extreme space in that org for years, that's ending now, and if you want to be seen on LinkedIn, come pull out your wallets, come pull out your credit cards. I think the message is pretty clear and I myself hope it gets to some meaningful point. I hope it doesn't end up like Facebook, where if you want something, you get it
you must always pay. There should be some space for the creators, otherwise people will get tired of it and leave.
What monitoring tools to use?
Martin Hurych
If I were interested in tracking these numbers and metrics in a more sophisticated way, are there any tools to help me do that?
Jan Kyselý
They are, but they cost something and I don't think they have that added value now that you can see the numbers on LinkedIn and with a few clicks you can pull it into some Excel and do magic with it. I don't think it's quite worth the money right now, but one of the tools that I've been quite interested in lately and I've found that it has that added value quite a bit is AuthoredUp. It's one of the tools that you'll find
in the premium primer I included with this episode, so you can find it there and try it out. He can actually even look back at your content, download stats about your posts, and offer it to you in some form where you can work with it and evaluate it. Of course, he can do the basics, you can create the post, hide it in some library, schedule it, but the stats are quite interesting to me. I think it's usable, and for the $17 it can be interesting. But LinkedIn has made it possible to schedule your posts ahead of time right on that platform and makes those stats available even a year out, so those tools where you can create that content and keep track of some stats, I think they're a little bit pointless anymore.
Which tool to use to manage conversations?
Martin Hurych
When I'm typing in the built-in messenger, I'd like to throw whatever I'm typing on out the window, because it's such a mess. One click and you lose the conversation forever and then you look unserious. What does the agency that LinkedIn feeds use to manage conversations?
Jan Kyselý
It's worth saying here that LinkedIn is trying to work on this and that there are whispers in those circles that Inbox could undergo some major changes. I think there are a lot of people pushing for that and I honestly don't know why LinkedIn isn't working on it. It's one of the big bottlenecks of that social network for people who but there are apps that can help you do that. We use an app called LeadDelta, you'll also find it on that list, and it does two things.First, it can download your entire contact database and somehowwork. It can download conversations from both your personal account and Sales Navigator because these two inboxes are separate and have nothing much in common. The app can integrate them into one dashboard and download all those conversations. It has one big advantage, you can label those conversations differently in there. There's a reply a week, this is a lead and somehow work with that and reply directly from that app and get it organized. What needs to be said and what needs to be pointed out, all of these apps are not officially connected LinkedIn. So when you're using something to automate, to monitor those messages and to publish content, the app is getting that data from that social network by some kind of data scraping. That's illegal, and you always run the risk of getting your account banned at some lower percentage. I always say when I recommend these tools, you do it at your own risk and at your own risk, we have nothing to do with it, but of course it can save you a lot of time and effort.
How to handle automation on LinkedIn?
Martin Hurych
There are companies that say, no automation at all, there are companies that say, you can't move without automation. What is the real state of play today, what is the real threat? Sometime those two years ago, you were relatively really taking a risk of something happening to you. I've seen the warnings on the screen a few times myself and I have to knock today, it's all good. So what am I realistically risking, how does LinkedIn look at these third party tools today with your knowledge?
Jan Kyselý
Still the same, but he went the other way on it, he basically limited the number of people you can reach per week. That number is officially around a hundred, so these automation tools have lost the biggest advantage, reaching maybe thousands of people every week. It also threw a pitchfork into our business, now those projects are spread out over a longer period of time, and the mass of people that we used to reach in, say, two weeks, we now reach for half a year. It doesn't matter that much, it helps you to work with those people more during that campaign, to evaluate some metrics, but it's all stretched out. You
automation tools still make sense, but you can't reach those thousands of people in a few weeks anymore. Again, unofficially, and again, it's at your own risk, if you've been sending these messages for a while, you've been active on that profile for a while, you can try to push that limit a little bit higher, 120, 150, maybe 200 contacts a week. LinkedIn in most of those cases will let you in if they see that you've been doing that activity for a while.
What is the point of paid advertising on LinkedIn?
Martin Hurych
What haven't we discussed?
Jan Kyselý
I don't think we've discussed a lot of things. One of the key things that I think companies should try is paid advertising through personal accounts.
Martin Hurych
I have to say that a lot of people who have tried it are pretty negative and say it doesn't do anything. Conversions are expensive, targeting is probably good, but it's not worth the money and I don't know what the basis of it is. I'm telling you the noise that's in my bubble. Again, the marketeers are fleeing to Facebook instead, and the ones I see long term doing something on LinkedIn they say it didn't yield any concrete contacts. But when somebody does get in touch, they say they're visible.
Jan Kyselý
I think it's about having the right expectations. Paid advertising on LinkedIn is expensive, it's ineffective and it's definitely not going to bring you leads right away, don't expect those conversions right away. But if you build that paid advertising as more of a branding channel, as part of some larger complex, some larger campaign, it can work. I'll give you an example, I want to target a homogeneous target audience, let's go back to maybe the HR of some larger companies. I've got a new company, a new brand that nobody really knows, or I'm relaunching it, or I've got some investment, I've got some marketing money, and I want to kick it up a notch. Maybe start with paid advertising and try to get that brand out to those people in some playful interesting way. Don't expect those conversions, but rather that you get the message out to those people, what you do, who you are. At that point, it might not even be that expensive and it can bring those results.
Now you have the huge advantage that you don't just have to do that paid advertising through your company's content, but you can sponsor your employees' content as well. You can even sponsor anyone's content now. Now imagine I write a nice post about you. You tell me if you could sponsor it and get it to some target audience. I'll say sure, because it'll help you and me. So you can sponsor my content, I'll give you permission to do so, and it will normally be sponsored by Martin Hurych or Zazhe as a corporate brand. You can also use influencers to promote you nowadays.
