The Hidden Costs of Sticking to Old LinkedIn Habits with Irene Koehler

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, linkedin, headline, content, profile, connections, irene, personality, linkedin profile, audio, podcast, section, bit, talk, business, find, events, connect, person, professional

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Irene Koehler

Alastair McDermott  00:04

Hello and welcome to The Recognized Authority. I’m your host, Alastair McDermott and today my guest is Irene Kohler. Irene is a LinkedIn whisperer. And she talks about building authority, visibility and profitability for women owned service based businesses. And she is a social media guru. And she’s really into social audio live audio is just something I really want to learn a bit more about as well.

Alastair McDermott  00:27

But today, Irene, we’re going to talk about old LinkedIn habits first, can you tell me what you think? What you think of as old LinkedIn habits and and what we should avoid doing in LinkedIn?

Irene Koehler  00:40

Yeah, first of all, really happy to be here, this is going to be a great conversation, some of those old LinkedIn habits come from an out of date perception of what the platform is all about. So just without going through all of the iterations and everything that’s happened on LinkedIn, many people still think of it as a place to go if you’re looking for a job or looking to be hired. And that’s it, that just couldn’t be more wrong. So for anyone is looking to advance in their career, looking to be more widely known for the expertise that they have, or for those entrepreneurs, as small business owners, who are looking to find and attract the attention of their ideal clients or customers, will LinkedIn is 100% there for you. And the other thing that a lot of people have a dated perception about is that every buddy and all the content on LinkedIn is like super buttoned up and professional and very by the book, and there’s like not much personality. Yeah, throw that away. Just rewrite the script. Because it is now one of the keys to using LinkedIn is to bring your whole self, your personality, your quirkiness, and have that be tied into who you are as a professional, and that goes for people who are creatives also, who never thought that they really had a home on LinkedIn. So I would, it has just changed so drastically.

Alastair McDermott  02:34

Yeah, I think that people sometimes forget that it’s a, it’s an actual social network. It’s incredibly similar in some ways to something like Facebook, where there’s a newsfeed, and people put up content, they go live, we’re live now on LinkedIn, and on Facebook, I think on both my Facebook, my personal Facebook page, for example, and my business page, and the same for you, as well as on LinkedIn, and this type of content, this type of video, this type of interview is exactly what people kind of have come to expect on on all of those. So, yeah, the part of my personality, I know that, you know, it’s something that particularly when I was younger, and kind of a bit more fearful about just putting myself out there, I would really have tried to kind of dial back on the personality and come across as more professional. And I try and let that the personality still bleed in. But I kind of catch myself trying to be too professional sometimes as well. Can you talk a little bit more about about that side of things about how you think about that, and how people can change the way that they they they behave with regard to kind of being too professional?

Irene Koehler  03:48

Yeah, well, I think that there are there are a few things going on here. And, and I have to say that all of us haven’t gone through, like locked down. I mean, you and I are in different continents, right. But everybody around the world had this common experience of not being able to be with people in person. And so we were spending our time online connecting with people. And one of the things that came out of that is, I think, an unintended but fortunate consequence is that we our online presence became more human. Right? How many of us spent time on zoom with people when, like, pre pandemic, you know, we would be first of all we would be in our office, we would be always like in business attire, you know, a neat office, all of that if we were meeting with somebody, virtually, and then all of a sudden, we’re at home and there’s kids and there’s dogs and there’s laundry in the back, you know, all of that stuff and It’s just a shared human experience, it was just so relatable. Does that make us any less professional? Does that make us any less skilled or qualified to do the thing? Is that where we’re talking about? Of course not. But we learned that we can be professional. These are not mutually exclusive things, right? Being skilled and competent, and having expertise, and being human, can exist all at the same time. So I think the timing has really accelerated that shift. But also, the reason that showing our, our personality is important is that when we’re deciding who we want to partner with, or who we want to hire who it’s we need to stand out a little bit, so many people just on a, on a piece of paper or on your LinkedIn profile, you know, it gets a skill for skill, like other people have similar skills than than I do, right. For most of us, there are other people who have, can do the same kinds of things. But we look for people who we feel like we want to hang out with, we feel like we trust them, we, we think we would enjoy working with them. And so if we don’t let that part of us show, then we kind of get lost in the mix of sameness with everyone else.

