095 – How to Advocate for Ourselves as Women with Heather Hansen

Have a passion or big ideas but afraid to show it? Step into your own and learn how to advocate for yourself as a woman in today’s podcast with Heather Hansen. 

This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen interviews Advocacy and Credibility Consultant, Author, Keynote Speaker, and Host of The Elegant Warrior Podcast Heather Hansen on how to advocate for ourselves as women.

 

Heather Hansen is the premier expert on how to advocate for your big ideas. She is the CEO and founder of Advocate to Win and has given thousands of clients the knowledge and tools they need to become better advocates and win support, attention, loyalty and engagement for their big ideas. 

 

For over 20 years Heather has been an award winning trial attorney, giving clients the skills to share their big ideas with juries, who initially don’t want to be there and don’t understand the issues.  Heather has a degree in psychology, is a certified mediator, and has provided expert analysis for CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, Fox Business, Good Day Philadelphia, and The Dr. Oz Show. 

 

Known for her insight and energy, Heather has been invited to speak to audiences across the world, everywhere from Kuwait to Ireland, to share with them the tools to advocate for their big ideas. Her interactive and energetic keynotes leave participants with actionable tools they can use that very same day to stop simply communicating and begin advocating. 

 

Heather is the author of The Elegant Warrior-How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself, which Publisher’s Weekly called, “A template for achieving personal and career goals.” She is also the host of The Elegant Warrior podcast. 

 

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We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.

 

About the Episode:

 

I have to begin by saying this episode was one of my favorites! Heather and I have very similar passions in teaching people how to own what they’re good at and to advocate for themselves, especially women!

 

This podcast was FULL of expert information from Heather, however I want to break this episode down into three key points on how to advocate for ourselves as women:

 

Know the Difference Between Communicating and Advocating

 

Starting with the basics… communicating and advocating for yourself are completely different. Communicating is sharing information and distributing ideas to those who need the information. Whether it’s you telling someone about your favorite restaurant or a great book you recommend, that’s communicating.

 

Advocating however, takes on a whole new level of courage and confidence. Advocating is standing up publicly for an idea you are passionate about or believe in. Women often are great at communicating, however when it comes to advocating for ourselves, it can take a bit of time to get used to doing. 

 

However… if we don’t advocate for ourselves, our ideas and messages will never be heard.

 

Understand the power of your voice

 

 I LOVED this quote by Heather…

 

“No one can advocate for you as well as you can. No one knows your big ideas and what you have to share as much as you do. Once you step into that role of advocate, that’s when you get all those things you’ve been seeking.”

 

This means you need to be comfortable with your voice, and being seen and heard in order to advocate for yourself. 

 

Your voice serves as your most powerful tool in order to advocate for yourself. Your voice also can describe a ton about who you are as a person. If you don’t declare those things you are passionate about and those ideas you have and what you’re really great at, they will never be declared. Your voice says so much about who you are and it’s a very real part of advocating.

 

Build Credibility with Yourself

 

One important thing to note is often as women… we are our biggest objectors! We are often so much harder on ourselves than anyone else out there is. So along with how to advocate for ourselves comes a sense of self-awareness in the fact that we need to recognize the credibility we have within ourselves.


I teach all the time to my clients that they need to own what they’ve done and what they’re good at. Often when I get done working with a client on their LinkedIn profiles they feel a bit uneasy or somewhat braggy… and that’s good! After we list through everything they’ve really done, then they understand that they really are great and what they do!

 

Many times we have so many reasons not to believe in ourselves. We say we’re “too young” or “too old” or “not educated enough” or “can’t speak well”… whatever it may be! However, the biggest point here is… 

 

How can someone else advocate for you… if you don’t advocate for yourself?

 

That is why you need to learn to overcome those objections, because once you do, it’s easy to overcome everyone else’s against you, which, aren’t nearly as bad or plentiful as the ones we often have with ourselves. 

 

It will take some time and some practice, but own what you’re good at, girl! Learn to advocate for yourself and everything abundance will come into your life just like that.

 

Episode Spotlights:

 

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/095
  • Audio review from Domonique Townsend, Founder and CEO of We Optimize Work LLC.  (2:38)
  • Introduction and background to Heather Hansen (5:23)
  • Heathers journey from a trial attorney to news personality (7:39)
  • Do women struggle to advocate for themselves more than men? (9:49)
  • The difference between communicating and advocating (10:47)
  • How using your voice is the most important part of advocating (15:27)
  • What started the conversation around this discussion of advocating for yourself (21:13)
  • Places to advocate for yourself and get your message out (28:01)
  • Resources that Heather has made to help step into advocating yourself (30:55)
  • Recap of todays episode (34:37)

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

 

 

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Read the Transcript

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 95

Intro 0:05
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 there. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And this is Episode 95 of the good girls get rich podcast brought to you by up level media, where we teach a simple relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing system for women that gets you on the phone consistently with your perfect people. This is just people you love to talk to people that can take your business in your life to new heights, one person at a time. We’re not throwing spaghetti at the wall here spamming our networks. We’re just putting a simple process in place using this crazy valuable LinkedIn tool to help us do that. Simply, and I want you to be talking on a regular basis to people who you cannot believe are on your calendar, people you can’t wait to have the opportunity to chat with. Bottom line is we teach digital marketing with the human touch. And speaking of that, I always love to connect with you in person, check out my website, Karen Yankovich. com slash events, so that you can see where I’ll be in the upcoming months. And maybe you can join me and we get together and take a selfie and really get to meet each other in person. Personalized marketing really is a kind of tell it was kind of like Back to the Future, right? Like it’s the way that it always worked. But now we’re starting to recognize how it really is the way to grow your business with powerful, profitable connections.

Intro 1:45
So if you have listened to before or if you love what you hear today, I’d love to hear from you. So make sure you subscribe to The Good girls get rich podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, leave me a review because that way we can see what works for you. We love to showcase reviews on our upcoming episodes. You can also leave us an audio review in speak pipe. If you go to Karen Yankovich comm slash speak pipe, or check, click the link in the blog or the show notes for wherever you’re listening to this, you’ll see the link for that. When you leave us an audio review, you don’t have to just leave us well, when you leave us an audio it doesn’t always just have to be review, although we love that maybe you have an idea for an upcoming episode or a guest that you think I should interview on this podcast. We love your suggestions and speak pipe is a way for us again, that human touch. I love hearing your voice. So speaking of hearing your voice, we have an audio review from Dominic Townsend I want to you to listen to now. Thanks, Dominic. Hi, I am Dominic Townson, founder and CEO of we optimize work LLC, a consulting firm that provides continuous improvement expertise to companies that are looking to find out where they are wasting time and wasting money in their processes their day to day process. Is the good girls get rich podcast is absolutely amazing Karen Yankovich every week, I look forward to a podcast that has been uploaded it to listen to I have invested in several courses that focus on LinkedIn positioning LinkedIn training and LinkedIn. They provide LinkedIn strategies and they do not compare to the feed. The the insight and feedback that we received from the podcast alone in the girls get rich podcast. I give you five stars. I am very excited just to learn so much from Karen and her leadership in her podcasts and how she gets questions from the special guests that she features each week. I look forward to hearing it every week and I am super excited to give this review and I’m telling you I will get five stars and I recommend this to anyone else who is looking to position themselves the correct way in LinkedIn and also utilizing services that are provided as well. Okay, that was so great. I love that we’re inspiring people to up their game here on the good girls get rich podcast. So thanks for taking the time to let us know that Dominique, I really appreciate it. One last thing, if you are if you can take a quick screen share of this episode, then you know on whatever device you’re listening to it, you can share that on social media, use the hashtag good girls get rich, tag me, I’m at Karen Yankovich across all social media, and I’ll be sure to share your post with my audience. And that’s how we all get more visibility. Right. I also would love I love sometimes sending little gifts if we can find where to mail them in the actual mail. So thanks for sharing that as well. I love you know, the rising tide lifts all boats. So when you share my content with your audience, I will share you with my audience and we all get lifted up. So remember, we’re doing blogs for the shows now. So if you’d rather if you’d like to read this, not only do we have a blog For each episode, we’re also sharing the full transcripts now, so if you have contacts that for whatever reason are not in a place where they can maybe, you know, maybe they just don’t have the ability to listen to the entire show. Now, not just not, it’s not just the blog, they can read, they can read the full transcript. So we’re pretty excited about adding that to the girls get rich repertoire. So this week on the show, we have Heather Hansen and Heather and I have been connected through a business program that we both joined a couple years ago. And I recently saw some conversation she was having on LinkedIn. And I jumped in and said, You know, I think it was it’s really in line with the message for women that I’ve been trying to share recently, mainly about how important it is for us to advocate for ourselves. So I, you know, immediately said we need to take this conversation over to the podcast. So I would love to introduce you to Heather Hansen, who I think you’re going to really enjoy. Take it away Heather.

Heather Hansen 5:57
We are here today with Heather Hansen and Heather is the premier expert on how to advocate for your big ideas. She’s the CEO and founder of advocate to win and it’s given thousands of clients the knowledge and tools they need to become better advocates and when support, attention, loyalty and engagement for their big ideas for over 20 years how there’s been an award winning trial attorney given clients the skills to share their big ideas with juries who initially don’t want to be there and don’t understand the issues. She’s got a degree in psychology is a certified mediator, and is provided expert analysis for CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, Fox Business Good day Philadelphia and the dr. oz show. She’s known for her insight and energy and she’s been invited to speak to audiences across the world from Kuwait to Ireland, and share with them the tools to advocate for their big ideas. She is the author of elegant warrior How to Win life’s trials without losing yourself, which Publishers Weekly called a template for achieving personal and career goals and is the host of the elegant warrior podcast. So Heather, you got a lot going on. It’s so great to have you here today.

So great to be here, Karen. It’s so fun. I listened to your podcast all the time. So it’s nice to be on this end of it.

Karen Yankovich 7:06
Yeah. Well back at you. And you know, it’s funny. Heather and I have been in each other’s worlds for a couple of months now. And we got to know each other maybe six months ago. And there was a conversation going on on LinkedIn. And actually, Heather posted a comment and we’ll talk about it. She wrote an article about something that had come out in the news. And I kind of just saw that article and wanted to jump up and down. I was like, Yes, I completely agree. This is so important. And and I thought it would be just a perfect conversation to have here on the podcast. So before we get into that, Heather, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about your journey? What brought you to I mean, you’ve had quite the journey from, from trial trial attorney to a news, you know, to a news, personality, right.

Heather Hansen 7:50
So well, I am still a trial attorney. I’ve been defending doctors and hospitals when they get sued for over 20 years and Philadelphia and the neighboring counties and And in all those years, I quickly realized that when I stepped into the courtroom, the juries, you know, they wanted to hear from me a little bit. But really, Karen, they wanted to hear from the witnesses and ultimately, the parties in the case. And so I realized that my job was not just to advocate which I had learned to do between my psychology degree and in law school and and my experience, but more importantly, my job was to teach my clients and the witnesses how to turn to the jury and advocate for themselves. And I’ve been doing that for 20 years, and I have loved it. Some time, I’d say around 2009 or so I started doing a lot of speaking so I started speaking to health care providers about how to advocate for their patients and their treatment plans. And then that sort of extended to speaking with women’s groups and business groups and sales groups, and then at one of those speeches, someone approached me about doing some TV. So in around 2014, I started doing legal analysis for CNN Fox msnbc Good day Philadelphia. And now I do the occasional dr. oz show as well. So that’s all a ton of fun and has given me great experience in keeping my answers short into the point and also really knowing who my jury is, you know, your jury in the courtroom is the people that you choose your jury when you’re on TV or the viewers, and knowing your jury is an important part of being an advocate. So all of these experiences together have definitely given me a lot of insight on how to advocate and most importantly, how to teach other people to do it for themselves.

Karen Yankovich 9:38
So important, it is so important. It’s such a great, it’s such a great conversation to have, because I think so let me ask you this, let’s kind of get right to the meat. Do you think women have a harder time with this than men? Because I feel like we do and, and I try not to be I really don’t want to be I don’t want to put labels on people. But I just find that that you know, we Women are like, I got it, don’t worry about it. And we’re like, wait, no, tell me more about that. Like, what? Why do you think you’re the best person, you know where and and I just I just came off of a weekend where I spent five days at a women’s conference, and some believe it was a podcasters conference. So it was just amazing voice after amazing voice with so many amazing messages. And, you know, the important I just realized the importance of each one of those 800 people at that conference, the need for them to advocate for their own show and their own voice,

Heather Hansen 10:29
right. And they’re all really good communicators, obviously, you know, and so I think that that’s where we have to begin. There is a difference between communicating and advocating, communicating is sharing ideas. And I think women are fabulous at that we are fabulous at sharing things and curating things and making sure that everyone that we know and love has the information that we think that they need, but advocating is publicly supporting something, and that is very different. So as women, we’re really good at advocating For our favorite restaurant, you know, you’ve got to try this place, or our favorite TV show, you’ve got to watch this show. We’re amazing at advocating for our friends and our family, and Gosh, our children Forget about it. But when it comes to advocating for ourselves for publicly supporting our own ideas, I think that we do struggle. I think we feel as though you know, we’re stepping over lines, or we’re acting like we’re too big for our boots, or we don’t shouldn’t have to do that, because people should just recognize our competence. And the truth is that no one can advocate for you as well as you can. No one knows your big ideas and what you have to share as well as you do. And when you step into that role of advocate, that’s when you start getting all the things that you’ve been seeking.

Karen Yankovich 11:46
Oh my gosh, so true. And Heather, that really is fundamentally the reason why I do this podcast, because I think that women, you’re right that I agree that that we are great advocates for everyone else, but if We’re not great advocates for ourselves who’s going to be. And you know even more even when we’re great advocates for our friends, it’s still not the same. Like, I’m sure you have friends that advocate for you, as I have friends that I’ve been need for me, but, but we have to start learning how to advocate for ourselves if we want to accomplish the things that we need to accomplish, whether we’re in it,

Heather Hansen 12:19
and it’s not selfish, you know, I talked about the five C’s of an advocate in my keynote speeches. And the first thing is connection that second see is compassion. And that’s connection and compassion with the people we are advocating to. So this isn’t all about me, me, me. And I think that when we when we realize that women become a lot more comfortable with it, you know, a lot of us especially Generation X and that age, we were taught not to be too loud and not to talk too much about our endeavors and our successes. But when you start thinking about it as How can I serve, what do I have that can help me to connect with this person? Help me to show this person compassion. Help me to use my creativity and my curiosity And build credibility in order to win the support and attention and loyalty and engagement that I need. I think that when we see that it is, both sides can win, we’re a lot more comfortable with it.

Karen Yankovich 13:14
And then I feel like the people around us are lifted up as well. Right? Because I like to take this like out of your world, in my world and into, like, even just thinking about, like, for some reason, my what’s been on my mind lately, or even people that are, say, teachers, public school teachers, you know, they’re typically are advocates for their students and advocates for the for the upper education. But imagine if they were advocates for themselves and really went out there and said, you know, no, I know this better than anybody. So I’m going to give you my point of view, as you’re writing this article, you know, CNN or MSNBC, because you’re, you know, I’m the one that are in the trenches, and I, you know, I know this, and I feel like you know, sometimes we feel a little bit removed from the people that are advocating for the things that we’re passionate about when really, we are the people that should be advocating for them, regardless of what it is that we’re doing.

Heather Hansen 14:05
Well, that’s right. I mean, no one can do it better than you can no one knows what you know, no one knows your experience. Now, sometimes it takes a little bit of time. Like I know, for myself, stepping into my business, I had spent so much time teaching witnesses and clients how to advocate for themselves to the jury is that I didn’t even really recognize that that was a skill. And I really am, by the way, which is

Karen Yankovich 14:28
brilliant. I mean, maybe that is a typical legal strategy, but I’ve never heard it. I think it’s brilliant.

Heather Hansen 14:34
Well, thank you, but but it’s something that has come So naturally, as part of what I do that it didn’t even occur to me that it was something that I should be proclaiming. And I think for the teacher in your, in your example, Karen, you know, he or she is so accustomed to handling a bunch of children and trying to keep their attention focused on the lesson plan and advocating for the lesson plan over all of the distractions that are there in the room. That they don’t even think of that as a skill. And I think that once we start to take a step back and really look at the skills that we have, and what we bring to the table, then we start to see that we do have to publicly support those skills in order for them to grow.

Karen Yankovich 15:17
Yeah, and the more that we can have our voices recognized, the more people can hear them, and the more people we can help.

Heather Hansen 15:26
Well, and using your voice is such an important part of of what I teach people not only in the global way, but in a really specific way as well. So using your voice is important because your voice is as singular to you, Karen as your fingerprint is. And so if you don’t say what you have to say in the way that you have to say it will never be said. And just like your voice is as individual to you. So are your skills so are your ideas, so are your passions. And if you don’t declare those things, they will never be declared and then no more micro way, your voice tells the world a whole lot about you, we can learn more about someone’s emotion and their state of mind from their tone of voice than from looking at their body language or reading their facial expressions. So using your voice is a very real part of advocating both finding the confidence inside to actually stand up and use it. But also using it effectively, to make sure that when we are advocating for what we want, we’re doing so in a way that’s going to be sure to end up in beneficial results.

Karen Yankovich 16:34
Wow. So that’s, you know, that’s one of the reasons why I do what I do even on LinkedIn, not just with the podcast, but on LinkedIn, because I feel like so, you know, taking it back to this conference that I was just at, you know, all of these women, it was a women’s podcasters conference, it was she podcast live, which was amazing. And first year they were out they had I mean, just as an example, they had there’s lots of podcaster conferences out there and the first year that they put this conference out there, they had 800 Oh, was a, I think almost 700 people registered for this conference in year one. They’re the third largest podcasting conference in the country in year one. And I but I think it’s because I think women recognize that they need to have community to help, you know, to move their message and their voices forward. But what I so so here we are, my talk at the conference was the very last lot of the conference the last lot of the last day, but it ended up being a great place to be because, you know, everybody’s getting all motivated and learning all these skills and really feeling empowered. And I know what happens typically then we go home, we get on the plane and it’s a schlep to get home and we get back to our lives and our to do list and I loved having the opportunity to come in and say okay, like now what, right like now what are you going to this LinkedIn is where you can now start to step into this person that you’re starting to feel and hear and see. Right, you can start to tell the world about this amazing message you have and why you are uniquely qualified to share this message. And LinkedIn is a place for you to do that. You know, and I think that often, you know, one of the things my company does is write LinkedIn profiles. And very often, when we’re done people like I know, I feel like I’m bragging, like you have done all this, you know, you do this, right? Like, this is owning it, it’s owning it and stepping into it and really kind of putting out to the world, the person that you’re becoming, and and that it’s a place then when you’re advocating for things. You’re also kind of substantiating your credibility a little bit behind your words. Right. And I think it’s, it just becomes that’s where the power starts to come in. I think for the for the messages we’ve have.

Heather Hansen 18:43
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s funny because a lot of the work that I do, you know, I talk a lot about building credibility, because in the courtroom, if I don’t have credibility with the jury, I can’t win. And we need to build credibility with the people that we’re advocating to. Whether it’s our clients or customers, our teammates are funding Our sponsors. But before we can do that, we have to build credibility with ourselves, you know, the people that you work with that you help to write their LinkedIn profile, they have to believe those things. So the way that we build credibility in the courtroom and the way that I talked about it with my clients is you set expectations and you meet them, and you make promises and you keep them. And when you can’t you own it. And you have to do that with yourself as well. So that if you set yourself an expectation that you’re going to do outreach for an hour, every day for a week, then you meet that expectation, and then you start to really feel as though you can rely upon yourself. You have your own credibility, and you can start to trust yourself. And then you’re more comfortable saying, you know what, this isn’t bragging. I can own this because it’s true. And if you don’t, you know, you do mess up which we all do. owning that mistake and trying to fix it is a huge part of building credibility. And the other part of it, you know, I teach people how to overcome objections in the courtroom. I have to overcome objections all day long, and in sales and marketing and building teams, we also have to overcome objections. But one of the things that I have found with the women that I’ve worked with is the hardest overcoming objections to overcome. The ones that hold us back most often are our own. We object before anybody else can You’re too old. You’re too young, you don’t have the experience. You can’t speak well on a stage. You don’t look good in that dress. I mean, there’s so many things people might laugh at you people might think you’re stupid people might think you’re too big for your britches. I mean, there’s so many ways that we hold ourselves back with our own objections. And once we can find a way to overcome those objections, and I actually have a series of questions that I use with my clients to help them do that, because once you can overcome your own objections, it is easy to overcome other people’s and usually other people don’t have nearly the number of objections that we have. So a lot of this work a lot of the work of an advocate starts with yourself, you know, building your own credibility using evidence to do so overcoming your own object. Asking yourself these questions using your voice and standing up. And then from there, it’s a whole lot easier to advocate for yourself to the outside world.

Karen Yankovich 21:09
Oh my gosh, I totally agree. I totally agree. Alright, so let’s talk about the article that started this conversation. So do you remember the article we were talking about? It was a Forbes article that came out early, early September 2019.

