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Build LinkedIn Habits

Habits are, and I love this quote, so, and don't get me wrong. Like, I'm not sitting around reading Aristotle, just so you all know, I just love this quote. It's not, I just like have a pipe and I'm like, have my cardigan, and I'm like oh. Oh, I'm not trying to offend anybody with my British accent, by the way. It's pretty bad. Laura, yours is, by the way, doesn't she have a fantastic accent, by the way? Do we, can we all agree on that? Now she's embarrassed, look at her, so. We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence then is not an act, but it's a habit, okay. And here are the three daily steps for how I do it and what we look for in kinda the habit part is that we share everyday. I will share every single day. This is the habit that I get into. Yes, I wake up and I clean the throw-up off of my shirt, but I also get up every single day and I get into my feed and I think to myself, what are some of the things I learned yesterday? And this is another really one that I love is I...

actually have a LinkedIn log. I like to journal, anybody else like to journal in here? So I have a journal that I keep for everything 'cause I just like to write things down or else I'll forget them. I don't always have, like, my computer with me so I keep a LinkedIn section of that journal where it's just like good ideas for articles, good ideas for posts, people that I want to follow, people that have mentioned books to me. And what I'll do is I'll start to compile ideas so everyday I'm not sitting down and being like huh, what do I need to post today? I need to think of something. No, you have so much that's happening in your daily lives right now that you can talk about, right? Like I niche in sales, you are gonna be, there's something completely different for you, maybe it is sales. But I start writing ideas and thoughts I'm having or like I think about these emails. Like, somebody sent me an email yesterday and I'm like, man, that was such a good prospecting email. No one sends good prospecting emails. No one's thoughtful, no one cares, I need to write a post about it. 30,000 views later, other people like that too. And sometimes it's a complete flop. Like, I've written stuff that's terrible, right? Like there's people like uh, you have one like on that photo because no one cares about what you ate for dinner because that's not the platform. I will say this. Professionals is the default. When my daughter was born, I put that up and I said hey, I know this isn't the correct forum for this, but I'm super pumped, like, this is my daughter, she's beautiful, and I got like, I think it was a hundred thousand views, something crazy like that. So I'm telling you that while it's professional, transparency and vulnerability wins too. People wanna know you're a human being. The more we can add that on there in what we post and share, the more that people will want to connect with you in a genuine way. Connect. If you're a salesperson and ever watched Glengarry Glen Ross I don't know if that's a movie or if anybody's ever seen that, but there's a famous scene and there's like ABC's of selling. It's always be closing, right? The new ABCs is always be connecting. Always be connecting. The thoughtfulness in being able to connect with people and build relationships now is the reason why I love LinkedIn in the first place. Like if somebody asked me today in one of the interviews I was doing, they're like, why do you love, like, what do you love about LinkedIn? I think LinkedIn was the first place that I genuinely connected with strangers. Because Facebook I have friends, so I know you, I accept you, we're friends. These are people that I'm like, I'm actively looking for other people to connect with that I, like, I have commonalities with, I just don't know them yet. And it's kinda pulling that into like hey, be good at connecting online because you're probably gonna be really good at connecting in real life. But a lot of my best relationships I've had in my life and the affinity I have for this platform is because I made them on the platform and they became real life connections for me. People I do business with, people that I've accomplished a ton with, and all of that just came out of like, I read your article and I think you're great. And I was the only person who wrote on it. So, let's talk, and they're like great, and we did. And there's been so many fruitful things that have come out of that, so always be connecting. And then audit that. Audit your profiles, audit all of your information. The public-facing stuff that you put out there to the world should be audited daily. It changes so fast. Everything in your descriptions, that great narrative I talked about, what happens if I was like, you know, yesterday I had somebody come up to me and they're like, I got an email from somebody who had never met me before, they saw my email on LinkedIn and they read my summary. And do you wanna know what the subject line said? I dressed up as a salesman for Halloween. (chuckling) And it was just this fantastic like, ode to being a salesperson. But saying somebody was like man, I just wanna be on this mission with you and I just wanted to connect with you. I thought I'd give you a shout out 'cause it's not easy to be on that mission to take back sales. Like the more that we sit around and we audit and we tweak and we just care and we're in there daily into our LinkedIn profile, the more that people will genuinely want to connect with you in life, not just on this platform. And I think that the first time that they interact with you just gets to be online, which is pretty cool. Alright, learning something? Alright, good. It's a lot of information. So they also make it really easy for you to understand when you've reached all-star status on LinkedIn. It's because they actually give it that distinction. So as you're scrolling through your page, you have this new dashboard section right below your headline. And it's going to show you all the stuff I showed you before about like connecting and being a mentor, but on the right-hand side it'll say you're an all-star status. So being an all-star on LinkedIn, they will tell you that you've achieved it and typically what that means is you have a photo, woo! You've listed out five skills, you have an education section with something on it, and then you also have a location summary and industry and the position that you currently hold in an organization. That seems pretty easy to be an all-star on LinkedIn, right? So the first time I saw that and the reason why I even created this class where it's called all-star status is because there's a lot more to it than that, to really get it outta here. So I always laugh when they put that out there. I'm like, you're setting the bar pretty low. I'm pretty sure everyone's just like (chuckling) all-star, look! It's like ta-da! Like, I did it. And then here's like a Jerry Springer final thought, but I wanna share one extra little piece of information for you that most people don't. Your profile isn't yours. Your profile is actually not yours, and I think the more we know that about Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff, they own