LinkedIn Expert Richard Bliss Talks Online Presence, Algorithms and His New Column
In this Meetings Today Podcast, destinations content manager Taylor Smith sits down with CEO of BlissPoint Consulting Richard Bliss, a LinkedIn Top Voices Influencer and a 2025 Meetings Trendsetter, to understand how he helps executives master modern communication tools for strategic business advantage, specifically through LinkedIn.
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[Related: LinkedInsights: An Introduction to Taking LinkedIn Beyond the Badge Scan]
Transcript:
Editors note: The following transcription was facilitated by Microsoft Teams via its AI transcription software and proofed by our editors. Although it is very accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.
Taylor Smith
Hello, and welcome to this Meetings Today podcast. I'm Taylor Smith, Content Manager for Meetings Today, and it's been a while since I last recorded one of these. We've been very busy here at Meetings Today this summer, publishing the second ever issue of our brand-new biannual digital magazine, Incentives Today, and also celebrating our 2025 Meetings Trendsetters, which we announced on August 1. That list features 20 meetings professionals who are innovating, initiating and inspiring positive changes in the business events industry through their work and leadership in a wide range of roles, and one name that appears on our list this year is Richard Bliss, founder and CEO of BlissPoint Consulting, and who I've come to discover is an absolute legend on LinkedIn. I first met Richard at MPI Southern California's We[Con] earlier this summer in San Diego and I am super excited to catch up with him today and pick his brain about leveling up your LinkedIn game. Thank you for being here with me today, Richard.
Richard Bliss
Taylor, what a pleasure. I'm so excited to join you here. And we did have a lot of fun in San Diego, didn't we? It was very nice to meet there.
Taylor Smith
We did. It was great. And the weather was so nice. Great way to kick off summer, I will say. But before we jump in and get into this LinkedIn lingo that you've that you're going to share with us, I want the audience to get a chance to know you a little bit more. They've got your bio in our Trendsetters. They heard what I just said, but what's your story, Richard? Where's your career taking you and how'd you end up here?
Richard Bliss
Well, that's a long story. I don't think we have enough time to cover all of it, but it's been a very unique journey for me. I started off my career many years ago and have been in tech for a very long time and over the years taking on many different roles, being involved. Taylor, I even had my own technology conference for many years, traveling all over the world.
From Sydney to Berlin to Finland to Helsinki down to Buenos Aires and then throughout the United States, having the opportunity to share and teach. And it's always usually been around technology and the trends and impact it has on on all of us. And I found myself here having launched my company now a little over 6 1/2 years ago.
I'm in Silicon Valley and I work extensively with a lot of leaders, marketing people, salespeople, understanding how to what I call in my book, digital first leadership. How do I put myself out there? Because in today's world, we know it, Taylor, you meet people online.
Before long, before, if you ever meet them in person, and that might be co-workers, that might even be your boss. And so we we really need to change the way we think about that. And having been a trendsetter, I appreciate the recognition in a wide variety of other areas. It was great to be recognized here and see how see how that as we move into the future, what it's looking like with trying to use the new tools that we have.
Taylor Smith
And I think it's something, you know, every day we're all wondering what that's going to look like. A few years ago we weren't talking about AI and ChatGPT, right? We wouldn't have known what ChatGPT meant or stood for. And now it's second nature to some of us because so much is changing and shifting, and the industry is trying to keep up, so that's why we need you. That's why you're here. Well, how does your experience and what you've done uniquely position you to serve the meetings and events industry with this kind of tailored, one-of-a-kind insight into this world of digital first marketing?
Richard Bliss
I've been in all aspects of it, right? Hosting my own technology conference, being on stage as the keynote, being in the audience, being the executive that is in charge of that message, helping coordinate that, whether being a vendor at some large events, all of that allows me to see the holistic image, the picture that goes with all of that. And one of the biggest challenges continues to be how do we, how do we find people? How do we talk to people? How do we connect with people? Because as we, you know, obviously COVID disrupted so much of that and you know, Taylor, it's almost like we're resetting and relearning basic fundamental skills on just connecting with people. It's almost like we forgot that COVID kind of did a reset and said, OK, we're all going, we all are going to start over. And that's been one of the biggest challenges that I've seen is helping people understand how do I take things that I do naturally?
