- Robb Conlon
Show Notes Episode 32 - LinkedIn Crash-course -Ft. Chelsea Berg
Updated: Dec 23, 2020
Episode 32: LinkedIn Crash Course.
Robb dives into the biggest listener requested topic of 2020, "How the heck do I make LinkedIn start to work for ME?!" With his guest, who is coming back to the LinkedIn Scene, they dive into the strategies that ANYONE can do to start building their network on LinkedIn... and the best part is, they're all FREE. Ft. Chelsea Berg - @ChelseaWandering
Connect with Chelsea
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelseawandering/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsea-berg-575b885a/
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
4:00 LinkedIn isn't a static platform
8:00 The 50 Cent Strategy
10:00 The heck is an Algorithm?
10:40 Creating your own post for your passion
14:00 Making your own posts
18:00 Marketing Yourself
21:20 Creating a LinkedIn post that draws attention
27:40 LinkedIn growth from Zero
31:05 Vulnerability Sample
34:20 What Story are you telling?
36:30 When to be Vulnerable?
39:20 Bucket Showers
42:30 Seed Comments
44:30 Starting Invites for your page
49:00 Look for People, not Opportunities
53:00 Closing
Transcript (Auto generated):
today on recruiting hell
one of the most requested topics on this
show from our listeners
is how does linkedin work linkedin is an
incredibly powerful tool
for your networking and for your job
search and thankfully
doesn't take nearly as much time as some
of the other content platforms out there
today we're going to dive into basic
linkedin strategies
that anyone can do with only a small
amount of time and effort involved
using these strategies from some of the
biggest names in social media
we're going to look at what you can do
when you're starting your network from
next to zero
[Music]
hello and welcome to recruiting how i'm
your host Robb Conlon
today's episode is something that has
been requested rather frequently over
the past month or two
and in the interest of making sure that
we always listen to listener feedback
i thought it was appropriate to not only
do this episode as quickly as was
feasible but also to sort of pair it
with the time of year
as it has a lot in common with what you
do on linkedin
giving and the holiday season now past
episodes
have told us about networking for the
give being generous with your time
and helping you realize that value needs
to be given
to your potential network connections
before you actually make any asks of
them
the same goes for linkedin and whether
you have zero connections
400 connections or 4 000 connections you
can use the strategies in this episode
to help grow your reach and connect with
some pretty amazing new people
the concept ties directly into marketing
yourself
that is discussed in episodes 12 and 26
of this series
crafting your linkedin brand not only
takes time and effort
but you also need to have some direction
in where you're headed
so if you need additional ideas on how
to market yourself go listen to those
back catalog
episodes today's format is a slight
change from the normal
in that we have a guest but the guest is
here as the learner and to drive the
conversation
chelsea berg is a recent connection of
mine that was made through another guest
on this show
we were introduced and with her need for
a position it made a lot of sense to
connect with her myself
and give her some of the resources here
at recruiting health including being on
the show
chelsea welcome to the program it's
great to have you here
hello hello now in this episode we're
going to take a slightly different
format than normal as i said
we're going to take a look at how to
leverage posting when you're just
starting on linkedin and this is
something i know that you
just began a few days ago this is one of
these kind of easy to execute strategies
that both you and other listeners can
pretty much do right off the bat
when you stop listening to this program
today so before we start that
let's hear a little bit about you
chelsea and your professional and
personal journey so far
hello everyone and thank you rob for
having me on the show
as you said my name is chelsea berg i
recently got married so
sometimes it feels weird to say my full
name still
um so my husband and i actually just
moved back
to the midwest the milwaukee area
we spent the last two years traveling
and
living kind of all over the place so we
spent 14 months abroad
traveling and also volunteering around
the entire world
very animal conservation based we did
some ocean conservation volunteer
and then we landed after that in san
diego for a mere
11 months leading right up until
when kova began so a perfect storm of
situations happened to bring us back
to the midwest for my husband's job um
and that kind of explains
um you know the fact that i'm a need for
a position and also why
um i spent a good deal of time on
linkedin looking for work
got it well it's quite the ride you
shared a lot of really interesting and
exhilarating things with your travel i
know you've been
all over the place and that kind of
brings me to my first point you've done
a lot of
moving in your career if you will and
you've probably gained a much more
worldly view
than a lot of people and this is a huge
advantage for you because it allows you
to connect into some of those
communities
that you once visited and you can do
that via linkedin these days which is
awesome
so you have connections in countries
that i don't even have listeners in yet
now we're
we're in 22 countries which is awesome
but that gives you something of a
handhold
in these areas that people like myself
or other folks who haven't traveled the
world
they might not have that yet so chelsea
