Burn The Playbook - B2B GTM Strategies with Marc Crosby

LinkedIn Strategy 2026: Headlines, Comments, and Sales Activation | Brenda Meller - Meller Marketing

• Digital Rebels Consulting

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LinkedIn strategy for business in plain English. Learn how to fix your profile, post with purpose, and turn daily activity into real pipeline. Guest expert Brenda Meller shares simple steps any team can use in 15 minutes a day.

Helping the self-employed, executives, and corporate teams enjoy a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie, Brenda Meller is a former corporate marketer turned LinkedIn coach as an entrepreneur, national speaker, Chief Engagement Officer at Meller Marketing, author of "Social Media Pie: How to Enjoy a Bigger Slice of LinkedIn," and podcast host of "Enthusiastically Self-Employed."

What you’ll learn

  • How to set up a profile that wins clicks: headshot, headline, banner
  • Who LinkedIn is for today and why it’s not just job seekers
  • Posting that works: repost with your thoughts, original thought leadership, real photos
  • Comments as a growth channel and how to use LinkedIn News
  • Time rules that matter: daily cadence and the 18-hour posting window
  • Employee advocacy that actually helps sales
  • C-suite participation: who should post and why
  • Trade show playbook: before, during, after on LinkedIn
  • Metrics that matter based on your goals, not vanity numbers
  • “Burn it or Build it” takes on SSI, newsletters, DMs, automation, pods, and more

Chapters
00:00 Cold open
00:30 Intro and why LinkedIn in 2025
01:24 Who LinkedIn is for now
02:18 First-impression fixes: photo, headline, banner
04:57 How often to update each section
07:06 Daily time on LinkedIn and having a plan
09:24 Opportunity stats and company visibility
10:15 Activate employees as brand ambassadors
12:25 Should execs post? Practical approach
14:16 Top-down vs bottom-up strategy
15:53 What to post: beginner to advanced
18:43 Comments > easy on-ramp and reach
20:31 Metrics that matter to your goals
23:45 Algorithm talk without the stress
25:29 Frequency and the 18-hour rule
26:38 Conferences and trade shows playbook
29:13 ROI for CEOs and social selling as a long game
31:34 Does video dominate? How to use it
34:48 Burn It or Build It lightning round
45:58 One action to start today
46:09 Where to find Brenda

Who this helps

  • Owners, consultants, and solo pros who need clients
  • Sales and SDR teams who want warm conversations
  • Marketing leaders building employee advocacy
  • Executives who want credible visibility

Guest

Host

  • Burn The Playbook Podcast by Digital Rebels Consulting
  • Site:

Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

© 2025 Digital Rebels Consulting. All rights reserved.


Digital Rebels Consulting (00:30)
Welcome in I'm Marc Crosby. This is burn the playbook My special guest today is Brenda Meller who is a self-proclaimed ambassador of LinkedIn national speaker and chief engagement officer at Meller marketing which helps the self-employed executives and corporate teams enjoy a bigger slice of LinkedIn pie She is a former corporate marketer who gets linkedin She's also the author of her book social media pie how to enjoy a bigger slice of LinkedIn and also host and producer of her own podcast

enthusiastically self-employed. Welcome Brenda.

Brenda Meller (01:00)
Thank you, Marc Delighted to be here with you today.

Digital Rebels Consulting (01:02)
Awesome. So let's just jump right into it about LinkedIn. We're going to start with some just maybe the basics of LinkedIn and move to some more advanced, I guess, topics, if you will, just so there's something for everybody here, but let's just level set. I think for many years, people thought LinkedIn was for job seekers. And I think some people still probably think that. So what is LinkedIn today and who is it for?

Brenda Meller (01:24)
So LinkedIn is actually used today more by people for professional networking purposes than it is used by job seekers. And I think this legacy of what LinkedIn is, is because when it first came on the scene, they marketed themselves as an alternative to monster and hot jobs. And I think many of us, when we first came on the network, it was because we were thinking about making a job change or we were actively making a job change. And then we set up our profile to look like a job seeker, copying and pasting things from our resume, et cetera.

And you can easily change that by just shifting how you have your LinkedIn profile set up so that you're not hesitant about people thinking that you're using LinkedIn for a job search if you are in fact using it for networking or for business development.

Digital Rebels Consulting (02:05)
Nice. You do a lot of work at least with coaching people on LinkedIn, do's and don'ts. What's the first impression that your LinkedIn profile typically gives off to people? What are the most common mistakes that you see as far as our LinkedIn profiles?

Brenda Meller (02:18)
I think when we think about the top portion of our LinkedIn profile, it's the most important. When you post, when you comment, when you come up in search results, people are seeing your headshot photo. They're seeing your name and they're seeing a portion of your headline, usually like the first 40 to 60 characters or so. So having a current headshot photo is essential. So that's a big mistake I see people with an outdated headshot photo. And what happens, Marc is we'll get into a discovery call with them on a zoom or whatnot, or we'll meet them in person.

and they'll look at your photo and they'll be like, Marc? Because it looks a little different. It's Marc from 10 or 15 years ago as opposed to Marc from today. And what happens in that flick of an instant is they're thinking, well, if he's not going to tell me the truth about what he looks like, what else is he not going to tell me the truth about? So having a current headshot photo, think, is really essential. And it really should be a professional-looking headshot photo, not a selfie, not you in your car, or cropped photo where you see somebody's arm off of your shoulder, things like that.

And then with that, like I said, your headline follows you around as you post, as you comment, as you come up in search results. So making sure that your headline is not just job title at company, but instead it's written in a way that is really written for your ideal target audience to draw them to click to come back to your profile. And then once they get there, I'm gonna give you the third most important thing, which is your LinkedIn banner. That banner should be supporting your LinkedIn goals.