And now transfer those to a new environment like online, like in this case LinkedIn, where I'm not, I'm not comfortable. I don't know. It doesn't feel natural and that causes people to freeze up and hold back from what they would normally be able to do with fairly ease and an approach without fear. But right now there's a lot of people being held back.
Taylor Smith
And that's what you're here for. When I met you and heard you speak at MPI Southern California's We[Con] earlier this year, I learned more about how to properly use LinkedIn during your 60 minute session than I've learned throughout the entirety of time that I've been a LinkedIn user.
I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm doing it all wrong. Everything I'm doing, everything I thought about LinkedIn because, you know, I I'm an Instagram girly, right? I've been on Instagram since it came out. I've probably had a million different Instagram accounts at this point and I feel like I know the algorithm as best as I can on LinkedIn, it's totally different how this, how that platform works. Can you maybe give our listeners today a quick recap of what your session was about that day so they can get a feeling for what drew me in so much?
Richard Bliss
LinkedIn, you said it. LinkedIn is different. Now I'm going to ask you a question, how many of those Instagram accounts do you pay for?
Taylor Smith
Zero.
Richard Bliss
Zero. If you had to pay for your Instagram, would you keep it?
Taylor Smith
Um.
Richard Bliss
Maybe.
Taylor Smith
I'd keep, it I think. I think maybe I'd keep one, but it's because I don't think I could live without Instagram.
Richard Bliss
Right. You can't live without it. Now here's the difference is that one of the things that you wouldn't pay for it, and you don't pay for it right now, is because they don't get revenue from you, right? Then you don't pay Instagram. You don't pay Facebook. You don't pay TikTok. We don't pay X. Some people do, but Elon Musk discovered real fast that people just aren't willing to pay for that.
And that's because their their revenue is driven by advertising, right? Their customers are looking to get access to us and then our eyeballs become the the product, the revenue stream.
But on LinkedIn, only 20 of their revenue comes from advertising. The other 80 comes from people literally paying for the platform. LinkedIn Premium, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Recruiter. These tools drive $17 billion of revenue.
Taylor Smith
Wow.
Richard Bliss
And that's some of my clients spend $1 to $2,000,000 a year on LinkedIn, not running ads, but using and accessing the tools that let the platform be more effective. Now the reason I bring this up is because algorithms that are designed to benefit the buyer is the key. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X. Their algorithm is designed to benefit their buyer, their customer, the advertiser. LinkedIn, their algorithm, on the other hand, is designed to benefit you and I. We're the payers now. Do you pay for your LinkedIn?
Taylor Smith
I do not, but I would be lying if I said I didn't consider what it would mean for me.
Richard Bliss
That's right. You've thought about it, but you still, here's the thing, you're still benefiting from it because so many other people are paying for it that the baseline of the algorithm’s activity benefits you. You know, it's kind of like if anybody's ever moved out of the house and they kept the Netflix account that their parents are still paying from, you know what I'm talking about.
Taylor Smith
Yeah, I know that too well.
Richard Bliss
Maybe a little bit of that? Sure. OK. So what we've got then is that the LinkedIn algorithm is fundamentally different because of the customer is fundamentally different. Now when we say fundamentally different, what are we talking about? This is the things you were alluding to. OK, first of all, on LinkedIn, when you post something on LinkedIn, it doesn't go to your followers. It goes to a tiny fraction. Less than 10% oftentimes see your content on LinkedIn. So if you've got 1000 people who are following you on LinkedIn, we'll do easy math. 100 people are going to see it 10%. If you have 1000 followers or connections, it's kind of the same thing. It's not, but we're not going to get into that on this podcast.
Only 100 people are going to see it out of 1000. Well, why? Because LinkedIn needs to know if that content you're putting on their platform is worthy to be shared with their audience. And how do they determine that? They watch carefully the reaction of the audience to your content. Now you know on Insta and on the other products, they throw it to as many people as possible and then they get the engagement and then you track that engagement metric, right? What's my what's my percentage here on LinkedIn? It's the complete opposite.
