Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe (00:00.834)
Hello, this is Richard Lowe with Leaders and Their Stories. I'm here with Mike O'Neill, who's with Integrated Alliances. And he's gonna talk to us about how to do lead generation on LinkedIn. So take it away, Mike.

Mike O'Neil (00:16.076)
well, LinkedIn's 21 years old, so it's had quite an evolution over time. We'll talk about where it is now, but I'll just spend 45 seconds talking about kind of how we got here. When LinkedIn came out, it was free. There was nothing but something free. And you had to be in San Francisco to understand what it was. And since then, it's snowballed and snowballed to the point where there's a billion users.

Richard Lowe (00:40.11)
It's that, it's snowballing.

Mike O'Neil (00:45.426)
And I'm part of the first hundred thousand and almost everyone was from San Francisco back then. And there's different buckets and different places in LinkedIn where people play. Some people are the career people. Some people are the jobs people. Some people are all about posting and some people about profiles. And I wrote a couple of LinkedIn books about profiles and branding in 2010 and 2015. And being an engineer, like I am, I'm an industrial engineer.

Richard Lowe (00:51.458)
different buckets and different places in LinkedIn where people play. Some people are the career people, some people are the job.

Richard Lowe (01:09.39)
2010 and 2015. Being an engineer like I am.

Mike O'Neil (01:15.378)
started out in computer networks when floppy disks. The question was, do you have one 5 and 1 1⁄4 inch floppy or two? Remember that, Richard? Which one?

Richard Lowe (01:19.31)
And did you have enough and did you have enough money for the one megabyte disk drive that came that you could get

Mike O'Neil (01:30.322)
I had the 64K of memory.

Richard Lowe (01:33.354)
Yeah, yeah. I remember those days. Remember those days. I also wrote a book on LinkedIn called Focus on LinkedIn. But it's way out of date because it was written before Microsoft bought it.

Mike O'Neil (01:47.89)
Me as well. And I'll tell you, my books are out of date, but they're timeless. They really are. mean, the concepts are timeless, but the details really matter. And we'll talk about the current details of things. And we're done living in the past. So let's fast forward 21 years. I've been doing it that long. And now today we've got not just LinkedIn, but we've got sales navigator as well. We've got the paid high-end version sales navigator. We've got a

Richard Lowe (01:55.875)
details.

Mike O'Neil (02:16.38)
paid version of LinkedIn and we've got a free account. And I'll talk about all three here. I think it's best if we start with a free account and talk about how people can use it to find their right audience and to engage them. And then we'll do the upgrades from there. So there are a few limitations with a free account that really matter here. And the biggest limitation with a free account for users out here

Richard Lowe (02:16.736)
you

Richard Lowe (02:31.086)
Okay

with the free account.

biggest limitation with a free account.

Mike O'Neil (02:44.76)
has to do with when you're inviting people to connect. You can't send more than five messages and the rest of them are blank. So you've probably seen in your inbox these blank invites coming to you. Well, many of those are from people who have a free account. They can't send you a message because they sent five already this month.

Richard Lowe (02:45.006)
has to do with when you're inviting people to connect. You can't send more than five messages and the rest of them are blank. So you've probably seen in your inbox these blank invites coming through. Right. Well, many of those are from people who have a free account. Okay. They can't send you a message because they've had five already. I didn't know that. That's interesting.

Mike O'Neil (03:11.25)
Yeah, and I'd say probably at least half of them are that situation. People got a free account and they just click send, send, send, send, If you're going to do that with a free account, your headline on your profile matters a great deal because in the connection inbox, they see part of your headline and the headline is that text right by your name up at the top there.

Richard Lowe (03:20.63)
if you're gonna.

Richard Lowe (03:32.59)
They sleep.

Mike O'Neil (03:41.33)
So the area of your profile that matters the most obviously is your headline. That, yeah, that and your picture. Those are the two things, you know, right around here. I don't mean your old, your body picture. I mean your mug.

Richard Lowe (03:44.638)
area of your profile that matters the most obviously is...

first thing people see.

