March 23, 2025 • 25 mins
Answering Your Top LinkedIn Marketing and Profile Optimization Questions
In this episode, I introduce a new series where I answer your questions about LinkedIn, marketing, and my work.
Topics covered include recent LinkedIn invitation limits, revising my book 'Social Media Pie,' understanding LinkedIn invitations, expectations for my coaching cohorts, Sales Navigator usage, tips on optimizing personal vs. business profiles, and CRM recommendations.
Additionally, I discuss the costs and benefits of LinkedIn Premium and offer practical advice for maximizing connection invitations and engagement on the platform.
The questions primarily stem from participants in my recent 'Stop Chasing Clients, Start Attracting Them using LinkedIn' webinar.
Join my VIP email list to be notified about future webinars and events.
Enjoy this podcast episode format? Let me know, and I'll add more episodes like this in the future.
00:00 Introduction to the Series
00:31 Overview of Questions
02:31 LinkedIn Invitation Limits
05:57 Revising Social Media Pie
07:49 Understanding LinkedIn Invitations
09:26 Cohort Size Expectations
12:15 Teaching Sales Navigator
15:27 Using Countdown Timers
17:00 Optimizing LinkedIn Profiles
19:24 CRM Training Insights
20:35 LinkedIn Premium Costs
24:19 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
**************************************
My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.
Visit mellermarketing.com
Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show.
Today I'm going to start aseries where I'm going to be
covering questions of the week,and I may do this once a week,
may do this once a month, we'llsee how it goes.
But what I've done is I'vecollected out some questions
that I've received aboutLinkedIn, about marketing, about
the work that I'm doing overthe past week, and I'm going to
answer them to you in thispodcast episode.
So, if you enjoy this, let meknow If we're connected on
(00:22):
LinkedIn, send me a messagethere, or on Instagram or email
or text.
Whatever.
Just let me know if you findthis interesting and I'll keep
doing episodes like these.
Okay, so I'm going to firstread off the list of questions
that I'm going to respond to andthen I'm going to go through
them one by one.
So, question number one did yousay there's now a limit on how
many times you can send a notewith an invitation?
And you can send a note with aninvitation?
(00:46):
And I should say a few of thesequestions came from
participants in my recentwebinar.
It's called Stop ChasingClients, start Attracting them
Using LinkedIn, and it's a freelive webinar I'm currently
offering.
I've got two more sessions thatare coming up.
The next one is going to be onTuesday March 25th at noon and
then we're doing this again onThursday March 27th at 10 am
Eastern time.
By the way, if you'reinterested, go to
(01:07):
Mellormarketingcom slash stopand you'll be able to register
for those.
These are only going to bedelivered live.
You won't be able to registerafter those dates to get a
playback, but you can always goback to Mellormarketingcom slash
subscribe, get on my VIP emaillist.
That way you'll be notifiedwhen I do future webinars on
these.
All right, so let me go throughthis list again.
(01:28):
So question number one did yousay there's now a limit on how
many times you can send a notewith an invitation?
Question two when will yourevise social media pie?
That's my book.
Question three what do you meanby invitation?
Is that a connection request?
Question four how many peopledo you expect in your cohort?
Question five do you teachSales Navigator?
(01:51):
Question six what is the timerthat we can see on your screen?
This is a countdown timer, bythe way.
Question seven please discussoptimizing your personal profile
versus creating a businessprofile on LinkedIn, which may
be repetitive of your personalprofile.
Question eight do you dotrainings on any CRM?
And question nine actuallythere's 10.
(02:12):
So question nine is premium now$70 a month, and a follow-up on
that was?
Does it let you see who hassearched you?
So let's start going throughthese one by one and I will
always bring the knowledge thatI know to you.
If I don't know, sometimes I'llgo and seek the knowledge and
find it and then I'll do a blogor a video about it.
But we'll go through these oneby one.
So, starting with questionnumber one, did you say there's
(02:33):
now a limit on how many timesyou can send a note with an
invitation?
Yes, this is something that waschanged by LinkedIn in the past
I believe in the past year.
Maybe it was in the past pasttwo years they started trying
this out, whereas in the past,any person who was using the
free basic version of LinkedIncould send out invitations and
we could add a note with everysingle one.
So what happens here is, onLinkedIn, when you're inviting
(02:55):
someone to connect, you have theoption of when you go to their
profile, you click on theconnect button, it will either
say add a note or send.
Now I think it's now sayingsend without an invitation and
the send without an invitationis like this big blue bold
button.
It looks like that's whatLinkedIn wants you to do, but if
you read the text, they saythat adding a note with your
invitation will help more ofyour invitations to get accepted
(03:18):
.
Now what happened is, in thepast year, I think, they sat
around at LinkedIn headquartersand started to say how can we
make more money?
And somebody said you know whatwe should do.
We should now only give ourunpaid users, the ones using the
free, basic version of LinkedIn.
We should now only give themthe ability to add five
invitations per month with anote, and the rest of them they
(03:39):
won't get the ability to add anote.
But if you upgrade to premium,you can add a note unlimited
with every invitation that yousend.
Now I am a big fan of surprisingand delighting your customers,
rewarding your customers forloyalty, not penalizing people,
and I really felt like this wasa penalty to LinkedIn members
who weren't paying for asubscription.
(04:00):
I would have preferred thatLinkedIn added something to a
premium membership rather thantake something away that
everyone had, and what they didis they took away the ability to
add a note to every singleinvitation, so now you can only
do it with five invitations.
Now my workaround on this, myfriend, is if you don't want to
upgrade to premium, yeah, youdon't need to, but if you don't
want to do that and you stillwant to try to get those
(04:22):
invitations accepted, only usethose note credits rather than
add a note feature with peoplethat don't know you.
That would add some context.
That would likely help them toget to know you so that they can
accept your invitation.
The other folks, the peoplethat you've had interaction with
, maybe on a webinar, in person,you've known from past lives or
(04:42):
careers, don't add a note Ifyou know they're going to know
who you are.
Don't add a note.
Don't waste that preciousinvitation credit on them.
Now, if you want to use thisfeature, you've personalized it
for the five people that youdon't know.
You still have more people youdon't know that you want to
invite to connect.
