E. 3 - Bland to Brilliant: LinkedIn Strategy with Lynnaire Johnston
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[00:00:08] Melissa Vining: If you're a high performer looking to grow and make an impact, but feeling stuck, underappreciated, and burned out at work, you're in the right place. I'm Melissa Vining and this is the Job Search for High Performing Misfits podcast. I help high performers leave draining jobs behind, reclaim their careers and land roles and organizations where they can thrive. Tune in for tips, insights, and inspiration for your journey to fulfilling work that fits you.
[00:00:38] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Hello and welcome to the job search for high-performing Misfits podcast. My name is Melissa Vining. I'm a certified career coach and certified resume writer, and today I am joined by Lynnaire Johnston. And I am so excited to have you here, Lynnaire, because you are so well known in the LinkedIn space all around the world, and you are always so generous with sharing really practical, actionable advice for people to really take full advantage of LinkedIn.
[00:01:07] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: So I know you've written two books on LinkedIn, Link∙Ability and Business Gold. You are a professional profile writer, and you help people every day to create standout profiles. You have an online members community to help business professionals make the most out of LinkedIn.
[00:01:24] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: And LinkedIn is this platform that is just constantly changing and evolving, and I know you are always on the backend trying to stay up to date on all of those changes and share that with everyone so they don't miss it. So I'm very excited because I know I'm going to learn something from this conversation, our listeners are going to learn something, and I'm really honored that you accepted my invitation to be here. So thank you for being here.
[00:01:48] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Kia Ora from New Zealand, and thank you so much for inviting me, Melissa, I'm really thrilled to be thought of as a high-performing misfit, so I am absolutely fabulous. Great to be here.
[00:01:59] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Do you want to tell us a little bit more about your background, and maybe how you identify as a high-performing misfit?
[00:02:05] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Sure, and that's a great question. So I'm a professional writer. I have been all my life, and I started out in journalism and in broadcasting and in radio. So I love live streaming and have a live streaming,show myself called Link∙Ability Insights, and we do that on LinkedIn once a fortnight, talking about all the things you just mentioned about changes to LinkedIn. So as a former reporter and editor, I'm always looking for what's new, what's changed, what's updated, and there are a lot of features on LinkedIn that change all the time.
[00:02:40] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Video is a really common example, and over the last, oh, three to four years, LinkedIn has changed tremendously. And one of the things that LinkedIn has done is it has given us a lot more new features for job hunting and for recruitment, which I think is absolutely fabulous. So I like to try and help people to find new jobs on the basis of these new features. So as you say, I'm really practical and try to help people with tips that I think they can go away and implement straight away.
[00:03:10] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So my own story with LinkedIn is that I had a copywriting business, and I suddenly discovered that LinkedIn had a publishing platform. And as a writer, I started to write about writing on LinkedIn, as you do, and I learned more about LinkedIn, learned about it, and wrote about what I was learning. And then other people asked me questions, and gradually people seemed to think that I knew something about it.
[00:03:35] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And I fell in love with LinkedIn because there's always changing. There's always something new. I get bored easily. And so there's a great way to be able to, when you live in New Zealand, which is at the bottom of the world, as you probably know, it's a great way for me to be able to reach out and have, have really good business relationships with people who are in different countries.
[00:03:55] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And that's one of the things that I believe that LinkedIn offers to everybody at some level or another is that opportunity to network and get to know people you wouldn't otherwise meet in your everyday life. And yes, some of those are misfits like me.
[00:04:10] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So where I see myself as a misfit, is in that my career has not been linear. I've done a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of something else, all to do with writing, but still. Not exactly what you would call career progression by any kind of stretch. And so I think that anybody who doesn't fit the box is entitled to be called a misfit and should be proud to be a misfit.
[00:04:37] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Yes, that is perfect and I definitely relate to that as well. I had more than 20 jobs before I was 30 years old. Definitely
[00:04:46] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Whoa.
