Somewhere in the Middle welcomes Daniel Alfon, Author of Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success
Daniel Alfon is the author of Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. Daniel joined LinkedIn in early 2004 and publishes articles, interviews, and exclusive content about advanced LinkedIn strategies to clients and subscribers to his website, www.danielalfon.com.
Connect with Daniel AlfonTwitter: https://twitter.com/DanielAlfon
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielalfon/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfon/
Website: https://www.danielalfon.com/
Amazon: Buy Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success
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Episode Transcript
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(02:06):
Happy Friday, everyone. Welcometo somewhere in the middle with
Michele. I'm your host MicheleO'Brien, founder and CEO of
Michele Ebron LLC. And I'm superhappy to share this hour with
you where we examine all thoseplaces where spirit meets life
and the joys and challenges thatmay bring you guys now I like to
start by thanking this Beverlyblack and tribe family channel
(02:27):
for helping me create the spacefor us. Dr. Family Channel is
home to an assortment of thoughtprovoking shows that explore
life, spirit, business andculture, including woman at the
well hosted by Miss Beverlyblack herself. Somewhere in the
middle was born on tribe Familychannel. And though we have
grown onto our own platform, weare ever grateful and loyal to
our roots. To paraphrase anAfrican proverb, we are here
(02:50):
only because we stand on theshoulders of those who came
before us. I want to say thankyou to my guests on August 18
Show authors, Rufus Stevens andConnie Johnson. You can connect
with Rufus and Connie at theirauthor websites. Connie Johnson
dot author sites.co and RufusStephens. Dot author sites that
(03:15):
CO you can find our completeshow archives, including the
August 18 show at the summer inthe middle podcast.com. I also
want to shout out Bruce Georgeof the geniuses common movement
which encourages all of us toembrace our inner genius and
share it with the world. This isa really important message and
you guys know, I think we shouldshare this with the kids. But
(03:37):
it's not just for young people.Sometimes we adults need to be
reminded that the world needsour genius. Learn more about the
geniuses common movement at WWWdot geniuses common.com. Now,
this month's guest helpsprofessionals and business
owners optimize their LinkedInprofiles to enhance their
(03:58):
careers and grow theirbusinesses. Daniel alfen is the
author of build a LinkedInprofile for business success.
Daniel joined LinkedIn in early2004 and publishes articles,
interviews and exclusive contentabout advanced LinkedIn
strategies for clients andsubscribers to his website,
(04:20):
which is Daniel alfon.com. SoI'd like to welcome Daniel Alfon
to Somewhere in the Middle withMichele Barard. Daniel, thank
you so much for being on theshow.
Michele, my pleasure to besomewhere in the middle with
you. Thank you.
Well, I'm really excited aboutyou being here because you do
something different from anyoneI've spoken to in my seven years
(04:44):
of doing the show. So this isreally cool. And I think what
you've got to share with peopleis really valuable information.
But I like to start myinterviews with two questions.
So we can kind of understand whoyou are So if you're ready?
Yes, ma'am.
All right. Daniel Alfon. Who areyou? And how did you become who
(05:08):
you are today?
Thank you very much. I'm ahusband, father and LinkedIn
consultant. And networking iswhat brought me to everything I
have professionally. People Imet along the way, people I
served along the way. And I wasprivileged to keep in touch with
(05:29):
them. And they helped me opendoors to all sorts of
opportunities.
Now, I'm going to ask you aboutthis, because maybe it's a
generational thing, maybe it's aregional thing. I'm from down
south in the US. And I, I thinkit's unusual to hear men start
(05:50):
out with a father and a husbandtype thing. And then put their
careers afterwards. And you havea lovely accent. So I'm going to
assume you're not from thesouthern US.
Thank you very much. I waslistening to the episode you
(06:10):
released with Nate Turner. And Ithink that is a must listen, for
any parents. I'll say this. Irelated to it as a father, but I
think mothers can relate to it,as well. And perhaps that's part
of the reason I started bysaying that. Obviously, Nate's
(06:31):
journey has been different frommine. But I agree with many of
the facts that you discussedthat we, we basically emulate
the environment, we grew up aschildren. And our children are
already in their 20s. So I can'twrite those letters to them. But
(06:51):
that gave me an idea to perhapsconsider writing those letters
for the unborn Grunch grandchildwe may have. So thank you for
that.
That's beautiful. That'sbeautiful. And if you haven't
spoken to me, or emailed him oranything, I will let him know
that he inspired that. I justthink that's really fascinating.
(07:12):
You're like the, you know,third, I think you'd like the
third gentleman I've spokenwith, who started out that way.
And now, I feel that wouldn'thave been the case, say 15 years
ago. And I wonder if somethinghas changed in the way that we
perceive ourselves as workingpeople as business people.
(07:35):
You're right, perhaps COVID hasalso changed some some of the
perceptions we have, because westarted working from home a lot
more than than before. So thebarriers are less rigid, and the
Chinese walls are less rigid.And as a person, you shall do
(07:59):
more than your job. Your job isimportant, but it's not the only
thing. And maybe it's legit forguys to to, to acknowledge that.
I think it's excellent. And howdid that impact? You know,
because like you said, your kidsare grown, my kids are grown
too.
How did the pandemic kind ofshift your perspective in terms
(08:22):
of your business? Cool.
So the most important aspect forme it was that travel was
removed from my my day to daycareer. And I had a lot more
time. And I watched our 18 yearold 17 year old child grow,
(08:44):
because I was with him. He wasjoining school for from zoom and
suicide. And I decided to dosomething more meaningful with
that time that it was almost agift because we had no idea at
the beginning, it would take somuch longer. It's so so much
time and I think some of theconversations we've had would
(09:07):
not have been possible withoutus being around the tool.
Yeah. Well, and I think that'sgreat, too, because that also
gives you time to work on yourbusiness in a different way. I
would imagine if you didn't haveto do all that traveling, how
did that shift your business?
You're absolutely right. Istarted working even more with
(09:29):
US customers. I'm based in southof Tel Aviv, Israel. Okay. So
the weather is close toAtlantis, but we're we're a
couple of 1000 miles ahead. Andthat enables me to work with
people from all over the placeand all over the world, and
people had no longer andexpectations for you to meet
(09:51):
them face to face. And that alsomeant you could jump on a call
much faster and start workingwith people and start Helping
him much, much faster. And even,even when we with COVID, perhaps
behind us, things of changing inour perception and our wish to
(10:13):
have some hybrid career is maystay with us even even longer.
And were you in this businesswhen the pandemic started? Or is
this a new venture for you? Howlong have you been doing this?
Yeah, I've joined LinkedIn early2004. And I started using it
(10:34):
professionally in 2006. Backthen, I held quota carrying
position. And a significant partof my time shell was dedicated
to find the name of the personwithin the organization I needed
to reach out to, and one eveningLinkedIn, just show me the name
of the purchasing manager andthe name of the owner and the
(10:55):
name of the anyone I needed toreach out to. So it enabled me
to beat my quota. And then Idecided to see what's under the
hood. And then, you know,friends asked me to train their
sales force and train theirstaff. And at one point, I
decided to specialize and todrop everything else. That's
when I published my book in2014. So I would guess at least
(11:24):
15 years is pure LinkedInconsulting, what I'm doing
primarily is pure LinkedInconsultant.
Wow. So
what exactly do you help yourclients with? With LinkedIn?
Ask them all sorts of questionsabout their business or about
their objectives. Some of themyou help authors, both fiction
(11:44):
and nonfiction. And it's asimple questions about what they
would consider success. Becausehaving worked with lots of
authors, you know, some of themwould like to impact many
people, some of them would liketo have to be on more stages,
some of them would like to offerprograms, some of them would
like to gain revenues from thebook itself. And until we define
(12:11):
the purpose, or the objectiveyou have, we can't continue with
the tools. And LinkedIn issimply a tool. It's a very
powerful tool, it's, you know,850 million users. And since you
hit record, 1000 people havesigned up, Michelle, every
second three people sign up now,but it's still too. So we need
(12:32):
to know, what would you consideras an objective of success for
you, and LinkedIn needs to servethat purpose. If you want more
people sign up to your authorplatform or to website or your
newsletter, then LinkedIn has toserve you in that way.
So maybe we should back up. Alot of people, especially
(12:56):
authors tend to want to get aFacebook page and all of this
stuff, how is LinkedInbeneficial to them?
