Get Better Results Doing Less on Linkedin - Teacher: Gus Bhandal

I joined an engagement pod in 2018. I it ruined my LinkedIn it took me a long time to bring back the right people into my audience. When I was creating content, the only people that would ever see it Were the people in the pod and the people in the pod weren't interested in what I have to do for a living or interested in what I'm selling, so it took me a long time to get rid of those people and then start curating a new audience all over again.

So from experience, I can say it's going to ruin your LinkedIn. Despite what the owners of the engagement pod try promoting. Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content classroom. Gus Bandel.

Hi, Gus.

Hi Juma, how you doing?

doing

well. I'm doing well. And I'm sure you are doing well out there in Coventry.

It's

great to have you on.

I am. Yeah, It's uh, it's all good here. Not, not so sunny right now, but, uh, I mean, usually the sun always shines in Coventry, but, uh, not so sunny today.

Yeah, Coventry is the center of the

world.

Yes.

Of course, center

of the universe. Yeah. That's the hashtag.

All right. Great. So Gus, um, I know we came here today to talk specifically about some LinkedIn related things, cause that's what you're into. That's what you do. So could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content?

Absolutely. So what I, um, I'm a LinkedIn trainer. I teach people how to use LinkedIn. I tell people I'm the UK's number one LinkedIn trainer, according to my mom. Um, and essentially I, I teach business owners, senior executives, and teams how to make the most of LinkedIn, how to really leverage it for their business and make sure that, uh, quite frankly, they're using it like a proper social media platform.

Right. So what makes LinkedIn so different than any other, uh, social media platform?

My favorite thing about LinkedIn and particularly the thing that makes it different to other platforms is the fact that you can curate the perfect audience. One of the best things about LinkedIn is that. It has a search box. We can use it for free. Um, and essentially we can search for anybody that we want to search for and anybody that we want to connect to. Whereas every other platform, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, anywhere else, you're relying on people to follow you. You're relying on people to find you on those platforms. On LinkedIn, you get to do the outreach and you get to connect to exactly who you want to connect to. In essence, curating the perfect audience.

Right. And so would you say that one of the most powerful features on LinkedIn is actually search? Cause I don't really hear people talking about that much. People often talk about how bad the algorithm is. They talk about video versus text versus carousels. But are you saying that search is something that people.

Really overlook as one of the more powerful parts of

LinkedIn.

Absolutely. I think there's a lot of LinkedIn trainers that will talk about things like having the perfect content strategy, which is obviously a good thing. Um, and also how to, you know, kind of work the algorithm, et cetera. But I think a lot of people forget that there's a search box where we can curate the perfect audience. Most people go through life on LinkedIn and just connect to everybody that they've ever worked with or everybody they met at networking or friends or content that they want to see, et cetera. And that's all great, but ultimately what happens is your audience becomes very disparate, so that when you are creating your perfect content, it's not necessarily seen by your ideal audience. So the search box is ridiculously powerful. And it's so powerful that LinkedIn have a whole separate tool called Sales Navigator, which is essentially, um, the search box, but made a thousand times more powerful. So we can have the free search box or we can use the paid tool as well, but it's all about that search.

Yeah. So one of the things that I often, um, I'm sad about is the fact that I am not very good at LinkedIn sales navigator. I know of it. Um, well, what happens that when you get on the platform, every now and again, LinkedIn will give you free access to LinkedIn navigator, but every time I get it, I'm not good at it.

I'm like, okay, how does this actually work? Uh, what are the, what are the real benefits of the tools that are in it? Are there any tools that you pay for that you think is essential for, for marketing teams, for CEOs, for business owners, to use when they pay for LinkedIn sales navigates or any

particular tool

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily pay for any additional tool as such, but particularly when it comes to sales navigator. So LinkedIn has a number of paid options. You have the free option, you have the premium option, and you have the sales navigator option. You have other like, you know, the recruiter and the career mode, et cetera. I normally tell people forget the premium mode, either use the free version or go straight to sales navigator. And with sales navigator, the search is immense. And I think as you said, Many people don't know how to use it. They pay for Sales Navigator. It can become very overwhelming because it's a proper lead generation tool. Um, and then people just think, Oh, you know, it hasn't worked for me, etc. Sales Navigator is brilliant to, um, create lists of people that you want to connect to. And it has a, A massive criteria in terms of how many employees does a company have? What's their job title? Where are they based? Who are they connected to? Um, and my favorite kind of, uh, feature of sales navigator is have they posted within the last 30 days?

on

And I always tick that

box, yes, because if you're connecting to people that aren't using LinkedIn on a regular basis, all you're doing is curating an audience of people that don't use the platform, which means that your content is not going to get seen by anyone. So I always make sure that I connect to people that are active on the platform and Sales Navigate helps me to find who those people are.

that note. So one of the things that always happens to me is that when I, when people send me connection requests, cause that's one of the things you can do on LinkedIn, when people send me connection requests and I go to check their profile, which if I don't know, you send me a connection request. I check your profile out to see what you're up to.

