#057: Why Linkedin Is The New Facebook With Deepak Shukla

Welcome to episode 57 of The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, Deepak Shukla, our SEO expert, is back on the show talking about why LinkedIn is the new Facebook, especially if you’re looking for a social platform to grow your business.

We talk about how it’s a great way to make business connections (people actually open their LinkedIn emails), to get your content seen by lots of people (it’s like the old Facebook feed), and to find podcasts to get interviewed on.

If you think LinkedIn is not the right platform for your business, you need to listen to this episode because I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at this new opportunity.

Resources:

Jillian Tohber Leslie on LinkedIn
Deepak Shukla on LinkedIn
MiloTree
Pearl Lemon
Catch My Party
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Alt Summit

Transcript: Why Linkedin Is The New Facebook With Deepak Shukla

Host 0:04
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:10
Hey, guys. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius This is Episode 57. Wow!

Reach out to me if you use an email pop-up and MiloTree at the same time!

Before I launch into today’s episode with my guest Deepak Shukla, I wanted to ask those of you who are using both MiloTree and a different pop-up solution on your blog at the same time, because we are rebuilding our email pop-up, and we have some cool ideas.

But I wanted to run them by you and I wanted to talk to you about your strategy. If you could reach out to me at jililan@Milotree.com, I would love to pick your brain. Maybe we could even, I don’t know, get on a call.

Okay, I want to launch into today’s episode. It is with Deepak, my friend. And we are talking about a really interesting concept, which is how to use LinkedIn to grow your business.

Deepak, welcome back to the show for podcast #3.

Deepak Shukla 1:09
Hey, Jillian. Yeah, absolutely. Three’s the charm, they say. Thank you. I’m really happy to be here.

Jillian Leslie 1:15
Oh, yeah. We were talking again, because we’re working together, and we are talking about a topic, LinkedIn. and I said we should record this as another episode. So, here we are.

Deepak Shukla 1:27
Absolutely. Hey!

Jillian Leslie 1:29
So first, I wanted to talk about, so we’ve been working together now for two and a half months and I wanted to do a recap on how it’s going and what we’re doing and how you see it, and how we see it, that kind of thing.

Deepak Shukla 1:43
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it’s a really good topic to explore for your, your audience.

So yeah, we’re coming up to the 2 1/2 month mark. And I think that one of the really interesting things that’s come out of the process is, what we’re in the process of doing now as we’ve discussed, is almost doing some refining.

So my aim when I came in was to clear up any kind of technical problems that we saw as to the HTML, if there were any broken links, whether internally or links that were going out externally that were broken, doing things that we could do to improve any of the kind of meta text and data on site.

As well as, of course, building some fresh links that were industry relevant and continuing in that fashion for your site. And over the way… we started, so we’re 2 1/2 months in, well it’s 20th of Jan.

So what’s been really nice to see is that, you know, if you plug MiloTree into, for example, just an external tracker of showing kind of your organic keywords.

As of November 2018, you are ranking for 108 total keywords. And we’re now, what Jan, and it says there’s now a total of 100, sorry, 207 keywords.

There’s actually been a kind of especially at the long tail, there’s been a significant expansion of the number of keywords that you’re ranking for. And certainly, there’s some additional ones that come up now into the top 10.

And I think this was some of the data that we were, of course, discussing on our last call, because now what makes sense, and this is sometimes typical of what happens is that we see a bump in keywords and the amount of keywords.

We’re not yet seeing that correspond in terms of, okay, is there a corresponding bump in terms of revenue. And what happens at this stage is we’ve just discussed as well.

Let’s take a look at the keywords we’re ranking for and there’s a bunch of them, the external tracker fixed up 207, which internally means like if you look via Google Search Console, this is, how many is it, 1400 and 90, in fact, actually 1400 and 90 as of today.

So what, you know, we went through, of course, and this is where, you know, you can probably tell your audience about our conversation. It was where we looked at it and started kind of narrowing and refining, so then we can look across the keywords and think, well, what are the key words that are most commercially meaningful from the ones that we’re already ranking for.

Jillian Leslie 4:14
Exactly. So we looked at it and said there are certain keywords where it’s great that we’ve gone up, but they’re not specifically relevant to somebody who is looking to grow their Instagram and wants a pop- up and has a website, and all of the different things that need to be lined up for somebody to purchase our product.

Deepak Shukla 4:34
Yeah, absolutely.

Jillian Leslie 4:37
So we went through. David and I did, and we said, “Okay, what are the most relevant keywords for us?” and send them back to you.

And now we’re hoping to grow those to really get traction under those because, you know, we blog about a whole host of topics. And while they’re relevant, they might not be super relevant for somebody.

Now what we’re looking for are people who want to buy, people who have a specific problem that we can solve that problem.

Deepak Shukla 5:12
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It makes complete sense. And what typically happens is when you run, let’s call it, fixes or maintenance from a technical perspective as well as building initial links, there is in this case, you know, kind of a surge of what could be considered to be the low-hanging fruit or words at the long tail that you begin to rank fo.

And then it’s a case of, as you said, it’s digging into that, as you and David have done and saying, Okay, great, these are the keywords that, you know, we’re ranking for overall. What can we do, or rather, you just give us the information, let’s do it right. Let’s narrow the things down even further still and see what makes most commercial sense.

