← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
315 - The Inside Scoop on LinkedIn Marketing with Alex Rynne, Senior Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn
00:39:46
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- [00:02]
Daniel Murray
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the off.
- [00:28]
Welcome to another episode of the Marketing Millennials Podcast. Today's guest is Alex Rin, senior Content marketing manager at LinkedIn, aka the perfect person to break down what's actually working on LinkedIn right now. And you know, I love LinkedIn. That's where the Marketing Millennials was born. So let's dive into this episode. We talk about what's working on LinkedIn today, which features you should be using to grow how, how to build an engaged audience that drives results. If you want to level up your LinkedIn game today, this one's for you. Let's get into the episode. Today I have someone on the podcast. We're going to get inside information how to use LinkedIn for your business. For you, I got Alex, she works at LinkedIn. She's been at LinkedIn for 10 years. She's a senior content manager there for the marketing solutions. And we're going to dive in. So welcome, Alex, to the podcast.
- [01:28]
Alex Rin
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Longtime fan, first time caller.
- [01:33]
Daniel Murray
Let's just dive into just why LinkedIn first and then we can get into the nitty gritty.
- [01:42]
Alex Rin
Yeah. So why LinkedIn for marketers? I mean, in my opinion, that's where your audience is. People come to LinkedIn with a distinctly different mindset than they do when they go to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, even X. So people are coming with a professional mindset. People are coming for different reasons. I mean, yes, people are looking to connect with like minded professionals. People are also using it as their main source of industry information and people are using it for entertainment also. So yeah, I think one of the main reasons for marketers though is because it's where your audience is, that it's where the decision makers are at who are going to decide, you know, if your product is worth investing in. So yeah, it's a must have for marketers, especially B2B marketers.
- [02:34]
Daniel Murray
I want to go go into also what is the biggest mistake that you see a lot of B2B brands make when they, they join LinkedIn or even people who join LinkedIn that want to start utilizing it.
- [02:48]
Alex Rin
I'd say just like establishing a page and assuming that you're going to get a following like right away, it's similar to building a relationship with someone you don't go on a first date and ask them to marry you. It takes time to build a relationship. It takes consistency. So I think there's this expectation, okay, I came on, I created a page, I have these solutions that are great. Why aren't I getting more followers? Why aren't more people interacting with my content? And it just, it just takes time. The other thing from B2B marketers specifically, and this is no hate on anyone, just something that I've noticed is that a lot of B2B brands are pretty boring and they shouldn't be and they don't have to be. You know, there's people assume that with B2B buying decisions they, people don't want to be entertained, but they still want to be entertained. I think people assume that B2C brands can have a lot more fun. But B2B. B2B buying decisions are just as emotional and people still want to see humor and personality in their content. So I think I'd like to see more B2B companies in particular being a little bit more courageous and bold.
- [04:02]
Daniel Murray
So I want to talk about it because a lot of people think of LinkedIn as well. At least five, six years ago it's a place to get a job or network. Now it's more of a place where it's becoming a true social network. But I still think people are not thinking of it as a way to drive business and drive results. So I want to start of what are some tactical things people could do today to start getting attention on LinkedIn for their brand or themselves?
- [04:34]
Alex Rin
Yeah, I think, you know, it is similar to other social media sites in the sense that you should post consistently and making sure that your audience is or that your content is valuable to your audience. Meaning that it's audience centric. It's not necessarily about you and your product. Although at the end of the day that's what you're there for. It's more so alleviating your customers and prospects pain points. So yeah, yeah, I think one of the first things is just making sure that your, your content is audience centric, making sure that you're posting consistently, making use of all of the different content formats that are available to you. So you know, if you're, if you're publishing content on LinkedIn from your blog, that's great. But there's other ways to make that you can distribute that content. People want a blog post and maybe a visual format. So like a stat card or a nicely designed like quote card, a short video, whether that's something that's really like lo fi, like you did it on your phone or maybe you're doing a live stream that's like in some studio that you built if you have a little bit more funds. So I think making sure that it's a multi format approach, posting consistently and making sure that it's not all about you. I also think no one wants like a page that's like a used car salesman where it's like buy my product, buy my product. I would make sure that you have a full funnel approach, which means that you're not just going for the hard sell every time you're publishing some content. Maybe that's about industry news, that is product agnostic and that's how you become, you know, a trusted business intelligence partner to these people, not just a person who's trying to sell their product.