Digital Rebels Consulting (03:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brenda Meller (03:41)
And it really should be designed for your ideal target audience. So it's really not a piece of artwork that you like to look at your family vacation, or you on the boat or something like that. It really should be used intentionally. If you're an employee of a company, it should be branded, you know, for your company. So showing that you're representing your organization. If you're self-employed, you can have a little bit more flexibility with that. Maybe a branding message or a call to action to your ideal target audience, or promoting an upcoming event or your podcast, things like that.

But using those three items, your headshot photo, your headline, and your header image with intentionality to support your goals is really gonna be key.

Digital Rebels Consulting (04:17)
Nice. Those two things are certainly important. I think just in any business, you know, if anybody's doing research, I think you had something that was really important there as far as just, establishing that trust of who you are and what you're all about. And when you meet somebody in person, if it doesn't, ⁓ line up with what you saw on, you know, the internet, then it creates a little bit of a more work for you, I think, to figure out what else did you change or what else did you lie about? Or what else did you miss leading me about?

Brenda Meller (04:42)
If that's not updated, is he still a coach? he still doing, you know, like now we're trying to like piece together the puzzle, really.

Digital Rebels Consulting (04:48)
Certainly. with that said, how often should you update your LinkedIn profile, whether it's the picture or the banner, the everything else that's underneath that and your, and your profile.

Brenda Meller (04:57)
Yeah, so it depends on the area and how you're using LinkedIn. I always tell people your headshot photos should be no more than five years old. Now, five years ago is the date that we're doing this recording was 2020. So we're in 2025 right now. So you look at your headshot photo, if it's been taken before 2020, it's time to get a new one. Now for myself, Marc, I update mine about once every two years, maybe every three years, because I want to make sure that it looks like the current version of me today. When you see me in person, I want to make sure that there's continuity to that right away.

Your headline, you can change it more often, and you can actually change it as often as you'd like, but I would say at least once a year, you should be refreshing it, reviewing it, maybe trying to change around the keyword order in there, but you can certainly update it even more frequently. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may notice that I changed my headline. I just tweak it a little bit, but I changed it at least once a month to some different keywords and phrases. And then your header image, it should be updated at least once a year. And I always tell people the header image is kind of like a billboard on the side of a highway.

And if you drive by, you know, a billboard the first time, you might notice the Baconator is back at Wendy's and you pay attention to it. And then if you keep driving that same route by the second or third day, you're ignoring it because you've already gotten the Baconator or you're like, Nope, I can't. My doctor says I got to eat healthier and you're ignoring it. But then they have a new message up on there and it might say, tropical smoothie, try our new flat breads. And then you're paying attention to it again. And what happens is we have people that are essentially driving by

our profile by coming to our profile, repeat visitors. And if you change out that header image, they're going to go, something's different. That's, and then it's a new message for them to consume or to read on there. So same thing for me, I change out my header image monthly. I would say the average person though, it's a good practice just to do it at least once a year in there.

Digital Rebels Consulting (06:41)
Gotcha. think that all makes sense. At least just going back and taking a look at it. And once again, just understanding like what your digital footprint looks like to people who might be researching you, whether you're looking for a job or whether you're networking and just go through top to bottom and just make sure everything's updated. and whether you're looking for a job or you're networking, how much time do you typically recommend that somebody spends on LinkedIn, whether it's every day or per week? mean, what's, what's a good time to get in there?

Brenda Meller (07:06)
Are you expecting me to say 24 hours a day? Cause I'm a LinkedIn coach and give up sleep and just be outside. I mean, I'll setting aside. mean, I would love to say 15 minutes, 15 to 30 minutes a day. If you're using LinkedIn for business development, for actively networking, or if you are in career transition and actively searching a job, that should be the minimum 15 to 30 minutes a day. You shouldn't be spending hours, even if you're doing business development or job seeking or things like that. But in the, ⁓

Digital Rebels Consulting (07:09)
Just for the average person.

Brenda Meller (07:32)
In the big scheme of things, you might be spending a little bit more time upfront to optimize your profile and get things in place. And then once you have that in place, the 15 minutes a day will allow you the time to do what you need to do to keep active on LinkedIn and to help you achieve your goals. And that's going to include a combination of activities, posting, network engagement, maybe sending out invitations, screening and invitations, you know, looking at your messages and things like that. But keep in mind Marc and for...

yourself and for your readers or your viewers and listeners, LinkedIn is designed to keep us on the site longer and they can service ads and they can, you know, try to sell us memberships and upsell us on things. So if you don't go in with a plan of I'm going to spend 15 to 30 minutes on LinkedIn, you might end up finding yourself spending 45 minutes to an hour and then feeling like I just wasted that time. I don't know what I got really out of it. So I always tell people go in with a plan.

Digital Rebels Consulting (08:04)
Mm-hmm.

Brenda Meller (08:24)
of what you're looking to do on LinkedIn that day and be careful of that shiny object syndrome on there.

Digital Rebels Consulting (08:29)
Yeah, I was doing some research before this and I found, I guess a stat that says how often people are actually on there per day. Do you know the answer?

Brenda Meller (08:37)
So I read once it was like the average person spends, I think eight minutes in a single visit on LinkedIn. Like that's the average they come in, they do what they need to do and they leave. And related to that is a different report, but it said that 49 % of LinkedIn members are active monthly on the platform, meaning they go out on LinkedIn at least once a month. Now the flip side of that, I'm not a math person, but the flip side of that is 51 % of people don't go even on LinkedIn once a month. They might go on.

once a quarter, once every three months, once a year, once whenever they think about it that's being on there. But LinkedIn is really more like, it's almost like reading a business publication. You go on, you get your news, and then you put the paper down. You're not scrolling on LinkedIn and staying on here for hours. Like sometimes we can be on Instagram and on some of the other networks.

Digital Rebels Consulting (09:24)
Yeah, you must've been reading my notes cause you nailed it. was eight minutes a day. And I think the, what, yes, it was exactly. You nailed it. Perfect. Um, some of the other stats, I think that, uh, some people might be familiar with, or maybe not. that LinkedIn does have a billion users and surprisingly only 1 % of those users post on a weekly basis. There's 50 million companies on there and fewer than 10 % post on LinkedIn. So it seems like there's quite a bit of opportunity for people to.

