Have you ever wondered if it's worth it for coaches to be on LinkedIn? I've always been curious myself and questioned if it would actually help me grow my business. That's why I went to the expert, Donna Serdula and she helped me determine if and how to make the most of my time on LinkedIn.

Learn how to use LinkedIn to help you grow your coaching business, so you can broaden your network, establish your authority, and book more clients.

A job change in 2006 led her back to LinkedIn as Donna Serdula looked for tools to help her build a sales territory. It was during this time she had her LinkedIn epiphany and forged her LinkedIn 4 point methodology. By integrating LinkedIn into her sales process, she found tremendous success.

In 2009, she walked away from her successful sales career and founded Vision Board Media and LinkedIn-Makeover.com.

Donna and her team of over 40 writers have helped thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, sales stars, business leaders, and professionals from around the world create professionally branded LinkedIn profiles.

She is the author of the book “LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies,” published by Wiley.

Donna has been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, Time’s Money Section, Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, LA Times, NBC, SiriusXM Radio’s The Focus Group, and many other news outlets.

She has presented keynotes and workshops for NBCUniversal, Columbia University, Wharton Business School, Intuit, Texas State Bar Association, GSK, and hundreds more.

http://linkedin-makeover.com/

Transcription:

[00:00:00] Lindsay: You are listening to the book of dream clients, podcast bite-sized episodes from one coach to another to help you create and scale your business with simplicity, no hustle required.

[00:00:16] To the book of June client's podcast. We have Donna with us today and she is a LinkedIn expert and she is a busing. All of my myths about LinkedIn. I never felt like it was a fitting for coaches to be a part of it, but she is definitely convincing me that it is a place we should probably be showing up on.

[00:00:33] And she's giving us some really fabulous tips and ways we can optimize our profiles so we can connect with clients there. So you're really going to enjoy this. Take some notes. We have some great resources for you at the end. And of course, sit back, relax and enjoy. Donna. Thank you so much for being on the book, your dream clients podcast.

[00:00:52] I'm really excited to have you on 

[00:00:54] Donna: Lindsey. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:00:56] Lindsay: I was excited to bring Donna on because she's going to talk about LinkedIn and I have all kinds of made up theories about LinkedIn in my head. And if you listen to me, you know that I am not the expert, so that's why I brought in Donna.

[00:01:10] So why don't you go ahead and tell everyone about yourself and what you do and we'll do. 

[00:01:14] Donna: Sure. Sure. So, so my name is Donna stir doula, and I have a business called vision board media, a company, vision board media, my websites, LinkedIn dash make-over dot com. And I joined LinkedIn back in 2005. I built a sales Tori territory utilizing it.

[00:01:34] And you know, I realized very early on. The importance of not only LinkedIn, but that LinkedIn profile and how it's this amazing platform for branding. I, in 2009, I started my own company. There's important media. And I, I said, I want to be here to help people write their profile, help them develop it, help them, tell their story, help them use it in a really strategic way so they can find opportunities.

[00:02:00] Those opportunities could absolutely be jobs. They could be gigs. It could be partners and clients. All types of opportunities. And in 2015, Wiley publishing knocked on my door and they said, we'd love for you to write a, for dummies book on this topic. And so I'm also a for dummies author. I wrote LinkedIn profile optimization for dummies, and I now have over 20 writers on my team.

[00:02:23] We have written over 6,000 LinkedIn profiles for executives and entrepreneurs and coaches from all over the world. And I love what we do. We really help people change their lives through telling their story in a public way. So people can collide with them and use them to get those opportunities with.

[00:02:42] Lindsay: Wow. That's amazing. And I, I was gonna tell you all of my theories and probably myths about LinkedIn before we get started. So for me, so I, I am a coach. I've been a coach for many years. And when LinkedIn first came about, I signed up because you know, why not? So I didn't see the big potential for me and I still don't.

[00:03:06] So I'm hoping you're going to open my eyes and everyone else's because I believe, and I'm, I know I'm wrong, but this is what's in Lindsey's head. That LinkedIn is for people who need jobs or consulting. And so I don't know how LinkedIn can be good for an online coach, because I feel like my clients find me elsewhere.

[00:03:25] And so how is LinkedIn even going to help me? And why should I spend time? I spend even more time on a, another platform. 

