The Security Circle

EP 039 Teddy Burriss Everything You Want To Know About LinkedIn And Were Too Afraid To Ask

• Teddy Burriss • Season 1 • Episode 39

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Teddy Burriss is a LinkedIn Strategist, Trainer, and Google Workspace Advisor.


Beginning in 2009 Teddy has been using his business experiences, Dale Carnegie Training, DDI Leadership skills, Sander Sales Training, Certified Social Media Strategist, Certified Career Transition Coach, and Toastmaster skills to deliver LinkedIn Training programs for business professionals in all types of industries guiding individuals in many different roles with the best practices and tactics of using LinkedIn as a business tool. In 2020 Teddy began working on his YouTube channels - Using LinkedIn as a Business Tool and Using Google Workspace for business.

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linkedin.com/in/tlburriss

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  • 336-283-6121 (Work)



Email
tlburriss@burrissconsulting.com

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Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Yoyo:

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle Podcast. Ifpo is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and we are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members' mental health and wellbeing. Now, got a little treat for you today, this young man who I'm going to have a chat with stemmed because most of you know I had a. Issue with my access to LinkedIn recently, which we can talk about. I was actually restricted from using LinkedIn for three weeks, and I'm still not clear exactly what I did that potentially breached some of their terms and conditions. So I then went out and thought I need to find me an expert. So found me an expert. I found me an expert called Teddy Burris, and Teddy is a guru when it comes to LinkedIn. Teddy, welcome to the Security Circle Podcast,

Terry:

yoyo. I'm happy to have a conversation with you and I hope that what I share with you can be beneficial to your security professionals who listen to you. If I may challenge that definition of Teddy Burris as a LinkedIn guru, I'm a LinkedIn practitioner. Which means just as my doctors and my lawyers, I have to practice every day to be able to figure out how to do LinkedIn better than I did before.

Yoyo:

Well, I know that the one thing we all have in common is that we all have a LinkedIn account because a lot of the listenership find the Security Circle podcast through LinkedIn. It's my primary business forum. Even though we are across all other relevant social medias, some relevant, some not so relevant. Tell me, what do you love about LinkedIn or is this a love hate relationship,

Terry:

Teddy? Well, it is a love hate relationship. But I'm very clear that 900, I think it's 954 or 958 million people are on LinkedIn today. And it's a it grows by about, I'm checking my number to make sure I say the right number. 945 million by way. I think that means there was a purge, but it's an important place. It's an important networking place. It's a place for humans to meet other humans and say hello and have conversations and discover new ideas and philosophies. But as a LinkedIn trainer, coach, strategists, here's the hate part. And I say that, satirically a little bit. It changes so fast that every day I'm like, oh my God, that video's now too old. That's the wrong, I'm producing a new video today because the last one was wrong. A again, the hate part is because it keeps changing. But you know what, yoyo, that's also the love part because for the most part, LinkedIn keeps changing for the better. So, to answer your question, the love part is it's a place for humans to meet humans.

Yoyo:

I think I've been a LinkedIn user and both a paid and non-paid user over the years since I think 2008, 2009, something like that. Long long time. But when my privileges were withdrawn, I felt a sense of bereavement, 100%. Not only was I at the time, speculatively job hunting, starting up a new business needing my network. Who are my extension of the outer world that I'm connected to. It's also the platform that I, make my podcast services available, my pro bono podcast streams. Yeah. And so when they cut that access I was so desperately upset. I remember the first time I was so desperately upset. So, before we go into the intricacies of LinkedIn etiquette and where people can go wrong, let's talk about the kind of journey for the professional, the journey in this case, security professionals and why LinkedIn is pivotal to an individual wherever they are in their career.

Terry:

Yeah. And by the way, that the story about you felt, bereaved. I remember probably now about seven or eight years ago, and mind you, I make a living teaching LinkedIn as a business tool. About seven or eight years ago, LinkedIn was down for four hours and I was walking around my home office twiddling my thumbs, and my business partner boss, c e o c f o, wife said, what are you doing? I said, well, LinkedIn's down right now, and I'm waiting for it to come back. And I see this look on her face, and she says to me, well, what happens if it doesn't come back? So right there, there's bereavement right there. So, so, and fortunately it did, and it hasn't been down for that long of a period of time since then. Look, the journey is this, yo, it's very clear to me. It's all about humans meeting humans. So when we go networking in real life, We wanna show up. Ideally we wanna show up looking good. We want a nice clean shirt. We want, you clean slacks, maybe we polish our shoes, or at least make sure there's no dung all over'em. And then, that's called presence. And you do the same thing on LinkedIn. You create presence so you look good. So when people see you, they go, that dude's all about security, or that lady's all about security. And I can tell because they walk the walk and talk to talk from their profile. And the other thing, this journey of using LinkedIn as a security professional or any professional of that matter is, if you're a security professor, you're not typically gonna walk into a pole dancing club and spend time hanging out with people to learn pole dancing. As I use a very, satirical analogy here. You're not gonna do that on a regular basis or publicly. So you're gonna show up in groups of people who are similar to you. Well say they on LinkedIn. You're gonna connect with people who are similar to you, relevant to you, people you know, similar or relevant to where you want to go, by the way, not just who you are. That's called dub Professional Networking. And then the last big piece of this journey of using LinkedIn yoyo is that you, again, in a networking event, you don't get into conversations you know about cryptocurrency or you know about, embezzling or, or about all these little topics that are irrelevant to what you do or want to do. You're going to get into conversations that are relevant to your journey. Likewise, on LinkedIn, you're not, you're gonna share content that's of interest and relevant. You're gonna look for conversations that are relevant. That's the journey presence, the right network and the right conversations. And by the way, your audience can't see. And actually I don't know that you could see it if we were still online. You can't see what's above my head. So let me show yo-yo what's above my head. Boom. Can you read what it says there?

Yoyo:

It says, it all starts with a conversation. Yeah. So I've got this yellow Post-it note here that I'm just waving in front of Teddy because it says, it all starts with the conversation. I remember that it was so impactful from the last time that I've slipped into conversations with other people I think it's very relevant to today's society. What does it mean to you then? Why have you got it written up behind you?

Terry:

Well, so I studied a dude who's dead, who wrote a book in the late thirties, 1930s, by the way. And the book was titled How to Win Friends and Influence People. Now, do you know who wrote that book? Yoyo.

