Transcript: AEC Firms: Add These LinkedIn Strategies to Your Marketing Plan

Lindsay: Does your AEC firm have a LinkedIn page? you most likely have a personal profile, your subject matter experts, your technical staff, your principals, probably have personal profiles. But are you really maximizing LinkedIn to showcase your subject matter expertise to position your firm as an expert in the areas that you work in? Or even attract potential clients? Do you even think that’s possible on LinkedIn?

Well, I think it is. I know it is. And today I have a special guest, Mindi Rosser. She works with B2B firms to help them build their personal brands of their subject matter experts and their company brands to showcase their expertise and to attract potential clients. And to start meaningful conversations on LinkedIn to help fill their pipelines of potential new work. And I love that she doesn’t necessarily work specifically with AEC, but she does work in the B2B space. And so, she brings a really good outside perspective that I think will help us. I know she helped me.

She’s going to show us some new features of LinkedIn that I know no AEC firms are using. So, if you listen, you can get ahead of your competition. If you start implementing some of those new features, she’s going to tell us some strategies to build our personal brand and help our firm’s brand. And then she’s going to tell us how to use LinkedIn to attract potential clients.

So, let’s get started. Without further ado here’s my conversation with Mindi Rosser.

Lindsay: Well, okay. We have Mindi Rosser here from Mindi Rosser marketing and she is going to talk all things LinkedIn with us today. So hi, Mindi, how are you?

Mindi: So excited to be here, Lindsey.

Lindsay: And Mindi is joining us all the way from Hawaii. So, I should say like Aloha, Mindi. Aloha. Well, let’s start before we get into the meat of today’s topic, you are probably new to most of my listeners. So, can you spend a few minutes telling us a little bit about yourself and your career path, and how you help firms today?

Mindi: So, I work with experts who are really interested in dialing in their LinkedIn profiles, building their personal brands, and also being seen as that subject matter expert, especially if they’re working within a company. This mix of business leaders, business owners, in-house marketers, and people who are just very passionate, I think about their, brand, making sure it looks good, and making sure their LinkedIn profile is up to date. Also, a number of them really enjoy doing the marketing and social selling stuff on LinkedIn.

So, helping them kind of figure out that blend cause everybody’s different with how much marketing they need, how much sales they need. And what does that actually look like on LinkedIn without feeling salesy or spammy or too pitchy and too much of a hard sell? Because as we know, LinkedIn is very, very much about building those professional relationships.

So, I kind of help people build professional relationships on LinkedIn, and kind of how I got to this path, I would say that it started about 10 years ago, thereabouts. And I was working actually in-house as a content marketer for a startup in San Francisco and I was really trying to figure out this LinkedIn thing for my company and we were in the B2B space.

And so, I didn’t have much knowledge about B2B. I had come from more of a, B to C background in a social media agency before that. So, it was really trying to figure that out. And as part of that, I also started working on helping my colleagues with their LinkedIn profiles because we all needed to look good as subject matter experts.

And so, I’m like, huh, this LinkedIn thing, it’s really fun and really powerful, especially when you enlist everybody within your company to kind of be on the same page and also to rally behind it. So, it was almost like this mission I had as an in-house content marketer there to figure out, okay, how do we make this LinkedIn thing work for the business?

So that actually led to me wanting to go more into LinkedIn and not do as much content marketing. And I wanted to help more firms. Get discovered that same magic sauce that we discovered there. And so, I started consulting with a number of different firms and working with a number of different clients on how they can use LinkedIn to fill their sales, pipeline, and also to build brand awareness and increase their market share using LinkedIn.

So, this was this kind of like led me to where I am today and working with a number of people on those same things. And it’s, it’s really exciting because I get to work with like a mix of different personality types at different companies doing training, um, helping people with LinkedIn strategies, and yeah, I couldn’t be happier.

