#175 Mail-Right Show Special Guest John Memo LinkedIn Expert

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Confused On How To Use LinkedIn To Build Your Online Network?

We discuss how real estate agents can use LinkedIn effectively to build their local and national networks.

John Memo is an author, speaker, 1-on-1 business coach and consultant, John Nemo helps individuals, organizations and businesses boost their brand, generate sales leads and increase revenue.

The son of two English teachers, John grew up in a home where the basement walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with books. A lifelong love of story led him to a career in journalism, where he started his career in 1997 as a reporter for The Arizona Republic and later The Associated Press.

John later worked in talk radio as a producer and on-air talent at KTIS-AM radio in Minneapolis-St. Paul. He also served as a freelance writer for hundreds of different magazines, newspapers and websites, covering topics ranging from Fantasy Football to Norwegian Architecture to Rock Music.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 175. I have really been looking forward to this show. We’ve got a great quest, John Memo and he’s an expert. He’s the expert on the LinkedIn. John, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

John: You found me now John. You found me. I had to use the bad pop culture movie reference. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been working since 2012, helping people use LinkedIn for lead generation, for sales and marketing. Kind of stumbled into it a little bit on my own when I quit a day job, started my own company in digital marketing agency. Really understood the opportunity with LinkedIn even back in 2012, using it almost like a Google for prospects. Really understanding the opportunity there. And so that’s led to a book and an online course and coaching and consulting. And so yeah, today what I do is I really help you understand how to leverage LinkedIn to get more leads, get more business.

Jonathon: That’s great. And I’ve got my cohost, my great cohost, Robert Newman. Like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers Robert?

Robert: I am Robert Newman. I am the founder of an inbound marketing company, not surprisingly called inbound real estate marketing. We focus on educating our real estate agents and brokers on how to get better lead generation using digital mediums.

Jonathon: Right, thanks for that Robert. John I look forward to have you on the show because LinkedIn since they were purchased by Microsoft, seem to be determined to get more people to the platform. It has tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people that go to it anyway. But they really seem to be invested in a lot of time, money, resources in developing the platform. And that development seems service recently. Would you agree with some of that John?

John: Yeah, I think so. I think they’re about to top $600 million members worldwide. They’re adding, you know, by their own stats two new members every single second. And I think the reason LinkedIn is so relevant, like you mentioned John. Microsoft bought back in 2016 for $26,000,000,000. So they’re at the big kid’s table, like they’re not going anywhere as far as a network or a platform. And honestly there’s not really another competitor yet for what they do. For a one stop shop, one stop gathering place for professionals worldwide. That’s the value of LinkedIn is you’ve got 600 million people around the world in one place in work mode, in professional mode, not there for cat videos or you know, what we use the other tools for. And that’s the opportunity is the business, you know, kind of direction in theme with LinkedIn and it is growing. You’re absolutely right.

Jonathon: Because recently I have been posting more content on LinkedIn. They made the editor posting articles, videos much easier. And I’ve been doing it a lot more and I’ve been seeing a lot more success in posting relevant content. Would you agree with that? Would you like to go through, do you think posting content on LinkedIn video and actual written content is a great idea?

John: I think it is in dialysis. I think if we’re really looking at LinkedIn as a bottom line lead generation and sales tool, what I always tell people is the money is in the mailbox. So what I mean is the whole strategy I kind of teach on LinkedIn is really understanding three key things. So one is you have a client facing profile. It’s not a resume, it’s not written in the third person, like a pro athlete, right? It’s not all about you. It’s about who you serve, how you help others get what they want. We can talk about more about that later, but the real value then is connecting and engaging and building one on one relationship with people. And LinkedIn has really revamped and improved the messaging experience so that it’s almost like real time instant messaging or text messaging. You have animated gifs and emojis.

You can attach documents and files and you can have a real time back and forth with people. And where I see the most success is again, any high trust business, real estate, whatever it might be, people have to really know, like, and trust you. The content is a great entree into that. The content is the currency you use to initially buy someone’s time and attention. And we’ll talk about that more in a little bit of what content works well on LinkedIn. But the real value is once we get connected, once we have some context for our conversation, then moving that into the LinkedIn messaging is where you see a lot of results of, you know, back and forth. It’s just like a real time coffee meeting. I look at it like every day I get on LinkedIn and I have a series of virtual one on one conversations or one on one coffee meetings.

