Episode 40: How to Hack LinkedIn and Get Your DM Opened by Journalists and Strangers (PR Starter Pack bonus)
If there’s one benefit you should go after with social media, it has got to be your power to connect!
Connecting through social media is not merely about sending DMs to random people or sharing an article. It’s not even just about personal expression or gratification.
When you put PR into this context, social media becomes a whole new tool that can open the doors not only for your present audience but to the right persons who can put you in the spotlight for more business exposure and opportunities.
As a business founder, you need to leverage social media, particularly LinkedIn, to your advantage because that’s where you’ll be able to connect with media members.
But creating a LinkedIn profile and waiting for it to be discovered by journalists and media outlets is not enough—you have to optimize your profile!
Everything matters, from the top banner to the last statement at the bottom of your LinkedIn profile. You have to be purposeful with what you put in there.
Optimizing your profile captures the attention of the members of the media and your audience. Believe me, it has worked for hundreds of my students who took the time to build their brand in the digital space.
This is why in this extraordinary episode of this podcast, I decided to go out of our conventional setup, so I can demonstrate how you can optimize your LinkedIn profile.
I directly took this training out of the many exclusive training in PR Starter Pack for you to consume and to give you an over-the-shoulder view of what I exactly do with my LinkedIn profile and messages so that people can’t resist my offer!
“Social media is such a powerful tool not only for us to connect with our audience, but also to connect with powerful members of the media, people like journalists and writers, and reporters and podcasters, who have the ability to share your story to millions of people.”
-Gloria Chou
Before our PR Starter Pack VIP call with our journalist guest tomorrow, 28th of June, take this time to see in this training what I do to help hundreds of business founders propel their brands as what we do inside the PR Starter Pack. There’s no doubt that your LinkedIn profile may just be the best place to start.
You can’t miss this episode and training. Let’s optimize your LinkedIn profiles now and get you connected with the right people!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why you should optimize your LinkedIn profile
The primary and prized elements of the LinkedIn profile
Making an effective and captivating bio-headline
Hacks and tips to optimize your LinkedIn posts
How to make LinkedIn and people like your posts
Why you need your connections and friends on LinkedIn
If you want to get free organic press features, get on to top podcasts, and build relationships with editors at your dream outlets, join me and hundreds of small business owners in the PR Starter Pack at www.prstarterpack.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Gloria Chou's Masterclass: PR Masterclass
Gloria Chou’s PR Starter Pack: PR Starter Pack
Gloria Chou’s LinkedIn Profile: Gloria Chou
Corene Summers’ Linkedin Profile: Corene Summers
Additional Resources:
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Here’s a glance at this episode…
[1:48] If your profile doesn't seem super legitimate, you're not putting your best foot forward as the industry expert that you are.
[2:47] You really want to optimize everything that's right here because people are not going to be scrolling all the way down.
[4:49] By telling people who I serve, how I serve them, and the impact that I'm making. So instead of saying what your role is, whether you're an account executive or software engineer, you want to put who you're helping and how.
[7:13] Because people on LinkedIn are browsing, they're not looking to read an article, and so that's why emojis work. That's why bullet points work, and that's why having a really good headline is going to help you distinguish yourself amongst the crowd.
[9:00] LinkedIn really likes a mix of videos. They like audio and also plain text. So if you're posting three times a week, make sure you switch it up. Don't do only text. Maybe one day, put a photo and a text. Maybe one day, do a video.
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Gloria Chou 0:00
Hey everyone. As you know, social media is such a powerful tool not only for us to connect with our audience, but also to connect with powerful members of the media, people like journalists and writers, and reporters and podcasters, who have the ability to share your story to millions of people. That starts with leveraging the social media tools you already use, such as LinkedIn, and Twitter, and Instagram to reach them. Now, this is a special bonus training I have inside for my PR Starter Pack members. This is one section on how to optimize LinkedIn, so that you can get noticed and feel comfortable using the DM scripts that I have for you in the PR Starter Pack to copy and paste and send it out so that you can get the journalists attention, and also get them to open the email and pitch them directly. So this has worked for hundreds of the PR Starter Pack members who have been successful at getting on a first name basis with the editor, who now have built connections with members of the media and have been able to pitch and land their stories. So this is a training that I've taken out for you to consume so that you can get a little taste of what is inside of the PR Starter Pack. So enjoy this training. It's called 'How to Optimize LinkedIn.'