Okay, I'll start by saying thatfor many authors, when they
Google their own name, they willsee their LinkedIn profile tops
the list, that's not necessarilythe case for their Facebook
(13:16):
page, or their Facebookprofiles. So you need to manage
it. And you can't let LinkedInmanage it for you. Because many
people will will visit that thatprofile, whether they find you
via Google or via LinkedInsearch, or anything else, and
the minimums is to present yourbook in a professional way to
the LinkedIn community. And thatshouldn't take too much of an
(13:40):
effort. It could be done inminutes in less than an hour. If
you have even just a cover thename of the book, and and
something like that, you can setit up in minutes. There are many
more advanced things you can doon LinkedIn, but that's the
minimal thing I would wouldsuggest. Okay. And, you know, some
(14:00):
people say you're not supposedto advertise on LinkedIn. So
what's your what is your generalapproach? I know, it can vary
depending on what people want todo. But what's the general rule
of thumb in terms of how weshould be thinking about using
LinkedIn?
Cool. So perhaps the show themost important thing I would
(14:21):
suggest is to forget about theway other people use the
platform, and to focus on thebest way for you to leverage the
platform. And that means that ifyou're an author, you're in
business, then the fact thatLinkedIn has a job search
capability is not relevant foryou. And you need to think of
(14:42):
the LinkedIn platform as awebsite. I didn't see your your
only website, you may haveanother website, and that could
help people discover yourwebsite that could help more
people go to Michele barard.com.That's the simplest way to treat
it. Think of it as a wayupcycled needs to convert your
(15:02):
ideal reader into reaching outto you. Now, you said some
keywords there.
Now, because one of the thingsthat I struggle with with
authors sometimes is people wantto write books because they feel
like they've got this intensemessage they want to get out or
they want to entertain, theyhave the story they have to
share. But a lot of times, theydon't realize they're actually
(15:23):
starting a business. AndLinkedIn can really offer some
good opportunities, right forconnecting with people who can
help advance the business, maybeother resources that they could
use in the business, whetherthat's editors or graphic
designers or other people theycan link up with. So what kinds
of things do you think peopleshould be concentrating on in
(15:45):
terms of their priorities, whenthey're thinking about it from a
business perspective?
Excellent. The secret no onetold me when I wrote my book was
that the book is just thebeginning. Just putting there on
Amazon will not change most ofthe author's lives. And we need
to think of it as a way to gainmore exposure and more revenues
(16:10):
via something else. It could bespeaking gigs, it could be
programs, it could be other allsorts of services, we may we may
offer, and you nailed it,because many authors would
primarily think of LinkedIn as away to get more readers. It's
great, but it's not the onlygame in town. In many cases, you
(16:30):
could actually leverage LinkedInto find you to find more people
who would show your book to waymore other readers than
themselves. And that could beeditors and cover designers. And
that could be bloggers, and thatcould be both podcasters. And
you could use LinkedIn as a wayfor you to amplify your message.
(16:53):
And not just speak to the readerthemselves, the readers
themselves are important. Butthere's there are a lot of
communities on LinkedIn thatcould help you get the message
across to the readersthemselves. There's a there's a
b2b element in your in LinkedInthat's very dominant. And if
your book has any b2b context,it makes a lot more sense to use
(17:17):
it in that way, instead oftrying to find the readers via
LinkedIn, who could show yourbook to other people. It could
be HR professionals, it could bemanagers, it could be a local
Chamber of Commerce, it could beall sorts of things, depending
on the topic of your book. Ifyour book is a self help book,
then you could also find a wayfor you to get into more stages
(17:42):
in more podcasts via LinkedIn.And there would be a stage where
you could explain about themessage and how you got into it
and how we can help you.
Very cool.
But now LinkedIn looks like it'sgot its well, just like social
media in general looks like it'sgot its priorities, right? So we
(18:02):
want you to connect with peopleand all that kind of stuff. But
maybe your business hasdifferent priorities or metrics,
things that need to be looked atwhat kinds of things should I
mean, are there differencesthere that you see?
It's a great question. Yes. AndI don't think LinkedIn has to
set your objectives. Michelle,you have, in some cases, the
(18:24):
LinkedIn suggestion would makesense, and that's fine. But if
there's any misalignment betweenwhat LinkedIn suggest and your
priorities, forget aboutLinkedIn. LinkedIn is really the
tool. You can even think of itas a black box. What is your
objective? Is your objective toget more people learn about your
(18:44):
book? Or learn about theservices that you offer? Then
how will you turn thoseconnections into revenues? It's
a very simple question. But wecan have lots of different
answers to that very quickly,either quality, or quantity.
(19:05):
Quality means you connect onlywith people, you know, well, and
then you run into an advancedsearch and you find someone was
be was an ideal person for youto reach out. It could be an
influencer, it could be ablogger, it could be another
podcast, or it could be someoneelse. And you should connect
with people, you know, well,you're able to reach out to the
person you're connected with andask them whether they feel
(19:27):
comfortable making thatintroduction. And if they do
Michelle, you will gain theattention of the influencer
thanks to that person's name,not your name, not my name, but
the person in between. Andthat's the quality approach. The
quantity approach means you needto get as fast as possible to
3035 or 40,000 connections inorder to gain exposure. If
(19:53):
you're only starting onLinkedIn, it's frankly not
realistic to go that routebecause it will take you years
LinkedIn has now limited thenumber of connections requests
you can send on every week. Soit will take you a lifetime to
get there. And perhaps the worstthing to do would be to try and
have it both ways, or to besomewhere in the middle, just
(20:16):
just for this, you need to besomeone who will for everything,
but LinkedIn connectionstrategies, because link being
somewhere in the middle meansyou no longer know your
connections without havingenough exposure. So pick one and
ask yourself, if you had to pickone. Michelle, would you like to
be the best connected or themost connected?
(20:37):
Hmm.
So most connected might workbest on something like Facebook
or Twitter? It
sounds like, Yes, ma'am.
But LinkedIn, we want to focuson quality, although not
necessarily quantity.
You're absolutely correct.Because if I, if I see that we
share a mutual connection, thenwhat I think of that person is
(21:00):
going to impact you see, I lookat your profile, and I see Sam
Sierra, and I'm, I was connectedto him. So obviously, he was a
guest on somewhere in themiddle. And if I reach out to
him, he will be able to answerbasic questions about you, and
maybe it will land a meaningfulconversation will mean we'll
have a meaningful conversationwith him. But he imagined the
(21:22):
something else would see Sam andfive other people. And you would
not necessarily knows those fivepeople, then you shall you will
not be be there. When I look atthose six people to say Sam is
the go to person you need to asksome I will see five other
people a phi as Jane Doe. Andshe says Michelle, who? That's
not the answer we want. We wantpeople who can answer basic
(21:45):
questions about about us andmake the introduction. If we're
into a quality network. It'stempting to go for both, but
it's a dangerous path.
So
does this get into that sayingwhere they say your network is
your net worth.
You could have 200 connectionsand grow your business thanks to
(22:12):
LinkedIn. And you might have5000 connections without those
connections being translatedinto a nickel or dime. So these
are for me, these are vanitymetrics. And the metrics we need
to focus on are the real lifemetrics. It could be the
downloads of a book, it could bethe engagement, we gain as
(22:32):
author to have a book tour or tobe a guest on our podcast such
as this or something else. Sothe metrics that count are not
the LinkedIn metrics. It's themetrics that count for you. It
could be traffic to a website,it could be discovery calls,
where people say I struggle withediting, perhaps it could help
(22:53):
me. And if you're usingLinkedIn, if you haven't used
LinkedIn for that, and you youhave eight, or eight or 10, new
inquiries, and some of them willbe translated into clients, then
you know that LinkedIn hashelped you grow your business by
25%. That makes sense. And ifyou see only the LinkedIn
metrics growing, and you seenothing in the bank side, so
(23:17):
you're not doing the rightthing, forget about the LinkedIn
metrics treat as a black box,focus on the metric that matters
to you.
And that gets into just generalconcepts about marketing anyway,
right? So anytime you doanything in marketing, you're
testing you're measuring. Andthen you're responding to what
you see, right?
(23:38):
Yes, LinkedIn hasn't
changed the way our minds arewired. And every, every now and
then there's a new shiny object,and people tell you that it's
changed everything. I can't sayit has changed. Everything has
saved time. It's reorganize theinformation we see. But it
hasn't changed the way we needto know like and trust the
(24:00):
person we'd like to work with.
And now LinkedIn has a lot oftools. I know every time I go
into my LinkedIn account, I seesomething different that I just
didn't notice before. And theseare, they may vary at different
levels, because there's ofcourse, the free LinkedIn level,
then there's like, I guess, ajob search level. And then
(24:22):
there's like a business level. Idon't remember all the names.
You're the you're the LinkedInexpert.