Richard Lowe (03:58.894)
Dead, dead shot.

Mike O'Neil (04:01.234)
Yep. So if you're going to be doing inviting people with a free account, focus a lot of attention on that part of your profile. OK, the area at the top and the picture. All right. So you can send up to 100 a month, which is really quite a bit, you know, with a free account. So a free account works really great for a lot of people. It has an upgrade called Business Premium, and the upgrade lets you send as many of those kind of

Richard Lowe (04:05.953)
account.

Richard Lowe (04:13.486)
You can see.

Richard Lowe (04:22.062)
Yes.

Mike O'Neil (04:29.498)
messages with texts as you like. And you can see for 90 days back, who's been viewing your profile. And for some people, it's the little gold badge that counts, that puts people over it. And it's 60 bucks a month. You know, buy a year, you get two months free, that kind of thing. And then there's another version of LinkedIn called Sales Navigator.

Richard Lowe (04:31.912)
And you can see for 90 days.

Richard Lowe (04:46.402)
Right.

Richard Lowe (04:54.318)
And then there's another version of LinkedIn called Sales.

Mike O'Neil (04:58.65)
And I work primarily with Sales Navigator. My clients work with lesser accounts, but I work with, we call it SNAV, you know, SNAV in our world. Okay. It's got a, got a nickname and SNAV has all kinds of capabilities and it's really complex product. So let's start out at the, with the free account and work on that. All right. When you're, when you're looking for people to target.

Richard Lowe (05:00.642)
salesman.

Richard Lowe (05:06.35)
Right.

It's now got all kinds of people.

Richard Lowe (05:17.336)
So let's start out with the free account and work on that. When you're looking for people...

Mike O'Neil (05:26.81)
You're generally looking at four or five criteria. Where are they located? Probably don't care about people in Hong Kong. Maybe you don't care about people outside of your state. So let's say that that's first, And generally you're talking about cities and states in general. Cities and states.

Richard Lowe (05:27.064)
You're generally looking at a or 5...

Where are they located?

Right.

Richard Lowe (05:46.968)
City.

Richard Lowe (05:51.534)
Yeah, I target Texas and Florida.

Mike O'Neil (05:54.524)
Yeah, yeah, they're really good markets. Texas and Florida, California, those are three really big markets. After that come Illinois and New York in terms of size of market. And then Georgia, you I do a lot of targeting, so I know the big markets.

Richard Lowe (05:59.566)
Right.

Richard Lowe (06:10.638)
George is my third one.

Mike O'Neil (06:12.656)
Yeah, yeah, that's the top five, the top five that we do. Now, if you're going to do some outreach and you want to be serious about it, don't start being serious. Do your outreach in Arkansas or Mississippi or Missouri so you can practice before you get to the big leagues. You know, in baseball, they've got preseason, football, hockey, any sport, they've got preseason so they can tune things up.

So if you're going, Texas is your market, well, I wouldn't even say Oklahoma, I'd still would. like Arkansas and Mississippi because, you know, they don't seem to care. They don't seem to care. You can misspell something or say things in a way that you're correct later and, you know, those states didn't matter. Now, if you're from those states, I'm sorry I said that, okay? But you understand the idea.

Richard Lowe (06:49.026)
Right.

Richard Lowe (06:53.902)
You can misspell something or say things in

Richard Lowe (07:04.142)
I'm sorry I said that. But you understand the idea. Do it someplace out of your own audience.

Mike O'Neil (07:09.138)
Do it someplace out of your own audience, somewhere far away. I'm in Spain, so everything's far away from me. So we talked about location. The next thing that tends to matter is what industry people are in. Medical industry is different than secondary education, different than healthcare, different than hotels. So there's 400 and

Richard Lowe (07:14.08)
and sprays or everything.

So we talked about location. The next thing that tends to matter is what industry.

Medical industry is different than secondary education, different than healthcare, different than hotels. There's 430 industries like that. Wow. There used to be 147 and they just crippled that about a year ago. Okay. So when you go to type something in, you can see the match up. Right.