[00:03:34] Donna: Well, so, so repeat after me, LinkedIn is not just for job search and I know people do they think of LinkedIn as this like, oh, I just, I just got handed a cardboard box. I better go there and update my profile.

[00:03:51] You know, I think the, it all comes down to, and this is, this is something that LinkedIn did for years. And that was these to say, your LinkedIn profile is your online resume. So just copy and paste your resume. And that's what really, I think, got people thinking, oh, it's place just for job search. And of course recruiters love it, you know, because it's basically an open Rolodex and open address book of, of every professional out there in the world.

[00:04:19] So of course recruiters are going to love it and flock to it. But, you know, I think the first thing to think about is this one, your LinkedIn profile is not around. All right. Just get that out of your mind. Do not copy and paste your resume if you've ever copied and pasted your resume. That right there, ladies and gentlemen is why you're scratching your head going.

[00:04:37] I think LinkedIn is a waste of time because I'm not, nothing's like happening. It's because you did exactly what LinkedIn had originally said, which was copy and paste your resume resumes, align you to job position. Your LinkedIn profile needs to align you to your audience, to your goal, to your keywords.

[00:04:56] And it needs to tell your story through what your target audience needs to know about you. So as coaches, that story that your LinkedIn profile should be telling. Okay. Who's your target audience? How do you help them? What is the value that you bring? How did you get into this? What is your background that infuses you with this knowledge that is going to allow you to help your clients gain success?

[00:05:25] That's the story that needs to come through that LinkedIn profile now. Not, not to just like totally monopolized compensation, but what I want you to realize is with LinkedIn, it is a database, it's a database of professionals for professionals. And one of the other big issues, Lindsey to say this girl, but you're making this mistake on your profile.

[00:05:54] I'm making a thousand mistakes. I'm sure. And I bet, I bet most people who are listening to this will be making this mistake. You have 64 connections. Yeah. When you have a small network, that's another reason why you're not doing well on LinkedIn. You need to be connecting. And I know yet this is get another platform to be managing.

[00:06:14] And I know, but, but here's the thing. If you work with, with people who are in business, who are in corporate, who, you know, whether it's B2B or even B to C it's okay. B to C, because even then they are on LinkedIn as well, and you want to connect with them. And when you connect with. You're now in their network.

[00:06:32] And if one of those people or someone who's connected to them or connected to them three degrees, if they're searching, you'll turn up in the search results and they can see how they're connected to you. And people love to do business with people who they know or know other people. 

[00:06:51] Lindsay: Well, I'm surprised I have 64 connections.

[00:06:54] I thought I had like five, so I don't know. I don't even know how that star yeah, she's better than, better than nothing. So for me, I'm thinking, is this more of a place where people have to go to LinkedIn to find you, or does it come up if you're just Googling? 

[00:07:14] Donna: It depends on your name. It really does depend on your name, but I will say that.

[00:07:19] LinkedIn profiles ranked very high in Google search. So you can find, especially for people who are really trying to curate that first page of search results on their name, you know, LinkedIn is an easy way of claiming one of those top spots. So it does work very well within the Google world. Typically more for a name base.

[00:07:43] You know, search as opposed to a keyword based search keyword based searches happen more within LinkedIn itself and think about it this way. Right? You go to Google, right? And you do a keyword based search. Like I am looking for a life coach. You're going to get results from all over. I mean, you're going to get any publication that even says the word life coach.

[00:08:06] Like you're not going to get a true listing of, you know, life coaches you know, who have that specialty that you're looking for. But if you go to LinkedIn and you do a search and you say life. It's going to pull up those life coaches that are either people you've already connected to or people that they're connected to, or they're connected to you.

[00:08:27] So you're almost searching your tight network. And there's a beauty to that because. You want to see, like, you know, how closely connected am I? Because people like to work with people who, you know, are within that sphere. It's, it's a little bit, it allows them to trust them a little bit more easily and it allows them to feel like, okay, if so-and-so worked with them or knows them, they must be good.

[00:08:55] That does 

[00:08:55] Lindsay: make a difference referrals or just, okay. She knows this person. So that makes me feel better about making my decision. My. I dunno if it's a stigma or what it is, but I feel like LinkedIn is also this really hard sales slash Marc masculine marketing platform. I mean, if I just look at my messages and LinkedIn and like, I'm not even responding to these, I know they're canned messages and they look gross to me.