Because what will happen often, to anticipate what someone might be thinking in the audience, is that, well Deepak, you have the original set of keywords and you start kind of ranking or rather focusing on those.

But when you, for example, take a sample set of even, let’s just say, 10 keywords, in actuality, if they have a search volume of let’s just say 100 to 300 to 500, there’ll be all of the kind of long tail keywords around it, that, you know, targeting that keyword will help.

But also, there’ll be other keywords you already ranked for, at some level. So in fixing technical problems and beginning to build kind of links to your site, it will have an overall net effect across a lot of the keywords that you actually, you know, already rank on Google for.

And so what that means is, in improving one thing, you may end up improving something that’s slightly to the right or left side of it a lot more and then you begin to adjust once you see, okay, Google is responding really well to these things and now let’s kind of target and drill further still.

Jillian Leslie 6:53
Right, so let’s steer the ship in this direction.

Deepak Shukla 6:56
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

What are the opportunities as a blogger on LinkedIn?

Jillian Leslie 6:58
Exactly. And then we started talking about LinkedIn. And I was saying that I am, of course, on LinkedIn but I don’t think of my LinkedIn profile as a direct way to grow MiloTree. And you said, “Ooh,” like there’s there’s an opportunity there.

So on my LinkedIn, for example, I have my education and my background, and I am linked to, you know, because of my background, I have links to lots of people who are big in Silicon Valley and stuff like that, but they’re not exactly relevant to my customers and to people who, let’s say, would be reading our blog.

So I’ve kept it somewhat siloed, and you said that that’s a missed opportunity. And so we started to think about this from the perspective of our customers, our users and to say, is there an opportunity on LinkedIn that we are all missing as publishers, as, you know, mompreneurs, as food bloggers, as what, you know, small shop owners.

And you said, “Ooh, there is an opportunity here on LinkedIn.”

And I was just thinking about this, as we press ‘record,’ which is — and Deepak, I want your feedback on this — as entrepreneurs, we’re always looking for where the opportunity is,

And say, in the beginning, the opportunity was on Facebook. Back in the day when you would post something and it would show to all of your followers. And guess what, that’s dried up.

Now, you want to reach people, you’ve got to pay for it. Facebook is going through a lot of changes. Facebook’s not the place where… and also ads on Facebook have become very expensive. It used to be that was the opportunity.

You get in on Facebook and then even putting money behind stuff and all of a sudden you’d see this huge return. And that’s not necessarily there.

An opportunity that I think we as predominantly women entrepreneurs saw, especially as publishers/creators was Pinterest. That to us, like men weren’t on Pinterest. Businesses weren’t really unless they were like food brands and stuff, they weren’t really on Pinterest.

And Pinterest for us has been this huge opportunity both for Catch My Party and MiloTree. And I think what you and I are are circling in on, is maybe there’s an opportunity for bloggers, small business owners, female entrepreneurs on LinkedIn because we’re not yet there.

Deepak Shukla 9:42
Yeah.

Jillian Leslie 9:43
Did that make sense?

Deepak Shukla 9:44
It does. It makes complete sense. I think that, you know, let’s step back a second. LinkedIn has changed dramatically as a platform. It has become a lot more social because they’re pushing video as, you know, Facebook Call with Facebook Watch, they’re attempting to compete with YouTube.

The world’s kind of accepting that video is almost here and video is here to stay. So what that means is that LinkedIn has become now more socially driven. It’s attracting a lot more people that are entrepreneurs, mompreneurs.

It’s attracting a lot of people that are building, you know, independent to small to medium to big businesses. And they’re talking a lot more about this personal stories, about their journey, about, you know, everything that relates to kind of what they’re doing within the world.

And it’s almost in some respects, being a lot like Facebook was, but maybe five to seven years ago, where you post a status update, you post some content, it would get, you know, a decent amount of reach. That same thing.

And that might be the best kind of, number one, you know, avenue for some of your audience to understand that that opportunity that we used to see on Facebook is definitely a lot more prevalent on LinkedIn.

Whereas Facebook, everybody uses this term. It’s ‘pay to play’. You know, you have to spend money to get your content seen. That’s not the case on LinkedIn.

Can you get a lot of reach on LinkedIn?

If you write good content and you do simple things, such as tagging people, you know, I see it still happen. Tagging people that, you know, all your friends are tagging people that have liked your last status updates or tagging people that, you know, individually commented, you can get a really, really decent amount of reach.

That’s, you know, something that’s really big. And this is where it gets really interesting, is in terms of, you know, what LinkedIn is, of course, LinkedIn is probably the most powerful business, individual business person directory in the world.

And a lot of people don’t really think of how much data LinkedIn actually holds, you know. If I want to find an individual that is a blogger who, you know, is producing content, I can find that person for free on LinkedIn.

Whereas there’s no real easy way to do that on any other platform, unless you want to pay for the privilege. And you can directly send them a message.

So when we think about, of course, now, all of your actual audience and, you know, they’ve got, you know, perhaps, you know, a fashion site, or maybe there’s a cooking site, or maybe you’ve got an opportunity.

