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4 Key Elements That Make a Compelling LinkedIn Presence: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Feb 28, 2023

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

In this episode, we’re talking elements that make a compelling LinkedIn presence. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts: 4 Key Elements That Make a Compelling LinkedIn Presence

LinkedIn is THE place where people go to connect professionally. Your presence on the platform can create endless perks for your business and personal brand – if you do it right. To craft a compelling LinkedIn presence, you should revamp your profile, add value to the community, be intentional in creating your community, and keep your tone positive and optimistic. Now, let’s get to work on your LinkedIn prowess. This episode covers everything from LinkedIn tips to networking. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • How do you create a compelling LinkedIn presence?
  • What is the best way to network on LinkedIn?
  • How should you approach the “About” section?
  • What’s the best way to add value to the community?
  • Does cold calling work on LinkedIn?
  • Why should you be intentional in creating your community?
  • What should your tone be on LinkedIn?
  • How does Windsor approach returns for dresses?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Anne Candido 0:02
This is Marketing Smarts – a podcast committed to helping you become a savvier marketing leader, no matter your level. In each episode, we will dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We will also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. And if you miss anything, don’t worry, you put worksheets on our website that summarize the key points. Now, let’s get to it. Welcome to Marketing Smarts! I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re gonna go super tactical and talk about what makes a compelling LinkedIn presence. We’ve gotten this question a lot, especially in context of personal brand, right? Whenever we say personal brand, who was like, Oh, you’re gonna help me with my LinkedIn profile, I’m like, yes, your personal brand work, we’ll help you with the LinkedIn profiles, one way that your personal brand gets executed. But it’s not the way or all the ways but that is a very important piece. And the other reason why we want to talk about it is because we’ve seen LinkedIn becoming a very abused channel, it’s still the premier place to go for connection, especially business connection, professional connection, and networking. But there’s some things that are happening on LinkedIn that aren’t conducive to that networking that we’re going to address. Because when done right, your LinkedIn presence can really be a huge way of helping you grow your credibility, your reputation. And it’s really great, again, for networking for especially for the purposes of job hunting, recruiting, getting traction, and for call to actions, and just overall selling in general.

April Martini 1:39
Yeah, and this is why it’s so important to be intentional, and creating your actual presence. So there are elements of style, sophistication, value, all of these things need to be considered in order to be successful on the platform. In addition, this is another place where you can’t set it and forget it, you need to actively participate to get everything you can out of the platform itself. And that is

Anne Candido 2:05
right on. And with that we’ll get into 4 key elements that make a compelling LinkedIn presence. So the first one is think of the image blocks as advertising real estate in your “About” section as your elevator pitch. Alright, so this means your image in the banner at the top, those are your two biggest visual real estate spots for images and you know, pictures of you and that sort of thing. And there’s a reason why this is so important, because this is the first impression people have of you. So the image of you should actually represent who you are. So it needs to be high quality, and needs to be authentic to you. It has to be natural, it should be recent. A big one that we’re seeing, we’re going from a tool standpoint, it should feel approachable and inviting. It goes without saying that you should absolutely have an image to love, people still don’t have images up there, you cannot not have an image you guys, I mean, you have to represent yourself, it’s really super critical. In order for people to get a sense of who you are. Now, the one that many people disregard is the image at the top or the banner at the top right, this is prime real estate, if you don’t put anything up there, it just a false to some like random like a blue dashed or whatever, right? This is like your billboard. And so this has to represent something that is really uniquely or should representing this really uniquely you relate it to your personal brand or your business. So think about this is like a billboard that you would see as you’re driving down the highway. Just think about how telegraphic those billboards need to be in order to really capture attention, but how compelling they can be all at the same time. So this is what you really want to focus on. So if you’re a sales folks, for example, they use us to capture their pitch, they might even put some contact info up there. Those who sell products may include a product or a family shot to others sell services may include their tagline their mission or their offering. Just don’t waste a space I mean, we use it in order to promote marketing smart so that’s a way that we are able to really bring attention to marketing smart in case people don’t go to the down deeper pieces of what we actually do. Now your bounce section like we said should be your elevator pitch on why someone should be interested in you and or your business. Now this is not a history of your company or you okay, you have a place down below that allows you to put your resume per se and that can be used in order to really timeline all those things out. This should be more of like your brand story it outlines your wide outlines your purpose and outlines the impact you want to have on those you engage with. It really helps people understand the important brand questions that what makes you you so like what we say all the time, who am I How am I different? Why do you want me that should be represented in your elevator pitch which is your about us section. Now we get some questions from people who said well how much of that about me section should it’d be about me or about my company. And really it depends. So for entrepreneurs of startups is probably closer to 50-50. Because for a long time your business is you and you are your business. So you’re going to have that kind of a little inner woven narrative that actually exemplifies both. And that’s kind of what me and April have. Now, there’s also like in the corporate sector, where your company may speak for itself, like I don’t have to represent P&G, everybody knew who png was. So then it became more at 90, me and more like 10%, the company now, some people will use a company in order to increase their credibility to increase their popularity, do that if you need to do that, but remember that this is supposed to be about you, not what your company does, or not just what your company represents. Yeah, and if