Sometimes you see that they haven't posted anything. Well, sometimes you see they haven't posted anything yet. And sometimes you realize that based on their posting frequency or they're posting cadence, they may be posting once every six months or whatever that might be. How important is it that people who you're connecting to are active in that way?

Because I've heard many people say, and I probably have said it myself. That a lot of times the inquiries you get for your business are people who don't engage, or some of them don't even make any content. Is there a way to connect somebody's posting activity to how likely they are to buy from you or engage with you for business?

One of the things when it comes to people who are active on the platform, there's a couple of schools of thought here. There are some people who are lurkers who just literally open LinkedIn and go through and just look at content and then leave. no way of really knowing if people are active on the platform without them either reacting to content or creating their own content. So if I go to somebody's page, Profile and it says this person hasn't posted yet or this person hasn't posted in the last three months, etc Next to the button where it says posts I click on comments and then I see if they're commenting so if they're regularly commenting then it shows me that they're active because actually A commenting strategy is also a powerful way to bring people into your world, etc And to obviously to talk to a lot of people So if they're not posting regularly, I at least check that they are commenting regularly

If They're not posting anything, nor are they commenting, that tells me two things. That either tells me that they're a lurker, that they're just hanging around on the platform, or, um, they're not active at all. In both senses, they're not necessarily a good fit for an audience. Because obviously the whole point of LinkedIn is you want an active audience because it's about engagement. It's about two way conversation, etc So I look at people's posts and whether they're posting if they're not posting I click on comments and see if they're commenting and obviously if they're commenting a commenting strategy is still a It's still a good strategy for LinkedIn without necessarily posting.

So It's one or the other normally.

you look at that and you determine, well, okay, they are, Not making any content, but they are commenting, um, depending on how they are. You could actually look at that and all this is not using sales navigator. This is just now just looking at their standard stuff on LinkedIn.

Right. Okay. So then, then how does sales navigate? And I know we kind of going off on a little bit of a

tangent here, how does sales navigator come in

with this?

So sales navigator helps us to find those leads in the first place So for example, I can go If I use the search box, I can find people who are for example second degree connections So, you know friends of friends I can search for particular job titles or locations, etc. But it's a very um it's a basic search where a sales navigator can go much deeper in terms of Has this person posted in the last 30 days?

Is this person connected to? I don't know, certain influencers or content creators, et cetera. Um, what company does this person work for? How many employees does that company have, et cetera. For me personally, I do a lot of corporate LinkedIn training. So I look for, um, kind of like the CEOs or the executives of an organization that has more than 10 stuff, for example, so 10 employees.

So that would be a criteria for me. And that could be a criteria for others, or it could be, uh, we can base it upon. Very specific job titles. So whereas on the free version you would just type in I'm looking for an accountant or I'm looking for somebody who works in HR or a videographer In Sales Navigator, it actually gives you the job titles. So it could be Human Resources Manager, Human Resources Director, etc. And you can put multiple people into a search. to then create a list. Um, and essentially that becomes a lead list. You would save that list. You can contact people individually as and when. Um, but there's so much more in terms of sales navigator because when you pay for LinkedIn, you also get to send personalized requests. Um, so, and

because unfortunately on the free version, you can't do that anymore. You can only do it to, I think it's up to 10 people per month, whereas on the paid version, you can send

unlimited connection requests.

Right.

in, as in notes

that go with the connection

Like the

personalized part of the

request.

Yes. Yeah. So, and it's, it's all things like that.

So rather, you know, as well as being a good lead generation tool, paying for LinkedIn gives you access to lots of things that you don't normally get on the free version. But I should say for the most part, for 80 percent of people of what they need, the free version of LinkedIn is more than enough.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Cause I am

using the free version. I use the free version of LinkedIn. Uh, okay. So, so there are two things that I, I used, you said that I want to, I want to kind of go deeper on. The first thing is the personalization of messages and whether or not that's a good idea. There has been tons of back and forth over years, arguments for and against Why personalizing messages is the way to go or isn't the way to go.

