How To Fully Utilize And Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile With Lisa Kanda

Is your LinkedIn profile just collecting dust? If yes, then you are missing out on a powerful business tool. In this episode, Rosie Zilinskas interviews Lisa Kanda about the value LinkedIn can provide and how you can fully utilize your profile. Lisa is the CEO of Elkay Advisors, LLC. She is a marketing strategist, speaker, facilitator, and trainer who focuses on helping businesses and entrepreneurs learn how to establish and grow their online presence to get visible. Lisa brings her expertise and experience to dive deep into optimizing your LinkedIn profile by showing components on hers that you can learn from. From choosing your profile picture to writing your experience section, she walks us through the steps to improve your profile and increase visibility and engagement. More and more, professionals are discovering the importance of LinkedIn to form connections and achieve goals in the corporate world. It has evolved to be more than just a place for your resume. Don’t waste this professional tool. Learn how best to utilize it by tuning in to this conversation!  

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How To Fully Utilize And Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile With Lisa Kanda

When was the last time that you looked at your LinkedIn profile? Is it up to date or could you go back to your LinkedIn profile and dust it off? In this episode, I have invited a very special guest to talk to us about the different components of the LinkedIn profile that you can utilize. There is a tremendous amount of real estate on your LinkedIn profile that you could optimize. If you are looking for a job or applying for a promotion, it is so important for you to have the various components done and look beautiful so that when someone comes to your profile, they see that you’ve put in effort in creating an informative and professional LinkedIn profile.   Lisa is going to show us some components on her LinkedIn profile. If you are tuning in to this, you might want to go to the episode website and pull up YouTube, and you will be able to see what we’re talking about. Lisa is the CEO of Elkay Advisors, LLC. She is a marketing strategist, speaker, facilitator, and trainer who focuses on helping businesses and entrepreneurs learn how to establish and grow their online presence to get visible, connect with their ideal clients, and use their digital real estate in a strategic and effective way to get results. Her approach is to demystify the ever-changing digital landscape to make it easy to understand while sharing proven actionable tools and tips.   All of the information that Lisa is going to talk about still applies to you if you are in the corporate space. You can apply all of the tips that she shares to your LinkedIn profile. I’m excited to have Lisa go through her LinkedIn profile so that she can point out the various components that are really cool. With that, stay tuned.  

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  Before we go into this episode, I wanted to remind you that there is a free quiz that you can take on the NoWomanLeftBehind.com website. If you log onto the homepage and you scroll down slightly, you’re going to see a section that says, “Let’s find out where you are in your career.” If you click on the radio button that’s called “Take the Quiz,” there will be a popup that comes up and it says, “What’s the key blocker in your career path?” There are three key blockers that you may be operating under and you may not even know it. If you click on, “Take the Quiz,” it’s going to be about ten questions. It shouldn’t take you more than three minutes, and then you’re going to be able to get some additional resources just by taking the quiz. Remember, go to NoWomanLeftBehind.com to take the free quiz.  

