12 | Redefining LinkedIn Marketing: AI, Networking, and Success with Expert Joe Apfelbaum

0:00Hello and welcome to Leveraging AI. This is our guest today, Joe Applebaum, is an expert on marketing, He's an expert on how to promote brands and build loyalty and connections and relationships on LinkedIn. And he's an AI enthusiast. And the combination of these three things make him an absolute magician. And in this episode, he is going to share all the different steps and tools that he's using. He's extremely knowledgeable and passionate about this topic, and he talks fast. So get ready for an amazing ride and get ready to take some notes. At the end of the episode, I will also provide some amazing updates that happen in the AI world.

0:38So stay tuned for that as well. And now to the episode with Joe Applebaum. In the next few years, AI technology will change our world dramatically. Whether you are a business executive trying to catapult your business forward, or just somebody who refuses to be left behind and want to advance your career, this is the show for you. I'm your host Isar Maitis, a serial entrepreneur and an AI enthusiast. You'll hear invaluable practical tips from innovative business leaders, AI practitioners, and some of the brightest AI minds in our world today on how you can leverage AI in ethical ways to advance your career and grow your business.

1:25Hello and welcome to Leveraging AI, the podcast that shares practical, ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiencies and drive business growth. This is Isar Metis, your host, and I am super excited today. You know, your industry's biggest conference is happening today and everyone from your industry are attending, including buyers, decision makers, suppliers, anybody you want is there. And it's not just happening today. It's happening every single day, 365 days a year, and it's called LinkedIn. And if you know how to think and operate LinkedIn as it is a conference, you can drive huge business growth.

2:03Now, that being said, you need to be prepared with strategy, polish tactics, and the right manpower, just like you need in an actual conference. Well, Well, Joe Applebaum, who is our guest today, is an expert both on LinkedIn networking and how to leverage it to grow business, as well as an expert on AI tools and how to use them for many different things. But in today's episode, we're going to specifically focus on how to do three things, which is his methodology for growing on LinkedIn, branding, building, and booming, and how to leverage different AI tools to accelerate and improve that process, which in other words, becomes your manpower that we talked about before.

2:44So being able to do that, being able to network on LinkedIn effectively and grow a business that's using that could be a game changer to any business. And Joe is one of the top people in the world today in combining these two aspects together. So AI and growing on LinkedIn. And hence, I'm really excited and humbled to have him as a guest today. Joe, welcome to Leveraging AI. Thank you so much for having me on the program. I'm really excited to be here. And I'm really excited about sharing the different things that I've been discovering over the past many years. Awesome. And I know, you know, with the amount of stuff you're playing with AI stuff, it's everything you've been learning through the years is now accelerating every day with new stuff that you're learning with different AI tools, right?

3:25Just saving a lot of time and making things a lot easier because a lot of the stuff that we used to have to do on LinkedIn and even at conferences, a lot of the stuff we had to do used to be manual. And now a lot of the stuff is automated and there's machines doing the work for us so that we can be more creative, so that we can build relationships more. And we don't have to focus so much on taking notes. Like right now, I have an AI taking copious notes of every single thing I'm saying. That's amazing. So really, let's dive right in. And first of all, let's talk about the concepts that I mentioned earlier that you mentioned to me of branding, building, and booming.

4:05Let's define these steps. Then let's dive into each and every one of them and talk about how and what needs to happen in each and every one of them. When it comes to using LinkedIn, you need to have a strategy because the right strategy will save you a decade and energy without strategy is a waste of time. So often people will create a LinkedIn account. they'll add a few connections, and then they'll disappear from it. Maybe they'll jump in every once in a while when somebody sends them a connection request or they get an email. Or maybe they have the app on their phone and they're logging in and they're looking at the feed, but they don't really have a strategy of what to do.

4:38If you go to a conference and just sit on the side and watch and you don't get involved, you're not going to get results from the conference. The same thing with LinkedIn. You need to have a system and a process. And because I'm the type of person who loves reverse engineering everything, I became the expert at search engine optimization. And I grew one of the fastest growing companies in America, learning SEO. But I had a system and a process to be able to do that. The same thing with LinkedIn. There's a system and a process, and I call it branding, building, and booming. The first step on the bottom is branding.