Alastair McDermott  06:45

Yeah, I think one way that I think about this is about the personality versus professionalism, kind of divide is that you can have personality while still being professional. And that like one thing that I think about that is I can still allow my personality to show through, while also having good video quality, while also having good audio quality, while also having planned what we’re going to talk about on the episode. And having a good title that having bringing personality into it doesn’t take away the professionalism, of having all of those other boxes ticked. I think that that’s a mistake that people make. They think that if they show the personality, that people are going to assume that they don’t have the other boxes ticked it in that way, in terms of professionalism. So yeah, that’s that’s just something I’ve been thinking about this. And it’s only as I talk to you about, about this, that it kind of started to formulate the the reasoning or the logical, the logical breakdown there. But I think that’s that’s one way that I think about that.

Irene Koehler  07:55

Yeah, and I think that that makes a lot of sense. And when I, you know, when we talk about showing your personality, you know, I’m not suggesting that when we’re streaming on LinkedIn, or, you know, some other place where our objective is more business related that, you know, it’s like, you know, that there’s no business content to it. Right. There’s just like, you know, there is I mean, as you said, Alastair, I mean, it’s business con-content, but we can have, you can still have fun, you can still you don’t have a sense of humor, you can be vulnerable, you can all of those things, but you can show who you are through that conversation.

Alastair McDermott  08:49

Yeah, and it, it’s, it is tough, like, I think that it’s, you know, it’s not as easy as flipping a button, you have to think about how you do that. And you have to think about like, I think Mark Schaefer who I interviewed on the podcast last year, he talks about strategic authenticity. And I know I spoke with Chris doe, and he had a kind of different perspective on that. You don’t want to be too mercenary about it. But you do want to kind of be selective about the bits that you want to allow through. You don’t want to you don’t want to kind of bombard your, your audience people listening or following with with all of your personality either, but it’s good to let a bit of it show through. Like I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m very much an introvert. Even though I’m doing a live stream here to multiple channels. I’ve got a podcast and all this kind of stuff. Actually, I you know, if I had the choice between going to a party or sitting at home with with a drink and a book, I’d probably sit at home.

Irene Koehler  09:53

I’m right there with you.

Alastair McDermott  09:56

Yeah, so and yeah, like I Need to, you know, force myself out of that sometimes, but like, I know that that people who are introverts will really connect with that and understand, you know, that that’s, and maybe they’re my people, you know. But I think that we can allow someone that, you know, we can talk about some of that kind of stuff, while we’re also talking about the professional topics because they are relevant, you know?

Irene Koehler  10:21

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And it does, and, and it can take time to get comfortable with that, you know, I’m not at all suggesting that this is easy to do. Coming up with content is hard. Getting in front of a camera is hard, going live on video, it’s hard. And then, and then now you’re telling me now I have to like, be comfortable and free flowing and show my person. I mean, that can be really intimidating. So it’s, it’s a process. So I want to mention that for anybody who’s listening that says, Yeah, fine for you to say that, right. But you know, it doesn’t come automatically. But there are many different ways to accomplish it other than…

