 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today, my guest is Tom Matieski, joining us from the Canary Islands. Our topic is LinkedIn marketing for eSports, how to reach sponsors and advertisers. Welcome Tom. Hello, hello, everyone, and thank you for inviting me. Fantastic. So the Canary Islands, I'm guessing that you have volcano erupting right near you or something. Not maybe on my island, because I'm Fred Aventura, and even yesterday I went to the volcano at the top of this, but it's not alive anymore, but yeah, it's like the landscape here, it's everything. It's born from volcano from lava, so it's an interesting part of the world that it's super interesting for us from a European perspective that we are in this different world. It's like Africa, but still a mobile phone that it works like in Poland and any other European country. And I understand that you actually live in Poland and you are visiting the Canary Islands. Is that right? Yes, I use a lot of possibility to work remotely. Even before coronavirus, I traveled a lot and I moved for a few months to Thailand, to Colombia, to Portugal, and especially during winters. Winters in Poland are super cold, so we always try to escape. And now during coronavirus, it's easier to travel in the European Union than to go, for example, to Thailand. So yeah, I use this opportunity to go somewhere to spend one month or more and to immerse more, not just like tourists, but to try to meet people, learn language, etc. That's a really nice life, and I think a lot of people are taking advantage of this new remote lifestyle we have. And LinkedIn definitely plays a part of that. I can meet people from all over the world, which I have. And for people who don't know about LinkedIn, it's linkedin.com. And I've been on LinkedIn for about 14 years or something like that and have the max number of connections of 30,000, so I'm very involved. So Tom, why is LinkedIn important for eSports businesses? OK, eSports, like any other business, if they need to connect with other business, they need to establish trust. They need to be known, they need to educate other people from counterpart, if they want, they will advertise during their tournaments or other events. So LinkedIn, it's super important to connect directly with people and to maintain this relationship because it's not like emotional decision to sponsor eSports team, it's like the longer process. And many possible sponsors, they don't know yet what eSports is and how to work with this. And if we connect with them, if we show them that we can help them to connect with younger audience because it's mostly for this reason that many of the brands, they want to connect with younger audience, but they don't have idea how to do this. They know there's something like TikTok or something, but they don't know. And eSports, it's often the good way to connect big brands and younger audience and eSports managers, eSports head of sales or business developers need to understand that they should connect with business in their field. It's hard to just make marketing on platforms for gamers and expect that business white collars that will know, okay, maybe let's check TikTok, maybe they will have some opportunities for us. So for this reason, I highly recommend and I mentored many teams, eSport companies, how to use LinkedIn, how to show value of eSports, how to show value of their tournaments or their teams to traditional big business. You make a very good point in terms of the need to connect to younger audiences. And even the Olympic Games, which is going on right now in Beijing, understand that value and that importance because they've added sports like surfing and competition climbing and other sports that are attractive to younger people. So that's a good point. And so what led you to work in this role with LinkedIn? Tell us about what your journey has been. Yeah, I started my dream to work remotely. There's always my big dream and I started to do in general marketing and then I started okay, LinkedIn is the best, one of the best ways that I can bring results for myself and my clients. So I started to work mostly with tech companies and from tech companies, I work with many in various industries, mostly software companies. But one day my friend said to me that he recommended me to eSports company and I thought, hmm, probably they couldn't afford me because I played games when I was much younger, but later they said, okay, let's use business as the game and let's earn money to have this possibility to travel because it's like, it's my biggest passion even I didn't have money, I hitchhiked here in Europe. So it was always my biggest dream to travel. But so I stopped playing games, but you know, after many years, I started to talk with the eSports company. I was surprised how big they are, how organized and put their goals. So I thought, okay, let's try with LinkedIn and we work for one year. And it showed me that possibilities for this industry and also how much they can win if they use LinkedIn more. Because I found that almost nobody use LinkedIn and that could be a good path to get money to grow because most of the money still eSports gets from sponsors and advertisers. So did show me that we are a case study and the success in this that okay, it's good direction. So to be a