Heather Hansen 21:22
Yep. It was about America’s top 100 most innovative leaders and the Forbes Forbes put it out and included one woman. And there was a huge outcry. The woman Diana cap, who wrote girls who run the world dropped it alliterative for that was on by 60 well known and innovative women and asking Forbes to overhaul the criteria that determines who makes the cut. And, you know, I agree that the criteria could definitely be over overhauled. I think that the criteria so often there’s so many unconscious biases in the way that things are laid out, that puts women and other minorities at a disadvantage. So I definitely believe that that needs to be overhauled. And I do believe that more women need to make the cut. But I also feel as though we don’t speak up enough about how innovative we are. We don’t speak up enough about our big ideas. And women especially don’t brag and yell from the rooftops about all that they have to offer the way that men do. And because of that, we are not as often seen when it comes to these top 100 type of list. So sometimes it’s true that the loudest voice wins and you know, loud isn’t enough loud has to have credibility and evidence behind it. The loudest voice doesn’t win trials. It’s the but it but it certainly helps to be the one that the jury is hearing when you’re presenting your evidence and building your credibility and making your case. Oh my gosh,

Karen Yankovich 22:50
yeah, and you know, I it’s I bet because one of the things that it goes to me because I know this, I teach this I get this, but yet I still get a little cringe like do I have to be The loudest voice for myself, right? Because you think like, do I really want to be the squeaky wheel is not the pain in the neck like, but the answer to that is no, you know, but but the reality is the squeaky wheel does get the oil. Right. So, so where’s the balance? Where’s that? Where do you know? Like, I guess? I guess the I’m not asking you to answer that. But I think the question we need to ask ourselves is to find the balance, right, the balance of getting your message out there in a way that is empowering.

Heather Hansen 23:27
That’s right. Well, I think that we struggle. It’s funny because I was listening to a podcast this morning. And Simon cynic has a new book coming out that’s called, I think it’s called the infinite game. Don’t quote me on that. But he did an interview where he was talking about winning and how winning should no longer be the goal because you know, someone wins and someone loses. And that is certainly true. In my cases. When I step into the courtroom at the beginning of a trial, I know at the end of the trial, someone will leave that courtroom a loser, and someone will leave a winner, but that is one of the few places in life Where it’s a zero sum game, there is a definition of win in the Cambridge dictionary that says to receive something positive is the result of having earned it. And I think that sometimes we can recognize that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and that helps all the other wheels. You know, it doesn’t mean that you’re getting something. It is an abundant world, and there’s plenty of pie. And there are ways to make sure that everyone wins. But by you not squeaking and not getting the grease, you’re not doing benefiting anyone. I think that a lot of times, especially for women, when we start to think about the ways in which we serve by advocating for ourselves and make it about so one of the things I always talk to women about is you’re not advocating for yourself, you’re advocating for your idea. Your idea is a thing just like I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the children’s book, what did you do with an idea and it’s like a little egg with a crown on it and the child plays with it and gives it attention and gives it love and the idea starts to grow and I love that book, but I take issue with it the end the idea is grown in this beautiful wonderful thing, and then all of a sudden in the book, it just sort of floats into the air and explodes. And that’s where we get it wrong. Your ideas don’t just float into the air and explode, you have to advocate for them. So if you feel like you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your idea. Think of that as a separate entity that needs you to advocate for it in order for it to get all the attention it needs.

Karen Yankovich 25:23
Oh, my gosh, that I mean, I think I think that that statement, right, there was just so powerful. So the article that that, that Heather wrote basically talked exactly what she just said there. Right. And, and I’ll quote from it, when women start advocating for themselves, they won’t even need anyone to overhaul the criteria that determines who makes the cut, which, you know, which means we have to get our voices out there. We have to get our messages out there. Right We can have, we can and that’s advocating right advocating isn’t saying it to, you know, to your cats in your living room, right. It’s, it’s got a good two, it’s got to be out publicly and which is Also sometimes a little scary. So what do you say to people that that are feeling a little nervous about that?

Heather Hansen 26:05
I you know, I hate the phrase fake it till you make it because I think it makes us feel uncomfortable. It makes us feel like fakes. It makes us feel like Sony’s. What I urge my clients to do instead is to show it until you grow it. You may have a little bit of a sense of humor inside that you can show and it will start to get attention, people will start to recognize that and feed it and then it will continue to grow. Everyone has a thing that makes them a good advocate. I had a client one time, who was grumpy, he was a grumpy doctor. And if I had told him to be all sweet and cuddly on the stand, the jury wouldn’t have hated him. They would have found him not at all credible, not at all likable and not at all trustworthy. Instead I urged him to show how much he cared about the patient and how much he followed policies and procedures to a tea because that was important to him and caring for the patient. And when he started, just show that the fed off of it, they leaned forward in their seats, they gave him the body language that he needed, so that he could do the same. And that feeling grew until all of a sudden he was very confident in himself and not quite as grumpy. Those still grumpy because he’s a grumpy type of guy. But the jury appreciated his grumpiness, because they saw that it was the result of really working hard to take good care of the patient. And ultimately, they absolutely loved him. So you don’t have to do things that are outside of your comfort zone. In order to advocate for yourself, you just need to find ways to publicly support yourself. And there are different ways to do it. I have a seven x seven w program that I use with my clients where we talk about seven times seven ways to communicate the information that you need to communicate in order to publicly support yourself. So it doesn’t have to always be using your voice. It can be using data and evidence it can be using someone else as an advocate. But ultimately, as I said at the beginning, there is no one who can do it better than you can and when you know that and you realize that you’re doing it for your big idea. And not for yourself, it’s going to come a whole lot easier.

Karen Yankovich 28:03
So we talked about using LinkedIn to advocate for yourself other other places. And I love I know, you gave a few examples of ways that you can advocate. But how do you get that advocate, you know, whether you’re using data, or whatever you’re using, that you’re in a way that you’re comfortable doing? How do you get that other other ways to get the message out there? What are your Yeah, and you have any ideas for us?

Heather Hansen 28:21
So my preferred way is always in person. And I know that’s not easy in today’s age. But I do think that the pendulum is swinging and I think that advocating for you 100% agree with you on the Yeah, it’s advocating for your big idea in person. Karen allows you to make eye contact and to read body language and to read facial expressions. And also, there are studies that show that when we are in person, we actually feel the air between us differently and that’s another sense that sort of comes into play as you’re talking to one another. So that is, for me, the gold standard for advocating if you can be in person, whether it’s Across you know, so I do two day strategy days with some of my clients and then the first day we work on honing the message, the seven x seven w program, how do we figure out what ways you’re going to advocate that and the second day we do an across the table and on the stage and an on camera program where we go through each way that you can advocate because those to me are the gold standard. If you’re in front of an audience, like you were when you spoke at the podcasting event, that is a fabulous way to be standing up on a stage and publicly supporting who you are and what you do. Awesome. I love it. Or if you have the opportunity to be on camera, whether that’s in a video that you’re going to put on LinkedIn or Instagram or on your website. That is another great way to use your body language and your hands and your eyes and your tone of voice to advocate at across the table when you can look at the person that you’re negotiating with or you’re talking to or you’re selling to, and again, read their body language, listen to their tone, that’s ideal. And then the next step down is to do something like zoom or something Skype where you don’t have that same feeling of the air passing between you, but you can still see the eyes and read body language and the tone of voice. And then the next step would be the phone. Because there you still get the tone of voice and tone of voice is really important. It’s a great way to know your audience. I always say, you know, know your jury, who you’re trying to advocate to, is it your team so that you can be a better leader is that your clients or customers so that you can sell to them? Is it investors to get more funding, and when you know, your jury, and you’re really tuned into their tone of voice, you can learn a lot from them. And then sort of bottom rungs of advocating are, of course, you know, text messaging and emails because so much can be misread. But again, there are ways to do it effectively on each steps, each one of these steps.

Karen Yankovich 30:49
Awesome. I love that. I love that. So I think that I think that we’ve given the setting. I hope that we’ve inspired the people that are listening to this to understand The value of advocating for yourself. Tell us a little bit about how you blend to this, how you get this message out. I know you have a book and a podcast. Tell us a little bit about those.

Heather Hansen 31:09
So I wrote the book, the elegant warrior How to Win life’s trials without losing yourself as sort of a guideline for applying the lessons that I’ve learned in trials and applying them to life’s trials. So that book is out there. It’s available. It’s on Amazon and Barnes and Noble target anywhere that you buy books, you can certainly get that. I also have a podcast called the elegant warrior where I interview people about what their definition of elegance is and how they maintain it during times of trial. And we also talk about what their big idea is and how they advocate for it. I have a website it is in transition. It is currently at the time that you and I are speaking Heather Hansen presents calm, but it’s going to be advocate to wind calm. And there you can see links to the blogs that I do. I do a video and a blog pretty much every week. And then there’s also my speaking, my consulting and Hi, you can get in touch with me there if you want to work with me.

Karen Yankovich 32:03
Amazing, amazing. And you have all kinds of good stuff on LinkedIn also,

Heather Hansen 32:06
yeah, I try to I try to post the things that I do in all of the various places so that, you know, if you’re going to the time and the trouble to make a video and a blog, you know, you want to make sure that as many people see it as possible. It’s a big idea, and you want to get it out there.

Karen Yankovich 32:21
Exactly, exactly. It’s less, it’s less work to get an existing message out to all the people than it is to continue to create new, and you have to continue to create new content anyway. But But you know, why? Why would you continue to create new content if you’re not doing your best to get it in front of people. So I agree with that.

Heather Hansen 32:38
And then and you also get, you know, the interaction with the people who respond to it. So I get very different responses on Instagram that I do on LinkedIn. And they all help me with the next client, you know, so that you can really be I think, a big part if you’re going to focus on LinkedIn or Instagram or any of the other social medias to really make you Your audience or your clients, they’re as engaged as possible. And that means, you know, asking them questions, answering their questions, going back and forth with them in the messages being actually social

Karen Yankovich 33:11
on social media. That’s right. Just like you would in person, actually. So I was telling you, when we started this, I wanted it, I was trying to find the LinkedIn posts that started this conversation. The two of us are so social on LinkedIn all the time, it took me forever to find it. But that’s a good thing, right? Because it keeps us engaged. And plus, I love having these conversations. I’m not having these kinds of conversations, because it’s my job. I’m having these kinds of conversations because I love having these conversation kinds of conversations. But I love inspiring people to advocate for themselves and to think bigger and to really step into, you know, a role that I know can change their lives in the lives of the people around them very often.

Heather Hansen 33:50
Well, that’s right. I mean, I have learned so much from your big idea, Karen, and and all the things that you’ve shared about LinkedIn and corporate pages and all of that. So you’re advocating for your Big Idea has certainly been of service. And I think that as women especially, we need to remember that because when we remember that our bigger ideas are helping others, it makes us a lot more comfortable and advocating for them. Awesome.

Karen Yankovich 34:12
Thank you so much, Heather, for being here today. I think that that’s a great way to wrap this up. And I look forward to our continued social interactions, and hopefully not always online, maybe in person at some point. And I will share all of where to get your book and your podcast and in the blog in the show notes associated with this. So thank you for being an advocate for all of us. And thanks for being here.

Heather Hansen 34:36
Thanks so much, Karen.

Karen Yankovich 34:37
Thank you for having me. I hope that you enjoyed Heather as much as I do. You know, Heather’s a great role model for women of influence and we’re all women of influence whether we’re influencing our kids, or our neighborhood, or we’re teachers and influencing our classrooms or we are, you know, working doesn’t matter what we’re doing. If you’re interacting with people you are influential and and I hope that I am inspiring you With my guests and with this show, to kind of step into more of that role as an influencer. So I love that when we you know that I have people like Heather in my world to help you because we can’t be silent about this, we’ve got to start being more vocal about the things that we know are right, we know that we can support and we know that we can help. You know, you know that I think that the place to start with that is on LinkedIn to place to start to, to really own the value that you bring to the world to really showcase the value that we that you bring to the world. And that a lot of that work is done up front, just need to be looked at on occasion, right? But once you do the work on a great profile, to really start to own that woman that you’re becoming that man that you’re becoming, then you know, the person that you’re becoming, then you just start to incorporate. You know, once you get do that, and you get that work done and you get that profile and then you just have to sort of tweak it as things change and You know, I, my goal is to keep this really simple for you, you know that I want to support you in this. That’s why I do the podcast.

And if you want to dive deeper, we are having so much fun with the LinkedIn profile challenge. LinkedIn profile challenge. com, it is live folks LinkedIn profile challenge. com, the time This podcast is going live, we are in the throes of running this live. So check it out, you can still join us LinkedIn profile challenge. com. If you go to that link later on and you get a waitlist, no worries, we’ll get back to it. We’re going to be doing this a lot. Because I my goal is to move into 2020. With an end, my goal is to support thousands of people with their LinkedIn profile. So not only do I want you to go to LinkedIn profile challenge com and join us it’s completely free. I want you to share that with your friends. We haven’t done it in years. So I’m excited to get back to really getting back to basics with LinkedIn and making sure that everybody’s got the foundation set. And that’s your profile. And in that free course we’re not just doing the tax. Typical stuff, right? I know that I need to also kind of do the same that we talked about earlier lifting you up. I also know that sometimes we need a little kick in the backside to remember and to to, to really showcase our greatness. So we’re also going to be doing a little have little extra surprises along the way to help you really find that place where you can shine your greatness. So remember, before you go if you haven’t already, take a quick screenshot of this on your phone or your whatever you’re listening to this on, and share it on social share this episode with If you enjoyed it, share it with your audience and give me a tag at Karen Yankovich. So that I can share it with my audience and lift both of us up. The bottom line is I want this to be simple for you. So let me help you. Let it be simple. See you back here again next week for another great episode.

094 – LinkedIn for Women: Owning What Makes You Great!

Some women feel like LinkedIn may not be for them, however LinkedIn is crucial when it comes to owning what makes you great! Learn the best tips on how to use LinkedIn as women to own what you’re great at. 

 

This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen goes into a deep dive on what it means to be a successful woman in business and how to use LinkedIn to own what makes you great as a woman in business. 

 

 

#GoodGirlsGetRich

We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.

 

About the Episode:

 

Today’s episode holds quite the special place in my heart! I recently came back from attending and speaking at the She Podcasts Live conference and… WOW! I felt supported and lifted up everywhere I went at the She Podcasts conference because women were being advocates for other women!

 

When you start owning what you’re good at, that’s where abundance begins in your business, however us as women tend to struggle with that. Imposter syndrome creeps in and we tend to downplay our achievements. 

 

My whole business is targeted towards women (and men, but I’m talking to the ladies here!) owning what you’re good at and positioning yourself in the best way possible on LinkedIn, so that is what I wanted to focus on today.

 

In order to use LinkedIn as women, here are 3 key things we need to start doing to step into our power and owning what makes you great:

 

Advocate For Yourself

 

Many of us spend our days advocating for others. Whether you’re a manager advocating for your employees, a mother advocating for your kids, there are many ways that us as women give credit to everyone else, but ourselves!

 

In order to own our power, we have to recognize what that is and own it! This is where LinkedIn comes into play. Create a profile that positions your like a rockstar and you’re instantly advocating for yourself!

 

Not quite sure how to do that? Join my free LinkedIn Profile Challenge coming up and I’ll take you through each step on how to own what makes you great! 

 

Together We Are Stronger

 

It’s SO important to surround yourself with the people who lift you up and make you better. It was evident at the She Podcasts conference that women WANT to support other women! 

 

Since we’re already advocates for each other, we need to keep these women in our lives and continue to nurture those relationships because we are stronger together as women.

 

Continuing to support other women is already included in your daily LinkedIn routine. If you don’t have one already, check out this blog here to learn more. 

 

Be More Comfortable with Being Seen and Heard

 

A part of stepping into what you’re good at and owning what makes you great, means you need to be comfortable being seen and heard. As women, we’re sometimes a bit hesitant to put ourselves out there, which is why we’re not typically seen and heard in the first place!

 

As your LinkedIn profile becomes solidified and your growth in business starts to explode, this means you have to be comfortable with your own voice. More people will be looking to you as a source for what you’re good at, so get ready to be comfortable with the fact that this is a mental shift you will be faced with in the time to come when building your ideal life.

 

Episode Spotlights:

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/094
  • Intro to today’s episode (4:08)
  • Karens experience at the She Podcasts conference (4:18)
  • What and who inspired Karen to create her business (11:33)
  • Importance of owning what you do (11:58)
  • Intro to why women feel why LinkedIn isn’t for them (14:30)
  • Imagining the perfect life for yourself (16:00)
  • How to advocate for yourself (18:11)
  • Why we’re stronger together (21:44)
  • Be more comfortable with being seen and heard (25:24)
  • Importance of wrapping all 3 of these points into your world (33:25)

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

 

Help Us Spread The Word!

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If this episode has taught you just one thing, I would love if you could head on over to Apple Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW! And if you’re moved to, kindly leave us a rating and review. Maybe you’ll get a shout out on the show!

 

Ways to Subscribe to Good Girls Get Rich:

 

Read the Transcript

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the Good Girls Get Rich podcast episode 94

 

Unknown Speaker 0:05
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
Hello, I’m your host Karen Yankovich. And this is Episode 94 of the good girls get rich podcast and this podcast is brought to you by up leveling media. This is where we teach simple and relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing that gets you on the phone consistently with your perfect people. No throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall here no spamming your network. I want you to be consistently talking to people who you can’t wait to have an opportunity to chat with. And this week’s show is really going to dive into that, particularly as it relates to us women.

 

So I’m so excited to dive into this because, you know, I’ve been teaching digital marketing for a bunch of years now. And I like to refer to the work that I do on LinkedIn is digital marketing with the human touch, I think that we’re starting to see overwhelm in, you know, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. I really love those platforms still, and I use them, but I use them a lot differently than I’ve used them before. And I use them a lot differently in my business that I’ve used and I’ve used them before, you know, I just I there’s a Facebook group that I belong to, that recently just check is taking their entire forum off Facebook, because so many of their members are just don’t want to be dependent on Facebook, right? So I’m not saying don’t use Facebook or Twitter or Instagram to market your business.

 

I absolutely am not saying that at all. I’m saying that we’re losing the human touch there. And I really love to talk about how we can build that back in with relationships, especially on women that are not really looking for the left brained strategy way to do this, they’re just looking to talk to people that they love to talk to about things they love to talk about. So if that’s you, you definitely want to listen to this show.

 

If you’ve listened before, or if you love what you hear today, I love to hear from you. So make sure that you’re subscribing to this show and Apple podcasts or wherever you’re listening. And you know, leave us a review you can either email that to me all the links are here or send it to info@KarenYankovich.com. Or leave a review in the pod catcher of your choice because it helps me understand what is resonating with you.

 

And if you leave us a review I get to showcase your your review on upcoming episode. You know we all you also can leave a review on speak pipe which means that you can talk to me I love to hear your voice. Go to KarenYankovich.com/speakpipe or go in the Notes for this episode, you’ll see a link for that.

 

Again, I want to I want to be speaking to you and sometimes Like this is a one way conversation, right? I’m speaking to you through my microphone, I want to hear back from you, that helps make this more conversational, and makes it I think more valuable to you when I hear what’s resonating with you. Also, I’d love for you to share this episode on social media, take a screenshot of it, use the hashtag good girls get rich, tag me, I’ll be sure to share your posts with my audience. And that’s how we get more visibility.

 

I’m @KarenYankovich across all social media. And and we’ve started to you know, we’ve started to incorporate more ways to consume this show, meaning or the message in the show. So if you go to KarenYankovich.com/094. You’ll see the blog for this page. So we were in addition to show notes, we’ve also started to include a blog so it’s easier to read if you just don’t have time to listen to this half hour episode. You’ll also see this is a button a button there and you can expand it and read the entire transcript. So if you have you know, friends or colleagues that are disabled, and they want the whole Transcript we’re including that as well. So there’s anything more that we can do to help this make this more accessible to you. I’m listening, I’d love to hear from you.

 

So this show I kind of fast track this show because I spent last weekend and actually almost a whole week in Atlanta, Georgia last week at the she podcast conference. And this is a conference you guys are linked to the show notes. We I interviewed Jessica cub from in and Elsie Escobar, in a previous episode of this podcast, and we talked about the she podcast conference, we’ve talked about the need for a conference where women felt like they were being heard and supported. And you know, I’ve been to other podcast conferences and I definitely felt heard and supported.

 

But Holy moly, not the way I was heard and supported. She podcasts. And just a quick recap. When Justin LC been running a community for women podcasters for a couple years now called the sheep podcast, it’s a Facebook group. And you can join that if you’re a woman podcast or interested in being a podcaster and They asked about maybe six months ago, they asked like maybe March.

