Linkedin Marketing for Creative Professionals: Grow your Personal Brand

1. Trailer: Linked is the platform you've probably been sleeping on. And it's costing you thousands of dollars of opportunities, jobs, and even potential clients. If you want to build a personal brand, if you want to be called an expert in anything, this is the platform to be on. Sure you might have used it so far for networking, maybe applying for jobs. But have you tried building your own PR without selling yourself so you can get featured in your favorite magazine? Getting hired for your talents just by using the right keywords in your profile or being approached by your dream brands just by posting the right content. Hi, my name is a Port. I'm an entrepreneur, Fortune 500 brand consultant, and I've worked with brands like Adidas and BMW. Lincoln has been the single most successful platform for my business so far. And when I say business, it means I started as a side hustle, alongside my nine to five and a dream of how can I get paid doing what I love doing. In this class I'll show you the same strategies that I used to grow 1-10 K followers within two months and how I secured five figure clients and I get it. It feels like a platform where people are just constantly bragging or announcing some new career move, but not anymore. We'll discuss how you can build a brand that makes you look like an expert without feeling like you're showing off. Following those simple steps can ten x your visibility on line. And help get your name in front of the right people so you can finally start making money from your talents. So I'm excited to see you in class. 2. The 6 Ps of Linkedin: This class is organized into the six piece of linked in platform, profile people, portfolio posts and performance. We will discover what makes the platform of Linked in so different, and in many ways better from other platforms. Especially if one of your goals is to eventually get paid for your talents. Next we will talk about your profile and how to optimize it to build your personal brand. We'll also talk about what people to connect and disconnect to and from. You can't just build a network linked, but actually a real PR machine. Next we'll build an amazing portfolio. Just show off your CV, but actually show people what you do for them so you can convince people about you before they even meet you. And then we'll discover what posts actually work and a way to find your unique advantage so you can make your posts flow up to the right people. Lastly, we'll cover performance and how to turn one successful post into hundreds more so you can save your time. The project for this class is to actually apply all the tips we're going to go through on your own native profile. So you don't just learn about what this is about, but actually see results. Each lesson will have a homework, but what actually really matters is that you work alongside the lessons. If you're on your laptop, just open up another window, sign up to Lindon, and follow a long step by step. Lincoln is literally one of the biggest success drivers in my business. And if you want to follow along what kind of secrets I have for you, I highly recommend to download the cheatsheet that I've included in the resource section. Also included some amazing prompts that you can use in Chachi to write your bio, write your profile description, write your work experience so you don't have to come up with all of it by yourself. But you can find some nice prompts there to help you along the way. So if you want those, go ahead to the resource section downloaded and then we'll start with the first lesson platform. 3. Platform: Welcome to lesson platform. In this lesson, we're going to talk about the first P of linked in. Which is platform the nature of linked in. So let's talk about what makes linked in so different, AKA the nature of linked in. Because let me tell you, lots of people are still confused about it or are undervaluing its power. And trust me, there's a huge power in this platform. Linked in has gotten a major blow up. And if you're one of those people that have joined Linked in at the time where I was literally like, I'm going to upload my CV platform. You know what I mean? The transformation has been massive. It went from I post my CV to I want to be known as an expert platform. It used to be a platform where people just posted their resumes and Yes. Connected to their colleagues and high school peers. But now it's a place where you can actually show off your expertise and become known and build a strong personal brand. And you feel like you have some kind of talent and you want to make money from it. Actually make money from your talents. You want to be a linked in. What makes linked in so different from all the other platforms, we'll cover a bunch of different things. Number one, I versus the nature of linked in is set at platform, unlike Instagram, which is more of an platform. What do I mean by this? Linked in is a platform because it's all about sharing thoughts, creating connections, starting discussions, having conversations. Like Instagram, which is more of an platform, which is more focused on. I'm going to show you my life, my experiences, my stories. What makes linked in so special is that it's a place where you can have real deep conversations. In fact, comments on linked in can be measured in paragraphs, not just words. You don't often see one syllable of comments like cool or cute or like a heart that you see on Instagram. But instead, you can actually find meaningful ful conversations going on in the comments, in conversations that people have under your posts. It's a great place to start conversations because people love to share their opinions. And you can easily start three paragraph discussion in the comments. Trust me. Next, linked in is the most trusted a platform. Studies show that among all social media platforms, linked in is the most trusted what it means for you. It means that people, when they find you on linked in, they will believe what they find on the platform. That means you can own your own narrative. If you can shape how people look at you and think about your personal and professional brand. This is especially important if you want to be seen as an expert in your field. So before we jump into all the adolescents, take a moment to understand what you actually want to be known for. And I know this is a simple prompt. But literally take out your notebook and say, what do I want people to remember me for? What do I want to be known for next? What makes linked in so different? It's a lead generation platform. Lead generation is a way that people finding people that might be interested in buying what you're selling. So for example, if you're an artist, lead generation might be people finding you who would like to commission you for a piece or buy your art. Or let's say you're keynote speaker and lease. Might be an event manager or a conference organized company who might hire you. Because linked in is a social media platform with the highest income people, it's a great place for lead generation. So remember, the highest income users compared to all social media platforms are linked. And this means if you want to be there and make money from your talents, you have the potential to find people with high buying power. That's especially important if you want to make money for your business at the freelancer as a consultant. High paying clients, not just people who are looking for a cheap deal. Next linked in as a search optimized platform, which means it's likely the profile, it's going to show up first on Google when people type in your name. Or at least it's going to be right under your website if you have a website in your name. For me it's been second in search results under my name. And that's before I even started growing on linked in, I literally had 400 connections and most of them were like people who went to high school, university with me, that means you have to optimize your linked in profile so much as if it is as important as your website. So I wanted to share on linked in what you want to be known for because people are more likely to find you there and believe what they find. And they will have their first impression of, let's say they hear your name, they Google your name, They go on the link, the profile. That's the first ever impression that they will have of you. So you got to make sure that it's optimized. If it's already driving traffic, you want to take advantage of that traffic. And on a personal note, I want to share with you that linked in has been the platform that has driven the most traffic for my business without me having to sell myself. And that's something very important for me. Sure. You know, we always hear about platforms like Tiktok and Instagram. But ask yourself, what effects have they actually had on your life, work and business, and can you measure those in numbers? Because connections and content on the platform of Linked in can actually drive five figure clients easily. Linked In is incomparable to all social media platforms because for me, it has been the source for highest income and lowest involvement of time wasted on the platform. Because the people you find actually are high quality people that either want to connect for a purpose or hire you for a specific purpose. It's not just hey, I want to chat or I just want to be in the comments and watch your content. There's actually a purpose behind them, interacting with you and linked in. It has been the place where I've gotten in context, highest paying actually, jobs that you fulfill my purpose. So you want to take advantage of that? Oh, as we go into the lessons, I want you to remember, I always go with the idea of don't do as I say, do as I do. Instead of just watching the lessons and thinking about what tips I give you. Actually go on my linked in profile and check out how I applied those tips to my own account. If you already get started, let's start and sign up to Linked in if you haven't yet opened your account. And let's take advantage of this powerful tool. Trust me, you don't want to miss it. So let's get into the first part of optimizing your linked in presence, which is your profile. 4. Profile: Profile type: Welcome to Linked in Profile Optimization. In this lesson, we'll discuss the second of linked in which is profile. We'll cover everything from profile type to optimize new profile picture banner, headline. First link about section and skills, whether you're just setting it up or you're optimizing it. You'll hear some tips that are great for you, for your profile, and to help you become more discoverable, credible, convincing to make your profile sound like you first. What's our objective with our profile? Objective is to let people know about us without meeting us. Sure. But it's also to be discovered in search yourself and convert people. Convert people means for them to subscribe to your newsletter, to become a lead, like we talked about before, to hire you for your job, to buy your, offer you to feature you on their podcast. So you want to figure out first what your priorities are and then let's get started. So what do you actually want from your profile? First, let's talk about profile type. Let's start with the basics such as profile type. I know I know some of you don't even know that there are different profile types out there. That's why we're covering this. So let's get into them. It's just two. Number one, a normal profile, the traditional set up, which means you just have connections. Number two, a creator profile where you can grow your real brand and there's between connections and followers. And as you might have guessed, we are going to choose the creator accounts because there you can add hash texts that are relevant to what you want to be known for. You see analytics as a create account. Your content will also be recommended to a larger audience, not just connections. And like I said, you can see analytics for your posts. So you know what works and what doesn't work. To change from a normal linked profile to a created profile. Just following steps. First, you want to click on the Met icon. So let's say I'm on the home page. If you want to click on me, I can view Profile. It will take you to your profile. Then you want to scroll down to Edit Profile. I already have my creator mode on, as you can see here, so you won't see it. Edit Profile at profile section, drop down menu and select Creator mode. You want to click on the turn on button to switch to Creature Profile. When you're done, let's get into the profile content. Here you can see now you have a creator mode on to know how to optimize your profile. Let's go from the upper part to the lowest. When you set up your profile, you should personalize your profile. Link up here you can see public profile and URL. This way you don't have a random number, make it your name, link in.com slash and then your first and last name and click Safe. 5. Profile: Picture + Banner: Number one, your profile picture, you want to use a strong profile picture. If you are good at self portraits, try it out, but no self is allowed. And consider investing in a professional head shot, even if it's just you asking your friend who takes really good pictures, it's that important why a high quality profile picture will