As a trade professional, do you know how to network through LinkedIn?
In this video I'm gonna show you how and we are gonna do it right now.
I'm Roger Wakefield, LEED AP, The Expert Plumber.
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Recently I was asked to do a talk at a LinkedIn Local event on networking and LinkedIn.
Now this is not something that most people in my industry are doing a lot of.
So I felt very honored to be asked to do that.
So what I've got here are some clips of the night, some things that I taught other people
in the room and guys these weren't just plumbers, roofers and electricians.
These are actually businesspeople wanting to learn more on LinkedIn.
So I really did have fun on that evening.
Hope you enjoy these clips and hang around for the end of this.
My name is Roger Wakefield, I literally just got started in social media about nine months
ago.
And I got started in it because I got tired of marketing companies ripping us off, and
I got tired of sending Google so much money, I think I bought one of their buildings out
there.
I know plumbing companies that send them anywhere from twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars
a month for pay-per-click.
And I wanted to learn something different.
So what I did is, I started studying and looking into social media and figuring out where I
wanted to learn.
And I found out about a guy named Michael Stelzner and some things he does.
And I started reading and talked to Julie and said "look I want to learn social media
from social media people."
I went to San Diego for a three-day seminar and literally, I walked out and I was like:
okay this is completely game-changing.
And the one thing I'll tell you is look, at nine months I'm a rookie at this, but I learned
enough that I've got top people across the country talking to us and looking at us about
what we're doing it's like: okay what y'all are doing is working.
You keep doing it and you're gonna grow.
So tonight we're gonna talk about LinkedIn.
Let me teach you the trick and here's what really got me going on social media.
I was up one morning, I'm on the treadmill, I get on for an hour, and I always turn on
YouTube and I'd go through and pick what I want to watch.
And literally one day Gary Vee says "I don't care if you're 20, if you're 50, or if you're
70, you can do this.
And y'all think about it, YouTube is what?
15 years old.
Facebook, all that, guys were talking 13 to 15 years.
It's not that big of a deal.
So we're talking LinkedIn tonight.
The first thing I'm gonna talk about this session is personal, okay?
So when you look at your LinkedIn page, that's a card, that is a business card.
If you send me a connection request all I have to look at is your page.
So what you need to do - and look at my page, look at Dr. Natalia, look at Judy Fox, look
at Michaela Alexis, look at some of these people.
Make your page stand out.
My page used to say Roger Wakefield, LEED AP, The Expert Plumber, Texas Green Plumbing,
yada, yada, yada.
Now I deal with real estate agents.
Real estate agents are what helped me grow my business.
So I was sending those out to real estate agents all the time and I'm sure a real estate
agent says like a Roger, plumber, thank you bye.
Okay it's that quick.
So I went in and spiced it up and now it's like Roger Wakefield ,LEED AP, Speaker, The
Expert Plumber, yada, yada, yada, and now I'm like: look this is why you want to connect
with me, because I bring benefit to you.
And my page says that.
Now it talks about what I can do for people to help them.
It used to be about me.
Everything on my page was I this, I this, I this.
I'm trying to introduce myself all in this many words.
I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.
Now it's I speak to you how to grow your company.
I speak to you and teach you how to do social media and how to teach your employees how
to do social media to benefit your company.
So what you want your page to be is basically a really cool business card.
Look at some of the pages that I've talked about and look at the people that send you
invitations.
When you look at their page, what is it about it you see that you're like: wow you know
what?
I could connect with this person.
People buy from people they know, like, and trust.
And you've got this many words to put that in; why should they want to connect with you?
It's not about you, it's about them.
What can your page do to make them think "I need to connect with this person!"
When I speak to plumbers, electricians, roofers, and HVAC people I speak about social media
I speak about networking and I speak about video.
As you see we've got our video going tonight because that is part of what we do.
We'll get into it more in a little bit about connections, because I'm kind of limited on
time.
But what they want is people want to find out about you and video is the way they're
gonna do it.
Guys, literally, connections are easy to do and if you can convince people that you offer
something to them they will connect with you on a personal level.