 

So this is maybe six or eight months ago, they asked if any woman was interested in them holding a live event. And what they basically said was okay, you guys are telling us you want to live event, put your money where your mouth in the mouth is, they hosted a Kickstarter. And they said, if we can get $25,000 in this Kickstarter, we’ve got enough money to run this event. And they, you know, whatever it was in three weeks, four weeks, whatever the time you have for Kickstarter is and with Kickstarter, the issue is if you don’t fund it, you don’t get the money. So it was like kind of make or break for them. Well, not only did they fund it and meet their $25,000 goal, they doubled it in the time, their their fundraising time, they doubled it to $50,000. That’s how much demand there is for women’s conference.

 

Now, this is not you know, I struggle with this a little bit because it’s not excluding men. It’s making women feel more included. And, and because often at some of these conferences and even in life in general, and you’ll hear about Next week, I’m interviewing Heather Hansen. Oh my gosh, Episode 95, you’re going to love this one. Because we talk a little bit about how, you know, we’ve got to be our own advocates because we are not being heard.

 

So sometimes we need to learn that, you know, these are not necessarily skills we were born with, or that or that we learned as we were growing up, least not me. I mean, I grew up, you know, I’m in my 50s. So I grew up in the 60s and 70s. And, you know, women were not advocating for themselves, then we’re maybe it was starting to become the bra burning years.

 

But, you know, that really wasn’t being advocates for for intelligence and strength and asking for a seat at the board room or frankly, a seat, you know, at the highest levels of government. It was it so so now we’re there, right? We are seeing the value that women bring to this world. So going back to the sheet podcast conference, I really didn’t know what to expect. I was excited to be there because I just knew so many people there. And as a speaker, I speak at a lot of conferences and if you go to Karen Yankovich calm events, you can see some of the conferences I have coming up. But often I don’t know a lot of people at the conferences, right if they bring me in to speak, I don’t always know a lot of people at the conference.

 

So this is a conference that I knew a lot of people at. So I knew it was going to be for me social as well as hopefully educational Plus, I was speaking so it was work. So it was really interesting, because, you know, when I saw the schedule, I was doing a talk that was called LinkedIn for podcasters. Something, you know, three ways to build your product, use LinkedIn to build your podcast audience. And when I saw the schedule, the podcast was a three day conference. And the last workshops were 3pm on Sunday, and my workshop was 3pm on Sunday.

 

So when I first saw that I was a little disappointed because I thought, Gosh, people are going to go home already, which definitely happened, but it is what it is. Somebody’s going to be lost, right? Might as well be me. But I gotta tell you, it was the perfect time for me to go because what happened was, I got to Spend the three days soaking in all of the stuff that everybody else was talking about really building relationships, listening to what other women were saying and what they needed. And really being really feeling like I was being supported and lifted up everywhere I went.

 

So because I teach LinkedIn, and I feel like LinkedIn is such an amazing place to shout that from the rooftops, it turned out to be the perfect time to do my talk. And I will actually link to this talk in the show notes because I live streamed it on my LinkedIn page, my Facebook page, and Twitter and YouTube. So I’ll link to it in the show notes. So you can watch the talk if you want. Because what it allowed me to do is walk into that room at the end of the conference and say, all right, you know, how’s everybody feeling here? You’ve just had a few days where I don’t know about you guys, but I’m feeling pretty empowered, and pretty. I’m feeling like I really understand the power that my voice could have, but I know what happened. I know that it’s very easy to go home tomorrow, and get back to doing the day, right?

 

And not remembering all of the amazing how quickly can slide away. And I don’t want that to happen for anybody here. So how we can continue this conversation, how we can continue to show up as a leader, as a woman with a voice that that deserves to be heard, because when our voices are heard, it changes the world. It changes the world, the people that I met at this conference, were unbelievable. The world changing women that I met it just I can I don’t even want to start listing them because I will forget somebody really important. But half of them I didn’t know they existed, right, which is crazy. But now I do and and it’s up to us as women to continue to let people know that we exist to amplify our voices beyond the conference and beyond our podcasts. And to me, LinkedIn is the place to do that.

 

So it was just a perfect time for to do that. So I was able to dive in and really You know really kind of hopefully provide a platform for people to take the next few steps and stay on that high that they are leaving the conference with stepping into the do the rest of their lives really, as the leader that their podcast is positioning them to be. So I in hindsight, it was the perfect place for my talk to be and I’m grateful that it was there and grateful for Justin LC for bringing me on to as a speaker at the conference and just grateful for all the people that I met there it was it was so amazing. And grateful to them for the all the hard work that they put into it. It was it was a whole lot of fun. I met I think I made like three new best friends and probably 10 new best friends, maybe 15 or 20. I mean, it was so fun. And I got to meet like, you know, just so many other stories, but just another quick story. Shell Hamilton who I’ve also interviewed on this podcast, shell and I have been business friends since 2012. It is know October 2019 is I’m recording this. So seven years. We were like for like seven and a half years because it was early 2012 that we met and we have talked on the phone I always say there’s no way a month has ever gone by without us talking on the phone.

 

Sometimes, you know, we’re texting a few times a day, I’ve helped her with a million things in her business she’s helped me with 10 million things in my business. And we had never met before we had never been in the same room before. That’s this crazy digital world we live in. I have this you know, great friend who I’ve never met in person. So she was at the conference I get to I got to actually hug her and spend some time with her. So that was amazing. But that’s all just you know, stories about the conference which isn’t really the goal of this, but I thought it was really important for you to hear my personal story what inspired me to do this because without people like shell in my life without people like Justin LC in my life and all of the other people that all my other friends that I that I got to spend time with at the conference and all the all my new friends and new opportunities that came up for me just, I’m still exploding. In fact, I’m still trying to catch up with my to do list from there.

 

So one of the other things that came up for me at that conference and I actually talked about it in my talk was, you know, when I first started talking about LinkedIn marketing and you know, this show is good girls get rich, right? It’s about lifting of women and letting women know that their voices deserve to be heard. And that if you know that you have a message, and when you stay in that place of, of doing what you love to do, and what you’re really good at doing, that’s where you that’s where abundance starts to come into your life, right? And when I started to teach this to you know, the people in my world I wrote an article years ago about basically said it was called something like screw the glass ceiling. And it was basically like, don’t worry about the glass ceilings like we’re creating lives for ourselves, that that don’t that were the glass ceilings are irrelevant. We don’t have to worry about them anymore. And I know that some of you listening to this still do have to deal with that. I fully recognize that. But I think the more that we grab our own power, the more that we step into a world and don’t take no for an answer and do Like, I mean, I can I don’t want to get to rambling on this. But, you know, how many times have we seen and you’ll hear more about it next week on the show with Heather Hanson articles where there was, you know, 100 top influencers who and one of them are women, right?

 

This the only way that’s going to change is if we, if we start to step into that role, so we have to I’m not I don’t want us to break the glass ceilings anymore. I want us to evaporate it. Okay. And one of the ways we do that kindness can be by ignoring it can be by creating our own successes and our own amazing lives. The morning of my talk at the she podcast conference, an article came out, oh my gosh, I can’t remember what where it was from but I can link to it in the show notes as well. And it was talking about glass floors, about how not only is a glass ceiling but now there’s glass floors. Now the CEOs which are often you know, middle aged white dudes of companies are creating jobs for their kids.

 

Right? So now, you know, their kids are never going to experience having to work in the mail rooms, right? They’re going straight up. So not only we’re dealing with glass ceilings, we’re dealing with glass floors, it gives me an absolute headache. And I just choose to ignore all of it, and take control of my destiny, and build my build a business and a life and a career that supports me. So that’s what I’m hoping to inspire that this podcast does for you. But I want to talk a little bit today, you know about ways that we can specifically I want to specifically talk to the women today, because I think that what I’m hearing in the past few years, and I heard it at this conference, which is why I wanted to do this show.

 

Women don’t think LinkedIn is for them. They’re comfortable being conversational on Facebook and Instagram and you know, Pinterest and all that and again, I am not knocking those things, but I want you I want to just tell you T=that if you give me two hours a week, two hours, just two hours of really targeted LinkedIn time, you’re going to get clients, you’re going to get media, you’re going to get attention, you’re going to make partners that are going to blow your career and your business out of the water.

 

I know it because it happens to me, and it happens to my clients every single week. But women don’t feel represented on LinkedIn, they feel like it’s very left brained and that they don’t, you know, they’re not really sure even how to position themselves. You know, I can’t even tell you how many times I heard this past week. Oh, my gosh, I haven’t looked at my LinkedIn profile in three years. Right. And I get it. I mean, I can say that about Pinterest. So I don’t expect every single person, man or woman to always be on LinkedIn, but it was it was an avalanche of that at a woman’s conference.

 

So I really, it’s it’s made me shift my perspective on my business a little bit. And you guys are going to see some changes in some of the things that I’m doing. In fact, I’m going to tell you about some of them. before we’re done here today.

 

So stay tuned to the end because there’s some pretty cool announcements coming But as a woman, I want you to just kind of like Close your eyes. And imagine that it’s a year from now. You know, it’s a year from now, and I want you to just dream. I mean, like, pretend I have a magic wand. Don’t worry about how this happens. I want you to just like, if you’re driving, don’t close your eyes. But if you’re not driving, close your eyes and just stop and spend a minute really trying to imagine the perfect life for you. And if you need to pause this and do it and then come back to it, by all means do that. Don’t forget to come back because I want to help you with the other side of this.

 

But think about you know, what does your life look like? Not necessarily what does your business look like? You know, are you stay at home mom and you want to be home at three o’clock for your kids, but you want to have five super powerful clients every month that are bringing you in 1000 or $2,000 $10,000 each, so that you’re you are contributing to your household whether you are a single mom, parent or whether you’re partnered family, you know, what is it that is your dream Do you want to be left, you know, have a laptop lifestyle, be location independent, I want you to just dream it up. Do you want to be a speaker? Do you want to never have to be a speaker? Do you want to never, you know, have to create a funnel again in your life, right? What is your dream business. And then what I want you to do is, is come back here and I want you to stay in that place. Because I am telling you when you start to become that person, and you start to feel like that person, and you start to represent yourself as that person on your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn is where you do this.

 

You can’t do it on Facebook, you can’t do it on Instagram. You can’t do it on Twitter, at least not as effectively as you can do it on LinkedIn. What you know, what I often tell people is your LinkedIn people look at LinkedIn as a resume, but your resume is who you used to be. LinkedIn is who you are becoming.

 

So I want you to, to as you listen to the rest of this, this episode of the show, I want you to put keep yourself in the position of the person You are becoming in 2020. And I am here to give you that little push to be the person that hopefully makes you think bigger and feel supported around this.

 

So the first thing I want to talk about is advocating for ourselves. There isn’t anybody that’s going to advocate for you better than you can do it. And I know that it’s not easy for us to do that. Sometimes I know that we advocate for our kids, we advocate for our parents, we advocate, you know, for our students, those of us that are teachers, we advocate for, you know, I mean, if we’re, if you are a, if you’re a manager at a corporation, you advocate for the people that work for you, right? Who’s advocating for you? Right? You have to be the person that puts that message out there that advocates for ourselves if we’re not advocating for ourselves. Our voices are not going to be seen or heard. So we have to be advocating for ourselves.

 

And this is everyone. By the way. This episode is not just for entrepreneurs. It’s not just for, you know, six, seven, multiple six figure entrepreneurs or business professionals, this is for, you know, those of us women that work in retail, imagine if you start advocating for yourself, and you start pointing out to your supervisor or your boss, or maybe even creating a LinkedIn profile, okay, advocating for yourself saying, you know, I work at Macy’s, and I have turned around the domestic department that it’s, you know, it’s doing twice the amount of business that it was doing last year. Right? I don’t care if what you’re doing, you know, you don’t feel that, that you’re making that impact. I’m telling you that i what i hear from a lot of people is and I, this is everybody in my life, not just my business friends, not just my entrepreneur, friends. They feel like their voice isn’t heard.

 

You have to advocate for yourself, for your voice to be heard. And it doesn’t. It’s not about like, bang people over the head with it and saying, hey, hey, don’t forget Don’t forget I’ve done this. It’s about owning your power using LinkedIn to create a profile that positions you as a freaking Rock Star. And again, I know if you’re a volunteer, if you’re the president of the PTA, and you never got paid a dime in your life, you can create a LinkedIn profile that positions you like a rock star, so that at some point, maybe somebody handing you a microphone and paying you $5,000 to speak in front of a room of other presidents of the PTA.

 

Okay, so this is not just my entrepreneur, friends, this is for every woman out there that is feeling that their voice is not heard all the time. It has got to start with us. We can’t wait for other people to advocate for us. And again, I mentioned a few times next week’s show is all about this, you’re going to love that. But it starts with your LinkedIn profile. And you know, I don’t always rightly I don’t spend a lot of time writing LinkedIn profiles, people that are not looking for jobs, are not looking for clients. But I think really, we need to start doing that. We need to start doing that I am running a LinkedIn profile challenge. It’s LinkedIn profile challenge. com. everybody listening to the show needs to go to that link right now and register for it. Whether you know whether you are no matter what, where you are in your life. Because often people say to me on my LinkedIn profile is great. And then I look at it and go, Hmm, not so much. Because we think that we just tell about what we used to be, I want you to be advocating for yourself in your LinkedIn profile.

 

And this LinkedIn profile challenge is going to help you do that. So if you’ve never thought about using LinkedIn, LinkedIn profile challenge com if you use LinkedIn on a regular basis, LinkedInprofilechallenge.com, it’s completely free. And we’re going to go through it live starting October 28 2019. Not sure what’s going to happen to it after that. So you definitely want to get in live on it if you can. If you’re listening to this later, some you’ll go to that link and that link will tell you what, what the status is of the free challenge, but it will always be free in any case.

 

Okay, the second thing I want to talk about, and this was another thing that really stood out to me at the she podcast conference, and that is together we are stronger. And it’s so interesting because you know, you hear so much about Women catty backstabbing each other, right? But I haven’t experienced that. I mean, maybe I have experienced in my life I’m not gonna pretend that I haven’t experienced in my life I absolutely have. But I have learned and it is not always easy but I have learned to ignore that. And to just own my power, own it include the people in my life that support me and that are together with me and that lift me up because that creates a life and a business of my dreams.

 

Okay, so don’t so let other women support you find surround yourself with other women that support your goals. And again at this I at this LinkedIn profile challenge is going to be a Facebook community that supports this as well. We’re all in there to lift you up in this okay, I’m there My team is there. Everybody else in the challenge is there we’re going to have you know, we’re going to buddy people up so that they can support each other.

 

You will feel supported and I and if so if you’re not feeling support Or if you feeling like you need to be supported in this stepping into your, the next phase of your life. This is I’m here to help you and and I do believe that LinkedIn is the place to do that. I mean, you’re listening to the show, you know that I think that LinkedIn is what you should be using, right. But I think, you know, often when we write LinkedIn profiles, people who look at us and go, is that really me? Like, I can’t say that I’m like, Yes, that’s really you. And yes, you can say that. You’ve done all of those things. We pull out of you things that you wouldn’t have dreamed of being able to pull out of yourself. So let us help you be feel supported by the other people in your community. Find communities like the shoe podcast community, there’s lots of other women based communities that are supportive of each other.

 

And while I’m not going to say that there’s not mean girls out there, and that there’s not that backstabbers I really feel like that is going away. And maybe it’s just because I’m getting more mature in my life that I ignore them or just like again, like the glass ceilings. Just Just pretend it’s out there evaporated, and just surround yourself with the people that are stronger that are going to look at your LinkedIn profile and say, Wait, you know what, I want you to talk more about this. I think you should be, you know, you should you’re overlooking the fact that you did this for 10 years, right? Like, find people that are going to help you really shine your light.

 

Okay, and they’re out there they are out there. I mentioned shell Hamilton earlier, my friend that that I met for the first time and she’s got an amazing podcast actually interviewed her on this podcast. So we’ll link to that we’re gonna have a lot of links in the show. And her podcast is meditation minis. And she she can walk around and say, Hey, I’m Michelle Hamilton. I have a podcast and I had half a million downloads on my podcast last month, but I can write so I was walking around with her and she’d say, Hey, I’m Sheila Hamilton. And everybody of course, said what’s your podcast? She’d say your podcast and I chime in and say, and her podcast had a half a million downloads last month. Somebody said you’re like a walking PR person. But I am truly so proud of her that I joked that I want to like print out her stats and put them on my refrigerator like my kids report cards, because I am so proud and amazed by what she’s done with that. Those are the kinds of people you need to find in your life. Okay, shell, by the way, does that for me as well?

 

Okay, so you want to find those people in your life and and you want to to step into this role. And the last thing I want to talk about today, and this was also something you know, all of this stuff is stuff that that really I felt the need to talk about after the podcast conference is then the need to get comfortable or more comfortable with being seen and being heard. I you know, I remember we’re in Episode 94 of this podcast. I remember when episode one came out, I was a nervous wreck for people to hear that episode. Because I felt like what are people going to think? You know, what are you know, are people going to think, you know, Are they going to like I mean, all of my little Gremlins came up, right? Even with all of the work I do around social media, I mean, I’m starting to learn how to not really care what other people say. For the most part, I kind of always have been that way. But there’s always a part of me that does care, right?

 

When I was meeting the 700 women that have these podcasts, I was so impressed with the courage it took some of them to tell their story, and to be seen, and that does take some courage, especially if you’re in your 40s or 50s. Now or 60s or 70s. And you’ve spent your life learning how to be demure, right, learning how to not be the center of attention. And now I’ve got a freakin microphone in my hand and I’m sending out this podcast to, you know, everybody that will listen the millions of people on the planet, right. When you’re creating a visibility of LinkedIn profile, you are stepping into a place where you were You’ve got to start becoming comfortable being seen.

 

So, you know, some of some of my some of my listeners, some of the listeners that are podcasters or do do content creation. It’s something we struggle with, I definitely teach people how to do that a big part of the work that I do with people on LinkedIn is around PR. How do you get more press? How do you get more visibility for your you and your business? But for those of you that are listening, that are not looking for, necessarily, to get more visibility for to grow your business, think about what that visibility could do for your career. So let me take you back to my teachers and I’m going to use teachers as an example again, I have a lot of teachers in my family, and I they’re amazing. They’re amazing. And any of you guys in my family that are listening to this high fives to you all I admire you I could not it’s not in my blood. I went to college to be a teacher and quickly realized it was not my thing. I love kids but like I’m not a teacher.

 

But think about This for a second. First of all, if you look and I’m in New Jersey, so I’m not going to speak for this country wide, but I’m going to bet that as probably everywhere. I if you look at a board of education or at a an organization chart for school district, you will very likely see, let’s say there’s 100 people on staff at a particular Board of Education, okay? My guess is that of that hundred people, 90 or more of them are women, and 10 are men. But I bet that of those 10 men, more than half of them are principals and or superintendents or directors or have a position of power. Why is that? Why is that why are there not more women stepping into, you know, the the more powerful and higher paying roles in schools.

 

So it may be your choice and 100% that is absolutely amazing. You may get to make that choice but if you are a woman, and you do want to have a little bit more, a bit Bigger paycheck and step into more of a position of authority in your school district. Imagine if you created a LinkedIn profile for yourself, that positions you as the best damn fourth grade teacher out there. And you talk on your LinkedIn profile about the billions of certifications that you’ve taken, and the classes that you take on the summer, and the end, the tutoring that you do, and the results that your students have gotten on there. I mean, I got I hate to talk about standardized test scores, but this is such a hot topic here in New Jersey, but like on what you’ve done, create a LinkedIn profile, that pill that positions you like a freaking rock star. Okay.

 

Then from there, what I want you to do is, again, this is visibility, right? So first of all, you’ve got to be comfortable doing that because most fourth grade teachers are not doing that. Okay, so you’re the fourth grade teacher doing that you might feel a little weird about it. I want you to try and get over that. And by the way, I mean, take the same example if you are you know in in corporate or you are in retail, whatever it is you’re doing, you can Use the same example. Just plug in what you do in where I say, teacher. So what about if next, the next thing you do for your visibility is you go to some of the the teacher magazines, the the industry publications, and you start to connect with the people that write the articles on LinkedIn.

 

Okay, so now remember, you’ve created this great LinkedIn profile, you start to connect with the people that write articles about the kinds of things that you are an expert in, and you start sharing that with your LinkedIn network. And you’re consistently proactively building your LinkedIn network. This does not take a lot of time, guys, this takes an hour a week, maybe it takes a little bit of time up front, right, and that’s what we’re doing the LinkedIn profile challenge so we can take that piece off of your plate, your profile, be ready to go for this. Imagine if they use you if they start quoting you in upcoming articles. Now in your LinkedIn profile, you’re going to start linking to all of these places you’ve been quoted all over The Internet, okay.

 

And then maybe you’re also looking at some of the conferences that are coming up in all over the country doesn’t have to be local, right? And you put together a talk, and you pitch to speak at some of these conferences. Now you might have to use, you know, vacation days. And I know that’s tough for teachers, right? And I don’t you know, I know that this is easier for my entrepreneur listeners, but, you know, pitch yourself to not be a 10 at a time necessarily just an attendee at these conferences, but pitch yourself to do a talk, you know how to stand in front of a room full of people, right, that’s what you are trained to do. So now you’re just doing it with a microphone in your hand. All of these things are starting to position you as an more influential teacher. And the chances are, if your goal is to get promoted and to get a job, maybe it’s even a job in different district that pays more, maybe it’s just a suit, maybe it’s just a maybe it’s a supervisor of the you know, in the department you’re in, I want you to take this model Across whatever, you know, whatever you do for a living, and put yourself in that situation, women are not doing this men are.