But
are there certain tools thatsomeone at the free level could
really start to leverageimmediately to see some results
in their business?
Absolutely. And I actually wouldnot encourage anyone to go and
(24:44):
pay for a premium account beforemaking the most out of the free
accounts. Most of LinkedInmembers are not paid members.
And you can gain a lot of dataand clients and exposure thanks
to a free LinkedIn account ifyou know what you're doing, so
perhaps we could break it downinto three simple steps. The
(25:06):
first step would be to improveor optimize your LinkedIn
presence. Because your LinkedInprofile is associated with every
public action you perform onLinkedIn, you mentioned
connection. So if you if I sendyou an invitation request to if
I receive an invitation requestfrom you, I will be able to go
and visit your profile beforedeciding whether accept that
(25:28):
invitation or not. So have alook at your profile and make
sure it speaks the message youwant to tell the world can we
see your book cover? Can we seethe name of the book? Can we
even understand you're an authorwithin five seconds? Or is it a
hidden there because you thoughtit was job search and you only
(25:49):
enter the places you've worked,though, even though it's not
important for you, as a businessowner, just like you said, or is
an author, or even a futureauthor see working on the book
and the book will only bereleased in 2024 Doesn't matter,
that's what you're doing. Sofirst level would be a deal your
presence on LinkedIn or yourprofile for for most of us. And
(26:11):
then the second layer would be aconnection strategy and decide
where whether you connect withpeople you know, well or not.
And then would come the part ofthe Legion, the lead generation
Cropper. After you your profileis set up. And after you
connected with people, you know,then you can lay back and ask
yourself, Okay, how am I goingto use this engine? There are
(26:32):
many possibilities there couldbe confusing. Woke, how can I
leverage LinkedIn platform forme to gain more readers? And am
I targeting the individualreader? Or am I targeting some
organization or some brokersthat could show my my book to
other people or ring me onto thestage for me to explain about
(26:56):
the book itself, the problem,your books, souls could have all
sorts of groups on LinkedIn. Iknow you worked on on one
specific group. One specificbook, I'm sorry, for a lady who
wrote a book about how to findnursing jobs. So for that lady,
(27:17):
the fact that LinkedIn is apowerful job search engine,
bring everything in a reallynarrow, she could explain to job
seekers how to find nursingjobs, she could use the LinkedIn
platform in order for her tofind LinkedIn groups where
(27:38):
nurses are would be nurses willbe. And there instead of saying
buy my book, which would betempting, but not really
effective. She could what shecould do say I go to Amazon and
order your book, you would getyou would not know my personal
(27:58):
details, Amazon is going to holdthat information. And I can't
even go browse through theAmazon App and ask Amazon to
send me the first chapter ofyour book. So what you could do
is maybe have an extract maybetwo pages or the introduction or
something that would make peopleunderstand what the book is
about without spilling the beansshouldn't be too difficult for
(28:21):
for everyone to do. And then youwould go and promote that
passage. Or maybe it would be ashort Zito something that would
help people understand there isa way for them to find those
nursing jobs. And this easysteps will be one, two, and
three. And if interested inlearning more, then I've got a
(28:43):
forthcoming webinars next month,that would be free, or you could
also buy my book, that's fine.But if you only show the book
down people's throat, withoutthem realizing the value of the
book, you're not likely to see alot of new orders.
So it sounds like you're talkingabout but using LinkedIn as part
of your marketing funnel.
(29:04):
Absolutely. It should be alignedwith your marketing funnel in
general. And even in terms ofcontent, I don't think we'd our
audience here needs to producecontent for the sake of
LinkedIn. But if you have goodcontent that is educational, and
evergreen, say you could help ifI'm struggling with editing. And
(29:27):
that's the fruit might let's sayit's my first book. So I have
all sorts of quite all sorts ofquestions. How can I pick an
editor? And what's the best ageto start working with an editor?
Is it just when my book isfinished or when my draft is
finished? Or is it somewhereelse? So you could answer those
questions in 30 seconds. You'vebeen asked those questions for
hundreds of time. Help abouttaking the questions that your
(29:52):
ideal readers are strugglingwith and answering those
questions in a way that wouldhelp them see that Have you the
move thanks to Michelle from thethey've taken a baby step from
point A, where they wereabsolutely clueless to point B,
they only start understandingbut they can look back and say
yes. Now I think I've made someprogress. Now they will be
(30:16):
listened to to you, when yousay, I can show you the steps to
C and D and E. And that would bethrough gated content, or a
webinar or a call something thatwould bring them down the
funnel, just like you said,start by offering real real
advice that would find them inthe place they're at right now.
(30:37):
And then they would be a lotmore interested in to you don't
have to sell they want to buy.
Right, so you're educating? Yes,ma'am.
I think that the content thatworks best is educational, top
of funnel, Evergreen, if youhave words, you can repurpose or
curate content, that'seducational, you've got a lot
(30:59):
more chances of that contentbeing read on LinkedIn, and that
content could be a lot moreengaging, and people will
discover you, thanks to thateducational content.
So even for fiction authors, whomay not have an educational
book, they could maybe shareinformation about their journey
as a writer, the challenges weran into and how they overcame
(31:24):
them with the writing process.You know,
when I when I'm listening to youthink the the could be talented
drawn between entrepreneurs andbusiness owners and authors.
Because the struggles arebasically the same. We have a
blank page, and we're askingourselves, should I create this?
Or should I create that? Okay,so the fact that it's a fiction
(31:45):
book doesn't change the essenceof our struggle, we need to make
tough decisions. And we knowthat every decision we make is
going to influence our nextsteps. And if you're a good
writer, as your authors are,then try to describe that author
journey, as a book. And ifyou're, if your style is a
(32:11):
thriller, then try to align itwith the way you describe. So
would it be I would turn thepages and want to see how did
you make that choice. Or if youfind fun, funny stories, or
children's books, and try totell the same story from the
angle of a child, or somethingthat would be aligned with your
(32:32):
style.
That is amazing. Insight. I lovethe way you put that like lean
into your genre to tell yourpersonal story, your personal
journey. I love that.
Thank you. I think it boils downto you don't have to become
someone else on LinkedIn.Michelle has a real life
(32:55):
personality. You don't have tocreate a new one, you can be the
same person you are. And thatmeans if you're an introvert,
you don't have to become anextrovert on LinkedIn. You can
gain exposure and trust in gameand make more people will
discover your book with withyour vulnerability and your
(33:18):
frank advice. I was strugglingwith this. I was struggling with
LinkedIn should I be here ornot? Because I see everyone is
describing only TED Talks andonly Academy Awards. And all I
all I've done you know is writea book. But I struggled with it
I decided to show you mightjourney. And that's how it looks
like you don't have to dosomething else. You have a real
(33:41):
life, personality, you have areal life style. And reflecting
that style is the easiest way toget across to people and to
connect with people. If you needto be if you try to become
someone else. It's not reallyfruitful. And at one point,
people will say your phone. Wedon't
want that. Wow. Thank you.
(34:04):
Thank you for that. Because Iknow a lot of people LinkedIn in
particular, I think is a littleintimidating for people, because
it's the professional socialnetwork. And so I think that's
really great advice. So if youhad a brand new person coming on
to LinkedIn today, what threethings do you think they should
(34:26):
do? Getting started on LinkedIn?
Cool. My first suggestionMichelle would be to try and
play with the LinkedIn platform,the app or the desktop and try
to visit 20 to 50 profiles ofpeople to do similar things. So
if I were a first time author, Iwould simply run a search for
(34:49):
authors on LinkedIn infanfiction, I would add some
some other keywords. If it'snonfiction, I would write
something else and I would lookat 30 profiles and it would be a
amazed, but the variety ofthings that we'll see. And that
would help me understand, okay,that lady has, like, when I look
at your profile, you have a verynice banner, when I see your
(35:09):
banner, the word book comesalive. I don't mean that
everyone has to copy your exactbanner, by they see that you
have turned into your bannerinto a real life example of a
book. And they could do the samething with their on message, it
doesn't have to you have totweak it. Perhaps the book is
(35:31):
only the only deciding about thetopic of the book so they can do
something else. firstsuggestion, just suggestion
would be to simply read as manyprofiles or glances as many
profiles as they can, in orderto get some good ideas, some
people to be inspired by andsome things you don't want to
(35:52):
emulate something that doesn'twork, something that turns them
off, it's important for them tounderstand why that has turned
us off and try not to do thesame thing. So that's that could
take you as little as 30minutes, simply browse and see
all sorts of profiles and decidewhat good ideas could be part of
(36:15):
your LinkedIn presence. Mysecond, My second suggestion
would be to simply improve andoptimize their LinkedIn profile.