[00:09:20] So I feel like that's all the, like they're giving LinkedIn a bad they're representing bad. So let's talk about that. How can you. Soften the LinkedIn for us who feel like that's where they're playing there, 

[00:09:34] Donna: you know, I feel that LinkedIn levels the playing field for women. And I feel that it's a great place for a woman to go because you've got this LinkedIn profile, right.

[00:09:46] And this is where you can tell your story. And you can, you can talk about, you know, the things that you've done, you can talk about, you can talk about your accomplishing. But in a manner that's more authentic and genuine. It doesn't have to be raised 500 million and blah, blah, blah, blah. You can talk about how I helped this company and what you had put into it.

[00:10:10] And like those suggestions that you made and then what the results were. So you can go in there and really formulate your own story in a manner that is comfortable and organic to you and, and the profile. Does that the other thing is women love relationships. I know I do. And you know, I've already talked about it, but you being able to use that LinkedIn search engine and to find those connections, super powerful, super powerful.

[00:10:36] You know, the other aspect that I love for women is when you go onto LinkedIn and you go into that LinkedIn feed, that's the more of that social network aspect. And you can go in there and you can suddenly. Join the conversation of your network, and you can see what people are talking about and you can jump in and start to comment and like, and it's an easy way to network without having to leave your house.

[00:11:06] And so you could say to yourself, you know, Hey, you know, I coach this specific title. You know, executive or I coach people who are in health care and you can then follow those hashtags where those people are, or you can even join groups where those people are, or you can go in and look at those companies and see the employees that work there and what level they are.

[00:11:28] You can then follow them and you can start to really get into those conversations in a, in a very natural, comfortable type of way. And, and I don't feel that. That type of environment is available in other places. So it really allows you to do a lot of research, feel comfortable and then engage in a confident type of way.

[00:11:55] Lindsay: Okay. I'm, I'm seeing it now. I'm wondering how, if I'm a business coach or I'm a health coach or, you know, relationship, coach, whatever, how do I find clients on there? Or do I let them find me? 

[00:12:08] Donna: It depends on what you want. Lindsey. There are some people who take a very passive approach to this. They optimize their profile.

[00:12:17] They make sure that it really tells their story in a very authentic, genuine type of way. They make sure that they're building their network. You know, if they're going in there doing a presentation, they're connecting or asking people to follow them. You know, they make sure that, you know, as they move around, they're connecting, right.

[00:12:35] But they're not actively involved in the posting as much. And in that way you can still get. Some success because people will find you, people are looking before a meeting, they're going to pull up that profile and they want to learn more. And so more in the rapport aspect in terms of the, you know, the, the research aspect.

[00:12:57] You're, you're gonna find some really great. And that's very passive. It's a very passive way of doing it. If you say, well, you know what done it? You know, if I'm going to, I'm going to do all that. I want to go a little bit further, you know, in that situation you do, you want to start to use it more? And so again, so here's so passive is the first level.

[00:13:17] The second one is more as a tool, right? And so as a tool. You know, do some searches, do some keyword searches, you know, look at companies and look at those employees because you have that ability to see into companies. You have the ability to see invisible relationships, you know, oh, this person that I worked with is connected to this person.

[00:13:37] They could give me that, that introduction. So I could get in there and I could start talking about this coaching program, you know, so allow it to do that type of thing. So really using it more as that tool, you know, that tool to prospect, that tool to have engage in, you know, get that business intelligence.

[00:13:57] Then if you want to go the third step up the third step above that is right. Let's start posting, let's start adding value. Let's start educating. Let's start, you know, really letting my voice be heard. And that's when other people are going to start hearing, you know, start reading you on that LinkedIn feed.

[00:14:19] They're going to start seeing you as that thought leader. They're going to start saying, wait, this person is giving me so much value just here on my newsfeed, on my LinkedIn feed. Maybe this is someone that I do want to work. I 

[00:14:32] Lindsay: love the passive little bit introverted me, loves the passive method mixed in with the high level of providing content and posting content that, that soothes my brain a little bit.

