037 - Mastering LinkedIn for Podcasters: Strategies for Building Your Audience And Brand

Brenda Meller, LinkedIn Trainer and Podcast Host, Meller Marketing, joined me to share tips on how podcasters can use LinkedIn to promote their shows.

Topics included: 

🔹Promoting your podcasts on your LinkedIn profile. Hint: it's more than putting it in the Featured section.     

🔹Driving potential listeners to your podcast by sharing 30-60-second audio bites.     

🔹Why perfection shouldn't be your goal, turning "mistakes into learning experiences.  

(Clips of this interview with Brenda Meller were pulled from my content vault)

Download 25 Content Creation Ideas To Kickstart Your Social Media Posts  (Click Link Below)

🔷 Thank you for listening. I hope you found this episode insightful, educational, and inspiring. If you did, don't forget to hit that Follow to keep learning and growing with us.

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For additional insights, follow Annette Richmond and Black Dog Marketing Strategies on social media.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annetterichmond/
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:45

Hi, I'm Annette Richman. Welcome to Content Marketing School, where we will dive into content marketing strategies specifically for coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs. Discover how effective content marketing can elevate your brand and grow your business. And if you enjoy the show, don't forget to hit that follow button. Hi, I'm Annette Richman and this is Content Marketing School. Last year, my friend and colleague, brenda Meller, linkedin coach from Meller Marketing, joined me on my previous podcast, smarter Business Moves, to talk about LinkedIn for podcasters. She dropped so many great tips that I decided to pull some highlights from that episode from my content vault and share them with you today. Enjoy.

Speaker 2: 2:03

I have learned recently, like all the mistakes that I'm making, and I'm going to ask you a little bit about that. But first, how is LinkedIn different, like if I have a podcast, as opposed to me? They had it on their to-do list for years and it was almost similar to writing a book, like I want to do it. I want to do it. People are asking me for a book. You know, people are asking me for a podcast. I'll get around to it, but it just seems like a mountain to climb to actually do the launching of it. But the ironic thing is, if you're doing live events already whether it's LinkedIn Live or audio events or webinars it's not really that much different and there are some tools that are a little bit different with it. The difference is on a podcast, it's mainly audio, and I say mainly audio because nowadays you can watch podcasts on YouTube and a lot of podcasters will say you can go watch the live show here or watch the playback here as well. But I think the strategy is a bit different in that you know you could be reaching different audiences. So I think you want to think about that, first and foremost, where you're getting in their ear. You know every day, every week, depending on how often you publish. So I think audio quality is really key, having really good audio quality.

Speaker 2: 3:17

But also I'm coming from that marketing background, so I'm always thinking about who is my intended target audience, what are my business, my career goals and then, from their perspective, what are they looking to get out of the podcast and is it clear to the audience, to the listeners, what they're gaining for?

Speaker 2: 3:35

So I don't know about you, annette, but when I first launched my podcast, I kind of fully immersed myself into learning as much as I could from different people who were podcast producers and podcast course creators and people just teaching different podcasting methodologies, and there are some elements that are a little bit different. You know, when you think about your podcast title, the name of your show, you need to make sure that it's in the right category and you've got your show title. Mine is called enthusiastically self-employed and then you can also put like a subheading underneath that which clarifies this is LinkedIn, marketing and business tips for coaches, consultants, speakers and authors. So you can include some of those keywords in there. But I think you really got to like immerse yourself into learning about podcasts If you're on the start to that journey. And I'll say, annette, I just launched mine and I think it was the end of March, so I am, no, by no means an expert, but I do feel comfortable knowing some of the ins and outs at this point too.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Well, you know, I appreciate it. You know you shared some, um, some strategies with me and things that I've learned, because you shared some resources that I can use and you're welcome to share whatever you would like that you think would help people. Um, and you know one of the things I started my podcast in 2020, I started my LinkedIn lives in 2021. And I just kind of threw them up there on the podcast and then I realized, after learning recently, that just having me there doing interviews all the time is not necessarily or is definitely probably not the best strategy for a podcast, because you know, as as you are, and we all are, I think we do LinkedIn lives. We invite people. I invite people here to to so I can learn from them and our audience can learn from them. People are here to see you, they're not here to see me, and so if you have only interviews, you lose a little bit you know of of having yourself as the expert. So I know you can talk a little bit about this. So if you would, that'd be great.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Yeah, and I I think there's a mix you need to come up with and I'm I'm not going to take credit for this I I know I've. I've been following, like I said, a lot of people who are already leaps and bounds ahead of me, and one in particular, adam Shibley. I believe I pronounced it correct, adam. If I didn't, I'll get closer to it one day, but he has a podcast called Podcasting Business School and he offers you complimentary podcast audits or mini audits, I think is what he calls them and during the discussions he asks you about your goals and your audiences and what would success look like in six months or a year or whatnot. And then we got to talking about you know kind of the structure and what my podcasts look like. And for me, you know, similar to you, I've been doing LinkedIn live interviews for years and I've probably got three to four years of of a library a content library that I can now convert, of a library a content library that I can now convert.

