Keppie Careers

Social media speaker, social media consultant, job search coach

How to Position Yourself on LinkedIn During a Pandemic

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In the midst of a pandemic, it is easy to be distracted and ignore your social media accounts. However, during a time when it is more challenging than ever to connect and impress people in person, even more people will turn to online tools to learn more about you. Will they learn what you want them to know?

In addition to being a place to share information you want people to know about you, social media is still a great place to learn about opportunities for new jobs. Jobvite’s 2019 Job Seeker Nation Survey indicates that 35 percent of respondents found job postings on social media, 50 percent heard about jobs from friends and 37 percent learned about opportunities from professional networks. The numbers show how important social networking tools are to your job search.

Assess: Review your social media goals

No matter how much (or little) time you spend using social media tools to enhance your online reputation, assess what you want people to know about you? What is the most important thing for them to learn? What feeling do you want them to have? Is there something you do NOT want them to know? What do you want them to DO when they land on your profile? Take the time to audit your profiles to ensure you’re putting out the right messages.

Ask a friend or a coach what they think when they visit your social media profiles and when they look at your streams of information. Make sure you aren’t missing the mark when it comes to shaping a reputation you want to own.

Google Yourself

At least a few times a year, you should Google your own name. You want to know what comes up when people search for you online. What pictures show up? Are they of you? Is there someone who has your name and comes up before you online, even in LinkedIn? Make a note of things that show up high in search, and make a point to spend extra time making those things the best they can be. For example, LinkedIn likely comes up high in search. Manage your profile there first, before you spend time anywhere else online.)

Update Your LinkedIn Headline

When is the last time you reviewed your LinkedIn profile?  Make sure to include new accomplishments and look over your materials with fresh eyes. LinkedIn made changes that could impact your headline length — it can now be as long as 220 characters. Use the extra space to target your audience and incorporate keywords to attract people to your profile.

Be sure you keep everything consistently updated. If you update LinkedIn, be sure to also update your resume.

Audit Your LinkedIn Profile

Have you updated the image behind your LinkedIn photo? This banner makes an impression when someone lands on your profile. Make sure you customize this with something that makes sense for your expertise. You can create a visual easily by using Canva.com, a free design tool.

If you haven’t updated your LinkedIn profile in a while, you may not have set up the “Open to Work” section that asks about your business information. This is the “bat signal” to recruiters to let them know you are open to being contacted.

Edit this business information by selecting the prepopulated category that matches your expertise. Fill in business focus areas, and then select if you want that information to be public or not. If your profile is public, LinkedIn points out that anyone can see what you selected, which is the whole point of this exercise, after all!

If you choose to allow all LinkedIn members to see your choices, LinkedIn will add the open to work image to your profile picture.

LinkedIn’s “Brag Book”

LinkedIn gives you a brag book area! This “Featured” section is a place to include your best work samples, such as:

  • LinkedIn posts that you’ve created or re-shared.
  • Articles that you’ve authored and published on LinkedIn.
  • Links to external websites, for example, your personal blog or portfolio.
  • Media that you can upload, for example, your images, documents, presentations and videos.

Review Your Experience and Skills Sections

The Experience section is also critically important. This is where you list your various job titles and indicate what you have accomplished in each of your positions.

Make the most of the title sections. You have 100 characters to leverage in each job title spot!

Don’t forget to populate your skills section with 50 specially selected skills! You can also take skills tests and add them to your profile.

Audit Your Settings

No matter how much great work you do on your LinkedIn profile, if your backend settings aren’t properly set up, people will not be able to access what you have to offer and to learn about you! To review and update your backend updates, click on the dropdown right below your little photo of you on the right side of the screen on your desk or laptop.

Select Settings and privacy, and review every question! In most cases, the choice that is more “public” and less “hidden” is what you will want to select.

On the other hand, to discourage people from using your LinkedIn profile as a launching point to see other profiles, you may choose to select “NO” for “Viewers of this profile also viewed” – this is one way to help prevent people from getting distracted and jumping to other, likely similar, LinkedIn profiles once they find your profile.

One other thing to watch for under the Microsoft Word setting: you probably do NOT want to allow your job descriptions to auto-populate templates on Microsoft word resumes.

Don’t miss the “Mentions or tags by others” setting. Unless you are famous and might be inundated by tags, it is nice to allow people to mention you in a way that you are notified in their LinkedIn updates and comments.

Finally, as you scroll to the bottom of this section, you’ll see that you can block and hide. In particular, I suggest you allow EVERYONE to follow you on LinkedIn to help make your profile more visible.

When you allow people to follow you, it will make any effort you put forth to improve your profile more worthwhile, as it opens the opportunity for more people to access your content on LinkedIn and to see your updates.