successful business or a business person, do you think it's necessary to have a LinkedIn profile and a LinkedIn presence? I think it's of course, it's possible, it depends how we define success. Because I believe for, for example, there's this organization B&I around the world. And I know it's possible that people run their business only based on B&I. They are lawyers, accountants, and they have only local clients and they have recommendations. Okay, great. But I believe in today's world, even we have recommendations. Many times, our potential client will check us, we'll put our names in Google. And maybe we have a website, but website, it's okay, it's more or a lot of, a lot of work. And especially if we are business developer in bigger company, we don't have our personal website and you know, general website wouldn't build this trust because our goal in B2B space is to build this trust. Because if someone, if I will buy apples from you for, I don't know, $2, if that wouldn't be good, okay, I will survive this because it's not big money for me. But I will, if I buy professional service for a few thousand dollars and that can destroy my company if I make bad choice, it's important to trust the other person. And for this reason, we can use LinkedIn and we can use, and we can have super bad presence on LinkedIn and that could destroy our trust, our credibility. And for this perspective, we, that can work for us or against us. And if we have good profile and in this profile, we focus on our client, we don't write, we don't have description about our experience, our schools, but we focus on our client and we show that we understand them, we know their pain and that we know their problems, we know their goals. And from this perspective, if we show this in our profile and then we keep creating content and by this we are showing this, okay, I'm organized person, I'm active, I'm smart that I can get so many content ideas. For this perspective, our potential clients, they see, okay, if he, if he can do something like this, probably he would provide good work for me because also he wouldn't risk his reputation. He put so much effort to build his reputation, to create this content, run webinars, probably he wouldn't destroy his reputation by doing bad work. So I also choose service providers this way, I, I tried to use some financial advisor last year based only for recommendation and it was bad choice so I decided, okay, no more, no more I will depend only of recommendation from people, my willingness to do some favors for someone, no, I want to focus only on professional side because I expect the world class service for myself and by using LinkedIn, we can create this and this, this, this image of us and yeah, for this perspective, I highly recommend LinkedIn because also not only we can have more clients, but we can also have better clients, you know, without LinkedIn I don't plan in the nearest future to go to Hawaii so it will be hard for us to meet and from this perspective, it was possible, it was possible to meet and yeah, I think, I think I'm the best example that it's, is one of the best tools to build that brand around the world and to connect with clients and also to have great rates. Now I have to agree with you on that because I've connected with so many people all over the world on LinkedIn and I feel like I can, if I want to meet someone in a particular part of the world or in a particular industry, I can use LinkedIn to make that happen and I will admit that many of my guests on the show have been, have resulted from connections on LinkedIn and, you know, I can't tell you how many meetings I've had on either, on either Zoom or like on WhatsApp with someone who wanted to talk about some business idea, they thought maybe I'd be someone interesting to work with in relation to some idea they had and, you know, most of the time they don't really, you know, pan out but it's a really, it's a lot of fun and it's a lot of fun to see what other people are doing. So how can businesses use LinkedIn to actually improve their bottom line to make a profit? First, it's great to look for ideal clients for decision makers. So I think it's first, first thing and to, to focus our, for about to own our best, best dream clients. I use this term dream on a hundred that was invented, maybe invented, maybe, maybe he made this famous but chat homes in the book ultimate sales machine. And, and this, this formula is to make a list of the dream clients. And if we have, like, if we close 20% from this list, we will be super happy and we don't make it that way. That's the, for example, we just send 100 emails and it's done. No, because most of the time people in this bigger companies, they're extremely busy and they wouldn't care about us, especially with my surname was super hard for many English native speakers. But if I, for example, if I have someone on my list and that person will post something and I keep commenting this in the smart way and I'm showing, okay, I'm the smart person that read what you posted that understand this and I can bring some value to you. And for this reason, even I just commented other people content. They started to recommend to me clients from all over the world, for example, from US also. So this, this is one of the, one of the best ways to, to use power