Episode 78 LinkedIn Video: Tips for Sales Professionals

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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Jack Hubbard: Hello! Happy Thursday, everybody.

Brynne Tillman: Hey, Jack, How are you? 

Jack Hubbard: Great. You know, golf season has started. I've got a couple of rounds in and the weather's getting better. And I know you're getting out on the tennis court and doing a lot of things as well, so. All the best with that. And today we've got a best-in-breed program and we're going to talk about using videos.

But first, I wanted to mention yesterday we had a great program with Chris Nichols, a real senior executive with the South State Bank correspondent division. And so if you want to hear a replay of that, let me know. Next week, we're featuring Cary Perlman, who wrote a tremendous book, and he'll be on Jack Rant's with Modern Bankers next Wednesday.

But today we're going to talk about using videos with you. And we've got five or six examples here, Brian. But just let's start at the very, very beginning. Why videos? Why are videos so important these days? 

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, I love this question and I think video connects you human to human when you can see someone talking and you get to experience their inflection, their voice, the way they handle themselves, it's so different than the written word.

It's so different than even audio. And I think audio is great because you can still hear some inflection and connect. But video, you know, you get to know the person. And one of the things we used to talk about all the time we haven't in a while is the idea that on LinkedIn it's not necessarily who you know, but it's who knows you and when you're using video.

But at scale, people get to know you and you know, that brings in the like and the trust and it earns you the right to get conversations because they feel like they know you already. So I think that's the number one reason video matters. 

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I do too. And for those people watching, especially bankers who may have not done this before.

Before we get into some of the individual elements. I'm a banker. I've never done videos before. This sounds really hard to me to do, Brynne. Make it easy for me. 

Brynne Tillman: Well, you know, there are all kinds of different videos. The easiest video is I just turn on my phone. I take a little native video to your phone and upload it native video into LinkedIn.

That's the easiest way. As bankers, typically we're talkers, we have ideas. We are thought leaders on the subject matter, the subject matter that our clients and prospects care about. And we can just capture 3060 seconds at the most. And it's just so simple to do. LinkedIn natively when you upload a video now has a toggle that you can turn on captions so you don't have to worry about adding captions.

And by the way, it does its best at captions, but for me, it always spells my name. Bryn always. No matter what, there's no AI that fixes that. You can actually click and edit. So you can, you know, before you actually publish it, you could go and listen. And really 30 seconds is enough for someone to connect with you.

So maybe it's a quick idea or maybe you're going to be at a networking event and you want to let your network know, Hey, I hope this if you're in the Chicago area, I hope to see you there. But there's so much that you can do in that 30 to 60 seconds that will really engage your audience and the captions.

Our game changer, you don't need an editor. So that's the easiest way. There are lots of ways, but 

Jack Hubbard: I want to stay with this raw native video, and I'll give you a couple of examples and then maybe you can kind of walk through, okay, here, here's what you do. You know, you do this and you hit this button, etc.

So I'll give you a couple of examples. One for me and I suggested this to my friends down in Saint Charles, Illinois, is you go to a networking event, you kind of talked about this a little bit. I'm going to be at this networking event. Let's say you have a speaker and a lot of these. Do you go up to the speaker afterward?

You say, you know, you really hit some real key points for me. Would you mind if I did a walk and talk with you and you could actually walk with the speaker or you could stand there and say, look, you talked about this, this, and this. Can you amplify those and turn the video on him or her and let them talk?

And that's that's really good. That's number one. Yeah. Number two, what I really like and Meredith, Eliot Powell, and Mark Hunter do this really well it's in the car video. And so Meredith's just kind of sitting there and said, you know, I was thinking about this, this and this. But that leads me to one other thing.

I was talking to a banker about this recently. She went on a call to get her car away from the building, so they didn't know what the building was. And she said, you know, I was just talking to a manufacturer. And here are three things they said were some real key issues for me. I wonder how and here are the issues.

I wonder how this works for you. I'm curious about how you feel about those three things talked about. 

Brynne Tillman: Well, I love all three. I especially love that last one. Now, I will say if you are actively working with a company and you've stuck your sign in the ground, you can use that building because they've already given you permission.