[00:14:45] So if we go that route how do we build our network by, do you have like a strategy that you do every day? Like I go into. You know, for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, and I just build my network, but by following people are posting, like, what's a good strategy. Cause I know my people want action steps. Like what should I do first?

[00:15:05] Donna: No, I would say really think in terms of going in and you know, and even if it's just once a week, if not once, you know, if it's not every day, but you know, really think about, okay, who is in my network, like let's visualize. My real network, the people that I engage with, maybe I engage with them on Instagram.

[00:15:28] Maybe I engage with them on Facebook. Maybe they're people who are in a networking group that I belong to, but really if you haven't already started developing this over time, then let's do a onetime. Let's try to get that network, that offline network reflected in this online network and all of those other online platforms.

[00:15:51] Bring them in. So, you know, maybe over a period of a few days, a few weeks just really make that concerted effort to build it up just through the people that you know. And the beautiful part is like, if you listen to some experts talk, they'll always say you have to do a personalized invite. If you don't do a personalized invite.

[00:16:11] Oh my goodness. If these people know you, they look they're like, oh, there's Lindsey. You do not need to a personal invite. So it's not like this should take forever. Right? So invite this people that, you know, you don't need to do a personalized invite if they can, if they recognize your face. If a person's not going to recognize your face and you're sending them invites.

[00:16:33] And that situation a little bit of a personalized note would be a great idea. Hey, we met here or we've connected, or we're in this group where I see you commenting here. And I, I really would like to, you know, you know, join your network so we can, whatever, you know, and you know, do that once you have that, once you have that foundation, once you have that founding.

[00:16:56] Then it's just, you know, keeping it up. It's, it's making sure that, you know, you have a new client connect with them on LinkedIn. You know, are you engaging in a conversation somewhere? Hey, throw them in soup. And you know, it really shouldn't be something that you, it should, it should start to feel. It should start to feel natural.

[00:17:19] Like it shouldn't feel like, oh God, just start to feel natural. It really should. You know, and the nice thing with LinkedIn is it's very smart. It's very smart. So what you could do is once you have a nice foundation, Just go to my network, you can connect your address books, you know, your contacts, and then LinkedIn will start to show you, oh, here's all of these people that you've been connecting to.

[00:17:46] It. Here's all the people that you've been talking to. And oh, by the way, here's the people that you should know. So after a while, LinkedIn is going to start doing it for you. 

[00:17:58] Lindsay: Okay. Gotcha. So if you were looking at my profile, what are three tips you would give me right now? Cause I hope I'm not the only one who has just like this barren desert.

[00:18:09] Donna: So the very first thing is I think you are a member of Forbes coaches, council. That's all I think you do. I don't think you do anything else. So that right there is a huge, I think that's a huge area for improvement, you know? And you should on your, your LinkedIn headline. So right below your name, it says official member at Forbes coaches, council.

[00:18:31] This right here is something that LinkedIn does thinking they're helping their members. And they're not, which is the most current experience that you have. If you don't pay any attention to it, LinkedIn will throw it right up there as a headline. And that headline Lindsay that follows you. So if you do start to post, if you do start to connect with people, if you write a recommendation of whatever you do on LinkedIn, it's going to say Lindsay Malone, official member at Forbes coaches, council, and, and right there, it's, that's not true.

[00:19:00] You are so much more than that, right? I mean, you're doing so much more. That headline needs to be optimized. And it's 220 characters, and it should say in a very pithy, very concise, but very engaging way who you are and what you do. And if you can put in your keywords, so, you know, coaches, coach, or however you want to, you know, helping co helping coaches get their dream clients, you know, whatever that might be.

[00:19:32] I want to put it in there. And when you infuse it with your keywords, that means you're going to turn up higher and more often in search. So if you're sort of scratching your head going, oh gosh, Don at 220 characters and duel, it's kind of, well, here's the thing on my website. If you go to LinkedIn dash, make over.com and you go to free tools, you're going to see that I have a LinkedIn headline general.

[00:19:52] And it is an app that you just click, click, click, you put in a few terms, a few keywords, you add a few descriptors. It will, it will spit out a beautiful headline for you. And that's that's for you. That's for your audience. It's free, but absolutely go in there and generate a impressive engaging headline.