Lindsay: Yeah, I can hear it in your voice. I can hear that you love LinkedIn. and I have been on LinkedIn for a very long time, and I still find that compared to other social media networks. So, I’m on almost all of them. And I run social media for my day job. And for marketers take flight obviously, and it’s still, for the most part, gets the most reach organically on LinkedIn for us, for, for my businesses. and so, I’m very excited to have you on today to share your knowledge and update the listeners about how they can use LinkedIn at their firms and to help their firms. First, let’s start with, what are some of the new features of LinkedIn? Cause they’ve been rolling out a lot of stuff. What can you tell us about some of your favorite new features of LinkedIn,

Mindi: Yeah. So, they have been in I as, as a LinkedIn fan. Obviously, they just kind of watched it over time, especially over the last 10 years when I paid a lot more attention to LinkedIn, I felt like LinkedIn was always kind of a laggard when it came to innovating on social media. And so, you’d see other channels do neat things and you’re like, ah, I wish LinkedIn would do that. But LinkedIn, I feel like is trying to play catch up and I don’t think they’re ever going to be. The leaders of the pack when it comes to that. But I feel like they have rolled out a number of features that are really beneficial. To users and especially within companies and outside of the company. So, for people who do want to become thought leaders, there are a lot of really cool tools. People who want to be seen as subject matter experts within their organizations or help their subject matter experts really utilize and kind of work together with the page. There are a lot of really neat ways to do that.

So, some of the new features I’m especially excited about; are LinkedIn newsletters. So, I am like very excited about LinkedIn newsletters. So, LinkedIn newsletters can be actually done by an individual. So that’s where they first started with the individuals rolling them out to profiles. So, you do have to turn on creator mode. So, if you look at your profile, you will see it. It’s pretty much near the top. And it says, turns on creator mode. So, if you turn that on, you will get access to LinkedIn newsletters.

Uh, LinkedIn newsletters are very, very powerful, especially because a lot of people will turn them on publishing once and then never do it again. So, the people who are going to see the most benefits. I know consistency is really tough. Uh, so the people who see the most benefit are those who pick a schedule that they can work well with. And that is published frequently. So, it doesn’t have to be every week. I tend to publish every week, but some people like to publish monthly or biweekly or however, and the beautiful thing about a newsletter is you do not have to create fresh content for the newsletter. This can actually be repurposed from a blog. It can be repurposed from content or articles elsewhere. You can link to things. You can put a video here. You can pretty much use your newsletter for whatever type of media you want to promote as an individual. And this is a way, especially if you have a decent size network to build and get visibility because getting visibility on LinkedIn is key. Especially when there’s so much, as we know, there’s a lot of noise on LinkedIn and people are trying to play the algorithm and hack it and try to, you know, post polls, which were really trendy for a while, not so trendy now. And really try to get people’s attention. So, if you’re trying to get people’s attention and you have long-form content, a LinkedIn newsletter is going to be very beneficial.

Now LinkedIn newsletters have also just recently, like within the past, as we’re recording this the past week or so, they have rolled out to pages. So, if you have a LinkedIn page, a LinkedIn company page, go and look and see if you have it. All of the ones that I have seen have it available. And you can actually do the same type of newsletter from your page. So, some people will have like a subject matter expert that maybe they have their own personal individual newsletter, and then they will have the company LinkedIn newsletter as well. So, this is a way to really stay in touch with your followers. So, if you have a decent following with your LinkedIn page, you are going to be able to notify them. Instead of your content just kind of getting lost in the shuffle because pages have a lot more trouble getting visibility for the most part. If their followers are not that active. So, the LinkedIn, newsletter’s a way to kind of circumvent that and get around that and get back on the radar for those who follow your page. So, the newsletters I’m definitely super, super excited about.

Lindsay: My mind is going with all the ways we can use that. I did not know. I had heard about them for profiles like people, but that’s news to me that it’s out for pages now. So that’s, that’s great news. Any other new features of LinkedIn that you’re excited about?

Mindi: I love LinkedIn live, so I am a video person. I love connecting with people on video. I feel like there is a lot of potential. I feel like LinkedIn live is not as advanced as Facebook live. It’s not quite like Instagram Live. It is its own kind of breed but if you’ve done any type of YouTube streaming it’s that’s, I would probably equate it to more of like a YouTube live stream.