5:09That means you got to figure who you are. You got to figure out what is your plan, who are the people that you're targeting, and what is the promise? What is your messaging? What are you delivering? So what does it mean? What is your plan? When it comes to coming up with a plan for any strategy, you got to figure out, am I networking? Am I prospecting? Am I marketing? What are you doing? What's your purpose for being on LinkedIn? Not everybody's on LinkedIn looking for a job. Not everybody's on LinkedIn looking for clients. Not everybody's on LinkedIn looking for exposure. Different people want different things.

5:43And you need to define what success looks like for you. And I know that might sound for some people very rudimentary, But the truth is people haven't written this down. They don't have a plan on paper. And the first step in our course, in our coaching program, and as I tell people is if you want to be successful at something, you got to figure out what the end looks like. Stephen Covey in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he says, begin with the end in mind. So if you want to be successful at LinkedIn, what's your plan? What are you going to do? How is it tied to your business plan?

6:12How is it tied to your marketing plan? What are the specific action steps that you need to take every day? And are they marketing, prospecting, or networking steps or maybe a combination of the different ones, depending on your goals, that's how you're going to know even who to target and even who to give messaging to. Because if you're doing a networking approach, you're going to be targeting very different people than if you're doing a prospecting approach. And if you're doing a prospecting approach, it's often a different strategy than a marketing approach as well. And so understanding what approach you need to take is the first step in the process.

6:44Then you get to figure out your target market. What does it mean your target? I want to pause you for a second. are they mutually exclusive? Meaning, do I have to focus on one or can I decide to focus on two or three of them? Depending on the part of the platform that you plan on using. So if you're using Sales Navigator, you're probably going to have more success prospecting using Sales Navigator. If you're using the organic version, you're probably going to have more success networking on the organic version. If you're using advertising, you're probably going to have more success with marketing on the advertising platform of LinkedIn.

7:14Depending on what you're looking to achieve, there are different elements and places of the platform that you're going to focus on. So if somebody is on a tight budget and they don't want to spend money on advertising and they don't want to spend money on Sales Navigator, then maybe they should be networking. Maybe they should be using their relationships and learning how to do that. But if they start marketing on LinkedIn on the organic side, they're not going to be very successful because nobody wants to be sold to at a networking event. The last thing you want to do is somebody to shove your business card or give out flyers at a networking event.

7:43Nobody wants that. You've been to a networking event. You know that people want to build real relationships. So learn how to do that properly using LinkedIn. It's no different than walking to a room, but you have to know what tools to use and how to do it. But again, understanding the plan is the first step. The second step is making sure you understand who the people are. Now, there are 900 million people on LinkedIn right now. 40 % of those people are logging in every day, according to the statistics I found. and 58 % of them are using their mobile phone to log in. Now, so think about that. If someone has their mobile phone, they have their app, usually they have notifications on.

8:18And that means when you DM somebody, you message somebody or connect with somebody, they're gonna get a notification about that on their cell phone. And the average connection on LinkedIn, the average user only has 440 connections. And most of those connections, 60 % of them, are not logging in on a regular basis, but 40 % are. So there's a lot of active people on LinkedIn, but many of them are lurkers and they don't know how to use it. So when you're defining your target market, you not only have to define the type of person based on their activity level, you also have to define the type of person based on their title, based on their demographic.

8:51Who is this person that you're targeting? If you just want business owners, you're going to fail on LinkedIn because just business owners, there are tens of millions of them globally on LinkedIn. There are 900 million people on LinkedIn. You got to really define who you want to connect with, who you want to build a relationship with. Just like before you walk into a networking event, there's a thousand people at the networking event and you want to meet all one thousand. You're going to fail. There's no way you can meet a thousand people. Who are the 10 people you want to meet? And the more you know who you want to meet, the more you can, as you're meeting people, tell them who you want to meet and they'll point you in the right direction.

