¶ Episode Intro
looking for you in terms of guidance around how would you approach. a new business starting out on LinkedIn, which to me, it's an opportunity,
That is Alexander Buckridge and architect based in NYC that is in the process of starting his own architecture firm. And if you're an architect interested in how to leverage LinkedIn and other channels to acquire clients, then you don't want to miss this. I tell Alexander the secret way that companies grow their LinkedIn following.
Ah, I didn't know that.
Then we dive in how to manage both his company page and his personal profile.
Cause I wasn't sure how to approach that in terms of, running it. And I think, yeah, it makes more sense.
And we end by covering how to send a proper launch email out to your network.
Let's say I would send it out as Hey, this is upcoming individually. Is there like a tactic,
¶ LinkedIn Strategies
Let's talk about, LinkedIn, it sounds like you've been exploring some opportunities of building relationships on LinkedIn and maybe looking for opportunities there as well.
this week, I set up, which takes five minutes. It's obviously not a big deal of setting up your own business on it.
But what I will say is that as it is a new, fresh thing, and I would love to get your thoughts on it as well about as I'm going to launch the brand, as I want to use it more intentionally to direct traffic to, and speak to people who would be interested in working together, would be get your thoughts on, frequencies and just generally As I launched the brand and leading up to it and driving traffic, through, studio Bucky versus myself.
and, I would be curious just to get your thoughts on that as well, because You are a LinkedIn pro, looking for you in terms of guidance around how would you approach. a new business starting out on LinkedIn, which to me, it's, an opportunity, right? it's a blank slate I've been posting, but, this is a bigger play to a certain degree and maybe, another direction.
Yeah. Yeah. So
¶ Setting Up Your LinkedIn Business Page
this is important. So you have a LinkedIn personal profile and you're saying you've started a LinkedIn business page for Studio Bucky. the basics of this, I think important to understand, one, so there's some great things with when you start your own page. You can invite up to, I think it's 250 of your own connections every single month
Ah, I didn't know that.
right? So it repeats every month. So you're going to see a zero out of 250 on your company page and your company LinkedIn page, and you can go ahead and it's annoying because you have to literally manually click 250 people that you want to invite. But you can also filter it. maybe for you, it's filtering down to people in NYC, it's filtering to a specific
Yeah,
you know, that they're working on and you can go ahead and just invite them to it and then they're going to get a notification and maybe 25 to 50 percent of those people are going to accept that invitation and that's fine. So I'd focus on that for the first few months, just on Studio Bucky, just to get it up to a point where it has, few hundred. People following
¶ Maximizing Personal Profile Engagement
it. I think that'll be good, but what's also, I think, important to understand right now is that I wouldn't let that company page distract you too much I think the vast majority of your value and where you're actually going to find opportunities is going to be through your personal page. And that's for a few different reasons. One company pages on LinkedIn are just so much harder. To get engagement on.
And I know this because I've helped with several different ones, not own with growth detect, but with monograph as well. even just the level of content that you have to put out in order for it to really perform well it's different. It's so much different and so much more difficult to get there on a company page than it is on a personal page.
¶ Leveraging Creator Mode
So on your personal page, I don't know if you have yet, but if you haven't, I would highly recommend turning on the creator mode. Do you know what that is?
I don't.
the steps are really simple, but like anyone can Google this and I'll probably put it in the show notes as well, but it's just a button. I think you go to your profile, you click on somewhere there's a turn on creator mode, but it's two steps do it. What's important with that creator mode is that it gives people the opportunity to follow you. Instead of just connect with you, right? when we're talking about linkedin, there's a few things, right?
You want your profile to be public There's absolutely no point in a linkedin profile being private or requiring someone to know your email before they connect with you Like that is the most Anti business development thing you could possibly do. Like you don't want to add more friction to the, to building a relationship. You want to make it easy and seamless for people to build a relationship with you.
But, it even lowers that, that barrier to entry into your world and your environment even more by giving them the opportunity to follow you. So if you go to my LinkedIn page, for example, I've got almost, I think at this point, almost 30, 000 followers. and that's not 30, 000 connections. I might have half of that in connections.