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  Lisa, thank you so much for being here. You are a LinkedIn expert. This show primarily caters to women in the corporate world. If someone is looking for a job, why is a LinkedIn profile important?   Rosie, thank you for having me. Hello to everyone, especially if you’re curious about LinkedIn. What I’ve discovered over the years I’ve been doing this is many of us signed up for LinkedIn a long time ago. LinkedIn has been around since 2003, almost twenty years, and we’ve forgotten about it. For whatever reason, we signed up when we did and it has gone by the wayside. Right now, LinkedIn has exploded. Since 2020 when the pandemic hit, LinkedIn has added over 250 million members, which is mind-blowing when you think about that growth in a short period of time.   It’s time to reinvigorate, reignite, and get back on track with LinkedIn. No matter where you are in your place in the corporate world and whatever place you’re moving toward, it is now the place to be, especially if you are in the business-to-business space. I encourage you that if it has been something you have forgotten about, now is the time to go back and take another look. If you’ve gotten back into it, we’re going to talk about some interesting cool things you need to be doing now because of all those changes and all those new people.   I didn’t realize that LinkedIn was going to be 20 years old or 20 years old already. That’s quite a long time ago. The reason why I think it’s important for someone in the corporate world to have a LinkedIn profile or for an entrepreneur, a woman that maybe is in corporate that’s looking to leave corporate because that has happened a lot over the last few years. It’s to showcase their experience, accomplishments, capabilities, and skills, and ultimately improve their profile so that someone can find them. That’s the way I’m thinking about it.   Maybe you can walk us through why it is important on their profiles to at least have a picture or have their work history. Why don’t we start picking your brain by going through a LinkedIn profile? What are some of the important things that you think we should be focusing on?   First and foremost, going back to the purpose of the profile. In the old days, or what you may be stuck in your profile is that it is thought of as a place for your resume. It is far past that. Because of all the amazing new features that LinkedIn has given us, it makes your profile an amazing way to give you a first impression that gives over and above what a resume can do. It can bring out your authentic self. It can allow you to showcase a lot more of your experience and whatever type of work you do. How to enhance that beyond what a resume could ever do. It truly will introduce you in a completely different way and give a different first impression than a piece of paper. That’s the first thing. You have to rethink the purpose of a profile beyond that resume because some of us still are stuck in that thinking.   To go into the actual profile itself, let’s start at the top. What we like to call that, for those who may have little journalism experience, when you looked at a newspaper we used to talk about above the fold. Anything that was placed above the fold, because newspapers used to fold, now it’s whatever you see on your screen in your computer, that’s the most important stuff because many people don’t go past that. You have to think about that in terms of your profile. What do people see as soon as they land on it? The first thing you said is a photo. It’s hugely important.   You want to think about what that photo looks like. It needs to be current. Don’t be throwing a photo up there from 20 years ago because you look so good back then. It doesn’t matter. You need to look like who you are, but it does pay to have a professional headshot done. I would invest in that because it will pay in so many different ways. A professional headshot rule of thumb, at least a minimum of 60% of your head should be in it. I see all kinds of different profiles and you can barely see the person’s face. You want to be able to see the face. That’s important because you’re getting that first impression. People need to know that you’re a real person. Pictures of your dogs and cats are not appropriate. Pictures of you with other people are not appropriate. I’ve seen it all.   The other thing that LinkedIn offers us, which is different in this respect, is what’s called a profile banner. Many people don’t use this, but there’s a banner that goes behind your head. It’s a huge opportunity for you to at least put an image there. When you go and click on that, LinkedIn gives you a few standard ones you can pick from. If you do not have any experience in graphic design, you can use one of theirs, but at least add something there of interest.   By all means, mention you’re an entrepreneur if you’ve started a business. You want to showcase your own experience or something that you’ve worked on. Maybe you have a patent for a particular invention, maybe you work with a community group, or maybe you like to volunteer. There are so many ways you can showcase who you are in an image that you can place it there. No matter what, put something there. That adds that value.   As you scroll down, remember you’re above the fold. You’re still looking at that top. One of the first things is your name. I always recommend in your name, if it makes sense, add your professional designations. In that case, if you have a PhD, CPA, or there are so many of them. If you have a credential that has a letter, add that to it. That’s highly important. It’s not the place to add all kinds of other things. That’s just for credentials.   You have a headline right underneath that. People mistake that the headline doesn’t have any extra characters. It defaults to the title of your first work experience if you don’t put anything there. You have the opportunity to change that. This goes back to what you were talking about with how people can use LinkedIn and get found from the search capabilities. LinkedIn tells us that in your headline, the keywords you use in there are important because the algorithm searches them. You can expand that headline to increase visibility and increase getting found by adding certain keywords or phrases that people may be searching for the kind of expertise that you have. If you’re looking to connect with certain kinds of folks, you want the ability to be found for those things.  

