Episode 49: Kevin D. Turner

Jack Hubbard  00:22

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 Ledger's to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants With Modern bankers. 

Welcome to Jack Rants With Modern Bankers brought to you by RelPro, and Vertical IQ. Each week I feature top voices in financial services from bankers and consultants, to best selling authors and many more. The goal of this program is simple, to provide insights, success practices and to bring new ideas to the table that you can use to maximize your results. 

So, as I mentioned in the introduction there are “go to bankers,” and there are “go to LinkedIn” people, and Kevin Turner is my go to LinkedIn person. Now let's be fair. You know my partner, Brynne Tillman, and lots of other people know a lot of things about LinkedIn. But Kevin has this unique situation where he keeps up on what's going on and new on LinkedIn, and they make a lot of changes all the time. 

So, Kevin, I'm absolutely thrilled to have you on the show today.

Kevin D. Turner 00:00:36

Jack. I'm glad to be here, too. I enjoyed our last conversation we had here live, and it's exciting to be here. And yes, I am a LinkedIn geek in that sense I do track this stuff to the extent. Right now, in 2023, we have 168 new LinkedIn features. I think it'll cap out at 170. I'm sure there is something out there I've missed. We have, like 32 updates, and 18 rest in peace. Features that we all, some of us like that have gone away because they weren't utilized enough on LinkedIn, or they just didn't fit anymore.

So I love this. But I could not do it alone. I will never take credit for doing it alone. I've got a good group of I always say Eagle eyed and and sharing hearts that bring me stuff, right? I always say, if you see something weird, take a picture, take a video, send it to me. We'll figure out what it is and I'll give you credit and so I do that. It's part of, I guess my community build, you know, in that sense, a give back but it's also important to do, because on LinkedIn new features are rolled out in waves.

You'll never, always be first. You'll never, always be last. You're going to be in one of those 5 waves. They're always randomized. So if I only tell people about what I can actually see. I might be a third wave. I might be the last wave. I might be the first wave. but by having a community coming together and giving everybody credit for contributing, I'm able to tell you everything that's going on on LinkedIn, and it works. And I don't know if anybody else really did that in building a list, everybody wanted to take credit right? “I found all this stuff, and I'm bringing it to you.” I don't care to do that because I just want to know. And I want everybody I know to know and to know who finds it right, and I think it's just the right way to do it.

Jack Hubbard 00:01:50

Well, it is, and you've got 46,000 followers who very much appreciate what you do because LinkedIn doesn't tell us. S I wanna explore your business a little bit to start with you. You didn't just fall off the turnip truck and say, “Oh, here I am. I'm gonna do, LinkedIn” because you did a lot of stuff beforehand. Talk about your business, what you did before, LinkedIn. What do you do for people that want your help on LinkedIn in 2024.

Kevin D. Turner ╽ 00:03:03

No, I do a lot of things before, LinkedIn, but I've been on LinkedIn since 2005. I was in the first 2 million to join, and I've been active ever since. I used it in every business I've been involved with since that timeframe and found opportunities that way. But you know, before LinkedIn, before really starting, TNT Brand Strategist. I was everything from, you know, Fortune 50 National Sales Management for Sony Corporation, got into doing Venture Capital. So started up companies ran them a lot that were based in data privacy back in the I always say, turn of the century, right? Pre. 99, that is, turn of the century. And you know, love doing that. Got into turnarounds, corporate turnarounds for private equity and love doing that. But the problem with a turnaround is, if you do it right, you put yourself out of business right? Then you gotta find another one and just like any kind of consultancy. As soon as you land something, you gotta spend 80% of your time. Try to find the next one and look like you're spending 100% of the time fixing that one right? So a little bit of a challenge.

Got kinda tired of that and went into I guess they call it kind of Fortune 50 nonprofit. And so I led the American Heart Association from being just US based and doing a little bit of global business on accident into actually doing business in 140 countries. Building offices in Hong Kong, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Belgium Puerto Rico, basically servicing everything outside of the United States and hiring the people and then hiring print facilities in different locations. So we didn't complicate our nonprofit here in the US.

All that was great. But I was traveling 85% of my month. And not to Ohio, right, which isn't too bad, Dallas, to Ohio kind of thing. I was traveling all over the world. So when I was back one weekend a month my clock was messed up right raising a family all I wanted to do is sleep when they wanted to be awake. It was not right, although I loved it, enjoyed it. It wasn't right. I sat down with my wife. We said, you know what? We're both writers. We're both brand people. We enjoy helping others. And you know, what could we do together? 