Mike O'Neil (07:37.522)
30 industries on LinkedIn.

And there used to be 147 and they just tripled it about a year ago. So when you go to type something in, you can see the matchup. Okay. And you can just, you know, I've got a lot of tools that I use to hone in on industries and stuff. And like, for example, if you pick the technology industry, it doesn't just include technology, it includes 45 other industries.

Richard Lowe (07:58.574)
you

Richard Lowe (08:04.846)
It doesn't just include technology, it includes 45 other industries, including libraries. Interesting, interesting, interesting.

Mike O'Neil (08:10.19)
Including libraries, Richard, libraries fall under technology. So, so when you're dealing with industries in LinkedIn itself, you're stuck with big industries. If you get into sales navigator, you can say, I want that industry, but not libraries. You get really grand. You can say not just what you want, but what you don't want. If you've got that information.

Richard Lowe (08:19.31)
When you're dealing with industries in LinkedIn itself, you're stuck with big industry. Right.

Richard Lowe (08:32.339)
Right.

Mike O'Neil (08:38.948)
if you happen to know what that information is. So the next thing that comes into play, and this is a really big one here, this may be the biggest one, job titles. Do I target here, here, here? And you can use some combinations. We call it Boolean. Boolean is a programming term that just basically says or.

Richard Lowe (08:39.084)
Okay. Okay.

Richard Lowe (08:49.612)
Yeah.

here, here, here, and you can use some combinations.

Right.

basically says or. In our case here, we'll just use the simplest ways. This or that.

Mike O'Neil (09:06.436)
In our case here, we'll just use the simplest ways, this or that, president or founder or director.

Richard Lowe (09:15.725)
I look for president, founders, C-levels, VPs.

Mike O'Neil (09:20.294)
Yeah, yeah, and you can use five of those words. You can have so many or commands, this or this or this or this or that, but that's it. And LinkedIn. In Sales Navigator, you can go all the way down the street or yourself to death. Yeah, yeah. And you can use ors to say the ones you want, and then you can use ors to say the ones you don't want. Like, I don't want.

Richard Lowe (09:23.042)
Yeah.

Richard Lowe (09:28.524)
Yeah.

Richard Lowe (09:35.31)
Which I do. Which I do.

Mike O'Neil (09:49.778)
past presidents, I don't want fraternity presidents, I only want these kind of presidents. And that's sales navigator. So that's why you pay a little more money and you get a lot more, but it's pretty complex.

Richard Lowe (09:55.554)
Right.

Richard Lowe (10:01.272)
get lot more, they call it querying, you get a lot more querying.

Mike O'Neil (10:05.05)
Yes, a lot more query. You can ask better questions of the machine. So in the LinkedIn and the free version and the LinkedIn premium version, one last thing that comes into play sometimes that's significant is the keywords. So if you look at job titles, it only looks at job titles, but keywords look everywhere in a profile.

Richard Lowe (10:10.211)
Right.

Richard Lowe (10:26.158)
So if you look at job titles, only looks at job titles, but keywords look everywhere. If someone says, I hate motorcycles, and you put a keyword motorcycles. Yep, you just put it. just put a keyword motorcycle. I hate motorcycles. Yeah.

Mike O'Neil (10:34.97)
If someone says, I hate motorcycles, and you put a keyword motorcycles, you got them.

Mike O'Neil (10:45.51)
Yep, there you go. So if you hate something, it doesn't matter. The system doesn't understand hating and liking it just says, found a word.

Richard Lowe (10:53.806)
In fact, it works the way AltaVista used to work back in the day. It's just keyword driven. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike O'Neil (10:58.418)
remember Alta Vista, Yeah, that's back in the, that's pre-Yahoo.

Richard Lowe (11:03.768)
Yeah, that's back in the, what is it, early 2000s?

Mike O'Neil (11:07.008)
Excite was another one back then, remember that?

Richard Lowe (11:08.776)
They were all keyword driven and scammers were always trying to use, know, the system.

Mike O'Neil (11:14.192)
Yeah. Now those algorithms fit on a couple of pages and now the algorithms are God knows what.

