About Jon Keel: Jon Keel is the Founder and CEO of Improved Together, LLC, which helps small business people increase revenue and gain the freedom they want by using proven automated systems. Jon is a results-oriented Business Advisor who has been helping businesses and their leaders stand out and thrive for nearly 25 years. Jon has developed a local, national, and international reputation as a performance-based online marketing expert, actively involved in this arena since January 1997. In addition to being CEO of Improved Results, which he founded in September 1997, he co-developed the Xavier University MBA E-Business program, where he taught online marketing and e-commerce for over three years. Since 2008, his business has focused primarily on expanding its online presence, reputation marketing, and conversion improvement for local and regional businesses. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Jon.
In this episode, Nancy and Jon discuss the following:
- The rapid growth of LinkedIn and its frequent updates
- Importance of staying informed about LinkedIn’s changes
- Need for a professional LinkedIn profile.
- Significance of staying current with LinkedIn’s features.
- Tips on how to grow your LinkedIn followers through engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- The limit on connections is 30,000, but there is no limit on your number of followers.
- LinkedIn will now show about 60 to 70 % of the posts of the people for whose bell you’ve clicked.
- It’s essential when you reach out to people and make connection requests that you include a personal message with the person.
- 99 % of LinkedIn users use it ineffectively and don’t know due to ignorance.
“You have to master five principles. I have given a talk on mastering these five principles to be successful on LinkedIn. And, you know, one of them is to have a killer profile. LinkedIn also says, in addition to 99% of folks not using it effectively, that 99% of profiles— and I don’t know any better way to say it— they suck. They’re terrible. And people need to have their profiles be professional. In other words, would you show up as an amateur or a professional? And it’s your choice. The second is to understand that it’s about relationships on LinkedIn. It’s not a quick sale. LinkedIn is not a transactional platform. It’s a relationship platform. So, develop that mentality in your writing and in the videos that you do. And the third is to expand and grow your network. You can never have a large enough network on LinkedIn. And there are ways to do that. The fourth, I’m trying to remember, I’m just having a brain cramp this morning, but the fifth is to stay current, which is what I offer all my members, the ability to stay current through twice-a-month master classes that I hold where I share with them all this current stuff that I’ve learned. And my objective, Nancy, my objective is not to be the smartest guy in the room. I just hang out with them.” – JON
“Well, the easiest way is to find people on LinkedIn that you want to follow, that you think, well, that person, I might, number one, have the opportunity to do business with them. Secondly, they might be a great referral source for me. So, it all starts first with following them. And I remember from the “Five Love Languages” book that came out many years ago, it’s hard to withdraw before you make deposits. So, you make a deposit by following them and commenting on their content. A certain number of them will follow you back and comment on your comments. That’s the way it starts. It’s a process.” – JON
“There’s no limit to the number of posts you can do. I personally recommend three a week. Some people post every day, and that’s fine. If you can do it, that’s great. I personally don’t have the time to do it every day, but certainly no more than once a day. When you post more than once a day, your overall post-exposure will increase, but subsequent posts are throttled, if you will, by posting more than one today.” – JON
Connect with Jon Keel:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonkeel/
- Improved Together: https://www.improvedtogether.com/
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website:https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with John Keel, the founder and CEO of Improve Together, an exclusive community of like -minded professionals working together to develop their personal brand by making LinkedIn work for them. John works with LinkedIn users who are frustrated, confused, feel as if they’re missing out on the tremendous business growth opportunity LinkedIn offers and even overwhelmed by LinkedIn’s continuous updates. And in addition, he co -developed the Xavier University MBA e -business program, where he taught online marketing and e -commerce. As I said just a moment ago, John, it’s all about LinkedIn these days. Welcome to the show.
Jon Keel: Thanks so much, Nancy. I’m glad to have the opportunity to share with you and your audience today. [1:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I watched a short video that you created. The one thing that jumped out to me was there were 350 million members in LinkedIn, and they add three new members every second. And yet, 99 % of LinkedIn users use it ineffectively. Why is that?