So, the beautiful thing about LinkedIn live is that you can actually stream live on LinkedIn at the same time as you are streaming live on Facebook, streaming live on YouTube. you can’t stream live on Instagram at the same time that’s a different way, to do that, but it’s great because you are already streaming live anywhere. You can actually turn on creator mode. So again, you will have to turn on creator mode from your personal profile. If you’re doing it as an individual, you can actually do it from your page as well. So, some companies like very similar to the newsletter, they will have a LinkedIn live stream from their page, and also any subject matter experts who want to have their own show or they want to interview experts, they will do it from their personal profile. I have seen more results just from my own personal experience in working with clients, people doing it from their personal profiles. Just because most people tend to have a larger network of connections than followers of a page. But if that’s not the case for you, if you, if your page has a lot of followers, then it might be something worth exploring because you can actually bring a number of subject matter experts within your company to be a part of that show.

And that’s going to build their personal brands as well as build that visibility. So, there are a lot of really neat ways to play with LinkedIn live and how it can be used. There are also some glitches, like comments on LinkedIn lives are a little bit tricky sometimes they work on the desktop. And sometimes they don’t exactly work on the desktop.

So, we’re crossing our fingers that they fixed that glitch. Uh, but for the most part, people really, really enjoy them. And if you are trying to put a face to the company and you want to showcase your people, this is a way to do that. And it doesn’t have to be something you do every week. You could do it every month, or some people tend to do it periodically when they have an event coming up. It’s not something that you have to feel like incredibly committed to with the newsletters. It’s a little different, you really do need to be committed to your schedule. With the lives, you can, you can be a little bit laxer. I tend to do mine on a schedule though. I like mine. It’s like every Monday at the same time, I’m showing up in the same place talking about similar topics. And that does build a following. It does take time to build up a following, but you will start noticing people are, start expecting you to show up and like, oh, oh Yeah. I watched your show. It’s a beautiful way to connect with people, especially cause they get to see you in action, and they get to see your face and your features and, hear you talk. And there’s something that builds trust, especially from a B2B sense, and builds trust with your audience because it’s all about professional relationships and sharing your expertise. So, LinkedIn lives super excited about it.

Lindsay: And I, you know, coming from the AEC world, I am not at least. The firms that I follow on LinkedIn or the people I’m connected with on LinkedIn are in-house marketers. For all of you guys that are listening. I think there’s a really big opportunity here with LinkedIn lives. There are not a lot of firms doing it and you get notified. I think when one of your followers goes live, right? You get a notification on LinkedIn. Is that, is that correct? Or am I remembering that wrong?

Mindi: I That is correct in that would be whether it’s from the page or from their personal profile. And then a really neat thing that a lot of people don’t know is if you are live and somebody comes to your profile while you are live. That header image actually turns into your live stream. So, people that are coming through probably like, oh my gosh, she or he is live right now, on LinkedIn. So, it’s, it’s pretty neat to see what they’re doing with

Lindsay: Yeah. So, I think that there’s a really big opportunity. For, like you said, maybe to have, you know, for the marketing to take the lead and be the host of the show, and then bring on the firm’s different subject matter experts, whether you do it, you know, once a week might be a little intense, but maybe once a month to start with, and then, you know, interview your different subject matter experts, bring them on to talk about a particular project they’re working on, some challenges, showcasing things, you know, I could even see it for construction firms. Now, I don’t know the Wi-Fi might be spotty, but even do it from the field when you’re inside a project or do some project tours, which are live, you know, again, good Wi-Fi but I can see this as a really good opportunity that not a lot of firms are taking advantage of right now. And it’s pretty much free other than your time to do this. And, and not a lot of, like I said, not a lot of firms are taking advantage. So, you, my friend listening right now, who’s a marketer to brainstorm some ideas and maybe add this to your marketing plan for next quarter or next year. probably next quarter to be the first to do this and set the bar. So, I liked that, that LinkedIn live, feature. Any other features that we want to hit on today before we move on.

Mindi: Yeah, one other thing to add to LinkedIn lives is that just keep in mind that you do not have to make it fancy. It does not have to be like a TV set. I feel like you don’t have to have a fancy background or crazy editing. The lives that actually work the best are ones that feel like you are either, you know, you’re talking to somebody in their office, or you are out in the field and it feels very little, a little bit rawer. It doesn’t have to be like polished marketing, you know, trailer video or something like that. So, keep that in mind, the ones that actually perform better are the ones that feel like the person is really there with you. And it does feel live. It’s not overly edited, so you don’t have to spend a bunch on it, making it look super fancy or have a, you know, awesome editing job. So.