And if I have good content, that’s the context to spark a conversation. And with content on LinkedIn right now, the best thing is video. So especially kind of, you know, the self, a selfie video I guess is the term, but you on camera sharing some thoughts, some wisdom, some tips, some ideas on location, you know, sharing a little bit behind the scenes. And you know, even like if I’m a real estate agent touring a home, right? Oh look at this beautiful listing and I’m walking through right now. I can’t wait to see who this home becomes a dream for, you know, or you know, doing something in the day to day life that kind of brands you what you’re doing, where you are, what are exciting. Some thoughts, some tips you know. If you’re looking for a new home, these are some things I’m seeing. Here’s an example as I’m walking through this listing that we have, this is what people really want in a kitchen. You know, and that just brings value to people.

And LinkedIn video is very popular. They’ve created a native video platform for it. So you upload it right from your phone or your desktop into LinkedIn to give a lot of play to it, likes, shares, views. And then you get comments and engagement that you turn into one on one conversation. Hey, so glad you liked my video on, you know, home trends right now in southern California. Curious, are you looking to list a property or buy one? Oh, you are? Well we should talk more. Let’s have a phone call. Like all that happens in a span of. Typically it can be a few minutes, right? That’s how you get these quick wins. Marrying some content with some one on one engagement.

Jonathon: I think that`s fantastic and the beauty of this John it’s all free isn’t it?

John: Yeah, there’s no, there’s no cost involved. you know, other than if you want to have a premium LinkedIn profile, which we can talk about. But there’s all these different ways to be in front of people on LinkedIn. And so one of the tools we were talking about off air before the show was LinkedIn Profinder.

And I see Robert mentioned that in some of his articles too. And that’s a great place. LinkedIn, again, they’re trying to be this one stop shop. So they want to be a place where you as a professional log in everyday to find a job, find it an employee, right? Industry News, thought leaders, content, original, whatever, networking, prospecting, sales. They also have a freelance marketplace called Profinder. It’s free to sign up for if you’re a premium LinkedIn member. And if you’re, let’s, for example, if you’re a real estate agent, you sign up and input all your info in and it gets connected to your LinkedIn profile.

Now, if one of the 600 million members on LinkedIn goes to Profinder as a user and types in, I need a real estate agent in this zip code that I’m moving to because I just got transferred from my job. Your name pops up, or more specifically, they put together a little questionnaire. You get an alert that says, hey, this person is looking for real estate agent. Do you want to contact them? Do you want to talk to them? And so again, that’s free and it’s LinkedIn sending new qualified leads, right? People that are looking for an agent, they’ll tell you their budget, what they’re trying to do. So there’s lots of different ways to be active on the platform.

Jonathon: This is amazing and something I didn`t know about until we had our pre show discussion. It’s just mind boggling. Why the agent, so obviously this before this going this start off with the profile and why what you think a lot of people do wrong with the. With the initial setting up the profile, John.

John: Yeah, right. I mean, so many people set it up like a resume. That’s kind of what we were indoctrinated to with LinkedIn. LinkedIn has this problem, John, where they can’t outgrow their reputation that they started with, which was it’s a job seeker website, right? For HR professionals and job seekers only, and of course that all has changed. LinkedIn, I think they’re founded in like 2006 or something. A lots change since then, and really what it is now is when you set up your profile page, and by the way, whether you like it or not, that’s one of the top search results on Google for your name. If you don’t believe me, go offline and Google your name and you’ll see your LinkedIn profiles at the top like it’s got that much juice with organic searches. So love it or not. Your LinkedIn profile is showing up.

And what are people finding with your digital brand? Like is it, is it all about you and your accomplishments and where you work? And kind of my philosophy there is, you know, nobody cares, right? Like one of my favorite books ever was Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people. And he says in there all the way back in 1936 John was, you know, your ideal customers and clients don’t care about you. They care about themselves morning, noon and after supper. You know, because they said supper in 1936. But anyway, like when you reformat your LinkedIn profile to make it more what I call client facing, then you catch people’s attention. So for example, instead of saying, you know, I’m a licensed real estate agent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You say what I do colon, I help home buyers in city name, you know, find the ideal home of their dreams or whatever the big benefits are.

By providing 20 plus years of experience in this city. What makes me unique colon, and I’m writing a profile for you right now. What makes me unique? Having spent the past 25 years serving, the residents of this county, city, whatever. I have a unique insight into the culture, the climate, the schools, the people, the neighborhoods of city name why that matters. When you’re transferring from you know, outside state, new job, whatever you want an agent that’s plugged in, right? So that’s an example of a seasoned real estate professional, leveraging their experience in a way that serves the client. If you’re brand new, you can say, you know, what makes me unique, blah, blah, blah because I have these unique skillsets or traits. Like you want to really reverse engineered toward what are the benefits I’ll get if I pick you as my real estate agent in this example, like what’s unique?

