Goodbye Resume, Hello Thought Leadership: Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

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Hello, hello, and welcome to episode number 278 of the good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And I am excited to be here today. And we’re kind of going back to our LinkedIn roots. Today I wanted to do an episode that really was really back to like, what the heck do I do on LinkedIn to make this work for me. So you know, I do a lot of talking about creating thought leaders, right, as you are stepping into the next chapter of your career or your life, whatever that is. It’s it’s becoming more and more important that we understand that the visibility that we’re building gives us a responsibility, right? If people are listening to us or paying attention to us, they’re hearing what we say. And we are stepping into the role of a thought leader. And as we embrace that, and we understand that our identity is kind of shifting into this thought leader, whatever that looks like for you, right? It’s different for everyone. But whatever that looks like for you, there’s ways that we can do it in a way that people have more and more confidence for us, right? One of the reasons that we incorporate the PR work that we do in our shoes link up programs, is because I know that that credibility that the PR gives us, helps us position ourselves as a thought leader. And it’s not like fake positioning, right? Because the more people can hear what your point of view is, can understand where your heart comes from. And they get to know like and trust you, you are building that thought leader brand with every piece of publicity that you put out there. But it’s like a puzzle, these pieces need to fit together. Right. So today, we’re going to be focusing on the LinkedIn piece of this. Okay, and I gotta tell you, you know, somebody asked me, a couple of years ago, I distinctly remember somebody asking me, like, what did I attribute, like my success on digital marketing to? And of course, there’s 100 answers to that question, right. But for whatever reason, what came out to me was kind of like competence, just the word confidence, and showcasing what I do. And you may have heard me talk about this on the show. But my background, my history is, my sales experience is in the IT world coming up through the, you know, the 80s, and the 90s, in the 2000s, and blah, blah, blah, right? Or 100 years ago, and I was often the only woman in the room when I was in, in technology sales right back way back when. So I really learned how to portray confidence, because if I knew I was confident, I knew I was really good at what I was doing. But because, you know, times were different than and I don’t know that it’s that much better now, but kind of different than if I didn’t portray confidence, I would have gotten my lunch eat. And they were like patting me on the head, like the nice little lady in the room. Right? So I had to portray confidence. So it’s a skill that I learned early on the importance of showcasing you know, my expertise, right. So that’s, I think that’s really what ultimately led me to be to be to be focusing on LinkedIn. Because I think that’s where we can do that. Right. That’s where we can do that. So what can we do on LinkedIn, to create a thought leader brand that we’re going to talk about today. So hopefully, you can relate to that, hopefully, you, you, you understand where I’m going with this, you know, when it makes sense that there’s things that you can do to control this, right, we want to position ourselves as if we’re peers, with the most influential people in our industry. And we do that one of the ways we do that is by creating a LinkedIn profile that does a lot of that heavy lifting for us. So let’s dive in. The first thing I want to talk about here is your LinkedIn headline. And you know, I’ve talked about this a lot. And I’ve done LinkedIn profile reviews. If you go through my LinkedIn profile in my activity section, you’ll see that I do a lot of LinkedIn profile review, live LinkedIn profile reviews on LinkedIn, helping people with things like their headline. And when I, you know, really the importance of the headline, is it. It’s what captures the attention, right? It’s what reflects your professional identity. And it’s what sets you apart from all of the other people, right? The example that I’ve used a million times for 20 years, right, is you can say I’m a financial planner, and I have all these great letters after my name. And I know you earned those letters, and I want you to showcase what you earned and what makes you amazing. But also, I don’t really know what those letters mean, right? So what I want but if you say something on your LinkedIn headline like I and I know if you’re a financial planner, by the way, you probably can’t say this, because I know you have compliance issues. But let’s just say you could say this, you can say something like I’m a financial planner that helps women over 50 create enough wealth to retire at 60. Right. So now your headline is capturing my attention. Because I’m like, wait, I’m not really sure I’m in the market for a financial planner, but I sure as heck like the idea of being able whether if I whether choose to or not retiring at 60 Right, and it reflects your professional identity. It doesn’t mean that you can’t work with a man it doesn’t mean you can’t work with it. I’m in under 50. Right? And he’s that’s what you are most expert in. So when you’re creating your headline, there’s a couple of things I want you to think about. We’re gonna think about keywords. And you’ll hear me talking about this a lot during this episode. But if you position yourself as a thought leader, right, you need to tell me who you are. Right? So who you are, right? I’m a financial planner, who you help women over 50, how do you help them, I help them by helping by helping them create a plan to retire at 60. Write a financial plan to retire at 60. So so when you’re crafting your headline, I want you to apply that test to it, who you are, who you help, and how you help them. And think about how you want to be seen in the world, right? This headline is going to be seen in a lot of places, it comes up when people search you on search engines, it comes up when people search you on LinkedIn. By the way, when you spend some time on this