Episode 80 Leveraging LinkedIn Polls for Engagement

Intro

I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from ledgers to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same banking. So people business and I'll be talking with those people that make banking grade here and Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

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0:00:29 - Jack Hubbard: Happy Thursday, everybody. Hi, Brynne.

0:00:31 - Brynne Tillman: Hey, Jack, how are you?

0:00:34 - Jack Hubbard: Great. We're having a great week and I'm looking forward to this topic. It's something that we use often, and I think it's something that we use well. And it's a really good way to reach out to very targeted people who might be interested in what you're talking about. So we're going to talk about polls today before I start, you know, here we are. Next week is May already, and I wanted to let everybody know what the lineup for the next couple of weeks for Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

0:01:08 - Jack Hubbard: I'm thrilled. Next week, next Wednesday, May 1, Dave Brock is going to be my guest. Dave and I probably could have talked for 4 hours. He is absolutely brilliant. He has written a couple of great books and we talk all things sales. And then back to the LinkedIn train. Richard Bliss is going to be my guest on May 8. He's terrific. And we had a wonderful, wonderful interview. And the third one I got to talk about because his name is Kurt Knudsen, former banker, sold his bank and wrote a book on how to sell your bank. And it's a great tutorial.

0:01:50 - Jack Hubbard: And so those are the next three sessions we're gonna have with Jack rants with modern bankers. We have some great guests coming up in the summer. We're gonna kinda take the summer off. We're gonna do some best of s and we'll talk more about that as we go forward. But today I wanna talk about polls. Let's start with what they are. I'll kinda get this kicked off. And then you do the yes hands. You're really good at that.

0:02:16 - Jack Hubbard: I discovered polls through you. And one of the things I found out is that if you do this right and you're not product pitching, you can really understand what's going on in your marketplace. I'll give you an example. I've seen a poll very recently about a book club. And when you start your poll, you have a few characters, I think it's 200 or 250, something like that, where you can kind of get a little context around it. And then you can have multiple answers. So you can have up to four answers.

0:02:54 - Jack Hubbard: And I'd like to get your pitch on this around how many? So the first answer might be yes, we have a book club at our bank. The second answer might be no, but we're considering it. The third answer is no, we're not considering that. And then the fourth one is other. And that's where you can kind of comment on that. And that's where you can keep your polls kind of moving along in terms of people wanting to see them and comment on them and get engagement on them. So polls are a great way for you in your marketplace to understand some really key issues in your marketplace without trying to be focused on banking products.

0:03:38 - Jack Hubbard: Now, you're good at the yes ands, Brynne. And so before I talk about why you would recommend we do the polls, what would you add to what I talked about around what a poll is?

0:03:48 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah. So that was a fantastic explanation. There's 140 characters in your question and 30 characters that you can add to each of your options. I love that you added the other Sharon comments as the fourth. I always do that now because originally when I started with polls, I didn't do that and people would be frustrated that their answer wasn't there. And that's the last thing we want to do is frustrate them.

0:04:16 - Brynne Tillman: So I made sure that we always add that. Other sharing comments. You can also run the poll. I think you can do one day, three days, one week, two weeks. If you're using this for business development, I actually recommend doing it for the two weeks because you have a poll, you have it out there, and you can continue to share it with people, and we can talk about how to do that in a little bit, but you can continue to share it with people over time.

0:04:45 - Brynne Tillman: And this poll ends up being very valuable tool for many reasons. I'm happy to list them in a minute, but the longer you have it out there, the more data you can collect. I like the two weeks.

0:05:00 - Jack Hubbard: I do, too. I think that's a terrific idea. Let's jump into why and what are some reasons that people would do this? And I'd like to have you piggyback onto that answer, if you wouldn't mind, and talk about how often you think people should do polls. Why and how often, Brynne.

0:05:21 - Brynne Tillman: So I'm going to go the back door and do, or the reverse and I'm going to go how often first and then the why and the how often. If you are using this that we typically recommend, I'd always have a poll open because this is a great way to engage with folks. So, you know, do two a month at two weeks. Obviously most months have a little bit more than two weeks rates, but you can continuously have one running.

