How to Become a Leading Voice in Your Field on LinkedIn

Okay, so let's go ahead and get started. I'm Sean Smith, and welcome to the Leading Voice program. I'm going to start my slide share. I hope everyone can see my screen. So this program, this free masterclass today for experts and professionals on LinkedIn is called How to Become a Leading Voice in Your Field on LinkedIn, even if you're an introvert like me. So as we get started, I'd like you to think about what made you decide to show up today.

Was it too many pestering emails from me, or was it curiosity about this concept of being a leading voice? I'd like to take a moment to talk about what it means to be a leading voice on LinkedIn. Unlike other platforms where we have influencers who are famous for, well, all sorts of things. LinkedIn, I created the term leading voice to describe people who in their own sector, in their own field, stand out in some way. And we'll get into that a little bit more. But think about what made you decide to show up today. And yeah, let's do this.

What you can expect from me today is I'm going to explain to you how I'm going to show up today. I'm going to explain to you why experienced professionals are different, why this is not a cookie cutter LinkedIn course. I'm going to provide a manageable solution to the LinkedIn problem that you can take home today. And you're going to get honesty in the benefit of my own failures at this. So one thing that I like to say, it's on our website at illumino.co. For pickleball too old for tick tock. You know, really, there's something interesting that's happening in the world of LinkedIn. It's been happening since the COVID pandemic,

I think. And even before that, really, is this shift towards creators and people sharing content. But what has happened as well, is that the with the with the amount of AI generated content that's that's out. in the world right now, the one thing that stands out for the search engines is expert voices. And there aren't enough expert voices on LinkedIn. And that is something that I would like to see change. So I'm hoping that the people with 10, 20, 30, even 40 years of experience will start to open up and share that experience in their own words on LinkedIn. The goal here is not to become an influencer. The goal here is not to get millions of followers.

The goal, which you can define for yourself, is to share value within a community. That said, LinkedIn is not like other platforms. LinkedIn is a business platform. And therefore, it is business focused. It's not free. It's not frivolous in any way most of the time. And so the idea is that there would be a business reason for doing this, for sharing content, and that ultimately it would be to sustain you and your career. One of the things that I talk about, and I'm going to talk about more,

is this concept of what I call the social funnel. And the social funnel, I like to say, sits somewhere in the middle of the world. And I think that's a really good idea. And I think that's a really good idea. And I think that's a really good idea. between personal branding and social selling. Two marketing terms that I find rather distasteful to begin with. But the social funnel is basically your intellectual property, your experience, your knowledge, your expertise shared on a platform like LinkedIn. And the benefits of that travel with you from job to job. It's not something that inures to the organization that you

work for, but really, it's a social funnel. And I think that's a really good idea. it becomes your own personal Rolodex and you take it with you when you go. Another reason this works is about a year and a half ago, LinkedIn rolled out a program called Creator Mode. And Creator Mode is an interesting thing. They're trying to attract more content of worth to their platform. And whether they're doing a good job of it or not remains to be seen, but they're definitely trying to attract people with expertise, people with knowledge, and people within given industries that have a lot to share. So I know that there were a number of people

from the medtech world, as well as from pharma and a few other areas, MSLs in particular, regulatory affairs, post-market surveillance, people showing up. And this is really who this program is created for. I spent more than the last year interviewing hundreds of experts in these areas on various topics. And what I discovered that is that I really enjoy most is speaking with experts. The reason I enjoy speaking with experts is because, well, they're interesting and they actually have something to say. And what they're saying is meaningful and valuable. And I don't see enough of that on the platform itself.