I mean, Taylor, I call this the upside-down world of social media because everything is, it literally is. So they show it to as few people as possible on LinkedIn, as few people as possible see it, and then they carefully watch the engagement. And if you get significant engagement, now they'll show it to more people. But that engagement has some caveats.
Taylor Smith
Yeah, and that's what people might not know what to do.
Richard Bliss
Right, because for example, you only get one post a day. How often do you post on Insta?
Taylor Smith
Like every picture I was like, gotta get it up there.
Richard Bliss
Gotta get it on. If you go to my account, you're gonna mostly see my board game collection and my garden. That's about it.
Taylor Smith
That's not a bad feed. I'd like to check it out.
Richard Bliss
You gotta go check out my garden there. I'm not a very good gardener. That's why I put it on Insta. Anybody know why my plant's dying? Anyway, now here's what's going on is that when you put that something out on LinkedIn, LinkedIn only lets you have basically one conversation at a time. Now I know there's people listening right now saying, wait a minute, I post all the time on LinkedIn. They don't stop me. No, they don't stop you. But what they do is they hide it. They hide your content from your audience if you post more than once a day. That's a shock to a lot of people.
In addition, if that one post a day contains a link, now LinkedIn cuts your audience in half because and this and I usually and you saw this when I presented. I usually ask the audience how many of you were on LinkedIn this week? Everybody raises their hand. What were you doing? And what you'll discover almost immediately is that people were on LinkedIn for a very specific reason, not just a doom scroll, and a very limited amount of time to do it. A link, according to the LinkedIn engineers, robs the individual user of both of those, they didn't come to look at a link. They didn't come to watch a video. They didn't. They came for a specific reason. So the link takes them off the platform and have that conversation somewhere else, and then it uses up the time they had allocated to be on LinkedIn and they probably don't come back.
So they're like, you know, and this is why, Taylor, you see so many people saying look for the link in the comments below. They're adding the link to the comments, bypassing that penalty. There's some other techniques that I teach better ways to do that, but that one kind of works.
What else is that you get that one post a day. You get the link with the 50%. But here's the killer when it comes to sharing other people's content. Taylor, you've made a wonderful post on LinkedIn. I think it's fantastic. I think my audience needs to know about it. What am I going to do? I'm going to hit the repost button. I'm going to share it with my audience and Linkedin's like, yeah, well, we're not quite going to do that. They're literally going to hide your reshare from 99% of the people you're connected to. 99% of your audience will not see you sharing your best friend's wonderful post on LinkedIn. Isn't that crazy? There's a reason.
Taylor Smith
Wow. Yeah, I mean, so 99% of our audience at Meetings Today won't see me sharing Meetings Today’s post because I want to get it out there?
Richard Bliss
That's correct. Now at this point, now we can go into why. There's some legitimate reasons why. But now it sounds like I shouldn't even be on LinkedIn at all. They’re limiting whom I reach. They're only showing it to a tiny fraction. They're not letting me share content.
Yes, what they're doing is not letting you behave on their platform like you did on Insta, and they're trying to break you of social media habits that are literally sabotaging your abilities.
So here's the positive news. When it comes to LinkedIn, there's one activity above all other activities that you can do to drive your brand awareness, reach your audience, get people to be relevant, to learn about your event, to understand the value you're bringing. There's one thing you can do on LinkedIn that will just blow it up.
You want to know what it is? Oh, I'm sorry. We're out of time. I'm just looking. We're out of time. Oh, my gosh.
Taylor Smith
You have to come back. Tune in next time.
Richard Bliss
Here's what it is. It's the comment. Now that sounds, that sounds anticlimactic. But what did you see happened when I gave that presentation at meetings at the at the event, what did you see me do? What was the little technique I used?
Taylor Smith
We left a comment in the beginning of your session. We had an hour. We left a comment in the beginning of your session on someone's, yes, a volunteer's post and by the end, when we checked it out, maybe it had 12 impressions at the start. It was a very fresh post, right? Very new. It hadn't had many eyes on it. An hour later, after the 100 people in the room went on and commented, it had over 1000 impressions and views.