Richard Lowe (11:21.539)
it's all AI, I'm sure.

Mike O'Neil (11:24.082)
So you pull all those items together and then you get a search results. In LinkedIn, you see 10 per page. In Sales Navigator, you see 25 per page. It's just, see a certain amount and you go to page two, page three. So if you've found now your people, what are you gonna say to them? That's the next, buy my stuff. Now, you might...

Richard Lowe (11:34.894)
Right.

Richard Lowe (11:41.939)
If you found a-

Richard Lowe (11:47.01)
buy my stuff. You're say buy my stuff, right? No, I'm kidding. That's not what you say.

Mike O'Neil (11:51.792)
You might say that later, but you don't start with that. You start by having a template typically. So you've got some little base message, it's a sentence or two that you might say. And then you'll look at somebody's profile and you'll take that text and you'll go, I learned, he's into funky shirts. Okay. So you paste your message into the connection request and you'll say, I'm into funky shirts too, or I really like that.

dashika you had or the what do call your shirt, know, your costume, your Hawaiian shirt, you know, and I do like to compliment people on how they look in their pictures, by the way. A lot of people spend a lot of time and effort to select that picture. And if you say, you know, that was that's a mighty smile you got there. Mighty smile you got there.

Richard Lowe (12:24.93)
Hawaiian shirt, yeah.

Richard Lowe (12:32.334)
All right.

Richard Lowe (12:42.498)
Yeah, you basically say anything you can to show them that you actually looked rather than a robot.

Mike O'Neil (12:48.344)
Exactly so. Exactly so. And you expect someone who's in marketing to have marketing stuff in their profile. You're looking for something that's unusual, off the beaten path. And in a profile, the about section is the best place to find that. And then you scroll to the bottom, right? And see if they're part of any associations or they went to a school that you could talk about or they're...

Richard Lowe (13:01.678)
Right

Mike O'Neil (13:17.318)
they volunteer or have some causes. I like to look at the recommendations people give. Do ever look at those, Richard?

Richard Lowe (13:24.501)
Yeah, I'm actively getting lots of them and I look at them definitely

Mike O'Neil (13:30.192)
Yeah, when you look at, well, let's say it's Jonathan that you got there and you scroll down into the recommendations and it says, John, well, I'm not going dear Jonathan anymore. I'm going with John. Or if it's Johnny or whatever. But recommendations kind of see how people talk about them. And there might be something juicy to say there as well.

Richard Lowe (13:43.532)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Lowe (13:55.407)
So in summary, you're using LinkedIn Navigator or if you don't want to buy LinkedIn Navigator, why not? It's only what 30 bucks more than this business thing. You're using it to find qualified people to talk to.

Mike O'Neil (14:07.387)
Yeah.

Mike O'Neil (14:12.434)
That's right. That's right. And you get a search list. You've got a list of people in a search.

Richard Lowe (14:17.154)
And then you're putting together a semi-customized message at least. So you got your boilerplate and then you basically want to look a little bit. And I'm sure you could come up with some AI that does that if you wanted to, to put in some, that's unique, that shows that something looked at their profile at least.

Mike O'Neil (14:38.66)
Exactly. So exactly. Now, now if you, I, I, I'm in technology and a lot of our audiences are technology people. Okay. I like to look at their past jobs, all of their past jobs and see if there's anything I can relate to. know, what were they doing back in the, in the eighties and nineties that I can relate to my best when I was in technology, worked in telecom, internet systems, integration servers.

Richard Lowe (14:45.707)
you

Richard Lowe (14:52.489)
if there's anything I can relate.

What were they?

Richard Lowe (15:01.154)
Alright.

Richard Lowe (15:05.742)
systems integration, servers, wide area networks.

Mike O'Neil (15:08.932)
wide area networks, I worked in all that cool stuff. And if I see they had anything to do with any of that, I'm on it. I'm throwing out slang and gibberish that's related to that kind of stuff to get them feeling warm and cozy, you know, right? Right. We would have talked about TCP IP.