[00:04:47] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Along with you. So we are in the same boat there, and I know a lot of listeners can identify with that. And there are so many questions I could ask you about LinkedIn, and as a career coach, there are so many questions that I get all the time. But there are also these things that people don't ask, and I think need to be talked about.
[00:05:08] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: So I kind of want to start there because what I've seen is when people start their job search, they realize they have to update their resume or CV, and they think "I'm supposed to do something with LinkedIn," but a lot of the times it feels a little bit more ambiguous, right? It feels a little bit more confusing, and they don't really know exactly what to do.
[00:05:31] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: So this is where I've seen so many people using AI, and all of this information is on there and it's just very generic, right? And it kind of all sounds the same, and it's really not saying anything. So I'm interested to hear from you, like when someone comes to you and they don't really even know where to start, how do you help them get started?
[00:05:57] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Oh, we start at the top. And another way of describing that is at the beginning, because when you first join LinkedIn, there are some things that it asks you to do. It prompts you to do. For example, add a profile photo and add a headline. Those are the kind of things that most people understand as being essential to LinkedIn and their profiles, and that's absolutely true.
[00:06:20] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I think where they get a bit lost, Melissa, is in how much of a beast LinkedIn is, because a lot of features are hidden. You don't know they're there, and you don't know what you don't know. And if nobody tells you these things, all you end up with is, as you say, a bland profile that sounds like everybody else.
[00:06:39] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Now, I'm a fan of AI. I wasn't to begin with, but I am now. But I do believe you have to be very careful about how you use it for LinkedIn. And LinkedIn's own internal AI is awful, so I wouldn't be using that either.
[00:06:55] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But I do believe that if it's at all possible, that people who are starting out on LinkedIn need to know what it is they want to achieve. That's the first thing. If you're a job seeker, then that's really easy. Very simple. One objective, you know what you're doing. But if you arein a role and you're fully employed, but you've got a side hustle going on, that you might want to develop into a business later on, starts to get a little bit more confusing. How do you make sure that people know about your side hustle without your employers getting up in arms about the fact that you are doing that. Right.
[00:07:30] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And how do you gather social proof? Because it's quite hard to say, "Hey, I'm fantastic," and in fact, everybody hates saying that about themselves. But when other people say, "Hey, Melissa's fantastic," then that's a different thing altogether. So recommendations I think are really important on LinkedIn. And there's a bit of a shame that they sit at the bottom of the profile, frankly. But that's, you know, you can't change that. That's LinkedIn's, prerogative on where it puts things.
[00:07:56] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And so really when you're looking at LinkedIn, you need to start at the top. So one of the things that people often don't do is to have a banner. And I like to have a banner because I think it is a scroll stopping visual, extravaganza. Well, it can be if you do it really well, because you don't want to hide in the shadows. If you're looking for a new job, you have to stand out. And for a lot of people that's really difficult.
[00:08:26] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But if you were to put together a banner that you can do for free in Canva, that says what you do and your area of expertise and has something visual on it. It might be locational. So it might be if you're in San Francisco, it's the Golden Gate Bridge. If you are in Australia, in Sydney, Australia, it might be the Sydney Harbor Bridge. And if you're in New Zealand, it might be the Auckland Harbor Bridge. Now really location, or if you work locationally, that's really important. But having words on your banner that tell people what you do is really, really important because you only get one chance to make a good first impression.
[00:09:06] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: I love that advice because the banner is, I think, such an underutilized piece of LinkedIn, like you said, and it's the first thing people see on your profile. So I always recommend Canva too, because you can create really nice looking banners, and you can use the free version, and it's really easy.
[00:09:26] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: And what I sometimes suggest to people too, to kind of combine your recommendation of get some recommendations, you can actually put a recommendation on the banner, which is what I've done on my profile. I took a quote from a client and put it right there on the banner so it pulls it from the bottom of your profile all the way up to the top right away.
[00:09:46] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I love that. That is a brilliant idea. If anybody listening learns nothing from this podcast episode today, but that, it's been worth it. Well done, Melissa. Great idea.
