Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

LinkedIn Creator Mode: Your Killer Secret Weapon for LinkedIn Growth

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 324

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Ready to unlock the full potential of LinkedIn Creator Mode and skyrocket your reach? I've got you covered with a game-changing episode that reveals how this powerful, yet underutilized feature can help you broaden your reach, grow your network, and establish thought leadership. As a business owner, entrepreneur, or content creator, you'll get a step-by-step tutorial on activating and maximizing LinkedIn Creator Mode, so you can be on your way to dominating the platform!

As I walk you through this amazing feature, we'll share tips on how to create hashtags, add custom website links, feature lead magnets and activity, and even host LinkedIn Live events. You'll discover how to leverage StreamYard for promoting live streams on LinkedIn and how to utilize the LinkedIn newsletter feature for further reach. Plus, learn how to get subscribers straight from your profile and boost your visibility. Don't miss this opportunity to learn about one of LinkedIn's best new features in years and get ready to make your mark on the platform!

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Speaker 1:

I often get asked Neil, what can I do to further improve my LinkedIn profile? What can I do to broaden my reach, grow my network, my engagement, establish thought leadership? There's actually one killer thing that you can do on LinkedIn. That is really, really easy to do, but very few people know about it. Well, I'm going to teach you the air quotes secrets about this trick and this functionality and describe all the features in full detail, including how to actually turn this feature on, in this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer and welcome to the YouTube, neil Schaefer, and welcome to the latest episode in this podcast which, as your digital marketing coach, explores best practices and tries to provide you very tactical and strategical advice for all of your digital content influencer and social media marketing. There is a lot to cover and I want to make sure that no digital marketing stone goes unturned. All right, today we focus on one of my loves, which is LinkedIn, because I wrote my first two books on LinkedIn. Now, for those of you that have been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know, starting about two months ago, i have begun to live stream each one of these podcast episodes. What this means is, whether I am recording solo or I am with a guest, you can actually consume the content first by following my YouTube channel over at youtubecom slash Neil Schaefer, or connecting with me on LinkedIn and liking my Facebook page, because I am also live streaming simultaneously on YouTube, linkedin and Facebook. Now, you know that I've been doing that for a while. If you're a listener, what I'm going to be doing this time is actually, for the first time, of actually repurposing a YouTube video into a podcast episode. Now, if you are not experimenting, you're not growing, and if you are not repurposing, you are not going to grow. What YouTube has allowed me to do something that has been very hard for me to visualize in a podcast which is to provide you a step-by-step tutorial. Youtube is really good for how to's and step-by-step tutorials, right, so why don't I take that same idea into a podcast episode? And that is the thought process.

Speaker 1:

Now, i've tried to clean up various things that are obviously out of place in a podcast, but I would really love to hear your opinion. Does this work or not as a podcast episode? I think it does. I think it actually opens up a new door of a lot of different, very, very educational and actionable content that I can provide you here in a podcast format. But you are going to be the best judge of that, and I would really appreciate your feedback. Obviously, neil Schaefercom slash contact. You know, contact me on the socials. If you're on my email list, send me an email. Either way, i would love to get your feedback on this.

Speaker 1:

So today we talk all about LinkedIn Creator Mode. It is one of my most favorite topics because so few people understand it. I think, once you understand it and you continue listening to the end of the podcast, where I am going to help you step-by-step implement all the different features and benefits of LinkedIn Creator Mode. I think you'll see that it is really the best new feature of LinkedIn in quite some time, and I would say, a few years. I think it is that important. Whether you are obviously a business owner, entrepreneur, content creator, you know the name is LinkedIn Creator Mode, but you don't have to be what we would call a content creator to take advantage of it. Anybody well, any person can take advantage of it, and every single one of you listening to this podcast, i want to make sure that, by the end of this, you are already turning Creator Mode on and you're using it to your advantage. All right. Well, even if you already have LinkedIn Creator Mode on, i think you're going to learn a few things about it in this podcast. So keep listening and let's jump straight into LinkedIn Creator Mode.

