Networking with Digital Marketers
How to amplify your message
Building a network creates authority and allows you to stand out from others. However it is not easy and takes a lot of time to build relationships that are provide value. Some key reasons to spend time as a digital marketer building your network.
- Good to give back
- Relationships build trust
- Can help through out your career
- Allow you to define yourself
- Can build authority for your personal brand
Here’s an industry secret: LinkedIN is not the only way to get known!
Enjoy the show about Networking with the Joanne Weiland, CEO of Linktoexpert.com
The transcripts are also below! If you would like to be a guest, learn more and schedule your podcast with Jeff Stanislow here.
Also, if you like this and want to up skill your digital marketing networking and sales sills using social media. Check out this course!
The Host: Jeff Stanislow, CEO of Chief Internet Marketer
The Guest: Joanne Weiland of Linktoexpert.com
Transcript of the Digital Marketing Podcast with Joanne Weiland of Linktoexpert.com
Jeff S.: 00:00 Hi, this is Jeff Stanislow, the chief at chief Internet marketer, like to thank Joanne Weiland for joining us today. Joanne is an expert networker and we're going to talk about how important network is today and for us digital marketers out there and for anyone for that matter. How are you doing today, Joanne?
Joanne W.: 00:20 Terrific. Thanks Jeff.
Jeff S.: 00:23 Yeah, thanks for joining us. You are one to consider, you know, maybe an expert in networking. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your past and you know, what makes a networking so important?
Joanne W.: 00:37 Well, it's kind of interesting just to, because of the fact that when I was in my forties, I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up and I started taking those personality tests that many of us take, and it kept saying I was a connector and I thought, well, big deal, everybody's a connector job. What I did was when I found that out, I started to, you know, think deeper on the types of other people I know, and they really did automatically just connect me to other people. Like you do it as well. So I feel like you're a natural connector too. So when you do it, you just think everybody does it I just didn't realize it, but back then too, I was at the Nextel store and I was complaining that my cell phone back then couldn't add any more contacts, and they said, "well, we never knew anybody that knew more than 800 people," and I said, "well, I have to delete somebody to add somebody else." Anyways, so again, Jeff, you're one as well. So it's interesting when we are, we just do it naturally.
Jeff S.: 01:45 I mean, that's a lot of connections. I would imagine your network is probably far more vast than what the phones can handle back then, but maybe now. So today, tell me a little bit about your network and how many people that you're connected to and why is your title as being the chief connections officer. Why is connection so important to you?
Joanne W.: 02:09 Well, what I found was many years ago, Jeff, I used to work with business owners around the country and I was always doing push and pull marketing, they call it because I was working for a vendor like Intel that would sell to a distributor that was out to a reseller and that would, you know, sell to an end user. Well, what you really know, you probably know and many of the people that are listening is that really if the end user doesn't buy it, the reseller doesn't buy it and the distributor doesn't a stock it. So I really had to learn to do push and pull marketing. With the push and pull marketing you really need to know who's who meeting. Like you and I are calling, networking today and you had to know who was the decision maker. And so you really did have to network to get to know who was who and who even is the real decision maker because many of them say they are. So once you found that you could do a lot of what I called global alliances and I still do those because of the fact that I realized the power of networking is also the power of knowing who the influencer is. Who's the one that's going to make the decision because a lot of times, I mean I've worked with $17 billion companies and it was only two people in the whole company that could make the decision to hire in our case experts, consultants, coaches, team builders, trainers, facilitators and authors. So just as an example, a lot of people think is the power of networking, but it's really about who you network with because if you noticed a lot of people go to many networking meetings, myself included, I used to do this and you're just kind of hoping to find a needle in a haystack. In my opinion, Jeff, now what I do is I try to find out the type of person I want to work with, look for that type of person, call them directly and just ask them if they would get together with me on zoom because usually they're not right here locally like you and I are but, or get together for coffee if they are or something because of the fact that even though I do believe that we have to continually stay in front of people to keep the networking going, but a lot of times to really make something happen, you really have to go directly to the person that you want to make it happen with.
Jeff S.: 04:34 Yeah. I completely agree with you and understand trying to find the right person is a difficult task and a lot of times you have to build a network to find the right person that can help you out. It's building trust and building your network and building these relationships are key to success. Tell me a little bit about how the digital landscape has changed networking, and what are some of the things that you found work well on networking online and then maybe telling me a little bit about Link to Expert, your business?