[00:09:58] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Okay, so I wanted to go back to something you said because you were talking about how important it is in the job search to stand out, and that is something that I am teaching every single day, and is really the key to a successful job search. So I'm curious to hear from you a little bit about that, because like we've talked about, in this age of AI, there's so many people just blending in.
[00:10:25] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: And recently I talked to someone who was really turned off by LinkedIn because she said, everyone's just blending in. It seems so inauthentic, and it feels like I have to do it like that just because everyone is doing it like that. So what is your advice for maintaining authenticity and also showing up professionally on the platform?
[00:10:47] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: One word, Melissa, video. LinkedIn has become a very visual platform. It wasn't like that of only a few years ago, but now it's really a video oriented platform. And if you look at your feed, you'll find lots of people putting up video. Now you can stand out in the feed simply through video. Now that's producing content. We are really talking about our profiles at this point. So how do you use video on your profile to stand out?
[00:11:23] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Now, the one I'm recommending, well, there's two ways. One that I really recommend, and that is to put a video in your featured section. So that sits quite high on your profile, has nice, big thumbnail, so it's nice and visual. And if you were to, create a 30-second to a minute long welcome video that's an introduction to who you are and what you do, and who you serve and how you help. Then that can sit at the front of your featured section on the left, and it really stands out. Anybody who wants to know anything about you is going to look at that video. Now, the catch to that is it has to be hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, but you can always upload your video to YouTube and make it private there so people don't see it, and then add it into your featured section on LinkedIn. So that is one way to do it.
[00:12:18] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: The second way is to have, if you've got a premium account, then you can put videos into the services section of your profile, and this sits above the featured section. And you can put videos in there that stand out because again, thumbnails show up there nice and easily. Now, my mention there about premium was kind of a bit misleading because you don't have to have premium to do that, but you do have to have premium for it to show on the front page of your profile. So that's what everybody sees before they click any more buttons or see more button. And so if you are going to do videos, the best place to do them really is in your featured section, but an alternative is in your services section.
[00:13:09] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But you can also add videos to your roles. Anything in your experience section you could add videos to as well, and quite a lot of people do that. So imagine standing out doing that if you did a video of each of, from each of your roles and talked about what you learned, and what it entailed, and what you enjoyed and how you then got onto your next job, then I think that really does stand out, but not in a self-aggrandizing way.
[00:13:35] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I think a lot of people get concerned that it's just them showing off, but it is not. It's talking about how you can help people, what skills you can bring to your next role, how the companies that you work for are going to benefit by having you on their teams. And I think if you switch it or reframe it, then it's a lot easier to stand up in front of your camera on your phone, which is all you need, and all I do, and then tell people what you can do.
[00:14:05] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Yeah, that's great. And I think that's such an important point of the mindset shift, right? Like it's not just about you, it's about how can you help the other person? And if you make that shift, then how you're communicating this message completely changes. So, I also wanted to talk to you a little bit about, and this kind of goes from what you were just saying, the idea of using LinkedIn as more than just a resume or a CV, because I know you talk about this a lot and sometimes people just think, "oh, should I just put exactly what's on my resume or CV? Like, how else can I expand on this?" What should people be doing?
[00:14:45] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Well, I hope you've got another hour on this question, because it's a question I absolutely love to talk about. I believe that as long as your CV and your experience section line up in the dates of the roles that you've had, everything else is open to interpretation, and open for you to, to do whatever you want with.
[00:15:08] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: People don't know, for example, that LinkedIn has a projects section, and you can talk about individual projects that you might have been involved in, in your different roles and give them as much weight, by which I mean a lot of text, and media, and images. You can do that on top of what you have got in your experience section. And that then really stands out and it starts to fill your profile out really nicely.
[00:15:35] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Now, of course, I'm assuming here that everybody understands that the about section, which is your summary, your professional summary, can be 2,600 characters long, which is about 350 words, and that you should be telling your story in that area. That should not be just, I worked here, then I worked there, then I did something else. It's how you got to where you are now. What is it that you love about the work that you do? What are your aspirations, particularly for people starting out in their careers? Where do you want to end up? What are you aiming for?
