How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Influence and Sales with Shay Rowbottom

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, everybody. Welcome to mortgage marketing live. You know where you're at. You know why you're here? Because every week we're bringing you the truth in what's really working with mortgage marketing and we're going to get started in about five seconds. All right, all right. Welcome. Welcome. And if you're watching live, we want your comments. I want to know what your question is today for our special guest, who I'm going to bring on in just a moment, all about linked in. And secondly is quick announcement. If you guys haven't heard, you know, you've been seeing it be talked about for a while. Finally, the book is live. It's on Amazon. If you want to get it or you can get it for free and I'll pay for shipping. The brand new book Disruptor Die, How to Survive and Thrive, the digital real estate shift. If you want to get the book for free, I'll pay for your shipping. Go to DisruptorDieBook.com or go to Amazon and you can get it there. Enough said about that. Let's talk about our special guest here. We have today. Let me bring her on. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the amazing, the one the only, Shay Robotten. Hello. Thank you. I love the applause. Wow. It wasn't expecting that. You can't feel bad after getting applause from the audience, right? No, no, not at all. All right. All right. So listen, Shay. Many people in my community kind of know of you. You've obviously been bubbling up there. I say blowing up on the scene for the past, you know, period of time now. But for those who may not be familiar with you, who are you? Who do you help? What do you do? Yes. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. This is great. So I am a digital marketing entrepreneur. I dropped out of college when I was 20. I was 20. And worked a few years as a starving artist trying to make it as a musician. Realized I had no marketing acumen, no business acumen, and I was going nowhere. Just having this creative ability alone, I needed, I needed some balance in my life. So when I was 23, I decided to pivot. I decided to stop music and learn a little bit more about social media. I actually met a blog owner who was making really good money at the time. He was my age. His whole business was online. It was a lot of passive income. I was really intrigued by this guy. I was humbled. Like, let me work for you. And he needed video content for his Facebook page. And I had just recently learned how to edit videos because I had been making them for my own music career. I'd been getting into music videos a little bit. So I started working for his page. Editing his video content. He had about three million followers on his Facebook page. And I just soaked it up like a sponge. I learned everything about how to get attention online through video content, how to repurpose other traditional mediums, like articles, text posts, blogs, into video content. And at the time on Facebook, there was actually a huge issue with a lot of blogs starting to get shut down because Facebook was really cracking down on stolen video content. See, video had become really effective. It was like the new way to get attention. The algorithm was favoring it. So everyone needed video. Put a lot of these big Facebook pages. They were doing it the illegal way. And they were getting shut down. So suddenly, there became this massive need in the market on Facebook. That's primarily where I focused for licensed, safe video content. So I just decided to do it. It really, the business started by word of mouth. A lot of these big Facebook pages. They know each other. And they share tips on how to grow and monetize. So they started finding out about me. They were like, you know, we can get you these licensed videos. I had figured out a business model in a formula for licensing them. Non-exclusively, which I can get into later if you'd like. But it is essentially just a way to make it way, way cheaper that I undercut the rest of the market when it came to licensing video content. And it came to licensing video clips and getting these pages safe, relevant, high performing content for their blog to feed their audience gain new followers and ultimately drive traffic to whatever offers they were promoting at the time. And I did it for years. It was an amazing experience. I ended up scaling it up. I got an investment after about a year of doing it alone. My partner and I, we had a few outsourced employees. We ended up getting a capital investment about a year in. And then we really scaled from, you know, like a two person operation of my bedroom with some outsourced employees to over 30 in-house employees in downtown Milwaukee, where I'm from at the time. And we were doing, you know, big media buying campaigns, a lot of social media content for big companies like Peco, Yahoo, Verlo. Work was some of the biggest, most successful pages on Facebook. I mean, I cannot stress enough how unique that experience wasn't how much it humbled me because they really don't teach this in college. They really don't teach a video marketing as it pertains to the social media news feed yet in the mainstream. And the more and more I got into it, the more I realized how fortunate I was to be put in that unique position to get that unique expertise that not everyone has. And so I pivoted. I eventually got on LinkedIn to teach business owners how to apply these news feed video principles and the marketing formulas that I teach to their LinkedIn to attract new eyeballs to their LinkedIn to their business to gain inbound leads and ultimately increase revenue there. So that's my focus now. I help business owners create effective video content to attract their target market and close more deals on the LinkedIn platform. Yes, and you certainly do shout out to you real quick for those who don't know, by the way, I like to do for those that are watching, whether it's live on the replay, I'll be getting notification of your input on the replay as well. But if you've seen Shane's videos on LinkedIn, I'd like you to just put in yes or you do have any like hashtag, you know, people can follow. Shane, Shane, yes. So, but here's the thing for those of you who don't know, right, you've got now this may be a little bit out of date, but you have over 20 million video views on LinkedIn. Is that correct? Oh, yeah, many more now. I don't know. I have to go retail. We got to get a new graphic. Yeah, probably closer to 30 at this point, 30 million over over 200,000 plus followers. 