create trust and credibility with potential connections, clients, employers, and obviously it'll make you more memorable and turn you from one in 1 million to I recognize her face and I feel like I know her. Ideally, you want to invest in a professional head shot. If it's a friend taking it with an iphone on portrait function, that's fine too. And once you have it, get a second and third opinion from people who give you honest feedback. Honest feedback. Not people who just, you know, struggle ego. And if you don't know where to get started, I highly recommend these two videos from my Youtube channel. It's called Head Shot for Linton and Self Portrait Tips. You can start there. It's a great way. And that's how I create my own profile pictures for all social media channels, especially Linton. Next is the banner, which is the big picture that is shown behind your profile picture. So let's talk about how to make it visually appealing. Banner for Linton, profile quality design is a signal of value. So it's important that you pulled a banner that looks great. We start, I don't want anyone to overthink it, so let's cover this quickly, Your brand design identity. Here's a super easy tip on designing your brand identity. Whether it's for choosing your outfit, for your profile picture, designing your banner, your portfolio or posts colors you use. Your brand would represent who you are and how you want to be seen. So you want to swap up your background colors for your colors. Here's a super way you can find your own aesthetic. If you would create a vision board, how would it look like? What colors and style of clothes would it be? What Dream car would look beyond the vision board? What house especially, you know what interior design of the house? Is it super colorful? Is it playful? Is it black and white? Minimalist, is it pastel, colored and dreamy? That's how you should design your personal brand. How your vision board will look like. That's aesthetic you want to go for. I want you to take time tonight to actually, you know, when you have dinner, sit down for 15 minutes, open your pints to count, and start building your vision board. Then tomorrow, look at it and decide your three colors, at least three, maximum five, and your styles. So you want to look at your vision board, see what kind of cohesiveness, what kind of vibe does it have. And then you want to take the same design for your banner, for your post, for your portfolio. How do you actually create your banner? When creating your banner, you want to focus on either a call to action, a purpose statement, or a website link. You want to keep the amount of text minimum to make sure it's easily readable, both on laptops and phones. You want to avoid fancy phones and go for a simple design, because sometimes fancy phones can't be read. Camera is a great tool to get started with your banner. Simply click on a linked in banner template and choose a design you like. You open up your camera account, you go search, and you can either say just linked in banner and choose one. Or you can choose from these three, whichever you like. Number one is base simple, elegant personal branding linked in banner and it'll show up. It's this one, okay? The next is black minimal motivational code linked in banner. That is the next version, so keep it simple. And then the next is yellow, monochrome photo linked banner. If you're more into colors, you can swap the colors of course, okay? And once you've chosen your banner, you want to swap the background with your brand colors. Or you can also use a contextual background image that shows how you're working. For instance, I'm showing myself recording a podcast in the background, but you can also use a picture of your keynote speaking, for instance. You want to make the banner visually appealing, but not to destruction. You want to distract, you want to minimize the words. And then we go into what you actually want to put on as your words, on your banner. We said for instance, a call to action. What do you want people to do once they come to your profile? Is it check out my website, subscribe to my newsletter. Is it book me as a speaker? The next is a purpose statement. And the last thing, a website link. You want to make sure it's easily readable from laptop and phone. So the text should be on the right because your profile pictures on the left. So go on camera, click on link Banner, choose your design that you like. Design it and then download it and upload it. Here are some designs that I really like from people that have used these kind of concepts. Call to action website, link minimalist design on their website. I want you to look at them and see what you can learn from them. Also chose different styles so you can see the different accounts. So number one is Ali Abdaal. I'm sure you know him. You want to check out his background picture and his profile picture. Profile picture is a bit casual but it's still very professional, high quality. He smiles. The banner shows his call to action, which is right now, check out my new book. It could be something else, right? But if you have something that you want, people like a priority right now I'm launching something. Then you want to put that into your banner and show people what exactly they should be doing when they come to a profile. You can also see his colors are very colorful, but it's still minimalist and it looks very clean. So you want to make sure that there's not too much going on on your banner. Next is Janine Sua. I really love her. She's investor. She just has a purpose statement in her banner. Her profile picture is very fun, but you can see it's a professional, not a hedge shot professional profile picture. It's created in a studio, but it shows her personality. He content is also very fun and exciting, but her banner is very clear. It has a purpose statement and then the logo of her company. And next is Ben Mere profile head shot is very clean, background is very minimalist, and his call to action is subscribed to my newsletter. So you want to check out what call to action you want people to take, what kind of brand identity you want your profile to have. And that's how you build your banner and your profile picture. 6. Profile: Headline: Now let's move on to your headline. Your headline is basically the first sentence, so the few words that show up right under your name, those are the words that also show up when you post on your post. That's all you can see, a profile picture. And those few words, and those are probably the most important words that you will ever write on your entire profile, because this is the first impression. And here are two types of people. I want you to choose which one you are. First, you put your current job and your company in your headline. Or you put something cute in your headline that's supposed to show what are your character is like HR Rockstar or Talent. Unicorn. Stop it. It's not helpful, neither of those. Here's why your headline is the gateway to your linked in brand. Before sharing content, it needs to be in top shape. When recruiters look for you, all they see is your name and your headline. When people search for you or all they see the sneak peek of what? Yes. Wait for it. Your name and your headline. So you want to make it count. So instead of being cut or just putting your profile, your drop title in your headline, you want to do this. Figure out what is it you want to be hired for and put that one in your headline. Your dream job, your dream, whatever you want people to hire you for. That's what you put in your headline. Not your current job, but what you want to be hired for. The reason is, using your dream job instead of your current job in your headline is that recruiters are only looking for people who are currently doing the job that they are hiring for. Not someone who's doing something else and trying to move up. And if you want to be hired for a service or talent, but you haven't yet done it like a workshop instructor, keynote speaker, You want to put the words workshop instructor or keynote speaker in your profile. You want to see it as announcing an offer. Here is the key to it. Keyword magic. Use specific keywords in your headline. Keywords that people would search for. Let's say you don't even want to use linked in to get a job, but you just want to be hired for something. You want to put that in your headline. People are not going to search for design in turn because that's your current job. They want to look for a graphic designer because that's what you want to hire you for. So ask yourself, what words would someone use that wanted to hire me? Of course they wouldn't type design Wizard, but they will use keywords like graphic designer, Adobe Premiere. Ask yourself what you want to be known for. For instance, keynote speaker. Use those keywords. For instance, if you're a speaker speaker or keynote speaker should be in your headline. Give specifics, creativity, design thinking, sustainability, and then combine, here's the headline. Magic. You want to combine your job title with your value. Graphic designer, branding and identity, Senior Recruiter, export and talent acquisition, senior software engineer, full stack development. As soon as I put the keyword in my profile, I got actually asked to become a keynote speaker at events for companies. That's not just, you know, a coincidence. Because I actually asked people who e mail me, who message me even outside of Linden. How did you hear about me? How did you hear I'm a keynote speaker and they say I found you over linked. I literally put keynote speaker into the search bar and you got recommended. So you want to take advantage of your headline so well by using your dream job that you want to be hired for your dream position and put that in your headline so people can actually find you. The next part is bragging. I know this sounds really weird to people and it sounds like, oh, I don't know what to brag about, I haven't really achieved anything. I'm going to show you how to brag without feeling weird. So the first part was combining your job title with the value you give. Now you want to show credentials. What have you accomplished? What demonstrates your expertise? And fewer examples. I coached 120 clients to get in the best shape of their life, or I'm a Cornell MBA and a trainer, and 500 Fortune 500 consultant. And for those who may not have credentials to show, consider highlighting relevant experiences or skills you have. For example, mention any relevant certifications you've earned even if they're not directly related to your current job. Highlight any notable projects you have worked on, either professional or in your personal life. Mention volunteering experience, community involvement, anything that demonstrates your skill and expertise. You want to highlight what trainings you've completed in front of how many people you've spoken. So here are some examples of how to show credentials on your Linton headline. If you don't have too much to brag about award winning journalist with ten years experience and investigating for boarding. Yeah, a lot to brag about. Next, experienced project manager with PMP certification and proficiency in Asia methodology, whatever that means. But it shows your credentials. Marketing specialist, expert in social advertising and condecretion, data analyst, skilled in Python and Excel with experience in financial analysis. Experienced teacher, masters in education, specialized in Stem curriculum development. You want to go into depth into all the expertise you might have. A special trainings, who did special certifications, a special niche, like I didn't even understand five things of what I just told you. But that's what I read in people's profiles and that's how they get hired for because they talk about the niche that they're in. Okay. So even if you're a teacher, you can say taught, you know, five K plus students and helped them accomplish blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. You want to bring in some kind of number, some kind of certification, some kind of niche expertise into your headline. But remember, the most important part of your headline is to use keywords people search for, and keywords of jobs you want to be hired for. Don't use your, you know, current situation, but use what you want to be hired for. Use it as if you were offering a service. Right? It's not that you are faking it, you're just offering something that you haven't offered before. So if I say I'm a graphic designer, what I offer right now now, have I graphic design before? No. Does it mean I can't do it for you? Of course, It doesn't mean that, right. If I look for a graphic designer, I'm going to put graphic designer into linked in and I'm going to find you and then I'm going to hire you. You always have to start from someplace, but make sure that you make it easy for people to find you by using keywords in your headline of what you want to be hired for, of what you want to be known for. Remember, your headline should always highlight your expertise and what you want to be known for. Use specific keywords and give concrete examples of your accomplishments so that your profile stands out. Next, let's go to the first link. The first link on Linked then should be a call to action. Here, for instance, you can speak a profile