 

Okay, we have to be doing this because we are losing out on opportunities. We are not being seen, because we’re not always willing to be visible. So we’ve got to kind of get over that. And I am here to support you with this. I got it like this is a little bit of a rampage here. So I’m sorry if I’m starting to seem evangelist, but I’m so it’s so important. And again, coming after that conference, you know, you can be positioning yourself as an expert.

 

You know, again, do you have a podcast? Do you have a message, get it out there on a blog, create a podcast, there was so many podcasters at that conference that didn’t were not podcasting for their business that were podcasting. You know, there were there were people that are teachers that are podcasts, there were podcasters you know, that talked about travel and that talked about all kinds of things, national parks, you know, getting divorced, all kinds of things. Again, I hate to even mention a few topics because there’s so many good topics. But it doesn’t have to be something that you’re getting paid to do. But the podcast or blog, or just getting quoted in magazines, using your voice, can help you elevate your career in so many ways. And then once you do that LinkedIn is the hub for all that to live, you don’t have to have a website, you just need to have a LinkedIn profile that can share all of that media.

 

So I hope that you can see where I’m going with this. Right? Like, I hope that you’re starting to see the importance women especially have starting to take control of your visibility of your message and really starting to learn how to amplify it, learn how to advocate for yourself, learn how to amplify your voice, because 100% you know, I believe that we are our voices are more important now than they’ve been in a really long time. You know, I don’t really want to get really political here, but 100% women’s voices are being heard less, and we need to stand up and make a lot of noise.

 

But I don’t want it to just be noise. I want it to be smart. I want you to be talking to the right people, I want you to be getting it getting in front of people and letting the world know what an amazing person you are. We can’t be silent anymore. Okay, a lot of this work is done up front. And once you do your LinkedIn profile, you only have to look at it on occasion. And then you just incorporate simple systems into your world that will allow you to connect with these powerful people that I mentioned the journalists and the conference organizers and you know, all kinds of things like that. I am here to support you in this that is fundamentally why I do this podcast.

 

So don’t forget, if you want to dive deeper, join me October 28 for a free five day LinkedIn profile challenge, go to LinkedIn profile challenge com to get in on that. I have not done this in years in years. This This has been something we’ve charged for the last God five years. So you’re going to get free access to me free access to my team for anything. week, we’re going to work on your profile together and have you ready to be putting your stamp on this world. So again, I am here to support you. Remember if you liked this episode, take a quick screenshot of it and share it from your phone share it on social media. I will then share with my audience that starts to get us both that visibility that I’ve been talking about. The bottom line is I am here for you I am here to help you do this and to do it in a way that simple. So please let it be simple. I will see you back here again next week with Heather Hansen and another great episode of the good girls get rich podcast.

 

093 – How to Position Yourself on LinkedIn with Bofta Yimam

Worried about how to position yourself on LinkedIn for ultimate LinkedIn success? Then this episode is perfect for you!

This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen interviews Emmy award winning Bofta Yimam on how to position your self on LinkedIn and tips on crafting your signature talk to tell the story of you.

 

Bofta Yimam is an Emmy® & Murrow Award-Winning Journalist, Washington D.C.-based National News Correspondent, International Speaker and Executive Coach. Bofta is the first Ethiopian-American newscaster to receive an Emmy for her work. For more than a decade, she’s reported live on the morning and evening news for TV affiliates around the country, including CBS and ABC. 

 

As a coach, Bofta works to help change agents and industry transformers craft and syndicate their compelling signature talk so they can deeply connect with their audience, establish authority, create impact and transformation from the stage and on screen… while reducing the fear and anxiety of sharing their story to a group. Bofta helps her clients achieve a powerful signature talk that they can share “on demand” while replacing their fear of validation with incredible confidence. Watch her in action: https://youtu.be/cz4rSIy0Nbk

 

#GoodGirlsGetRich

We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.

Want to Uplevel Your LinkedIn Profile to Get More Business?

 

About the Episode:

 

I speak all the time on how to position yourself on LinkedIn for ultimate LinkedIn success, however I was recently at a conference and connected with one of the most amazing women out here, Bofta!

 

Bofta Yimam helps people tell their stories in the most authentic way possible and as we’re gearing up for my free LinkedIn Profile Challenge, I thought she would be the absolute perfect guest to explain the best way possible to position yourself on LinkedIn to tell your signature story and further serve your audience.

 

Own your story

 

Bofta helps people create their signature talk for a living, however the first step in creating that signature talk, is to be real and honest with yourself and owning your story!

 

Think about the trials and lessons you’ve learned in life… there may not be many but there is always a story you can tell about your life that brought you to be the person you are now, as well as brought you to where you are now in your career.

 

Perfect your LinkedIn profile

 

Obviously you’ll need to spruce up your profile in order to position yourself on LinkedIn!

 

Having trouble putting this together? Sign up for my 5-day free LinkedIn profile challenge now to keep you on track and Uplevel your profile with only 10 short minutes a day! Visit linkedinprofilechallenge.com now to sign up.

 

If you’re a speaker, podcaster, etc., be clear about the engagements you’ve spoken at on your profile. Craft your profile so they can sense your personality and you can have a better sense of if your chemistry with a potential client will fit.

 

In addition, you need to make sure that your about and experience sections reflect this story of YOU! I just did another podcast talking about how to craft your perfect experience section for reference if you’re having trouble with this. 

 

Connect and build authentic relationships

 

While you now have that perfect profile, you will know that your profile not only reflects you as authentically as possible, but you know that your profile, isn’t really about you… but more so about your potential client!

 

When someone comes to your profile, they’re not REALLY interested in learning what you did at that company you worked at 20 years ago. They’re really looking to answer the question of : “Tell me why I care” 

 

By making your profile less about you and more serving to the audience you’re trying to reach, you will automatically attract the type of perfect people you’re looking for and start building those relationships with people who want to authentically connect with you. 

 

Fun LinkedIn Fact: The message button is now called chat 

 

So what does this mean? LinkedIn is actively trying to facilitate more engagement back and forth between people. Instead of messaging someone which can be one-sided, the language of chat mentally shifts someone to want to chat back. 

 

Stay consistent with posting and top of mind with your audience

 

At the end of the day, LinkedIn is a social platform. Using LinkedIn is about being a part of a community more than anything else. That means, you need to be a part of the active community without expecting something back in return.

 

Post consistently to let people know you are active and engage with others posts. By staying visible and top of mind on LinkedIn, you’re remind people about your story to build your brand and positioning online. 

 

Be sure to mixing your expertise along with your powerful story in your posts and why you’re doing what you’re doing so people have a more in-depth insight on to who you are and why they should work with you. 

 

Episode Spotlights:

 

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/093
  • Introduction and background to Bofta Yiman (3:34)
  • Bofta explains her journey towards the coaching world (5:13)
  • How Bofta helps people craft a signature talk and story (7:40)
  • Why LinkedIn is important for businesses owners and speakers (13:42)
  • How to bring your personal voice and see chemistry with a client from your LinkedIn profile (15:52)
  • The importance of relationships on and offline (20:44)
  • Who your LinkedIn profile is actually about (22:07)
  • Incorporating a LinkedIn strategy to land more speaking engagements (27:50)
  • Where to learn more and work with Bofta (35:07)
  • Bofta’s Emmy award (37:23)
  • Episode recap (39:10)

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

 

 

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Read the Transcript

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast, Episode 93.

Intro 0:06
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
Hey there, I’m Karen Yankovich, the host of the good girls get rich podcast, and we have an amazing guest for you today. But first, just know that we are brought to you by up level media where we teach simple relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing, we are completely revamping our digital program, I can’t wait for you to see it. I think it’s something really no one else is doing.

So really keep your eyes open for that we what we’re teaching is how to get on the phone with your perfect people, those perfect people that can bring the money and the profits into your business. You know, we’re seeing a lot of spam, LinkedIn, we’re getting lots of messages, people we don’t know, offering, do all these things that we don’t need, I don’t want to be that person, I don’t want you to be that person.

So I’m going to teach you how to do it completely flip that on its head. And we’re excited about that. And to kick that off, we’re going to be doing a LinkedIn profile challenge completely free, because none of the strategy we teach, even the stuff we talked about here today works as well without a great profile. So check that out at LinkedInprofilechallenge.com, you can get on the waitlist for the next challenge. And the upcoming one right now is October 28th to November 1 2019. After that, we’ll be doing them a couple times a year, hopefully.

So you saw the opportunity to get on the waitlist for that. Even if you even if it’s past the dates I just mentioned at LinkedInprofilechallenge.com completely free. And again, we’re flipping the traditional training on its head, you’re going to learn how to set up a profile, that really, you’re going to be amazed as you when we’re done, we’re going to be authentic, but we’re gonna it’s gonna be really powerful. I can’t wait for you to see it, because we’re really excited about it.

Okay, so if you you know, stop what you’re doing right now take a quick screenshot, so that if you love what you’re listening to today, you can share it on social media. So both both to who you’re going to meet in this episode, and I can share your posts with our audience, make sure you tag us both. And then we all get more visibility that way, right. And this is how we start to show up as a leader, we start to show up as an influencer. And we get more visibility. And you know, that’s how we keep this ball rolling for all of us. Right?

So I would be grateful if you did that. And in return, of course, I’ll share it with my audience. There is a link in the show notes also for speak pipe. If you go to KarenYankovich.com/093 you’ll see that they’re not only can you give us a review for this episode, or you know, you can also just tell us, you know who’s a guest you want to say you think we should have or if there’s a topic you want me to talk about speak pipe is a great way to let me know that.

And if it is a review, we can always play it for our audience. So that’s fun to do as well. So I’m not going to keep babbling here. I can’t wait for you to meet Bofta We met at a conference a few weeks ago. I loved what she had to say. And I thought she’d be a great guest because we talked about using. She talked about how to get more podcast gigs, how to become a guest on podcast. And a lot of what was talked about was LinkedIn focus. You know, I love that. And I wanted you to hear about that. So here we are. I can’t wait for you to meet Bofta Yimam

Okay, so I’m excited this week on good girls get rich podcast have Bofta Yimam with us. She is an Emmy and Moreau award winning journalist, Washington D based national news correspondent, international speaker and executive coach.

She’s the first Ethiopian American newscaster to receive an Emmy for her work for more than a decade. She’s reported live on the morning and evening news for TV affiliates around the country. CBS and ABC, as a coach have to work to help change agents and industry transformers, craft and syndicate their compelling signature talk. So they can deeply connect with their audience establish authority, create impact and transformation from the stage and on screen, while reducing the fear and anxiety of sharing their story to a group of to helps your clients achieve a powerful signature talk that they can share ondemand while replacing their fear of validation with incredible confidence.

And time I met at a conference about a like a week ago, and I did a talk on LinkedIn. And she came up to me and did a talk on speaking and she had so many things to say about LinkedIn when she was done. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I need to have you on my show. Thank you so much for agreeing to do that.

Bofta Yimam 4:46
Absolutely. And here we are making it happen.

Karen Yankovich 4:49
Yeah, absolutely making it happen. I was which was great, which is great. So the conference where I was at a podcast conference, and I was doing a talk LinkedIn for podcasters. And just talking a little bit about what you guys on the show heard me talk about a lot micro targeting how to really connect and build relationships. So I love love having the opportunity to kind of hear from the other side about what they look for from us. But before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about your journey, and we read your bio, but let’s hear like the real deal. Tell us a little bit about your journey and what brought you to the coaching world?

Bofta Yimam 5:23
Wow, how much? How much time do we have?

No I’ll sum it up, you know, the coaching world to me. I started really by just being interested in business. And it was this itch that I could not get rid of you know, and I was working full time as a journalist and was a TV anchor and reporter. And I started by hosting workshops.

But the way I really started was asking some friends, if you had a day with me to learn something, what would you want to learn? And so I knew that through coaching, because I had had a business coach that I was really gravitating toward this. And I came to her for something completely 360 different. And so when I now was gravitating toward this coaching model, I thought, well, what am I going to teach? What do I want to share with people, I’ve always loved helping people, Karen.

So I knew that I wanted to do that. But I also wasn’t sure how to go about it just to know how. And so having a coach led me to really asking so many different questions and being able to have that one to one time and really just probe the mind, you know, how do I do certain things. But coaching I think I was drawn to because it, it helps me have high impact with people in a way that I felt like I couldn’t before just that one on one and truly creating transformation in someone’s life. And really being able to help them take their message and share it with the masses.

And so it’s different from being on TV and writing a story. And it airs that one day, because this way this person’s story, if they’re living for the next 40 years, and they’re sharing it on stages, they’re touching thousands of people, you know, every time they speak every time they share and the impact, really, I can’t even imagine just how big of an impact if you keep working with different clients that would be so I was just drawn to coaching with the idea of helping people in my expertise. Once I really thought about what really is the thing that I do that’s different from so many people and where I really shine and have my special sauce. And for me that’s crafting stories, which I’ve been doing for years as a journalist.

Karen Yankovich 7:38
So cool. That’s so cool. Tell us a little bit about what you mean when you say you help people craft a signature talk.

Bofta Yimam 7:45
Right, so I think that sometimes when somebody has a strong desire to speak, one of the first things they think about is well, why would somebody want to hear me, and I always go back to their compelling story, meaning all of us have a story that’s compelling. And that can use some structure and crafting because here’s the thing, we have many stories in our lives, but extracting and picking the best ones can be a little bit tricky when you are in fact that person who went through what you went through, you went through the journey.

So to you maybe no big deal that you survived something that was incredible, incredibly hard. But to somebody else listening, they’re thinking, Well, I’m going to do the same thing just in a different way. And so that compelling signature story is really what you would say and how you position yourself in your niche when you want to talk.

So for example, you Karen and I know you very like let’s say lightly right, because we just met at a conference and then here I am on your podcast. Sure you have this ability to help people through linked in and through social media.

But there’s probably a part of you where there’s something deeper, maybe that has led you to this moment, maybe you your network, or your relationships or your connection, something that’s deeper, where you could craft a story around it and bring it back to what you do now and your expertise. Yeah, and that requires some digging, right. And that requires some digging.

And it usually it’s like well, all I so people will say well, all I am is a social media marketing guru, or all I am is this but there’s something that led you to that desire to want to help people and coach people and walk them through the step by step. And there’s something about you, and your character really, that shines through that. And that’s what I tap into.

Karen Yankovich 9:36
I love that. And you know what else I love about that, and I know you talked a little bit on your, your bio about about this, when you have a signature talk. Like for me, I have a signature talk. But that’s the and that signature. And it’s really a signature system, our success path or whatever, like everything I do every course I teach every talk I give. There’s there’s the same overlaying, you know, theme overlaying path, right?

Bofta Yimam 10:03
Yeah.

Karen Yankovich 10:04
And sometimes I’ll do just a piece of it, right, sometimes the whole path doesn’t get rolled out depending on how long I have or what they’re what they’re asking for. But what’s interesting, and what took me a long time in business to realize is it simplifies your business when you do that. Because you know, and it’s so funny, because somebody said to me at that same conference, and maybe it’s the third or fourth time, they’ve heard me talk.

And they’re like, every single time I hear you brand, and you always have a fresh angle on this and things like that. And I actually cracked up because I was like, in my head, it’s the same dog. It’s just tweaked and formed a fresh angle, or a fresh I may have made us different stories that supported in different ways, depending on the audience, depending what they’ve asked me to, to cover. And maybe I will maybe I will kind of emphasize different pieces of that kick that signature talk again today on the audience.

But it’s so it makes my life so much easier to know to have done that work up front, on what that signature talk is, and then be able to just deliver it and tweak it. And I mean, I’m doing a talk on Thursday that I’ll be honest, but today’s Tuesday we’re recording it, I haven’t barely started it. Because I know it’s done already, I just have to tweak it for the audience,

Bofta Yimam 11:21
Right for that particular audience. And that’s exactly you being seasoned and you are someone who’s been speaking for a while and of course, has a podcast where you’re using your voice or constantly talking to people and, and extracting and kind of also placing your story within it, right, you’re part of this podcast, you created it for a reason.

And you have this awesome title and all of those things. And I believe really, Karen, when somebody owns their story, there is this shift that happens if they truly own their story. Because we’re going deep sometimes in the work and not that everyone’s comfortable with that because it can be kind of uncomfortable, sometimes depending on the nature of the story. And of course, the person and what they’re trying to do and share.

But when somebody owns their story, they are clearly more comfortable on a stage, because it’s kind of like they’ve owned their message decided what they want to keep it in what they don’t, but they have really shed themselves of that weight of not owning pieces they didn’t like

Karen Yankovich 12:23
And also becomes their story, right, as opposed to the same talk everyone else is giving.

Bofta Yimam 12:28
Exactly. And it’s why people are attracted to them. It’s because they have a story and they’re vulnerable and willing to share it. And it’s how you share it. Right? It’s with integrity, it’s with its with some framework, it’s giving some teachable moments to people so that they walk away.

Also it’s not, you know, some people think, well, isn’t it going to be turned into some pity party? No, it’s just revealing pieces of you. And sometimes I have clients because I speak and then I also land clients, you know, when I speak and, and we’ll go in a month or two, and I’m working with them. And I and I think that Remember, you also were attracted to me somehow, because we ended up working together. And it’s because I shared a piece of my story on the stage.

So I am practicing. You know what I preach here and that you attract people to you when you’re willing to go places that some people aren’t always willing to go and just owning kind of the mess and then how you got out of it. And teaching people I’m really big on providing them with here’s what I learned. And here’s what I want you to know, through this so that they walk away feeling like, wait a minute, I can do something with this right now I can feel empowered. And that’s what you really want to leave the audience with.

Karen Yankovich 13:40
Awesome. I love it. I love it. Okay, so when we met at Mapcom, one of the things you talked about an attempt that you did was the ways that you can use obviously, we’re talking about podcast guests, right, and becoming a guest on a podcast and the things that you look for.

Bofta Yimam 13:55
So I think LinkedIn is super powerful for Yes, speaking engagements. And when I mean speaking engagements, I also mean podcast, because that’s another way to use your voice just like you do. Karen, right. So it’s a great way. And being a guest on a podcast is amazing. Because you can really show up as the expert, you can also practice speaking, if you right now feel a little bit uncomfortable, it’s one way for you to just start speaking and practice getting your story out there your why the mission for your business, and really showing up fully as that leader in your niche.

And so I think LinkedIn is powerful, because when you have your headline and your about section and everything fully crafted, really in a powerful and compelling way. And you’re reaching out to, let’s say podcast hosts and your niche, they are immediately going to your about section. And so if that’s not tightened up and does not reflect your expertise and doesn’t reflect what you’re about, then it’s really not serving you in the way that it could and and the way that you I imagine want it to be so who’s in business or trying to be more visible, you’re a coach or consultant or whatever might be your particular position right now as even as a CEO.

And so that headline, and that also that line in your about section where if you’ve been on a lot of podcasts, mention it, you’d be amazed at how many people who I coach really dismiss all of their expertise and their visibility and what they’ve already done. If you give more than 50 talks a year on a certain subject, say it, right, but we often just dismiss it because we don’t think about it, we don’t really reflect on all we’ve done. So I think it’s really powerful for you to insert it there. And then also, as we were talking about even off the podcast, Karen, just making sure that you’re posting about your expertise that you’re providing value free value to the LinkedIn marketplace. Because

Karen Yankovich 15:50
So cool. Yeah. And you know where that you know what I mean, as a podcast host, I get pitched a lot I get people pitch me all the time to be on the podcast. And I am at this moment in time, we’re not even accepting pitches, mainly because most of the pitches I get, I have no way to get a sense of if I think there’ll be any, any chemistry between me and the person that’s being pitched to me. But if you have a great LinkedIn profile, and I can look at it and I can you make it really easy for me to listen to another podcast episode that you did, or somewhere else that I can hear your voice and see your you know, feel your energy, it makes it easier for me to say yes to that.

And more and more people are relying on like podcast guest services to not only get to be a guest on podcasts, but to also get guests on their podcast. And I think that that I actually haven’t figured out how to make that work for that for my podcast. Because I feel like when I’ve done that they may not, they may not be the best shows that I’ve done. Because I don’t have any sense. And maybe I need to get better at it. Maybe you know, that’s my inexperience as a journalist, right. But I don’t have any sense of what the chemistry is between us.

So if you’ve done the work and made my job easier, you have a better shot of getting on my show, then just you know, sending me a pitch and then saying, you know, with your one sheet which I want, right, but but if I can actually see what you’ve done and have a little sense of of your message, right, not just your topic, but what your message is behind the topic. That makes it an easier. Yes.