260,000 plus followers. Okay, so that's a lot. And when did over the what period of time did most of your growth happen on LinkedIn, since you pivoted over there, like, you know, how long you've been at it? Yeah, so I officially started. I just passed my two year anniversary. It was May 7th of 2018 is when I posted my first video. In one year, I believe May 7th to date, I had about 60,000 followers that I'd gained in one year and max connections. I think it took me like nine or 10 months to get to the 30 K max connections. And I was just a massing followers past that point. And in year two, I've gained over 200,000 followers on LinkedIn. So growth escalates, I mean, it's that way on any social media platform. The first 100,000 is the hardest and then momentum kind of carries you from there. But there's also like a lot of weirdness with the LinkedIn followers. I really don't focus on followers so much. I focus on other metrics like engagement, community building in the comments and how many inbound leads I'm getting. And I actually just got off a call with LinkedIn this morning about this because there is an issue with like a lot of bots and fake profiles. So in terms of my follower growth, I would say that the bigger I get, the more that I notice a lot of like weird, like foreign and just honestly they just look like fake profiles following me. So yeah, 60,000 in year one year to 200,000, which is pretty typical. It does get easier to grow on a lot of platforms, but just be mindful that I do not really measure my success based on followers. And there's a good chunk of those followers that may not even be real. So you kind of touched on then what you measure your success on is engagement. And obviously you've got a source of revenue you're making money on LinkedIn as well. But what are your metrics for success? Yes, absolutely. So my metrics for success inbound leads, you know, everything I teach is organic. And that's what's made me very, very attractive. A lot of marketers actually buy my program because I teach people how to do everything organically. So for me, the entire lead flow is dependent upon how much I post a lot of companies. They run ads for their business, which is also an effective way to get a nice consistent lead stream. But for myself, if I want to double inbound leads, I simply double the amount of posts I make. And that's it, no ad money needed, no, I don't increase ad spend to increase lead flow. It's all organic. So it's a really genius business model. And I typically just measure success based on how much traffic I can get to my profile, which the more eyeballs, the more of my target market lands to my profile, the more they convert to leads. And that's also what I teach in my program is all about how to optimize your LinkedIn profile. So when people land on your page, they're very likely to convert. But now, you know, things are shifting a little for me. I'm, I've hired a lot in my business the past couple months, especially with COVID. We really expanded. We've grown a lot. So I personally, I'm working on developing a new company that is not about marketing at all. It's actually a healing and personal development business where I'm going to teach people how to empower themselves, get over their limiting beliefs, get past their limitations. That is ultimately holding them back from their business goals and from making more money. How to set boundaries, you know, how to deal with toxic family members. How to stop attracting partners and relationships that don't respect you. I've had a pretty intense life in just 27 short years. I've been through a lot of trauma, a lot of abuse, a lot of depression and mental health problems. So I kind of got the PhD in healing now. I've done a ton of work on myself. It did result in me 10 xing my own business. But also just really starting to remember who I really am and what I want to do in this world. Marketing is amazing and I'm so privileged to be able to bring these marketing resources to business owners who really need it to level up on social media and take that with them wherever they go online in the future. But my heart has really been pulling me toward helping people heal. I see the mass depression in the world. Just how combative we are, how divided we are as a nation, as a world. You know, pointing the finger at people outside of ourselves, blaming everyone, attracting people that are going to abuse disrespect us. We don't respect ourselves. I mean, look at the way that we've allowed so much, so many systems in our current society to basically just favor the few and disempower the many. And I think people are really waking up to that. So I think with this entire coronavirus, it's really pushed me to develop that healing company even quicker. Because I see now more than ever how the world needs healing and we need to stick together and we need to empower ourselves and remember how powerful we are. We do not need to be dependent on any. We do not need to be dependent on any system outside of ourselves, any relationship outside of ourselves, you know, teaching people to go within. And so I measure success now based on how much I can impact people to love themselves and start to finally turn all that energy inward and learn how to take care and parent themselves. Because that's the way to have lasting impact in society and create real ripples of change in the world. Yeah, that's awesome. Congratulations. I think that we need more voices like that out there. And it's funny as you're explaining that the thing that dawned on me was I don't be curious on your