There's going to be 15, 000 connections, but 30, 000 people are following me because they came to my profile and they click the follow button rather than clicking the connect button. and so as a result, they still get updates when I post things. And so it just helps you. It basically just helps you build your network faster. and easier if you're going to be posting more frequently.
¶ Building in Public and Content Strategy
The, other thing is that I think you're already starting to do this really well on LinkedIn, just from what I've seen. Is that you're actually, you're kind of like building in public. A little bit, which is good. Like you've mentioned, you've already announced that you decided to leave snarkitecture, that you're starting your own venture. and it sounds like, maybe people have at least supported you in the smallest sense, but, reached out to you because of that in the larger one.
So I think being like, especially over these next couple of weeks, because you said you want to launch the website in July, like I think doing more of that build in public is totally fine. Almost like you're sharing your thought process as it's coming to launch. So you're saying we've been working on the website. Here's what we're focused on now for the website. Really excited to launch this on July 1st. feel free to reach out if you're interested in talking about these projects, right?
Or maybe there's another post being like, I've worked on a lot of different projects with a lot of different clients in the past. here's the ones that I'm most focused on moving forward. let me know if you're interested in chatting. And you might not even, honestly, you might not even need a CTA in these posts. It's it's almost self evident, right?
yeah. You're on
in that situation and they're reaching in there and they're seeing that post, they might just reach out to you and be like, Hey, I'm interested in what you're doing. And so it's not necessarily about trying to turn every single post into a call to action, right? because people are going to follow you for the value that you're sharing, Because eventually, again, I think right now, first couple of weeks, you're building in public.
You're being clear about what it is that you're doing and maybe even some of the challenges and the decisions that you're making. But you want to, you want it to be more relevant to your potential clients than to the architecture audience. It's a little bit of a double edged sword. will end up making a post to other architects rather than to their ideal clients.
because I think after it launches, then what you're actually going to do is you're going to do like value posts and you're going to say, here's a common challenge that X, Y, Z has when they're doing an interior renovation. here's what you can do to fix that. they're very specific to your client. They're speaking and they're providing free value to them. And what that does is it helps to elevate your authority.
It makes it clear that you know exactly what you're doing and that you can offer value to them. And you'll notice that there's this weird thing. Like I see it on my profile as well. There's posts that I know are going to perform well, they're just great at building my network a little bit and getting my reach out there.
So if I want like a dopamine hit, I'm going to post one of these that I just know are going to perform well, then you have the really value posts and you'll see it even if you scroll through like my previous posts, there's ones that do really well, they get hundreds or even thousands of likes and engagements. And those ones that get 50 to 100, and those 50 to 100 are very specific. And they're providing a specific sense of, value.
and talking about addressing a specific challenge, but as a result, the people that engage with that are much higher intent, right? So I can follow up with those people that engage with that post and say, Hey, are you interested in doing this? Are you interested in starting with, starting a project? Thanks for engaging with my posts recently. is this a project that you're working on now? So you're almost using that as your, that's like your warmup, right?
You're just monitoring who's engaging with your things using you as an excuse to reach out to them. but yeah, there's a difference basically between high intent posts, which are generally going to be lower engagement and then low intent posts, which are probably going to be higher engagement.
yeah, no, that, that makes sense. there's, similar principles in some ways on, even on an Instagram and how you use it as well in terms of that kind of thing. that's helpful in terms of when I share stuff, from my personal, which, was speak to behind the scenes of the next few weeks and thoughts and also. I was just wondering about, do you put, the company in it tagged or
Yeah, I would do that. you could tag your own company, make sure that what you have to be careful of whenever you're tagging someone in LinkedIn or something in LinkedIn, is that if that entity doesn't then engage with that post, it actually like decreases the reach of it. So if you tag StudioBucky in your post and you post it, just head over to your StudioBucky account and make sure you engage with it.
You're engaging with yourself, but like go and like that post and maybe even leave a comment, like excited about. Next few weeks are excited about launching in the next few weeks from the studio Bucky
Why is that? It's just a analytical thing,
Because they assume that I think the LinkedIn algorithm just assumes that if you're tagging someone in a post and they're not engaging, then that means that you were just like fishing for engagement from them. And so they're going to devalue that post, assuming that it was like a, almost like a spam attempt.