But if it's just a prospect and you haven't worked with them, I love like leave that. But I love that you're in an industrial park and they see your surroundings. And what I love about what you're saying is we can actually talk about the challenge and the solution without being salesy. Right. It's it's really about here was their challenge.

There were a couple of options and we decided to go with this option because it was really about cash flow, not capital, whatever it was. Right. And so you can now talk about that in a way that's educational and storytelling and it leads people to our solution. And so I absolutely love in the car video is what I call it.

You might be out of the car, but in the car video, in real-time, you're capturing your genius. And ultimately, it's typically what happened. I think we left and came back. I just make sure we're still live. But ultimately, we're you know, we're capturing our genius in the fields, the other places.

It's just listen to what you're saying to your clients and then get on your camera. You could do it on Zoom. You could do it on your phone and just talk about it. I love that. That's the conversation that we might have at a networking meeting or a conference. And yes, I understand that it seems one way with a video, but you can always end it with I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments and now we can create that two-way with that call to action.

Jack Hubbard: That's absolutely right. And when you post the video up on LinkedIn, you can also say, Hey, what are your thoughts? And then you can tag people and do that. So here's my phone. I'm going to get real practical with you because I have to admit I've not done this native video, so here's my phone. How do I go? But I've never done this. How do I go about doing this? 

Brynne Tillman: Well, so there are a few things. Initially, what I would recommend is to record it just on your camera. So you open up your camera, you go to video, you go to your selfie mode, you record, start with the smile, smile before you hit record, because it does capture that for a second is the thumbnail.

And so you can just record there. And then when you go into LinkedIn and you go to your post, which for most people now is in the top right, and you go down to the bottom of that post, there's a little image and you just click the image and choose the video. And it's really that simple. And that natively uploads into LinkedIn and it does very well in the algorithm also.

So now make sure you add text. You can mention people you're allowed to mention, you can use hashtags, you know, all those kinds of things. But that video really will do exceptionally well. And, you know, raw video tends to do even a little bit better than edited video. And we do edited videos all the time. And it does rather well. But people tend to really engage with raw video. Yeah. You know, like it's really you. 

Jack Hubbard: Yeah. So one other thing and then I want to get to meet dolphins a dolphins dolphins dolphins comment when I went to my video on my camera, one thing you need to do is to hit the little button on the lower right with all circles because then it reverses the camera.

So it makes you make sure you're on and that's showing something else. So that's what I call that selfie mode. But yes, that's exactly. Yeah. So Matt is an entrepreneur. He's one of my editors at the financial brand is awesome Yeah we had just a great article recently thank you man he is the CEO of a company called Sin Pros that does some really interesting things with content.

But his question is what do you think about asking connections for a question? Or to complete a LinkedIn survey to help you decide what to cover in a video brand? And you're the master at answering this question. 

Brynne Tillman: I love that. So LinkedIn poll definitely is a great way to get feedback and I don't recommend that you just post the poll, but you make a list of people you're connected to and invite them to vote on the poll.

The next level might be, Hey, I'd love to interview you now, whether it's on that topic that they voted on the poll or something else, and you record that interview on Zoom or Teams or whatever it is that you're using, and now you have that recording that can become content in and of itself. You can take the transcript, you can quote them.

There are so many ways to use this content, but I'm going to share one new tool that I'm going to use two tools, one opus clips, which we just haven't. We're experimenting with it now. But if you upload maybe a 30-minute conversation or a 15-minute conversation and it's feeding, it works with Chachi Beat, it's owned by Openai and creates a churchy beat.

So it works beautifully together and it will find clips and literally clip it out of a 30-minute conversation. You can edit it, you can do all kinds of other things, but you don't have to go searching through that to find it and it will actually edit it for you. It has a phone, a mobile version, but it's much better from my experience now on a desktop.

From mobile, I've just started using cap cuts. It's an app for mobile and you can actually record yourself and you can bring it in and you can have intros and outros and movement and really interesting captions and it's like clicks of buttons. Then you download it and upload it natively. So there are a lot of tools that I yes, you should interview them, but you want to use not, not just to capture what is of interest to them, but to actually use that as content, even if it's 32nd clips.