  Think beyond the title. You don’t need to put your title and your company there. It’s redundant. It’s already everywhere else on your profile. The opportunity is to use that space for something much more descriptive of what you do, who you help, and the kind of work you do. We’ve got your profile banner, photo, name, and headline. There are another two cool features. The video feature, which a lot of people don’t know about, is another way that you can enhance your profile. In your photo, you can do a 30-second video.   You taught me that, Lisa.   It can only be done on mobile for right now. They may eventually get it to your desktop. If you want to stand out, do a 30-second video using your mobile device for your profile. Your image will show up there, but when they scroll, it’ll automatically start that video. It’s another way to make yourself stand apart. If you’re searching for a job, it’s a great way to have a quick message explaining that you’re looking for new opportunities. If you’re looking to connect with more people, it’s a great way to say, “I’m looking to connect with you.”   The other place is in your actual name, you can do a name pronunciation. It’s only on mobile that you can do it, but it’s seen both on mobile and desktop. If you have a difficult name to pronounce and some of us do, you can use that ten-second audio clip to do that. It helps folks connect with you more. It’s almost like back to you doing something online. If I met you in person, you reached out, and I shook your hand and say, “Hi, I’m Lisa,” you said, “Hi, I’m Rosie.” When I heard your name, I would know how you say it, but you don’t have the same opportunity when it’s on a screen. Take advantage of that.   I do love this because Lisa has a banner with her pictures. When you click on her picture, her little video pops up. Right next to her name is that little speaker that she was talking about that you can actually say your name. Obviously, my name is Rosie Zilinskas, but you have no idea how many people miss that S. I have the same thing. I love these other features. I’m going to leave this up for a little bit, Lisa, so that you can talk about your profile as you’re describing your process. Please go ahead.   Even in my description, I have a lot more information about who I help and what kinds of work I do. Beyond that, do you see where it says contact info? Many people forget that the contact info is an opportunity for you to add other ways for people to contact you. You would want to take a look at that. You can add your email, other websites, or a phone number. That’s important. You can choose how you want that to happen, but you should add other ways for people to contact you. That’s another way of networking. It’s like the business card that you’re handing out, “Here’s my profile. By the way, here’s my email address and my phone number.”   You can turn certain things on and off, depending on where you are. If you’re job searching and you want that email address, they are great. If you don’t want to get emails, you can take that off and just have a website to go to for your company. Whatever makes sense for you. Beyond that, we’re going to scroll down a little bit because it’s what’s most important here.   I have all my profile sections completed. If you have not done that, you’ll see a bar up here that will determine what level you are in the completion. It could be from just beginning to intermediate to advanced. If you don’t see anything, it means you’re done. That’s the key. They used to say all-star, which is the top level. Now they don’t say it. You just don’t see anything.   If you’re looking at your profile as we’re going through this and LinkedIn is prompting you to add other sections, add those sections. Just keep going by. You want to get to all-star or completion of your profile as LinkedIn says to. The reason is LinkedIn has told us that when you are at an all-star level or when you’ve completed your profile to their level and what they determine is complete, you will get seen in more searches and you’ll have greater reach and engagement in your posts. LinkedIn will demote you if you don’t get there. You want to get there so that you are optimally getting the most out of LinkedIn. When you've completed your LinkedIn profile at an all-star level, you will get seen in more searches and have greater reach and engagement in your posts. – Lisa Kanda Click To Tweet I’m glad that you said the level of completion because I was going nuts the other day. I sat through one of your training and you said, “If you don’t see anything then you’re done.” I was like, “No wonder.” I was looking everywhere. I was looking for the all-stars because I remember back when they did have the all-stars and I could never find it. When you finally said, “That’s because you’re done.” I’m like, “I spent time looking for it.” That’s great information. All of these sections, you can enhance whether you’re a corporate employee or an entrepreneur because you can just put more sections in there, right?   Yes, and you want to because remember, this is your first impression. Because it’s more than a resume, if you click on that “more” button, that’s where it’s going to tell you all the different sections that are available to you. When you’re on your own profile and you click on that, you’re going to see that you can go to other sections and complete them. If you’re like, “Where’s the volunteer section? I want to add volunteer work there.” it’s up there. You just have to add that section if you haven’t edited it before.   The other thing here when I was talking about some added features that LinkedIn has given us is what’s called this featured section. Why is this important? Why do you want to do it? When you look at this, it’s a way of showcasing your expertise. If you’re in the corporate world and let’s say you’ve written a case study or a white paper, or you’ve worked on a cool project or you do graphic design work. There are so many different things that you work on in your current position that is worthwhile being highlighted and seen. This is where you put it.   You have to add the featured section. You want to go to “Add the section” to your profile. Once you add that section, that feature section can be anything. It doesn’t have to be on LinkedIn. You can feature a post if it makes sense that you posted something. You can also feature a link. Let’s say you were featured as an employee of the month or for an outstanding service award. It’s online, either in a newsletter or somewhere online. You can take that link and post it here. If you have a PDF or a PowerPoint presentation, or even a Word document, you can add that here.   