[00:20:15] And if you do that, you're going to find with within days, You're going to get more hits and you're going to get more views to your profile. 

[00:20:24] Lindsay: How could we build our list with the LinkedIn? Cause I'm a big list builder. Is there a really cool way we can do that there too? 

[00:20:32] Donna: You know, one of the things that you could do is you could have, you know, if you're doing events.

[00:20:39] Online events. You could do that through LinkedIn and you can put up, you can create an event and you could push that out there. So people outside of your network can join. And that would be a great way to, to build you know, just as you are, you know, doing podcasts just as you are, you know, it's just one of those places where if you're whatever you're posting on Instagram and you just think of what it is that you're pushing out there.

[00:21:04] It's just, just reformat it just ever so slightly strip out all those hashtags girl. We don't need 30. We're here. It's typically three. And we like to do more broad keyword hashtags in the LinkedIn realm. So rather than going like marketing tips for women marketing. Okay. Okay. Put that in. And you can find that you can kind of piggyback a lot of that stuff.

[00:21:32] And LinkedIn isn't as scary, professional, boring stuffy, as it used to be. We used to be very, very stuffy, very, very traditional, very, very conservative. You know, goodness gracious. If you even mentioned having a child and you were proud of them for, you know, whatever that was random, it's not that way anymore.

[00:21:55] It's not that way. I really feel that there's been a number of things that kind of like. Twisted it and pivoted it, but, you know, I really feel like a lot to do with a pandemic. I think it also had a lot to do with the Microsoft acquisition. But LinkedIn is a much warmer place. And, you know, if you, again, Lindsey, you're going in and you're only seeing the 64 connections.

[00:22:17] So you're seeing only a sliver of possibility you expand those connections and then you get onto that LinkedIn. You're gonna be like, wow, this is a hopping place. 

[00:22:29] Lindsay: You think everyone's on Instagram, right? And so you're like, well, I there's nobody over there for me. All my people are over here and I think we could possibly be missing out on a whole load of clients that need our help.

[00:22:45] You know, 

[00:22:45] Donna: here's Nope. You have to pull it up because I want to make sure that I get this stat correctly, but this what I'm going to, what I'm going to say to you is sort of like a mic drop type of stat. Okay. And like, if you think about, you know, if you think about, you know, Instagram, if you think about Facebook, if you think about Twitter, There's a lot of people on it.

[00:23:08] And a lot of people are posting. There's a lot of people on there, whereas with LinkedIn, most of the people who are on it, and there's a lot of people on it, very few are creating content very interesting, less than 1% of monthly active LinkedIn members actually create content on LinkedIn. All right, there are.

[00:23:35] 675 million total users on LinkedIn. And that it's actually grown. It's closer to 7 25 at this point. The total number of active users in one month is 310 million. So monthly they're getting 310 million hits. But only 3 million of those users are posting content on a weekly basis. So when you consider that there are 9 billion views of content per week on LinkedIn, it was those, those abuser benefiting those 3 million LinkedIn users like Mike dropped like low hanging fruit.

[00:24:16] Right? All of these people are on it and looking and they want to see something. And there's only a small amount of people who are actually posting. So if you go in there and you start posting. Consistently engaging quality posts. I'm not talking about like what we talked when you mentioned early on, like those that grow a tree, you know, by, by my insurance, like really, Hey, you know, let me, let me educate, let me add value.

[00:24:47] You know, be somewhat vulnerable, not too vulnerable. You know, let me, let me share my successes. Let me educate, let me advise, let me coach, you know, let me kind of showcase the type of stuff that I am doing, you know, open yourself up within that LinkedIn realm. It doesn't take much because there are so many people on who are checking it out.

[00:25:12] There's not a lot of content creators. Why do you think 

[00:25:15] Lindsay: that there's not a lot of content creators? 

[00:25:18] Donna: You know, I think it comes down to, it is it's still a professional network and a lot of those corporate employees who are on. A lot of times people still think, oh, if I start to post, you know, what am I going to do it?

[00:25:38] Am I going to do wrong by my, by my employer? Are they going to be like, Hey, you're not supposed to be posting, which is not true. I mean, I, you know what the employers want their employees to be posting. They want to showcase, they have rock stars. They want to showcase. So. That's that's, but it's a fear.