Joanne W.: 05:09 Well, what I did find is what we were talking about a second ago, but the other part of it is that I don't want to discount the networking because way back my mentor at the time taught me something that is priceless when it comes to networking. I used to think like, we just talked about that I was so terrific that I knew all these people. Well, he really busted my bubble Jeff by telling me, Joe, it doesn't matter how many people you know, it matters how many people know you and what you can do for them. I was like, what? I mean literally it floored me because again, I was just so thinking, it's so cool that I know all these people, and it is, but it still doesn't matter if they don't know you or you can do for them. So when it comes to technology, what I have learned too from also being the called the networking queen is that then once you do meet these people, make sure you have a follow up system using technology like you're talking about to continuously and frequently stay in front of them with your press releases, with your blogs, your interviews, like how you've been so kind to interview me today. You know that you and me both take that interview and distributed to the world because of the fact that people need to see and hear and know you. They even claimed now, 37 times they have to see you before they think you're credible and they have to see you or hear you in different ways. Like this interview, like a blog, like an article like you know that you created, you just wrote a new book, whatever it is. Jeff, thank God we have technology now because it's so much easier than when we used to have to create the newsletter you printed, distributed in the mail, you know, that would take forever. Now you can, of course you have a newsletter sent out to tens, hundreds of thousands of people, like we do twice a month every month for the last eight years because some people want to see it in the newsletter. We also, of course you don't use all the social media because of the fact that that's easy too, to distribute information. Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, we send out about 35 to 40 tweets every day on purpose and just to stay in front of people but about our different experts because what we do, by the way, is connect executives with experts. The other part of the technology is good, but so many times that we really don't realize there's still power in traditional marketing. The traditional marketing often comes into play depending on, again, the age bracket or the type of client. In our case, we know a lot of boomers are the ones that hire our experts. So every month for the last eight years we've created and sent out press releases to our tens and hundreds of thousands of connections because even that is powerful. We still work with traditional media publications that we get our experts in as a subject matter expert or that they can even have their own column, their own article, all different ways that we're constantly working with the media, radio networks so that we actually work with all their radio hosts that they actually can get on all these different people's radio shows or podcasts and even Internet TV shows. So it's endless and it is maddening. I'm not going to kid you, but I think the biggest mistake people make with all of this, to sum it up is whatever you're doing, like you again being so kind of, you know, invite me to be on your show now that we have this created, make sure you distributed as many ways as you can to show case that you're the expert or whatever you want to showcase that you are because if you took the time to create it, you know, don't forget to distribute it.
Jeff S.: 09:15 Yeah. I, I think that brings us to a good question here in understanding, and we've had some conversations in regards to Link to Expert and how it really fits in the marketplace. Our recent dialogue, and I think a direction that you're going is it's talking about how you amplify someone's creation or someone's content or try to amplify their authority. Tell me a little bit about that maybe we can clarify what Link to Expert does. I would imagine a lot of people think it's Linkedin. So, you know, maybe you can differentiate that as well.
Joanne W.: 09:52 Let's do it with a differentiator. Most people use Linkedin to find a job and that's terrific because that is not what we're all about. And when they've tried to find a job, of course they want to have their profile, their resume and stuff as well on Linkedin. Trust me, we use Linkedin for other reasons, which I'll get into in a minute, but the main differentiator is Link to Expert was designed when you want to hire somebody for a project or you're looking to be the expert to be bound to do projects for people, meaning coaching, consulting, training, professional speaking, facilitating, all those types of things that people hire you for the project versus full time employment. That's the biggest difference. Again, I said it earlier, but we do use Linkedin then also to amplify the messages. What we mean by amplify is, again, most people know a lot of people, but they don't realize a lot of times the people in their mailing list, in their contacts, in their databases are their friends, families and neighbors and nothing against them, but my family, just as an example, we'll usually still say to me to this day after been doing this since 2007 what is Link to Expert do again? Do you do this? So they're not usually going to hire you or recommend you because they don't always get it because again, they're your friends or family. So what we do do is help you be seen, be heard, and be known worldwide with these. So if you want to be known as the expert, we help you find clients fast as well as clients find you fast. That was what it was designed for because what I found is most experts are really brilliant at what they do, but they're not always good at marketing. So getting back to your original question about amplifying, again, they can still, and we do recommend that they still send it to their database, but what we created was a unique database exchange program. So every one of our members actually gets their message, sent to everybody's contacts, nobody gets each other's contacts, but they always get exposed every month to everybody's contacts and even a couple of times a month. This is another way that we really believe in networking and collaboration because of the fact that you can't know everybody. I can't know everybody, but together we know a whole lot more. So if we can take that same message again using this interview as an example, and not only are Jeff and I sending it to all our contacts, but then all these other people's contacts, in our case, it reaches hundreds of thousands of people will get exposed to our interview without Jeff or I do an anything extra because our system automatically does it for you. We designed it on purpose that when you take five minutes to upload again, review, just as an example, it'll automatically go to hundreds of thousands of people.