What makes you better, what makes you different? And then you have like testimonials, you can put right in your LinkedIn profile, what others say. Working with John was amazing. He helped us find our dream home, blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t be happier. Our listing sold in seven days or less, you know, with Robert, like he was the best ever, you know, like real persons, et cetera. When you set it up that way its client facing. I can sell, select, I can look through and go, I want to relive her with these traits. They match it for me as a prospect as opposed to I have to read all about you and how you’re licensed and blah, blah, blah. I don’t care. Right? Can you solve my problems? Here’s what I need. Right? And that’s the key thing to leverage with your LinkedIn profile is your personal brand. How people, you know, the benefits they’re going to get from working with you and what makes you unique. That’s a huge deal.

Jonathon: When I went to your website and I’ve read some of your free content and saw your videos and I realize I’m actually having my own profile. I wrote it out and send it to my proofreader yesterday. And I’m going to do based on some of your recommendations because fundamentally it was laid out in the way that you pointed out, which is absolutely no interest to my target audience. Absolutely. So many of them are like that. And I think some of the stand to the way the LinkedIn kind of structures the profile system which encourages you to do your profile in the way that you don’t recommend fundamentally so I can understand.

But it’s so beneficial hearing you and I think in some ways strained linked to the, about us page on a lot of agents’ websites. It’s the same problem. They have all their qualifications that worked at these offices. Your target audience doesn’t care, does it John? They just want to know what you can do for them, don’t they?

John: Yeah. And so think about a LinkedIn profile. Even if you know your ideal client, you know the idea person you want to work with, your sweet spot is courting the, you know, the stay at home mom of the executive that got transferred. Those are the lucrative houses you know, of the price point you want to sell to. So your profile would say, you know what I focus on, you know, I help busy stay at home moms find a house that’s going to provide the type of neighborhood and school environment and Blah, blah, Blah that people want. Or if you’re targeting empty nesters, you have a different approach. Like the richest can be in the niches with LinkedIn. So you really want to target a niche audience. Even, and I know in real estate it’s like, well, I’ll sell a home to anyone anywhere, anytime.

It doesn’t matter, but it’s hard if you try to be everything to everybody, especially on LinkedIn, you’ll be nothing to nobody. And so pick a couple real niche audiences that you do well with that are lucrative for you as a realtor. And appeal to them and make it clear like, these are the people I’m looking out for, this is how I help them, this is what makes me go above and beyond, you know, other agents in town. Here’s what people say about me. And then it really builds that know I can trust because a high trust, high relationship situation is huge. I mean, we’ve all had great experiences with realtors and we’ve had nightmare experiences. And it’s because we haven’t gotten to know him well enough on the front end to make sure it’s a good fit.

Yup. I think it’s great. We’re going to go for our break and when we come back we’re going to delve into this fascinating world of LinkedIn. And why you should spend a little bit more time on it. We will be back soon folks.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. We’ve had a great conversation with John. It’s been fascinating. Robert have you got a question for John?

Robert: I have a comment. I just wanted to say John, everything inside the real estate industry is actually heading in the direction of have niches in terms of digital efficiencies. It’s no longer. We could probably talk about just about anything that you could share to twitter, instagram, Facebook, whatever you want. If you want a high conversion rate and you want to try to compete against all the direct marketing solutions that are out there, one way to separate yourself easily and with a very low cost is simply target yourself as an expert for a particular type of property.

A particular area, price point, specialty accommodation of these things. But pretty much every single consultation I’ve ever done in the last year focuses deeply on niche marketing because it is the niche marketing clients I have are becoming ever more successful. While every other client I have that as a generalist, including ones that spend big, big, big dollars on direct marketing. They are starting to see an ever decreasing amount of results while spending more money. And so I just, I had to comment on that.

Jonathon: I think it’s been ongoing for the theme of our interviews in 2018. Isn`t it Robert?

Robert: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Jonathon: Now John, endorsements. I think getting the endorsements and testimonials are rather important for an effective profile. Do you have any thoughts about that? Do you agree? And how do you go about getting endorsements and testimonials John?

John: Yeah. So this comes back to the way LinkedIn has structured your profile, it’s kind of still clunky and hidden. So you can have a lot of recommendations that you get through LinkedIn, but it’s difficult to do and it’s cumbersome and it’s a lot to ask someone. And they have to do a bunch of stuff and submit and you have to approve and review and you can get them. What I prefer is just get real life endorsements. So from your website, from existing clients and the method I always use is. I just write it for them and have them approve it and say, Hey, I’m glad you had a great experience working with me. You know, pursuing your home. Could I get an endorsement? If it’s easier I wrote up some thoughts about our experience. If this looks good, approve it. If not, edit it, and then you use their name.