- [06:22]
Daniel Murray
So one thing LinkedIn just did recently is they, they're buffing up their, your, your analytics with, with newsletters. With posting we can go into like newsletters first because I think most people don't even know they can create a newsletter on LinkedIn. And then what was the move to start adding open rates and more analytics into newsletters? Was it feedback? What are you seeing with newsletters as a top of funnel strategy?
- [06:54]
Alex Rin
Newsletters have exploded in the best way possible. I think folks don't always have the bandwidth to be like checking your page constantly or that enough time to be coming on LinkedIn to absorb everything. So newsletters are the perfect way that if someone's interested in you or your content, like a summary of what are the top things that they need to know or like the top tips of the week, et cetera. So yeah, I mean, I think again it's just like a different format, a different vehicle to deliver your insights to your audience. So we thought, you know, it made sense given that people are more and More so seeing LinkedIn as a place to come and gain industry news and stay connected, to add that format and.
- [07:50]
Daniel Murray
Then I mean the other big format that LinkedIn's really pushing and you, if you can give tips on how to do this the best way, obviously it's video content and you have a video feed now and it's different than other platforms video feeds, but you still see other followers. But how should brains be utilizing that or people be using, using that feature and what are some tips for them to be actually seen in the feed?
- [08:21]
Alex Rin
That's a great question I've had. I've posted a lot myself, just videos about video. Very meta. And I've gotten Some, some feedback I've seen in the comments of like, you know, some, most people are jazzed. Most people are like, great, this is, this is amazing to see video on LinkedIn. We're excited. And some people are like, oh, no, I didn't want LinkedIn to become TikTok. Like, everyone calm down. LinkedIn is never going to be TikTok. That's not our MO. You know, it's just, it's like I said in the beginning, a different mindset. We're still a professional platform. We're not boring, but we're still a professional platform at the end of the day. So the type of content that you're coming to consume is different. So that's just like, know, square one. I think, secondly is just talking about what, you know, people are just like, I don't know what to record. You know, I don't know what to record. What should I talk about? I'm like, talk about what? You know, it's the same stuff that you post in on your blog, it's the same content that's on your website. It's just in a different format. Thirdly, I think it's an opportunity to really showcase your company's personality and maybe folks within your company, like your leaders. Because as we know, millennials and Gen Z, we're not just looking at a company and looking at the solutions, we're looking at the leaders and even like, what politics the leaders align with. What are there any sustainability practices or charitable practices within that company? We care more about the company as a whole and less just about, like the products. So anyway, my point is it's a great way to showcase your company's leaders, maybe some of your company's employees. At the end of the day, I believe that people buy from people, not from companies. So the more that you can humanize your brand with video, I think the better. And I would say a big barrier that I see to a lot of people even to begin with video on LinkedIn, is that they have this like, perfectionist idea that they want their, their videos to be great. And I get it. Like, we all want to put our best foot forward, like personally and professionally, whether it's for your personal page or whether it's for like the LinkedIn for marketing page. But it really doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, I don't think it should be perfect. Whatever the inconsistencies are or the, or like the hair that's out of place or like the dog barking in the background, all that stuff just makes you a lot more relatable and over time your videos are naturally going to get better. Like the first video I did, I look back now and I'm like, oh gosh, you know, like that was terrible. I was so clearly reading on off of like this queue thing that I'd set up for myself. But that naturally gets better over time as with anything in life. So yeah, I wouldn't be afraid to put stuff out there that's not perfect.
