Is LinkedIn actually a waste of time?

Tom Inniss • 00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Marketers of the Universe. My name is Tom Inniss, and what you are missing in the background is Debbie dancing on camera, because today we have brought back Debbie Gacutan- Jardin De Oliveira, the coworker with the longest name at Brew Digital, but also our senior social media manager to try to convince me that LinkedIn is not a complete waste of time. So let's dive straight into it. Debbie, welcome back to the podcast.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 00:44

Thank you, Tom. I think for the audience and for our listeners, Tom doesn't really need to tell you that I was dancing. Had I known, I wouldn't have, you know, done my little dancing over here, but super happy to be back, everyone. And yes, I am ready for this debate, Tom. I came prepared.

Tom Inniss • 01:03

I'm pleased to hear it because I am increasingly convinced that LinkedIn is just a bit of an echo chamber of the would-be thought leaders and the narcissists and those that want to like try to convince you that their mundane everyday life has some sort of significant meaning to marketing. So I'm going to see whether or not we can wrap this podcast up really quickly. But in your opinion, Debbie, is LinkedIn a waste of time?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 01:33

OK, so first of all, whoever is in the network of Tom, stop hurting him. He's such a nice guy. And it is not a waste of time. But if you are a page or an individual that is treating LinkedIn with like how it was back in 10 years ago or just another ad channel, you are definitely wasting your time.

Tom Inniss • 01:56

Okay, so I guess we will then have to dig into how you view LinkedIn as a useful product then. So I did some research in advance of this podcast to see whether or not the numbers themselves could convince me, but I think it would be a combination of numbers and your personality that potentially bring me around. But Jacob Nielsen said that 90% of the platform users lurkers. So they're just hanging around, not engaging, they're just reading, not posting, they're doing absolutely nothing. And then only 9% are intermittently interacting with the platform and the posts. And then you've got those 1% of heavy contributors. Now, do you think that that is a healthy ecosystem where such a vast majority of people aren't posting?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 02:44

I think that's a very good question and I think it's very important for us to also be aware of that, Mika. One thing that I do want to clarify is that this 99/1 rule, it's actually quite a common thing among all of the social channels nowadays, but also this has been the date even before outside of social channels. If you think about where you are in a classroom setting or perhaps in your work area or in your team, you will always find people that are just passively listening in the team conversation. And you have like that one or two people that always talk every time. So I think in a natural setting, this is common. Is it a horrible thing? I think you have to think about who is the audience that you're talking to. Now, LinkedIn is basically made up of like four out of five decision makers and that's based on like the recent survey of LinkedIn marketing solutions. And what that basically means that yes, 90% of them might be lurking, but majority of them are actually the decision makers that you want to convince. So it might not necessarily be a bad thing. It will be a bad thing though, if they don't consume your content.

Tom Inniss • 04:01

So you think it's fine if they're lurking, but they have to see the things that you are posting. But that means you have to be the 1% of people who are posting, right?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 04:11

So if you look, think about like the 1% nowadays, it is quite true that most of the what most B2B organizations or all the pages owners are the one producing those thought leadership content. I think that's where the divide of the distribution and untapped opportunities out there. I think we will get into this much later once we start talking about LinkedIn turning into a social selling tool, but the 1% of the noise in LinkedIn might not necessarily be the ones that will drive that decision. I think that the 1% needs to also qualify the quality of it. Yes, you will see a lot of people who are just posting. I don't know if you've seen this, but there's a funny trend coming out of how LinkedIn Influencer Starker Days, like, I thought about this, and this is my take in marketing today, you know, like that type of post, that's not what we're talking about here, what we're talking about as well, it's just more of like, the type of content that will be relevant and would really position you as the right partner for, you know, your target audience. So we do not, do not, that's like a long way of saying, do not aim to be the one person, just aim to be the right person.