And by the way, Jack was talking behind your back today, Matthew, in telling you all about how amazing your company is. And so I had some fun checking you out and I can't wait for our conversation. 

Jack Hubbard: Let me let me bring up something that's kind of we hadn't planned to talk about, but I want to discuss it. So here's here's Matt who has added a comment to a live stream that we're going to discuss in a second.

My opinion on this is and you help with this. So I'm watching you now. I added a question my name is up there now. That's good marketing for Matt and his company. Now, we mentioned that, of course, and that's different. But he could have just come up there and posted the question you posted down on re-stream. And now he's evergreen in this whole thing, I think. And that's good marketing for him. 

Brynne Tillman: Absolutely. And there are specific live streams that I try to make every week. Meredith and Mark's being one of them on on Saturday mornings, 8 a.m. Eastern. So I try to make those my son is in the crew now, so we're on the road and it's not as easy.

But as soon as Christmas was over, I missed you last Saturday. I wondered what you were doing while we were in DC on the water. So on the Potomac, he was rolling. So yeah, so. So I try to make them. But there are four or five that I really. Carson Haiti has one that just attracts a lot of folks, so not only do I love the content and learn, but I meet people in the comments.

I network with people in the comments I've made friends and comments, right? And especially if they become podcasts and you mentioned it really it's definitely evergreen. So lots of great things around that I really enjoy and I enjoy it now. I really am selective because it can be time-consuming, so make sure there's more value beyond just the commenting that you're learning and your networking and engaging as well.

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, and I agree with you and I'm selective and Saturday morning is a really good time for me. It's 7 a.m. central so I watch Meredith and then I go right to Larry Levine's program and he has some amazing guests. And so I'll contribute to that as well. Well, we're on the topic of live video, and here we are.

Brynne Tillman: We use restream and there's stream yard, etc.. This is a little more challenging to do, but it can be really beneficial. Talk about the live stream. Yeah, so Live and every other platform you can do natively in the platform on LinkedIn, you need a third party in this case where we use re-stream and there are many others out there as options.

But you know, we do this weekly and Jack on on Wednesdays runs his interviews live on Thursdays. The two of us are having a conversation live and so we are in front of our audience in this case, twice a week I do a third one, and sometimes I'm a guest on other ones. But what happens is people get to know you.

They get to know your expertise, you connect, there's chemistry. People go, I like these people and I don't like those people. And whatever it is, you find your people right? You find your people, and then you start to build trust and credibility and they look forward to coming in like we like. For example, today we did not have time to really market this, but right now we have 14 people live well, it will be another 50 over the next week who watch it and replay it.

And then this will be on our podcast with Jack Rants with Modern Bankers Podcast. And so it will continue to get exposure. It's on our YouTube channel now that we started with new followers yet to go follow us on YouTube because we just started it. But you know where you build a brand and you build a following that knows you, it's very hard in today's world to have influence over any community without video.

Jack Hubbard: And I know a couple of bank presidents who do this really well. I will tell you that it is time-consuming and it is so rewarding. Let's say you had no viewers, but you were able to put out some video or had a guest that really helped your network. You can use that and forward that out.

My friend Neil Stevens down at Oconee State Bank in Georgia does the remarkable podcast and he does it as a podcast. And there are some videos and he interviews prospects. He actually has them come to the bank, see what a great idea. And the way he talks about their company and what a tremendous situation. And I want to add one thing to this brand, because I think the power of this is not just in the live show, but this is our 89th program.

So between you and I and my guests and I, this is 89 shows now. We have all these clips. This is where your marketing partner can come in or if you can do it yourself, that's great. Talk about the value of doing little short clips and then putting those out on LinkedIn. 

Brynne Tillman: So I'm reluctant to say this, but we are in a tick-tock time.

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, some of us are done. We're too old. Yeah, I think. I think I'm on. But I miss you. You might want to check that brand to see if you are on. Yeah, I'd rather not know. I've seen you dance. I haven't heard any of this stuff, but. But it's the point, though. And what does go on are the little clips and.