in my first link. This CTA call to Action, should be going to a specific product. And the most important product or call to action, your newsletter, your workshop, your consulting offer. You want to customize the text of the link by starting by clicking on the Call to Action and saying things like action. Words like book set up by subscriber, use adjectives that have an action in it. Here for instance, it's Sunday Snippets newsletter, which means subscribe to it. Here is also try my new newsletter. I always like to use very action driven words in my call to action. Next is the about section. About section is basically your buyer. What you need to understand about your About section is this. 7. Profile: About Me: This is your time to tell a story about yourself, to inject some personality into your profile and to position your personal brand. If you want to know more about how to create your personal brand and find clarity about what you actually want to be known for, I highly recommend you check out my other class here on scare, like my seven day personal branding challenge or any other classes I have here. So let's talk about about section outline. You want to start with a hook, which is a first interesting opening statement. Let's say you're an artist. Your hook could be art. My way of making the world stand still for a moment. The next is a sentence that defines who you are as a creative professional. Again, as a visual storyteller, I make ideas look good on canvas, on one canvas at a time. The next is your professional background and achievements. You want to highlight your expertise and braggable achievements. In the past eight years, my art has been to more countries than I have more from New York Galleries to Tokyo exhibitions. And let's not forget the tour drew the Global Art Award in 2022. Then you want to inspect a personal touch. So shares star story, a personal philosophy. So for instance, nature is muse. And because it doesn't talk back and it patiently waits for me to paint it or whatever it might be. Right. Something that shows your personality. You want to showcase some range. So you want to talk about your diversity of your skills, diversity of your experiences. While I'm known for water call landscape, I often dip my toes into different brushes. And digital art. Same story, different medium. Okay. Next you want to add a testimonial, if you like. That doesn't have to be. But for instance, you know, Asha doesn't just create art, she creates experiences. And then you put the name of the person who gave you that feedback. And lastly, a call to action. So what do you want readers to do next? Do you want peek at what I do? I always love to connect with new people. Give me a shot here my e mail address Or hear link them. Make sure that there's no link working in this about section. So don't put a link just doesn't work because people can't click on it. The link is for the first link in your profile. No need to put it in your bio, but I highly recommend putting your e mail so people can directly e mail next on your profile experiences. I want to fill out your work experience. If you have a CV, just copy paste everything into your linked in dates, titles, descriptions. Just copy, don't think, because we will adjust everything later in the lesson portfolio. So we'll turn your boring CV download into an exciting portfolio that tells people I'm the right person for what you're looking for. I also want you to add any education licenses, certification. So fill up your experience, the education, with all the dates, your license certifications, volunteering skills. Remember with education, keep it short and sweet. Add any majors, study focus that's relevant to your work. Most of the time, your major and your thesis topic should be sufficient here. In terms of licenses and certifications, Same here. Choose those relevant to what you want to be known for. But if you have any out of scope licenses, feel free to add them as well. Maybe they will give some, you know, background. Let's say you're a designer, but you learned how to code. Add that because it shows how you stepped out of your comfort zone to explore a new topic, new skill set. Maybe someone is looking for a artist code. Next, the volunteering experience. Again, keep it short and sweet. Add anything that is relevant to what you've done. And most of the time this can, but doesn't have to be related to what you're doing right now. Next is skills. Here's where you want to think about, what are the key words potential clients or employees are looking for. Let's say you are an HR consultant, but you're skilled in project management. Add it, because as a skill, this could be a significant reason why your clients would love for you to take you on to run company wide projects. Not just to hire them, to consult their teams, but actually to run projects to find what skills are relevant in your field. You can also try a Schacht prompt like this one. Imagine you are a client employer description. What skills would you look for in your job description? Who's looking to help you? Whatever, whatever, right? So here's an example of how that could look like. So you want to ask the ideal company you want to work for and then what you would offer. So imagine your head of HR at Epo. What a practical skills would you be looking for in a sales training expert who's looking to help you design a corporate training for your employees. And then especially spitting out sales experience, product knowledge training, and facilitation skills. So you want to put those skills on your linked in profile. Check which ones are relevant to you and then insert them in the skills section of your profile. This way people can endorse your skills. And you want to better choose skills that you actually have. Because when you've done filling those out, you can ask people to endorse those skills for you. And if employees are looking for you and they know your proficiency and the skills that they're looking for, they're more likely to hire you when you're done filling all of this out. Let's go to the next lesson because this is the fun part. We will design your page and portfolio for you. So like I said, copy paste all the information in there and then we'll see each other in the next lesson. 8. Portfolio: Experience: Welcome to portfolio. This is one of my favorite sections because it's so exciting to design your personal brand and visual presentation on Linked. In this listen, we will talk about the third of Linked in your portfolio. We will discuss how you can create a portfolio and showcase your work on Linked in. And this is not just for artists who actually have actual portfolio. This is for anyone with any creative or profess expertise. Because instead of you just saying what you can do, you show it to people. You chose people with what you can do, how you think, and what you can do with your work based on results and proof. Let's face it, it's going to make you look way better than just listing down your CV in an online format. In this section, we will talk about a specific parts. One is the featured section, which you can find here, and one is the experience section. Let's talk about the experience. Most people write their CV totally wrong. They keep it either super empty or they fill in unnecessary details. Or they just literally copy paste the job description of what they did. They're right in terms of what are all the things that I did, basically just talking about the tasks that did it. And there are three issues with this. Number one, you probably did a lot more than your job description said. Number two, lots of things that you did aren't really relevant to what you want to do now. Three, it doesn't really tell people how you performed. Instead, here's what you want to do. You want to shift from activity language to impact language. Here are the three rules. Number one rule is impact over activity. What does that mean? We already copy pasted our CV on linked in. Now it's time to refine it. We want to change activity language to impact language. So don't describe your responsibilities as work cross functionally with product and sales teams. Describe it in terms of impact. I enabled growth for markets by x percent or increased sign up by x percent. At the same time, also think about problems you solved. So what are the problems that you list that you faced in your job and how did you solve it? The next Hep that you went into is probably that you have not listed down things that are relevant to what you actually want to do now. So your job and the job description and the things that you've done don't really fit to how you want to present yourself now. So ask yourself, what do you want people to know about what you did and what can you leave out that goes for both jobs and responsibilities? Lots of creators have probably had a lot of different jobs you included and often overlapping, but not all of those jobs are worth mentioning. For example, you may be creative design, but alongside working as a design assistant, you also did call center work to make some extra cash on the site. Unless you want to go into sales or get hired as a call center assistant, you don't need to mention that job in your linked in profile. Same with responsibilities. Say you worked as a design assistant and alongside of prepping agency briefs and working on logo design, you also did non essential tasks. Let's say you also found yourself managing the office supplies and inventory and phone calls and Bukit the team you know or making coffee for your boss. No one needs to know that the rule of thumb here is anything that makes you look junior isn't relevant to how you want to be seen or what you can do for a potential employer or a client unless it's relevant to how you want to position yourself or can even vaguely give you an edge, cut it out. Okay. Whatever makes you feel look junior and whatever isn't relevant to what you want to do now or how you want to position yourself in front of employers or potential clients. Cut it out. Again, this goes for jobs as well as ilities. So let's say you had a job that isn't relevant to anything you want to do now. And it kind of like was overlapping because you just wanted to make money on the side. Don't need to include it. If you've already copy pasted from CV, cut it out from a profile and ideally from V two. And then in terms of responsibilities, instead of listing everything down that you did, cut out all the responsibilities that aren't really presenting yourself in the best light. That make you look junior, All that aren't relevant to how you want to be seen, how you want to position yourself. Now, rule number two for writing your experiences. The first two lines, in every experience, you only see the preview of two lines. So you've got to make them count. You can put the most important information and then put two dots at the end of the second line. Or you can start a bullet point in the second line so they know to click, see more and keep reading. Rule number three is trying to sound smart. I know this sounds counter intuitive. We always think smarter words make us sound smarter and look better. But in reality, the more complicated the words, the less people are interested. So keep it simple and avoid cliches or cheesy language. Action words are always good, like led, accountable for improved. But try to avoid cute or cheesy words like rock starred, spearheaded, inspired, hardworking. Everyone is hard working. That's not something you should have to call out in your experience. Number four is, first things first, if you want to be known as a keynote speaker, you got to add it to your experience as the first experience. You can't expect people to guess what they can hire you for. If you have a nine to five but also side hustle. Make your side hustle an extra work experience. And use strong words like founder speaker, don't call it a side hustle because you don't want potential clients to think you only pay 50% attention to it. Because it's just on the side if you're serious about making it work. Put it up in your recipe. Don't bury it under your 95 or other side. Hustles, again, if you don't want to be known for it, better cut it out. But if you want to really lean into it as a potential business or income stream, you got to put it there and you got to put it, you know, as if it was as important as all your official other jobs. So first things first, whatever is most important for you has to show up first on your profile. Rule number five is to make it visual. Humans love beauty, so you got to add links, pictures, videos, to your experience. When you click on Experience, you can basically expand it. And then you can click on different links and visuals to actually see sneak peak. What you did, this is the essence of your portfolio. So you got to add links, pictures, videos to what you've done, your portfolio, especially those things you want people to pay attention to. You got a business or a side hussle. Add a link to your website. Make sure that the links have a clear image. Okay, upload a preview of a project. Okay, so you can upload a PF or even behind the scenes picture would be great. You can also add posts to your experience. So for example, the work I've done with ad as here you can see that I've been featured in some of their campaigns and