The best content practice that you should initiate in your business, is providing one piece of content a day. It does not matter if it’s a post, article or a video. Just make sure that you do not sell or pitch in any of the content that you put out on the platform. Your network is looking to engage with you and learn from you at the very same time. This is something that I learned very early on when using LinkedIn. The more that I give to my audience, the more they give back to me. Ask questions in your content. See what their take-a-ways were. Find out their pain points and the problems they are having so you can be the authoritative leader to provide a solution.
As part of my series of interviews about “How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Aaron. Internationally acclaimed and award-winning online marketer, 2x best-selling author, top podcaster and speaker, Scott Aaron, is the go-to specialist when it comes to converting traffic, establishing connections, creating income, building brands and businesses using LinkedIn. Fully immersing himself in learning LinkedIn and social media strategies, Scott quickly gained traction as a leader in generating big results for other entrepreneurs, online business owners and business coaches. Scott is passionate about helping fellow business owners achieve success while building their own network organically without complicated and costly marketing tactics. His program has helped thousands experience explosive growth following his simple, strategic and effective system. People-focused and result-driven, Scotts strategic approach to teaching others how to create wealth online and organic traffic, is the game changer when it comes to competing in a saturated digital world.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Over a 23-year professional career as a personal trainer, business owner and coach, I realized I had a gift. I had a gift of building trust, rapport, relationship and connection with other people. As social media started to take over, I found myself feeling very disconnected on Facebook and Instagram. A lot of “posting and praying” and “scrolling and trolling” was a big part of my day. Then one day I stumbled upon LinkedIn. I had a profile, but I had no concept of how to use it. But as I had done so many times before, I figured it out. I realized that in today’s overcrowded social “selling” media world, LinkedIn is the ideal place for anyone who has a business that relies on human connection to build their business, brand and bank account. My strategy is simple. Use LinkedIn for what it is best used for: Creating human connection, rapport, trust and relationship with those that could benefit from you, your service or your product. It is also the most organic way to grow a huge network of those that actually want to hear how you can help and assist one another.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
Starting at a young age, I learned the importance of being resilient. When I was 18 years young, my father made a poor business decision that landed him in federal prison for 24–36 months. Prior to leaving for prison, my father (with the help of my 2 grandfathers) purchased a failing health club in downtown Philadelphia. Little did I know that this gym would one day become mine. As we drove my father to prison, I had a lot of thoughts running through my mind, none of which were business related. That was all about to change. When we pulled up, the guards were waiting to escort my father into the prison. But prior to exiting the car, my father left me with a message that I will never forget….”Now you are the man of the house!” Those words have never left me. I was an 18-year-old kid now responsible for running a health club with no prior experience in business, wellness or being an adult. I always stress to people that you are always dealt certain hands in life. Some you want to fold and some you want to hold. I can honestly say that I have not folded a hand yet that I have been dealt. Being resilient is my superpower and it is one that we can all access if we truly want to.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of the funniest mistakes I made when I was first starting out with my business utilizing LinkedIn, I was messaging people the wrong way. Namely, doing too much copying and pasting and forgetting to change the person’s name when sending the message. As much as we want to automate certain aspects of our life and our business, sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up.
The big lesson that I learned from that mistake, was to really do my best to be as genuine, authentic and real as possible no matter what I was doing on the platform. If it means me taking a few extra minutes to make a message ultra-personal in order to establish that connection, then I was going to take that extra step.
Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?
In the beginning of my business journey in building it online, Facebook was most effective to increase my business revenue. That all drastically changed in 2015 due to the changes in the algorithm of the platform. That is what really drew me to LinkedIn. What I realized is in order to create more business revenue, as a business owner, you must have more conversations than anyone else. Most people are waiting for those to reach out to them on Facebook and Instagram, we’re on LinkedIn, you do the genuine reach out to start conversations. It’s all a numbers game.