Speaker 1:

Linkedin Creator Mode what exactly is it? Why should you use it? What are all the different benefits? And then, most importantly, how do we turn it on? Is it free? Do we have to pay money? I'm gonna walk you through and answer all of those questions.

Speaker 1:

So let's first start with what exactly is LinkedIn Creator Mode Now? LinkedIn did not always have this feature. It is relatively new. Now, when I say relatively new, i'm talking post COVID, and I wanna give you a little bit of history, because I think this is really important to understand the full benefits and future potential that LinkedIn Creator Mode can have for you. So it was March 31st 2021, where LinkedIn said, and I quote at the heart of our ecosystem is our creator community. People love to see creators. This is LinkedIn, by the way, not TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. People love to see creators give their take on what's happening in the news or share insights into a specific industry, whether it's a post, a video, an article or even a comment. So if you are creating content on LinkedIn which is posting or even commenting, you are considered a creator on LinkedIn. If you want to publish content on LinkedIn, then you are also considered a creator. So Creator Mode is not just for these famous influencers and other people that we call content creators.

Speaker 1:

Something else LinkedIn said that day was if you want to build your following and engage with an audience on LinkedIn, creator Mode could be the right fit for you. Who doesn't want to build a following and engagement on LinkedIn, right? They also said interesting data point here 50% of member follows. You can connect with someone on LinkedIn. You can also follow them without connecting, and this is going to be really important piece of information to understand as I go through this video. 50% of member follows come from profile views. Someone goes to your profile, they find you on search, they hear about you, whatever it is, and then they end up following you. So with Creator Mode, what happens is that your primary profile action updates, instead of the default being connects, it goes to follow And this helps you grow your audience. In addition and I think this is really really interesting Creator Mode will make members eligible for search and discovery results downstream, helping creators get discovered and grow their audience, meaning that if you are a creator and you are in LinkedIn Creator Mode, then that gives your content that you publish a better chance of being discovered on LinkedIn in the feed than if you don't have Creator Mode on. So this is an absolute no brainer.

Speaker 1:

But wait, there is more. That was 2021. A year later, linkedin announced on March 30th 2022, that more than 5.5 million people across the globe turned on the feature. Now LinkedIn has I don't know 6, 700, 800 million users. That is a small fraction Now. That was a year ago, so I'm assuming, with time, more and more people turn it on. But I'll tell you and I'm gonna show you how to do this search yourself that there's still a lot of people that haven't turned this on, which means more opportunity for you, my viewer. Now, those who have turned on Creator Mode have seen a nearly 50% increase in the number of people that follow them And a nearly 30% increase over the past year in the engagement on content created by people with Creator Mode turned on. So Creator Mode turned on more follows, more engagement and check this out an 89% increase in the number of subscriptions to newsletters. This is one of the other benefits of Creator Mode that I'm going to get into momentarily Now, if that wasn't enough, a few months later, we're still like a year ago, june 9th 2022.

Speaker 1:

And this is the last piece of data, because I think it's really important to understand the data to understand the full impact and potential that LinkedIn Creator Mode has for you. That 18% of all follows on LinkedIn. Now they mentioned 50% came from profile views. Now there's an 18% came from LinkedIn search, and they said that's why we've made a number of improvements to how creators like you show up in search results. Now, if someone searches for a specific person, we've made it easy to one click follow them without needing to leave the search experience. And if that's not enough, like easier to follow straight from search results. If someone searches for a specific company or topic, we'll show profiles of creators who discuss those subjects and make it simple to follow those people with a single click.

Speaker 1:

So LinkedIn Creator Mode overall, generally speaking, you're going to get broader coverage, broader followers, broader engagement, broader visibility. But when you hone in on specific subjects, your specific niches, it becomes even more powerful. And I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that in one second. And it says if you have a Creator Mode turned on and your profile's public visibility is on, as it should be, when a LinkedIn member invites you to connect, we'll automatically have them to start following you, regardless of whether or not you accept their connection request. This means they'll start seeing your public post updates in their feed without needing to wait for a response from you on the initial connection request. So you don't even have to connect with them, but they still become your followers. And this is how, even though you may not know, but LinkedIn has a connection limit of 30,000, which I'm actually at, and I'm constantly deleting inactive profiles and adding in new people that want to connect with me, but they don't have that for followers. So you can begin to exponentially grow way more followers than you have connections, and that's how your influence and visibility on the LinkedIn platform actually increases.