Yoyo:

I remember that's, I remember the phrase from its origins and there was a movie I think that came out like that. Something like

Terry:

that. If Dale Carnegie is a dude who wrote the book, I studied Dale Carnegie for a long time, and Dale Carnegie's all about people, meeting people to building relationships with people. And throughout the book I kept reading that it's all about how you talk with that person. Not to that person, but talk with that person. It's all about listening and having conversations. And that resonated with me so much that I created that, this little quote and it's been with me forever. And now it's an eight foot long statement on the back of my office wall that shows up on my camera for me to see, to remind me, ask questions, Teddy and listen.

Yoyo:

I was so glad that you responded. I actually tweeted you because I saw your name somewhere and I think I,'cause I'm not a blue tick, some people have this restriction in being being able to DMM or receive a DMM from anybody without a blue tick. But you responded and I'm so grateful because I realized, we've all got something in common. Most of us who are on LinkedIn want to be part of a conversation, but there's this kind of ways it can go wrong. Like, I've had people approach me and send me a message and I've probably had a very sincere reason to want to get to know me. But it's all, it's come across a bit like a Spanish Inquisition. Like, I'd love to really know what you do, what do you do? And I'm thinking, well, I just don't feel very comfortable telling a stranger what I do. But if we'd met in a network environment, I'd be there telling a stranger what I do. What's the best way to go about that,

Terry:

do you think? So this morning I coached a lady and on how to use LinkedIn and in one of my programs and I watched her as she's sending a, the first message to an invite message to someone. And in the invite message she says, I hope we can connect and have a conversation. And I told her, I said don't say those words.'cause you're hoping that, that per it's assumed that you're hoping you're gonna connect because you're sending an invite and it's again and I studied the English language. I which is, very dynamic. I studied Ralph Waldo Emerson, Zig Ziglar, Norman Vince Peele, a bunch of freaking dead people. And one of the things I discovered is that the words that we use have an impact on the results of the actions. And so we need, and again I don't think that I would walk up to you in, in, in real life, yoyo at a networking event where you're standing there holding a glass of shali and I'm holding an I p A and a, and a biscuit in the other hand, I'm not gonna walk up to you and go, Hey Yoyo, I hope we can connect. No. Yeah. Those are not words we use. I think it's just, you need to really think through, I say this, write it, say it out loud. And when you say it out loud, if it doesn't resonate or sounds stupid, delete it and say it again. It's really, it's assumed on network that an invite hopes for acceptance and a connection. And for me, I'm not gonna ask you to tell me all about you. Look, a lady said to me the other day, Hey, tell me what your business is all about so I know more about you. Oh, know what my response was? My response was, look at my LinkedIn profile. And I don't think I said dinging bad out loud, because that's what my LinkedIn profile tells you what my business is all about. I think we, we miss that it's humans engaging with humans, and I'm with you, yoyo. I'll stop ranting in a minute. Too often the, we get bombarded by idiots and fakes and scammers and hackers and all that stuff, and they're gonna use stupid words. Don't use stupid words. Use human words. Yeah. Rant over for now.

Yoyo:

Well, I've got something else that you might rant about. I'm sure we've all had those requests to connect that have looked relevant because of the nature of the business. And then the minute you connect, you get a sales mail. That's literally, we offer this, we do this, we can do this for your business dah. And sometimes it's long and sometimes it's just, oh my God, seriously, you haven't even qualified me as to whether I'm the sort of person you should be pitching at. It's great pitch, but why? It's one of those kind of like, you can tell it's just being sent out to everybody. Do you have any ideas and suggestions for,'cause sometimes you just, sometimes I know I was only targeted for the position I had in a former business. I was seen as a major decision maker for sales and salespeople. And I knew that they were only approaching me because of the job title I had. And so sometimes I just wanted to say, I'm not in the market to really, I had to think really hard. How can I be courteous? But also, succinct, I'm just not in the market, but thanks for approaching me. I'm not in the market. I even googled. Great responses to unsolicited sales mail, to see if I could come up with something that was kind, but also bugger off.

Terry:

I just wrote down on my little sticky note, which I used for actions. Do you see what it says right there? Yes. Get a soap box. I need a soap box because you just gave me permission to get on my freaking soapbox. Okay. first of all, if someone sends me an invite and I respond back to them, which by the way, you can, any, everybody can do this. A lot of people don't know they can do this, but you can do, you can respond to every invite without accepting it. Okay? So I respond to every invite without accepting, unless I clearly know who you are. And I can respect you and accept the invite, and my message is gonna be very politely. Very politely, yo-yo. But this is what I'm saying. Who the hell are you and what the hell do you want? Now I say it in very polite words. Okay? Yeah. And so, so I give them the opportunity to say something meaningful and relevant to me. But you know what? I get in response. Hey Teddy, thanks for accepting my invite, by the way, look at this shiny thing I'm selling. You need to buy it. And, yo-yo, look, I'm with you. I'm a professional. I'm empathetic, I'm compassionate. I have to make sure my brand doesn't get destroyed with my words, but my response back is, screw off. I say it yoyo, I say it in very polite words. Yeah. And by the way, I would never, someone pitches to me the moment they connect. I would never say thank you for the offer. Never. Because I am not appreciative of the offer. So why do you wanna say thank you? So again, in very polite words, I say, here's my newest phrase, cool. That what you have is not relevant to me in any way. I wish you all the best in your endeavors as you focus on other targets.

Yoyo:

I can see a lot of people reaching for a Post-it note now or an I iPhone note just to write that phrase down'cause I will be, that's a really good quote. What other significant fails have you seen of lates that you seem that are just repetitive and maybe people should just have more awareness about what they are and what a nuisance they are.