Richard Bliss
It had over 1000 impressions. Now what's an impression? That means it was seen 1000 times in that 60 minutes. Why? Because the algorithm values a conversation on LinkedIn above all other things, a conversation between business people. And when we in that room all went and left a comment on that person's now, the size of their network had nothing to do with this, that actually the content itself had nothing to do with this.
Taylor Smith
The last time they posted had nothing to do with it.
Richard Bliss
Nope, none of that. What had to do with it is the algorithm looked and saw, oh, this individual drove a conversation that was interesting to a wide variety of people and did it within the 1st 60 minutes. Let's show this to at least 1000 people here, and usually that'll happen within the first 24 hours. And so your listeners right now, they can replicate this, create a post, but before you do share the post, I'm going to as we get close to time here, I'm going to give you your listeners a technique that they can use. Just in the beginning, I'm going to give two pieces of homework here for your listeners. And so when we, if we ever come back, we're going to check with your listeners. Let's see if they actually implemented it.
Two things that you need to do: No. 1, when you before you create a post, rely on your team. So you have a meeting planner. They want people to know about an event, so they're going to write a post. But before they do, they're going to send it around to the team and say, look, tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM, I'm going to make this post. Here's what it's going to say. They're gonna be like, OK, I need all of you to comment on it. And they're gonna say good, Congrats. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to it. No, no, no, no, no. That's not a conversation. I need you to comment as if your audience is listening.
Because when LinkedIn, when you make a post, let's just do the math real quick. When you reshare a post, it goes to 1%. When you create a post, it goes to 10% of my audience, but when you leave a comment, it goes to 30% of your audience. So that comment becomes the content to convey the message. So your colleague makes the post and you leave a comment that says, ‘Susan, this is fantastic. One of the things I like about this event is that we have the opportunity of bringing together like-minded individuals in the in the, you know, in the agricultural space. And as they come together, we've seen over the years as we've done this event how it has driven innovation and ideas as people continue to talk to each other about the way it's rapidly growing.’
The comment is almost a mini post and that's going to get picked up and put in front of my audience. And then if the person I'm commenting on comments back, it goes in front of their audience. That's the number one thing is to write a comment as if the audience is listening. That's number one.
Taylor Smith
Cause more of your audience will see that comment than your post itself. Wow.
Richard Bliss
They’ll see the comment, give them context. And the second thing I'm going to challenge your audience to do here as we get as we get to the end is to go look at the number of people looking at your LinkedIn profile right now. How many people looked at you? And there's going to be a number. And so Taylor, I want to ask you what that number was for you, but everybody listening can just go look on their LinkedIn. They can go see a number that, OK, let's see how many people have looked at. And what you can do is just go and then it'll just be right under your picture. It'll say profile viewers.
Taylor Smith
OK, let's go look. Let's go to my page. OK, 175.
Richard Bliss
So 175 people have found you interesting in the last 90 days. All right, so what is that? That's almost two a day are looking at your LinkedIn profile. Why do we care? Because that's one of the strongest signals to the LinkedIn algorithm that you and your content is interesting to an audience member, so two people a day are finding you interesting. Now, if your audience follows this next piece of homework, that number should jump by 200% to 300% in a week.
Taylor Smith
OK, I'm going to follow this homework and a week from today we're recording this podcast. Let's see, it is August 6th. A week from today I will be checking in with you, Richard. And if 175 is not tripled…
Richard Bliss
We're going to come back, we're going to, we're going to check in and here's what you're going to do.
Taylor Smith
We're gonna see!
Richard Bliss
All right, we're going to look into it. But you have. Here's your homework. You need to go leave three comments minimum every day for the next week, basically for the next five business days. Three comments that I just described, right? You tag the person's name, you restate what they said so your audience understands context. You add value. We're talking a significant amount of effort here for a comment. This is not congrats.
Taylor Smith
Yes, not my LinkedIn emoji comments.
Richard Bliss
No, not your LinkedIn emoji. You know what I did, right? My encounter with emojis was the chocolate ice cream with the big googly eyes. And my team said that's not chocolate ice cream. I'm like, oh, OK, don't use emojis. I don't use them. You can go to town. But here's the point. 3 comments a day for the next 5 days.