9:26I walked into a networking event recently and I said, I'm looking to meet marketing directors. There were only four marketing directors in the room and there were 100 people there. And every one of the people that I spoke to pointed me to those four people. And those four people were mentioned my name many, many times. I got four amazing meetings and that was a very productive 90-minute session. Think about doing that on LinkedIn, but know who you want to target. If you're targeting marketing directors or chief revenue officers or HR directors or lawyers or attorneys or chiropractors, there are many of them.

9:59I had a woman who targets dietitians and she said, Joe, there are no dietitians on LinkedIn. All dietitians use Instagram. I was like, okay, well, I would take your word for it. But fortunately, LinkedIn has a function called search. Yes. It's search for registered dietitians in the US. And can you guess how many registered dietitians there were on LinkedIn in the US? Over 190 ,000. I would have guessed 150. That would have been my guess when you started asking the question. But I'm in the ballpark, I guess. Her mind was blown. And she's like, I cannot believe that these dietitians, because the ones she's like, the ones that I have in my thing don't even use LinkedIn.

10:35I said, did you ask them if they use LinkedIn? She said, no, I'm just assuming that they would use Instagram. I said, when you assume you make an ASS out of you and me, that's how you spell the word assume. Instead of doing that, let's just do a little bit of research, learn how to use the tool properly. And then you can figure out who the people are and where they are. And you know what? On LinkedIn, what I love about the people on LinkedIn is on LinkedIn, they're sharing their first name, their last name, their title, their company name, what they do, who they do it with, how long they worked at the company, where they worked before, what school they went to, what school they went to before that school, all the things that they liked and commented on, and all your mutual connections.

11:17Dude, that is so much information if you're networking. That is so much information if you're prospecting that you could use for fodder to have meaningful conversations, to do meaningful strategic outreach to the right people in the right way. Because the last thing you want is spam. And spam just means that it's irrelevant. If someone sends you a message telling you that they want you to buy their goat cheese and you're allergic to goat cheese, it's irrelevant to you. So you've got to know about the person. I want to comment on what you said because I think it's so, so, so important. So many people go to LinkedIn and are either, like you said, are not really using it at all, or when they do, they don't really understand how to use the tool to its full capability.

11:54And the search in LinkedIn is incredible. Even the basic, even if you're not buying Sales Navigator, even if you're not paying for the pro version, you can go in. And so I just did it the other day. I'm trying to help a company get people in their course. And they're looking for marketing directors in reputable companies. And in three minutes, you got all the people that are your first connection or second connection, meaning somebody can introduce you to marketing directors that are in reputable companies over a size of X in literally seconds. And that is so incredibly powerful. And the other thing of what you said is picking the right people.

12:30So they wanted only reputable companies as a way to promote their course, to say, we have these kinds of people in our course, giving them a free ride into their course for the first time. And I've sent the message to 10 people out of marketing directors in the US. There's, I don't know, probably millions. So that message was, those people were hand picked. The funny thing, one of them literally wrote me back and said, oh, you're pit slapping me? I said, no, I literally sent that message to 10 people. That's it. So if you got this message is because I really think you will meet people like you at your quality at that course, which will be worthwhile your time.

13:09And I did not automate this and send this to 10 ,000 people, hoping 50 will say yes. 100%. 100%. So when you're picking your target market, you also want to consider who your centers of influence are. That's why we call it people. There's the plan, the people, and the promise in the first step called branding. And so with people, it's really important. Now, a lot of people have a hard time finding their target market. It's one of the hardest thing you can do in your business. And that's where AI comes in. You could use a tool called ChatGPT, and you can prompt the tool to help you identify who the best target market is for your business.

13:40And then you can ask it to create an ICP for you, which is an ideal client profile and help you identify who your COI is, who your center of influence is. And we have the right prompts inside our AI course that walk you through step-by-step how to be able to come up with this. So not only can you come up with your plan using artificial intelligence, but now you can help find your target market. And then you can tell it to tell you what are the search criteria to put into LinkedIn to help you narrow down the best target market for you and the best demographic and the best area. Can I pause these there for a second?