Brenda Meller (09:27)
Was it?

Digital Rebels Consulting (09:50)
⁓ capture more attention to engage with their, their audiences. And if you're a business to do the same thing, as far as just, showing up to your, your client base or your customers in a way that you want to show up, probably outside of the traditional marketing channels. What's a good way that businesses can use LinkedIn more effectively to drive more sales, to drive top of the funnel. what would you recommend for, for corporations, whether you're a team of 10 or a hundred thousand.

Brenda Meller (10:15)
Activate your employees, you know, get them up to speed on LinkedIn, empower them, give them the resources and tools they need to build out their profile because they are the face of your company. When you think about it, Marc, when you go into the homepage feed, what are we seeing? We're seeing posts from people primarily, you know, every once in a while we'll see a company page post or we'll see a sponsored post or something in there, but your employees can act as your brand ambassadors to help to give your

company that additional visibility, and they can even use the information you're you're posting through your company page. They can do a repost with your thoughts and they can help to extend brand awareness through your platform. but I think the biggest thing is going back to your earlier point, a lot of people think about LinkedIn as a job search site. And even if it is a sales team, your sales team might be. A hesitant on being overly active on LinkedIn, cause they don't want the boss to think that they're looking for a job. So if you can empower them and say,

No, we want you to use this. And then when you see them posting and engaging with the page, we give those attaboys in the forms of likes or comments, or even when you're in a team sales meeting, hey, you know, Marc, saw you posting on LinkedIn this week. We really appreciate you doing that. And then asking them for feedback on other things that you can post or other features that you can do, but giving them that power and that support. I think that's the, that's the huge thing that you can do for your company.

Digital Rebels Consulting (11:33)
Absolutely. And also the best thing is that it's free. I mean, you can sign up and you can start posting today if you wanted to for your company or for yourself or to promote your products or promote specific things to maybe your, client base or your customer. So why would you not do that? I mean, your alternatives, at least for sending out those messages are probably going to cost you, uh, you know, money. And obviously, uh, everyone's always pinching pennies and with everything this year and going into next year, it's a challenging environment for a lot of people. So I don't see why you wouldn't. Um, but I guess.

⁓ you had mentioned as far as just, you know, companies using that in a lot of best practices. One of the things that I've seen, some companies do, especially at the executive levels that the executives, whether you're a CEO, CFO, they're, they're out there posting, they're doing some videos or maybe just at least engaging. Do you find that to be effective as far as just, driving more authenticity, transparency and engagement with, with the company?

Brenda Meller (12:25)
So some of the stats that you mentioned earlier, you know, the percentage of people using LinkedIn and how many millions of billions of users there are in the platform. I don't know that I've seen the stats and I'm going to make myself a mental note to look this up later, but in terms of like company executives, C-suite who are active, who are first of all, who have an updated LinkedIn profile. Cause many of them go dormant. They don't really do a lot with them.

And then who are actively using LinkedIn, whether it's posting or even better doing video or putting thought leadership content out on there. The proportion is so low on the platform. But yes, for companies whose leadership team does get active on LinkedIn, I think it can be a huge win for the company because there's not a lot of organizations that are doing this. But I'm always looking Marc at the human element. When I work with corporate teams and I do team training and whatnot,

⁓ there are some people in the C-suite, like your CFO typically will not get active on LinkedIn. So bother with the CFO. Let's look at the CMO, the chief marketing officer or someone like a CEO who is in more of a front facing position, who's comfortable being active and accessible online. Let's use them. Let's tap into them as our top ambassadors and get them to kind of set the tone for how your company is using LinkedIn and to be the voice of the company.

on the platform. So I don't think you can change behavior necessarily, but I think within every leadership team, there's probably one or two people who are open and receptive if given the guidance, and that helps to build up their confidence on how to use LinkedIn.

Digital Rebels Consulting (13:52)
And do you find that that has to be driven from the top down and organizations, just as far as if you want the sales reps, marketers, people in between directors, ⁓ directors of sales, does it have to be something that comes from the top down as far as this is a strategy or is it just something that you can, I don't know, loosely just kind of implement in different spots on your teams? Does it have to be like a really structured strategy to engage on LinkedIn?

Brenda Meller (14:16)
company strategies are those that are designed with the team. know, so when you're doing your annual strategy planning session, you're talking about your goals for the future. If you're bringing your sales team and your leadership team in on that discussion, it becomes not the company's strategy, but our strategy as a part of it. And then depending on like, when you ask a question about what we should be posting in terms of content, I believe it's, works best when it's top down, but also in some organizations, just realistically,

The organization might not be overly active on LinkedIn and you might have a superstar salesperson. There might be somebody listening to this podcast right now that's going, that's me. And they are comfortable using LinkedIn. They're watching what other people are using on LinkedIn. And maybe the company doesn't have a social media strategy per se, and they don't have a let's define our three pillars on LinkedIn that we're talking about, but you can do that on your own and you can help to.

lead the organization and maybe even help to guide the person who's managing your company page and maybe suggest ideas and things like that to them. So depending on the organization, again, I think top-down works best, but the reality of some organizations is there might not be that structure in place, which creates a really great leadership opportunity for someone who's comfortable using LinkedIn.

Digital Rebels Consulting (15:28)
Nice. I think, uh, so we've talked about some of the basics and we're kind of getting into some more meaty things here. So, you know, everyone in the company has updated their profile, um, from the CEO down to, you know, the janitor and we're ready to go out on LinkedIn and start supporting our company and driving sales and creating some more, guess, awareness of our products and solutions. So what do we post? Like when we get there and we're staring at the blank screen, what do we do? What, what, what should we post?

Brenda Meller (15:53)
Yeah.

Yeah. This is a great question. I get this asked a lot. And a lot of times, I feel like companies kind of fall into the bell curve. There's the people that are super active on LinkedIn and super comfortable and willing to try the latest thing and do videos and things like that. And there's people on the other end of the bell curve, which are really hesitant and nervous and don't have a lot of confidence or just don't have the time to do it. Most people are kind of someplace in the middle. so I usually recommend that.