I've posted links to the Adidas platform itself. So they can see this is not just something that I talked about, but it's actually an active link that is up on their website, linked in profile. So it makes me double credible that I not just work with this brand, but I also have a clear link to something that I did and it's life on their website. So add links at pictures, add links to outside places. Add videos, gifts. This does two things. Number one, it makes it look visually more appealing. Again, humans love beauty. And number two, it gives proof of your work. And that's the whole point of your portfolio linked in. You want to give proof of what you've done in the past as if you'd be an artist with their portfolio of artwork on their website. You do the same with your artwork, the literal fruits of your labor. And here's some examples of links and media you could add for different professions. So let's say you're an HR professional link, so media could be infographics on hiring, stats, links to a company culture video that you did. Photos from training sessions, screenshots from recruiting campaigns. Let's say you're a graphic designer, you could post a portfolio. Images, links to your website, campaigns that you did. Time less of design videos or before and after visuals. Okay, let's say you are a teacher. Things that you could post are classroom photos, you know, select student projects. Positive feedback or links to teaching resources. Your copywriter links to published articles or campaigns, client testimonials, performance as for instance, like how much engagement did one of your pieces get. Once you've finished with your work experience, it's time to choose the best parts of your work and portfolio for the featured section. So now you've done your experience section. I want you to go in to what you copy pasted before and follow the rules that we talk about. Go for action. Go for action words, not cheesy words. Go for impact language. So what is the result you actually brought? Go for simple language. Don't try to make it sound smart and make the tool lines count and add as much links, videos, pictures, as you can, okay? 9. Portfolio: Featured: We go to the feature section. The feature section is basically above your about section and right under your headline. Let's talk about why this is important. Your featured section is the visually biggest section of your profile. Not in terms of length, because that's probably your experience, but in terms of attention, Why? Because again, it's about visuals. Your featured section shows visuals in a way that directly grabs people's attention. You got to make it work for you. Your featured section should serve two purposes. Number one, introduce you in under 10 seconds and to give a clear call to action you want people to take. Now, most people take their best performing posts and just post them there. I don't want you to do that. That's your best performing posts represent the highlights of who you are and what you can do for people. It's not enough to just brag about how many likes your posts get. You want to create a visual representation of who you are. You want to try a mixture of bragging, introduction and call to action. Bragging could be, have you won or been nominated for an award? Have you been featured in a podcast? Whatever it might be that you can brag about. Introduction could be a post that tells a story about who you are, why you do what you do. And obviously, it would be great if the post didn't just have five S. But it's fine. So introduces you and a call to action would be. Subscribe to my newsletter book, a call. Check out my free training or whatever other lead magnet you might have here. You can also link to your website and important is in your featured section. Be visual. We love to see images, videos, pictures, so you got to include those. When you add a link to a featured section. Don't just leave it blank. Add a picture that shows people what they will get once they click on the link. Even if the link automated picture, you got to upload one. Your homework is to spice up your experience section and to feature at least three posts in your featured section. I want you to do this before we jump to the next P of linked in which is people. Because we want to first have the visual portfolio ready before we start networking and putting the word out there. Once you're done with all that, let's get the word out there for you, for your personal brand. Because the next lesson we'll finally do some networking to get your brand viewed by the right people in the fourth of linked in people. 10. People: Welcome to people and this lesson we'll discuss the fourth of linked people. This lesson is all about connecting to the right people and disconnecting from the wrong ones. We'll explore how to get your profile and content in front of the right audience. Those who are interested in your personal brand and can become future collaborators. Clients, employers, mentors, or even friends. And you'll also get some hacks to develop your own PR without trying to sell yourself. Let's dive in and how to learn to build meaningful connections on this platform. Linden is a great place to network for sure, but most people are approaching it in just that networking platform. Instead, what I want you to do is you should use Linden for creating your own audience. To recap again, the difference between a connection and a follower, anyone can follow you. But not every one of your followers should be a connection. In this lesson, we will talk about how to create connections so that you can get your brand in front of the right people. And on other social media platforms, you can decide to follow someone. And they can decide whether or not they want to follow you as well. But on in, it's different, like the order of big people, powerful, influential people following you on any other platform just because you follow them is incredibly low on linked in the game is totally different, unlike other platforms. When you connect with someone on linked in and they accept your connection, you automatically follow each other. Means if you can get someone to accept your connection, you automatically can get access to their inner circle. Your post will be recommended to them, you can send them messages. And this is a really big one. If you are connected to Bob, and Bob likes on any of your post and interacts with you, it's very likely that Bob's network will see you post as well. So you always keep the rule in mind, is this person powerful or a potential client? If not, is their network powerful or potential clients? If both can be answered with no, you want to rethink that connection. Before we talk about who you should be connecting to, let's talk about who you can disconnect from. 11. People: Disconnect: Here's who most people are connected to. They're high school peers because somehow they found you on line and want to know what's up with you your Uni peers for the same reasons your former colleagues and maybe bosses, people you met at random networking event and gave your, you know, profiling to and probably Facebook folks. And that's totally fine. It's good to be connected to people who've known you for years because the likelihood of them converting into clients is bigger because with time comes trust or maybe someone in their circle is a relevant client, seize your content. A side note, if being connected to any of those people, hold you back from posting content, disconnect and follow, or even consider blocking them, because I hear this a lot. For example, let's say you have a 95 and you're connected to your coworkers and boss and you want to use your brand on linked in to build out your site. Hustle. But anytime you're about to post, you are afraid what are they going to think about this? Are they going to judge me for taking something else on and having something else going on aside from my nine to five? If any similar thoughts crossed your mind before, block them immediately. You don't need to sabotage yourself and they'll probably never realize that you can block them. Who else should you disconnect from? Well, as we covered people who hold you back from putting your brand out there, very important random people. For some time you probably might have accepted every request because, you know, it wasn't follow. It was just, you know, connect. And people who won't be of any value to you, your brand, your career again. They can follow you, but they don't need to be connected to you. And how to disconnect. Click on the profile, click on Plus, click on Connect button. They won't notice, they won't be notified and they will still be following you. 12. People: Connect: Next question is obviously, who should you connect to? There are three types of people you should have in your connections. People you want to be seen by, people you want to be hired by, and people you want to be close to. And we'll go into depth of all these three. Sometimes when I close a big client and I'm talking four or five figure clients, I see that they've been following me for at least six months before they started to reach out to me. And that's why you want to start now because you never know what will happen in a few months. You might get your first PR feature, your first big client, or a new job, or even find a business partner or a life partner. So let's dive deep into each of those types. Number on people you want to be seen by. The first category of people are those you want to be seen by. What does that mean? This is how you build your own PR machine. You want to connect to people who work in outlets or areas that could potentially feature you in the future. Like magazine editors, events and conference planners, award organizers. Especially in your niche and your field. So let's say you're a fashion designer, you want to connect to editors at fashion magazines. Organizers of fashion events or managers of design awards, or let's say you're illustrator. You should connect to art directors at publishing houses, magazines and advertising agencies. You could also connect with of art exhibitions and competitions who might potentially showcase your work and help you gain more exposure. Because the idea I've linked in is that you put your work out there and people who you might connect to might in a few months be like, oh, I've seen her posts for a while now, I think her work is great. I'm looking for more people for my award or I'm looking to write an article about this topic. And I was thinking about featuring her. They reach out to you and you have your first magazine cover. Magazine, feature, event feature. Or you even are nominated or winning a prize in your niche. You don't know how powerful this is, trust me, on this one. If you want to be featured, if you want to build your own PR without trying to sell yourself, you have to connect to those people so they can naturally see your content and they get the idea themselves to feature you. And this is very important. We're not reaching out and telling them to feature us, we're just reaching out, connecting on a human level so they will have the idea themselves to feature us in the future. The second type of people that you want to reach out to, a people you want to be hired from. This is not just head hundreds, but also people who would be hiring managers. A company or brand you're interested in or for a position you're interested in or say you have your own business side, Hustle or Freelancing. Who would be the person hiring you to consult in the company? So again, let's say you're a fashion designer. This could be head of design innovation at a company who's looking to hire you as a speaker or consultant. Or let's say you're an illustrator, maybe you want to connect to book cover editors for book illustrations. Or people who work in product packaging design for companies. They would have titles like packaging design, er, Product Packaging Specialist. Who would potentially hire you? The next type of people you want to reach out to is people you want to be Los too. Here it's all about the idea. Your network is your net worth. Connect to people who are leaders in the industry, who are where you want to be. Who are who you want to be once you're really successful as a fashion designer. Again, this could be other designers who've built huge businesses, worked with the world's biggest brands, received awards themselves. Or it could also be, you know, material developers who've innovated a sustainable material that will change the future of fashion. You want to be close to those innovators. As an illustrator again, you could connect with other artists and illustrators who have created artwork, you know, at major animation studios or our illustrators who have published successful book, you know, children book series. This way you're putting yourself in front of the right people in six months after connecting to all these types of people consistently. Those connections come back big time. And here's how to find people. You don't just want to randomly type in the job description of the relevant people in the search bar. What you want to do is instead you want to go to a company profile. So let's say you're looking for someone who works at Microsoft. You want to go to the Microsoft link in page and then click on People. Here you can start searching. So