This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey everybody, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. So glad you're here. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm gonna talk today about making money using LinkedIn.
Or perhaps, what are the opportunities? Or at least growing your professional relationships, which can lead to other opportunities using LinkedIn. My opinion on this has also changed a bit in recent years. We see a lot of people using social media to promote something who tend to focus on platforms like Instagram. And of course, we've talked about that from time to time.
And I like using Instagram, and some people are able to be successful in their business using Instagram. But going forward, I actually think it's going to be harder and harder. There is a great deal of uncertainty in terms of the algorithm there. It's very much a pay to play situation, as well as the fact that so many people are trying to do essentially the same kind of thing. So that's always hard.
And you may be able to break through doing that. Or you might actually be more successful if you've looked for something different. So LinkedIn on the other hand is all about work, right? Contrary to networks like Instagram. So if you're hoping to offer more of a professional service, even at some point, even if you're not sure what it is yet, you should definitely be actively adding connections on LinkedIn.
Maybe doing a couple of other things too. This is something that doesn't really take a lot of time. It can be done just every now and then. And even if you are selling soap or some other kind of consumer product, you might think, well, I definitely don't have any use for LinkedIn or something like that. I still don't think you should ignore it.
So we'll talk about all this in response to a question from our listener, Abby. I'll also tell you about one of the worst pitches I've ever received through LinkedIn. I actually got it very recently and I'm still kind of shaking my head about it. So I'll tell you about that in this episode coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. Stay tuned.
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Hey, Chris, this is Abby and I've been listening to the show for a while now. Congrats on hosting your fifth season. I have 2000 LinkedIn connections, many of which are people I know reasonably well and have taken the time to keep in touch with. I often leave comments on status updates to congratulate someone on a new job. I leave endorsements for people who've helped me and I have several endorsements myself.
In other words, I've put a lot of time into developing my LinkedIn skills. So what's my next best step to go from idea to income? How can I profit from either helping people use LinkedIn or something else that I haven't considered? Thanks for your help, Chris. - Abby, thank you so much for being around.
Thank you for the great question. Helped me to think a little bit about LinkedIn. And I think listeners, I decided to kind of divide the answer here because this is a next level question. Like Abby is actually doing really well. So let's talk about somebody who's not in the place of Abby and is kind of like, well, how would I use LinkedIn, et cetera?
And then we'll circle back to her needs. So I tend to think about the personal relationship model. I've called it like the small army model before, like how to recruit a small army. I wrote a blog post about that many years ago. We did a classroom episode on the small army model here on Side Hustle School.
It really is about thinking how can you be as helpful as possible? How can you get to know people and add value to their lives? Which I know is a kind of a cliched phrase, but ultimately if you were helping people, then that's what you were doing. So for example, there's a hashtag open for work. People use that when they are looking for work on LinkedIn.
Like all of those people are in search of some kind of employment, right? So I don't think you should try to go out and establish relationships with all sorts of people you have no connection to. LinkedIn doesn't like that so much either. But one of the reasons why LinkedIn has worked so well is because of the many natural connections that all of us have to one another. So once you have even a hundred or so LinkedIn connections, you can go and see like who are the second level connections, who are the third level connections.
What you'll notice is that they are massive. Like there are so many interesting people that you were connected to by second or third degree. So if you're just getting started, maybe set up a habit of inviting, let's say five people a day to connect, even just three people. Start with close connections and slowly branch out from there. And when you do that, don't sell anything directly.
You're not trying to really pitch anything. Nobody likes that. And what you should do is spend some time in your personalized LinkedIn feed, do exactly what Abby is doing, comment on different threads, consider if there's a LinkedIn endorsement you can post. And then simultaneously, while all this is happening, get to work on what you will eventually offer for sale, some kind of skills training or course, for example. So Abby has been doing that for a while.
And now what she needs to do isn't so much about LinkedIn itself. It's more just kind of looking around and saying, okay, I know all these people, all these people have chosen to connect with me. Some of them have even left me endorsements. Why is that? Like what do these people see in my life or in my online profile life, at least, that they choose to follow and interact with?
And this is kind of like starting any sort of service, whether it has to do with any social network or otherwise. What am I good at? What do I have to offer? How can I take these answers and create some kind of concept that is then distilled into some sort of product or service? And that's what we talk about all the time on Side Hustle School, or that's what I've written about in my books.
So now Abby's going from idea to income. What is her specific idea? I think that's the question. She doesn't actually have a specific business idea yet. So I would focus on that.
Let's get to that business idea. And then she's got all those connections. Maybe those connections can actually help. Actually, that's my final point. If she's not sure, why not ask some of them?
What do you think I'm good at? What's the greatest need in your life right now? Maybe not every person has a great answer and maybe you get some random answers too, but if you ask enough people, you might see some sort of pattern emerge. Now last, I said I would tell you one of the worst pitches I got recently, which leads to the lesson, like be careful about blind pitching. Don't just send the same pitch to everybody all the time.
I got a pitch on LinkedIn from somebody who said, they had a great opportunity for me working in an insurance company. And they were like, we've looked at your skills. We think you'd be really good at this. It was also geographically well-targeted. It was like in my area.
And I was like, wow, you do not know me at all. And I don't expect everybody to know me, of course, but if you're gonna connect with me on LinkedIn and pitch something, then you should probably know something about me. And working in an insurance company would probably be, I don't know, the worst job in the world for me. If you happen to work in an insurance agency, by the way, I'm not saying that's terrible. I'm saying for me, that would be terrible.
For me, I would not be very good at it. So listeners, I promise I will never try to sell you insurance. All right, good luck, Abby. Let us know how it goes. And listeners, if we're not connected, by the way, on LinkedIn, feel free to add me and I will add you back.
Let's just mutually agree to not try to sell each other insurance. I think that would be good for everybody involved. Thank you for listening today. If you have a question, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. I'm so grateful for you.
We've got another episode coming tomorrow. Be sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
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From the Onward Project.