Lindsay: Production. Yeah. Now a question, a question about, is it, I haven’t done too many LinkedIn lives and it’s been a little while since I’ve done them. Is it like Facebook live where the video is saved and it’s on your profile page or your page’s feed or your personal profile feed? Does it stay there after the live is over?

Mindi: It’s a really good question. It does. So, the beautiful thing about the lives is like they don’t disappear for a while. The newsletters were kind of disappearing and hard to find. They have fixed that now, but the lives are on your page. So that shared as a LinkedIn post from if you’re on a personal profile it’s as a LinkedIn post. What I tend to recommend is if you are sharing it from a LinkedIn profile that you actually feature one of your most recent ones on your LinkedIn profile at the top, just so people can see you and can see it. So that’s the way to make sure that you still have that visibility, uh, when people come to your profile because some people aren’t going to scroll back through all of your posts and activity, but if it’s featured right there, people will immediately, even if they don’t watch it, it’s all of a sudden you’re building that trust and building that brand by having that at the top and then four pages, it’s going to show up under the videos. And so, when people land on your LinkedIn page, they’re going to see it. And it’s pretty prominent. It’s usually LinkedIn kind of feature that if you have done some live video, it will be one of the first things that people see when they land on your LinkedIn page.

Lindsay: Yeah, great that’s really good. Cause like video, I think is now like videos in. Like the more and more video. So, the more video that we can do and then the lives are, like you said, don’t have to be overly produced. Like I think a lot of firms they’ll do video case studies. They’ll do these video testimonials and they’re very polished and edited and produced. And so, they’re pretty time-intensive and money intensive. And so, lives are another good way to just add another type of video that isn’t as time or resource-intensive, as some of our traditional video marketing that we think of.

Mindi: Yup.

Lindsay: Great. So, you may have answered this. I think you answered this along the way. You know, how can in-house marketers? So, a lot of my audience are people who work inside firms and use these new features to build both their personal brands and help their firm’s brand.

Mindi: Good question. I think understanding how it all comes together on LinkedIn is key because you may be doing all of these different tactics, but if you don’t understand the big picture. Okay, how is this actually used? Zooming out? How is this actually helping us as individuals? How is it helping us as employees? And then how is it helping the firm and understanding what that actually looks like in the landscape of that on LinkedIn?

So, the key from a personal branding perspective is if you do have subject matter experts and you are trying to help them with their personal brand and build that expertise, That is obviously going to affect the notoriety of your firm that is going to showcase that we put intention behind helping them build their personal brands. when people and subject matter experts within the company, have that backing from the company that speaks very highly of how the company values its employees. And that is it’s like, oh, oh, they actually put time and intention behind this. And people will actually start seeing like the firms that stand out are those who do but I would say an amount of thought and intention behind how they help their employees build their personal brands. It doesn’t have to be extravagant. It’s not like you’re building this very comprehensive program that takes several hours a week to manage. It’s really just about being intentional with a few different things to help your employees build their personal brands. Such as what we were talking about with the lives, like bringing on your subject matter experts and interviewing them in a live setting. Maybe including and linking to them in a LinkedIn newsletter, maybe shouting them out in a post from the company page and tagging them appropriately. And the employee can actually highlight the, featured posts on their own profile. So, they don’t even have to share them from their profile to be able to feature them on their LinkedIn profile. So just a few different things that they can do. And just kind of making sure that you’re communicating with your employees. I think sharing with them and sharing with your subject matter experts like, okay, this is how we are approaching LinkedIn as a company. This is how we want to support you in building your personal brands. I think just a few simple things, a few simple changes to your LinkedIn strategy can make it so much more effective rather than marketing, operating in a vacuum. And just trying to do all of these things and like trying, it feels like you’re pulling teeth from subject matter experts because they are so busy with what they have to do. So, I think it’s really making sure they understand the value that it, you know, what it brings to them. To be featured. What it brings to them. How can this build their subject matter expertise? How can this help them build trust with their clients and their professional relationships and be seen as more of an expert? And I think just communicating that to them in a way that makes sense and also trying to limit, I think the amount of contribution like I think as marketing can help them with, you know, structuring the content, uh, making it super easy for them to share, like featuring them, but not making it feel like a heavy lift. That is key. I mean, just if you keep their lives easy and they’re like, oh yeah, of course, I’m going to feature this. I just need to click one button and feature this on my profile. And I spent 30 minutes in an interview with you. Okay. I can do this. Doable. So, I think putting that thought in at the beginning can really give you a better product in the end.