Easiest thing I'm going to start with the easiest thing the people that are maybe more in the beginner category is go to your company page Do this like once a week go to your company page find a recent post and at the bottom You're going to see a little repost. It looks like a recycle symbol So click on repost and then it gives you two options repost or repost with your thoughts now if you are not active at all on LinkedIn and you're Nervous to be doing this just do a repost because they don't have to do anything else. You just find the post click on repost and it

pushes it out to your homepage feed, you don't have to think about anything. If you're comfortable, now I'm moving into the middle of the bell curve here, if you're comfortable, then do the repost with your thoughts and then start adding some commentary. If you'd like to learn more about this service, DM me here on LinkedIn, or if you'll be at this upcoming conference, I'm gonna be there, let's meet up in person. So now you're bringing a little bit more of a conversational approach inside there. So that's the easiest thing to do, the repost. If you're beginner, repost with your thoughts if you're maybe a little bit more comfortable leaning in.

For those people that are kind of towards the right side of the bell curve that are very comfortable or active regularly on LinkedIn, I want you to think about there's a hierarchy in the algorithm. LinkedIn prefers new original content that supports thought leadership that is helping to educate and sometimes entertain, but really is more educate and inform. And it's related to your areas of expertise. So if you can get conversations started with that.

By asking a question, comment below and let me know your thoughts, tag someone in, you know, agree or disagree. So if you can get some conversations started, that's going to be key in there. And I even saw a report recently, Richard Vanderblom publishes a really great LinkedIn algorithm report, and he put out some infographics recently. And for me, it's always, it's always like, there's some tweaks. There's some things that are happening. The focus is always on.

posting content that is seen as interesting and informative for your ideal target audience. So you're not really posting about yourself, Marc, even though you might be posting about your company. You're posting and you're trying to frame things in the way of how is this interesting and helpful for you as my ideal target audience. So that was covered in his report. And the other thing is stop using stock photos and start using real photos. And that's been the case, I think all along, but.

You know, now there's some data behind this back backing it up. Like stock photos are guys going sober, right? As opposed to real photos, we tend to pause and look at it and take notice. And then that will pull us in. So hopefully that gives your listeners a little bit something to think about depending on where they are in that spectrum of comfort posting.

Digital Rebels Consulting (18:43)
I know that there's been a lot of, think even Richard probably says this as far as just comments and things like that. think LinkedIn is also promoting and supporting more comments. So you get that conversation going. And I even noticed in some of the comments that I put on other posts, those might get more impressions than some of my just, you know, raw posts. And so what are your thoughts on that as far as just, mean, that, I think that's an easy way to kind of get involved with LinkedIn is like liking something and commenting that way. You don't have to think of a brand new idea to put out there.

As far as a subject matter expert or something else that you want to promote. So would you say that comments is kind of like a easy way in to get started?

Brenda Meller (19:17)
This is funny. This is one of these strategies as it's continuing to evolve in the algorithm and there does seem to be more weight lately given to comments in there. For me, my path on LinkedIn changed when I figured out it's not just about what I can take from the network and what I'm publishing out there, but being a good LinkedIn community citizen, so to speak. So I'm contributing to the community as a whole by commenting on other people's posts. They did recently add in here, Marc, where you now, when you comment on a post, you can see how many impressions you're commenting.

And that's fairly new. And there's also a feature if you're in the US, if you're on the LinkedIn homepage, on the right hand side of your page, it'll say LinkedIn News, and it's basically trending stories. Your LinkedIn News might be a little bit different than mine, depending on the area that you're in and the industry that you're in. But what I've started doing is going into those LinkedIn News stories, finding something that's related to the work that I do, or topics that might be of interest to my ideal target audience, and then adding a comment in there.

And because they are trending and they're being served up by LinkedIn, you can actually get a nice boost of impressions from those comments. And especially if you do a longer comment Marc, sometimes that can lead new people to find you because they click to come back to your profile. But yeah, definitely comments is an easy strategy. If you are struggling with content, like you said, it can be very easy way just to ease into LinkedIn.

Digital Rebels Consulting (20:31)
What are the metrics that actually matter? I mean, we talked a little bit about impressions and things of that nature, but do followers matter? Do impressions matter? Do engagements matter? Do all of them matter? What should people be looking at? if, even if you're a seasoned marketer, what really, guess, I guess is the meaty part of those KPIs?

Brenda Meller (20:49)
Yeah, so I'm going to say, I mean, first of all, it's just called burn the playbooks. I'm going to see that one too. It doesn't matter what the metrics are if you don't know what your goals are. And I think that's important. The metrics are going to vary and the importance of those metrics is going to vary based on what your goals are for using LinkedIn. Now, if you're looking to really develop yourself as a thought leader and get yourself on stages and make yourself known as a speaker.

You know, then you're going to want to make sure that you are growing your followers at a higher rate and you're getting better engagement in other certain areas. Maybe if you're working in a sales role, the end of the day goal is to get more clients. Right. So the metric really should be, are you getting those discovery calls? Are you getting those conversations that are happening inside there? Now, if you say, okay, but generally speaking, we just want to be more successful. How do we measure that through LinkedIn using their metrics? there's actually, I think like five different areas I look at inside, like.

posts on there. So impressions, that means how many eyeballs saw your post and that contains readers, people that never interact with your posts. So I still think that number is important because I get people to this day. I've been following you for years. I want to work with you on optimizing my profile, training my team. And I've never heard from this person. They've never interacted with me. So impressions is important. Likes and reactions. You can see who those people are. you know, that helps to create some visibility there. Are you reaching the right people?

Comments are really important. We've talked about that already and especially longer comments and replying back is going to increase the number of comments that you have as well. Any interaction, whether it's a like reaction comment reply is pushing your, your posts back out to the homepage feed again, which will in turn improve your impressions as well. And then we have reposts, which, you know, you can do a repost or repost with your thoughts.