of giving something without expecting something in return. But people will feel, okay, I want to give him something in return. Because when I was younger, I was reading books about success and, and the rules, okay, you need to give something to your mentor. The mentor can help you. And I think, what can I give to the super rich person somewhere on this, another part of the world? If I'm in the library in Poland now and I'm 17, for example. But today you can check many times decision makers, big, big companies. They post something on LinkedIn and they have like one comment. And this one comment will be something like this. Great post. Oh, great. You, I like this. And if you actually read what they posted and you make a few sentence comment, they will say, okay, who's this person? I want to check, check his profile, for example. And if we make our profile in the way I talked in the beginning, the first part of our interview that will be around their pains, problems. And they will say, okay, whoa, I need this guy. I want to connect with him. And it will be much different, different talk if they will reach to you and they will see already that you are smart, then you, then if you will reach to them, call them, you know, send emails and back. Okay, let's work together. No, it's much different dynamic because you are expert in this and this situation. So I, I highly recommend to use LinkedIn in this way to really focus on the client that we love work with, because also money is on one hand. But on second, we do business to have good lives. And, you know, I, I do my business to have this possibility, for example, to move for one month to the different country. And we should also have good clients. And if we can choose our clients and we can work on this, it's, it's not like, you know, get rich quickly, you know, tactic that, okay, let's today post a few things and tomorrow you will have big clients for, from Fortune 100 least, for example, for 5,000 least. No, it's, it would, it would, it would take time, but it's worth because everything goes, it's meaningful life. It's, it's, it's needed to be to do time invested in this. And I highly recommend to use LinkedIn in this way. Of course, we can also research other clients. We can research decision makers. We can research if we have any connection to decision maker, because sometimes we don't need to comment with, we, for example, we can find that. Oh, I want to reach, for example, I want a sponsor from PepsiCo and I can find, okay, that marketing department director, I have connection to, to him because my school friend, he knows him and I can reach to them. Hey, John, do you know him really? Can you make intro for me? Great. I wouldn't know this without this. On LinkedIn, I can see this so we can use LinkedIn also for this, this reason. And of course, it's LinkedIn also great way. I use it also to become the better person. Like if I, for example, reading now, reading some books now, I always think, okay, what, how, what can, how can I teach this people on LinkedIn? How can I make from this idea shorter post? And, you know, we learn better if we, if we try to teach other people this, what we are reading, because you're reading without any goal. It's okay, let's read, okay, I finished book, but now I need to be more conscious and also to think how to adjust this for my audience, for tech people, for esports people, and also it's, it helps to, to, to, to learn better. So, you know, LinkedIn has many goals. I just wanted to show you some, not obvious, because of course, it's possible to find people, send connections, and maybe we'll have some business from this. It's also possible. I agree. But I like to show also different angles, not obvious, and that, that can bring more quality in the long run. You know, I can tell you that I can provide value to people because they know I can get to anyone on LinkedIn because I have so many connections. And it was very slow, like you said, it is not a fast process. I've spent years developing my LinkedIn connections. And now I focus more on posts and commenting. And if you have a premium membership, you can actually see who's looking at your profile so you can look and see. And then I look probably every time I see someone is looking at my profile and I'll look and see if that's someone I want to connect with. Sometimes they're not connecting with me, but I might want to connect with them. So can LinkedIn be used to connect with advertisers and sponsors? I think that's a really key question here today. Yes, definitely it's possible because mostly, mostly who is responsible for sponsorship and advertising, mostly marketing people in, for example, energy drinks companies because it's like common industry to sponsor eSports. And they are active on LinkedIn because all marketing people are active on LinkedIn because they have to find a job. They understand this. You know, it's sometimes it's hard to, for example, to connect with like medical, I mean, medical industry because they don't need so much LinkedIn because they have patients from the other sources. They don't need to be active there. But marketing people have to be there. So if they have to be there for work, for being, for following recent news, for following recent trends, they also will be interested in trends regarding