August 17, 2024 • 27 mins
In this inspiring episode, our guest Matt Cretzman shares his incredible journey of leveraging the power of LinkedIn, starting from a pivotal moment in 2019 that altered his life and career. Discover how his passion for connecting people and building meaningful business relationships led not only to career success but also to finding his wife. Matt's dedication is encapsulated in his book, "The LinkedIn Advantage," and he unveils some of his best LinkedIn marketing strategies, including how to export your entire activity history for maximum impact.
Dive into the essential elements of a winning marketing strategy with our B-C-T framework: brand, content, and traffic. Learn from Matt as we discuss the importance of a strong brand and valuable content before driving traffic for conversions. Gain insights into advanced LinkedIn tactics such as targeting event attendees, making the most of LinkedIn newsletters, and using AI-powered conversational bots for engaging leads effortlessly. We also introduce LeadStorm AI, a groundbreaking tool that merges CRM features with outbound capabilities to automate your LinkedIn and email activities. This episode is packed with actionable tips and innovative tools that highlight how AI is revolutionizing LinkedIn marketing.
Visit Matt's Web Site
Send us a Text Message, give feedback on the episode, suggest a guest or topic
Visit the Remarkable Marketing Podcast website to see all our episodes.
Visit the Remarkable Marketing Podcast on YouTube
Remarkable Marketing Podcast Highlights on Instagram
Eric Eden on LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Eden (00:00):
Welcome to today's episode.
Today we are talking aboutLinkedIn strategies and AI.
We have a great guest to helpus talk through this Matt.
Welcome to the show.
https://www.mattcretzman (00:11):
What's up my man Eric.
Good to meet you man andremarkable marketing podcast
listeners.
Awesome to chat with you guys.
Eric Eden (00:18):
Why don't we start off by you sharing just a little
bit about who you are and whatyou're doing with LinkedIn and
AI today?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (00:26):
Yeah , yeah for sure.
So at my core, I'm a connector.
I love connecting dots andmaking interactions for people,
which is number two why I loveLinkedIn so much because it's a
relationship platform, right, itallows you to start
conversations that matter withpeople that matter.
I'm a serial entrepreneur.
I have shiny object syndromeand love chasing squirrels.
Serial entrepreneur I haveshiny object syndrome and love
(00:46):
chasing squirrels.
And I'm also married, have twoawesome girls, and my story for
how I fell into LinkedIn comesfrom a little bit of personal
tragedy, a little bit of somehighs and lows, and I've gone
through a number of differentvalleys.
Eric and I've certainly climbedto the mountaintops, but life's
been an adventure and, as myone friend says, your destiny is
defined by your relationships.
So I focus on helping otherpeople make the right
(01:07):
relationships, powered by havinga strategy around LinkedIn,
because that's what's changed mylife as well.
Your destiny is defined by yourrelationships, so choose them
really well.
Eric Eden (01:17):
I love that.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (01:17):
Yeah , I love that yeah, I should
also say yeah.
So I just man, I've been likeall in on LinkedIn since 2019.
And I just finished writing abook called the LinkedIn
Advantage.
And some people might hearLinkedIn and, you know, cringe
or not seem as exciting, but I'mtelling you I'm so passionate
(01:40):
about this platform and helpingpeople use it right Because it
took me from struggling singledad when I lost my daughter in a
car accident 12 years ago andhad to go through a major life
transition in 2016.
And I wondered for a couple ofyears, just wondering what was
next.
And two things I did in 2019that radically changed my life.
(02:02):
I started a podcast like thisone right here and I went all in
on LinkedIn.
I just had this urge and I hadto scratch that itch.
And I'm really glad that I did,because the relationships that
I formed through LinkedIn andthe strategies that I uncovered
with the tools just radicallychanged my life.
And I could tell you manystories over the past five years
of what some of thoseadventures have led to.
Eric Eden (02:25):
It's very interesting .
Fairly recently, linkedinlaunched this new feature where
you can go in and you can exportanything that you've ever done
on LinkedIn, including yourentire list of all your
connections and the date thatyou connected with them, every
message you sent, every postyou've liked, and I downloaded
that and I've been on LinkedInfor 18 years and that was a very
(02:48):
interesting historicaldocumentation.
Yeah, I bet, when you look atthe history of it, it's very
interesting, because I've been abeliever from the beginning,
since 2006 or seven, I think, iswhen I had my first connections
and I was like, wow, it'sreally interesting that all of
that data is there and so anyonecan go and do that on LinkedIn
(03:09):
and just export everything.
And it's a fun exercise, butwe're ready to be inspired.
Why don't you tell us a storyabout some of the best marketing
you've done with LinkedIn?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (03:22):
Yeah for sure.
So I love, I love telling thisstory and it's a little bit
about it's about my love life.
So I tell people I, in aroundabout way, I met my wife
through LinkedIn and you're apretty darn good marketer If you
can manage to find your spouseinadvertently through marketing
that you do on LinkedIn.
So I'll back up and tell youthe story.
2019, one of the first clientsthat I landed was a professional
(03:45):
sports team here in Dallas.
They reached out to me onLinkedIn and wanted to set up a
coffee meeting.
This person was in sales, Hername was Lauren and so I obliged
, agreed to, and I was very newon LinkedIn at the time.
I'm not an OG like you.
2019, I was still trying tofigure it out and so we met up
for coffee and I could quicklytell like this person's trying
to sell me and she's doing apretty darn good job.
(04:06):
But I think I'm a little bit ofa better salesperson.
So I flipped the script and Isaid you reached out to me on
LinkedIn with a message.
I can actually how are youdoing that?
Unpack it.
And she said hey, we're doingit.
I'm doing it manually, Like Ijust try to find people in
search and I'm messaging themmanually.
And, to make a long story short, I convinced her to set up a
(04:26):
meeting with the president ofthe team and me, and I wanted to
pitch them on my LinkedInservices and how I could help
bring efficiency and strategy towhat they were doing.