Richard Lowe (15:12.654)
And if I see they had anything to do with any of that...

Richard Lowe (15:21.134)
that's related to that kind of stuff to get them feeling warm and cozy. We would have talked about TCP IV. So basically a technical person or a leader can use this to help find other people in their industry or whatever kind of criteria they want to network with, to sell to, to buy from, whatever their purpose is.

They can use this to find better qualified people. So they're not wasting other people's time and their own on people who are not interested. For example, like one of the first mistake that I made in LinkedIn when doing this was I would throw out a message that said, you know, I'm a ghostwriter and I want you to, I want to help write, help you write a book. And then I got back, somebody says, you didn't look at my profile. I've written 50 books. Like, that was 80. That was, that was years ago, you know.

Mike O'Neil (16:15.25)
Yeah.

Richard Lowe (16:18.394)
Probably eight years ago or something. Learn my lessons since then. You make sure that you've checked and then you have a different message. I see you've several books. Are you thinking of writing another one? Maybe I can help with that. It's a different message, but it shows that you at least looked.

Mike O'Neil (16:34.512)
Yes, having a library of templates is what you just described. And that's brilliant that we, we just, do that ourselves. I have five or six that fit the different scenarios in technology. might be that, I worked at a technology company that's similar to yours, or you were in, you were in Colorado or, or, or, or, you know, you're an engineer. You know, I have a template that, that, kind of says how I could relate to them. And then I've got one that says, I can't relate to you at all, but.

Richard Lowe (16:46.37)
Right.

Richard Lowe (16:51.81)
Right.

Mike O'Neil (17:03.856)
Damn it. You got a cool company you work for.

Richard Lowe (17:06.893)
And now the, the other mistake that I've, that I've made and I've seen other people make is they get this message and there's no, first of all, first mistake. one is it says buy my stuff. Don't do that. And mistake number two is no followup or poor followup.

Mike O'Neil (17:22.79)
Yep. But let's explore that, Richard, because we are. So I just went when you're going down your list of people, don't be afraid to skip people. If you send a half the people on that page, pick the right half. You know, don't just feel you got to invite everybody. Your search is only so good in LinkedIn. Your mind and your eyes are scrubbing that list on the fly.

Richard Lowe (17:31.912)
yeah.

Richard Lowe (17:45.708)
If you're looking for technical directors and one of them is an art director, that may not be right for your audience, although it was a director.

Mike O'Neil (17:53.008)
Yeah, that's right. And the word director is a really dirty one. There's directors of catering out there. So if you're going to use the word director, you've really got to use a qualifier with it. And that's where LinkedIn doesn't work well and Sales Navigator works really well, because you can really qualify with the, you can have say director and sales or marketing. Okay. Cause you can use those little ors and brackets and stuff like that. Yeah. So after, after you send these out,

Richard Lowe (17:57.44)
catering.

Richard Lowe (18:07.394)
Yeah. You can really qualify with the, you can have a state director and sales or marketing. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, so after you send these out, they're going to show up in a certain place in LinkedIn. They're going to show up in your new connections page. And it'll say, you know, connected an hour ago, a day ago. And that's the place to go. Follow up.

Mike O'Neil (18:22.876)
They're going to show up in a certain place in LinkedIn. They're going to show up in your new connections page. And it'll say, you know, connected an hour ago, a day ago, a week ago and stuff. And that's the place to go look, to follow up and you're going to send a thanks for connecting message. We call it a welcome message. All you're saying is thanks for connecting. I hope we can be good resources for one another. That's all. Nothing more. Nothing more than that.

Richard Lowe (18:43.928)
saying.

we can be good resources for one another.

Thank

Mike O'Neil (18:52.498)
Okay, now a week later, you might say, I was recircling, came on back, I thought you caught my eye again, I took a closer look and you seem like the right kind of person who would be involved in internet security and you know what, I love that or might wanna write a book or you'd be a good author. Picture yourself on the cover of 8 1⁄2 by 11 or what is it, 8 by 5.

Richard Lowe (18:53.546)
Right.

