Conversation Transcript
John Paul Mains 00:18
All right. Hey, everybody, we are back today to talk about how to grow your business here on our growth ventures podcast. We’re glad that you are joined us today. And today, we’re going to be talking about a thing, especially for you b2b companies out there business leaders, LinkedIn has recently changed their algorithm. And it’s, it’s an interesting change, it’s kind of the opposite of kind of what you expect. But at least based on what they’re telling us. They came out, I think it was late June, that they talked about, they made a couple of core algorithm changes. If you’re not familiar, surely you’re familiar linked, then is a b2b, social network. You know, we both pretty much all of us have used it for finding a new job or finding contacts or if you’re a marketing agency out there, you’re constantly pestering us other people that are in the marketing industry, saying you can drive us new leads, please stop.
Ted Jones 01:24
Or polling you for answers.
John Paul Mains 01:29
Goodness, that’s terrible, guys. So yeah, I thought it was really interesting. I mean, when I saw it when I, when I heard about this as like, Oh, this is actually kind of cool. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, your social network, you’re sharing content that you want your social context to get, right. Yeah, sure. And so they’re what they’re saying what LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. And what they’re saying is that you if they’re trying to cut down on the viral illness of a post, there saying they’ve gotten all sorts of just people learning how to game the system, like you can over on Facebook and social media, like on Tik Tok. Especially Twitter, you can, you can probably do a few different things in order to make things go have a greater chance that leads to things going viral. And what they’re saying is we’re b2b, we’re about Condor about quality content. And so we we’ve we’ve made changes that will actually stop that kind of behavior. It’s an antiviral algorithm like that.
Ted Jones 02:42
Yeah. Yeah, they want to look to see if that content has some legs first, before they start pushing that into networks that you’re not associated with, right?
John Paul Mains 02:54
Yeah, um, which makes total sense. I wish that’s how social media works. But this is this is I like action like this. If it works. I love it. Yeah. So. But yeah, it’s all about writing. If you if you write quality content, then we’re going to show it to your audience, the pace that follows you and pays attention to you. Yeah, okay. Perfect. I love it.
Ted Jones 03:18
It’s on the, you know, I think what was it a year and a half, two years ago, they enabled the Creator mode, right, where you are a creator, and you can kind of switch it and then, you know, that kind of leans into that, you know, instead of you having contacts on LinkedIn, which was, you know, your traditional man method of staying up to date with someone now that you actually can get followers on LinkedIn, that are just literally there to follow your content, if you’re putting out good content.
John Paul Mains 03:49
Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you’re if the release creator moved first, in the hopes that people will start creating quality content on their platform, if you think about it, we’ve got a b2b network that wants to help each other. Why not create might do this in such a way that you’re you’re emphasizing quality over viral illness or entertainment or something along those lines? Sure.
Ted Jones 04:17
Well, yeah. And that’s, you know, one of the reasons why I spent more time on LinkedIn, Twitter is just entertainment, like you said, like there’s so much, there’s so much out there, obviously with Elon Musk’s purchase and everything. He’s trying to write that ship. Now and I know this week even released the whole ad revenue sharing model that he had mentioned before. So now a lot of creators are getting rewarded on that platform for not so much the the value of their content, but almost the volume and the reach of
John Paul Mains 04:55
it rewards you for creating entertaining content to make it sticky. Facebook and Twitter all about keep people here to dupe you, I want you to doom scroll on your phone and just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and finding new interesting content to make my brand Google I love it, let’s find more of that. Well as b2b, I want, something’s going to help me I’m not here to be entertaining.
Ted Jones 05:19
Yeah, and LinkedIn is definitely the place for that. I mean, most of us on LinkedIn got our start by connecting with people that we’ve had a relationship with and have built trust with, through, you know, various careers. And, you know, I think that establishes a good foundation for where that content can provide value. Jeff, most
John Paul Mains 05:42
definitely, most definitely. Yeah. I mean, I like the the. So that was the antiviral nature was kind of the one of the two things that they announced that they were changing with their algorithm. The second one is that they’re going to it goes exactly into this is that they will promote quality content, meaning knowledge and advice over your, hey, look at me in this great or, Hey, that’s awesome. Or hey, if self promotional fluffy stuff, they’ve got their, they’ve got AI, which is like watching this stuff, and trying to filter out and promote those things that are high quality that people actually do care about. Yeah, that’s the second part of the algorithm.
Ted Jones 06:32
Yeah, and, you know, you see that a lot of that’s comes back from where, you know, LinkedIn came from, right, when someone changed their job position or, you know, lost a job, you would start seeing that within your network. And I don’t know, if they’ll de emphasize that kind of content. Now, does that now be, you know, something that, you know, is, is lower priority? In their strategy, be curious to see if
John Paul Mains 07:00
it will be? I think that I mean, it’s clear, Microsoft’s put, been putting a lot of money. And there’s been a lot of changes coming out on LinkedIn over the last few years, which I’m grateful to see. Because, you know, if I’m looking, if I want to be entertained, I’m going over to one of the normal consumer focused social media. But at the end of the day, I mean, if I’m trying to grow my business, I’m gonna be paying attention to LinkedIn, and what’s going on there, which means I want quality content I want don’t want fluff. And so this is this antiviral algorithm change is spot on perfect. Hopefully, it will truly work in lifting that kind of stuff up. I don’t know, if they assume they already released it. But
Ted Jones 07:41
yeah, I was kind of exploring around, you know, I was interested in, you know, what they do to determine like, what’s happening. So, you know, and whether or not something has value, and, you know, similar to, you know, like a Google or, you know, any other type of search engine they’re going to, or even Twitter has trending topics, right? What I was doing was playing around with LinkedIn search. And, you know, if you just type in, put your cursor in the search bar, it’ll actually start showing you now. They’re not calling it trending topics or anything, but it’s almost keywords that they say, Try searching on this. And I think they’re gonna start bubbling up those kind of hot topics on.