April Martini 5:47
you’re struggling with where to start, start with your personal brand. We have lots and lots of episodes on how to think about that and made the reference point of when we mentioned this, sometimes people think great, you’re gonna help me with my LinkedIn profile. Yeah, it’s the opposite way. Yeah, so build your personal brand, and it will help you to build your presence on LinkedIn. But I would just say that, I think historically, LinkedIn is a harder platform for people to quote unquote, know what to do with in order to establish their style. It’s just easier on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. And then you have the personal versus professional aspect to layer in, when it feels like an extension of your marketing campaign, either for you or your company in the balance and just discussed, this can help provide the right lens are the clarity for you. And I would just reiterate making sure that all of these building blocks that Anne outlined and really gave kind of the map for how to go and create what should be there, all of that make sure that all of those are working really hard for you. Because there are a ton of people out there that are not leveraging one or in some cases, all of these and then their LinkedIn page or profile just goes completely unnoticed.

Anne Candido 6:56
Yeah, agree. All right. The second element that makes a compelling LinkedIn presence is add value to the community. April.

April Martini 7:05
Yeah, you can’t be a lurker if you’re gonna have a compelling LinkedIn present, amen to that. You have to contribute to the community. And it has been designed to be a pseudo meritocracy, where those with the ideas and the clout gain the most attention. This can even be to the chagrin of the rest of us who are left scratching our heads wondering why are those people getting all of the attention that they’re getting? Well, it’s because they are intentionally creating community or participating in the community, which we’ll talk a little bit more about that in the next point. So I won’t go any further there. But you can add value to the community in three primary ways. First of all, in thoughtful responses to other people’s posts. This means liking and commenting. This is how you stay top of mind, you will get bonus points if you use your comments to reinforce your point of view. So I love this a truly great example of brand creating emotional engagements with consumers put out something that continues the conversation and then yes reinforces how you would build on it or a perspective that is valuable to continue that conversation. curating content. With comment, many people just share articles or posts that they find interesting or insightful. But they don’t say why they find them interesting or insightful. And then it just becomes to the point about making your profile about you. Nothing is about you just about everybody else that you’re sharing their content out there with any of your perspective there. This is one of those opportunities to express your point of view, original content, write a blog or an article, do a video share content, you post through different channels. We share all of our podcast episodes here. Typically with comments now I will say I did a little test and learn and started reposting to see how closely we were linked with forthright people. So you might see a little just that repost for me but it was with intention. But that original content that pertains specifically to you and your company or your initiatives or just you if it’s where you work somewhere corporate, and it’s more about your perspective as an individual versus where you work. We really suggest a combination of the three. A strategy and a content calendar will help you hold yourself accountable. It will also make it less daunting to add value to the community because you’ll have your what to go and do and then when to go and do it. Also posts should be concise and to the point we’ve all seen the diatribes on Facebook and Instagram. That is not what we were suggesting here. We don’t even really always suggest it there either. But I digress. The post should be concise and to the point and then also tag businesses and people. This is another place where we are left scratching our heads where people are just missing opportunities. This helps to show appreciation for them and how you’re adding value for them which they then may reciprocate, which then builds that community that we’ve been talking about and it encourages them I’m just overall to engage with you. So I think if you think about this as the equivalent to liking and commenting on other channels, and making sure that on top of that you’re adding your unique point of view, that becomes really a good place to start along with, like we said, having that calendar and really adding it to your calendar is, you know, another point of or your to do list or whatever to make sure that you’re engaging regularly in the ways we just outlined.