you can start searching for keywords. Let's say a department you're looking at or a position you're looking at. Let's say your client or the person who would hire your potential client, or the potential person who would hire you is a VP of HR. Let's see if we can find someone like that, okay? We have Vice President H R over here, and you can also find other people related to it. So you can see VPH R in America, Chief Diversity Officer. Let's say you're a diversity consultant and someone is looking, you want to sell your training to Microsoft. You would probably want to reach out or connect to the Chief Diversity Officer. What you can do here is just click Connect. Linton gives you the option to add a note. What I would say is don't overdo it with a note. You can just click Send without adding a note. Or you can add a note saying, hi, I've seen some of your work and I'm really excited to connect. Because I think our values aligned a lot when it comes to pushing diversity in companies. Don't try to pitch yourself yet, so click on the, Don't try to pitch yourself yet. Don't try to make yourself look super big or great. And don't try to sell any service or, you know you sell yourself yet. You just want to create a commonality between you two. Give that person a compliment and try not to make it too cheesy and that's how you basically write a text. So let's say Hi Sharif. I like to use the word I as little as possible. So let me say seen some of your work. Hi, Sharif. Seen some of your work and it's really great to see what you've done in the diversity sector. I would love to connect more on this topic. And then your name, let's say you have in your profile stating something that you do with diversity. Then Sharif knows exactly why you get in contact because you have some kind of commonality with diversity. Like I said, this is very straightforward. It gives a very quick complement but not too cheesy and it gives a bit of a vague connection idea. Don't try to make it too, oh, I would love to share more about blah blah. It makes them feel like they need to commit to you. Just keep it straightforward and short, and that should be it. Like I said, the better your profile, the less you actually need an introduction of yourself. But if you want to introduce yourself, keep it short. Three sentences, No more. And that's how you find and connect to people in Linked in. 13. People: Engagement: Before we get into the last of linked in, let's talk about engagement now. We've connected to the right people, we've disconnected from the wrong people. Now we're thinking about how do we engage on Lindon. Let's talk about engagement rules. Number one rule, you want to warm up the algorithm. This should be done 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after you post a new post on your profile. You go to your posts here and see the latest posts that you posted. You want to comment on it. So let's see, here is a comment, you want to answer the comment, you want to like it. This will signal the algorithm that you are active, so your post will be shown to them. What it also does is whoever posted, so let's say this person posted on my last post. Whenever I click like and comment, they will be notified that I commented or answered to their post. They will go back to my profile. And the likelihood of them seeing my new post is bigger. So you want to drive people back whenever you start posting again. The next rule is the first 90 minutes. You want to make sure that in the first 19 minutes of you posting your post, you want to be as active as possible. This will determine the reach for the next 8 hours. Within the first hour, you want to answer at least two comments here. This was the first person that commented and I directly answered her, as well as here she commented. And I directly answered to her comment within the first hour. You want to do that with at least two comments and then don't worry if you don't have time, you can answer the rest of the comments later that day or on another day. But this really signals the post is engaged, people are interested. So whenever you get a lot of engagement in the first 90 minutes, including your own engagement, it will signal the algorithm that this post should be boosted for the next 8 hours. The next rule of engagement is don't edit or comment first in the first 10 minutes, do not edit your post. So don't go here and edit your post within the first 10 minutes of posting, even if you have a spelling mistake. This shows the algorithm that your post is not high quality enough. I know, I know all these rules come actually from the guidelines that Linton has said. They don't really need to make sense, but you just need to understand how the algorithm also, don't comment on your own post. First, don't post your post. And then say, hey everyone, Follow me here. Follow me there. Click this link. Whatever you want to wait until someone else comments, and then you can comment on it. You can answer that comment. You can comment your own comment as well. For instance, sometimes when my posts go viral, I go in and say, let's connect. And I share my link to my website so people can connect with me. The next is how do you revive a post? Let's say you posted something and I didn't really blow up in the first day. How do you revive it after 24 hours? You want to add multiple comments in two to four comments to re launch the post in the feed of all contributors. Contributors are people who like share or comment. This will help you have an extra growth of 25% Don't think, Oh, my post didn't get any engagement, it's going to never go viral. No. You can revive it after 24 hours, then repost the next rule. Whenever you get a repost, you want to go into your repost. You want to like every repost you get and ideally also comment on it. What you want to comment is something like, thank you for sharing my post. Yes, love that you love my post. Thank you for the love. This will show people that follow this person who shared your post, that you are the original creator. They're a lot more likely to go into the comments. See you say oh person posted it, let me go and follow her. The last rule is be human, interact when it matters. Even when people start commenting on this post, you want to start engaging with them. You want to start having conversations. You want to ask them questions. Those are the rules of engagement. I'm really excited for you to start implementing these member warm up the G within 15 minutes before and after the first 90 minutes are important within the first hour. Answer at these two comments, Don't edit or comment. First, revive the post after 24 hours and interact with your posts and just be human. Now, how do you do this if you haven't posted yet? Because obviously we haven't even figured out our first post yet. Very easy. You go on your home screen, you go to a post that you're interested in, and you start commenting. You can either comment originally or you can answer someone's comment. You want to go with how, why, framework. How has this post inspired, impacted you? How do you think about this topic? What do you believe about this topic or this opinion that you just consumed that can help others? Why is it important for the overall community on linked in? Again, this is a We platform. So anything that you comment should have a community focus. Something that you want others to take away. You want to go down in your timeline and see who do you like to engage with, Where do you have a strong opinion about? And then go into what they say on their post and add your own two sense. It's very important that you have an original thought and that you just share something that inspired you from this post with others. This can help you get more people into your network, more followers onto your profile, even without posting anything original yourself. Engagement on the platform, as I said before, is a platform for real, meaningful connections and comments. If you ask people for their opinion, you won't just tear crickets, you'll actually get a meaningful replies on linked in. But I want you to be aware as well. Trolls are there and amazing people there. It's important to note that linked in isn't immune to stupid people, negative comments. Obviously, it's still a social media platform. However, unlike other platforms like Tiktok, Twitter, Linkedin has a community of amazing people who are willing to engage in meaningful discussions, even if they have a different opinion. Personally, I had a great conversation in the common sections where someone had a drastically different opinion than me. 14. Posts: Post Types: Welcome to this lesson, which is the fifth P of Linked in posts. Posting on Linkedin can help you build your personal brand and really show yourself as a thought leader and expert in your industry. In this lesson, we'll discuss how to find your unique advantage and use it to create content on linked in that will make you stand out. We'll also talk about the kind of content you can post and what usually performs well on the platform. Let's speak about what makes post scoviralosttypes posting times, post that work well on linked in and then later on finding your unique advantage. The next lesson. So first of all, what makes posts go viral? Posts don't go viral because people like them or even comment on them. We always like to Chase likes, but they don't really help us. Posts only go viral because people share them. So our next question should be then, what makes people share content? And specifically, what makes people on Linton want to share your content? People share content because it makes them look good. It doesn't make you look good, but the person who shares it, for instance, if you share industry news, someone shares it, then they look good because it means they keep up with news and trends. If you share something about inclusion, it makes you look good because others would think you care about inclusion and so forth. We'll go further into this later on. But first, let's discover what kind of post types perform well on Linked. When you click on Start a Post and Linked, you can see you can share a photo text only. You can add a video. You can even create an event. You can create a poll, a document which swipe through, or an auto swipe which is like a slide show. The best performing types of posts to date will be these three. And they are based on the three different person running content types that exist, Show share and tell content. If you know any of my other classes on skill share, you understand the idea of show share, tell. We're not going to go into detail here, just a quick overview. Show content is that shows you and your work The best content format. Here on linked in is a video giving a glimpse into your work life. Like for instance, a day in life. Shared content is content that shares about you, your values, your experiences. The best content format to do this in is text plus video telling a story. And then we have tell content telecon and tells people about your expertise and the best format to do this. In here Linton is documents swipe through for tips. And by the way, you can also swap show and share content formats. Which means for show you can use text and image behind the scenes image of your work. And for share a video where you share a story via video. If you want to know more about show, share, tell metric, check out my personal branding class here on skill share called the Seven Day Personal Branding Challenge. 15. Posts: Posting Times: Let's talk about posting times. Linked in is a professional platform, which means what? It means people check it out when they are in a professional setting, which means usually nine to five Mondays to Fridays. You want to avoid times when people are busy at work preparing or preparing for the weekend. Instead, you want to aim to post when people are procrastinating on work or just coming in or leaving from work. Which means the best posting times would be Monday to Thursday, nine to 10:00 A.M. when people arrive at work, or three to 04:00 P.M. when people are about to leave work. And it's always nine to 10:00 A.M. three to 04:00 P.M. in your time zone. As we said, you want to avoid times when people prepare for the weekend. So avoid Fridays and if you want to post on Fridays, make it light and inspirational. Nothing text or information heavy. And do you want to avoid weekends unless there's super urgent news and trends that you want to tap into? Post at work? Well, on linked in, let's get into it. 16. Posts: News: Number one, news in your industry. Linked in is becoming more and more of a hub for news these days. You can even see it here, Mcdonald's latest campaign and someone shares the latest campaign, right. Because people love seeing news and what's out there. You want to share industry news in your industry or niche. It's the perfect spot for keeping up with what's going on in the field. Whether you are, you know, let's say a marketer or a scientist, Let's take for instance, the marketer. As a marketer, you can share the greatest campaigns that brands put out. Like I said here, you can see this Mcdonald's brand campaign and it's shared by the brand called because of marketing. Let's say you're scientist. Your news in your industries would be new discoveries or trends you share and you want to add your $0.02 to it. Oh, and don't forget about inclusivity and new leaders in the industry. Those are hot topics are linked into. By sharing content like this, you really set yourself apart from others on the platform. Do you want to know why? Because again, it'll make the person who shares your post look smart and up to date. If you share about news and trends and you share your $0.02 to them, then people want to share that to their network showing that they're also on trend and they keep up with industry news. If you share anything about inclusion or sustainability, anything purpose related, people want to share that too because it makes them look like they care. 17. Posts: Seasonality: Next posting that works on Linton is seasonality. Seasonality works very well on Linton. One tip is to use seasonality, which includes some innovation in your field, social media trends. Seasonal events like International Women's Day on Christmas, Earth Day, whatever works for you, your culture, your expertise. You want to take your calendar and mark the day that works for you, that fits to you. So let's say for instance, you talk about sustainability on Linked. You want to put Earth Day in your calendar and then you want to plan content around those events. I would recommend always to post at least three days before the event. This way when the keyword starts trending or the trend, you know, the moment starts happening like Earth Day or Christmas, you will show up in people's time lines. 