Jon Keel: I think the main reason, what I discovered four or five years ago, Nancy, was that while LinkedIn is a great platform, a great B2B platform, a great business platform, and it actually crossed a billion users worldwide, the end of 2024, and it’s now adding four new users every second, LinkedIn continues to make upgrades to the system. Improvements, et cetera. Last year, for example, in 2023, LinkedIn, made 140 changes and modifications to the platform. Well, that’s great. That’s great, by the way. But at the same time, in my opinion, LinkedIn does an equally poor job at communicating those changes and upgrade to its members. So people, in a sense, I’ve said this on several recent calls, people are wallowing in ignorance. It’s not that they’re stupid, they just don’t know. [2:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, that’s weird. So why do they continually update it?
Jon Keel: Well, to make the platform better. I mean, they’ve just within the last two weeks have made some additional what I consider to be fairly significant changes, particularly around the profile. And I personally believe it’s just going to make the profile better for those people who choose to use LinkedIn as a sales medium, as a sales potential medium. [3:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure, what kind of changes did they make?
Jon Keel: Well, they eliminated what’s called creator mode, which came out about two years ago. And what will in effect happen is that the about section will move up back up to the top of the profile the way it was before LinkedIn incorporated creator mode several years ago. Featured section will move down. But more importantly, I think for me, from my perspective anyway, is they have broken out the providing services section into a separate section with the opportunity for people to add media, videos, et cetera, to that section. And I believe part of this is, and I don’t know this, but I believe it’s due to LinkedIn maybe modifying its practices, if you will, to allow those of us who sell to use it more effectively. I’m excited about the change. [4:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Yo, how did you get notified? Because I certainly was not aware of any of those changes.
Jon Keel: Well, when I first got serious about LinkedIn around five years ago, I started reaching out to people and I have what I call a posse, my posse of 10 people worldwide who are definitely LinkedIn insiders. I mean, these guys and gals know their stuff. More importantly, over a period of time, I’ve come to trust them implicitly so that if they say something, I know that it’s correct. There’s a lot of people out there, a lot of people out there on LinkedIn advising that say things that maybe not, aren’t necessarily true or not up to date. And I pay these, I pay these folks every month, uh, just in order to have the, the relationship with them. [5:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I think that’s awesome. So, can any person on LinkedIn be successful? I mean, what do you have to do to be successful?
Jon Keel: Well, I think you have to master five principles. In fact, I have a whole talk I give on master these five principles to be successful on LinkedIn. And, you know, one of them is to have a killer profile. LinkedIn also says in addition to 99 % of folks not using it effectively, that 99 % of profiles, and I don’t know any better way to say it, they suck. They’re terrible. And people need to have their profiles be professional. In other words, would you show up as an amateur or a professional? And it’s your choice. The second is to understand that it’s about relationships on LinkedIn. It’s not the quick sale. LinkedIn is not a transactional platform. It’s a relationship platform. So, develop that mentality in your writing and in videos that you do. And the third is to expand and grow your network. You can never have a large enough network on LinkedIn. And there are ways to do that. The fourth, I’m trying to remember, I’m just having a brain cramp this morning, but the fifth is to stay current, which is what I offer all my members, the ability to stay current through twice a month master classes that I hold where I share them all this current stuff that I’ve learned. And my objective, Nancy, my objective is not to be the smartest guy in the room. I just hang out with him. [6:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that’s smart. You know, you mentioned about the connection. I mean, is there a limit to the number of connections a person can have?
Jon Keel: Yeah, the limit on connections is 30, 000. But there is no limit on the number of followers you can have. I have a number of friends who have well over 100 ,000 followers. And that’s important because followers, in addition to connections, see your content and see your comments on posts. And I’ll say so I continually, every day I have an exercise I go through every day. It takes me about 30 minutes where I’m continuing to grow my connections and followers. [7:42]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. How do you grow your followers?
Jon Keel: Well, the easiest way is to find people on LinkedIn that you want to follow, that you think, well, that person, I might, number one, I might have the opportunity to do some business with them. Or secondly, they might be a great referral source for me. So, it all, it all starts first with following them. And I remember from the five love languages book came out many years ago, it’s hard to make withdrawals before you make deposits. So, you make a deposit by following them, commenting on their content. A certain number of them will follow you back and comment on your comments. That’s the way it starts. It’s a process. [8:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, why is it that, you know, I see some of my connections, posts, and I don’t see others? How does LinkedIn determine what posts you see?