Speaker 2: 6:31

Now, at the beginning of this year, I shifted the focus, whereas before I just called it social media pie and it was inspiring people. That was the P, who inform was the I and educate was the E? U and it was just really a smattering of interesting people from different backgrounds and there was really no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it was job seeker focus, Sometimes it was corporate, sometimes it was solopreneur. It was a little mishmash. This year I decided to focus in more on targeting people who are solopreneurs, so my interviews are much more succinct in terms of the topics and the categories we're covering. But what I learned from Adam is you really should have a mix and it's maybe a third of each. So a third interviews where it's like me and you today you're interviewing me, I'm answering questions, I'm bringing in my expertise, and he suggested a third should be solo talks, so it's just you talking, and a third should be you demonstrating what you're doing. So maybe it's a mini, a profile in my case a profile mini audit. Maybe a 15 minute interview where I pull someone up on screen. I do a profile mini audit and it's just me and that person and it's not alive. So I'm starting to change my mix a bit. But I will say I guess I'm lucky because I have those you know, three to four years of content to pull from that I can convert. I'm finding it's more of an effort to sit down and schedule the time to do the solo interviews, but I just did one.

Speaker 2: 8:02

We I don't know, are you a Taylor Swift fan, annette? Yes, yes, yes. So you know, the concert was like sold out. It was impossible to get tickets unless you wanted to pay for, you know, $2,000 tickets, morgan, a mortgage. It was insane, and we did.

Speaker 2: 8:18

We went to the movie this past week and it was such a fun experience. It was my husband, so we had a, you know, kind of a date night. My daughter brought a friend with her and we went to the movies and we got the the the Taylor Swift drinking cup, and they handed out mini posters and they had adult beverages in the bar part of the theater. I got a I think it was the red drink, I don't know what it's called, but it was a whole. It was like a whole concert experience.

Speaker 2: 8:42

And then you sit in the movie theater and you watch her show and it's like almost three hours and I was just thinking throughout I'm like she's a marketer, she's, she's an entertainer, she's a person, and I was just thinking throughout I'm like she's a marketer, she's, she's an entertainer, she's a person, and I was learning all these things and I ended up doing a podcast and I talked for 15 minutes about marketing and speaking lessons that I learned by going to the Taylor Swift movie.

Speaker 2: 9:02

So sometimes it's like coming up with content and topics for your podcast can be challenging. But then I want to put on my marketing and my in my marketing hat, my LinkedIn hat, like what? What am I hoping to impart upon my audience and make it entertaining. But that can definitely be I don't want to say a struggle, a challenge. You need to put the effort into doing it and if you have that content, like you and I do, I mean that's the easy part. All we need to do is convert it. But I think you need to put your own voice in there too.