18. Posts: Stories: Next is sharing personal professional stories on Linden. They can really distinguish you from people just bragging about their new accomplishments. You want to combine personal stories with your professional journey and you can really add your personal touch to your accomplishments. So for example, you can share a behind the scenes of a speaking engagement or a professional achievement and how you got there. And you want to make it personal. So you want to talk about what makes this event so special for you based on your experience or your personal, or your identity. For example, when I got featured in Bulk, it was a very special moment for me because when I grew up I never saw women like me in a magazine like that. So I shared that on Linton and worked really well. A lot of people not only congratulated me, but they also went in the comments and said I had a similar experience. I never saw myself represented when I was a child. And it's beautiful to see someone like you on these platforms. So you want to always bring a personal touch into your professional achievements or into your professional day to day. So again, for instance, a day of life worked really well. One of my most performing environment posts on Linton, was it a day in life manager at Adidas? Because I didn't just talk about, oh, this is all the work I do, but I actually got, gave them a glimpse into how I structure a day that I love getting a shake in the morning, that I love cycling to meetings, that I love sitting outside in nature, not just inside in the office. So I brought in a personal touch that I, you know, pray at work. All these personal things that are in a professional context, those are the ones that resonate with people. So I always try to find a way to connect the personal and the professional. 19. Posts: Viral Reposts: Next is reposting viral posts. I know this is a bit different, but there are posts that go viral on Linden. No matter who posts them, someone with 550,000 followers, they will be successful in both accounts. You want to find posts in your niche that went viral for others. Meaning they got way over average engagement on their accounts. So let's say an account gets an average of 80 likes. You can look in their account like post history, but one of the posts got 800 likes. That's a viral post. Same with other calibers, right? If an account has an average of like, but one post gets 5,000 that's a viral post too. So take one of those posts and simply repost it. Don't just use the repost button. Don't just put repost, but actually take the entire post and put it up on your platform. Guarantee those who'll perform all your other posts. This could be industry news, means a poster, whatever it might be. And don't worry about copying. You can just adjust the caption. You add your own $0.02 and credit the person that posted it first. I always like to add emoji and then the name, or I like to tag the person and then give IP international property to that person. So you want to take the post and post it originally to your account that if you're worried about copying and stealing someone's content, you always get to credit the person that you copied it from. I would always recommend having at least one viral repost a month to keep your engagement up and signal the algorithm that you will get engagement at least once a month, disproportionately high. 20. Posts: Write: Next strategy that works on Linkedin is to write Linked is a great platform for long quantum. Quantum works super well, but it doesn't have to be an entire blog post or article like by the way, you can also do a newsletter. Like for instance, I have a newsletter on linked In specifically that in and of itself has almost 6,000 followers. Today, I do post blog posts, but text also works in a posting format, not just in an article format. Remember that you want to use Laden in the way that the platform works best. If you're not a text heavy person. You can also use a voice over and just transcribe it and then post it as a text. Or you can take a video that you used as a piece of content and turn it into text form. As mentioned, one of the best performing posts is just a text with a video. So you want to create a paragraph with a well formulated text and you want to add a picture in it that grabs people's attention. Give you an example. There's a post of mine. I just posted it last week. And it basically has an image of me talking about the idea of your network's network is only for privileged people. And then I shared a text with it that had both tips but also a personal kind of like backstory of why I'm interested in this topic. So you can see it's a rather long text, but people are interested in reading it because they saw the picture and the grabbed their attention. You can also see it has fair amount of likes. We're just having it posted like three days ago. And when you write on Linked, remember that people want context including a personal picture. A story is super effective. Again, you want to balance personal and professional content. Just sharing a head shot and text about your expertise. Try to share a personal angle or story behind the head shot. If you fly, flop this idea. If you use a personal picture of yourself, if you know working or in what kind of context you are and you add a professional message to it, that's the perfect balance. Personal picture, professional message, professional picture, personal message overall, is the key to keep sharing your expertise and your personality because that's how PR works. You want to be your own best PR, which means you want to both tell your backstory and you want to showcase yourself as an expert in your field. 21. Posts: Video: Strategy that works is video. You have to use video. If you want to get your message across, try using video. Even if you don't want to be on camera yourself, you could show the context of your work or something cool that you've been up to. Making videos is especially important for speakers, trainers, consultants, and educators. Here's why. Because a video gives people a sneak peek into how you would perform on stage and a workshop. How you would actually come across in person. They can hear your tone of voice, they can see your confidence, and now they know exactly what they're signing up for if they would want to hire you. You want to keep your videos under 1 minute, if possible, and use the subtitle function. You can upload a subtitle or you can use the automatic function on Linked In. Because majority of people on social media still watch their videos without sound on. Because if people are scrolling through Linked In while they work, they don't want their coworkers to find out. 22. Posts: Announcements: The next posting tap that works really well is announcements whether you like it or not, it still works super well on linked in. And I'm not just talking about, I'm excited to announce. Here are different posts that you should create when it comes to announcing a new position or a new, you know, path in your professional career. Don't just write, I'm so excited, I'm so thrilled to announce, blah, blah, blah. Sure, it will work probably. But it will work better if you actually give it a bit more personality and backstory so you can actually take people on journey with you from the old place to the new place. So here's what you can do. You can do two posts. Number one, the goodbye post and number two, the welcome. Here's the new thing post. Here is how you can structure them. First, let's talk about the goodbye post. You should share a breakdown of your last job and your achievements and highlights. Ideally, something that you can really brag about and that you like. Three to five things that you're really proud of achieving. Then you want to give a sneak peek into exciting news are coming. If you can guess what's up next, here's a little tip. So let people comment below. And then you want to add a picture, ideally some context behind the scenes picture of you working on the coolest projects. Then the hello post, you want picture in front of your new office, in front of the logo of the company you're going to work with. Or if you're starting your own business, a picture of your home office studio or with your product you want to add. Why you decided to join like this or create this new company. Join this new venture. And then a call to action. Connect with me on this topic I'll be speaking about more in the future. Again, you can let people in to their comments. They will congratulate you, but they will also reach out on new opportunities. 23. Posts: Tagging: Access Tagging. If you want eyes on your content, tag people, actually not just people, also brands. If anyone or any brand or anything has to do with anything that you're remotely doing. And in the content of your post, you want to attack them. You also want to encourage people to attack others. In the comments, this will get you in front of more eyes and more people with bigger network. It might just start a relationship with them in the future. You also want to a tag people in your goodbye posts and your hello posts. You want to thank them for the time in the company, Thank them for their support. And also tag people that inspire you to go on this new adventure or that you will be working with in the future. Their network will see your posts and connect with you. 24. Posts: CTA: The next thing you need in your post is a call to action. Always include a call to action in your posts. Whether it's asking people to follow, like comment, share, or tag others like we just discussed, This can make a huge on your engagement. Because as we learned from, you know, a video that I posted, I posted this to linked in once and it got not a lot of engagement. And I posted it again with a call to action at the end saying share this and it got over 200 shares. So you want to make sure that you include a call to action that people can notice in text form. Put it in the beginning of the text and in the end in video form, you can put it in the end. People linked in love to share their opinions, so they might re post your post with their opinion. All you want to do is for them to share it, so you want to take advantage of getting your audience to engage with your content. 25. Posts: Homework: Let's get into the homework. Before we start about talking about your unique advantage, you want to create one post made from the post types that we said worked well. Use the post types and strategies that we talked about. Either a text with an image that tells a story, or a video or a document with tips in it. And I'm excited to see your content. I just want you to post one post. Get it out of the way, and try to apply these ideas of tagging people, giving a call to action, and finding the balance between personal, professional. And when you've done that, we're going to go to the next lesson, which is finding your unique or unfair advantage. This is going to transform the way you tell your story on linked in. And transform the way that you will connect with potential clients, employers, collaborators, or even PR opportunities see in the next lesson. 