To make sure it answers thequestions they want to answer.
It has to mention the book hasto mention the topic of the
book. And the third and lastsuggestion would be to try and
(36:39):
ask meaningful questions. Say,if you say my book is still in
the writing process, and I'mworking with you, I'm still
editing. So I have maybe atleast a quarter before itself.
But here's a very simple idea, Icould tell people I'm working on
a book and show them two covers,or show them two titles. And I
(37:01):
would simply ask them, if theymind either voting or telling us
telling me what works best forthem the orange cover or the
blue cover that technical booktitle or the emotional one. And
that's a very nice way to makepeople aware of the fact that
you're writing a book, insteadof saying, you know, you can go
(37:22):
to Amazon and preorder my book,you can make the same message in
a more subtle way. And peoplewill actually many people will
engage with that content, stillgain information will engage,
they will gain more informationabout how people treat the
profit, the book, or the coveror the title could even improve
(37:42):
you in the early stages. Youcould almost turn LinkedIn into
or create a community wherewhere you'd have alpha readers.
And it would ask who would bewilling to read a chapter and
give you some feedback. And manypeople would be thrilled many
people will not be it doesn'tmatter if 10 people reach out to
you and saying shall I'd like tohave a look at the chapter, you
(38:05):
start building a relationshipwith them, you can improve your
book, and when it's out there,you can thank them and say that
you couldn't done you could nothave done that without them. And
that will also he's likely toincrease the way they would
engage with your book, theywould feel part of your journey.
So it doesn't take too mucheffort. Everything we mentioned
(38:28):
is feasible within minutes. Gothere.
I love it. I love it and gettingpeople engaged in that way. They
feel like they've got a certainamount of skin in the game. And
then that makes them want tosupport you all the more.
Yes,
the author's journey is, is along term one. But if we can
(38:50):
make people part of thatjourney, we gain a lot more
information without losinganything, we really only get
more more get richer, and we canget more insights about what
other people think about ourbooks and, and our books are not
made for us. They're made forthe readers. And their LinkedIn
(39:11):
profiles are not made for us.They're made for our ideal
readers on LinkedIn.
So they should scan the otherprofiles get an idea of what
they like, what they don't like,what works for them, what
doesn't work for them, theyshould
engage the folks that that
they connect with in differentways, particularly if they're
(39:33):
trying to promote a book orsomething like that.
And the third thing, and thesecond was actually optimize
their LinkedIn profile,
optimized profile. That's whatit was optimized, optimize the
profile. So how do you go aboutoptimizing your profile that's
just kind of figuring out okay,this is who I want to present or
what I want to present aboutmyself, and then making sure
(39:56):
that everything on that page keypoints to that. Is that really
what optimization is?
Yes, it's partly that it'sdeciding that the headline
you're going to be using isdifferent from the default
headline, LinkedIn will show usthat the default headline will
be simply the title and the thecompany you're working for. So
(40:21):
it could be founder or books,editors, editor LS, that's fine.
But if you want to change it,for example, if you want to say
that writing and publishing isalso part parts of the services
you offer, you could tweak yourheadline and make it about the
other parts you want to show.And if your book is self health,
self help book, then you canbasically say I help lady lady
(40:46):
entrepreneurs, start their ownbusiness, or whatever the book
is about. And and if you saythat you help first generation
American, write or publish theirbooks, then the book is there.
But it's not just by my book.It's this is the system I have.
And there are other elements, wehaven't gotten to hear the
(41:09):
keywords you'd like to includein your profile, because there
are billions of searches thatare run on LinkedIn, to say, I'm
running a search for the nursingjobs or the self health self
help. Book, how can you makesure that I'm going to find you
in page one, and not in page125. So there's a whole system
(41:32):
to it, but it's again, it's notvery difficult for the authors
to to follow. And I think whatyou mentioned earlier is way
more important than anything wediscussed. The minute you become
an author is the meat, you needto understand you're in
business. And that you drive thethe conversation should be
(41:53):
different. Everything becomes atool, and LinkedIn is one tool.
It's not the only one, it couldbe a great way for you to gain
to grow your business. But youneed to understand that you're
in business before youunderstand that you'll only be
transactional about thedownloads, or the books or one
more person. But there's,there's, you can't always come
(42:18):
and say, Here's my book bytesthat one point you will feel it
doesn't make sense. And mostpeople will not be engaging with
that sort of content. So youneed to find creative ways to
write about it, just like you'redoing with your
work. Well, Daniel,
you help people with this? Howcan they get in touch with you
(42:41):
to help them with their LinkedInprofiles? How can I get in touch
with you to help me with myLinkedIn profile?
Thank you, Michelle. They'resimply go to Daniel alfond.com.
There's a way for them to readarticles and go to the store and
book a one on one or whatever.And if I may ask a very simple
question. We can do this in lessthan 60 seconds. Are you going?
(43:05):
Are you willing to try this withme? Sure. Cool. So let me ask
you this. What is the link thatyou would like to promote the
most on LinkedIn?
Oh, a specific link
probably relate to my discoverycall. Excellent.
So is that on on Michele?barard.com?
(43:26):
Well, there are two there's oneon Michele barard.com. That's
for something a littledifferent. Because I work with
business people and help themkind of systematize what they
do. That's the tech geek in mecoming out. And on urban book
editor, I have the one forpeople who have books that they
(43:46):
want to get edited or getmarketing plans developed for
excellence. So is urban is theurban one the link you want to
promote? Yeah, excellent. Solet's try to do this live in
real time. I'd like you to go toyour LinkedIn profiles you can
let me
do it. So you're gonna see melooking okay guys, because I'm
(44:06):
looking at the other monitor.
I love hands on
exercises, you know, I'm asoftware trainer by background.
I love that.
Thank you very much for playingthis dangerous game with me. You
can always edit it out but tryto click on Add profile section
when you go to your profile.
Okay, you're gonna laugh at mebecause I go so infrequently
(44:33):
that I have to think about whereI go. I forgotten I changed
that banner just recently I likethat. Okay,
so add profile section.
Yes ma'am. And then recommendedthe second from the bottom. And
the first one should be addedfeatured. Yes. Again, for our
listeners here we went to yourprofile. I asked you to click on
(44:56):
Add profile section and thenrecommended and then she Should
Are we good to go for the nextstage? Yes, sir. Good. Can you
see a plus sign on the top?Right? Yes. Would you please
click on that plus sign andselect the third sing edit link?
Awesome. Good. Would you mindgoing to urban book edits.com
(45:18):
and find the direct link to thediscovery call you'd like people
to go to?
Oh, my who knew you could do allthis fancy stuff?
All right, I've got it.Excellent. Could you please
paste it? And click on add?Okay, and just save it.
(45:46):
And I can put in a fancydescription and all that I'm not
going to?
Yes, absolutely, you can, youcan tweak the headline itself,
you can also add a description,but that what that will do is
basically showing a visual linkto that page, anyone visiting
your profile will see it prettyfast. And that means more people
(46:08):
are going to discover thatdiscovery call. And they will
understand faster, how you canhelp them. Alright,
so now when I want to view myprofile as my status as another
person,
so basically what you could whatyou could have you saved it.
Yes. Good. So when you scroll,let me show it. Here. We go to
(46:35):
your profile.
Look at that.
Yeah, okay, so we simply scrolland we see this. And as you
said, you can check you canchange that you can say on
schedule discovery call. Andwhat happens when I click here,
is I go to the page, you wantit. Very cool. And you can
change that in two months orwhenever you can make your
(46:56):
LinkedIn presence aligned withyour future needs. Very cool. It
took you less than a minute todo it.
Yeah, that's awesome. Guys,don't ever say you don't learn
anything on this show. I'm justsaying you always learn
something. Our guests arefabulous. Daniel, thank you so
much. How can people connectwith you personally, they want
(47:18):
to connect with you on LinkedInor Facebook all the social
medias. How do they do that?
They can really started any offon what's calm. They can find me
on LinkedIn. They could find meon Twitter or cool why they'd
have all they have to do is saythe magic word. I was listening
to somewhere in the middle and Ihave a question.
Awesome. Thank you, Daniel forbeing on summer in the middle of
(47:39):
Michele Barard. Thank you,Michelle. That's our show this
month guys. You can reach meonline at Michele barard.com.
You can also find me onFacebook, Instagram and Tiktok
as urban book editor, send me anote. I'd love to hear from you.