What's, what is your take on that? And I'll get back to the second thing I want to

ask you thereafter.

So my opinion is that. Every connection request should have a personalized note that goes along with it, mainly because It saves the other person lots of time because you're telling them very directly. I would like to connect with you for this reason. Now, I always train people and recommend to people that they say something about the other person because you have to do the research to save the other person time.

So for example, if you and I didn't know each other and I send you a blank connection request, you would have two choices. You can either reject that or you would have to do your due diligence and go through my profile and then you will see. What I do for a living, do I create content, who I'm connected to, etc. But unfortunately, by sending you a blank connection request, I've put the onus on you to do the research. Whereas, What I would normally do is I do the recess. So I look at Juma's profile. I look at your headline. I look at your connections and mutual connections, what content you're creating, your testimonials, et cetera. And then I would send you a note to say, I would like to connect with you because I love your content or you're connected to these people or, you know, et cetera. Those something that, that I can only. Uh, write about because I've read your, your profile and because of that, that takes the, that puts the onus on me to do the research and takes the onus away from you.

So I'm saving you time because then you can make a decision straight away. Like, yes, I will accept Gus's connection request or he's lying. I don't like his reasons. I would, I would decline, you know? So it's, yeah, it's a personalized connection request. Not only is it lovely, it's, you know, when we go to networking events.

Yeah. We introduce ourselves. We tell people, Hello, I'm Gus. I do this, this and this. Um, now tell me more about yourself. Whereas I think a blank connection request is literally just giving somebody your business card and walking away. So, and obviously we don't like that. We don't like people that do that.

So that's a good point that you've made. First of all, the, the whole idea of giving people the work to do. Even though you are the one who is reaching out, right? I think that's a very, very good point. So I have a podcast,

you're on it right now, obviously.

Um, and I think part of the thing that I've discovered in doing that is that when you When people ask you to be on a podcast and they don't say anything, they don't explain why, or they they don't give context, then you have to now go and find out what it is about. You may have to go and try to, you know, chase down episode and and so I think that point is very, very valid in the fact that you, it you, when you remove friction, it makes it easier for people to make

a decision.

Uh, so that's, so that's number one. The second thing is that I know you have like a four stage strategy for how people should approach LinkedIn. So the first one is optimizing your profile. And the second one is finding your ideal clients. So what you're talking about here with LinkedIn navigator is that second part of the thing is like targeting the people you want to target.

Uh, okay. So after you've done that, and I know probably. We could talk a little bit about how you tell your clients to make content. So after you found the people that you want to, to connect with and you send them these requests, then what's the process after that? Is there something that you should or shouldn't do?

Are there things that you should try to avoid? Should you be taking advice from certain people? I don't know what happens

next.

So for me, the, the, the four stage process, ultimately it's optimize your profile, um, connect to great people, create great content and do plenty of engagement, uh, with those people. Now, particularly in terms of the, the second and the third kind of, uh, part of the strategy. When I connect to people, I always say something nice about them.

The thing that I don't do is sell to them. I don't say, Oh, thanks for connecting. I do LinkedIn training. It looks like your LinkedIn is rubbish. Please buy my services. So I don't sell to people. That's where the third part of the strategy comes in, because I let my content do the talking. Because ultimately we have to get people to know us, like us and trust us. And generally people won't hand over their money until they trust us. And ultimately I get people to trust me because I have a solid content marketing strategy, which basically explains who I am, what I do, what I'm good at, my case studies, my testimonials, my background, my experience, my education, et cetera.

So that's where my content strategy comes in. So that when people that I connect to see that over time, they learn to trust me as opposed to me just going in and saying, well, thank you for connecting. This is what I sell. Please buy it. Because at that point they have no idea who I am. You know, it's kind of like the, um, the first person that ever drank a can of Coca Cola, he didn't know what that was going to taste like, but the second person knew that the first person didn't die.

So he drank a can of Coca Cola as well. So it's, it's that case of, there has to be that, that level of trust, right?

Yeah, I connected

with Gus and I didn't die. So it might be a

good idea

for you to,

exactly. I think that's my new strapline. That's going in. Yeah.

all right. Great, great, great, great, great. All right. So, so I, I know we've been talking for a little bit and we're supposed to be talking about how to make your LinkedIn. Efficient and effective your process inside of that. And I suspect that we've touched on a few things that you may have wanted to talk about already.

So, so let's, let's segue into that, that overall idea of making your process of being on LinkedIn more effective and more efficient. And the first question I would ask is what does that really mean? What is being effective and being efficient on LinkedIn look like?