26. Unique Advantage : Welcome to part two of posting, Finding Your Unique Advantage. Now we've covered how to post and what post types really work. Now we'll go into your unique advantage, or also called your unfair advantage. To find your unfair advantage, we will start by identifying your strengths, your skills and experiences, and all those are both personal and professional. The book, The Unfair Advantage, is something I would recommend you to listen to if you are open, but it talks about different areas that people can have an unfair advantage in. And if you combine the concept of an unfair in the context of this book, which is more for business owners, and you combine it with content strategy, which is what I do. Then you have really powerful concepts and that's what I call funding your unique advantage. So let's talk about all the areas that you can have an unfair or a unique advantage in. But before we go in, I want to tell you, you will go through these areas and think, I'm not special. I have nothing that makes me stand out. And I want you to rethink this because I had the same issue I was thinking. I didn't grow up with a lot of money. I didn't grow up in an exciting neighborhood like I didn't grow up in like London or New York. What kind of unfair advantage do I even? I want you to understand that sometimes your disadvantages can also become advantages. For instance, the location that I lived in and that I grew up in was a village in Germany. Which I thought is always a disadvantage. Because I'm not in a cool city. I don't have a lot of network. I don't really have a lot of tools that I can work with. I'm just in the middle of nowhere. But when I created content and I started to create content of logging, people were excited to see German Village areas that was so mundane to me and so normal to me. And growing up in this neighborhood was very unique for people where it was normal for me. I wanted to see people in London, in Qualm, pour, in Los Angeles. I wanted to see people in huge cities having exciting lives. But they wanted to see people who live very natural and like nature driven lives. And so that was something that I had to figure out that sometimes when I feel like something is a disadvantage, it can be an advantage. The same with the identity that I have, right? Being a Muslim woman and growing up in Germany, a lot of people say when you, you know, became Muslim and you started wearing the head scarf, isn't that a disadvantage in the workplace? And I say, you know what? It's my advantage because I stand out and naturally stand out. That means I don't have to shout loud for people to notice me, they just notice me. Because a lot of times I am the only woman of color that I am the person of faith, or Muslim woman or woman with a head scarf in a professional setting. So I don't really have to shout loud and say, hey, look at me, I'm a marketer. But people say, or people think, oh, I recognize her because she's different. So that is the whole concept of having a personal brand. That you're recognizable. And you're recognizable for what matters to you and how you want to be seen by people. When you think, okay, I have a lot of disadvantages. Maybe woman in my workplace, I'm the only person of color in or like one of the very few in my industry or niche. That's not a disadvantage. It's an advantage because it makes you stand out. And the same on Linkedin. If you put out work, people will see you as, oh, I recognize her, I recognize him. They are different than all the other in their niche. They are someone I can remember, I can recognize, maybe I can even relate to because we have something in common. So as we go through these areas, I want you to always think about what makes you different. And even if you feel like something is a disadvantage, it can be an advantage. So let's go through all the areas that the unfair advantage talks about and also adjusted them to my unique advantage idea of using this concept to create content specifically on a professional platform like Linden. When you combine the concept of the unfair advantage with content strategies that will go through, it becomes super powerful because on a platform like Linden, where you have 1,000 people talking about the same topic, you will stand up. The common areas of your unique advantage is number one location, being in a specific geographic area or having unique opportunities to access or resources. If you live in a cool city, your content will instantly be more interesting for people. But same if you live in nature. As I told you about, your content will become instantly more beautiful. People would love consuming it. Number two areas, knowledge. Having specific knowledge or expertise in a particular field. This can be as niche as you want it to be. Next is money. Having access to financial resources or funding. This could also be as easy as saying, you know what, I have a nine to five, I am making okay, yearly income, but it is coming in monthly, and I can use that income to invest in my brand in my site. Hustle. I can take 200 bucks a month and give it to a video editor so I have enough time to build my brand, but I don't have to boy about editing, right. That's a unique advantage for you. Next is network. A strong network of contacts or influential connections. Sometimes that comes with location, sometimes just with people you know or how well you are in networking. Next is personality. So any unique traits that you have that set you apart. Maybe your humor, maybe a bit quirky or sarcastic. Next is experience. Having experienced in this particular industry field or even personal experiences, I also talk about the idea that you know the fact that I. Three years old, I started having created my first mini business with 16 years old. That's a very specific experience that I talk about online and specifically on a platform like Linked, where it might be controversial, but that's my personal and professional story that has really shaped how I approach my life and my work and my business. So what personal or professional experiences have you had that you can talk about? Next is skill. So having any specific skill set, and again, this could be an advantage or something that you see as a disadvantage. Like, for instance, you can't afford a camera as a photographer, but you're really skilled at creating really good photography with your iphone. That's a very specific unique advantage. And next is identity. That is not part of the book, I added it into it because it really sets you apart from others in your industry. It could be your personal faith. You are a parent, You have ADHD, you're a person of color. These things say you work in investment as the only black mother in the whole department. It's likely you are also a unicorn in the wider industry. So use that advantage by talking about it. Or let's say you are a manager, but you have ADHD. Imagine how many other people who work with ADHD are interested in knowing how you organize your day so your identity can easily become your unique advantage. When it comes to creating content, finding your unique advantage and using it to create a competitive edge. You can really position your brand on line so it's recognizable for people in a way that sounds like you and in a way that people remember you. Here's how that worked with my brand. In a specific content example going in my analytics, this is my best performing post on linked to date, it's called A day in the Life of a manager at Adidas. When you go in, you can see that I was talking about behind the scenes of what it is to work at the Adidas office and what I do during the day. Anyone else could have done the same thing. But there are two main unique advantages or factors here that I have. Number one is location, working at Adidas and working in Germany, which is interesting for people to know about. And also the office is in the outskirts of the German Bavarian nature side. So it's interesting number two identity because I'm a Muslim women and you don't always see, you don't see a lot of women or people who look like me or create content around working in a place like that. And then also the other identity factor is that I pray at work. And I included that into my log because it's a normal part of my work day. And if you want, a third unique advantage is also experience. Because I work on what is swear I work on exciting projects at Adidas, whatever, you know, any other marketer could have talked about their day in life. I could talk about a day of life as a marketer who works on very specific projects that also are very close to my heart. And another personal experience is of course me praying at work, which you can see a lot of people, you can see a lot of reposts, 150 repost over 280 bikes. So a lot of people called out that they love me biking at the campus, or they love that I pray at the campus and I'm having a prayer room in the office. Not just Muslim people, also Christian Christian people or people who meditate. They found that a very unique experience to have and show. The next example I want to give you to talk about unique advantages is this post where I talk about how I help other companies creating prayer rooms in their offices. Let's talk about praying at work, which in itself is quite controversial topic on Linton. I guess two unique advantage factors here are, number one, my identity as a personal faith. Number two, my experience praying at work. Number three, network, so developing prayer rooms for big brands. And you know that those are the factors that made this post successful and have over 90 posts. And again, you will find that sometimes your advantage starts at a disadvantage. So a lot of people ask me, isn't it weird to be the only Muslim woman in the workplace? You know what you could see the disadvantage to be a minority in a place I see in advantage because it makes me stand out and I am able to talk about this experience from a very unique perspective that people might or might not know connect to. But at least it's so unique that people pay attention to it and they will interact with it. So let's go into finding your unique advantage. To find your unique advantage, you want to do this, create a list of your strengths, skills, and experiences, and find the areas where they overlap to find your unique advantage. So you want to list down the areas we went to, location, money, network experiences. And you want to list down how those, where do you have strength in it and where do you have an advantage? 27. Unique Advantage Examples: I want to give you specific examples. So let's talk about two specific examples of people finding their unique advantage. And this is super hypothetical, but maybe you can take a little bit inspiration from these examples. So let's say you are a photographer living in New York and you happen to be Latina. You probably have several areas of overlap that make your unique advantage. Including the areas that make you a unique advantage and your strength skills and experience. The areas could be your location. New York is a place where people would love to see someone who lives in New York and share their experience. Your strength may be, let's say you are really good at capturing cultural diversity in your photography because of your cultural background. Your skill may be that you don't have a specific camera software, but you can capture really high quality photos on your iphone. And let's say your experience may be you're super familiar with the neighborhood and people of New York City because you grew up there and your culture is from there. So you want to focus on your unfair advantage by creating a niche for yourself. So instead of finding a niche, you are the niche by showing your unique perspective. So let's say you could leverage the unfair advantage of your location by showing people hidden gems in New York and showing that through photography. You could use your skill for, you know, capturing pictures on your iphone to do a Dana life only shot with your iphone and showing a very beautiful light. Or you show the specific cultural, you know, places. Or you create portraits of your community and you share them online. And this way you use your unfair advantage, which is your location. People love to see you know content from New York, which is your ability to capture content with your iphone. And you show people how creative you are, how talented you are by doing what you're good at, which is showing your neighborhood, showing your culture. Using an iphone to create content, not a high quality camera like other photographers. Do you share that content online? Let's look at another example. Let's say you're creator from Texas who loves videography and has a fashion degree and you're really into sustainability. Your unfair advantage might be to combine all this, right, creativity, videography, living in Texas, and your sustainable idea about sustainability. You could take your skill, which is the expertise of videography, and you can take it to make high quality videos and about your experience. So let's say you want to create videos about sustainability and the way it intersects with fashion. You can tell it in a storytelling format. You can create content that speaks specifically to the niche audience interested in sustainable fashion. So you could create videos that talk about sustainable fashion brands. Or you could tell the story behind fast fashion brands and their effect on the planet. Or video series about how you take materials you find in your neighborhood in Texas and you design a fashion piece from it. You could use your fashion background to curate outfits and styles and turn one item into ten different outfits because that's sustainable. Also, your location right in Texas, how can that be of advantage for you? Well, maybe people are interested in how you navigate sustainability in a state that's not typically associated with eco friendliness, right? So this kind of content brings a unique perspective and makes you stand out. You are from