That was completely from thehip and really messy and super
tedious, and so we ended upstriking a partnership.
Little did I know about, threeyears later, that person that I
met through LinkedIn, Lauren.
I would see her again on adating profile.
(04:48):
It wasn't hers, it was one ofher best friends whose name was
Nadia, and so as I was scrollingthrough profile as I tell the
story of 397, I saw Nadia andI'm like, wow, this woman is
gorgeous.
I like everything that I see.
We share the same values and,furthermore, I see Lauren in one
of her pictures.
I'm like I know Lauren as aprevious client, and so I
(05:10):
reached out.
And this is where it's reallyfun, because my brain works in
some ways Like I see the worldthrough LinkedIn and a lot of it
.
I see the world throughLinkedIn messages, and so when I
saw her profile, my mind wentto a LinkedIn campaign and I was
like how am I going to reachout to this person in a way that
builds trust, piques theinterest and takes it to the
next step?
So in my first message to mynow wife, I referenced Lauren.
(05:34):
I said, hey, how do you knowLauren?
Like she was a previous client,how do you know her?
And she's actually one of mybest friends and I was like
perfect.
So when you're running LinkedIncampaigns, you try to look for
commonality and you look fortrust, and if you can find those
two things at scale and stillmaintain a degree of
personalization, that's whereyou can really get move the
needle and get some results onLinkedIn.
(05:55):
So I applied, like my LinkedInnerdiness in a personal context
in trying to start aconversation and we hit it off.
We went on a first date.
It was super fun and we endedup becoming best friends,
quickly proposed and we gotmarried a couple of years ago
and I've used my LinkedIn skillswith my wife to do brand deals,
(06:17):
film a docu-series all overEurope.
We've been to 14 countries.
I even landed an MC gig with aSaaS conference called SaaS Talk
, which is one of the top twoSaaS conferences in Europe.
Thousands of people show up.
All of this.
My life has radically changedthrough LinkedIn and having a
process and a really gooddialed-in strategy for how we do
(06:40):
outreach.
So, to answer your question,that was a long way to answer
One of the best marketingcampaigns, if you could call it.
That was the one that I didthat ended up landing me my wife
.
Eric Eden (06:50):
It's the best kind of partnership for Indians.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (06:54):
Yeah , it's the best.
But to be a little bit moreserious, one of the best
campaigns that I did for one ofour clients was a Mexico City
basketball team In Mexico, acountry that's dominated by we
say soccer, they say football.
I've done a lot withprofessional sports teams, and
so this challenge was how do wedraw bring awareness to a pro
(07:14):
basketball team in a countrythat's dominated by other sports
?
And so I started working withthe basketball team, put
together a holistic strategy toleverage courtside tickets and I
love using this part whenmarketing on LinkedIn.
I love leveraging LinkedInevents.
So we set up a LinkedIn eventthat was highly exclusive, the
(07:35):
registration was on LinkedIn andwe put together this VIP
experience that included acouple of collaborators and
sponsors.
And then we took that LinkedInevent, put together a list of
like CEOs and top executives andsuccessful entrepreneurs in
Mexico city and did a bunch ofoutbound, started conversations
leading to meetings, and we useda little bit of scarcity,
(07:58):
exclusivity and a VIPopportunity for them.
And it was the case studies.
On my LinkedIn profile it's inmy featured section we actually
ended up hiring a five-man filmcrew to film the case study.
It was definitely overkill.
We had way too many people, itwas too high production, but it
made it very fun and it waswildly successful.
We had about 30 people thatshowed up and had the time of
(08:19):
their life courtside watching agame, and so it started
conversations with some bigbrands and sponsors and
collaborators and stuff likethat.
It was great.
Eric Eden (08:28):
That's awesome.
So the project you're workingon the LinkedIn Advantage tell
me a little bit about whatyou've learned and what you
evangelize is having anadvantage on LinkedIn.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (08:43):
Yeah , man, I talk to people on a
very consistent basis whereLinkedIn is almost an
afterthought.
It's not usually the firstplatform that businesses or
entrepreneurs or founders oreven content creators might
think about going on.
It's thank you, gary Vee, who'smaking it a little bit more a
part of the conversation, butthe focus on the book is just
(09:05):
number one telling stories ofwhat I've done over the past
five, six years in usingLinkedIn for myself and then
bringing together a holisticstrategy for how they can, yeah,
use LinkedIn to your advantage.
And so what I ended up doingaugmented by AI, which maybe we
can touch on that today but Iended up developing an
assessment, called it's theLinkedIn advantage assessment,
(09:27):
which covers 10 specific pointson LinkedIn and you can
categorize or rate your, yoursuccess or your involvement or
activity A to E, and then, onceyou complete the assessment, our
platform will spit out what wecall the LinkedIn Power Score.
So I couldn't believe thatlinkedinpowerscorecom is
actually available and I knowLinkedIn has their own SSI,
(09:50):
which is the Social SellingIndex.
But I infused my experience, myprocesses and systems into our
own assessment using theLinkedIn Advantage principle,
into developing your ownLinkedIn power score.
But the easiest way to thinkabout it is I tell people three
letters to simplify what I doand what they should focus on,
(10:11):
and that is B-C-T, brand content, traffic and, eric.
I've done a lot of marketingcampaigns, especially in my
early years, where the focus wasmostly on traffic and people
want, and there's a lot ofpeople today that think you can
just push a button and getreally good traffic that
(10:31):
converts.
If you don't have the first two,your traffic is not going to
convert.
So how do you take a step back,see the bigger picture and put
a strategy around building abrand that clearly communicates
who you are and who you're notthrough content that is both
insightful, inspirational andclarifies trust and expertise,
(10:53):
and then leveraging that in youroutbound through outbound
traffic and it's funny somepeople are now this is like the
popular term.