Repost with your thoughts of someone else's post. mean, that takes a lot of effort. takes like that content was so good that I had to share it along with other people in your network. there's also inside polls. You can see some of the metrics in there. You can see how people responded. The one number we can't see, but it is also important is how many people are saving your post for later. So what can you do to increase that? You can tell people, Hey, save this for later. You'll want to reference this again. I promise you. So all of those numbers I think are important.

When you talk about followers, you know, how important is that? I think quality over quantity. You know, we want to make sure that the right people are following you. ⁓ if your followers are growing over time, that proves to the network that your content is seen as interesting and valuable and more people are continuing to follow you, but come into the day, Marc, are you getting your goals met with regards to LinkedIn? think that's more important.

Digital Rebels Consulting (23:18)
Yeah, I agree. And it kind of just depends on what your goals are. And I think there's also differences. And we talked about the algorithm and I think that maybe some people don't hear that. And maybe people like you and I that spend way too much time on LinkedIn on a daily basis. We hear about the algorithm. Algorithms not treating me nice. I got the shadow band and all this stuff. Should people really pay attention to the algorithm? And I guess some of those things like Richard puts out as far as just metrics that neither matter. Maybe they'd

Maybe they don't matter.

Brenda Meller (23:45)
That's a great question. mean, it's LinkedIn sandbox. So I think we should understand what the rules of engagement are, you know, what are their rules on the platform and how are they rewarding behavior and how are they penalizing behavior all that stuff. But I've always advised my clients just focus on what are your goals for using LinkedIn, making sure that your profile is optimized. It's got the right keywords and phrases that are going to bring people to find you and help to serve up.

whatever that next call to action is when they get there, you know, making sure that we're posting content that is seen as interesting and informative. There's certain techniques and I think they're kind of gimmicky. know, you can get someone in once on a gimmick, but if your content is not seen as helpful and informative when they see you the next time, they're not going to participate. And that's not really going to be beneficial to you over time. So I think coming back to the basics of understanding human behavior on the platform.

Being aware of the rules of the algorithm, I'm gonna live and die by it, Marc. I I'm like, okay, yes, those are the rules, but it should always be more like focused on your ideal target audience and delivering content that is seen of value for them, building up those relationships. LinkedIn is a long game, right? So it's not who gets to 1 billion followers faster. I mean, that's not the goal of it. I don't think any of us are looking for that. But I think being aware of the algorithm, sure, but not...

living and dying by it every day. I don't think you need to be worrying about that.

Digital Rebels Consulting (25:05)
Yeah. think people stress out a little bit too much about the algorithm, but I think there are some differences though. So, ⁓ between like Facebook, Instagram and X, as far as just the protocols for posting, think like on those platforms, you could probably get away with posting a few times a day and it's probably fine. I don't know, cause I'm not in that space a lot, but are there differences as far as just the frequency of how many times you can post to where maybe the algorithm again, just suppresses it and nobody sees it.

Brenda Meller (25:29)
Yeah, so the general guideline is no more than once within 18 hours. If you post more than that, then what happens is you'll get some penalty for both posts. So LinkedIn has seen you as almost like spamming, you're putting too many posts out. Now that's for the average mere mortal, people like me and you. Now you might see these Uber influencers out there with five or 7 million followers on LinkedIn say, you should post 20 times a day. Sure, that works if you've got 5 billion followers.

And you've got a team that's running your social media for you more often though, Marc, the question that I get asked about that is it's, the guidance I give people about posting is, is they're not posting at all. So try to get into the habit of posting once a week minimum. So it's usually the bottom that I'm working at, like let's get out there and let's get active. It's not very often that I get hit with a, you know, I'm posting four times a day. that okay? I mean, that'd be a great thing, but.

Even then, um, yeah, if you want to get better reach out of it, try to spread your posts out. And if you're getting a post that's performing well, well, let it ride. Don't like post the next day, like give it a couple of days of breathing room and allow it to really get maximum reach on the network before you post something again.

Digital Rebels Consulting (26:38)
Good tips. didn't know that about 18 hours. I'm not really, I think I had like maybe a shorter window in there, but I'll have to maybe adjust my posting tactics as well. Speaking of tactics, you mentioned about trade shows and conferences a bit ago. Is there a good strategy that people can use for, before they go to a trade show to maximize at least their presence at a trade show as far as the before.

the during and potentially after as far as following up and making these connections and multi-channels as opposed to just showing up to the trade show, collecting some business cards and being on their way.

Brenda Meller (27:06)
and it works out on the end on there. Yeah, I think certainly looking up the host organization to see, do they have an event page about it or have they been posting about it? And get yourself into the comments as well on their posts. Hey, I'm going to be attending, looking forward to it. Maybe doing a pre-conference post or maybe even the day that you arrive, like in front of the signage or banner or with your team, if you're there as well, you know, we're here at XYZ Expo for the next three days in San Diego, if you'll be here as well.

you know, let's meet up and that way when you're meeting people throughout the conference, they might, yeah, I saw your post on LinkedIn. It's a, it's a great technique there. You can also within the LinkedIn app, there's a way that you can pull up your QR code, for your profile. And what I try to do is when I go to a conference, I'll save that as my, my screen saver on my phone. And that way it makes it a lot easier for you to connect with people as you're sitting next to them in a, in a workshop or, know, networking the expo floor, things like that.

I always try to encourage people to add a personal note with their invitation. If you're using premium, you have unlimited with the free basic version. It's five, but I actually heard from John Aspirian. He's another LinkedIn coach. They're now starting to reduce it to three free notes every month with the basic version of LinkedIn, but try to use those. If you run out of the credits to add a note after the person accepts, just message them back. Hey, Marc, it was great to meet you at XYZ Expo this week in San Diego. You know, let's keep in touch.

on there. So that helps me and you in the future, because three months from now, six years from now, we might forget that we met at this event. And that does help with that. And I think after the conference, looking up on the conference page, if they have a hashtag, some of them still do use hashtag, look up the hashtag, try to connect with the people that are using it both throughout the conference as well as afterwards, I think it'd be a good strategy there too.

