How to Start from Scratch on LinkedIn w/ Kyle Coleman

UX Marketing

Blake: [00:00:00] on the podcast today, we have Kyle Coleman from Clari. Kyle is somebody that I follow closely on LinkedIn, not necessarily with the same job description as me, but I watch what he does with his LinkedIn content, and it's a really good example that we can all follow.

[00:00:15] So we're going to dive into a lot of those principles today. But first off, Kyle, how are you doing? How are you feeling today?

[00:00:21] Kyle: [00:00:21] I am doing so great. Thanks for having me. On.

[00:00:25] Blake: [00:00:25] I'm excited for this. I always like to start with context about you so that people know that it's not just a crazy person on the other end talking nonsense, but that you're actually credible.

[00:00:34] So let's get some context on Kyle. What's the story of your career so far? How'd you get started? How'd you get to where you are now?

[00:00:42] Kyle: [00:00:42] Yeah. Good question. So I started in B2B tech. In about 2012 I got a job at an advertising agency in San Francisco, B to B tech advertising agency. And from there I was introduced to, actually one of our clients was a VP of marketing at some other ad tech company in San Francisco. He left his company to go join Looker.

[00:01:05] A, Looker was a seed funded, actually, I think at that time it was an angel funded company. I had never heard of it. I had a little bit of exposure to the business intelligence and the analytics space and opted to jump ship from my not so cushy advertising job over, over to, I was a sixth employee at Looker.

[00:01:24]stayed at Looker for about six years. Grew the SDR team from just myself to a team of about 60, as the company itself. Went from six employees to about 800 or so. And I left and helped scale the, the revenue at Looker from about a hundred K in RR when I started to about a hundred million in ARR when I left.

[00:01:44] And they were, Looker was by Google in the summer of 2019 for, two and a half billion dollars. So that went pretty well. And, I joined Clary as the head of sales development and sales enablement back in April of last year. one thing led to another over the course of the summer and early fall, and I ended up taking on an expanded purview on the marketing side.

[00:02:06] So I, we have this newly created department that we call our growth department that encapsulates a lot of top of funnel sort of teams from demand generation to field marketing to SDR and enablement. All in our little growth team here.

[00:02:21] Blake: [00:02:21] Awesome. Yeah, I've, I've heard more and more companies doing that, trying to combine sales and marketing, not necessarily combined the departments, so just get them to collaborate more. I think that's

[00:02:29] Kyle: [00:02:29] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, Clary itself as a revenue operations platform, so we're trying to drink our own champagne here to a certain extent and make sure that all the teams will as aligned as possible.

[00:02:39] Blake: [00:02:39] Yeah, no, for sure. Okay. And then my second question of context here before we really get into the actionable advice is if you had to. Yes. Or, or just tell us what your professional super power is. What would you say? Yeah.

[00:02:53] Kyle: [00:02:53] Hmm. Good question.

[00:02:56]

[00:02:56] Oh, this is a tough one. I feel like I am able to. I, I feel like I'm able to communicate with people really well by understanding their success criteria. So for what I mean by that is when I'm speaking to a sales person, I'm not speaking to them about MQL or leads or website visitors.

[00:03:16] I'm talking to them about pipeline. And then conversely, when I'm talking to my marketing person, I'm able to kind of switch gears and talk more about the metrics that matter to them, and so I can help bridge the gap between the two. that's one of the beauties of the beautiful things of coming up as an SDR and, and sort of staying in that orbit that's right between sales and marketing for the last seven or eight years, is that I have developed the capacity to be able to speak.

[00:03:39] Both languages really fluently and be able to, ensure that each team, each hand, I should say, knows what the other hand is doing.

[00:03:48] Blake: [00:03:48] they are. They're definitely different languages. It's kind of like Spanish and Portuguese. They're kind of related, but they're totally different.

[00:03:55] Kyle: [00:03:55] That's very true.