Gloria Chou 1:17
Because LinkedIn is such a powerful way to connect organically with editors, and you've seen now how it really works. You can literally comment on an editor's newsfeed. They will respond if you have an interesting point of view, because they're not expecting to be pitched to you on LinkedIn. So they are actually very open and receptive, and I've actually connected so many clients of mine to these legitimate high profile editors by just commenting on their LinkedIn feed. So what's important about LinkedIn is that you need to have an optimized profile. If your profile doesn't seem super legitimate, you're not putting your best foot forward as the industry expert that you are. So I'm going to teach you in the next few minutes how you can optimize your LinkedIn profile, and then how you can get visibility. Remember what I said about contributing to a higher domain authority website, how you can post on LinkedIn and get that traction, whether it's in a LinkedIn published article, or just on the posts and comments? So I've had my LinkedIn for the past few months. I went from having around 500 to 1000 contacts to nearly 7500 organic contacts, and these are mostly inbound requests. I was able to get my posts that I would post anywhere from I will go from like, maybe a few hundred views to around 5000 to 7000 views. So I'm gonna tell you step-by-step how I did that, so that you can achieve the same results and also get super visible on LinkedIn because that is a great, great way to establish your authority.
Gloria Chou 2:47
So this is my LinkedIn. And this is what it looks like right now. There's a couple things I want you to notice. The first one is the LinkedIn banner. Right here, from the banner all the way to the About Section, this is pretty much all that anyone sees. When I talk about prime real estate, this is what I mean by that. You really want to optimize everything that's right here because people are not going to be scrolling all the way down. Because I know I don't do that. How do you capture their attention by just these few elements? Well, first, you have the banners. The banner is something you can make custom in Canva. You can set up like a parameter saying that you want to LinkedIn banner, and they're going to size it to this dimension. And you want to have a call to action with a website. You do not want to waste real estate by putting a stock photo or an interesting graphic. Whether it's directing them to book a call with you or to solve a problem that you're trying to solve, or if you have a free event or a webinar or whatever it is to boost conversions, you want to put that here. For me, I use my banner to tell people about my live masterclass and what they're gonna get if they come to the masterclass is the free roadmap, and then how they can register. Very simple. Then this is what is super important is your bio, your headline. When I say headline, a couple characters that's right here. Notice that when you view people's profiles, they only see the headline. They don't see any more than these few sentences. So having this optimized is super helpful because that is all people see when they're scrolling through is your name and this headline. It's really important that you use this wisely. So what do I mean by that? So before, I used to have a headline that was former US diplomat, TV producer, and now like PR for startups. That was okay, but I could make it better. How do I make it better? By telling people who I serve, how I serve them, and the impact that I'm making. So instead of saying what your role is, whether you're an account executive or software engineer, you want to put who you're helping and how. So for me, I put 'I'm helping founders get featured and build credibility.' Because that's tangible. That's actionable. They understand what that means to get featured, and what it means to build credibility. And how do I do it? I do it without ever paying for ads or agencies. Now, you might have something where you're helping people like hack this, with 5000 clients served or whatever. So you can also put a numeric number in there. Then, I put at the end that I am a startup mentor and PR guru, so people understand that I have been vetted, that I am invited to teach my classes, various founders circles and serve circles, and so that speaks to the startup community. And the PR guru speaks to anyone who maybe isn't in startup, but they understand that I am in PR. I don't even mention here in the first sentence that I do PR. This is what I mean by really hacking this and making it super optimized. So people can understand in a split second, who you serve, how you serve, and your impact. And your About Section is also really key because a lot of people just tend to put what they do like here under their experience, but I can assure you less than 1% of people are actually going and deep diving in this, especially if you're a business owner.
Gloria Chou 2:47
Now, if you are working for a company and you are trying to appeal to recruiters, this might help more. But I feel like if you're on this masterclass, you're probably a founder and so that means that you will probably want to quickly tell people in your About Section what is the solution that you're giving, why it's so revolutionary, and why you've been vetted. So for me, I put in my mission. I put in 'I am a mentor and startup coach,' which shows people that I have been vetted, and what I believe in. And I believe that unlike an agency, it should not be a luxury item. Then I list out the places that I am actually a mentor, and then I list out how many views I've gotten from my clients. So for you, it might be like how many minutes saved or how much money saved or whatever that is, it's always good to put numbers. And then I put in all the places that I have gotten my organic press my earned press for clients. So it's basically in bullet points. It's quite long, but it's so much easier to read than putting three paragraphs and writing a novel. Because people on LinkedIn are browsing, they're not looking to read an article, and so that's why emojis work. That's why bullet points work, and that's why having quickly a really good headline is going to help you distinguish yourself amongst the crowd, and don't forget to use your banner.