My recommendation for you is goto their profile, find their
activity feed, look forsomething recently that they've
(05:04):
posted and, by the way, ifthey're not posting, don't send
them an invitation.
They're probably not active onLinkedIn, but if they have
something posted recently,within the past week or two, add
a thoughtful comment, more thanmaybe a sentence or two.
Even so, your name starts tobuild some familiarity and they
can actually they remember you.
What may happen is they mayclick on your profile and then
(05:26):
they're gonna see a button thatsays accept, because if you send
them an invitation, it wouldsay pending from your end, but
from their end, if they look atyour profile, on your button, it
would say accept.
The other thing that mighthappen is they may not look at
your profile right away, but thenext time they look into your
pending invitations they go oh,brenda Meller, she sounds
(05:49):
familiar.
I think she's that person thatresponded to my post this week
with something really thoughtful, right?
So we're building somefamiliarity, we're building some
trust.
That's going to help you withthe workaround, all right, so
that's it.
So that's question number one.
Question number two when willyou revise social media pie?
So I wrote a book it's calledSocial Media Pie how to Enjoy a
Bigger Slice of LinkedIn and Ipublished this in.
It was actually the very end of2020, but going into 2021.
(06:10):
And at the time, it was reallyhard to publish this book
because LinkedIn is a runningtarget.
They're continually makingtweaks and changes to the
platform, so I decided to focuson overall LinkedIn strategies
and not so much including screencaptures of different features,
et cetera on the platform,because I knew that they were
going to change things.
And the ironic part about thisis, before I went to publish my
(06:32):
book I think it was I wasworking on it in like October,
november of 2020, getting it offto the printer LinkedIn made a
major change to some of the backend the privacy and settings
area and I had to redo an entirechapter.
So I knew at the time that theday would come that I'd want to
do a refresh and for those ofyou who are authors, you could
probably relate.
When you're publishing a book,you just want to go through that
(06:53):
first process, get it done.
After you publish, or eventhroughout the publishing
process, you realize there'ssome things that you want to
change, but there's so muchmomentum and you really just
want to get the book done.
So I think going through thebook the next time probably what
I'll do is at the end of eachchapter.
I'll put some action items inthere and maybe even some QR
codes pointing to blogs orresources, and I might make some
(07:15):
other changes in there as well,and obviously, any changes
reflecting what's happeningdifferently on LinkedIn as well.
So I'm thinking about it for2025.
It might be a 2026 project.
When I do publish a new editionof the book, I'm going to
follow the same theme socialmedia pie and I'll probably put
a different type of pie on thefront cover.
The current first edition hasapple pie, so maybe it'll be
(07:38):
blueberry pie or banana creampie or something different
cherry pie even on the frontcover.
So that's the plan At somepoint in the future.
I don't have a timeline inplace for that yet.
Question number three this wasasked by someone on the webinar
and my understanding is this isprobably someone who's a heavy
Instagram Facebook user who'snow starting to use LinkedIn.
(07:58):
So their question was what doyou mean by invitation?
A connection request, and thisis a perfectly valid question,
especially if you're not supersavvy on LinkedIn, not very
super familiar with the network,but you're familiar with some
of the other social sites thatare out there.
On Instagram and Facebook, wedon't have connection requests.
We have friend requests orfollowers, right?
(08:19):
So when we're talking aboutinvitations on LinkedIn, this is
a really new concept for manypeople.
So I love that this personasked this because, about
invitations on LinkedIn.
This is a really new conceptfor many people, so I love that
this person asked this.
Because I've been on LinkedInso long I forget that this might
not be something familiar tothose of you who are newer.
So on LinkedIn, you certainlycan just click on connect and
(08:43):
invite someone to connect withyou, which is very similar to
the friend request on Facebookor even on Instagram.
If you have it set up thatsomebody has to request to
follow you and you have toapprove it.
So an invitation on LinkedIn isa two-way action.
One person initiates it and theother person has to accept it.
Whereas followers and followingis a feature you can do on
LinkedIn, follow is a one-wayaction.
You don't have to wait forapproval.
When you click on follow,you're automatically starting to
follow their updates and posts.
(09:05):
You'll start to see some oftheir posts in your homepage
feed.
If you interact with them,you'll see them more frequently.
But an invitation is a two-wayinteraction and it is a
connection request.
Now, as I said in the answer tonumber one, I would add a note
with every one of those, justsome clarification and how these
connect together there.
So that's question number three.
(09:25):
Question number four how manydo you expect in the cohort?
So right now what I'm doing isI'm launching for the fifth time
my program which is called theRecipe for Social Selling on
LinkedIn, and I've designed thisprogram specifically for
individuals who areself-employed.
Coaches, consultants, coursecreators, speakers, authors,
(09:45):
service providers, independentprofessionals and even some B2b
sales professionals are going tobe a part of this program and
the question asked in the groupwas how many people do I expect
in the cohort?
And I think the person askingwas asking because sometimes
you'll enroll in an onlineprogram and it's a cohort, but
there's 100, 200, 400 people inthe cohort and then you get into
(10:06):
the group coaching and it's notsmall group coaching.
It's really a broadcast on aZoom webinar and you can't see
other people.
The chat might be locked down,you can't even ask questions of
the host because there's just somany people on there, and that
happens when you get that volume.
In my program, the Recipe, Ireally focus on small group
coaching, so I try to keep thecohorts to anywhere from 10 to
(10:29):
25 individuals.
I've not had the problem yet tohave such a large cohort that I
would have to split it out, butif I do get too large in there.
I will split the cohorts intosubgroups so that our small
group coaching is exactly thatsmall group coaching.
My goal with that small groupcoaching is that everyone gets
the opportunity to ask questions.
(10:51):
I will facilitate the session,make sure we go around, I will
make sure that everyone isacknowledged, at least in the
call.
If I see you on, you haven'tasked a question.
Before we leave I'll say do youhave any questions?
And I think that's somethingyou don't get from some of the
larger programs that are outthere, from some of the bigger
names.
I want to make sure that I gettime with my audience.
That's really important to meas I continue to grow and evolve
(11:11):
this program, because I wantyou to be successful in the
recipe.
That's a big goal for me.