Speaker 1:

So let me talk about I already hinted at some of these, but I want to go into some of the specific benefits of Creator Mode. So, first of all, you're going to notice that there is a normally on anyone's profile that does not have Creator Mode on, you will see a connect button. If you have Creator Mode on, like Deb, i just recently interviewed her on my podcast and there's actually a live stream we did together right here on my YouTube channel. It is now follow. Now you may be wondering what if I want to connect with Deb? Well, you still can. You just got to go to more and then connect. You got to know to do that. But this big blue follow button is going to entice people to following without necessarily connecting, and that's how you build way more followers and connections, because you can follow anyone you want. This person may not accept your connection request, but they can't reject your follow, and that's one of the mechanisms that LinkedIn uses to get creators more followers. Now, when someone sends that connection request, they automatically follow you. I mentioned that Even if you deny the request, if you archive that request that they sent to connect with you, they are still going to follow you, which is pretty cool, all right.

Speaker 1:

Second thing I talked about LinkedIn wants to give creators greater visibility for their content, but it should be in their niche. How does LinkedIn know your niche? Well, it's really easy to see here. If I go to my profile, you will see here, and anyone who has Creator Mode turned on has these hashtags. Talks about blogging, linkedin content marketing, influencer marketing and social media marketing. So immediately when we are in someone's profile, we immediately know what they're about. Linkedin knows what you're about and you bet that if I send out content using these hashtags, linkedin is immediately going to associate that I'm probably an expert in one of those areas and immediately going to give me a little more visibility, because you can only choose up to five hashtags, right? So it's similar to how, with a website, you have a meta title, meta description for your home page. There's only so many characters you can fill in, but if that includes influencer marketing and you blog a lot about influencer marketing, chances are you're going to get more authority on search engines for influencer marketing content versus content that may not be part of your meta title, meta description to a certain extent. So that's how that works And if you were curious, you go.

Speaker 1:

it's really really easy to say you know what I don't want to do? social media marketing. I want to add another hashtag And it's really interesting because it'll show you sort of what are the most popular, like Google suggests. It'll show you, like, what are the most popular hashtags. I'm going to go back to social media marketing. Interestingly enough, there's someone misspelled social there, but that's how you are able to create these five hashtags. Really really easy to do. All right.

Speaker 1:

Number four is that you can add a custom website link. So you may not know this, but if we go further down in my profile, you're going to see this. If you click it, it's going to go to my website, right, and you'll see it forcom. Well, that's pretty cool, and All I need to do here is go to my edit and, at the very bottom, if you have Creator Mode turned on, you will be able to add a web, so I could add a lead magnet Hey, download my free book, sign up for a new course, buy my new book, whatever it is. You can add it there And then boom, it's going to show up right here.

Speaker 1:

I'd say that's another really, really huge benefit of the Creator Mode that LinkedIn didn't even talk about when I, you know, described their, their press releases and blog posts announcing all these features at the beginning. So that is a really killer, killer functionality. Without even having to go further down in my profile, they're already going to see what I'm about and they're able to immediately go to my website and follow me. I'm obviously editing my own profile so you don't see the follow button there, but you would see it under normal circumstances. All right, another interesting little tweak is that you'll notice, if you go down, that I have the featured and activity sections above my about section. In a LinkedIn profile without Creator Mode, the about section would come first and then you have your featured and activity. Now the featured is really critical because this is where you can put your lead magnets, the main things you want to promote. Up to three of these are going to be visible at a time. You can add more and you can scroll through them. But this is a killer feature that says, hey, the minute someone goes below your profile, let's go back to Deb, let's see if she has it enabled. The minute someone goes down, you know, in your profile they're immediately going to see these. So that's another really, really cool benefit of being in LinkedIn Creator Mode.

Speaker 1:

Now, some of the other things you can do is you can do a LinkedIn Live, and that's what I was going to hear. This is a previous LinkedIn Live that I did. So you cannot do a LinkedIn Live right now unless you're in Creator Mode. So the idea is that and you also can't do a LinkedIn Live from LinkedIn itself You have to go through a third party app.

Speaker 1:

I'm a huge fan of StreamYard and I, you know, i started live streaming just a YouTube on StreamYard. It's like, why don't I do LinkedIn and Facebook as well? And actually, when you create a live stream in StreamYard and you connect LinkedIn and LinkedIn confirms you have Creator Mode on and you have the LinkedIn Live function. Howdy on It. Actually, once you schedule that LinkedIn Live, it actually creates an event in LinkedIn. That event actually sends out a little post And so people can like it, people can comment on it and obviously, about a number of people say Hey, neal, i noticed you live in my feed today, so it does give you ability to get extra visibility. And if you're already doing live streaming, right, it makes sense to also publish that on LinkedIn as well. I find I get as much, if not more, engagement on my live streams from LinkedIn than I do on YouTube or Facebook, for that matter. So that is LinkedIn Live. Another functionality just for LinkedIn Creator Mode users.

Speaker 1:

We also have the LinkedIn newsletter.

Speaker 1:

Now I have been publishing LinkedIn newsletters. You'll notice I have 11 editions. I just published one an hour ago, so I've been publishing these Basically. I have a weekly newsletter I send out through ConvertKit. Well, why don't I just copy and paste that and put it on to my LinkedIn? And that's exactly what I have been doing. Now there's some tweaks I need to do, but if you subscribed to my newsletter, go to NealShaffercom and fill that out or, you know, follow my newsletter here. You'll see I have 6,109 subscribers. That's not bad. It takes a long time to build an email list of 6,109 subscribers, so you may start out with 100, 200, 500, 1,000, but it's another channel for your content. So you'll notice if you see my newsletter, it is basically the same content I am copying and pasting. I'm tagging people within LinkedIn And, like I said, it's more visibility.

Speaker 1:

Linkedin is also sending this out as an email. Thank you to those that are subscribed. I don't know if it goes out to everybody, but I have noticed that I receive my own and this is a really, really easy thing to do. This is like a no-brainer, and the other thing they allow you to do that they just added is in your featured section you can now add the newsletter So immediately you wanna get people subscribed to it and then boom, they can do it right from looking at your profile. Now I know this goes beyond LinkedIn Creator Mode, but if you're curious how to develop a LinkedIn newsletter, i think I already gave you the advice there And if I was to go back into where I am here, let me go back to my home screen here So you see where it says write article. Right, you click on write article And you can also do LinkedIn newsletter from your company page, but company pages don't get much engagement on LinkedIn, so obviously I'm gonna do this from my personal profile. You go next and then boom, this is where you cut and paste everything in.

Speaker 1:

You want to upload a photo. I'm a big unsplash user, so I'll use a royalty free. I'm actually a subscriber to Unsplash Plus. I'm actually paying them money every month to get access to some exclusive Getty images that Unsplash also has. But you upload an image here, this image becomes the header that you see here. That also gives some visual appeal when it goes out into your feed, and then you basically write the newsletter.

Speaker 1:

Now there's some things here. You can add an image, a video slides if you wanted to do that, links, code snippets I have an experiment with code snippets, with adding my own podcast snippet, but I believe it's available to do. But it is really really intuitive, really really easy to do. You press next. Let me just add a title right here. This would be the subject line for my newsletter. So we add a title, we press next and then this will publish as a newsletter. It'll go out of my feed and then the email will go out to those people I think by default, unless they have that feature or setting turned off. So that is how it is very, very easy to create a LinkedIn newsletter.