Terry:

Look you, how much time do we have? Girl? Here's a few, here's a few. Go on. When I let my my device talk to me when I'm working with you, like, Alexa, don't disturb me. Here's a few. Yeah. Number one, and I've seen this for all the time where people will, they'll fill out their LinkedIn profile, but make it really look good for who they are. They're the president of this company, and so they're, they have their phone number and their email address and their website for their prior company, and then they have them under their experience section and all this great, informative information about the prior company. And then they quit that job and they become c e o of another organization, a competing organization. And when you look at their profile months later, not days, which is bad enough, but months later, it still references the old website, the old email address, the old phone number, and the old company, even though they're now the c e o of a competitor, Yeah, people let their LinkedIn profiles linger and they don't pay attention to it. They don't manage it, and it totally misrepresents, if not what's the word I'm looking for? Just respects who they are today. That's a big one. Which is ugly. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's other bad etiquette as you said. Send an invite and then send a pitch that's about as ugly as you can get. Spell the person's name wrong. I get you LinkedIn messages to Terry all the time. T e r y. And I don't get all bent outta shape about it. Let me get off my soapbox for a minute. I mean, there's other ones too. Like another one may be that they have a LinkedIn profile. They're pretty active about connecting. They never engaged. The last thing they did was five years ago where they commented on some slinky image that they shouldn't even have commented on, is on the top of their activity. So, they just they, remember it's networking. You don't walk into a networking event and stand in a corner drinking your, what's the good drink in in your space, drinking some sake and nnu nibbling on some some casserole. You walk in and you get into conversations and that's, yeah, I might put that one at the top of my big fails. So, there's a lot, and it really comes down to this, yo-yo, for anybody, including the security professionals, look at what you're doing, look at what you're saying. If you haven't said something in a while, remember you're hanging out with a bunch of your peers and people who are relevant to you, maybe interested in you. So do something and make sure you're, your name tag is appropriate.

Yoyo:

I personally don't enjoy videos where a woman is specifically trying to grab attention. So she's put herself gyrating to yoga positions,

Terry:

and so are you telling me I should stop doing that?

Yoyo:

I just think I, I'm quite a stickler for what should be LinkedIn content and what should be for one zone Facebook account, and I just, I sometimes I just think, oh gosh, you've just, you've kind of sold yourself out. You've put something there that's quite clearly suggestive, very eye catching for a one gender, and yet really you are communicating a whole other different message. But all I'm seeing is what you are doing on this video, and it's just very suggestive. Maybe I, that came up today and the amount of comments on that post, I'm thinking, well, it's clearly working, but I think it cheapens the professional community ethics.

Terry:

Okay, so the mail in me, now, mind you, the words I'm about ready to say here, listen to all of'em, not just you Be careful. Now, Terry, the mail in me says, send me that. U r l The professional in me says, I get it. There's a lot of click bait out there. Yeah. And a lot of people use different types of click bait. Let me tell you, I can dress up pretty freaking provocative, but that's not my style. And so Yoyo I remember I studied Dale Carnegie years ago, and so I have to think this way. This is important for me to think that person is misled. That person doesn't know better. Yeah. That person thinks this is the right way to do it. And it's not my place to judge what is my responsibility. Yo-yo is for me to move on to the next conversation. And I'm pretty deliberate about, but I'm with you. I get it. And I'm not one of these guys, or I'm not one of these LinkedIn members who says there's a distinct line between Facebook and LinkedIn because I don't think there is a distinct line. I think there is some logic in the conversations on LinkedIn are more public and broader and should represent your brand or at least not disrespect your brand in any way. And by the way, your brand is personal and professional, so I'm okay with you posting something personal on there. As long as it's professionally delivered, and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with the pictures of my brand new baby. I'm okay with the pictures of my son going to school. But write it in a way that it resonates with your target audience and is not. Click bait or self-serving. Is that, did I say that right?

Yoyo:

Yeah. Where it's relational to the business community. So for example, I love seeing people's personal posts when they're going up mountains with their business for raising money for certain charities. And the business is co-sponsoring what they're doing. And you're seeing progress updates and some of them can be incredibly insightful. And I posted once a Snapchat photograph of a selfie of myself and my cat with face masks on, like we were going to the spa and it was the funniest thing I've ever posted. But the message was, be kind to yourself, remind yourself all the time that it's not just about work, it's sometimes about thinking and checking in with yourself and saying, what do I need? Am I okay? Okay, let's just have a mindfulness moment. And then got loads. It got loads of lights. I'm not chasing lights. I had a post go viral once. It got 600,000 views and several thousand comments. And I, and it was during Covid and it was a post around leadership that I was not the author of, but I'd found, and I posted and accredited the author. And it was quite exhilarating having a post generate that much activity. But I was quite grounded in that. I thought, I don't really need to generate this all the time. It is happened. Great. It's fun when it happens, but it's quite a lot of high maintenance and I wouldn't wanna be chasing that all the time. What do you have to say about chasing high high

Terry:

clicks, chasing viral posts? Yeah. So first of all, I'm not gonna judge you for taking your cat to get your Manny pet done, because I take my pet goldfish with me often. But move that aside. I will say to you that first of all, never ever post anything, hope and praying'cause hope and pray are not business tactics. Do not hope and pray that it goes viral.'cause that's not what this is. You don't walk into a networking event and want to be the, always wanna be the center of attention. That will fail miserably because your fly is down or your shoe's untied. Yeah. But what you need to do and I'm with you, yo I've had a few posts over the years that went quote unquote viral and that's, like I'm slapping myself on the back. Good job, petty. It's fun, but it doesn't create business value. That's 600,000 views. I'm willing, I'm almost willing to bet you got no business out of that.

Yoyo:

No, I mean, I wasn't in the business to get business out of that. I was employed, but

Terry:

Yeah, it was but there's a lot of people who post content and they go hope and pray it goes viral and they can get business out it. That's just not how it works. Yeah. So what, what's really more important is to be to be consistent, to be focused. I call it lead with give you post content that can be a benefit to the other person and that other person that you're hoping to be benefit to is your target audience. Not every time Dick Harry on the internet. So yeah, when that happens, you get excited and you do a selfie of you. I got 167 likes on my Snapchat. But just do things with purpose. Focus on your goals.

