484. UpLift Live 26 conference

John Espirian: 00:00:00

What do you get when 150 people descend on a room in Birmingham to chat about LinkedIn? You get the UpLift Live conference. This is the Informed podcast, episode 484.

Hi, everyone. I'm John Espirian, your host of the Informed podcast, a show all about LinkedIn best practice. It's a bit of a different episode this week because I'm just back from Birmingham where we hosted our third annual UpLift Live conference. It's a day all about learning and networking around LinkedIn best practice.

I would normally start the show with the Postbag with listener questions. I'm just moving that to next week so we can just focus on what's just happened at the conference. And I'm going to intersperse this episode with a few lovely contributions from attendees and speakers who were in the room on the day last Thursday.

So, it was our third conference and all of our speakers had a LinkedIn focus.

I was the first person on the stage, and I was talking about direct messages. A lot of people talk negatively about direct messages and we often see negative examples. All of my talk was aimed at showing the positive side of DMs and giving you some helpful tips around that.

Our next speaker was Tony Restell. He talked about business growth on LinkedIn. And then we had Nicole Osborne. She was talking about being more relatable on LinkedIn.

After that we had a bit of a first, really. We had a double act. Two experienced LinkedIn operators taking the stage at the same time. So, Mic Adam coming over from Belgium and Guy Strijbosch coming over from the Netherlands, and they partnered up to talk about sort of international issues and cultural differences that we see on LinkedIn. So, all of that was our morning session.

Then in the afternoon we had Heather Murray talking about how to make AI a bit more relatable on LinkedIn, especially for non-technical people, and how you could use AI in a clever way on LinkedIn.

Then we had the host of the Nudge Podcast, which is Phill Agnew, and he was giving some behavioural insights about how he grew his podcast and how we can apply some of those consumer behavioural insights into how we grow on LinkedIn.

The funniest talk of the day then was delivered by Dave Harland, who is a very well-known copywriter. And he talked to us about how you can be unconventional in standing out on LinkedIn.

And then rounding things off was Brenda Meller, internationally known speaker on LinkedIn best practice. And she was talking about the idea of "co-opetition", this idea of how you should embrace and co-operate with people who might otherwise be your competition. And all of those speakers then gathered together at the end of the day for a 45-minute Q&A.

So, an all speaker panel to round off a whole day packed with learning and networking. Let's see what our audience thought of proceedings.

Sergej Pavljuk: 00:03:15

Hi, my name is Sergej. I'm owner of Czech communication agency, and I'm impressed by this event because I'm getting bored at all other marketing events and here I actually get new ideas. I'm very thankful for its organisers and would recommend it to any marketing agency, owner or freelancer.

John Espirian: 00:03:34

So, there's a case in point. Sergej came all the way over from Czechia to witness our conference for the first time and really enjoyed his day. So, thank you for that kind contribution, Sergej.

Let's hear also from one of our speakers. Nicole Osborne was second up and she was speaking about how to be more relatable on LinkedIn. So, here's a quick clip of Nicole speaking to the mic after her session was done.

Nicole Osborne: 00:04:00

John, it's not fair you make me giggle so much. Tristan, take off the glasses. Hello, I'm Nicole Osborne. I'm the founder of Wunderstars. I specialise in working with digital agency owners and help them with my LinkedIn.

UpLift Live is an amazing event. One key takeaway for me was Brenda's talk, actually, how you can work with your competitors because there's always enough pie to go around. So, be kind, support each other, lift up people. Thank you very much.

John Espirian: 00:04:30

I think me going around the room with my multicoloured microphone gave people the giggles for some reason, but thank you for that contribution, Nicole. You did a great job. Here's another speaker. This was Mic Adam who joined the stage as a double act with his colleague Guy.

Mic Adam: 00:04:47

Hello, my name is Mic Adam. I'm a LinkedIn trainer and what I enjoyed about the conference was really the mix of types of presentations that we saw and heard from strategic to really things that you can do in a hands on environment. Yeah, when the next one comes around, I'll be here again.

John Espirian: 00:05:10

Great to catch up with Mic there and his colleague Guy got on the microphone as well to say a quick hello. So, let's hear from Guy, too.

It's Guy Strijbosch from the Netherlands. I'm a LinkedIn strategist attending UpLift Live for the third time and being invited as a speaker. So, we enjoyed it. Thank you very much, John.

It's really great to be able to speak to the speakers while you're at an event. There was no them and us there. So, it was great to be able to grab them for a quick session on the mic.

We had some, there was so much background noise. I've done my best to filter it out. You might hear a little bit of it here and there.

I also grabbed a quick bit of time with one of our co-organisers. So, here's Gus Bhandal.

Gus Bhandal: 00:05:48

Hi, I'm Gus Bhandal. I am a LinkedIn trainer and co-organiser of UpLift Live. I absolutely loved hosting UpLift Live yesterday. Just having so many people in the room, so many people watching on livestream, the fact that people have made so much effort to join us, to be together, to listen to our fabulous speakers, to join us at the party, to go for a post event curry, it really meant a lot and you know, it kind of, it lifts our world to see so many people in a room enjoying themselves, smiling, being happy, etc.