Brynne Tillman: And we do all our own LinkedIn stuff. I have no problem with our team doing my tic text. That's why I really don't know. I don't think I get anything from it. I don't engage with anyone on it. So it is what it is. But Tic TAC is these 30 to 60-second videos and that's it. And then you move on.

It's these reels that move on and actually on your mobile. Right now, if you click on video at the bottom, not everyone has it, but most people do. LinkedIn is attempting to be TikTok, so it's a little new rollout and it has those reels, right? So you can go and post these 30 seconds, whether they're native or edited through a cap cut or an opus clip or whatever you decide to do, or maybe your bank or credit union has a marketing team that can help you with that.

If you send them a video, maybe they can do it and brand it. But now what happens is you are there for 30 or 60 seconds so people know that it's going to be fast, they're going to watch it, and you just become part of the fabric of their their day. And then when they need a bank or you're the only one they're thinking about.

Jack Hubbard: I think that's right. And there is an art to this. There are too many people who do these videos and it's all about them. Buy me whatever it might be. But what you're talking about is a banker adding value to the marketplace by saying, here are three things I'm seeing out in the marketplace that's pretty powerful when you do these little clips.

Well, let let so we talk about native video. We talked about this livestream. Let's talk about highly edited videos. This is a little more formal, but still really good for videos. 

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. So highly edited videos, by the way. The core of this is really getting a market brand out for the bank or credit union. So you know, it's got your logo on it it's got you know it feels like a produced piece and there's some great value in the some of them you'll see as an interview, you know face to face. It's not necessarily a zoom, although it could be, and like our highly edited is in our e-learning course those are highly where you move from picture to B-roll to LinkedIn, live to PowerPoint, right?

So you've got all these pieces integrated together and there is a time and place for this. But I will say from a social media video perspective, that is stuff that should go on the company page and that you then engage on it because you are not a highly edited person. And what we love to see is in your natural environment, trade in your natural.

So even though marketing can still put up your logo and you've got captions going when you've got a B-roll going, it's a little bit of a different B-roll if I'm saying something with another video over my voice. Right? And so and it's easy to do with Canva today, like we do a lot of this fun stuff because we do this.

But as a banker, or if you get your marketing team to help you with the highly edited video, great. But I would say don't invest your time in the highly edited without support. And we do this for our clients all the time. But the native will work. So there is a time and place for that highly edited video, but it's not necessary for bankers to succeed.

Jack Hubbard: Let me add one more thing to the highly edited video This time of year. It's annual meeting time. And so you're your CEO chairman, whoever is, and senior executives are going to get up in front of the stockholders. If you're a stock publicly held company and they're going to talk about how wonderful things were, we added this, we did this, etc.

Now you're not going to want to show everything, but you can talk about, you know, here's 38 seconds from my CEO who talks about the marketplace and where the bank is headed from a community perspective. That's great. Those are terrific things to do. And it's relatively easy to do. Well, here's here's one. The question from Matt is about Watkins Ville, Georgia.

I believe that's right. It's a community bank, about $700 million down and down in Georgia. Neil Stevens is the chairman. Great guy. No meal for 30 years. And by the way, his son just had his second child, Caleb Stevens, who does the South State Bank correspondent bank podcast community bank podcast every week. Here's one of my favorites.

And it's pretty easy to do. It is this whole idea of personalized videos in the inbox that is all of our favorites there. It's simple. It's not sales, but it is a value grab.

Brynne Tillman:  I love it. So now it's only available to do this on your mobile. You can't send a video message from a desktop, but when you visit someone's profile and you click on the message and you go all the way down to the left, there's a little paper clip, you hit video, and then as you mentioned, the little twirly on the right, You know, you put it in selfie mode, turn it around, and I can quickly on my mobile, send a personal video into the inbox for me. It's much faster than typing a message. And there is about well, it's over a 90% response rate on video messages, even if it's my gosh, I didn't know you could do that on LinkedIn or how did you do that is often the response I get but it starts a conversation. So I really love it and I tend to do permission-based things.