And what I really recommend on LinkedIn is paste those testimonials and endorsements into the profile text, into the summary Text, into the job listing text. Don’t rely on people searching and fishing and diving deep enough to unlock those areas. They’re very hidden and so that’s why I used that section of the profile that says what others say and then you just paste in two or three great testimonials. That’s really all you need on the profile page. The more the better of course, but that really works well. Now, LinkedIn also has a thing with keywords where they have they called skills and endorsements. And so you want to put at the very top your top three keywords that you want to be known for, so real estate, real estate agent, whatever broker, and you want to organize them in a way where your top three are what you want to be known for or found for.

So if you know LinkedIn will give you recommended keywords to use based on what people are searching for. And then you can add more keywords to your profile. And Robert has a great article on this. I was looking at earlier talking about key words and putting them in your profile because remembers LinkedIn is just a big search engine, but 600 million members. They have every piece of data from all of us and they reverse engineer it in LinkedIn search. So if I go in and I type in real estate, blah, blah, blah San Diego or something, it’s going to pull up realtors in San Diego. But if I have a niche focus even more so, it’ll pull up those keywords. And now with LinkedIn you can search through content. So this is another feature they’ve added where you can search for the phrase, school districts, San Diego, right?

And say you’re moving to San Diego, you can use LinkedIn, like Google search for school districts, San Diego. It will pull up posts from anyone that’s put those keywords into a status update, an article in their profile. And again that connects people to you just like a search engine. So when your format in your profile, you want to have this mixture of and when you’re creating content, frankly, a mixture of client facing, but also keywords. How would someone find me? How would they search for me? How would they look to connect with someone like me on LinkedIn around these areas of interest?

Jonathon: So I just want to recap and make sure am right about that. So actually having keywords in articles that you publish through LinkedIn if they are round some of the key phrases that will help you.

John: Yeah. Yeah, because people will search. Like the way that LinkedIn search works is you type in a keyword or a phrase and it will tell you, do you want to filter this by people, by jobs with this keyword? Do you want to filter it by companies that have this keyword in their name? Do you want to filter this by articles and posts and content with this keyword in them? So again, it’s a big search engine and LinkedIn will tell you as a user, hey what are you looking for related to this keyword? A person, a job, a piece of content? And that for you on the other end, reverse engineering it is what key words would people be using, right? What would they be using in my niche, my expertise, my specialty? And that’s then how you can kind of get found more often on LinkedIn, getting your material surface with those keywords.

Jonathon: Another thing now outreach because I think just locked in the world, the brick and mortar world. The more people you have in your network, the better you are. First of all, do you agree with that? And secondly, if you do, how do you do effective outreach to build up your LinkedIn network?

John: Yeah, and I think it depends on your specific profession and goals. But let’s say if you’re a Realtor you can do, I think it’s up to 20,000 or 25,000 LinkedIn connections before they cap you off currently. It’s kind of a little bit of a mystery, but in some degrees it is true. John, the more people you’re connected to, the better because it’s the six degrees of Kevin Bacon movie game, like so and so who knows? So and so who lives there might be connected to someone that you need to know. So it is important to have a big network of people. The key though is to be strategic about it. So if I’m a real estate agent and I’m doing outreach, what I’m going to do is look for a couple of different target audiences. I’m going to look for number one, who can be a referral source for me, right?

So in my cities that I want to work in, in the counties, in the areas who are the HR directors? Are there big companies in town that have relocation experts or relocation staff or HR executives? And am going to connect with them and create a conversation that says, Hey, want to be a resource for you? If you’ve got people coming into town, you needed advice on neighborhoods, whatever would love to be a resource. Let me stay in front of you. Here’s some free content I’ve got that would be helpful to new employees coming in. That’s one audience I go connect with in my local area. Right in LinkedIn lets you filter by zip code and by search radius and things like that. And then you can also connect with prospects and you could say who’s the ideal person that I know typically, based on job title or position or industry type is someone that you know is moving a lot or might be moving or has properties or is connected to people that have to come in and out.

Maybe it’s the owner of a company, right? That is small enough that you know, you can talk to directly, but they do have people coming in or contractors around the country, people moving in and out, traveling, whatever. Like there might be opportunities. So you have to be a little strategic there that’s a little more, you know, you’re kind of just trying to build a network of connected to everyone in your area that seems relevant. Right? And then what you do is you really can leverage LinkedIn’s professional groups. And they’ve really made an effort to come back and bring this more to the forefront.