For example, you know, I was looking. You’ve got an opportunity, number one, to use LinkedIn to search literally. If you search for the keyword ‘mompreneur’, then you have around 900 results come up.

If you search for the word… let’s have a look now because I’ve got it here in the background. I just want to check. If you search for the word ‘solopreneur’, then you have several hundred results come up.

And this is the part that we, you know, that we originally made reference to. If you search for the word ‘podcast’, you have 9721 results come up.

How to get on other people’s podcasts using LinkedIn

Jillian Leslie 13:15
Wow. Because that’s one thing that I want to do is while I have a podcast, I want to be on other people’s podcasts that are relevant. I want to be introduced to other people’s audiences to provide value, stuff that I know that hopefully can help them.

But that also helps me, you know, grow and get a bigger audience and hopefully connect with like-minded people.

Deepak Shukla 13:43
Absolutely, absolutely. Jillian, podcasts are really still at the very, very early stages of their growth, right? If video is now, businesses aren’t really savvy to the idea of podcasts I think being now. You know, a company would much sooner do video before they do audio.

And what’s really interesting is, is that, you know, podcasts are on a huge growth swing. It’s still very, very early days. Which means that what we’re seeing is an abundance of podcast creators who are actually hungry for people to share their story on their podcast.

Jillian Leslie 14:18
Definitely. When somebody reaches out to me with an interesting story, I immediately go “Please come on my show. I want to hear it, I want to share it. And I want to learn from you,” that kind of thing.

Okay. And let’s talk about this, which is, I do think it is a great strategy to try to get onto people’s podcasts, especially in your niche.

Deepak Shukla 14:31
Yep. So, you know, using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is just really simply like it’s like an Amazon search with additional filters.

So for cost of, you know, perhaps $70 to $80 per month. And, you know, LinkedIn Sales Navigator offer a free trial for the first 30 days, right? So you have the opportunity to run keyword searches. So you can run something such as, you know, simple as, you know, podcast in someone’s title.

So I ran the search ‘podcast’ in title. What that means is that anybody who uses the word ‘podcast’ in their actual title will come up in search. Now that’s the search gave me 9721 results.

Jillian Leslie 15:29
Wow.

Right. So I don’t know what is Sales Navigator. So it’s a service and therefore you can search?

Deepak Shukla 15:30
So that means there’s potentially 9000. And let’s assume that that number, you know, is on the largest side, that’s probably at least 5000 people that has podcasts, Jillian.

Yeah. So you can search basically LinkedIn using a variety of filters.

So if I want to find a particular kind of person, what this does is it allows me to search by geography. So I can go, so for example, I’m doing it right now, I’m going to…

So I’ve used the keyword ‘podcast’. So what that means I’m searching people that have the word ‘podcast’ in their title, that are based in the United States, that also use the keyword perhaps, you know, ‘entrepreneur’ because, you know, then they’ll welcome any kind of small business owner come on to talk about their story.

And that’s of itself has given me 551 results, which means that there’s potentially of that, let’s just assume even half of that, our podcast hosts, that means that there’s 250 people currently who are in the United States that are podcast hosts that, you know, discuss the world of entrepreneurship.

And that’ the opportunity. These things will be, I think, as you said, Jillian, you know, you going on to, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 podcasts over time is going to add huge value in so many ways.

Number one, you get direct exposure to their audience. Number two, you get the opportunity to practice, refine, and build your brand story. Number three, you get links from every podcaster you go on.

Jillian Leslie 17:14
Right. Yes. And the more podcasts you go on, the more people will invite you on to their podcasts, so it snowballs.

So the question then, if in fact, I see a podcast and I go and I look at it, and I listen to an episode or so, and I go, “Oh, I want to be on this podcast,” let’s say, Would you recommend reaching out to them on LinkedIn? Or would you recommend sending an email?

Reach out to people on LinkedIn and not email because the open rates are higher

Deepak Shukla 17:40
Yeah. I think that LinkedIn is probably the most powerful way to do it at the moment. Because LinkedIn inbox messages, for those who are active on LinkedIn, gets a lot more open rates than anywhere else.

Jillian Leslie 17:52
Really?

Deepak Shukla 17:53
Mm-hmm. And here’s the really interesting thing. Not only can you search people, for example, that have that profile listed as a podcaster, you know. You can search specifically for people that have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days.

So I can then just target people that I know that are already active on LinkedIn, and I can directly send them a message. And to take it one step even further, you don’t necessarily even need to listen to their podcast until they actually responded.

So what I’ve been doing — and this is the process that has got me probably on to around 40 podcasts in the last month and a half, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 18:31
Wow!

Deepak Shukla 18:32
Yeah, absolutely. I don’t listen until I initially reach out to… so I’ve got someone invite me, Errol. He came up in the search, right? Errol’s title is entrepreneur, podcaster, and creative director. Error helps entrepreneurs.

So I would send a message, the initial message would be “Hey Errol, I notice that you’re a podcast host” and being a business owner or being, you know, or loving podcasts myself, I just wanted to connect. I hope that’s okay.”