Richard Lowe (19:12.366)
Picture yourself on the cover of 8.5 x 11. What is it? 8 x 9 x 6. 9 x 6.

Mike O'Neil (19:21.274)
Nine by six, nine by six. So there's three messages in that sequence. We've got the invitation. We've got thanks for connecting or the welcome message. And then you've got the message where you really are saying, you know, I reached out to you for this reason. You know, I don't read out to everybody. I reached out to you for this reason.

Richard Lowe (19:41.442)
That's when you ask them to buy your inkjet cartridges, right? No, kidding.

Mike O'Neil (19:46.502)
That's where you say, you know, I you got a laser printer, don't you? You know, what's in, what's, what's in your wallet? Yeah, I knew we'd have fun with this, Richard. I knew we would. So let's just try to keep it simple. It's a three step process. And you know, if you've got tools and sales navigate or other things, you can go further with it. But that's, that's it right there. You know, find the people.

Richard Lowe (19:52.654)
because we've all got a million of those.

Richard Lowe (20:03.768)
Right.

Mike O'Neil (20:14.17)
get your message together, or messages together, invite them to connect when they do. And if you get 20 % of the people you're inviting to connect, you're doing pretty good. 20 % is a pretty good number, especially if you're dealing with people who get a lot of invites, like people at the top of the company. So let that be the case. Now, if you've got Sales Navigator, let's talk about that. So that was the free version and all.

Richard Lowe (20:33.421)
Right.

Mike O'Neil (20:43.578)
In Sales Navigator, you've got a few more filters you can use. And one that I like a lot is called Seniority Level. Seniority Level. Did use that one, Richard? Have seen that one? It's a great one. Great one.

Richard Lowe (20:52.312)
seniority.

I use, yeah, yeah. I use that one a lot because I'm looking for senior people.

Mike O'Neil (21:01.362)
Yeah, yeah. if you're doing your job titles, seniority level is a little bit redundant with that. You can be used together strategically, but you're basically saying, I want CXOs, anyone with a chief title. Now, you could be chief bottle washing officer and it will find it. Richard, I've tested this. mean, literally, you know, chief, I'm the chief widget officer, I think it was. And it found it because all it's looking for is chief.

Richard Lowe (21:12.59)
Yep.

Yep, yeah.

Mike O'Neil (21:30.756)
and officer and anything in between, qualifies.

Richard Lowe (21:31.08)
officer anything in between yeah I was looking for chief data officers and that was also chief diversity officers so I had to filter that manually

Mike O'Neil (21:42.3)
Yeah. Yeah. So you understand when you've got something, you know, powerful, it's a little more complicated, right, Richard? I mean, you're blessed with something and you're cursed with something at the same time.

Richard Lowe (21:48.61)
Yep. Yep.

Richard Lowe (21:53.87)
So now you're just to kind of summarize this and lead towards a wrap up. You're a technical person or you're a leader and as a leader, your job is to lead. Your job is to get out there and to network. I preach this a lot. You have to network to survive in this world, especially the way the world is going. So you have to get, and that doesn't mean going to network groups or things, could mean that. What it means is getting to,

people to know, like, and trust you and find people you know, and trust. We could have a whole episode on that. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a word used by many marketers and salespeople. And what it means is you get people to trust you and to like you and know who you are. So you've just connected with people using a method that actually helps with that. You've, you've given them messages that are at least semi-relevant. So they start to know you.

Mike O'Neil (22:28.956)
K-L-T, absolutely, we know that one well.

Richard Lowe (22:49.666)
They, you're talking to them over three messages. They start to like you a little bit and they're trusting you a little more because you're actually being relevant. So you've raised it just a little bit. And then as your messages continue, you can raise that even more. And maybe you schedule a meeting and, this is a lot of my audience might think, well, I'm a technical person. Why would I do any of this stuff? It's well, what happens if you your job? You're to suddenly scramble.

You you should be doing this during your whole career. Correct?

