Lessons

Lesson Info

Optimizing Your Linkedin Profile

There's some other personalization pieces I love, so, one, your profile link. How many people have seen their profile link? Like LinkedIn.com, forward slash N, yep, and then you have your name on it? Do you know you can personalize that? Did you could actually go, that's the first step, if you're watching out there, if you're actually looking at this, make sure you go check this, because it's just gonna be a bunch of numbers and symbols until you go personalize it. And what I found out is that you can actually personalize it for whatever, it doesn't have to be a name. It can be like I'm a rockstar. Linked.com/nImgreat. First of all, I don't wanna connect with you and you need to rethink your life on that statement if you have that, but you can make it about your business. You can be like Joe's Lawn Service. But I'll tell you, there's business pages for that. And for me, what I could put in there is like doubling 10,000 businesses. I could put something in there. There's other personali...

zation hacks, too. Email, make sure it's your actual work email, or how you'd like to connect with people. People email me all the time. Anybody in here get a couple emails a day? (audience laughing) Yeah, I get a few, too. And one of the reasons that they email there is because this. I don't put my personal email on there. I use my personal email to make sure that I sign in to LinkedIn. That's the one I use because God forbid I leave DigitalMarketer some day, I couldn't get into my account if that was the case. I couldn't do that. So make sure that you own the login process as your personal email, and that your business email that you wanna connect, your forward facing email, is on your profile. Your Twitter is on there. Okay, so my Twitter name is MrMonetization. I'm not proud of it. My teams make fun of me all the time because monetization, I'm the Director of Monetization. No one knows what that means. So I put Mr. on the front of it, because (chuckles) it's edgy. And, yeah, and so if you wanna connect me to there. But they give you opportunities to put into other social spaces. So Twitter is one of them that they allow. And then also people miss this. A lot of people don't put their birthday on LinkedIn. I have no idea why you don't do this. Yes, that's my birthday. And you can wish me one later, if you want to. But the reason why it's great is because inside the newsfeed, every single day in your activity feed, you're going to see say happy birthday to this person, say happy birthday to that person. And when you start to understand that one day a year you show up in everyone's activity feed because it's your birthday, that birthday becomes pretty amazing now, doesn't it? So if you don't have it on there, get it on there. No, you can't change it every day to be your birthday. Just telling you that's not good. But it is a really fun thing to do on Facebook to get a friend, like if you get it to hack into their account, don't do the amateur stuff and just write a post, go in there and change their birthday to the next day. So much fun here. (audience laughing) Personalization, so this is exactly where you're gonna find it. On your profile on the right-hand side, you can click in to edit it. Now you can go up and edit your website URL. You can also edit, I'm gonna get into this personalization piece here. And as you scroll down through and click on the link, that's where you're gonna go over here to actually edit the personalized link. So you can personalize it there, you can put whatever information you want. And then when you save that, now you wanna put that inside your email footer in like emails that you send out to people in your business or anywhere else that you want to just so it has the branding part on there. So if your name's on there, it says LinkedIn, forward slash N, forward slash, your name, it's a really strong piece for people to connect with you. Okay, cool. So the other one I wanted to show you is this little hack. Now, see where it says website, digitalmarketer.com, it just says Website next to it. That's fine You can add multiple websites on here, but what you can do is also go in there to the typing form, which is actually 30 characters, and you can change it. So our is: Our mission is to double the size of 10,000 businesses by 2020. So the 30 characters I'm going to use is double 10,000 businesses. So if I just see a website there, and I see that it's a website, maybe I click on it, maybe I don't. But if I see that it says double 10,000 businesses, and you could personalize it a little bit more than just website, people will want to click on it. And this isn't something people tell you a lot, but you can personalize quite a bit on LinkedIn, and the more personalization, the better. Great, and then you wanna get to writing an amazing LinkedIn Profile summary. Now, if you look at LinkedIn's page, or LinkedIn's actual business page, they will give you points on this as well. They will share with you and say put what's relevant and what really makes you look compelling and make sure you're listing your accomplishments. People do that. They do it in bullet forms. I actually would disagree with that. Whew! Sorry, LinkedIn. But I would disagree with it because I think that people like to read in a narrative format. And I'm seeing that more and more and more now with the way that people were engaging and consuming information and how they're reaching out to me. So your summary is right underneath of your headline. And you get about 2,000 characters with it. So when you click into it you'll see that you have quite a bit of space here to manipulate. Now, not only do you have the ability to write a summary, but they allow you to add media to it now, too. So with the ability to have really rich media, you can also-- Oh, pre-kids, whoop! Okay. (laughs) But you can start to add pieces that add credibility to what your summary is talking about. So people can see quickly what you're about and that those things that you talked about in your summary are consistent there. Now you can add media that is photos. You can add video now, you can a link to a podcast. It's a pretty amazing place to do that, and especially if it's consistent with the summary. So don't just put a picture of your dog. I know it's