Speaker 1: 9:30

You know, and and I will second that you turned me on to podcasting business school and I have devoured, you know, burned right through where I'm at the current one. I just was listening to this morning and, um, you know, I mean I have worked with you myself and when I do things I I often I told you I think what would Brenda do? What would Brenda do? And it really, and I, because you know, I think you are a very, very smart marketer and you know the whole idea of the mix too is is is interesting. When I first started my podcast it was just me talking and I had like 10, 10, maybe 15 minute things and then it just seemed the natural thing to go to the lives. But so what? What are maybe some of the mistakes that you see people, podcasters, making, like with LinkedIn? Maybe things they're doing they shouldn't or things they're not doing that they should? I'm guessing the latter, yeah, and I it's funny, cause I put together a checklist and I'll drop the link into the comments.

Speaker 2: 10:28

I think it's already in there. It's funny cause I put together a checklist and I'll drop the link into the comments. I think it's already in there right now. But I put together a LinkedIn for podcasters checklist because these are the things when I started getting really immersed into the podcasting community. These are the things I would do as I was going and trying to find these people on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 10:47

And there was one person in particular. I was listening to their podcast and actually wanted to do business with them. I'm like I want to pay this person money to help coaching me in these areas and I went to their LinkedIn profile and it's not uncommon that people that are heavy podcasters aren't super active on LinkedIn. A lot of times I find that they're more active on Instagram. You know Facebook somewhat, but it's more Instagram is where I'm finding them being active. But when I go on LinkedIn, even if it's a business related topic or finding somebody like me who's super active on LinkedIn, they're not active.

Speaker 2: 11:19

So when I went to this person's profile, first of all, I was trying to figure out is this the right person? Because I knew the name of their show, but I was not clear on their name and I even had to go back to the podcast and look up the spelling and and I tried to look on their profile and I wasn't connected with them and that at this point, so I couldn't click on contact info and get their contact information, their email, things like that, their website. So I had to kind of scroll around their, their profile and figure out, like where do I go to learn more about them? Is there a website link? Is there an email? And I think that's the first thing, like, look at your, if you're a podcaster, look at your LinkedIn profile, but don't click on your contact info and see if you can figure out a way to do business with you without being connected, so you can't message them, you can't click on contact info, because the reality is we do have podcast listeners that are not connected to us and then in this case, this individual wasn't active on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 12:17

So even though I had sent them an invitation, they didn't accept it right away, and I think it was a couple months later they finally accepted it. So I think that's that's one big thing right there, big nugget for them.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah, that seems to be a thing for everyone. I mean, you know, I've worked a lot of job seekers, you have worked with job seekers and you know, as a former recruiter, if I looked at a profile it was kind of like a maybe, you know, I wouldn't necessarily use an in-mail, I would pass them by, but if they had their contact information there it's kind of a no brainer. Yes, let me contact them and see. And so I think that's kind of a thing for for everyone to have contact information on, you know, in their about section.

Speaker 2: 12:59

I sprinkle throughout too. So assume the person looking at your profile is not connected to you, because there's probably I don't know what the percentages are in it, I would think more people looking at your profile. I don't know if it's 50, 50, let's just say it is 50-50. Let's assume 50% of the people looking at your profile your connections and they can message you or click on contact info, and let's assume the other 50%, just for argument's sake, is not connected to you. So is it clear to them how they can get ahold of you? Or, if they're not, maybe they're not ready to get ahold of you yet they're on the fence about. Do they want to do business with you? Do you have something that is meeting their needs? They want to research you more. Is it easy for them to figure that out Now?

Speaker 2: 13:42

Could I have gone on Google? Yeah, I could have, but you know, I'll be honest, I'm more comfortable researching people on LinkedIn, and that's the network that I'm a heavy user on. So I think you got to think about it's another takeaway to think about. Where can your intended target audience be found? There are some people that exaggerating, but that sounds similar to yours, and they don't want to figure out which one is it. You know they want to really be served up on a silver platter, Like here's the way to do business with Brenda Mueller.

Speaker 1: 14:25

They want to find out, right? Yeah, I think of the easy button and I had somebody tell me that make it easy.