Yoyo:

What does LinkedIn how does LinkedIn want people to use its platform?'cause that seems to change, right? What my understanding is the way LinkedIn wanted you to use its platform maybe five years ago, is very different to how LinkedIn wants you to use the platform now. So when it sees you not using the platform in the way that it wants you to, this is where I have a personal dilemma of how now I think social media platforms are generally becoming way too powerful. You get kicked off LinkedIn and all of a sudden you are ostracized in a minority market. So when it's got all the power, Sometimes it's better to play along the lines of the rules. Okay? So how can we advise people now that we understand what LinkedIn and how it wants you to use it? So I'm reading

Terry:

a book called, oh, I had to go reach for it. I'm reading a book called the YouTube Formula. Okay? It's written by a pretty smart dude by the name of Darrell, d e r a l, Eves, Darrell Eves. The fore word is written by a dude named Jimmy Donaldson, who on YouTube is referred to as Mr. Beast. Okay? Now I share that with you because in the book and Mr. B says this, and Darrell says this, play the game the way they want you to play it. Use the tool and follow the rules. And that's how you're gonna and under and understand the rules. Understand how that works, and that's how you're gonna get the greatest value from it. Now, to answer your question more deliberately is LinkedIn wants you to get into conversations Now. They just say, get into conversation. I'm gonna tell you get into conversations with the right people. Furthermore, LinkedIn wants you not just to create content, but create content that creates conversation station. It is one thing to have a post that gets a bunch of freaking, like, boom, there's someone banging in their forehead against the keyboard hitting the light button. If something else, the next level is to create content that gets a bunch of comments. Well, that's nice. Well and good as well. But here's where LinkedIn wants you to do. They want you to create content that people comment and reply to because the presence of content that creates comments and replies. That in fact is a conversation. It's engagement. And the more, and think about this yoyo, the more you create content and give and share content, that creates conversations. The more people hang out on LinkedIn. Yeah, well, boom. Waka, that's what LinkedIn wants. They want you to create content that creates what's called stickiness, where people hang out and they go, oh my God, this is such a cool conversation. Then they go looking at profiles and boom comes an ad, then they go looking at more content. Boom comes an ad. Do you get where I'm going? Boom, comes an ad. That's what LinkedIn wants.

Yoyo:

I like that. And also I understand that LinkedIn wants doesn't like to push out content that encourages people to click on outside the site. So the step around that is if you're gonna post a link to YouTube streaming or a link to a podcast, for example, like I do, is to put that in the comments and not embed that into the main body of the post, because LinkedIn won't distribute it as much if that is embedded in the original post. Not a lot of people know

Terry:

that. Well, that's not completely accurate. Is it changed? It has significantly changed in the last couple years. Yes. We had to hack the system put in Ur l third party URLs in the first comment. And this is two or three years ago. Okay. That's not so much the case today. Okay. If the content. Creates conversation. Even if the hyperlink drives people outta LinkedIn, there's still a conversation going on around that post. Okay. So LinkedIn does not penalize, they actually very clearly said this in one of their last, public, what's it called? Town hall meetings. They said this out loud in the meeting that it was a public meeting that they we've discovered we no longer want to penalize people for sharing third party content. And again, the reality is you may have to go to YouTube or tender or whatever, or bumble or grind or to look at that content. Yogi you said yes. I hope you're saying yes just to laugh with me because you're not hanging out on Tin, on Tinder, Bumble, or Grindr, but the, I'm joking, but the reality is, even if you have a third party post, people will come back. That LinkedIn post and have a conversation. I

Yoyo:

don't know any of those websites you've just mentioned. Oh my gosh, what's happening to my nose? It's getting huge. So, so I like that. So now that we've established the fact, what are the other myths that people think are happening with LinkedIn and what are the truths? Because we've just dispelled a myth there. Do we

Terry:

have any more? Yeah. Here's a huge one. And this is a cultural one, and it's outside of my culture because I'm a noisy, old white guy from the US and I have no barriers. Okay. So, but this is real, and I'm being, and I need to say this and be what's the word? Empathetic of people in these cultures. There is a philosophy in some cultures that if you look at someone's LinkedIn profile, that could be considered disrespectful, I thought it was there to look at. Yeah. But there are, I'm telling you, I get this question at least weekly. Okay. Because I answer questions on Quora and I only answer questions on Quora about two things LinkedIn and using Google Workspace. But I get asked this question, or people will post this in lots of different ways, different words. But the bottom line is, oh my God. I looked at that person's profile and I thought the only answer was to delete mine. Yeah I'm serious. This is huge. This is a huge problem in some cultures and that's a misunderstanding because some, I get it, some of those, some cultures some, countries and people's lives, they do things different than the grumpy old white guy in North Carolina does. And I can respect those cultures having those ideas, but unfortunately they're misdirected in the context of social media or LinkedIn. And, I'll get asked this. I looked at someone's profile and I'm like, oh my God, I should have done that. And I went and hid and if I unhide, will they see me? And then some will actually say, I deleted my profile. I need to create a new one. That is such a big problem in with lots of people. I'd love to start a campaign to say, this is good. Go look at people. Yeah. Look in people's eyes when you're talking with them. Look at their LinkedIn profiles for the right reasons. Now girl, if I see you every day stalking my LinkedIn profile, I'm gonna wonder what's wrong with you. Well,

Yoyo:

Teddy maybe I'm just into old white guys.

Terry:

No. Gru, grumpy old white guys. Oh, grumpy

Yoyo:

old white guys. Look, I think I, if I'm swinging by someone's profile I like to sort of leave a note that I've been, whether it's a follow, and so they know I've looked and followed. Or sometimes a message just to say, Hey, look, I love your profile. So for example, I think this is how I found a very super cool gentleman who will be on a security circle podcast. His specialism is space security. And I was like, oh my God, I need to speak to this guy. And so I read his profile, looked at his background, and I thought, this is a great career. He's gonna know, I've looked at his profile, so I'm gonna follow him, drop him a message and say, hi, listen, I've just swung by your profile. I produce a podcast. I'd love to talk to you about space security. He messaged back and said, Hey, yes sir I'm open to having these conversations. I think it's nice to swing by and leave a note and follow. But I think people that look at you and don't follow up with anything else, I think it's a little odd sometimes I do,

Terry:

Well wait a minute now. I'm with you. Yo-yo. That, that maybe may. But you know, if I go look at the, a LinkedIn profile of a, a forklift driver and Alabama or a forklift driver in the UK who's not relevant to me in any way, but for some reason or another I thought he may be or she may be. I'm sorry for being a sexist about forklift drivers. If that person's irrelevant to me, I see no reason for me to hit, follow, comment or do anything else. I mean, nine 45 million people, there's at least three or four that are irrelevant to me.