tempting, please don't do it. And I'll also say that when we get to the next section, the big one is being authentic. So in the summary, a kind of a rule of thumb, is that you wanna be authentic. You wanna talk about who you are. You don't necessarily just wanna paint the best picture of yourself, or the facade, that I'm just this great professional. You wanna be authentic and that also means being a little bit vulnerable. So share personal interests that increases likability. Share personal interests that absolutely increase likability. So when you talk about the fact that, if I'm going to go through my summary, I share that I never, when I was a kid, I didn't dress up as a salesperson for Halloween and I didn't ask for a salesperson uniform for Christmas. Typically, most people don't just like have these huge aspirations to become salespeople when they're kids. And that shares a little, now, great, you know a little bit more about me, but the really nice part is that there's some likeability there. Some of you laughed and smiled at me. Other people are like, "I don't care about you." (audience laughing) But it's true. There is something there to be said. And then the narrative format. People do like to read in story. And they like to see that as you're going down the page. And this isn't just for the summary. There's also a narrative part of all applications of LinkedIn, which I'll get into a second. And then you wanna have a clear call to action. You wanna call people to something in your summary. You wanna be able to ask them to do something, to join you, or connect with me. Or if you're reading this whole summary and you get to the end of it, those people are pretty bought in to what you're talking about. And there's no better time than to ask them a really great question, or call them to do something, "Hey, connect with me. "Shoot me an invite. "Make sure that you read more. "Hey, let me know in a message "if you think that this is something "that you'd be interested in "or you wanna be on this mission with me." Add compelling media. So like I showed you before, pics, videos, website, podcast links. Make sure that you're telling the story and not just a written format. People like to engage with all types of media and they learn in different ways. So if they're scrolling through your summary and they're like, "Ugh, I'm just so exhausted. "I don't wanna read 2,000 characters right now." And they click on that LinkedIn photo of me, they'll be like, "I bet he knows something about LinkedIn. "I don't know. "Maybe he knows something about-- "Oh, he's speaking right there. "Maybe he's a speaker. "Maybe he does--" So they get to see, they're painting a picture of who you are. And they're giving you new ways to be able to do that. So here is a big portion of, I wanna actually read this to you, because it will give you a good framework for how you should maybe write your summary. So it says: I'm on a mission to overcome the stigma of selling. I'm on a mission, I'm on a mission. So I'm telling them what I am. But it's not Salesperson, bullet point. When I was a kid I didn't dress up as a salesman for Halloween and I certainly didn't ask for sales training for Christmas. Get another idea of who I am a little bit more there, showing a little bit more personality, a little bit more of my identity. Unfortunately, no one wants to be a salesperson, even though it's the largest profession in the United States. Nobody wants to me, we all kinda end up there. People hate being sold, but love to buy. And they actually really hate sales people. They need them but they equally hate them. It's something that, what I'm trying to do right now is I'm trying to say statements that we can agree with. (chuckles) And I'm trying to get them to understand that I see it, man, like I know sales sucks. And I know most people are pretty terrible and they have crazy stigmas about them. And even with all the other job options, here I am, a sales guy, trying to escape the thoughtless, pushy, untrustworthy reputation that has been ruined by countless before me. "Hey, what do you for a living?" Me, whispers, "I'm a sales guy." (audience laughing) Right? I'm here to take sales back. So I'm on my mission, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about it, to restore, teach and up-level the sales profession. It won't be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Right? Kinda gettin' some feels there? Today, the strategic empathetic salesperson wins. It's time to put thoughtfulness back into sales process and I'm ready for the challenge. Does anyone want to join me? Call to action, right? And you can optimize it. Like this is searchable content. So when you have 2,000 characters here, it's incredibly searchable and you should use it. And narratives totally help you fill that up. If you're bullet-pointing things out or just putting hashtags someplace, you have so much more that you can actually optimize in that summary. And this is one of the few places on LinkedIn that allow you to do that. And it's searchable content. So the reason why sales in there, how many times did you hear it? Sales, (snaps fingers) salesperson (snaps fingers). Just over and over again, but it's not boring and I'm not just putting those bullet points there. People actually wanna read it. Does that sound like something you would like to read? So start thinking about that. There's a lot more creativity there. So 2,000 characters. And then you also wanna maximize your experience on the profile section itself. And believe me, I know this is a lot of information, but when you start to think about these different ways that you can start telling stories, it's going to all happen here in the way that you set up your business. So I currently work for DigitalMarketer, right? And it's narrative over bullets. So DigitalMarketer is a research training certification company based in Austin, Texas, that focuses on sharing what's new. Now it doesn't say I'm the Director of Monetization. I have sales and teams and I have support teams and I have business development teams. And I have strategic teams. (chuckles) It doesn't say that. No one wants to read that. They wanna read about the company. DigitalMarketer, there's my credibility piece. Our mission is simple. We want to help double the size of 10,000 businesses by and we believe the best way to do that is to train a new breed of digital marketing professionals. And then as you move down a little bit, then I get into what I do. So this is where I work. This is what I do. 