Mike O'Neil (23:22.866)
That's right, that's right. And when you have a job is when you want to be building your network because more people will connect with you. You don't want to appear needy. You can offer more to people. Yeah, to like you.

Richard Lowe (23:32.226)
And they'll like you. Now, the other thing in the equation, just super briefly of no like and trust is you have to give to get. So I'm finding that out more and more and more. have to give something to people. So don't just go on there and say, my stuff. The first thing you should be asking is how can we help each other? How can I help you kind of thing? And then you gain their trust and they begin to know you and they begin to like you because everybody likes it. And I'm not talking about just giving away those free.

Mike O'Neil (23:54.737)
All right.

Richard Lowe (24:01.694)
free pamphlet or a free something, give them something they actually could use. Like, dude, are there any people I can connect you with? It's a great one. It's pretty harmless. Is there, where do I get those cool shirts that you're wearing? know?

Mike O'Neil (24:10.692)
Yep.

Mike O'Neil (24:18.288)
It's called Dashika, D-A-S-H-I-K-A. I'm sure they're on Amazon.

Richard Lowe (24:23.692)
Yep, or eBay, certainly. Yeah, you know, so in the long and short of it, this helps you get the people to talk to, but it's still your job to qualify those people and then to get them to like you and trust you and know who you are. And that's...

Mike O'Neil (24:41.938)
Yep. Yep. You do it through your profile and you do it through the words that you put in on LinkedIn. Those are the two things under your control. A lot of things are not under your control. mean, you can't control whether they're even going to see it, whether they log in or whether they pay any attention to it. So you can only work with the things that are under your control. And that's how you look and what you say.

Richard Lowe (25:04.076)
And then probably the other important thing is, don't trigger LinkedIn's, annoyance filters. like to call them where you're, you're just, had one person that was a friend of mine is a friend of mine. He decided he could make a lot of money by connecting to five or 600 people a day. So he just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang LinkedIn deleted his account, just killed it. So then he tried to create another one, killed it.

Mike O'Neil (25:28.284)
Yep.

Richard Lowe (25:31.278)
He could not create an, he can't create a new account on LinkedIn. If he can identify him, he's not going to be getting an account. So you have to be.

Mike O'Neil (25:37.33)
20 a day is a good number if you're going to be doing things. 100 a week, 100 a week and 20, 30 a day is really the upper limit for what people ought to be doing. And don't go too fast. Yeah, for connection requests. Don't go too fast.

Richard Lowe (25:51.928)
For connections. yeah. Spread them, spread them through the day. Like you're a normal person instead of a robot. You don't want to look like a robot.

Mike O'Neil (26:03.314)
Well, one interesting thing about robots is, you know, a robot will wait, it will do something every 20 minutes all throughout the course of a day. And a worker is not going to send a connection request, so on. So, I like to find a time in the morning. I'm listening to my podcast. So I've got my phone, I'm listening to my podcast, and I'm doing my inviting and checking my inbox in the morning. It's one of the first things I do.

Richard Lowe (26:09.206)
Right, right, right.

Mike O'Neil (26:32.274)
Other people go to their email inbox first. These two inboxes are the first things to kind look for in the morning. Yeah, mean, frankly, sometimes it's this one, sometimes it's that one, right? I mean, this has got to be done by nine or so. And I get my inviting done in, I take maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes in the morning to do my inviting. And I'm doing 20 a day, roughly.

Richard Lowe (26:33.4)
people go to their email inbox first. These two inboxes are the first things to kind of look for. Me too.

Sometimes it's this one, sometimes it's that one.

Richard Lowe (26:49.336)
Getting done.

Maybe 20 minutes.

Richard Lowe (26:59.724)
Right.

Mike O'Neil (27:00.166)
That's a minute apiece. Now I'm not spreading them out throughout the whole day. You Richard, you mentioned about spreading them out throughout the whole day. That doesn't operationally work for a lot of people, but what does work is if you split it up, parts of the day, you know, when I come back from lunch or before I leave or so, having two moments in the day works out pretty good.