response to this. Because what you did is you pursued the business side of things first, but correct me if I'm wrong. I thought of this the other day that being an entrepreneur, being successful in your own business is in some ways its own personal development course and journey on its own. Isn't it? Yes to get to your level to get to a certain level of success. You've got to fix your head stuff. Fix your head. Exactly. And I love that you bring that up because it's actually exactly what my clients go through in the video boot camp program. Like it's so cool to watch them not only learn like digital marketing these principles and how it affects their brand, but like it's a personal development course. I got like a lot of them have never been on camera before they feel shy starting out in the program. They start to build some confidence so it's actually really beautiful to just watch my clients develop themselves personally through the use of video content as a tool as sort of catalyst for growth and for pushing themselves. I mean that all translates to more business more abundance being better at selling honoring yourself more feeling more worthy about yourself more confident. So I love that you brought that up that's that's totally what I see in the boot camp. Yeah by the way a couple shout outs from people Victor the creative. He likes your stuff and then somebody else says authenticity is everything 100% and the benefit back that up obviously I watch your videos on you know a client of your boot camp and a big fan of it and you're right. And and and one of the videos you posted recently was look at when somebody has the reach and scale that you do you're going to get some haters you're going to get some trolls. People dealing with their own psychology and the latest one you you posted I think it was in the last 24 48 hours was all about you know money and the psychology around money and like people pushing back on you because you're talking about money on LinkedIn. Like how crazy is that it's a business platform right it is yeah yeah people don't like to feel uncomfortable is really what it is you know a lot of people say like oh people are asleep people are are just sheep. I don't really believe that even I believe people do see the truth they just as soon as they start to get uncomfortable because the truth is ugly and the truth can be painful the truth can be sad. That discomfort is like too much to bear so they kind of go into reactive mode and start shaming you for for basically just speaking truth. I think there's a quote no one is hated more than he who speaks the truth because the truth especially in our modern world sorry but the truth is very painful. A lot of people don't want to face it and I always relate that back to my childhood and not wanting to face for many many years that my parents were abusive because it was so painful like everyone wants the perfect white picket fence beautiful family. It's not always the reality for us for some of us the best form of self love and self care is to cut out our family and I think it's the same logic behind why people get really. They hate on you or they get defensive and shameful when you present new information or a different opinion that basically threatens they are normal that threatens what they've been building up for themselves so many years to feel safe as soon as you threaten that and make them uncomfortable and make them start to question if they've been wrong or what's really true. They'll attack you so I think if you have haters you are absolutely doing something right I say that all the time you know the truth hurts and those who speak the truth are some of the bravest people out there because it's not easy to deal with shame shame is a great way to control people it's why children grow up hating themselves because they're so shamed as children a lot of times unconsciously by their parents their parents shame them in an effort to control them in an effort to make them the kid that they want. It's a really ugly by a human emotion it's the lowest of all vibrations so even when someone really disagrees with me or post an opinion that I just like vehemently disagree with and I get kind of triggered like oh my god how can they be so stupid how can they not see things from my perspective. I really try to look inward and take it as an opportunity to practice acceptance and love for what is out there instead of shaming them for having a different perspective this is how we grow this is how we learn and when you can get past your own self righteousness you'll actually find that there's nothing more liberating than being wrong and changing your opinion on something when presented with new information that challenges your beliefs and yes makes you uncomfortable. I love that and it's a nice segue into a topic that's relevant for most as I'm sure you've experienced as well when people consider putting themselves out there on social media video particularly it's a very kind of revealing medium in some ways. That is like the first phase of like being comfortable being on social is dealing with your own psychology and being okay with what's the right rejection you know critiquing critic being criticized. What I have written down for my notes is for us to let's talk about video content strategy but would you agree first and foremost hey you gotta be willing to accept what comes at you as you put yourself out there. Yes absolutely I had another interviewer asked me the other day you know what do you tell to people that are afraid of the haters or afraid of people are going to say that they're wrong in their opinion. I actually said like it's inevitable that will be wrong sometimes right to just piggyback off of what I just said like you have to accept that sometimes you're not always going to be right. We have to let go of the shame that we feel when we're wrong so I would say that's the that's the first aspect just accept that there's going to be haters. There's going to be people who disagree with you that's life you know you are not living life playing on the sidelines trying