Adam Robinson calls it inboundled outbound.
I've heard other people call itcontent led outbound, but the
principles are still the samethose three things.
If your traffic is notconverting, you're not growing
(11:13):
the way you want to.
You should probably start thereand look at how's my brand?
What kind of content am Icreating?
Is it valuable?
Do I have a strategy and am Ileveraging that in my traffic to
start conversations from aplace of give first.
Eric Eden (11:28):
Yeah, that makes sense.
If we were sitting down andhaving a coffee, what would you
say are the two or three thingsthat you recommend to the most
to people, tactic wise to do onLinkedIn to be successful?
https://www.mattcretzman.co (11:40):
One of my top strategies as it
relates to growing myconnections on LinkedIn has been
targeting, researching andtargeting attendees of events on
LinkedIn.
That's been a great strategy.
If you're not familiar with howthat works, you probably are,
eric.
But go to the search bar onLinkedIn, filter by events,
(12:01):
think of what conference orevent or topic might my ideal
prospects or clients want toattend.
And then, once you yield thatsearch, say sales.
Filter by events.
All these events are aboutsales.
That obviously says it givesyou an idea of where they are on
the buyer's journey.
If somebody is attending anevent on sales, they naturally
have problems with sales orlooking to better their sales.
(12:21):
If I have a solution aroundsales, I'm going to do some
outbound there.
So LinkedIn event hacking isone of my best strategies and
love that.
The second one is LinkedInnewsletters is.
It's a sleepy strategy and nota lot of people focus on or talk
about it enough, but you canvery quickly grow a following or
subscribership If you have aLinkedIn newsletter.
(12:41):
For a number of differentreasons, I love that.
Your newsletter articles forpeople to subscribe.
All they got to do is checkthat, hit that check mark and
now they've subscribed.
And when you build subscribers.
Linkedin will send a pushnotification to your subscribers
when you post a new article.
So if you're still postingarticles just as a post on
(13:02):
LinkedIn, take a step back,create a newsletter that's
branded for your audience andpost those articles underneath
your newsletter so you reap thebenefit of building an audience,
getting those pushnotifications.
And the other cool thing aboutLinkedIn newsletters and
articles is you can actuallyembed long form YouTube videos
directly in the article andLinkedIn won't necessarily
(13:26):
penalize you for that.
If you were to post that in thepost, you're taking people off
the platform.
Linkedin doesn't like that, butin an article you can get away
with it.
So that's a little workaround.
Eric Eden (13:38):
So LinkedIn events Very cool.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (13:40):
It's a cool little hack LinkedIn
newsletters.
And then the third one.
I tested this one out.
It was a fun experiment.
But earlier this year, wheneverI speak, I use a conversational
AI bot that triggers anautomation when I tell people to
text a word to a number.
So our platform, leadstorm AI,has that kind of capability
(14:03):
where you can configure any wordthat you want with the number
that's assigned to your platformand build an entire AI workflow
.
So let's say, I did this in NewYork City once.
I was speaking to a room ofmaybe a couple hundred people
and I said text the wordpipeline to this number and my
AI assistant, thor, will takeover the conversation.
(14:24):
And conversational AI is it isundetectably human.
So it had dozens ofconversations simultaneously.
Right as I'm standing there infront of an audience, I had
people being qualified, bookedand scheduled completely on my
calendar and my hands were offthe wheel.
So what I've been testing isputting that call to action in
(14:45):
my headline or placing itsomewhere in my LinkedIn profile
, because I noticed what happensis, as I'm posting and creating
content, second degree andthird degree connections are
seeing my content.
They don't know me, but they'recurious, and so if I have a
good enough positioning for thatword and that number, they'll
(15:05):
just fall into my funnel and AItakes over the conversation,
asks all the right questions,and then I've got a meeting on
my calendar.
Eric Eden (15:14):
That's pretty awesome .
https://www.mattcretzman.com (15:15):
So that's what your solution,
Leadstorm AI, does it's one ofthe many things that it does.
It's a full suite of sales andmarketing automation tools.
So build your funnels, yourlanding pages, manage your
contacts, email campaigns,opportunity pipeline.
The gap I saw in the market andwhy I built LeadStorm was
you've got lots of great,best-in-class platforms like
(15:36):
HubSpot or Marketo Pipedrive,but all of these all-in-one CRMs
did not have outboundcapability.
I couldn't use HubSpot orClickFunnels God forbid or
Kajabi to grow my brand onLinkedIn and do outbound.
It's not designed for coldemail, it's not designed for
LinkedIn automation, and soLeadStorm has the best CRM
(15:59):
features, plus 700 millioncontacts, and it gives you the
ability to fully automateoutbound and LinkedIn activity
and stuff like that.
Eric Eden (16:08):
Wow, that's super cool.
It's a beast.
So talk to me a little bitabout how you see AI getting
used on LinkedIn and in othertools like the one that you've
created.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (16:21):
Yeah , for me, I'm constantly testing
, like most people, and I'mtrying to figure out how can I
meaningfully enhance or bringefficiency to my daily workflows
and habits around AI.
So for us, we create customGPTs for our clients.
We use that internally not onlyto ask questions, as it relates
to meetings.
(16:41):
Every meeting we have with aclient we put into a custom GPT
and we can ask it a questionabout any meeting that we
might've had in the past.
We also use them for contentcreation.
But I've also been, eric like,really impressed with Claude and
Claude projects.
Claude's projects have nowthat's been my go-to for
(17:02):
anything that's writing,copywriting, focus what we do
with Claude.
I've done this on demonstrationwith clients before the best
practice.
This is my recommendation andit dovetails with LinkedIn,
especially people that arebuilding a personal brand.
Get on a Zoom call with afriend or a colleague or
somebody you work with and ifyou want to use ChatGPT or Cloud
(17:23):
to come up with a list ofquestions, what you want to do
is you want to document verballyyour origin story, your vision
for your company, tell storiesabout success that you've had
and just have a dialogue.