[00:03:57] Blake: [00:03:57] All right, well let's, let's dive into it. We're going to focus a lot on, on LinkedIn today, so a lot of people out there, micro-influencers entrepreneurs side hustlers that are thinking, how can I really be on LinkedIn if I am just trying to build out this small little product?

[00:04:13] I don't have much to say. If you were getting started in that situation, if that were you, how would you start from zero.

[00:04:21] Kyle: [00:04:21] It's way more about educating than anything else. And if you can position yourself as somebody who has a strong perspective. That is helpful. That is meant to educate and not necessarily sell, sell, sell all the time. There's nothing stopping you. you know, it's a great forum just to go and say your piece and the people and whether you interact with the people on LinkedIn, on the platform.

[00:04:45] Is so much more refreshing than other platforms like Twitter and even Facebook where people don't, there's no skin in the game. From a professional standpoint. People don't need to be professional. You know, their income isn't tied to how they show up on these platforms, but LinkedIn is not that way.

[00:05:03] LinkedIn gets, you get the best versions of people, and so you get really useful feedback and you have really good conversations as long as you yourself are being authentic.

[00:05:14] Blake: [00:05:14] And, and why did you yourself start posting on LinkedIn? What reality sunk in or out? Like at what point did you realize that that was something you should be doing?

[00:05:24] Kyle: [00:05:24] Yeah, it's a really good question. And I was giving this some thought, over the weekend. The answer genuinely, and this sounds super corny, but it really is true, and it's, it's also the reason that I've stayed in management for as long as I have, as opposed to, you know, kind of. Being more interested in individual contributor role closing business or something like that.

[00:05:42] And the reason is because I genuinely like helping people. I feel like I, I, it's what gets me going. It's what motivates me. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning. I, I feel like I have, I've learned a lot over the years. I've failed a lot over the years and I want to help people avoid similar pitfalls and accelerate their careers and achieve whatever it is that the goals they set for themselves.

[00:06:04] And I feel like this for a month that I've found on LinkedIn is pretty good way to do that.

[00:06:16]Blake: [00:06:16] yeah. So I wanna I wanna move on to your specific process because if we go onto your profile and look at what you're doing, the engagement's really good. And like you said, all you're doing is trying to educate people, not necessarily taking withdraws, but making deposits to people and helping them out.

[00:06:35] So I'm curious if we could just dive through some specifics about your process. So first and foremost, like what, how do you decide what you want to post.

[00:06:44] Kyle: [00:06:44] Yeah. Good question. I think before I answer that, if you don't mind, like I think I'd like to talk a little bit about what I did before I started posting because I didn't just wake up one morning and decide to go and try my hand at this. I, I did spend a few weeks trying to follow people who were. In a similar space as I was, or we're doing things similarly to me and tried to understand what made them successful or what made their content engaging or whatever it may be.

[00:07:13] I'm not talking about trying to understand the entire LinkedIn algorithm or anything like that. I, you know, I. That's way above my pay grade. But I would follow people like Josh Braun or Colin Katniss, or, Justin Welsh, some people like that who have been consistently putting out really solid content and have a big following and are also in a similar space as I am, which is the sales, a SDR and sort of enablement space, but also kind of with a lean toward leadership and a lot of different ways.

[00:07:39] And so I followed them for a couple of weeks. And I started engaging with their content first responding to or making comments on their posts, but also responding to other commenters, asking questions, trying to see what kinds of things sparked conversation. And that was the foundation that I needed to really understand who the audience is.

[00:07:59] And this wasn't a super long process. Like I said, it was only a few weeks, so it's not. You know, like I spent half of my life doing this. It was just to kind of get a feel for, I could get my finger on the pulse before I started trying my hand, and that is what really informed my methodology. Does that make sense?

[00:08:15] Blake: [00:08:15] No. Yeah, for sure. And that's a great precursor to it because it's not, you don't always just have to dive right in and then start failing right away. You can do some research preemptively and then prepare yourself a little bit better. So then now, now that you are posting, like what, what was the first.