Yoyo:

Fair point. So let's talk about tagging in people. Sometimes you can see that somebody's untagged themselves from a post. You can see it'cause the name is blacked out and there can be a view that maybe that person. Maybe wasn't consulted, they weren't included in the initial conversation. They don't really want the associated notifications that come as a result of that. But it can be seen as a snub, can't it, to the poster if they remove themselves. What's the general etiquette around tagging in people then and removing oneself?

Terry:

I gotta reach for my soapbox again. I'm sorry.

Yoyo:

Don't this, I'm gonna see how many times we can get it, get your soapbox

Terry:

out. This is Business Yoyo. LinkedIn is not just for the fun of it. Okay. It's business and I get it. You wanna be polite and friendly and, approachable and engaging and, you wanna be helpful. I get in business. You need to be all of that. But there are some times that people will tag me in a post. That is not relevant to me. And the only thing they're hoping to do is pull this guy with a big network in so that a bigger network can see their stuff. Okay. And I, I think that is more rude than me simply saying, un unmentioned untagged because it's not relevant to me. Yeah. Now, and also I will, I'll share this, I can tolerate people well, that's a stretch. I can tolerate people doing it the wrong way until it becomes burdensome to me. Yeah. And if they create a pose that all of a sudden my, my what's it called? My alert, notifications are flooded with everybody commenting and replying. And then that's burdensome to me. And at that point, I may wanna untag myself, but it is networking for mutual benefit. Not net networking so that dude can tap into my multimillion dollar, LinkedIn network. I mean,

Yoyo:

when you're tagging people in, you're also really giving away more intel than you might intend to if you think about it, because especially in certain groups and clicks and organizations and projects, you can be telling other people who you're basically working with or who you're collaborating with on certain

Terry:

projects. Right. Well, okay, so that's another big one. This is another why people do kind of a conversation often. Well, people will hide their LinkedIn network so that their first level connections cannot see who they're connected to. Now, mind you, your second and third level connections cannot see your network, but by default, when you connect with someone, you can click on their 500 plus connections and you can see up to 1000 at a time of their connections. Well, often people will hide those and the salespeople and executives and business owners will say to me, oh my God, I don't want people knowing who I'm doing business with. Well, I get that. But if 2000, 3000 LinkedIn connections are only your clients, then you know, then you may be giving away a lot. But your 2, 3, 4, 5,000 people are lots, should be lots of diverse people who are relevant to you in lots of diverse ways. And I say, look, I can pull out a freaking phone book. I can get on data Axle or Hoovers or whatever. I can find my target audience much easier than harvesting your LinkedIn connections. Now, the other thing too is just because that person, just because yo-yos a connection of mine and I may be doing business with you and not, you may have paid a million dollars for me to do work. Doesn't mean they're gonna steal my business. You, I mean, look, if you do your job right, just because someone knows you're doing work with someone else doesn't mean they're gonna get that business. Now here's the, yo-yo one more piece. Here's the reason why. The pro reason I say make your network visible to your network. It's called giving. So when you can see who I'm connected to, and you may find somebody that you'd like to have a conversation with, I am happy to introduce you to them when it makes sense for me to do that. And I think the value of helping your network is factorally more beneficial than the risk of some idiot seeing who you're connected to.

Yoyo:

I can 100% agree with that. I've asked so many people, in this LinkedIn journey that I've been on to introduce me to somebody, the power of that connection is phenomenal. And I do it for a lot of other people as well. Someone says, oh, I really need to speak to somebody who specializes in X, Y, and Z. Let me introduce you. And I love the fact that LinkedIn Messenger enables you to just bring in those two people into a conversation. Say, look I think you two need to have a conversation, but I think LinkedIn Messenger needs to be more efficient because I know about you, one of the common conversations I'm having around usage of LinkedIn messaging is that it's very easy to lose conversations because it gets very busy and very active. What's your recommendation around the kind of messaging, hygiene, I suppose, is the way to use it?

Terry:

Messaging, hygiene. I, I'm with you. It's dirty, it's nasty. Here's my answer. Here's my answer. Never message someone on LinkedIn if you have not first determined that they are active on LinkedIn. Gotcha. So you look at their activity and if they're, if they've been on LinkedIn within the last two or three days, then it may be worth an attempt to do a LinkedIn message. If they have not been on LinkedIn in a month, do not waste your time sending them a LinkedIn message.'cause it is likely, highly probable that they will not see it and it will get buried in the other garbage that requires a higher level of hygiene to clean up. Instead look for a different channel to engage with that person. Maybe I give classic example. I've got a really good friend of mine. I would never message him on LinkedIn, but I'll message him on Facebook. Yeah. Now, if it's not a really big friend and I'm not connecting on Facebook, maybe I'll send him a text message. Maybe I'll make a, maybe I'll do a phone call. Maybe I'll do an email message. But the bottom line is, pick the channel of communications that you think will get the greatest, the best response. And that is not always, first of all, it's almost never in mail and it people, you're not connected with, and it may not be a LinkedIn message. So

Yoyo:

give us some tips then. The security community that I belong to, we are very naturally curious. We have a higher curiosity scale. We are also probably in the main, higher in ethical compliance and quite morally

Terry:

driven. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. So, security professionals are very morally, Dr. I'm teasing you.

Yoyo:

Yes. Yeah. Yes sir. I can absolutely guarantee you that we come from, yeah. So, so how past Spot Rogue accounts for anyone who, might be a little bit rusty in this area? There's a few tips and tricks to spot rogue accounts aren't there? And one of them is if they only have one connection, for example.

Terry:

Oh, so wait a minute, this is a tip on how to spot the fakes? Is that what you're asking?

Yoyo:

Rogue accounts, any type of rogue account. Yeah.