When you run that campaign through those personal accounts, in our experience it can have many times better results. It's a new format from last year, LinkedIn's trying to get it into some mainstream and still giving it a little more space. On the other hand, it's still more believable from me as a person than it is from the brand that nobody knows. If I put it that way, it can be pretty work. If you want to make real leads out of it, you have to get those personal accounts involved. Because those personal accounts have the great advantage that you can connect with the person on the other side on a personal level and you have that channel open through those messages where you can write. That's where I get the leads from. So the first step is some branding, the second step is to engage a personal account. First of all, you always have to give something, so sharing the know-how for a while, it can take months, years, and only then I start to get the leads out of it. That's when it can all start to make sense.
Martin Hurych
But I don't have time for that, I go on LinkedIn to start generating business.
Jan Kyselý
If you don't have time for something, you better not do it at all. If I don't have time to go to networking events, why would I go to networking events, I don't have time to solicit clients because 9 times out of 10 they'll send me to hell. It'sit's always about the investment.
What kind of budget to prepare?
Martin Hurych
If you're talking about an investment, within the framework of a medium-sized IT studio or some medium-sized engineering company in a small town, how much should I prepare for it so that it gives me results in a reasonable amount of time and at the same time doesn't ruin me?
Jan Kyselý
It's very important what target group you're aiming at. If you're a software house targeting the Czech audience and you create the campaign yourself, then 5, 10 thousand might be enough to reach them. If you're a software house that has this strategy to target the American market and sell to American companies, you're going to need a big chunk of money because that market is huge. You can concentrate on some specific areas, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, to narrow it down a little bit because you know there's a big concentration of those companies, which I would definitely do with that US market. If somebody listens to us and wants to go into the US market, you're definitely not going to reach them across the board unless you're a billionaire. There so it's obviously going to be a lot more expensive.
When a company comes to me wanting a paid campaign from me, I always tell them that I'llneed at least $1,000 from them for media and $1,000 for agency work. That's the only way I'm going to be able to plan it, test it to some extent, and get some stats out of it so I can becan tell if it makes sense. At that point, I'm gonna be asking for about 50 grand. If you came to me and told me you had 5k to do it, I'd tell you it's not worth it, you're going to pay a lot more for the agency work than you'd put in the money, you can never get that back. We start at the $2,000.
What are the common misconceptions about LinkedIn?
Martin Hurych
What is the biggest misconception about LinkedIn that is not true?
Jan Kyselý
I would say that those are the three basic mistakes that people make. The first one, which we've already kind of bitten on, is that they expect those results terribly early on. Let's go ahead, I've got the money to do it, but I need results in a month or there's no point. I'm saying I'm not able to shake it out by then. But it's logical when you look at it from that higher perspective. You have a market, you send that message out there that you offer something, but only 3% to 5% of people currently need your service or product, maybe less. Those people are not interested because they don't currently need it or they don't know they need it. Whenyou run spray and pray campaigns, you have a target audience, you put a commercial message on them right at the beginning and you hope that something will come out of it, it tends to be extremely ineffective. Those people just don't have that need. You ideally have to build that need yourself first and then start selling. That's one of the big bottlenecks and mistakes that these people make. You have to invest some time, some money, some effort to get a return on it, like anything else.
Martin Hurych
I think the spray and pray is coming from America, but we don't realise that you've got some 400million people there and there are 10 of us. There, if you fail, you can send the same campaign six months later because everyone has forgotten about you. Here, if you fail, in 4 years they'll still remember you're a spammer.
Jan Kyselý
The second thing is that the European environment is much more regulated. I can't buy a database somewhere today and send an e-mail campaign to it, that's illegal. The Americans don't have that and the marketis infinitely large. Here in Europe and especially in the Czech Republic you usually have one shot.
If those companies do good market research, they will find that there are maybe 100 companies here in the Czech Republic that we can sell the product to if we don't want to go abroad. If you take into account that in each of those companies there are maybe 4, 5 people who are making the decision about the contract, half of them are on LinkedIn, that's some 500 people that I can try the campaign on. If I don't get that cold message, that cold outreach right the first time, I'm done and that's something to be reckoned with. In the Czech market, you have to be extremely careful when you fire that sales pitch at that person so you don't lose them.
Summary
Martin Hurych
If we were to end with 3, 5 sentences that are the only ones that will remain forever in the information noise, what would they be?
Jan Kyselý
If you want to win on LinkedIn, if you really want to be in those top profiles and it's not impossible to get there, even if you start from scratch today, get your name, your personal accounts involved. If you're the owner or the owner or the CEO of a company, you need to go with your skin in the game. That's what realistically is going to be able to get you those results. Also, they say that the fish stinks from the head, so if you want to get your company involved, you have to start with yourself. I see it in the examples of dozens, hundreds of companies that we work with that it has to start there for the whole thing to be successful.
Martin Hurych
So keep up the good work and keep being an inspiration to all of us who do LinkedIn on a daily basis.
Jan Kyselý
I was very happy to come and thank you for the invitation.
Martin Hurych
Thanks for being here. If we've taken you and LinkedIn a little further, we've done our job well. If we've swayed some of you who aren't on LinkedIn yet, we've done our job all the better. In either case, please subscribe, like, or forward to someone who might benefit from this piece. Be sure to check out my site, www.martinhurych.com/zazeh, where Honz's bonus is already hanging out at the moment, where you have one more bonus tool for working better with LinkedIn in addition to the two mentioned. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.