'Cause usually people just put what they do. And you're gonna miss a huge part of it if you only put what you do. As the Director of Sales Monetization I'm tasked with accelerating revenue growth and sales productivity for DigitalMarketer's flagship company, DigitalMarketHQ, as well as sales for our individual certificaitons and Certified Partner program. So I'm telling you what I'm doing. But you're now reading it and it's not just something that's pretty informal there. And then the last part is where I put my personality into it a little bit. Passionately growing sales teams in Austin and London who are motivated and passionate about the mission and core values. I'm truly honored to work for this company with some of the best business minds in the world, while making sure we are focused on educating and advancing businesses worldwide. Now, I'll tell you, if you just slow down right now, and if you're in your mind thinking about this. And you're like, "Ah, I just need to go back "and be-- "I cannot write like that." Some people are just like, "I can't write like that." And I'm not asking you to go and just become an amazing poet. I am asking you to take some time and think about how you're telling the story of what you do, not telling people what you do. What is the story of what you do? And if you just sit there for a minute and think about that, that's also gonna help you in real life when people ask you what you do. That's like the first question. I think every networking event, every mixer I'm at, it's like "What do you do?" And now I get to absolutely tell people, it's like, "I'm on a mission." (chuckles) And people are like, "Oh, God." (audience laughing) "I should never have asked this guy any questions." "I'm on a mission to--" No, and it's great, because it does show people a little bit more. And as people look you up and they meet you, they get to come back and they get to read these pieces. They get to dive deeper into your story. (laughs) I'm on a mission to Mars. So this is how you update that. In the actual profile, on this right-hand side, you're going to see a little pencil. That's all across the site. That's usually where you're going to edit your information. And when you go in and add experiences, you're going to have to click on it. And when you click on it, it'll open up and it'll ask you like, what company. So you could pick multiple companies here. But I have DigitalMarketer, we have, and the only way that's gonna show up is if your company has a business page. And then you can add your summary information there. You can upload the photos and media. You can add your link here, which is really, they make it incredibly easy. And you can titles, descriptions, to all those photos. And the best part this year, this like isn't something, this did not exist, adding media did not exist before, but now you can add video right within the platform, literally plays right on the page. And I don't know if anybody out here as compelling but video for me is incredibly compelling. I love being able to consume information in that way. I learn that way. And so when I have the ability to put those pieces of that credibility piece, or that video. Anybody have really good video about their business right here? Yeah, just a few people. You now can position it right within your profile on your business experience section and on the actual summary section now. And then also as you work your way down the page with different experiences, same thing goes here. You can add media to all past experiences as well. So all past jobs or groups that you are part of on this page, you can add the rich media there, too. So it's not just your current job. Great, so a few things to remember here on the profile part, and making sure this is great. So differentiate your profile and stand out from the crowd. All right, so you wanna differentiate your profile. So the media helps you do that, writing a narrative format helps you do that. You also wanna increase engagement so readers stay on your profile longer. So when you do add the media, that actually helps and increases the engagement and the time that people spend on your profile, because there's more for them to consume. Pretty simple math there, right? And making sure that that media and that video and all of that is really good information also increases the time that people spend on there. And the narratives do, too. When I just see bullet points, I can kinda get an idea of what you do pretty quickly by your title. But the narrative actually helps people to stay longer and consume more information. And that is incredible for you, because bounce rates on LinkedIn pages is about two seconds, typically, if they don't actually identify with what you're putting out into the world. And then when you do add media, people stay six times longer on your page based on having just additional information and things that they engage with at that point. Showcase your credibility, another great way, with your profile. So with this pictures, I picked very specific pictures. Anybody notice that they're all pretty much the same. They're usually me, doing something cool? (audience laughing) (laughs) I'm just kidding, I'm sorry. No, I want people to know that our company trains, that we teach, that we're out on stages, and that's something that is invaluable. We love it. And it also goes with our mission, right? So I'm not gonna put a picture up there just to put it up there. I'm not gonna put a picture of cool shades me in front of LinkedIn without really telling the story that I'm at LinkedIn. Like I have another picture, too, post-kids, where I have the dad vest on and I'm right in front of the same picture like that, right? But I want people to understand that I have, and I am inside, of that organization, and I have a few insights And it just only adds credibility when I tell people like, "Hey, I'm gonna teach you "something about LinkedIn." So, yep, present your personality. Present your personality, it's hard to do. Like it's hard to do on paper. If I hand you my resume, it's hard for me, this is my, this is who I am as an