14:08just to give practical examples. I'm sure your course has a lot of them. Can you give me one or two examples of what products you use to generate a target audience using ChatGPT for LinkedIn? I say, hi, I'm the CEO of Ajax Union. We're a digital marketing agency in New York City. We're looking for B2B companies. Can you help me identify the right type of company to be able to, for us to be able to service as a marketing agency? So it's going to give me a bunch of industries. It'll throw in construction, engineering, architecture. And I'll say which one of these are the most likely to need a B2B marketing funnel.

14:45And it's going to prioritize it based on the ones that it thinks that is most likely. And then I'm going to say which markets are the best markets to start finding these types of companies. So it'll reply, the top markets for construction companies are Boston, New York City, and North Carolina. on. And then I'm going to say, okay, create an ICP using the right title. And ICP stands for an ideal client profile using the right title and the right search filters within LinkedIn to help me identify it and find the right decision makers for me to connect with for my marketing agency, Ajax Union. And then it basically just writes the whole thing and gives you the whole thing.

15:22And that is the process. It's kind of like you're having a conversation with the artificial intelligence. It's not like you basically just say, tell me what's great for my business. It So the first step is I go in there and I train it on my business and I tell it everything about my business. And then I say, give me advice on what industry, give me advice on my target market. I even ask it, hey, what do I even need to think about when I'm picking a target market? And the AI will answer and kind of train you. And here's another key tip. You can say act as a marketing strategist, or you could say act as an expert marketing strategist.

15:54And the AI will behave that way as an expert marketing strategist. And I say act as a sales coach, act as a LinkedIn trainer, act as my ex-wife. And it says, no, sorry, I can't do that. Gladly. Thank God. Yeah. Quick question. First of all, phenomenal stuff, really good stuff. You know, again, for people who are listening who do not know, maybe the biggest disadvantage of ChatGPT is that its data ends in 2021, meaning it's not updated to current day and not even last year. Are you using Bing to do these kind of searches when you do them today just to get more accurate data? Well, I tried to use Bing and the information there is not as smart.

16:36It's not giving you that type of data. For me, it's more about just general industry knowledge. I don't care about what's happening in 2022 right now. I need to understand industries. I need to understand companies. I need to understand long-term trends and how companies think in general. What's happening right now in the past year is related to news and related to COVID and related to things like that. I'm not so worried about that right now. Right now, I need to think about my business as a whole. And the information that it has is more than enough. They just launched GPT-4, which is like mind-blowing in terms of its accuracy.

17:14And it's also multimodal, which means you can actually give it images and it can analyze images and videos and all different types of stuff. So it's really, really powerful. The interface has changed a little bit. and it's only available for people who have ChatGPT Plus, which is the paid version of ChatGPT, which I have. So what I would recommend people to do is, step number one is figure out your plan for LinkedIn. Number two is figure out the people. And number three is figure out the promise. What is your messaging? And guess what? AI knows the messaging. It knows the best possible messaging.

17:46And what you can do is you can prompt the AI to help you find the messaging. Now there's another tool called copy.ai that helps with messaging. And another one called Jasper. There's so many different ones. We have over 20 tools in our program that walk people through step-by-step how to use these particular tools and what tools are available. And there's 30 more that I'm studying right now that I'm going to be creating tutorials to add to our tool vault. So we'll have 50 tools in our tool vault and we'll separate it by the type of tool it is, whether it's content, transcription, image generation, video editing, branding, graphic design tools.

18:20There's so many different tools available out there where you use AI to help you with your business. But, you know, ChatGPT is really great for the strategy component, for the branding component. It makes it really easy. And then you could also use tools like Copy and like Jasper to help you out as well. So that's branding. That's the first step. Awesome. The next step that you need is building. Now building, there are three parts to it. There's coming up with your story, optimizing your profile, having a good presence, and then using automation technologies to help you be able to make sure that you're structured and that you're consistent.