Take that transcript, give itto Cloud Projects and then use
that as your knowledge base foranything creative or copywriting
(17:45):
related.
And so what I've done I do fora number of people, done for
myself is I'll tell Claude, hey,based on all of this knowledge
and expertise and who you wantme to be, I want you to write
now my LinkedIn bio, my headlinecopy, maybe some email
workflows or lead magnets, orgive me some unique positioning
(18:07):
around my processes and systems.
Give me a framework andbrainstorm with Claude, and the
output has been amazing for usand for me myself and our work
and our stuff with clients Idon't use.
Linkedin has some native stuffand, integrated with AI, I don't
use it.
To be honest, I don't think theconversation starter AI in the
(18:29):
LinkedIn messages is really allthat helpful.
I don't think LinkedIn's nativeAI helper for creating posts is
really that helpful.
It's too generalistic and soyou need something that's much
more specific.
So I'm crazy about Claude alsoa huge fan of claycom If you're
in sales and marketing and youneed a tool that can personalize
(18:50):
all your LinkedIn messages,your email messages.
We're in this crazy era ofhyper-personalization thanks to
tools like claycom and others.
So that's just a couple of tipsin ways that we're using AI.
Eric Eden (19:06):
Great use cases.
Great use cases.
Let me ask you on LinkedIn whatis your top recommendation for
people around building theirpersonal brand?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (19:16):
This is the word of the year for me
Positioning.
Positioning is everything.
There's some great examples ofthis.
If you're looking andpositioning your profile is the
easiest place to start and I'mconstantly amazed at how many
people just ignore like the mostimportant thing on LinkedIn is
your profile.
Some good examples might be goand look at Morgan Ingram.
(19:37):
I've known Morgan since 2019and he's a LinkedIn power user.
Look at Morgan Ingram.
Adam Robinson's another goodguy.
To look at.
Chris Doe, who's one of thegreatest marketers in our
generation.
I would say you can look at hisprofile.
Russell Brunson look at hisprofile.
Chris Walker, down in Austinlook at his profile and success
leaves clues.
(19:57):
So take a look at for people.
If you're building a personalbrand, take a look at these guys
that are doing it extremelywell and, if you want, you can
actually use AI to make thecomparison.
So you can grab.
If you want, use the printfeature on Chrome browser or
export somebody else's LinkedInprofile, copy and paste it.
(20:19):
You can actually takescreenshots.
Give it to ChatGPT because itcan read images, and then I
would use those ideal profilesthat you're aspiring to become
and ask AI really good questions.
Here are some examples ofprofiles that have really good
personal brands, in my opinion.
I would like you to use theseto benchmark against my own
(20:43):
positioning in my personalprofile and show me ways that I
can improve mine.
If you were to tell that to AI,it's going to do all the
analysis for you.
It's going to make it very easy.
My follow-up questions, if itdidn't clarify it enough, would
be give me practical tips on howI can improve my profile as it
(21:03):
relates to my creative, mypositioning, my messaging, and
if you do that exercise in 30minutes, you're going to have
really good output than a guidethat you can take to improve
your own profile.
But I'll just end with thisPositioning.
I think it matters now morethan ever for personal brands.
You've got to find a way todistinguish yourself and stand
(21:23):
out from everybody else, becauseit's never been easier to
create content and it's neverbeen easier to get people's
attention and run campaigns anddo outbound and stuff like this.
It's super noisy, sopositioning is absolutely
critical.
Eric Eden (21:38):
Great advice.
It's a competitive world outthere.
One last question from my sideis you mentioned content earlier
on LinkedIn is a great way todo outbound strategy.
What is your number onesuggestion for how people can
amplify their content onLinkedIn?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (21:57):
Yeah , listicles are really popular
right now on LinkedIn.
Don't think that I would sayfor people that are getting
started don't think that youneed to know everything right.
You don't have to come up withthis like expert post based on
an unbelievable success storyfor it to win.
I've seen great posts performextremely well that were just
(22:19):
simple and somebody took thetime to do the research and
maybe consolidate some thingslike here's the top 10 best
posts on LinkedIn in thisindustry.
Or here's I saw somebody dothis.
I spent 25 hours funnel hackingthis amazing brand's funnel and
here's all of my takeaways.
(22:39):
And if you want to put that ina Google doc, have a loom video
that shows you with all thisstuff, like in the video.
It's going to pique people'scuriosity.
They're going to want to lookat the video.
So just think through ways thatyou can give something away
that's insightful, educational,inspirational and just adds
value.
You don't have to be anabsolute rock star, but I will
(23:01):
always tell people story is whatwins the day.
If you can tell a good story inyour post, that stuff over time
, if you're just consistent andyou plant enough seeds and water
them, it's going to yield aharvest.
And Cloud AI is amazing as well.
You've got the Cloud projects,me and our team.
We give Cloud instructions andsay here's our client.
You have the reference, theknowledge base, a LinkedIn, a
(23:27):
high-performing LinkedIn post.
For me that has a really goodhook in the first two lines.
You want people to click, seemore and make it story-driven
and tell it from first person,and then I'll also tell AI, make
it feel like I'm a fly on thewall and I'm listening into
somebody else's conversation,and you just tell it like use
emotional words, paint a clearpicture and do stuff like that,
(23:49):
because AI struggles withemotion.
So if you tell it descriptivelyI want you to make me feel this
way in this post then it'sgoing to write from that
perspective.
Eric Eden (23:59):
Ah, that's a cool tip , all right.
Final thoughts on how peoplecan use LinkedIn to their
advantage.
Anything I didn't ask that youthink listeners should know
about personal brand and you'retrying to grow your personal
(24:21):
brand.
https://www.mattcretzman.co (24:21):
One of the fastest ways for you to
do that can be for you tocollaborate with somebody who's
further ahead than you and youmight have.