individual. Like make sure that you're putting that in there. The media helps you do that. The videos help you do that. Writing in the summary format helps you do that. But not just writing in summary format, look how I wrote the summary. I'm injecting some storytelling in there, talking a little bit more about my personal life and how I grew up. I didn't wanna be a salesperson, and I get it, sales people are the worst, but I'm trying my best to be a part of the reason why they get better. And I really want people to help me with that mission. And there are so many people that reach out to me on a daily basis just to connect with me, 'cause they're like, "Hey, I read your summary. "I totally agree with this. "I totally get it." And they're fantastic people, VPs of every type of company, business owners, all these really interesting and wonderful people, just because I was a little bit more vulnerable and a little more personal in putting out that information. The last one is different media allows you to engage with a larger audience. So if you just write, even if you're an incredible writer, some people just don't learn that way. They don't read things and consume it the same way. So having really good media pieces and being able to utilize that tool allows more people who just aren't consuming information in one way be able to engage with your company and engage with you. All right, cool, let's move to the next one. So education, people miss this so many times 'cause they don't understand how it works. So they think about it just being like, yep, I'm gonna put my college on there. Some of us are like I didn't go to college or you're like I don't want people to know I went there. So it's like (chuckles) some people are like, yeah, this isn't really a hard-hitting community college that I wanna talk about right now. But a lot of people do also see like Harvards and the Yales and the Oxfords and all these really prestigious schools on there, but I'll tell you the reason why LinkedIn put this feature on here was more about the community aspect of it. So, yes, London Metropolitan University is where I went. St. Joseph's is where I went. But I want you to watch is when you actually click on that, it's creating a community for you. You can see all alumni. 99,000 alumni on LinkedIn. You can pick the year where you went to school. And when you click that, it starts giving you all these recommendations, 32 connections. Daniel and I definitely should be connected, because I'll tell you right now or any of these other ones. Oh, look, I have a mutual friend with Perry Belcher. I'm gonna connect with him. And it connects. Every time that you put a school or your education on there, you are actually connecting to a greater community. And not only are they giving you the alumni, they're also connecting you with people that work there. Anybody who has that school on their profile, they will put it into one place so that you can engage with that community and they will give you insights to do it. It's pretty great, right? And also, I've lost touch with a lot of people, by the way. Like over the years, it's been 10, a little bit longer than that, years, since college. And I don't know what people are up to. But the majority of them are on LinkedIn. And I would love to reengage with them and learn what they're doing. And guess what? There is no better way to reach out to people or do business with people, or like a way to actually start to have a conversation than when you went to, like you went to school together. And if you're looking for opportunities to start conversation and looking for opportunities to connect with people, they make it incredibly easy to do so. The magic number is 99 here. 99 is exactly where it stops. So (chuckles) it could be 9,000, but to the rest of the world, it could be 100 as well. But 99 is a credibility piece that you're getting to. And why do you think endorsements-- Endorsements are so important because it's not you telling people what you're great at. Like the rest of your profile is absolutely that. You're going around being like, "Look at this, "look at this. "Aren't I great? "Look at this." This is adding to that credibility by saying, yeah, other people thinking that, too. So 99 plus or a million, we don't know, of people have said leadership is something that they've endorsed me for. Management, public speaking, these are people that are not me asking them to do this. It's actually incentivized within the community to go to your page and be able to click on it where you're connected to somebody. If you're not connected to somebody on LinkedIn they cannot endorse you in this section So these are your connections. These are people that saying within your community that you are those three things that you said you were. And here's how to do that and actually manage it. So you could click on next to the same pencil again. And you could see your top three. So re-order your skills within a category and choose up to three. These are the three up here on the top skills that are gonna show on the page. You can rearrange those, mess with them, delete them, or you can crab all these other endorsements that people have added to your page and you can move them around. And so this would be really good for you. Like if I had, 99, 99, 99, but I also am like, man, I'm really known way more for sales. And I want to be known more for sales. Then I wanna make sure that I'm moving those sales pieces up. Even if it says three on it, even if it says two. You're like, "Yeah, but, I don't have a lot of credibility." The more that people can actually engage with it, 'cause they can't do it with the dropdown or if they're scrolling through the phone they only see those three. So you want to build those, then you gotta make sure the three that you want up there are visible to people so that they can engage with it. And that's really good for, (chuckles) yeah, and some people can actually, you have to approve this, but people also think it's really funny, people will endorse you. My friend, Garrett, who you saw, remember the pouty, mean guy? He used to say like trash collection. He used to put that on there like weekly for me. So there are ways to mess with people, too. But they turned it off. It used to be it would just go live and everybody could just start endorsing