And then of course enlisting all the stakeholders that are involved in supporting you as you are developing that strategy, I think is going to be critical. So, there’s this beautiful dance, I think, between the subject matter experts and the company. And if you can discover what that is for your firm. You are going to notice a lot more results, but it is getting buy-in, you know, so it’s definitely getting the right people on board and explaining to them how this is going to benefit. Maybe showing them some metrics or maybe showing them some other companies that are doing it well, so they can understand and see the value for both the company and the brand.

Lindsay: I love it. I love it. And then, okay, so we talked about branding, right? Showcasing. Well, we talked about the new features and then we talked about maybe using some of those are different ways that we can build both our personal brand that will eventually also help our firm’s brand. So, branding is one thing, but let’s talk about maybe lead generation or how do we like attract the right people, like our potential clients to follow us and not just all of our friends and family.

Mindi: Right.

Lindsay: So how can, how can we use LinkedIn to attract those potential clients for our AEC firms?

Mindi: I think the key, it all begins with your LinkedIn profile. So, your personal profile that belongs to you, everything starts there. It’s great to have a good LinkedIn page and that is critical. If you don’t have a page set up and it’s not optimized, like make sure to go through and check that you have set up all the specialties, you have all the right keywords there. It always pays to review your LinkedIn page. At least every six months, every 12 months to ensure it’s all up to date and nothing needs to be updated. So, I think that is a prerequisite that okay, if your page is okay, then you would want to pay attention to your profile.

So, your profile it’s what unlocks the power of LinkedIn. And a lot of us just kind of put our job titles there. We put our company, there like, okay, we want to be associated with the firm. But we don’t really think about what actually goes into the headline. What is going to grab people’s attention? What do they want to see? What is going to make us stand out from other firms? It’s very competitive out there and on LinkedIn, a lot of people just don’t put on enough attention or don’t know where to put their attention when it comes to their profile. So, the key with like, just kind of a very simplified version of optimizing your LinkedIn profile. You want to make sure you have a good headshot first of all. It doesn’t need to be crazy professional. Like mine is literally taken in front of like a tree in Hawaii and I’m going to update mine soon, but you just want to make sure that you take a good headshot in that you update it every one to two years. If it’s, if it feels a little older than that, or you change your hairstyle, anything like that, you probably should update your profile because people want to make sure that when you are showing up in person or on a Zoom call, that you actually look like what your profile picture looks like. You know, it’s not like I had one for a while and it was, it was gorgeous. It was like I was at; at the time I was into real estate. So, I had like my, my jacket on and I’m like college shirt. I was like all done up, had professional makeup done, and then people would see me hop on a Zoom call and. Uh, Mindi, you have dreadlocks. This does not match at all now. And so, you just really want to pay attention to, um, updating your profile, even if it’s a great picture, just make sure it looks like what you look like in real life.

Lindsay: A current picture.

Mindi: Yes. current. Yes. then the next thing you’re gonna wanna pay attention to is your headline. This is key because, from a search perspective, these would be keywords and phrases that people might be searching for to find you.

Also, you want to keep in mind that this is like your hook. So, if you think of your tagline, this is not just your job title and your company. People can see what company you’re at, whether you put the company in the headline or it’s elsewhere on your profile. So, you don’t have to worry about putting your company inside of that headline. The key with the headline is you really want to get across number one, who you are, number two, who you help. Number three, how you help them, and number four, the results that you generate. So even whether you are a subject matter expert inside a company, or you’re trying to help others update their profiles, those are the four things that you really want to make sure that you are getting across in that headline area. And it’s really important to hook people. You don’t want it to sound like everybody else, but you also want to make sure it is not too clever where people read it and they go, yeah. that’s, that’s really great, but I have no idea what you do.