Alastair McDermott  11:06

You also have to start, and everybody started from I mean, there are some people who naturally skilled, but most people who are successful started from zero as well. And they picked up those skills like you do, you have to, like you have to practice to get good like in no matter what you do in life, like what we’re doing here is not easy. Like we’re now doing a live stream broadcast interview, on video. And it took a lot for me to get to the point where I was able to do that, I first off, I started doing audio only interviews on the podcast, which were pre recorded and edited afterwards, and then I switched to recording them on video. And then once I was comfortable with that, and my videos setup and, and I had 100 episodes under my belt, that’s when I switched to doing live stream. And it was only then, you know, I’m doing this now. But that’s with with 100 plus interviews done. So you do to get to the point where you do that you do have to put in the time and effort. But I think that the rewards are also fantastic, because you know, we’re able to go live and talk to a huge potential audience on on LinkedIn and on the other networks. So I think that, you know, it doesn’t come easy. But you do have to start at some point. Because if you don’t start, then you’re just going to be judged on, you know, the text content of your LinkedIn profile, which is, I guess, something that we can talk about as well. But I think that I feel very strongly that you have to create some kind of content and start putting it out there regularly.

Irene Koehler  12:43

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you. There’s a video on my LinkedIn profile. I think it may be in the featured section, but that I did awhile ago, sort of on this topic, where I have like some binoculars. And I’m like looking around and and my point was how we need to stop looking around at what other people are doing. And using that to, well to QUESTION Well, how could I possibly do what they’re doing? And exactly to your point, everybody started at nothing, right? Everybody started not being sure of themselves, everybody, you know, so you don’t really know sort of how long it took them to get there. So I think that’s part of you know, we’re all collectively experimenting all the time with everything on LinkedIn, whether it’s live streaming, whether it’s posting, whether it’s anything, you know, we’re just trying things out, and we’re all testing and learning.

Alastair McDermott  13:46

Yeah, and the other thing on that, I think that this is like content creation as as a kind of a general topic. And I think that it’s very similar to going to the gym, in that you need to go on a consistent basis for a long period of time. Because if you go seven times in one week, it’s not going to make all that much difference to you. But if you go once a week, every month for two years, that’s going to be life changing. And so that’s that’s how I think about content creation. And again, the first you know, the first few months you go to that gym, you’re not going to see amazing results. But if you just keep building and building there is this compounding effect.

Alastair McDermott  14:25

So I don’t want to drag us down the content creation rabbit hole, although I’m happy to keep talking about it, if you do. Well, I know that we want to talk a bit about the profile itself in terms of LinkedIn. And you said to me, that people undermine their own success when they have a poor profile. Can you talk to me about that?

Irene Koehler  14:45

Absolutely. So, so you know, I mean, this is the focus of my work is helping people be successful on LinkedIn. There’s so many people who are they’re very busy and they’re doing a lot of things, but not the things that are aligned with a path to get them to their particular objective. And along those lines, when I, when I see people doing all the things on LinkedIn, they very often are drawn to, you know, it’s that like, everywhere, that shiny object syndrome, you know, they, they see people doing live stream, they see that, you know, people posting these really cool post or messaging people, they just want to jump into doing all the things and, and reaching out to people, but they skip ahead very often, without having really spent some intentional time nailing their profile, not just the right content, but optimized in the right way. And there are all sorts of elements of the profile and different ways different fields should be filled out. And the problem with that, or the downside to doing that is when you’re the content that you post, or the messages that you send, when they are when that’s great, people want to know, people will automatically want to know, Hey, who’s that person who sent me that message that was interesting, or who’s the person who posted that really insightful take on the industry, they are going to click on your name, because it’s all on the platform, to go to your profile, to get that greater context about who you are. And when they get there is just a gigantic letdown, right? They get there and it’s, it’s out of date, or it looks like a resume, or, you know, there’s just nothing that speaks to them, that resonates with them. And so you spent all this time to put something out there that was like really interesting. And obviously, you put in the work to do that. But then we dropped the ball. And we get that I mean, we hear this all the time, like you get that one chance, right to make that first impression. And then they’re, they’re gone. And so that’s how we, we undermine ourselves. And I call that also like, leaving money on the table, right? Because that person could have been booking an appointment on your calendar, or, you know, looking to take that next step with you, whatever that is, and we lost that chance.