if i asked you
today if you looked at the linkedin
connections you have
who are you connected to on linkedin
yeah so i would say my main linkedin
connections you know they started off
with like high school friends
or just friends from college and things
like that you know when everyone first
gets their linkedin and
they just add people they know and then
throughout my travels and everything all
the companies that we volunteered for
and even just learned about or made
connections with we
i connected with them on linkedin as
well um
obviously i did on instagram and
facebook and things like that as well
but
learning about their company profile and
page on
linkedin was important to me as well so
i would
say you know you can find a lot of um
ocean conservation companies
companies uh that we worked for and
volunteered for
and then also companies i had worked for
in the past like i'm connected to
you know disney on linkedin and things
like that so
a broad range of you know companies and
also just people
that i know gotcha okay so again that's
the
kind of the the souvenir i would think
from those those trips and travels that
you kind of
put your your feelers out and grabbed
that onto those companies and maybe
those people too as well is that correct
you know the specific people from those
companies
gotcha yeah definitely good deal so then
my question for you is you mentioned
initially that you know you're
the folks you started with on linkedin
were you know people in high school you
made your
your profile and you kind of added some
people and things like that
what were your initial thoughts about
the linkedin platform uh the other day
you shared a few thoughts with me about
how you first kind of started it and i
wanted one to get those out for the rest
of the listener base
yeah to be totally honest my first
initial thoughts on linkedin were just
this is a job posting
platform this is how i find jobs this is
how i scroll for who's hiring
and you know i'm a creative at heart so
i always thought instagram like these
beautiful pictures and stories i could
really use
my creativity and then facebook you know
there was a way to
have more informal connections all over
the world and i never
thought of linkedin as something that i
could have
um you know creative
energy with per se right and that's
that's a really big leap for a lot of
folks myself included i was one of those
people too who was like
this is a job board this is a uh
method for me to find new employment
not something that i can actually create
on and i think that that
that statement you made that it's
doesn't quite feel like
instagram or some of the other platforms
i think that's a real big thing and i
think that
listener if you're you're following this
here
that misconception that linkedin is just
a job board or something like that is a
really big
thing so a lot of things and another
misconception that comes
along with this is that linkedin is a
set it and forget it kind of thing
that helps you land a job if you're
lucky and of course as we've been
talking about chelsea
it's that's a wrong assumption because
linkedin is a platform that is alive
it lives and it breathes a lot like the
other platforms
twitter instagram tick tock and speaking
of those
uh listeners follow the show there if
you haven't already but the real magic
of linkedin
is that it's an effort multiplier and
while it takes a while for it to start
to
charge up and pay dividends once it does
it can almost start to self-sustain and
sell fuel
so chelsea in our first call i gave you
a strategy to try with linkedin and it's
a tidbit that gary vaynerchuk dropped on
one of his videos probably a couple
years ago now
and i've seen this work for me i picked
this up and i've been teaching it to
other folks
we mentioned it before on the show and
while it's not 100 new to everyone here
this is the first time we've actually
put it into application with somebody
and we're going to drill into it a bit
further so chelsea would you be able to
explain the concept of the 50 cent
linkedin strategy
yeah definitely so how i understood it
best was
like you had mentioned the set it and
forget it you can't use linkedin
as that if you want to build a personal
brand build a community and things like
that so how i understood
the 50 cent strategy is you know at
first you might
make some posts and four people see it
or you might
make some you know worthwhile comments
on brands that you're interested in or
companies that you follow um and
you know over time the more you do that
you know on a daily weekly basis that's
going to build
your personal brand and it's not
something that you can just do
you know once a month or once every
couple months which i
was very much guilty of before
and that's okay and i think the
understanding of how
social media really works is is
something that's not necessarily always
made apparent to
everybody uh a lot of times the
the marketing world kind of keeps that
under under wraps so they can use it to
make money and things like that so
that's a really great way to kind of
explain the 50 cent strategy is the it's
the
commenting or reacting with 25 posts a
day
giving your two cents of course so 25
times two is the 50 cent strategy so
going into that a little bit deeper the
reason that we want to interact with the
others on the social media platform
which
chelsea you said is the the crux the
pivotal point
though it's the way that social media
works and many of us have probably heard
about what's called
the algorithm and whether it comes from
or youtube all of these companies and
platforms
are notorious for keeping their
algorithms kind of foggy or changing the
things all the time
so basically to explain to everybody the