You can add things here that are not only LinkedIn-focused. It’s recommended. I have a few more because I just added different things here. I have some testimonials and whatnot, but it’s recommended to do at least three. The reason I say three is because you see three there. That’s why. If you do one or two, that’s fine. If you can do up to three, I highly recommended featuring three different things.   One of the things that I see here is your LinkedIn Less Is More Worksheet. We’ll talk about that a little bit later, but I like this section a lot.   Take advantage of that. The activity piece of it. There’s nothing you can do. It just shows your activity on LinkedIn so that you can look at other people’s activities. You can say, “Rosie is looking at my profile.” You can look at my activities. The key thing here is an advanced way of using LinkedIn. If you are following certain people or other thought leaders that you know share good information that you typically like to repost or interact with, one of the ninja tricks is that you can follow or bookmark their activity areas, and then go to their activity when you want to.   This is high-level ninja stuff, Rosie. I don’t know if I’m getting too far and above what your group would want to do, but I just know it’s a great shortcut. I have a list of about ten people that I like to follow their activity, but I don’t want to be going to their profiles. The one way you can do it is if you scroll down there a tad bit, it says, “See all activity.” When you click on that, that’ll open up all my activity. That URL, you can save and bookmark that. You can say, “Lisa’s activity,” or that bookmark, and then just go to that.   There are several other thought leaders. I mostly do this for all the thought leaders that share high-end content. Simon Sinek would be a great one. He’s always sharing some great content. I don’t want to have to go the long way to get to his stuff. I don’t want to have to wait until it shows up on my feed. I want to be proactive. That’s a time efficiency thing by the way. That’s one of the tricks. That’s why the activity can help you.   Going back to your profile and what’s important, it’s right there. It is a great place to stop, the “About” section. Don’t see more yet. What you want to do is you want to entice someone to see more because what you can see, LinkedIn truncates it. You only see about three lines. This is what a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, and anyone who’s looking for a job just wants to get people to engage more and interact more with you. If you want to increase your profile on LinkedIn, you want people to find out more about you. This “About” section is your opportunity to expand what you want people to know about you far and beyond your resume. In fact, in some of the things I teach, I give an outline or a template example of how you can fill this in because you have 3,000 characters. It’s a lot of space. You can put so much more in here that is engaging and interactive versus a job listing or an experience listing. You’re going to use those first three lines as attention-grabbing information. Something like, “Why would I want to see more?” That’s a challenge, but you got to think a little bit differently. What would interest someone who lands on your profile to say, “I want to learn more about you?” In this case, most people who know me as a LinkedIn expert want to get more visible on LinkedIn. My Less is More Worksheet is something that I promote and I just leave it at that. That’s all I’m looking for right now. I’m very strategic in that decision. I’ve worked with hundreds of people on LinkedIn profiles. Sometimes a very provocative question is a great way to start that out because you’d be like, “I have that question.” If you know what their question is, then they’ll see more. What’s the answer to that question? That’s one way of looking at it or something very thought-provoking about what you do. That’s my recommendation. Also, I do lots of brainstorming with folks on how they can approach that. That makes sense because if I see something that’s interesting like, “Get visible on LinkedIn 40 minutes a week,” I want to know how I get more visible 40 minutes a week, “Tell me more.” I’m going to see what “See more” looks like in your profile here. You have different sections of what you do.   There are lots of different ways you can do this. There’s no hard and fast. You just want this to speak to whoever you want to land on your profile. That’s the idea here. Whoever your target is, because you can’t be to everyone. That’s not the key here. If you want other thought leaders, if you want other folks to network with, it just depends on where you are. If you’re looking for a job and you’re looking for recruiters to land there. You need to be speaking to them because you can change this as many times as you want. If you had a couple of different variations of this, you can change it, depending on where you are in your career and what you’re looking to accomplish. In my case, what do I do? I have this wonderful cheat sheet that you can find but I also have like, “I’m a strategist. I also help with speaking. I have a Let’s Get Visible Academy, which I launched. Who have I helped? Do I fall in that category?” Could you see yourself there? It’s pretty simple, but there are other things you can do here. One of the things is that LinkedIn doesn’t let you do any formatting. This is not like a Word document where we can bold and underline. One of the tactics I do is I use all caps. You can put emojis in here now. You can copy and paste emojis in. If you want to get an arrow emoji or a check mark, you can dress it up somewhat. The key thing here that I recommend, make sure you have short paragraphs and space. Give people a chance to be able to digest it and see it, not one big lump of text. The second reason is it is already shown that 60% of people who look at LinkedIn are doing it from their mobile phones. You have to think mobile-friendly. When you’re scrolling through your phone, when you see one big block of text, what do you do? Keep scrolling. You want to stop that thumb, so think about it in that terms as well. Most people are looking at your profile on a mobile device.