And that's where we created TNT Brand Strategies. That's where the TNT comes from, right? So we set it up. A privately held woman owned a small business right? That is a consultancy focused on helping clients really kind of refine or define, probably first refine and then promote their brand. And I do a lot of that through embracing new technologies, understanding them and then really pushing within LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is a huge opportunity for exposure for basically pennies or nothing. Right? It's about you, your time, your expertise, and your connectability. 

And if you are up to it right. LinkedIn is limitless. That’s global. So anybody who ever says, “Oh, you know, things are a little slow here.” You've got the world. There is no such thing as things are a little slow in business when you're on LinkedIn, and you're really doing it right. You've got the whole world.

Jack Hubbard 00:06:36

You mentioned 2005. I got on in 2006. You staked your life on LinkedIn, and I think a lot of people have. A lot of people have done really well, and become very knowledgeable and very helpful to people on LinkedIn. What was it that said to you, “This is it. This is something I need to hitch my star to.”

Kevin D. Turner 00:06:59

It was connectivity. Going back to all the travel I used to do, and the people I would meet, and I love meeting people. I love getting into their lives and culture and everything else, and then you go away right. Pen pals are not a hot deal anymore. You can't write that letter, put the stamp on it and send them. But within LinkedIn I can meet those same people every day. I can see them. I can see how they're growing. I can help them in different ways that I couldn't do, and I can do it in mass that I found out very early on was a huge opportunity and it was the only platform that was allowing that to happen. Because I was on Twitter, you know. Now, ex other places. Facebook, that kind of stuff put them all aside because they really weren't opening up that ability to connect and stay in contact with the community and in a very professional way. And so that's that to me was like that turning point where I just said, I got LinkedIn. LinkedIn gets me and I'm gonna move forward with it. And when we went through that process of gotta get off the road, what do we do? This was perfect. And my wife she writes more towards things like, resumes Bios, content for sites things along that line. I'm more of the odd kind of techie Guy, how do you look at LinkedIn as a database? How do you make sure your SEO is right, that you're being found? You know that all these other components are working together. And I'm kind of the Loudmouth marketing guy. Right? She's more refined in her writing. I'm a little more “Blahh.” You know, together it works incredibly well.

Jack Hubbard 00:06:36

Well, you're everywhere. In fact, this morning, as I was preparing to move over to the dining area to get a recording. I saw you were on. It might have been just a couple of days ago in a year in review, which I wanna talk about since we're now into 2024. But you said something I wanna come back to you and talked about how LinkedIn will roll these things out and some people get them, and some people won't and they never notify you. What's the magic of this, Kevin? How does LinkedIn say Kevin ought to get this, but Jack won't get it until 2 months from now. What's the magic of that? 

Kevin D. Turner ╽ 00:09:31

There are? There are some components of that, because they're focusing now, rollouts within product lines. Right? So, navigator. Obviously, you know, recruiter premium and premium. They've decided to roll out all their AI assistance stuff coming through premium. So kind of a reason to buy into the premium. Right? We often forget that LinkedIn isn't a good social site. It's a business, right? It's not Craigslist. It's trying to make money. And it's actually the only social media site that has been wildly profitable since year one and that is because they get it. And so to me, I'll just like watching that process.

Jack Hubbard 00:10:09

It's fascinating. Well, let's go back to 2023 a little bit since here we are in 24. Do we want to talk about going forward? But what were some of the key features that maybe were added by LinkedIn, and 24, and maybe a couple that were retired, that you go. Jeez! I wish they'd have kept that

Kevin D. Turner ╽00:10:29

Oh, boy. And there's probably quite a few, I think my favorite new feature is what we call collaborative articles. And what collaborative articles are, it's based on people who've been interacting on LinkedIn, and have somewhat of a reputation for an area as a thought leader, LinkedIn will come and tap you on the shoulder and say, We'd like you to contribute to these articles. That used to be at one point, they were generated by human editors, right? The editing team, they still do that. But the collaborative articles are generated initially by AI. And then the people invited in are what makes it stronger. Because we all know AI lacks personality, personal experience, those kinds of things. That's what the people bring to these articles. So it starts in the right sense. 

And then we contribute and build those. Right. And the interesting thing is the opportunity for exposure is incredible. Because what LinkedIn is doing is it's putting collaborative articles in the feed outside of your network. Right? So people who never knew you now know you, they're allowing all the search engines within minutes of you publishing something into a collaborative article, all the search engines already have it. And they're crediting you. So you are getting the kind of the internet power of what LinkedIn editors have. You're getting, because you're part of the package, right? And so that exposure is incredible. 