Terry:

Yeah. I call'em fakes. I like rogue, but I call'em fakes. I may start using rogues because rogue music may not be fake, but first of all, so if you, when you look at someone's LinkedIn profile, you click on more, you click on about this profile. When you click on about this profile, you'll see is it a brand new account or is it a 2017 account where they just updated their profile picture? And then the next thing is look to see how many LinkedIn connections. If it's a LinkedIn account that's from 2017 and they only have two connections and they only have one comment or one post, it's likely a rogue account that has been hijacked. Here's the other one. Look at the words they use when they send you a LinkedIn invite. The words I get all the time and this is a generalization yo, I get it, but this is what I get. I get drop dead gorgeous Asian women with American names who live in California, who work for a company with 300,000 employees. And the words say this, I've looked at your LinkedIn profile and you are such an expert professional. What? You just looked at my LinkedIn profile and you're gonna call me an expert professional. And they use really ridiculous words like that. They don't use human words. Gotcha. And then the next thing, yo-yo, is this. If you think, and you may be wrong, if you think that is a real person, a drop dead, gorgeous Asian woman with an American name who lives in San Francisco and you think that she's relevant to you, then reply back to the invite and ask them one question, how could I help you? Now that is a pretty blunt question. The fakes, the RO account, they're gonna come back and say this, oh, Teddy, it was so nice of you to accept my LinkedIn connection request. I am all about this, they didn't answer the damn question. If they can't answer the question, I assume, in my opinion, they're rogue. And by the way, when you run into a rogue account, there's two steps you absolutely have to do. Please, everybody do these two steps. Never miss these. Number one, go to their profile, click on more, hit report and block and report them as a fake. I wish they used the word rogue. Report them as a fake second thing to do. And it's not, conceptual. You gotta click to do it again. Go back in more report block and hit block and tell'em the freaking go away. Yeah.

Yoyo:

Gotcha. That's really good advice, Teddy. So, okay, that's good. What about other tips and tricks then? What major little gold nuggets if someone was to sort of come away from this podcast and say, do you know what since I've listened to that podcast, I've always done this and I never knew I could do it. It's really helped me. What sort of tips and tricks can we offer to people?

Terry:

Alright, get your pens and papers out, ladies and gentlemen. And if you use a pencil, needs to be a number two pencil. If you use a paper, it needs to be a ledger. Here's some ideas. Yes. Number one, never send a LinkedIn invite to someone who does not know you, does not know who you are, and you can use lots of tactics to get people to know you. It could be look at their LinkedIn profile, it could be engaged in their content. Hey, it could be asking mutual connection that knows both of you to send that person in a LinkedIn message or an email and say, oh my God, Teddy is so cool. You need to say hi. Or better words than that. Never send an invite to someone who doesn't know you. Number two, the moment you connect, you need to immediately engage that person, and it needs to be about them, not about you. No pitches, no sales, no invites to a business conversation. Look at their LinkedIn profile, figure out a little bit more about them, and engage with them in a meaningful human to human way about them. And please never send a message that says, I see that we have 27 mutual connections. That's so, do something real. And if you don't have something real then ask them a question. Say something honest and sincere to them. But you need to engage immediately because that can open the door to the next conversation. One more, one more. Oh, yoyo I gotta go read the book on how to use LinkedIn as a business tool so that I can give you that. So, here's another one. Here's another really cool one. Look for ways to start conversations with your target audience. Here's an example if their birthday is today. Say happy birthday to them. If they are your target audience, there's someone you wanna have a conversation with, whether for your business or your career, and today's their freaking birthday, wouldn't that be absolutely fantastic for you to drop in and say happy birthday to them? Because again, this is just another way to start a conversation, maybe have a career shift or a career growth. Congratulate them in a meaningful human to human way, because the moment you do that, it could create, it'll do two things. One is it could create an opportunity for a deeper conversation. Two is it shows them that you cared enough to make that engagement about them.

Yoyo:

Yeah, and I think I've seen some connections where I've said, happy birthday. And I don't use the one that they suggest, there's a, you can just click on one and it sends happy birthday. Yeah. I always call them by, I always call them by their name. I'll say, Hey John, happy birthday. Something like that. And when you see that the last messaging you've had is always me saying Happy birthday and they don't even reply. Thanks. You can gauge a level of connectivity, can't you? Which is important and it's memorable, so, alright,

Terry:

well wait. But, so if you see that five times you said happy birthday to them in LinkedIn and they were engaged, then don't do it again. Now, if I really care about you, yoyo, I freaking do, I'm not sending you a LinkedIn message to say happy birthday. Yeah. I'm calling you, I'm FaceTiming you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna Snapchat you or I'm gonna, WhatsApp you, I'm gonna try to get to you more deliberately and go, girl, it's your birthday. Yeah. I wanna make sure you're having fun. Don't use the same channels that everyone else uses.'cause then you look like everyone else. Yep. Agreed.

Yoyo:

Stand apart from the rest. So, so what are the alternatives to LinkedIn then? Because as far as I'm aware, when I learned this painfully when I had my access restricted, I'm like, I felt bereft in the sense of how can I connect with a broader community in a tool that we've all just become accustomed to being a part of our lives. That's, none of us have really prepared for the fact that it might not be there. And then are we prepared for the fact that we might not be able to access our data? And I'm talking about the, your account getting hacked, for example, and be, and they will freeze your account. They will freeze all access to your account if they believe there's been any suspicious activity or rogue activity as we say. So, so what's the, what can we do to prepare for the access? Being restricted for what? For whatever reason.

Terry:

I think I need to go to study how to be a pottery maker so I can go make pottery. No, no serious, seriously, let me answer this question for you. First of all you need to have multiple points of contact to your target audience, to your network. So, I down you by the way, did you know that you used to be able to download your LinkedIn connections and get their email address? Yeah, you can. Yeah. Yeah. You can't no more since when? About five years ago?

Yoyo:

No. You can.'cause I've just done it when I got re Yeah. When I email address. Not all of them. So those that have obviously clearly given consent for their email address to be given,

Terry:

which is less than 1%

Yoyo:

Correct. So it's a little bit worrying. Yes.

Terry:

Well, yeah I've got 29 now. I got 15,000 LinkedIn connections. I barely had a hundred people who had their email address in there. I get you. You can get a few, but number one, download your LinkedIn connections. Number two, as you connect and get into conversations with people, don't scrape data from LinkedIn. It's not what I'm proposing by no stretch of imagination, but you know, if you connect with them on an email, then save their email address and phone number in my contact so you have'em in your, yeah, in your personal contacts, not in your business context. They only go into business contacts if they're a business connection, but every LinkedIn connection you make is not a business connection, but you absolutely need to manage your co, your connections and the contact information in your personal context. And by the way, side note, make sure you export it out, your business context every now and then. So you put them in your personal context'cause they're real humans that you met. Okay? And some, maybe subscribe to their YouTube channels, maybe invite them to subscribe to your YouTube channels. Maybe if they're, we create a enjoyable, conversation with each other, in real life, not through LinkedIn messaging. Y Yoyo and I are sitting here looking at each other again on the screen. I think we've made a little bit higher connection request. I may hunt you down on, on Snapchat or what's the other one? Instagram and Follow You connect with you there. So multiple points of contact so that in event one of those goes away, you don't lose everything.