Tom Inniss • 05:30

Right, right. Okay, but I feel like when I'm on LinkedIn, all I am seeing is either people who've got a new job and then you're celebrating them and you give them a little thumbs up, or it is those people you talk about, the LinkedIn unhinged, who are like, I woke up and pulled my cereal and it went on the floor and what I saw as the ants gathered around the cereal was very reflective of how I feel around email marketing, you know, that sort of like that absolute nonsense that just makes you roll your eyes. So how do you and I'm going to skip straight ahead. So how do you create content on LinkedIn that pivots you away from those absolute narcissists?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 06:18

Oh, that's a good... Okay, I hate that you call them narcissists. You know, that content might actually like really touching them deep, deep, deep inside.

Tom Inniss • 06:28

Do you believe that it does though? As a senior social media marketer, do you believe that they mean what they say?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 06:34

Some people out there really commit to it, you know, and if that's something that they're actually passionate about, really like all that metaphorical serials versus B2B marketing, here's how I see both in a similar way, why not? And it's actually achieving something that is funny right now, which is you are actually spending time dwelling in that content and you're helping that content get disseminated even further. Now, is it making you hate them more or love them more? I think it depends per person. Maybe that type of content would resonate to a certain type of person, but it definitely didn't resonate with you. But it's still achieving the thing that, you know, that influencer wanted to do, which is the reach that they committed. So I can see why people do it. Yes.

Tom Inniss • 07:22

But all attention is good attention. It's what you're saying now.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 07:26

No negative press is negative. No such thing as bad press. Um, yeah, I mean, okay. So how do we stay away from that? I think like, you know, call out to everyone in that, especially my clients. this is not the type of content that we want to achieve. Primarily because it's like, you need to also think about it's not about just reach, but also LinkedIn is like a storefront for companies. It might not be the one that people engage with, but people it is basically like the red flag or green flag, like is it something that I want to partner with you? Or is it, you this field, do I trust you? And so because of that, that's like a good filtering seed in terms of like what type of content we want to move forward with.

Tom Inniss • 08:23

Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about content because all social media platforms are now penalizing you for linking to external websites. So you have to stay very much on platform. But how do you diversify your content or make it engaging and exciting without just defaulting to those PDF carousels?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 08:45

You know, this is, uh, this is basically my challenge right now. What keeps me awake every night? No, not necessarily, but it is a big challenge for social media managers right now, because if we are to look at the algorithm or what performs, it's basically content that really requires. Our, you know, audience to dwell in the platform and engage with them. Now, what are the types of content, what is the type of content that does this best? It is carousel. And because of that, you might find that when you go to LinkedIn, everyone is doing carousel. That not necessarily mean like it's a bad thing, but I think diversity in your content is important, especially if you think about what is the message that I want to deliver, what is it that I want to resonate with my audience? And I think this also leads to another question of like, do I just want them to be clicking or do I also want them to, you know, comment? Do I want them to engage with us? Or if I don't want them to do anything, what is like the metric that is important for me? I think that if you have this on top of your head, you will be able to advise your client better or your team better in terms of like the content formats that you guys will use. So let's go back to your first question of like, you know, the penalizing is a thing, LinkedIn doesn't want you to add the link on the caption itself. Most of the captions that I now use are in the first comments. This is actually challenging, especially if we want to say that, "Hey, we're on Forbes," or "Our research has been in Financial Times," and so on. Because usually in the past, I would just like belate to the teacher on Financial Times, but now how do I do that? This pushes us to actually test more about what are the best platforms, or I mean, formats rather, that would really resonate to our audience, whether it is to drive comments, which is important for us, and important, I would say, important for LinkedIn users, but also to get those clicks that we really do want at the end of the day. So it's thinking about other formats and then testing and learning from it.