Speaker 1:

I've seen some people just do a weekly blog post or a weekly video as a newsletter. So you don't have to have a formal weekly newsletter. You can use it as a way to give a weekly update, like a blog post or a video or a podcast episode, and you put in 100, 200, 300 words. You could even use chat GPT to help you, because this isn't necessarily to rank right. So flesh out some content, summarize it and then, hey, just check out the full video, go here Very, very easy thing for you to do. So another great benefit of the LinkedIn Creator Mode. So let's keep going.

Speaker 1:

Now We also have LinkedIn Audio Event. Now, this is not something I take advantage of, but let me just go back here And this is where I'm able to access all the Creator tools I have, and you'll see that there's this Audio Event. Now, the Audio Event is something I haven't done. They started this, launched it, when you know Clubhouse was a big thing. I don't know how many people do it, but it is possible to do an Audio Event if you are a LinkedIn user. So if you're big on Clubhouse, you might want to check that out. All right, there's also some creator analytics that LinkedIn gives you. So the analytics you see about your posts are more on par with what a LinkedIn company page analytics would be. So that's pretty cool. You get additional insight. You also get a follow button which you could put on your website if you wanted to, just like those old follow me on Twitter buttons. I don't do that, but, hey, you could do that And you become more discoverable in search results.

Speaker 1:

So this is an example. I just did a search for myself. It's pretty cool, and when I do a search for Neil, that Neil Patel comes up, but you'll see that his hashtags come up and you'll see that his follower count comes up. Compared to two people. Neil is actually a good friend. I'm following this other Neil as well. You can see how much more visibility you get. You get those hashtags, you know whether this person is relevant to you or not And you see the social proof, the credibility that comes with having all those followers. So that's a pretty cool functionality, i would say.

Speaker 1:

About the creator mode and being discoverable in search results, and I will say that LinkedIn has promised and I'm going to quote them you become eligible as a creator in creator mode. You become eligible to be featured as a suggested creator to follow, so that potential followers can find you and your content across LinkedIn. So, like I said, there are some additional friends with benefits. Additional, you know, icing on the cake benefits that LinkedIn creators ie those that have LinkedIn creator mode turn on will have the opportunity to gain should you turn it on. So why would you not turn creator mode on? I don't know, i think it's just you didn't know, but I'm hoping by the end you are ready to turn it on And, ladies and gentlemen, it is really really easy to turn on.

Speaker 1:

Let me just go back to the home. You'll want to click here, which gives you access to your profile. You want to go down here where it says resources and these are private to you, and this is where you're going to be able to say creator mode on or off, so you get your analytics there, and then here is where you'll be able to turn it on or off. Basically, i have it turned on and that's why you see all the different features. If I wanted to turn LinkedIn live off, i could. I don't want to do that. If I want to turn that follow link off, i don't want to do that as well. Here's where I can create that follow button. Copy that code from my website. It is all accessible from that section, right From that section, when you edit your profile in LinkedIn, saying resources. I'm showing this on the desktop because I do believe that there are certain things that you can only do on the desktop and not on the mobile app. So I recommend, when you do important profile edits to your LinkedIn profile, you do it on the desktop and not on the mobile app.

Speaker 1:

If you enjoyed all this advice, make sure that you download my LinkedIn ebook right up there. It's completely free, a lot of free content. It's going to help you optimize whatever you do on LinkedIn. We will also have the link in these show notes. Once again, love to hear feedback on how that went.

Speaker 1:

If you are looking for help with your digital marketing or LinkedIn, i've actually had quite a few people reach out to me for my fractional CMO program that are really, really interested in building leadership on LinkedIn. It is something that I do cover as well. Feel free to reach out to me, neilshaffercom slash CMO to find out more about that one-on-one consulting If you'd like to join my community of digital entrepreneurs and doers learning and sharing and growing together. That is my digital first mastermind community. You can find out more about that at neilshaffercom slash membership. We have been at full capacity of 15 for quite some time now. I can't guarantee when I will have it open for new members, but if you go to neilshaffercom slash membership and enter your email address in the waiting list there, you will get notified as soon as I have an opening. All right, everybody. That is it for another exciting edition of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastneilshaffercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilshaefercom to tap in to the 400 plus blog post that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.