And discover new and unexpected opportunities on the platform Bloomberg is now calling “cool”

Listen Time: 30 Minutes

When was the last time you intentionally leveraged the world’s largest professional networking platform to attract new clients and grow your business? Or, as Liam Darmody, LinkedIn expert and brand coach, fondly calls it, the “serendipity manifestation platform”. 

If you can’t remember the last time you spent 30 minutes networking on LinkedIn, posting content, and connecting with other brands, then you’re missing out on one of the most powerful growth marketing tools at your disposal. With over 950 million members from over 200 countries, LinkedIn is the premier place to connect, network, learn, and grow with other professionals in your industry – whether locally, or globally.

In fact, whereas LinkedIn has, in the past, been a quiet and obligatory part of a professional persona, even Bloomberg is now saying LinkedIn might be “cool.”

“As other networks stagnate, shift their algorithms or burn themselves to the ground, LinkedIn is becoming a site where regular people actually want to hang out and post their thoughts.” – at least, according to Darmody. 

And there are some very practical methods for growing your LinkedIn and attracting new clients. Darmody’s magic rule? 30 minutes a day.

How to Boost Your Brand and Business in 30 Minutes on LinkedIn

Spending 30 minutes a day on LinkedIn posting, reposting, and connecting with others in your network “gives you the opportunity to really kind of niche down and start talking about your craft” says Darmody.  

The result is a “flywheel effect of reciprocity,” an organic posting-and-reposting within your industry capable of helping you uncover unexpected opportunities and attract clients. When it comes to overcoming objections from colleagues and staff who are reluctant to spend that 30 minutes on LinkedIn, a gentle reminder that a robust LinkedIn profile has far-reaching benefits for everyone at the company. 

After all, Darmody says, “Marketing is everybody’s job.” 

And marketing with LinkedIn is a non-negotiable part of any healthy digital marketing strategy today. With each new connection forged or post reshared on LinkedIn, both your personal brand and your company image get a boost. From there, opportunities and new connections spring up (and not just in the form of a recruiter poaching heads from your company). 

But why not find out more for yourself? Listen to this 30-minute episode to learn Darmody’s tried-and-true methods for attracting new clients, growing your brand, and boosting your business on the new “cool” platform that is LinkedIn. 

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About Liam Darmody

Liam is the founder of Liam’s Brand Stand. He helps founders, leaders, and teams build magnetic brands that attract clients, talent, and opportunity on Linkedin.

Episode Transcript

CTM Peter: Thank you, everybody, for joining CallTrackingMetrics Smart Route Podcast. We are venturing into episode 29 of how marketing, sales, and leadership can win with Linkedin. Our guest today is Liam Darmody. He’s an expert in all things Linkedin and here to share some of his knowledge on that. A little background: Liam and I have worked together twice in the past. The first time was at Revolution Health, in the mid-2000s, and again with Living Social beginning, I don’t know…2010-ish, something like that. In addition to Liam and I working together, we also had the pleasure of working with the co-founder of Call Tracking Metrics, Todd Fisher. So, the three of us have actually worked together. Well, the three of us have worked together on two separate occasions, and now I’m super happy to have Liam as our guest here on the podcast today to share all of his knowledge on all things that are Linkedin. So on that, Liam, thank you for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourself!

Liam: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. It’s so funny how things always come full circle, and the network that you build even in the earliest stages of your career can last as you grow. So that’s one of the reasons that I love LinkedIn is because it is just like one gigantic networking event. It’s 24/7, 365, and people, I think, underestimate how much potential there is on that platform to build a new network even from people that you’ve never worked with before.

So yeah, I’m Liam Darmody. I am the founder of Liam Brand Stand, which is a consultancy that helps founders and leaders build personal brands on LinkedIn that help to attract clients, talent, and opportunity. With the quick and dirty sort of pitch of what I do. I started the business about three months ago. I have been posting on LinkedIn for about four years now, really intentionally, and have just had a tremendous amount of opportunity present itself. As a direct result of me being a little bit more comfortable with sharing who I am on that platform and now it’s sort of known as a personal brand, which some people like the term, some people despise the term, but showing up on that platform can really translate to a lot of opportunity. If you’re doing it and you’re consistent about it and you show who you are, I think good things will inevitably happen. So it’s been great. I’ve been doing it for three months now and it’s new and it’s different, but it’s my passion. So it’s been really fun.

CTM Peter: Nice, and that’s beautiful because that was the next question, the elevator pitch, and you just jped right in there. So that’s awesome. Thank you very much for doing that and also would like to highlight that LinkedIn as a communication tool like that is what.