Tom Inniss • 11:04

How does the algorithm prioritize those forms of engagement because obviously we want clicks but they're hard to get. Likes are very superficial. Are comments sort of the main way now to measure your engagement?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 11:18

Yes. So comments are basically what we call an active engagement. So nowadays it's, there are classifications of engagements. I would say that clicks or swipes on carousel, it's actually quite an active engagement indicator. as well as comments. And that's the reason why comments is actually something that LinkedIn is pushing for, which means for me as your social media manager, when I get a post out, I immediately like try to start the conversation within the threads, but not just any conversations. It needs to be very meaningful. It needs to be really related. It needs to be much deeper. So the LinkedIn 360 Guru, that's the new algorithm, what it's called, It's actually very smart. It classifies if a conversation is just superficial, such as great posts, or it's something that actually like indicates that, oh, you're actually an expert on this field. So those deep comments and those active dwell times is what you want. Which interestingly, in my experience is something that is quite challenging now as well when you do videos, because watching a video is actually, is much of a passive engagement rather than an active engagement, which means video do not get as much reach as carousels.

Tom Inniss • 12:42

Wait, so we've already moved on from producing video content?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 12:45

Yes, it's a whole new ballgame.

Tom Inniss • 12:48

That's crazy. So I've only been in the industry for three years and everybody was like, we need to be doing videos right now. Videos are the thing. And you're saying we've already moved on from that and now it's carousels.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 12:58

No, it's more of like we have moved on to the engagement that we want to see. You can do both a carousel, you can do both a video, you can also actually do like just text or like a static photo. Well, what we want to see is that type of active engagement on your post and that people actually staying in that post and commenting and sharing and driving that meaningful conversation. So it's not so much a game of just about formats, but actually what each post makes your audience do.

Tom Inniss • 13:32

Okay, so you can still like your thought lead your classic thought leadership blog post is still going to potentially drive engagement providing it is an interesting piece of content.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 13:44

Yeah, but I don't. So a blog for me when I receive a blog, it's not just like here's a link, please click to it, this is a blog, but it needed to be transformed into a digestible format. Usually it's a carousel or it's basically a video of the thought leader within the blogs, you know, specifically diving deeper into, you know, something that they've mentioned within the blog.

Tom Inniss • 14:08

I see. Okay. So you have to be very platform specific and tailor the content that you might otherwise create. Okay. So we're back to the sort of classic, is it hub and spoke format of content? where you have like a central piece and then you break it up and you reformat.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 14:23

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that's essentially the best practice for all social media channels right now, just because, you know, every, everyone I feel is quite mature and how they engage with social channels, they take on a different persona and a difference, um, you know, yeah, a different persona as they engage with different social channels. Like I am a different than me when I'm on LinkedIn versus when I'm on TikTok or an Instagram. Therefore, as a marketer, you have to follow that mindset. You cannot just, here's like a cake, go and eat it in every channel. You kind of have to like, make it like a different cake for every channel, which is like a hard thing for us marketers, but it also makes the job more fun. I think.

Tom Inniss • 15:13

want you to dig deeper into that analogy.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 15:15

So I get it. I really should kill that analogy because I'm like, wait, how do I do a cake?

Tom Inniss • 15:22

See you losing the thread there, even if you were saying it and I was like, you should get a full this back. And then see, you've got a bakery that your, your LinkedIn might need to be a costum and your TikTok is an eclair, Ann?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 15:40

No, it's much harder than that. It's like it's the same base, but you have to deliver it in different ways. Ah, okay. Here's an analogy. Because I'm okay, you can totally cut this, Tom, but because I'm a mom of two, I would have the same dinner of bolognese pasta, but I would have to deliver it differently for my one year old versus my four year old because both of them consume it differently. Draw pen.

Tom Inniss • 16:08

Still done. Yep. Wrap this podcast up. You've nailed it.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 16:12

Exactly.

Tom Inniss • 16:13

Okay. So it's audience targeting.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 16:16

Yes, exactly.