Speaker 1: 14:31

Don't put and don't put up anything. That's not going to make it easy. And you know, people are so thinking you, thinking that we're, we're unique. Well, I have a sister in law whose name is Annette Richmond. So you know, yeah, actually we're, yeah, she, she's a veterinarian in California and so you know, you, you think that, oh, we're so unique. People don't realize. You know their name and everything, but but it is. It is true, you have to differentiate yourself. So you know, I'm going to be downloading that checklist for podcasters, but can you give people who might be listening to this on the podcast maybe a couple of little?

Speaker 2: 15:13

tips from that. We'll keep going. So I'm going to. I'll give you, I think it's like a four or five page. I'll give you like one tip that's on every page. Does that sound good? And we'll kind of keep going, whatever you want to give, we will take.

Speaker 2: 15:24

So let me give you another tip, then. So let's look at you are a podcaster. Someplace in your headline on LinkedIn you should have the word podcaster or podcast host or something, or maybe it's the name of your podcast. And if maybe you're marketing the name of your podcast more than you are your own name, I'm going to use Adam, again podcasting business school, and I even struggle with his last name because he, when he comes on, he's he's like hey, this is Adam, welcome, uh, what does he say? Welcome, pod pals to the podcasting business school. And he might say his last name, but he doesn't really say it a lot because it's tricky to sound.

Speaker 2: 16:02

So I know him as Adam from podcasting business school. So when I look him up on LinkedIn, I'm like is this the right Adam? If it says podcast host or podcast someplace in his headline, I know it's him Like that's in an instance. So if, if podcasting is a major part of your business, absolutely use that headline field to add in the word podcast or podcast host, or maybe put the name of your podcast if it's a highly recognizable name, okay, yeah, so there, there's another tip on there. I'm going to go down to the another page. Here's another thing. So as podcasters, you know, we, we, we hope that publish it and they will come and they will find us right.

Speaker 2: 16:42

Like oh, yes, of course.

Speaker 2: 16:44

I'm on Apple. I'm on. You know all these other podcasting platforms and they'll find me. Yeah, if they're already subscribing and if they open up the podcast app, they will. Um, yeah, if they're already subscribing and if they open up the podcast app, they will. So, uh, one thing is, you know you should be publishing out content and reminders and maybe emailing your list once a week and saying here's my new podcast episodes.

Speaker 2: 17:02

But what I like to do is on LinkedIn, um post about a recent podcast and if you're doing this on a fairly regular basis, you certainly could do once a week you can do a post about. Could do once a week. You could do a post about your podcast once a week. And a lot of tools nowadays, like I use Buzzsprout and they have inside the paid version of Buzzsprout, you can create like an audiogram up to I don't even know what the length is. I usually try to do like 30 seconds to a minute of a clip with the little radial button that kind of has the sound waves going on it and you can.

Speaker 2: 17:33

You can pick the portion of the interview that you want. It grabs the cover graphic. You can download it as an MP4. And then when you upload it. It's got the burned in sound and the video visuals already there. So my advice is post about a recent podcast and I would say, do this at least once a month. At least once a month If you're, if you're publishing podcast content regularly, you certainly could go weekly and I think a lot of people, annette, and tell me what you think is they struggle with even coming up with posts at all on LinkedIn. So I think if you get a weekly show, publish it weekly, but I think monthly would be at minimum. What do you think about that?

Speaker 1: 18:11

No, I agree, and I use Buzzsprout too for my podcast and it is so simple to go on there and just pull those little audio clips. And you know it's interesting because I was talking to and obviously I try to post five times a week. I'm not always good at it. If I do more than that I kind of pat myself on the back, but you know it is. But but one of the things and as you're saying this, because I used to do that and I haven't done it in a long time with my podcast is, first of all, you have to think about it, you have to put it on your list of things that you're going to do. And you know, I think it's just if you think of it like, because creating content is, I don't want to say, hard or challenging, but it takes time to create content and pulling audio like that from your podcast is not, doesn't?

Speaker 2: 19:09

take a lot of time. It doesn't, and once I think, once you get into the habit and you've established a process how to do so, it does not take a lot of time. You know it's more like and don't overthink it. I have, I have an intern who helps me with this, but I always do all of my processes first to figure out how to do them, and then I instruct her and then I'm always like, I tell her, I'm like if you can figure out a better way to do it, go for it. But in this case I literally tell her pick any interesting audio clip that you can. If it's a solo interview, it's just me. So just pick me talking.

