What are boolean searches and how can you use them to find clients on LinkedIn?
Now, if you have been wondering about the same thing, stay tuned, because in this video, I'm
going to show you exactly how to use boolean operators, to find new leads for your business.
I'm Vendy, and I'm all about helping coaches and course creators attract the
highest quality inbound leads on LinkedIn without the need for cold selling.
Now, if you're planning to use LinkedIn in your marketing this year, be sure you
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All right, so what are boolean searches in the first place?
Now, let me try to explain this to you in the simplest possible way.
Boolean searches include operators and modifiers such as, and, or not
quotation marks and parentheses.
And using these operators, you can refine incredibly specific searches on
LinkedIn to find your ideal clients.
Now, chances are that you still have no idea what in the world I'm talking about.
So, let me hop on my computer and show you exactly how each of these operators work
and how you can use them going forward.
All right, so let me show you how each of these operators actually work.
So, let's start with OR and, or basically means either when you're using this
operator on LinkedIn you're telling the algorithm that you want to see all profiles
that have either X or Y keywords in them.
So, let me give you an example here.
If you were looking to find all accountants and all bookkeepers on LinkedIn, then
your search should look like this.
Bookkeeper or accountant, you're basically telling LinkedIn, I want to see all profiles
that have either of these keywords in them.
Now, it's important to note that they don't have to have both of those keywords in one profile.
It does enough that they have either one or the other, all right?
Another example you might be looking for CEOs or founders or entrepreneurs, right?
They don't have to have used all of these three keywords in one profile, but if they
have one of these keywords in a profile, it would get returned in the search results.
Another example, you could say, I want to see all people in marketing and
all people in advertising on LinkedIn.
So, then your searches, marketing or advertising.
Now, it's very important to note that you must use capital OR for this search to work.
And it applies to all boolean operators.
You must use the capital letters, all right?
Now, let's go into the next one.
The next one that is very commonly used is AND operator and it basically means including all.
So, you're telling LinkedIn, show me all profiles that have
both X and Y keywords in them.
So, again, the example here, you might want to find all profiles that have both
accounting and law keywords in them together.
So, basically if the one profile has just accounting keyword in them, it will not
get returned in the results because you're telling LinkedIn both of these key words must
be in the one profile for it to be returned.
And if they don't, it's not going to come up in the results.
Okay, so here's a another example, nutrition and fitness.
You're telling LinkedIn both of these keywords must be on one profile for
it to get returned in the results.
Similarly, CEO and nutrition and fitness.
So, you're basically looking for all CEOs that have, that are in these initiatives, right?
And both of those keywords must be in one profile.
So sorry, let me correct myself.
All of these three keywords, right?
Must be in one profile for it to be returned in the results.
Now, and then we have an exact phrase, so these are basically quotation marks
that you use around your keywords.
So, typically if you're looking at searching for more than one word,
you would put it in quotation marks.
So, basically you're telling LinkedIn, show me all profiles that have these consecutive
keywords together in this order, okay?
So, for example, Freelance writer you're telling LinkedIn these two, keywords must be together
in this specific order, personal trainer, these keywords, you know, have to be together in
this order, business development manager, same thing you're telling to LinkedIn, these three
keywords must be in this exact order, because that's what I'm searching for, all right?
Now, then we have NOT, which basically means exclude.
You're telling to link to LinkedIn exclude all profiles that have these keywords in them.
So, for example, you might be looking for, you know, vice presidents or directors, but you
don't want assistance to come up in a search.
Because as you know, you know, there are going to be many people who say
they're, you know, assistant to vice president or assistant to a director.
So, you could be clever about your searches and make sure you're yes, looking for
directors, but you're excluding the people you don't want to return in the results.
So, another example, you might be looking for personal trainers, but not personal
trainers who are within weight loss, because for whatever reason, you're
not interested in weight loss, okay?
So, that is how you use the NOT operator.
And it is actually one of the most powerful operators on LinkedIn, because you can get very
specific when you start saying, I want to find this, not that, not that, not that, all right?
And then the final one, the final operator you use on LinkedIn is PARENTHESES, and
this allows you to structure, put it all together and structure very specific searches.
So, basically parentheses means perform functions in the parentheses first.
So, kind of similar to maths class, okay?
So, basically let me give you some examples here.
This is how you start putting together all these searches.
So, you're looking for business owners and coaches or consultants
and health or fitness or nutrition.
So, basically what is going on here, you're telling LinkedIn that you want
to find all business owners who are also either coaches or consultants.
And you're saying they must be within health, fitness, or nutrition niches, right?
Again, looking for business owners, but not just business owners, business owners who are
also either coaches or consultants and are within these specific niches because you have
used AND operator in the middle, all right?
Let me give you another example here.
Personal trainer and moms or pregnancy or weight loss, not injury.
So, what exactly are we searching for here?
You're basically telling LinkedIn, I want to find all personal trainers that also have
basically that also specialize, you know, for, you know, there there's either specialized to
helping moms or pregnancy or weight loss, right?
So you're basically saying these are all personal trainers I'm searching for must
have either of these keywords in them.
Because you know, that might be what you're exactly looking for.
And you're saying not injury, right?
Because again, their injury, personal trainer, as you're saying, I'm not interested
in injury, personal trainers, all right?
