Advanced LinkedIn, With Andrew Moon of Orange Nomad

Hello, I'm Dan Thomas Shefsky and this is the connecting it podcast.[inaudible] welcome to the connecting it podcast. I'm your host, Dan Thomas Shefsky and joining me today is Andrew Moon, founder of orange nomad, Andrew, really excited to have you on today. And, uh, you're always a wealth of knowledge when it comes to marketing, you know, for on LinkedIn, with MSP. So thanks for joining me.

Thanks Dan. I appreciate it, man. It's good to be here. Uh, good to be in the say audience again. So, yeah.

And we've had you at a couple of different things. You've been around at some of the glue glue talks. Um, we've, you know, had you inside powered services and seen lots of MSPs, you know, talking about how your, your, your LinkedIn strategies and things are really helping them and growing their business. And I thought this was a timely approach to bring you into our podcast. And just, let's talk about what's working on LinkedIn. What's not working and, uh, have a good conversation. So, uh, why don't we start off a little bit, just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background of how you're that kind of the expert in the go-to person now for LinkedIn,

You know, it's, you know, I have the similar journey to most people that are listening. I was an MSP up until, uh, C one's a 2014. So I ran it. I ran a full blown MSP for 10 years. Started from scratch, made every single marketing mistake that there is spent boatloads of cash on every course, every everything that you could think of, uh, ended up frustrated, couldn't get anything to work. Um, and really the LinkedIn stuff came came about. Really, I'll be honest with you. It came about by accident. I kind of was been on LinkedIn since 2006, so I was an early adopter messed around with the platform and get just really didn't see much business use of it, uh, for a long time, but I was big on lunch and learns and, and really the, the way that LinkedIn came about was, was for me, the light bulb moment was when I was trying to get people booked for our in-person lunch and learns when we were allowed to do that. Um, I was having a hard time getting people registered. So I decided I would go, it was a Wednesday night. I remember it vividly. I logged in and sent out about 150 personal invitations to people that I was connected with on LinkedIn that I had either met at conferences, had coffee with, or just, you know, I had some type of relationship with and went home for the night. Didn't think anything of it came in the next morning, my inbox and LinkedIn was full. I had 20 people registered for our event and they were all people from that list. That's great run my LinkedIn list. So it was kind of a light bulb moment for me, really the light bulb moment came when I went in my inbox because it was one message after another, after another of people that said, Hey, thanks for inviting me. I really, really appreciate it. Unfortunately, I can't come to this one, but please invite me to the next one. And from a marketing perspective, that's when the light bulb went off for me because getting a response, starting a conversation is the hardest thing to do in marketing. And I had like 50, 60 people that had messaged me back and took the time to have a conversation. So we kept that going. So when I sold my MSP, a lot of people re we were booking people in, in person events and LinkedIn became kind of really, that was the bread and butter of, most of the marketing was surrounding LinkedIn prior to selling my MSP. When I sold it a couple months later, people found out that I was available, started requesting me to do LinkedIn training and LinkedIn for MSPs kind of became its own entity. Here we are.

Wow. That's, that's a cool journey. And I mean, like LinkedIn has grown. I mean, I think the pandemic is really, you know, COVID, you know, all the things have really pushed MSPs to go to LinkedIn. Um, we've seen a lot more, I mean, I go on LinkedIn now and I'm seeing more business posts than I've ever seen before. Um, in some respects, it's hard to keep up with all the different things, because so much is going in there. What, what are some of the things that people, you know, if you're an MSP that's on today listening, like what are some things that they can do, uh, to help their engagement? I think there's one thing I always see people post, but then you look and it's like, they post time after time after time, when there's no engagement, like what can I do as an MSP to get people engaged in the content?

That's a great question. And it's one of those timeless questions, but in order to get engagement on content that you post, you really need to flip that around and look in the mirror as to what type of engagement are you doing on other people's content? Are you participating in conversations? Are you building your network by engaging other people ruin those conversations? And that really, and I still, I see this right now. We've been doing some testing, even internally. I'm not posting as much content myself, but our engagement rate is up because that's what I'm doing every day is I take that hour from 1130 to 1230 every day, and just have conversations. I look for people's posts. I look for ways that I might be able to help people or just engaging on in business conversations. And that has been a great way to boost my engagement, but it, it really starts with what we do with LinkedIn. And it starts about other people first. Uh, so there's no hack, there's no, you know, cheesy guru tactic on getting engagement really long-term, that's where it starts. If you're engaging on other people's content, you're exposing other people to your content