Tom Inniss • 16:17

At this very basic level. If it's not Bolognese, it's something else. I love it. Let's stick on those different platforms then. Who is your target audience for LinkedIn? Who Because everybody seems to be on LinkedIn, but as we said, the 99/1 rule, the majority of people are lurking or not engaging. Who are you creating the content for on LinkedIn?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 16:44

Such a blanket statement, but it would be ultimately your decision makers. But you know, if you think about B2B decision making process in the customer experience, it's a group of people. not just one person, is it? You have to think about the tool user itself, the team leader, you think about like their HR slash like, you know, the privacy or security team, whatever. And then you want to think about as well, like, you know, C levels and so on, or like leadership tools. So it's a multitude of people that you're trying to cater to.

Tom Inniss • 17:21

If you're targeting that specific decision making group or the buying committee, do Do you have to tailor your content individually to each of those roles? So your security people, your finance people, your CEOs, does your content have to meet the needs of each of those people or can it just be broadly, here is how we solve the problem of your company?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 17:43

That's a very good question. I feel like I've said that's a very good question so many times.

Tom Inniss • 17:49

I take this positive feedback on board.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 17:53

It's really something that you think about quite well. I would say that it depends on a lot of things. One, if you have the resource to do that, why not? I don't necessarily think that you have to tailor for everybody in the buying committee, but definitely two or three people that you'd want to influence first. I don't think that you need to do one content per se and assume that one content will be taken in by the buying committee. I think it's always smart to try and highlight different points that might resonate for each person in the buying committee.

Tom Inniss • 18:31

OK. And how do you actually approach those? Because in my research, I found that personal employee profiles were getting 561% greater reach according to an algorithm insight report by White Hat SEO. So do you as a company bother spending time investing in your company profile or do you have to build a network of ambassadors who do that for you?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 19:03

So I think the answer to that is that you have to do both. I think that we're at a day and age where it's no longer, oh you know, eventually they will do this. No, it needs to be part of their strategy. It comes in different names, employee advocacy, champions, social selling, it's the same thing. It's basically making sure that your knowledgeable employees are on the LinkedIn and that they are representing you, unfortunately though, not everybody does this, so as I prepare for the podcast, like an interesting number that I see that is that only 10% of organizations out there have at least like 50% of their knowledgeable employees actively on LinkedIn, or at least using LinkedIn or doing some social selling. That number even increases to 37% if it's only 5% of their employees. That's actually a very big number if you think about how much B2B pages are very active on LinkedIn. That's where I earlier mentioned that there's like an opportunity there because employee pages do have higher reach and higher engagement but they are underutilized because their organizations are not utilizing them or are preferring to post on their own. So it needs to be learned, it needs to be safe and it needs to be done.

Tom Inniss • 20:35

And how do you actually do that? How do you harness the power of your What are we calling them? Ambassadors?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 20:44

I don't know, you can call them anything.

Tom Inniss • 20:47

Your knowledgeable employees.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 20:48

Secret weapon.

Tom Inniss • 20:49

Yeah, how do you deploy your secret weapon? Like how does... let's take Brew Digital and let's use Rich. Rich Harper, head of digital marketing for those of you who don't know. How would we as Brew Digital make use of Rich posting on LinkedIn?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 21:05

I think that first, Rich needs to buy into the idea and I think that Rich is a smart guy and I'm saying this because he's also my manager, but he knows that he has to do this and he knows the numbers and stats out there. It's very hard to deploy an employee advocacy program or a social selling program within the business if people do not buy into this because you're asking people for their time and efforts outside of their daily work schedules as well. So I think that's step number one. Step number two, I think there needs to be a very clear guardrails and a clear idea of what this program entails, what it is that I am responsible for versus what Rich is responsible for, and also just making sure that they feel very supported. Now, is there a need for a tool for this? I personally, my style is to first like round up, you know, I prefer to like do things small first and build a business case before getting a tool out there. But tools are helpful, especially if you want to scale your employee advocacy program.

