1681 – The Most Effective Strategies for LinkedIn Success with Fluex Media Joel Freund

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0:58with us right now Joel Freund Joel you are the founder and CEO of Fluix Media you're found on the web at fluixmedia.com that's f-l-u-e-x media.com Joel thank you so much for being here thank you thank you for having me absolutely well give us an overview of your work uh I'm really excited to have this conversation. So Flowex Media is a company that is helping people building their presence on LinkedIn. Many of the very popular accounts that you see on LinkedIn, Flowex is behind them. In which ways? So most of our clients are people who are either executives and bigger companies or CEOs or founders themselves.

1:48And they want to have a LinkedIn presence, a good LinkedIn presence for whatever the reason is. But it takes a fair amount of time to do it right. And we are the company that a lot of them are delegating this kind of work to. Yeah. So, well, then we're going to be talking about LinkedIn for the rest of this conversation. All right. So for those who may be skeptical or those who maybe have kind of given up on LinkedIn, what is the opportunity that they may be missing out on? So LinkedIn is a massive networking event. You have people from across all the industries. Almost the entire world is there.

2:42the business community. It's the biggest networking event. It runs 24-7, 365, and it's just there. So you can do it at whatever you want. You can go to a networking event and waste your time. And you can go to a networking event and pitch everyone and make everyone upset, make everyone run away. or you can go to a networking event and build relationships. You can look for people that you want to engage with, that you want to build a relationship with, whether they are potential clients or they can introduce you to other potential clients or they can introduce you to whatever, just like you would do in normal life.

3:35The reason why most people are not successful on LinkedIn or the same thing as in any social platform is that there's a plastic screen standing between you and the people. And that fools people into thinking that this is somehow different. People are gonna be people, human beings are gonna be human beings and the rules don't change just because you're sitting behind a plastic screen. So whatever, you wouldn't do at a live networking event, don't do it on LinkedIn. That's interesting. You know, thinking about the content that we share and also how people misbehave on LinkedIn, I think we've all experienced it where, you know, let's say it's someone that I don't know and they're using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

4:24And the very first thing they do is come at me and say, hey, how would you like to have a discovery call to talk about, you know, how we can decrease your IT savings? And I'm like, what? So irrelevant. And also, like, could you imagine going up to a party and just bum rushing somebody and immediately that's kind of your opening salvo there? I mean, that's what those folks are doing. So that's what not to do. And any other thoughts on what not to do on LinkedIn? Yeah, I was in the telecom space before I started this company. And I can't tell you how many times I got messages from telephone companies pitching me phone service.

5:04for the exact same thing that I'm selling. So there's nothing more off-putting than messaging someone. And it's pretty obvious that it's just spam. It's just, you're just mass messaging everyone. Don't do that. This is not email marketing. This is actually, people are using LinkedIn to network and to create relationships and looking for opportunities and they're open to engage in business. That's why they're here. That's why they're coming on the platform. And you're just killing an opportunity. You're just breaking relationships. You're destroying every potential for a relationship there is. You're just destroying it.

5:46Don't do that. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about what we should. Let's talk about maybe specifically about how we should be showing up on LinkedIn. You kind of tipped this off just a little bit earlier. But what is a, you know, someone that's really getting a lot of value and sharing a lot of value on LinkedIn, how might their presence look? Like what sort of activity are they doing? And again, just for context, again, this is what Fluix does. And we'll talk specifically about how Fluix helps in just a moment. But I'd love to maybe just kind of maybe put a pin on some best practices for LinkedIn today.