Okay, so how many do I expect?
And I think there's anotherpart of this for those of you
who are course creators or whohave historically been learning
by doing If the person were tosay how many people do you want
in the cohort versus how manypeople do you expect, I think
you'd get a different answer.
How many people do I want?
(11:32):
I'd love to get to 50 rightaway, but realistically, based
on my past experiences withcourse launches.
I'm getting between 10 to 25.
So there's just some historicaldata that I'm looking at.
I am trying a couple thingsdifferent with this cohort in
terms of marketing and promotion.
I've been running Facebook andInstagram ads for the very first
(11:52):
time leading up to this, tryingto both promote my LinkedIn
checklist in the month leadingup and then, now that we're in
the webinar promotion period,I'm running some ads specific to
the webinar.
So maybe you've seen one ofthose.
If you have, I'd love it if youclick on and you can get the
link to register.
But again, you can go toMellormarketingcom slash stop.
If you're interested, all right, moving along.
(12:13):
Question number five do youteach Sales Navigator?
Interesting question.
I have used every version ofLinkedIn except Recruiter.
I should say so, the free,basic version.
I've used Premium Career, whichis what I'm currently in.
That is $40 a month.
There's Premium Business, whichI've used in the past and I
think right now for new memberscoming in, I think it's $70 or
(12:37):
$80 a month.
They keep changing it.
Then the next level up fromthere is Sales Navigator and if
you pay monthly, I believe it's$120 per month.
It might be a little bit more.
It might be a little less, butit's definitely over $100.
Now, if you do an annualsubscription with any of these,
you get a discount, but you haveto pay in full for it.
So I have used Sales Navigator.
Do I teach Sales Navigator?
(12:57):
That's not a core component ofthe recipe for social selling,
because the recipe program isreally based on the public
version of LinkedIn.
Sales Navigator is actually anentirely different site.
It's the same in that theconnections and what in the
homepage feed are pulling fromthe same area, but Sales
Navigator is an entirelydifferent subscription.
(13:19):
So what happens is, when yousign up for a Sales Navigator
subscription, if you happen tomessage people using Sales
Navigator and then at some pointin the future you delete your
Sales Navigator membership andyou go back down to free or
premium career or premiumbusiness, you lose all of your
messaging history inside SalesNavigator.
So that's one of the cons ofusing it.
(13:39):
If you start using it, you justhave to remember that messaging
history go into the publicversion of messaging so that
you're not losing that.
The other thing, though withSales Navigator, it's really
meant for heavy users ofLinkedIn that are using LinkedIn
for prospecting and businessdevelopment, for individuals
that maybe are doing enterpriseor B2B sales on a much larger
level.
You get much deeper access tofilters.
(14:04):
You can set up lead lists andprospect lists.
What I like about SalesNavigator is it does give you
the ability to curate your ownfeed so that you're not just
spending time wading throughcountless irrelevant posts in
your homepage feed, but you'rereally Sales Navigator.
You can set it up in a way sothat you're only seeing posts
from people that are in yourlead or prospect list and when.
(14:26):
I see that we have the abilityin Sales Navigator to set up an
individual lead list, whichwould be people, or we can also
do company lead lists as well.
So it does give you someadditional bells and whistles.
While I don't teach SalesNavigator, I don't go deep into
the ins and outs on how to useit.
I have used Sales Navigator inthe past.
I always tell my clients andmembers that if you have any
(14:48):
level of premium subscription,go into the LinkedIn Learning
Library.
They have a video that's allabout learning Sales Navigator.
I think there's multiple videosin there now and this is
approved by LinkedIn, so theyreally are making sure that the
LinkedIn learning video ispretty comprehensive in how you
use Sales Navigator.
Now, beyond that, there areother individuals that I know
(15:10):
that are LinkedIn trainers andcoaches that specialize in Sales
Navigator.
I can point you there, but theaverage person coming to me
really is just looking to usethe front end of LinkedIn, the
free basic version, or maybeusing LinkedIn layered on with
premium career or premiumbusiness in there.
All right, next question Duringthe webinar, I had a countdown
ticker on there and the personsaid what is that timer that we
(15:32):
can see on your screen?
And if you go onto my webinarfor the Stop Chasing Clients
webinar, I think I had this intwo places One, I do an exercise
in the beginning like abrainstorming exercise, where I
had a three-minute countdowntimer, and then I also did one
at the end.
I think I had a 10-minutecountdown timer to take
questions.
And if you use Google Sheetsrather Google, what is it?
(15:52):
The Google Slides, I think, iswhat they call it there is a
countdown ticker that you canincorporate as part of that, and
I think Zoom even has somethingas well.
But I find sometimes that thoseare a little bit tricky.
The user has to enable it.
It might hide things on screen.
So I figured it out.
I just I started using Canvacomfor all of my slide decks and
there's a way you can add inanimated GIFs and things like
(16:13):
that inside Canva.
What I did and this is me beinga very scrappy marketer I found
a countdown ticker.
I think I actually recorded iton my phone.
I did it myself on my phone andI did a countdown from three
minutes to zero and I did ascreen video record on it and
then I uploaded that into myCanva and I put it in the Canva
as a video.
So now when I do the Canva inpresentation mode, as soon as I
(16:37):
advance the slide to that, thecountdown ticker starts.
The video essentially startsplaying and it plays until it's
ending on there.
So that's how I did the timer.
I did it myself using my ownphone and Canva.
It wasn't using any specialsoftware or tools or things we
had to pay for.
It was really just capturing avideo on my phone and then
uploading it into Canva fromthere.
(16:58):
All right.
Question seven the person wasasking can you discuss
optimizing your personal profileversus creating a business
profile, which may be repetitive?
And the answer in the webinar.
I'm going to tell you the samething here.
You should have a personalprofile on LinkedIn.
You will be the most active onyour profile.
That will get the most viewsover your company page.
But you should also have acompany page even if, and
(17:20):
especially if, you'reself-employed, because by having
a company page, first andforemost, you'll have the
ability to put your company logonext to your company name,
instead of having that grayavatar which immediately creates
a question mark for people whowant to look like a legitimate
business.