18:53One of the biggest problems that people have is that they're not consistent. And another problem that people have is that they're boring. If you're not storytelling, you're boring telling. And if you don't want to have a boring profile sharing information, that's why people go on Google. They find the information on Google or Bing, as you mentioned, using AI. You can find great information. It's very accurate. But people don't need your information. They want to know who you are. What's your story? What's your client's stories? What are you doing? My best posts are the posts that tell a solid story.

19:24So we teach you how to come up with stories. By the way, you can use artificial intelligence to help you come up with the stories. You can use AI to create presentations. There's a tool called Tome. You give it a prompt and it creates an entire presentation for you, A to Z. Then you can take that presentation and share it on LinkedIn. Very fair. Can you spell that for people? T-O-M-E dot A-P-P, Tome dot app. So what I want you to know is that telling stories is extremely powerful. And most people look at most people's posts that don't have any engagement. They're not telling stories. Today, I analyzed a bunch of influencers.

19:57If you go to my LinkedIn posts, you go to joelinkton.com, you'll see I put posts by Alex Hermosey and Tony Robbins and Sarah Blakely, who became from scratch. She had nothing. And she became a very, very successful entrepreneur, the founder of Spanx, Barbara Corcoran, all these very successful people. And I looked at their best posts and their best posts were all storytelling posts. Stories sell. Features tell, but stories sell. And then optimizing your profile. Inside our course and coaching program, we have 20 different things that you can do on your profile to optimize your profile. But you need to optimize your headline.

20:33I would tell ChatGPT, act as an expert LinkedIn profile writer and create a LinkedIn headline that includes title, company name, target market, the problem you solve and how you solve it. Keep the headline under 150 characters. Use information from the About section of LinkedIn, the current headline, the experience, and other relevant information. Use two emojis that are relevant to the LinkedIn profile in the headline. Do not include anything that might be offensive, unprofessional, or inappropriate for LinkedIn. Include the following text in the LinkedIn headline. And then I would include additional text there.

21:03Do you see how specific and precise the prompt is? And the more specific and precise you are with adding constraints, the more likely you are that it'll help you do what you need to do. Now I can go through and tell you all the different prompts that you can use. And I have over a thousand prompts in my course. Not all of them are related to LinkedIn. Some of them are related to email marketing. Some of them are related to other functions in your business. But what I want you to know is that if you use the tools properly, you don't have to do the work. You just have to be smart enough to learn what a headline even is.

21:35Most people don't even know where the headline is on LinkedIn. And they just write CEO in their headline. And they wonder why no one knows what they do for a living. So it's really, really powerful to properly optimize the 20 elements in your profile. I'll give you another element that you should optimize. Your LinkedIn profile video. I don't know if you know this, but on your LinkedIn image, you can have a video there and that video is 30 seconds long. But you might ask me, Joe, what should I say on the video? Well, don't ask me, ask AI. AI writes video scripts for you. And then AI can edit the video for you as well, adding captions on the video using a tool called like video.ai.

22:11There's a video tool where you upload a video and it creates captions and it formats it and it makes it look nice and everything. And so my recommendation to you is to leverage AI properly, but learn what are the 20 elements that you need to optimize your profile. You can have recommendations, you could have articles, you could have LinkedIn posts, act as a LinkedIn content writer and create a LinkedIn post that is less than 2000 characters. Consider the LinkedIn user who's the author of this post and writing the content. Use a professional tone. You can put any tone. You can use a sarcastic tone.

22:44You could use whatever tone you want. Address the audience reading the LinkedIn posts. Use at least eight sentences using short paragraphs separated by breaks that are social media friendly and easy to read. Start with a hook. Add main points and a call to action. End the post to encourage LinkedIn connections to like the post and leave relevant comments on the post. Include three popular hashtags related to the content of the post. Use Markdown in your output. There's a lot you can do to be so specific. Do you get what I'm talking about here? So I want to pause you for a second. First of all, this is absolutely freaking brilliant.