Anne Candido 10:28
Yeah, I think you brought up a lot a lot, a lot of really good points, I’m going to hone in on a few of these just to drive a sharper point on them. One is in this kind of goes back to the intro, we’re talking about all the benefits of LinkedIn is to use LinkedIn for its benefit. So that means you need to kind of abide a little bit by the rules of the platform if you want the platform to work hard for you. So for example, one of the things that you alluded to is that this is a professional network. The one thing that is starting to kind of cloud over which people are kind of missing the point of a little bit is by adding too many personal things. Yes. LinkedIn is not the place to say, oh, look where I went to with my kids this weekend, or Oh, it’s so and so’s birthday, who’s my dad, my family member or whatnot, those are for Facebook and Instagram. Professional posts are meant to drive credibility and reputation. So if you are going to put something out in LinkedIn, you should always be thinking about it through the lens of how’s this going to build my credibility? How is this going to build my reputation? Right. So that’s why you do all those things that April mentioned, when you repost your posts with a little bit of insight into how you think or whatever that mantra that you’re trying to preach, if you will, that you want people to adopt or associate with you, right? So you continue to reinforce those things by showing people that that’s how you’re thinking, or why did you repost this in the first why did we post in the first place? What is it? Why is it interesting to you what your original take on it right? Now, sometimes you do those things. And you just comment, because you want to be a top of mind with certain individuals, you want to just give them a congrats, or, you know, this is really cool for you, or I’m so happy for you, those are totally fine as well. But they are part of the strategy. They’re not the strategy. But it is a good way of saying, Oh, that person will recognize me and they still see me. And this might be somebody that you haven’t talked to for a couple years. I do this a lot with my p&g colleagues. And I’ll talk to very often but I’m just like, hey, I still very interested in what you got going on. I’m still behind you and supportive of you. And I don’t want you to forget about me. So I do that as well. And then the other thing that I want to really drive a point on is something else that you mentioned, April, which is about being a curator versus a creator. And this is where we see a lot happening too. If somebody goes to your LinkedIn posts, and all you have done is curate other people’s content, repost other people’s content, you’ve liked other people’s content, that’s all your posts are, is tourists people start to wonder, do you have a mind of your own? Yes, absolutely. For yourself, like, what is your point of view? Why are you even here, right. So you have to have some creation, in that you have to have some element of being able to, again, express your POV is express something that’s insightful for you are meaningful for your business, something that’s going to help perpetuate your personal brand, whatever that happens to be, you need to create something that is oh, that allows you to have that onus and that ownership for your space on LinkedIn. Otherwise, people see it as a very big way to just push the cold calling. Yes. Right. It’s just there for you to lurk into into push cold calling. So make sure your your presence on there is meaningful. Yes. Does it take time? It does take time, it takes some thought. But once you start getting into practice of it, you just carve out a little bit of time. Sometimes it’s in the evening. I do sometimes in the evening when I’m sitting there watching TV. Yep. I mean, I don’t have anything else to do in the commercials if I’m actually watching reality tv or during sports seasons. And during the commercials, I’ll just kind of dump through LinkedIn. And I will make a comment on somebody else’s post. Or I will, you know, post something that we had for the day. And we actually have social media managers who actually do this on our behalf. Not everybody has that luxury, but make it an intentional part of your strategy.