[00:16:11] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: People who are hiring people want people who have got initiative, and are open to learning, and a whole bunch of transferable skills that you need to identify on your LinkedIn profile. Most people call those keywords or another fancy term, optimization. Really what it is, is you are sharing with the people who are viewing your profile, the things that you do really, really well.
[00:16:37] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So let me give you an example of how this might work. Your skills section on your LinkedIn profile, which is quite a long way down, you can now add 100 skills in there It was 50 for a long time, but now it's up to 100. And you can assign each of those skills to different parts of your profile, to your roles, to your projects, to your education, to your volunteering, and to other areas as well. And if you do that, it makes the skills really stand out.
[00:17:07] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But the key to having really good skills is making sure that they are in LinkedIn's database. Now, what I mean by that is that anytime you are asked a question on LinkedIn, on your profile and it pops up with a dropdown menu of different choices, you need to choose something that is in that dropdown menu.
[00:17:30] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: If you don't, and you make it up, so say for example, you want to put in a role heading that says, Chief Encouragement Officer, that is unlikely to be in LinkedIn's database. But if you just choose something that's a little more usual, traditional, if you like CEO, founder, business administrator, whatever it might happen to be, if you choose one of those, then that's in LinkedIn's database, then you will be found in searches.
[00:17:59] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Because the problem is, you can do everything to make your profile look fantastic. But if you cannot be found because your keywords and keyword phrases are not in your profile and not in LinkedIn's database, then you will not be found, and your profile won't be seen. So I think that is important really in this instance, to follow some of what LinkedIn says. So making sure that you are using phrases in the database, but also showing your personality.
[00:18:28] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And that's another way I think that you want to stand out on LinkedIn is by showing your personality. Sure, you can use AI to maybe write some of it, but don't just put up what AI suggests. Make sure that you put your own spin on it. Add your own ideas. AI doesn't know what's in your head, only you do. So make sure that that knowledge and experience shines through everything that you do.
[00:18:52] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Exactly, and this is such a great opportunity, unlike your resume where it's more formal, you have fewer words you can use, right? You're more limited. Here we have more space to show the personality and the humanness. And what I always tell people is it's not just about what you did, it's about how you do it and why you do it. And if you're incorporating those into something like your about section, that automatically stands out because everyone else is focusing just on what.
[00:19:21] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Yes. Yes, absolutely. The other thing about your about section is write it in the first person. So talk about I and me rather than he, she, or they. Because that's friendly, that's professional, and it's like you and I sitting here having a chat, and you telling me about your your background, and that's what you want it to read like.
[00:19:43] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Yes, it's got to be professional, but you want people to feel that they've got to know you a bit, so you need to add in something, and this never appears on anyone's CV, that is a bit more about you personally. So for example, I'm a gardener. And so when I'm not on LinkedIn, I'm in my garden. And I have that on my headline on my profile. So the other people who are gardeners go, oh my goodness, I'm a gardener too. And automatically you've got some, synergy going on there and you can start a conversation.
[00:20:13] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And so that's something I think that's really important too, is just give a little away about yourself, that makes people feel they know you. And that's why the videos are so important, because it's a really good way for people to see us. they know our voice, they can see what we look like, how we move, our mannerisms, all of those kind of things. And that, I think, really helps build trust because that's where LinkedIn's value is, in people trusting each other. Because we do business, we hire people we know, like, and trust. Right? And so I think it's important that we find ways to make sure that people do trust us, and we come across as a genuine, authentic person, and not an AI bot. That is so crucial now .
[00:20:58] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Yeah, exactly. And I love that tip of putting in that little bit of your personality and your interests because you're right, it helps people build a connection with you right up front, and it helps you create rapport much faster. That is a really good strategy. So I wanted to ask you a little bit more about like specific cases where, let's say someone has a very non-linear career path.
[00:21:26] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Oh, I love this.
[00:21:27] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: How might they represent that on LinkedIn? Someone like a misfit like me and you and the listeners, what can they do about that?