I like the tip of the white space between the paragraphs. That makes a big difference. It makes it easier for the eyes to read. I think experience is where people don’t put enough in. Let’s go through the experience section.   As the owner and founder of my own company, that’s where you’re going to see the most information. I’ve been working and I’ve owned the company since 2008. It’s way too long ago in a good way. I have lots of corporate experience underneath that. As you can see, I’m expanding on that. There are a couple of things you can see here. I’m using the caps feature to make it stand out because I can’t use other Word typing. I can’t bold it or whatever. You have those two things, skills and documents. It’s called media. In each experience section, you can add skills now. It’s huge. Remember getting found. You want to list the top skills that you bring to your experience. In every experience section, that matters. What I mean by matter is we can have an experience that doesn’t relate today to what we might be wanting people to find us for. It’s your current position and your skills. That’s a very new feature by the way. That has only rolled out in the last few months. List the top skills that matter to your experience section. – Lisa Kanda Click To Tweet Media has been around for quite some time. You can add media. Similar to what we were talking about in the feature section, media can be an upload of a PDF, a document, or a PowerPoint. There are lots of things you can add to your media. Similarly, you may have it in your feature section. Can it be redundant here? Sure. Why not? What people see up there and what people see here, they may not see both of them. They may have short memories, believe it or not. It makes sense if it fits the job you’re looking for or the experience you’re looking for. You want to think to add some media, by all means, even if it’s just a photo of you getting an award. That’s relatable because it’s showing the award in a different way, especially with some kind of prestigious award. Add media, add skills, and similar as you see, you want people to want to add more. You were saying, Rosie, such a big point is, people most likely just put their job title. They don’t even expand on that. You don’t want to make up a job title, but you want the job title to be explicit about what you do. Think about that. As far as the media, this is not where you would put in an actual PDF of your resume. I want to be clear on that.   I don’t see where you put your PDF or resume anywhere on LinkedIn. Your profile is what it is. People can download your profile as a PDF. Did you know that? I did not? No. You could do a QR code.   That’s different. QR code is that little ninja trick that you can see right here on mine. If you put your phone up to that, you are going to go straight to my LinkedIn profile. You can download anyone’s profile as a PDF. Let’s scroll back up. Do you see where the “more” button is? Do you see it says “Save to PDF?” That will download it. Any PDF that you want of a profile, you can save and it’ll download as a PDF. This is cool. I’m going to open it up quickly here to see. This is awesome. Look at all this information that people can download.   Do you see how that is so much more powerful than a resume? Yes. This is incredible gold here, Lisa.   You might want to download your profile as a PDF to share in an email or another capacity. That’s a fantastic point right there because people in the corporate world specifically still use a traditional resume. I do resume services so I know usually we limit it to two pages. If you wanted someone to get a whole picture of your LinkedIn profile, that is a fantastic feature. I love that.   You could specify, “This is my LinkedIn profile,” so people will realize. Here’s a key thing too. You could download yours, look at it, and then say, “Where do I need to go back and enhance this? Where could it make sense? Now I see it in print. You’re right, when you see something in print other than when you see it on screen, it has two different perspectives. It might be much more powerful for you to print that out, and then see how you can enhance your one here. I love that you did that. It was a great demonstration of doing that. The other thing you’re going to see I’ve done here and what’s important, depending on where you are in your career and what you’re looking to enhance. You can add other experiences that don’t necessarily have to be jobs. What would that look like? Maybe you took on a special assignment. Not necessarily a project per se, but you got to work on a six-month assignment in that you were able to utilize a very specific type of skillset that you had. You could put that as experience and label what that was, enhance that project that you did, and add some media to that. That’s one place you could put it there. In my case, I’m a podcast co-host. I’m also a keynote speaker. Those are different things I do in addition to being the owner of my company. The different roles I have. That’s one thing you can do. The other thing is you can add what we call projects. If you scroll down a little bit, projects get buried. You can add projects as well, but what’s cool about it is if you look at the one with EPS corporation, I can add other people in there. This is a great way to enhance your online profile by adding other folks that you may have co-created on a project together. That’s where it could be different in the project area versus what you put into the experience. If you’ve collaborated on some projects, I would recommend adding it to the projects because then it gives you a bigger reach from collaborating with others. Whereas if you did it on your own, add it to your experience. Lots of opportunities and ways you can slice and dice it, but you want to think outside the box in that way of the work that you’re doing and your involvement in what you’re doing in your current position. Got it.   