Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Chris Castanes (0:01)

Welcome to "You're Going to Be Great at This, the podcast where we help entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, sales professionals, and other self-employed folks turn prospects into customers and grow their businesses. We deliver practical tips and tricks with plenty of humor and dumb stories to keep things fun, I'm your host Chris Castanes. So let's get going and make your business thrive.

Today I have got an awesome guest, and we've been talking a little bit before we recorded this, and she's she and I just cracking each other up here. I don't know what's going on. This is Miss Judi Hays, and Judi is, for lack of a better word, a sought-after LinkedIn strategist, speaker, and author, she helps leaders with become visible experts and turn their online presence into trusted business assets in an AI-driven world. And we live in that driven world right now, don't we, Judi? Thank you for coming on. And how are you doing today?

Judi Hays (1:20)

I am fine. This is my AI rendition, by the way, because I'm down by the beach.

Chris Castanes (1:27)

It's virtual shooting. What are they called at my digital twin?

Judi Hays (1:30)

Yeah, this is my digital twin. How's she looking? Nice. Great, Chris. I'm doing great. It's so nice to meet you.

Chris Castanes (1:39)

And you're and you're in New York City.

Judi Hays (1:40)

New York City, yeah.

Chris Castanes (1:42)

The city's so nice they named it twice,

Judi Hays (1:45)

and right up the block from you.

Chris Castanes (1:47)

I'm down here in lovely South Carolina, on the coast, praying for praying that hurricanes don't get us this year. Tell us a little bit, just in like two sentences or so, how you became a LinkedIn person, and also, I'm curious about that book over your shoulder. I want to hear about the book as well.

Judi Hays (2:11)

You've all heard of niches, right? And I resisted claiming a niche because I, you know, I'm a marketer. I do marketing. I grew up in direct marketing, back in the day. I started in New York City advertising, and but then I got into digital marketing, so that was a specialty, but it wasn't special enough. And then I got into social media marketing, a little bit more special, but again, a lot of people doing that. When I said, you know what, I really like LinkedIn, and back in 2012 was when I really got in deep. Most people like LinkedIn, and I was like, oh my gosh, who does that? And I really got into it, and I love it because it's a professional platform. You know, I don't have patience for all the other social platforms, and so LinkedIn is a to the point and it's a real way of and you and I met on LinkedIn right we could say we met online but no and I just I worked for a trade association and I started to train the members in terms of how to use LinkedIn, and they loved it, and I got a little taste of teaching, you know, and I just thought, I bet you there's other people that want to learn how to use this platform, and that's how I built the business I have now, that is really you know working with people that want to you know get the most out of their personal brand. LinkedIn happens to be one of the platforms, and that's what we do.

Chris Castanes (3:40)

And speaking of personal branding, that's what we were going to talk about today. That was our topic. So good segue there. Kudos to you. Yeah. And tell us a little bit about how we can do our personal branding on LinkedIn. Is it personal? Like, let me ask you this way: I have a business, and I have a business page on LinkedIn. Is personal branding just Chris, or is it also related to my business on LinkedIn as well?

Judi Hays (4:10)