[00:21:35] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Well there's more than one way to do pretty much anything on LinkedIn, but people tend to take the titles or the yes, just let's call them the titles that LinkedIn gives you. So, experience, projects, education, people tend to take all those very literally and to see them as just one thing. So for the experience section, which is the major area that people would be using for this, people see that as the roles that they've had in the past because LinkedIn really came about through people putting their CV online.
[00:22:14] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: There is still that feeling that that is what experience means. That's what LinkedIn means by experience, the different roles you've had. But what if it doesn't? What if it means the different kinds of work that you have done? So it may not even be paid employment that you put in there. I'm, uh, and a lot of women will agree with me on this, under no illusion that if you manage a household, then you are multitasking every minute of the day and you're juggling so many things and that gives you a whole range of skills that you may not be employed to, to use, but you use them nonetheless. And so making sure that you think outside the box with your experience section is something that I think a lot of people don't do.
[00:23:04] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And I need to be clear that LinkedIn can make it a little difficult. You're expected to have a role, a title and a company that you've worked for, and then list all of the things that you've done and the years that you've been, been doing it. But I think we all need to get a bit creative around this and how we see it, and it differs for, everybody.
[00:23:23] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: For example, you've been doing some work, outside your normal business hours, for a different company. Say you've got a bunch of friends who said, please, can you, do my books for me, for my accounts for me? And you've agreed to do that, but your job is, a paid job is to do something else, then you could put that in under the title "various companies" or the companies "various companies," which is a legitimate title on LinkedIn, and say what it is that you do. Bookkeeping, say for example, and then talk about the fact that you do this work for other people and that might well be different from what you do in your normal day job, and it shows that you are willing to help people for a start, and that there's more to you than just what you might be doing during the day.
[00:24:07] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So that's one thing is that various companies title. When I say a title, it's not a role title, it's a company title. Because that's often where people get a bit stuck. Yes, I'm happy to say that I've done, all these different roles, but I don't have any companies to attach it to. Put them under "various companies," and that gives you a logo down the left hand side. So that's one way of doing it.
[00:24:29] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Another way is to put it under your own name. So, Lynnaire Johnston, Inc, for example, and have that as your company. And then put all the different roles as separate titles down the page and they all link to Lynnaire Johnston, Inc, and that way then you can put in all the different things that you do. So in a, in a way, I've done that on my own profile. So please have a look at that. You'll find me. I'm a bit hard to miss on LinkedIn. Have a look and in my experience section, you'll see the different things that I have got listed there.
[00:25:01] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: One of them is a podcast guest. But I love doing podcasts, right? And I do my own live streams, as I've said, but I also do podcasts like this on a regular basis. So I've put that in as a role, which is not paid for, as you and I both know, Melissa, but I love doing them. They show a different range of skills, and they allow other people who might be podcast hosts to go, "oh, look, she does that. I'll reach out and see if she'd like to do mine." And that's an opportunity for me.
[00:25:32] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So I think seeing these things in different ways and looking for different opportunities is a great idea on LinkedIn. And there are no end of the different things that you can do. You can put in a volunteering section and talk about the work that you do in your community, at length, because every time that you put in a role in experience or a different role, say in, volunteering. Then you've got 2,000 characters you can write about it. And you can add media and, and depending on the sections, you might be able to add other people who've worked with you on that. There was no end to what you can do creatively.
[00:26:10] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And on my profile, I've done a lot of different things simply so that I can show people how you can do that. They just there as examples. And I think that it's worthwhile having a look to see what other people, not just me, do with their profiles that might give you ideas and sparks and different ways of thinking for you. So that's two ways that you can do it.
[00:26:32] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: The third way, and I will stop talking shortly, the third way is in your services section. Now in there, you can talk about different things that you might not put into your main experience area. And just a reminder that sits above your featured section, and it doesn't give you quite as much leeway in terms of text anyway, but it does allow you to put media in there and to be able to mention what it is that you do elsewhere outside your job. And you might want to be doing things like that to show people that you are capable of doing other things or working towards something.
