092 – 5 Creative Ways to Use LinkedIn to Stand Out From Your Competition

Intro 0:00
You’re listening to the Good Girls Get Rich podcast episode 92. Welcome to the Good Girls Get Rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:23
Hi, I’m Karen Yankovich, the host of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast. And this podcast is brought to you by Uplevel Media. This is where we teach simple relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing that gets you on the phone consistently with your perfect people not throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks and not spamming your LinkedIn network. Simple, easy, fun relationship, talk to the people you can’t wait to have the opportunity to chat with LinkedIn marketing. We teach digital marketing with the human touch over Uplevel media and Karen Yankovich.

So if you’ve listened before, or if you love what you hear today, you know that we love to hear from you. So make sure that you subscribe to us on your podcast, pod catcher of choice. We love your reviews we love when you read us that helps us understand what you’re enjoying and other podcast and what we can do to make it even better for you. I’d love for you to also take a quick screenshot of this and use the hashtag good girls get rich shared on social media tag me I’m at Karen Yankovich, I’ll be sure to share your post with my audience. And that’s how we all get more visibility. And then also we love your voice messages going over to Karenyankovich.com/speakpipe or even just go to the show notes for this episode, there’s a link to speak pipe, you can leave us an audio review, tell us what you love about this episode. Or just tell us what you want to hear on this show. We’d love to get your feedback just on maybe topics you want me to talk about, or guests you think I should interview. So go to Karenyankovich.com/092. You can see the blog, there’s a link for speak pipe. If you leave us a review, I can play it here for my audience. So that’s always fun too.

So today’s show was a little interesting. You know, when I speak at conferences and events, and you know, it’s speaker season right now, Fall of 2019. I’ve got probably two events a week, September, October, November. So I try to incorporate some outside of the box thinking because I know that they’ve brought me in to teach LinkedIn marketing. And I like to be I don’t want to be like every other LinkedIn speaker out there, right.

So I like to try to offer ideas to the audience that they surely haven’t heard before from other LinkedIn speakers. And I was thinking when I was thinking about topics for the podcast, that I don’t do that enough here on the podcast. Now, here’s the thing, you’re a podcast listener, right, you listen to my show, hopefully you listen regularly. And thank you so much for doing that. So most of the things that are outside of the box for a typical audience, you’ve already heard, because I talk about that stuff all the time on this podcast. So I had to dig a little deep to find some creative things that maybe you haven’t heard already on the podcast. So I’m really excited to share those with you today.

So hopefully, you’re excited to learn some creative ways to use LinkedIn ways that your peers and your competitors are not reaching their audience ways that they’re not using LinkedIn so that you can stand out from the crowd. Because I want you to stand out from the crowd, I want to give you that little push the one that makes you think bigger, right?

We talked about thinking bigger a few episodes ago. And it’s so important for your LinkedIn marketing, for your marketing in general in this digital era that we live in. So here’s the deal, I’m going to just remind you, if you haven’t done this already, to get on the waitlist for our LinkedIn profile challenge, it’s LinkedInprofilechallenge.com, it is coming up soon, we’re doing the next round, starting October 28 2019.

If you’re listening to this after that week, don’t worry about it, you can still get on the waitlist for the next round. But we haven’t done this in about five years. So I’m really excited for this, we’re going to help you with your profile, completely free. And it’s definitely not your brother’s LinkedIn profile challenge, right, this is a challenge that is really very heart centered, I want you to show up in a way that you feel comfortable showing up but maybe also pushes you outside of the comfort zone a little bit so that you can stand out from the crowd and really show up and connect with your exact perfect people.

So that work really does need to get done to have the best success with the things we’re going to talk about on the show. So if you haven’t already gotten on the waitlist, go to LinkedInprofilechallenge.com. If it’s too late for the fall 2019 challenge, no worries, we’ll be doing it again, in another weightless for the next challenge.

So we’re going to dive in. So I can push you a little bit outside of the box here, I’m going to talk about five creative ways that you can use LinkedIn that makes you stand out from everybody else out there. And the first thing I want you to think about and this really comes to mind for me, because I am recording this in the fall, and for me conferences and is in the fall, I’ve already got conferences booked for Fall of 2020.

So you know, it is just when people like to have conferences, and one of the things that I teach at conferences all the time, is before you go to a conference, if you’re going to a conference with your speaker or an attendee, go through the list of speakers at the conference and connect with them on LinkedIn, and tell them, Hey, I’m really looking forward to seeing you at the ABC conference. Really looking forward to your talk there. I would love to connect with you here on LinkedIn to get to know a little bit more about you before I hear you at the conference.