Alastair McDermott  17:55

So I don’t want to because I know that we could spend two hours talking about all of the details that people could address on their LinkedIn profiles. And I want to do like a whistle stop tour of the whole thing. But I’m just wondering, could you give us the biggest mistakes that you were seeing? Like, what are the most crucial sections there that people should be taking care of?

Irene Koehler  18:15

Yeah. So a few things I’ll say the about section. Really, really important really, really important. A couple things I’ll say about about the about section about. Okay, so a couple things I’ll say about the about section, you need to be, like, really clear, make it very, very clear. Because if our profile isn’t like very clear about what we do, what the benefit is, for somebody working with all of that, then there’s no way in the universe that someone is going to land there, and they’re going to be clear on it. And I can’t even tell you like how often I land on somebody’s profile, I’m like, but I’m not really like what is the main thing? Yeah, I don’t know. Also, you even though it’s called the about section. So so many people think, oh, it’s about I’m going to tell you all about me. the about section should be about the person who’s coming. I mean, it should speak to them. Right, because they’re coming and we want to like put out the welcome mat. And so there’s a way to have them have that feeling when they get there like, Oh, she’s talking to me. Yeah, that she’s so you want to have that. So that about section is important. So those are just some high points.

Irene Koehler  19:57

And the other thing I’d say one other thing I think you on the profile that’s important is the headline. The headline is really, really important. Because that headline, any where the headlines job is to draw the right people over to want to visit your profile, because that headline shows up when you comment in somebody else’s post when you you know, wherever you go on LinkedIn that headline is there. So you want me to mention? Yeah, yeah. So the headline is really important and important that you customize it in a very compelling way. And you only have a few characters to do that. So I have, I have a headline guide to help walk people through that. I don’t know if I can, if I can mention that now or mentioned it.

Alastair McDermott  20:54

Yeah, that’d be great. So and this is something that I kind of think about when I’m looking at my own headline. I’ve gotten feedback from other people that I’ve spoken to, you know that I should mention that I’m an author and a podcaster. Right at the start. Well, there people have said, Oh, yeah, you know, you want to talk about who you’re helping first, while the people say, you know, you should put the services first, I have to say, I’m feel like I’m being pulled in a lot of different directions with the advice I’ve gotten about the headline over the years. What’s, what’s your take on it?

Irene Koehler  21:24

Okay, so my take personal, all of my takes her in this little headline guide, you can get for the low, low cost of free. So but what I would say is, you have in the headline, like 220 characters, you put the most important, the most important part of your headline in the first like 43 characters. Because as you move around LinkedIn, it’s truncated. So it’s shortened. So only that first part shows up with your name. And so if you say things at the beginning of your headline, like, really nice guy, oh, and I have a podcast, you know, if you use those first characters, to not say something that’s really if I’m your target audience to not let me immediately think, oh, this may be somebody I want to check out. But that stuff that later in your headline, I may not ever see that part. So I would say like, the fact that you’re an author, I mean, I think that that’s fantastic. It adds social proof, I would put that, like later in the headline, unless your target audience are like book publishers, or somebody who would be drawn to, you have some of those other words.

Alastair McDermott  23:04

Yeah, and by the way, I’m just gonna, because I can actually share this with the video viewers. Your, your headline guide is available, we’re gonna put a link to that in the show notes for the podcast episode and the video. And we’ll put that in as a comment on the link LinkedIn event as well. So that’s where you can find it on Irene’s website.

Alastair McDermott  23:28

So okay, so the headline, the about section, what else is is super important to take care of on the profile?