Brandon Jordan: Let’s call.

Brandon Jordan: Ah.

CTM Peter: Really kept you and I in touch, Liam, over the years because every once in a while, like every six months, eight months, nine months or so was like hey how you doing just a little note to say hey how are you and we’ve kept that relationship going ever since, and I’m happy about that. Nice .

Liam: Me as well. Absolutely.

Brandon Jordan: Yeah, that’s awesome. You know I love to see things come full circle, especially working in sales. It’s really great to see those relationships. you know, continue to build using a tool like LinkedIn. With that being said, Liam. What’s something that you wish you knew before you really started posting frequently. And I know you’ve been using the tool for a while, but what? 

What’s one or two things that you wish you knew before? Yeah, before you start posting frequently? 

Liam: Like before I started posting on a regular basis, I mean yeah, I mean I think  I think I wish I started doing it sooner. , and even more consistently. , my journey on LinkedIn has been a little bit different than I think it’s what I typically sometimes recommend to my clients because I viewed LinkedIn more as a sort of a journal that I would share with family, friends, and colleagues. So I would talk about whatever it was on my mind, right? So you know that i.

Typically will tell people you should have, you know, 3 content categories that you pull from, and every post that you put out should somehow fall into one of those 3 buckets. , I was kind of all over the place. So my network grew in all sorts of different ways and resulted in having all sorts of different people follow me, which is not a bad thing necessarily but what’s really powerful about LinkedIn is that the titles of people that are on the platform and what their specialty is and what their interests are and that’s unique because you can’t really get that on other social platforms. So that gives you the opportunity to really kind of niche down and start talking about your craft and really getting targeted with your messaging and finding people on the platform who will.

Really resonate with what you’re putting out there and engage with it and interact with it and then that sort of creates this flywheel effect of reciprocity and so they start posting you start posting. They’re commenting on your posts and vice versa. , so that’s what I would have probably done differently is I would have sort of decided like what do I want to be focused on from a messaging standpoint. , and really hone in on that. , I’m doing it now, obviously, because I’m helping people do Linkedin personal branding so that’s primarily what I talk about. But.

To that end, I’m sort of building a new network of people that are interested in that  now whereas if I had started talking about, for example, you know, just sales in general or marketing four years ago, I I would probably have a much more targeted audience to Post to.

Brandon Jordan: Okay, that’s awesome. So sounds like you know for those listening , don’t hesitate right? You said you wish you would a sorry sooner and then you wish you know one of the things is maybe focus on the messaging right? You know, ah understand what message it is that you’re trying to get out so that. 

Liam: I have to be an expert in order to post there or ah, you know what? if my boss sees it and it’s like what if your boss does see it like does your boss dislike you like you know, does your boss not want you ah sharing the information that you have and and coming across as ah as a knowledgeable professional I think it depends on the company that you’re in but by and large people are hired because they have skills and they have a personality that mesh well with the business that they’re being hired by ah and so if you can bring that personality to your office and you can bring it to your teammates and your clients and your customers then Linkedin is just sort of an extension of that right. 

Ah, and it creates even more opportunity because if you put yourself out there. Future clients could potentially find you right? and that could manifest into an opportunity for the business. , so I think that’s one of the other things is like people don’t know what to say they’re like I don’t even know what I’d write about it’s like right about. Any one of the 60,000 thoughts in your head that day that are not going to offend somebody and are relatively professional-oriented and you know that’s a great starting point.

CTM Peter: Nice so in most instances a company or organization’s social media is going to be owned by the marketing team. How and when or where would you start to involve other departments?

Liam: Well so I mean I think my view on marketing is that it’s everybody’s job right? I think you know you’re working at an organization. Presumably you like working at that organization and you. Ah, would recommend it to people and there are things about working there that you would feel like sharing, and so I think everybody should feel somewhat comfortable sharing content about, you know, their organization specifically. but I think it also depends on kind of what the definition of marketing is. 

You don’t necessarily need to have your employees going out there constantly beating a dr and posting you know press releases about your company and the latest results and the latest business Journal article, etc because that isn’t really what their Linkedin audience necessarily wants right? and it’s good to have that in there every once in a while, but what really is powerful is when you let your employees and you empower your employees to talk about what they’re passionate about on the Linkedin platform, build a following, and have conversations with people who are interested in the same things. 

And then they start to sort of say okay well this person is really interesting I like their content where do they work? Oh, they work at CallTrackingMetrics cool. Well maybe I’ll check out their open jobs or maybe they’re a company that would be able to help us with something right? So , that’s what marketing looks like I think now it’s beyond just the marketing department now obviously like.

