216: The Impact of Influencers On Your Business

Melissa [: 00:00:00

Hey, hey, hey, I hope you guys enjoy these what I'm calling podcast shorts for my burnout to all out community. This is just a little peek behind the curtain of the coaching that goes on inside of my programs. We're bringing to you some of the best nuggets and coaching I'm giving, within hot seats of all of our different programs, whether it's our LinkedIn Method Academy, our Mini Mastermind, Business Basics, all the way up to our higher level Mastermind. If you're hearing some of these questions, and you're like, man, I wish I could get my burning question answered by Melissa. Hey, guess what? You could be featured on my podcast. If you've got a question that you want answered and you submit it to my team and we pick it, we will bring you here to the podcast for our podcast shorts and, do a hot seat with you. Where can you submit your questions? Send them to team burnout to all out.co. We'll make sure we drop that in the show notes for our podcast shorts.

Melissa [: 00:01:02

And I hope that you guys find as much value in the shorts as our clients do inside the program. Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business, and you're listening to the Burnout to All Out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice, and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur. Let's dive in.

David [: 00:02:13

Hello. Good morning.

Melissa [: 00:02:15

Good morning.

David [: 00:02:16

Earlier you had said not to connect with competitors and my previous use for LinkedIn was as an employee job searching. So right now, my current network is about 200 peers, 50 recruiters in my space. No one in my target audience. So I guess what advice would you have for me there? And then as I'm engaging with other posts and and priming that algorithm

Melissa [: 00:02:42

Mhmm.

David [: 00:02:43

Am I engaging with competitors in that way?

Melissa [: 00:02:46

Yeah. Great question. Okay. This is a good one. So first of all, how many of you guys are in his shoes? I saw Monica kinda nodding her head. Yeah. So if time is an issue and we're trying to be efficient on LinkedIn, I don't want you guys chasing your tail trying to, like, quote unquote clean out your leads. I would spend more time aggressively growing your network than I would trying to delete your network.

Melissa [: 00:03:10

Okay? Because quite honestly, 200 in a matter of 2 months, you can obliterate that 200 and blow it out of the water with a new fresh network of ideal audience that you wanna market to. Right? If you've got a ton of time on your hands or you've got an assistant that can go in there and clean out the competitors, go for it. But I don't want it to be like your top priority. I think that we can shift the algorithms and shift what LinkedIn puts in front of you by just aggressively growing the right network and engaging with the right people. Now this becomes kind of a sticky widget and double edged sword. Someone even asked, well, do I just follow my competitors? Right? And I guess there's a fine line between, like, a competitor versus an influencer too. So let's talk about that. Your I all of you have an ideal audience who are influentially there's groups, there's leaders, there's companies that they follow.

Melissa [: 00:04:03

Right? It's part of their personality. Right? So, just depends on who you're targeting. So just for giggles, an example would be, if you're targeting functional medicine practitioners, one of the top influencers they're gonna follow is Doctor. Mark Hyman on LinkedIn. Right? So if you wanted to be visible with your headline and marketing to these individuals, then you would wanna go find Mark Hyman and engage in his post because it's like there's a huge audience that you're trying to market to that are in the feed. Right? And in this scenario, Mark Hyman isn't necessarily your competitor, but he happens to aggregate a large group of people that you want to market to. Right? Which would be different than, let's say, in that scenario that person coaches functional medicine practitioners on how to launch online businesses. Right? Well, then they're not going to wanna go connect directly with others who are doing that exact same thing, but they may wanna check out their network and see who's engaging with them, who's following them.

Melissa [: 00:05:14

Right? So those are 2 I wanna delineate those 2 different things. There's influencers, and then there's, like, direct competitors. And influencers, you wanna hang out with all day long. Some of you fell into my ethos because we did that. Right? We engage because of my industry in kind of the personal development business. We hang out a lot with, like, the Sara Blakely. We've gosh. I can't even think of them right now.

Melissa [: 00:05:41

Like, Tony Robbins. Even the 9 8 and 9 figure business coaches, like, that are a step above me, like Kelly Roche. Right? So we go hang out there, and we engage, and we comment in their post. And then people see my headline and they're like, oh, she's a LinkedIn strategist. And I'm like, I'm hanging out where there's prime real estate of I of an ideal audience for me, but it's not necessarily my competitor. Right? So, David, for your category as a recruiter, like, help me understand. You're in the recruitment space. Is that right?

David [: 00:06:15

No. That's just the another segment of my current network because I have peers and recruiters in my industry, neither of which I'm really interested in from a business development standpoint.

Melissa [: 00:06:27

Okay. Tell me about your business.

David [: 00:06:29

So I work in retirement planning.

Melissa [: 00:06:31

Okay. Alright. Awesome.

David [: 00:06:34

And so I was thinking about targeting maybe travel groups or something along those lines? Influencers in the space might be like a Dave Ramsey or something like that.

Melissa [: 00:06:47

Yes. 100%. And that's what you just need a noodle on. And also, guys, don't be afraid to go off LinkedIn and go to Google for this because you can only do so many searches in a month on LinkedIn before you get put in LinkedIn jail. So one of the things that we do is we'll go off platform and research top influencers and industries, find them, and then go to LinkedIn because, keep in mind, some of them are gonna have really robust LinkedIn accounts and some of them aren't and it's not gonna help you to follow someone on LinkedIn who's not active. So like for instance, with RT, if any of you guys remember him talking during our master entrepreneurship kind of online business space. Right? So one of the things that I've been doing is in entrepreneurship kind of online business space. Right? So one of the things we did for him was we're like, okay, well, let's go find where the entrepreneurs are hanging out.

Melissa [: 00:07:41

So we went to Google and found, like, one of the big ones is, like, all the sharks from Shark Tank. Right? And then we went to LinkedIn and found that, like, 3 of the 5 were highly active, highly visible, massive networks, and the other 2 were, like, completely obsolete. So we chose to just follow the ones who are super active and engage in their feed because we know that we're targeting kind of this entrepreneurial person who's following this shark. Does that make sense?

David [: 00:08:09

Mhmm. And then I have a couple of other retirement planners kind of peers that are killing it on LinkedIn. Would it be okay to engage with their content?

Melissa [: 00:08:19

Yeah. If they've allowed you to be connected with them, they have no idea likely your headline is proper. Right? Thanks guys so much for listening in on today's podcast episode. And I can't wait for you to see my upcoming guest in the next episode. You are going to love this keynote speaker. Hey, here's the deal. If you like this, please subscribe and leave a review. And you want the latest online business growth strategies and exclusive LinkedIn pro tips sent straight to your phone? Text the word update to 704-318-2285.

Melissa [: 00:09:08

That is text the word update to 704-318-2285. Can't wait to see you guys. Come find me over on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you like to hang. Cannot wait to hear how you are enjoying and applying what you're learning. You guys reach out to me over on social because I love hearing what's resonating with you. When you reach out to me and you send me those personal DMs, they really do impact the content I continue to bring forward to you. So again, come find me melissa_henault over on Instagram. Melissahenault over on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Melissa [: 00:09:48

Can't wait to see you guys over there.