Digital Rebels Consulting (28:52)
Nice. Yeah. love that QR code function as far as on LinkedIn. The problem is that it's kind of hard to find and nobody really knows that it's there, but if you have it, it's great. Especially if you don't have business cards or you ran out of business cards or if there's, you know, a thousand people named Marc Crosby and can't figure out which one and they're trying to find them on LinkedIn. It's just nice to have that QR code. as far as just being able to connect with people easily. and

Brenda Meller (28:58)
Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (29:13)
think going back to like the corporate sense of this, you have conversations with executive leaders and CEOs and you're trying to convince them that social selling is a great strategy. I think with a lot of marketing, there's a lot of challenges as far as connecting that to ROI. What's the ROI of all my team wasting their time posting on LinkedIn every day? What's the ROI for posting on LinkedIn if you're talking to a CEO?

Brenda Meller (29:35)
So I think, you know, this question does get asked and it's usually because they know of the potential of LinkedIn. They know that there's great buying power out there. They know that they can reach people on LinkedIn that cannot be found elsewhere. And you know, it does, but LinkedIn profiles are managed by us as individuals. It's not like we're not scraping information and putting into a directory and hoping that the information is still accurate. So a lot of that information is valid for people that can be found out on there. So.

I always tell people LinkedIn is definitely a long game. The whole concept of social selling is built on social media and selling. So you're selling through your profile, through your activities. And there's definitely some nuances to the process. You know, for me, I'm a marketer. I'm not a salesperson. My approach that I use to do business with people is I want to, you know, gain their trust.

by personalizing an invitation, do a follow-up with a soft sales pitch. I'm not gonna like follow up and say, let's jump on a discovery call, because it might scare people away right away. But if we can get some conversation going back and forth, and I say, let me know if you ever have any LinkedIn questions, and they reply back and say, actually, I do have a question. I'm at a conference right now, and I heard you on Marc Crosby's podcast talking about the QR code. How do I get that? You know, I might send them a video right away.

And then afterwards I might say, Hey, let me know if you'd ever like to work with me one-on-one, I offer some LinkedIn coaching. Now they're more open and warm and receptive to that sales pitch. Cause I've already given them a little bit of a free sample on there, but I think it all starts with knowing that people will look at your profile, whether you're active on LinkedIn or not. And the profile can either help to support and tell your business story and give people a path to do business with you. Or it can be like a roadblock.

you know, to that process in there. And you can either empower your teams to be on LinkedIn or not. And if you don't, your competitors might be getting that bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie because they are embracing it as a platform. So usually I said that conversation starts because there's interest in curiosity, but there might be some hesitation because of that ROI factor again.

Digital Rebels Consulting (31:34)
Gotcha. And then I think on LinkedIn also, there's this ⁓ trend towards more video. I just feel like when I'm scrolling on LinkedIn all day, it's just videos, videos, videos. So do you think that's something that if you want to post something on LinkedIn, does it have to be a video? Because if you just post text only, is it going to get drowned out with all the other noise that's out there?

Brenda Meller (31:50)
Yeah, I think video comes down to, know, as for you as a person, are you comfortable doing video? You may have noticed if you're actively using LinkedIn on the LinkedIn app, there's now a video tab on there and LinkedIn has started in the past year or so prioritizing video, especially portrait style, the TikTok style, you know, the Instagram story style video. Pay attention to the videos that are in there, first of all, and just make notice of what captures your attention and what causes you to scroll on by that goes along with it.

I think a really easy thing to do if you're comfortable with doing videos and introduction, introduction of yourself, hey, my name's Brenda Beller. You may not know that I am a LinkedIn coach and I'm also a marketing coach. Like giving people that overview of you on there. The great thing about video is you can do it on your phone nowadays, Marc. You don't have to go through a fancy production studio. And once you record it, let's say you do a one minute video. If you're not happy with it, delete it and just do it again and then upload it and go inside there. But.

If you're not comfortable with video, I'm going to get your listeners on how you don't have to do video, but there may be people on your team or people that you interact with that you can comment on their video instead of doing your own on there.

Digital Rebels Consulting (32:56)
I thought you were going to say something about like, you know, use an AI tool to recreate your, your person and put a transcript in there and just do that. But you weren't going there.

Brenda Meller (33:00)
my gosh.

You know,

is my friend, Sandra Corman. She, think on her podcast, she was talking about like AIs are to content creation. What a calculator is to math. It kind of speeds up the process in there, but I think you've probably had this happen to you, Marc. He's like, look at someone's profile. Who's using an AI generated photo. And if you know them, you know, it is because you look at it, you're like, something feels off about that. My friend Annette Richmond, specializes in video. So she's very comfortable using the AI tools, but she'll send me like videos that are created and I can't think of a new network.

starts with an S, but it's like AI generated. And you look at it and you know it's not real. And now we're having to kind of look at these videos going, wait, did that actually happen? You've got, you know, Mr. Rogers with some rapper in a video and they're having like, that never happened. So I think, you know, there's a lot of conversations nowadays about, you know, authenticity, think is an overused word, but is it a real person in a real video?

Or is it computer generated and overly produced, which can create some mistrust or some skepticism? Does that make sense?

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:04)
It does. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about before, just your digital footprint. What does it look like? Does it establish trust or does it erode trust? And that's probably something to think about as you're developing your LinkedIn profile and also as you're putting content out there. Because I think that if you're on there enough, you can sniff it out pretty quick as far as the videos or even the text. And, I don't know if you think that nobody's going to pick up on it and

might be a fool to think that, but let's pivot over to our most popular segment, which is our burn it or build it segment. ⁓ I'll ask you 10 questions, some hot topics here. You tell me burn it or build it. may be a brief reason why. So we will start with a number one social selling index, burn it or build it first. What is it? What is it? And then burn it.