How to reach out to podcasters on LinkedIn

So that could be the same message, right? “Hey, Errol. Hey, Heather. Hey, Jason. I noticed that you’re a podcast host. I’m always on the hunt to connect and listen to more interesting podcasts. I hope that’s okay. — Deepak”

You know, a lot of people naturally would say, “Oh, well, yeah, of course, you can connect. This is my podcast.” You know, here’s my podcast, Eric helps entrepreneurs. Here’s the iTunes link, have a look and let me know what you think.

That’s literally a lot of the responses that I get. And it’ll be at that stage that then I’ll quickly go and have a look at the podcast. I will maybe listen to a couple of bits or will listen to a couple of bits and pieces, figure out if it’s a fit.

And then I’ll say, you know, “Errol, I really liked your podcast. I particularly like this episode. I don’t know if it’s possible. I’d love to come and explore being a guest on your show. What is it that I could tell that would be useful for you to make that decision?”

And then they’ll directly say, “Well, this is my audience. This is what I want to know. How do you think my audience could benefit?”

So they asked you the direct questions that you have to answer. And that’s the process I’ve been following, Jillian. And it was working so well with it.

For the last three weeks, I stopped doing any reach out but I’ve still been getting responses from past messages that have come in, because I was getting overwhelmed with how many positive responses I was getting.

And that is a process that anybody can emulate.

Jillian Leslie 20:25
Absolutely. So you recommend breaking it down? You don’t recommend saying in the first interaction, “Hey, I see you’re a podcaster. I think that this would be a great fit. I’d love to come on your show. Here’s what I do.” So you wouldn’t do it that way.

Deepak Shukla 20:44
I wouldn’t do it that way for a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s perhaps too much too soon. So that’s the first thing.

Number two, you know, it’s always important with any transaction that we do to try and focus on getting initial yeses. “Can I connect?” “Yes.” “Here’s your podcast. What do you think?” “It’s great.” “Could I be on your show?” “Yes.”

It’s so much easier when you start asking small asks before you make the big one. That’s the second reason.

The third reason, and this is probably the most important reason for your audience. There’s a huge element of practicality to it. Your audience will not have the time to go and listen to 200 individual podcast shows.

Jillian Leslie 21:21
Right.

Deepak Shukla 21:21
Right? And, and even if you do, what if only 10% of them respond anyway? You may as well only focus on the ones that make an effort to accept your connection request, that write a short response saying, “Thanks for reaching out, I appreciate it.” And they should be the people that you focus on.

Jillian Leslie 21:38
Got it. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. So in terms of being active on LinkedIn, okay — let’s say I always use this example — I’m a food blogger, or I’m a beauty blogger, or I am a teacher, you know, and I do kids’ activities.

Or I sell jewelry or something like that. How active do you recommend I be on LinkedIn? And two, can I take my content that already exists and put it on LinkedIn?

Deepak Shukla 22:10
Brilliant questions. So number one, how active should you be?

I think that you could produce a piece of content each day if you want. And here’s the interesting thing, Jillian.

When I say produce a piece of content, I mean, literally about 70 to 100 words. I don’t need a 2.5 thousand blog post. I mean, status updates.

Jillian Leslie 22:32
Really? Okay.

Deepak Shukla 22:33
Yes. They work way better than any other type of content at the moment on LinkedIn.

So number one, be active every day or be active every day or two. What I mean with being active is if you can sit down for a couple of hours and produce literally probably 1000 words of content, but if that’s broken down, of course, into short stories which are 100 words each, that content could last you a month.

Jillian Leslie 22:58
Okay.

Deepak Shukla 23:00
That’s definitely the first thing. That’s the first thing that I’d say that it’s less content that you wait, it’s much less content than you think and it’s just snippets rather than actual, you know, long form content.

So the barrier of entry is very low. That’s the first thing that I’d say.

Jillian Leslie 23:17
Okay.

What content should you post on LinkedIn?

Deepak Shukla 23:18
The second thing that I’d say is that as to the content that you currently have, absolutely, you can repost literally, you know, 30% to 60% of your content onto LinkedIn as an article and then link back to your actual, you know, entire blog. You can absolutely do that

Jillian Leslie 23:35
So you’re like teasing it and then you’re linking.

Deepak Shukla 23:38
Yes, yes.

Jillian Leslie 23:39
You’re not putting the entire post.

Deepak Shukla 23:41
No, because you want people to come back to your website.

Jillian Leslie 23:44
Got it. Yeah.

Deepak Shukla 23:45
Yeah. So you could for example, you could spend some dedicated time and think right, you know, this weekend, I’m going to spend one hour just reposting content.

And you could probably get through 3 to 5 blog posts in an hour because you’re just reposting, right?You’re shortening it and then you’re putting it on.

So you could spend maybe you know several hours getting 20 pieces of content on there. It’s a couple of hours but then it’s done. And then the only focus is to produce those status updates and they get a lot of traction, you get the metrics that LinkedIn provides you.

You know, this status update got 3.5 thousand views. This status update got 400 views. The next status update got, you know, 900 views. And you will begin to see opportunities open up.

So I get people that are approaching, “Hey Deepak, I’d love to, you know. Could we work together or what is it that you do?” Or “You know, I love your status updates.” And what this opens yourself up for is influencer marketing, Jillian.