So by the end of the year, LinkedIn will be able to attract more people with knowledge and expertise. So I think that's the key. So at the end of today, this hour, what you're going to learn is why LinkedIn is the hottest platform for experienced professionals, why LinkedIn doesn't work for so many, and what really matters and what you can ignore and how to make LinkedIn work for you. Those three things, A, B, C. So you're in the right place if you're here to grow your audience and your network. You're in the right place if you're here to find new clients. You're here to find new clients or new opportunities for yourself or for your company. You're in the

right place if you're desiring to generate a steady income, steady business, steady leads, or just steady opportunities. As I said before, the thing about leading voice is that everybody gets to decide what that means for themselves. It's kind of like saying success to somebody. They fill in the blanks in their own mind. They fill in the blanks in their own mind. And so I would like you to fill in the blanks in your own mind. What does a leading voice look like? Is it somebody who has to get speak at conferences? Is it somebody who gets their travel paid for? You take your pick. Leading voice is not for you if you're not open to new

ideas, if you have no interest in sharing content. And I didn't say writing content or creating content. I said sharing content. And, or you're just here to look for some sort of, you know, quick get rich, get rich quick scheme for LinkedIn so that you can, you know, spam people. I don't, I don't, I don't believe in automation for LinkedIn. I don't, I don't use it. So all I ask of you today is that you watch and listen and give me your attention and, and not assume that leading voices like other programs is because it really isn't. Also, anybody that decides to take action today and enroll in the paid course will get a free.

One-on-one profile review and content review with, with me. So as I think about it, it's really a question of, you have two choices. You know, do you want to build a curated audience with ideal clients, other leading voices, an audience that engages, looks forward to your posts, who respect your authority and who will take your calls when you reach out to them? Or do you want to continue like Mike? Do you want most of us to have a hodge podge of non buyers and former colleagues, disengage strangers that don't know who you are and don't care or prospects who, you know, avoid your call and don't reply to your messages?

It's kind of an either or proposition for most of us. So, let me tell you a little bit who I am. I love this picture because it makes me look like such a stud and I'm really just a total nerd. But the I'm not a LinkedIn guru. This is something I say all the time. I mean, I've, I'vecoins self unseen all the time. to say all the time, I am not a LinkedIn guru. You know, I didn't go to graduate school twice to teach people LinkedIn. I'm teaching LinkedIn because it's something that I know how to teach. You know, it's a framework. It's a part of marketing. And it is something that can be very, very valuable to people. And what I found was that not enough people, not enough experts,

not enough scientists, not enough archivists, not enough people really understand how to share their content. So who am I? I'm a former chief marketing officer. I worked my way up from the bottom of the ladder in a regulatory publishing company called Thompson Publishing Group. I went to FDC Reports, which became Elsevier Business Intelligence. From there, I went to a number of software providers, always in the life sciences industry. I've been working within the life sciences industry for four years. And I've been working in the life sciences industry for four years. And I've been working in the life sciences industry for four years. And I've been working

in the life sciences industry for nearly 25 years at this point. I'm the founder of Virtue B2B marketing agency, the creator of a program called Story 2021, and a member of Forbes Council. I'm, yeah, you get the idea. I hate that part. So I want to tell you a little bit of my journey. I went to undergraduate school. I was an art student, as a matter of fact, painting, drawing, sculpture. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no classes where we had to read, except two semesters of intellectual heritage and art history every, every semester, you know, and I was going to be the next Andy Warhol. And when

that didn't materialize, you know, I switched gears. I went back to school for, for marketing, you know, and, and then I became, over time, a B2B creator and worked my way up to the top of the ladder. Then at the beginning of the pandemic, I suddenly lost my job. And I found myself in a position where I had a choice, I could find a new job, or I could do my own thing. And I decided it was time to do my own thing. I had been building other people's brands for more than 20 years. I had been building other people's dreams for more than 20 years. And it was time to build my own.

And so I did. And I set out. And I built myself a website. And I wrote a press release. And I was like, ta-da, welcome to the world. And it was right at the start of the pandemic. It was May. And I launched to crickets because I had no brand, no list. And yeah, and certainly no paying clients. But I had a dream. And my dream was this. This is a this is this is Puglia. This is southern Italy. And I saw myself sitting in a garden. And so what I wanted to do was to build a career for myself that would allow me to work from anywhere, even southern Italy. And what I have now is, you know, a substantial following on LinkedIn, a differentiated

voice in the marketplace, a growing audience and and paying clients that I that I love working with, truly. So, um, you know, if you're thinking about betting on yourself, do it. Don't wait. You know, it doesn't get any easier. But do the course first. So why LinkedIn? Why now? So this is this is the the power statement here. You need a power statement, Sean. Here's my power statement. LinkedIn is the number one platform for experienced professionals to grow their audience and income. Bar none. Far better than any other platform, any other investment of your marketing time and money is LinkedIn. And I have been interviewing the experts for the book that's launching today, the 25 men tech leading voices to follow on LinkedIn. I don't know if any of you have seen those posts, but I think Dylan that's live now, right? So you can download that book immediately. And I really hope that you found this information helpful. And I'll see you in the next one. Bye bye.