- [11:07]
Daniel Murray
I think also going deeper on that, I love that you said humanized brand. I love that you say people want to see the leaders behind the brand. They don't want to see faceless organizations. They also want to see like have a connection. Even in this age of AI where you, you don't know what posts are written by AI or what's not, it's a chance to get in front of people in a human way. But another thing that I think is really cool that you could do and I see a lot of people doing this and if you're a brand or you're like say have a podcast or any way you can. What LinkedIn does better than any other platform is you can pro boost that post or sponsor that post and get it seen by your ideal customer profile, which is the best part. So you can have a good video, you could see it performing, you want it to be seen by more of people, you want to be seen, you can put some money behind it. And I see a lot of people doing this. What strategies have you seen with that functionality of like boosting posts to get seen by the right audience at the right time?
- [12:16]
Alex Rin
Yeah, that's another good point because that's another thing that makes LinkedIn distinctly different from other platforms. We have the world's biggest database of, you know, first party professional data because people are coming in and willingly filling in out all this stuff about them. So we are targeting can get very granular. Now I wouldn't recommend doing like hyper targeting, but somewhere in between, you know, you don't want to do the spray and pray. You also don't want to go to niche on your hyper targeting, but you can on LinkedIn if you want to because we have those targeting capabilities in regards to boosting a post or whether it be video or otherwise. Just because we do live in an age of, you know, specific social media algorithms, you do have to pay to play, which is how I say it like you, you have to have budget to put paid behind your content because in my mind you should be spending around 20 that the 2080 rule. It's the golden rule that we follow on my team. So spend 20% of your time creating content, 80% of your time strategically distributing it from a paid and organic standpoint. Because if you created something awesome and then you don't take the time to distribute it, you just publish it once or twice and assume your whole audience has seen it, then that was a waste of your time. So you want to make sure that you're kind of like slicing and dicing it into different formats. Putting paid behind it. One strategy I see if you're like hesitant to put paid behind something because you don't want to waste your money, you're not sure if it's going to work, is use your organic strategy as a testing bed, right? So, like, you can post up organically and you notice that, like, this one blog post did really well, or this one, you know, carousel of images did really well. That's a good signal to you to inform your content strategy in the future. Oh, this hit a chord with my audience. Let's double click into that or let's like find another variation of that and then put paid behind that. Because it's. You're almost certain that you know this already resonated from an organic standpoint. The assumption is it's going to do much better on if you put paid behind it.
- [14:25]
Daniel Murray
I think the also is a thing I like to do, which I think is even an E is a softer test, I would say is use comments as a way to just test headlines or quick things. Because now you have analytics for comments too, which is now going to help people understand, hey, they're getting impressions. And if they get likes as well, that can inform you that, hey, maybe I should write a piece of content on this because it struck a chord with that audience. It's also, if you don't have a big audience, commenting on people who are getting attention is a great strategy because you're being seen in a feed of someone who is a trusted voice and you're commenting something valuable to that trusted voice and it makes you seem more trusted. So that's something that I think people don't do enough is use comments as a strategy to inform a lot of content as well.
- [15:25]
Alex Rin
I agree with that. I think the key word what you said is commenting something valuable. Some people just go on and like, they notice that one of my video posts is doing really well, so they see it as an opportunity to post a link to their website or like, talk about their product. And I'm like, yeah, no, like, I'm sorry, I'm going to delete that because this isn't a place for spam. But yeah, if it's a comment that's additive to the conversation. And like again social media is meant to be a two way street. It's not like me yelling into a megaphone or my brand yelling into a megaphone and assuming that people are gonna like that and that we're not gonna interact with them. So yeah, that's why I think that comments are very important to show again that you're human, that you're, that you're, there's someone on the, the other end of that computer who's willing to go and talk and go a back and forth conversation with you. So yeah, I like that, that strategy as long as it's additive to the conversation.
- [16:20]
Daniel Murray
A big trend that, I mean it's been going on for a little bit but it's are doubling down and we've met kind of hit it on a lot. But people also using personal brands and company pages to do a lot of their marketing. So a founder posting or head of marketing or whatever their audience is that they're, they want, they use utilizing those profiles as well as the personal brand. Do you part of the, the strategy of growing your brand or your company, do you recommend that you have some personal brands attached so you get seen more?