Lindsay: I’ve seen some of those and I’m like, what?

Mindi: Uh, so don’t get too clever, but don’t be too boring. You know, it’s kind of like something in the middle where people are like, okay, that’s clear. I understand what you do. Oh, okay. You help generate these results. And, okay. Those are some search phrases that I might use to find somebody like you. And it usually takes people a few iterations to get this just right. Just be patient with yourself to start with something that you look at in your head of mind, think, okay, how can I use all 220 characters to make this like, pop a little more like, okay, I could probably add this in, or this is like my secret sauce. I tell people to think about their secret sauce or superpower. What did they actually do? Like if you just put, I’m a marketer at this company, I’m like, okay, that’s really boring. Nobody’s going to want to connect.

Lindsay: And marketing is pretty broad now. Like there’s a lot, it could be a lot of different things that you do.

Mindi: Uh, so it’s really about thinking through the experience and thinking through the experience of the people that you want to attract to your profile. So, if we are thinking, in terms of conversations, getting leads, building professional relationships, what are they going to see in your headline that’s going to pull them in and say, huh? Yeah, I think I would like to connect with you. This looks different and you will, you will immediately set yourself apart if you pay attention to your headline, just because other people in the industry are not, and they just don’t know what to put here. So that’s something that you can play with, and it doesn’t take, it does take a little bit of time. I think, 10 to 15 minutes, just kind of sit through and brainstorm what could go there. And then revisit it every so often, like, okay, I’ll tweak this a little bit, but just see what happens to your profile views. So that’s where you’re going to notice the results is if you notice your profile views go up and you’re like, oh, that must have worked. If your profile views kind of stay the same, you may want to tweak your headline a little bit.

Lindsay: Great. Great. And so just to recap, you said, think about these questions, who you are, who you help, how you help them, and the benefits they get. Did I miss anything? Okay. I was taking some notes while you were saying that.

I just wanted to recap for our listeners. you know, it’s kind of like our value proposition statements that we try to do in our proposals, but instead of like the value prop for the project that you’re pursuing, it’s like for yourself, and it’s kinda like how you introduce yourself to at a networking event. And LinkedIn is just like a virtual networking event. So you weren’t, you wouldn’t get. I mean now maybe some of our engineers might go up and be like, I’m a wastewater engineer. You know, if they came up to me, I’d be like, well, what the heck do you do? Well, I make sure that you have clean water or that the water that you dispose of goes somewhere safe and doesn’t get into your drinking water.

So, you know, I don’t know how detailed you get, like for a headline. I mean, I guess you can’t get too detailed because there are only 220 characters. So, you have to be a little creative with some wordsmithing. And this is where the in-house marketer could come in and help the subject matter experts help wordsmith there. Their headlines.

Mindi: Yeah. I think you make a really good point too. It’s helping the subject matter experts to do this. The more that you can, like, I’ve worked with teams where it’s like, okay, we’re just going to work on everybody’s headline. And we may do some tweaking to the rest of their profile and certain sections, or at least give them a company description or something to put in their most recent experience at the company. So, they have some copy there, but I think if you can help them in, you know, individually work on their, their headlines and even writing it for them, providing them some versions, where should we tweak this? But if everybody’s following the same format and it looks very good across the board, because you are thinking about your clients, they’re going to look at multiple profiles, especially those of your subject matter experts. So, if they go across the board, you’re like, wow, everybody has a great headshot, and their headlines they all kind of speak to these different areas that these experts are, specializing in, within the firm. It’s going to build that trust and credibility for your company. And it doesn’t take that much time.

It really is just like an exercise in your kind of sitting down and thinking, okay, who needs to, who needs to be updated, looking at their profiles and figuring out how you can help them update.

Lindsay: Yeah. And we do this a lot for our websites, for the firm’s website. There’s usually an about us page or meet the team page. so, we’re already doing that in some way. It’s just then doing a similar exercise for LinkedIn, for their personal profiles on LinkedIn.