Your company page on Linkedin is probably managed by your marketing team and larger organizations are probably a lot more focused on the messaging that goes out from their employees. They have to be because there’s a lot more risk at a larger organization but ah by and large you know if you.

Can empower your employees to leverage their networks to build their thought leadership brand that they will attract people to your brand through osmosis. So I think every basically to answer the question I think every department if there’s somebody in the department that is.

Comfortable posting content on Linkedin let them you know as long as they’re not like bashing your competitors or clients or saying things that are inflammatory like yeah, you should you should encourage it.

CTM Peter: I like it. It seems to be a way too that you could probably discover hidden talents about somebody. You might not have known before.

Liam: Absolutely absolutely and another thing that’s interesting is that at larger companies that I was at , where you know there were companies. There were there were employees in different offices. There were employees who I’ve met through Linkedin that worked at my company in a different city.

Because they saw my content right? And so like we would never have worked on the same project. We would never have been in the same room for any reason right? Software engineers that are building mobile applications like I wasn’t working with those folks but ah, they saw my content and then we would start conversations and then I started getting them posting on Linkedin about software engineering and they were you know, kind of. Geeking out about that and so there’s just a tremendous amount of connective potential on the platform that you would never really know until you start putting stuff out there.

CTM Peter: yeah I like that.

CTM Peter: That’s pretty cool. So everybody use Linkedin everybody connect right? every department I like it I know me personally right coming from a sales perspective again. , you know when I’m working with prospective clients. You know I like to connect you know via Linkedin.

Liam: Yeah.

Brandon Jordan: Either prior to you know our product demo after the demo. just to kind of you know, add that extra connection. , what are some of the concerns that you make you might hear from leadership or ah Hr , and really like how do you address those concerns, while still following a strategy that works.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a great question I think the number 1 question that people probably get or are nervous about is oh so-and-so is being more active on Linkedin They must be looking for a job. , which is totally a logical assumption because Linkedin is a job platform for the most part most people view it that way.

It’s evolving into more of a content platform. But it’s still a long way away from being widely known as a content platform, and I think that when I talk to employers about encouraging employees to post. .

It’s not the content that’s going to get them recruited away right? like people have Linkedin profiles and recruiters are very good at their jobs. So if you have talented people working in your organization recruiters are contacting them all the time. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if they’re putting out content. 

what? what matters is. Are you creating a culture at your company that is keeping them there when those recruiters are calling for something else, right? That’s the question that needs to be answered ah companies that feel confident in their culture are probably more likely to encourage their employees to share content on the platform I think it also requires a bit of a different mindset.

For employers because the days of working at a company for 30 years are over right? people just don’t do that really anymore and so you have a very short window of time or not very short but like the average employee stays at a company for like three and a half years or something like that. , so you have a three-and-a-half-year four-year window with that employee. Where you know you will pay them for the work that they do and they will do that work and you can either encourage them to help you market the business and build their personal brand and their thought leadership and see if new opportunity comes your way because of that or you’re able to make an easier time recruiting people because of that. 

Ah, or you can choose not to and I think choosing not to sort of closes more doors than you really know could be opened if you were just a little bit more open-minded to it so that’s kind of the thing that I hear the most I think the other thing obviously the the the larger. Company the more risk there is there’s more employees. There are more people that maybe don’t know what they can and cannot say if people are working at you know large companies that have thousands of clients and the people that are posting don’t know who the clients are and they say something about 1 of those brands like that could be problematic but I think that’s where you have. Resources that you can put into place that create a program where it’s like these are the things that we encourage these are the things that we really want to make sure we shy away from, you know we encourage our employees to talk about what they do and how they do it and why they’re passionate about what they do, .

Liam: And why they like working here etc like be themselves on social media on on Linkedin but these are the things that we these are the sort of boundaries that we want to set.  and if you put those programs in place. Ah then at least you’re having a dialogue about it I think that’s the other observation that I have.

 A lot of leadership teams would love for their teams to start posting more on Linkedin but they don’t want to ask their teams to do it because they say these are you know this is their Linkedin profile that doesn’t belong to us so we don’t want to ask them to post on our behalf and then on the flip side. You’ve got employees who are like well maybe I would love to post on Linkedin but I don’t know if my. Executive team would be cool with it. 