As you can see, filling out all these different sections, you want to take advantage of filling out every section. Volunteer work, organizations, projects, publications, and all these things. You definitely want to get recommendations. It’s very important to get recommendations. What are the benefits of the recommendations section?   There are several. First of all, as a part of the all-star and the completion of your profile, LinkedIn wants to see a few recommendations. Beyond that, if you’re in job search mode, your recruiters are going to be looking at your recommendations because your recruiters want to see what other people are saying about you. Even if we know a recommendation is going to be positive, no one is going to put a review up there and say you were horrible to work with. If you have a number of recommendations, that’s a good sign. It means people want to talk about working with you and that they found a good experience. That’s important for a recruiter. They want team players. If you come across as a team player, then that’s going to matter. One way to get recommendations is to give recommendations. One way to get recommendations is to give recommendations. – Lisa Kanda Click To Tweet That’s a great idea. We’ve been talking about all the different sections on LinkedIn that are important. We talked about this a little bit. Tell me a little bit about the LinkedIn Less Is More Worksheet and where can people download it?   Thank you for asking. The reason I created this worksheet is it came out organically from me. I’m similar to everyone else. I’ve had a profile since 2006 on LinkedIn. I started it way back when in the corporate world. It sat around there for a while, then I started teaching how to use LinkedIn from 2009 to 2010. I got invested in understanding how to use LinkedIn. It was very active, and then things slowed down. I got inconsistent. I used it and didn’t use it, which is very similar to lots of folks because LinkedIn for many years didn’t show the benefits that it could have. Around 2017 to 2018, I moved to a new area. I reinvigorated my LinkedIn and I was figuring out how to be more consistent. The two things that I hear most are, “I don’t have enough time and I don’t know what to do.” That’s it. I’ve trained and taught people a lot on LinkedIn, and that’s what they say, “I don’t have time.” You do have enough time and when you do know what to do, you just need a cheat sheet. You need someone to show you how to do it and what time to allocate toward it. What I was doing, it’s on my own. I was practicing what I was preaching to you now. I started monitoring, I started tracking my time. I started getting hyper-focused and strategic in what I was doing. Over time, I’m like, “You came up with something. You should probably share this.” That’s why I came up with the cheat sheet. Write down exactly what you’re doing and how much time you’re spending. I put a stopwatch on. I give myself X amount of time. This is important as far as it’s easy to go down those rabbit holes. It’s easy to get distracted by shiny object stuff. We don’t have that time. I’ve got ten minutes to do X, in, out, and done. Even by just doing that, I will see results. That came out of literally me documenting what I was doing. I came up with the Less Is More because that’s what it is. You don’t need as much time as you think to get the results that you want. I created this little cheat sheet. It is available on my website, LisaKanda.com. It’s right there on the homepage. You can download it right from there. It gives you exactly what to do 2 days a week and 20 minutes a day. That’s it. Lisa, I just downloaded your worksheet and I’m going to go through my LinkedIn profile as well. I know that you have some stuff coming up. You and I are connected through one of our networking groups. You did an actual training for us and I thought it was fabulous. I wanted to have you on the show so that you can tell people the main purpose, which we’ve already gone through. People might need more help. What are some things that you have coming up where people might be able to participate?   Thank you for asking. Thank you to everyone who’s tuning in. I hope we didn’t move too quickly, but you see the benefits and all the amazing things you can do on LinkedIn now. I think that’s what’s so important. LinkedIn has changed a lot, especially in the last three years. There’s so much more opportunity. As we know, all social media is changing so rapidly. You’ll have the time to keep up with it. You need someone who’s keeping up with it. Luckily, that’s what I do. I keep up with what you don’t need to and I just say, “Here’s what’s happening. Here’s what you need to pay some attention to.”