- [17:02]
Alex Rin
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think it has to, it has to come from an authentic place. Like, I think one thing that's more unique to millennials and like Gen Z is that we're just hyper aware of when we're being taught, when we're, when we're being marketed to. I feel like smell BS from a mile away. And so it has to come off as authentic. Like this person was already posting or this person, you know what I mean? Like it can't be like oh, the company clearly told this person to start posting but they're very stiff and it's clear that they're not having a good time doing it. I think if you're having fun creating content, it comes across very clear to the consumer and they have a fun, they have a good time consuming it. But yeah, I think in general it's important because it's like we talked what we mentioned before, you're humanizing your brand. You're showing the people you behind the organization that cause folks to just like your brand, have, have greater brand affinity. And I think at the end of the day also like it doesn't hurt because you, it's just another way to stay top of Mind, we always say that the brand that is bought is the brand that is remembered. So if people are seeing people that work at your company talking about stuff that's either associated with the brand or maybe stuff that's not associated with the brand, it just like builds the brand's credibility. Like, and for example, you know, I, like I mentioned I started posting videos about video with no intention of, just with the intention of trying to be helpful. Right? Because video is a new format on LinkedIn. And our internal growth team approached me and they asked me if they could put thought some thought leader ads, which is also a new content format behind some of those videos about video. And it turns out that those videos about video that didn't even mention LinkedIn video ads were some of our top converters over the past quarter. So it's just interesting. People want to hear from people. People are less of course you're gonna, you're gonna try people sell people on video ads if you're the LinkedIn for marketing channel. But if it's someone who works at LinkedIn who is, you know, obviously associated but also not pushing the product, just talking about like insider tips, that's gonna do well.
- [19:16]
Daniel Murray
So we talked about obviously that one ad strategy is like having organic strategy, boosting that post, getting seen by more. But the other side of it is actually running, running ads and having an ad strategy. But could you give some insights of what the best brands are doing to be successful with LinkedIn? Actual ads on the platform, not sponsored posts.
- [19:43]
Alex Rin
I think the first step is making sure that you're implementing an objective based advertising strategy. So it's not necessarily about the ad product that you choose itself, it's about what you're trying to achieve. So if you think about okay, what do I want? I want brand awareness. I want people to be more aware of what my brand is. I want lead generation. So you know, that's pretty self explanatory. Then you go into Campaign Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, and based on what your objective is, it gives you a suite of products that you can use. So it's pretty helpful in that sense because it can be overwhelming. We have a lot of different ad products, but go in pick what your objective is, it'll give you a certain amount of products that you can choose from. And I think one of the most successful things I also see is that folks that are submitting using a mix of different product formats and within those product formats, submitting a bunch of different creatives. So just like I said before, like it's about it's less about creating, more about distributing. That's also what I mean is that you have a variation of like say you're doing carousel ads. You have literally like five different versions of that one carousel ad and then seeing which one is doing best and then like making little changes and campaign optimizations along the way. I think the other thing is that especially in B2B marketing, it takes a much longer time to see results, especially like lead generation results. Right. Because the sales cycle is much longer for B2B. It could be like three to six months. So the issue that we're seeing is that a lot of leaders are being like, okay, the ad, the ad was expanded, expensive and it's been up for a month. What are the results? And the marketer's like, dude, like I don't, you know, I haven't really seen anything yet because it's only even a month. So I think there's a lot of like upward education that needs to be done around basically like how, how long it's going to take to see real results and especially bottom of the funnel results when using LinkedIn ads. But yeah, I'd say using a. Making sure that you're following an objective based format, making sure that there's some variation. I mean this is kind of maybe like an obvious one, but making sure that you're using something like bold, creative, something that's going to stop in the feed. There's so much content out there that I think it's important to like know what your brand's definitive value props are and really leaning into that. I think the other thing is like not forgetting about the copy that is associated with the imagery. Some people just think just kind of like think of that as an afterthought. But yeah, I think making sure that's uniquely different is also important.