0:05:53 - Brynne Tillman: The one thing I do want you to keep in mind is the last four or five days of the poll. You don't necessarily want to send it out because if someone is a few days late, by the time they get to it, it's already closed. Even though you keep it open for two weeks, maybe after twelve or 13 days, you can start the next poll so that you always have one going. So a new question, all those fun things. So that's the. How often do you need to do that? No, but it's such a great way to start a conversation and it's so simple that it's very nice to always have one.

0:06:32 - Brynne Tillman: So now I'll answer kind of the why. Well, there's a bunch of whys. The first one is you can pretty quickly discover a challenge. So let's say if you had unlimited line of credit, what would you invest in? More inventory, more talent, more equipment, other sharing comments? And so it becomes a little bit of a discovery question, kind of fun. Maybe you wouldn't even say a line of credit. You might just say, if you had unlimited funds, what would you. Right.

0:07:06 - Brynne Tillman: And so now you've got this discovery ish question out there and you can find opportunities to start conversations with folks. You can use this to gauge interest in topic. Right. So, you know, I'm creating an ebook on X, Y and Z. What are some of the things, you know that would intrigue you to get you to want to read that ebook? Right. Lots of, you know, what is the interest on it? Or I'm writing an ebook. Here are the three titles.

0:07:39 - Brynne Tillman: Option four is share other what title resonates with you most? So there's a little bit of research in there. It's a little bit of fun. And then, by the way, after the poll closes and you create that post, you could send it to all those people. Thank you for your input. Here's the final post, or ebook or whatever that might be. You can find out, I'm throwing some stuff out kind of randomly, but industry trends, what's going on there? What are they forecasting? What do they, you know, if we reach out to bankers, what does Q four of 2024 look like for you? Or what do you predict will happen with the interest rates? Or when do you see the housing prices and mortgage rates kind of equaling out? Right. Whatever it is. But for us, we want to engage bankers. For the bankers, you want to engage the business owners in your community.

0:08:36 - Brynne Tillman: So you want to figure out kind of what's happening in the trends, what do they perceive as happening? It will give you content. So, you know, I said it gives you topics that you might want to do, but the actual poll can be content. You can use that as a study. You know, just a thought. You know, and for me, the number one thing that a poll does from a business development standpoint is it helps us to start conversations. These are people that are engaging, and we can use all of the reasons that I just stated to start those conversations, because that is our goal with LinkedIn, to start more trust based conversations without being salesy.

0:09:22 - Brynne Tillman: Asking them for their vote and then sharing the results of that poll isn't salesy. You're creating that trust. And I think it really has a great impact. So I know I went kind of ranting on there, Jack, but that's my why it's good.

0:09:41 - Jack Hubbard: And one of the complaints that I get from bankers is, well, okay, if only 6% of my network is going to see my poll, gee, that's a pretty small number. But you have a secret as to how to get more votes on polls by doing some one on one things. Talk about that.

0:10:04 - Brynne Tillman: So, you know, just, it's a myth. If we post it, they will come. If we build it, they will come. If they don't come, you have to invite them over and over again. But there's so directly, there's a little paper airplane, and you can send it now up to ten people or ten messages at a time. You just send it as a separate message. You can't put their name in, but you can put in there. You know, as a banker, we'd love your one click poll.

0:10:33 - Brynne Tillman: As a business owner in X community, we'd love your one click poll. And now you're going to take inventory of your connections. You can search them and identify. You could do this through exporting or search, and you identify the people that you'd like to vote on your poll, and you ask them to vote on the poll, and then they vote on the poll. And now we have that opportunity to engage the one thing, not the one thing. LinkedIn does other things right, too. But one of the things that LinkedIn does right is you can't see how other people have voted until you vote.

0:11:10 - Brynne Tillman: And I love that because it creates fomo fear of missing out. I want to see, I may not care about voting, but I want to see how other people vote so they'll vote. So really, really important. You can also email this link to other people, they'll click through. I mean, there's so many ways you can get people to vote. You could create, and this is a little like advanced step, but you can take that link and create a QR code. You could do it for free in canva or in bitly bit ly.

0:11:46 - Brynne Tillman: You take the link to the post, you create the QR code. And when I was teaching a class, it was really a speaking gig from the stage. I had the QR code up and I had everyone scan it and then wrote on the poll right from their phone.