In that regard, I’ve found that definitely in the last few years, there are so many new features available that I am concentrating on helping, especially women because that’s who I’m attracted to and who like to work with me. Entrepreneurs, career women, and anyone who’s looking to finally utilize LinkedIn, especially since all the other platforms don’t have time for it. Scrolling through Facebook and Instagram is a different purpose. I have a couple of things coming up. I am doing a webinar, Five Ways to Win on LinkedIn and The Biggest Mistake You’re Making Right Now. It goes beyond what we just talked about. An optimized profile is important, but it is other things as well. In order to win at using LinkedIn, make it the best opportunity and bring opportunity to you. That webinar is coming up on May 17th and 18th, 2023. That’ll also be available on my website. If you sign up for the worksheet, you’ll be added to my email list. Trust me, I do not spam, but you will see some notifications if you get the worksheet. Beyond that, I have a LinkedIn Fast Track. That’s for someone who is ready to jump in and get up to speed fast. It’s not for everybody, but it’s a three-week program with six sessions. You dive in and you do the work with me. Small group. I find that also works better. We’re all time constraints. We’re working. You’re on your LinkedIn. I’m telling you what to do. You’re going and doing it right as we speak. I just opened up my LinkedIn and I was taking a peek. It’s not bad, but it could definitely get some improvement. As you will know, I want to do your Fast Track because I want to make sure that I have my LinkedIn optimized as much as I can. I want women that are looking to advance in their careers that feel that they’re stuck to find me. I need to make sure that my LinkedIn is up to par. Lisa, this has been phenomenal. I’m going to call this a training because we went through your LinkedIn profile. Great information. Are there any two actionable tips that you can leave us with so that people can know what to do next?   I’m going to say get the Less Is More Worksheet. That cheat sheet outlines quickly what you can do right now. From my own experience, it’s something that I found. I use it and lots of folks that have worked with me now use it, and they’re seeing results. One of the things is incremental things make a huge difference on LinkedIn. Don’t think that just by doing this, you’re going to start seeing results right away. The second thing that’s important is don’t be afraid. It’s a simple thing but consistency is key. The number one thing is consistency is key. Don’t be afraid to start being more consistent in using LinkedIn because of the same reason. You’ll start seeing results. It’s one of the quickest platforms you’re going to see a quick return on your investment because people are more engaged on LinkedIn. The key thing is it’s 24/7 networking. It’s going on all the time no matter where you are. You can stop and drop into LinkedIn at any time and someone else is going to be there. Think about it from that perspective. Just do it. The last thing that I did want to make sure to ask you, and I almost forgot, so I’m glad you brought this up. I typically tell people, “If you’re looking for a job, you need to identify companies that you want to work at. If you can identify 2 or 3 people within the company, send them a networking message so that you can talk to them about their company and learn. Maybe they might know someone who’s hiring or whatever. How would you recommend it for someone to approach a cold call? I’m in corporate, I want to work at XYZ company, and I know Sally. How would you recommend that I approach Sally when I want to network with her to learn more about her company?   You don’t know Sally. There are a couple of different approaches. I’m going to recommend thinking of a company where you already know people who work there. As Rosie’s demonstrating, you’re going to go to the search bar and you’re going to start typing the company name. You want to go to the left where it says “Companies.” You definitely want to get to the company. Sometimes it’ll come to the dropdown. Sometimes you need to search, and then you want to find the name of the company. They need to be on LinkedIn. Once you go to their company page, see where it says, “Miriam and 13 other connections work here?” Number one, you want to see if you know anyone there that’s connected to you. That’s the first thing. You want to see if any connections work there because you may not even realize that someone you worked with in another job way back when is now working at that company. The best way in is someone you already know. That’s why I was clarifying if you knew Sally or not. If you know someone else who works there, that’s your introduction. You can connect with the person you know if you’re not