And, you know, speaking to these 25 leading voices, many of them that I interviewed one-to-one, you know, they told me without exception that this has done wonders for not only their income, their career, their opportunities, but it's done wonders for their outlook on humanity, their sense of connection, their sense of well-being, their sense of belonging in the world. You know, and a lot of times the income opportunities aren't really like a quid pro quo. It's not like I sent out seven connection requests this week and three of them turned into clients. That's not the way this program works. So let's talk about why people work with other people, why they choose one thing over the other.

One of the experts in the Leading Voice book, his name is Omar Khatib. You're going to want to look him up if you're at all involved in sales and marketing because he's got some really inspiring ideas and he's really an amazing, amazing coach and salesman. And what he talks about is that when people buy, they're buying from you. They're not buying from a brand. They're not buying from a company. They're buying from an individual. But that individual needs to productize themselves and needs to make themselves appealing. And I'm going to switch gears for a moment and talk to you about how I evaluate people's LinkedIn programs.

So I'm going to go to my own profile. What I wanted to show you was, sorry, we got some incoming messages here, is what I look at when I look at somebody's profile. Because I can tell a lot about a person's profile. I can tell a lot about a person's profile.

Just by this information that is visible on their profile. And the first thing everybody looks at, and whether we like it or not, you're being judged. People are opening your profile and they're judging you. They're deciding whether or not to give you the interview, whether or not they want to come work with you, whether or not they're going to take your call or your connection request. So what I try to do is I try to tell people, look, what you want to do is you want to decide who is. Who is the audience that I would like to attract? And once you've decided on the audience that you would like to attract, then you want to make your profile as appealing as possible to that audience.

So that when they come here and they make the split-second decision, connect or not connect, call or don't call, respond or don't respond, hire or offer an interview or don't offer an interview, that they're feeling. This is not a science. This is a pseudoscience. Is that they're going to have a positive response when they see this. So professional photo. If you don't have a professional photo, please get a professional photo. Second of all, this background area is yours to do anything that you want with it. A lot of sales and marketing people like to use this space back here to sell. I like to use this space back here to add a little bit of flavor to who I am as a person.

So what you see here is my favorite place. This is in southern Italy. And then you see a quote from one of my favorite authors, Italo Calvino. Italo Calvino is not widely known in the United States. But among Europeans, he's fairly well known as an Italian author. And so they see this and they see the quote. And, you know, hopefully this makes me a more relatable person to people as well as expressing, you know, who I am. And then we get to the profile description. And the profile description. It tells you who I am. It also has keywords in it to help search engines find me. And it has the information that you need.

And then there's a humanizing element at the end, which says worker bee at heart. You know, I'm a worker bee. I am not C-suite. I like to roll up my sleeves, dig in, do the work, do the research, talk to the experts, do the interviews, write the white papers. You know, that's me. This is my company. This is the number of followers that I have. And this little secret thing up here is says that Sean knows how to customize his URL. One of the dead giveaways that you don't know very much about LinkedIn is when this is the default setting that was given to you by LinkedIn itself.

The next most important thing is this section right here. This is the activity you can look here and find out how many followers somebody has and then show all of their activity. When you look at somebody's activity, what you want to do is go directly to their posts. You want to see the frequency of their posts and you want to see the the amount of engagement that they're getting. And by engagement, I'm talking specifically about the number of reactions, the number of comments and the number of reposts that they're getting. And when you look at that and you see that the person generally has more than one.

And if you look at that and you see that the person generally has more than one. If you look at that and you see that the person generally has greater than 10 or fewer than 10 likes and comments, that tells you everything that you need to know about their LinkedIn game. So on that note, I'm going to try to go back to this. So back to the idea of, you know, why do people choose to connect with you? And, you know, why don't they?