The second thing is yourcompany page on LinkedIn almost
serves as like a mini version ofyour website, and sometimes
(17:43):
people are more apt to stayinside the platform instead of
leave to go to your website.
So it allows them that abilityto navigate through and to learn
more about your business byfinding it in search results or
going to your experience section.
So I don't think it'snecessarily repetitive, because
your company page, your company,is an entity and even if you're
self-employed, it's just you.
(18:04):
People might assume that you'rean agency or that you're bigger
than you are, and I like usingit because it's a place that I
can promote my products, myservices, my events.
It's a place where I can putadditional postings.
So on LinkedIn you can onlyreally post once a day without
getting hit with an algorithmpenalty.
If you do more than one postwithin 18 hours, you're going to
get a slight decrease inimpressions for both posts.
(18:27):
So if I have two posts in a day, I go out of my company page.
Or even if I don't have twoposts in a day, I try to always
post at least once a month on mycompany page, if not once a
week.
And what happens is when peoplevisit your company page either
by you inviting them to followthe page, by them navigating on
their own, or your page comingup in search results when they
(18:47):
get there, when they go to theactivity section of the page,
all they're seeing are posts byyour page and when they scroll
down, it's a very captiveaudience.
It's a very condensed feed inthere of just posts from your
company page, whereas thinkabout the LinkedIn homepage.
You're competing with so manypeople out there, right, so it's
highly concentrated.
I love having business pagesfor that reason and I believe
(19:08):
and I've used my own businesspage as a lead generating source
for my business, so I don'tthink it's repetitive.
If anything, I think it servesas an extension of your brand
and I do go into this in therecipe program in greater detail
.
Question number eight do you dotrainings on any CRM?
So this question wasinteresting.
Not specifically, but I alwaystell people I'll teach you what
(19:31):
I know and I'll share myexperiences.
So for me, when I first gotstarted with my business, I was
using an Excel file to trackleads and inquiries and things
that were coming in, and theneventually I started using a
site called 17Hats, which wassomewhat of a CRM system.
It also allowed me to do emailsand things like that.
I looked into HubSpot from timeto time.
I've gone back and forththrough the Excel spreadsheets.
(19:54):
I've used Trello for CRM aswell, which is really a project
management tool, but you can useit for your CRM as well.
So I don't do trainings onspecific CRMs like Salesforce or
HubSpot or things like that.
I have used them once upon atime.
Years ago I was usingSalesforce, but I don't use them
specifically now, andSalesforce is really designed
(20:14):
more for enterprise levelindividuals.
It's not really cost effectivefor a typical entrepreneur.
So my area of specialty ismarketing and LinkedIn.
I don't really go into greatdepth on trainings on CRM.
So I let you know what I do andI let you know the lanes that I
say in there.
Question nine we've got twoquestions to go here.
(20:35):
Question number nine is premiumLinkedIn now $70 a month?
Yes, it is, and this isinteresting.
So if you've ever paid for anyLinkedIn subscription before and
then canceled it, you maynotice they say this is a
special rate.
You're never going to be ableto get this rate ever again.
Are you sure you want to cancel?
They create that FOMO, thatfear of missing out at the time
(20:55):
that you want to cancel it.
Because what happens isLinkedIn is a business right and
, just like all of us who arebusiness owners, we may increase
our prices from time to timeand newer customers coming in
might get charged a higher pricethan customers who started with
you a long time ago in theirsubscription.
So this is essentially whatLinkedIn has done.
I have had friends who've saidto me they got in for premium
(21:16):
business I think for $20 a monthbut they can't ever cancel it.
They can't upgrade to SalesNavigator because if they ever
go back down they're going tohave to pay $70 a month for
premium business.
So yes, whatever the rate isthat you are seeing is the
current rate that they areoffering.
You may notice that LinkedInwill give you a 30-day trial for
free, or sometimes you mightsee a 60-day trial or a 90-day
(21:39):
trial out there.
If there is any sort of offersout there that you're interested
in, grab them.
Definitely try to use the freemonth before you pay for the
full upgrade on there and dokeep in mind if you want to get
that cost down, you can also gowith an annual subscription,
which reduces the monthly cost,but you have to pay for the year
(21:59):
in advance, if that makes sense.
And then follow-up question forthat person.
She said at that level we weretalking about premium career
versus premium business and Iwas recommending going into
premium career, which is theversion I'm using, because I'm
paying $40 a month and I'mgetting everything that I need
and I'm a pretty heavy user ofLinkedIn.
And she was asking for thepremium career.
(22:19):
Does it let you see who hassearched you?
And my response to her was youcan see who has viewed your
profile for the past 90 days.
Using premium career In premiumbusiness.
You can see who's viewed yourprofile in the past year.
Now who has searched you.
This is available in generalanalytics.
You don't need to pay for this.
It will show you how many timesyou've come up in search
(22:42):
results in a certain time period.
I'm going to pull this up inthe background to talk to you
about what that time period is,but essentially, when it's
coming up in your analytics,your search results, it gives
you like a specific number howmany times you've come up in
search results in a certain timeperiod.
I'm looking at my profile rightnow and it says how many times
my profile appeared acrossLinkedIn between March 11th and
(23:02):
March 18th and this is the pastseven days.
So it's telling me the number ofsearch appearances, but it
doesn't tell me was I in pageone?
Was I in page 10?
It doesn't tell me.
Did people actually click on myprofile to look at my profile
or did they just skim through meas a part of the results?
If that's the case, who cares?
I came up in page four ofsearch results and they didn't
(23:23):
see me right Now.
It will tell me where Iappeared post comments, network
recommendations, search thingslike that, et cetera but it's
not going to tell mespecifically did they look at my
profile?
So I really don't think thatlooking at who has searched you
or the number of search resultsyou've come up in First, two
(23:51):
numbers how many times yourprofile has been viewed in the
past 90 days or, if you're usingpremium business in the past
year, has been viewed in thepast 90 days or if you're using
premium business in the pastyear.
And the middle number, thenumber of post impressions,
which is the number of time thatyour post crossed by somebody's
pair of eyes in the homepagefeed.
Both of those numbers should beat least steady or growing.
That tells you that you'rereaching your ideal target
(24:12):
audience, that your content isseen as valuable and you're
attracting the right people toyour profile.