Mindi: Yeah. And I think it’s, it’s really interesting to see, and I, I feel like the subject matter experts also, it’s kind of a way of enlisting them into like your, your master plan. You’re making them look good. I get the weight off them. You’re like, let me do that. Let me help you. Or some people are a little more particular and they may want to write it with some guidance from you. So, you do have to take that into consideration, but a lot of them are just happy to hand it off and say, yes, please help me with my profile. You’re helping me look better. You’re helping me build my brand. You’re helping me build better relationships and attract the right people.

One other thing, to add to the headline, you want to think about the people they are each trying to address. every subject matter expert is different in the types of people that they’re pulling in and where they build those professional relationships. You want to speak to their audience, not necessarily the overall company audience when you’re thinking of your marketing persona. You want to get into the head of your subject matter experts and think about, okay, the people that they would be talking to individuals, this is what they need to hear. And it was a little bit more niching down and really thinking through each individual and the types of people that they are interfacing with.

Lindsay: Yeah. I love that point because we do that on the sales side. Like we match people, we call it zippering, but like a project manager tries to meet with a project manager on the client-side. And the principal tries to meet with the facilities director on the client-side. So, they have different people that they’re targeting one-on-one. In, you know, in real life. So, kind of the same thing when you’re writing your headline is you know, if you’re a principal at a firm or helping the principal write his or her headline, then you know who they’re attracting kind of that level on the client-side, that persona on the client-side or potential client-side.

Mindi: Correct. And you want to speak to them and make sure that that language, uh, you don’t want it. The language doesn’t feel the same across everybody. You don’t want people to come across and be like, oh yeah, marketing wrote this. You want it to feel like it is coming from them. Like, oh, they just let you lose with your headline. You want it to feel like it feels enough like them and something that they would say, maybe the words that they would use and at the level that they would be meeting with people.

Lindsay: Yeah, I love that. I love that last little tip. Okay. Anything else before we get to the rapid-fire questions today?

Mindi: Covered a lot.

Lindsay: I know. I know you would just like dropping knowledge bombs left and right here.

Mindi: I think just recapping like your LinkedIn strategy and just the approach for LinkedIn. I think just again, remember that you are zooming out and just looking at how all the pieces could fit together, especially the ones that we talked about today. And then keeping it simple because you can make LinkedIn extremely complex and very complicated, and it could take a lot of time or you can keep it very simple and say, okay, I’m going to focus on one initiative. Like I’m just going to focus on helping everyone get their LinkedIn headlines updated. Make sure everybody has a good headshot. And then maybe moving on saying, okay, now that I have a little bit more bandwidth, maybe we want to do a newsletter. Maybe just repurpose the content from our email newsletter on LinkedIn. And so, I think it’s one thing at a time and not overwhelming yourself with all of the ideas that we talked about today. Cause that could be a full-time job in itself.

Lindsay: Yes. Yes. On top of the full-time job that many marketers already have, which is not LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn is one of like the thousand things they have to do. So that is a good point too. Like, don’t go to overwhelmed, but yeah, I like, I like that. headshots and headlines are probably a good, a good place to start.

Okay. So, let’s close out today by asking you the rapid-fire questions. Are you ready? Okay. So, what is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new to their industry?

Mindi: I think the key thing, especially what, what I learned as they knew market or to the industry, because there was so much to learn, especially if you are changing industries or even just moving to a different firm and everything is different is to really keep it simple and think about what is actually going to move the needle. I found that I got very distracted at the beginning. I’m like, Ooh, but I want to try that tactic. And that tactic. It’s an old shiny syndrome. And so, you really want to be focused on, okay, what is our overall objective? And what’s the one thing that I could do and really put my energy into that is going to move the needle for the company. Versus just like using up marketing time and resources all over the place. It’s like being very strategic, looking at all of your options, and then saying, okay, we’re going to go hard and heavy on this initiative. And then you can always do other things later but picking one initiative per quarter tends to work very, very well.

And then measure and see how you’re doing and whether, you know, going more leaning into that initiative a little more in the next quarter is a good strategy or whether you need to pivot. But that’s, that’s one of the pieces of advice that I learned the hard way was like I was all over the place and just did not choose exactly where to focus my attention. And it kind of drove my boss crazy.

