UpLift Live - Speaker announcement: Richard van der Blom

Speaker announcement: Richard van der Blom

09/25/23 • 11 min

1 Listener

Our final speaker announcement is a Dutch superstar based in Valencia, Spain. It's the man who knows all about the LinkedIn algorithm, Richard van der Blom.

TRANSCRIPT

Back 2 years would practically do nothing for the reach.

Now, you get more people to repost your stuff, it accelerates your growth.

Welcome back to the UpLift Live podcast. This is John Espirian from the Mission Control team for UpLift Live, which is the UK's first LinkedIn-focused conference for LinkedIn specialists, power users and enthusiasts.

It's time for our final speaker announcement, and this time we're shooting over to Spain to speak to a Dutchman. It's social selling and LinkedIn algorithm expert, Richard van der Blom.

Let's hop aboard and get to the interview with Richard!

Richard van der Blom, welcome to the show.

You are going to be a speaker at the UpLift Live conference in Birmingham in March. Welcome aboard.

Tell us, what do you know about LinkedIn? Thank you, John, first of all, thank you for having me both here on the show and in March in Birmingham.

What do I know about LinkedIn? I guess I'll know quite a bit, just like I think all the other speakers.

Have been active on LinkedIn since 2005.

Started to give my first LinkedIn training back in 2009.

So, what I'll probably bring to the stage is about plus 14 years of experience on how to leverage this platform to grow your business.

Basically, that's it, to grow your business, whether you are a solo entrepreneur or a marketing professional, or whether you are in B2B sales.

And that's basically what I hope to share with the audience.

Awesome.

And you're well known for your skills in social selling, but I think probably most people who are watching this or listening to this on the podcast will know you for your algorithm report.

You've become really famous for that.

And you've got more than 140,000 followers, mostly off the back of that, I would guess.

Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about where the algorithm report came from, and what kind of insights people get from that.

Yeah, well working with, so, my main focus is to work with mid-size, larger enterprises.

And back in 2018, we had two enterprise clients.

And they were baffled by the fact that when they publish a white paper or a really well-thought article, they would reach, let's say, 5000 views.

And they were baffled by the fact that if they would publish like a team picture of like, any event that they would participate in, like, I don't know, half the marathon at Boston, they would get like 30,000 views, and they were like, we want to switch that, you know, we want to have 30,000 views for the article and just 5000 views for them.

So, they started to ask us questions.

And back then we only knew from our own experience based on our own postings what would happen, but we could only guess, and then I teamed up with some really amazing people.

And they helped me to, I delivered them with the questions and they started to research like what happens if somebody likes if somebody comments what happens if you change the post in terms of format.

And basically, we released like an algorithm report in October 2018.

That was the first one and it was actually shared first with the two clients.

And they were very, very enthusiastic about it.

So, I thought, OK, let's just publish it.

And it went like, it blew up.

I remember I had almost 1 million views on that post, which was for me back then it was like huge.

And so that was a start, actually.

And back then I didn't thought even about redoing the same thing next year.

I just thought like, OK, it's a one time exercise, job done.

And then I think it was something in May 2019.

May, June 2019.

And people actually came back to me and said, like, are you going to do the research again this year, because we have seen some changes.

And that was when like, it occurred to me like, hey, maybe if we do this on a more regular basis, then you know, people would benefit from it.

So, we started to do it again, October, same month, 2019.

It went even bigger, we have more data because we were more prepared, we know how to examine it.

And that's actually how it started, and indeed you're right.

That's when also my personal growth accelerated my personal page accelerated because social selling is really cool but it's rather boring to post on but if you post like the secrets of LinkedIn content, algorithm, well, you probably know that, then people like really want to have this and really grabbed you know.

Yeah.

And tell me do you agree that the pace of change on LinkedIn is speeding up...

Our final speaker announcement is a Dutch superstar based in Valencia, Spain. It's the man who knows all about the LinkedIn algorithm, Richard van der Blom.

TRANSCRIPT

Back 2 years would practically do nothing for the reach.

Now, you get more people to repost your stuff, it accelerates your growth.

It's time for our final speaker announcement, and this time we're shooting over to Spain to speak to a Dutchman. It's social selling and LinkedIn algorithm expert, Richard van der Blom.

Let's hop aboard and get to the interview with Richard!

Richard van der Blom, welcome to the show.

You are going to be a speaker at the UpLift Live conference in Birmingham in March. Welcome aboard.

Tell us, what do you know about LinkedIn? Thank you, John, first of all, thank you for having me both here on the show and in March in Birmingham.

What do I know about LinkedIn? I guess I'll know quite a bit, just like I think all the other speakers.