Well, it really is very much about judging a book by its cover. And so if this is your calling card and this is the chance that you have to make an impression on people, then you really want to do your best to optimize that opportunity so that you are able to connect with the audience of of your choice. The next thing I'm going to say is that everyone hates marketing. Even marketers hate marketing, to tell the truth. I've been a marketer for a very, very long time. I've been a marketer for a very, very long time. I've been a marketer for a very, very long time. And there's nothing I hate more than marketing myself.

And it's not comfortable. It's not something that most people feel good about. And so what I found works much better is sharing value. Now, I did want to talk about three common misconceptions about LinkedIn. And refute them. The first misconception is LinkedIn doesn't work for experienced professionals. And by experienced professionals, today I'm talking about people in med tech, regulatory affairs, post-market surveillance, et cetera. Scientists by nature. Experts, subject matter experts. People with deep industry knowledge.

Medical science liaisons, pardon me. And other groups who have a lot of knowledge but think, oh, you know, LinkedIn, that's for marketing and salespeople. And the other misconception is that people who spend time on LinkedIn posting, commenting aren't serious. I disagree. I disagree. I find that in this time period, in this era of asynchronous communication, it's actually a way of optimizing the use of your own time.

That the downtime, the minutes in between the meetings, the minutes in between phone calls, the minutes in between tasks can be used more effectively by engaging with others and building a sense of community. So even if your goal is not like, well, I need to do this. I need to bring in more revenue for the company. Your goal is simply to build a supportive community for yourself. Then I think that every minute spent asynchronously on this platform, and it's a term that I'm going to be using a lot, is minutes well spent. And that those minutes don't need to be, you know, half hour chunks of time.

You don't need to say, I'm going to block out an hour a day to do LinkedIn. No, I really recommend. You know, having the app on your phone and logging into it the way they might check Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. And then misconception number three is there's no ROI from LinkedIn if you're not in sales. As I said, I spent a lot of time talking with experts over the last several weeks who are killing it on LinkedIn. And some really, really exciting stories came out of that. We're going to be publishing an article about this. In. MedTech Insight that Dylan wrote and my colleague, Dylan Brock.

And, you know, some really, some really, really interesting stuff from people that are going to recognize their names. And they're talking about their LinkedIn journey and how it has benefited them in many, many ways that aren't purely financial, but also benefited them very much so financially. And these are not salespeople. So why, why are people having a bad experience on, on LinkedIn? I'm going to let you in on one gigantic secret about LinkedIn and it's called dwell time. Dwell time means that the LinkedIn algorithm is measuring the value of your content.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Based on how quickly you bring people to their platform and how long you keep them there. So a lot of the things that people are sharing, particularly things with external links are getting downgraded in the algorithm and not shown to very many people. LinkedIn basically gives you an hour or two to get 10 likes or comments in a very organic way. Or they decide that your, that your content has no value and they show it to very few people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most people have this experience of posting content, a lot of times using external links,

doing reposts, things that were given to them by the marketing department who really should know better, and asked to post it for an upcoming webinar, for an article that was written or published or a speaking engagement that's coming up. And unfortunately, by using the external links, what they're doing is cutting their exposure in half. So rather than LinkedIn showing it to 200 people in the first hour or two, they show it to 50 people, maybe 100. And if you don't get 10 likes and comments from those people, then they're saying, oh, look, nobody's interested in this. And then they just deep six it.

Nobody sees it. The other is boring content feeds. And this is a thing. This is on all of us. This is really where we need to step up as a community and try to come together to create more interesting, more engaging stuff. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that. And the third thing is just the really unacceptable behavior of spammy connection requests where you've got a connection request and two seconds later, you're bombarded with this automated email that says, hey, this is what I do. You want to book a meeting? How about 30 minutes? And then they follow up with you with another automated thing.