Interesting.
so it's something for everyone to know if you're tagging someone in a post, you want to make sure that they're actually going to engage because if they're not, it's going to actually, it's going to hurt the reach of that post in general.
Wow.
the other thing to do on your profile is make sure that, especially with all of this branding, like toss in a LinkedIn header into the branding that your partner is doing. And then also in your featured section, when you turn on creator mode, then you have the opportunity to add a featured section and you're going to want to add a link to your studio, Bucky website, as well as a social image there, and the call to action there.
And even the call to action, when you turn on creator mode, because then you can add a button. you can add a button below your name. There would be chat about your project, chat with Alex, start your project. It's the same one that you're using on the website. but you're going to use that same one and the LinkedIn header would be, click the link below to start a conversation and the featured section is going to be, cook here to have a conversation as well.
Yeah. Yeah. So you're just getting that kind of going.
You're getting that fly by. So then you have multiple ways. People are going to land on your site. They're going to be able to schedule an appointment with you. People are going to see on LinkedIn and you're putting them all into the same funnel, right? Because you're just going to be optimizing this one funnel for now on this one page and getting them to book a meeting
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, good. Cause I wasn't sure how to approach that in terms of, running it. And I think, yeah, it makes more sense. I've obviously built up my own thing off that anyway. So just keep going and tag it as you go and just make sure that the content is appropriate, it's, speaking the right language.
Yeah. And I can send you, I'll send you some links after our call as well for some things that I put together. I'll also share that in the show notes here, I've written one specifically about exactly what to do on your profile to set that upright, and then I've written a couple about content as well, so I'll share both of those with you.
Perfect. Yeah, no, that's great. that'll allow me to drive that.
But I think, you're going to find the highest intent leads out of LinkedIn.
yeah, I think that's right.
probably, and that's, it's almost like a slower, it's that more long-term relationship
The longer
of talking about, like you're already doing in person. Yeah. the LinkedIn is going to be a longer play. I'm sure that Instagram, you should test it,
I
Instagram's going to be. I would imagine it's going to be more of these like one offs. Like people are going to come in and be like, Hey, I'm ready for a project now. This is exactly what I was looking for. and that might happen. I don't know, once every few months or something, or once a year, I have no idea, but
yeah. Yeah,
yourself out there and see which one, see where you're getting the best leads is probably what I would do. Not that you have to stop doing one or the other, but it tells you how you can focus attention one way, one way or the other.
yeah. I think I just, yeah, I'll try and do both for the next few weeks here and just see how things pan out in terms of like with the launch of the brand and the build up to that, which is helpful. ultimately it's a poster, Hey, websites live, blah, blah, blah. it's I definitely want to explain a bit more about the brand. And I think Martha is going to do that herself in terms of her own post or whatever. I might just get her to tag me in it or something.
And, that, I think that's just a nice way to do it. and yeah, I do need to sit down and start working out my content for the next few weeks now, you know, so it's, just particularly about
¶ A Word From Our Sponsor
that.
¶ How To Launch A New Brand
Yeah, you can do that. Something else to think about with a launch, which I now have, experienced multiple times, launching my own brand or launching, different features and things that are happening through monograph, it's that, a single launch will not work. You have to continually remind people that you've launched something that they're, or else they're not going to know. So I wouldn't think of it so much as a singular event. Like you could have a launch week instead, right?
You're going to obviously have a day where you're like, it's live. It's opening. I would post that the next three posts. I would continue to remind people it launched. this is what, here's one of the sections, right? Um, it launched here's another section. So it's almost actually each of the sections that you have on your
I was just gonna say, be about,
That's what I would do. It's like a shorter version of that or to screenshot of it and something. And so you're just continually reminding people that you've launched because if you don't. singular day launch is not going to perform the way that you want it to. You're going to get the most juice out of it if you just continue to remind people that this is something that you're doing and even if it's a monthly exercise for the first year where you're like, to all my new followers.
just so you know, like I've started my own practice. Here's what I'm doing. This is what it is. yeah, you just want to continually be, Hey,
yeah.
where I'm at. This is what's going on.
you're gonna turn into that annoying guy,
yeah, you think that it's annoying, but it's actually not. I think that's the funny thing about it. It's we have so much hesitancy about doing that because we're like, someone's gonna, someone's gonna be, someone's gonna leave a comment that's saying, you just posted about that. I know, you just mentioned it a
Well, I did, yeah, I guess.
they're not going to. Or if they do, it's just yeah, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to remind people, to do it because 90 percent of your audience didn't see it the first time you posted it.