to be liked by everyone you know you can be liked by everyone but you're going to live a very small existence controlling that tight circle of people that all like you. You can only control a small group of people all liking you and having nothing bad to say about you as soon as you want to branch out bigger as soon as you want to 10 X your life your goals you better be ready for some you can't control at all. And you shouldn't and then the other part of that is you know a lot of people tend to have imposter syndrome about like their own expertise like I tell people all the time like you're an expert in your industry. Why do you think you you don't have the authority to show up on video and teach people and actually I talk about this in my program like I consider it selfish to fall victim to those insecurities and fears because you're just withholding helping people you're just withholding bringing value to people's lives. That you have that probably nobody else has you know no two people have the same walk of life which means you inevitably have value to share and stories to share that no one else has so falling victim to your fear of oh people are going to hate on me I'm not you know what people are going to judge me for these videos you're forgetting that the great majority of people who see your videos are going to benefit and you falling victims that insecurity is just keeping that value from the world. So be brave it does get easier the first video is the hardest it's like riding a bike it's like anything like it really gets easier and that goes back to what I was saying about seeing my clients really thrive as they go through this program I love watching the progression of them getting more and more comfortable on camera and really honing their own voice and their own personal brand. That's really cool to see that evolve as we're all in pods and seeing people post their different content and stuff that's really cool. Yeah okay so what can you tell those that are listening and watching and as we said earlier like most of the people viewing for me and my audience are in real estate or mortgage. In terms of a video strategy what are some things they need to consider in advance before they decide to get on LinkedIn specifically. Oh yeah great question I would always look at the long term I mean like it's not uncommon for people to want to switch industries down the line do something else you know I feel like almost everyone in the world is going through this shift right now where we're realizing a lot of us are doing something that we're not totally aligned with and we're not passionate about. So I always say to my clients like you know promote your niche and make content that flexes your specific skills in your industry that positions you as an authority. Just give you know just like ask yourself what do I know that can make my target markets lives easier that they don't know and just start giving away free tips people will come to you you won't even need to ask for business or pitch people will come to you like wow you've given me so much tips about my mortgage or buying a house or lenders whatever. That I would actually like to pay you money now I think I'd like to hire you I think you know what you're talking about and I've picked up on that from all your content that you put out for free. So that's step number one in your industry to attract business and grow a loyal following that can buy from you later. Also you know be yourself because the more you page and hold yourself into this professional image of like I'm this you know this is me and this is this is only for business and this is you know there's really a misconception that being our true selves in business being vulnerable being personal is a turn off that's not the case at all and I find that what people do is they suffocate themselves were eventually down the line when they are going through a big transition when they are going through a hardship something that they're following could support them on. They don't feel comfortable talking about it because they're following has never actually seen the real them they've never actually seen them talk this way. So if you can just you know throughout your time building your blog I understand that it's around business and that is the goal here on LinkedIn. Now I'm really grateful that ever since I started my blog in 2018 I always touched on my interest in mental health I always talked a little bit about narcissism and growing up with narcissistic parents and what that's like because now I'm more and more feeling more and more called to go toward that. And wow thank God that I've been open with my following this whole time about who I really am and where I come from so now it's no big deal when I want to go out there and say hey by the way guys I'm finally doing it I'm starting a healing company you know who wants to learn more they already know that about me you know I haven't pigeon hold myself into this like you know I'm just I'm just like another Gary V and it's digital marketing its content and that's it. So keep that in mind as well really really ask yourself when you start to deny your own freedom to post what you really feel just ask yourself like could I really post it though honestly the answer is usually yes it's usually just some filter some societal conditioning that tells us it's not safe. Now is the time more than ever where we need to return to being real we need to return to our true selves we need to encourage people to speak their truth to not be fake and the world will only become a better place because of it you will only inspire more and more people to be open authentic and do the same. You know that deserves a little a little James Brown love it love it so let's let's I love that let's switch and get tactical because you know people love tactics yes they do and I've learned a lot from you going through your boot camp and you've obviously done your homework and research and you got stats to back all this up but let's talk about where do people go wrong with their linked in headline and if you