There is a lot of, um, content on LinkedIn from people that suggest that you should be there a lot. Like I see processes all the time where people say, You know, I wake up at five o'clock. I have an ice bath. I, you know, I take my dog for a walk for five hours and then I come home and I spend six hours on LinkedIn doing outreach.

And, you know, now I've made 20, 000 pounds, you know, this week and all that kind of stuff. And for the most part, it's all lies. It's not what I like to teach people. Unless you're a LinkedIn trainer yourself, you have better things to do. So. I teach people that actually just with a few minutes a day or just with a kind of um a few set activities each day you can make your day efficient and be just as good as those people that spend eight hours a day on LinkedIn because it's just a smaller scale and I think the problem is that there are like I said unless you're a LinkedIn trainer there is way too much advice about being on LinkedIn all day every day because It's not necessarily about the hustle. LinkedIn should form part of your day. There's a big digital marketing world out there, big strategy world out there. We have to get clients. We have other things to do. You know, we have to eat, we have to sleep. You know, it's, there's only so much in our day that we can do. So I teach people how to use LinkedIn efficiently just by spending a small amount of time a day, rather than eight hours a day.

All right. Okay. Good. So the efficiency part is that you're building a business. You have a life, you have things you want to do that are important. You should not be spending one second more on LinkedIn than you really have to in order to accomplish your goals. So that's basically what it is. And I, and I know about those people who talk about it's, I don't know, probably their day has a lot more hours in it, maybe 48 hours

as opposed to 24.

But the description that they give, it almost seems as if you have to like live on LinkedIn. You have to be on it constantly. And I know for most people. That is way far from the reality. All right. So, so now that we've established that as how to be the, what efficiency means and what being effective means, let's talk about how you do that.

Where's the first place you start when you're teaching a client how to be effective and

efficient on LinkedIn?

So once we've Optimized our profile. So I made sure that our profile says all the right things and is covered in keywords of what we do. So my, my profile is covered in words like social media, digital marketing, LinkedIn training, et cetera. That's what I do for a living. So it's all over my profile. Then I curate the perfect audience.

So I spend, so essentially with clients, I tell them, let's have some daily tasks, some weekly tasks, and some monthly tasks, and a daily task could be. Let's go and engage with 5 or 10 people today. Let's go and comment on, like, just spend 10 minutes a day just scrolling through your feed. And if you have curated the perfect audience, then your feed should be perfect to you. You shouldn't have to see content that is not relevant to you. So, what you're going to do every day is spend a few minutes just curate, um, engaging with other people. Um, a weekly task would be the I would say create one or two pieces of content per week that you're going to publish. You can either schedule them or publish them, you know, uh, as and when, but also a weekly task is connect to a few new people every week.

Keep building that audience. Like, so keep curating an audience, but I recommend just a few people per week. I think there's a limit of, you can connect to a hundred people per week. I don't, I don't know how true that is. You know, it's, it's all, it's always changing, but generally. You shouldn't be connecting to 100 people per week because what that will do is that will grow your audience too fast and you won't get enough people to know you, like you, and trust you. So if you build it slowly but surely, you can send people DMs, you can send them messages, you can engage with their content, etc. in an efficient fashion. So a daily task would be to engage with people, a weekly task would be to connect to a few people, but also write a couple of posts per week. A monthly task would be to plan your content. Of a month. So in terms of particularly if you have content pillars, so every month, I'm going to post at least one case study, at least one testimonial, at least, um, one post about what I do for a living, at least one post about, I don't know, a networking event, uh, one post about a podcast I've been on, et cetera.

So it's all that kind of that monthly content, which makes it efficient. So you're not waking up in the morning thinking, Oh, I haven't posted any content today, or I don't think of any content. So let me just post something. Um, So it's, it's those daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that only take a few minutes each day, but that create that consistency.

Cause I think one of the biggest things on LinkedIn is consistency. Those people that aren't consistent are the ones that aren't getting success.

Hmm. Hmm. That's good. Um, let me just zero in on something you mentioned at the start of what you were saying. How can one engage? And not seem fake, uh, because I know some people engage because they're told to engage, but they don't know how to. Do it in a way that is genuine. How can someone do that?