Brenda Meller (34:48)
I'm sorry, got the words wrong. to say, um, build it. I like it because it's LinkedIn sandbox and it gives us a benchmark to assess our progress. It is an index, a scale of zero to 150 is average. So if you have an index SSI of 50, means you're average for the population. They give you four categories up to 25 points per category. You're using LinkedIn, especially for business development. think it can help you to identify opportunity areas. And that's why I say build it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (35:14)
I like that. Number two, LinkedIn newsletters.

Brenda Meller (35:17)
I'm a little bit on the fence on this one. I think if you like longer form content, I would say build it because it does give you the ability to add multiple links and media and things like that inside it. If your goals are reach, I'm hearing a lot of my friends moving over to Substack now, which is getting better reach and there's some subscription models and things like that in place. And for that reason, I'm on the fence about saying burn it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (35:39)
Okay, that's fair. You can always be in the middle. There's no rules to this. So we'll go with no decision on that one. So it's a maybe, ⁓ which is.

Brenda Meller (35:43)
Okay.

It's a mixed bag. You know, I will still

say I use it because any feature has, if LinkedIn says, Brenda, we're going to give you a newsletter feature. I'm going to enable it. And I want to train my clients how to use it. And that way can give you best practices. But depending on what your goals are on LinkedIn, there might be other platforms that are better suited to building that audience.

Digital Rebels Consulting (36:05)
I agree. agree. Number three, ghost writing for executives.

Brenda Meller (36:09)
Now I don't do that. But I understand why some people use a ghostwriter for it, whether it's they struggle with confidence or timing or things like that on there. think burn it as long as it's you feel like it's still your, or build it rather, if you feel like it's still your voice. Burn it if it's a replacement from you ever going on LinkedIn.

Digital Rebels Consulting (36:30)
Okay. I agree. I was going to say like maybe ghost writing isn't a thing anymore because everything is AI. So maybe the ghost writers are going away. But at end of the day, I mean, if the executives have an opportunity to be present or to not be present, I would think that being present would be better than doing nothing at all with a ghost writer. I don't know.

Brenda Meller (36:46)
Yeah, again, as

long as it's still, if you read it, if you feel like it still fits your voice, because people think it's you. So we want to make sure it sounds like us.

Digital Rebels Consulting (36:54)
Very clear, good point. Number four, ⁓ DM voice and video notes. So when you connect with somebody, typically I think you have an option that opens up to where you can send somebody like a short video or maybe a voice note as a burner to build it.

Brenda Meller (37:07)
I like the voice notes because that is an in-platform feature that you can do. The video, I don't know that there's an in-platform feature for that. think that's something that you'd have to bring in an extra external video. And what I've noticed a lot, I don't see it as much anymore, but it would be like a video of somebody holding up a sign that says, Brenda. And I know the hi Brenda was computer generated. And now I feel like you're trying, it's a gimmick. You're trying to trick me into thinking that you created a video for me.

But I do like the voice notes because it is an in-platform feature as long as they're not super long. Like try to keep it 10 or 20 seconds. Don't ramble on for a minute. And then it crops it into a second voice note in there.

Digital Rebels Consulting (37:43)
Gotcha, so we're burning and building maybe on that one. Number five creator mode.

Brenda Meller (37:47)
We're building voice notes. We're burning video.

That's actually gone. So that's an easy one. It's funny because they laid launched it with a lot of fanfare and there's a prostrate and everything. then they kind of quietly. Pedaled from it and they're like, yeah, we're going to sunset it. And unless you were looking for it. And many of us who were in the LinkedIn training and coaching community, we were looking for it. Cause we saw some deep features that were happening, but the problem is if you had creator mode turned on your default button became follow automatically when they.

Digital Rebels Consulting (37:58)
Burn it! Alright, that's easy. Moving on to the next...

Brenda Meller (38:22)
closed off crater mode, they didn't flip your button back to connect again. So be, be cautious about that. And if you're not sure, you'll need to find somebody who's not yet connected to you to see what is your default button on your profile.

Digital Rebels Consulting (38:34)
We might have to talk about that after this number six automation tools for LinkedIn outreach

Brenda Meller (38:38)
burn it. had to think about what the fricks burn it. It's a violation of LinkedIn's terms of service. And more importantly, it's icky. I think that's a technical term. It's icky. Like I can see those coming in and they're not personalized or selling me something that's not relevant. I don't know that anyone is, is buying, you know, what they're doing in their outreach efforts. sometimes for von Marc, I will reply back when I get an automated message and I'll say test. And if it's automated.

It doesn't matter that I said test, they'll come back with great setup. So it's just icky. I don't think they're effective and they are a violation of LinkedIn's terms of service. could get you thrown into LinkedIn jail or kicked off of the platform. So read the fine print on any services that are claiming they can help you grow your LinkedIn network through use of automation.

Digital Rebels Consulting (39:22)
Good tip. Open to work for your profile. So if you click like you're looking for a job, or I've seen in some cases, some consultants do that as far as just they're available, burn it or build it open to work.

Brenda Meller (39:32)
So I'm going go split on this message. ⁓ if you are actively in career transition, unemployed in between successes, turn it on because that will alert, recruiters that are searching for profiles, but also through your LinkedIn activities, posting, commenting, coming up in search results, people in your network will see. And there may be people out there who would refer opportunities to you or help you in your job search. If they knew that you were open to work and looking for work on there. I have seen some candidates.

flip it on, flip it off, you know, maybe initially when they're back into the job search market right away, they don't put it on right away, but a month or two or three months on the line, they turn it on. That's perfectly fine. But open to work is really that green badge that comes on your photo. It's really meant for people that are open to job opportunities. So I'm going to say build, blame it rather if you're a consultant who thinks that means I'm open to getting more project work, cause that's not what, not, not what that feature is meant for.

on your profile if that makes sense.

Digital Rebels Consulting (40:26)
Burn it and build it depending on where you're at number eight engagement pods or comment groups

Brenda Meller (40:33)
Bern, if you're paying to be in the engagement pod, because all you're doing is artificially inflating engagement while you're paying for that. And if you ever leave the engagement pod, if you don't have good content, your engagement is going to tank. So you really didn't do anything. You're just paying to be in it in terms of common threads. I've met a couple of them with fellow LinkedIn coaches and trainers, and even some of my own membership programs and things like that. But I think that the thing is we don't.

post all the time, every day, every week to say, Hey, I have a new post comment on it. We might occasionally be resharing something and we might ask people would love your thoughts on this or going inside there, but it's never done with the expectation of you comment on mine. I comment on yours. think when it comes from a place of genuine support and engagement, I think that's where it's most effective.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:20)
Yeah, that's a good point there at the end. think probably a lot of people join them, the engagement pods, comment groups to get their vanity metrics pumped up. So it's just, know, liking and you know, that's a great post Marc. But I think like you were saying at the very end though, if it's actually for a purpose and you're going to do something that's meaningful and somebody else's posts to drive the conversation, that's probably where a comment group can be effective. So we are split on that.

Brenda Meller (41:44)
What an hour.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:45)
Number nine SEO stuffed experience sections I know that some people from you know marketing like to just put every character they can in your entire LinkedIn profile for SEO burn it or build it

Brenda Meller (41:57)
It's so funny when you say, when you first said it, um, I don't know if you're expecting me to say burn it, but I'm one of those people. I know like LinkedIn, if they say they'll say, they'll say, they'll give me a box. I'm going to use that box. And if they say, well, you can put up to 2,600 characters in that box. I'm going to get to close to 2,600 as I can, but I'm not going to keyword stuff. I mean, my, my goal is I want to make my about statement interesting and informative knowing that the average person is only going to read the first four lines. Like 95 % of people don't even click on more.

So we wanna make sure that the first four lines are interesting and compelling and written for my ideal target audience. It's not really about me, it's about me as it relates to how I can help you. My goal is to get you to click on more and knowing it's almost like a sales funnel, you when you think about the shape of it, more people are gonna read at the top and as they go down in your about statement, they're gonna, they're less likely to read everything. But if you can make it.

short snackable chunks of copy with keyword lists that are maybe products and services or problems that you solve sprinkled in. And as you continue to go down, if you look at my about statement, I have like personal and professional goals. And I say what drives me, what makes me different? You know, when I travel, I like to enjoy pie. I've got a rescue dog, her name's Pepper. I love doing jigsaw puzzles and I want to learn how to do dollar bill origami and maybe teach yoga someday that humanizes you.

So it's not necessarily keyword stock stuffing, but I want to think about it's like psychology of how people are using your about statement and come end of the day, LinkedIn is, is kind of like an SEO tool, almost like Google. So if we use the right keywords and phrases, we're going to come up in more searches. So I don't want you to think of keyword stuffing. want you to think about keyword strategy in your.

Digital Rebels Consulting (43:39)
I agree. It's like you're reading my notes here. So number 10 is personal post. You're talking about some of the personal attributes of you. Are we going to be posting about this stuff on LinkedIn? I hear some people complain about it. Like this isn't Instagram. This isn't X. This isn't that. So our personal post. Okay. On LinkedIn.

Brenda Meller (43:47)
Mm-hmm.

I think really it's, it's build it if you're comfortable sharing personal items on LinkedIn. Some people are not in there like, Nope, this is just my business. I'm not going to get into anything personal. It's going to be all professional. Only things that I feel comfortable sharing with my coworkers and things like that. I will say though, if you're using LinkedIn for business development, let me just pick one category right now. If when you're posting, if all you're doing is selling in your post, people are going to tune you out eventually.

if you're doing a variety of posts, sometimes selling, sometimes informing, sometimes educating, sometimes doing a poll. And what I like to do is like, sometimes the polls are like water cooler talk, like what are people in the world talking about right now? So here in Michigan, we just had snow this week. If I worked in a corporate workplace, the day after the snowstorm or the day, the morning of the snowstorm, everybody in the coffee room will be talking about the snow.

my gosh, I haven't even raked my leaves yet. It's too early for snow. my kids loved it. It's great. It's pretty. So I might do a poll that says in Metro Detroit, we just got four inches of snow. The schools are still open. is it, is it too early in the season for snow? And poll response once is yes. Poll response two is no three is, whatever you're coming up, but you're getting people to engage with it. And that's going to get them, you know, portion of those people are going to click to come back to your profile. And if you work in a sales role.

Now they're more open and receptive to reading your about statement, your, your profile in there as well. So try it. If you're comfortable doing personal posts, I will say, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you're going to know that I love fly. And you're going to know that I have a rescue dog that's named Pepper. And I do videos with her pretty regularly. Sometimes I weave in LinkedIn tips and other times it's just me and Pepper. I talk about our day. Those videos, I get so much traction. And when I don't do one in a while, the next time I do one, people will say, we need more pepper.

Don't figure it out, but again, if you're not comfortable, it's perfectly okay just to keep things professional on the

Digital Rebels Consulting (45:41)
Mm-hmm.

Got it. So build it.

Brenda Meller (45:48)
Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (45:49)
Cool. Final word, what's the single most LinkedIn initial of every sales and marketing leader should implement today to accelerate their business?

Brenda Meller (45:58)
and 15 minutes on LinkedIn every single business day. Read it. There you go.

Digital Rebels Consulting (46:00)
Perfect. I like it. That's a good way to end it.

Just been 15 minutes. It's as simple as that and you can do that tomorrow. Where can people find you, Brenda?

Brenda Meller (46:09)
Obviously on LinkedIn, right? Brenda Meller on LinkedIn, or you can go to my website, MellerMarketing.com and learn more about me. have some free resources and checklists on there as well.

Digital Rebels Consulting (46:12)
You

Sounds good. Thank you for joining the show.

Brenda Meller (46:19)
Thanks for having me.

Digital Rebels Consulting (46:20)
Cheers.


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Marc Crosby - Digital Rebels

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