it. (audience laughing) But it was turned off. Thank goodness, because I'm not good at trash collection, which is good. That would be false information. And then recommendations. So recommendations are a part that, you ever heard somebody say that it doesn't hurt to ask. But it actually does hurt to ask, especially if it's too early. Like they want you to ask people for recommendation who actually know you, who you've built a relationship with, that you've worked with, that wanna write that. And they want you to ask. You should absolutely ask. This is a time to be selfish and ask people to write recommendations for you, 'cause as people scroll down the page, whether you're trying to get a job, or you wanna work with someone, this is going to be a section where people will read through and see what others have said about you. So this, in case, I have one from Rachel and Michael. But they make it very easy for you. So 3,000 characters total for this section. And this is how you do it. Click Ask for Recommendation. I'm like, okay, who do you wanna ask? Well, maybe Ryan Deiss would write me a really good recommendation. Select the relationship. Okay, well, did I work with Ryan? Is he a client of yours? Oh, Ryan managed me directly. And then I was the Director of Sales and Monetization when we worked together. "Hey, Ryan, can you write a recommendation?" So it gets it started for you. And then you personalize it, right? Like, show me some love, Ryan! (chuckles) (audience laughing) I want you to be more intentional than that. And especially with some of the things that worked really well for me. (chuckles) Some things that have worked really well for me when I do ask people for recommendations is being able to be a little bit more of like, "Hey, I know we've worked together, "and I'm really trying to build out my credibility "on LinkedIn and I would love if you could just "talk a little bit about what your experience was like "to work with me." Or your clients can also do that, your customers can do that, too. In this case, I had a few of my peers at various organizations I've worked with be able to be like, "Hey, yeah, I've worked with you, "I managed you directly. "I was committees with you." And I think that's a really good point to kinda make is that if you've worked with somebody, if they've been your boss, if they've been your peer, if they have been on a committee with you, those are three really good places to start. So if you don't know who to ask, ask somebody who has previously employed you that likes you, that's a big one, that has liked working with you and (chuckles) enjoys your company and would not write a recommendation that's like, "Well, they were here." (laughs) And then also look for people that you've worked with. Who are the peers? Who are the colleagues that you've worked with over the years who also think that you had a really good experience with. And the last one is I do like the committee one. I like the committee because I've been on multiple organizations, clubs, and I don't want it to just be work related. I want people to see me in different capacities. So I don't want them to just be like, "Yeah, well, I've managed Marcus. "I've also worked with Marcus." But I also want people to be like, "Yeah, be he also cares about this. "And I've worked on something with him." And it's consistent. So he's the same guy here that he is outside of work as well. And then, also, don't freak out, because a lot of you are like, "Wait a minute, so people are just gonna write "recommendations for me and it's gonna go live?" So you, one, can give them. If you've received them, you can make them live or not. See how it says Show? Or you can even ask people for a revision. I love that. (audience laughing) That's like my favorite thing. I wrote a recommendation for somebody. And then they sent it back and said, "Hey, if you can just change these few things?" I was like, "What?" But it's true. I mean, you wanna make sure, this is public-facing stuff. It gets real. Hopefully, you're close enough where that doesn't offend somebody, (laughs) but it's true. And then the other one that you can do is that you also want to give recommendations as well. So the given recommendation part of it is that usually when you give recommendations is a really good way to ask for them. So I always start by trying to think who are the few people that I can go ahead and give a recommendation to? Because the more I give recommendations, the more people are like, "Oh, hey, "can I do that for you, too?" And you could amass recommendations, but you don't have to show them. You can show them, they stay on your profile even if they're not live. You can continue to start getting them and you can choose and pick which ones you want to go live and when. So it allows you to manage it. And then also it also you to manage the given ones in the same way. So if you give them, you can actually ask people to take them down. You can show them, not show them, you have full control. And I just wanna make sure you know that so you don't think that you're gonna ask for something and it's not great and it just pops up, and somebody's like, "Yeah, they were here. "They weren't that great but they were a human body "in the room." You don't have to worry about that. And the same thing, if you give one, and things change. Business relationships change all the time. I have partners and people that I work with that I'm like, "Man, I used to like five years ago "so much." And you can go in there and you can actually toggle it off if you feel like that's not the case anymore. (audience laughing). No hard feelings, right? Interests and Groups. This is a big one for me, because interests and groups are just that. They show people your interests but they also can categorize you by that, so they're creating lists. LinkedIn does a fantastic job of creating lists based off interests and what you like to do. They also love to put groups together. And these are closed groups by interest. You can create groups. Personally, like I've created groups for heads of sales and people that have been really interested in learning about LinkedIn and trying to figure it out. And, by the way, I'll tell you, this deck right here isn't something I've just done over and over and over and over and over, and this is like some tried