So somebody's typing something in, you know, I need a sales pro for banking. You're the contributor in that area, they're finding you, they're then following it to LinkedIn, and they're learning about you, right. So that exposure is incredible. Now LinkedIn is getting shoosh, huge SEO value for LinkedIn, the same way. So you know, they're basically pumping out content. Now, how do they reward everybody, if you contribute, and you're in the top 30% in your category, right? Then you get a little badge that says you're a top community voice in and I've earned, I think six so far. And then I stopped and they went away, because they do go away after 60 days, you have to keep up with them. And I'm back in and I'll probably pick them all back up in the next couple of days and they'll be back on there. They do have an impact. I've had people come to me and say, Oh, I saw you have you know the brand strategy, or the personal branding community top voice on LinkedIn. 

You must be really good at this. Let's talk. Right? And so you focus on those categories that you want to be known for, to kind of build that knowledge leadership in this process. And I think it's an incredible opportunity. Are the articles all that good, huh? Sometimes, sometimes not. But the exposure is incredible. And I think that's, you know, one of the reasons we're all on LinkedIn is to be found. And so this is just a, I don't know, it's an accelerant. But if you're not doing it, you should be doing it. And there's ways to get into it if you haven't been invited, and that is going to those articles, you know, going in and giving people the reactions, right, so that's how that individual is going to get scored to get their badges. If you start contributing like that, you start sharing these collaborative articles. Ultimately, they're going to notice you, and then invite you in, as long as you've got a good record on LinkedIn. So if you've done anything, you've been in jail too many times for the wrong reason. And they may not invite you in. That's always kind of a stickler or they don't like the content you produce. They might not invite you in, but it's a good way to kind of get that invite done. 

Jack Hubbard  16:10

Now, I know you've got a couple others for 2023. But I got a follow up on a question. You mentioned that and I've contributed to a couple of articles. And it's fascinating how people come out. And and again, you know, you know, I only work in banking, but I get people coming out of the woodwork following me, etc. So it's kind of, but you earn that, right, because you're active on LinkedIn. But let's say I'm a banker, and I've got 500 followers and a few connections, and et cetera, et cetera. How would I then proactively go find these collaborative articles, so that I could maybe comment and get myself into this mix?

Kevin D. Turner  16:50

Believe it or not, if you see one in your feed, right click on it, it's going to take you to a single collaborative article. And within that article in the header, there's going to be an area that you can go see the list of all collaborative article categories. And that's where you can then go, okay, you know, what, I really want to be known for this, this and this, those are the ones you want to open, maybe put a tab on your browser, right? So that every day you can open it, start collaborating with it, start sharing them, very quickly, you're going to be in one of the things if you picked, let's say three or four categories, make sure those categories that you're picking are also your skills within your profile, right. So you've you've set them up the skills, you've had endorsements for those skills, right? Because that way to LinkedIn looks okay, you know what you're talking about. And then make sure it's in the content of your LinkedIn as well. So that's kind of their backup to check. If you do that, more than likely, you'll get invited into those articles. And that's, you know, the perfect way in.

Jack Hubbard  17:54

That's great. Well, what else in 2023, you got one more really good one for 23. And maybe one or two that were retired. 

Kevin D. Turner  18:02

The one, the one that I'm in love with is verification, right? Profile verification, whether it is I have an official email from IBM, right, because I work there, I can verify my email. And then I know, I really do work for IBM, because believe it or not, IBM has three times more employees on LinkedIn than they actually employ. So you want to be looking for the IBM ones that have the little badge that says verified because they can't get that IBM email without being part of IBM. And so it's a nice little kind of piece. They also will do it with IDs. So in the US, Canada, Mexico, we show our driver's license to an app, which is called Clear me, that's the app you use to run through the airport to pass all those lines. 

You show that it does a biometric on your face. And it says yes, you are the person in that document. And all it tells LinkedIn is your match. Your name matches the document, your face matches the document. So you are who you say you are. That's all LinkedIn finds out. Clear me hold some of that information. Because if you're going through security checkpoints, they have to have verification. But they're a group that's been around for about 15 to 20 years, no incidences of really tight security. And that's one of the reasons they don't provide that stuff to LinkedIn, because they don't want it out there and LinkedIn doesn't want to have it either. 

So I love ID verification or verification. You can even do it through Microsoft entra. And through LinkedIn learning, if you have a license for LinkedIn, they're trying to give many ways to do this. And what I love about it is it's free for everybody. And they just launched ID verification through person Gonna, using the passports outside of the United States into, like 40 Other countries throughout the Middle East, throughout Europe, throughout Asia, that uses that little RFID, kind of chipset within a passport as part of the verification as well. And then biometrics on top of that. But again, keeping it all free. So now when we get an invite, we know that person is who they say they are. Or if we read something about the murderer, look at their profile, we're gonna see that little shield there, right with the X in the middle, and we're gonna know that they're who they say they are. And that's important when we're starting a relationship, because in the digital world, we can be anybody we want to be. Right, and many people do pretend to be people. Loving, verification.