Jonathon: They were dying a bit don`t they?

John: They were dying on the vine for many years. And now like the LinkedIn kind of, you know, they become just kind of spam fest where people are just posting articles and running away and nothing really valuable. But there are two approaches now with LinkedIn groups. One is you can create your own group and you could say, you know, this is the topic or the theme. It’s going to be everyday living tips for professionals living in this city or whatever it is. The local happenings, almost like a local kind of melting pot to share ideas and best places to eat. And school districts and neighborhoods and new developments like this could be a hub. And that gives you context for conversation with prospects. Because now I connect to you and I can invite you to this group that brings you value. Instead of, hey, if you ever buy or sell a house, call me.

It’s more like, hey, I want to connect. I’ve got a group. I’m trying to build local, professionals in San Diego. The focus of the group is really just to talk about things we’re passionate about here in town, new developments, restaurants. Best places to eat, school districts, obviously I have focused as realtor, but I want to connect people just to bring value. Networking people will be in there and because you’re the hub of it, you’re going to be front and center when their friend says, hey, do you know a good realtor will actually, I have this one on LinkedIn.

They’re really friendly man. They’re super knowledgeable, you know, you might want to give them a call. So that’s kind of being a resource and being a value and using the LinkedIn groups, connecting with people that make sense to connect with and doing it in a targeted way eventually, then it’s going to bring you those people when the timing is right to pull a transaction out. And that’s, that’s the key.

Jonathon: Yeah. Go for it Robert.

Robert: So as I was explaining, as I was saying to John earlier, I hadn’t like my personal experience with LinkedIn is that it has been hard to leverage with real estate. However, I have two very relevant examples that play directly into the chain of conversation that we’ve been having. So one where I’ve seen LinkedIn be incredibly effective in the hands of a real estate agent specifically is relocation. Now relocation is very interesting thing is a big company, let’s say, announces either an expansion or a new location inside a smaller town. You will be shocked that oftentimes this company is moving large groups of employees from various parts of the country into this locale.

Creating this massive interest that wasn’t there previously. LinkedIn groups are an amazingly strong way to connect into these people that are doing the remote dating. The other way that I’ve seen from LinkedIn leverage specifically as it relates to groups is builders and developers sometimes will either expand existing tracks in homes or go into a town and do new tracks. And when they do, if it’s a big builders such as Kaufman and broad or somebody like that, you’d be surprised about how relevant the. There are groups that we’ll be talking about, new development inside LinkedIn. And oftentimes they will focus on developers.

Now, these groups tend to have other real estate professionals and then see you scratch your chin and go, should I even bother me in the answer? My answer is absolutely you should bother. Because you can. If you have a buyer or seller looking for information on this new development, having connected into a group of people that specialize and are experts in this area, you’d be surprised how many times you can pull out referrals or parcel committed commissions for nothing more than passing along a name.

I had a relocation expert that I did business with for a long time and she made; I mean a ridiculous amount of money applying the strategy inside of LinkedIn. And all she was doing was being a professional networker as opposed to a traditional real estate salesperson. But her most valuable resource, even at that time was LinkedIn groups with these people that were. It was a small group, but it was relevant people who are connected to the developers so that. Those are my two comments. I just, I want to give some very specific tips as I understand them to our listeners, and that’s one of them.

Jonathon: That`s great. We going to wrap up the podcast part of the show. Hopefully John is going to stay on with us for another 10, 15 minutes. And what I will ask John in the bonus content is about the difference between the free and the premier. And a couple of other questions that should be relevant to you listeners and viewers. John, how can people find out more about you and your great wisdom around LinkedIn?

John: Yeah, thank you. Go to LinkedInriches.com. So the word LinkedIn and then riches R I c h e s, LinkedInrichies.com. That’s my website. You can get a free copy of my book right on the front page, tons of training videos, all kinds of good stuff. And yeah, obviously you can connect with me on LinkedIn too. Let me know you heard me on the show, it’s John Memo. You can find me right? Find Memo and yeah I would love to hear from people.

Jonathon: And Robert how can people find out more about you and what you are up to Robert?

Robert: They can check out my website as usual. Inboundrem.com. That`s really it with me.

Jonathon: And you want to find out more about what I’m up to go to the Mail- Right website.com. And there’s a ton of past interviews with experts like John. And so it’s kind of a mini university in its own right. Just watching some of the previous discussions. Thank you John and we will be back next week where we’ll have another expert or discussion that will help you be a more successful real estate agent, not only for yourself but for your family. See you soon. Thanks. Bye.