Speaker 2: 19:40

If it's me interviewing my guest, and I'll say, like if I interviewed Annette, I want to make sure that, um, that the clip that you're pulling from the audiogram is Annette talking, it's not me audiogram. Is Annette talking? It's not me. Because if I'm looking to merchandise the podcast featuring this person, their area of expertise, I don't want me to be the person talking. I really want to feature my guests. So, um, and we were just talking about this this morning, I was doing a project review with her and she had created a clip for the the Taylor Swift podcast and I said, yeah, I listened to it.

Speaker 2: 20:10

And I said I'm not sure if I'm crazy about it. And she's like, yeah, I was trying to make it, you know this, you know. I said you know what I'm overthinking? It Just publish it. It's not like it does not really matter. In the big scheme of things, I think if somebody is a Taylor Swift fan, um, or if they're, just if they enjoy the content that I put, interested, they're going to click over. It doesn't really matter which clip that we use. If the topic is of interest and they're interested in listening to the person, I think they'll pop on over. But a lot of it is just practice and experience, right, and not just like getting in the habit of doing these things.

Speaker 1: 20:46

Well, what you just said and please do ask your questions of Brenda, because she's so generous with her knowledge because I'm looking over and I'm seeing like light bulbs and things like that coming up, so people are engaged even if they're not commenting. But I think what you said is so important and it holds so many people back about all their content is that it has to be perfect, it has to be just right, it has to be whatever, and you're saying no, no, yeah, I think done is better than perfect.

Speaker 2: 21:13

You know, and and I read this recently and I wish I could remember where I read it from and they said like, if you want to get really good at something, you just got to do it a lot and do it more and do it more and practice doing it, and honestly, even like in these LinkedIn live interviews. Annette, now you've been doing this for a while. I think you do a great job as an interview host. You know myself, you know I've been doing this, like I said, for a couple of years. If I look back at the first few shows, I'm like, oh my gosh, what was I doing? Yeah, probably, to the outside person they're not that bad. But I notice things like right now I try to look at the camera and if you're watching this on video, I'm tapping my camera. My camera is kind of like eye level and if I look at a net, it's down here. So in the beginning I was really focusing on looking at my guests. Now I'm focusing on looking at the camera and I always tell my guests when they come into the interview. I give them reminders at the beginning, but I will say things like make sure that you're looking at the camera, not at the screen. Unless you see comments popping up, feel free to pull them up. But when you, when you're doing a podcast, I think similarly and there's something that's to be said in that with, like, watching yourself on video, I don't know about you I get like, oh, I can't stand myself. But you get past that shutter, you know, and then you start to focus on the technical elements.

Speaker 2: 22:29

How does the audio sound? Do I seem like I'm engaging and interactive, or does it seem like it's stiff and I'm looking nervous, things like lighting, and so it's similar to the podcast. When I first started publishing, I'm like, oh, I can't listen to myself. It's just, it's like cringy, like nails on a chalkboard listening to myself. But now I listen to them because I want to make sure you know, the audio quality is good from start to finish. There's been a few times where we've exported something from LinkedIn Live and similar to your show. We have a sound bed at the beginning, like that intro video that plays, and the outro at the end, and either myself or my intern one of us we forgot to delete out the audio of the music bed. So there's a way inside of Buzzsprout that you can edit. You can upload a new podcast in its place. But I wouldn't have known that had I not made that mistake the first time.

Speaker 2: 23:22

So, you'll know, annette, I say I don't make mistakes.

Speaker 2: 23:25

I have learning experiences and what I try to do is, whenever I have one of those learning experiences, as much as possible I try to share it back with my community and instead of I'm not trying to be a perfectionist and 100% polished production I'd rather have some of those learning mistakes happen so that I can tell other people what happened. And I think similar to podcasting. I've had a couple of times where I use, if I do solo interviews, I use Audacity and I had the microphone pulling up from the laptop and not from my fancy microphone. Now I would never have learned that if I had not had the mistake slash learning experience doing it, and I think I even in one of my shows I referenced that and I said I'm not going to correct it, but if you go back to the first or the second show you can hear it. So I'm letting people know where they can go and learn from my, my mistakes, my learning experiences. But I think you just get good at, at at doing more. What do you think?