algorithm is a platform
set of rules and the formulas that
determine what gets shown
on a social media platform when and to
whom
and if you can consistently tap into or
heaven forbid
crack the algorithm then you're in for
some crazy success
so with you chelsea you know you just
started
back on this route this route here of
posting you had a
fabulous post uh just last night that i
saw and i was like man
uh does she is she going to teach them
the master class here when she comes on
the show or she's coming as a learner
because it was
it was tell us a little bit about that
post uh and we can talk a little bit
more about like the
the algorithm and the best practices go
ahead
definitely so as i mentioned with my
travels is very focused on
animal conservation and ocean
conservation and one thing
that really really impacted me was we
did a lot of beach cleanups all over the
world and cleaned up
tons and tons of trash just on all these
beautiful beaches and so i made a post
just in time for
you know we're a week to christmas now
um
about how the holiday season produces so
much trash
um among all of us and we might not
realize because season of giving and
it's a very important time of year and i
love like christmas is my absolute
favorite time of year
um but i really wanted to dive into and
also let people know that there are ways
to go about it in a little more
earth you know eco-conscious way so i
made a post
allowing people to click on an article
that's you know five ways to
um be a little bit more earth conscious
this christmas
and i even learned myself so
and that's that's a great thing and
linkedin can be a platform for
learning as well as kind of advertising
and saying hey i need a job
so when you posted that the algorithm of
the site
took that and said hey i should show
this to people who chelsea's connected
with
so the algorithm basically is described
as the preferred best practices that the
company wants you to follow
to be the participant in their service
and when you adhere to the rules closely
by making a great post like you did that
had uh hashtags that had an article
and that had a decent amount of content
body
they start to reward you with reach and
putting that on other people's
feeds to get more eyes on your content
and post now an algorithm of course
isn't the only thing that dominates what
people see on a platform
no siree the other aspect for linkedin
or
at least for making content or posts
that is uh are innovative
and clever and thought-provoking you
have to kind of use that marketing style
we really saw that
in your post chelsea it was it grabbed
me because i was a i was surprised to
see it like wow she really put something
out so fast
and b the the copy that you put on there
it did suck me right in which was just
outstanding so
we have to kind of use those marketing
style techniques to engage with people
with what we put out so we talked about
that post
uh chelsea do you know how many people
that reached by chance
well not gonna lie the first time i
looked to see who liked it it was like
my mom and my husband
which you know typically happens on you
know you always have to have your number
one fans
um but then i saw you saw it and then a
couple other people as well so i think
it kind of
you know reached a couple of people who
like it's not like my mom or husband
have been following my linkedin a lot
because i don't post
often until i met you and had a nice
wonderful conversation about that
so i would say it still has a lower
reach just because i am just getting
back into the swing of things but
um like i said i did just post it last
night so you never know who could see it
right and the other thing too is it's
not just the likes and reactions and
things like that that you're wanting to
take a look at for your post
on linkedin in the left-hand sidebar
if you take a look at uh it's usually
under your portrait you can look lower
in that menu and you can find a
little stat it'll say views of your post
for example for me i had one
uh yesterday i believe that is at like
394
which for me is pretty darn good usually
i run
mid uh mid hundreds or low you know
1200s or things like that
which is great so i'm happy when
anything you know gets four or 500
people of reach so you've had some eyes
on your on your post and i love that you
said
you know it's your mom it's your dad
it's your husband it's
it's the guy who's having you on the
podcast that's seeing this there are a
whole lot more people out there
who have likely seen scrolled and didn't
interact with it which is a great thing
but you still have the impression
in their uh social feed which is super
important so
let's pretend for a moment you got six
interactions or something like that you
know two comments
four likes and reactions but you may
have had your post delivered
to 60 80 100 people
so that's a hundred pairs of eyes in
your post so the question to ask here
is how do we get more people to look at
what we're seeing what we're doing
and so part of the algorithm that we're
looking to tap into with the 50 cent
strategy
is the interaction with others portions
so think about you know right
how that works right so did you actually
make any comments
uh back to folks who had maybe said
anything or
anything like that so when i originally
was
um looking for the article i had found a
couple that were similar but i wanted to
find something that you know looks good
for posting strategies and also just you
know
spoke to spoke to me and things like
that so as i was looking in the you know
hashtag sustainable holiday
uh i made a few comments there but i
definitely need to get better at
you know when i'm not posting
interacting with others and