Un-follow

Is your LinkedIn feed getting too spammy?  Weed out people you don’t want to hear from. In LinkedIn, you can block people (which means you won’t see their updates, and they won’t see your content, either). LinkedIn won’t notify the blocked people! (Just click on the arrow next to the endorse button on their profile.)

Change Your Password

If you have trouble keeping track of passwords, you can use a password management program such as LastPass. Also, be sure you are using your personal email for LinkedIn; it’s not a good idea to use a work email or an email you never check!

Engage

How are you engaging on LinkedIn?

Post content! LinkedIn rewards people for creating content on the network. You will be more likely to be found in a search via LinkedIn if you are active on the platform. Don’t waste this opportunity to interact with your network. Share useful posts and comment on news and informational articles. Post blogs on LinkedIn if you have news to share or wish to comment on what is going on in your industry. Don’t forget to ‘Like’ and “Share’ updates that members of your network post. This helps get you on their radar screen and can also help introduce you to people who follow them and the comments on their posts.

LinkedIn still has groups, even if they are harder to find than they were in the past. Find groups by typing keywords into LinkedIn’s search bar and selecting “groups” as the search category.

If you could use some help updating your LinkedIn profile to ensure you are well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities and that you aren’t missing out on the chance for employers to find -and hire you – check out my special offer.

Tired of job hunting? Start a business instead!

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social-network-vector-with-icons_23-2147497527If you’re thinking about starting a business or hanging a shingle, you’ve probably considered how to improve efforts to tap into social media and to use social networks to help promote your business, product or service.

Statistics detailing social media business opportunities via social networking

The statistics are pretty compelling. GrowingSocialMedia.com featured these numbers in a recent roundup:

  • According to Statistica, the number of global social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion in 2018.
  • Pew Research Center found that 90% of adults age 18 to 29 use social media. (Although, that seems low!)
  • We Are Social Media found 71% of women are active on social media, compared to 62% of men.
  • Perhaps most importantly for business owners: 92% of small business owners who use social media believe social media marketing is important for their business, according to Business2Community.

Neoteric UK compiled more great stats in an info graphic referenced on We Are Social Media. They noted:

  • The fastest growing group of new users on Twitter are between 55 and 64 years old.
  • 45% of users feel “worried or uncomfortable” when email and Facebook are inaccessible.
  • The +1 button (on Google+) is hit at least 5 billion times per day.
  • 189 million of Facebook’s users are ‘mobile only’, thanks to smartphones

Does social media propel direct sales?

With these statistics in mind, you may think social media marketing is a great direct line for you to help sell your product or service. Post a few great insights on Facebook, and VOILA! – you’re a selling machine, right?

Not so fast.

Last week, Ad Week  reported about data from e-commerce vendor Custora analyzed between January and March, 2016. Reviewing about $100 billion in sales among 500 million shoppers, researchers identified only 1.5 percent of retailers’ last-click e-commerce transactions that came via social media. Of those, not surprisingly, Facebook dominated 81 percent of sales, while shopping-centric Pinterest generated 10.8 percent.

Why use social media marketing if it doesn’t produce direct-click sales?

Stay top-of-mind / inspire trust / leverage reviews

Why aren’t retailers dropping their Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and other accounts and desperately searching for another marketing tool to guarantee sales? They realize social media isn’t about “selling.” Instead, it’s a vehicle to help stay top-of-mind for clients and customers.

In addition, leveraging these tools helps companies inspire trust in their target audience. Especially if you are a small business or are not well known, if you have a community of social media followers who are engaged and to whom you respond frequently, potential customers may be more likely to take a chance on making a purchase from you.

Social media is a great way to help encourage happy clients and customers to leave a positive review for you, which, in a buying environment where people look for online validation that their purchase is a good idea, is very useful to drive sales.

Teach Google what you want it to know and demonstrate expertise

Another, equally important reason to leverage social media as a business owner. These tools give even the smallest business the opportunity to feed content and information directly to Google and to “teach” the search engine what they want it to know.

In addition, using social media helps business owners demonstrate expertise and leverage credibility, which is especially important for consultants and coaches, but also for people selling products based on their knowledge. For example, if you are marketing a diet product, you’ll want to prove to your audience you know something about health. Similarly, if you’re selling exercise equipment, it will help inspire confidence in buyers if they can easily see your social media stream is full of content demonstrating you are an expert in the fitness field.

Even if you’re already making money online — tap into a bigger audience

Email marketers or those who rely mostly on Facebook ads and webinars to sell products and services may think they don’t need to leverage non-paid social media to get the word out. Certainly, if you can drive people to sign up for a webinar where you can demonstrate your expertise, you’re on the road to success. However, you’ll never know how many MORE people might have taken the time for your webinar or purchased your product if you had a credibility-boosting social profile.