And it's hey dude, cut me some slack here, I'm trying to build my own dream. Yeah.
yeah, building a dream over here.
yeah, it's just come on, it's give me a second, and then the LinkedIn thing, it's more thinking about those posts. launch week, I think is a really nice idea. and then, yeah, another thing just about rollout, separately is just in terms of email, I've obviously got a lot of people, so you would just send that out as an email as what's your, because you've done like a couple of launches, you said, so obviously, you've got LinkedIn, you've got your socials, what about your email thing?
Is, do you think that's just like a Hail Mary situation of yeah, boom, everyone.
You could consider how many people do you have that you want to send an email to?
there's a hundred quality ones I would say. I would
that's awesome. That's amazing. So I'll tell you what I did when I was switching. Tyler Tactics to Growth Attacked. that's a weekly newsletter. And so actually I think for either the three or four weeks leading into that, I said that it was happening. And so I gave them, I said, Hey, just so you know, Tyler Tactics is switching to Growth Attacked. This is the new brand. It's happening at the beginning of the year. And that was my reminder at the top of every single email.
because I had learned from these experiences, right? You can't launch one time and expect people to know if they see an email from growth detect land in their inbox after seeing Tyler tactics for a year. They're not going to know what it is. so you could consider maybe building out a sequence for these people and saying, Hey, I'm like the first email is, If you haven't heard, I'm a, this is where I'm at. I'm going to be launching my website. I'm going to be launching it in a couple of weeks.
I'll keep you updated. hope to hear back from you soon or something like that. And then you're giving yourself an excuse to then send another one that's Hey, websites live. take a look, let me know what you think.
this would be to individual from the work email. Let's say I would send it out as Hey, this is upcoming individually. Is there like a tactic, for, how you like say I have a hundred Do you bcc, is there a way to put that into like, where it all goes out or,
that's where it would be good actually to use something,
like a plugin.
I use ConvertKit to manage my email list. You can't legally put people into an email list unless they've opted into it. so you could look at something like even like MailChimp or something like that, you could use a tool like that. You could do the blind BCC, with the entire list and things that you're doing with that, but what you have to be really careful about, because you have a brand new domain name. Actually, this is something that I wouldn't expect any architect to know, but right.
You have a brand new domain name, and if you send out from your brand new domain name, from your brand new email, 100 or 200 emails in a BCC, that's going to get flagged by Google and it will probably actually end up in spam. Because you haven't spent any time to warm up your email address. So if you want to do that, I would consider you could literally Google this. There's different like warm up email tools. They're relatively cheap.
It might be like 19 or, 40 bucks a month or something like that. But essentially what it does is it warms up your email such that when you send out 100 of them, your domain name, isn't going to get slammed by Google. Or something like that. And so it literally warms it up. Just, it warms the domain itself up to, so that you have the ability to send out a bunch of emails. If not, then I would be sending those emails one by one. That might be a safer way to do that.
If 100, maybe you're just trying to send out like a, maybe it's not a sequence and you're just trying to send out like 10 or 20 a day. But just be careful. Like you do want to monitor, you want to monitor, make sure that it's landing in their inbox, um, and not in their spam, because if it's landing in their spam, then you want to, you're going to need another approach.
Yeah, fair.
It's re they've recently gotten more aggressive with it, which is why it's even more pertinent and important now. they've really hammered down on, spam
Yeah, I'll take a look at the warmup and yeah, maybe, figure out a little bit of a tactic there with, how that goes out. Cause yeah, that's, it's important that to get that in under their nose, you know,