you know companies that i'm just you
know really fond of or
have experience with you know it doesn't
hurt and everybody loves
interaction nowadays too especially it's
like we don't get to see each other or
you know have these community events so
you know a little comment goes a long
way it does
and that's a great little phrase because
even on your
own post a little comment goes a long
way you'll often find
that folks like myself will make a post
and then once we do
we come into the actual comment section
with either like a
an add-on or something that we didn't
actually post in the thing like the link
to the
article or whatever it might be that's
something that's part of the strategy
two
is to get more eyes on that you can post
on yourself
occasionally with the 50 cent strategy
don't let it rely on it of course
it's usually for others but one of those
you know maybe five cent or
darn five cents doesn't divide and
evenly into two
uh six cents a day maybe on your own
posts which is a great thing
so i always wondered why celebrities did
that they would post something and then
like
make a comment on their own post you
know a funny phrase
or something like that well and that's
kind of them
gaming that that algorithm because if
you make a comment on someone with a bit
of a followings post
it shows up it gives them an alert so
when folks make a comment on
on my linkedin on my phone i get
notifications every single time and the
other part is is if i make a comment on
somebody i follows post
they also send me notifications when
other people comment on that post so
it'll say
rob you're you're following john smith
other
you know 48 other people have posted on
john smith's post
so it's a great way to build that
interaction and that's kind of what the
50 cent strategy is all about it's about
getting
you in front of more eyes every day on
other posts as well as your own and so
by doing this you're guaranteeing every
day you get at least 25 new people
to see what you have to say or how you
feel about their content and keep in
mind
you may get more mileage out of this for
actual comments of course
than just you know thumbs up and things
like that but i would say for best
results we pair the two right
right good deal so my next question for
you chelsea is dealing with the next
part of linkedin we talked about it just
a moment ago
uh marketing yourself a little bit and
i'm curious
i don't know much about your marketing
background i know you've done some
social media i know you've done a lot of
things like that
to you what is the phrase write good
copy mean
yeah so to me write good copy is like
you had mentioned you saw my post
and you know everything about it you
liked that there was an article attached
you liked that there were hashtags
and i think writing good copy to me
means you know getting someone's
attention with what you have to say
you know if you're writing something
boring or something that's not authentic
or um just looks like a robot type that
people aren't going to be as interested
so write good copy um you know kind of
speaks for itself and
you have to write something good to get
people's attention which will
eventually help you with you know your
connection
absolutely and then there's another
phrase that i'm curious and i'm not sure
if you know this one but this is one of
my one of my favorite phrases
it's above the fold are you familiar
with that phrase
yeah i was a journalism major so i had
to learn about that
good deal so enlighten us please what
does above the fold mean
yeah so above the fold especially you
know in marketing terms nowadays with
everybody you know being online and
everything happening on the internet is
it's
getting somebody's attention whether
it's to buy something or
to read something or to click more or to
keep reading the article you want to get
their attention in the first upper half
of you know the fold per se so in that
first
you know couple of paragraphs you want
to make sure it's going to
allow them to know
you know what your company is or what
you have to say or what your mission
statement is
to be able to have them read more buy
more something like that
right exactly it's that old old
marketing term that basically says if
you're sending someone a marketing
letter
you need to capture their attention
before they reach the first tri-fold
in the actual letter uh you need to have
like two sentences sometimes because you
have
you know the address dear sir dear madam
and then
yeah blah blah blah and you have just a
handful of sentences if
if that maybe even a handful of words to
capture attention so that that is
perfect i'm really glad that
uh you get a great explanation on that
you know with you know eve in modern
day i would say maybe above the scroll
if you will above
the flick um in that case so that should
be your goal
with linkedin post and i saw that with
what you posted
yesterday i i was like again kind of
blown away going like oh man i
she said she does she said she needs to
learn but i don't know
how much she needs to learn but it's and
it's great it's good to see somebody who
is brand new to the platform have a
successful post right off the bat
and success is variable
on linkedin and the goal of what people
post on linkedin should be
to get people to click that you know
little read more thing at the side
yeah we can together then take a look it
kind of makes
what makes a successful post we talked
about yours a moment ago
i want to bring in an example about how
to
uh leverage this that really got some
traction for me so i'm gonna
kind of take the reins here a little bit
more than i normally would just because
i want to read this out for folks
uh a couple days ago i posted the
following