Jeff S.: 12:59 Wow, that's amazing. I would imagine you work with a lot of consultants and entrepreneurs. As a matter of fact, I was just reading through a press release. You've got three keys to enjoy life as an entrepreneur or consultant and there's some tasks that you mentioned about handling to help you out. So eliminate, automate and delegate. Can you talk to us a minute about that and your thoughts on those?
Joanne W.: 13:26 Well, I have read hundreds, even, probably thousands of, but I didn't always keep track, of books. What I always found when I wrote, read books or you know, I listened to audio books or whatever, Jeff, I always feel like there's a nugget or two or three depends, but the top three nuggets that I found from those hundreds of books that I read were those three words you just said and to sum it up, eliminate, automate, and delegate. The easiest way to do it is just for the next two weeks, spend time recording everything you do. You'd be shocked if all the things you do as an entrepreneur and then after the two weeks look at it and see what things can you eliminate because trust me, I personally think business is called business because if you really look at, it's called busy-ness, a lot of us entrepreneurs create busy-ness because we think we're doing business. There's a lot of things we're doing that we don't need to be doing. We can eliminate it. Second, look on there what can you automate? Like what I just described, what we do, and we worked with the programmers to automate so many things to allow us to magnify and amplify people's messages. It's all automated. I don't touch it, nobody touches it. It just automatically sends out email blasts automatically sends out e-newsletters. We have systems to send out these press releases to these hundreds of thousands of instead of somebody sit there manually doing this. So that's the automate and meet as many things as possible and that eliminates a lot of your time wasted as well as even to pay somebody to do a lot of those things. They basically automated for you one time and then of course delegate. My overview on that would be ask yourself, can somebody else do this as good or better than myself? If they can delegate it to that person and teach them so that they can do it, because again, if it has to be done more than once or monthly or whatever because it can't be automated, but that way you, the entrepreneur can focus on what you do best because there are things on that list that only you can do. So if you take your time doing that and usually only the things only you can do or the things that you're passionate about, it's your natural talent, God given talent, whatever you want to call it, your passion, your purpose. When you're doing that, you love what you're doing and do what you love life just hums. Everything is beautiful. So part of all this eliminate, automate and delegate is also to get you back to why you usually became an entrepreneur in the first place because you weren't doing it so that you could work 80 hours a week and feel exhausted. You guys will go back and get a job and nothing, it against jobs, but that's usually, you know, we wanted to become an entrepreneur instead of having a job and ,so I really feel like that is the key to happiness, to success, because of the fact that you really can then focus on what you do best.
Jeff S.: 16:34 Yeah. I like the thought process of really thinking through what you're doing over a period of time, whether it's a couple of weeks, and then just identifying like those types of buckets that you can put things in. You know, what can you eliminate that's wasting your time? What things are you doing that are repetitive, that you can build an automated process for? Then the other thing is what can you delegate to someone else to do for you so you can focus on your business? Those are some key takeaways. I appreciate you sharing that with us. Joanne W.: 17:06 Well, I know you're actually a good one to automate as many things as possible. So my hat goes off to you too because not everybody does it. A lot of people know it, but they don't do it. Jeff S.: 17:16 I appreciate that very much. So, Joanne Link to Expert has been around for a long time and I know you're having some great success in trying to amplify people's messages and create authority for people, but even that is difficult and time consuming. I believe you guys have some services that you can help these people with, and doing that for them as well. So I could look to delegate some of that work to yourself or your team. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Joanne W.: 17:52 That's a really good idea. Sure, and that is one of the reasons we created Link to Expert because again, when my mentor taught me that people had to not just know me but know, and I don't mean just me, know us as an expert and what we can do for them. You have to make your expertise known. What I also find with that with the way we can distribute it, but the key is too Jeff, is getting the expert that is really brilliant again, to explain what they do for people in layman's terms that the average executive or entrepreneur, because entrepreneurs hire other entrepreneurs that have different areas of expertise, but getting them to explain it, Jeff, in a way that somebody will understand it and say, "wow, I really need to hire Jeff today and I really want to buy one of his e-courses," as an example, because of the fact that I understand why that e-marketing course about marketing can really make my life easier. So we distributed the information to amplify and magnify it but again, if the message isn't clear about your expertise we're kind of back to square one, so we really need you to either work on your message or we even have different, of course experts, that can help you because constantly I'm fine tuning my message too. So I don't mean that it's easy because different times you have to say different ways and actually even to different audiences like when I'm on your show versus somebody else's show that has a different audience but the last thing too that I think most entrepreneurs really miss out that we shine in is creating multiple streams of income. We just talked about your e-courses or I did your e-courses just as an example. That is a terrific source of income. We actually have 181 ways you can make money using Link to Expert, all these different multiple streams of income. Of course, I do not ever expect anybody to do 181 ways, but the point of this is that you as an entrepreneur, as no one wants to be known as the expert, should have passive income, should have residual income. So yes, you can still do your active work. Maybe as you know, speaking on stages maybe as consulting or coaching one on one or coaching to a group, but just imagine if we helped you create these other streams of income that you are also beginning while you're sleeping, while you're on vacation because of the fact that you have that area of expertise. Now, why don't we take it and utilize it to make it make money for you instead of you just always having to, again going back to you might as well have a job if you're just only doing an active income in streams are only active because you only have so many hours in a day and you know, don't you want to spend time with yourself, with others, with your friends, your family, your kids, your grandkids. So I just felt like, you know, we really need to be smarter as entrepreneurs and create ways that we can make money. And many of them just like you and me are doing this is what I would call joint venture. Many of them are designed to do it with another expert or multiple experts to create an affiliate or joint venture with other people and then you all benefit from it and you each just add your slice of expertise. So there's just, I could go on and on, but I'm trying to slow down here.