Speaker 1: 24:25

No, I agree with you and the same thing with me. I'm trained, I. I mostly look at the camera and it feels awkward at first. And, yes, I am a person. There's no photos of me because I hate to see myself in a picture. I hate to see myself on video. I wanted to be younger and thinner and all that stuff. But you know, we are who we are, although, you know, streamyard does have a nice little soft filter, so that's, that's always nice. But one of the things that that I think is so important about what you said is the idea that it's all about the message and the person you're delivering the message to. It's not about us, it's not about you, it's not about how we look. It's how it sounds to the audience. Is it clear? Is the message good? We went off on a little tangent. Can you hang out for a little bit and share us a couple more podcast tips?

Speaker 2: 25:14

Yeah, let's bring the car back over to the podcast. We went rogue for a little bit and share a couple more podcast tips. Yeah, let's bring the car back over to the podcast. We went rogue for a little bit there. So I think the last tip I was sharing was to share a podcast episode in a LinkedIn post, and I do like the audiograms as a way of sharing. Alternatively, you could just share the show link in your LinkedIn post. I always like to make sure, if I'm going to share the show link, look at what the previewable image is, make sure that it's not blurry, make sure that it has good resolution. That's inside of there.

Speaker 2: 25:45

Another thing that you can do if you have a podcast and even if your podcast has been around for a while I do recommend this tip you can create a company page for your podcast. So I did this, annette, when I first launched my podcast it's called Enthusiastically Self-Employed I created a LinkedIn company page and there's a couple of different ways that you can create a company page. You can create like a regular company page which can be linked into your experience section. That's key. Or you can create a showcase page which almost becomes like a product and service of your main page. Now you can't link that into your profile, so that's important to keep in mind. For the reason of linking it into your profile, I prefer to do the company page. Some larger organizations prefer to do subsets pages, so they're they're managing, you know, controlling the brand a little bit. But what I like about it is when you create the company page and then once you add it to your profile as a new experience and you can say add job title of podcast host at and then you can link the company page to your podcast the name of your podcast, enthusiastically self-employed there's a little green notify network button and, as long as you add it to your profile and you indicate the start date is the month that you are in.

Speaker 2: 27:00

So let's say, hypothetically, I added this to my profile today, created a new company page, but my podcast started in March. If I put my start date of March, linkedin's not going to push out a notification because it's old news. But if I put my start date as October 2023 in that experience section, then LinkedIn will push out a notification to my connections and followers and it will say congratulate, brenda on being named podcast host at enthusiastically self-employed. And then the magic starts to happen here and that you get the homepage notifications, you start to get people congratulating you because it will appear in their homepage feed. You'll also get direct messages from people Congratulations on your new role, brenda and a lot of times people will choose the pre-populated text that LinkedIn has.

Speaker 2: 27:42

Sometimes they'll modify it, but a lot of times it's congratulations and best wishes in your new role, and you know it's the same thing over and over again, and what I started doing is, when they send me that I will message them back and I copy and paste this, but I would say thanks. It's actually not a new role. I launched my podcast in March, but I just got around to adding it on my LinkedIn profile. Do you listen to podcasts? If so, I love it if you could give my show a follow and tell me what you think and I'm making this a nice one-to-one message and any thoughts on that approach.