Tom Inniss • 22:24

But say Rich is now posting on LinkedIn, he's doing his thought leadership pieces, he's more engaged than the ants he saw in the park or whatever. He's actually delivering some key insights to B2B digital marketing. How do we as Brew Digital take what he is posting on LinkedIn and then turn it into beneficial lead generation or visibility for the company? Are we just reposting what he's putting as brew or?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 22:54

So reposting is actually not a thing anymore or it's not a good, it's not given a lot of plus points on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has really changed a lot. So what I would say is if you have an employee that is quite active on LinkedIn, one of the things that you also want to do is to create page content yourself that also showcases this employee. It basically builds that alignment between your employee and you as a brand. And it also helps drive that traffic that you want to the page of your employee. If you think about it, this is essentially helping them to help you. The next thing that you want to do is to also make sure that your employee has the right UTM codes in order for you to make sure that you qualify and also see how much of an impact this employee of yours posting or the social selling is helping your company. You need to want to also make sure that they're trained up to accommodate customer requests or customer engagements and interactions. Sometimes what happens is that they post, but then they forget about it. And then that type of like opportunity gets missed. So that's something that you don't want to do. And something interesting that we try out lately with one of our clients is that that post that your employee did for you, you can actually boost them yourself. So instead of you creating the ad or boosting your own page content, you can actually boost an employee's page contents. And what in our experience, what we've seen, and it would be great to have paid team to like share this a bit more is that the conversion of our employees content was much higher than a normal ad for the page.

Tom Inniss • 24:49

And what was a conversion in this instance? Is it a click to the website?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 24:54

Yes, clicks to the website or I don't know it's Mikaela's thing so I'm not so sure but they did report that they have a higher conversion versus a normal paid activity.

Tom Inniss • 25:05

Interesting interesting. So treat me like a simpleton. We are deploying Rich out there to start his thought leadership journey. I know this is somewhat off the hoof, but he's agreed he's on board. What is he posting about? What are we doing to boost his posts? And then how do you actually envisage that making a difference to our pipeline?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 25:30

Okay, so I think the first thing that you need to do once you have somebody who is actually ready or would love to try social selling themselves, it's first you need to know the persona of that person because whatever they're providing, it's not a copy paste of the content of your page. It needs to fit their persona, it needs to fit their tone of voice, what they're actually interested in and potentially who might be interested in engaging with them. So when I think of Rich, he's the head of the digital team. I'm thinking about something that would go along the lines of like, you know, team dynamics and feature of work. And we're thinking about as well, like, you know, really tapping into experience, guiding clients and that type of thing. And I think, you know, then you would have to work, then I would have to work with Vishen building like a content pillar for him to do. Let's assume that he has already posted his contents. I think the next step is really how to organically make sure that his post is gaining reach. Before I jump into Boost, the first thing I want to do first is to organically like make that content work, whether that is like going into trends and conversations right now, whether that is like making sure that a lot of like comments get built on his post. Rich shall also should be jumping into other posts and also engaging with them. The combination of these three things will help the algorithm be warm and also would help to really like increase the reach of his posts. Now, if you really now are ready to boost them, I would suggest that you don't boost all of the posts. I don't think that that's what boosting is for. You only boost things that are key. So for instance, Voodoo Digital has an event coming up soon and Rich is one of the speakers of the event. Him posting about his presence and also what the audience or the attendees of the event would be, what they can look forward to from the event. That is the type of post that I would boost. And that's something that you can work with the paid team if you want to boost like certain locations or preferences or jobs and titles and so on. Or this is something that we can work on it ourselves as well. And of course, all of this activity would not be useful if you don't measure it yet. So making sure that you have the right UTM in place so that you can really quantify which ones got that impact from Rich. And making sure as well that whatever Rich content provided is something that we can repurpose as well as a page.