I think it's finding content to, so engaging with somebody authentically and with integrity and honesty is finding content that, Resonates with you and so LinkedIn is very much a storytelling platform Whereas before it used to be a place where people just put their cvs and just tried to get a job etc Now it's a place where people tell stories and the and the reason people tell stories is because it resonates with others So if I tell a story that, Oh, I went networking today, or I bought some orange chocolate today, or I bought some new orange trainers, or I went to this event, or I was on this podcast, or I've done this training, or I've got this qualification, it resonates with other people because other people will say, Oh, I also love orange chocolate or I hate orange chocolate.

And then they get into a conversation. It's actually, there's no harm in just being authentic and, and writing content, like writing comments, et cetera. That res on content that resonates with you Sometimes the con the, the content and the comments. aren't necessarily related to your work, but it's about building relationships.

It's about building friendships. If I spent all day every day saying, Oh, I love your post. Just so you know, I'm a LinkedIn trainer. Would you like some LinkedIn training? Eventually people will just switch off and they'll stop responding to me. Whereas if I talk about stuff like, you know, if you talk about podcasts or videos and, or the equipment that you use, you know, I could reply and say, Oh, this is a really good post because I haven't got a mic yet or I haven't got a decent HD camera or whatever it may be. And it's it's that kind of content where it resonates with one another which then helps both of our audiences to see each other. So if I comment on your content all of your audience will see my comment and all of my audience will see your content. More or less, not necessarily all, but you know, some of them, um, but it's that it's that sharing.

It's that authenticity of just having a conversation just like you would in real life.

Yeah. I see you worked in orange chocolate

into the conversation.

Oh, always. Yeah, it's, Uh,

I always talk about orange chocolate. There is a reason. I mean, it's a long story, but it was, I always used to teach people about marketing segmentation and I used to use orange chocolate for it. Um, but now I talk about it because. As we're getting closer to Christmas, most people send me orange chocolate in the post and, and my wife hates orange chocolate, which means I get to eat it

you get all of it.

yeah, exactly. So, yes,

This test things until you find something that you like that no one else likes

and just buy that.

absolutely. Absolutely.

It's a little trick, talking about that, let's talk about what's the line between, personal content and private.

And okay, let, let me call it the Facebook line, how do you make sure not to cross that line? And is there actually a line between what is personal and what is private or LinkedIn, or is this a something false? And you just

post anything that you want.

So, I mean, that's a great question because I talk about stuff. So for example, when it comes to personal, personal content and personable content, unlike most other LinkedIn trainers, I actually like it and I really enjoy it because actually it tells me more about the person. So I could say all day, every day, I'm a LinkedIn trainer.

I'm a LinkedIn trainer. I'm a LinkedIn trainer. Eventually people switch off because they're like, I know what this guy does. But if I start talking about chocolate or trainers or networking or education, or, uh, my wife or my kid or my car or my dog or whatever, I mean, I haven't got a dog, so I wouldn't talk about that, but whatever it may be. It starts resonating with other people. I don't think that there's a line. I think it's entirely up to you how deep you want to go. So for example, I never talk about my family. I never talk about my wife or my son on LinkedIn or indeed on any social media. I just don't want them involved in any conversations, but I do talk about My food, or my networking, or my car, or the fact that I've gone for a walk, or whatever it may be. Um, and I know there are some people that tell really deep stories about, like, illnesses or diseases or people passing away, etc. I think LinkedIn is just an outlet. It has become the new Facebook. I think it's the outlet for people to tell those stories. I think the balance is that the line is drawn is if you want to tell stories, because you want to tell a story because you need to get it off your chest as opposed to telling a story because you're expecting lots of engagement as soon as you start telling stories for likes or for engagement or for comments etc that's where the draw the line is drawn in in my opinion i think telling you have to tell a story because you want to tell a story because ultimately that attracts your tribe when it resonates with people people think oh that's a good story i will now engage with this story um So that's, yeah, but personally, I think the line is entirely up to you.

And quite frankly, if somebody doesn't like your content, they can move on. There's a billion people on LinkedIn. They're bound to find something else.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking about the, over the last few years, the, um, let's call it the dog CEO

story. Um, you know, that story and also one person who, got engaged and said, I got engaged this weekend. Let me

tell you what it taught me about sales. I'll be to be to be sales or something like that.

What do you think about those posts? Are those posts, are they credible or. Is that something that is, is, you know, are people blowing this out of proportion?

What, what, what do you

think about that?

I think so. The post. The post where somebody engaged and said, here's what it taught me about B2B sales. I genuinely couldn't tell if that was satirical or not. I didn't know if that was a joke and lots of people saw it as a joke. A lot of people did, but it got lots of engagement and that's fine. However, we don't know who that person is.