[00:25:58] It's a fear. They have, you know, you asked me why that's fear. You know, I think a lot of times there is just, you know, there's a lot of good, smart stuff going on there, you know, do I want to post, can I post? And a lot of them just, you know, they just prefer to, they're more they want to, they want to read, they want to maybe engage just by liking maybe they'll comment.

[00:26:25] But they're just not creating those posts. 

[00:26:29] Lindsay: Interesting. So for example, I could make a post that has, you know, five tips to book your first client today. If you want more, you can go download this. Can we do, can we do things that bring, take them out of LinkedIn or is it just all, should it all just be there?

[00:26:46] Donna: So LinkedIn likes to make that, that LinkedIn feed sticky. So what that means is they don't want people leaving. So those posts that you post to an article tend not to do it. Okay. So that's why, if you do start to scroll through the LinkedIn feed, you'll see that there are some people when they post, they'll say Lincoln, first comment, trying to get, you know, they're trying to hack the algorithm to still give that link, but not, you know, where it gets caught up.

[00:27:21] So here's the thing. I mean, you could do it in a whole bunch of different ways. I mean, you could, you know, just, you know, just say, Hey, here's five. And just, just gain the influence that you gave them the tips. And then in the, you know, in the comments, if a person's like, wow, this is really fabulous at that point, you say, Hey, well, if you want more, you know, go over here.

[00:27:39] You know, don't think where everything has to be. Like, I need to fill my list. You know, sometimes it's, I need to educate people that I'm here. I need to educate people that I am a thought leader. I need to help people understand, you know, I'm doing this because I really do want to have. And when you are doing it like that, where it's not, it's not such a, you know, I want to take something from you.

[00:28:02] I take your email, I want to take your business, but you know, I'm, I'm here to give I'm here to help. That's when you gain like these amazing followers and people start to see you, and then what do they do? They visit your LinkedIn profile. And when they're on the LinkedIn profile, maybe in the featured section, that's where you have, you know, you know, those lead magnet.

[00:28:24] Okay. 

[00:28:24] Lindsay: Okay. So you can put things like that on your profile. Oh girl, this 

[00:28:28] Donna: is not like, like Instagram, where you can't really put links anywhere. There's a lot of areas within the profile where you can have beautiful imagery and the links out they can scroll through. They can look at your, your about section.

[00:28:43] They can scroll through, they can see your entire trajectory, you know, like to me, One of the, one of my big pet peeves is, you know, these people who's just sort of spring out of nowhere, like a Phoenix, even a Phoenix, like Athena, just jumping out of Zeus's head, like totally ready to fight an army and people to victory.

[00:29:05] It's like, girl, you just came out of his head. What background do you have? Like something must have forged you, right. And that's the beauty of LinkedIn is it shows, it shows where you've been and how you got there. And all of the beautiful things that you, you know, you've experienced that have created.

[00:29:28] What you are today and what allows you to help people be selected? I 

[00:29:31] Lindsay: love that you're allowed to show the evolution of your business. Cause I think a lot of times we think everyone just started when we did or the day we discovered them. And I think it's important to be transparent with how long you've been doing this and what you've gone through to get there.

[00:29:44] So I love that example. 

[00:29:47] Donna: I love, I love when I look at a CEO, his profile and I can see their entire trajectory. Very, there's not a lot of CEO. You do that. There's not a lot of, you know, any, any type of chief officer. Even, I mean, you know, I mean, even just regular thought leaders who are, you know, leading or building or companies or whatever, it's, it's not all that often that they'll open up that door.

[00:30:11] I guess what look at my career, see, see those, those jumps backward and those weird pivots. And like, I love looking and seeing what made a person up, you know, who they are today. And, and that goes for you. You guys, as coaches, you're coaching someone. Check out that profile and learn so much from where they've been and who they are.

[00:30:35] It'll allow you to bring even more to the table because you can see those choices, decisions they made. 

[00:30:42] Lindsay: I love that perspective. So Donna, if somebody is thinking, okay, you've convinced me. And now I have work to do. I have no idea where to start, where what's their next thing 

[00:30:53] Donna: that they can do. So what can they do to get started?