Jack Hubbard  20:49

There's so many fake ones out there, Kevin, and we're going to talk about that. But I gotta ask you a very practical question. So I've not done this. And here's the reason. So my legal name is John. We've gone by John since I was three years old, I go by Jack, but on my driver's license, because it's the legal name. It's John. Steve Smith goes by Chip, and he puts a chip on LinkedIn, because that's how people know him. How do we get around the verification? Because I'd like to use it.

Kevin D. Turner  21:22

It's kind of good and bad, you can get around it in a way. And that is if you're using nicknames, right, that can be associated. Billy William, right. Those are really easy ones. Jack and John, that might work. But what you do is you're going to set up your profile as John, you're going to do the verification, it's going to tell LinkedIn you are who you are. And then you go back and you can change John the jack, it will stay like that until the next verification stage. And LinkedIn has information that you believe John is Jack, in that process, now, if you change your first name, and your last name, and they had nothing to do, you became Billy Williams, there might be a problem. They're gonna say, too far off from the original, right, something's not right. But first name, nicknames. Those are very accepted in that process. And that's how you do it. And if you don't want to have anybody see, John, you know, you do it, just like a company does a bad press release? Do it Friday night at 11 o'clock. Get it all done? Switch it back onto Jack, nobody would see it. Right. That's why you do it.

Jack Hubbard  22:40

That's a good catch. Thank you, Kevin, for that. All right, what's something that was retired that you thought, Gee, that was a great thing, I wish they'd have kept that.

Kevin D. Turner  22:50

The one and it actually technically retired in 22, at the very end of December, but everybody's still screaming about it. And that's pinned comments. So if you write a post, right, right, in Article, whatever it was, and you wanted to have the first comment, you know, and you didn't want to get in trouble with how LinkedIn sees that algorithm wise, but you want to have a comment in there, you want to keep it at the top, maybe it had the link to whatever you were talking about, at some resources, maybe even add your pitch. I don't think there's anything wrong with a pitch in the comments, right? You used to be able to pin it. I had a pin starting in two September, and it ran to December and they got rid of it basically saying people were using it in the wrong way. But to me, if you give somebody that pin, you should expect they will use it in many ways. Because you don't have control over that. Right. And so they thought that people were using it more towards sales. I don't think that's wrong. Yeah, to me, a lot of us are on LinkedIn to pay our bills, right, keep our family happy and help others out in that same way. So why would that be wrong? But that's one of them that went away. I think people just they're not happy with profile videos as the other and you and I, I think the last or the first time we did this. I think it was stimulated by a profile video.

Jack Hubbard  24:19

So it was fabulous. And you had a guitar at the end which I just think is so cool.

Kevin D. Turner  24:28

And that was actually somebody who did that off a clip from another life. It was Jillian Whitney, and she just put that together. She's brilliant in the video side. For her that probably takes moments. For me it would take days, hours, years maybe never happen right? You say it's good to have friends that you can give things to and they give things to you. But I love that it is still in my featured section. I made a post out of it and put it in the featured section. So it's still available, but doesn't have the same effect but that's one i am missing. And I don't think they should have pulled it. But I want to know why they did it. Yeah. Well,

Jack Hubbard  25:09

But that's an interesting question, isn't it? Why I mean, there's a I heard around the world, there are people in LinkedIn called innovators, and maybe they don't call them that anymore. But they're there to change this thing for the better. What, what's the rhyme or reason to take away something that was so valuable?

Kevin D. Turner  25:32

You know, their excuse was not enough people used it. But to me, if you've already created it, not enough people use it, it's just gonna, it should just stay there, right? Maybe it will build momentum and become more. So to me, that was a bad excuse. What I understand about it is it was expensive to maintain, because the video was third party processed. So they were basically captive, right. And this goes into when we're talking about, we're getting ready to talk about what's coming in 2024, it'll, you'll understand why they want to get rid of this, because there's some big stuff coming. And it's more towards native video. So I would say that profile videos are probably coming back in some form, maybe not exactly the same, because that would be admitting something. But in some way, they'll be available. And they'll be done natively. So you don't have to, you know, build it over here in Canva, and put it over there and load it with your mobile and then look at it on your desktop, you'll be able to open up your desktop and just make one.