Yoyo:

That's really great a advice. And when I was restricted, I thought it would just be, I thought, okay, this'll be for a week. Maybe this is a slap on the wrist kind of thing. And then you, I read loads of blogs probably how I found you. And then I realized that there, they may even be changing the rules for how they restrict people's access. Because the I read several places that if you are repeat repe repetitive offender they tend to block you for longer than a week. And then I thought, well, surely I'll be back online on Monday then. I haven't received any warnings, any notifications to say, Jolan, you are breaching our code of conduct. You need to stop this right now, otherwise we will restrict your access. And they then I would've gone, holy mother of flying monkeys, what can I do to stop this happening? But they didn't. And so the next thing is, I'm restricted for three weeks and yet this is the funniest thing. I did obviously we them quite a lot. I was quite angry with them, but I remained very professional. All I wanted to know, and I asked this of them repeatedly, please tell me what I've done wrong. Please tell me how I can apologize if I've made a mistake. Please communicate to me. Period. And they didn't. It was awful. And even, and the reason when I, the,

Terry:

go ahead. Go ahead. I'm gonna tell you why in a minute.

Yoyo:

And then when I was given access back again I received a notification to say that my access had been granted and there was a likelihood that I'd breached some terms and conditions in respect of one of six options. I'm thought, great, thanks for the thanks. And I still don't know what it is. I don't, I'm not soliciting people, I'm not, selling anything like that. So bit conflicted. And then they sent me a customer service feedback thing and I was just like, guys, seriously, work it out. We are. I was in love with LinkedIn. I was so passionate. I had really high level of engagement, and all they did was turn me into somebody who became quiet. You're like, great. Okay. So I still don't know how to prevent this happening again.

Terry:

Yeah. And it's un unfortunately, the customer, I hate that for you. And by the way I don't wanna make you feel like your I'll be honest, this happens thousands of times a day. Wow. And I'm generalizing my number. It could be way more than that. 945 million people. The problem is the people who are the frontline customer supports, LinkedIn help people. They don't know the reasons. They don't that an algorithm smacked you and hit that uncheck box and turned off your profile. And it, there is never, I talked to two people this week, there's never an alert that says, yoyo, you need to behave. Unfortunately, it's just, it will never happen because 945 million people, a significant number of people were making dumb mistakes. Mistakes on LinkedIn. They would be flooding the internet with these emails and yeah. And then creating a dialogue that they do not have the bandwidth to manage.

Yoyo:

So this is the dichotomy and I, we're gonna talk to you about algorithms a little bit more. I have a friend who started off as a business network pal, a colleague, and now a friend, and she was pursued by an account obtaining to be the Royal Prince of Dubai. Oh yeah.

Terry:

He's a cool dude.

Yoyo:

He was engaging in very flirtatious conversations with her, of which I'm sure there was a very small percentage of her thinking, I could be going out on a private jet to Dubai very soon, but I said, look, this is clearly a fake account. It's clearly a an account of a, I think you should find the original account and send them a DMM and say, look, here's a screenshot. This guy's pretending to purporting to be you. Clearly this guy's a very busy guy. He's got plenty of women at Beck and call and he won't be going onto LinkedIn to find nice honeys to talk to. Just like me, I'm just like him. But, and he certainly, has a team around him. He won't be going on LinkedIn by himself, so there was a bit of realism there. But, when it comes to reporting that account to LinkedIn, nothing got done. That account is still there and it felt very difficult that my account was restricted when I was a very good, active, ethical user. He's clearly romancing women and with what intention? My goodness. We could be looking at things as significant as romance fraud and yet the account is still alive now even though it's been reported. What's that? It's failing us.

Terry:

Yeah, it is. And again, I don't want a I can't take a position of what's the word of, standing up for LinkedIn support. I can't do that. And I also know this, and whenever you hear me say, I know this, it's very clearly that I know this. I don't understand, and I know that I don't understand. And again, they the algorithms, which is the first line of engagement, the algorithm has to have a very clear trigger that person's a freaking idiot before it can execute on anything. And if the algorithm cannot have a clear trigger to execute, then it has to lean back towards, give the account the benefit of the doubt. And I'm using my words and I hate it. Yeah. And again, there's just not enough workforce to be able to handle. And by the way yo, this is not just LinkedIn. This is Instagram, Facebook, Tinder. You should see what's going on in my Bumble account. It's atrocious, but anyway,

Yoyo:

I think TWI, everyone knows, even celebrities now and pundits they know that Twitter's the wild West. You can say anything, do anything, be whoever you wanna be, right? Facebook, we know you can be whoever you wanna be. You can say that you're a 13 year old child, your name is Mary Sue, and it will not ask you to validate who you are. But LinkedIn's all of a sudden become the star. It's like, God, it's gonna literally wipe you off the face of the business planet if you don't use LinkedIn according to rules that you haven't had to look at since 2008.'cause they've changed. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And I think I'm more than happy if LinkedIn said to me, do you know what? You are clearly very passionate about what we do. I'd love for you to be an advocate. Come and learn. Go on a course, whatever, learn about us, be an advocate, and then communicate that message. I think there's huge missed opportunities. And I was very frustrated, I think in the first few days because I recognized that an algorithm had potentially determined I wasn't human. Because the initial communications coming from LinkedIn were that there was significant. Concerns about the authenticity was the word use of my account. And I'm thinking,'cause I'm a security risk professional, holy moly, have I been hacked? And if that's the case, I need to know how this has happened. And they weren't prepared to even support me on that basis. So if an algorithms basically saying We think this person isn't human, then and we are, then we have a huge problem in relation to how AI and algorithms are working in the future. I think that's just my

Terry:

soapbox. Hey, you just gave me an idea. Ooh, good.

Yoyo:

I've got

Terry:

plenty more of those. First of all, did you have two factor authentication enabled?

Yoyo:

No, I didn't and I still haven't, but I'm more than happy to do it. I'm just gonna go and read a flipping book or a thing to find out how to get my two.