and true talk that I've done for years, because the platform changes so quickly, like every day. I'm like, "Where'd that go? "Where's that button at "that I've been using for five months?" It's because they're always constantly auditing the site. So everything you're seeing right now is literally they're giving me 90 minutes to show you something that I've been like learning for seven years. Like, "Okay, go." (chuckles) I'm like, "Okay, how do I get through this "in 90 minutes?" But this is a good one. Interest and Groups is something you have to pay attention to, and the Groups sections specifically. So here's some of the groups that I'm in. Marketing Communication, 778,000 people in that group. TED ideas, South African Business Communities. I've been working down there for awihle over the last few years. And what you wanna pay attention to is that when someone actually clicks on the marketing group, and you're a part of it, this is a fantastic hack for you, by the way, is that when you start the conversation, or you look in here, there are 692 active members in the group, you click on the members and you'll see over the side it says Message. But if you click on Andy's, this person's, profile, it shows you that we're not connected. Now, I don't know if you know about LinkedIn, but if you're not connected with somebody, you can't message them. You cannot message them. Unless you have a paid feature where you can send an in-mail message, which is like a sponsored paid-for message to send to somebody you are not connected to, you will not be able to do that So being in a group with someone will allow you to message them if you're both in the same group. It's a nice hack, right? So if you're sitting there going, "Man, I really wanna connect with this person, "and they're not responding to my message "and they're not responding to my invitation, "but I really wanna be able to send them a message." And I wanna try and connect with this person or get ahold of them, if you're in the same group, then you absolutely can message one another that way as well. But I love that. Look how many, just so many ways that LinkedIn is creating this opportunity for you to build network, to create these groups that you can start having conversations. And then not only that, and have conversations, is that you can actually start to utilize and build that and deepen those relationships by understanding you have similar interests. And I love that. And I love that you can go through. So if I was you, I would 100% go find some groups that you feel like totally fit for your industry, and then start to think about the people within the group that you'd like to connect with. 'Kay, whew, whew, y'all. (audience laughing) So let's recap a little bit on the profile side before we move forward. So there's a profile pic, wanna make sure that it's strong. All right? We wanna make sure that people can see you, that your hair's not in your face, that you are a real person, that it's up-to-date and not from like 10-years-ago. So they meet you. They're not like, "You had hair once, right?" That there are ways that we can be authentic and that we can put our best foot forward with a great photo and also just to keep in mind that's 60%. So making sure that people can see your face. It's not so close that they have way too much of your face, but they get to see exactly how you would look. Compelling headline. So you have opportunity here to personalize your headline. You have an opportunity and you have real estate to be able to go in and talk about more than just this is my job and this is where I work, that you can tell them exactly who you are. Executive sales leader, executive sales leader, that's who I connect with. People usually don't see that if they just look at Director of Monetization. In fact, no one knows who the hell that is, right? Monetization, what is that? Like I don't know what that is. But now I can tell them I'm an executive leader at a sales organization. An epic summary, being able to show your personality. You have 2,000 characters. 2,000 characters, go wild, right? Write about who you are, show some vulnerability. Share what you do. Share what you're passionate about. Like, did you think you were gonna end up where you ended up? Did you always think you were gonna be an accountant? Like I don't know how that works. Did you love math (chuckles) from an early age? It's funny, I used to, long time ago, I was an admissions counselor at a college. So a very important and amazing opportunity. Anybody ever been there? Have you ever done one of those college presentations? Anybody ever just wanna jam like a pencil in your eye because they were so boring? So many times when I would sit around and I would look at this amazing auditorium of students and their parents, I would always sit around and be like, "Okay, what do you wanna be, what do you wanna do?" And somebody would be like, "I wanna be a doctor." I'm like, "Oh, that's good." And some kids would be like, "I wanna be an engineer." (chuckles) And I'm like, "Great, you love math?" They're like, "No." And I'm like, "That's a problem, "I think that's a problem (audience laughing) "for you, okay?" I just want us to inject personality in everything that we do. We have one shot at being able to do that. And people don't always get this human to human thing. They don't get the opportunity to just talk. By the way, selling face-to-face is the way to go. But if you don't have that opportunity, how do you convey your personality online? And this is one more place to do it, it just has a professional context. And you can do it in a fun way. Like my summary wasn't boring and dry and like super staunch. It was a very absolutely like, I mean, it was beautiful, first of all, but most of it was expressive. And I think that it was also a way for you to get to know a little bit more about what I care about what I mission is. I'm on a mission. Maximize experience. So your experience doesn't have to just be, "I worked here, here, here and here." Like all LinkedIn profiles look. You wanna stand out. You want to be something that stands out. You want to be okay with having someone scroll through a feed or scroll through a bunch of LinkedIn pages, and they're all gonna look the same. They're gonna come to yours. They're gonna come to yours and