And on top of all this learning all about LinkedIn. So, yeah, it was a fabulous day and very proud to be one of the co-organisers.

John Espirian: 00:06:29

Here's a quick clip from Mark Lee who was attending the conference for his third year, his hat-trick year. Here's what Mark had to say about his experience.

Mark Lee: 00:06:38

I loved my third UpLift Live. So many practical tips. I've been listing them all out. Too many to identify. I should pick one. So, I'll take one from John's talk right at the start, which is about using DMs and creating a group direct message, which I'm going to do for one of the private groups that I run outside of a physical group as it were, LinkedIn and ensure that there's better messaging between members of the private group and encouraging them to comment on my posts that reference the group.

John Espirian: 00:07:17

And here's another one of our international attendees. This is Mary-Liis Garcia. She's Estonian but is based in Paris. She flew over for the Uplift Live conference.

Mari-Liis Garcia: 00:07:27

Hi, I'm Mari-Liis, the creator of Pause, luxury retreats in Paris. I flew over here and the conference is absolutely worth it. It's the pace of the speakers is amazing.

There are pauses, you can network with people, you can talk to people. There's just so much to learn throughout the entire day. Everyone is very approachable and just an amazing experience.

I recommend highly to anyone even if it means flying over from some other country.

John Espirian: 00:08:02

And a quick thank you to Holly Christie from This Demanding Life, who is our website designer for uplift-live.com She was here in Birmingham as well for her third UpLift Live conference. Here's Holly now.

Holly Christie: 00:08:14

I'm Holly Christie. I'm a website designer and mentor to website designers. This is my third UpLift Live that I've attended. Absolutely love it each year – has totally raised my LinkedIn game. Loved the talks today, particularly about building authority and trust and sharing kind of relatable content, but not personal, not private content. It's been an absolute great day. Looking forward to the rest of it.

John Espirian: 00:08:41

And here's another hat-trick attendee, it's Eleanor Mitchiner.

Eleanor Mitchiner: 00:08:45

My name's Eleanor Mitchiner. I'm a marketing consultant. I lurk on the edge of LinkedIn and I love this conference and today I've learned that everything's about people, even the tech.

John Espirian: 00:08:57

One of my absolute favourite people on LinkedIn and one of the top experts in the US, Brenda Meller, came over from the US. I think it's her first time outside of the US to speak. She was our closing speaker at the conference. And here's Brenda in her own words.

Brenda Meller: 00:09:13

Hi, this is Brenda Meller. I am a LinkedIn trainer, coach, marketing consultant and above all, huge fan of John Espirian. And I am just returning from UpLift Live, speaking at the event and just kind of thinking in my head about all the wonderful things and how surreal it was meeting people like John in person. It was like meeting celebrities and being there and just being surrounded by LinkedIn geeks. That's the coolest thing ever, the coolest experience.

And I'm still in my head just processing everything that we talked about yesterday and all the new connections I've made.

I surround myself with rockstars, I've always done so, and I made some new rockstar friends over the past couple days and just a delight being a part of it.

John Espirian: 00:09:55

And here's another one of my favourite people, Ashley Leeds, also a LinkedIn trainer, also there at Uplift Live for his third conference.

Ashley Leeds: 00:10:03

I'm the 15-minute guy and I've just come back from UpLift Live and it was uplifting, and I think the best thing from it was just be yourself and add some humour, which is what I do all the time. Thank you, John, thank you, Gus, and thank you, Jeremy.

John Espirian: 00:10:20

And we'll finish off our audience contributions with something completely different. You'll see what I mean in just a second.

Alex Beeching: 00:10:26

Hello, everyone. My name is Alex Beeching and I make founders impossible to ignore with public speaking, done for you copy and strategy.

Only two sessions in and already I'm learning a lot. I brought a backpack to fill with all the tips and points and it's already full. We've had John and he was brilliant and later on there'll be some brilliant speakers and here now is some unwanted beatbox.

John Espirian: 00:10:56

I'll probably edit that out.

So, I hope that gives you some flavour of what happened during the day.

It was really a great event, and I originally envisaged the idea for UpLift Live as a chance to just meet up with all of my LinkedIn network from around the world. So, I'm thankful that I've had a chance to do that.

I'm continually amazed by the fact that people hop on planes to come over to Birmingham to see us all. I think it was an excellent day, and if you want to catch up with what was happening at the conference, you can now buy a replay ticket.

ersion of the conference from: 2024

As I record this on Monday 30 March, I'm still working through the replays, but those will be available in a couple of days. So, almost all of that content is now ready for you to check out. I hope you find it useful.

I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you if you came along to Birmingham or if you were watching through our livestream virtual ticket, thank you so much for your support. It was an excellent day.

I'll be back as usual probably at the end of this week for a normal episode. And until then, if you have any questions for the show, please drop me a line. As I said during my talk, I really love voice notes, so drop me a line if you can and I'll catch up with you all soon.