So maybe I'm like, Hey Jack, I hope you're doing well. I'm not sure if you're aware that Mark and Meredith are doing a surprise, but they're not. I've just got a surprise podcast and I know that we both love the podcast. Let me know if you're interested. I can send you a link to the event or whatever it is right now.

Ask you to have a call to action. Start the conversation. Don't make it. Let me know if you're interested in this. I'll send you a link. There's a networking event for the local chamber. Let me know if you're interested. I'll send you a link. Don't send the link. If you send the link, there's no reason for them to respond.

They have the link. And remember, our goal really is to start conversations with these folks. The other side of that is you're respecting their inbox. You're not spamming them with links, you're asking permission. So it's like a double good deed to ask permission. 

Jack Hubbard: Well, let me tell you about this in action. So as I mentioned, the financial brand that has about 400,000 subscribers was kind to put us in a recent this week, one of their additions and so I sent out three video messages and they said hey, financial Brad just just was honored us by by putting an article in about hitting your peak on LinkedIn.

If you're interested, let me know I'm free for three. I'm in the Hall of Fame. I'm in the Video Hall of Fame because everybody responds and says, yeah, I would I would love to see what that article is all about. Now it's out there, but I'm able to be more personal with them and say, I thought this might be of interest to you given some of the things that you're working on.

So I absolutely love this. Thanks, Josie, for the kind comment. And by the way, the podcast listeners, are Jose Serrano, awesome Insight, Bryn Tillman, and Jack Hubbard. So that's what we're thanking them for. And I would add for those of you who watch this, you mentioned somewhere in the 20 to 25 range we have every week, what are the reasons we're doing this for you?

And so if you have a comment or a question, we love the level of interactivity. Well, you've already talked about the last brand, which is videos and apps. Anything else that you want to discuss around videos today?

Brynne Tillman: So what I'll say is most people, when they get started, are very uncomfortable. They don't like to look at themselves or their judge around themselves.

Nobody sees your pimple. Nobody cares about the hair being out of place. They don't. It's your message. So what I would say is when you're recording and I when I started I did this I actually for had at the time boy back in the day Sally Joe Lamont and I would she would be in front of me and I would record or she would record me.

So I was talking to a human being and being recorded it. That's a nice way to get started, right? Because now you're not looking at yourself. You're looking at the other person and you're speaking as if you were in just, you know, a normal day. The other thing you can do is cover if you're on Zoom or you're on teams and you're recording, just put a Post-it note over your face and just look at the camera and talk as if there's a person there.

Don't look at yourself. As soon as you look at yourself, you're going to start to be hard on yourself and you'll see me 50 times and it's bad. my necklace is out of place. my, my hair, my. And I'm doing this a lot. And you don't need to do any of that. Just be you. That's who people want to see and recognize.

When you're in a networking room or a conference, you're not constantly seeing yourself when you're talking with people. So it's awkward and not natural as a human being to look at yourself while you're having a conversation or communicating. So cover it up and you will have much more success. 

Jack Hubbard: I saw to amplify what you just do. Your grade point I just saw and I got an email today from a great lady. Her name is Julie Hansen. I know she wrote a book called Look Me in the Eye. Julie's been on the show and she's wonderful. And one of the things that she said is about 3% of people and I think it's higher turn their camera off when they're on a Zoom meeting or what have you. I think that's wrong.

And I'm sure the reason they do it is because of my background socks. And I'm not I don't have my hair in place. Look, it's it's okay. This is all about helping people. They worry less about what you look like and they worry more about how you help them. And I think that's a that's kind of a good way to end this program.

This is a great topic read, and I'm sure we'll be talking about it again because LinkedIn continues to add new features to this. Any final thoughts on your end?

Brynne Tillman: I mean, the final thought is just do it, just do it, get comfortable. If you want to start with the personal video message, send one to Jack or myself. We're happy and we won't judge, but we're happy to get it.

And we can even send one back. Just just start. It is one of the best ways to connect at scale. And again, I'm going to end with what I kind of started with that old phrase that it's not who you know, it's who knows you. 

Jack Hubbard: Great way to end. We'll see you next Thursday. Brand. Thanks so much.

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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.