they're gonna be like, "Oh, my gosh, look at this media. "This is gorgeous. "I love this photo, look at that video! "Wow, oh, my gosh, they did that? "Oh, that's so beautiful." Because not everybody's using this right now. I want you to stand out, I want you to be able to maximize your experience page, because not everybody's using it. You want to stand out, make sure that you're maximizing, maximizing your profile, and being able to use the real estate they give you. Education is important. Education is important, don't overlook this section. Anybody go to college in here? Couple of us went to college here. We're also in groups, or we at least started a college somewhere. (chuckles) And we have that on our profile. They create community for you. They're going to pull people together and utilize it. Remember, you have to be connected to people to send them messages on LinkedIn. But if you're in the same group, you can message them. That's my last takeaway there. Endorsements, so endorsements are huge. They are your peers telling the rest of the world what you're great at, not what you're telling the rest of the world that you're great at. And it just adds credibility. And the last one is ask for recommendations, ask. It's really hard. There's like a whole methodology around asking. I'm not gonna get into that. But this is a place where you want to ask people for recommendations actively. And find out, remember, those three things. Did I work for them? Did I work with them? And did I do anything with them outside of a capacity of work? So like did they see you in another setting? Like were you in a group together? Did you volunteer together? Like those are really great ways to start. So if you get those three, you're beating the rest of the population. And people will continue to see more and add more credibility to you. And then you wanna join groups that matter. I didn't just join that marketing group, by the way. I didn't just join the marketing group for the sake of being in that marketing group or because I wanted to connect with somebody. I genuinely care about it. Like I generally care about things, the South African group that I was a part of for the business group. Like, South Africa, by the way, is just one of my favorite countries on the planet. But they also have had a not-so-great history. And a lot of the people that are trying to get jobs and a lot of the people are trying to kind of decentralize education and get really good content. And I wanna people to know that I care about that. 'Cause if you care about that, and I care about that, that's another way that we can start to tell people the story of like who we are. And I think that's great. So that stuff all lives online. You take full advantage of that real estate I think you're gonna see that people are wanting to have better relationships with you and connections with you on LinkedIn. So here's the part, anybody ever look for jobs on LinkedIn? Anybody ever look at anybody to hire someone on LinkedIn? Yeah, they create really amazing tools for you in terms of searching for jobs. They're also searching for people that you'd like to employ. So this Jobs page, if you click on the Jobs section within your profile. So if you go to your-- if you log into LinkedIn, this would be the top bar on your page, so you have your Home button, your networked jobs, and then you can keep going down to Notifications, we'll get into a second, but the Jobs part, this is what's gonna show you. They're gonna be like, hey, are you interested in looking for a job? Are you interested in posting a job? And which one of those two would you like to do right now? And then if you are, it says: Where are you in your job search? Are you actively looking and applying? Are you casually looking to see what's available? It knows. The only thing I don't love about LinkedIn is that even if you're gainfully employed, they still send you something like, you could work here. They do all that time. Anybody got one of those? Look what it would like and they put the profile or like the logo there. (audience laughing) I'm like, my people are straight, like I'm good. Please stop sending that to my team, LinkedIn, please. They're super happy here working with me. Not looking but open to the right offer. Not looking and not open to any opportunities at this time. So if you click one of these, it'll take you to a corresponding page to either help you, or they'll leave you alone. Or they might be like, okay, well, if you're just looking, like, why don't you build some companies that you might wanna work for. But this is exactly what they start doing So if you say: I'm actively looking, it will take you to something that I love. LinkedIn does a fantastic job of looking at all data across the site and matching it with yours. So, in this case, it says: Companies where you know someone and companies you might be interested in. So it's going to bring a bunch of companies that are kinda similar to your job experience. That's kinda scary. It does that, it's looking at that all the time. And it wants to make it that way. But then it does this: You have six connections that work here. Ooh, that's pretty cool. So it looks like my friend Antonio works at, that looks like, well, it rhymes with IBM, but we'll just say that's what it is right now. And then also down here, it looks like yeah, three company alumni work here. So people that you've actually worked with before work here. Not just your connections, but it's telling you, people that you've worked with at this company work here. So you can start to connect with those people that you're connected with that work for these companies and be like, "Hey, I'm really interested "in this company. "I think I might be a really good fit. "Could you introduce me to the right person? "Could you maybe take my resume? "Or is there anybody that you know "that I should talk to that's outside of the general "just application process?" And so LinkedIn does a really good job of showing you the mutual connections, the degrees of separation between you and what you're looking at all across the site. But I love this from people that are interested in getting jobs places because it also tells you, as the job seeker, also you wanna pay attention to those people that work there. (chuckles) Because you might go, "Ooh, they