That is such a powerful way to get more out of every conference you go to, it doesn’t have to be a conference, by the way, maybe you’re going to see a guest speaker at your local Chamber of Commerce, right? whatever it is you’re doing, if there’s somebody that’s speaking at an event, and you are going to that event, connect with them ahead of time on LinkedIn, I must get in front of 10s of thousands of people a year, maybe maybe I get five or 10 of these connection requests in a year.

I mean, like that’s like a fraction of a percentage of the people that get in front of nobody’s doing this. So if you are the one doing this, you’re going to stand out from the crowd, it gives you have an opportunity to start to build a relationship with the speaker that you’re going there to see. Maybe it’s a speaker that 100 people or 1000 people or 10,000 people are going there to see and you’re now going to stand out from that crowd because people aren’t doing this.

So get that list of speakers that are going to be at a conference, you’re going to make sure you’re you know, when you’re looking at the event, you’re going to be going to in the next month or two. If there’s a speaker there, make sure that you connect with them beforehand, so that you stand out from everybody else there. You can walk up to them after the event and say, you know, Hey, Joe, I’m Karen, I can do last week on LinkedIn. Hopefully you remember that I loved you know, I didn’t know that you did this. And you’re now you’re getting some intelligence about that speaker that no one else in the room has, right?

If they’ve done their job on LinkedIn, sometimes the speakers are not active on LinkedIn. And that’s okay, too. Right. But you are doing your job, I can tell them ahead of time, and maybe doing a little reconnaissance about the fact that, you know, wow, it says here that you’re a Jets fan. Oh my gosh, we’re going to do with that team this year, right?

So use LinkedIn to get a little reconnaissance, connect with speakers before events and use it as an opportunity to build Oh, what’s that word, relationships, relationships with the people that you’re going there to see.

The second thing I want to do the second creative way that you can use LinkedIn. And this is a fairly new feature on LinkedIn that I’m not seeing a lot of people use. But I love using it. Because for me, it’s just another great way to be of service to my community, right relationships. And that is LinkedIn. Kudos. So KU do kudos, like, you know how you give someone kudos for doing a good job at something? Well, LinkedIn has built in the ability to give people kudos to them on their LinkedIn profile. So it’s different depending on whether you’re on your desktop or on your app, or your iPhone or your Android phone. So I’m not going to walk you through the steps to do it.

But on your desktop, just you know, you have just so you know, you have to click as everybody can open it on the desktop, right? You if you’re looking at someone’s profile on the desktop, you basically go you click the More button that’s to the right, it’s got like three little dots. And then there’s more, that’s to the right of their name, right, right where their headline is, okay, you’ll see, you know, you’ll see chat, and then you’ll see more with three little dots. When you click More, it’ll give you the opportunity to share the program file saver to the PDF, and one of them is the opportunity to give kudos. Now that’s just a great way to stand out from the crowd. And there’s a you can only do three a week. So do three a week, right? Why not? And it gives you the opportunity to say just say thank you for going above and beyond or being a team player.

I think there’s 10 different things here. and be creative with who you’re doing this with. Like sometimes I give kudos like sometimes I’ll come off of a great call with my mastermind group. I was given more kudos, I’m like you guys were rock stars. Today, I’ll give kudos to everyone. Sometimes I’ll give kudos to somebody who just supported me and helped me and doing something. Right.

And you know, maybe they went outside of their way out of their way to help me figure something out that I didn’t know, I didn’t give them kudos. Because all it’s really doing, it’s bringing me, right, it’s letting my audience know that I am grateful for the people that are in my life, which is always a good way to be right, that’s putting out good karma.

But it’s also sharing with the people that you’re giving kudos to, to their audience, how amazing you think they are. So it’s very, I hardly ever see this in my LinkedIn feed. So I don’t think a lot of people even know it exists, you know, know it exists. So give kudos to people in your network, people that have done really cool things for you. Maybe they’ve just supported you definitely give kudos your clients if they’re doing great things, right. Because you always want to do great things for the people that are in your world.

Okay, the third thing I want you to do. And this is another thing that people still feel a little hesitant about, even though LinkedIn has gotten a lot better at this. And that’s endorsing, you know, those skills that five years ago, you were getting endorsed for things you don’t do by people you don’t really know. Well, LinkedIn is getting better at this, first of all, you now have the opportunity to pull the top three things you want to be known for to the top of the of the skills list.