eSports, regarding to get to this younger audience. So it's so possible to connect with them, to show them the new ways to achieve their goals and to support them in this because our number one goal on LinkedIn should be to become trusted advisor for perfect clients or maybe perfect partners in case of sponsors and advertisers. So they should have this feeling that, OK, if I need to, if I have to ask something about eSports, they should remember about your name. This should be the number one goal. And when you achieve this, everything would be much easier. And yeah, it's that they can help you. And then you will be number one on the list to to get the sponsorship contract, for example. And you know, what's terrific about LinkedIn is that it's a great place to find a job because of the job posts. It's also a wonderful place to become educated. There's a lot of courses on LinkedIn and you can get can't you get certificates for those courses? Yeah, probably is. But also it's great to to learn because people try to create good content and, you know, it's like good piece of content. It's like easy to consume because people want to make this easy to consume because they want to build their brand. So it's on one hand, it's LinkedIn learning. Of course, it's great library of courses. On the other hand, it's it's it's also this this content is great. And it's also great to show because we show in our profile, our credentials, our certifications. So it's also great way to showcase this. Maybe I don't recommend to post, OK, I just achieved certificate because it's not so interesting. We should always think about our audience and to make something interesting for them. For example, if I if I go for conference, I don't post something like yesterday, I have this great opportunity to attend conference. Grab. Thank you. No, I will make some. I will post something that I learned during this conference because I want to make some gift for my audience because they didn't didn't join this conference. So for this reason, they can learn something. And also, this is great way to network with the speakers, because if I will show that I attended his speech, I made good notes. I have my own insights about this and I will talk to him. I give him another exposure, so he will also be interested though, who is this person that, you know, after conference, it's like, you know, zero content on maybe super boring content. Like I attend conference and in this case, well, this person is like, you know, she really listened to me. I'm happy to this. So yeah, it is my also advice to use LinkedIn in this way because you can even if we can do a little small homework, you can create post about today, podcast, what you learned. You can talk to me. I will comment like everything and that way you can connect with people who who record podcast, who write the books because you wouldn't see so many pieces of content like this. So I highly recommend this tactic to connect with people in more meaningful way. All right. And, you know, I just want to make sure everyone knows there's also LinkedIn groups on topics. So we do need to wrap this up, but I just want you to tell us briefly if you have any particular predictions for B2B marketing and sales. Would be more that would be more expensive to get to the clients using cold emails, paid advertising, like LinkedIn ads, Google ads, Facebook ads, everything would be more expensive. So I highly recommend to build the trust and then to build the relationship. So now I'm working also with my business partner to start marketing automation agency. So for the point where you connect with the clients to provide them education, to provide them news from your industry, to not connect with people and then to try to close. And if you don't close, it's over. No, it's like the beginning of the game and to have them in your network, in your work and to keep creating this image that you are the best organized, the biggest expert in your industry that told to go to person. And I think it's the most important thing to remember that it's like no magic. There's other person there in the company and we need to build this credibility. How can people find you? What's your website? OK, my website dedicated for E-sports is contentway.co, not com. It's like without e-sports, my journal website, contentway.co. And of course on LinkedIn, Tom Machajewski, I think in any notes for this podcast, you will find this because I know that it could be hard to write my name just from the sound. Absolutely. And I'll be posting it on LinkedIn so you can look for me on LinkedIn and look for Tom on LinkedIn. So, Tom, thank you so much for filling us in. I learned a lot. Thank you. I'm happy to share good approach for LinkedIn because I highly believe there's still that word will be better if we use it in the good way. If we connect more in the world and, you know, I'm in Poland, we're close to Russia, we're also afraid. So I would be so great if we connect more because I believe that normal people are so good there, but we just need to be more connected and we know more about each other. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Tom. Thank you. Thank you to our viewers for joining us today. Next week my guest will be GamerDocsTheGreat to talk about the impact of eSports on young gamers. See you then.