And people are interested in simple stories. If you run a blog about, you know, something about arts and crafts and children, then be authentic. Talk about, you know, some of the things that arts and crafts have taught about you are with your own children.

If you sell jewelry and necklaces, then you can produce content that still, you know… And this is the interesting thing. A lot of people are just interested in stories about your personal life and your journey and what you’re learning.

So if you’re thinking, “Well Deepak, I don’t know how to really talk about jewelry…” or you don’t even necessarily need to even mention jewelry at all. Because people are going to follow you and for your your life as well as for your passions on LinkedIn.

So you can be so flexible and broad in terms of the content that you want to produce. What I’m saying is, you can talk about anything that you want.

Jillian Leslie 25:41
That’s so interesting. So it does feel much more like Facebook back in the early days.

Deepak Shukla 25:47
Yeah, it’s really like that now. You know, I generate a lot more business from LinkedIn when I don’t talk about SEO.

Jillian Leslie 25:53
Hmm. Interesting. So what will you talk about?

Deepak Shukla 25:58
I will talk about stuff that’s inspirational. I will talk about stuff that if I go to my posts, I’m going to quickly…

Jillian Leslie 26:06
And we’ll link to your LinkedIn profile and my LinkedIn profile.

Deepak Shukla 26:11
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the last one I spoke about was about… let’s have a look. So I gave a tip about how to turn videos into blogs. The one before that was thanking my team. Another one before that was about… let’s have a look. About talking to business owners, embracing brand personalization.

So I’m talking to, you know, another one with just a quote. So I’m talking broadly within the area of entrepreneurship, but there is no mention ever where I discuss… Yeah, I talk about turning 33 this year. And, you know, that was one of my posts that got, you know, a lot of… let me have a look.

Yeah, so one of my most viewed posts is: “Today’s thoughts: Act like a hustler, work like a dog, operate like a hacker, position like a painter, prepare like an athlete. Let’s grow.”

And of course, I don’t expect your audience to write anything like that at all. But the point here is that I didn’t write anything about SEO.

But that’s the kind of stuff that will generate traction and have people reach out to me and then ask me about SEO because, you know, we’re moving into an area of people less and less feel like they’re being sold to and more and more where they want to work with interesting and inspirational business owners.

New Shopify MiloTree pop-up to grow your Shopify sales. Try it today!

Jillian Leslie 27:35
I wanted to take a short break to talk about MiloTree. We just rolled out a Shopify pop-up. What that means is you install this pop-up on your blog, and it says ‘Shop Now’ and it has your pop-up, and it leads directly to your Shopify store and it’s populated with your most recent products.

We will also be rolling one out for Etsy where it will pop up and say, you know, “Shop my Etsy store.” So be on the lookout for that.

If you sign up for my MiloTree, you get your first 30 days free. So you can definitely check it out. kick the tires, see what you think. Okay, now back to the show.

Should you connect with everyone who sends you a friend request on LinkedIn?

Now, when you get a request for somebody who wants to connect with you on LinkedIn, do you always say yes?

Deepak Shukla 28:24
I connect with absolutely everybody.

Jillian Leslie 28:25
You do.

Deepak Shukla 28:26
Yeah, yeah. Always. Always. Always. I think that you can’t know.

And this is the interesting part, Jillian, and it relates also to podcasts. You can’t know who you know, is within anybody’s second degree network.

So if, you know, if I’m at a cafe and I’m really friendly to Frank the barista. I should be friendly to Frank the barista because Frank the barista’s uncle could be, you know, the owner of a whole multi-chain retail outlet. Frankie’s cousin could be somebody very important.

So this principle that we see so often in real life that you don’t know who you’re talking to really ever or you don’t know who that person might know is definitely, you know, one of the biggest reasons I think that we should accept connection requests from everybody.

I think that if you have an opportunity, Jillian, to go on a podcast that has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, you should absolutely do it.

Jillian Leslie 29:21
Interesting.

Deepak Shukla 29:22
Because you can’t know their audiences. Because it’s folly for all of us to assume that our audience are only interested in jewelry or are only interested in arts and crafts there. We’re weird and wonderful people that are interested in all kinds of things that have nothing to do with, you know, the business that we’re in or the service that we offer.

Therefore, we should recognize everybody else is like that. So, I’ve been on a podcast about sustainability in the environment. And I’ve been on a podcast about, you know, about sports and stuff that has nothing to do with my business.

But I know that or, you know, based upon what I’ve seen, I recognize that you know what, the people that listen to this are also, you know, to some degree, probably interested in what it is that I have to offer.

And for that reason, I accept invitations. When I do podcast reach out, I’m happy to go into any podcast because I think that, you know, someone somewhere… And what the couple of podcasts I’ve been on that have ended up generating work, there haven’t been podcasts that have been about SEO.

Jillian Leslie 30:28
I love that. I think what you are teaching me is this idea of openness — openness to opportunity and that you can’t connect the dots until afterwards.

And I’ve talked about this previously on my podcast, which is I tend to want to silo things. I tend to want to silo my LinkedIn from the rest of my business like even in small ways. I don’t tend to talk about what I do to the moms that I interact with because I immediately think, oh, they’re not going to be interested in that.