We all hate when we send out those connections and they reply like: oh yeah I'm so glad I
got to meet you, by the way here's what I'm selling and if you got time for a phone call
I can call you right now.
And I'm already like; you know what?
Delete.
Okay?
Guys, build that relationship.
If you look at the videos that we do on, you know LinkedIn, we're really growing on YouTube,
and we do a lot of videos there.
But I teach people how to fix their own plumbing and people are like: wait, you own a plumbing
company, why do you want to teach people to fix their own plumbing?
Because if you can go home this week and repair three your toilets and say "Roger saved me
a thousand dollars" Well number one, you already know me, you like me, and you trust me, but
now when you have a problem you can't handle you can say, you know I'm gonna go look at
Roger's videos and see what Roger has.
And you know what?
If it's something that I can't do, I know who I'm gonna call.
Go in and search the industries that you would like to connect with those people.
So - and I go back to me.
I grow my business through real estate agents.
So I can literally go into LinkedIn and search Keller Williams and then define it by DFW
and I can say okay Keller Williams has, you know, 700,000 agents nationwide, 100,000 in
DFW and I can start going through and say: okay I want to look at the ones that are not
my first connections because we're already connected, but my second and third connections.
On a personal level that's really great.
When you walk into a business where you're walking in and you're speaking to a roomful
of people that you would really like to connect one-on-one with and you can build those connections.
Now what do you do with it?
Now you go in and you do videos, you write posts, you write articles.
If you were talking about real estate and you want to talk about some of the top real
estate people in the city, you can pick those people out or people that you work with, or
people that you want to work with.
When I do a lot of blogs, or a lot of posts, or a lot of articles, I'll tag social media
people that I'm dealing with in Los Angeles, and in Thailand, in Virginia and different
people and that helps to bring them into the conversation.
Because now whenever I tag them in it, it pops up on their feed: Roger tagged you in
an article.
And they'll go back and look at it and then they'll normally reply, or share, or something
like that.
And it'd be just like a friend sending you a letter and you're like: oh my gosh I want
to I want to share this with everybody.
Well you're not gonna sit down and make 100 copies of it, and write 100 envelopes, and
put a hundred stamps on it but with social media is so much easier.
Now we can literally reach out to 5,000 people at one time and send this out and say: oh
my gosh, look what I just found.
When I send out stuff, when I send out articles, whenever I send out videos, it's not: hey
look I want to sell you this bottle of water and you should buy it from me because...
It's: do you know what a slab leak is under your house?
Do you know how to find it and do you know how to fix it?
I don't say "hey call me" I don't say "Hey look Texas Green Plumbing, call me" Now don't
get me wrong, I wear these shirts everywhere.
Whenever I post something on LinkedIn, whenever I do a video, it's to help people.
It's not to say "hey look buy from me."
I've got a YouTube channel called The Expert Plumber and I make videos and I've had real
estate agents call me after I've gone into a class and told them about it and they said
"look I rebuilt three of my toilets because of the information I learned from watching
your video.
you saved me a thousand dollars."
When you're on LinkedIn and you want to grow your business, do it by building connections,
do it by giving people something of value.
And if you give them something of value, they're gonna remember you and you build those connections.
Like I said earlier pick out, pick the people that you want to build those connections with
and then when you do it they're gonna remember you.
And they're gonna say - when people get online and watch my videos, when they go home and
they're toilet is running, they think "okay I know somebody" And if they're not hear in
Dallas I get messages saying "Hey look I watched your videos, so when I called the plumber
I know exactly what to tell him."
"Hey this is what's wrong with my toilet."
"Well we'll come check it out and we'll do this and -" "Oh no, I'm telling you this is
what's wrong with it" "Are you a plumber?"
"No but I know a plumber."
And guys, when you teach somebody and you can build value with them they're gonna remember
you.
And that's how you use LinkedIn.
Thank you for watching.
If you want to learn more things about plumbing, or in this case networking, watch some more
videos here on our channel The Expert Plumber.
And again if you hadn't done so, please subscribe and ring the bell so you don't miss out on
anything and then we will see you on the next video if you don't get flushed.