I couldn't tell you that person. You couldn't name that person. We don't know who that person is. Now. I think that there are parts where it's blown out proportion in terms of People now complain about things that don't actually happen. So for example, I think lots of people like the dog CEO story. That never actually happened, but people, somebody somewhere made a joke about it.

And now everybody uses that as an example. And I think it's just, I think in some cases it's exaggerated. What I would say though, is We have to sell, you know, this is the thing. I normally talk about a, an arbitrary figure of 70 30. So 70 percent of my content is very personal content, very personable content talks about me, my life, et cetera. But 30 percent of my content is just so you know, this is what I do for a living. I'm a LinkedIn trainer. I do LinkedIn training. Here's some testimonials, here's a case study, et cetera. And I think it's finding that balance of Um, telling stories that resonate with people because we wish to tell stories, but also making sure that people know what we do for a living. I think the stories about the CEO dog or the B2B sales, etc. I mean, sometimes I think they're, they're overly exaggerated. People complain more about, I think I see more complaints than actual content of where, where those complaints originated, if, if that makes sense. So we just, yeah, we just have to find that balance.

Yeah. Yeah. That,

that CEO though was satire. They basically would say, I remember the video because I was, I, obviously those things end up being off of LinkedIn. They end up on Tik TOK and Instagram. And you see these stories about somebody is making this piece of satire concerning someone who, um, or the ideas that they.

Was they were going to a job when they met a homeless person and they gave them some money. And then when I went for the interview, the homeless person was the actual CEO of the company. Um, so for, for those who don't know what the CEO dog story is about, it's basically same thing. Some dog on the street, they gave him some treats.

You went into the business and

boom, the dog was the CEO and you got hired or he made you

late for the interview or whatever it

was.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Some.

So, so

that's, that's the thing. I mean, obviously that, that post itself is satirical, but obviously I think it's, it's making light of people who write content like that, which is basically, uh, like it's completely fabricated and, or it's just a story that we don't tell. I know that there's a particular person on LinkedIn who, Um, he, he's an author and he writes books and he basically, he went to see a woman who was dying and she basically, he signed her book and she kind of, she died with it on her chest and things like that.

And it was just, when I see stories like that, I just think that's, that's ridiculous. That's kind of like, you know, but there are some people out there that choose to tell stories like that. With no satire, with no humor, they actually mean that as a story. However. I think it's a very small minority. Uh, and to be honest, when I see content like that, I have two choices.

I can either make a joke about it, or I can just stop following those people. Cause ultimately I don't think those people will last long on a platform because thankfully the human race is still intelligent enough to work out the difference between somebody who's trying to promote their business and somebody who's just trying to promote themselves,

What are your top three red flags that may cause you to stop following someone?

um, So, overly argumentative content, I know a couple of people that just, they just love arguing with anything. I could write a post and say, my name is Gus, and they would send a post and say, your name isn't Gus. They would just argue for the sake of arguing. So, I think, It's how you want to be treated in real life.

I think if if somebody is overly argumentative online, they're not somebody that I want to engage with. And that I love alternative viewpoints. But when somebody is arguing for the sake of arguing, you just think that's, you know, for me, that's that's a red flag. Um, another red flag would be kind of Selling too much, like just being the person that always sells, always sells that, like, you know, et cetera, with no actual substance. I think that's the thing. And actually, that's probably related to a third red flag in terms of I like people to be their authentic selves, but I want some proof as well to back it up. If you have a seven figure business, Show me screenshots of your bank account. If you have some great testimonials, show me some screenshots of those testimonials.

If you had some great clients, like, do that. And I think there's, you know, the first red flag is people being overly argumentative. Um, you know, a second red flag is people who are only ever selling. And the third red flag are people not backing up what they're saying and just kind of you know, You know, they're selling snake oil, basically.

I see it all the time, like people say, Oh, give me 10, 000 pounds and I will teach you to be a great speaker and guarantee you a speaking gig. And ultimately it's a speaking gig at their own event. It's like, I can, anybody can do that. You know, it's like, give me 10 grand. You can come and speak at my events.

You know, it's, yeah. So it's, you know, there's, yeah. Red flags generally relate to, Uh, people who are inauthentic, people who don't have integrity, people who aren't being honest, people who can't back things up, people who don't have any experience or, you know, etc. And people just trying to sell things that they're not really good at.

They're, they're the kind of red flags that I see on, on LinkedIn, you know, sometimes, not a lot, thankfully.

yeah, that's true. And all of these, uh, outlandish claims about reaching from point A to point Z

in just a couple of weeks, or it takes, it takes time. It takes, it takes time. And I find that, and this is probably human nature.