headline, you can use it in other places, right? You can use it as your Facebook bio, or your Twitter bio or whatever, right? But take some time to really craft an amazing LinkedIn headline, who you are, who you help, and how you help them and do it in a way that is attracting the exact right attention. Okay, think about power words that you may want to use, right? And I will say, if you are not a little uncomfortable pushing save after that headline, then you haven’t, you have not showcased your genius enough. I would love it. If you take a stab at your headline, and then tag me on LinkedIn. I will tell me, Karen, I’m listening to what episode is this episode 278 of good girls get rich and you asked me to tag you take a look at your headline, I will look at your headline and give you feedback on that. Okay, this headline is so important, especially as you’re stepping into that thought leader brand. And the thought leader brand is not like remember, like it’s it’s it’s it’s really positioning you for more influence, more impact and more income as you’re stepping into the next chapter, right? Whatever that looks like for you, even if your next chapter is I need to make more money doing exactly what I do now. Right? So this is how we start to do that we start to own it ourself, right, who you are, who you help, and how you help them. Alright. The next section I want to talk about is your about section. Now remember, this is this used to be called your summary. And remember, like a summary is like the Cliff Notes of a book, right? It’s not all that interesting. But about is interesting to me. I don’t know about you, right? If you know anything about like online marketing and website psychology, often your about page is the number one page viewed on your website, because we want to know more about you. People want to know more about you. So tell them about you in your about section on LinkedIn. Right? That’s what we want to do here. And, and 100%, I have never in the history of the world been able to talk been talked out of this, this needs to be in first person. And I know some of you are like, and I get that I know I’ve got some names in my head of people that are still in third person. And they choose to do that. And that’s cool. I’m not the LinkedIn police, right. But you’re connecting human to human here, right. So this is not your resume. This is your personal brand. This is you portraying who you are, and building relationships, and networking from this place of power. Right? This is what you’re doing when you’re creating this thought leader brand in your LinkedIn profile, you’re networking, and you’re connecting from a place of power. So this starts with your headline and then moves into the about section. So tell me a story. Don’t just tell me like, you know, Mary is, you know, really good at Excel and Word and Google Docs, right? Like, who cares about that nobody

cares about that. What they care about is what brought you to where you are today. Tell me, you know, remembering to though that your LinkedIn profile is about you, not your business. It’s not the place to list your products and services. It’s not the place to list all that much information about your business, frankly, even if your business and you are kind of interchangeable, right? People want to know more about the person behind the business here in this about section. So that’s what I want you to be creating here. As you’re creating this about section, the person behind the business, right? Showcase your achievements, showcase your expertise, you can talk about yourself, as the founder of your business as the host of your podcast, talk about why you started your podcast, why you love your business. Tell me, don’t give me testimonials in there because you have a place for that right LinkedIn recommendation section. Tell me about a client when like, oh my gosh, when my client Mary, you know, tripled her revenue in six months after just applying these three tweaks that we did. This is what lights me up. It’s like, I want to put their pictures on my refrigerator, like my kids report cards, right? Like, tell me that kind of stuff. Give me a story. Make it interesting. Make Me Want to Read this. Remember when you’re crafting your summary that when people first go to your profile, it’s only going to show the first couple lines right? And then you can click more to read the whole thing. So make sure those first couple of lines are powerful. Well, you’re gonna make them want to click More and go, wait, what? Let me hear more, I want to know more about this, right. So absolutely create this summary in a in a story kind of with a story kind of vibe, I like to use a lot of whitespace. You know, I want you to use every six, every single one of your characters, you have the time of this recording, you have 2600 characters, you can use, use every one of them if you can, because what we’re doing we’re trying to bring, because because it’s also helping make your profile magnetic, right, because you’re gonna infuse keywords into that, if you are a money manifestation, coach and speaker, you want to use those words in that about section a lot. So when somebody is on LinkedIn googling or searching on LinkedIn, or Googling, searching on LinkedIn, for a money manifestation speaker for their conference, you come up, right, this is how we start to make your profile magnetic. So so that’s why I want you to use every single one of those characters if you can. And given a lot of whitespace, though, because nobody wants to read one big giant paragraph, you can add some bullets, you can add, you know, I’ll send you a link in the show notes, there’s a site that you can, if you look at my LinkedIn profile in my About section, you’ll see there’s some bold in there. LinkedIn does not allow you to bold it, but there’s a website that you can copy and paste your text into, and then paste it back into LinkedIn, and it will come back as bold or italic or whatever. I’ll link to that in the show notes. So you can use that if you want to. You’ll see I use it very sparingly. Because LinkedIn is still it’s not your resume, it’s your brand. But it’s also not Instagram or Tiktok. Right? It’s all business. So you don’t need a million emojis or a million different, you want it to be readable, right? You want people to read it, you don’t see like a magazine or you know, like