[00:27:11] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So if you're in a role that you really don't like or an industry you really don't like, and you want to branch out into something new, showcasing that on your profile is a really good way to do that, and you can put a piece in your services, you can put a piece in projects, you can put a role on your experience, and you could do some LinkedIn learning courses, which sit reasonably in the middle of your profile once you've completed these courses, and show people that you are open to learning.
[00:27:41] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Now, LinkedIn learning courses are free for people who are on the premium account, but if you live in the USA, you can use your library card to access them. And that is such an amazing resource that most people, A, don't know about, and B, don't utilize as much as I think they might. There are thousands of LinkedIn learning courses. And I'm a bit of a fan, because I've only recently started using these myself as I'm learning more about AI. And there are some really good courses, and I highly recommend people check out. So those are three, is it three? I got to four different ways that you can talk about your career in a non-linear way.
[00:28:23] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: I love that. And I also love the part about the people who might be trying to change jobs, change industries, right? A lot of these high-performing misfits are feeling burned out and they're like, "I want to do something completely different." And when that's the case, you do have to show that you're qualified in some way.
[00:28:42] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: It's not enough just to say, I'm going to make the change. How can I show that I'm qualified? And I think your points about taking this in a more creative way, it's really important because I know I've talked to people and they're like, "well, I did that thing, but it was just for my family." And it's like, no, that matters too.
[00:29:00] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: That does matter, absolutely. You learned some skills, you made some mistakes, you got something right, and there was a result. So just thinking that you have to be paid in order to have your content or your, what you've done on LinkedIn is not right. And I think that's the problem because people see it as so much like their CV.
[00:29:19] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Please don't make it your CV. Please make it into something that's really exciting to look at. And people just go, "oh wow, this is amazing." And I think that that starts right at the very top of your profile with your banner and your headline. So really think about what you're doing with all of that.
[00:29:36] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Yeah, definitely. So I also wanted to ask you about for people who sometimes they say, "I could do X job or I could do Y job, but how do I put that on my profile?" Like if there's two completely different things that I'm aiming for in my, job search, how do I represent myself in a way that makes sense? Because we talk about resumes, and we could have two separate ones. LinkedIn, you can't do that. So what's your advice for that?
[00:30:04] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: That's a little more tricky because of course, your profile goes down a page. It literally is linear in that, in that way, isn't it? And so in terms of just the experience section, you do have to make a choice. You have to choose what's going to go at the top. Unfortunately, there is no way around that.
[00:30:23] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But if you put several roles under one company banner or one company name in the experience section, then it's the company name that sits at the top, rather than the individual roles. And so because they're connected by a gray line that runs down the left of the page, and that means then the roles don't seem quite so emphatic, they're not quite so in your face, if the company name is in the biggest font, and so they can sit under there, but you still have to make a choice.
[00:30:55] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So that's where I think that you would want to be using services section. And/or the featured section, because I've only talked about the featured section as a place for video. But what if you used it for other things, like an explanation of the other things that you want to do? I think that's a really a good use of feature that's not being made.
[00:31:17] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Yeah, definitely. Ok, so I want to make a little bit of a shift here, and let's talk a little bit about using LinkedIn for networking, because I think most people know that this is the biggest networking platform in the world, but they still get afraid of it, because the word networking has a lot of negative connotations, and people just don't even know how to approach this. So how do you suggest people use this platform as a networking tool?
[00:31:47] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I think you need to approach it as you would if you were meeting someone in person. You want to be friendly and warm and approachable, and you need to be personal. You don't come onto a podcast and not address the host by name. You want to, when you're reaching out to people, address people by name. I think that's an absolute crucial point, and a lot of people will just send out defaultconnection invites with no reason why someone should connect with them.
[00:32:18] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But people aren't like that in real life. You meet at a networking event, you already, you've got something in common, right? And you then proceed to find more things in common to establish some kind of connection and synergy and why you might want to stay in touch afterwards, and it's the same on LinkedIn. There is absolutely no need to be afraid of this. What you do need to be afraid of is not doing it the right way, the way you would do it in person.