Or it’s kind of hard to explain what I do. And then people will find out like moms, let’s say, you know, in my daughter’s school and they’ll be like, Wait, you have a podcast? You have a business, you’re an entrepreneur?” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, yeah.”

And I think that the one thing I’d like to work on for 2019 is not being afraid to pull my worlds together. And I want things I think tied up in like little… I want things in buckets. And I don’t think that that is helping me.

Deepak Shukla 31:47
I think that you shouldn’t be hard on yourself. I think it’s human nature especially when, you know, you you operated in such a different space before coming into entrepreneurship. And before, you know, launching your podcast.

And you’re basing that based upon everything that, you know, you have seen and understood as being the way that things are done that, you know, work; what we do here is what we do here.

And I think that, you know, what that means is it’s exciting, Jillian. There’s a huge opportunity for everybody here because, you know, life is… The interesting thing, of course, about today’s things are moving so quickly, and everything is emerging and immersing and subject to change.

That there is no way we can accurately predict where our next win nor where our next setback, if you will, will come from.

Jillian Leslie 32:45
I agree.

Deepak Shukla 32:47
And with that in mind, give yourself every opportunity for success.

Jillian Leslie 32:50
I agree. I totally agree. I think about this all the time. I just wrote a piece in my newsletter. And by the way, to get on my newsletter, sign up for my MiloTree. You can cancel it but you’ll still be then getting my newsletters.

And I wrote about how you don’t know where your next win is going to come from. And you need to be open to everything. And that you’re right. As things are moving so quickly, you want to be failing. Because it means that you are, I call them at-bats, and that you’re trying.

And I think that you’re right. And so it’s just a whole different way.

So one thing we talked about was taking my LinkedIn profile which is very buttoned down and you were going to look at it and and kind of try to personalize it or give me feedback on it.

So I’m curious, ultimately, you know, what you come back with so that I can start to merge these different personas together.

I mean, not that I’m inauthentic in any of them. It’s too exhausting to not be authentic, you know, to have to keep different, I don’t know, personas alive.

But I think that I do need to, I don’t know, to merge things more.

Deepak Shukla 34:14
I think that people will find your journey amazingly weird and wonderful. You know, I looked at your resume on LinkedIn and, you know, I apologize in advance if I’m going to be over sharing on your behalf.

Jillian Leslie 34:26
No, please.

Deepak Shukla 34:26
I can imagine how I would feel if I received a request from you to be, you know, on my podcast versu,s “Hey Deepak, I’d love to, you know, if it’s of any use to explore what I’ve learned on my journey, starting out in Stanford, going to work for Warner Bros and then Walt Disney to, to leaving that all behind to venture into the world of entrepreneurship.

You know, with my family and everything that’s taught me as a woman that’s come out from the corporate world and then gone to launch an interesting cool little pop-up that serves female business owners. Do you think that might be interesting for us to explore any elements of that on your show?”

That sounds so powerful to me, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 35:18
It’s funny. Because I’m hearing it where, yes, again, on the inside I’m like, “Oh, that’s alright.” But no, that’s nice.

Deepak Shukla 35:27
Then you attract the Stanford crowd, then you attract the Warner… then you attract the screenwriters.

Because what happens then is you attract all of the other people who would ordinarily never listen to you because they’d assume that you don’t know my story, there’s no way I can connect with you.

And the more that we weave in those different elements of your story, right, the bigger your audience becomes.

Jillian Leslie 35:50
Right. I think you’re right. I think that is really valid.

And that’s why I would say to everybody out there if you’re listening to this and you’re saying, “No, LinkedIn isn’t my thing. It’s not for me, it’s not my business, my tribe is not there,” I would challenge you to really broaden it as well.

Because you’re doing then what I’m doing, which is you’re narrowing your self-definition. And you’re saying, “No, no, no. I need to be in Facebook Groups with other people like me.”

And it’s like, well, wait a second, maybe we all can venture out into areas where there are opportunities.

Deepak Shukla 36:30
And you have then the opportunity to bring those people back into your own Facebook group or your own place of power. And the only way that you do that is to go and become parts, you know, intermittently of other conversations.

Jillian Leslie 36:44
Yes. And that you can have all these different pieces to your door. I think that’s probably true.

My journey has been… it hasn’t been a straight line. And so therefore I think because of that, it’s confusing to me to kind of explain that to somebody.

But to embrace that, I mean, you’re giving me all these, like, I wish you could see my brains like exploding right now.

But it’s about embracing all of those different elements. And, you know, I’m Jillian no matter what, like I am who I am but I have had this very path, and therefore I know about lots of different things that I can bring to my story.

For example, story. I understand story. And therefore, I can understand because I was a writer, and I understand story when it comes to selling and marketing.

And so it’s like taking these different components and pulling them together into embracing all the weirdness.

Share your story on LinkedIn

Deepak Shukla 37:41
And I would say, you know, by not sharing your story, you’re you’re doing not only yourself an injustice because you have all of this value to add that come as a consequence of the experiences.

And this is for everybody that’s listening as well. You’ve all got a story and you probably listen to Jillian and me, and you think that well, you know, I haven’t been to Stanford and I don’t have this background. So maybe my story is not not interesting.