Taylor Smith
Yes.
Richard Bliss
Who are you going to comment on? You're going to comment on colleagues. That's easy. You're going to comment on people in your industry, meeting planners, event planners, and then you're going to comment on people maybe outside who people that might have a network, but also that you can enter into a conversation that might drive awareness. Publishing in your case. We’ve got meeting planners and events. That's great. But also maybe it's topics that are coming up. Maybe it's the concept of dealing with the economy or the globalization or how right topics that could be fascinating and interesting to your audience right now. Go comment on perfect strangers, you do that three times for the next 5 days. You come back and look at that number and we're going to see if that number hasn't at least crossed 350 people have found Taylor Smith fascinating, because the things she has added to the conversations that she's seeing, that they're seeing, and this will be an audience that has no idea that you exist, and suddenly you're going to be front and center. So this is going to be what I kind of leave you with is some simple actions.
Taylor Smith
I love this, and simple actions I think is something our audience could continue to come back and check in on Meetings Today as you work on this new column series that I'm super excited to share with the audience, “LinkedInSights.” We’ll be starting it soon, and it's scheduled to make its debut in our September issue, which is just around the corner. But this conversation today kind of did give us a sneak peek into what that is. But Richard, maybe let our audience and our listeners know today why, why should they care about their online presence and leveraging LinkedIn in this way, and how is your future column “LinkedInsights” going to help them continue to learn about these methods and tips like the 3x5 comment method?
Richard Bliss
Sure. I give kind of a fun answer that is Willie Sutton, the bank robber, was asked, why do you rob banks? And his answer was, well, because that's where the money is. Why should you be on LinkedIn? Because that's where the money is. Your customers, and you saw this. I asked for a raise of hands in the audience. How many of you have a Facebook account? Actually, it's how many don't. And that number keeps going up. How many don't have Insta? How many don't have TikTok? How many don't have whatever it might be? How many don't have LinkedIn? How many hands went up? Zero. Everybody has a LinkedIn account. It's the closest thing we have to a true digital identity. And so you should be mastering LinkedIn because that's where your customers are now. They might not know what they're doing either, and they're out there just kind of lurkers. They don't. They're not.
Taylor Smith
Yes, which can you share that stat? That stat when you shared it blew my mind. How many people actually use LinkedIn?
Richard Bliss
Yeah, you're looking at 1% to 2% of the people are actually posting content and then it's like a 5% or 10% number where people are actually engaging.
Taylor Smith
So much potential. There's so much potential on that platform.
Richard Bliss
There is, and here's the irony is that LinkedIn's been around for a long time and yet the opportunity to stand out is like fresh. Now we can talk about in future episodes. Well, I don't know what to say or how do I say this? Well, we can talk about AI, the impact that AI gives, and how you use it effectively. How to not. I get asked all the time, does LinkedIn care about AI? I'm like, no, your audience cares.
And it's again, LinkedIn is not evaluating the quality of your content, although that's changing. What it's really evaluating is the quality of the engagement. And so that's what I'm going to leave with. It's a simple answer that a lot of people can't believe is that easy. That's why I've given the homework three comments a day for the next five days and we're going to come back and see what happens.
Taylor Smith
We'll see what happens. And if you want to learn more, you better be sure to stick around because there is certainly more to come from Richard in the future issues of Meetings Today and online at MeetingsToday.com. So stay tuned. And Richard, this was great. Thank you so much for joining me today and giving our listeners a little sneak peek into what's to come.
Richard Bliss
Taylor, it's been lovely. Thank you very much for the invitation and I'm looking forward to us continuing to do this together.
Taylor Smith
Of course. That was Richard Bliss, founder and CEO of Bliss Point Consulting and one of our 2025 Meetings Trendsetters—and as you've learned, a master at maximizing your LinkedIn potential. Once again, I'm Taylor Smith, content manager for Meetings Today. Thank you all for tuning in to this Meetings Today podcast and make sure to visit MeetingsToday.com/podcasts to check out even more. Till next time.