Have been active on LinkedIn since 2005.

Started to give my first LinkedIn training back in 2009.

So, what I'll probably bring to the stage is about plus 14 years of experience on how to leverage this platform to grow your business.

Basically, that's it, to grow your business, whether you are a solo entrepreneur or a marketing professional, or whether you are in B2B sales.

And that's basically what I hope to share with the audience.

Awesome.

And you're well known for your skills in social selling, but I think probably most people who are watching this or listening to this on the podcast will know you for your algorithm report.

You've become really famous for that.

And you've got more than 140,000 followers, mostly off the back of that, I would guess.

Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about where the algorithm report came from, and what kind of insights people get from that.

Yeah, well working with, so, my main focus is to work with mid-size, larger enterprises.

And back in 2018, we had two enterprise clients.

And they were baffled by the fact that when they publish a white paper or a really well-thought article, they would reach, let's say, 5000 views.

So, they started to ask us questions.

And back then we only knew from our own experience based on our own postings what would happen, but we could only guess, and then I teamed up with some really amazing people.

And basically, we released like an algorithm report in October 2018.

That was the first one and it was actually shared first with the two clients.

And they were very, very enthusiastic about it.

So, I thought, OK, let's just publish it.

And it went like, it blew up.

I remember I had almost 1 million views on that post, which was for me back then it was like huge.

And so that was a start, actually.

And back then I didn't thought even about redoing the same thing next year.

I just thought like, OK, it's a one time exercise, job done.

And then I think it was something in May 2019.

May, June 2019.

And people actually came back to me and said, like, are you going to do the research again this year, because we have seen some changes.

And that was when like, it occurred to me like, hey, maybe if we do this on a more regular basis, then you know, people would benefit from it.

So, we started to do it again, October, same month, 2019.

It went even bigger, we have more data because we were more prepared, we know how to examine it.

And that's actually how it started, and indeed you're right.

Yeah.

And tell me do you agree that the pace of change on LinkedIn is speeding up...

Previous Episode

Speaker announcement: Mark Williams

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Our next speaker is known as Mr LinkedIn! Welcome to Mark Williams, who's coming from North Wales to speak onstage in Birmingham at UpLift Live about advanced LinkedIn strategies.

TRANSCRIPT

Who would have predicted this time last year that AI would be even anywhere near LinkedIn, you know?

It's time for another speaker announcement, and this time we're chatting with Mr LinkedIn himself, Mark Williams. I call Mark the Swiss Army knife of LinkedIn, as he knows so much about the platform and is probably the single person from whom I've learned most about LinkedIn.

I chat with Mark a lot as we're both Liverpool Football Club supporters, and I'm a regular contributor on his podcast, Linkedinformed. We're turning the tables today and I'm interviewing him.

Let's hop aboard and get to the interview with Mark!

Mark Williams, welcome to the UpLift Live podcast.

You are going to be one of our speakers in Birmingham.

It's a great honour to be able to host you.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

I can't wait.

I can't believe it's so long to wait till March.

It's seems a long time away for me at the moment.

But I'm sure once we get past Christmas, it'll come upon us in a flash.

Yeah, it will a bit.

And it feels odd to be saying this, given that you are Mr LinkedIn, but tell us, for the people who don't know who you are, what do you know about LinkedIn? Oh God! Where do you start? I think, you know, one of the things I would say about me and LinkedIn, I mean, it changes so often.

And there's so much complexity to it, that I don't think anybody could ever claim to know everything about LinkedIn.

But I have been doing this a long time.

And I think one of the things I feel is a strength with regards to knowing about LinkedIn is just that, that sense of knowing the company, the direction that they go in, and sometimes they make a change and you think, oh, you know, I assume this, or one would assume this from what they're doing.

But sometimes when you've been doing this, as long as I have you kind of go oh, I'm not actually sure that's true.

I think it's probably more like this, you know, and interpreting and understanding the platform from the perspective of users and how users have changed the way they use it, you know.

I guess again, the longer you've seen it, the more you've been around it, the easier it is to be able to make that kind of crossover between what the platform or what the company are doing, and how its users will actually want to use it.

Yeah, it's one of the things I appreciate most about your Linkedinformed podcast is that you actually cogitate and digest this stuff and then think about what it might mean strategically and explain that really well on the podcast.

So, if anyone hasn't come across Linkedinformed, it's just gone through its 400th episode.

It pretty much is required listening, I would say.

If you're going to be coming to this advanced conference for LinkedIn specialists, you need to be listening to Mark's podcast, go and check it out.

It's a regular for me on a Saturday afternoon.