[00:32:45] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Now, unfortunately, LinkedIn has made this a little more tricky. So you can now only send, might be 5 or 10 personalized connection messages a month, which isn't very many. You can either pay for premium and get pretty much unlimited, although there is an upper limit, and that's one way to do it. The other way is just to send the default message,but when somebody does connect to you, that's when you make your approach. That's when you say, thank you for connecting, and here's a little bit about me, or here's why I reached out.
[00:33:22] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Really, you want the reason you reached out, you liked a comment that they made on somebody's post. You see that you've got a certain connection that you really know and like in common. You need to find that ground that makes you somebody that they want to connect to. It might be that you have an interest in their topic. If you're a job seeker, you might want to be moving into their area of expertise, so you might say you want to learn from them, and you want to connect so that you can see their posts more easily. It's really super important to do that personalized outreach if you possibly can.
[00:34:00] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: A third way to do that is so that the person knows your name before you send the default message. If you are on a free account and don't have access to those personalized messages, and that is to comment on their posts. Do that half a dozen times. Good comments. Not "Great post. Great share. Thanks for sharing." Never do that. Ever, ever, ever. What you want to do is to add a useful comment that something valuable that adds to the discussion. Do that. By the time they receive your default connection invite message, they'll know who you are, they'll know that you add value, and they'll be saying yes.
[00:34:41] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So I think it's really important for people to understand that in an age of AI, inauthenticity, spammers, and scammers, that people are saying no to a lot more invites, so you need to stand out when you are inviting somebody to connect. And don't listen when LinkedIn pops up that little notice that says we suggest you only connect to people that you know and trust. If you do that, you'll never grow your network at all. But be careful who you do reach out to and make sure that they are people that you want in your network. That's the critical thing about this. Don't connect for connecting sake. Find people who will be of value to you and to your network.
[00:35:26] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Yes, that intentionality behind it, and I love the strategy of commenting or even sharing, like resharing their post can be really nice because then they benefit from it and you get your name out there more. And if you are not putting up your own content, that gives you content. Yes, that's an excellent idea.
[00:35:48] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Yes, exactly. So I hear a lot of the times from people who say, "oh, I'm trying to network on LinkedIn, but it's not working." And I know a lot of the things that you talked about address that, right? It's like maybe you're doing some of these things that feel inauthentic or they feel spammy, even though maybe you're not spamming. But it feels that way. So do you have any other pieces of advice on if it's not working for you right now, is there anything else you can do?
[00:36:18] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I've got a phrase that works really well when you're approaching people. And I learned this from someone else, so this isn't just mine, and it's the phrase, "are you open to connecting?" Or "if you are open to connecting, may we?" Or "let's connect" or whatever. It's the words "open to connecting" that really seem to open the door literally, and for you to be taken seriously. Because it's being kind, it's putting the onus back on the person, to say yes or no. We all know that they've got the choice anyway, but it's recognizing that they've got the choice and asking them whether that would be okay. So it's not just assuming that they'll say yes. And so I think that that's a really useful phrase to put into your personalized connection invite.
[00:37:07] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But if you are finding it generally difficult to network with people, you're looking at the wrong people. So try and find different people who you think might be more open to that. And those are people who are active on LinkedIn. So you can tell who's active on LinkedIn by going to their profile and their activity section and looking at their posts, for example. And then that will tell you whether they're active, what they're doing. And that already then gives you some ways to approach people.
[00:37:36] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: But yes, it is true that people are getting more cautious and that's understandable. LinkedIn has more than a billion members now. Not all of those are real. You have to be careful and spot scammers, and always when you're looking at somebody's profile to decide whether or not you want to connect with them. Have a look at the about this profile section that sits under the more button in their profile intro. Have a look at that, see how long they've been on LinkedIn, see what you think about some of their activity before making a choice. But second degree connections, so that's where you've got somebody else in common, are a good, generally a good way to network with people.