0:12:04 - Jack Hubbard: Right.

0:12:05 - Brynne Tillman: Because it came up. So there's lots of ways that you can draw traffic to that poll. But what's really great is you get to see everyone that voted how they voted, and you also got all those comments. Excuse me. You have all those comments to engage with. And polls are just a great way to get people excited to have a conversation.

0:12:29 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah. I know one bank that uses polls to actually help them determine what kind of seminars and webinars they should be doing for their audience. And it's really simple. It's like business owners are always trying to get better educated. We're thinking about doing a couple of educational seminars during the year. Here are some options. Which ones would you select? There are so many as here. I think the key with polls is to not be pushing product and not to try to get the marketplace to say, yeah, I'm going to borrow money in 2024. I think that's a big mistake.

0:13:15 - Jack Hubbard: And here's the other mistake I think a lot of people make, Bryn, and that is they let the poll die. In other words, it's two weeks, it's all done. They get all this data and then they just let it sit there. What are some things you recommend? You starting to talk a little bit about this, but what are some things you recommend we do after the polls?

0:13:37 - Brynne Tillman: So the people that vote, if you are a first degree connection, you can just send them messages. If they're a second degree connection, if you have sales navigator, you can send an email or you can send a connection request. Remember, they've already engaged, so it's appropriate, I think, and you don't have to do this with everyone but everyone that you want to engage afterwards. Right. So what I do is, Jack, thank you so much for voting on the poll. We ended up with 127 votes.

0:14:09 - Brynne Tillman: I gleaned a lot of insights around x, Y and z, and I'd be happy to share them with you in how you and your peers or your colleagues have focused on this topic, whatever that might be. Let me know if you're interested. Now, you could go, I wrote a blog on it, or I'd love to have a conversation about it. You decide what your call to action is, but the call to action is, I'm happy to share how you benchmark to your peers.

0:14:39 - Brynne Tillman: I mean, who wouldn't want to know that? Now, granted, they could go back and see it, but if you go a little deeper into the purpose of that poll and maybe you find a podcast in a related topic, or you find maybe your poll and this I used to do all the time. I forgot. I would go out and find an article. So I would include that article in the text above the poll and do a poll around the article. And then afterwards I could say, you know, interesting how much aligned our votes were with the article. I'd love to share what this means in the industry or how this is going to affect you and your colleagues, whatever that is. It's very, very purposeful.

0:15:27 - Brynne Tillman: And the fact that someone voted on that topic, you know, there's an interest. So you're likely to get a conversation. Now, side note, if they are already a first degree connection, sure, it's easy to click message right from your desktop, but consider sending a little video message on mobile. You know, if they're a first degree connection, you could just say thank you. They get to see you, right? Thank you so much for your engagement.

0:15:54 - Brynne Tillman: I'd love to share the insights that I gleaned from you and your peers. If you're open, if you're, you know, if you're open to a quick conversation, let me know. I'm happy to send a link. If you know them well enough, I've put a link below. I love to catch up with you and share kind of what's going on.

0:16:12 - Jack Hubbard: And I think, go ahead. I'm sorry.

0:16:14 - Brynne Tillman: No, no. I'm just kind of squirrel all over the place.

0:16:19 - Jack Hubbard: I think this is where you want to make people curious and you say, I found some really interesting insights. Now, if you didn't, you know, but if you found a couple of really good insights that you could connect, let me give you an example. And I don't know if this would work, but if you were to be, if you're in Seattle and you have vertical iq, they now have local data and this stuff is amazing. So you can look at the dentists in Seattle and you can look at how many, what their growth are, what their growth position has been over the last couple of years, and you might put a poll out around that. And you say, based on some information that I've gleaned, there are XYZ dentists in Seattle. I'm curious if you're planning on growing my dental practice, staying about the same, purchasing another, whatever the case might be. You could put the questions together, and that way you can continue to connect the great tool that vertical iq is. And you could do it with Relpro, too, by using these polls that are very, very powerful.