6:24So everything Fluix is doing, everyone else could do themselves. You don't really need GloX for anything. GloX is really just doing it for people who really exhausted their time and they really don't have time for it. And there's a very small niche. The niche of people that need our services are fairly small. So for most people, you can do it all yourself. I'm going to tell you the basics, but it's not rocket science. It's very, very simple. you're going onto the platform you are a human being trying to engage with other human beings so that comes across and not only in the private messages but in the content if you want to if you want to talk if you want to put out content you are going to talk about things that are actually helping other people other people are going to either find value in it they're going to be helped by the content that you're putting out so you're sharing information that is relevant to your audience that is actually helping them there is value in it or you're establishing and when you share value you're establishing your credibility because if you know if you were if you know what you're talking about then okay this guy knows what he's doing and you're actually help someone and you establish your credibility at the same time also you can share things that you would share at a networking event or when you meet someone just just when you meet someone that you want to create a relationship with imagine you walk in the street imagine you're in a you're walking the street and you see a person that you're after this is a person that you're trying to get for a long time you couldn't get an appointment with him whatever okay and you just bumped into him the street and the person has nothing to do he has time now he's waiting for someone and he actually has time to talk to you what do you want to tell them what are you telling them what do you want them to know about yourself that you think that's gonna increase the chances of you doing business with that person what is it are you going to walk up to him and tell him how great your company is or why they should buy from you no you would start you would try to find common ground you were trying to find something that you can actually have a conversation with him anything about business you would try to open yourself up so if the person is into maybe the person is into sports baseball you're having a conversation about baseball normal people say normal things that normal people exactly at a networking event right like no just have a normal conversation so yeah that needs to come across in the content that needs to come across into your private messaging and i actually we actually have a i created a little video where i show people how actually to go from engaging in content engaging in comments going to private messaging and how to start a conversation in a way that is just creating a relationship rather than just just cold pitching and spammy kind of message that we all there were that we're all used to getting um and if maybe i can we can find a way how i can get it to your audience maybe i'll put out an email if someone wants to get this this piece i can send it out but we walk we walk them through the exact steps on how to do it to do it the right way people ask me do you use sales navigator no i don't because i don't want to i don't want to do anything i don't want to do a single activity on linkedin that is in a mass activity i don't want to do a single activity that is just spamming people everything i do is thought out i spend time on each lead a couple of minutes researching them looking up everything i i can it could take it takes you three minutes to search to research a person today's day and age you look them up on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

10:31If they have a website, you can find it in a second. Anything that's available, you should look at before you send the person a message. And then when you message them, it's specific. You know what the person likes. You know what he's into. You know how to start a conversation with them. It's not that difficult. Just needs a little bit of brain space. Yeah. Well, this is really interesting because I think I've heard before, right, where people are like, no, no, you can only talk business on LinkedIn, right? This personality stuff is not the place for, not the domain of LinkedIn. It sounds like you're, I agree with you.

11:11I mean, it's just, it's weird and boring, you know, if it's devoid of personality and humanness. 90 % of content on LinkedIn is business only. It's true. But it's also true that 90 % of content on LinkedIn are getting one or two likes with almost zero traction. And tell me exactly for what purpose you're doing it. What does it do for you if no one sees it? There's no point. I know it's uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable on people in business, especially professionals, especially seasoned professionals. and the way you call them. I like that term, the adults. What was that? Adult. Adulting, yeah, business adulting.

11:55Yeah. So those people specifically, they don't like, and it's very uncomfortable and it's hard to not be completely buttoned up when you're in business. It's hard. I know. It's hard for me. I'm the same personality. It was torture for me at first. every single post was like it's very hard but you can do marketing one of two ways you can spend a lot of money ton of money or you can give up a little bit of the comfort comfortability and it just it just works a lot better than money yeah um okay so how does fluix work with your clients What are you doing exactly? Or what does your company do? So our clients are people who want to be on LinkedIn.

12:46They want to do it. And they just don't have the time for it. So we would do it A to Z for them. So the process is very simple. It's a unique process where we start with a discovery where we're building out a foundation of voice, the voice of the customer. We're getting to learn everything that is about the person, about their business. we're building out the foundational tools so we understand them not only from a business perspective and a business branding but on a personal branding we need to understand every nuance of how they speak how they express themselves words that they use words that they never use so because it needs to be their content and then we're having weekly calls about 30 minutes every single week where we're having a conversation and it's specifically targeted towards extracting content the person doesn't realize what's content and what what is not content we're just having a regular conversation and we're taking those recordings we're turning that into content and of course everything goes through an approval process the client approves the content before it goes live but but but most people when they start linkedin They don't know what is content What is post worthy What should I share What should I talk about So we kind of take the whole stress away We're just having a conversation Get the information out We write it up And then with the client's approval We start posting those stuff The posts are exactly the client's words We're actually using their words And their expressions So it's exactly their content But without the pressure of creating content Without any pressure You don't need to be thinking about content.

14:29Everything is being done on the back end. And it's still your own content. It's not ghost writing, making stuff up from the internet. It's real. They're real insights. They're real content. Yeah. And then, so obviously I think a lot of folks are listening. They're like, well, this all sounds good. But what I need at the end of the day is, you know, new conversations, new connections I need to a business development or sales. How do you then kind of make that final connection so that, let's say, that they can have an offline conversation or, you know, a conversation outside of just, you know, commenting on posts, that sort of thing?