[00:08:31] How did you start getting your ideas for what the post, cause I know there are going to be a lot of people listening in that say I just have no ideas. I'm not a creative person, but we both know that that's totally false. Anybody can be creative in their own way. How did you find your creativity.

[00:08:46] Kyle: [00:08:46] I asked the team, I asked the team here at Clary and said, what are the things that you all are wondering? Or, you know, I, I've become a little bit removed from the day to day of the SDRs here at Clarion. I would just ask them, you know, what? What kind of questions do you have top of mind? What kinds of things would you like my perspective on?

[00:09:04] I also thought about questions that I get over and over and over again when I do. Panels are, when I speak with other SDR leaders or something like that, and I literally have a Google doc. The title of that Google doc is LinkedIn posts, and I just have a huge bullet list of things that I, that either the SDR team here at Clary came up with or that I've brainstormed over the course of the last few weeks.

[00:09:25] And it's just a running doc and I just, every idea that I have, whenever I have it, I, you know, just pop up on my phone and just jot it down. And. I flushed that idea out whenever I can. I would say that's the other part of my methodology that is, I think, important, which is to be really intentional about setting time aside for when you do this.

[00:09:46] So this is part of the reason I started doing this was because I felt like I was busy, but I wasn't super intentional with how I was staying busy, if that makes sense. So I really wanted to dedicate time to just think. And to think and to write. And so with those two things in mind, I need a topic to write about.

[00:10:04] So that was kind of my one, my one two step here was get your subjects down first and then set. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of time. It's, you know, 15 or 20 minutes a day where you just sit down, undistracted, blank piece of paper. And I just write down the things that I'm thinking about.

[00:10:21] Blake: [00:10:21] And so once you have your ideas and that, and that's super helpful too, because that works for you. That might not work for other people. So, and some people might not have an SDR department too. Be able to discuss things with. So key point here is find out what works for you, whether it's that or something completely different.

[00:10:39] But then once you have some ideas and you start compiling that and being more comfortable with actually creating content, you've got to get into the more technical things. So you start testing. What time should I post? What formats do I use? So I'd love to get your ideas on that as well. Do you think it matters what time you post?

[00:10:55] Have you seen anything that indicates that if you post a certain time, it's going to work out better for you, or do you just kind of go at it.

[00:11:04] Kyle: [00:11:04] Yeah. I think I care more about when I'm at my best. Then when the LinkedIn audience is at their best. So I'm trying to optimize for when my brain is working well, and that for me is just in the morning. Sometime between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM local time. I'm here in California. So it's specific. And I think just by happenstance, that happens to be a good time.

[00:11:24] You know, it catches the East coast and the middle ish of their day. It catches the West coast when they're waking up. It's still the end of the day in Western Europe. So I feel like that's probably a good time, but honestly, like I haven't spent too much time thinking about it. I care way more about when I'm personally going to create.

[00:11:41] Good post good content. Then when the audiences is ready for it, I do know that the weekends are no good.

[00:11:47] Blake: [00:11:47] Sure. Yeah. That makes sense, huh? People want to stay away from work at all costs. What about formatting? I know that most of your, your, your mostly text based, on your posting. How did, is that just because you feel more comfortable as a writer or you've seen that those text posts just do better than a video or something else?

[00:12:09] How did you decide that that was your format?

[00:12:12] Kyle: [00:12:12] Yeah. It's interesting because I have learned a lot about effective. Email writing over my, my tenure and my, my life has an SDR. And so many of those principles apply from writing a solid outbound email to writing a good LinkedIn post, short snappy sentences, a lot of white space, simple calls to action, you know, kind of the basic stuff.