Feel free to send in some topicsyou'd like us to cover on the
show. Make sure you tune intothe show on October 20 when my
(48:02):
guest will be masteringintegrative life coach Nancy
Picard. You can find us once amonth on Fridays at 5pm Pacific
6pm Mountain 7pm Central and 8pmEastern at the somewhere in the
middle podcast.com. Let'scontinue the conversation. You
guys be good. stay mindful andremain prayerful peace and bliss
(48:23):
and Joe
(50:00):
You
Happy Friday, everyone. Welcometo somewhere in the middle with
Michele. I'm your host MicheleO'Brien, founder and CEO of
Michele Ebron LLC. And I'm superhappy to share this hour with
you where we examine all thoseplaces where spirit meets life
and the joys and challenges thatmay bring you guys now I like to
start by thanking this Beverlyblack and tribe family channel
(02:27):
for helping me create the spacefor us. Dr. Family Channel is
home to an assortment of thoughtprovoking shows that explore
life, spirit, business andculture, including woman at the
well hosted by Miss Beverlyblack herself. Somewhere in the
middle was born on tribe Familychannel. And though we have
grown onto our own platform, weare ever grateful and loyal to
our roots. To paraphrase anAfrican proverb, we are here
(02:50):
only because we stand on theshoulders of those who came
before us. I want to say thankyou to my guests on August 18
Show authors, Rufus Stevens andConnie Johnson. You can connect
with Rufus and Connie at theirauthor websites. Connie Johnson
dot author sites.co and RufusStephens. Dot author sites that
(03:15):
CO you can find our completeshow archives, including the
August 18 show at the summer inthe middle podcast.com. I also
want to shout out Bruce Georgeof the geniuses common movement
which encourages all of us toembrace our inner genius and
share it with the world. This isa really important message and
you guys know, I think we shouldshare this with the kids. But
(03:37):
it's not just for young people.Sometimes we adults need to be
reminded that the world needsour genius. Learn more about the
geniuses common movement at WWWdot geniuses common.com. Now,
this month's guest helpsprofessionals and business
owners optimize their LinkedInprofiles to enhance their
(03:58):
careers and grow theirbusinesses. Daniel alfen is the
author of build a LinkedInprofile for business success.
Daniel joined LinkedIn in early2004 and publishes articles,
interviews and exclusive contentabout advanced LinkedIn
strategies for clients andsubscribers to his website,
(04:20):
which is Daniel alfon.com. SoI'd like to welcome Daniel Alfon
to Somewhere in the Middle withMichele Barard. Daniel, thank
you so much for being on theshow.
Michele, my pleasure to besomewhere in the middle with
you. Thank you.
Well, I'm really excited aboutyou being here because you do
something different from anyoneI've spoken to in my seven years
(04:44):
of doing the show. So this isreally cool. And I think what
you've got to share with peopleis really valuable information.
But I like to start myinterviews with two questions.
So we can kind of understand whoyou are So if you're ready?
Yes, ma'am.
All right. Daniel Alfon. Who areyou? And how did you become who
(05:08):
you are today?
Thank you very much. I'm ahusband, father and LinkedIn
consultant. And networking iswhat brought me to everything I
have professionally. People Imet along the way, people I
served along the way. And I wasprivileged to keep in touch with
(05:29):
them. And they helped me opendoors to all sorts of
opportunities.
Now, I'm going to ask you aboutthis, because maybe it's a
generational thing, maybe it's aregional thing. I'm from down
south in the US. And I, I thinkit's unusual to hear men start
(05:50):
out with a father and a husbandtype thing. And then put their
careers afterwards. And you havea lovely accent. So I'm going to
assume you're not from thesouthern US.
Thank you very much. I waslistening to the episode you
(06:10):
released with Nate Turner. And Ithink that is a must listen, for
any parents. I'll say this. Irelated to it as a father, but I
think mothers can relate to it,as well. And perhaps that's part
of the reason I started bysaying that. Obviously, Nate's
(06:31):
journey has been different frommine. But I agree with many of
the facts that you discussedthat we, we basically emulate
the environment, we grew up aschildren. And our children are
already in their 20s. So I can'twrite those letters to them. But
(06:51):
that gave me an idea to perhapsconsider writing those letters
for the unborn Grunch grandchildwe may have. So thank you for
that.
That's beautiful. That'sbeautiful. And if you haven't
spoken to me, or emailed him oranything, I will let him know
that he inspired that. I justthink that's really fascinating.
(07:12):
You're like the, you know,third, I think you'd like the
third gentleman I've spokenwith, who started out that way.
And now, I feel that wouldn'thave been the case, say 15 years
ago. And I wonder if somethinghas changed in the way that we
perceive ourselves as workingpeople as business people.
(07:35):
You're right, perhaps COVID hasalso changed some some of the
perceptions we have, because westarted working from home a lot
more than than before. So thebarriers are less rigid, and the
Chinese walls are less rigid.And as a person, you shall do
(07:59):
more than your job. Your job isimportant, but it's not the only
thing. And maybe it's legit forguys to to, to acknowledge that.
I think it's excellent. And howdid that impact? You know,
because like you said, your kidsare grown, my kids are grown
too.
How did the pandemic kind ofshift your perspective in terms
(08:22):
of your business? Cool.
So the most important aspect forme it was that travel was
removed from my my day to daycareer. And I had a lot more
time. And I watched our 18 yearold 17 year old child grow,
(08:44):
because I was with him. He wasjoining school for from zoom and
suicide. And I decided to dosomething more meaningful with
that time that it was almost agift because we had no idea at
the beginning, it would take somuch longer. It's so so much
time and I think some of theconversations we've had would
(09:07):
not have been possible withoutus being around the tool.
Yeah. Well, and I think that'sgreat, too, because that also
gives you time to work on yourbusiness in a different way. I
would imagine if you didn't haveto do all that traveling, how
did that shift your business?
You're absolutely right. Istarted working even more with
(09:29):
US customers. I'm based in southof Tel Aviv, Israel. Okay. So
the weather is close toAtlantis, but we're we're a
couple of 1000 miles ahead. Andthat enables me to work with
people from all over the placeand all over the world, and
people had no longer andexpectations for you to meet
(09:51):
them face to face. And that alsomeant you could jump on a call
much faster and start workingwith people and start Helping
him much, much faster. And even,even when we with COVID, perhaps
behind us, things of changing inour perception and our wish to
(10:13):
have some hybrid career is maystay with us even even longer.
And were you in this businesswhen the pandemic started? Or is
this a new venture for you? Howlong have you been doing this?
Yeah, I've joined LinkedIn early2004. And I started using it
(10:34):
professionally in 2006. Backthen, I held quota carrying
position. And a significant partof my time shell was dedicated
to find the name of the personwithin the organization I needed
to reach out to, and one eveningLinkedIn, just show me the name
of the purchasing manager andthe name of the owner and the
(10:55):
name of the anyone I needed toreach out to. So it enabled me
to beat my quota. And then Idecided to see what's under the
hood. And then, you know,friends asked me to train their
sales force and train theirstaff. And at one point, I
decided to specialize and todrop everything else. That's
when I published my book in2014. So I would guess at least
(11:24):
15 years is pure LinkedInconsulting, what I'm doing
primarily is pure LinkedInconsultant.
Wow. So
what exactly do you help yourclients with? With LinkedIn?
Ask them all sorts of questionsabout their business or about
their objectives. Some of themyou help authors, both fiction
(11:44):
and nonfiction. And it's asimple questions about what they
would consider success. Becausehaving worked with lots of
authors, you know, some of themwould like to impact many
people, some of them would liketo have to be on more stages,
some of them would like to offerprograms, some of them would
like to gain revenues from thebook itself. And until we define
(12:11):
the purpose, or the objectiveyou have, we can't continue with
the tools. And LinkedIn issimply a tool. It's a very
powerful tool, it's, you know,850 million users. And since you
hit record, 1000 people havesigned up, Michelle, every
second three people sign up now,but it's still too. So we need
(12:32):
to know, what would you consideras an objective of success for
you, and LinkedIn needs to servethat purpose. If you want more
people sign up to your authorplatform or to website or your
newsletter, then LinkedIn has toserve you in that way.
So maybe we should back up. Alot of people, especially
(12:56):
authors tend to want to get aFacebook page and all of this
stuff, how is LinkedInbeneficial to them?
Okay, I'll start by saying thatfor many authors, when they
Google their own name, they willsee their LinkedIn profile tops
the list, that's not necessarilythe case for their Facebook
(13:16):
page, or their Facebookprofiles. So you need to manage
it. And you can't let LinkedInmanage it for you. Because many
people will will visit that thatprofile, whether they find you
via Google or via LinkedInsearch, or anything else, and
the minimums is to present yourbook in a professional way to
the LinkedIn community. And thatshouldn't take too much of an
(13:40):
effort. It could be done inminutes in less than an hour. If
you have even just a cover thename of the book, and and
something like that, you can setit up in minutes. There are many
more advanced things you can doon LinkedIn, but that's the
minimal thing I would wouldsuggest. Okay. And, you know, some
(14:00):
people say you're not supposedto advertise on LinkedIn. So
what's your what is your generalapproach? I know, it can vary
depending on what people want todo. But what's the general rule
of thumb in terms of how weshould be thinking about using
LinkedIn?