Expand your network and access referrals and assistance

Yet another important reason for businesses and business owners to use social media tools is that they allow you to grow your network and meet new people who may be willing to promote you or your company to their network!
  • One new tool I’ve been checking out lately that fits in well with this model is called Brazzlebox. It’s a virtual community for small and home based businesses. Check out their video. Members of the community can easily network with other businesses nearby, and connect up with other businesses in the same industry. Members can post on the network, trade private messages or even give out coupons.
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Option2I built my business using social media tools and I LOVE helping people figure out how to make the most of these resources. So, I launched a new program to help other entrepreneurs who want to stop wasting time on social media and start making money. The “Smart Business Owner’s Social Media Help Desk” is a private Facebook group where I teach entrepreneurs how to leverage social media to enhance their reputations, grow their brands, expand their businesses and make more money. Click through to learn more and access the limited-time offer bonuses!

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Social Media Tips for Business Owners

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Banner smallNo matter where I go, I find myself talking to business owners about social media. Literally, I can’t shut up! They ask, “What’s with Twitter, I can’t figure it out?” Or, they say, “I don’t have time for social media. How do you do it?”

That’s all it takes, and off I go, explaining how social media isn’t rocket science, but it’s not intuitive, either. I start ticking off all kinds of tips and tricks to help make it easier to make social media marketing work for his or her business.

For months, I’ve been asking myself, “How can I tap into my passion about social media to help more people?” And, “How can I offer overwhelming value, but keep it affordable, so even new entrepreneurs can get onboard and it’s valuable for people who have a good start, but could benefit from some easy tweaks?” I want to provide something that’s so amazing, it’s a no-brainer for every business owner. I think I’ve finally figured it out!

Most business owners need a helping hand. Think about it:

Wouldn’t it be incredible to have someone to ask the you can’t quite figure out how to upload that photo to Twitter? Or, to be able to ask an expert if your tweet looks good, or if you’re going to embarrass yourself by publishing it?

YES! I WANT TO LEARN MORE

What about when you want to decide the best hashtag to use for something you post? Who can help? How about if the person there to hold your hand (virtually) just happens to be someone CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business and Forbes ask when they have questions about social media?

Learn everything from big-picture strategy to technical know how:

  • Choose the best social networks to connect with your customers and clients.
  • Save time while you stay top-of-mind for people who need to know about you.
  • Leverage social media marketing to build relationships and increase awareness of your brand.
  • Inspire trust, influence buying decisions and make more money.
  • Look smarter than your competition.
  • Get it all done faster so you don’t waste time!

Sound good?

Social media constantly morphs and changes. (Have you noticed how often LinkedIn changes its interface? If you’re confused, it’s not you, it’s them!) A kickstart is great, but you’re too busy doing your work to keep up with the latest and greatest on social media. You could spend weeks or months trying to unravel social media’s complexities, only to find out your favorite network just got an overhaul and it’s back to square one for you.

So, this program isn’t based on feeding you a bunch of hour-long webinars. Who really watches all those webinars, anyway? Isn’t it better to have your questions addressed directly? You need help putting your social media strategy to work every day.

Join me in a brand new group: The Smart Business Owner’s Social Media Help Desk.

You’ll have 24-hour access to ask your questions, and I’ll be there daily to help you overcome every social media issue, from the big issues (what to say in your profile) to the most mundane. (Is there really a “best time” to post?)

A bonus for members? As the group grows, in addition to my expertise and targeted advice, you’ll also have access to opinions and ideas from your fellow business owners. Members will be invited to share opinions, ideas and best practices. There’s strength in numbers, and an empowered, well-informed group of business owners is a great asset.

What do you actually get?

Whether you’re just getting started, or you’re ready to ramp it up, there will be useful information for you.

Access to a group where you can ask and get answers to all of your social media marketing questions. We’ll house everything in a private Facebook group (since that’s where you likely spend a lot of time).

  • For a limited time, a free, 30-minute, one-on-one preliminary social media coaching session over the phone. (Sign up before I decide I don’t have time for these free sessions!) My initial social media consultations normally start at $300. For anyone who joins The Smart Business Owner’s Social Media Help Desk now, I’ll include it for free.
  • Daily Help Desk Hints – 6 weeks of  social media pointers that you can easily implement in 15 minutes or less. Learn how to strategically and efficiently target your audience, create appealing visuals and plan your social media calendar in advance.
  • I’ll regularly share actionable tips in the group you can implement to generate better results from your social media marketing.
  • You’ll always be up-to-date. You’ll have the latest information when a network adds new features or makes changes that could affect your business.
  • SHORT (5-8 minute) webinars with tips, tricks and trends you can apply toward your own social media marketing. Topics include “How to write great professional bios,” “How to find your customers or clients online” and “The best tools to use for social media success.”
  • Checklists to help you solidify your social media business strategy – and ongoing, up-to-date information to keep you successful moving forward.