Jon Keel: Well, that’s all part of the, some of the work that LinkedIn has done over the years, but more particularly since last fall. Typically, it used to be that LinkedIn would show when you post a post, LinkedIn would show your post to 10 % of your connections. Well, that’s changed a little bit. They now show your post, your content to people with whom you’ve had an engagement, you know, and messaging back and forth within the last two or three weeks, people who have recently followed you, which again goes back to why it’s important to continually build the list of people who are following you. [9:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That’s really interesting. You know, one of the things I learned, and I don’t know if this is a new feature, but apparently there’s a bell on profiles. I’m sure you’re aware of it. They were on some profiles and they’re not on others. Maybe you can describe what the bell is. Why doesn’t everyone have that?
Jon Keel: Well, the bell is located right underneath the banner graphic in the upper right. If you follow somebody, you will see their bell. So, if you go to somebody’s profile and you don’t see the bell, you just need to go down and click the follow button to follow them. The bell will automatically appear. And when you click the bell, LinkedIn will then show you, and this is again, a change from last fall. It used to be they said all their posts. LinkedIn will now show about 60 to 70 % of the posts of the people for whose bell you’ve clicked. [10:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Huh. And how many posts do you recommend? I mean, is there a limit to the number of posts? LinkedIn allows you to.
Jon Keel: There’s no limit to the number of posts you can do. I personally recommend three a week. Some people post every day and that’s fine. If you can do it, that’s great. I personally don’t have the time to do every day, but certainly no more than once a day. When you post more than once a day, your overall post exposure will increase, but subsequent posts are are throttled, if you will, by posting more than one today. [11:13]
Nancy Calabrese: I mean do they ever flag you if you post too much?
Jon Keel: I’ve not read that. I mean, there are things you can do to get flagged by LinkedIn and you definitely want to stay under LinkedIn’s radar.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, how many connections can you, I guess, reach out to on a daily basis without getting flagged?
Jon Keel: Well, that’s another good question. If you have the free version of LinkedIn, you’re limited to 10 connection requests a week. Yeah. If you have premium or Navigator, I think the limit is 200 a week. To me, it’s worth the money. I wouldn’t use LinkedIn without having Navigator. [11:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, no, no, no, we have navigator. You know, I, I, somebody told me it was about 50 a day.
Jon Keel: Used to be the LinkedIn has recently throttled that back. And I don’t know if they just want more people to have premium, invest in premium or Navigator or what. And it’s important when you reach out to people and make connection requests that you include a personal message to the person. Where do you want to connect? Whenever I get a connection request from somebody and I probably get 10 to 15 a day, if they don’t have a personal message for them, I will just immediately disregard that connection request. [12:45]
Nancy Calabrese: So, what do you mean by personal message? What are some examples?
Jon Keel: Let’s say I wanted to reach out to you. We’re already connected, but I’d say, Nancy, and I would write something like, and by the way, I have all this templated. Nancy, I’ve been seeing some of your recent posts and really like what you write. It seems like we should be connected. Let’s connect. It’s something that’s something personal. It’s not high brow, but it’s just you’re talking like you talk to somebody in real life. [13:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You said earlier that LinkedIn is about building relationships, not selling. And I had this, I guess, conversation with somebody else about it. To me, I see LinkedIn as a sales tool. Yes, you want to build a relationship, but the ultimate goal is to sell. Wouldn’t you agree?
Jon Keel: Oh, totally, totally. I don’t do LinkedIn for fun. I mean if you have the time to do it, and it’s a hobby, that’s okay. But I use it as a sales tool. And, and the way I do that, and then here’s where a lot of people make mistakes on LinkedIn, Nancy is that they will connect with somebody, and somebody will connect with them. And the first word out of their mouth is, and many times they will automate their responses. Oh, I do this, I sell this, I can do that for you. And many of those messages are automated. I disregard those immediately. First thing I want to do is, when I say build the relationship, is maybe engender some type of conversation. Maybe I’ll ask questions about them or about their business. And I typically will do that a couple of times, maybe over several weeks. And then at some point I’ll say, you know, it seems like it might be worthwhile for us to have a conversation. If you agree, let me know. I never include my call scheduling link unasked for, or basically unless somebody has said, yeah, I agree with that. One of the things I was going to say, one of the things that a friend of mine taught me recently is, Nancy, would it make sense to have a no sales zone intro call so we can get to know each other better? And I like to turn no sales zone to put people at ease. Most people think if you want to have a call, you want to sell me something. Well, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe not. You know, I’ve sold over the last 40 years, I’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff in various careers. And I never did it by being over the top or in somebody’s face. [15:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. How did you know I’m just curious how did you make the transition to LinkedIn marketing.