Bofta Yimam 17:28
Absolutely. And inserting that I think even a sentence or two into the about section can help that podcast host really see it. And one other thing to to mention is that when you are connecting as a guest, and you’re seeking podcast hosts, I think it’s important that you know you you do it in a very organic way.

So you’re just saying you know, great to connect with you I happen to listen to your last podcast, big fan of thanks for sharing your golden nuggets on X y&z just showing some interest back at that person versus Me, me me I want to get on I want to get on right, especially because that happens so much. And like you said, your pitch to a lot. So I think it’s also coming from that, you know, really different approach where you’re, you’re actually paying attention to the podcast that you want to be on, where most people are just blindly applying, I actually don’t do podcasts will now i will be doing a few more as a guest, just because I went to a conference and there was all these podcast hosts.

But typically, my schedule is really tight. So I don’t really do them that often right at this moment. So usually when I do them as because I really liked that person and I connected with them or vibe with them at a conference. And I said yeah, I’ll do it. But for those who are seeking it, another thing you can do, and this is another or organic ways to post on your Facebook or your LinkedIn profile and say, I’m looking to speak more about my message on whatever your message is on speak on your message on XY Nz.

On three podcasts next month, I’m opening up a few slots, please let me know if you’re interested or shoot me a message, you know, you can say something along those lines where you’re putting yourself out there on your profile, with a big message of you know, I’ve got a few slots open for podcast, to be a podcast guest next month, looking to speak about my message on XYZ who’s interested and just love it. Who actually responds. And that’s a powerful way of you showing up and putting yourself out there as a leader. And is there risking it? Oh, wow, what if nobody said everything? Fine, you can delete it two weeks later, you know what I mean?

Karen Yankovich 19:39
Or you could say DM me instead of that so that way nobody knows if there’s nobody responded. Right? So

Bofta Yimam 19:44
you could buy but by not forcing the DM one thing, you know, to Karen, is that when people comment and you’re liking, guess what you’re doing? You’re also improving the chances of other people too? That’s true.

Karen Yankovich 19:56
Yeah.

Bofta Yimam 19:57
So I do think there’s Yeah, there’s a little risk involved putting yourself out there. But again, just a quick tip for someone who is looking to become a podcast guest more, and increase your visibility through that same thing with Speaker engagements. You know, if you just got one talk about it, but your last word to doing it, you know, and cross promote that that event. And for me personally, that’s, that’s how many because people one for one, see that I’m speaking, right. And number two, they see that I cross promote, you know, and I want to help your name get out there too. And so I think there’s a couple of different ways about, you know, putting yourself out there, but being consistent, and having compelling posts that share your story are fantastic.

Karen Yankovich 20:43
So cool. So cool. That’s such a great tip.

I love that. And you know, at the end of the day, you really want to be I love that you said something about like, connect with them authentically and build a relationship. I always tell my clients like creating, like, if especially if you saw, if you saw something that was just recently in the public, are on the station that you loved talking about that share that tag the minute, you know, like that’s valuable to them, right? Because now you’re getting their work in front of your audience, and you’re giving them value before you’re pitching or asking, you know, anything like that. Does that make sense?

Bofta Yimam 21:17
It does, it does. I just think, you know, relationships are relationships. And so you want to concentrate on high value. And we care about our audiences and what our audiences are going to walk away with. And maybe to empowering story, maybe it’s new information and content that just came out about that particular industry. But we want the people at home to genuinely have some information that they may be seeking, meeting wanting, desiring, and we want to be able to provide that in a really in a really powerful way. And so if somebody feels like they can contribute that conversation, then you know, sure you can connect on LinkedIn, or you can just email the station directly.

Karen Yankovich 22:06
Right, right. So I what I’m hearing and which I want to make sure everybody else that’s listening is hearing is that, and at the end of the day, if you’re telling us, you know, on your LinkedIn profile, you’re telling you, the world about you. But really, it’s about the in your case, it’s about the the the consumer, the listener or the reader, right, the so your you know, your job is not saying I’m booked and I’m amazing, your job is to say, I’m booked and I haven’t met, I want to get my map, you know, I want to make sure that the message I’m delivering is really valuable to the people that are listening to it.

And I think that that same message translates to LinkedIn. You know, yes, we’re telling you about you. It’s your personal brand. It’s about you. But the end of the day, tell me why I care. Right. Give me a reason that you’re different than other people or that you know, how you help the people that you support, whether you’re looking for a job, or a client or whatever, right, what makes it what makes this less about you and more serving to, to the audience you’re looking to reach?

Bofta Yimam 23:07
Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Karen Yankovich 23:09
Yeah. So any other tips for us around how we can how LinkedIn serves like have given me like creative ways that or, or stories that you’ve used LinkedIn with that I don’t know that might help us get creative about how we can use LinkedIn to further serve our audience. Because I think if you’re tweeting somebody, I think that’s valuable. But you don’t really know who I am from my tweets, you do know who I am, if I do a good job of creating a LinkedIn profile connect with you there.

Bofta Yimam 23:35
Why can say that as a coach, I do post quite a bit. I post organically about what I’m doing, or things that I noticed or breakthroughs a client had, or, you know, valuable things that my audience can, my audience being linked in, can find value in. And I think that just coming from a value perspective, and being consistent, and what you’re doing on LinkedIn goes a long way, if you are trying to connect with more coaches, and I think that that’s what you need to be doing. But most people are not doing that consistently.

And then they’re not also branding their their summary along with their posts as that same thing. So it’s just lack of consistency that I probably see more than anything as a coach, where it’s that, that mixed kind of way of doing things where they’re expecting results. But it’s been three weeks since our last posts, they don’t really message people and they’re not really networking.

And so I think that posting is something that still is few and far between are doing it on LinkedIn, even though more are doing it not to the level that I think is the most powerful way, which is consistently posting a few of these few days a week about what you do, and about the value and about who you are and about why you do what you do. And all those things that people just tend to overlook.

Karen Yankovich 25:06
So did you notice just recently, I mean, for me, it was just I think yesterday, the day before that, I noticed that the message button on LinkedIn is now called chat. So LinkedIn is encouraging more conversational type engagement by they’ve changed the summary section to about they’ve changed messaging to chat. So I think these are all very like, psychologically, they’re big changes, right? Instead of messaging, which I feel like is is a one way kind of thing like, yes, I’m messaging you.

And I hope you messaged me back the word chat, assumes you’re going to respond back to me, right? So I think that there’s, I think that we need to be conscious of that and be ready to chat. Right? Not just login once a week, and see what messages we have. Now we’re like, who wants to chat with us. And that’s huge, right? If you get a somebody reaches out to you that a journalist or the media or a speaking engagement or something, only din, about something that could really provide value to you or your business? That’s not a chat. Right. So be around chat back.

Bofta Yimam 26:09
Right, exactly. Be be around to chat back. I think that’s powerful. And, you know, speaking of speaking engagements, you know, what I do is really help people get out there, craft your story, get visible and land on stages with that well crafted that framework, that story.

And I have landed an international speaking engagement, very organically did not know the person, and it was through someone who reached out and on LinkedIn, set up a call wasn’t really quite sure where the call would be, took the call. And then towards the end, you know, it ended up being a phone call about that, and I, you know, was caught off guard, but that Okay, that’s pretty sweet.

So, you know, don’t discount what opportunities may come, you know, with you being visible on LinkedIn, and increasing followers and increasing senior engagement, and also commenting on other people’s posts. It’s not just all about, you know, me, me, me, it’s, it’s really being part of a community more than anything else. And I just think some people and I know you teach it really well, but missed the boat on that, you know, it’s, it’s more than just about you.

It’s commenting and liking other people’s content and sharing their content to and just being part of the active community without expecting something back, you know, there’s different from putting something out there. But then the expectation that if I do this, this happens. And so it’s just really a mindset of relationships. And I think that it’s a really powerful tool. Like I said, I’ve learned it for speaking engagements, clients, really anything and everything that I can think of LinkedIn has been helpful as one of the different tools that I use.

Unknown Speaker 27:49
So let’s talk about speaking engagements. So for a second, so you, I mean, it’s phenomenal when people just reach out to for that, right. And I love when that happens. And it will happen if you’re doing this, right. But I also don’t like to wait for that to happen, right? I like to have something that’s repeatable. So when you work with your clients, do you incorporate LinkedIn strategy to help them find and land more speaking engagements.

Bofta Yimam 28:15
So not specific only to LinkedIn and but more of a social media strategy in general. And so you know, a lot of it is about also reminding people about the story, because that is why they’re bringing you on, and your expertise. So really combining that. And that’s what we do when we craft the signature story just to back up for a second. So it’s mixing your expertise along with your powerful story and why you’re doing what you’re doing and mixing that into this awesome story.

But what the beauty of that is, Karen is that then you can take pieces of that. And now sprinkle that inside of your social media pages, I always say the one that you use the most double down on that. So if you are someone who’s doing Facebook, and you do not want to do linked, and then double down on Facebook, and here’s how until we work through a strategy of how to do that.

But I’m also big on massive outreach through a conference template that I have, you know, really structure that anyone can use for my clients where they do this massive outreach through your structured speaker bio, your conference template, your marketing tools that you really need, and then you can begin to massive outreach. And so it’s really, it’s really coming at it from several sides. But none of it works to me if you don’t have a story in place, because you haven’t effectively communicated to the audience of why you are uniquely different, and why you should be brought up.

Karen Yankovich 29:41
I love that

Bofta Yimam 29:41
Yeah, so. So I’m not saying nothing matters, but you’re playing at a smaller level, if you haven’t really identified, hey, here’s how I’m different. And here’s the value, we go back to value, the value that I actually bring your audience. And I’m also big on that co collaboration, you know, the idea that you come on to a speaking engagement, but that you also cross promote, you know that you also participate that you’re not just there to come up and just get off the stage, I get it, people are busy, we have things to do, but you’re showing up as fully as you can, or at least you’re telling them how full you can show up ahead of time. You know, so if you need to check out early or what have you, great.

But I think there’s something to be said, when you have a speaker who’s still connecting with the audience afterward, cross promoting afterward. And before just doing those things that make you again, stand out as a speaker.

Karen Yankovich 30:33
Yeah, I love that. And you know, one of the things that I teach and that I do is when I’m speaking at a conference, I reach out and connect with all the other speakers at the conference and make sure that we’re connected to Hey, we’re both speaking at this conference. But also, I reach out if I’m attending a conference, I reach out and connect with the speakers at the conference.

Now you speak at conferences, I speak at conferences, how does that happen? It hardly ever happens, where somebody says, Hey, Karen, I’m, you know, looking forward to seeing your talk at, you know, the middle and podcasts conference next month, it hardly ever happens. And I teach LinkedIn. Right? So if it does happen, I pay attention. And I’m looking for you when I go to that conference. And that’s how you start to develop relationships with sometimes, you know, the most influential people in the room.

Bofta Yimam 31:18
Absolutely. And and they can refer you to other speaking engagements, it said that 80% of the speaking engagements that you will get are from referrals. So the more you speak, guess what, and if you’re good, which I know you are, but then you will land more speaking engagements, because you putting yourself out there get 80% that’s a huge number.

So if somebody out there is listening to this, and you want to speak more, think about how often you’re speaking now, are you really somebody who wants to speak more, you feel more comfortable just saying I want to be a speaker, you know, there’s a really big difference and doing the work and the action and the outreach. And I love that you said that because it does remind me of something that I do use with LinkedIn, because I’m kind of going off the cuff here with Karen. And we didn’t even you know, craft any crazy questions, we just kind of

Karen Yankovich 32:03
Literally like five days after we met in person.

Bofta Yimam 32:06
So you know, one of the things I do is I take the conference booklet, after and I add every single person to LinkedIn or have my team do it. And everyone already is warm, because they just met me or I just spoke on the stage or I was also in the conference booklet. So it’s not like it’s a stranger. And so now you’re connecting with LinkedIn.

And like you said, growing that, but that conference booklet is, again, really underestimated there because it has all of the power players, the sponsors, the people who actually spoke on the stages, the organizers, and these are the people who are part of your network, and who will also share your name, you know, so you know, we all do different things.

hey’ve all got creative niches, you know, going on in the coaching world, especially. So keep that conference booklet and start using LinkedIn to connect with people. So I just think leveraging that booklet is really good.

Karen Yankovich 32:58
I love that. And I think about how much more powerful That is, if you’ve done the work first and having a great profile, because then they’re going to be like, wait, who’s this person she was at that conference, I need to dive a little deeper into relationship with her because you’ve done the work to make sure that you are worthy of them wanting more from you. Right?

That doesn’t happen by some magic one that happens when you doing that work up front and creating the brand and telling them like you said, from the very beginning, how do you describe yourself in your headline, all right, and and that’s what we’re going to see when you start to connect with them. So sure, they’ll probably accept your connection request if you haven’t done that. But now you have another connection in your collection of connections, as opposed to somebody that really wants to get to know you better and collaborate with you maybe bring you in to speak hire you whatever,

Bofta Yimam 33:45
Right. And we can’t also underestimate the 234 touch points sometimes that it requires it’s like a follow up, right? How often is it the follow up to the follow up where you actually land something, you know, in the speaker world, sometimes it’s the follow up that really, really, really got you in? It’s following up that third time, sometimes just circling back, like, Hey, I know that three months ago, you hadn’t let it you know, finalize all your speakers at curious to know, do you still, you know, have that have that room?

So, you know, I think that we underestimate just having those touch points. That Yes, you can have it from the stage, but also LinkedIn and then adding them to Facebook, I’m active on Facebook, and I have a Facebook group called speaking influence. And so, you know, I also will add people sometimes straight to the group. And so it’s really a way I think speaking social media against that whole 360 were like, everyone’s connecting on all of those platforms.

And so if you’re not, you know, really work in it like you can you have to ask yourself, you know, what, what’s one step that I could do, to really, really engage better and just picking that platform. And if you’re like, Karen, then it’s LinkedIn or you’re like me, I do a little bit of both. And just roll with it. And just make sure that you’re doubling down.

Karen Yankovich 35:04
Yeah, so cool. So cool. So I know that you tell us a little bit of how people can learn more about you, I know that you have a really cool way to help people get some of those speaking engagements

Bofta Yimam 35:15
I do. So I do have a course if that’s something that your audience is interested in, where I walk you through the step by step everything from crafting your signature story, to landing speaking engagements to even getting paid as a speaker, your speaker, contract, all that packed inside this course that I have, and and you do that live calls with me as well. So if you’re stuck, you get that benefit. I also, of course, work one to one with folks as well.

Either way, the best way that somebody can connect with me is to text 555882 story2019. So it’s again, 555888 story2019, no spaces, you’ve got a problem to put in your email there and press enter. If you don’t press enter, it won’t go through. And that’s a way for you to to actually receive my 14 strategic ways to land speaking engagements at at no cost. But you can get that directly to your inbox, if that’s something you are in fact interested in.

And then we’re connected and you can email me back and you can say, hey, I want to learn more about X, Y, or Z or whatever it might be, or what you said on Karen’s podcast was pretty cool. Whatever it might be, that’s fine. But again, that’s my 14 free strategic ways to land speaking engagements that I’ve implemented myself. And so if my clients, and it’s super powerful that look, we’ll go straight to your inbox again, 555888 story 2019, no spaces.

And that’s the way to to directly be connected with me. And I also share pieces of my journey and my story in it. So you will learn more about me along the way. And then my speak and influence Facebook group is just called speaking influence. And that is a free group as well, where I have a bunch of free trainings where you can hop in, and you can just engage and be part of the conversation. And I’d love to hear a little bit about your story there.

So those are two really great ways to connect with me. You’ve got the Facebook group, and then the text at 555. Add to story 2019.

Karen Yankovich 37:15
Cool. So put all of those all of that in the show notes and in the blog. So they can do that. And I have one more question for you. You want to me? What can you tell us about that moment?

Bofta Yimam 37:26
Oh, I did win an Emmy. And, you know, really, I’m honored to win the Emmy, it really was because I young woman, Kimberly really spoke out about her story. And she talked about what she’d gone through was a horrible tragedy, she found out that her the person who was convicted of the crime was now going to get out there was a loophole in the Tennessee law.

And through her sharing her story, I can’t emphasize that enough. She, you know, really helped change Tennessee law for the future. And so that moment was spectacular for her I think just to give her that moment. And we were in Tennessee when it happened. And it was a powerful moment is to receive it. And again, she shared her story. And it would not have happened. I don’t think without that at all.

Karen Yankovich 38:18
Now, so cool. So cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Congratulations on that, because that is amazing. And I think this was really helpful. So thanks for being here today. We’ll definitely link to all of this. So people can get to know more about you and the work you do and hopefully get some strategic ways to land some speaking engagements, because for most entrepreneurs, speaking really is a way to establish yourself as an expert, or for many, maybe not most, but for many entrepreneurs, it’s a way to, even if you’re not looking to travel the world speaking, even speaking locally, is a powerful way to grow your business, get your name out there and stand out from the crowd. And that’s really, a lot of the work we do here on good girls get riches. How do you stand out? How do you step into the power that that you bring to the world? And?

Bofta Yimam 39:03
Absolutely, you thanks for the well.

Karen Yankovich 39:06
Thanks for sharing that. And thanks for being here with us today.

Bofta Yimam 39:09
Absolutely, absolutely.

Karen Yankovich 39:11
I am so grateful that I have people like both to in my life. She’s amazing. It was we were like Kindred souls, we met this conference. I love the messaging she had, and we can talk for hours. So I hope you enjoyed what she had to say as much as I didn’t really take to heart the fact that you can, again, build relationships with people that maybe you didn’t think that you could before, you definitely can. So and definitely take her up on her offer on how to get those speaking gigs.

So remember to that. Everything we talked about here today will work so much better. And you’ll be adding so much fuel to the fire. If you’ve taken the time initially to create a LinkedIn profile that was positions you as somebody worthy of getting to know. And I’m here to support you with that, check out LinkedInprofilechallenge.com, join us in the upcoming challenge. I can’t wait for you to see it. We haven’t done this in years. If you get the waitlist page, no worries, we’ll be doing it again, we’re doing it in the fall of 2019.

And then again, probably in the spring of 2020. So while I’m still going to be here in the meantime with all of that, but make sure you get on the waitlist you don’t miss out on that because that’s where you’re going to get really specific LinkedIn profile training completely free. And it’s not your bros LinkedIn profile. Okay, this is a, this is a different kind of training. We are I don’t want to give too much of it away, because it’s we’ve really created some exciting, fun experiences for you within this training. So for now, to find out about those experiences and to join the party, you’ve just got to get on the waitlist LinkedIn profile challenge. com. I will see you there. And if you haven’t already done so please share this on social media that you’re listening to this episode, tag both to an eye so we can both share it with our audiences. And we can all get more visibility that way. I’m here to support you. I want this to be simple. So let it be simple and let’s come back next week for another great episode of the good girls get rich podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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

Want to stand out from your competition? Of course you do, that’s the way we become successful in our businesses! Find out how to do so using these 5 creative ways to use LinkedIn to stand out from your competition.

 

 

This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen uses her LinkedIn expertise by sharing 5 creative ways to use LinkedIn to stand out from your competition. We all want to build our business and have better profits. By using these 5 expert tips, you are sure to stand out from your competition in the easiest, most efficient way possible! 

 

#GoodGirlsGetRich

We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.

 

 

Want to Uplevel Your LinkedIn Profile to Get More Business?

 

About the Episode:

 

While I just did an episode on thinking bigger to skyrocket your business, I wanted to expand on this a little bit more and show you how to stand out from the crowd while we’re gearing up for our free 5-day LinkedIn Profile challenge.

 

Here are my top 5 creative ways to use LinkedIn to stand out from your competition:

 

Connect with speakers BEFORE conferences or events you’re attending

 

As I mentioned in the podcast, right now it’s speaker season and I’m booked with events and I bet you may be attending a few too!

 

The best way to stand out from every other person attending these events is to get a copy of the speaker list and connect with these people on LinkedIn before the event! That way, you can start building a relationship with them immediately and you’ll be able to connect with them in person at the event much easier than if you were just a “normal conference goer”. 

 

Give LinkedIn Kudos

 

LinkedIn kudos are a fairly new feature to LinkedIn that not many people know about! When it comes to standing out from your competition on LinkedIn, this is the best way to do so!

 

If you don’t know how to give kudos on LinkedIn, just pop into my Facebook group and drop a question in there and I’ll answer showing you on video! 

However if you do know how, you can choose from a variety of different kudos and you can give up to 3/week. Be sure to use them strategically to get in front of people you either want to build a client relationship with or a professional relationship, or better yet, both!

 

Giving kudos also lets your audience know that you are appreciative of other people and that you are grateful for them, which further builds trust in your brand.

 

Go on an endorsing binge!

 

LinkedIn has recently been doing a MUCH better job when it comes to the structure of endorsements on your page, so let’s use them!

 

Think about your own strategy; you should organize and list your top 3 endorsements on your page so that people endorse you for them. (Not sure how to do this either? Come ask me how!) Other people want the same thing!