And Jillian will tell you way, way more about this than I ever could. That, you know, at the heart of any powerful story, it’s the journey that people care about, and where it starts and ends is of lesser consequence than anything else.

And we’ve all got, you know, this journey that’s our lives. We all should share that story with others.

And by doing that, you not just lift up your business, of course, but you lift up people like yourself. You lift up those people who are in the shadows that are teetering about starting their own business that are looking for someone they can identify and connect with, that are looking for any means of inspiration.

So, I would say that, you know, by not sharing your story, by not going on to the podcast or the shows, or connecting with people that you look at and overtly think have nothing to do with your audience, that you do yourself an injustice and you do others an injustice.

Because as Jillian said, you don’t know where your audience actually truly are because, you know, there’s still many, many, many silent Sally’s out there who love what you do but just don’t know about it.

Jillian Leslie 39:25
Yes. And I think that another thing I am really working on in my own life is when I think I know something in my business, and to say maybe that’s not true.

So maybe I think I know my audience or I think I know you guys who are listening to this podcast. But there are outliers, people who I would be really surprised to know they’re listening.

And so I find that the more I can say to myself, okay, that’s a story I’m telling myself and it fits my narrative and maybe it’s not true is very humbling and scary but important to do, is to challenge those assumptions.

Deepak Shukla 40:05
Wow. I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 40:09
And so I do this again in my parenting with my daughter because my daughter will come home with like some story of how tomorrow is going to be a horrible day.

And I go, “Wow, that’s a really interesting story you’re telling yourself.”

And to just even make some space around that narrative that my daughter completely believes is true. And we all do this.

And so therefore, it helps me do it in my own life to go out like if I can point it out for her, I can point it out for myself. So it’s just you’re kind of opening my eyes to not just doing things the way that I do it or the way that I think everybody else in my space does it.

Deepak Shukla 40:49
And that could be the angle in for all of us, I think, that if everybody feels a bit scared or feels a bit insecure, then that can be the story that you can share with others. Because everybody identifies with that.

Jillian Leslie 41:01
Absolutely.

Deepak Shukla 41:01
Everybody is scared and fearful and, you know, the more that you are open about those feelings, the more that you win people to your cause, that you have people to empathize with you, that sympathize, that will follow you.

And, you know, Jillian, we all are. Well, I know that you are familiar with, of course, the concept of the flawed hero and this whole idea of the origin story.

And I think that, you know, one of the things that I’ve as well continue to try to challenge is that you know, Deepak, you know, don’t make assumptions until you have the data in your hand. Go and do 10 seemingly irrelevant podcasts and then you can truly say that, Okay, I see now that this might not be the right path for me.

And often we we will take, you know, a tiny bit of data. LinkedIn is a professional platform. It will take another bit of data.

“Deepak, I could never go on a sustainability podcast or a podcast about, you know, sports because I’m selling jewelry.”

And I’ll say, “Well, you know what, there might be a lot of dads who listen to that podcast about sport who would say, you know what, it might…”

You can’t know really how things can evolve and develop. And the smartest and sensible thing to do in this world of, you know, evolution and adaptation is, as you said, Jillian, is to try stuff.

Jillian Leslie 42:26
Yeah.

Advice: Sign up for a 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Deepak Shukla 42:27
Just try. And this route to trying really, to pin it down again in practical terms that everybody’s worried you can sign up for 30-day free trial with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can type in a couple of keywords into their search.

If you’ve ever been on Amazon, if you’ve been on eBay, it’s exactly the same thing. Type in the word ‘podcast’ and send a couple of people the same message, change your first name, and begin to see what happens, and do that. It will take you literally three minutes a day to do it.

Jillian Leslie 42:59
Yes, I’m going to do that. I’m going to do this. And then do you pay $70 to $80 a month or do you just do it and then cancel and then, you know.

Deepak Shukla 43:09
I’ve signed up for the year. LinkedIn is so powerful for what I do with work. And that search filter is excellent.

And for a long time, to be honest with you, Jillian, because I was like, “Oh, I don’t need LinkedIn Sales Navigator.” And I’m an agency owner and I was in the same camp as you.

And it was only about three months ago that I became three, maybe six months ago, something like that, but I began using LinkedIn Premium.

And since then, I’ve never looked back. What has been the result? I’ve been on 40 podcasts.

Jillian Leslie 43:42
Wow.

Deepak Shukla 43:44
Because of that $70 a month subscription that I pay.

Jillian Leslie 43:47
Right. And how many sales did that get you?

Deepak Shukla 43:51
We’ve got, well, we didn’t meet through LinkedIn, I don’t believe.

Jillian Leslie 43:55
No. You reached out to me. But again, like, you know, how many clients did those podcasts get you?

Deepak Shukla 44:00
Yes. So that process has led me to three direct clients from actual podcast hosts who then directly asked me.

And it’s led to a further one more from an audience member. And these are people that you know, work with me on SEO. So people consider them to be you know, three- or four-figure deals.

And then finally, it’s improving our SEO significantly because I’m generating a continuous series of decent links from these sites and still, I’m getting more people that are joining and that’s finding out about our tribe, that personally reach out to me and say “Deepak you know, I listen to…”

So, you know, I go into a lot of careers podcasts, Jillian, about career transformation, which could go on because you’ve changed your career, you’ve got a lot of advice that you could give to anyone who wants to get into Stanford.