[00:30:58] There's there's a few things. And I mean, I hate to just say you can call me up

[00:31:05] so I always say, try, you know, get in there and take a look at it. The one thing most people don't recognize is the sheer robustness of the profile. They really don't recognize how much you can put in. And the more you put in the more keywords that are just organically being used better, your profile is going to do in search.

[00:31:28] So don't think less is more in this situation. You know, you want to be, you know, you don't want to go, oh, you know, you don't want to drag on forever, of course, but there are character limits. So LinkedIn kind of actually prevents you from going too far, but at the same time, do try to do it yourself. Do not copy and paste.

[00:31:45] Okay. Okay. Let me see. Don't copy and paste your resume. Don't copy and paste your bio. Don't even copy and paste your about section from your website because people have already seen that. They've seen that they want to learn more. So you want to build upon everything else. You want to create unique content here because people are they're landing here.

[00:32:05] Maybe they've already looked at you in other places. Don't be like that person. Oh my God. Do I have to read this again? Like doesn't she have anything else to say? So craft something new. There is my book. You go to Amazon LinkedIn profile optimization for dummies. It's a for dummies book, you know.

[00:32:24] They're awesome. They're amazing. So definitely you can start there if you're like, I just. Want to do it myself. That's me, because I don't want to talk about myself. I don't like to talk about myself. I don't like to write about myself. You know, it's so hard. I've been through it all where it's like, we've 

[00:32:40] Lindsay: already did that way already.

[00:32:41] We already did that. Now I have to do it again. 

[00:32:44] Donna: Well, that too it's like, and how can I state it in another way? Or, or sometimes it's, you know, like I've told my story so many times. Is there another story here? Is there another, is there another way of looking at it? Like how can I really position it for this audience, which is different from that audience, but you know, sometimes.

[00:33:08] You know, just like you want to, you know, just as coaches know that there's a need for them. You know, there is a need to say, look, I need a branding specialist who I can talk to, who can listen to my story, look at it through fresh new eyes and, you know, and, and also here's the thing, even though I'm, I'm talking about that past of like showcasing your past, you don't want to spotlight just your past.

[00:33:33] Right. It does need to be forward aligned to where you're going. So I love having that pass that builds, but builds towards you where you're headed. So that's, that is something that a lot of people get stuck with is, you know, they're so comfortable in all of the things they did in the past that they've stopped thinking about what they're doing currently and where they want to go.

[00:33:57] And the most successful profiles are those that are forward on. You know, that are looking out and saying, you know, this is the direction I want to go and let me brand myself in that way so I can become that person. So my book visit my website, tons of free resources. But also check out everything's listed there.

[00:34:18] We can certainly work with you guys and, you know, talk to help you tell your story and put it on there. So, you know, there is a return, you know, the return isn't just influenced, but the priority is more clients, right? 

[00:34:32] Lindsay: Okay. So we're definitely going to put all of those links in the show notes, because I know that I'm not the only one thinking.

[00:34:39] Yeah. I can probably try and figure this out myself and take, you know, probably months and then stop doing it. And that's why I'm LinkedIn is the way it is. Or you can just go to the professionals and have them help you. So thank goodness. There are people like you, Donna. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

[00:34:55] As really excited for this to come out. And please go follow Donna on LinkedIn, I suppose. And where else? No, I'm not on there. I don't have time for that. Where else are you located? 

[00:35:09] Donna: I I, well, I I'm on I'm on LinkedIn. Of course. You can also I have a podcast called dream big with big dreamers where I talk to my clients and other people about, you know, where they've been and where they're going and how they dream big.

[00:35:22] I also am on Instagram is vision board spotlight. You can see me on Twitter under Donna Serdula, but if you go to LinkedIn makeover on Twitter, we tweet out all of our non confidential. Profiles. So you get to see the type of work that we're pushing out there. Now don't plagiarize guys, but it's, you can also sealing to that on our website under examples, but we tweet out profiles.

[00:35:47] You can really kind of see, this is what I should be aiming for. This is a top tier. You know, truly optimized profile. So that's on, that's a LinkedIn makeover on Twitter without the E and LinkedIn. 

[00:36:02] Lindsay: Ah, yes. Amazing. Definitely go check all those things out. Go show out to your love. Go follow her and thank you again for being with us today.

[00:36:10] Donna: Thank you so much for having me.