 

This isn’t hard to do either. You can go and endorse your perfect people while watching Netflix or having dinner at night maybe once a week. Doing this also encourages people to endorse you back and keeps you top of mind in people’s profiles, so it’s a win-win that people often forget about doing! 

 

**added bonus to endorsements: receiving more endorsements tells LinkedIn whose profile to bring up when searching for these things. Get your top 3 in order and you’re more likely to be found!

 

Write recommendations for your favorite podcast, blog or tv show hosts!

Now I’m not saying to do this just because I am a host! However, since you are clearly a podcast listener, I thought I’d mention podcast hosts first! Leaving recommendations for your favorite hosts is the perfect avenue for them to share your recommendations, because no one else is doing this!

 

Other social profiles can become incredibly crowded, so leaving LinkedIn recommendations is the best way to stand out if you want to get in front of your favorite podcasters, bloggers etc. to further build relationships and continue conversations with them. 

 

Use hashtags everywhere on LinkedIn

 

Most people know that using hashtags on places like Facebook and Instagram can get you visibility, but using hashtags on LinkedIn is a hidden secret that actually is more effective than other platforms!

 

LinkedIn gives you the ability to follow hashtags, which in turn means if someone is following a hashtag, and you use that hashtag, your post will automatically come up in their feed even if they’re not following you!

 

This is the perfect way to increase your visibility and get your content in front of your perfect people. You can also use hashtags in:

 

  • Your feed posts
  • LinkedIn articles
  • Posts you share
  • On your LinkedIn company page

 

Check out my previous podcast episode on hashtags here if you want to learn more about finding clients using hashtags on LinkedIn!

Episode Spotlights:

 

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/092
  • Intro to today’s episode (2:17)
  • Free Special offer to jumpstart your business with LinkedIn (3:51)
  • Why you should connect with speakers BEFORE you go to a conference or event (5:01)
  • New LinkedIn feature to take advantage of (7:53)
  • How endorsing has changed in LinkedIn and why it’s getting better (10:26)
  • Writing recommendations for your favorite podcast hosts (12:53)
  • Why hashtags are SO beneficial on LinkedIn (15:04)
  • Recap of the 5 creative ways to use LinkedIn to stand out from the crowd (17:03)
  • How using these LinkedIn strategies can help you attract your perfect people (19:27)

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Help Us Spread The Word!

It would be awesome if you shared the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast with your fellow entrepreneurs on twitter. Click here to tweet some love!

 

If this episode has taught you just one thing, I would love if you could head on over to Apple Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW! And if you’re moved to, kindly leave us a rating and review. Maybe you’ll get a shout out on the show!

 

Ways to Subscribe to Good Girls Get Rich:

 

Read the Transcript

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.

 

091 – The Truth About LinkedIn Groups with Rebecca Vertucci

LinkedIn groups: What are they? How can they be beneficial for your business? How can you use them to grow your client list? We’re answering all of these questions in todays episode!

 

 

 

This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen has Rebecca Vertucci back on the podcast for another in-depth LinkedIn training and info session all about LinkedIn groups.  

 

We are joined by Rebecca Vertucci, a Senior Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn where she has trained recruiters and hiring personnel on how to find and hire top talent and build their employer brands. Rebecca is also the founder of The Vertucci Group, which provides coaching, workshops and online programs for career transitioners, entrepreneurs and business leaders. Rebecca is frequently called on to speak at conferences, universities and corporations to bring her unique perspective and expertise to audiences around the globe.   

 

#GoodGirlsGetRich

 

We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.  

 

Want to Uplevel Your LinkedIn Profile to Get More Business?

 

About the Episode:

 

 

 

WOW was this an episode full of knowledge! I highly advise listening to every minute or read the entire transcript to get the full effect on how LinkedIn groups can truly transform your business.

 

However, I want to get down to the nitty gritty about LinkedIn groups and what they can really do for your business!

 

LinkedIn as a company understands the value of groups and they know how it hasn’t been very strong to date. In 2020, there will be a completely new overhaul of LinkedIn groups, however for now, let’s start with the basics of LinkedIn and the differences between the different types of LinkedIn user engagements.

 

Differences between LinkedIn user engagements:

 

LinkedIn Company Page

 

Your LinkedIn company page should serve as the content hub for your business. This is where you show your ideal client EVERYTHING about your business. This can include blogs, articles about your business and industry your business is in. 

 

Whatever your content and marketing strategy is for your business, should live on your LinkedIn company page. 


The first time Rebecca was a guest on the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast we spoke all about LinkedIn company pages, so be sure to check that episode out here

 

LinkedIn Profile

 

We talk a lot about your LinkedIn profile on Good Girls Get Rich. Your profile is where you speak about YOU, your expertise and your role in your business

 

Your profile is the only way that you can make connection requests and send messages, so therefore this is where the building of your business relationships takes place.

 

Struggling with how to present yourself to your ideal client on your LinkedIn profile? Join my FREE 5-day LinkedIn Profile Challenge.

 

LinkedIn Group

 

Now the topic of this episode… Your LinkedIn groups are your community tool. Linkedin groups are a way for like minded individuals come together in one place and have autonomy on discussions about certain topics. 

 

How to share content in a LinkedIn Group:

 

Let’s get one thing on the table first… a LinkedIn groups are not the place to share content without direct engagement. This is a place to share more insights and have topics surrounding a piece of content that you already have written on. 

 

This is where you always think about the next level of engagement. 

 

Don’t just drop your content in the group because you don’t want to spam your LinkedIn network.

 

How many groups should you be part of?

 

As Rebecca says… LinkedIn is a quality game, not a quantity game. You can be in up to 50 groups, but you should pick only around 5 that you can participate in quality conversations with to have authentic engagement.

 

Now let’s dive into the differences in LinkedIn groups…

 

What type of group you’re in depends on the types of conversations you want to have. 

 

Listed (open) Groups

 

These are groups that can be found on LinkedIn in a search and come up in search results. In most of these, the group manager chooses whether or not you have to be in the group to see the content or not. 

 

Unlisted (closed) Groups 

 

These groups are invite only. These are places you can have conversations that you don’t necessarily want anyone to be able to search (i.e. discussions surrounding your current job, job search and industry, etc.)

 

Say you have a paid client program and want to use LinkedIn groups to deliver content that your clients pay for. This is also a great way to utilize an unlisted LinkedIn group. 

 

*Pro insight: Any unlisted group will not be listed on your profile, however listed groups you are a part of could potentially show up in your interests. Be sure to check your privacy settings if you want to keep your groups off your profile.

 

How to find and join LinkedIn Groups:

 

So now you’re interested in groups… how do you find the best ones to start building business connections and getting clients?

 

Start with answering these questions:

 

  • Who is your ideal client?
  • What do they care about?
  • Where are they hanging out online?

 

Now that you have these answered, this is where you can start finding groups. 

 

There are over 1.7 million Linkedin groups, so there is SURE to be a group that fits your needs.

 

Start by searching any kind of keyword that may be on someones profile that you’re targeting.

 

Go to the groups section and look at the results that come up in that search. From there, you can narrow it down from here:

 

  • Which groups have the largest audience?
    • Pick a few from here
  • What does the activity look like?
    • Don’t be fooled, sometimes smaller groups with more engagement may be better than larger groups with no activity
  • Is this group local?
    • If your business is local this is huge, however if you don’t care exactly about geography, we still recommend being part of at least one local group. People feel more compelled to use your services if they feel that you are closer to them in some capacity.

 

Now, pick 3-5 groups where your ideal client is hanging out and look at the content. Start asking and answering questions and engaging. From here, you will be able to decide whether or not the group is a good fit to build business relationships.

 

*Only pick 3-5 groups. Anything more may be difficult for you to keep up with and if you’re not consistent in a group, people won’t see you as a source of reliability. 

 

Weekly LinkedIn Group Routine

 

If there’s one thing you should take away from this episode is that engaging in these groups on a consistent basis is KEY to utilizing LinkedIn groups to build business. It’s as EASY as this.

 

Do this weekly…

 

Set time on your calendar 3 times during the work week between 9-5 to engage with your groups for 20 minutes.

 

*Pro tip: LinkedIn is a 9-5 audience. It’s a very corporate group of people. They’re not hanging out on LinkedIn on weekends and week nights. They’re on LinkedIn during work hours, so use this time to engage for maximum reach. 

 

Last thing… Is it worth it for you to start a group?

 

If you feel like the bulk of your clients and leads are coming from LinkedIn and you have a solid LinkedIn strategy now, the answers is yes! It’s about where your ideal client is hanging out and how you want to engage those clients.


LinkedIn is a highly trusted platform. The know like and trust factor has been a huge thing on LinkedIn for a while, so if you are at a place that you are using LinkedIn well, then a group is a way to really take your LinkedIn game to the next level.

 

How to attract people to your group:

 

Now if you have your own LinkedIn group, the best way to attract people to your group is with these 3 things:

 

  • Email list
  • Your content (blogs, social call outs, etc.)
  • As you connect with people and build business relationships, invite them to your group 

 

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate, huge numbers. There’s value in a small, intimate group setting and as you grow, you can expand your reach and group strategy to be beneficial to your overall business

 

LinkedIn has a good job at providing training information in LinkedIn’s help center if you ever get stuck!

 

Huge thank you to Rebecca Vertucci for all the INCREDIBLE knowledge bombs that were dropped in this episode! Feel free to contact her for her services at thevertuccigroup.com

 

Episode Spotlights:

 

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/091
  • Intro to today’s episode (1:42)
  • Start of the episode with Rebecca Vertucci (2:42)
  • Where things are going with LinkedIn groups (5:48)
  • Inside information on what will be changing with LinkedIn groups in 2020 (8:08)
  • The difference between your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn company page and LinkedIn groups (9:08)
  • How to utilize your content in LinkedIn groups (11:40)
  • Features that have left LinkedIn to avoid spamming your network (14:12)
  • Different kinds of LinkedIn Groups and the differences between them all (19:32)
  • Are groups a part of your profile? (27:14)
  • How to use groups to get the message out and grow your network (30:50)
  • Ways to utilize center of influencer marketing on LinkedIn groups (34:24)
  • The importance of local groups even if geography isn’t important to you (37:46)
  • Are you ready to start a LinkedIn group? Should you even start a LinkedIn group? (40:38)
  • The first step in starting and promoting a LinkedIn group (43:51)
  • Navigating LinkedIn group tools vs Facebook groups (47:22)
  • Final tips on starting your own LinkedIn group (55:42)
  • Where to find Rebecca (1:00:22)
  • Episode recap and brand new free resource introduction (1:02:37)

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

 

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If this episode has taught you just one thing, I would love if you could head on over to Apple Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW! And if you’re moved to, kindly leave us a rating and review. Maybe you’ll get a shout out on the show!

 

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Read the Transcript

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the Good Girls Get Rich podcast episode 91.

 

Intro 0:06
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 0:24
I am Karen Yankovich, the host of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast. And this podcast is brought to you by Uplevel Media where we teach the simplest relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing system that gets you on the phone consistently in a micro targeted way with your perfect people, people who you can’t wait to have the opportunity to chat with.

 

And we have a show for you today. Boy, we have our the second time we had a guest come back for their second episode. The first one was Marie Forleo. So Rebecca is in good company for sure. I can’t wait for you to hear what we’re going to be talking about today. But before we do that, just a quick reminder, if you loving what you hear today, take a quick screenshot of this episode and share it on social media. And let your audience know what you’re loving about this podcast.

 

You know, we always love your ratings and reviews as well. And if you go to the blog for this page, KarenYankovich.com/091. You can see a link to speakpipe and leave us an audio review not just for this episode. But maybe you want to just let us know about it guess we should interview or a topic you’d love for me to talk about. I’d love to hear from you on speak pipe and the link to that is on the show notes and on the blog page.

 

So we have got Rebecca Vertucci back. And Rebecca is somebody that I met through a business group we both belong to, and she was on the show a few episodes back will link to it where we talked about LinkedIn company pages. And I knew we needed to be really specific about what we talked about. Because just after our initial conversations, I knew that we could talk for hours and hours about LinkedIn marketing. So we picked a topic and then I kind of surveyed my audience after that. And we decided that this time, we’re going to talk about LinkedIn groups. And LinkedIn groups are undergoing some massive changes. They haven’t actually undergone them yet at the time that this episode is going live in October of 2019. But maybe if you’re listening to this, a couple months later, you’ll have you’ll be able to actually implement some of the more of the stuff that we talked about here today. There is lots and lots of reasons to start paying attention to LinkedIn groups. And you’re gonna learn a ton about that in this episode with Rebecca Verducci. So I’m just gonna let this episode speak for itself. Check it out.

 

Okay, so we’re so excited to be back with Rebecca Vertucci. Rebecca is a second time guest on the good girls get rich podcast. The only other person that has done that so far is Marie Forleo. So Rebecca is in such good company. And I’ve gotten such great feedback from the first show, she knew what it was all surely I know, we’ll talk about that will link it in the show notes. Rebecca is presented to some of the biggest companies and organizations in the world as a senior customer success manager at LinkedIn. She’s trained recruiters and hiring personnel on how to find higher and higher top talent and build their employer brands, and is also a founding member of the women at LinkedIn organization. Rebecca is also the founder of the refugee group, which provides coaching workshops and online programs for career transition owners, entrepreneurs and business leaders. She’s frequently called on to speak at conferences, universities and corporations to bring her unique perspective and expertise to audiences around the globe. Rebecca, thank you so much for being back here with us on the good girls get rich podcast.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 3:40
Thank you so much for having me again, I had no idea I was in the company of likes of Marie for Leo, I need to find a way to work that into my website.

 

Karen Yankovich 3:49
You totally do. Yeah, yeah. So thank you so much. We listened when you know, we’ve gotten 70 such people love our first episode together, I should have looked up and see what the episode number was on that. But we’ll definitely put it in a blog in the show notes. But then we got such great feedback on that, that I knew we wanted to have you back. And, you know, we’re doing a bunch of, you know, really great LinkedIn focus episodes in a row here. This this fall and winter. So I knew this was the time to bring you back to really dive in. And that and you know, one of the things we talked about in our first episode was that, and which is definitely proven to be true, is that when you and I started talking about this, there’s like 100, different directions is, right. So we decided we’re going to keep this one focused on LinkedIn groups, because I get a ton of questions about that. And I think just having a show where we’re totally focused on how we can use and leverage LinkedIn groups and where, where it might make sense of where it might not make sense, right group. So that we, you know, as entrepreneurs and small business owners, which is the majority of my audience, you know, we’re pressed for time, I am right, and we don’t have a ton of time to be wasting. So we want to make sure I like to make things really, really simple for my audience. So by doing the show, just specifically on groups that could make it simple for them to use groups. I think that can be really powerful. So yeah, so thanks for being doing this with me. Do you get a lot of questions about groups as well?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 5:21
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And you’re totally right, Karen, you and I are LinkedIn geeks, so we can talk about a lot of things. But one of the reasons I’m also excited to talk about groups is because there’s a lot coming down the pipeline with groups. So what’s nice is that since I work at LinkedIn, I got some of the inside scoop. So I think it’s really good timing for you and your audience to be thinking about this topic. So I’m really excited to dive into it.

 

Karen Yankovich 5:46
Okay, so should we start there? Or should we start on some of the questions that I’ve had,

 

Rebecca Vertucci 5:51
I think, let me lay the groundwork because I think if someone’s listening to this episode, and they’re wondering, maybe they’ve tried groups, or they’ve, you know, been wondering if groups are right for them in one way or form for their business, I would like to give some insight into kind of where things are going so that they can make some informed strategic decisions as you move forward in their business. So perfect. LinkedIn, as a company, absolutely understands the value of groups,

 

Karen Yankovich 6:20
Do they? Do they really? Okay.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 6:26
the group’s experience has not been strong to date. So a little behind the scenes, we’ve been going through a lot of work on our data side, and like our tech side, to get a lot of our data and information in one place. So if you think about LinkedIn, and how it rolled out over the course of the past 15 years, you know, we started with profiles and jobs. But then we added like company pages, and we added ads. And we have all these different features and tools that we kind of added over the years things like groups, alumni page is all this stuff. And it was sort of just like by user demand, but not necessarily being housed in the same place, believe it or not on the back end. And so we’ve for two years now actually been under a major project. And I say we as if I’m an engineer, I am not. I’ve hadn’t done any of this. But we’ve been basically doing a lot of things with our tech platform on the back end, in the way of like machine learning and data and insights and analytics, so that the user experience both on the member side and the corporate side, going forward, will be robustly different. And we’re actually in the process of a major corporate rollout right now. So ultimately, what that means and what has been communicated to us, the customer success team and the sales team, is that within the next nine to 12 months, there’s going to be a complete overhaul of LinkedIn groups.

 

Karen Yankovich 7:54
But just to set the stage for somebody who’s listening to this later, it is like October, it’s like September, October 2019. So you’re saying in 2020, we’re going to have some major changes. Correct?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 8:06
Yep, absolutely. So some things that have been historically painful, that will be updated as examples. And right now, there’s only really one place to access LinkedIn groups, you have to be on the desktop experience. And you have to go to the groups section. And unlike other platforms, like Facebook, for example, you can access groups directly on your phone, and it’s part of your user experience. We have not historically had that. And that’s something that’s going to change. LinkedIn has been really investing in our mobile experience. So especially the mobile experience for groups, it was going to be brand new, we’ve never had it before. But it’s going to be robustly different. And then I would say a lot of the interactivity features that have been really popular on other platforms, things like polls, live videos. And all of that will be coming to a LinkedIn group near you in 2020. For sure.

 

Karen Yankovich 9:04
Awesome, awesome. Yeah. So let’s, let’s oh my gosh, so feel free to keep feeding us these things as we talk if you think of anything else that’s coming to LinkedIn groups. But um, let’s talk a little bit about like the difference between your LinkedIn profile and your LinkedIn company page and a LinkedIn group. Now, when Rebecca was on the show earlier, we focused the show on LinkedIn company pages, so I don’t want to spend a ton of time talking about that, you can listen to that. Well, let’s just touch on it. So people understand the difference. So can you give us in a couple seconds the difference between those three things, those are the main three different types of user engagement, right? Three different platforms, okay.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 9:42
Yep. So let’s say because your audience is entrepreneurs and business owners, let’s start with the company page. The company page is your hub of where you’re going to push out your content. So everything that you’re creating or sharing that’s about your ideal clients, or customers and your industry experiences, you want to really push that out from the company page, or at least originated it and upload it in the company page. So that you can use the tools of the company page, like tracking and data and analytics and targeting and retargeting and paid ads, all of those things, from the company page, say versus your personal profile. So for any company, whatever your marketing strategy is, you would employ that on a company page. And then anybody that works for the company, you know, a lot of people listening might be solo printers, but you might have dreams of having a team of people, or some people listening might already have a team, or employees that even work full time for them. Especially if you think about brick and mortar stores, things like that, you as individuals would share out content from the company page, and your personal profile talks about you, you’ll talk about your business, but you talk about your role in the business, your own philosophies, as an example. And through your personal profile is the only way that you can make connection request or send the messages. So your personal profile is really that personal one to one networking tool, where you’re going to build business relationships. So the company page is the content hub and sort of home of the company content. The personal profiles are your tool for business networking, and business relationship building. And then your group is sort of your community tool. So whether you have a group or you participate in groups, it’s a way for like minded individuals to come together in one place and all have like autonomy to ask questions and share content and engaging conversation.

 

Karen Yankovich 11:39
Okay, so let’s talk about content for a second, as most small business owners, if they certainly if I’m working with them, they are producing content regularly, let’s just say weekly. So I have a weekly podcast, right? So every week in my podcast, I have content related to my podcast, I would put that on my company page, and then share my company page to my personal page occasionally meant maybe drop it in my personal page. What should I do with that content when it comes to my group?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 12:05
Yeah. So I think what happens is a lot of people who are producing content, whether it’s groups on LinkedIn, or groups on Facebook, I’m sure we all see this, they post their blog, or they post their podcast, or whatever it is that that’s sort of their weekly content. And then they go to all these social platforms, and they share it out into groups and on ads and different ways that we share out content. What I would say is different for groups. And I would argue this is true, regardless of LinkedIn, right? Like, regardless of where you’re engaging in groups, as I don’t think it’s a place to just share content without direct engagement. So I don’t think that any entrepreneur should be a part of any group, whether they’re running the group, or they’re participating in the group, simply to share out a link, I think it’s important to use those platforms to think about creating conversation around the content piece that you create it. So let’s say you created this podcast about LinkedIn groups, instead of just saying, Hey, here’s my new podcast episode about LinkedIn groups. It would be what Karen, I saw that you already did. And I know you’ll do going forward, but like a head of the podcast, you asked your community, hey, what would you like to have answered in this podcast? Or, hey, I’m thinking about having these blogs in the coming weeks? which ones would you guys want to hear about more? What questions do you have? And maybe you’re even in those groups answering questions, right. And then once the podcast is live, instead of just saying, Hey, here’s the new podcast, you have a highlight of the three things you covered, and why somebody should tune in to the podcast, and what would be in it for them. So really thinking about that next level of engagement, not just sharing content and making it available to the public, but really taking it that step further to really engage with your ideal clients in a way that’s more meaningful.