So ,I hope this is all coming together and starting to make sense.
This is how you build upon operators to structure very, very specific
searches that will find and bring back your ideal clients in the results.
So, let me just hop back to the main video and give you some more pointers there, all right?
All right, so now that you have an understanding of how each of these operators work, we
need to put our knowledge into practice.
So, let's open up LinkedIn and actually craft your very first boolean search together.
All right, so let's perform our very first boolean search together, okay?
And let's just look for some personal trainers on this platform.
Now, the biggest mistake the majority of people would make is
that now, which is basically type in.
Personal trainer in the search bar and then I would click enter and they would go to people
and think, okay, well, 1.4 million personal trainers are on LinkedIn , but now that you
understand boolean operators, I want you to think of what is wrong with this search.
Now, basically we must use the exact, we need to use quotation marks.
So, to do an exact phrase search.
Otherwise, if you do not use the quotation marks, you're basically telling LinkedIn,
show me all profiles that have personal in them or didn't have trainer in them, right?
So, basically this could be pretty much anyone that have, you know, let's
say I have used trainer in my profile and I'm saying I'm a LinkedIn trainer.
And then someone has used personal inner profile and they say, you know, my
personal view on something is X, Y, and Z.
So, this is a very incorrect search to use.
So, it will bring up some of correct results, but it will also bring up many,
many people that are totally irrelevant.
So, we initially had 1.4 million search results when we used a search like that.
So, now if I'm telling LinkedIn these two keywords must be together like this, in
this consecutive order and we click search.
Then now our search went from 1.4 million to 500,000.
So, now we're getting way more specific on bringing back the right
people we are actually looking for.
Now, we could next build up on our search and let's say, you know, that you want to find
personal trainers that help moms in particular.
So, you're saying I want to find all profiles that have personal trainer in them.
And also a key word I mentioned of mom or pregnancy.
If I could just do that, okay.
Pregnancy or weight loss.
So, you are basically telling LinkedIn, I want to, I want to see all personal trainers
and then also have either mom or pregnancy or weight loss keywords on their profile, okay?
And we're going to click enter.
Here we go.
And now that brought in the results back from half a million to 44,000, this is brilliant.
The more specific we get with our searches, the more you know, the more the right
people we're going to see in a result.
And that's what you want to deal when you're looking for your ideal clients on LinkedIn.
So, again, 44,000, and we can probably bring this down even more by saying, well,
I don't want these trainers to be basically helping with injury, because you could
say that's not relevant to me injury.
Here we go.
And that brought down our search from 44,000 to 36,000.
So, it helps us giving you an idea of how specific you can get with your searches,
because I always recommend that you want to get your results under K basically 5,000.
The results cause your, your whole purpose of using boolean operators is for you
to find your ideal clients on LinkedIn.
So, the more specific you get with your search, the more quality people you're
going to find in the results, all right?
Now, one thing I need to mention is that, in LinkedIn, Premium, so the premium
business plan and the free LinkedIn plan is going to allow you to do boolean searches.
However, it's going to start limiting you when the search is becoming too long.
So, for example, if I made a search even longer and said, pregnancy or weight
loss, or, let's say muscle building.
Okay, we're getting results, but basically, the more keywords you include there,
the sooner, LinkedIn is going to stop your search, your surveys that say not
injury, or boxing though, let's see that.
And here we go, this is what I wanted to show you.
LinkedIn is basically telling you no results found, which is actually not, quite true.
The reason why you're getting this is because LinkedIn does not allow the free plan or
premium for business, very long searches.
You see, this is too long on the kind of the standard and the cheapest premium plans.
So, this is where you would have to invest in sales navigator.
If we go over here, to actually be able to run searches like those.
So, I'm going to put this very same search in their search box, and you can see that
I am actually getting 32,000 results.
So, not no results found, but actually there are a lot of people under the search.
However, you have to invest in sales navigator or the recruiter plan to be able to run
super, super long searches, on LinkedIn.
Now, if you are new to sales navigator, and if you want to understand kind of the
benefits of using it, and if it's even worth the investment, make sure you check
out my video on how to use sales navigator.
And I'm going to link that in the cards above.
So, you have a clear idea of the whether or not it is worth basically the investment,
but I'm personally absolutely in love with sales navigator, but this has, should
have given you a good idea of how we actually use boolean searches in practice.
And unfortunately, you're not going to be able to run super long searches.
In the basic LinkedIn prep plan, but it's gonna get you started.
So, again, if I just make it shorter, you know, it does allow me, us to
narrow to a certain extent, all right?
So, let me just hop back to the main video again and share a couple of more tips with you.
All right, you are now an expert using boolean searches on LinkedIn, just make sure
you always capitalize each of the operators, otherwise they're not going to work.
So, always use all caps AND, all caps OR and all caps NOT when running your
searches to make sure you get super precise results in the search box, okay?
Now, if you're interested in growing your business on LinkedIn, and you're ready to sign
up your very next client on this platform, be sure you also message me on LinkedIn
and ask me about the LinkedIn bootcamp.
I would absolutely love to help you grow on this platform.
Now, if you're brand new to LinkedIn, I highly recommend that you download my
start guide to LinkedIn below this video.
You might also want to check out this video next on how to grow your following on this platform.
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Thank you so much for being here and I'll catch you in the next episode.
Bye.