All right, my friends, those arethe questions of the week,
mainly coming from participantsof my staff webinar, but a
couple of additional ones that Iwas sharing with you in there
as well.
If you found this helpful,again, do let me know.
If we're connected on LinkedIn,send me a direct message, send
(24:33):
me a text if you know my cellphone number, or send me an
email.
Let me know if this was helpfulfor you and, as always, if you
do have any questions, feel freeto reach out to me and maybe
I'll feature your answer in afuture show.
Have a great day and I lookforward to seeing you on
LinkedIn, where I'm going tohelp you to get a bigger slice
of the LinkedIn pie.
Take care and have a great day.
Welcome back to the show.
Today I'm going to start aseries where I'm going to be
covering questions of the week,and I may do this once a week,
may do this once a month, we'llsee how it goes.
But what I've done is I'vecollected out some questions
that I've received aboutLinkedIn, about marketing, about
the work that I'm doing overthe past week, and I'm going to
answer them to you in thispodcast episode.
So, if you enjoy this, let meknow If we're connected on
(00:22):
LinkedIn, send me a messagethere, or on Instagram or email
or text.
Whatever.
Just let me know if you findthis interesting and I'll keep
doing episodes like these.
Okay, so I'm going to firstread off the list of questions
that I'm going to respond to andthen I'm going to go through
them one by one.
So, question number one did yousay there's now a limit on how
many times you can send a notewith an invitation?
And you can send a note with aninvitation?
(00:46):
And I should say a few of thesequestions came from
participants in my recentwebinar.
It's called Stop ChasingClients, start Attracting them
Using LinkedIn, and it's a freelive webinar I'm currently
offering.
I've got two more sessions thatare coming up.
The next one is going to be onTuesday March 25th at noon and
then we're doing this again onThursday March 27th at 10 am
Eastern time.
By the way, if you'reinterested, go to
(01:07):
Mellormarketingcom slash stopand you'll be able to register
for those.
These are only going to bedelivered live.
You won't be able to registerafter those dates to get a
playback, but you can always goback to Mellormarketingcom slash
subscribe, get on my VIP emaillist.
That way you'll be notifiedwhen I do future webinars on
these.
All right, so let me go throughthis list again.
(01:28):
So question number one did yousay there's now a limit on how
many times you can send a notewith an invitation?
Question two when will yourevise social media pie?
That's my book.
Question three what do you meanby invitation?
Is that a connection request?
Question four how many peopledo you expect in your cohort?
Question five do you teachSales Navigator?
(01:51):
Question six what is the timerthat we can see on your screen?
This is a countdown timer, bythe way.
Question seven please discussoptimizing your personal profile
versus creating a businessprofile on LinkedIn, which may
be repetitive of your personalprofile.
Question eight do you dotrainings on any CRM?
And question nine actuallythere's 10.
(02:12):
So question nine is premium now$70 a month, and a follow-up on
that was?
Does it let you see who hassearched you?
So let's start going throughthese one by one and I will
always bring the knowledge thatI know to you.
If I don't know, sometimes I'llgo and seek the knowledge and
find it and then I'll do a blogor a video about it.
But we'll go through these oneby one.
So, starting with questionnumber one, did you say there's
(02:33):
now a limit on how many timesyou can send a note with an
invitation?
Yes, this is something that waschanged by LinkedIn in the past
I believe in the past year.
Maybe it was in the past pasttwo years they started trying
this out, whereas in the past,any person who was using the
free basic version of LinkedIncould send out invitations and
we could add a note with everysingle one.
So what happens here is, onLinkedIn, when you're inviting
(02:55):
someone to connect, you have theoption of when you go to their
profile, you click on theconnect button, it will either
say add a note or send.
Now I think it's now sayingsend without an invitation and
the send without an invitationis like this big blue bold
button.
It looks like that's whatLinkedIn wants you to do, but if
you read the text, they saythat adding a note with your
invitation will help more ofyour invitations to get accepted
(03:18):
.
Now what happened is, in thepast year, I think, they sat
around at LinkedIn headquartersand started to say how can we
make more money?
And somebody said you know whatwe should do.
We should now only give ourunpaid users, the ones using the
free, basic version of LinkedIn.
We should now only give themthe ability to add five
invitations per month with anote, and the rest of them they
(03:39):
won't get the ability to add anote.
But if you upgrade to premium,you can add a note unlimited
with every invitation that yousend.
Now I am a big fan of surprisingand delighting your customers,
rewarding your customers forloyalty, not penalizing people,
and I really felt like this wasa penalty to LinkedIn members
who weren't paying for asubscription.
(04:00):
I would have preferred thatLinkedIn added something to a
premium membership rather thantake something away that
everyone had, and what they didis they took away the ability to
add a note to every singleinvitation, so now you can only
do it with five invitations.
Now my workaround on this, myfriend, is if you don't want to
upgrade to premium, yeah, youdon't need to, but if you don't
want to do that and you stillwant to try to get those
(04:22):
invitations accepted, only usethose note credits rather than
add a note feature with peoplethat don't know you.
That would add some context.
That would likely help them toget to know you so that they can
accept your invitation.
The other folks, the peoplethat you've had interaction with
, maybe on a webinar, in person,you've known from past lives or
(04:42):
careers, don't add a note Ifyou know they're going to know
who you are.
Don't add a note.
Don't waste that preciousinvitation credit on them.
Now, if you want to use thisfeature, you've personalized it
for the five people that youdon't know.
You still have more people youdon't know that you want to
invite to connect.
My recommendation for you is goto their profile, find their
activity feed, look forsomething recently that they've
(05:04):
posted and, by the way, ifthey're not posting, don't send
them an invitation.
They're probably not active onLinkedIn, but if they have
something posted recently,within the past week or two, add
a thoughtful comment, more thanmaybe a sentence or two.
Even so, your name starts tobuild some familiarity and they
can actually they remember you.
What may happen is they mayclick on your profile and then
(05:26):
they're gonna see a button thatsays accept, because if you send
them an invitation, it wouldsay pending from your end, but
from their end, if they look atyour profile, on your button, it
would say accept.