like, like, you know, Forbes magazine isn’t using a billion emojis in their articles, they might add a little bold here and there, they might add a little italics here and there. But that’s what I want you to do, you’re presenting your professional self. So I want you to infuse your personality, but you don’t need to. But I don’t think you need a bunch of emojis and stuff like that, I use a couple, just to kind of give it a little pop and a little personality. And again, you’re welcome to model mine. By the way, feel free to do that. So a lot of whitespace make sure that you have a call to action. What do you want people to do next? Right, what do you want people to do next. And remember, this is your thought leader brand. So it’s okay to showcase your beautiful, brilliant expertise, the kinds of things that make you unique, the kinds of things that make you amazing. Tell me about these things in your about section. Tell me about your journey. Tell me why you love why you love what you do so much right? Craft this summary in a way that, again, is compelling makes me want to read it, but also makes me want to take action with the next step, right makes me want to take action with the next step. And honestly, if it sounds like a lot, I’m not really a writer. So I mean, that’s not really true. But I prefer talking, which is why I have a podcast, not a blog. So if you’re not sure what to write, like, just grab your phone and get a record app and record five minutes of who you know, like just the story, read, transcribe it, and then edit that transcription into 2600 characters, format it, add some keywords, and then bang, you got a summary, right? And again, tag me happy to do that. Just let me know you’re listening to this episode, and that I offered this support for you, I’m happy to do that for you. Alright, so moving on your experience section. So this is the part that’s most resume like, right? So this is where you’re going to put the description of your product and your service and your business. All the things I told you not to put in your about section, right? This is where you do put it. So I get that I get asked this question a lot. And so I’m going to answer the question that that maybe some of you were asking in your head, I personally, my personal advice to you is to go all the way back. If you worked at McDonald’s when you were 16 Put that in there because you may connect with somebody that’s gonna say, oh, my gosh, I worked at McDonald’s when I was a teenager in high school, I remember coming home smelling like french fries every day. Right? Like, but when you do that, nobody cares that you were, you know, poured a good container of French fries. Right? But if what you’re doing now, right is maybe customer service related, then tell me in that experience of you working at McDonald’s, that even way back when you were 2018 years old, you were the person that they call to the register when old man you know, Smith came to the register, because he was cranky, and nobody ever wanted to serve Him. Because He know always complain. But you always were able to smooth him and schmooze with him and turn him around. And he always left happy when you served him. Tell me that, if that’s relevant to what you’re doing now. Right? Like find some tiny little thing and all the different jobs you’ve had over the years. Remember, this is the story of you, the brand of you, so they’re all relevant, but pull from those experience sections what’s relevant to what you’re doing now. An example is one of my if you look at my experience section, you’ll see infinity communications group which is a company that I owned by Two years ago, and I owned the company, right. I was vice president of the company. But I was vice president because frankly, I was too young and a woman to get the contracts that we needed to get. But thankfully, the guys that I partnered with, I literally had to find them to start this company. But thankfully, they became amazing mentors to me. And it was awesome experience. But I basically ran the company, I did everything. I hired people, I fired people, I negotiated health benefits, I went out on sales calls, I bought office furniture, I took the garbage out, right, like I did everything. I don’t talk about any of that in there. If what I was doing now is human resources related, I’d be talking about negotiating health benefits packages, right? But it’s completely irrelevant. So I don’t need to even put it in there. I just talk about the things that are relevant to what I’m doing now. I’m building up from the time I was in high school till today, the story of me the journey of me, and what what experiences I took from each of those companies, that helps me become the thought leader that I am today. Does that make sense? So if you look at infinity Communications Group, all it talks about is marketing and communications, because that’s relevant to what I’m doing today. Right? So yes, I want you to listen, but you don’t have to list all the things you did. Just tell me the story. Tell me the story from the time you went to McDonald’s to today, to what, what was relevant, and what the kinds of things you pulled from each of these experiences that led for you to be the amazing human being that you are today. All right. So tell me a little bit about that. Remember to infuse your keywords. We’ll talk about that next. But remember to infuse your keywords because this is what’s relevant. For example, I was the vice president of infinity Communications Group, we didn’t have 10 vice presidents, we had 10 employees. Right. So I but if you look at my experience section, it says a vice president, I think it says marketing and marketing and media, because social media and marketing are key word important keywords for me, right? So I use those as that. There’s no LinkedIn police. It’s true. I did serve those roles, that role in my company. But there’s nobody that’s going to look at this and go, Well, that wasn’t your title. You can’t use that on there. Yes, you can’t. You can’t make stuff up. I don’t want you to take off. That’s not true. Right. But you can reimagine your titles so that they fit the story of you so that they are telling the story of you, and so that they are attracting people helping make your profile more magnetic with those keywords. Right. Makes sense. So let’s talk about those keywords for a second.