At that. I think that's really important though. I mean, a lot of people, it's something I hear on coaching calls all the time is like, well, you know, I'm connected to a thousand people. Um, but you know, I posted an image. I post a video or I'll post, you know, that's something that's really thought leadership and things. And they're like, I'm just not getting engagement. I think what you just said, I mean, you hit it on the head is what they should be doing is we all need to be doing is engaging on other people's posts, having those conversations, like when you're engaging. And you're saying, having a conversation, are you talking about like in the LinkedIn messenger or are you saying on their posts? Like, you're just kind of trying to like chat back and forth or say something and let them say something back and then reply again. What does that mean? Like when you say have a conversation

That's where it typically will start is when you post a, a comment you give your 2 cents on somebody's post and that's where you kind of see people will feed off the off of your posts. People will comment on your post in that thread of the message of the post itself. But the great thing that I've noticed is how many people that will connect with me. And then we start a other side conversation in messages and one-on-one messages. So it's my posting, something that, you know, like last week, um, woman was at posted how much she was bullied, you know, growing up and how, how difficult that has been in growing her business. And just that vulnerability, that personal side of people. I got three people to connect with me and started side conversations because I commented the same. I went through the same thing and, you know, I was bullied most of my, you know, teenage years all the way up till I got out of high school. And yes, I can relate to that, but that has nothing to do with what I do that has nothing really to do with what they do. But it's about being a human being. And I think you touched on that, that to me has opened up more engagement opportunities with LinkedIn since COVID because a lot more people are looking to connect with people like that, who can tell, who get them, they get the fact that it's not all about business and sales. It's about being human being. Yeah.

And that it's that authentic. I mean, it's just, people want to know you're human. I mean, we all know, we all see titles, we all see companies we work for and all these different places, but really at the end of the day, I have been in the same boat as you, when I look at, you know, people's profiles or things like that, I want to know more about you. Like, am I getting from your post who you are like, who you are as an owner, who you are as attack, um, or, you know, and I think that that goes a long way and people don't realize it, that that authenticity is, is really important.

It is. And people have been starving for it for a long time. All COVID did was just bring that out in the open and make that acceptable to have those conversations and to be a person. And I think now more than ever, this is really the perfect storm. I think for LinkedIn and the engagement going forward is people are paying attention to what brands are doing. They're paying attention to things that you're posting on LinkedIn, and what you're doing right now goes, you know, it's going to have ripple effects on, into the future. So when you're doing good things, that's going to be great. If you're still on there, you know, hammering the sales message over and over and over again. And everything's about you. People take notice of that as well.

Yeah. The other part of it is I would say, and I think that's a really good tip. So I mean, being real, being, you know, authentic, you know, and sharing, but connecting and having conversations. I mean, I think that's, that's a really good way to spark that engagement. And I hope that's one really big tip that I think people can take away from today. But the other part of it is, you know, you and I have talked about this before, is that persona of somebody like knowing who you want as a customer, are you connected to them? Um, are you a part of groups that they're in? And I think that some people don't necessarily understand that methodology or maybe it hasn't hit for them yet. Can you kind of talk a little bit about understanding that persona of the person or like the, the, the sector that person's in and how that can also take place in, in the benefit you, if you understand that

It, you know, it, I neglected that for a long time when running my MSP, I, it was, you know, I like most MSPs was anybody who can fog a mirror, write me a check and has more than five computers. That's my customer. The problem is, is there's so many of those in your market that it is. You'll never reach all of them on LinkedIn or off LinkedIn. And when I got clearly defined as to the types of customers that we wanted, and because we all want to have, you know, customers that we absolutely love doing business with, and they pay on time, they take your advice, they respect you. We want to clone them over and over again. The cool thing with LinkedIn is people, people hang out with people just like themselves. So when you get connected with people like that, your best customers hang out with people that are just like them. And that is a great way to be in conversations, to be in groups that they belong to on LinkedIn and to be helpful. And people see that they see that, okay, you're connected to Susie Jones at X, X, Y, Z company. And then they start investigating. And that's the neat thing with LinkedIn is people will stalk you for a long time, perhaps before they're comfortable reaching out to you. And that's the interesting dichotomy in the MSP space is not everybody needs your services right now, but the trust gap that we have as MSPs, and we were asking them to spend a lot of money and we're asking them to give us their most precious resource, which is their data. So the gap that we have, people who have been burnt by MSPs, we see that over and over again. So they have that stigma. So that trust factor, they're going to be less trusting of another MSP, but if you're connected with people that they know, people that they like, people that they trust and they see that they trust you as well. You're, you're, you know, it's that association that people automatically want to do business with people that they know like, and trust, we hear that over and over and over again, but how do you get that? It's by showing up every day on LinkedIn. And again, it goes back to that human factor. People want to see that you're there to help first, and you're not there to sell them anything all the time.