The other thing that mighthappen is they may not look at
your profile right away, but thenext time they look into your
pending invitations they go oh,brenda Meller, she sounds
(05:49):
familiar.
I think she's that person thatresponded to my post this week
with something really thoughtful, right?
So we're building somefamiliarity, we're building some
trust.
That's going to help you withthe workaround, all right, so
that's it.
So that's question number one.
Question number two when willyou revise social media pie?
So I wrote a book it's calledSocial Media Pie how to Enjoy a
Bigger Slice of LinkedIn and Ipublished this in.
It was actually the very end of2020, but going into 2021.
(06:10):
And at the time, it was reallyhard to publish this book
because LinkedIn is a runningtarget.
They're continually makingtweaks and changes to the
platform, so I decided to focuson overall LinkedIn strategies
and not so much including screencaptures of different features,
et cetera on the platform,because I knew that they were
going to change things.
And the ironic part about thisis, before I went to publish my
(06:32):
book I think it was I wasworking on it in like October,
november of 2020, getting it offto the printer LinkedIn made a
major change to some of the backend the privacy and settings
area and I had to redo an entirechapter.
So I knew at the time that theday would come that I'd want to
do a refresh and for those ofyou who are authors, you could
probably relate.
When you're publishing a book,you just want to go through that
(06:53):
first process, get it done.
After you publish, or eventhroughout the publishing
process, you realize there'ssome things that you want to
change, but there's so muchmomentum and you really just
want to get the book done.
So I think going through thebook the next time probably what
I'll do is at the end of eachchapter.
I'll put some action items inthere and maybe even some QR
codes pointing to blogs orresources, and I might make some
(07:15):
other changes in there as well,and obviously, any changes
reflecting what's happeningdifferently on LinkedIn as well.
So I'm thinking about it for2025.
It might be a 2026 project.
When I do publish a new editionof the book, I'm going to
follow the same theme socialmedia pie and I'll probably put
a different type of pie on thefront cover.
The current first edition hasapple pie, so maybe it'll be
(07:38):
blueberry pie or banana creampie or something different
cherry pie even on the frontcover.
So that's the plan At somepoint in the future.
I don't have a timeline inplace for that yet.
Question number three this wasasked by someone on the webinar
and my understanding is this isprobably someone who's a heavy
Instagram Facebook user who'snow starting to use LinkedIn.
(07:58):
So their question was what doyou mean by invitation?
A connection request, and thisis a perfectly valid question,
especially if you're not supersavvy on LinkedIn, not very
super familiar with the network,but you're familiar with some
of the other social sites thatare out there.
On Instagram and Facebook, wedon't have connection requests.
We have friend requests orfollowers, right?
(08:19):
So when we're talking aboutinvitations on LinkedIn, this is
a really new concept for manypeople.
So I love that this personasked this because, about
invitations on LinkedIn.
This is a really new conceptfor many people, so I love that
this person asked this.
Because I've been on LinkedInso long I forget that this might
not be something familiar tothose of you who are newer.
So on LinkedIn, you certainlycan just click on connect and
(08:43):
invite someone to connect withyou, which is very similar to
the friend request on Facebookor even on Instagram.
If you have it set up thatsomebody has to request to
follow you and you have toapprove it.
So an invitation on LinkedIn isa two-way action.
One person initiates it and theother person has to accept it.
Whereas followers and followingis a feature you can do on
LinkedIn, follow is a one-wayaction.
You don't have to wait forapproval.
When you click on follow,you're automatically starting to
follow their updates and posts.
(09:05):
You'll start to see some oftheir posts in your homepage
feed.
If you interact with them,you'll see them more frequently.
But an invitation is a two-wayinteraction and it is a
connection request.
Now, as I said in the answer tonumber one, I would add a note
with every one of those, justsome clarification and how these
connect together there.
So that's question number three.
(09:25):
Question number four how manydo you expect in the cohort?
So right now what I'm doing isI'm launching for the fifth time
my program which is called theRecipe for Social Selling on
LinkedIn, and I've designed thisprogram specifically for
individuals who areself-employed.
Coaches, consultants, coursecreators, speakers, authors,
(09:45):
service providers, independentprofessionals and even some B2b
sales professionals are going tobe a part of this program and
the question asked in the groupwas how many people do I expect
in the cohort?
And I think the person askingwas asking because sometimes
you'll enroll in an onlineprogram and it's a cohort, but
there's 100, 200, 400 people inthe cohort and then you get into
(10:06):
the group coaching and it's notsmall group coaching.
It's really a broadcast on aZoom webinar and you can't see
other people.
The chat might be locked down,you can't even ask questions of
the host because there's just somany people on there, and that
happens when you get that volume.
In my program, the Recipe, Ireally focus on small group
coaching, so I try to keep thecohorts to anywhere from 10 to
(10:29):
25 individuals.
I've not had the problem yet tohave such a large cohort that I
would have to split it out, butif I do get too large in there.
I will split the cohorts intosubgroups so that our small
group coaching is exactly thatsmall group coaching.
My goal with that small groupcoaching is that everyone gets
the opportunity to ask questions.
(10:51):
I will facilitate the session,make sure we go around, I will
make sure that everyone isacknowledged, at least in the
call.
If I see you on, you haven'tasked a question.
Before we leave I'll say do youhave any questions?
And I think that's somethingyou don't get from some of the
larger programs that are outthere, from some of the bigger
names.
I want to make sure that I gettime with my audience.
That's really important to meas I continue to grow and evolve
(11:11):
this program, because I wantyou to be successful in the
recipe.
That's a big goal for me.
Okay, so how many do I expect?
And I think there's anotherpart of this for those of you
who are course creators or whohave historically been learning
by doing If the person were tosay how many people do you want
in the cohort versus how manypeople do you expect, I think
you'd get a different answer.
How many people do I want?
(11:32):
I'd love to get to 50 rightaway, but realistically, based
on my past experiences withcourse launches.
I'm getting between 10 to 25.
So there's just some historicaldata that I'm looking at.
I am trying a couple thingsdifferent with this cohort in
terms of marketing and promotion.
I've been running Facebook andInstagram ads for the very first
(11:52):
time leading up to this, tryingto both promote my LinkedIn
checklist in the month leadingup and then, now that we're in
the webinar promotion period,I'm running some ads specific to
the webinar.