Who can you reach out to?
That's trying to reach the sameperson as you and bring people
together, offer ways tocollaborate, and you'd be
shocked at who would say yes,it's amazing.
And then everybody wins.
Eric Eden (24:41):
Collaboration is the way to win.
I love it.
That's it All.
Right, I'm going to link toyour website and your LinkedIn
profile on the show notes.
In case people want to divedeeper on this stuff, they can
reach out and get in touch withyou on either of those fronts.
Really appreciate you sharingyour stories and tips and advice
here on the Shutter Day.
Thank you very much for beingwith us, you bet.
Welcome to today's episode.
Today we are talking aboutLinkedIn strategies and AI.
We have a great guest to helpus talk through this Matt.
Welcome to the show.
https://www.mattcretzman (00:11):
What's up my man Eric.
Good to meet you man andremarkable marketing podcast
listeners.
Awesome to chat with you guys.
Eric Eden (00:18):
Why don't we start off by you sharing just a little
bit about who you are and whatyou're doing with LinkedIn and
AI today?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (00:26):
Yeah , yeah for sure.
So at my core, I'm a connector.
I love connecting dots andmaking interactions for people,
which is number two why I loveLinkedIn so much because it's a
relationship platform, right, itallows you to start
conversations that matter withpeople that matter.
I'm a serial entrepreneur.
I have shiny object syndromeand love chasing squirrels.
Serial entrepreneur I haveshiny object syndrome and love
(00:46):
chasing squirrels.
And I'm also married, have twoawesome girls, and my story for
how I fell into LinkedIn comesfrom a little bit of personal
tragedy, a little bit of somehighs and lows, and I've gone
through a number of differentvalleys.
Eric and I've certainly climbedto the mountaintops, but life's
been an adventure and, as myone friend says, your destiny is
defined by your relationships.
So I focus on helping otherpeople make the right
(01:07):
relationships, powered by havinga strategy around LinkedIn,
because that's what's changed mylife as well.
Your destiny is defined by yourrelationships, so choose them
really well.
Eric Eden (01:17):
I love that.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (01:17):
Yeah , I love that yeah, I should
also say yeah.
So I just man, I've been likeall in on LinkedIn since 2019.
And I just finished writing abook called the LinkedIn
Advantage.
And some people might hearLinkedIn and, you know, cringe
or not seem as exciting, but I'mtelling you I'm so passionate
(01:40):
about this platform and helpingpeople use it right Because it
took me from struggling singledad when I lost my daughter in a
car accident 12 years ago andhad to go through a major life
transition in 2016.
And I wondered for a couple ofyears, just wondering what was
next.
And two things I did in 2019that radically changed my life.
(02:02):
I started a podcast like thisone right here and I went all in
on LinkedIn.
I just had this urge and I hadto scratch that itch.
And I'm really glad that I did,because the relationships that
I formed through LinkedIn andthe strategies that I uncovered
with the tools just radicallychanged my life.
And I could tell you manystories over the past five years
of what some of thoseadventures have led to.
Eric Eden (02:25):
It's very interesting .
Fairly recently, linkedinlaunched this new feature where
you can go in and you can exportanything that you've ever done
on LinkedIn, including yourentire list of all your
connections and the date thatyou connected with them, every
message you sent, every postyou've liked, and I downloaded
that and I've been on LinkedInfor 18 years and that was a very
(02:48):
interesting historicaldocumentation.
Yeah, I bet, when you look atthe history of it, it's very
interesting, because I've been abeliever from the beginning,
since 2006 or seven, I think, iswhen I had my first connections
and I was like, wow, it'sreally interesting that all of
that data is there and so anyonecan go and do that on LinkedIn
(03:09):
and just export everything.
And it's a fun exercise, butwe're ready to be inspired.
Why don't you tell us a storyabout some of the best marketing
you've done with LinkedIn?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (03:22):
Yeah for sure.
So I love, I love telling thisstory and it's a little bit
about it's about my love life.
So I tell people I, in aroundabout way, I met my wife
through LinkedIn and you're apretty darn good marketer If you
can manage to find your spouseinadvertently through marketing
that you do on LinkedIn.
So I'll back up and tell youthe story.
2019, one of the first clientsthat I landed was a professional
(03:45):
sports team here in Dallas.
They reached out to me onLinkedIn and wanted to set up a
coffee meeting.
This person was in sales, Hername was Lauren and so I obliged
, agreed to, and I was very newon LinkedIn at the time.
I'm not an OG like you.
2019, I was still trying tofigure it out and so we met up
for coffee and I could quicklytell like this person's trying
to sell me and she's doing apretty darn good job.
(04:06):
But I think I'm a little bit ofa better salesperson.
So I flipped the script and Isaid you reached out to me on
LinkedIn with a message.
I can actually how are youdoing that?
Unpack it.
And she said hey, we're doingit.
I'm doing it manually, Like Ijust try to find people in
search and I'm messaging themmanually.
And, to make a long story short, I convinced her to set up a
(04:26):
meeting with the president ofthe team and me, and I wanted to
pitch them on my LinkedInservices and how I could help
bring efficiency and strategy towhat they were doing.
That was completely from thehip and really messy and super
tedious, and so we ended upstriking a partnership.
Little did I know about, threeyears later, that person that I
met through LinkedIn, Lauren.
I would see her again on adating profile.
(04:48):
It wasn't hers, it was one ofher best friends whose name was
Nadia, and so as I was scrollingthrough profile as I tell the
story of 397, I saw Nadia andI'm like, wow, this woman is
gorgeous.
I like everything that I see.
We share the same values and,furthermore, I see Lauren in one
of her pictures.
I'm like I know Lauren as aprevious client, and so I
(05:10):
reached out.