One of the best stories that I can share is when I was going through this process of beginning to use LinkedIn, I happen to be reading a book called “Go For No”. The title of the book says it all. “Yes, is the Destination, but NO is how you will get there “. This rang so true for what someone needs to do on LinkedIn. The more NO’s that I collected; the more Yes’s started to show up. The more Yes’s that started to show up, the more my business’s revenue started to increase. This is a simple formula that can be applied to any business.
Let’s talk about LinkedIn specifically, now. Can you share 5 ways to leverage LinkedIn to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.
There are five simple but yet effective things you can do on LinkedIn to drastically improve your business.
The first thing is to make sure that your profile is optimized. What I love about LinkedIn, is when Microsoft bought them out a number of years ago, they embedded SEO on all of our profiles, so they are more searchable, visible and able to be connected with. There are specific keywords that you must have on your profile to appear in the searches for those individuals that you seek to connect with. This is something that I understood for the onset of me using LinkedIn. If I wanted more speaking engagements, client acquisitions and podcast interviews, I had to have those keywords fluttered throughout my profile.
The second thing that you should do is defining your client or business avatar. In other words, the person that you are most likely to want to engage with, the person that you are most likely to network with or the person that is most likely to purchase your services. This became crystal clear to me when I started to close more business on the platform. When you are super specific with the network that you were building, it raises your chances and ability to close more sales to grow your business using LinkedIn.
The third thing that you should focus on is the proper way to message a contact. For those that are reading this, I am sure you can relate to me when I say that I have been victimized by a lot of people sending me unwarranted messages on LinkedIn that are 18 paragraph long drunk-a-logs trying to sell me. That is not going to get me on a phone call or a zoom meeting with you. What I found is that there is a strategic and best way to message someone on LinkedIn. This took me years of crafting and perfecting messages that are getting back the responses I required in order to build my business. When sending a message make sure that you craft your message by stating the person’s name first. The next thing that you want to do is bridge the gap between the other person and yourself, stating the connecting point of why you should connect without trying to sell them. The final thing that you should do is to end your message with a call to action. Always remember, questions lead to answers and statements lead to nowhere.
The fourth thing that you should focus on within LinkedIn is using the automated notification messages that you were provided each and every day to reengage with all the connections that you have not spoken to in a while within your network. The great thing about LinkedIn is just that. The platform truly wants you to continue building meaningful and genuine business relationships with people on the platform. Use these automated messages that are given to you every single day in the notification section of the platform to your advantage. You don’t have to get fancy. What I found was, the more of these messages that I sent out every day, the more reengaged conversations I would create. This truly creates more leads than you have time. Which my friends, is always a good problem to have.
The final thing that you must do to grow your business using LinkedIn, is providing relevant, educational and informative content. The best content practice that you should initiate in your business, is providing one piece of content a day. It does not matter if it’s a post, article or a video. Just make sure that you do not sell or pitch in any of the content that you put out on the platform. Your network is looking to engage with you and learn from you at the very same time. This is something that I learned very early on when using LinkedIn. The more that I give to my audience, the more they give back to me. Ask questions in your content. See what their take-a-ways were. Find out their pain points and the problems they are having so you can be the authoritative leader to provide a solution.
Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The big movement that I am seeking to inspire others to latch onto, is the movement of understanding that we are all perfectly imperfect just the way that we are. Our flaws and our imperfections are what make us so special and so unique. It is my dream and mission to see people acknowledging and harnessing the power of who they are. Watching them step into that power each and every day being their true, genuine and authentic selves unapologetically. When we all realize that this is a superpower that we all possess, I truly believe the world will be a better place, because everyone is showing up the way they should, not the way they feel they have to.
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
There are so many people that I would love to have a private breakfast with, but who I would love to sit down with right now is Gary Vaynerchuk. What I admire so much about Gary is his willingness to fail in order to succeed. His willingness to try new things to see how far he can stretch himself and his businesses. Him and I have a very similar work ethic where we could do business all day, every day. But everybody needs to shut it down at some point so they can recharge their battery, in order to show up the proper way each day for those that look up to them. But the thing that I admire most about Gary is his unique way of being able to create genuine and authentic human connection no matter if it’s 1 to 1, or one to many.
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
Podcaster Scott Aaron: How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.