So maybe you've seen one ofthose.
If you have, I'd love it if youclick on and you can get the
link to register.
But again, you can go toMellormarketingcom slash stop.
If you're interested, all right, moving along.
(12:13):
Question number five do youteach Sales Navigator?
Interesting question.
I have used every version ofLinkedIn except Recruiter.
I should say so, the free,basic version.
I've used Premium Career, whichis what I'm currently in.
That is $40 a month.
There's Premium Business, whichI've used in the past and I
think right now for new memberscoming in, I think it's $70 or
(12:37):
$80 a month.
They keep changing it.
Then the next level up fromthere is Sales Navigator and if
you pay monthly, I believe it's$120 per month.
It might be a little bit more.
It might be a little less, butit's definitely over $100.
Now, if you do an annualsubscription with any of these,
you get a discount, but you haveto pay in full for it.
So I have used Sales Navigator.
Do I teach Sales Navigator?
(12:57):
That's not a core component ofthe recipe for social selling,
because the recipe program isreally based on the public
version of LinkedIn.
Sales Navigator is actually anentirely different site.
It's the same in that theconnections and what in the
homepage feed are pulling fromthe same area, but Sales
Navigator is an entirelydifferent subscription.
(13:19):
So what happens is, when yousign up for a Sales Navigator
subscription, if you happen tomessage people using Sales
Navigator and then at some pointin the future you delete your
Sales Navigator membership andyou go back down to free or
premium career or premiumbusiness, you lose all of your
messaging history inside SalesNavigator.
So that's one of the cons ofusing it.
(13:39):
If you start using it, you justhave to remember that messaging
history go into the publicversion of messaging so that
you're not losing that.
The other thing, though withSales Navigator, it's really
meant for heavy users ofLinkedIn that are using LinkedIn
for prospecting and businessdevelopment, for individuals
that maybe are doing enterpriseor B2B sales on a much larger
level.
You get much deeper access tofilters.
(14:04):
You can set up lead lists andprospect lists.
What I like about SalesNavigator is it does give you
the ability to curate your ownfeed so that you're not just
spending time wading throughcountless irrelevant posts in
your homepage feed, but you'rereally Sales Navigator.
You can set it up in a way sothat you're only seeing posts
from people that are in yourlead or prospect list and when.
(14:26):
I see that we have the abilityin Sales Navigator to set up an
individual lead list, whichwould be people, or we can also
do company lead lists as well.
So it does give you someadditional bells and whistles.
While I don't teach SalesNavigator, I don't go deep into
the ins and outs on how to useit.
I have used Sales Navigator inthe past.
I always tell my clients andmembers that if you have any
(14:48):
level of premium subscription,go into the LinkedIn Learning
Library.
They have a video that's allabout learning Sales Navigator.
I think there's multiple videosin there now and this is
approved by LinkedIn, so theyreally are making sure that the
LinkedIn learning video ispretty comprehensive in how you
use Sales Navigator.
Now, beyond that, there areother individuals that I know
(15:10):
that are LinkedIn trainers andcoaches that specialize in Sales
Navigator.
I can point you there, but theaverage person coming to me
really is just looking to usethe front end of LinkedIn, the
free basic version, or maybeusing LinkedIn layered on with
premium career or premiumbusiness in there.
All right, next question Duringthe webinar, I had a countdown
ticker on there and the personsaid what is that timer that we
(15:32):
can see on your screen?
And if you go onto my webinarfor the Stop Chasing Clients
webinar, I think I had this intwo places One, I do an exercise
in the beginning like abrainstorming exercise, where I
had a three-minute countdowntimer, and then I also did one
at the end.
I think I had a 10-minutecountdown timer to take
questions.
And if you use Google Sheetsrather Google, what is it?
(15:52):
The Google Slides, I think, iswhat they call it there is a
countdown ticker that you canincorporate as part of that, and
I think Zoom even has somethingas well.
But I find sometimes that thoseare a little bit tricky.
The user has to enable it.
It might hide things on screen.
So I figured it out.
I just I started using Canvacomfor all of my slide decks and
there's a way you can add inanimated GIFs and things like
(16:13):
that inside Canva.
What I did and this is me beinga very scrappy marketer I found
a countdown ticker.
I think I actually recorded iton my phone.
I did it myself on my phone andI did a countdown from three
minutes to zero and I did ascreen video record on it and
then I uploaded that into myCanva and I put it in the Canva
as a video.
So now when I do the Canva inpresentation mode, as soon as I
(16:37):
advance the slide to that, thecountdown ticker starts.
The video essentially startsplaying and it plays until it's
ending on there.
So that's how I did the timer.
I did it myself using my ownphone and Canva.
It wasn't using any specialsoftware or tools or things we
had to pay for.
It was really just capturing avideo on my phone and then
uploading it into Canva fromthere.
(16:58):
All right.
Question seven the person wasasking can you discuss
optimizing your personal profileversus creating a business
profile, which may be repetitive?
And the answer in the webinar.
I'm going to tell you the samething here.
You should have a personalprofile on LinkedIn.
You will be the most active onyour profile.
That will get the most viewsover your company page.
But you should also have acompany page even if, and
(17:20):
especially if, you'reself-employed, because by having
a company page, first andforemost, you'll have the
ability to put your company logonext to your company name,
instead of having that grayavatar which immediately creates
a question mark for people whowant to look like a legitimate
business.
The second thing is yourcompany page on LinkedIn almost
serves as like a mini version ofyour website, and sometimes
(17:43):
people are more apt to stayinside the platform instead of
leave to go to your website.
So it allows them that abilityto navigate through and to learn
more about your business byfinding it in search results or
going to your experience section.
So I don't think it'snecessarily repetitive, because
your company page, your company,is an entity and even if you're
self-employed, it's just you.
(18:04):
People might assume that you'rean agency or that you're bigger
than you are, and I like usingit because it's a place that I
can promote my products, myservices, my events.
It's a place where I can putadditional postings.
So on LinkedIn you can onlyreally post once a day without
getting hit with an algorithmpenalty.
If you do more than one postwithin 18 hours, you're going to
get a slight decrease inimpressions for both posts.