Gloria Chou 7:29
So I'm going to show you exactly what I mean by before and after. So this is a client of mine, Corene Summers. She is a wellness coach. She's a bad-ass wellness coach that's basically using ancient wisdom to help people. She is a Lyme survivor. She's living with Lyme disease, and so she's has a course on cultivating peace, wellness, health, using ancient wisdom. This is her headline before, which is 'Empowering health-hungry humans to cultivate peace and power in a world of chaos.' Now, this sounds really nice. But if I was not in the wellness industry, it doesn't really speak to me like I don't understand what this means. It sounds great. But it just it's not really actionable and tangible. What I mean by optimizing it is that the headline I wrote for her is this one, 'Helping 100k plus empowered humans become their own wellness heroes by incorporating ancient wisdom into everyday life. And then she is also a Lyme warrior. She speaks a lot about Lyme disease. So this tells exactly the impact she's making. She's helped more than 100,000 empowered humans and also how she empowers them through ancient wisdom and making it accessible. That is what I mean by very quickly hacking that and making that.
Gloria Chou 8:48
So now that you have that, it's time to optimize your posts. So what I mean by that? I will show you an example of a post that I did that got around 5000 views. LinkedIn really likes a mix of video. They like audio and also plain text. So if you're posting three times a week, make sure you switch it up. Don't do only text. Maybe one day, put a photo and a text. Maybe one day, do a video. So this is one that I posted about five months ago. It was about a podcast that I did. I broke down what I said in the podcast and what we discussed and I used a lot of emojis, probably used too many hashtags. I recommend you using four hashtags max. Otherwise, it comes up a little spammy. In my post, I always put a call to action. So whether it's a next webinar or to download my lead magnet, whatever it is, you you always want to bring people to action. Whether it's to connect with you or follow you whatever it is. Because if you already have their attention, why not give them another action? So this one got around 7479 views and 163 comments. And how did I do this? First of all, I did not put any links in this post. Now LinkedIn wants you to stay on their platform. They are greedy for your attention. So if you put a link to an external website, like your own website, they're going to downgrade your posts. So what do you do? To work around it, I put in here, gloriachou.com. I spelled out d-o-t.com/webinar. And then I also put, 'the link is also like in the bio or in the comments.' That is one way to get around the fact that you want to share a link, but you don't want to lose out on your engagement. Then also, what you want to do is, if you have people you're super familiar with on LinkedIn, they're familiar with your work, just tag them, so that they will be able to engage with you because they're not going to feel that you're spammy because they are used to your work and they know what you're capable of. So that's what I did. I tagged some of the people that have been following me for a long time, who know that the tremendous value that I give, and they actually engage with me. Another thing is I put in the actual link how to register, because remember, you're not supposed to put any links in the actual post. Then I told all of my friends about it, when within the first hour, that is how LinkedIn measures your engagement to see if they want to bump up your post or downgrade your post. So that one hour after you posted is so key. That's why I always try to post around 11 to 3pm. Because I find that after 5pm, people are not really monitoring it. And on the weekends, people may or may not be on LinkedIn. So, within that hour, you want to tag everyone you know. As long as you know, they're not gonna get annoyed, you want to just basically harass your best friends to comment, and then you want to keep commenting. So the best thing for LinkedIn is that if they see like a long chain of discussion, so maybe someone posts and then you say, 'awesome, sign up,' and then they post and then you post. Try to have that as long of a chain as possible, because this shows LinkedIn that your post is valuable, and it's causing discussion. So, that is another hack. And the more you can do this, the better you can actually join a LinkedIn pod, whereby you invite four or five friends who are very active on LinkedIn to form a group message. Everyday, you drop in your link of the posts, and everyone comments, and you're all committed to each other success. That is how you can get the engagement up, way up. And I'm in a couple of these, where every day when I do post, I put in my link, and then we're supposed to comment on each other. So these are all the ways that you can hack and get your views up. You'll be surprised that if you just implement these simple hacks, you will be able to very quickly rank much higher on LinkedIn. You're gonna get a lot of really interesting people connecting with you and not as much of the spammy, random people that you see on here. You're gonna be able to start to stand out. Now obviously, if you want, you can upgrade and I can write your LinkedIn headline for you on our one-on-one per session. But this video should give you a really good guidance on how you can start and do this on your own. And it is all included with the PR Starter Pack that you purchase. And I really look forward to hearing your responses connecting with you on LinkedIn and supporting your growth and also commenting on your posts. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks, guys.