Yeah, well, that's a valid question. The business is a validator. You know, when we have websites and business pages and things like that, it validates that we're legitimate. A personal brand, which could also be considered a professional brand, is really how people perceive you. Okay, so a brand is not your logo. You know, people think, "Oh, I got a logo. I've got an identity. No, that's not your brand. Your brand is really how others think of you, right? Exactly. And so, one thing everyone that's watching or listening, take out take out whatever tool you're on and open up a search browser, Google, something like that, and type in your name, and see what comes up. And most likely, unless you have a very common name, your LinkedIn profile will be the first or second result. So that tells you that has a lot of weight. So. Someone's going to do business with you. You're checking somebody out. You're going to you know hire somebody, whatever. You're going to search their name, and their profile is going to come up. So now you click on their profile, and it's it looks like it's an artifact. You know, back from 2008 when LinkedIn launched. You know, hasn't been updated. It's got a picture of them. You know, with their high school you know buddy next to them, and it just looks like, oh my gosh, this hasn't been updated. Nobody's here, so it looks like the shop is closed. You know, you go buy a shop and nobody's there. You know, restaurant, nobody's in it. It's like I don't want to go there, and that's not a good perception of your brand, right? So that's where using LinkedIn as sort of your sales page, and for all of you that have run your own businesses and consult with clients, coach clients, having that page as a landing page where you can actually sell yourself is a really great asset. You can do a lot for free on LinkedIn. You know, you don't have to have a paid account. I have a paid account because I teach people on it, but I think that you know at least to start with some of the fundamental areas, and the book over there that I wrote is based on three components. The elevate part is elevating your visibility, and when I explain LinkedIn to people that don't really get LinkedIn, it's like think of it like this: there's a virtual event. It happens to be called LinkedIn. Okay, you are invited to the event, and you're going to show up. What are you going to wear? Going to be in your golfing gear. You know, you're going to be in a in a black tie. You know, what are you going to wear? You know, what are you comfortable in? How do you show up? That's your profile. Okay, that's the elevate part. It's like because people are going to see you, and they'll you know, form in their three-second assessment of you. They'll form some kind of opinion based on how you look, right?

So that's the importance of the profile. So the next part of this wonderful event is that there's a lot of people there. There's some people I know. There's some people that are friends of friends. There's some famous people there. There's some people that I have no idea who they are, but they look interesting, and so that's the expand part. So that's the network. Okay, those are all the people at the event, which is your connections and your connections of connections. Okay, and you want to get introduced to people. You want to kind of mingle into conversations, and then the third component is you ever notice like when there's an event or someone comes to your house or something, everyone congregates around the food or the bar or whatever it is. They're always around there, you know, and that's the content and the messaging and all that. That's where everyone engages, you know.

Judi Hays (7:35)

So it's like you always want to kind of get in on these conversations, you know. That's when you leave a comment. You're getting in on a conversation, you know, or if you're starting a conversation, you know. So when those three things work together, you can't have one without the other. It's not pick two. It's like you got to have all three working in order to have a fulfilling LinkedIn engagement.

Judi Hays (7:57)

There's no way out of that because you could have a beautiful profile. I've had clients hire me, paid me very well to do their profile, and then you know they didn't want to do any of the other stuff, and then they come back a couple months later and they say, well, you know, nothing's really changed. I mean, yeah. I said, well, are you growing your network? Are you engaging with people? You know, are you showing up? No, I don't really feel like doing that. It's like, well, it's not going to work. I will guarantee that. So think of it this way: you got to dress for the party. You got to make sure you're you're mingling and talking to people and meeting new people, and then you've got to put yourself out there. Say something, comment, send a message. That's good. Yeah, you like that? I mean, I can.

Chris Castanes (8:36)

Judi, you were just giving us the three E's of networking on LinkedIn, and as you were talking, that little tiny wheel in my head was turning a little bit, and I was thinking there's so many similarities to in-person network. And LinkedIn networking sometimes because you know sometimes you'll see that post and there'll be 5000 comments on it and a million likes or whatever and everybody's jumping into that same pool and it reminds me of if you go to a networking meeting and everybody's around the food like you said but there's always that one little wallflower person at a networking event that's sitting over on the side, and I tell everybody, you go to a networking event and you see that person, go to them and talk to them, because you are going to be their hero. They're uncomfortable, and just go over and say hey and introduce yourself. And it's the same thing on LinkedIn. I'll find that person that gets zero likes, nobody ever likes or comments on anything they do, and I go in there and I'm like, "This is awesome information. Thank you for sharing it. And the next thing you know, I'm kind of like you know, I don't want to say I'm the good kid, but whatever. I mean, they like me now, and I've got a better chance of getting some referrals out of them than jumping into that quagmire that was another post about. Have you ever noticed anything like that?