Richard Lowe (27:11.67)
if you

Richard Lowe (27:18.978)
That's what I do. I do them generally first thing in the morning before I go to bed and maybe in the middle of the day. I don't try and I don't try and artificially spread it through the day. Okay. Well, we we've learned a lot today about LinkedIn. I mean, these these might sound pretty basic, but they're actually very, very powerful. could you summarize it all in a, in a, you know, paragraph?

Mike O'Neil (27:42.266)
Yeah, sure I can. LinkedIn is the place where the people you want to do business are. You have to go to where they are. Now, finding them is a matter of extracting by putting some things in to get some things out. The next step is to engage them to connect for the most part.

Richard Lowe (27:46.028)
LinkedIn is the place.

Mike O'Neil (28:06.002)
There's a, could have, if we had 30 more minutes, we'd talk about content and posting and all that stuff, but we don't have that time today. So I'm being rather direct here. There's a whole lot more to it. And if you like, know, book a call with me. I mean, it's really easy to book a call with me. It's schedulewithmike.com. Schedulewithmike.com. Does it get any easier than that?

Richard Lowe (28:16.718)
And if you like, you know, book a call with me. It's really easy to book a call with me. It's schedule with Mike.com. was a Mike.com. it get any easier than that? That was my next question. Well, thank you for answering that. How to get, how to get hold of you schedule a meeting.

Mike O'Neil (28:32.562)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I get on a call with someone, we look at their profile and I give them tips and guidance on what to do. You know, this is good, that's not. Have you thought of this? Take a look at this idea. Then we go over your target market and talk about who those sort of people are. And then we discuss things like we talked about today. How would you engage those folks? We just get more specific when we're in one-on-one versus doing a 20-minute podcast.

Richard Lowe (28:59.606)
Number one thing that I think people can do to increase their profile is get a good headshot, a professional one. You know, JC Penney's and with a Groupon and get it for 30 bucks, which is what I did. And they came out really, really good and get a professional headshot and make sure that headline is good and change it once in a while. should, the headline should, should be a, what do you deliver to people? What do they get? It's not about you. It's about them.

Mike O'Neil (29:20.487)
Yep.

Mike O'Neil (29:28.986)
And actually your headline can be about multiple things, which you mentioned. You and I both do both do this. We get, we got a certain amount of characters and you can say, you know, a little bit and then put a little separator or an emoji and then say a little something else and another emoji. I recommend people use three sections. they got a, the first section is about their name and title or their, their title and title and company, then an emoji and then some qualifications. says I'm a sales navigator expert, campaign expert.

Richard Lowe (29:32.334)
240.

Mike O'Neil (29:59.034)
and then another emoji and then something interesting. So mine says Forbes top 50 social media expert. So those are three separate kind of buckets of stuff in the same text separated by an emoji or a little vertical pipe. So you get three, four lines of stuff, Richard, right? You take advantage of it. That's prime real estate.

Richard Lowe (30:02.83)
Mine says Forbes top 50 social media. Right. Those are three separate kind of buckets of stuff in the same text separated by an emoji or a little vertical pipe. You get three, four lines of stuff, Richard, right? Take advantage of it. It's the one that shows up everywhere. And other than the first three lines of the about clause, it's the only one that shows up on anything, those things. And that's what you need to focus on. Well, thank you for coming in.

Mike O'Neil (30:30.482)
Exactly.

Richard Lowe (30:32.576)
I'm Richard Lowe. I'm Richard Lowe, the writing king. You can find me at the writingking.com or ghostwriting.guru and I write books for people. I also occasionally do LinkedIn profiles and LinkedIn work. Not with Sales Navigator. That's not my forte. I tend to just look at the profile and fix that up and give it little coaching. So this, you know, that's how it works. I also do case studies and white papers.

Mike O'Neil (30:32.978)
You bet, Richard.

Richard Lowe (31:00.46)
So thank you for watching the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I hope this was helpful and come back next time. Thank you.

Mike O'Neil (31:08.434)
Thanks for having me, Richard. This was really fun to go with you. You're awesome.

Richard Lowe (31:10.924)
My pleasure. Thank you.