that data. So everything you do on this platform, if they went down, or LinkedIn changed its game, or Microsoft was like no, we're goin' back to Lennox or whatever they, I don't know what it is, I don't know, I don't know if that's true. Lennox isn't even a thing. If they did that, you lose everything. So what I wanna teach you right now is to actually go back and figure out how to get all of that data, every connection that you've ever had on LinkedIn. So under the settings and privacy section, so if you go to LinkedIn right now and you're at the me, does everybody see this me section with your little bubble head in there? If you down, if you actually click down on it, it'll give you settings and privacy. When you click on your settings and privacy, it's going to bring you into this privacy section where you wanna click on that. And then as you scroll down to the how LinkedIn uses your data section, download your data, click the works, that's everything and hit request. That downloads all of your contacts' information, all of your articles, all of your posts, everything you've ever done on there, photos, all of it, and they send it to you in an email. Pretty crazy, right? I do this once a month. Once a month, because if, for some reason, you know, I can't log into LinkedIn or whatever, I've written such great content on there. Not only have I written great content, but I'm connected with some pretty amazing people that I just don't know if like I would have access to them or think about connecting with them, or I'd lose those connections if anything went down. So please, I beg you to go on and make sure that you are downloading your data and making sure that this, these people you're connected with and all this really great content you're putting out in the world is actually yours. Cool? Recap, let's do it. Optimize your profile. That's the first think you should be doing. If you're thinking about being an all-star on LinkedIn, you gotta have a great profile, use all those beautiful pictures and everything that you did, write those great summaries, let people get your personality, let them know what mission you're on, right? Grow your network. So make sure you're connecting with the right people, not just everybody, okay? If you're in here right now and you're in the back of your mind like oh crap, I accept everyone all the time. Go back through audit those people, alright? Make sure you're connecting with the right people and make sure that they're connected to the right people and that they're engaging in the industry you want to be in. Share and lead, okay? So you want to be able to share. Leadership on this site is about sharing. It's sharing other people's content, it's creating your own. If you're not an expert, you don't have the authority in that area, find people that do. Follow people that do, connect with people that do. Share that information, it's just as powerful. I share people's stuff all the time that's not my own. I have my original thoughts on it. It's called education, okay? If you've been a part of any formal education, it's other people who've learned other people's stuff who are experts in it, teaching you their stuff, and then you go out with a degree with those people's stuff that they learned about other people's stuff. So congratulations, that's exactly what this model looks like. And I was actually having a conversation with Ryan Deiss who's our CEO of our company, and he was talking about how a PhD was truly somebody who had an original thought. Like, a master's level course with somebody that actually just mastered somebody else's information, and PhDs during their dissertation and all that stuff are actually being tested on does your original thought stack up to what we already know to be true? So if you think about those things about thought leadership, then you can also say that like thought leadership is taking a bunch of other people's ideas too and sharing those because they're great ideas, and mastering those ideas. But if you wanna start being a thought leader, it's authentically and it's brand new information to the world that's your thoughts. Cool, huh? Create a daily routine. Last one is that habitual part. You know, we are what we repeatedly do, right? So everything that we do on a daily basis, you wake up, you do this, you're in LinkedIn. Number three, okay? Or four or five or whatever your day is. But I typically get really busy. I don't know about you, I typically get really busy in my day, and if it's not scheduled out, I won't do it. If I'm sitting around thinking like, you know what? I'm gonna spend 30 minutes in LinkedIn today. I've got my LinkedIn log journal, my diary, and I'm writing out all these great ideas. If I don't actually do that and give myself a little bit of time every morning, then it won't ever get done. It just won't happen. That works with everything, but you have to be habitual with this platform, and you need to be daily and it needs to be something that you're committing to if it's ever gonna work for you and you're gonna get the most out of it. So the other part is is that this my LinkedIn page, Marcus A. Murphy. I will do this. I say this with the classes that I usually meet with. And if you do, send me a message, I do reply. It takes me a little bit of time sometimes, but I go through those on planes, I go through them in my spare time. I usually, like, if I'm somewhere, I always go through and I would love to talk to you about your business. I would love to talk to you about anything LinkedIn related. And I do actually engage. That's the one thing I like to hang my hat on in life is that I really do believe that I should be connecting with people, and I care about that a tremendous deal, so make sure you connect with me. And then I did wanna say thank you very, very much for even coming here and taking this time to learn about LinkedIn. And I did wanna see if we had any questions or if I can open up and be of any help to anybody. Yeah, we've got a couple of minutes to get a couple of questions in. Great. I don't know about anybody else, but I've never been excited to go home and review my LinkedIn. (laughter) This is like a new feeling. I'm like, I need to open it and change things now. So yeah, we've got a couple of minutes. What questions from the audience? So as one of two people in here not on LinkedIn, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's cool. Clearly I know nothing. I have my own business but I have no employees. Okay. Do I need a company page as well as a personal page or do I just need one or the other? Yeah, no, so that's a really great question. If you own a company and it's still just, I'm a solo-preneur, it's just me, having your page is also a place where other people can engage, not just your employees. So yes, I would say first, the short answer's yes, you should have a business page. But also, it's where people can find you too, and it adds a level of credibility. It's like having a Facebook page or a fan page on Facebook. Like all those places are points where prospective customers and clients can engage with you. So I would absolutely have that as like a, as a cone of influence for you to be able to share and distribute content, but also for people to find you.