Texas, but you are into something state is not really known for. So you could shoot a daily life of thrifting in Texas or visiting stunning location in Texas talking about their history. Maybe you shoot some fashion videos with clothes that fit to each location. So you have waterfall and the clothes are blue and you have the desert, and the clothes are linen clothes. So you want to connect your idea of your expertise of videography and you want to create content that shows people what you're good at with your unique advantage by using your location, using your passion for sustainability, using your unique ability to take things and make something out of it, right? You want to find whatever advantage you have and bring it into your content. Now people will think that's too creative of a content for Linden. Trust me, if you find a professional angle to your passions, people love this on Linden. You want to share some kind of tips like how I thrift in places that are not sustainable. What I believe industries will look like in the future. That's trends and news, Maybe tips and tricks for companies and brands to be more sustainable. You want to find a professional angle. We'll show you your expertise to the people linked. But you want to bring in some personality, some excitement, your unique advantage. Now, I always hear people say, what if I don't, I'm not, I'm a senior professional. What if I just have a boring nine to five? Here's what you can do. So let's say you work in 95 as a junior graphic designer at a small start up in Berlin. And you again, have a lot of different unfair advantages. Number one, your location, Berlin, as a hub for start ups. This gives you a really good access for networking with creatives, but also a cool location people would love to see in your content. You could do a data life of working for a start up in Berlin. Works very well on Link, and I can guarantee you that. Next is, let's say you have specialized knowledge in graphic design and you love doing tricks with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Let's say you took some time to learn and you know how to create custom brushes in Photoshop. And then your experience may be that you joined a special graphic design program in your university. So here's some content you could create these different unique advantage factors. Number one, a blog post talking about your experience in special graphic design program that you joined in university. Write your experience, you can also take this as a picture and a text format like we talked about before. Writing works really well. Next you can do an illustrated video using your custom brushes in action, which shows you expertise. Then again, you can do a day left working in Berlin, showing the cool places that you work at where you have lunch with Berlin as your backdrop. You could also do an interview series with people you meet in Berlin as a graphic designer and you ask them for career advice for other graphic designer. This is taking advantage of your unique advantage of having network and you don't even have to be in the picture, in the video. You can just interview other people and have them be part or the main part of your content. So you want to always look at what are all the factors that I have. Even if it's a small program that you joined in university, we would love to hear about it. Talk about it. Talk about your experience. If it's your location, if it's the niche of the work you live in, you work in. Or if it's like a weird thing that you do throughout your work day, maybe you don't have lunch, you always skip lunch. Talk about that, right? People love to see the personal angle to your professional expertise and experience. 28. Unique Advantage Homework: Your homework will be to make a list of your top three unique advantages. Is it location, skill, identity? Then you want to bring some ways you can use these to create your unique content. Use the show share, tell metric. Show content, share content content. Choose one idea and create one piece of content from this idea using your unique advantage. Remember, the idea is to make a post stand out based on your unique advantage. So you can use a show piece of content. Let's say a day in a life. Behind the scenes picture. Maybe behind the scenes story of when the last time you did a project. You can do share content where you share your opinion or maybe a personal story, something that was really impactful in your life and work. All you can do tell content, which is more instructional. Ten top tips for other graphic designers based on interviewing 300 designers, whatever it might be, you want to find your angle of your unique advantage and it into this show share tell metric. So I want you to create one piece of content that incorporates your unique advantage in it. It only has to be okay, One piece of content. I want you to create it and post it within the next three days. Do not overthink it. Do not make it a whole production. I just want you to put it out and then share a link to it in the project section. Because I would love to see your project. I would love to follow and engage with your post. And if you want to have some feedback, I would love to add that too. And when you're done with that, let's jump to the next lesson, which is the last piece of linked in performance. 29. Performance: Lastly, let's talk about performance. Once a year, I go through all my content and linked in and I see word performed well. And I try to find commonalities in the posts that did. So post types, was it video, text with image or, you know, multiple images or swipe through, was it topics? So what topics resonated? Well, for example, anytime I talk about praying at work, my post blow up, well that's, you know, starting to become a trend, right? And then angle. What do people enjoy? Is it more the personal angle or the professional Braggy angle? Or come join me behind the scenes angle. So you want to figure out all these three, then try to use all these factors to design the next year's content focus. That's what I do. So you want to monitor the amount of shares that your content gets, the reach. You can find all these numbers and you under text tabs, so you just click on your profile. And then up there you see analytics and tools. And then comments are super important. They will tell you what people want to see next from you. And it's been really important for my business and my brand. For example, my day in the life of an address manager, when I click on my top performing posts, the comments that were on this post were mostly about people, or majority was about people being really excited about me praying at work. I realized that people are interested about the idea of having a prayer room at work. I posted, I started thinking about new content that I could talk about when it comes to prayer rooms and the fact that I helped Adidas create a prayer room and be able to pray there during the work day. Based on these comments, I thought what other posts could I create that would work well on the platform? So I started posting about, you know, where I pray at work, where I prayed at work before we had the prayer room, how and why I helped Adidas develop the prayer rooms in the first place. And also tips for praying at work. So all these things were based on comments, and by the way, the list goes on and on. I even got requests from other companies to help them develop their prayer rooms simply by listening and catering to the demand in the comments. Only when I then created more content about the prayer rooms, I got even those offers from companies. Before you think about more content you could create, you want to go back to content that already worked well and then think about how to create more of it. And even if you haven't posted yet that much, you want to always bring that performance angle to mind. Whenever you post, you want to figure out what is my top performing posts. And next step is to turn that top performing post into hundreds more. To do that, you have to do the following. Turn one content format into many others. Let's say a video with top tips performed. Well, turn it into a swept through a text with an image or even an event. Let's say a story in written form. Performed well, turn it into a video. A swipe through the praying at tips piece went viral in gallery and text form with the same hook. I turned it into a video form as well. Again, if something works like this works in video form, I then turn it into a text form. Then turn the text where I talk about, let's talk about praying at work and my top tips for people to create prayer rooms at work. This is a text with multiple images. I turned that into a swipe through, which also performed really well. You want to find out the topic that worked well and then turn it into different content formats. So when you look at my top performing posts, you can see in the top ten posts, six of them are related to praying at work. And one of them, again, like I said, literally just copy pasted the text with the multiple images and turn it into a swipe through format, which also got a lot of engagement. So that is one way you want to turn an existing post into different formats. So you can literally just copy paste that already works into different formats or whatever performs, turn it into ten more content pieces, take a part of it and turn it into a new piece. Then take what people loved about it the most and turn them into original pieces. It goes on and on and on. For me again, like I said, I turn the comments into a video where about let's talk about praying at work, where I talked about how I helped adds to create the prayer room. Then I turned this into a gallery with text and then I turned that into a swipe through and it goes on and on and on because I can still see the engagement be really high. And I love talking about the topic. I'm happy to talk more about it. Because it takes my unique advantage of my identity as well as my network and my skills. So being able to convince companies to be more inclusive, those are all the things that I see as my unique advantages and I just turn them into new posts. So you want to think about turning one content format that worked well with the topic into different content formats. Or to cater to specific comments. And say, I answer this comment with a new piece of content. Again, the example of the prayer room. One of the questions that came into the comments was, where did you pray before you developed your prayer rooms? Because I want to pray but I can't convince my company. And then I turned it into a video where I said all the places I prayed at before we created a prayer room. There was also comments under the posts that were more about, how do you feel comfortable as a Muslim woman or wearing the head head scarf in the workplace? Again, that came from the Dana live video. And I turned that into another video where I actually talked to camera, talking about what my father used to tell me, which is you'll never get a job with a head scarf and with a lot of women here as well is you never get a job with a head scarf. This is share content where I shared about my personal experience and I gave them behind the scenes and my opinion about how you become more confident being a person that's not really represented in the workplace and specifically wearing the head scarf in the workplace. Judge. So again, as soon as you start posting, you don't really have to come up with content anymore. Because as soon as one post really becomes successful, you can just answer the comments with new pieces of content. So the homework for today is turn your best performing post into three more, either in different formats or based on comments and feedback. Can you imagine we're already done with the entire Linton universe creating your brand on the platform. I can't wait to see what you came up with in the project section of this class. So please share your link to Linked in profile and the posts. And I would love to give you some feedback and see what you've created and also interact and connect on Linked. 30. LinkedIn Outro: Congratulations, you made it to the end of this class. If this class was helpful, make sure that you share link to your Linton profile and that you posted on link in the project section of this class. If you're looking to learn more about personal branding, creating content, how to grow on social media, check out my other skillshare classes because they're really helpful. If there's any open questions, you can always go to the discussion page of this class. I'm always happy to answer them. And don't forget to download your Linton Growth Guide and Checklist on the resource section of this class. You want to hit the Poll button next to my name so you don't miss any other class coming up. And I do listen to requests, so please share those requests for new classes in the discussion page. And please, if you love this class, I would love to see your review on it. And share this with a friend who might be interested in growing on Linked and growing their personal brand. To find more helpful content complementing this course, feel free to check out Sina Port.com and follow me on line at sport official. Of course, you can also connect on linked in at sport. Thank you so much for watching. Excited to see you in a future class.