(18:27):
So if I have two posts in a day, I go out of my company page.
Or even if I don't have twoposts in a day, I try to always
post at least once a month on mycompany page, if not once a
week.
And what happens is when peoplevisit your company page either
by you inviting them to followthe page, by them navigating on
their own, or your page comingup in search results when they
(18:47):
get there, when they go to theactivity section of the page,
all they're seeing are posts byyour page and when they scroll
down, it's a very captiveaudience.
It's a very condensed feed inthere of just posts from your
company page, whereas thinkabout the LinkedIn homepage.
You're competing with so manypeople out there, right, so it's
highly concentrated.
I love having business pagesfor that reason and I believe
(19:08):
and I've used my own businesspage as a lead generating source
for my business, so I don'tthink it's repetitive.
If anything, I think it servesas an extension of your brand
and I do go into this in therecipe program in greater detail
.
Question number eight do you dotrainings on any CRM?
So this question wasinteresting.
Not specifically, but I alwaystell people I'll teach you what
(19:31):
I know and I'll share myexperiences.
So for me, when I first gotstarted with my business, I was
using an Excel file to trackleads and inquiries and things
that were coming in, and theneventually I started using a
site called 17Hats, which wassomewhat of a CRM system.
It also allowed me to do emailsand things like that.
I looked into HubSpot from timeto time.
I've gone back and forththrough the Excel spreadsheets.
(19:54):
I've used Trello for CRM aswell, which is really a project
management tool, but you can useit for your CRM as well.
So I don't do trainings onspecific CRMs like Salesforce or
HubSpot or things like that.
I have used them once upon atime.
Years ago I was usingSalesforce, but I don't use them
specifically now, andSalesforce is really designed
(20:14):
more for enterprise levelindividuals.
It's not really cost effectivefor a typical entrepreneur.
So my area of specialty ismarketing and LinkedIn.
I don't really go into greatdepth on trainings on CRM.
So I let you know what I do andI let you know the lanes that I
say in there.
Question nine we've got twoquestions to go here.
(20:35):
Question number nine is premiumLinkedIn now $70 a month?
Yes, it is, and this isinteresting.
So if you've ever paid for anyLinkedIn subscription before and
then canceled it, you maynotice they say this is a
special rate.
You're never going to be ableto get this rate ever again.
Are you sure you want to cancel?
They create that FOMO, thatfear of missing out at the time
(20:55):
that you want to cancel it.
Because what happens isLinkedIn is a business right and
, just like all of us who arebusiness owners, we may increase
our prices from time to timeand newer customers coming in
might get charged a higher pricethan customers who started with
you a long time ago in theirsubscription.
So this is essentially whatLinkedIn has done.
I have had friends who've saidto me they got in for premium
(21:16):
business I think for $20 a monthbut they can't ever cancel it.
They can't upgrade to SalesNavigator because if they ever
go back down they're going tohave to pay $70 a month for
premium business.
So yes, whatever the rate isthat you are seeing is the
current rate that they areoffering.
You may notice that LinkedInwill give you a 30-day trial for
free, or sometimes you mightsee a 60-day trial or a 90-day
(21:39):
trial out there.
If there is any sort of offersout there that you're interested
in, grab them.
Definitely try to use the freemonth before you pay for the
full upgrade on there and dokeep in mind if you want to get
that cost down, you can also gowith an annual subscription,
which reduces the monthly cost,but you have to pay for the year
(21:59):
in advance, if that makes sense.
And then follow-up question forthat person.
She said at that level we weretalking about premium career
versus premium business and Iwas recommending going into
premium career, which is theversion I'm using, because I'm
paying $40 a month and I'mgetting everything that I need
and I'm a pretty heavy user ofLinkedIn.
And she was asking for thepremium career.
(22:19):
Does it let you see who hassearched you?
And my response to her was youcan see who has viewed your
profile for the past 90 days.
Using premium career In premiumbusiness.
You can see who's viewed yourprofile in the past year.
Now who has searched you.
This is available in generalanalytics.
You don't need to pay for this.
It will show you how many timesyou've come up in search
(22:42):
results in a certain time period.
I'm going to pull this up inthe background to talk to you
about what that time period is,but essentially, when it's
coming up in your analytics,your search results, it gives
you like a specific number howmany times you've come up in
search results in a certain timeperiod.
I'm looking at my profile rightnow and it says how many times
my profile appeared acrossLinkedIn between March 11th and
(23:02):
March 18th and this is the pastseven days.
So it's telling me the number ofsearch appearances, but it
doesn't tell me was I in pageone?
Was I in page 10?
It doesn't tell me.
Did people actually click on myprofile to look at my profile
or did they just skim through meas a part of the results?
If that's the case, who cares?
I came up in page four ofsearch results and they didn't
(23:23):
see me right Now.
It will tell me where Iappeared post comments, network
recommendations, search thingslike that, et cetera but it's
not going to tell mespecifically did they look at my
profile?
So I really don't think thatlooking at who has searched you
or the number of search resultsyou've come up in First, two
(23:51):
numbers how many times yourprofile has been viewed in the
past 90 days or, if you're usingpremium business in the past
year, has been viewed in thepast 90 days or if you're using
premium business in the pastyear.
And the middle number, thenumber of post impressions,
which is the number of time thatyour post crossed by somebody's
pair of eyes in the homepagefeed.
Both of those numbers should beat least steady or growing.
That tells you that you'rereaching your ideal target
(24:12):
audience, that your content isseen as valuable and you're
attracting the right people toyour profile.
All right, my friends, those arethe questions of the week,
mainly coming from participantsof my staff webinar, but a
couple of additional ones that Iwas sharing with you in there
as well.
If you found this helpful,again, do let me know.
If we're connected on LinkedIn,send me a direct message, send
(24:33):
me a text if you know my cellphone number, or send me an
email.
Let me know if this was helpfulfor you and, as always, if you
do have any questions, feel freeto reach out to me and maybe
I'll feature your answer in afuture show.
Have a great day and I lookforward to seeing you on
LinkedIn, where I'm going tohelp you to get a bigger slice
of the LinkedIn pie.
Take care and have a great day.
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In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.