Hey, don't know if you saw my first message. Yeah, I saw your first message. Thanks. And so, as I said before, really, the problem is most professionals don't understand how to share their content and the amount of boring content that's out there, the amount of external links. So, it's not a constant thing. It's an endless cycle of regurgitated marketing material and AI generated fluff that's out there and makes it really easy for an authentic expert voice to stand out. If you start sharing your ideas, even minimally, on a regular basis, you will quickly

build an audience for yourself. I guarantee it. Yeah. Third thing is that most people really are open to connecting with you. If you really know what you're talking about and you're really good at what you do, people are open to meeting with you. People are interested in what you have to say. What people are shut down about is that they don't want to be pestered. They don't want people nagging them. We call it demo badgering. Do you want a demo now? Do you want a demo now? Do you want a demo now? And the answer is no. How about 30 minutes? Can we have 30 minutes of your time? No. I don't even talk to my father for 30 minutes on a regular basis.

So the other truth is that very few professionals understand LinkedIn. And doing better on LinkedIn is easy, is an easy way to build your audience. Oh, doing better on LinkedIn is easy. Here's the secret. Build your audience and share things that they'll want. So you really need to build an audience with intention. And one way to build an audience with intention is by following the leading voices that are already present in your industry. And that's the reason, one of the reasons why we publish the leading voices in MedTech. Because guess what? LinkedIn doesn't make it easy for you to find out who the leading voices are in your sector.

In fact, there's no way to search to find out who has, oh, I don't know, the most followers, the most popular posts. Anything. There's no. It doesn't exist. So I ran an experiment with a group of people about a year ago. And it was called hashtag breaking LinkedIn. And what we did was we got about 25 people together. And we decided we were all going to post at noon on a Friday. And that we were all going to use the hashtag. Breaking LinkedIn. And then what we were going to do was hop on and like and comment on each other's stuff immediately following posting our own.

And what was crazy was that five or six of the 25 people received this message, including me, the following Monday. Which was, congratulations, your post is in the top 1% engagement on LinkedIn. See the reactions. And this is the actual spreadsheet from the group. It was part of a cohort that I was in. And most of the people in the group. So these are the people that received the notification. So I guess it was six out of 25 people. And everyone in the group got five to 10x the number of impressions that they ordinarily got when they posted alone. And so this is what I've been talking about. LinkedIn is not a solo sport.

It is a team sport. And you need a team. And you need a cohort to help support you in your efforts on LinkedIn. So I've developed a program which is based on four parts. And step one is developing the content. Understanding the content. Understanding the kind of content that's working and that's working today on LinkedIn. And believe me, it shifts like every three months. So you've got to kind of keep. You know, remember when everybody was doing polls? And it was like, oh, polls are the thing. Everybody's doing a poll on LinkedIn. Polls aren't the thing anymore. Videos, you know, some people say videos are the thing.

Actually, the things that's still doing the best is single image and text posts. Where the post itself is written in engaging format and with careful attention paid to spacing. A lot of you may notice that I use emoji. And single lines of copy or, you know, 131 sort of one line, three lines, one line. Nobody wants to read a wall of text on LinkedIn. So you need to pay careful attention to some best practices. Like, you know, reformatting your ideas in a way that makes it easy for people to skim. Makes it easy for people to take away the big ideas. And what that does, it's like when you have a poll quote in the middle of a magazine article.

The data. The data. The data. It draws you back into reading the rest of the copy itself and engaging with it longer. And remember, LinkedIn is evaluating you based on how long people are spending time with your content. So if you just put a picture up and it's a refrigerator magnet and it's like, you are powerful, girl, you go. Sorry. I don't know. I just think that's Facebook behavior. Really, what we're talking about here is value. And engaging people by delivering value. So the things that perform really well, have you ever seen the sort of complex flow charts, the multi-page PDFs, a lot of the MDCG working group documents that get reposted will get like, I don't know, 400 or 500 likes.

I mean, Stefano Belleta like kills it just by reposting documents from the EU and the MDCG working group. It's pretty incredible. He has 31,000, 32,000 followers and it's just growing by leaps and bounds. You know, he's remarkable. So then curation. A lot of times when people think about curation, they think about curation in terms of curating content. When I talk about curation, I'm talking about a curated audience. I'm talking about being very intentional about the audience that you want to attract and why you want to attract. And one thing that I like people to keep in mind when they think about this is, well, I just want to attract people with buying authority.