I find that people are attracted to the outliers. Yeah. Um, so there may be somebody and, and I'm not denying that this is true. There may be some people who start and very rapidly gain traction on LinkedIn, but a vast majority of people have to build over a long period. Of time. That's the

vast

majority of people.

Do you agree with

that?

I absolutely agree The, the, um, the people who have longevity on LinkedIn are the people that have a low bell curve in terms of it's a slow, well, it's not even a bell curve. Actually, it's more of a kind of a graph that goes up. It's more, it's a, it's a slow burner, slow build, et cetera. I've been on LinkedIn since 2007. By now I should have a billion followers, but I don't because my audience is curated to the audience that I wanted to create, and I talk to the people that I want to talk to. There are people And we know who they are, they're kind of people who join engagement pods, people who have, all of a sudden, like within, I don't know, a month, they've got 100, 000 followers, and then they start writing content like, oh, you know, here's how I reached my first 100, 000 followers, here's how I earned 10, 000 pounds a week, and all this, and it's like, that's complete lies, it's complete fabricated, because they All your followers are fake. And I think the people that don't have longevity are the people that have a really high bell curve. Like it goes up, but they will come down just as quick. Um, and like I said, I've been on LinkedIn since 2007, and I've seen so many people come and go in terms of, Oh, look at me. I'm really successful. I've got a big audience.

And next thing you know, They've disappeared. We don't know who they are. They've either been banned or their audience has worked out that actually you're fake or the audience have worked out that they themselves are fake because they're all bots, etc. So I think there's, yeah, longevity on LinkedIn is based around curating the perfect audience. and slowly but surely creating great content that those people want to read.

Yeah. And I think those people also they, cause whatever's in private will eventually come to be in the public. So I think they probably burn a lot of people privately and eventually the word gets around that these people are not really who they say they are. And, uh, and, and so as a result, their business kind of just dries up because nobody trusts them anymore.

So it takes a long time, but you mentioned engagement pods earlier, right? Um, some people may not know what engagement pods are, uh, could you explain what they are and then give me your opinion or your take on engagement pods for building your following on

LinkedIn.

Sure. So engagement pods are essentially groups of people that have decided that they should engage with each other's content, um, artificially. So it's, you know, for example, it could be a WhatsApp group. It could be, uh, something created, uh, some sort of community where they post their content and everybody should jump onto that content and like it and comment on it and, you know, et cetera. Um, so it's basically artificial engagement. It makes. Posts and people look more popular than they actually are. I'm not a fan of engagement pods in any way, shape or form. I have had many a conversation with people about, you know, people kind of say, well, what if all my ideal clients are in that engagement pod?

Surely that's a good thing. And it's like, well, if they were your ideal clients. They wouldn't have to be in an engagement pod. They would just work with you anyway. It's kind of, and I think that's, people forget this about LinkedIn, like in terms of the six degrees of separation, you could connect to anybody in the world on LinkedIn. And if you're not connecting to them, then there's a problem with your outreach strategy. There's a problem with your content. There's a problem with your testimonials. There's a problem with a number of things being in an engagement pod. All that does is literally amplify The bad stuff that you're already doing and yeah, it's, it's artificial engagement, it's fake, and actually it's against LinkedIn's terms and conditions, which is, I mean, not the, not the LinkedIn generally does too much about it, but I, I'm not a fan of engagement pods at all.

I prefer. Uh, curating the perfect audience, creating great content and being authentic and having integrity with an audience that will eventually get to know you, like you and trust you.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I've, I've been invited to engagement pods before. Um, I'm sure you have, you've been invited to get engagement pods and, and it's always hilarious. I've never even, you know, some people go in and look around and see what they're like and investigate. So I know some people on the platform do that.

I just think it's a little hilarious thing because I think it's. Anti community, anti relationship. It's, it's, it's not healthy, for your business. It's probably not going to help your business. And, um, but yeah, and I've never said this publicly before, but I just think people should stay away.

Just just stay

away from it altogether.

Uh, I, I absolutely agree. You know, very, uh, so very early in my business, I started my business in 2017 and I remember I joined an engagement pod in 2018. It wasn't sold as an engagement pod. It was somebody I met networking. Uh, I thought they were a really nice person and they seemed like they know a lot. They had a really big audience and they said, Oh. We've got a WhatsApp group, so why don't you join this WhatsApp group? And what we do in that WhatsApp group is just share each other's content, and then we can go and engage on that content. And if you're not going to engage, then you can't be part of the group.