And this is where it's reallyfun, because my brain works in
some ways Like I see the worldthrough LinkedIn and a lot of it
.
I see the world throughLinkedIn messages, and so when I
saw her profile, my mind wentto a LinkedIn campaign and I was
like how am I going to reachout to this person in a way that
builds trust, piques theinterest and takes it to the
next step?
So in my first message to mynow wife, I referenced Lauren.
(05:34):
I said, hey, how do you knowLauren?
Like she was a previous client,how do you know her?
And she's actually one of mybest friends and I was like
perfect.
So when you're running LinkedIncampaigns, you try to look for
commonality and you look fortrust, and if you can find those
two things at scale and stillmaintain a degree of
personalization, that's whereyou can really get move the
needle and get some results onLinkedIn.
(05:55):
So I applied, like my LinkedInnerdiness in a personal context
in trying to start aconversation and we hit it off.
We went on a first date.
It was super fun and we endedup becoming best friends,
quickly proposed and we gotmarried a couple of years ago
and I've used my LinkedIn skillswith my wife to do brand deals,
(06:17):
film a docu-series all overEurope.
We've been to 14 countries.
I even landed an MC gig with aSaaS conference called SaaS Talk
, which is one of the top twoSaaS conferences in Europe.
Thousands of people show up.
All of this.
My life has radically changedthrough LinkedIn and having a
process and a really gooddialed-in strategy for how we do
(06:40):
outreach.
So, to answer your question,that was a long way to answer
One of the best marketingcampaigns, if you could call it.
That was the one that I didthat ended up landing me my wife
.
Eric Eden (06:50):
It's the best kind of partnership for Indians.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (06:54):
Yeah , it's the best.
But to be a little bit moreserious, one of the best
campaigns that I did for one ofour clients was a Mexico City
basketball team In Mexico, acountry that's dominated by we
say soccer, they say football.
I've done a lot withprofessional sports teams, and
so this challenge was how do wedraw bring awareness to a pro
(07:14):
basketball team in a countrythat's dominated by other sports
?
And so I started working withthe basketball team, put
together a holistic strategy toleverage courtside tickets and I
love using this part whenmarketing on LinkedIn.
I love leveraging LinkedInevents.
So we set up a LinkedIn eventthat was highly exclusive, the
(07:35):
registration was on LinkedIn andwe put together this VIP
experience that included acouple of collaborators and
sponsors.
And then we took that LinkedInevent, put together a list of
like CEOs and top executives andsuccessful entrepreneurs in
Mexico city and did a bunch ofoutbound, started conversations
leading to meetings, and we useda little bit of scarcity,
(07:58):
exclusivity and a VIPopportunity for them.
And it was the case studies.
On my LinkedIn profile it's inmy featured section we actually
ended up hiring a five-man filmcrew to film the case study.
It was definitely overkill.
We had way too many people, itwas too high production, but it
made it very fun and it waswildly successful.
We had about 30 people thatshowed up and had the time of
(08:19):
their life courtside watching agame, and so it started
conversations with some bigbrands and sponsors and
collaborators and stuff likethat.
It was great.
Eric Eden (08:28):
That's awesome.
So the project you're workingon the LinkedIn Advantage tell
me a little bit about whatyou've learned and what you
evangelize is having anadvantage on LinkedIn.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (08:43):
Yeah , man, I talk to people on a
very consistent basis whereLinkedIn is almost an
afterthought.
It's not usually the firstplatform that businesses or
entrepreneurs or founders oreven content creators might
think about going on.
It's thank you, gary Vee, who'smaking it a little bit more a
part of the conversation, butthe focus on the book is just
(09:05):
number one telling stories ofwhat I've done over the past
five, six years in usingLinkedIn for myself and then
bringing together a holisticstrategy for how they can, yeah,
use LinkedIn to your advantage.
And so what I ended up doingaugmented by AI, which maybe we
can touch on that today but Iended up developing an
assessment, called it's theLinkedIn advantage assessment,
(09:27):
which covers 10 specific pointson LinkedIn and you can
categorize or rate your, yoursuccess or your involvement or
activity A to E, and then, onceyou complete the assessment, our
platform will spit out what wecall the LinkedIn Power Score.
So I couldn't believe thatlinkedinpowerscorecom is
actually available and I knowLinkedIn has their own SSI,
(09:50):
which is the Social SellingIndex.
But I infused my experience, myprocesses and systems into our
own assessment using theLinkedIn Advantage principle,
into developing your ownLinkedIn power score.
But the easiest way to thinkabout it is I tell people three
letters to simplify what I doand what they should focus on,
(10:11):
and that is B-C-T, brand content, traffic and, eric.
I've done a lot of marketingcampaigns, especially in my
early years, where the focus wasmostly on traffic and people
want, and there's a lot ofpeople today that think you can
just push a button and getreally good traffic that
(10:31):
converts.
If you don't have the first two,your traffic is not going to
convert.
So how do you take a step back,see the bigger picture and put
a strategy around building abrand that clearly communicates
who you are and who you're notthrough content that is both
insightful, inspirational andclarifies trust and expertise,
(10:53):
and then leveraging that in youroutbound through outbound
traffic and it's funny somepeople are now this is like the
popular term.
Adam Robinson calls it inboundled outbound.
I've heard other people call itcontent led outbound, but the
principles are still the samethose three things.
If your traffic is notconverting, you're not growing
(11:13):
the way you want to.
You should probably start thereand look at how's my brand?
What kind of content am Icreating?
Is it valuable?
Do I have a strategy and am Ileveraging that in my traffic to
start conversations from aplace of give first.
Eric Eden (11:28):
Yeah, that makes sense.
If we were sitting down andhaving a coffee, what would you
say are the two or three thingsthat you recommend to the most
to people, tactic wise to do onLinkedIn to be successful?
https://www.mattcretzman.co (11:40):
One of my top strategies as it
relates to growing myconnections on LinkedIn has been
targeting, researching andtargeting attendees of events on
LinkedIn.