Terry:

So I'll help you that later on because that's critical. Not only two-factor authentication, but multiple email addresses and have, your phone numbers on your account. But here's the idea. I have Yoyo because I know this happened with someone. So what a preparation, this is security preparation to secure your LinkedIn account. What I recommend you do is you have a document and you put it in your last pass. You put it in your Evernote, but you have a document that says, here are 25 influential people who love me, who I'm connected with on LinkedIn. Now, just the value of the strength of the word love. But here are 25 people who care about me, who have really good LinkedIn networks, get their LinkedIn profile, u r l, their phone number and their email address. So in the event that you get hacked you send an email. To these collectively, to these 25 people and you say, I need your help. Would one of you write a post on LinkedIn that says, oh my God, Yo's LinkedIn profile, which is U R L X Y Z, her profile has been hacked. She has been kicked off of LinkedIn and this woman is one of the most influential, smartest, caring, compassionate security professionals in the freaking world. Yeah. And we need LinkedIn to to help her get her profile back and then everybody else engage on that post tag LinkedIn, help tag the LinkedIn people, and start a firestorm of support and care on your behalf. That Now I know that works by the way,'cause I know two people who have done that.

Yoyo:

I did have an influencer friend of mine who's got an awful lot more followers than I have, and they started something called Free, the LinkedIn one, and it was a picture of me behind LinkedIn bars and that went onto Twitter. And then they responded to me when they saw that because I, all I was saying is, why won't you tell me why my account's being restricted? Why can't you give me information to help myself? Why can't you even help me apologize, for example?'cause it got to stage seven days in. I'm like, well, I'm glad, happy to apologize if I know what I've done wrong. But you see, the reason I think I took it so badly is'cause I'm not a rule breaker. And I know this might sound dreadfully boring. I don't even have a persona of being remotely rogue. But I don't break the rules. I don't speed. I might spread a little in the past. I don't speed. I don't get tickets. I don't break rules. I don't break laws. And so LinkedIn, when they restricted me, I felt victimized. And I think this is a huge warning to anybody who's using LinkedIn. I can't even tell you how it happened to help you not let it happen to you. That's the frustrating thing. And yet surely we all ethically want to support the platform we love collaborating on. So help us to help LinkedIn by helping us to be, to understand better about how not to cause violations if we are doing it inadvertently. I

Terry:

get you, I understand clearly what you're saying to me, sister Mary Margaret, and it sucks and I just don't have an answer. I do ha I do have this viewpoint. Do your best to stay between the lines. Protect your account with everything you have the ability to do to protect your account. Two factor authentications a big one. By the way, I would love to talk to a security professional and find out how two-factor authentications are being hacked. I know some ways are being hacked, but they are being hacked.

Yoyo:

I'll tell you why. It's because, whoa. Who is that? Well, this is my ginger cat that's just walked across the screen. Do you know why? Because it's his dinner time and he's doing that, hello, I'm here. Feed me. The two fact authentication, it's great, but it's nothing is 100% secure and there are shortcuts around it. So I think with anything cybersecurity related you've got to think of it like nets. The more nets you can put in to catch the rogue behavior the less likely you are going to be penetrated in that sort of sense of a word.'cause ultimately, if someone does successfully penetrate, they take away stuff from you. You don't wanna give them. I'm thinking two factual authentication. Yes, it's like locking your door on your house. You don't go out and leave it open. And if you do, leave it open. There's gonna be a certain accusation isn't there as to why you walk out your house and leave it open. I simply am sounding like such a hypocrite right now because I haven't activated it yet, but I need to learn how to. So is this something we could just finish up with a simple how to engage two-factor authentication on LinkedIn, add that extra security layer? We are talking to an engaged security community, and then we can certainly say we've given our

Terry:

bit back. And there's only one other person who's listening to this podcast who does not have two factor authentication enabled. Every other security professional listening to it has done so. However, I will offer you, until you understand how to do this, most people will set up two fa wrong. Okay. Right. Okay, so here's what you need. Here's my recommendations. And by the way, for everybody listening, I'm Teddy. I'm full of ideas. Use them as you see fit. That's my insurance statement. Here's what you need to do. First of all, use an authenticator app, Google app, Microsoft app, whatever app you want to use. When you set that app up on your device, it typically will be set up on your cell phone. It's just like having a little dongle. The worst thing you could do is lose that freaking little dongle. Yeah, well, you do not wanna lose your freaking cell phone, so make sure you're using a cell phone number that you're never gonna lose, that you're never gonna give up. And you're gonna protect that cell phone and cell phone number with every ounce of energy you have. Second thing you wanna do when you set up the two fa you, it's gonna give you backup codes. Get those backup codes, store those in a location that you can trust. Mine are in my last pass. Yo-yo people can't hack my LastPass. Why? Because I'm using a really freaking weird password. I'm using an email address that's only associated with my online presence, and I don't use anywhere else. I have two fas set up on my LastPass and I have backup codes for my LastPass. Your

Yoyo:

every cybersecurity manager's dreamed you know that.

Terry:

Well, then it's even deeper than that. You're gonna associate an account with your, an email account with your LinkedIn profile. Put multiple email accounts on there that you have your business and your personal. I have two others that are on there that are related to my use of LinkedIn. And you want to protect those email accounts. How? Two-factor authentication. You wanna save the codes for that for that two-factor authentication. You wanna make sure your password is freaking secure. You wanna have redundant phone numbers. You wanna protect all the things that you protect. You don't, just don't put a freaking lock on your front door and let the damn thing get rusty.

Yoyo:

Yeah, well, what can I say?

Terry:

And the way this whole thing starts, it all starts by going to LinkedIn settings and privacy. Click on security and read what it says and read the help notices. Don't just click on stuff and think you know what you're doing. Yeah, I think

Yoyo:

that's that's incredibly valuable. Teddy, what can I say? It's been an utter pleasure, a complete enlightenment of the philosophy of LinkedIn by Teddy Burris. What we'll do is we'll provide you LinkedIn profile for people to be able to check your content. Help me out. Check you out. Heart

Terry:

meeting, hot meeting, that's the word I wanted to use.

Yoyo:

You have a whole load of security professionals now. You'll spot them.'cause they'll be like cybersecurity managers. There'll be CEOs of security companies, dog handlers, you name it. Thank you so much, Teddy. I really thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you and well, thank you for

Terry:

letting me

Yoyo:

share. Brilliant.