15:15So the way we do it is we built based on what the client's goals. We figure out what the goals are on LinkedIn. Where do you want to go? Who is the ideal client? We work on all those foundational stuff in the beginning. And then we design a strategy on how the content is specifically targeted to talk to those audiences. Get them in. and then when they engage with your content, the about page, we want to get them to check out your about page. That's the primary goal. We want to get the profile. By about page, do you mean LinkedIn profile? The LinkedIn profile. Yes, I agree. We want to get people to look at the profile.

16:02Yeah, just profiles alone. I'll just, sorry to interrupt, Joel, but there is, I mean, there's so much opportunity. I dare say 95, 98 % of people listening here, you have so much more potential on your LinkedIn profile to spend a little bit more time and, you know, make it easier for people to get to know you. I can, for the life of me, I don't get it, how people still, you look at 99%, I would say it's 99 % of profiles are not properly written up. And it's just, I just don't, I spend on my website$20 ,000. Okay, the best copy in the world. We really nailed it. I have hundreds of people looking at my about page every single day.

16:51I hardly have maybe with SEO, with everything, I have 100, 200. That's a good week on the website. The about page is the first place people go. This is where people look you up. It doesn't matter if you're looking for a job or you're the CEO of, I don't know which company. If they don't know you, they put your name into Google. The first thing that will pop up will be your LinkedIn profile. Try it. Put in your name on Google. Look what happens. And not to utilize the LinkedIn profile properly, just what a waste of an opportunity. This is the first place people will go to look you up. It doesn't matter whether you're in sales, whatever you do, this is the place.

17:38So if you're not having a LinkedIn profile, it's almost like you don't exist. It's almost like you're having a retail store, but you don't have a storefront. It's almost like you're having an e-commerce store, but you don't have a website. Like how do you exist in business? yeah uh if uh for example joel i just googled you googled your name because i want to let's say i i've heard about you someone was talking about you i heard you on a podcast so then i google you uh and by the way everyone who's listening to this you can play along go ahead and google yourself again people's google results are going to be a little different you know depending on who you are, but I Googled you, Joel, your, your number one, your number one, uh, Google response or Google search result is your LinkedIn profile.

18:30And Joel, how, how much control does someone have over their LinkedIn profile? Like to, to communicate about anything you want there, LinkedIn gives you near limitless control. You can do whatever you want. exactly literally whatever you want what does the process look like uh for engagement like who are you well let me ask you this who are you typically working like who would make a really really great introduction like maybe based on kind of the work that they're doing size of company budget that sort of thing like who should be working with fluix companies the best companies to work with Fluix are companies, they have an established sales team.

19:12They have figured out already their sales process and they're looking to incorporate LinkedIn into their overall marketing strategy. This is usually where Fluix comes in. We take over the account from the face of the company and we establish that we're putting a human touch to the brand. In other words, if you think about the difference between, what's the difference between GM and Tesla? It's sort of, you understand that when there's a connection, when there's a human connection to a brand, it changes the dynamics completely. It's a different world. It opens up limitless opportunities. It just creates a whole new life.

19:58So this is where we come in and we will develop the human element of the marketing piece. But really, this is something that every single person could do. You don't need a fancy company to do it for you. All you need to do is spend a little bit of time every day consistently and just work on it. Set up your about page, set up your headline. Don't write your title. No one is interested in your title. this is the most expensive piece of real estate that you'll ever have in this world. It's the first three lines of the headline. You're right. You put in your name on LinkedIn. The first result is going to be the LinkedIn profile.

20:45The first thing that people are going to see is going to be the headline. Why would you waste that for CEO, CTO, CMO? It means nothing. No one knows what you are. no one knows what you stand for no one you want to put in something that is going to give people something to know about you or pique the curiosity so they open up your profile and they read the rest of it something the title is just just you just wasted the most expensive piece of real estate you have brilliant very very cool uh joel your website fluixmedia.com someone's been listening or conversation, what's their next step? You can go on fluoxmedia.com.

21:30You can schedule a call and we'll tell you all you need to know about making the decision. But I'm going to say that again. If you have a little bit of time, people are getting intimidated by all those LinkedIn gurus and professionals and coaches. and they think that it's really so complicated that they want to hire a professional because they don't know how to do it. It's not. LinkedIn is not designed for professional. It's not designed for, you don't need to be a coder to do LinkedIn. It's designed for regular people, just like everyone, just like you and me, like just like everyone else. And if you know how to use Gmail, you'll know how to use LinkedIn.

22:17Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Joel Froon, This has been a great conversation. Again, your website, fluixmedia.com. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much.

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