Cool. So perhaps the show themost important thing I would
(14:21):
suggest is to forget about theway other people use the
platform, and to focus on thebest way for you to leverage the
platform. And that means that ifyou're an author, you're in
business, then the fact thatLinkedIn has a job search
capability is not relevant foryou. And you need to think of
(14:42):
the LinkedIn platform as awebsite. I didn't see your your
only website, you may haveanother website, and that could
help people discover yourwebsite that could help more
people go to Michele barard.com.That's the simplest way to treat
it. Think of it as a wayupcycled needs to convert your
(15:02):
ideal reader into reaching outto you. Now, you said some
keywords there.
Now, because one of the thingsthat I struggle with with
authors sometimes is people wantto write books because they feel
like they've got this intensemessage they want to get out or
they want to entertain, theyhave the story they have to
share. But a lot of times, theydon't realize they're actually
(15:23):
starting a business. AndLinkedIn can really offer some
good opportunities, right forconnecting with people who can
help advance the business, maybeother resources that they could
use in the business, whetherthat's editors or graphic
designers or other people theycan link up with. So what kinds
of things do you think peopleshould be concentrating on in
(15:45):
terms of their priorities, whenthey're thinking about it from a
business perspective?
Excellent. The secret no onetold me when I wrote my book was
that the book is just thebeginning. Just putting there on
Amazon will not change most ofthe author's lives. And we need
to think of it as a way to gainmore exposure and more revenues
(16:10):
via something else. It could bespeaking gigs, it could be
programs, it could be other allsorts of services, we may we may
offer, and you nailed it,because many authors would
primarily think of LinkedIn as away to get more readers. It's
great, but it's not the onlygame in town. In many cases, you
(16:30):
could actually leverage LinkedInto find you to find more people
who would show your book to waymore other readers than
themselves. And that could beeditors and cover designers. And
that could be bloggers, and thatcould be both podcasters. And
you could use LinkedIn as a wayfor you to amplify your message.
(16:53):
And not just speak to the readerthemselves, the readers
themselves are important. Butthere's there are a lot of
communities on LinkedIn thatcould help you get the message
across to the readersthemselves. There's a there's a
b2b element in your in LinkedInthat's very dominant. And if
your book has any b2b context,it makes a lot more sense to use
(17:17):
it in that way, instead oftrying to find the readers via
LinkedIn, who could show yourbook to other people. It could
be HR professionals, it could bemanagers, it could be a local
Chamber of Commerce, it could beall sorts of things, depending
on the topic of your book. Ifyour book is a self help book,
then you could also find a wayfor you to get into more stages
(17:42):
in more podcasts via LinkedIn.And there would be a stage where
you could explain about themessage and how you got into it
and how we can help you.
Very cool.
But now LinkedIn looks like it'sgot its well, just like social
media in general looks like it'sgot its priorities, right? So we
(18:02):
want you to connect with peopleand all that kind of stuff. But
maybe your business hasdifferent priorities or metrics,
things that need to be looked atwhat kinds of things should I
mean, are there differencesthere that you see?
It's a great question. Yes. AndI don't think LinkedIn has to
set your objectives. Michelle,you have, in some cases, the
(18:24):
LinkedIn suggestion would makesense, and that's fine. But if
there's any misalignment betweenwhat LinkedIn suggest and your
priorities, forget aboutLinkedIn. LinkedIn is really the
tool. You can even think of itas a black box. What is your
objective? Is your objective toget more people learn about your
(18:44):
book? Or learn about theservices that you offer? Then
how will you turn thoseconnections into revenues? It's
a very simple question. But wecan have lots of different
answers to that very quickly,either quality, or quantity.
(19:05):
Quality means you connect onlywith people, you know, well, and
then you run into an advancedsearch and you find someone was
be was an ideal person for youto reach out. It could be an
influencer, it could be ablogger, it could be another
podcast, or it could be someoneelse. And you should connect
with people, you know, well,you're able to reach out to the
person you're connected with andask them whether they feel
(19:27):
comfortable making thatintroduction. And if they do
Michelle, you will gain theattention of the influencer
thanks to that person's name,not your name, not my name, but
the person in between. Andthat's the quality approach. The
quantity approach means you needto get as fast as possible to
3035 or 40,000 connections inorder to gain exposure. If
(19:53):
you're only starting onLinkedIn, it's frankly not
realistic to go that routebecause it will take you years
LinkedIn has now limited thenumber of connections requests
you can send on every week. Soit will take you a lifetime to
get there. And perhaps the worstthing to do would be to try and
have it both ways, or to besomewhere in the middle, just
(20:16):
just for this, you need to besomeone who will for everything,
but LinkedIn connectionstrategies, because link being
somewhere in the middle meansyou no longer know your
connections without havingenough exposure. So pick one and
ask yourself, if you had to pickone. Michelle, would you like to
be the best connected or themost connected?
(20:37):
Hmm.
So most connected might workbest on something like Facebook
or Twitter? It
sounds like, Yes, ma'am.
But LinkedIn, we want to focuson quality, although not
necessarily quantity.
You're absolutely correct.Because if I, if I see that we
share a mutual connection, thenwhat I think of that person is
(21:00):
going to impact you see, I lookat your profile, and I see Sam
Sierra, and I'm, I was connectedto him. So obviously, he was a
guest on somewhere in themiddle. And if I reach out to
him, he will be able to answerbasic questions about you, and
maybe it will land a meaningfulconversation will mean we'll
have a meaningful conversationwith him. But he imagined the
(21:22):
something else would see Sam andfive other people. And you would
not necessarily knows those fivepeople, then you shall you will
not be be there. When I look atthose six people to say Sam is
the go to person you need to asksome I will see five other
people a phi as Jane Doe. Andshe says Michelle, who? That's
not the answer we want. We wantpeople who can answer basic
(21:45):
questions about about us andmake the introduction. If we're
into a quality network. It'stempting to go for both, but
it's a dangerous path.
So
does this get into that sayingwhere they say your network is
your net worth.
You could have 200 connectionsand grow your business thanks to
(22:12):
LinkedIn. And you might have5000 connections without those
connections being translatedinto a nickel or dime. So these
are for me, these are vanitymetrics. And the metrics we need
to focus on are the real lifemetrics. It could be the
downloads of a book, it could bethe engagement, we gain as
(22:32):
author to have a book tour or tobe a guest on our podcast such
as this or something else. Sothe metrics that count are not
the LinkedIn metrics. It's themetrics that count for you. It
could be traffic to a website,it could be discovery calls,
where people say I struggle withediting, perhaps it could help
(22:53):
me. And if you're usingLinkedIn, if you haven't used
LinkedIn for that, and you youhave eight, or eight or 10, new
inquiries, and some of them willbe translated into clients, then
you know that LinkedIn hashelped you grow your business by
25%. That makes sense. And ifyou see only the LinkedIn
metrics growing, and you seenothing in the bank side, so
(23:17):
you're not doing the rightthing, forget about the LinkedIn
metrics treat as a black box,focus on the metric that matters
to you.
And that gets into just generalconcepts about marketing anyway,
right? So anytime you doanything in marketing, you're
testing you're measuring. Andthen you're responding to what
you see, right?
(23:38):
Yes, LinkedIn hasn't
changed the way our minds arewired. And every, every now and
then there's a new shiny object,and people tell you that it's
changed everything. I can't sayit has changed. Everything has
saved time. It's reorganize theinformation we see. But it
hasn't changed the way we needto know like and trust the
(24:00):
person we'd like to work with.
And now LinkedIn has a lot oftools. I know every time I go
into my LinkedIn account, I seesomething different that I just
didn't notice before. And theseare, they may vary at different
levels, because there's ofcourse, the free LinkedIn level,
then there's like, I guess, ajob search level. And then
(24:22):
there's like a business level. Idon't remember all the names.
You're the you're the LinkedInexpert.
But
are there certain tools thatsomeone at the free level could
really start to leverageimmediately to see some results
in their business?
Absolutely. And I actually wouldnot encourage anyone to go and
(24:44):
pay for a premium account beforemaking the most out of the free
accounts. Most of LinkedInmembers are not paid members.