You know, this is not that kind of sales channel. This is social selling. And social selling is about building confidence and trust with the audience that you're trying to have clout with. And in order to do that, you need to have an audience that's built up of the members of the communities that you're trying to have clout with. And you need to have a community that you're trying to engage with that you want to be involved with. And for many of us, you know, in med tech and life sciences, those are small communities. Those aren't gigantic, enormous communities where you're going to have 50, 100,000 followers.

It's going to be more in the 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 range. You know, maybe 20,000 at the most. But really, very few people go over that number unless they're what I call super connectors, you know. And so I think that's a great way to start. And if that's your goal, then, you know, a salute. Have fun with it. But I say, you know, the idea behind becoming a leading voice is not about quantity. It's about the quality of the connections that you're building, you know, and are you building trust with that audience? So when you reach out to people, a lot of the business books and courses on LinkedIn that I've seen say, hi, I saw we have a number of connections.

And I'm like, eh, you know, I say, this is how you do it. I just read your article, your post. I really enjoyed it. Something more emphatic than that. You know, use your own words. I'd love to connect if you're open to that. Many of you may have gotten connection requests from me that say I'd love to connect with you if you're open to that. It's a gentle way of asking. You're giving the person the opportunity to say no without having to say no. Right. You're saying no, I'm not really open to that. Right. Or you are. And so it allows them, you know, it doesn't pressure them.

Just listen to your podcast. Watch your video. Caught your webinar. And I have to say you made me laugh, cry, think, remember. I'd love to learn more. Let's connect here if you're open to that. You'd be amazed at the response that you got to this kind of connection. Request as opposed to this kind over here. You know, probably the difference being, you know, a 10% connection rate, depending on who you are versus a 50 to 100% connection rate. Using it this way, depending on again who you are. I never ever do this. Send unsolicited in mail offers or use immediate auto replies with your new connections.

That's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That are your pitch that ask for their time that, you know, are praxy. Oh, And this is what I call my my hall of shame. And I collect really really bad ones. Hey, thanks for connecting. How's your business. Don't ask questions that you don't want the answer to. Don't be insincere with people. Don't start with. I hope you're well. Does it really matter to you if they're well, say why you're writing to people? Tell them what you want from them. Don't waste their time with meaningless words. I'm curious to know how you manage your...

No, you're not. You're not curious. Just FYI. Just FYI, really? You actually put that into writing? My white label creative design agency. Okay, you lost me. Because you know what? I don't need a creative design agency. And you obviously don't know anything about me. So we're done, right? Now, the other thing is that when it comes to building your network, most programs recommend like a three to five step approach where they say research, connect, engage, build, call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leading Voice suggests six to nine step content-based approach for professionals, creators. And that is to do your research,

find the people that you want to connect with. Don't try to connect with more than 10 people a day. But when they connect with you, thank them and offer them something of value. Or I just say thanks. I say thanks for connecting. I don't usually have an offer at the ready where I'm like, hey, do you want to buy my program? And then over the next several weeks, take the time to make sure that your posts, things that you're sharing, demonstrate your expertise. Maybe, maybe. At some point, there's what's called a call to action, a CTA in marketing terms, where you're asking for something. You're saying, hey, do you want to sign up for this webinar?

Do you want to come to this event? Do you want to do this, that, or the other thing? But really, the ratio of your time on LinkedIn, I want you to think of it like this. 40% of your time should be spent liking and commenting on other people's stuff. 40% of your time on original content creation should be spent on your own content creation. And then the other thing is, you should spend 10% on direct engagement with people. And maybe, maybe 10% of the things that you put out there should be promotional in nature. And most people have that more or less backwards. They spend no time engaging with other people's comments.

They don't leave supportive comments for other people. They just slap a like on something and move on. And really, you're going to start to see the art of the supportive comment that you're really going to start excelling in this program. Step three is community. And when we talk about community, we're talking about building yourself a supportive network. I like to think of it as being part of a tapestry. And that you are a single thread on your own. But once you're woven into the tapestry, you become part of a larger picture. You become part of a larger community. Community is not something that you can just say,

that's not something that you snap your fingers and you make happen. Now, a lot of you are going to remember LinkedIn groups. And you'll notice that LinkedIn groups died a quick and fast death. And the reason that happened was because some super connectors had built large audiences of hundreds of thousands of people. And we're basically circumventing the revenue channels for the platform itself, which is advertising sales and job recruiters. So if you take away their main revenue drivers, they have very little motivation to support groups. And so they just basically destroyed them. They're not supported.