Speaker 1: 28:15

Well, I just learned something, so thank you very much, and you taught me that about when I launched my company, when I shifted and I launched my new company to go back and do that and I did that. So, no, I think that's great, and I am launching a new podcast, linkedin Live, in January. I'm going to shift it along with the shift in my business, and so you know I'm going to be following all your advice for that as well. Anything else you want to you want to share before we go, cause I know, you know I, your time is valuable and I, you know I'd love to have you stay here for like two hours.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Yeah, no, if anyone's listening, feel free to drop in any questions or whatnot. I'll give you one more thing. There's a featured section on your LinkedIn profile. So I'm one like Annette. I'm an opportunistic marketer, remember. I come from that corporate marketing background and I'm really heavy and deep into LinkedIn. So if LinkedIn launches new features, there's a bunch of us that will compare notes on the features that are coming out. And there's a couple of people I hear from regularly Kevin D Turner I'm going to give him a shout out right now. He's one of the people I hear from and he's got like a team of people who will find these new features in the wild and report it back, and he's one of the first people I'll hear things from Often. John Asperian is another person that I will hear things from as well, and what will happen is LinkedIn, when they launch new features and new things on our profile, they won't often tell you, hey, this exists on your profile and they won't tell you, like, this is how you enable it or anything like that.

Speaker 2: 29:43

It'll just be it one day will appear and what happens typically is we, the LinkedIn training and coaching community. We are all independent. We do not work for LinkedIn. So we do not get access. Like LinkedIn doesn't send out a newsletter saying, hey guys, listen up. Like they don't do that. We have to figure things out on our own and then we compare notes and we're like who has it, how do you use it? How do you enable it? Kick the tires, figure out what to do, what not to do. Now I'm not. I'm not of the bleeding edge of announcing, you know, new technology and new features, and I'm probably more of the once it starts to become more mainstream. That's when I announce it, because then I know that most people have it.

Speaker 2: 30:24

So the featured some section is something that everyone has on their profile. If you don't see it, it's because you had not yet enabled it. So you can go to the top of your profile and it says add profile section and then I think it says core, recommended and additional. I could be wrong on the categories, but it's in the second one, recommended, and there's underneath that you can click on add featured. So there's two ways you can do it. You can go into that add a new section. You can enable it from there. Or, even easier, if you post about a recent podcast. As soon as you're done publishing that post. Click on the three dots and you'll see an option that will say add to featured and that will enable the featured section and put it in there.

Speaker 2: 31:04

And I like to tell people the featured section. I kind of think of it, annette, like an end cap at the grocery store, and if I go to my local grocery store is Kroger. So if I go to Kroger, is it with an S or not? In Michigan we say things with an S, but today I might see an end cap promoting Halloween, because we're getting closer to Halloween Snickers and Kit Kats and Reese's, peanut butter cups and candy corn and all the other you know stuff. Now, in two to three weeks after Halloween's done, they're going to clear out that end cap and they're going to start promoting Thanksgiving decorations and there'll be other things on there. So at the grocery store they're always keeping their end caps fresh because they're trying to promote and feature products. So when we as the shoppers are going at the end of the aisle, we're looking and putting things in our cart Right. So on LinkedIn, I want you to think about the featured section. That's your end cap for your grocery store, so to speak. So what are the items that you want shoppers to put in their carts this week, this month, this year.

Speaker 2: 32:06

A lot of times what I see people doing, annette, is they set up their featured like they set it up like two years ago and they've never rotated new product in and it kind of becomes stale and boring and even sometimes you look at articles and YouTube links and they're outdated. So I like to rotate in featured content regularly. I try to change out at least one of those items a week and you and I both do a weekly event email. We can rotate new things in. But if you're a podcaster and you're regularly publishing new content for your podcast, put one of your podcasts in the featured section and that will help to drive some visibility, I will say at a high level. You can just go to my website, mellormarketingcom, and I have six different LinkedIn checklists that are listed on my homepage, one of which is the LinkedIn for Podcasters checklist, and you can grab any of the downloads you want. But if you want to grab that one, just go directly to mellormarketingcom, slash your podcast all one word and you can grab it from there.

Speaker 1: 33:04

Thanks again for joining me today. If you found this episode helpful and relevant to you, please share it with someone else. I bet they'll thank you. Thanks for tuning into the Content Marketing Show with me, Annette Richmond. If today's insights have inspired and resonated with you, please share this episode and, if you haven't already hit the follow button to keep learning and growing with us.