uh post on linkedin it went bananas
and so it says so many folks want to
know how to leverage linkedin
and it's one of the most requested
topics for recruiting hell
coincidentally it's why we're doing this
episode of the show
here's what i've done i'm used to
reaching
50 to 100 people a post and this was six
months ago and six months later while
i'm not solidly in four digits yet i'm
seeing 300
1200 views a post the three things i try
to do to make this go further are
a consistency of posting b upping my
copy skills and finding what resonates
with my listeners
and audience c networking my ass off to
find new folks who i can help
and who can help me now my question to
you is chelsea
in listening to that where did i put the
break where was my above the fold
portion
to have people click read more
definitely so where i thought or what
captured me
is when you said here's what i've done
and kind of did a dot dot dot
where it allows people to want to learn
more and want to
keep reading right and that's actually
precisely where it was it was that that
break there
and there's a rule that i follow on this
show i will never withhold
any information from somebody's job hunt
but you might have to click a button
that's all in that case so you're
correct right after the ellipses it
gives that prompt
to people to find out what i actually
did as a strategy
and it kind of pokes that little
curiosity
button in our brains so the first part
about making a linkedin post that starts
to go somewhere
is taking advantage of that curiosity in
human beings and the idea that there is
value in that read more section the fear
of missing out on that value
fomo so in that case there are three
tips that can help
people who are starting out on linkedin
you know the consistency
the copy and then the networking with
other folks and again the 50 cent
strategy
is part of that so now that we've given
a great example of a post that generates
interest these can be pretty much easily
done on any topic as you showed with
your conservation post
that's something that while i believe in
you know saving the planet and things
like that it's not as near and dear to
my heart as it is to yours which is
excellent
so it's important for somebody who's
posting on linkedin
to find those things that really tap in
to what their experience
is in the world for me it's
it's this job hunt thing you know i have
i'm kind of on a bit of a crusade for
this because i've seen that people
have been really impacted by what the
world is like and for you that's an
environmental issue and
we are all stronger when we have our
causes together and we we
pursue those cause so what other kind of
post do you think
would resonate with your connections
from what you what you're passionate
about chelsea
yeah definitely so the reason i spoke
about
you know the conservation and things
like that is with the holidays
you know like i said christmas is a week
away i thought it would really capture
people's attention because
everybody's buying gifts right now
everybody is wrapping presents
so it's also important to do you know
make posts within the season or within
what's going on in the world um i think
for me
i mean something that i've been told by
a lot of people and it's just
the type of person i am is i i'm a light
they say i'm like the sun
um so you're not gonna find like
negative articles or
bad news that's going on that's just not
who i am that's not
authentic to me so you might find like
something good that happened
perhaps at a covid or something a good
news story of people coming together
you know in quarantine and all the good
things you know that with people driving
less
you know how it's impacting the earth
and things like that so that's the kind
of
articles that i'm passionate about um
and not just articles but just you know
posts in general um i recently rescued a
puppy
named moose tracks so dog related
um you know anything dog related or
maybe
something i learned about the pet
industry i could share about um
those are the types of things travel uh
that i definitely will share excellent
and you
you have a wide variety of things that
are very popular with people there
pets you know we know that half the
internet's devoted to cat photos we know
that
uh the travel you know people like to
see where other people go
that a lot of these things whether
they're in your life or not
are really great topics you know things
like that and you have to find again
what you're passionate about you've
rattled off a number of things that work
perfectly for you chelsea and the other
part of that is
for the other listeners these might not
be things that are you know
as you're as on fire about as chelsea is
the
thing that you might be on fire about is
i want to give him a shout
here because he's just a great great guy
um i know a gentleman named ted carew
and ted is a career
uh on the job safety uh
instructor director kind of like not an
osha inspector but the guy who like
interfaces with the osh inspector
and make sure people don't get there
okay hands cut off ted is
wild about safety and while safety is
like not my
my thing you know and it's not my
passion watching him post
on something that is to most people
maybe a little bit
something they don't think about every
day is it's really he is just on fire
for this and so
if you're a listener out there saying ah
my stuff
isn't interesting on linkedin there is
an audience for pretty much everything
when it comes to professional interests
and even some of the personal interests
which is great
good deal so there's one thought i want
to close with on the 50 cent strategy
here
chelsea and this is partially for you
but this is also for the
rest of listeners on linkedin remember