[00:12:34] So that format just translated really well from what I'm used to doing in my day job and what I have been doing for years and years. So that's the primary reason. I think the secondary reason is because. Words and word choice matters a lot to me and I pour over the words more than I care to admit. I would say, I'd say I probably read my first drafts in a couple of minutes, but then spend the other 15 or so minutes, really just editing and trying to come up with the exact right wording.

[00:12:59] So I just feel more comfortable controlling exactly what I say in written form versus kind of this word salad that I'm spitting at you right now.

[00:13:08] Blake: [00:13:08] And then once you get like the tactical stuff down, which clearly you're, you're, you're there, you've got it. Well handled. So I'm curious from that point on, how do you maximize your engagement and and get the most views possible from that content? What, what's your process or what have you seen that helps with getting engagement right off the bat?

[00:13:28] Kyle: [00:13:28] I think that, you know, I, I don't participate in any of like the real engagement pod type things or I don't even know really what the options are out there. I have. a few people that I, I always send myself to as a kind of a sanity check just to make sure that what I'm saying is off the rails. So they're aware of when I'm going to post things.

[00:13:50] But I think the best way to do it is just organically. And what I mean by that is when you post your thing, hopefully somebody is liking or commenting on it, you know, relatively in a short timeframe. And. Honestly and authentically and genuinely respond to the commenter. A lot of times this will be a great way, not just to get engagement in a current posts, but to also generate ideas for future posts.

[00:14:12] So I think that there's something that LinkedIn likes about when posts get early engagement. you know, with some signal that the, the, the content of the post itself is of decent quality. So I would really highly recommend that post your thing. And then again for me, what I do is I set a little reminder 30 minutes after I post it just to go back and check it and check in on things and respond to as many comments as I can.

[00:14:33]if I, if I have the free time, then yeah.

[00:14:36] Blake: [00:14:36] Do you, do you respond to every single comment or just ones that you feel actually prolong the conversation?

[00:14:43] Kyle: [00:14:43] Yeah, every substantive comment. So, you know, some people will come in, it'll just tag one of their coworkers or something. No real need to respond to that, in my opinion. But if somebody asks a question or, or extends my thought or something like that, I really do try and genuinely engage with them. And what's been really cool, and part of the reason I do this as well is not just for.

[00:15:00]the, the posts and the engagement on LinkedIn, but it's to genuinely learn from people. And so I've had, I've made thousands of new connections as I started doing this, and I've had a lot of really great conversations. This one included that I, I'm just learning for people about what's working for them, what isn't about, their day job, talking shop about SDR and enablement and sales and, growth marketing and all the things that I care about.

[00:15:22] I'm having really good conversations. Otherwise never had, if not for me, just putting myself out there on LinkedIn. So that's a really nice benefit of doing this.

[00:15:30] Blake: [00:15:30] Yeah. I mean, that's another side of the equation that gets lost you. You started by saying, I was asking you, Hey, how do you create your content? You're like, Whoa, slow down. I actually looked at other people's content first, and that's the side that gets left out all the time. People want to post links and regurgitate information and just spit into a void, all of the stuff that they want people to hear, but then there's no engagement on their end.

[00:15:53] So do you set time aside yourself to look at other people's posts to engage with them, or do you just kind of allow that to happen naturally?

[00:16:01] Kyle: [00:16:01] I'm more on the natural side there at Blake. Then, you know, as intentional as I am about my own posting, I will allow that to happen more or less organically. There are people that I seek out though, cause I know they post regularly. I know they post every day. People like Jeremy Donovan or. Josh Braun, you know, Colin Adams, as I mentioned before, I, I try and look out for their posts and just to keep tabs on what's top of mind for them.

[00:16:22] And a lot of times it's industry trends and things like that. So it's another good way for me to just to keep tabs on what's happening, in the universe that I care about. But, you know, aside from the handful of people that I go out of my way for, I don't really, I'm not too intentional about that.

[00:16:37] Blake: [00:16:37] This leads me to my, to my next question, which is, you personally, how do you measure if a post is actually...