Irene Koehler  23:42

Connections, I don’t know if that technically qualifies as being on the profile. But again, this is a whole other explanation. But this, this short piece about Connections is, if you have a free account, which the majority of LinkedIn users do, you can only see and can only be discovered by people who are within your network. And LinkedIn considers that out to like the third, your third degree connections. That’s complicated to explain. Not really important, but the primary takeaway is that the fewer connections you have, the fewer opportunities you have to be discovered by someone who’s looking for exactly the thing that you do. Right? They won’t be able to see your profile. So you want to have as many connections as possible. Am I saying connect to every random person who sends you a connection request? Absolutely not. I definitely do not do that. But connect with people that you think would be valuable members of your Network, don’t limit yourself to only people like that, you know, personally, or that you’ve worked with connect with almost anybody you know, you’ve met at a conference, you saw them on a live stream, you know, any of those things, definitely connect with them.

Irene Koehler  25:18

And I guess one other thing I’ll throw in since we’re talking about the profile, our recommendations, recommendations are one of the many reasons that I think LinkedIn stands for shoulders, head and shoulders, bar, apart from any other platform when it comes to being the hub of your reputation, and, and your expertise in your credibility. And because of those recommendations, there’s much more transparency around them. When somebody’s on your website. You know, a lot of us have on our website, you cut and paste and put in a pretty graphic testimonials and all of that, but I don’t know who those people are? Or did you make them up? Or, you know, is that your mom? I don’t really know. But on LinkedIn, I can click and see who that person is. does that person have like a robust network and a, you know, a substantial career and all sorts of things. I can also see who all the people are that you traded recommendations with? And that that’s just not a good look like you wrote one for them. And they wrote one for you. Yeah, generally, when I see profiles that, you know, there’s, that’s kind of a large part of them, is not great. But that sowed that layer of social proof on top of what you say you do, and having other people then say, Yeah, I had Irene do those things that she says she can do. And it was pretty fantastic. That is amazing. And, and powerful.

Alastair McDermott  27:08

So I’m just going to recap. So with the about section, we want the bed section to be like a welcome mat for our, for our ideal clients, we got to take care of the headline, and you very graciously have created a free resource for people. So we’re going to link to the headline, headline guide, you talked about having as many connections as possible, because it sounds to me like there’s this kind of logarithmic effect or exponential effect of having more connections. So more and more connections is in general a good thing. And I know that there is a a study. And I didn’t I didn’t do so sociology in college. But I know a lot of people who did would have would have heard about the strength of weak connections. And that study is a very old study done, I think in the 70s or 60s even. But basically what it found was that most people get job opportunities coming through people who they don’t know very well, rather than people who they do know very well. And there’s a whole bunch of statistical reasons for that. But there are good reasons to connect with people who you don’t know very well. And I think that is this is one of those old LinkedIn habits, the very old school kind of approach, which is to to only connect with people who you’ve done business with. Maybe if people switch that around, maybe if you connect to people, then you’ll do more business with with those people. So yeah, so that and then the last thing you mentioned, is just about getting more recommendations. And that’s something I, you know, I like I already asked for reviews for my book, I already asked for ratings for the podcast reviews for the podcast. And now I need to go and ask for recommendations on LinkedIn as well. It feels a bit awkward to have to say to us have to ask for all these things all the time. But yeah, there’s obviously a benefit in doing that, too.

Irene Koehler  29:01

Right. And, and there’s no way you cannot like cut and paste something that someone said about you somewhere else. The into a LinkedIn recommendation, obviously, it needs to come from that person directly. I mean, that otherwise we break that chain in the transparency, right, then it’s not linked to their, their profile, but I get that. Yeah, that can be a lot of asking.

Alastair McDermott  29:28

It’s a lot, but obviously, the people who do manage to do that, you know, they’re seeing success. So it’s something it’s something I need to kind of put on a checklist somewhere. And just make just make the ask. Okay, so you said to me beforehand, when he talks in the pre show that many people use LinkedIn, like a rearview mirror, instead of like, windshield, can you can you talk to me a little bit about that?