April Martini 14:13
When on LinkedIn, we’re resharing to our personal pages. Yeah, so we’re

Anne Candido 14:17
doing that too. For our episodes. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s a very interesting thing, too, that you can do on LinkedIn, which is not always okay to do on Facebook and Instagram is that if you have something going on your business, it makes a ton of sense to repost on your personal page about what’s going on in your business. Everybody expects you to do that. Yeah. So that helps the business that helps you. It’s a little, I mean, questionable, we don’t always post everything on our personal pages for Facebook. And it’s because it’s mostly it’s meant to be more personal. Yeah. Unless there’s something that you know, we’re really celebrating or a big achievement, then we might do that. Right. Yeah. Or we’re trying to cross pollinate to some extent. But, um, I think that’s a really good point.

April Martini 14:54
Yeah. And I think this is I mean, I’ll just put the fine point on the fact that this is why I think this is hard for people. Is because navigating what your professional persona is, is hard, which is why we go back to personal brand. And I think if you start there, and then you think really with intention about how you want to show up through your personal brand, in your professional tone, that’s where you can start to express your point of view, think about what that content is, etc. Because I do agree those pages where people are just reposting. It’s like you go and you’re like, are you a robot?

Anne Candido 15:28
I don’t have any connection with you as a human being whatsoever, which I think can be one of the pitfalls. Yeah, especially if you’re trying to sell business. Yes. Right. Because that’s how somebody’s gonna vet you. They’re gonna go to your item page, and they’re gonna look to see what you’ve done, and what you’ve done lately.

April Martini 15:42
And are you a person?

Anne Candido 15:46
Huh? Yes. All right. The third element that makes a compelling LinkedIn presence is to be intentional in creating your community. And we just, like I said, talked about this a little bit about adding value to your community. But now this one is really focused on creating your community in curating that community that’s going to best benefit you. Now, the biggest thing we can say here is just don’t connect with randoms. To boost your number helps, this is a big, big nono, they will drag down the algorithm. And it would make it very hard for your content to be seen as the same thing meta does with Facebook and Instagram. What you want to do to want to connect with others you’ll feel will benefit from your presence, or that you’ll benefit from theirs, there also may be some communities that they may have that you want to tap into. Yep, so is being very strategic and curating your own community. So watch, for those who are just trying to connect with you to sell their services, this has become the big issue, this is the cold calling issue, or cold emailing issue, or virtual door knocking, I think is what I heard the other day, whatever, we have all kinds of terms and ways of expressing this. So you can generally identify who these people are through their generic message that they send, because if you don’t know, you can actually invite somebody or link in with somebody, by using a message with a limited amount of characters. If you just kind of go in, you click on the little three little dots. So that’s what they’ll do to you, right? Or they might have LinkedIn premium where they can just direct mail you no matter what. But they’ll generally say things like, Oh, we generate 100 leads a day, or saw your profile or wanted to connect or, you know, you seem like somebody that we know, I should know, or we have a lot of people in common, or you show up in my keep showing up as someone I should know. Yeah, yeah, all those sorts of things. Now, I will be honest, I will say if somebody, regardless of if they’re from the Cincinnati area, I let them in, I know I’m getting cold called anyway. And I kind of just like grin and bear through the whole thing. But I’m like, I feel an affinity to the local area. And I, I I’ll do it. Now there is some couple things you can do to control this a little bit. So we can transition your platform so that anyone can follow. So that’s what I have from my own personal LinkedIn. And I believe April has for hers, too. So this helps you build your numbers because it allows people to follow your page without having to be connected with them, or allow them like free access to you to connect with you. So that can help build your numbers, I suggest you guys do that. Now, if your business and you set up your page, it automatically does that if you have your personal page, you have to go in and you have to make that happen for you in the settings. Now, once you do this, and you have this page set up, you need to be able to then create that value. Like we said, you don’t want people to kind of follow you and then you’re not creating any value for them. So make sure that you’re continuing to fill that pipeline with value so that people want to continue to come back to your page. It’s not just about generating numbers. But it is nice to have done that ambassadorship of people who are willing to go and to speak on your behalf and maybe share your content. Now, if people aren’t engaging with you, even after you’ve doing all this stuff, we get this question a lot. It’s like what do I do? First ask, Do I need someone to engage? Or are they good with numbers just to satisfy my ego, right? So we have our podcasts like April said, we put our podcast posts out there all the time. Sometimes they get people to engage with them, sometimes they don’t. But that’s not really the intent for putting in my LinkedIn, the temper putting my LinkedIn one is to again generate that credibility and reputation that we are creating a body of work. It’s also to let people know that we actually have another episode that’s in the can. So we want them to come listen to our episodes. So the posts are meant to attract people to come and listen to the episode. The next thing is that you can test and learn with your content. So play with engagement mechanisms, like surveys or call to actions or offers. I see some people do this really well, especially if they’re trying to mind for some insight that they’re going to use for something that tends to have better reaction than people who are just putting stuff out there just to kind of see so you can try those and see how this worked for you. Like we said, you can engage with other people’s content. And that usually encourages them to engage with us. Again, it puts you top of mind again for them, and they’re like, Oh, I do wonder what Anne’s gonna you know what she’s doing. And then I tend to see if I’ve engaged with somebody else’s content, they’re pretty quick to engage with mine, to follow her and see it’s a currency, right? As April mentioned, tag on this in your posts, encourage them to notice, engage and share. This is a big one that allows people to see and show up in their feed that, hey, somebody actually has tagged me and so therefore, I’m more interested in going to see what they had to say about me. Now, four super important posts, and I stressed you can’t overuse this, you can ask your friends to engage, right, you can stage it a little bit, because it’s only for, again, exposure for super critical things. A lot of businesses do this, like, Hey, we’re putting this out. Everybody go like and everybody goes share it. Okay? But unlike Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can’t boost posts on LinkedIn, but you can do pay posts, so it tends to be more expensive. But for certain high priority posts, you might want to do that as well. It but what do you have to say about this?

April Martini 21:01
Yeah, I mean, I think it really is so so important. Again, I go back to the idea if you could keep it in your head of this is a billboard approach to getting your message out there. And that idea of making it part of your marketing campaign, I still really like that because I think that’s the right lens to think about this through. And so then all these points kind of fall under a quote unquote, vetting strategy, right? Or am I doing it the right way sort of strategy, I also think you need to get clear on what you’re trying to achieve through the lens of this channel. So that then when you’re creating your community, or engaging in providing value to the community, you’re clear in your head about why you’re doing it and what this channel is serving for you in that bigger marketing approach. The other thing that I want to emphasize too, about the random boost in your numbers, which this is kind of funny, because when LinkedIn first came out, I’m going to just shamelessly admit that my sister and I had a competition to see who could get to 500 connections first. So

that’s Martini competitiveness. And when I saw this episode, I had to chuckle at that point. But now knowing what I know about LinkedIn, and how it has evolved, I really am also a bit of a bulldog about this, I won’t connect with people that I don’t know, especially when I do see that sales pitch coming. The only caveat and I have one like into it is if it actually piques my interest, like, if it’s something where I’m like, Oh, that was an interesting way to put that or, you know, like that kind of stuff where my brain is always kind of working for if the person’s working hard enough, will I let them in? That is one of my my criteria. I do think because I have so much frustration and sometimes aggression around the sales pitch associated with LinkedIn, it’s probably part for their own protection. But I do think that the overabundance of sales pitches has probably made me even more cautious about who I agree to connect with sometimes even if they have people in common and that sort of thing. I’m even betting to that level. Yeah. I mean, I had someone recently who we had 26 People in common, but they’re not really people that I necessarily stay connected with. And then I kind of looked and saw that they were recently on their own. And I was like I can’t, you know, like, this isn’t a reason to do it. So in any case, all of that to say the platform itself has matured in a lot of ways back from when it was just a game to get lots and lots of connections. But I do think that you want the people that you want seeing your stuff to see it. And that bill in and of itself builds community. So you want to do whatever you can for the algorithm to make sure that you’re doing you your part so that it will work in favor for you.

Anne Candido 23:48
Yeah, I think that’s a really, really good point. And I think the closing point I’ll put on that one is mean, you know, like Jordan Harbinger. And he says, like, once you’re thirsty, it’s too late to build the well. Yeah, I guess something like to that effect. And I think that’s what your LinkedIn network does for you. And we’ve talked about this a lot when you’re cold reaching out, to some extent, too, and how that can be jarring for people. And it doesn’t really, it’s not really conducive to the networking process. Being active on LinkedIn, and being making sure that you’re engaging in a way that is just in good, this good spirit of engaging without actually wanting something helps to build that well, so that when you are thirsty, when you do need something, you feel comfortable going back to that person and asking for something and reciprocity says that is an expectation currency for LinkedIn as well. And I did forget to mention too, when you do build your following this is a little bit of a tactical thing. And you have the followers portion, either at your business page or on your personal page set up. You can invite people especially on your business page, you can invite people to actually like your page. You get so many free likes or invitations to like your page, that is a way that we have built our business page. Now it’s from your own personal. Basically contacts. Yes, it’s a square it draws it from, but it is a good way to build start building those numbers from people that you actually want to curate, to support something that’s important to you. Without it being like a mass like gotta just kind of like everybody stuff. So they like everything, you know, back for me or like everybody’s random pages, so they like everything back for me. So just a little strategic tactical point for them. Alright, so the fourth key element that makes a compelling LinkedIn presence is tone tone should be generally positive and optimistic. April.

April Martini 25:40
I love this one because I hate rants. Yes, so Joking aside, for better or worse, this is the tone of LinkedIn. If you don’t believe us, just go and do your own audit, scroll through feeds, check out posts, nine out of 10, if not 10, out of 10 will be more positive, optimistic, celebratory in nature, I actually have seen a blurring of personal here in a way that I think works sometimes and doesn’t. And other times like today, there was someone that had worked with Michigan State University that posted about the shooting last night and gave a kind of a I really enjoyed working with these guys really sorry to see this. So it sort of like blended, you know, he gave his personal perspective on a current event, but was a more emotional leaning. But it’s still in my mind fit because it was from that professional, I have a professional connection to what happened here. So in any case, the only way that people can really get away with the other side of being more controversial or dissenting and tone is to be insightful, right. And so this is really exerting again, your point of view, but through an intelligent professional tone, right? This is really, really hard to do. And this is like to me, this is personal brand on steroids. You have to have a really strong personal brand and be known very well for something I think before you can even begin to go here. So that is my caution. The models we look at are Ray Dalio and GaryVee, but even their more controversial stuff you can check out it’ll be on other channels, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, other places where that is more appropriate to poke the bear. Again, though they both have a professional presence or more professional leaning presence on LinkedIn. Though personal posts might get you more engagement, it can be deceiving, because it’s not going to drive that professional credibility. So going back to that example, I gave, it still felt professional in nature versus something that was just my heart goes out to the situation that happened. There isn’t a reason to post that on LinkedIn. Just remember, in addition to it, being professional, it is the more polite channel lean into that positivity, the optimism being celebratory. And at the end of the day, remember it is a business platform. So please err on that side and use it accordingly.

Anne Candido 28:11
Yeah, those are all really good points and all those build, because of course, I’m reading an Adam Grant book.

April Martini 28:17
Of course you are which one is it this time? This is originals, right? Yeah, read original. I

Anne Candido 28:21
love originals. And I just read something. And I think this really applies here, which is people are punished for trying to exercise power without status. Right. And I think you know, the reason why like Ray Dalio or GaryVee can have those descending opinions where they can have a little bit of snarkiness where they can behave like that. And this platform or any of their platforms, frankly, is because they have earned status that allows them to kind of like rock the boat a little bit or kind of Baca convention. If you’re trying to do that, without actually building status or reputation that you are insightful enough to offer that that people appreciate it is going to land like a ton of bricks, and those are people that end up coming off as being a little like downers or like pessimists or you know, in a in a in, you don’t get that reputation that you’re looking for, for being like very astute or very much like going against the grain or revolutionary or whatever you want to be known for, which are the you know, the positive characteristics. So just that’s why the tone is so, so important. So really washed up before you actually posted anything on LinkedIn or any of your channels, frankly, but specifically on LinkedIn, which is meant to represent your professional self. Yeah, I

April Martini 29:40
think that’s that was a much better way of saying what I was saying about Ray and Gary, but it is about having the clout. Yeah, I think it goes with the status as you were talking. That’s what I was thinking of like, you have the platform and you have the credibility so you can speak to that and also they’re consistent in the way that they speak it They are they’re very consistent.

Anne Candido 30:01
You know what you’re gonna pay? You know, like you tap in if you want them because you know who they are. Yeah, but it’s very hard to build a reputation based on that. You have to build the credibility first, then then you can have you do that. That’s a very good point. Yeah. So according to Adam Grant,

April Martini 30:18
everything according to Adam Grant lately?

Anne Candido 30:20
Yeah, I love him. Okay. So our final segment is where we highlight companies or brands may or may not be using their marketing smarts in may or may not have anything to do with this episode. And you know, I tried to connect them, but I’m not exactly sure I can do that with this one. If you do this, I will not believe it. Yeah, it’ll be too much of a stretch. But you never know. Something might pop in my head. This was a more tactical one. It is definitely a more tactical one. But it’s a very relevant one, especially at this time of the year. All right, especially for you moms and dads out there who are watching your especially your daughter’s trying to find dresses for homecoming. Prom is coming

April Martini 30:59
up. Really. I don’t think I’m not in this age group. I forget. Yeah. So they just

Anne Candido 31:04
have winter homecoming. Oh, right. Yes. I want to come to me last weekend we can before right now your prom coming up? Yeah, and the biggest question is the dress right? You gotta find a dress and finding a dress. If you’ve ever been shopping or finding anything with your teenage daughters. Especially in a shopping it is frustrating at best. It is like horrendously like gut wrenching at worst, right? Because you just never know what they’re going to like you try to help and it’s just not the right thing. And so I say all this because I have fallen in love. And I am very, very thankful for now these like boutique online shops that basically cater to these dresses. Lulus is one of our favorites. We use that one a lot. But a new one that just popped up is called Windsor. And she used Windsor for her homecoming dresses, and she bought two and she was gonna see which one she liked. Right. So they arrived now, honestly, I mean, are these the best construction? No. Are they going to wear them once? Yes. So they have to be the best construction? No, they just have to actually last okay. Just one night just yeah, basically when I sit there, but they’re actually they’re priced accordingly. These dresses are like 50 bucks. I’m like for one night. 50 bucks, we can make that work. Okay. Now, the dresses are also very stylish. I think they’re very cute. They’re very appropriate for that age group. Are they very appropriate dresses? No, when I showed the picture of Korean to my mom, she goes she needs a sweatshirt and sweatpants. And I was like, yeah, so then my mom offered to make her the next dress. I’m like, yeah, no, that’s not gonna probably not gonna work. Well, a lot to be said. The reason why I’m giving kind of this this hat tip to Windsor in this is the return policy that they have, which is you can return in store. Now a lot of the they have brick and mortar store when it came on now. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so lose. I mean, not they have one, there’s not one around us. But Windsor is actually in the mall. And this is very, super easy return policy. Now it’s a very limited window from when you can return understandably so to avoid everybody buying these dresses and returning them. But they do encourage you to actually get multiples, try them on and then return them. And versus like feeling like you have to make that selection. At that moment. Pick the one it shows up. And if anybody could guess that knows a teenage daughter has a teenage daughter knows if it doesn’t fit just right. If it’s not Instagram worthy. It’s a total disaster, right? So when we had to go return the one dress, I mean, it’s basically you go to the return, it’s a few clicks to give you a QR code. You take the dress, you take the QR code to scan a QR code to go, thanks for the dress, it’ll go back on your credit card that you bought it on. It’s done in less than 10 seconds. Even she was like, wow, that’s easy. I’m like, Yeah, you could have done it yourself. So even like a teenager could actually go in return their home, which is kind of nice. So I say all that because if you are whatever business you’re at, and this is the marketing smart, I feel like they really leverage it, whatever business you’re at, make the risk low, to try your product, right. And in order to make your risk low, you have to figure out what is the thing that’s stopping people from actually trying you, in this case, it will be is it gonna be a pain in the butt to return, Lulu is is still not a pain in the butt to return. You just give you a UPS Label Label and you go and you drop it off at the UPS store. But I still have to go to UPS Store and stuff like that. It’s just nice to it’s a brick and mortar store. Make it easy for the people to return. Because then you have an opportunity to really differentiate from your competition and showcase a customer service that is really going to separate you from other people in this room because seriously, all these dresses are basically like the same. I mean, it’s not like It’s anything special here. So I can’t link it to LinkedIn.

April Martini 35:04
That’s okay.

Anne Candido 35:04
I try like, well, but

April Martini 35:06
I think that the interesting part here is about the return piece, because I think there’s a lot of these sites that are trying to lean into quote, unquote, more disposable fashion side of things. In this market of like, the more one off high end, you know, dress specific. So, you know, I don’t even remember the site we use, but we’re not using it for my second sister’s wedding. Because for my first sister, they pose it almost as though you should order a bunch. But then if you do, they’ll write you and say, well, we make each one to order. And you know, they make the return really hard. And you’re like, but we’re trying to decide, and there’s no store, which style we want to wear. And to your point. I mean, we’re not teenage girls anymore. We have other concerns, maybe. But we there’s no trial on process, right. And even if you do the measurements, and whatever the sizing isn’t always accurate. So I think on that side, and we know we’re running up in this, this new site looks like it’s going to be better. But a lot of what you just said, are the pain points of these experiences where you want to go the more cost effective route, you’re not going to where these multiple times, all of that is spot on. But you also want to get something that’s going to be wearable when it shows up.

Anne Candido 36:20
Yeah, so I think like the moral of all this is no matter what business you are, how do you get your consumer customer? client to try you on? Yeah, right. Or figuratively? Yeah. What how do you make it a low risk opportunity for them to try you on? Yes, right. Yep, absolutely. And if they don’t like you to

April Martini 36:39
return, they tried. Yeah.

Anne Candido 36:44
All right. So just to recap four key elements and make a compelling LinkedIn presence. Think of the image blocks as advertising real estate in your about section as your elevator pitch. This is how people capture your personal brand. Make sure you cultivate it wisely. Second is add value to the community you cannot be a lurker. If you’re going to have a compelling LinkedIn presence, you must contribute to the community. There are be intentional creating your community don’t just connect with random solution numbers connect with others who feel a benefit from your presence or that you’ll benefit from there’s also who may have a community that you may want to tap into. And finally, tone should be generally positive and optimistic. For better or worse. This is a ton of LinkedIn. And with that, we’ll say go and exercise your Marketing Smarts!

April Martini 37:22
Still need help in growing your Marketing Smarts? Contact us through our website: ForthRight-People.com. We can help you become a savvier marketer through coaching or training you and your team or doing the work on your behalf. Please also help us grow the podcast by rating and reviewing on your player of choice and sharing with at least one person. Now, go show off your Marketing Smarts!