And I thought, oh, that sounds like quite nice. It's like we're all being friends and we'll engage with each other. What I found was that I was engaging with lots of people, but they weren't engaging with me. So then when I asked the question, they said, oh, well, you know, We don't want to ruin the algorithm or we don't want to, uh, you know, it's going to affect our, for example, our Facebook ads and our outreach and our engagement.

And I thought to myself, Then why are you in this, you know, in this situation? Like, why are you part of a pod but not engaging, et cetera? Um, and it was just, it was just very weird. It was very, it was very one sided. And then the owner of the WhatsApp group eventually came out and just said, you know, just so you know, this is an engagement part.

So if you're not engaging and when I, you know, then you, you're going to leave. And when I started looking into it, that's when I thought, Oh, this is not, definitely not something I want to be around. And to be honest. Like I said, I've been on LinkedIn since 2007. When I joined an engagement pod in 2018, I just soon after I started my business, it ruined my LinkedIn in terms of it took me a long time to bring back the right people into my audience. Because ultimately when I was creating content, the only people that would ever see it Were the people in the pod and the people were in the pod were people that weren't interested in what I have to do for a living or interested in what I'm selling, et cetera. So it took me a long time to get rid of those people and then start curating a new audience all over again.

So, um, so from experience, I can say it's going to ruin your LinkedIn. It's going to ruin your engagement. You're the, the algorithm will work against you, et cetera. Um, despite what the owners of the engagement pod try to do. You know, try promoting.

yeah, that's such a great lesson. Thanks for sharing that Gus. That is such,

A great lesson. Even though that happened a a few years ago, it's still relevant right now 'cause people are still doing the same thing and eventually they'll have the same type of outcome. And to get back from that, it does

take a lot of work.

This conversation has been great. Gus, are there any final tips or any final advice that you'd want to give our audience about LinkedIn?

The only advice just to just expand on what I kind of said earlier, uh, or to summarize what I said earlier Sorry is to just make sure that you're efficient and effective You only need to spend despite what lots of people tell you don't spend eight hours a day on linkedin It's just a few minutes every morning curating the perfect audience engaging with that audience Making sure that you get people to know you like you and trust you and make sure that you do that with others as well So, um Be authentic, you know, have integrity, be honest, all that kind of stuff.

Alright, Guan, some people may want to get in contact with the UK's number one LinkedIn trainer.

Where can they find you online?

So if you Google the hashtag, the UK's number one LinkedIn trainer, I will be at the top of that page, or indeed just search for Gus Bhandal. Um, it's a BH, so you'll, you'll find me on any platform, but generally search for Gus Bandel on LinkedIn, come and connect with me. Please don't follow me, connect me.

Let's, let's have a two way conversation. That's, uh, that's what we should be doing. Yes.

that's an interesting thing you said, normally people don't want people, they say connect, but what they really mean is follow me because I have heard a lot of, um, of like popular creators. On podcast. And when they pitch their LinkedIn, they say connect with me on LinkedIn, but they don't really mean connect.

What they really mean is follow me because if you send them a connection request, generally they tend to ignore it. Uh, you know, uh, but what you really mean

is actually connect with

you.

Yes. Yeah. So, uh, it's a long story, but LinkedIn used to have this thing called creator mode and as part of creator mode, they changed the connect button to a follow button. Now, mine is still a follow button. So it's still there. But the reason it's still there is because I'm followed by lots of people all around the world and actually helps me to do my due diligence because what will happen is People that choose to follow me, but not connect with me.

I regularly look through my followers. And obviously if any of them are relevant or I'd like to have conversations with them, then that gives me the onus to, to outreach to them and say, actually, I see that you follow me, but actually I'd, I'd prefer to connect those people that I don't want to connect to that.

I'm not having to reject that connection requests because obviously, but they've chosen to follow me for the most part. Particularly, obviously, friends of you Juma, I would love to connect because it's that two way conversation. LinkedIn doesn't work. You know, I'm not, I'm not a film star. I'm not Leonardo DiCaprio.

I'm not John Travolta. I don't need just to be followed. I'm happy to have those two way conversations because ultimately it helps my feed as well. I want to see content that other people are creating because it's good for conversation.

You know, Leonardo DiCaprio, I couldn't

tell

a

version. That's

very orange version. All right. Thank you so much Gus for having this conversation with us today about LinkedIn. I do really appreciate it. And thank you students for joining us on useful content, useful content classroom. Dismissed.