Jon Keel: Well, this is my third career. My first career, 23 years, I had an engineering background and I knew that I wanted to do technical sales. So, I aligned with the company many years ago and over 23 years where we sold water treatment and wastewater treatment, plant equipment, capital process equipment. And that happened to be my educational background was environmental engineering. So, it fit. And in that timeframe, I sold a quarter billion dollars worth of stuff over 23 years. I ended up owning and running the business or it ran me. And for personal reasons, I needed to sell the business, which I did. Then in my interim period, because I didn’t have a job, I discovered the internet. And this was January of 97. And at that time, Nancy, there were 72 ,000 websites in the world. I saw this as a tool I thought that small businesses could use to increase their businesses, to increase their revenue. So, I went out and found some people that I trusted, paid them some pretty good money to teach me all about online marketing. And they did. And for the next 25 years, I worked with almost 1600 businesses around the world, helping them increase their revenue I never used the term online or internet marketing, but I spoke to what they were looking for, which was increased revenue. And that worked very well, building up to about a million dollars of revenue a year, ongoing, you know, continuity revenue. And March 1st, 2020, that shut down with the pandemic. And frustrating thing was what I’ve been doing for 25 years just wasn’t working anymore. So, through a serendipitous conversation I had with a friend of mine because I had ineffectively been using LinkedIn for several years. He connected me with some people who had developed a SaaS product that basically makes LinkedIn work better. And I became a white label partner for them. I’m one of five white label partners in the world. And I just, in fact, I was telling the story this morning on another call that what I observed was knowing what to do and knowing the soft skills that you need in LinkedIn and noticing that LinkedIn just didn’t update people. Again, 99 % of LinkedIn users use it ineffectively. And due to ignorance, they just don’t know. I love to teach, so I developed a whole series if you will of master classes where every other month, I teach all things LinkedIn all the things you need to do and need to know to be successful on LinkedIn and over the last four years I’ve had over 7 000 people register for and go through the training. [19:11]
Nancy Calabrese: it. I love it. Yeah, and you’re having one, right? Relatively soon, I think, in the next couple of weeks.
Jon Keel: Oh yeah, I have one coming up in third week of March.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Wow. Wow. John, I can’t believe we’re up in time. I could go on and on. Is there anything you want the audience or leave the audience with? Like, what is one takeaway you want the audience to have?
Jon Keel: Well, I think to understand from a principal or a fundamental standpoint, I give a talk, I have a 30 minute talk I give, that I recorded. And it’s called master these fundamentals, these five fundamentals to be successful on LinkedIn. Once you know the fundamentals and you master them, you just keep doing them over and over and over again. I mean, you know, I’d be glad to, you know, I can get you a copy of the link and people can reach out to you directly and, and, and watch the recording. I really don’t sell anymore. I just educate. [20:13]
Nancy Calabrese: I think that’s awesome, awesome. How can my people find you?
Jon Keel: Well, if they go to LinkedIn, my name is easy to easy to find as J O N K E L John Keel, like the bottom of the group. Reach out, follow me, reach out and reach out to me to connect because I will connect if you want to schedule a call. The way to do that, you can find that on my LinkedIn profile. I probably have 20 to 25 scheduled calls a week. Just talking with people, all kinds of people from all over the world. [20:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, fascinating. Take advantage of John’s expertise. I totally am in your court that LinkedIn is an amazing tool to develop the relationships and ultimately sell. So, people reach out to John. John, you were a fabulous guest and I’ll see you tomorrow at our networking event. But I really appreciate you sharing all of the wisdom that you’ve collected over the years.
Jon Keel: Thanks so much, Nancy. It’s been great. It has passed fast, for sure.
Nancy Calabrese: I told you it would. So everyone make it an amazing sales day and LinkedIn day and I’ll see you next time. [21:31]