LinkedIn is not Google, right? We’re not going to Google, we’re not going to LinkedIn, for example, to search for vitamin D, right? We’re not looking for vitamin D. We might however, be looking for a vitamin D distributor or vitamin D supplier. Right? So you want to think about what are people searching for on LinkedIn that you want to come up as the search results. So it is like SEO. But it’s very different than Google. And you need to think about it that way. For example, if you’re a real estate agent, you’re gonna be talking about real estate or you want buying houses and selling houses and all the great things you did. But if you don’t put the community you serve in, no one’s ever gonna find you. Right? Nobody relevant is ever gonna find you. Right? So you want to you know, if I’m looking for a real estate agent, you know, I you know, let’s say I live in Hackensack New Jersey, right? I’m gonna put in Hackensack real estate agent, right? If I just put real estate agent in, the whole country has kind of come up, right? So think about what’s important, what’s relevant, and and use keywords that increase your discoverability and your authority. And if you’re not sure what to use, go down the rabbit hole a little bit, check out some of your competitors, see what kinds of words they’re using, see what kinds of things they’ve got, like maybe even in their skill section, because you want to, you want to think about that you might think of things you didn’t think of otherwise, go in to an AI tool, your favorite AI tool and ask for the top 20 keywords that you would use on LinkedIn. Like describe hopefully your if you’re using chat, GBT, hopefully by now they know who you are, right? What are the top 10 keywords that you should be using on LinkedIn to be found, if you want speaking engagements, if you want buyers or listings, if you’re, if you’re a real estate agent, whatever it is you want, right? If you you know, if you want more clients, if you’re a coach, right? Think about what those keywords should be asked Shut up to you to help you. And then go back to everything you did for this episode so far, and infuse those keywords in wherever you can. You don’t want to stuff them, you want to make sure that it’s readable, right, and it’s in your voice. But you definitely want to use those keywords. So I’m gonna say like a lot of people talk about using LinkedIn, like keyword tools, like Google’s keyword planner, I don’t think that’s a good idea for this because I think that it’s not it might give you some stuff that’s not relevant on LinkedIn. Okay. LinkedIn does give you keyword suggestions, and it does give you suggestions for skills and things like that. So you can use those kinds of things. But I wouldn’t I would stay away from traditional SEO keyword planners because I think that it’s going to put you down the wrong path with keywords and you want to come up on LinkedIn and here’s the beautiful thing for you my competitors all know how to do this, right? Because we all teach about LinkedIn. Yours don’t, right? Probably yours don’t so. So if you’re infusing these keywords in, right, and you’re gonna start coming up for more relevant searches, this is what’s making you magnetic. Right we in our she’s linked up programs, there’s like always a moment that I get that call from somebody or that text or that message, or on a call or that you know, the thing I just somebody just reached out to me today and I’m like, That’s it her magnet struck her magnet is strengthening, right? That’s what I want for you. So that’s why when you’re doing all of this stuff we’ve talked about here, these are the kinds of things I want you to incorporate in this. The one thing I didn’t talk about yet that I do want you to use. Also, to establish your your authority brand, your thought leader brand, is I do really want you to use your featured section, your featured section. And if you go to my featured section at any given time, I usually have two or three things listed. I never have more than three things. Because frankly, you know, as much as I think I’m really interesting, I don’t think anybody’s sitting on my LinkedIn profile scrolling through my featured I’m images of watching all the videos and all the things I think they should watch, right? So I want to be really impactful with it really strategic with it. I typically either have maybe I’ll feature a recommendation, if somebody wrote me a recommendation, or feature, maybe a podcast episode, I’ll feature maybe book a call, right. So those are the kinds of things that I would feature on my feature section to help. Again, we’re creating our authority brand here. Alright, so let me recap this for a second. First thing you want to really do is focus on your headline. And then move on to your summary using 2600 characters. And then go back to the headline for one second, who you are, who you help, how you help them. Then moving on to your summary, right and using 2600 characters and fusing keywords, make it readable first person, give me some personality really, truly give me your