Tom Inniss • 28:14

That's perfect. So we've used Rich as the example here, but he's obviously the head of digital marketing. He would be a great choice. But how do you decide the employees that you're going to use? Are they the people that are likely to be visible to your prospective buyers or are they just people who know your product really well? So would we choose somebody who works in admin at Brew Digital, who might not actually be engaging with the employees at all or do we want to be putting senior devs and like paid media managers who are actually day to day engaging with the clients?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 28:49

Okay, like if I was to run your company's ambassador or advocate program, I would actually well first of all, I have to ask you like what is the point of this? Because there are also like employee programs which is just very much you know brand, it's brand love and for those it's open to everyone. Anyone in this company can join it and can represent us and here's like some training and guidance and off you go. And then there's also the next level to that, which is really developing a social selling program. And that one requires more training and requires more vetting of who wants, who needs to be part of it. For instance, a great candidate would be somebody who's already doing it, already sees the value of it in, you know, in building communications and opportunities for their role. Somebody who's also part of like existing pages or organizations within LinkedIn or within their network or area. Somebody who actually like LinkedIn would also consider as like an influencer. So I think like that's a great candidate, but somebody that I personally love working with are people who really just find the importance of this, not just for their role, but for their, for the brand themselves. Like I think brand love is something that you cannot fake. And therefore for me, that's like my first, you know, my first vetting point. Do you believe in what you do or what you sell? I think like that's a very important thing. And unfortunately they say no, they are in the wrong job.

Tom Inniss • 30:30

Yeah, that is a whole nother podcast. My word. You can't pay your bills with belief, Debbie.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 30:38

Well, I am here because I do believe that LinkedIn is important. I also will not agree to like try to defend it.

Tom Inniss • 30:47

Yes, I was going to swing it back. I was going to say, so of all of the platforms that you would use or that are in your toolbox for B2B marketing, is LinkedIn the one that you genuinely feel is the most important?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 31:03

Yes,

Tom Inniss • 31:04

so it's the one that you would keep above everything else.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 31:07

Yes Do I have to further why yes, I would like that because I go back to what I told what I'm telling you which is Every person becomes a different person Depending on the channel that they're in. I truly believe that once you're in LinkedIn You are either consuming thought leadership content or presenting yourself out there Professionally or you're basically out there trying to build, you know, your networks meaningful networks and meaningful connections No, that is like the mindset that I want or I want to find for my current clients That are looking for those decision makers that we want to engagement and want to talk to I think like an interesting stat out there is that LinkedIn traffic achieves an average of visitor to be conversion rate of 2.74% in B2B environments. And if you look at that against other channels, such as Facebook, 0.77% X, you know, 0.69%, that's like 277% more. So,

Tom Inniss • 32:19

yeah. And this is where I have my little obligatory disclaimer of if you are advertising on X, I am immediately judging you much more as a company.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 32:26

Oh, interestingly, I've just advised my clients to not to stop at X.

Tom Inniss • 32:32

Just? You've just advised them?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 32:38

Just. And the day this morning during showers thinking about Facebook. But another, another conversation.

Tom Inniss • 32:44

That is another conversation. I would be fascinated to know why you think we should be dropping meta products, but I don't know if we've got time.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 32:52

No, no, no. You don't have to post this. You don't have to include it, but it's more of like intention, you know, because I feel like companies now are on Facebook, but it's mostly because, oh, we have to advertise here, therefore why not? Let's post here. But I think, I think we need to be much more intention.

Tom Inniss • 33:11

Yeah, we will come back at another point and discuss the merits of every social media platform. For now, am I convinced that LinkedIn is useful? I can definitely see the value of it for B2B audiences. I think maybe my issue with it is that we view it as a social media platform, perhaps. Perhaps it's the fact that we define it as a social media platform when it kind of isn't in the way that you would think about social media when Twitter was fun and Twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram or Bebo or MySpace, you know, those were very much social media platforms where you were connecting with friends, family, but then also those that had shared interests. Whereas I feel LinkedIn is very much like a, it's almost like self-marketing in a way that normal social media isn't.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 34:06

Oh my God, like Instagram is self-marketing to its core.