Interested? Learn more about how to make the most of your social media marketing by joining TODAY!

Congratulations to Animal #timsackettday

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Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 11.52.41 PMToday is a special day. My friend Laurie Ruettimann started it a few years ago to honor someone who’s made a difference in the HR and recruiting industries. Laurie notes they’ve “honored good folks like Tim Sackett, Paul Hebert and Kelly Dingee.” This year, the honoree is the Recruiting Animal. When I heard the news, I jumped in to participate!

If you don’t know about Animal, you should! He runs the “greatest recruiting show on earth,” and he’s been doing it forever. He’s been podcasting since way before podcasting was “the thing to do.” When I first came on the social media scene, he was always very welcoming and supportive, and even invited me on his show. He was one of my early friends on Twitter, and one of the people who made using Twitter worthwhile for me.

My earliest memories of Animal include emails where he invited me to argue with him publicly online. He also gave me information about his research about LinkedIn for my first book.

On the outside, he’s a little….shall we say…abrasive, but he’s always there with an offer to help. In fact, Animal recently started his “good recruiter list.” He says, “There are…recruiters…working in the trenches who are good at what they do and could offer lots of good advice but they never turn up on these lists because they don’t work at creating a public profile. This Good Recruiter List is going to make them visible too.”

See, Animal is always lending a hand.

I’d share other nice exchanges I’ve had over the years, but I’m afraid Animal might yell at me for sounding too sentimental or mushy.

But, it’s safe to say he’s one of the good guys. Even though he may yell at you. He only yells because he cares.

Whether you’re a job seeker, a recruiter or anyone in the HR world, you should check out Animal and keep up with what he has to say. Look up Animal’s show and find him online…You won’t be sorry! And, please share and post about @Animal and #timsackettday. Spread the love!

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Avoid these mistakes when starting a side business

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moonYou’re starting a business on the side while working full time? Join the club. You’re in good company. MBO Partners research shows “30 million Americans (are) already…self-employed — either as a main source of work (17.9 million solopreneurs) or by using self-employment as a way to augment other income (12.1 million side-giggers).”

Running a business on the side can be a great way to supplement your income, but you want to be careful not to jeopardize your day job while you start your own business if you’re not ready to quit and be on your own full time.

Here’s a list of what not to do when you start your business if you want to be sure to keep your job:

Do not work on your side job while you are on the clock at your full-time job. This is a big “no no.” While it is challenging to accomplish everything you may want to do for your own business after hours, if you use company time, equipment or resources, you are asking for trouble. Use your lunch hour wisely and consider taking advantage of your vacation or leave time to manage important tasks for your side business that cannot be done after hours.

Even if you use a company phone or computer for personal use, do not use it for your side business, or you may be in legal hot water in the future.

Do not ignore non-compete agreements. Assuming your new business is related to what you do at work, be aware of any legal agreements you have with your current company. In the future, if your consulting business takes off, it’s best to make a clean break and maintain your relationship with your employer; you don’t want to gain a reputation of building your business on stolen clients. If you are lucky, the company where you worked will become a client, especially if you’re an essential employee they can’t do without.

Don’t forget to familiarize yourself with company policies regarding side businesses. Read your company’s manual. If there is a rule against having a side business, even if your business is not related to your current work, be prepared for the consequences. If you choose to move ahead and your new business is successful, it may be difficult to keep it a secret. On the other hand, if your side business does not compete or seem to interfere with your day job, you may face no resistance at all. Even if there is no rule against it, if you are building an empire similar to your current employer’s, and you can’t make a case for how your personal success helps the company, be prepared to be shown the door if your employer accidentally runs across your new website or reads an article about you online.

Get my free white paper: 5 Mistakes Preventing You From Landing a Job This Week 

Never share proprietary information from your current company to grow your own business. Can you say, “lawsuit?” You don’t want to launch your new business with the prospect of legal action against you. Be mindful of ethical rules as well as specific guidelines your current company expects you to adhere to so you won’t be in trouble later.

Don’t forget you can still look for opportunities to learn new things at work to help your future business. Plan ahead. It may be a long time before you are ready to leave your day job, or you may choose to continue to work for someone else while you maintain your business on the side. Think about how you can learn new skills while on-the-job. Volunteer for projects and position yourself to meet people who will be good contacts for you in the future.

Appeared on AOLJobs.com.