That's been a great strategy.
If you're not familiar with howthat works, you probably are,
eric.
But go to the search bar onLinkedIn, filter by events,
(12:01):
think of what conference orevent or topic might my ideal
prospects or clients want toattend.
And then, once you yield thatsearch, say sales.
Filter by events.
All these events are aboutsales.
That obviously says it givesyou an idea of where they are on
the buyer's journey.
If somebody is attending anevent on sales, they naturally
have problems with sales orlooking to better their sales.
(12:21):
If I have a solution aroundsales, I'm going to do some
outbound there.
So LinkedIn event hacking isone of my best strategies and
love that.
The second one is LinkedInnewsletters is.
It's a sleepy strategy and nota lot of people focus on or talk
about it enough, but you canvery quickly grow a following or
subscribership If you have aLinkedIn newsletter.
(12:41):
For a number of differentreasons, I love that.
Your newsletter articles forpeople to subscribe.
All they got to do is checkthat, hit that check mark and
now they've subscribed.
And when you build subscribers.
Linkedin will send a pushnotification to your subscribers
when you post a new article.
So if you're still postingarticles just as a post on
(13:02):
LinkedIn, take a step back,create a newsletter that's
branded for your audience andpost those articles underneath
your newsletter so you reap thebenefit of building an audience,
getting those pushnotifications.
And the other cool thing aboutLinkedIn newsletters and
articles is you can actuallyembed long form YouTube videos
directly in the article andLinkedIn won't necessarily
(13:26):
penalize you for that.
If you were to post that in thepost, you're taking people off
the platform.
Linkedin doesn't like that, butin an article you can get away
with it.
So that's a little workaround.
Eric Eden (13:38):
So LinkedIn events Very cool.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (13:40):
It's a cool little hack LinkedIn
newsletters.
And then the third one.
I tested this one out.
It was a fun experiment.
But earlier this year, wheneverI speak, I use a conversational
AI bot that triggers anautomation when I tell people to
text a word to a number.
So our platform, leadstorm AI,has that kind of capability
(14:03):
where you can configure any wordthat you want with the number
that's assigned to your platformand build an entire AI workflow
.
So let's say, I did this in NewYork City once.
I was speaking to a room ofmaybe a couple hundred people
and I said text the wordpipeline to this number and my
AI assistant, thor, will takeover the conversation.
(14:24):
And conversational AI is it isundetectably human.
So it had dozens ofconversations simultaneously.
Right as I'm standing there infront of an audience, I had
people being qualified, bookedand scheduled completely on my
calendar and my hands were offthe wheel.
So what I've been testing isputting that call to action in
(14:45):
my headline or placing itsomewhere in my LinkedIn profile
, because I noticed what happensis, as I'm posting and creating
content, second degree andthird degree connections are
seeing my content.
They don't know me, but they'recurious, and so if I have a
good enough positioning for thatword and that number, they'll
(15:05):
just fall into my funnel and AItakes over the conversation,
asks all the right questions,and then I've got a meeting on
my calendar.
Eric Eden (15:14):
That's pretty awesome .
https://www.mattcretzman.com (15:15):
So that's what your solution,
Leadstorm AI, does it's one ofthe many things that it does.
It's a full suite of sales andmarketing automation tools.
So build your funnels, yourlanding pages, manage your
contacts, email campaigns,opportunity pipeline.
The gap I saw in the market andwhy I built LeadStorm was
you've got lots of great,best-in-class platforms like
(15:36):
HubSpot or Marketo Pipedrive,but all of these all-in-one CRMs
did not have outboundcapability.
I couldn't use HubSpot orClickFunnels God forbid or
Kajabi to grow my brand onLinkedIn and do outbound.
It's not designed for coldemail, it's not designed for
LinkedIn automation, and soLeadStorm has the best CRM
(15:59):
features, plus 700 millioncontacts, and it gives you the
ability to fully automateoutbound and LinkedIn activity
and stuff like that.
Eric Eden (16:08):
Wow, that's super cool.
It's a beast.
So talk to me a little bitabout how you see AI getting
used on LinkedIn and in othertools like the one that you've
created.
https://www.mattcretzman.c (16:21):
Yeah , for me, I'm constantly testing
, like most people, and I'mtrying to figure out how can I
meaningfully enhance or bringefficiency to my daily workflows
and habits around AI.
So for us, we create customGPTs for our clients.
We use that internally not onlyto ask questions, as it relates
to meetings.
(16:41):
Every meeting we have with aclient we put into a custom GPT
and we can ask it a questionabout any meeting that we
might've had in the past.
We also use them for contentcreation.
But I've also been, eric like,really impressed with Claude and
Claude projects.
Claude's projects have nowthat's been my go-to for
(17:02):
anything that's writing,copywriting, focus what we do
with Claude.
I've done this on demonstrationwith clients before the best
practice.
This is my recommendation andit dovetails with LinkedIn,
especially people that arebuilding a personal brand.
Get on a Zoom call with afriend or a colleague or
somebody you work with and ifyou want to use ChatGPT or Cloud
(17:23):
to come up with a list ofquestions, what you want to do
is you want to document verballyyour origin story, your vision
for your company, tell storiesabout success that you've had
and just have a dialogue.
Take that transcript, give itto Cloud Projects and then use
that as your knowledge base foranything creative or copywriting
(17:45):
related.
And so what I've done I do fora number of people, done for
myself is I'll tell Claude, hey,based on all of this knowledge
and expertise and who you wantme to be, I want you to write
now my LinkedIn bio, my headlinecopy, maybe some email
workflows or lead magnets, orgive me some unique positioning
(18:07):
around my processes and systems.
Give me a framework andbrainstorm with Claude, and the
output has been amazing for usand for me myself and our work
and our stuff with clients Idon't use.