Tom Inniss • 34:09

Yeah, even as I finished that sentence, I was like, oh, no, wait, hang on. Instagram is.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 34:14

It is a social media platform, but again, you take on a different persona. It is like that you are much more professional there than anywhere else. But it also depends, like, I think the wave of professionality spectrum has widened. That's the thing, because there are people who are professional that are really like, I'm going to go to this person to really like absorb their wisdom, but there's also professional like, "Hi, my name is Devi and this is my day and my cup of coffee as I start to work." You know, I think like that definition has widened a bit. So you should expect a lot of different content coming from LinkedIn, but it's all under one big giant umbrella.

Tom Inniss • 34:59

And for now, that's perfectly fine.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 35:02

And for now, that's perfectly fine. One thing that we need to do is that social media changes a lot. So who knows what we will have in two years time or in three years time, what platforms there are. AI is out right now. So the game is might change like quite a bit. And we're here to like, just see what comes next.

Tom Inniss • 35:24

But for the here and now, what are you seeing that people are doing wrong in LinkedIn that you would immediately advise them to stop doing?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 35:33

Oh, thank you. And so, well, definitely if you are using AI, any AI tool, you are there. I am a big AI user too, but I think what people are missing is that verification step. You cannot just copy paste what you create on AI or you cannot just let AI do the work for I think a break prompt is good, but also a written verification step is good. Or else you'll just sound very robotic when you're there. The other thing that I want to also point out is that a lot of people just create like a long narrative text on LinkedIn. In some people that works, but also humans are built to be… We have like a goldfish attention span. So I think like if you really want to capture somebody's attention, you better make sure that long narrative text of yours has a great quote. It is actually relevant and it's easily digestible. Sometimes I find that it's like I have to go all the way to the bottom to get to know what you're trying to tell me. So I think like that's just a general advice for everyone here. And third, and maybe this is like something counterintuitive to what Tom is saying, But do not be afraid to be a little bit personal on your LinkedIn. By all means, do not make a metaphor of your serials and B2B marketing. That's not what I'm there for. But again, it's a self-marketing tool. And how will you do marketing if you cannot distinguish yourself from the others? Make sure that you're presenting yourself as authentic as possible. You're not making up stuff or trying to be what you're not. because I think people nowadays, marketers, other professionals or people in LinkedIn, such as Tom, can easily spot a faker.

Tom Inniss • 37:24

I'm just a cynic. I don't believe anything anyone says, ever.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 37:28

Great thing for somebody who's a podcast.

Tom Inniss • 37:31

Yes. Well, thank you, Debbie, for a valiant effort to try and convince me about the values of LinkedIn. But I think there's definitely, you're definitely correct in around personas. And I hadn't thought about how we present ourselves in different ways on different platforms. And I suppose it's that difference of mindset for each platform that might help start to convince me that maybe LinkedIn does have some value. It certainly has some good games.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 37:57

Yeah.

Tom Inniss • 37:58

We'll give it that.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 37:59

Yeah. I mean, I think it's also something to think about. It's like, what will, as a business, what will you do if you're not on LinkedIn? Most of like, you know, most of the things that are nowadays that a buyer can choose is actually digital before they get to their sales rep. If you're not on LinkedIn, you're just basically shooting yourself in your knee.

Tom Inniss • 38:19

Your knee? Need to weigh up the leg. Not foot. Right. Well, on that, I'm going to wrap it up here. Thank you so much, Debbie, for joining me today. We have been marketers of the universe. If you have enjoyed this episode, then good news, there are plenty more available on our website in the resource hub, brewdigital.com/resources. Alternatively, you can read our blogs, our thought pieces, they are more engaging than I was walking to school and I thought about how that reflected my pipeline. Sort of nonsense like that and I can guarantee you that is a fact because I write it. Thank you to all of the staff here at Brew Digital for all of their research and insights that have shaped the way that this podcast has developed over time. If you have any thoughts or feedback, please do reach out on LinkedIn and Debbie will be there to pick all of it up. Otherwise, we have been marketers of the universe. I've been Tom Innes, that's Debbie, and have a wonderful day.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliviera • 39:51

Shooting yourself in the knee, I think, would hurt much more than shooting yourself in the foot.