And they took away a lot of the power that the admins had to monitor groups and to control them. And now when you open a group, you'll see that not a single post has any likes on it. And it's just full of ad after ad after ad. We're hiring. We're hiring. We're hiring. Hey, come to my webinar. Hey, I just published this. And it's just like Twitter. It's like just shouting into the void. So I don't know anywhere near groups. There are some private smaller groups that are still kind of functional. But again, for the most part, the idea is to sort of curate your own audience. The next thing I want to talk about is moving people off the platform.

Creating some sort of subscription mechanism, some sort of way to move people off of the LinkedIn list and onto your list. And one of the ways that I do that is by doing webinars, because you get the download information and, you know, you can create an event on LinkedIn and you can offer it out to the community. And today is an example of that. I posted about that earlier this morning. And those of you that have not seen my post today, I encourage you to take a look at it because it really is a very powerful illustration of this principle. And lastly, step four is collaborations.

And I think, you know, one of the best examples of collaborations was this idea that I had, you know, a while ago, which was to try to identify the top people, people in med tech worth following and to put together the book of med tech leading voices for several reasons. One, it's so hard to do the research on your own. Two, I find that so many experts don't even know where to begin with who to follow or what good looks like. And so my idea behind the book was to say, here are examples of people who are using LinkedIn from a variety of areas. They're not all consultants. They're not all salespeople.

They're scientists. They're experts. They're regulators. And, you know, they're not trying to be clever or funny or witty or charming. They're sharing value and sharing value is what this is really about. So I've been connected with those 25 people, having gotten their permission to include them in the book. And then when I went to them and I said, hey, I could use your help trying to promote my masterclass this week because, you know, I ran out of time and I didn't market my own stuff because, as I said, even marketers hate marketing. So, you know, once that was in place, the class filled up rather quickly.

Same thing works with my clients. You know, I launched programs. On LinkedIn, I recruit experts. This is this is this is my my bench of experts. This is my go to place. This is where I find people to connect with. And the last thing I'm going to say is about this is like the best trick is to go to those leading voices and to see the people who are commenting and liking their stuff, because those are the people that are active on LinkedIn. Those are the people that understand LinkedIn. And and and start connecting with those people. You can open up the likes. You can see the list of people and you can send connection requests directly to those people.

Hey, I liked your comment on the SEALs post today. Would you be open to connecting? See how that works. They're going to then go back, look at your profile, say, does this person look trustworthy? Does this person look attractive? Does this person look like somebody that's going to harass me or somebody that's going to add value to my network? That's why you need to optimize your profile. That's why your profile needs to be as attractive as possible to the people that you're trying to attract. So review the four C's content, curation, community and collaborations. This is what LinkedIn is about. It's not about posting every day.

It's not about commenting every day. It's about being a member of a platform. And knowing how that understanding how that platform works and then using it to your own advantage, whether you're a job seeker or whether you're, you know, deciding to start your own consulting firm or you want you. You've owned a consulting firm for ten years and you just want more clients. You know, this is the best way to get there. So I'm not sure why you showed up today. Maybe you're a foreigner. Maybe you're frustrated that LinkedIn barriers your content. Maybe you want to get promoted. Maybe you want to build your audience, your client base.

Maybe you just heard that this was a friggin awesome program. I want you to remember this. LinkedIn is the number one platform for experienced professionals to grow their audience and income. Bar none. Now, if you believe me, if you believe what I've been telling you, and we only have ten minutes left, that LinkedIn is the fastest and most direct way. To build trust and connection. And you think that you may be able to do that. That could even work for you. Then you have two choices. You can wait for everyone else in your industry to figure it out. Because right now only the really early adopters have.

And that's what I discovered when I did that research. There's just so many people that don't have any idea what they're doing on LinkedIn. And. You can wait for everyone else or you can take control now. And learn what it takes to make things and work for you. And it's not rocket science. Trust me. So, which do you prefer creating more random content, hodgepodge and having a hodgepodge of disengaged content, contacts or building a vibrant network of followers, fans and customers. Don't worry. The leading voice program doesn't cost thousands. Even hundreds of dollars. Well, close. If you order now.