Linkedin has some native stuffand, integrated with AI, I don't
use it.
To be honest, I don't think theconversation starter AI in the
(18:29):
LinkedIn messages is really allthat helpful.
I don't think LinkedIn's nativeAI helper for creating posts is
really that helpful.
It's too generalistic and soyou need something that's much
more specific.
So I'm crazy about Claude alsoa huge fan of claycom If you're
in sales and marketing and youneed a tool that can personalize
(18:50):
all your LinkedIn messages,your email messages.
We're in this crazy era ofhyper-personalization thanks to
tools like claycom and others.
So that's just a couple of tipsin ways that we're using AI.
Eric Eden (19:06):
Great use cases.
Great use cases.
Let me ask you on LinkedIn whatis your top recommendation for
people around building theirpersonal brand?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (19:16):
This is the word of the year for me
Positioning.
Positioning is everything.
There's some great examples ofthis.
If you're looking andpositioning your profile is the
easiest place to start and I'mconstantly amazed at how many
people just ignore like the mostimportant thing on LinkedIn is
your profile.
Some good examples might be goand look at Morgan Ingram.
(19:37):
I've known Morgan since 2019and he's a LinkedIn power user.
Look at Morgan Ingram.
Adam Robinson's another goodguy.
To look at.
Chris Doe, who's one of thegreatest marketers in our
generation.
I would say you can look at hisprofile.
Russell Brunson look at hisprofile.
Chris Walker, down in Austinlook at his profile and success
leaves clues.
(19:57):
So take a look at for people.
If you're building a personalbrand, take a look at these guys
that are doing it extremelywell and, if you want, you can
actually use AI to make thecomparison.
So you can grab.
If you want, use the printfeature on Chrome browser or
export somebody else's LinkedInprofile, copy and paste it.
(20:19):
You can actually takescreenshots.
Give it to ChatGPT because itcan read images, and then I
would use those ideal profilesthat you're aspiring to become
and ask AI really good questions.
Here are some examples ofprofiles that have really good
personal brands, in my opinion.
I would like you to use theseto benchmark against my own
(20:43):
positioning in my personalprofile and show me ways that I
can improve mine.
If you were to tell that to AI,it's going to do all the
analysis for you.
It's going to make it very easy.
My follow-up questions, if itdidn't clarify it enough, would
be give me practical tips on howI can improve my profile as it
(21:03):
relates to my creative, mypositioning, my messaging, and
if you do that exercise in 30minutes, you're going to have
really good output than a guidethat you can take to improve
your own profile.
But I'll just end with thisPositioning.
I think it matters now morethan ever for personal brands.
You've got to find a way todistinguish yourself and stand
(21:23):
out from everybody else, becauseit's never been easier to
create content and it's neverbeen easier to get people's
attention and run campaigns anddo outbound and stuff like this.
It's super noisy, sopositioning is absolutely
critical.
Eric Eden (21:38):
Great advice.
It's a competitive world outthere.
One last question from my sideis you mentioned content earlier
on LinkedIn is a great way todo outbound strategy.
What is your number onesuggestion for how people can
amplify their content onLinkedIn?
https://www.mattcretzman.c (21:57):
Yeah , listicles are really popular
right now on LinkedIn.
Don't think that I would sayfor people that are getting
started don't think that youneed to know everything right.
You don't have to come up withthis like expert post based on
an unbelievable success storyfor it to win.
I've seen great posts performextremely well that were just
(22:19):
simple and somebody took thetime to do the research and
maybe consolidate some thingslike here's the top 10 best
posts on LinkedIn in thisindustry.
Or here's I saw somebody dothis.
I spent 25 hours funnel hackingthis amazing brand's funnel and
here's all of my takeaways.
(22:39):
And if you want to put that ina Google doc, have a loom video
that shows you with all thisstuff, like in the video.
It's going to pique people'scuriosity.
They're going to want to lookat the video.
So just think through ways thatyou can give something away
that's insightful, educational,inspirational and just adds
value.
You don't have to be anabsolute rock star, but I will
(23:01):
always tell people story is whatwins the day.
If you can tell a good story inyour post, that stuff over time
, if you're just consistent andyou plant enough seeds and water
them, it's going to yield aharvest.
And Cloud AI is amazing as well.
You've got the Cloud projects,me and our team.
We give Cloud instructions andsay here's our client.
You have the reference, theknowledge base, a LinkedIn, a
(23:27):
high-performing LinkedIn post.
For me that has a really goodhook in the first two lines.
You want people to click, seemore and make it story-driven
and tell it from first person,and then I'll also tell AI, make
it feel like I'm a fly on thewall and I'm listening into
somebody else's conversation,and you just tell it like use
emotional words, paint a clearpicture and do stuff like that,
(23:49):
because AI struggles withemotion.
So if you tell it descriptivelyI want you to make me feel this
way in this post then it'sgoing to write from that
perspective.
Eric Eden (23:59):
Ah, that's a cool tip , all right.
Final thoughts on how peoplecan use LinkedIn to their
advantage.
Anything I didn't ask that youthink listeners should know
about personal brand and you'retrying to grow your personal
(24:21):
brand.
https://www.mattcretzman.co (24:21):
One of the fastest ways for you to
do that can be for you tocollaborate with somebody who's
further ahead than you and youmight have.
Who can you reach out to?
That's trying to reach the sameperson as you and bring people
together, offer ways tocollaborate, and you'd be
shocked at who would say yes,it's amazing.
And then everybody wins.
Eric Eden (24:41):
Collaboration is the way to win.
I love it.
That's it All.
Right, I'm going to link toyour website and your LinkedIn
profile on the show notes.
In case people want to divedeeper on this stuff, they can
reach out and get in touch withyou on either of those fronts.
Really appreciate you sharingyour stories and tips and advice
here on the Shutter Day.
Thank you very much for beingwith us, you bet.
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
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.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.