 

Karen Yankovich 13:53
Well, I love what you’re saying. And there was no surprise there. But though, I think one of the you know, some of the, there’s been a lot of changes to groups over the past couple years, and some of them I don’t love and some of them I do love. And one of the things I do love is I don’t know if you guys will remember, but there used to be an ability when you posted something on your personal page, to share it to all of the groups you’re in. And it was crazy, because somebody would like drop a link in to their blog, and then share it across 25 groups, without any context, without any posts without any engagement. And I remember somebody I know really well reaching out to me saying that’s terrible. Why did they get away with that I was like, um, you should never even do that in the first place. Because it’s a terrible way to engage in groups. It’s just just spamming the groups, you know. And I call that like drive by blog posting, you know, like, you drive by a drop in your blog, and you keep going. And I. And I think what that does for people that are building with authentic relationships on LinkedIn, the fact that there are so many people that do that, that there are so many groups that are just full of driving by content posts, there’s people that are looking to engage a real opportunity to get known in that group, because most groups, many groups that most but many groups that when you go to them, there is just a blog in there, and there’s no actual engagement in there. So if you are the person engaging on those blogs, you may be the only person engaging on those blogs. And it’s a great way for people to get to know you, right, like who’s this Karen check, that’s always got something to say about my blog posts, you know, and and if you’re being if you’re being strategic, about the group’s you’re doing that in, and your ideal clients, your ideal partners, your ideal, like center of influence, people are hanging out in those groups. And, and putting content in those groups, it’s a great way to get visible if you’re the one of the only active people in the groups right now. But I hope, my hope is that more and more people become active in the group. So So you’re saying, you know, don’t be afraid to put your content in there, but do it in a way that it brings value to the group?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 15:59
Yeah, I would say whenever you see a feature going away on LinkedIn, it’s usually because the feedback from the members is that it’s not good. So I’ll give another example about something that went away. Because I work in the talent acquisition space, helping recruiters and hiring managers on LinkedIn as part of my day job at LinkedIn. And you used to be able to do the same thing with jobs, right? Like you would post a job. And then you could share your jobs out to groups. And it used to be in the feed. And then there used to be a tab just for groups. And now it’s gone all I mean, for jobs, and now it’s gone all together. And part of that is because nobody in those groups wanted to just see a bunch of spammy jobs from recruiters, especially groups where people were really in demand, like engineers, or sales professionals, or marketers or SEO people, they would be in these groups to learn from one another and be with like minded people. And instead, they were getting spammed by recruiters. And so at the end of the day, what you can’t take a shortcut on LinkedIn.

 

Karen Yankovich 17:00
Oh that’s such a great tweetable. I often say like, I don’t know, LinkedIn is not the place to bring your magic wand, you know, I don’t have a magic wand, you’ve got to do the work. But there’s, but there’s so much profit on the other side of that work.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 17:16
I agree, I’m here to the other side. The other thing I say a lot is that LinkedIn is a quality game, not a quantity game. So the reality is, even with groups, I wouldn’t say you can join up to 50, every member can be up to 50. But you should probably just pick five that you can actually be active in and participate in and bring value to. And I you know, I say that even about when we talk about the company page and content, or ads, or even connection requests, better to have quality than quantity. And not every platform is like that some platforms are definitely going after quantity. But when you look at LinkedIn, it’s a group of business professionals 650 million and growing, who are here to engage in a profession fashionable way, and they don’t want to be spammed, they really don’t. So you have to really think about authentic engagement on LinkedIn in a totally different way than you do on other platforms.

 

Karen Yankovich 18:08
So one of the features that went away that I was a little bummed that went away is the ability for the admin for the group to do a message to all the members once a week, did you get any feedback about that? Why that went away? And is that on the horizon to come back? Or is that gone?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 18:25
I don’t think it’s gone forever. I think it had to do again with the spamming this. So because, you know, it’s always the bad apples, right? Like people would start the groups and they were kind of abusing that feature. And I think at the end of the day, they’re trying to move towards more like authentic communication through things like Sales Navigator or LinkedIn recruiter or some of these premium accounts where, yes, you can still contact people that are in your group, but it’s more one to one messages versus bulk messages and things like that. I don’t know that it’s never coming back, I think what’s some of the new features of the groups, there will be other ways to kind of have continued content or contact with your members as an admin. But I will say another thing is that sometimes, you know, a lot of bulk messages that go out on LinkedIn are never opened. So we also look at things like open rates and engagement rates. And if we find that those features are really not used or valued by our members who are receiving the messages, that’s another reason that it might go away. Got it.

 

Karen Yankovich 19:31
So I mean, like I’m itching to get to strategy, but I want to stick for a minute with the just use just like the basics. So there’s different kinds of groups. Can you explain the different kinds of groups closed? And secret? Yeah, what are the different kinds of groups? And what’s the difference between them?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 19:47
Yeah, absolutely. So the technical names for them are listed and unlisted. That’s what LinkedIn calls them. But they’re kind of like open groups or closed groups is what we’re used to in social media. And ultimately, it’s exactly like it sounds. So elicited group is going to be able to be found on LinkedIn, if you do a search, like if you’re in the group section, and you’re searching, and you’re going to be able to that’s going to come up in your search results. And then within the listed group, you can decide a privacy setting like is it a public group? Or is it a private group as far as the content goes? So do you have to be a member of that group in order to see it, see the content? Or do you have Can you just see it, even if you’re not a member, right. So even within the listed category, there’s a couple of options of visibility of the content. And then unlisted means that it’s like an invite only, and people really can’t search for it, like you would only have, you would have to know about it, and therefore it’s really private. So what I tell people is that it really depends on the types of conversations that you’re going to be having in this group. And how, what kind of engagement you really want, what settings you want to have. So I’ll give myself as an example, I work had worked for the past 15 years with career transition owners and job seekers. So any type of group that I’ve had on any type of platform needs to be private. And the reason why is because you cannot, people don’t feel safe, having an open conversation about job search, if their content is just visible to anyone on LinkedIn, who might be able to find it.

 

Karen Yankovich 21:19
Got it makes sense. Makes perfect sense. So is that do you know? I mean, I guess it’s hard to say but is there is there you know, this isn’t does a listed or an unlisted group help or hurt engagement? Or participation in the group? Like, does it so Okay, so let me put it this way. I know I’m a member of your group. And what does it matter if it’s listed or unlisted as it as whenever it comes to? what I see as far as what’s happening in the group?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 21:48
know, if you’re a member? No.

 

Karen Yankovich 21:53
Okay, cool.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 21:54
You can be a member, you, Karen, of those listed unlisted groups, in your experience, when you go to the group section. Same, the difference is for somebody who’s not a member, and who might be looking to find that group. So another example on the flip side is like, you know, you especially if you’re playing a volume game, or like, maybe you’re trying to find other people, you might want to keep things more listed and more public, but then the types of conversations you’re going to have, or the types of you know, content you’re going to post might just be different than opening up like a real conversation, right?

 

Karen Yankovich 22:30
Yep

 

Rebecca Vertucci 22:31
So what I would say is that, regardless of platform, regardless of LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever else you might be using whatever else might pop up tomorrow, and I personally believe and I’m sure you agree with this, Karen, even though we’ve never talked about it, that your list your email list, and your website should be where you’re generating, if you’re running and managing a group. That is probably should be where you’re inviting people to join your group, because they should be on your email list. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. And then send them your content, and then say, Hey, we also have this group going on. So I would say anything from a lead generation for engagement for your own business, your own company should be getting people into your own email list and not relying on these platforms to grow your audience in that way.

 

Karen Yankovich 23:21
Okay, so. So I’m a member of the group, whether it’s listed or unlisted. Does the content and the posts and the activity in the group come up on my wall on LinkedIn? Or do I have to go to the group see what’s happening there? In today’s current state, you have to go to the group to see what’s happening. Okay, that will change. Okay, cool. So right now, you know, I have a Facebook group that teaches LinkedIn tips, and it’s very active. If you go to you know, actually anybody that wants to check it out, go to Karen yankovich.com, slash Facebook group, and it is you can ask to join, and we talked a lot about LinkedIn tips there. And I would love to bring that group over to LinkedIn. But it is a lot harder for me to get the same level of activity on my LinkedIn group. I freaking teach LinkedIn marketing, right? I want to use my LinkedIn group for this. But at this moment in time, am I missing something like is your Do you think that we’re ready to do that yet where I would, because here’s the and this is really the maybe even fundamentally, why I wanted to do this episode, people want to be off Facebook. So many people want to get their groups on Facebook. But as business owners, we have to make decisions around what is best going to support our community. Right. And as a business owner, I know that if I want the activity, especially around my paid programs, if I want to support them and be able to jump in and do a Facebook Live and answered live Q and A’s and things like that, I’ve got to still do that on Facebook. So do you think that that’s changing? And like to tell me a little bit what your your thoughts as I say all of that,

 

Rebecca Vertucci 24:58
Yeah, so I can speak to them why the engagement is higher in the things that we’ve noticed that I think you can anticipate being similar as we go forward in 2020. So one, and I kind of hit on it before is that part of the reason why people on Facebook and I would say Instagram and even Twitter are more active is because of the ease of use on mobile. And because most people on any of these apps are coming from mobile devices. So even for LinkedIn, about 60 to 70% of our daily millions of users are also coming from mobile devices. So we’ve gone all in over the past couple of years about making the member feed and the content feed and the jobs feed more mobile friendly. And that’s kind of what we’re going to be doing with groups as well. And so that’s really the big thing where everyone’s on mobile. So I would think about that when it comes to any thing to do with your strategy, your ads, you know, your content, whatever you’re doing, like most people on these platforms are coming from mobile. The other thing that Facebook does, is that you can set notifications as a member of a group of what groups you want to be notified about, and whether or not you want them in your feed. And so it’s not on I mean, actually, I think Facebook defaults that if you join a group and it’s on, you automatically get notified, you automatically see it in your feed, but you can change those settings. And right now, LinkedIn doesn’t have any settings like that there’s no notifications, you don’t get to choose whether or not you see it in your feed, it just isn’t there right now. So those are the types of things that we know will make groups more successful as we go forward, including the ability to just pop in and do a live, LinkedIn live is already up and running and by 2020 will be accessible to all members. So it’s those types of things that we have to get right first, before we relaunch groups, but trust me, we see what’s working on other platforms, we’re not missing the boat. It’s just we want to get it right. And we want to roll it out. So that it’s a seamless experience for you once it’s live.

 

Karen Yankovich 26:59
Got it? Got it. So you know, one of the when I was asking my community what they wanted to know, from this conversation, a few people mentioned things around this topic of our groups a part of your profile. And I actually, I actually want to answer that first and say that I think they are I think that, you know, I think that if you belong to five groups or 50 groups, it is a part of your profile, people can see what groups you belong to. Is there a way to hide that by the way?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 27:32
So that’s going to be about the the setting of the group is it listed or unlisted? So that sure, and then yesterday was a member. So what I mean by that is any unlisted group would not be in your on your profile. Those are just private, literally, private groups.

 

Karen Yankovich 27:48
But listed groups will be listed on your

 

Rebecca Vertucci 27:50
profile groups. I’m actually just checking one thing real quick, while you’re asking me that because they are no longer there. So I thought that this changed. So I think now instead of it saying, so at the very bottom of your profile, it used to have the logos of the groups. Yep, yeah. And now it says interests and your interests are going to be things that are companies, you follow influencers, you follow groups, that you’re part of an schools that you were a part of, or went to or follow. And so it’s anything that you’re kind of engaged with on LinkedIn. So if people go all the way down to the bottom of your profile, and click into groups, they’ll see what you’re a part of it. They are indeed listed groups, but it’s not how it used to be, which is that it was you would have companies following every part of that we just said like influencers, companies, groups, schools all had their own section. Now, it’s just all under interests,

 

Karen Yankovich 28:50
Right. But under interest, there’s, there’s separate options separate, they’re separate categories, and you can click groups, so you still pretty much can see listed groups that people belong to, too. So I do think that in some ways, you got to know that, that that is a part of your profile, but whatever that’s worth, right, for whatever that’s worth if you you know, I don’t know that I would worry too much about it from about, you know, from a profile standpoint, but it you know, it is a part of your profile. That being said, where the strategy, I think comes in around that is if you’re trying to find good groups to join, you can go to, you know, maybe some of your LinkedIn contacts that you think maybe are similar, do similar things to what you do, see what groups they’re in, and maybe choose to join. And maybe that will give you an idea of maybe some groups you might want to join. Right. So that’s where that kind of might be where strategy might come in around that less around what it means your profile and more more around how you find other groups you might be interested in being a part of.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 29:52
I agree with that, there’s a couple other things I would say, which is that anything on your profile, I just want to delineate that in case people do have privacy concerns. Anything on your profile that is visible to you is only visible, like your full profile. And the sections that you and I are talking about is only visible to your first degree connections. So you can’t see that with your second third degree connections, or even people that you’re only in a group with. Because we you know, basically, first degree connections have the strongest visibility into a profile. So everything else is considered a public profile. So what the public sees, and you can edit that. So I just want to let people know that for privacy sake. LinkedIn is a members first company, and they never want anyone feel uncomfortable with what is or is not on their profile public or first degree visible. So just take a look at your privacy settings, because there’s a lot of things that you can tweak, you know, in case that’s a concern.

 

Karen Yankovich 30:47
Awesome, fabulous. Cool. Okay, so what else should we talk about, as a from from, you know, Karen, the LinkedIn marketer, not Karen, the group owner, right, Karen, the LinkedIn marketer, what else? How else can I use groups to help get my message out? Or, you know, or meet more people grow my network? Like, what other tips do you have? Not we’re not talking about I’m going to start a group yet, or we’re talking about just how do I best use groups?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 31:16
Yeah, absolultely so. And this would be true, I would say, for any business owner, or any entrepreneur influencer. My guess is, and Karen, I know this is true for you. But let’s just pretend like maybe this isn’t true for the audience. The first step is you got to know who your ideal client is. And you have to understand what they care about, and where they’re hanging out. So in the example I gave about myself, I, for the first chunk of my business, I would say even the first chunk of my career, probably for seven years or so, really worked with job seekers and job transition owners. So I would start by looking at groups on LinkedIn, there’s 1.7 million groups. So any kind of keyword, any kind of activity, any kind of thing that might be on someone profile, and job seeking, or maybe you work with entrepreneurs, maybe you work with retailers, whatever it is, I would go to the groups section. And I would start by looking at the results that come up in that search. And then seeing which groups have the largest audience and click into those and see, you know, what the activity levels look like to know if that’s a good group to join. So like a group of 50 people that’s really active might actually be better than a group with 10,000 people where nobody’s even posted anything for the past 10 months, as an example. So I would kind of do the keyword searches, I would know, you know, think about your ideal client, where are they hanging out? If you have a local business, and this was true for me, when I moved from New York City to upstate New York, I kind of did this from a networking perspective, because I needed to meet new people, I looked at local groups, like local chambers of commerce, local women in business groups, local entrepreneur groups. So thank you with 1.7 million groups, I promise you, there’s a lot there to research. And I would pick five groups, this is always my advice, I would pick five groups, you know, maybe one or two more or less based on your bandwidth and your time. But I wouldn’t do significantly more or significantly less five groups where your ideal client is hanging out. The people that are in that group are your people that you want to be helping and supporting. And I would look at the questions that they’re asking, I would look at the content that’s posted. And I would do exactly what Karen mentioned earlier, which is start answering questions engaging. And and to be honest, guys, this is so easy. So when people give me pushback about this, it just drives me crazy. set time on your calendar three times a week, Monday through Friday to go in for 20 minutes, spend four or five minutes in each group. It’s not that complicated. answer some questions, help some people out. But LinkedIn is a Monday through Friday, nine to five site people are not hanging out on this site nights and weekends. Okay, this is a very corporate audience is a professional audience, it doesn’t mean, you know, it’s a suit and tie audience, but they’re working on work hours, right. So think about that, don’t save all of your engagement for the weekend, people probably won’t see it really be active 20 minutes a day, two or three times a week and be intentional about it. It’s not that complicated.

 

Karen Yankovich 34:25
I agree. I agree. And you know, I often say like, if you do a really good job on your LinkedIn profile, and really stand out as a leader, and then you find you do research, I recommend people typically, and I love your idea of five, I might expand that a tiny little bit. Because I like people to do is like find a group or two that you think your ideal clients are hanging out in, find a group or two that you think your ideal partners or like years of influence you’re hanging out in, you know, find a couple local groups, because I agree completely with you about local groups are amazing. And be when you’re the person that sharing and liking and commenting. You’ve already done the research that says My people are in this group. So when you you reach out, and you’re just commenting and saying really insightful things on the comments, your ideal people are going to be initiating connection request with you 100, they’re going to click and say, who’s this Rebecca chick that has all this good thing to say? No, I blog posts all the time. And they’re going to see your profile, they’re going to see it’s amazing. And they’re going to want to connect with you. Right? So your people are initiating relationships with you, just by spending a couple of minutes a week on these groups. Right? It’s that easy. It’s that easy. And it sounds like we’re like glossing over. But we’re not

 

Rebecca Vertucci 35:40
know, I think we’re really not I think we’re if anything, we’re not hitting home enough how easy it is. And I really glad that you brought up the center of influence thing, because I was thinking more about the ideal client. So you’re totally right, I would definitely layer in some of your other business priorities and strategies and a perfect example. I mean, Karen, you and I can to know each other in the group. Yep. Firstly, all, but pretty much, you know, every entrepreneur and every marketer is trying to get featured in some sort of publication or on a podcast to be seen as an expert. And wow, every single media opportunity I have ever had has come from groups, and come from really intentional networking on LinkedIn. So absolutely, there’s power and thinking about how to get the word out about who you are, who your center centers of influence are, as you said, and one of the things to look at is groups that are about PR media podcast, any of those things you’re focused on, there’s tons of those as well.

 

Karen Yankovich 36:42
There are there are, and you know, let’s talk about the local groups again for a second, because here’s where this is valuable, because a lot of people say to me, but my business really isn’t dependent on geography, blah, blah, blah. And I might I push back on that a little bit and say, neither is mine. But I would say more than 50% of my business are people I can drive to. Because people like to do business with people, they feel like they can meet in person, you know, when they hear, hey, we’re both in New Jersey, we’re both in New York that maybe we can meet up someday, it gives us something in common. And it makes it it makes that know, like and trust quicker to overcome. So when I joined a local when I again, it starts your profile, when you position yourself like you’re a leader, and like you’re an influencer in your industry. And you absolutely can do that. When you do that, and then you join these local groups, and then you become this person that’s engaging on the content. And then people connect with you, you do have the opportunity maybe to go to a local networking meeting, even though like my business, I have clients all over the world. But if I walk into a networking meeting, and I go into a meeting that I’ve done this work with, you know, 10 people come up to me and say, I know you were connected on LinkedIn, right? So So I’ve eliminated the know, like and trust. And that’s where a lot of my clients come from. So even though I can do business all over the world doesn’t mean I have to, there’s still a huge opportunity for me locally. I mean, granted, I live in the New York City Market, but I don’t care where you live, right, there’s still tons of opportunity for you there. If geography isn’t important to you, it doesn’t mean that it still couldn’t be valuable to you.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 38:20
Yeah. And so I’ll kind of build on that, because I left the New York City Market about five years ago, and I’m in upstate New York now. And it’s a very different market. And that’s kind of the example that I brought in before is like, Oh, I’m in this different market, I want to meet people. First of all, I was new to the area, I wanted to meet like minded people. But I will say that anything you do in business, I don’t care what your business is, it really is about who you know. And most of us do get clients from referrals, even if those people aren’t our clients. And so a lot of my local marketing is public speaking, right? If you can get in front of entrepreneur groups and business groups who are in your local community, and you can do a 20 minute workshop on your area of expertise, or bring something valuable to a group, how much easier is that to go and do in your local community than to fly all over the world and have to do that, right. So like, I just think being able to walk out your front door twice a month and go to an event and shake people’s hands and look them in the eye and maybe even lead a workshop or look, you know, attend somebody else’s workshop and learn from them. This is how business happens every single day. So I I can’t agree enough. You know, most of my clients are not from the Upstate region or even the New York Region. But a lot of my speaking gigs and a lot of my media gigs have come from people that I’ve met in person at events and this upstate area,

 

Karen Yankovich 39:45
Amen to that I’m like high five and you across New York, right now it was on your virtual high five. It came to me like a few years ago, I was in Texas speaking at the Texas women in business conference. And it was a great group of people they meet once a month for lunch. And, you know, they invited me to speak there. And it was a great opportunity. And I came to I was I was flying home. I was like, I have got to be these opportunities in New Jersey. Why am I on a plane to do this? Right. And I went, but I went out of my way to find them. And I have since found them. And it’s brought an incredible amount of business to my you know, opportunities to my business. So yeah, so yes, yes, yes to all of that. Okay, so what else have we talked to you about when it comes to being a marketer? And and the value of LinkedIn groups?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 40:36
Well, yeah, so there might if I was listening to this podcast, I might ask be asking, okay, so I understand how to how to engage in a group. If I’m a member versus a manager, you know, we’ve given a little bit of information about whether or not to start a group on LinkedIn and kind of the engagement on our platform versus say, other platforms. But I might be asking myself, like, Is it worth starting a group?

 

Karen Yankovich 41:00
That was when I was going next. I just wanted to make sure we covered, I just wanted to make sure we covered the you know, I am not ready to start a group yet. How do I best come? How do I best get that? So we’re right on the same page? Oh, perfect. Let’s go. Yeah.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 41:13
So I would say I love how you just phrase that because you don’t have to be ready to start a group to engage in groups on LinkedIn. So if you’re listening to this, and the idea of adding like, one more thing to your plate is like a non starter, please take the advice of joining a handful of these groups and engaging 20 minutes a week, two or three times a week, I promise you, you’ll see a massive difference. And it’s amazing how many people don’t do that. And listen, Karen, if we could get more people doing that, then these questions about group engagement would be non non lead issue, right?

 

Karen Yankovich 41:43
Yeah.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 41:45
But um, yeah, if you feel like your business, like really the boat, what I would say is if you feel like the bulk of your clients, and your business leads, and your business opportunities are coming from LinkedIn, and you know that another 50 million people like this is where you need to be like, your people are here, and they’re hanging out. I think it’s a non, you know, a no brainer to have a group on LinkedIn, I think that it’s really about where your ideal client is hanging out. And like how you want to engage those clients, and I agree with you, I’m just going to go on record in the Fall of Night, you know, 2019, and say, I don’t think Facebook groups are going to be the hot thing in the next couple of years. I think people are really over them. For a number of reasons. I think people are really over Facebook for a number number.

 

Karen Yankovich 42:38
Absolutely, absolutely.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 42:39
I’m telling you, if I wasn’t an entrepreneur, I probably would have been off that platform within the past year myself. And I’m actually almost not even carrying on. I’m an entrepreneur, and I might be leaving it because I just it’s becoming so bad. So the thing that LinkedIn has always done right from the beginning as it as a members first company. And people really trust our platform. We’ve enlisted them most trusted social media platform two years in a row by all kinds of publications, because we have always put our members data and our members experience before anything else. And so ultimately, I think that know, like and trust factor of LinkedIn is becoming the new hot knowing thing, it hasn’t always been the hot known thing, Karen and I have known for years, we’re about, you know, to have 2000 people that have known but the word is getting out. And I think that if if you really get are getting them, you’re at a place where you’re using LinkedIn, well, you have a great profile, you understand company pages, you’ve been putting out content, you’re sending network connections, and you’re getting a lot of value out of LinkedIn, then a group is a great way to take your LinkedIn game to the next level, for sure.

 

Karen Yankovich 43:50
Okay, so what’s the first step? I mean, obviously started the group ready. But what do you do next? Like how do we get how do you attract people to the group?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 43:57
Yeah, I would say email list. Right? So you have your email list, which hopefully, if you know, I know, we’re not spending today talking about that. But hopefully, if you walk away with one thing, you know that Karen, I think that’s the most important thing. Yes, yes to that, you definitely invite people, you know, through your email list, and then your lead generation, right. So like, for me, I have people who sign up for free v content. And I say, join my group, right, I don’t have a LinkedIn group today, but I will be starting on actually for 2020. But you know, traditionally, it’s been my facebook group. So I get people who are already like seeing my ads, seeing my content, I actually put it on, you know, every YouTube episode, because I have my YouTube show, join my group join my group. So same thing that you’re already probably doing for your Facebook group, you know, you would do it in exactly that same way. And then as you’re connecting with people and kind of building business relationships, say, Hey, you know, wanting to let you know, I have a group where you know, and it’s going to start, I was an intimate group. So you can say it’s an intimate group, or a small group that, you know, is on LinkedIn, where we’re really digging into some of these topics around LinkedIn, for business as an example, or around, you know, leadership in male dominated spaces, whatever your topic is, and I was whether you have five members or 15 members starting out, or whatever the number is, you have to really nurture it. I mean, you really do. Because if you can set the example of asking great questions, answering questions being on there, people will spread the word for you and say, Hey, I’m getting a lot of value out of this group, you should also join this group. So I think the mistake that people make, and I think they make it on every platform, not just LinkedIn is that if they don’t see immediately huge numbers, they’re like, this isn’t working. Right. And they give up and they move on, it’s not going to be big to start, and you just have to be okay with that. And you just have to say, you know, that you’re going to be consistent in in telling people about it and inviting people to it and all the other platforms that you’re using. And I think what’s hard is that because most of us have Facebook groups, I could just hear the audience asking this now, because I would be asking the same thing. Well, why would somebody be in both my facebook group and my LinkedIn group?

 

Karen Yankovich 46:19
Or why would I was just thinking the same thing? Because Because even as a group owner, I’m thinking like, do I need to do a hard cut of that someday? Like the Facebook group is closing the LinkedIn group is is now where we’re, we’re going to be or do we try? I mean, I don’t know there’s a real answer to this. But that’s what was running through my head, I really want more engagement in my LinkedIn group. And is that not going to happen until I close my facebook group? You know, so? And the answer probably is no, but you know,

 

Rebecca Vertucci 46:48
And I think you can think of each as a different thing, right? Like, if you really want to use Facebook for the volume, maybe you have LinkedIn for your clients, just your patronage. Maybe you have a LinkedIn group, just for your VIP students, and you say, Hey, this is where people are, you know, where I’m going to use Facebook to build this audience. But as people are really wanting to go to the next level, and move beyond the basics, we’re here’s our intermediate group on LinkedIn.

 

Karen Yankovich 47:18
Got it? Got it. Like, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay, so so how else can we build a group? You know, the challenge that I have with that, and this is just, you know, Rebecca, and I just literally hashing this out a little bit, is I can’t do video on the group’s yet, I can do video on my Facebook group, you know, and sometimes if I get the same questions a couple times in a row, I’d so much easier, you know, my camera on and say, let me tell you why Sales Navigator is my favorite tool ever, you know, versus having to either record a video and then upload it or whatever, right? Yeah, you know, to YouTube or whatever. So. So it’s not really all that conducive to engagement with a, like a client where you really have, hopefully a higher level engagement than a traditional group.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 48:04
Yeah. I 100% feel you and you’re 100%. Right. And even the fact that you can’t access it on mobile, right. And so therefore, like you’re on the go, and you want to answer a quick question, so I would really say just between you, me and the walls, and anyone listening,

 

Karen Yankovich 48:20
And all the people that listen to podcasts!

 

Rebecca Vertucci 48:23
Yeah, all of the people listening, that I would get really comfortable and engaged with groups that I’m not managing in this moment. And I at the start of 2020, or the end of this year, I would maybe start a small group and test a couple things out. Or if you already have a group and you’re already managing it, start, you know, absolutely doing some more engagement, but just know that it’s going to get better. And that ultimately, you’re kind of putting in some time now, but like not all of your time, and not a ton of your time. But you’re you’re slinging a foundation right now. So that when you’re ready to start doing all those other things, things that you’re excited to do, people are actually paying attention. Because at the at the end of the day, if you’re if you’re just going to try to start once all the features come out and hope that everyone’s engaged right away. It’s that’s not going to work either. Right? Right, right, with testing about setting the foundation of getting these groups in place, knowing your strategy and knowing where you want to focus, like what kind of group Do you want to have on LinkedIn, start small, and then get it going now, like, you know, a few months ahead of time, or maybe at the end of the year, whatever it is, with the intent and knowledge that more will be coming, but you’re getting the foundation in place.

 

Karen Yankovich 49:36
I love that. I love that. And you know, I have had a group for a bunch of years. And there’s a lot of people in it and I go in cycles with it. Because I it is it I do get a little frustrated with the rule changes and you know, things like that. But we’re on an up cycle again, because I really want to start providing value. And truthfully, if I’m going to teach this stuff, I need to be seeing what works, right. So we’re on up cycle again, with our group to see what works best for us and how we can best support our clients around their groups. That being said, You know, I do think it’s, I do think it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing to to create a group now right and and start to get it but I I still wonder, like what I don’t, I don’t know what I’m going to still really do with it yet. I do invite people do it, we do get some engagement in our groups. And a lot of it is relationship building as well, right? You know who else is in the group? And what are you doing? And others will jump in there with questions like, hey, LinkedIn just introduced this, what do you think about this feature? And but here’s the other thing that isn’t that I can’t figure out where this makes a difference where this is going to help me yet. And that is people on Facebook, they hang out on Facebook, right? hang out on LinkedIn, right, you probably hang out on LinkedIn. But a lot of people don’t really hang out on LinkedIn, the way they hang out on Facebook. So they pop into LinkedIn, they see what their message are, and they close it and they leave, right, whether it’s on mobile or desktop, I think just just the you know, the user experience is different, generally, on how we behave on Facebook versus how we behave on LinkedIn, which I think impacts the way we need to manage our groups.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 51:20
You’re 100%, right. I mean, I would say the same is true of Instagram and Twitter. Right. And so I mean, that’s kind of something we joke about at LinkedIn, it’s like, wow, the engagement on those platforms is way higher, you know, if we could get paid for every, you know, every time someone logged in, or no, if they could live in London, they would be doing light years ahead, you know, LinkedIn has really invested in the corporate, professional landscape. And so we have a lot of corporate products and services. And we do a lot of things in our business that, you know, always with members first and building our member platform, but isn’t about being logged in all day, every day, because our people just aren’t logged in all day every day, like you and me are.

 

Karen Yankovich 52:05

But don’t you, I hope they’re looking at the engagement around LinkedIn live. Because the engagement around LinkedIn live is off the charts. I know when I love that, and I think so I think that they’re starting to see that there are ways to keep people hanging out on the platform and having like, even just the ability to kind of chat in the messaging thing. I think that was a big change, where instead of it being your LinkedIn message, I’m like, Hey, you see that little green dot? she messaged them now you can chat with them. Right that’s huge!

 

Rebecca Vertucci 52:33
Yeah, you’re pointing out changes that have already been underway for all the right reasons. So an example is that we have more daily unique visitors than any publishing platform, more than number one publishing content aggregator in the world. So we’re getting 10s and 10s of millions a day of people a day coming to LinkedIn just for content. And so that has made a massive difference over the past five years of how many people are coming to LinkedIn every day, because before, you would only come to LinkedIn if you were looking for a job, right? And so things like content engagement, things like LinkedIn live, things like the messenger app, these are little ways that we’ve already even just being able to upload video is brand new to LinkedIn the past year now. Yeah, so these are ways that we’ve been getting people engaged more and more, I mean, our engagement numbers are just so much more than they ever have been. I mean, they keep climbing quarter over quarter over quarter. So people are on LinkedIn, they are hanging out. So I don’t want to make it seem like people are not hanging out on LinkedIn, you and I both know, people are absolutely hanging out on LinkedIn, they just don’t have it open 10 1220 times a day all day like they do Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Right. And so they’re coming here very intentionally. And I think that that’s why as entrepreneurs, we should be really intentional about how we are engaging them. One of the things that we even says like in our Help Center, about groups or even messaging is that like Spam is the top reason people leave groups or remove connection requests or like contacts. People don’t want to be spammed. And there are you and I both of us are a lot of people teaching LinkedIn right now that are teaching it way wrong. It’s all about quantity and pitching and sales. And all of a sudden, it’s not, that might work on other platforms. I don’t know how it’s working on other platforms. But it certainly doesn’t work on LinkedIn, people are here for authentic professional networking period.

 

Karen Yankovich 54:37
Rebecca, I did a whole episode on that about four or five episodes ago that was literally titled you are spamming your LinkedIn network. You know, I mean, for that same that very thing. Like you are the person that you never were the like encyclopedia salesman that was used to be knocking on doors 20 years ago that people closed their blinds came by, that is who you’re being when you’re doing those things, you know, nobody would wants to see you when you’re, you’re you’re losing your network. And that’s such a valuable network, it drives me crazy. So that’s a nice review.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 55:07
And I could do a whole other episode about messaging best practices, we won’t spend the time today, but at the end of the day, if you want to get if you walk away with one thing from the episode, and people, you know, if it’s a message that you wouldn’t respond to, if it’s an engagement in a group that you want to engage with, or a piece of content, whatever it is, like you are a human being think like a human being, and stop focusing on quantity, quantity, quantity, be authentic, build your business in a real way. Do the work.

 

Karen Yankovich 55:36
Awesome. Okay, so I feel like we’ve been evangelizing for like a half hour. So once I wrap this down to a couple of things, right, we so we talked, we gave some tips around what to do to how to use groups for you know, build your network. And as a marketer, we talked a little bit about how to start to build a group. What else do we need to know about if we want to start our own group? Is there anything we didn’t cover around that? Is there anything else that you want to talk about when it comes to groups? Because I feel like we’re about ready to kind of wrap this? Yeah, no, the thing

 

Rebecca Vertucci 56:06
I would say is that LinkedIn actually does a really good job at having a lot of training and content available for all aspects of our website, I don’t know that they do a good job at telling people that or marketing it. But as a member, there’s a lot of information and LinkedIn Help Center. So basically, when you’re on your profile, under your own photo, you can do like a quick search for topics. And if you go in and look at LinkedIn group or group management, they have a ton of like, best practices and ways to engage and ways to participate. So it’s a lot of things that we talked about today. But if you’re the type of learner that needs like a PDF for a quick tutorial, or some some writing and black and white, LinkedIn actually does an amazing job at having so many resources at people’s fingertips. I just don’t think we make it clear on where to find it. So I just wanted to wrap with that.

 

Karen Yankovich 57:01
Awesome. So I love that. And the other super secret this is coming up in group soon tips for us? Like things. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to lose your job, but

 

Rebecca Vertucci 57:12
I would love to tell you that they tell us everything. I mean, I’ve only gotten the high level myself. But what I will say is that once the official announcements of certain features come my way, Karen awesome them your way, so that you can send them to your audience. Oh, guys, we do do again, a great job at public announcements of things forthcoming, but not a great job at marketing them. That’s always been my one funny joke, when I speak about LinkedIn and about working here is like, they do a ton of great work for the members a ton of stuff for free. so much stuff like free webinars and free content. They just people just don’t know about it.

 

Karen Yankovich 57:45
I think what they do, and I understand this, and why shouldn’t say I understand why I’m, I’ve come to I’ve come to live with this is reality as you wake up one day, and it’s changed. It’s not like they’re saying, oh, okay, on Tuesday, this is going to happen. like Facebook comes out with these big announcements. And this is what’s happening in q4, and I bought LinkedIn, you wake up and something has changed to your email, and you’re like, Oh, that’s so cool, or is it? Cool? What do I do with this? So so you’re right, they have been doing some amazing things that we’ve talked about some of the amazing things here. But you just wake up and find out that it’s changed. Like one of the things that’s changed since we’ve talked last, I think, which I think is a huge change in LinkedIn, to my knowledge has never talked about it, is they changed the name of the summary to about I think that is a huge change. It’s a tiny little change with massive psychological implications. And you just, I just woke up one day, and it was there. I was like, wait, what did this change? You know? So anyway?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 58:45
Yeah, I think you’re you’re totally right. With every platform with every tech platform, there’s things that change that, that they might announced, but we might have missed or that they didn’t announce, and that is my everyday reality with LinkedIn. So I think, Oh, my gosh, the constant in life is changed. So the way that we navigate that is knowing that especially in technology, yeah, this is a joke that some some new platform will be out tomorrow. And that is what’s you know, both exciting and hard about being an entrepreneur is keeping on top of all of it. So I would say, you know, with all the bright shiny object syndrome, and fun things you can do in your business, make sure at the end of the day, that you’re just engaging the right people in the right way for your business. And keep it simple, you know,

 

Karen Yankovich 59:33
Yeah, and you mentioned this a few times, and it bears repeating, even though it has nothing to do with necessarily LinkedIn groups. You know, because of the fact that we don’t own these platforms, and we don’t have any control of them. Be sure you’re all of these things. You know, this is the hub of your business is your email list, not LinkedIn, or any other platform us because we we’ve got an amazing resource at our fingertips that’s free, although I love Sales Navigator, use it. But use it to to funnel everything back to your business back to your website back to your list. Cool and

 

Rebecca Vertucci 1:00:06
Also value your value your lesson value to your members privacy and, and nourish it. And honestly, that’s that’s where the magic is with building a brand and the business and building a community. So treat your people well, and all the rest will fall into place.

 

Karen Yankovich 1:00:21
Awesome Rebecca, thank you so much for being here with us and to tell people how they could find more out about you tell us about your YouTube channel. Yeah, and what else they can do to follow you?

 

Rebecca Vertucci 1:00:32
Well, I always like to tell people that I am on this platform called LinkedIn. And under Rebecca for TG, so please don’t hesitate to reach out and connect with me. I’m always happy especially like Karen said after our last episode, lots of people reached out and I love being connected. So that’s one, I am on YouTube under the Verducci group, which is also our website. And ultimately I put out weekly episodes about business is development, about career development. Sometimes it’s about LinkedIn sometimes about all the other things Karen and I mentioned, but didn’t dive into today. And that is what I would say we have some unique courses and some different things on the website. So definitely check that out. And I’m always available for any sort of keynote speaking, workshop conference speaking, so if anyone listening knows anybody that needs that for their company, I’m your girl.

 

Karen Yankovich 1:01:25
Cool. Thank you so much for this. This was so fun. You might have to be our very first third time. I got you a binary for Leo. Yeah. Bob Murray. Alright, so we’ll have to think about if you guys are listening to this, if there’s a topic that Rebecca and I either touched on or you want us to dive deeper into, let me know. And we’ll, you know, maybe that will be the next show we do we do together because I think she’s just a great resource for the show. And I think, you know, there’s a part of me, Rebecca that says, maybe I should bring people on that have different points view than me on how to approach the agenda, then I’ll just be annoyed the whole time. So I like that we think alike where this comes? Because I don’t get just I think it reinforces the importance of how to be authentic.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 1:02:11
Yeah don’t listen to any of those people teaching all the bad tactics.

 

Karen Yankovich 1:02:14
Gosh. Okay, thank you so much for being here. And we definitely want to have you back. So hopefully, you’ll reach that at some point soon.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 1:02:24
And always a pleasure.

 

Karen Yankovich 1:02:26
You know. Let’s go with our groups. Guys. I think it’s time.

 

Rebecca Vertucci 1:02:30
Yeah, this is the time strike while the iron is hot. Thanks, Karen.

 

Karen Yankovich 1:02:36
All right, take care.

 

So another fun episode with Rebecca. We always enjoy chatting, you can go to speakpipe, Karenyankovich.com/speakpipe. I’m sorry. Yeah, I think that’ll work actually, or Karenyankovich.com/091. And you’ll see a link to speakpipe. And you can tell us what you want Rebecca, and I have to talk about next on the good girls get rid of podcast if we can convince her come back again.

 

So I hope that that was helpful, I please make sure that you join, my LinkedIn group will put links in that to the show notes. But you can go to Karenyankovich.com/LinkedIngroup to get to that. But also remember that when you’re when you when you’re active in these groups, it’s really important that you have done the work of your profile first. Because when people check you out, right, whether you own a group or you’re active in a group, people are going to check out your profile, you have to have done that first. And we have an amazing, free LinkedIn profile challenge that we’re running again for the first time and I think five years in October of 2019. If you’re listening to this in replay, don’t worry about it, we’re gonna come back, you can still get on the waitlist.

 

So if you go to LinkedInprofilechallenge.com, you can either get on the waitlist or get in on the challenge live, depending on when you click on that either way, even if you’ve done the challenge before do it again. Because there’s always new things to learn your challenge is a living, breathing thing. And imagine if at the end of a week, your challenge was just done. It was done, you’re good. You show up like a big deal. And you’re ready to rock and roll on LinkedIn. So don’t miss this out. Join us at LinkedIn profile challenge. com, get on the waitlist given on the live challenge, depending on when you’re listening to this and get this take get this off your to do is once and for all. This is not your brother’s challenge. This is our challenge.

 

We’re going to go behind your profile to the heart behind your profile, we’re going to push you a little bit to show up how you want to show up how you want to be seen. It’s not just tactical, is a lot of emotion and mindfulness behind this challenge. So it is like we’re really excited to to present this challenge to you in this new way. I don’t think anybody’s doing what we’re doing with this and I can’t wait for you to see it. LinkedIn profile challenge. com check it out. All right. We’ll be back next week with another episode of the good girls get rich podcast. Don’t forget, if you haven’t already take a quick screenshot of this episode and share it on your phone. Share that on your social media so that I can share it with my audience and then we both get more visibility. The bottom line is I am here to support you. I want this to be simple for you. Most of the work we do is upfront and I’m offering things like this free challenge to hold your hand every step of the way. Let it be simple I’ll see you back here again next week.