You could go into podcasts about, you know, getting top college jobs. You could go on to podcasts about creativity and design because of your experiences with Warner Bros and Walt Disney.

And a lot of those audience members, you know what, they’re probably quite likely women that’s going to be some of your audience or at the very least it’s going to help you rank for really important keyword terms that we’re trying in the process of going through.

You know, like Pinterest pop-up tool or something to that effect. So the benefits are both upfront with the direct conversations that you have but also they serve you over time because as we also said, podcasts are only growing.

It’s easy to tell your story on a podcast

That person is only going to have more people that’s going to connect with them. And you going to Deepak podcast, Deepak’s going to have another 20 podcast interviews lined up after you — that’s a benefit to you. Because more people will find that show, more people will subscribe.

And you know what, it’s quite easy to talk about yourself on a podcast show. Well, it’s easier than writing a 4000-word long guest post or blog post for many of us at least.

So the actual process of getting onto podcasts and sharing things that are true to your story is way easier for many of us to do than asking somebody to write a full, you know, 2000- to 4000-word blog post.

Jillian Leslie 46:21
Yes. And what I would also say is, when you’re on a podcast, for example, you and I are co-creating this podcast. We both didn’t know what was going to happen. We had an idea, we wanted to talk about LinkedIn.

But you could just show a different side of you, I get to show a different side of me. If I sat down to write something about myself, it would be my narrative. And here we are writing a narrative together. So you get to see a whole different side.

Deepak Shukla 46:49
Absolutely. And here’s the other thing. What, it’s a benefit to you and we’re co creating, and hopefully, to your audience as well, is that what we have just started implementing, is taking the YouTube transcriptions of my videos and my podcasts.

Giving it to a writer and then turning the transcriptions that YouTube generates for free, of course, that have only about 70% accuracy. But turning every video that I do into a blog post based around that podcast, and that is doing wonderful things for our SEO as well.

If you’re thinking about starting a podcast…

Jillian Leslie 47:23
Interesting. And I have to say, out there, if anybody is thinking about starting a podcast, I so recommend it. I really do.

I’m going to be at Alt Summit, which is a conference. And my session is going to be about how to start a podcast in a weekend.

And I have to say that I love doing the podcast because I get to talk to people like you. It’s very intimate. It’s not like I’m having to talk to thousands of people.

Hopefully, I can reach thousands of people. But it’s just you and me talking. And there’s something so neat about that and then being invited into somebody’s ears. It’s really intimate.

It’s like, I feel privileged. So if you are at all thinking about it, reach out to me, because I will probably be putting my talk online. But I would recommend people take the leap and try it. It’s not very expensive. You can do it down and dirty.

And I think it’s really satisfying from a human perspective, from a connecting perspective.

Deepak Shukla 48:26
I completely, completely agree. I couldn’t agree more.

Jillian Leslie 48:45
So Deepak, I have to say, what I love about you is you opened my eyes to stop. You know, when I talked to experts about other topics, things especially that I know a lot about, I find those conversations very interesting.

But also very, what is the bias… confirmation bias, which means I hear stuff that I know, it confirms what I know it, it solidifies it, and then it’s harder to be thinking outside the box.

Deepak Shukla 49:08
Yeah, I understand. And I want to, as much as I can, at least come on and try and present you perhaps something that at least, hopefully, is somewhat unfamiliar to me.

Because then I know that it can impact a lot of the existing bodies of data that you’ve already got in your mind, as well as hopefully take, you know, your audience down some different paths that they haven’t yet considered.

Jillian Leslie 49:32
Yes. So if you haven’t, anybody in the audience, go to LinkedIn. And I’m going to do the exact same thing and start poking around and start seeing what it looks like and start doing some searches and see if there’s a way in.

Because it could be what I would say Pinterest is for men today, which is undiscovered and it’s like a sleeping giant for them. We all know that Pinterest is very powerful.

But if you talk to your husband about it, or he’d be like, it’s just cupcakes and wedding dresses, and it’s not for me. And I have a feeling that there could be that opportunity on LinkedIn for us.

Deepak Shukla 50:14
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, there’s a huge opportunity on LinkedIn. At the very least, you know, even at the very least, just sign up for Sales Navigator. It’s a 30-day free trial. If you’ve never used it before, type in the word ‘podcast’, type in any word that you want want with anyone you want to connect to.

See what comes up and and be surprised and look at some of the status updates that are in your own feed and have a look at one that seem to get comments and likes and patterns will appear before your eyes.

Jillian Leslie 50:45
I love it. Deepak, thank you so much for being on the show again. And you know what, we’re gonna do this again, if you’ll do it.

Deepak Shukla 50:54
Yeah. 100%. These are lots of fun. And, you know, I’ll do my best to keep trying to bring something that’s not yet considered to you and your audience.

Jillian Leslie 51:06
I love it. Well, thank you.

Deepak Shukla 51:09
Thank you.

Jillian Leslie 51:10
If you’re liking The Blogger Genius, please subscribe and tell your friends. And I will see you again here next week.