And you can gain a lot of dataand clients and exposure thanks
to a free LinkedIn account ifyou know what you're doing, so
perhaps we could break it downinto three simple steps. The
(25:06):
first step would be to improveor optimize your LinkedIn
presence. Because your LinkedInprofile is associated with every
public action you perform onLinkedIn, you mentioned
connection. So if you if I sendyou an invitation request to if
I receive an invitation requestfrom you, I will be able to go
and visit your profile beforedeciding whether accept that
(25:28):
invitation or not. So have alook at your profile and make
sure it speaks the message youwant to tell the world can we
see your book cover? Can we seethe name of the book? Can we
even understand you're an authorwithin five seconds? Or is it a
hidden there because you thoughtit was job search and you only
(25:49):
enter the places you've worked,though, even though it's not
important for you, as a businessowner, just like you said, or is
an author, or even a futureauthor see working on the book
and the book will only bereleased in 2024 Doesn't matter,
that's what you're doing. Sofirst level would be a deal your
presence on LinkedIn or yourprofile for for most of us. And
(26:11):
then the second layer would be aconnection strategy and decide
where whether you connect withpeople you know, well or not.
And then would come the part ofthe Legion, the lead generation
Cropper. After you your profileis set up. And after you
connected with people, you know,then you can lay back and ask
yourself, Okay, how am I goingto use this engine? There are
(26:32):
many possibilities there couldbe confusing. Woke, how can I
leverage LinkedIn platform forme to gain more readers? And am
I targeting the individualreader? Or am I targeting some
organization or some brokersthat could show my my book to
other people or ring me onto thestage for me to explain about
(26:56):
the book itself, the problem,your books, souls could have all
sorts of groups on LinkedIn. Iknow you worked on on one
specific group. One specificbook, I'm sorry, for a lady who
wrote a book about how to findnursing jobs. So for that lady,
(27:17):
the fact that LinkedIn is apowerful job search engine,
bring everything in a reallynarrow, she could explain to job
seekers how to find nursingjobs, she could use the LinkedIn
platform in order for her tofind LinkedIn groups where
(27:38):
nurses are would be nurses willbe. And there instead of saying
buy my book, which would betempting, but not really
effective. She could what shecould do say I go to Amazon and
order your book, you would getyou would not know my personal
(27:58):
details, Amazon is going to holdthat information. And I can't
even go browse through theAmazon App and ask Amazon to
send me the first chapter ofyour book. So what you could do
is maybe have an extract maybetwo pages or the introduction or
something that would make peopleunderstand what the book is
about without spilling the beansshouldn't be too difficult for
(28:21):
for everyone to do. And then youwould go and promote that
passage. Or maybe it would be ashort Zito something that would
help people understand there isa way for them to find those
nursing jobs. And this easysteps will be one, two, and
three. And if interested inlearning more, then I've got a
(28:43):
forthcoming webinars next month,that would be free, or you could
also buy my book, that's fine.But if you only show the book
down people's throat, withoutthem realizing the value of the
book, you're not likely to see alot of new orders.
So it sounds like you're talkingabout but using LinkedIn as part
of your marketing funnel.
(29:04):
Absolutely. It should be alignedwith your marketing funnel in
general. And even in terms ofcontent, I don't think we'd our
audience here needs to producecontent for the sake of
LinkedIn. But if you have goodcontent that is educational, and
evergreen, say you could help ifI'm struggling with editing. And
(29:27):
that's the fruit might let's sayit's my first book. So I have
all sorts of quite all sorts ofquestions. How can I pick an
editor? And what's the best ageto start working with an editor?
Is it just when my book isfinished or when my draft is
finished? Or is it somewhereelse? So you could answer those
questions in 30 seconds. You'vebeen asked those questions for
hundreds of time. Help abouttaking the questions that your
(29:52):
ideal readers are strugglingwith and answering those
questions in a way that wouldhelp them see that Have you the
move thanks to Michelle from thethey've taken a baby step from
point A, where they wereabsolutely clueless to point B,
they only start understandingbut they can look back and say
yes. Now I think I've made someprogress. Now they will be
(30:16):
listened to to you, when yousay, I can show you the steps to
C and D and E. And that would bethrough gated content, or a
webinar or a call something thatwould bring them down the
funnel, just like you said,start by offering real real
advice that would find them inthe place they're at right now.
(30:37):
And then they would be a lotmore interested in to you don't
have to sell they want to buy.
Right, so you're educating? Yes,ma'am.
I think that the content thatworks best is educational, top
of funnel, Evergreen, if youhave words, you can repurpose or
curate content, that'seducational, you've got a lot
(30:59):
more chances of that contentbeing read on LinkedIn, and that
content could be a lot moreengaging, and people will
discover you, thanks to thateducational content.
So even for fiction authors, whomay not have an educational
book, they could maybe shareinformation about their journey
as a writer, the challenges weran into and how they overcame
(31:24):
them with the writing process.You know,
when I when I'm listening to youthink the the could be talented
drawn between entrepreneurs andbusiness owners and authors.
Because the struggles arebasically the same. We have a
blank page, and we're askingourselves, should I create this?
Or should I create that? Okay,so the fact that it's a fiction
(31:45):
book doesn't change the essenceof our struggle, we need to make
tough decisions. And we knowthat every decision we make is
going to influence our nextsteps. And if you're a good
writer, as your authors are,then try to describe that author
journey, as a book. And ifyou're, if your style is a
(32:11):
thriller, then try to align itwith the way you describe. So
would it be I would turn thepages and want to see how did
you make that choice. Or if youfind fun, funny stories, or
children's books, and try totell the same story from the
angle of a child, or somethingthat would be aligned with your
(32:32):
style.
That is amazing. Insight. I lovethe way you put that like lean
into your genre to tell yourpersonal story, your personal
journey. I love that.
Thank you. I think it boils downto you don't have to become
someone else on LinkedIn.Michelle has a real life
(32:55):
personality. You don't have tocreate a new one, you can be the
same person you are. And thatmeans if you're an introvert,
you don't have to become anextrovert on LinkedIn. You can
gain exposure and trust in gameand make more people will
discover your book with withyour vulnerability and your
(33:18):
frank advice. I was strugglingwith this. I was struggling with
LinkedIn should I be here ornot? Because I see everyone is
describing only TED Talks andonly Academy Awards. And all I
all I've done you know is writea book. But I struggled with it
I decided to show you mightjourney. And that's how it looks
like you don't have to dosomething else. You have a real
(33:41):
life, personality, you have areal life style. And reflecting
that style is the easiest way toget across to people and to
connect with people. If you needto be if you try to become
someone else. It's not reallyfruitful. And at one point,
people will say your phone. Wedon't
want that. Wow. Thank you.
(34:04):
Thank you for that. Because Iknow a lot of people LinkedIn in
particular, I think is a littleintimidating for people, because
it's the professional socialnetwork. And so I think that's
really great advice. So if youhad a brand new person coming on
to LinkedIn today, what threethings do you think they should
(34:26):
do? Getting started on LinkedIn?
Cool. My first suggestionMichelle would be to try and
play with the LinkedIn platform,the app or the desktop and try
to visit 20 to 50 profiles ofpeople to do similar things. So
if I were a first time author, Iwould simply run a search for
(34:49):
authors on LinkedIn infanfiction, I would add some
some other keywords. If it'snonfiction, I would write
something else and I would lookat 30 profiles and it would be a
amazed, but the variety ofthings that we'll see. And that
would help me understand, okay,that lady has, like, when I look
at your profile, you have a verynice banner, when I see your
(35:09):
banner, the word book comesalive. I don't mean that
everyone has to copy your exactbanner, by they see that you
have turned into your bannerinto a real life example of a
book. And they could do the samething with their on message, it
doesn't have to you have totweak it. Perhaps the book is
(35:31):
only the only deciding about thetopic of the book so they can do
something else. firstsuggestion, just suggestion
would be to simply read as manyprofiles or glances as many
profiles as they can, in orderto get some good ideas, some
people to be inspired by andsome things you don't want to
(35:52):
emulate something that doesn'twork, something that turns them
off, it's important for them tounderstand why that has turned
us off and try not to do thesame thing. So that's that could
take you as little as 30minutes, simply browse and see
all sorts of profiles and decidewhat good ideas could be part of
(36:15):
your LinkedIn presence. Mysecond, My second suggestion
would be to simply improve andoptimize their LinkedIn profile.
To make sure it answers thequestions they want to answer.
It has to mention the book hasto mention the topic of the
book. And the third and lastsuggestion would be to try and
(36:39):
ask meaningful questions. Say,if you say my book is still in
the writing process, and I'mworking with you, I'm still
editing. So I have maybe atleast a quarter before itself.