So if you haven’t done that yet, go ahead and do that. But you know, you can assume that the people that you’re connected with have done that, even if they haven’t, you know, there was a the skills there anyway, go on and endorsing binge again, it’s just putting good karma out there, sit down and spend a few minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, you can even do it on your phone while you’re sitting on your couch, catch it, you know, binge watching something on Netflix, and go on and endorsing binge. It’s getting your name in front of people that can be valuable to you. Right? And it just reminds them that you exist, right, it’s keeping your top of mind, but it’s doing it not in a way like hey, join my webinar, Hey, get my free ebook. It’s just Hey, I think you’re great. Right?

So go on and endorsing binge, one of the things that’s going to do by the way, is it’s going to encourage them to endorse you back. So you will get endorse back for things. So that’s why it’s important that you put those top three things in there. If you’re not sure how to do that, go to Karen yankovich.com, slash Facebook group and come into the Facebook group and will and tell me and I’ll come in there and do a quick video for you there. But go on endorsing binge because what happens when you’re getting endorsed for things over and over, that you want to be known for. Its telling LinkedIn to bring up your profile when people search for these things. So are you starting to follow me on how this can be important, you’re just providing value to 10 or 20 or 100 people at a time by endorsing them for things and telling the world that you know, you appreciate their way they show up as a leader for these three things and just endorse them for their top three things, it needs to go down the list of 20 things.

But what happens if you do that to 100 people, some percentage of them are going to come back and endorse you back. In addition to just being grateful to you and giving you the top of mind that you’re that we’re all looking for the visibility that we’re all looking for here. And it’s also letting LinkedIn know when they do that disruptor in your profile more in searches, see how that can be strategic Win, win win.

Okay, so the fourth creative way that you could use LinkedIn that maybe you haven’t, and I know that you’re a podcast listener, because you’re listening to the Good Girls Get Rich podcast.

And of course, if you need practice with this you can use me to practice with, but I’m not really doing this just as a pitch for you to do this for me. I want you to write a LinkedIn recommendation for your favorite podcast hosts. Imagine how cool that is when they’re looking for sponsors, or they’re looking to book that guests that might, they might feel like is a little bit of a reach. And they can share your recommendations that you shared on LinkedIn, not just the reviews left on iTunes, but you’re leaving a recommendation for the host specifically, you can easily recommendations for the guests, right?

I mean, like last week, if you haven’t checked it out, you got to go back and listen to her back over to Rebecca and I geek out about LinkedIn groups. If you love that, go to Rebecca as well and said they loved hearing you on the Good Girls Get Rich podcast, because when I can share with potential guests that my audience is leaving, we recommend like that for my guests on LinkedIn. I mean, I’m going to get better guests, and you’re going to get better content on my podcast, right.

So listen, I’m not trolling for recommendations, although I always appreciate them. But I really mean it. When I say you know, often the podcast hosts or people maybe you haven’t thought about actually trying to build a relationship with, I want your reviews on Apple podcast, and all those other great places that really helps us in so many other ways. But when you leave recommendations on LinkedIn, you’re starting a conversation, you’re starting to build relationships with the host of your favorite podcast. Now you can replace favorite podcasts with favorite blog or favorite TV show or favorite, you know, radio host, right, but your podcast listeners, so I figured I’d go there.

So write recommendations on LinkedIn for the people that you listen to, for the people that you that you look, as opposed to an up to as mentors. And it’s just a way to start building relationships with them. And, you know, magical things can happen when you start doing that.

All right, the last creative thing. And this isn’t necessarily a creative thing in digital marketing in general. But it’s a creative thing here on LinkedIn, because I’m still not seeing a ton of people doing this. And that is use hashtags. So I know we think about using hashtags on platforms like Instagram and platforms like Twitter, we don’t always think about using hashtags on places like LinkedIn. But when we use hashtags on LinkedIn, it’s up on LinkedIn, you can follow hashtags, meaning if you use the hashtag, say, live stream or LinkedIn live or LinkedIn strategy, or whatever it is, you do, right health coach, yoga teacher, and somebody following that hashtag, your content is going to get in front of them. So don’t you want your content in front of more people, right?

When you put your content in front of more people like this, it gives you It gives you an opportunity to be seen by people that maybe didn’t know that you existed. And now they can follow you on LinkedIn. And now they’re going to, you’re going to get more visibility.

So use hashtags, don’t use 100 of them, or 20 of them like you might on on Instagram, use three hashtags used to be hashtags in your post. You’ll notice now that I’ve said this, you’ll notice on the left hand side on desktop, that you can follow hashtags. And underneath your posts, as you’re starting to create a post that you can, it’s going to offer you suggestions of hashtags.