- [22:32]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, two things on that. When I used to work for a company back in the day, we were really successful with LinkedIn ads and one of the strategies we used to use is we had like a very neon color background and we would just say like, are you a human resources professional? Like that was just like the copy on it and we, and on the image and then we would have like more copy on, on top and then it would be like claim your have a good offer. And it converted so well because we're targeting those people. And if you are human HR professional, you're going to stop at the feed because it's literally calling you out in the advertisement.
- [23:13]
Alex Rin
Exactly. That's, that's a good point too. It's like calling out your audience directly like, you know, hey HR professionals, hey social media marketers. Yeah, that, that's really important. We've done, we've done some internal AB testing too around backgrounds. So it's interesting that you said that. And we found, you know, when, look, when there was a one with a white background and one with like a darker, almost like wood esque background and the darker 1:1 in the A B test even everything else was the same. Same on the image, same like caption copy. It was just the background and I think it was just because the feed is white, the feed's gray, so it just stood out a little bit more.
- [23:55]
Daniel Murray
I think another thing that good advertisers do and I feel like people forget and this is why you should invest in organic strategy if you're going to do ads on any platform is you need to have a company profile with some followers or some good stuff on there or a good landing page. So if someone's going to scope you out when you are running an ad and you have five followers or 100 followers, it looks kind of sketchy in a way. Even though followers are sometimes vanity metrics in some people's eyes. But I think it's also social proof in other people's eyes. So that's why focusing on having a company page with good content on there, a link to something that you really want, something that's your copy and your bios, telling them directly what you do and who you are and showing personality on there is a great way to also have conversion because it shows the followers of your company when you're running ads. So yeah, it looks weird if you, if you don't, if you're not investing in an ASO organic strategy as well.
- [25:05]
Alex Rin
Yeah, you called out two important things there. One is not to forget about the call to action. I don't know why I still have to say this but like if you're going to run some kind of ad campaign or even it's just an organic post, make sure that you're sending people somewhere. So you're sending people to a landing page, you're sending, sending people to the blog. You're, you know, what's the call to action? What's the next step that you want folks to take after they just consumed your post? The other thing is, yeah, I wouldn't put paid behind a campaign if it's, you know, telling people to go back to look at your LinkedIn page and there's like nothing really there. There's not a lot of content there, there's not a lot of followers. Like you said, it's, you're not ready, you're not ready to put paid behind it quite yet. Unless I mean, people do follower campaigns pretty like early on. But I think it's important to establish a good consistent flow of content, make sure that there's stuff on there so that when you're driving people there, they're not like, oh, this is a dead end. So yeah, that's really important.
- [26:06]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, just like running. Even if I'm thinking about a Facebook or Instagram ad, if you have an Instagram ad, people are going to check out your Instagram. If they don't know you, they're going to want to know what you post, who you are. So if you don't have a story or something on there or good content, they're going to be, they're going to run away because they're going to think you aren't legit or not real. So it's the same thing in every ad platform. If you're going to run ads, at least have sort of an organic strategy behind it as well as a paid strategy because people will see that what are some other underrated tactics people should be thinking about doing on LinkedIn?
- [26:50]
Alex Rin
Not burying the lead is important. People, especially marketers, are pretty busy. So whether it's a video or it's, you know, whatever format it is that you're publishing on LinkedIn, whether it's a blog post, make sure that you're very clear and pretty early on what it is that the marketer is going to learn from this. Because again, it's not about you. No one cares about you. People are consuming their content because they're hoping that it'll make them look good in some capacity. Maybe they're learning something, maybe it's something they can communicate up to their bosses. Whatever it is, it's about them. So make sure pretty early on. And if it's a video, I'd say within the first three seconds what it is that they're going to learn. In that same vein, making sure that it's, it's snackable content. Back when I first started at LinkedIn, back in 2014, 2015, we were creating these like one stop shop ebooks of everything you need to know about LinkedIn for marketers. And it was like a hundred page ebook. I laugh now because no one's going to read that. I don't even know. I mean people read it then, but I don't think that's not what people want now. So making sure that you're creating more snackable, shorter versions of that within your, within your feed. And when I, when that comes to video, I'm, I'm talking about like 30 seconds. Like whatever you have to say, you can probably say in 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Unless you're doing a live stream, which is obviously a lot meant for a longer format. But even if you're doing a live stream and it's like you and me talking or maybe like there's us in a couple, there's three or four people talking, I'd say like keep it to 30 to 45 minutes max.