[00:38:18] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: My advice is not give up just because you might have the odd bad experience, doesn't mean to say we're all like that on LinkedIn. You reach out to me and tell me that you are on today or heard today's podcast, you know that I'll accept and say thank you very much for listening.
[00:38:32] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Definitely. And that's something that, yeah, we want people to not get discouraged by it, because you can do everything right and people are still going to say no and it has nothing to do with you most of the time.
[00:38:44] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: It's not personal.
[00:38:45] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Exactly. So keep trying. So I know we could talk forever about LinkedIn, I'm sure, but as we wrap up, is there anything else, any new features that we haven't talked about that you think might be helpful for people to know?
[00:39:03] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Sure. And there's one that I think is very useful and it's free, which is even better. And this is what's called an external link in your LinkedIn profile intro section. So by that I mean it sits right at the very top and you get an opportunity to send people to a website of your choice. Might be to your blog, it might be to your bio page, maybe not, might be to your YouTube channel, could be anywhere.
[00:39:30] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And in that you have 30 characters of what's called display text. So you can put the link in, but you can then write text so people don't see the link, they see what you have written. And that's a good place to say, preferably not "visit my website" because that is really a little bit boring, but "download my free checklist" or something that is a really nice warm call to action with something at the other end of it that people want.
[00:39:56] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Now this stands out, it's in blue and it's bold. It sits in your profile intro and it is free. So I highly recommend people getting in on that. And you can do that from within the editing section of your LinkedIn profile intro.
[00:40:13] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: That's excellent. I've been telling people to put their portfolio link and such in that section, but I did not know about that new part where you can describe it, so that is really good to know. Do you have any last words of wisdom that you wanted to give our listeners?
[00:40:29] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I would like to give a plug to my Link∙Ability members community, if that is okay with you, Melissa. There's only one of me and I can only reach individually people in a certain number of hours in the day that we all have. So the way I help more people, because that's my motivation, that's why I'm on LinkedIn, is to help more people. And the way I do that is through my members community where people can join, try it out free for 7 days, absolutely no obligation, and they can learn all the different aspects of LinkedIn within a community of like-minded people.
[00:41:07] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: And I really like the fact that the community members help everybody. So I'm helping them, they all help each other, and we've got a lot of experts in there who are experts in their own field, in AI, cyber security, we've got sales experts, marketing experts, you name it, and these people all want to help other people. And that, to me, is the essence of LinkedIn. And so my members community, which is at LinkAbility.biz, is all about helping people to be able to understand LinkedIn and to start to use some of the things that we've talked about today.
[00:41:45] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: Because it's changing all the time, it's hard to keep up with, and it's very easy to get left behind. And an example of that is people thinking that they can get great visibility just by putting up posts. You can't anymore. The algorithms have changed so dramatically that now you have to do other things. And so in the community, that's what we talk about. Because there are so many different ways, we've covered some of them today, to be able to reach out and get people to have a conversation with us, to get to know us, and for us to get to know them.
[00:42:19] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: So that's part of what the community is all about, is helping people to understand LinkedIn, and to network wisely, to create fantastically compelling profiles, and also to do video well, because I do think that video is something that is really crucially important. So that's the tip I would like to leave people with today is if you are not using video on LinkedIn yet, start today.
[00:42:44] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: And people can follow you on LinkedIn, they can go to your website, anywhere else that they can find you?
[00:42:51] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: YouTube. I've got a YouTube channel @LinkAbilityNZ We've got more than a hundred videos up there. Shorts and also longer form content. And this will eventually go there too, I hope so, this interview today. So, yes, please do have a look at my YouTube channel as well. I'd love people to look at that.
[00:43:09] Melissa Vining - Job Search for High-Performing Misfits: Perfect. Well, thank you so much again, Lynnaire, for being here. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.
[00:43:15] Lynnaire Johnston – Link∙Ability: I've had a lovely time. Thank you. Kia Ora from New Zealand.
[00:43:21] Melissa Vining: If you love this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe. Leave me a review and share it with a friend so we can help more high performing misfits find work they love. See you next time.