Now, Mark, I often think of you as the Swiss Army knife of LinkedIn, because you just know so many things about so many parts of what is a massive beast.

We're too far away from the conference for you to tell us any specifics about what you're going to talk about but can you say something about the kind of state of LinkedIn and where you think it's going and maybe give us some idea of the kind of advanced things that you might want to talk about? I mean, it's funny, isn't it.

Every year, or certainly for the last few years, in January, I do a sort of prediction of what I think's going to happen over the next year.

And I usually get it quite wrong.

So, I've given up trying to really predict on where LinkedIn is going to go.

But the one thing we do know is that it's going to change, and it always does.

And it always will.

I think there are indications from LinkedIn that they are making a real concerted effort to try and stem the tide of personal content.

And then trying to kind of dictate to us that they want to see more business content.

And that's a good thing and a bad thing, you know.

It's a kind of a good thing in the sense that maybe people do go a bit too far with personal content on LinkedIn.

But it's a bad thing, also, in the sense that it kind of drives me a bit mad that LinkedIn feel they can dictate to us what they th...

Next Episode

Mission Control: Gus Bhandal

Here's another member of the Mission Control organising team for the UpLift Live conference. It's marketing expert The M Guru aka Gus Bhandal.

TRANSCRIPT

The important thing about being there in person is that you get access to the speakers, there's no separate areas or anything like that. Basically, we're going to be one big happy family on the day.

It's time to speak with another member of the Mission Control team, and our interviewee today is The M Guru, Gus Bhandal.

Let's hop aboard and get to the interview with Gus!

OK, Gus Bhandal, welcome to the UpLift Live podcast.

You are one of my co-organisers for this conference.

Gus, for people who don't know you, tell us, who is this M Guru person? Thank you, John.

It's a pleasure to be a part of not only the Mission Control team, but you know, part of this recording as well.

So, my name is Gus, I run a business called The M Guru.

And the M stands for marketing.

I'm a marketer of numerous years of experience, 20 plus.

And what I do is I help businesses with their marketing.

Over the last few years or so, 3 or 4 years, I've specialised in LinkedIn, particularly in terms of content creation, getting people to be better at LinkedIn, and how to improve their LinkedIn presence, quite frankly, to get clients, to have conversations, to make friends and ultimately to make money.

Yeah, nice one.

And so you've got an interest in LinkedIn.

But why a LinkedIn conference? I know why I want to go to a LinkedIn conference.

What do you think about this one? Having worked in social media for a number of years, I know that the phrase digital marketing and social media and all that is such a massive phrase, and it kind of encompasses so much, and quite frankly, it's encompassing even more.

So, we started with the likes of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

And now we've got kind of BeReal and Clubhouse and T2 and Spill and all that.

And it's just never ending.

And I think particularly having a LinkedIn-focused conference, because I believe that LinkedIn is the platform for everybody.

I think it's the all-singing, all-dancing platform that covers everything for everyone.

And I think every business owner, senior executive, team leader, etc., should be on LinkedIn.

So, I think a LinkedIn-focused conference would be really good for the UK to make sure that we to make the most of the platform because I think it's the one platform that a lot of people have trouble with, but also the one platform that we can also make the most out of.

Yeah, nice one.

And you as part of the Mission Control team, I mean, you know so many people, and you go to so many events, so you've got some events experience as well, which I don't really have.

So, I've got domain experience with LinkedIn, but things like organising an event, organising a venue, thinking about maybe a pre-party or anything like that, is just totally alien to me.

So, we are going to be doing the conference, actually, well not in your home city, but near enough: it's going to be in Birmingham.

Tell us something about how you recommended that place, or what people should expect when they come to Birmingham? Absolutely.

I go to an incredible amount of networking events, conferences, etc., all over the world.

I believe that networking is massive.

I believe it's very important for business owners and lots of people to kind of to meet other people and get to know other people etc.

And I've, you know, in previous roles, kind of employments, I've run a lot of conferences myself, gala dinners, etc.

So, I like to think I know what I'm doing.

But at the same time, I also have a good handle on what makes a good event and what people would need, particularly in Birmingham, it's practically the centre of the UK, it's in the Midlands.

It's about a 20-minute drive from my home.

So, it's, it's perfect for me.

But it's great.

It's very easily accessible.

The venue itself, I actually went to an event there last year, and I thought, this venue will be perfect.

A, because it's massive.

It's got a massive screen, it's got a big stage.

It's got lots of networking opportunity, space.

So, I think it'd be ideal for our conference as well.

Yeah, nice one.

I mean, I haven't seen the venue yet, as the time we record this, but we are going to be visiting it together soon.

But when you were telling me about it, I was thinking, yeah,...