like I can bring yours up as an example if you'd like. Yeah sure so the linked in headline this is like also a big part of what I teach in my program about not over complicating your messaging so a lot of people in their messaging they want to be fancy they want to be creative but all they're doing is making it harder on the user to consume the information easily you know human beings are wired for survival we're always trying to conserve calories. So when you make it hard for your target market to like sift through your whole summary and figure out like wait but what is it exactly that you do you're just turning off business so I always say a good linked in headline is one that gets straight to the point exactly what you do who you help. The service you provide the problem you solve no fluff no need to brag about your MBA or your Forbes 30 under 30 no one actually cares in reality about that stuff you know I do not have a college degree never once has a client or possibly asked me where's your degree she they just care about the solution that what can you solve my problem yes so there's no point there's no point in breaking about that stuff in your headline it's the first thing your target market sees so I always give people this formula. I help X accomplish why using Z X being your target market why being the problem you solve and then see if you want to get good even for the Z being like going into the mechanism of how you solve it. So yeah for my LinkedIn headline I just have you want to go back to a question I just have I turn executives in a video creators that generate revenue on LinkedIn boom you know it's it's very pretty clear. Right and then and then the other characters that are left I use those characters for keywords so remember LinkedIn will also whatever keywords are in your headline they show up when people are searching so I put public speaker there strategically so when people are looking for a speaker I also show up in the search I put social selling I put marketing those are all keywords that pertain to the services I provide so keep that in mind as well. But as whatever's left over after you clearly communicate the problem you solve to your target market you can also you know throw a few more words in there that you think are relevant to your industry. Okay very good so quick point about that the keyword searches if you want to comment about that because people are typing in certain keywords looking for people that can help them with a particular problem right. Yes exactly right so public speaker real estate mortgage whatever right technology all that kind of stuff yes okay cool so that's how important then is this beautiful blue space up here where you see the. Oh yeah so I actually encourage people to use that as like a banner where it's just another place to promote your business and your offer your CTA you know your call to action where can people reach out to you. So I always say in your video content that is tailored to the newsfeed and just that should just be focused on providing value and not asking for anything you know you don't have a hard CTA back to your business in your video content you just want to get people in the door it's like window shopping so. So when. Provided all this free value and they're curious about who is this person providing all this free value now when they get to the your profile that should be an ad that should be highly optimized for conversions and your banner is a great place to showcase that right away. Use it as another place to showcase your services what you sell your email address your website where people can reach out to you and potentially also use like an image that's just an image of me sitting down there but like like for example it'd be cool to have like an image of you at work so. If you are a video a videographer an image of you actually holding the video camera at work you know like an action shot yeah yeah just like a picture that's relevant to your industry helps as well okay cool listen I know we have a couple more minutes left so real quick let's cover this best practices pro tips for hashtags tagging and engaging. Oh my gosh yes we'll definitely engage I noticed that the more you engage on LinkedIn the more you get engagement back so just go out in the feed start dropping comments have a custom hashtag for your brand like mine's shade shine so every post I include hashtag shade shine. It's just another place for people to follow me they can click on hashtag shade shine follow it and see my content show up in more places but when you're out in the feed engaging and commenting you can also drop your hashtag at the end of your comment so that's another way to get your profile to start to show up more and get new followers. And tagging on LinkedIn also works great create a list of industry professionals who your content would be relevant to and make sure they're active like they're actually on the platform regularly and just take them in the comment of your post say hey you know I thought you guys might be interested in this content it's relevant to your industry what are your thoughts. Okay awesome cool well listen I know you're incredibly busy you have made time for us I appreciate that very much if anybody wants to connect with you what's the best way. Yes definitely follow me on LinkedIn that's LinkedIn dot com slash in slash shade row bottom if you're curious to learn more about the LinkedIn video bootcamp and my agency services that I provide for businesses and influencers on LinkedIn you can go to my website. Shay row bottom dot com and there's a form there you can fill out to set up a call. Awesome Shay thank you very much for bringing sunshine to the world thank you Jeff you as well thank you so much it's been an honor being here and look forward to seeing you next time. All right and everybody you know what to do like comment subscribe all that we'll see you on the next one thanks for tuning in bye for now. Thanks for joining us getting agents butts and seats partnering with affiliates. 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