- [28:33]
Daniel Murray
I want to go into some rapid fire questions for you. Just. Oh, no, don't worry, they're not going to be too crazy. But just first thing comes to mind, best LinkedIn post format. Text, image, video or carousels.
- [28:53]
Alex Rin
Video. Video followed by carousel followed by image followed by just text.
- [28:59]
Daniel Murray
Ooh, I like that. Number two is what's the most overrated LinkedIn marketing tactic?
- [29:08]
Alex Rin
Overrated. I see a lot of people posting just because I think I get the sense because they just feel like they have to be posting again. There's so much common content on LinkedIn, especially with like AI assisted content now entering the game. What's happening is what we're calling a sea of sameness. So there's just so much content, there's an influx of content on the feed. You don't need to say anything unless you have something to say. Like that's okay. If you don't have anything to say, that's fine. Like obviously you don't want to go radio silent for a month if you're a brand. But, but if you don't have anything to say, don't say it. And in fact, when you do speak up, people will listen more closely because they know that you're not just like posting because you feel like you have to post to keep up with the Joneses.
- [29:59]
Daniel Murray
What is one B2B brand that's crushing it on LinkedIn right now that someone could go look for an example.
- [30:07]
Alex Rin
I'm probably going to get a hard time for this, but Salesforce, they, they do everything really well from like their illustrative images making something like, you know, something that's maybe could be more difficult to understand what it is and making it cute and like, and adding brand affinity that way. They're also doing some really cool stuff with like their videos where there's almost like, like a pop, pop out image to the video. Uh, it's hard to like explain But I can send you the link afterwards. But essentially they were promoting an event that they're doing and they have like this little illustrative character like walking across the street screen during the video. So I just, I feel like they're really trying to think outside of the box when it comes to their content.
- [30:56]
Daniel Murray
What is the best feature for marketers? LinkedIn feature?
- [31:01]
Alex Rin
Um, if you don't already have a LinkedIn page, that's the best feature because A, it's free and B, that is where you're going to need to establish that in order to start using ads. You can't use ads as a company if you don't have a page, which just is kind of an obvious thing. But just reiterating that like the page is like the bread and butter to begin spending and growing your business on the platform. Other than that, what's the best feature for marketers? I mean, there's just so many good ones. I think if you're not live streaming yet, I would start to use that. I feel like our live streaming feature is pretty cool. Now we have live event ads so you can actually promote the event. It'll help you promote the event before, during and after and do some pretty cool, like retargeting stuff. The people who attended the event afterwards.
- [32:00]
Daniel Murray
I like that. I think just to add on that, I think a lot of platforms you see the rise in social shopping, you see the rise of just influencers going on live stream, but you don't see a lot of LinkedIn. I, I think live stream is one of the best features. If you're trying to. You can literally hop on anytime and talk to your audience, whoever's on that time, and it'll be seen by people. Or you can plan an event. So you could do both, which is cool.
- [32:30]
Alex Rin
Yeah. And it's like, it's an in the moment thing. Like when I come on and I see one of my favorite brands livestreaming, I'm like, oh shoot. Like I need. There's this sense of timeliness, like this is happening now. Like, let me, let me hop on and hear what they have to say. But the other cool thing is that the content lives on far beyond the single day of the event. Because when we do a live stream, then we chop it up to shorter social videos, we do a blog post around it, we like continue to talk about it long after the event to drive eyeballs to it. So there's a lot of different things you can do with it. It's not just like the actual day of the or the hour of the live stream.
- [33:07]
Daniel Murray
What is one piece of advice for someone that is struggling hard to get traction on LinkedIn?
- [33:14]
Alex Rin
My, my sense is that they're probably thinking about themselves too much. They're not being as customer centric as they can be. So that means when you are publishing, think about your target audience, think about, maybe do some research what keeps them up at night, what are their issues and then creating content specifically around that. So not about you, not about the customer. The other thing that I think is that everyone's just like obsessed with talking in this like non human corporate speak that drives me bananas. Like if I read one more blog post that starts with like the ever changing world of B2B marketing, the landscape is changing at a rapid pace. I'm like, we know, like we get it, it's, it's ever changing. It's been that way since the beginning of time. But like I think it's important and I want to see more brands do this. Specifically B2B brands. Is talking to your audience the way that they talk, the way that they talk to their friends, the way that they talk to their peers, that's a lot more relatable and just like calling out the elephant in the room if there, if there is one in regards to something. Yeah, I just think these, like who, who talks like that in real life? That's what I want to know.
- [34:32]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, that's great advice. I also the one thing that you said about their self centric, I always say to people that aren't performing on LinkedIn or social in general, this is not your personal journal. If you want a personal journal, you're not, it's for you. So you're just documenting for yourself. If you want to get attraction, you have to do what other people want and what other people. You have to write what other people want to hear and if you don't like that, it's okay. Some people say I'm writing such in depth, like cool content. I was like, but do people actually care? Are you writing it in the way that people want to read it? Is it like, do you think it's.
- [35:12]
Alex Rin
Cool or does your audience think it's cool? If you think it's cool, keep it for your diary that you put under your bed. If you think your audience is going to think it's cool, then great. Yeah.
- [35:23]
Daniel Murray
Lastly is I want to ask you, because I ask everybody on this podcast is what is a marketing hill you would die on? Hmm.
- [35:34]
Alex Rin
The marketing hill I'm going to die on is never underestimate. The importance of top of the funnel content and investing in brand. I see a lot of folks, brands, sorry making mistakes, especially when times are tough and their budget gets smaller. Thinking, okay, well if that's the case, I'm just going to pour all the money I have into the bottom of the funnel. Into like strictly generation campaigns, into like my, my content that's at the bottom of the funnel meaning case studies, product tip sheets, etc. That's not going to help. You're wasting your money. I think that again top of the funnel sometimes gets discount like discounted because they're like oh well we're not talking specifically about our products in it or oh, those are just vanity metrics because it's tougher to track when people engage with that, when they, when they actually end up spending. But yeah, I just think it's, it's so important to build those relationships. We actually, so we do at LinkedIn every year a study in partnership with Edelman called the Trust, the Thought Leadership Trust Barometer report and we just did it for the sixth year last year and it actually found that something like 76% of marketers are more likely to spend with a company because they put out thought leadership that they find high quality and interesting over just like looking at, they find that content more valuable and more likely to spend with them versus like just looking at their product tip sheet or like their a case study or something of that nature. So it just highly illustrates the importance of that top of the funnel relationship building type of content.
- [37:25]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, expertise builds trust in B2B and most B2B buying decisions to be honest, are made by asking friends or doing research. Yeah, like they do. I mean if you want to do demand capture campaigns like getting case studies and for people who are about to buy, that's cool. But that you already most likely have. They already know about you and most likely you're spending more and more people that already know who you are where like a big part of marketing is generating new eyeballs, new people to know who you are. And the best way to do that is through education, expertise and entertaining. You want to build a relationship with someone and so I totally agree with that. Lastly, where can people find you and what you're doing?
- [38:23]
Alex Rin
You can follow me on LinkedIn. My handle is Alexandra. My name is Alex Rin, but my handle is Alexandrin. Very formal last name is spelled R Y N N E. So follow me. I try to put out interesting content again if I'm not gonna post anything, if I don't have anything to say following my own rule, but I do try and publish pretty consistently. So yeah, give me a follow. Happy to answer any follow up questions you about LinkedIn or just personal branding in general because it's something that I'm passionate about.
- [38:55]
Daniel Murray
Well, thank you so much for coming on, sharing the inside tips that someone at LinkedIn is using to grow on LinkedIn and what other people are doing to grow on LinkedIn, and I really appreciate it.
- [39:06]
Alex Rin
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [39:12]
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.