John Paul Mains 08:29
Well, this will be it. So that’s actually an interesting point. I hadn’t thought about if, you know, they, they’ve got a some kind of partnership with Jeff GPT. And yeah, if you’ve got all this wealth of great content that’s flowing through LinkedIn, why not say, okay, AI engine, here’s all this content coming in. Maybe I can type in A into LinkedIn search on a particular topic to try and figure out an answer. And I’m gonna get highly, highly relevant stuff from LinkedIn owns all of LinkedIn posts, or what have you helps me uncover other people that maybe I haven’t heard about that. I want to follow people that are putting out great advice. That to me would be the next logical step in this if I could uncover people that I don’t know. But I want to follow because they provide amazing content.
Ted Jones 09:22
That would be you reminded me that Microsoft was a large investor in chat GPT and LinkedIn owned by Microsoft, wait a minute.
John Paul Mains 09:35
I would click on somebody’s thought of this. But if not, then somebody reached out and hey, I’ve got the idea. Maybe for you.
Ted Jones 09:43
I’m gonna have to think more about that. What’s Microsoft doing here?
John Paul Mains 09:46
Oh, yeah. You always gotta wonder what is Microsoft doing? Yeah. Something you know, they’re thinking way, way, way on to the future. So, but yep, they’re all Only real true b2b social media platform out there. And so this the, you know, there is no there is no competition for this and they’ve got it all they’ve got to solidify, there’s no competing against what what they built already because of like mine your connections from a business to business perspective a friend a friend. Nobody’s gonna compete with this. Well, I say that, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon?
Ted Jones 10:29
Well, I know you’ve mentioned before, to just, you know, understanding how people engage with content, right, we like, and, you know, with LinkedIn, and just being able to post something, there analytics are still kind of not like robust. But eventually, you know, that is going to grow with their Creator platform and just giving you the analytics and knowing what kind of content really stands out, not just among your immediate group, but the extended group. Yeah,
John Paul Mains 11:02
I’ve been noticing a couple of changes in their analytics lately. So they’ve obviously paying attention to it. And they have to, I mean, if if they’re wanting content creators on here, and people will be able to have a good experience, I gotta provide the insights into what’s going on, so people can improve upon their content. And I’ve said this a million times, I mean, content is king content was King content is king content is going to be King forever. In Yes, the AIS of the world are able to create content for us. It just goes to show how important content really is. Yeah, good content really is. And if I as a person, not an AI can create better content, unique and brand new content that’s going to move an audience. That’s what the that’s what these. That’s what LinkedIn is really kind of, I guess, trying to push here is really trying to get be the number one contents source or source at once.
Ted Jones 12:03
Yeah, yeah, if you’re a trusted source on LinkedIn, and you’re providing unique, original content, and they’re feeding that back into a AI language model, all right, then, you know, that might really provide that,
John Paul Mains 12:21
if I can, if I can discover you as a trusted source on LinkedIn. And it’s clear that you’ve been right, you have a lot of great content, you’ve got a great knowledge about what your industry service product is, I’m much more likely this is normal social media one on one stuff, if if I see it, I like it there, then I’m more likely to do business with you if I’m capable of doing business with you. This is another content source. So yeah, that’s why they’re stressing on their algorithm changes quality content over fluffy concepts.
Ted Jones 12:55
And educational engaging content. So
John Paul Mains 12:58
so if you’re wanting to grow business, in your focused on the business, the business side, LinkedIn is the place to be on trying to engage new audience because it’s definitely possible. I mean, it’s easy to pick up new followers and a heartbeat, I’ve seen some very, very, very niche companies create a pretty sizable following over on LinkedIn that do this damn, like, how did you do that? You can do this many people, your product is like, what, who’s gonna follow this, but the end of the day, they’re providing really good content, and you’re able to attract an audience, the people that are there. Every business person is out here on LinkedIn. So the audience is here.
Ted Jones 13:38
And he just, you know, made all the sales guys happy.
John Paul Mains 13:45
Absolutely cool. already. So yeah, I think that’s about it. So I just we just wanted to talk about this. Like said, utilize link. If you’re b2b space, obviously, utilize LinkedIn, create good content, keep getting good followers, content, content, content, solid content, don’t make it fluffy. Make it useful to people that they can actually take what you have to teach how you take your knowledge and do something with it, which hopefully includes picking up the phone or typing up an email and say, hey, I can use your help. Yeah. Awesome. All right, everybody, be sure to follow us over on quick laboratory. Follow us here on a podcast, like share whatever it may be. It helps us out on reaching more and more people, like on LinkedIn where we post this as well. But you can find our podcast YouTube everywhere. So till next time, everybody appreciate y’all following us and checking us out. Thank you.