Irene Koehler  29:56

Yeah, absolutely. So many of us who have been working for a while, I don’t think I’m disclosing anything to say, like, I’m not in my 20s or 30s. So, you know, we’ve had, our careers have had twists and turns. And you know, we’ve done we’ve had a variety of jobs and responsibilities, and we’ve owned a business. And we, you know, we’ve done all sorts of things. And when and sometimes that involves like a pivot, right? You’ve worked in the corporate world for a long time. And now you’re beginning your entrepreneurial journey and starting a business, whatever that is. And so many people that I work with, they struggle, kind of how do I, I feel sometimes they say, you know, I feel like all the things I used to do, are kind of a distraction from this new thing that I want to do, and how do I, how do I manage all that messaging. And what I would say to anyone, whether you’ve started a business or not, is that many of us are, have been accustomed to using LinkedIn, kind of like a resume. And I look at that as looking in the rearview mirror, like, you’re looking at every you’re just reporting out to me, everything that you’ve been through, it’s a historical document, like, I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this. And yeah, that’s, that’s not interesting. But it also sells you short of why you are the person to do the thing that you’re doing now. So instead of looking the real winner, I encourage everyone to think about how they show up on LinkedIn by looking through the windshield, like your forward car, and you’re looking at where you’re going. And all of the places that you’ve been the way those play roles in play, prepare, where you’re going. But that so you, it’s maybe a reframing of how you describe what you’ve been doing. Because each one of those things, whether they’re similar, your head, each one of them, in a different way help you to be uniquely prepared to do the thing you’re moving toward.

Alastair McDermott  32:51

Okay, so how can I specifically show where I’m going? Like, what like, how, like, what words do I change in which section? Because I think about like the, I’m guilty of having like, I’ve got the resume style, where I’ve got all of the the old experience on there. I do also have a lot of content on there. I’ve got creator mode turned on, which I think you’d probably recommend that everybody does, who’s creating content? But where do i, where do I specifically go to kind of show the, the this vision of the future? And what the you know, what the current and future offerings are the things that I’m doing?

Irene Koehler  33:33

Well, I think there are a few different places do you can certainly do it through content, I would say that you can also do it in the about section, the about section can be be used in so many different ways. Just forget that it’s called about I mean, it’s a blank canvas, you can use it for a number of things. And one of the things I talked about was, like you said, it’s a welcome mat for people who are coming, but particularly for people who have made a pivot or they’ve changed there’s, there’s an opportunity there in that about section also to help. Frame you know, having had these experiences like I I’ve been in the trenches doing this, and this, and this, and the learning that I took away from that has prepared me to approach this new thing to come with a fresh, different perspective on how to do that. In a way that’s different or, you know, my approach is different than than anybody else. I’ll tell you that I worked with somebody who had made the shift from working on websites, just lots of lots of website design and and was now in event planning. And, you know, and she said, Well, you know, there’s two totally different things. I said, No, they’re absolutely not. I mean, think about when you were working on websites, I mean, you think about navigation, you think about what do people? What’s the experience you want, when people first arrive? What are the things that they’re most interested in? Where do they need to go? I mean, a lot of that applies to managing an event, you know, the physical layout, the planning for it, the materials that people have ahead of time, I mean, all of that. So, you know, we just reframed her, her background and her skill set to make it like relevant in a way that somebody who’s just done events, like, that’s all they’ve ever done, maybe they don’t have that same take on it.

Alastair McDermott  36:01

Yeah. And so you talked about, you know, all the different ways that you can use the about section, I actually start off my bed section by talking about one of the defining moments in the Harry Potter story, when he receives a mysterious package. So that’s, I have tried to create an interesting hook. I hope that has helped people who are watching this, and they want to go and check out my LinkedIn profile now. That’s why I have brought it up as because like I wrote it that way, specifically, to intrigue. I think that, and that’s something that I think that, you know, it’s something I’m trying to incorporate a bit more in, in the content that I’m creating, and, and how I think about all of my social profiles and things is in creating stuff that is bit more interesting, and maybe incorporates a story in some way. So yeah, I think I think the example you just gave is perfect of somebody who’s, who’s gone through that transition. And I went, I went through that myself, I was a corporate software engineer. And then I became a Search Search Engine Optimization guy, and then a web guy. And now I’m doing content creation and, and kind of business coaching. So I think that’s pretty normal to kind of go through that kind of progression for everybody. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to find a way to tell that story in a way that makes sense to whoever’s reading it.