And you can learn too. I mean, there's, there's so much value in being a part of some of these groups that like, I know that came out of the training that you did is that we had an MSP say, look, I went and did a profile for lawyers. I watched all the different lawyer groups and, you know, chat rooms or things that they were in and forums. And they were talking about, I think there was something around a compliance, you know, policy, like, you know, how it's going to impact them. And like, he just kind of had a conversation of what it's like from the it side. He became that expert. And next thing you know, people were calling him and saying, Hey, can you come in and do some of the compliance for us? Uh, because that's exactly, you know, you're, you're talking about it in more in depth than what we are, and that's something we absolutely need, but it's, again, if he wasn't in that forum, in that place and giving education through the LinkedIn channel, I mean, he would have never gotten it, but it's just cool how it worked out.

Yeah. That's a perfect example of it. And had he gone in, you know, all sales, guns, blazing, even an under got those opportunities, but when you, when you're there to, to help to answer questions and that's the great thing is people, you know, ask all the time and you, I'm sure that you run into it is what, what I post things do I post, what type of content do I put out your ideal customers will, will tell you that type of content. That's a great example of it. You now have something that is of concern to the people that are, are in your target market. I now have the opportunity to educate them. And I know that that that's something that they want to learn about. And that's a, you know, like I said, that's a great opportunity for MSPs, but you have to listen first.

Yeah. I mean, that's really, that's the, that's the major keys you got to listen. It's the same thing. When you get the appointment, you got to ask a question and you to sit back and listen. So it's the same thing on LinkedIn. Um, so I mean, it's, it's really good advice. I will kind of want to ask you a couple of other questions, cause I want to go in a couple of different directions, but before I get into like company profiles, I want to ask you, what are some of the don'ts, you know, I think one of the big ones that everybody, uh, I mean, I think you and I we've talked about it a million times. I get a request. I click accept five seconds later. It's Hey, Dan, I can help you with your managed service, you know, blah, blah, blah. And like, I can save you money. I mean, obviously is that one of the do nots, um, you know, right out of the gate,

That's a big one. And like I said, it's, it's been that way for a long time. Uh, people absolutely hate that. And the thing that's, that's interesting is as an MSP, when, when I talk to people that we coach, they hate it. They hate it. When people do that to them, yet they turn around and do it to somebody else. So it's hypocritical marketing. And I think that's the big thing that we've got to get away from on LinkedIn because you know, most[inaudible], he's, we're, we're introverts. We don't really like sales. So we don't really understand, you know, that, that psychology, what that does. And the terrible thing is there's been so many gurus out there and marketing coaches that have told people that that's what they should do on LinkedIn, that you need to post the sales message, the sales letters that you're sending out through direct mail that's, what's in your LinkedIn message. And they tell people that that's how they get LinkedIn to work. It didn't work for me when I was running my MSP. And then it really doesn't work. Now. I think you're casting a bigger light, a spotlight on yourself when you do that, that type of stuff right now, because now you've burned an opportunity and you don't, you'll never get that bad taste out of somebody's mouth. You know, when they, yeah. They're going to remove, I remove people that do that just because it's, it's so annoying because people just don't get it. Everything's about them first. So, you know, we're not, we're not making enough deposits in before we're asking something of somebody we're immediately taking. And like I said, those, those people that are doing that are, are much more glaring than they ever have been. Uh, now,

So let's say on that person right now, let's say, I'm the guy right now. I'm I go connect with people and immediately I'm hitting them up. If I change that up, I mean, it's trying to reverse it to some of the things we already talked about. How do I go from, okay, I want to connect with you, Andrew, but now I want to have a conversation with you. I don't want to sell you anything. I just want to have a conversation, get to know you, how do I do that? If I'm an MSP and I don't want to necessarily sell things, I want to get to know the person and really able to have a good conversation. And I'm connecting with them for the first time. What should it look like? How long should I wait before I messaged them? Or, you know, things like that to, to try to, you know, get to know them more.