0:17:31 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah, I love when you start with data and insight, you're proving out an article or an industry trend that's out there and you're. I'd love to see if this aligns with my network. This is globally what's happening. This is locally what's happening. I'd love to see even micro locally based on my network. Are we seeing the same trends that have been reported? Those are great. I love that. So starting with an industry trends article, I think is a fantastic way. It's also way less salesy. There's nothing salesy about that.

0:18:13 - Brynne Tillman: I love that check. The more I think about, the more excited I get.

0:18:17 - Jack Hubbard: Well, let's talk about another concept then. So in the recording that I did with Richard Bliss, one of the things we did talk about was polls. And I'll tell you how this all came around is that Richard Bliss is very involved with Richard Vanderblohm with his annual algorithm study. And we talked about some of the unique things in the algorithm study for 2024. And polls did come up. And so I said, look, talk about polls. He said, here's a hidden gem on polls.

0:18:49 - Jack Hubbard: Said, send polls from your company page. You've got a certain number of people that are following your company page. And he said, in my experience, you get better response from people that are following your company page. And I've done a couple of them on our modern bank or company page, and we have about 1000 followers. And it's true. The percentage of people that are answering is better. And when you send your one click vote to the people who are first degree connections and also following your company page, the response rate tends to go up a little bit. I don't know if you'd like to comment on that at all.

0:19:25 - Brynne Tillman: I'd like to comment that. I love that. I just learned something new. That's my comment. That's awesome. I don't know. I have never, I didn't even know you were doing that. I love that. I'm going to go check out the modern bank. Go check out the modern banker polls on LinkedIn. Go. If there's any open, go vote. If there's not, we'll open one up.

0:19:46 - Jack Hubbard: We'll open one up. I do try to do one every couple of weeks, as you always, as you always recommend. Well, this is one of those things that LinkedIn continues to experiment with. And the reason I bring that up is it started in 2009 and it stopped in 2014 right around this time of the year for whatever reason. But LinkedIn had another April 20.

0:20:14 - Brynne Tillman: Saturday was ten years since they sunsetted polls, and now we're talking about polls today.

0:20:21 - Jack Hubbard: And now they brought it back in 2020. There must have been some impetus for them to say, you know, we need to do that again. And I think that's pretty common with LinkedIn. They're always experimenting.

0:20:34 - Brynne Tillman: BRENNAN I love that you call it experimenting. I think it's, they're taunting me. Yeah. You know, I used to always say LinkedIn giveth and LinkedIn taketh away. And so I was very sad when polls retired back in April of 2014. And I was very happy when they came back. I think it was may of 2020. And, you know, I think, you know, at that point, everyone was at home, stuck at home. So maybe they're like, oh, let's throw some poles their way. I don't know.

0:21:12 - Brynne Tillman: But I do. I think it's a fabulous feature. You know, we're now four years back, and I really hope they keep it.

0:21:21 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I do, too. I do, too. Well, final comments on polls before we wrap this up today.

0:21:29 - Brynne Tillman: So if you are trying to figure out how do I use LinkedIn in a non salesy way to get on the radar of my prospects and referral partners? Start with polls. It's so easy. People are very happy to do a one click vote. And you really can start some valuable conversations that can lead from, you know, lead off of LinkedIn to, I used to say, you know, to a phone call, to a Zoom call, to whatever it is, you're moving it from digital to personal.

0:22:01 - Brynne Tillman: Right? And polls is just such a fun way to do that.

0:22:06 - Jack Hubbard: And as I was mentioning, we next week are going to talk about a really fun topic, which is videos, and there's all kinds of stuff to talk about around that. So great to see you, as always, Brynne. Thanks for your expertise on polls on LinkedIn. See you next week.

0:22:25 - Brynne Tillman: Bye, guys.

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Outro

Thanks for joining us for Jack Rants with Brynne, brought to you by our good friends at Vertical IQ and Real Pro. We're live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time, helping bankers turn connections into conversations. Don't miss an episode. Visit the modern Bankrate.com slash team be podcast. Leave us a review, if you would. You can also listen to this program and the new Jack Rabbits with modern bankers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play and iHeartRadio. We're on YouTube as well. Subscribe at YouTube.com slash at the Modern Banker. Finally, don't forget to make today and every day a great client day.