Jeff S.: 21:36 Great information that you can provide and a lot of value in regards to how you think about doing business and those three that we mentioned just the process I think if our listeners are just jotting that down they definitely got a takeaway of some value and then how can one build a system for passive income or some type of an automation income where they can take their skillset and leverage that because at the end of the day a lot of professional services and consultants can earn a nice living and what have you, but you're limited by the amount of time, energy, and effort from the hours that you have available.
Joanne W.: 22:25 Right, and we provide all the technology. So Jeff, you just basically can move in to your Link to Expert website within two hours that traditionally takes people six to eight months to create, and it traditionally cost $10,000. With all of our technology, with all you know, the ability to sell your multiple streams of income as well as promote yourself and magnify and be known as the expert and amplify all of that is only $2,500 with a investment guarantee, meaning if you actually use it, you actually get the $2,500 back. So we do that on purpose, to keep your accountable so that you consistently and frequently stay on top of your marketing. Marketing meaning like again this interview, it's not like you have to spend $10,000 to create a really cool brochure. Not that you can't do that, but you know even this is to me considered a really important marketing piece because you're allowing me to explain what we do and that's why you should be on interviews. We work with hundreds of podcasters and radio show host because we do think that this is really important when people are deciding if they want to hire you, if they can just download and listen to that interview, it really allows them to recognize if you're the right expert for their project.
Jeff S.: 23:47 Well that's excellent Joanne. As we kind of wrap this up here, I think we've got some key points across. I think that you have a valuable asset that someone would consider. How would one contact you if they wanted to find out more about Link to Expert so they can reach out and, network with you and connect with you.
Joanne W.: 24:10 Sure. My landline, our office line is 727-791 7338, that's 727- 791 7338, and our website is Linktoexpert.com, thats L I N K TO E X P E R T, and then you can just email us at info@linktoexpert.com and we would love to hear from you because the other thing is that we learn from others all the time. We keep creating new modules, new technology, new ways to communicate with people because of the fact that nobody knows everything again. That's what is the power of us all collaborating. We have one Twitter expert, just as an example, Jeff, he has 200,000 followers. So I don't know everybody, I only have 30,000 followers and it took me 10 years to get 30,000 followers on Twitter because people drop off, you add more people, but he'll retweet our staff. We have another guy in England, 56,000 followers, he retweets our stuff. Another woman up in D.C. She has 120,000 followers. So as you can see, that's the power of magnifying and amplifying, not just who we know and even our different members and they send it out to their people, but just those few four people. I could go on and on, but I'm trying to keep it short. You know, how many hundreds of thousands we amplify your message by them re-posting it or redistributing it for us.
Jeff S.: 25:52 Well, that's fantastic and I appreciate your time today, Jo. I think that there's some value here in regards to not only what you do, but some takeaways that as a listener, you know, jots that down and gets down that process of identifying their tasks and then puts them in the buckets. I think that'd be effective for them and shared your information. So if someone's interested in Link to Expert that they can reach out and connect with you. So I wanted to wish you a wonderful day and thanks for your time.
Joanne W.: 26:26 Well, and you know what, one more real quick thing. If they ever do want to see if this is a good value to them when they go to Link to Expert, they can click on, consider the value, the second tab at the top and it takes 5 or 10 minutes just to see how much time they really do spend on their marketing and exposure to the world and how much time it takes them, and how much is your time worth just to see if this is even a value to them.
Jeff S.: 26:54 Kind of an assessment then.
Joanne W.: 26:55 Yes.
Jeff S: 26:57 Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. Well, Joanne, again, thanks again, and this is Jeff Stanislow, with chief Internet marketer. I just appreciate your time and have a wonderful day.