That immediately goes back to our original conversation. Before I read, reach out to somebody. I w I would look at see what things that they are posting on LinkedIn. And I would make the effort to comment on those things, to join in the discussions that are important to them, because that's what they're posting. And then once you have that dialogue going, then I feel much more comfortable in reaching out to people when we were, when we're able to do this, you know, in real life, what I would do is I actually set aside time every week to go have coffee with people, people that I met on LinkedIn, that's, all I would do is just offer to go have coffee, get to know more about them and to, you know, build a business community here in the city where we live. So that's my premise. I'm not there to sell them anything. And it, the amazing thing is that it has happening even more now with COVID that I just had this last week, an MSP in California completely switched his track of his messaging from LinkedIn. He's trying to connect to creative companies and architects, and in switching his message, he got connected with people. He started doing that, having conversations. And then he reached out and said, Hey, let's have virtual coffee together. He booked two meetings in the first week of switching that around, because the whole key here is you just want to start a conversation. Yeah. Because you never get to having a signed customer if you've never had a conversation with them.

Yeah. Well, that's important. I mean, that's the part, I think though, you know, I think it's hard because if someone that's used to just instantly connecting and trying to get that instant appointment and that's where I was going for. And I'm glad you went that direction is, is I wanted to say, like, you've got to invest the time, um, for that relationship to happen, you know, and to make it so as it's worthwhile. And I think there's so much value getting to know the person commenting, building that relationship, and then logging that naturally to progress, to having a conversation. And that's where I think you're going to have a, a better chance of closing a deal down the road too. And I'm not saying that the second you get a conversation, you'd immediately talk business. I think you just talk, you continue to learn about each other, the companies and the things and all that. You don't go in hard selling, do you?

No. No. And that's, that's the really the thing. And that's what I teach, you know, with, with our program is, is, is that mindset, everything we do on LinkedIn starts with a different mindset than we, we, we've got to unlearn everything we've been taught with LinkedIn. And it's about people first it's human connection and conversations. When you approach it from that premise, when you have these coffee meetings with people, when you sit down and have virtual coffee meetings, you're not there to sell anything. And the sooner you get that out of your mind, it's people are much more relaxed when the people you're sitting with realize that you're not there to sell something to them. That you're just there to have a conversation with them. You'd be amazed at the relationships. I've had people go on physical coffee meetings in last two hours. Wow. Because people realize, okay, you're not here to sell me anything. And you start to talk about the things that you found on their LinkedIn profile and the things that they're posting, things that are interesting to them. And when you start there, people, we love to talk about ourselves. So when Pete, when we get people to talk about themselves, they will give you so much information about them as a human and how to do business with them.

That's, that's phenomenal advice. And I think, again, you know, you're hitting, you know, where we need to focus. And like, we all know MSPs as a whole. It's always on every top of every survey, sales and marketing is one of the biggest struggles or pain points. And it is really hard to hold back from trying to talk and sell if that's what you're programmed to do. Um, so I think that's a really good advice just to sit back, slow down, have a conversation, and really try to see, you know, where that goes.

And it's amazing, you know, because when, when you have those conversations with people, I was blown away at the amount of things that people would tell me, their viewpoint of our industry, of the it industry. So you actually learn all of those little landmines to take out of our services, all the things that frustrate people with it, you can get out in those conversations like that. You don't typically get those types of interactions in a formal sales engagement. When you're sitting at the table negotiating services, or you're there to do an assessment people aren't generally going to lay all their cards out on the table. But when you're in a relaxed human to human interaction, and you're, you're, you're gauging that as friendship, people will tell you a lot more information than you ever could get anywhere else.

Uh, words of wisdom right there. Um, one of the other areas I really wanted to talk to you about today, uh, while we're all we're on here. Cause this is something that I'm seeing coming up a lot. A lot of people are saying, what is the point of me having a business page on LinkedIn, everybody that's on LinkedIn. I get more, you know, I post something from my business. Nobody ever says anything. I posted from my personal, I get, you know, 20% or I get a hundred percent more likes and comments and things. I guess people are still confused as like, what is the value of a business page? Do you see value it? Um, or my better off not having a company page and doing things just personally,

You need both. So let me preference there. But, but you touched on, on the real key differentiator and that's always been that way is that people will interact more with your personal page than your company page. You need both because when you go into your LinkedIn profile, when people go into research, your experience, your current experience is your company. So that's where the actual data that shows up on your personal LinkedIn profile is pulling from your LinkedIn company page. So if you didn't have one, you look like a ghost company. So when they click on that, it goes nowhere. So credibility. We want to have that in there, going back to engagement. It goes all the way back to the beginning. What we talked about, people want to do business with people, not logos. And that will always be the case with, with any type of content that people post. They want to know that they're interacting with a person. So when you post something on your personal profile, that's why you'll get more engagement. And I'm not saying you won't get any engagement on your LinkedIn company page. You will get some engagement, but it's always going to be more on that personal side, because that's where you're building connections. You really aren't building connections off of your company page. You're doing it at the personal level.