But here's a very simple idea, Icould tell people I'm working on
a book and show them two covers,or show them two titles. And I
(37:01):
would simply ask them, if theymind either voting or telling us
telling me what works best forthem the orange cover or the
blue cover that technical booktitle or the emotional one. And
that's a very nice way to makepeople aware of the fact that
you're writing a book, insteadof saying, you know, you can go
(37:22):
to Amazon and preorder my book,you can make the same message in
a more subtle way. And peoplewill actually many people will
engage with that content, stillgain information will engage,
they will gain more informationabout how people treat the
profit, the book, or the coveror the title could even improve
(37:42):
you in the early stages. Youcould almost turn LinkedIn into
or create a community wherewhere you'd have alpha readers.
And it would ask who would bewilling to read a chapter and
give you some feedback. And manypeople would be thrilled many
people will not be it doesn'tmatter if 10 people reach out to
you and saying shall I'd like tohave a look at the chapter, you
(38:05):
start building a relationshipwith them, you can improve your
book, and when it's out there,you can thank them and say that
you couldn't done you could nothave done that without them. And
that will also he's likely toincrease the way they would
engage with your book, theywould feel part of your journey.
So it doesn't take too mucheffort. Everything we mentioned
(38:28):
is feasible within minutes. Gothere.
I love it. I love it and gettingpeople engaged in that way. They
feel like they've got a certainamount of skin in the game. And
then that makes them want tosupport you all the more.
Yes,
the author's journey is, is along term one. But if we can
(38:50):
make people part of thatjourney, we gain a lot more
information without losinganything, we really only get
more more get richer, and we canget more insights about what
other people think about ourbooks and, and our books are not
made for us. They're made forthe readers. And their LinkedIn
(39:11):
profiles are not made for us.They're made for our ideal
readers on LinkedIn.
So they should scan the otherprofiles get an idea of what
they like, what they don't like,what works for them, what
doesn't work for them, theyshould
engage the folks that that
they connect with in differentways, particularly if they're
(39:33):
trying to promote a book orsomething like that.
And the third thing, and thesecond was actually optimize
their LinkedIn profile,
optimized profile. That's whatit was optimized, optimize the
profile. So how do you go aboutoptimizing your profile that's
just kind of figuring out okay,this is who I want to present or
what I want to present aboutmyself, and then making sure
(39:56):
that everything on that page keypoints to that. Is that really
what optimization is?
Yes, it's partly that it'sdeciding that the headline
you're going to be using isdifferent from the default
headline, LinkedIn will show usthat the default headline will
be simply the title and the thecompany you're working for. So
(40:21):
it could be founder or books,editors, editor LS, that's fine.
But if you want to change it,for example, if you want to say
that writing and publishing isalso part parts of the services
you offer, you could tweak yourheadline and make it about the
other parts you want to show.And if your book is self health,
self help book, then you canbasically say I help lady lady
(40:46):
entrepreneurs, start their ownbusiness, or whatever the book
is about. And and if you saythat you help first generation
American, write or publish theirbooks, then the book is there.
But it's not just by my book.It's this is the system I have.
And there are other elements, wehaven't gotten to hear the
(41:09):
keywords you'd like to includein your profile, because there
are billions of searches thatare run on LinkedIn, to say, I'm
running a search for the nursingjobs or the self health self
help. Book, how can you makesure that I'm going to find you
in page one, and not in page125. So there's a whole system
(41:32):
to it, but it's again, it's notvery difficult for the authors
to to follow. And I think whatyou mentioned earlier is way
more important than anything wediscussed. The minute you become
an author is the meat, you needto understand you're in
business. And that you drive thethe conversation should be
(41:53):
different. Everything becomes atool, and LinkedIn is one tool.
It's not the only one, it couldbe a great way for you to gain
to grow your business. But youneed to understand that you're
in business before youunderstand that you'll only be
transactional about thedownloads, or the books or one
more person. But there's,there's, you can't always come
(42:18):
and say, Here's my book bytesthat one point you will feel it
doesn't make sense. And mostpeople will not be engaging with
that sort of content. So youneed to find creative ways to
write about it, just like you'redoing with your
work. Well, Daniel,
you help people with this? Howcan they get in touch with you
(42:41):
to help them with their LinkedInprofiles? How can I get in touch
with you to help me with myLinkedIn profile?
Thank you, Michelle. They'resimply go to Daniel alfond.com.
There's a way for them to readarticles and go to the store and
book a one on one or whatever.And if I may ask a very simple
question. We can do this in lessthan 60 seconds. Are you going?
(43:05):
Are you willing to try this withme? Sure. Cool. So let me ask
you this. What is the link thatyou would like to promote the
most on LinkedIn?
Oh, a specific link
probably relate to my discoverycall. Excellent.
So is that on on Michele?barard.com?
(43:26):
Well, there are two there's oneon Michele barard.com. That's
for something a littledifferent. Because I work with
business people and help themkind of systematize what they
do. That's the tech geek in mecoming out. And on urban book
editor, I have the one forpeople who have books that they
(43:46):
want to get edited or getmarketing plans developed for
excellence. So is urban is theurban one the link you want to
promote? Yeah, excellent. Solet's try to do this live in
real time. I'd like you to go toyour LinkedIn profiles you can
let me
do it. So you're gonna see melooking okay guys, because I'm
(44:06):
looking at the other monitor.
I love hands on
exercises, you know, I'm asoftware trainer by background.
I love that.
Thank you very much for playingthis dangerous game with me. You
can always edit it out but tryto click on Add profile section
when you go to your profile.
Okay, you're gonna laugh at mebecause I go so infrequently
(44:33):
that I have to think about whereI go. I forgotten I changed
that banner just recently I likethat. Okay,
so add profile section.
Yes ma'am. And then recommendedthe second from the bottom. And
the first one should be addedfeatured. Yes. Again, for our
listeners here we went to yourprofile. I asked you to click on
(44:56):
Add profile section and thenrecommended and then she Should
Are we good to go for the nextstage? Yes, sir. Good. Can you
see a plus sign on the top?Right? Yes. Would you please
click on that plus sign andselect the third sing edit link?
Awesome. Good. Would you mindgoing to urban book edits.com
(45:18):
and find the direct link to thediscovery call you'd like people
to go to?
Oh, my who knew you could do allthis fancy stuff?
All right, I've got it.Excellent. Could you please
paste it? And click on add?Okay, and just save it.
(45:46):
And I can put in a fancydescription and all that I'm not
going to?
Yes, absolutely, you can, youcan tweak the headline itself,
you can also add a description,but that what that will do is
basically showing a visual linkto that page, anyone visiting
your profile will see it prettyfast. And that means more people
(46:08):
are going to discover thatdiscovery call. And they will
understand faster, how you canhelp them. Alright,
so now when I want to view myprofile as my status as another
person,
so basically what you could whatyou could have you saved it.
Yes. Good. So when you scroll,let me show it. Here. We go to
(46:35):
your profile.
Look at that.
Yeah, okay, so we simply scrolland we see this. And as you
said, you can check you canchange that you can say on
schedule discovery call. Andwhat happens when I click here,
is I go to the page, you wantit. Very cool. And you can
change that in two months orwhenever you can make your
(46:56):
LinkedIn presence aligned withyour future needs. Very cool. It
took you less than a minute todo it.
Yeah, that's awesome. Guys,don't ever say you don't learn
anything on this show. I'm justsaying you always learn
something. Our guests arefabulous. Daniel, thank you so
much. How can people connectwith you personally, they want
(47:18):
to connect with you on LinkedInor Facebook all the social
medias. How do they do that?
They can really started any offon what's calm. They can find me
on LinkedIn. They could find meon Twitter or cool why they'd
have all they have to do is saythe magic word. I was listening
to somewhere in the middle and Ihave a question.
Awesome. Thank you, Daniel forbeing on summer in the middle of
(47:39):
Michele Barard. Thank you,Michelle. That's our show this
month guys. You can reach meonline at Michele barard.com.
You can also find me onFacebook, Instagram and Tiktok
as urban book editor, send me anote. I'd love to hear from you.
Feel free to send in some topicsyou'd like us to cover on the
show. Make sure you tune intothe show on October 20 when my
(48:02):
guest will be masteringintegrative life coach Nancy
Picard. You can find us once amonth on Fridays at 5pm Pacific
6pm Mountain 7pm Central and 8pmEastern at the somewhere in the
middle podcast.com. Let'scontinue the conversation. You
guys be good. stay mindful andremain prayerful peace and bliss
(48:23):
and Joe
(50:00):
You
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