Judi Hays (11:06)

Oh, all the time. You know, and I'm glad you brought up that analogy because before COVID, okay, you know, the idea of LinkedIn and Zoom and all these other things was kind of foreign. You know, people like eh, you know. And then after COVID, that's when my business just went off exponentially because people realized, wow, you know, we're not doing trade shows right now. We're not traveling. We still have to grow our business. How are we going to do that? Well, LinkedIn being that platform. So yeah, there are there are some people. I think there's a lot of fear, fear of you know oh I'm gonna say something stupid guess what there's edit and delete those are two great features I use them or I don't know what to say well then pretend you're in real life and somebody just said something would you respond to it or let's say you post something and some people put comments on there, and you never respond to it. That's like somebody saying something to you, and you're just walking away and just ignoring it. So there's a lot of parallels to in real life, and I think that I like LinkedIn as not a lead generation tool, but as a as a credible verification. I want to know the person is the real deal. I'm looking for somebody very specific for a project I'm working on. So now I'm searching and I'm really looking at the profiles to understand: is this person really under? You know, do they know what they're talking about, or would they say they talk about? You know, I love looking at these LinkedIn experts, and then you look at their profile, and it's like, seriously, it's it's like you know it just when you have the opportunity to embellish and really you know take out every feature you can use on LinkedIn it only serves you in the in the best light you know there's there's no wrong way to do it the wrong way to do it is that you don't know your password and you don't know how to log into it, and you just realize you missed five opportunities because you didn't respond to any messages.

Chris Castanes (13:08)

Yeah, but and of course, the big no-no on LinkedIn of course is, you know, sending somebody a request to connect, and then as soon as they say yes, you start spamming them with all your sales. Oh my God, that's the worst! I'm like, don't call that.

Judi Hays (13:23)

We call that pitch slapping.

Chris Castanes (13:25)

Pitch slapping. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

Judi Hays (13:29)

I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and say, I'm looking at this connection.

Chris Castanes (13:33)

If it's no, if it's coming up right, like as soon as you say, I agree to connect with this person and you start getting stuff. That's a bot, and I'm unfriending them, or whatever you call it, disconnecting, unconnecting. Ain't nobody got time for that, man. Come on.

Judi Hays (13:50)

No, you can't. I don't think you can outsource quality. I mean, yes, there's a lot of automation, and it's a problem. I have a lot of people that have reached out to me and saying, "Hey, my account got suspended. You know, what do I do? You know, and it has to do with LinkedIn gets very particular about that kind of stuff. Is too many people are doing it, and they're really annoying people.

Chris Castanes (14:12)

Well, I used, you know, I learned a hard lesson. I was just sending friend requests or whatever to tons of people in my area, and of course, there's the little button on there that says no. And after you hit no, another one comes up and says, "I don't know this person. And LinkedIn picks up on. And after you do that for a while, they'll send you a note and they'll slap your hand and they'll say, "Don't do that, Chris. You're violating our terms of service. And I do it and I do it and I do it. And next thing you know, I got to spend like two weeks in LinkedIn jail, and I was banned from LinkedIn for two weeks. It's a hard time, man. I was in there.

Judi Hays (14:48)

When you wrote your books, when you were LinkedIn

Chris Castanes (14:50)

I was gonna. I was the star of the Stroll-shank Redemption. I broke out, but well, this is great, and this is a lot of information. And I hope our listeners are getting something out of this. And I'm going to put Judi's information in the show notes. And so, if you need to reach out to Judi, she's on LinkedIn. You can find her there, of course. And of course, if you want to purchase her book, I'm sure she'll be happy to sell you one. And if you like this podcast, leave us a good review. And if you didn't like the podcast, don't blame yourself. I can't help you. And so it's not your fault.

Judi Hays (15:30)

I love this, Chris. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Chris Castanes (15:33)

Well, thank you for coming, and thank you for agreeing to be on the next episode after we have my attorney send over those documents to you, and you signed them and everything. So Judi has agreed to change her outfit and come back for yet another episode. And so we will see you next week and have a great week. Go out and be productive.

Judi Hays (15:53)

Thank you, Chris. Bye, everyone.

Chris Castanes (15:55)

That was amazing. Be sure to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on more useful information to help you and your business succeed. Thanks for listening, and if you like this podcast, leave us a review. And if you really like this podcast, go to the show notes and buy me a coffee. I love coffee. Until next time, stay positive and be productive.