So I’m just not going to do it and they’re not actually necessarily like talking about it at all. So that’s why having a program in place and having somebody that can facilitate sort of making both sides of that conversation feel comfortable. . Is is is a valuable thing. So I think employer branding is still very nascent.  and will become more and more popular and more prominent across companies. But right now it’s still I think pretty early.

Brandon Jordan: That’s cool. So like maybe having some sort of social media guidelines or you know social media meetings amongst us. Ah amongst your company. , yeah that makes perfect sense.

Liam: Yeah, or even like coming up with like you know a content calendar where you say these are the topics that we would love to talk about this week we’re not telling you what to say or how to address it but we would love it if you would post about this type of thing and share your perspective. , you know use hashtags that are relevant to the company itself.

Brandon Jordan: Yes.

Liam: you can start internal slack groups where people can drop the links to posts that they’ve put out on Linkedin so other people can go and support it. , you know you can really do a lot. There are some companies out there doing some really innovative things and they’re all over Linkedin , and that is good for business.

Brandon Jordan: Yeah, that’s great shout out by the way shout out to Francis Miller she runs our social media club here at Ctm and she does an amazing job. So yeah, we are very familiar with that and it’s something that we practice what we preach here at Ctm. Yeah.

Liam: Nice, nice. That’s great.

CTM Peter: Kind of an aside you know with Lincoln I’ve just started to dive into it a lot more probably in the last year because I’ve just kind of kept it off to the side and didn’t eat. It didn’t care about it. But as I’m seeing a lot of other social media platforms. You know, implode or.

CTM Peter: Just go awry with their content linked seems to be tried and true. It seems to you’re going to get real honest-to-goodness content in there. Not a bunch of hot air that you might find in other social media platform. So I’ve started gravitating to it a lot more? Yeah, so anyway.

Liam: Nice.

CTM Peter: So kind of ah along those lines. You know how much time do you think? Would you recommend? ah an individual might spend in Linkedin order to start seeing results and would that matter if it’s somewhat an entry level job or someone up in the c-suite how much time you think should be dedicated to see any results.

Liam: It’s a great question There’s not a sort of 1-and-done answer.  I think it depends on what your objectives are and what you want to get out of it I I would say you know if you’re posting something 3 times a week maybe right ah 2 or 3 times a week you’re engaging the people that are commenting on your on your content. You’re commenting on their content if they’re creating content. , you know, spending some time just finding new people in the platform to follow or connect with that are ah. Within sort of whether it’s your ideal customer profile or ideal client profile or you’re trying to just find people that are interested in the same things as you topic-wise  you know 30 minutes a day is is an investment that’s not really that much I mean you can burn through 30 minutes on Tiktok or Instagram in no time right? I mean.

Liam: 30 minutes is 30 minutes but it goes by pretty quick and that’s a lot of cat videos and whatever else you’re watching on there and you’re not necessarily to Peter’s point you’re not necessarily seeing that on Linkedin as often. There are still certainly people that post that stuff. But you know the idea of that.

That Linkedin is a content platform they’re trying to make it so that it’s the professional social network and that means you’re going to get value from the content that you’re seeing some way professionally. , so you know posting thought leadership ah posts engaging with people who are doing the same. , it’s a good use of 30 minutes and I mean Linkedin the problem is that I think people are so accustomed to hearing that social media is like a quick fix on the dopamine side of things you know, ah and and. You know people are putting. You know you put out a Tiktok and it’s like that Tiktok could reach thousands of people because for no apparent reason. It’s just like it’s there right? Linkedin is a little bit less focused on the virality of things they’re more focused on the value that you’re delivering and the conversations that you’re having so.

Liam: They expect you to spend more time on the platform in order to get the results that you might otherwise see somewhere else a little bit faster because the idea is that you’re building a network and you’re strengthening that network by creating that content. So , that that is kind of the.

The benchmark I would say is you know if you can find 30 minutes to do stuff on the platform every day that’s that’s time well spent and make sure that you’re adding new people to your network you can add up to 150 people to your network on a monthly basis or monthly weekly. It’s one of the 2 , and so you know.

Tapping out of of that is a good thing to do and you know that takes time so I’d say 30 minutes a day.

Brandon Jordan: cool so thirty thirty minutes a day. , and then you said a hundred fifty people a week correct. Okay, good old good old Google.

Liam: Yeah, let me? Ah yeah, let me find out how many Linkedin.

Hundred invitations per week I think is the the limit. So yeah, so if you’re adding 20 people a day. Ah you know you’re slowly but surely getting up there and. And if you’re using sales navigator. You can see who’s posted on Linkedin in the last thirty days that’s a filter within sales navigator so you can make sure that the people that you are connecting with are actually posting on the platform. , which is also beneficial because then there’s that reciprocity component.