By the way, you can also use these hashtags on your in your LinkedIn articles. You can also use these hashtags on your LinkedIn company page. So be creative with your use of hashtags, you may want to create maybe a list of 10 hashtags or 20. hashtags, we have an upcoming episode on hashtags. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be doing the full episode on this. And I’ll be sure you know if you’re if you’re so be sure that you’re subscribed to this show, so you don’t miss that episode. But for now, just start using hashtags. LinkedIn, it’s just a creative way to get your content in front of more people.

Okay, so let’s recap this. Now. The first thing we talked about the first creative way, we talked about using LinkedIn that maybe you haven’t thought about before, is looking at your calendar, see what you’ve got coming up, see what a live event you’re going to maybe it’s just a local meetup somewhere. Maybe it’s a big conference, maybe it’s a little conference, but connect with the speakers at these events before the conference.

The second thing is use LinkedIn is built in kudos feature to give people three different people. Kudos every week. Now, by the way, I say three different people. It’s three different kudos. So I think I mentioned to you that like I sometimes give kudos to like my mastermind, people, I can put all of them in one post, right. So I think your three kudos posts a week. But I get more than one name in a post, if that makes sense.

The third thing that I want you to do to be creative and your use of LinkedIn is to go on and endorsing binge just provide value, just provide value, endorse people that you love, for things that they do, it gives them value. And you know what chances are, a percentage of them are going to endorse you back which gives you value. It’s putting out that social karma that will come back to you right.

And then when when the fourth thing I talked about was using recommendations and use them not just for people that maybe you know, you worked with us it for people that you’ve listened to, maybe you heard them as a guest on a podcast, maybe it’s your favorite podcast host, maybe they did a Facebook Live that you loved, right, maybe you got an email that you weren’t even sure how you got that email, but you loved it. Go on LinkedIn and write them a recommendation because writing recommendations for people on LinkedIn is a great way to start relationships, by the way, you should be connected to them to write a recommendation. So now you can connect with influential people in your life and say, Hey, Joe, just heard your interview on, you know, CBS Radio, I want to write a recommendation for you here on LinkedIn. So need to connect with you first, right? Who’s gonna say no to that. So it’s a great way to start building relationship with some of the most influential people in your world.

And the last creative way to use LinkedIn is to think about using hashtags, not just when you’re using Instagram, not just when you’re using Twitter, but also when you’re using LinkedIn. And like, as I said, we’re also going to have it episode coming up in a few weeks about all about the use of hashtags on LinkedIn. So do you see how these creative ways could have you get engagement on LinkedIn? Have you get more excited about using LinkedIn, it’s not just pushing out content, and feeling like you’re just yelling into a void, right? And nobody’s responding. It’s a way to just be engaging, it’s a way to provide value. It’s a way to start using this powerful platform in a way that is going to attract your perfect people to you. Because they see how, how generous you are, and how you know, smart and amazing you are at the things that you do.

I’m here to reduce your overwhelm.

I don’t want this to just be another thing on your to do list, I want you to thoroughly enjoy the time that you spend on LinkedIn, I have LinkedIn open all day long on your computer. I know that’s a no surprise to you. But I want you to start messaging me and saying you know what, Karen, I’m finding that I’ve not linked it open all day long on my computer, right.

So that’s what I want to hear from you. Because you’re getting tips like this, that show how valuable this is that show how important that relationship based marketing, and how easy it can be when you’re not just always asking for the sale and always pitching when you’re providing value, starting conversations with people and building that heart based relationship marketing.

Remember that we’ve got a new, I’m so excited about our new free LinkedIn profile challenge that we’ve got coming up, go to LinkedInprofilechallenge.com to get on the waitlist for that or get started with us on that. I am here to support you with this because of this is where businesses happening.

And I know that the better job you do on your profile, the more success you’re going to have with that client, getting stuff with that money making stuff. And that’s better for you. And when it’s better for you, it’s better for me. And you know, I’m all about the win win. I’m here to help you with this. A lot of this work is done up front. It does need to be looked on on occasion and on occasion. But it’s simple systems. And I’m always here to support you in that.

So just a reminder, if you haven’t already, take a quick screenshot of this episode on your phone and share it on social media. tag me I’m at Karen Yankovich or use the hashtag good girls get rich and we’ll share it with our audience and we’ll both get some more visibility. I want this to be simple for you. I want to support you in this. Let’s do this together and let’s let it be simple. I’ll see you back here again next week for another episode of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast.