90. LinkedIn Makeover w/ Donna Serdula: SEO, Personal Branding, Keywords (part 1)

In this conversation, we will be diving deep into the world of LinkedIn -- from learning how to create impactful posts, optimizing your SEO through keywords and becoming a recognized industry expert, to effectively building a personal brand and empowering your employees to become brand ambassadors. 

This three-part episode series is a gold mine for anyone looking to make a powerful impression on LinkedIn.  

Donna Serdula is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond.  Bringing dynamic brand storytelling to the masses and empowering people to dream big – that’s the ink in her pen. It's her Website LinkedIn-Makeover.com where she and her team of over 20 writers and coaches help people collide with opportunity and transform their lives via future-forward career branding.

She has authored two editions of LinkedIn Profile Optimization FOR DUMMIES. She's shared her LinkedIn expertise at global conferences, presented keynotes and workshops, and featured on a number of high-profile news outlets.

Donna's website: http://www.linkedin-makeover.com/
Donna's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todonna

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Transcript

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this week we have a very special guest, Donna Sardula, I, my name is Donna Sardula. My company is called Vision Board Media, and that's where we help executives along with companies brand themselves, tell their stories on LinkedIn and beyond. This week, we have the pleasure of hosting a luminary in the field of personal and professional branding, Donna Sordula. As the founder and president of Vision Board Media, Donna has revolutionized the way we engage on LinkedIn. Her company is powered by an outstanding team of writers and coaches, and she has transformed lives and careers through innovative online branding strategies. She is the author of LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Dummies and is renowned for sharing her wisdom at global conferences and through various high profile news outlets. In this conversation, we will be diving deep into the world of LinkedIn from learning how to create impactful posts, optimizing your SEO through keywords and becoming a recognized industry expert to effectively building a personal brand and empowering your employees to become brand ambassadors. This three part episode series is a gold mine for anyone looking to make a powerful impression on LinkedIn. Welcome to Upskill Talks, I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, lead Upskill at Upskill Community. Upskill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact. Lead themselves and others in every episode through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenges and opportunities real leaders face in today's everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies. For you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. Thanks for the intro. And yeah, I'm really excited for today's conversation. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. And thank you very much again for coming Donna. And I am super excited to have in, to have this conversation with you. I'm very, very keen on, on LinkedIn. And before we even jump into talking about. The strategies that Flora discussed that we really want to share with our leaders. Let us begin from the beginning and Donna, what is LinkedIn? What do our leaders need to know? LinkedIn is a professional. network. I think that just in itself is, is such a differentiator. Um, you know, people go on Facebook and TikTok and what is it now? X? I don't even know what to call it. Um, and they, they really, they, they do it for entertainment. They do it for social reasons. They, you know, they do it for networking certainly, but, but LinkedIn is the place to go for, for business, for your career, for your professional. Aspirations and and that I think right there is is huge. So it's a place to build your network. It's a place to build your brand. It's it's a place to go to to stay up on the industry. It's it's a place to go to really market yourself, but not in an obnoxious way, but in a very authentic real way where you're helping people. You're inspiring, you're motivating and you're doing good along the way. Yes. Yes. Yes. And one thing that I always say to, to, um, to our listeners is no one size fits all. So it's really important that if you have a different kind of business or organization that needs another social media outlet LinkedIn. Is the right social media platform, and it doesn't have to be the only one. It certainly doesn't have to be the only one. Um, but at the same time, I, I do find that for a lot of professionals, LinkedIn works very well. Yes, yes, yes. LinkedIn is great. I even talked to students about it. We do have students who, for instance, are in online Careers where there is a lot of visuals and so on that may use other, uh, social media platforms like Instagram or so on. And yet we encourage them to have that presence on LinkedIn so that they're connected to where other professionals are connected. And we've got an expert in the house to really give us great guidance on what we need to be doing on LinkedIn. Next thing I want to share before we jump further in Donna is why. Why is it that we need to take some time, not just to say I'm on LinkedIn, but to really understand what LinkedIn is, how it works and how we can best leverage it. You know, I think getting deliberate on your goal and getting deliberate in your career is always a good thing. Most people really don't think of where they're headed, what they're doing. Um, but LinkedIn specifically the profile. It, it's, it's an important thing to get deliberate to understand why you're on it, what you're trying to accomplish, who are you, what do you represent, all of those good things. So, you know, for, with LinkedIn and that profile, the clearer you get, the more focus you get, the more success you're going to have. On the network and Donna, one of the things that as you talked about, um, about just sort of the use of it, that profile, it is from your profile that I went to learn how to pronounce your name accurately. So it's really thought of that, that place where you go for that public resume that public profile that helps us to connect like Donna and I went and checked each other's profiles before coming to talk. So she has an idea of who I am. I have an idea of who she is. And even down to how to pronounce her name effectively, I was able to glean from LinkedIn. So it's that kind of space. It depends on how you use it, how much of it you use, and it's all of the capabilities that Donna is here to talk us through this evening. You know, and the other part, Michelle, is that you knew that I checked you out. I knew that you checked me out and it was almost a little bit of a due diligence there, right? Yes. And I think that's something a lot of People forget about, you know, when, when I'm hiring, or if I'm going to be working with a consultant and I don't see that check. I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, yes, yes, even, and I think, I think that's worthy of a little bit of a conversation Donna because We have a lot of people who are interfacing and we're in a virtual world. And there are, there are some responsibilities when we're in that virtual world. And so for instance, one challenge that we have in society right now is people, people have a name issue. Like you didn't pronounce my name. You mispronounce my name. I want my name to be pronounced properly and so on. And I was able to give you that respect by going to LinkedIn, listen over and over to the correct pronunciation to be able to give it a good try. Right. And I think that, as you said, that due diligence when you're meeting with someone, whether it's for this type of conversation, whether it's an interview, whether it's a pitch, whatever that is, even if it's social, this is such an important piece. It gives you that platform where everything is there. Right, Donna? It's it's there and it's been catered. Hopefully it's been catered to be the target audience. It's been catered to you. So I want you to know what to think about me. I want you to. I want to feed you the right information so you have a good sense of who I am and what I represent and what I'm all about. And that should go vice versa. You know, There is the there is certainly now they sadly took away the profile video from us that that was a really fabulous feature that was just removed in June, but we still have the ability to state our name, and we still have the ability to do the featured media on top of our about section. So we can we can add videos of us. Introducing ourselves when we want to, we can have, uh, you know, tons of information that really showcases us in a multimedia type of way. But, but I think for a lot, for a long time, there was this fear. Oh, I don't want them to see that. I looked at their profile. I don't want them to know. And, and, and you can turn yourself to anonymous, but that's not the right way to go. You can actually. It's prospect, simply by looking at profiles. And what I liked about what you talked about earlier is that piece around self awareness because earlier you talked about LinkedIn provides us opportunity for sort of intentionality, understanding our goals and being intentional about those goals. And what I've just heard you say is about us understanding who we are, who we want to connect with and how we're going to position ourselves or frame brand. Present ourselves to the people, the particular people that we want to have these conversations with, to connect with, to look at us. And it's, it's a form of respect. If you think about it, you know, I don't want to give you this huge compendium of everything, half of which you don't care about, but it's really, it's being specific and saying, this is the most important things. This is what you need to know. And it's also recognizing that we're very complex human beings. There are so many things that we bring to the table. But this is a piece that I want the company. I want the public. I want my listeners, my, my followers. This is what I want you to focus on about me. So for instance, Donna, you have multiple other roles outside of leading in terms of developing people to, to work more intentionally on their LinkedIn profiles. But this is the piece that you're saying, this is the piece that I want you to interface with me on. So it allows you that layer of specificity. Absolutely. Right. So then how can we, so first of all, how can we build effective relationships on LinkedIn? How can we use LinkedIn as a medium for establishing, initiating, building, deepening, leveraging relationships? Yeah. It starts first with getting, again, I've already said this, I'll say it again. You need to get deliberate on your goal. You LinkedIn. Not everyone is on LinkedIn. Because they're looking for a job. Some are doing it because they want a long and fruitful career. Some people want to be seen as an expert. Some people are doing it because they're looking for partnerships. Some people are looking for investment opportunities or they're looking for investors. I could keep going. There's so many reasons why people. May decide to, to get on LinkedIn. So you need to know upfront what are you trying to get on it, what are you trying to get out of it? If you don't know mm-hmm. You're never gonna get there. So get deliberate, then figure out who your target audience is. Mm-hmm. And, and really start to think, who am I? What do I need them to know about me? What, what is going to be helpful to developing this type of a relationship? Mm-hmm. once. Once you get the, you have the strategy down the, the foundation from there is optimizing your profile and telling that story, telling it in an engaging way, not, not copying and pasting an out of date resume or an old bio. It's, it's really getting, getting engaging and conversational and, and utilizing it as a, as a, almost as a professional manifesto. Right, where you really say, this is who I am, this is what I do, this is why it matters. Once you have that, at that point, it's now time to start to network and start to build that network. If you don't do these things and you just jump in and you start posting on LinkedIn or you just start connecting with people, you're going to find the door slamming shut in your face over and over and over again. You're going to say, uh, this, this pro, this, you know, this network is useless. It's, it's not useless. You have to go in through the front door and, and, and systematically move through, if you really want success. So know your goal, optimize that profile, start to build the network and make sure that all of the people that you've known, you've met, you've, you've engaged with, these are people that you, you are sending invites to people that you don't know yet, you follow, and then you start to pay attention to what they're posting. Once you have that network, at least a good size network, at that point, that's when you can start to, to relate to people. And that's when you start to get onto LinkedIn and you scroll through the feed and you start to see what people are writing about. What are they posting? And you start to engage and you start to comment. And it's not about leaving, you know, 90 comments that say, congrats. Or good luck, or isn't that interesting, but where you really dive in to these posts and, and relate to it, add your feedback, add your opinion and, and talk with yourself out there, put yourself out there. And hopefully, and LinkedIn has stated this, the LinkedIn feed is people, you know, talking about the things you care about. And if that. Yeah, if that's the mission that tells you everything you need to know. It's getting in there, interfacing with those people that, that you're connected to, that you know, and having conversations in the posts through those comments. And it's not just a one time comment. It's, it's you commenting, them commenting, you coming back, and maybe a third person jumping in and adding something. That's when the magic happens. Yes, yes, yes. And there's so much, so much that you've said in there that I want to tease out some more. Donna, thank you very much for sharing those insights. One of the things, let me go to emerging leaders. Let me go to higher ed students coming into the workforce. Let me go to that place and as a starting point, and we see, we see Emerging leaders, higher ed students, young professionals, afraid to put an image on LinkedIn. We still see that I am not comfortable to put my picture up. I am not comfortable to put myself out there really is what that says. And at the same time, I would like to connect with Donna to learn about LinkedIn, but I am not comfortable to put myself out there. How do we help someone get over that hurdle? We've learned a ton about leveraging LinkedIn for personal and professional branding, but there is so much more to come next week, where Donna shares her top secret tips for how to drive engagement on LinkedIn. We are so excited to announce that next week, Upskill Live will be turning into a pitch den for founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, business leaders, and anybody looking to pitch themselves and network. You have the chance to come on, pitch yourself or your company, critique other founders pitches, learn in a collaborative way and meet like minded leaders looking to upskill. Please check the description for more information Thank you for listening to this episode of Upskill Talks. We bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe. Leave a five star rating and a written review at Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to share Upskill talks with other leaders like yourself, so they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to upskill community.com to review show notes, and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, and again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Upscale Talks.