work there? "I don't know. (audience laughing) "I don't know about that one. "Antonio and I really didn't get along." Career interests. So the career interest part of this page. So if you are interested, you click on one of those jobs, they also bring you back to career interests, where you can go in and edit your profile. So you can edit your profile when you're looking for a job and be able to go in and say these are the things I really am interested in. So now you have an option. There's toggle there. Let recruiters know you're open. So when recruiters who have the recruiter app on LinkedIn, they will see profiles of people that say, "I'm actually interested in looking for a job." Now, don't freak out, because some of you are like, "Will my employer see that?" (chuckles) No, they don't see that, they should. I'm just kidding. They won't. (audience laughing) They don't see it, they don't see it. But recruiters do and it's really important, especially if you're open to it. Because if you're open to it, down here, you can start adjusting what you're interested in. Hey, actively applying, the start date that I'm looking to start, and so forth and so on. And then here's the part that I actually think you'll enjoy is that also on your profile page right under that amazing headline that you just wrote, down here is going to be where you can actually click in to get career advice, career interests, and you can also go right into career advice section. So mentorship on LinkedIn, just so we don't pass over it, the career, right under here, where you can actually click on the career hub... How many people have mentors? Anybody have mentors in their life? Yeah, yeah, exactly. We keep talking about it a little bit more and more, but I'll tell you. The only reason why I've been successful at all is because people have invested in my life in some way. And I can point blank, I can tell you exactly who those people are since I was nine-years-old. I had a big brother, big sister, program, I've been a part of that. Nine-years-old I had somebody. He was best man at my wedding, by the way, pretty fantastic. But also taught me how dress, how to golf, how to talk to people, like it was unbelievable. But they pour into my life, they poured into my life over and over and over again. So this is my little soap box pitch for mentorship is like I'm swirling, I have people that I'm mentoring all the time, just people that are younger, older, doesn't matter, just people that are kinda asking me questions about how I navigated to where I am. And this will let you, and LinkedIn has gotten wise to that, they're like, "Wow, that is really valuable." Mentorship does accelerate growth. It does help people get to where they want to get faster. And if you were sitting here and you're like "I don't have a mentor and I don't know "kinda what that is." Mentorship are just people that have been there and done it and can maybe save you a little bit of pain from like going down the wrong path, stuff that they learned, or accelerate your growth, because they know how they got there and they can share that with you and be able to get you there faster. 'Cause you can go at your own pace. You'll get there eventually, but having people that have been there and done it and be able to bounce ideas off of them is fantastic and it's unbelievably valuable. LinkedIn got wise to that and they put a career advice hub just on your profile. So as you're scrolling down your profile, underneath your headline section, you will see a yes, you can talk about careers. But you can also op-in to mentoring people. You can say, "I'm open to that." So now as other people are looking at your profile, they can see that I'm open for it. And then they'll go into an inbox whenever they wanna hit you up. It'll go into your actual message inbox and say, "Hey, I saw your profile "it said that you were possibly mentoring "or getting some career advice, here's my question." And you don't have to turn that on. That's something that you could keep off. But I'm going to highly encourage that we continue to build out this amazing community of people that are interested in helping other people grow. And so I would say go in here and do this. And I've had it. I've had so many people. This is blank, because I'm not gonna show you mine, it has a lot of really personal (chuckles) people in there. But there are people that hit me up every single day asking me questions about sales, about how they got, like how do you actually be able to do that? How do you actually get the opportunity to get where you are? And then you have this opportunity to keep going, so mentor, career advise, prefer to give that advice. You can customize what you're actually interested in. So down here actually say that I'm open to talking about leadership, building sales teams, account management, public speaking, LinkedIn, prospecting, value-added selling. So you can customize it so when people are going through your profile and they see that you can do that or that you're open to it, you can tell them what you're open to in terms of what kind of conversation you wanna have. And then the recruiter part of this. So if you go in here and you turn on the Let Recruiters Know, you also can customize that, too. So say like, "Hey, hire me." (laughs) Don't say that. But you can start talking about, "Hey, I'm actually looking for these things." You're communicating with recruiters all over the place. And they give you an opportunity to do that at locations, where you wanna be. They have all that information when they start scrolling through your profile. And there it is, cool. So this is the other one I thought was great. Anybody who's an employer out there, everybody likes to figure out, like, "Man, what do I pay my employees? "What should I ask for?" If I'm looking for a job, what do I ask for? They come out with a salary section which lives there on that same career page. And you can go in and say, "Oh, I wanna be a VP of Sales. "I wanna be in Austin, Texas." This is what they've gotten from all of the research that LinkedIn does. And a lot of that research comes from just people actually submitting it. So people will submit that content and say, "This is what I make, this is where I live." And then they will pull all that data out and be able to give you a recommendation.