Irene Koehler  37:25

Right? Absolutely. It’s, it’s all about I think storytelling is, can be so powerful. But it’s all about knowing who your audience is. And when you talk about a hook, like, what because sometimes what seems most interesting to us about our work or our journey, I think, is not necessarily the most interesting thing to the people that we’re trying to, to reach and connect with. And so it’s always trying to find that. How can we like meet all of those goals?

Alastair McDermott  38:06

Yeah, and I think that we could continue to talk to this talk about this for for quite a while. But I’m just watching the clock. And I need to start to wrap this up. There’s one last thing I really wanted to ask you a little bit about, because it’s something I’m very interested in. That’s live audio. Can you just tell us a little bit about LinkedIn? live audio and and and I don’t know if you use clubhouse as well, can you just talk about that? Because I really I haven’t used it much at all. And I’d like to know a little bit more about it.

Irene Koehler  38:35

Yeah, absolutely. I could talk about this for two hours, which is not what you want. So yeah, I have been using clubhouse for those who don’t know, it is a social audio app. And it the popularity of clubhouse sort of set off tons hundreds and hundreds of other social audio apps and LinkedIn now has social audio. So I’ve been using that for that. Yeah, over a couple of years. So but while I was using it, like LinkedIn is also like my, my main home, that’s my happy place. And so I was always trying to, like balance the two because I love audio. So now having audio on LinkedIn is fantastic. So a few things that I would say about why audio is different than other content formats on LinkedIn. I mean, obviously, like it doesn’t have a video element. I mean, I mean, differences in terms of when you might want to use it.

Irene Koehler  39:47

Audio is no stress. Right. It’s no stress for people who whoever the speakers the presenters are and whoever the listeners are, you’re not aren’t tied to a screen, it doesn’t matter what you look like you can show up, you can be in your jammies, you can be like, You know what, whatever. I mean, none of that matters. And for people who are listening, they can listen, since they’re not tied to a screen, while they, I mean, I consume so much content by I just pop in my air pods, put the phone in my pocket, and I, you know, I do yard work, I just do whatever I want to do. And so it’s just very, very easy. It’s much more interactive, I will say that.

Irene Koehler  40:43

It depends on who who is organizing who’s running it, right. But when I frequently host live audio events on LinkedIn, in fact, I have one coming up Friday of next week, I regularly do these networking events for people to come and introduce ourselves. I mean, it’s very structured. So it’s like, super easy, and very fun. So people can come and I have just a lot of people being able to come and speak and introduce themselves and make connections and do all of that. So it can be used for so many purposes. It also is great for building your authority, right? Your I know, the focus of the podcast, in these live streams is about authority. And one of the reasons I see it as being so powerful is that many people can claim to be an expert in whatever, you know, they can Google or they can get from Chat GPT, you know, they can do whatever, you know, get the you know, the four main points that you need to know about blogging, or whatever it is. And then they can put together some slides, or they can start a live stream and just say, these are the main point you need to know. But it’s an entirely different matter when you bring people up live. And they ask questions, and they share their thoughts. And you in the moment have to be able to take your experience your real experience and your real expertise and apply it to their situation. Right. I think that’s where the the experts and the the experts like are separated because you… people get get a sense of like, how quickly can you apply the information. And that’s what it so it really builds that credibility and trust in a much more accelerated way than honestly that I think in other content formats, one of the there’s a number of downsides to it on LinkedIn, the product isn’t as developed as I’d like to see. There’s no recordings of it, like natively on LinkedIn now. So you spend all this time doing it, and then it goes away. You know, that’s a big lie as

Alastair McDermott  43:17

A-as a, as a fervent content. Repurpose er, I wouldn’t like that.