So do you share, like, do I share my company's post when they make something or do I take it and make it organic? You know, like, so it's more connectable to me in, but it's about my company.

I would do the opposite. I see a lot of people that will post on their company page and then flip over to the personal page and put posts the same link. The issue is if I'm looking down through your personal activity, so I'm connected with you on LinkedIn. People can see all of your activity every time you post something, every time you like something, all of that information you can get to and see what people are doing on LinkedIn. So when people look at that and that's all it is, is all you are doing is reposting everything off your company page. It goes back to the same thing. You're just, you're a duplicate, you're duplicating your company. You're not really telling me anything about you personally. You're really not posting anything. That's original content. And that's what people are starving for on LinkedIn. That the people who are taking the time, yes, you have some curated com content on there, but the personal created content is what I'm seeing. I have always seen, continue to provide the most engagement on LinkedIn.

So that's a really good point. And I struggle with this sometimes. I mean, obviously we've got things, you know, different events or things that could say. And so are you saying if, if it's coming from me, let's just take myself as the example here. We've got a, let's say a webinar coming up next week, rather than just taking the event thing that the company posted, taking the same text. Can I take the company links? So obviously you get to it, but put more of a personal story that people relate, know that it's me speaking. And like, why this is important to me or like why you should attend it in my version.

Exactly. Because that's your, you're starting in conversation. It's not one sided. You're telling people, this is why this is important. And yes, you do put the link so people can get to it. But when you're starting a conversation as to why you feel that it's important and you touch on something specific, especially something that your clients are having as an issue that this webinar being on this webinar solves, and you're engaging at that at a conversational level, on a personal level. People want to, they, that will create the dialogue. People want that interaction.

That's, uh, that's really important. And I think I need to remember that even myself, uh, from time to time, because we all get busy and think, Oh, we'll just post a link. But, uh, take that extra time and give that little bit of a extra personal touch. Um, it'll be worth

It. It will be worth it. Trust me.

Yeah. So obviously we've been sharing, we've talked a lot about LinkedIn, a lot about, you know, great stuff that you're bringing to your customers and just to the MSPs in general, in the community, you're always a wealth of knowledge. Um, one of the things I really like to do as we kind of come towards the end is leaving our listeners with, you know, like one tip or one takeaway that if there's anything you took away from today, um, what would that be for our listeners?

Stop doing random acts of LinkedIn, really? I mean, yeah, you bidding on there and you know, not giving your all to the platform and really understanding how it works. You'll never get the results and that's the same with anything you do in the marketing world. If you don't stay with it long enough, you will not see the results, but LinkedIn will continue to serve you well into the future. I have people still contacting me from, I had two this last week from people that I was connected with and had conversations with 12 years ago.

Oh wow. That's, that's great. I mean the big lessons, I mean, I think that's it. You gotta have consistency. You can't post one thing and think it's going to make you a million dollars. You gotta, you gotta keep that brand. You gotta build your brand. You gotta have consistency. You have to be authentic and link. You've said, you know, be yourself and give in CA also give of your time. Didn't communicate to others. I think those are some really big tips that I took down. And I wrote down on the paper here, and I know our listeners are probably doing the same thing right now. I appreciate you. And thanks for coming on and talking with us today and really discussing LinkedIn. And, um, how can people find you on LinkedIn

Orange nomad.com? Uh, you can get to all my social links are on there. Um, yeah, you can look me up on LinkedIn. I think it's Andrew Moon. Orange nomad is my LinkedIn handle, but yeah, always open to connections.

Yeah. And you always do a great job as well. I know you go live and go on LinkedIn and do lives and always bringing a wealth of knowledge there. So I encourage our listeners to reach out and watch Andrew and just continue to learn about LinkedIn and just being a good person and being authentic. Andrew's the role model of that. And, uh, again, Andrew, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing with us and, uh, uh, really glad you took the time to be with us today. Thanks Dan. I appreciate it. And thanks everyone for listening to the connecting it podcast. Make sure you subscribe and rate us five stars on the iTunes store.