Lindsay: Yeah, I think I was guilty of that when I was early in my career as well. And I got to keep reminding myself that cause there are new things coming out all the time and new features and you’re like, Ooh, let’s try this. But I think just saying, okay, we can try that, but let’s finish this quarter. I like that one initiative per quarter and say, let’s get through this quarter and see how this is going. And then we can revisit that we’ll put it on our list. So, I really, I really liked it. Reminder. Okay. Question number two. What has been your favorite or most memorable win?

Mindi: I think one of my favorite wins and it tends to happen over and over again. It’s I guess it’s not just one experience, but it’s really as the most professional perspective on LinkedIn is helping my clients get those people in their pipeline. And when, they say Mindi, I just had the most amazing conversation with a perfect fit client that came because they saw my profile, or they saw something I posted on LinkedIn or where we connected. And they saw that I was posting there’s something there that I played a role in helping them get connected or sending a connection invitation to them, inviting them onto a podcast or a show and being able to be that person that’s kinda putting people together and matchmaking. I think is one of the most fulfilling things, especially from a marketing perspective, because a lot of times that’s what happens with sales, but as a marketer, if you can be the person that helps initiate those conversations and kind of jumpstart that it’s pretty powerful.

Lindsay: Yeah, I love that. Okay. Question number three. What are you excited about?

Mindi: Uh, this is not LinkedIn-related. I’m excited. I just got a brand-new surfboard

Lindsay: Nice.

Mindi: you can’t see it right now, but it is behind me, and it is a fish. So, it has like, if you’re familiar with surfboards, probably most of you are not. Uh, but basically it goes really fast, and it’s super fun. And skatey is how I would describe it. So, I love surfing and I can’t wait to take out this board and probably like an hour or two from when we’re recording this. So that should be super fun.

Lindsay: Oh, I love it. I love it. Um, that is I, you know, growing up in Florida, we don’t have like the best surf, not like Hawaii by any means, but my kids have learned to surf. I never did. And now I’m like a little afraid, but it’s on my bucket list one day too, um, to surf. It’ll probably be on the east coast of Florida. I don’t think I will ever get to the waves of Hawaii. Those seem a little bit more intimidating,

Mindi: They are, but they’re fun.

Lindsay: Yeah. They’re fun. It’s fun to watch. I will say it is fun to watch my kids out there. a little nerve-wracking, but it’s fun. Okay. Last question for today. Tell our listeners, you know, how they can get in touch with you, what services you provide, how you help firms, and any, and all contact information.

Mindi: So, you can find me obviously on LinkedIn though. It’s Mindi Rosser, and it’s Mindi with an eye and Ross, R O S S E R. So just look me up on LinkedIn. I love connecting. Like I spend obviously spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So, reach out, say hello, say, you know, I heard you on the podcast and I would love to chat. I just love connecting. And then I do help firms, especially those who are trying to work with their subject matter experts are trading to dial in and. Simplify their LinkedIn strategy. So, I helped them get their subject matter experts, LinkedIn profiles dialed in, and then just figured out what they need to do with their LinkedIn page and how it all ties together.

So, if that’s something that you’re looking for help with, or you need training on, um, I do that as well, and then I also help a number of. People are just individuals who want to work on their profiles and figure out how to use LinkedIn to fill their sales pipeline or build their personal brand. So, kind of a range of people that I work with, and it’s super rewarding. So just look me up on LinkedIn and we’re like, we can take it from there.

Lindsay: Okay, well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Mindi.

Mindi: Thank you, Lindsay. It was a pleasure.

Lindsay: Okay, friend. What did you think about that conversation? Did you know about those LinkedIn features, newsletters, LinkedIn lives, maybe you knew about them, but maybe you didn’t think about how you could apply them at your AEC firm? I feel like there’s a real opportunity there, especially with the lives.

That was my favorite part that got my wheels spinning in my head of some things that we can do. at my, my day job, Full Sail Partners, and for Marketers Take Flight. And so, I hope that you got some ideas too, from your firm. I also liked her idea of not trying to do it all at once, but to really keep it simple and focusing on one initiative per quarter, because you know, how much capacity do we really have right now to keep chasing new things.

So, keep that in mind. and if you liked this episode, go ahead and share it with another marketer who wants to get more familiar with LinkedIn. And that’s it for me today. So, until next time, bye for now.