Irene Koehler  43:20

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  43:22

Yeah. So so you’d have to find some way to record it as well, particularly if you were thinking about podcasting. And is it just through the app or can you do it on on LinkedIn itself on the desktop as well?

Irene Koehler  43:35

Isn’t that great? You can do it on both?

Alastair McDermott  43:37

Okay, good.

Irene Koehler  43:38

On both so so people can speak, they can listen, they can do all of that you can do on mobile, on desktop,

Alastair McDermott  43:47

and where is it because like I don’t even see it. Like I have LinkedIn open on my my second screen here. And I don’t even see this anywhere.

Irene Koehler  43:56

And as one of many people who are creating LinkedIn audio events, frequently, I can tell you that that is another pain point is the discoverability of the events. If you go on my profile, you’ll see that maybe I even posted it today. I just scheduled one for next week. You’ll see it there. And sometimes if you just go into searching events where LinkedIn recommends events to you, you can find some audio events there. Many times people hashtag their their events with LinkedIn audio events, just to help people find it. Yeah, it’s not an elegant solution at this.

Alastair McDermott  44:52

They really need to work on discoverability because, you know, like, I’m actively trying to find it there and I can’t find it. So I I also don’t want to get too distracted while I’m talking to you. So but but but yeah, like, because of like, LinkedIn is so big, there’s hundreds of millions of people. So if if they started promoting it a bit more probably would get more people listening to it.

Irene Koehler  45:14

Yeah, yeah. I’ll say it is being piloted on company pages also. So, you know, I think that that’s, that’s very interesting because audio on company pages, they allow you to have multiple hosts, whereas right now on when I broadcast from my personal profile, I don’t have the ability to share hosting responsibilities with anyone, but that’s, like, tactical stuff. Overall, I really, I’m a huge fan. I think audio is a fantastic format. It allows people not only to connect with me, but I love it to help people connect with each other. And yeah, and everybody who comes says, Wow, this is amazing, you know, I just had no idea. And they all leave with new connections with people they never would have known otherwise.

Alastair McDermott  46:21

That’s really cool. Well, look, we have to leave it there, because we’re at the top of the hour. And otherwise, we would literally be talking for hours about it. Like, like you promised. Maybe we’ll come back and talk about that again, another time.

Alastair McDermott  46:35

So, Irene, thank you for for coming on. Where can people find you if they want to learn more?

Irene Koehler  46:42

Well, I have, we’re gonna put up the link to that headline guide. Right? One of the main places you can find me is no surprise on LinkedIn. So send me a message. Follow connect with me on on LinkedIn. And I would love to you know, anyone watching, please check out the I think it’s my most recent posts for the networking audio event coming next week, I think it’s on the 24th. If you can’t find the link for it, just send me a message and I will shoot it over to you. But LinkedIn is the place the best, easiest place to find me.

Alastair McDermott  47:32

Awesome. And I will make sure that the the events, the livestream video has a comment with the link to Irene’s headline guide for LinkedIn as well. And it’ll also be if you’re listening to the podcast, it’ll be linked in the show notes page.

Alastair McDermott  47:44

So Irene, thank you so much for coming on the show. I do want to do a small promo I just want to mention that for St. Patrick’s Day, that my book three ways not to screw up your business podcast is available for 90% off on Kindle, so you can find that on Amazon. It’s 99 cents instead of $10. And, and then there is a PSA for anybody in America. It is St. Patrick’s Day, or St. Patty’s Day, but never, ever, ever. St. Patty’s Day. So that’s just a PSA for everybody. So thank you for listening and watching. Irene, thank you for coming on the show.

Irene Koehler  48:24

All right. Thank you. It was great. Thank you.

Alastair McDermott  48:27

And see you guys. Thanks for watching and listening and see you guys next time.