Brandon Jordan: Awesome! So you you talked about cat videos on Tiktok earlier right? and you know different social media and this age of information right? Everybody pulls in inspiration when it comes to content with Linkedin specifically like where can. You know teams get inspiration. You know for for content. , you know you said it’s a professional network right? like where do you pull  inspiration from.

Liam: I mean inspiration can come from anywhere I think from from my number one sort of recommendation once people have set up a profile that is really strong on Linkedin i.

Brandon Jordan: Right.

Liam: I have a saying; I say, “Follow your fascination and fill your feed.” That means finding people who are posting about things you’re passionate about, whether it’s marketing or any industry you’re in.

Brandon Jordan: I like that.

Liam: Follow them so their content comes into your feed, and then you get inspiration from that. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t prepare my content in advance; I sort of post it on the fly. Some mornings, you wake up, and it’s like, “Man, I don’t have anything to write about.” So just scroll a bit, and it’s like, “Oh, actually, I wouldn’t mind talking about that. I have a thought or two there.” Oftentimes, I’ll leave a comment on somebody’s post, and that comment ends up becoming inspiration for a post in and of itself. It’s just things going through your mind as you’re scrolling through other people’s content.

In an age of Chat GPT and AI bots, you can go into ChatGPT and query, “I want you to act as an expert product marketing manager for X industry. Here are three target customer profiles that I’m looking to create content for on Linkedin. Give me 50 recommendations for content ideas,” and then it spits out all sorts of ideas. We are living in a time where I don’t think writer’s block is even possible anymore. You just have to go out and query some things, and you get inspiration.

CTM Peter: Yeah.

Liam: Those are my two recommendations. Follow people who are posting content that you like, and you will find inspiration. Engage with those people; you might inspire yourself to post something. And then use the other resources that you have at hand, like Chat GPT, to recommend some things.

Brandon Jordan: This is the third time. It’s good.

CTM Peter: It’s interesting when you talk about the 30 minutes that you should spend on Linkedin. Approximately 30 minutes. As soon as you said that, I thought, “Wow, I’ve got to switch it from 5 minutes on Linkedin and 25 minutes of cat videos on Instagram. I’ve got to flip those, too.”

Brandon Jordan: It.

Liam: Ah, yeah, I mean, and that’s honestly what I tell people. It’s like you’re watching, you’re consing content on other social media platforms, but you’re not building relationships and connections with people. That’s where the power of Linkedin is. You are investing time there, consing content, having conversations, but that, in and of itself, is an investment in your network. You know what they say, your network is your net worth. So I view time on Linkedin not as a waste of time.

Brandon Jordan: , as in the word, what.

Liam: Ah, view it as an investment of time, and that’s different than any other social platform for me.

CTM Peter: Cool, alright? , well, that kind of brings us to the end of our time together, Liam. , we always like to end these things but you know what would you like to plug? What’s what do you want the world to know.

Liam: Well, yeah, I mean, I want the world to know that it is the world is evolving, and people are getting more comfortable sharing their voice and talking about, you know what they know and what they like and what they’re passionate about, personally and professionally is.

Is blending more than ever before and as a result of that, it’s important to know that your personality and your personal brand are as much a part of your professional success as anything else. So it’s important to know that if you share that, you will create more opportunity for yourself.

 I always say that Linkedin is not a social media network; Linkedin is a Serendipity Manifestation Network, which is a cheesy phrase and it’s a mouthful, but I believe it wholeheartedly. If you decide to.

Brandon Jordan: .

Liam: Start sharing content on the platform, you will be able to manifest serendipity and create opportunities for yourself that you wouldn’t otherwise get and that’s why personal branding is so important, and that’s why I started a business to help leaders and founders do that. So if anybody listening is interested in. Taking your Linkedin game to the next level and you want to build a personal brand, I’m here. You can find me on the platform; I live there, and I’d be happy to help.

CTM Peter: And when exactly who should they look for on Linkedin to find you.

Liam: Liam Darmody or Liam’s Brandstand. thanks for having me.

Brandon Jordan: , that’s it for episode 29, and yeah, we look forward to connecting in the future.

CTM Peter: Liam, this is awesome.I have enjoyed this so much and I look forward to talking to you in the future about more of this stuff. 

Brandon Jordan: Ah, yeah, yeah, this is dope, man. This is dope. Yeah, way, man.

Liam: Awesome, man. Yeah, happy to do it. Thank you for giving me the chance. I appreciate it!