already connected to them. You can say, “I would like to get to know. Can you make an introduction?” Any kind of way you would. If I had seen you at a coffee shop, you knew who I was. If I don’t know who you are, it’s a little different. You’re looking for someone who knows you from someone. Honestly, people, think about it. I just met you in the coffee shop. If I walked up and say, “How have you been?” You’re going to stop and say, “How have you been? I saw that we’re on LinkedIn together. Great to see you again. Hope all is going well. Here’s what I’ve been up to and I was wondering if you could help me out.” Isn’t that how you would naturally have a conversation with someone in person? Look for a point of connection. If you don’t know anyone else, you might want to say, “Who is the right person?” because maybe you don’t know. Do you see where it says “People?” Click on the “People” tab. These are all the people. Now, you’re going to look for a different point of connection. Where they live, where they studied. See the top above that says “Next.” Click on the “Next.” It’s what they do and what they’re skilled at. Do you see? You have other ways you can filter. If you click the “Show more,” it gives you a few more. You can filter down the people who are there to see now how you’re connected. If you’re first connected, you know that you can write to them. If it’s a second connection, it gives you another opportunity. At the very top, you can also search by the keyword school. Where did you go to school? The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.   If you type that in, the search power of LinkedIn is where this all comes in because you’re looking for points of connection. Now, you’ve put that in as a filter. You could even filter it down more. You’re down to 756. If you click on that, then here’s the power. You want to narrow that down as much as you can. Now, scroll down. You can keep filtering it. That’s your list. When you start looking through that list, and then you see if you can key in the right person to connect with. That could be reflective. The other thing is you’re going to click on it and you’re going to look at their profile. One of the ways you can see how active they are is by clicking on that activity. If they’re not active at all, they don’t have to be posting, but they’re liking and commenting. At least you know they look at their LinkedIn because one of the things that happen most with LinkedIn when you reach out to somebody is you get ghosted. They don’t respond. A lot of times it’s because it’s someone who doesn’t look at LinkedIn. Don’t take it personally, but if you want to do that extra work, by all means, see if they’re active or not before you reach out to them. That’s the way I would recommend. You want to find as many points of connection. I am so glad I asked you that question because I’ve been recommending people to go to the company and then find new people. The way you described it is so much more strategic and that’s what we want. We want to make sure that we are optimizing our LinkedIn profile so that we’re strategic and able to get to the company where we want to get a job there. Fantastic stuff, Lisa. I love it. Any final words before we close?   First of all, thank you for having me, Rosie. Thank you all who are tuning in. Feel free to reach out to me at LisaKanda.com. I make it pretty simple to find me. If you have questions about LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. On my YouTube channel, I have a whole playlist of LinkedIn video tips. Feel free to go watch my video tips on extra ninja things on how you can learn about how to optimize using LinkedIn to be time efficient and productive. That’s where I focus a lot of my effort on.   Thank you again for your time. I appreciate all the knowledge and expertise that you’ve shared with us. I will see you soon, Lisa.   Take care. Bye.  

Important Links

• Less Is More Worksheet
• LinkedIn Fast Track
• www.LisaKanda.com
• http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/lisakanda
• YouTube – Lisa Kanda

 

About Lisa Kanda

Lisa Kanda, CEO of Elkay Advisors, LLC, is a marketing strategist, speaker, facilitator, and trainer who focuses on helping businesses and entrepreneurs learn how to establish and grow their online presence to get visible, connect with their ideal client, and use their digital real estate in a strategic, effective way to get results. Her approach is to demystify the ever-changing digital landscape to make it easy to understand while sharing proven, actionable tools and tips.   Lisa is a consultant to the New Jersey Small Business Development Center (NJSBDC) at Brookdale Community College where she counsels business owners on how to use social media to promote and build their businesses. She co-created the NJSBDC’s Digital Blueprint Certificate program.