Jack Hubbard  26:37

Yeah, which would be a lot, which would be a lot better. And I do want to talk about 24. But I want to split this a little bit. And you talked about verification, LinkedIn would tell you that there are a billion people on as members, I'm not sure that's really true, because there's so many fake profiles. Number one is to talk about fake profiles. And when I get someone from Revlon, or you know, somebody like that, that's in Taiwan, not those people are bad, or Indonesia, and they have seven connections. What do I do about that? Kevin, this is, this is horrible. And from what a lot of bankers are telling me, and I've had bankers actually say, Look, I can't handle it anymore. I'm getting off on LinkedIn, because of all these people that I don't know. So how many fake profiles out there? And when I get something that looks like a fake, what should I do?

Kevin D. Turner  27:36

Yeah. And I will say, we can't leave LinkedIn because it's fake, right? We didn't leave email, because of the notices from the prints of blah, blah, blah, right? Who needs your money, or we didn't leave our cell phones, because we got texts that our daughter was stuck on the side of the road and needed an extra $100 to get to where she was going to text the money. We didn't step away from this. We worked on technology to solve them. And to eliminate them. LinkedIn is doing their best. It's not as easy as we might think. ID verification is part of that. Right? If it's free, why doesn't everybody get it? So that's one of the ways we control this really quickly as if everybody gets it, it's not going to cost you anything. That makes it a lot easier for those fakes to stand out or become a little more targeted. But when I look at the overall membership, right, that 1 billion, if you just take the United States into comparison, there's 330 plus million people who live in the United States. Normally only business people are on LinkedIn. Right? 

So if you break that down to the actual amount of the labor force that's employed and unemployed, right, I think that number is closer to 169. Right? So if LinkedIn is saying we have 219 million members in the US, but there's only 169 members in the workforce, if everybody between the age of 15 and 64, in the United States, joins LinkedIn, we would still be short. So to me, it's either people who live in Nigeria and stay there in the US, or it's a fake profile. Right? And that, if we look at it in that sense, what is that? That's about 22%. Okay, over inflation. And I also look at when we had what we call the purge, and that was when LinkedIn looked at our connections and followers and said, you know, we're going to get rid of bad actors out of your numbers. And we're gonna get rid of people who haven't been active, right? Majority of those were fake profiles. They didn't dissolve the fake profile, but they took them out of our numbers and the average change was about 15%. 

So there were some that, you know, only got 1%, that suddenly got 65% change in their numbers depending on how they built their network. But if we look at that, I would say anywhere from 15 to 25% of LinkedIn, at least in the US, and it may be more or less worldwide, are probably fake profiles. So that is a lot. What we can do is, whenever we see them, we should report them. Right, we should block them. So not only do they not come back to us, but they don't come back to anybody else in our network, right, the more people who block them, the more likely LinkedIn is to take them out. Because block is a big message to LinkedIn. And then when LinkedIn sends you that message, that they reviewed the profile, right, or the invitation or the InMail. And that first review is by a bot. And this bot kept telling humans from fakes, obviously, because the majority of the time it just comes back and says no, we didn't see any violations. Don't leave it at that, respond to that email that came to you, and give them the details that they need to identify. 

So if you go back and say, Look, this picture came from a Sears catalog, right? And there's no way this lady went to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, all in the same timeframe, right? And worked for, you know, at a sea level at these companies, right, there's no way that could happen. And then you put that in that email return back, a human will read that, and have to follow that guidance to then evaluate the profile. So report, right report, block, and then respond to that email, we'll get rid of them. If we all do that, it only takes seconds to do. But if we all do that every day, and I used to get 30 or 40 a day, I'm down to maybe getting one or two. What happens is you get the reputation for if I mess with you, you're gonna report, block me and respond to that email. And you're going to get rid of me, right? Now, another thing that a lot of these fakes do, because they've now found approaching you doesn't work, you're not going to connect with them. So now they do things like they share your posts, or they comment on your posts. So be on the lookout for them. And when you see him, do the same thing, right report block, and respond to that email. And we'll get rid of him. But it is a problem. LinkedIn definitely has it. But LinkedIn is ramping up. They are putting teams together to get after this. And with everything else they've got going on. Ai wise, they'll get the salt. 

Jack Hubbard  33:05

Yeah, and a billion. So what I mean is if it's a billion and it's 750 real people, that's really what we're what we're looking for. Alright, so the value, right? Yeah, absolutely. 

Outro: 

Thanks for listening to this episode of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers, part one with Kevin D. Turner. his in every program is brought to you by our friends at RelPro and Vertical IQ. Join us next time for more special guests bringing you marketing sales and leadership insights, as well as lots of ideas that will provide your bank or credit union that competitive edge you need to succeed. 

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