personality. This is where you let your freak flag fly. Because you’re gonna attract the exact right people you want to track when they know exactly who you are. That’s why video is so hot, right? Because it’s hard to be somebody you’re not on video. So please, please don’t think this has to be like your professional, you know, people like you have to act like somebody you’re not, please act like yourself. In fact, I highly recommend you read it out loud once it’s done. And if you can’t, if you read it out loud, and it doesn’t feel like you then you need to fix it. Okay, you need to fix it. So you’re creating your authority about section, you’re gonna highlight your experience with impact, you’re gonna tell the story of you from the time you worked at McDonald’s to today by building up that story. And you know, again, only tell us what’s relevant. We don’t need to know all the details of every job you’ve ever had. It’s not your resume. This is your brand, it makes a big big difference your resume all that who you used to be, your LinkedIn profile should be positioning you for the thought leader that you’re becoming, okay, very, very different energy. Think about keywords and, you know, we’ll call it SEO or smo social media optimization. And then make sure that you’re using your featured section, because it is an important section to showcase the next step you want people to take, right? So again, I will remind you that I am here to support you with these if you want me to take a look at this episode 278 just pop in to the just after you’ve made the changes, tag me in your posts and say, Hey, Karen, Hey, Karen, you know, Episode 278, you offered to check this out, even if you listen to this two years from now, I still happy to do that. Okay. And I’ll take a look at it. And I’ll just give you some feedback. But let me know specifically what you want me to look at. Don’t just say look at my profile. Okay, tell me specifically what you want me to look at, because it’ll make it easier for me to focus on what you want to hear. Right. So hopefully that was really helpful to you, I will tell you this, we have for 2024 We’ve made some major changes to our she’s linked up accelerator program, we are we write your LinkedIn profile for you doing all these things for you, as well as creating a ton of other done for you assets, a media kit, because again, we want you to get publicity, right? Because that publicity helps establish your authority, we create your media kits, we create content for you. We do a ton of that stuff for you. And she’s linked up accelerator program. And then choosing up influencer program is just kind of the Getting Started program if you’re not really ready for all that done for you stuff. You know, you can do this at the self mastery level with our influencer program. But I’d love to tell you more about all of that if you want to hear more about what any of that looks like just grab a spot on our calendar at Karen yankovich.com/call. I’d love to talk to you and just chat with you. We’ll look at your profile, we’ll evaluate it and we’ll see what it looks like what it might look like for you to get some help with using LinkedIn to help you build your authority brand and your next chapter. So all of the information all the links I talked about here today will be in the show notes which you can check out at Karen yankovich.com/ 278. There’s also a link in there for SpeakPipe where you can leave us an audio message I love your audio message As I respond to every single one of them personally. So just go to Karen yankovich.com/ 278, you’ll see the blog for this page, you’ll see the link to speak pipe. And you know, when if this resonated with you, if you love what you hear today, I’d love for you to take a quick screenshot of this episode, share it on social media, make sure you tag me, so I see it, and then I can share it with my audience because it’s all about lifting each other up. Right? That’s how we move forward in 2024 and beyond by supporting each other. Okay, that is where the big opportunities arise. So I would love to do that for you. But I can’t I can’t I don’t know if you’ve listened until you tagged me right and you tell me so please take a quick screenshot. Tell me that your that what you loved about it, share it with your audience, I will then share that with my audience to get you some visibility. You know, I love your reviews, right? I love getting your reviews of the show because it just helps me understand what episodes you really enjoyed. So I can do more of them, right? Remember my motto here is to be that rising tide that lifts all boats, I do this podcast to support you. If you go to our website, we’ve got a free quiz. Actually. We’ll link that below as well. LinkedIn quiz.com will get you there to help you get started with this stuff. Hopefully you’ve got a lot of great tips in this episode. So let’s lift each other up. Help me help you share the show. And I will be back here next week with another episode for you. Have a good week everyone

Transcribed by https://otter.ai