It's less than $50 a week for four weeks. And I'm throwing in a 20% discount today. Which will be valid until. Sunday night. At midnight. So whether you are an aspiring leading voice, a consultant, a founder, business owner, a scientist, or SME, a medical writer or journalist. This is my promise. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. I promise. During the program that I'm launching is you'll learn how to make LinkedIn work for you. To create your presence. To engage. To build. Establish. Create and build a pipeline. This is the program at a glance. It's a 30-day program. It's a cohort-based program.

And this is really important. Because like the breaking LinkedIn experiment that I did. The goal behind doing this with 100 like-minded. Business professionals. Is to support one another in their efforts to reach their goals. To write encouraging comments. And to help boost their posts to make sure that they don't languish on the vine. So you get 30 short lessons delivered in your email. There will be 23 posting sessions which you can participate in or not. We hope that you will. We hope that you'll at least. Provide support. Provide supportive comments. And learn from the people who are posting.

We'll provide post templates that you can use. The templates aren't. You really want to be careful with post templates. The post templates that I write explain broadly. This is where the introduction goes. This is where you tell your story. This is how to format the thing. This is how to, you know, make the thing come to life. We're going to have five expert speakers that you're going to love. And you'll have one-to-one coaching opportunity with me. There are also four group calls. Which are, you know, probably going to be on like a Saturday. So that people can log in and ask anything that they want.

We can review what happened during the week. And come together. And figure out what's needed. So. Ask yourself, is this something that sounds like it would be good for you? Do you learn by doing? Do you enjoy short lessons? Do you need accountability? Would being part of a group help motivate you? Group exercise classes motivate the hell out of me. So this is like group exercise class for LinkedIn. And then I want you to imagine, you know, what would feel, what success would look like. What would success look like for you? What would it mean? If six months or a year from now, you saw such huge boost in engagement, such.

A huge boost in engagement. And you're like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I knew it. I'm going to do this. I knew I would be a part of it. It has been such a much larger audience. What, what does that mean to you? To be a leading voice. This is the program. And you're also going to get a free guide. That is. I think I wrote about our writing white papers a while ago. authority, and trust with audiences without, you know, wearing them down with stuff that is too detailed or too jargony. And then, as I said, if you act now, you'll get the one-on-one profile

review. And here's the best part. If you're not happy with the program after a week, you know, and you said, I tried this, I'll refund your money. You know, I'm not doing this for the money. I'm doing this because this is what I'm passionate about, is working with experts and helping business professionals achieve their goals. That brings me enormous satisfaction. And so, if you're not happy, you know, I'm not, yeah. Here's a testimonial. Thank you, Robbie. This is from the previous version of this program that I did. If you look up Robbie Crabtree, I suggest that you do, particularly if you're a founder,

because he teaches founders how to do storytelling. But not just founders. I mean, seriously, like anybody can benefit from Robbie Crabtree. So, if you're listening to this, check him out on LinkedIn and tell him Sean Smith said to connect with him. Okay. So, that's it. Final discussion. Disclaimer, I do not work, nor am I affiliated with or endorsed by LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn user, just like you are. And so, yeah, that's what you need to know. So, don't think that, you know, you're joining a LinkedIn program sponsored by LinkedIn. And then, as I said, we are offering

a discount until midnight Sunday night, Eastern time to take advantage of that. If you go to the enrollment page, and so, the regular price is $197 minus 20% would be like $40 off. So, that's pretty good. So, $157 for a one-month course, you know, it's a few dollars a day. And yeah, and you're going to get a tremendous amount of value out of it. If you point your camera at the end of the course, you're going to get a tremendous amount of value out of it. QR code, it will open the website. Or you can just go to Illumino.co, and you'll find it there. If you have any questions, you can email them to me at hello at Illumino.co. Or I encourage all

of you to send me a LinkedIn connection request. And we're about at the end of the hour. Um, please, feel free to email questions to me, or to reach out to me through LinkedIn. I'm happy to respond. And, yeah, that's it. Thanks, everyone. Have a great rest of your day. Hope that was worth it for you. Bye bye.