Ep 136: Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile with Donna Serdula

I had someone call me the other day. It was a fabulous conversation. Guy said he's 80 years old and he's looking at the next decade of his career.

Cool. I love it. That's awesome.

I thought I hung up. I'm like, that's who I want to be.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, next levelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we have Donna Serdula. In 2009, Donna walked away from her successful sales career and founded Vision Board Media. As the pioneer of LinkedIn profile optimization, she built a successful website, LinkedIn makeover.com more than a decade ago. In that time, she has worked with more than 6,000 executives, entrepreneurs and professionals, utilizing a talented team of over 30 writers, coaches and branding specialists to bring dynamic brand storytelling to the masses. She's the author of the book LinkedIn profile optimization for Dummies, which I just bought. And Donna has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Times Money Section, Wall Street Journal's Market Watch, LA Times, NBC, SiriusXM Radio's the Focus Group, and now the Next Level Income Show. Donna, thank you so much for joining us today on the show.

Hey, Chris, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, this is going to be awesome. So if you're listening today, you got to know I already bought Donna's book, which she has in the background there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Your real background, which you were talking about, which is, which is lovely. But we have, we have a lot to cover today, Donna, but I don't want to, I don't want to step on your toes. I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background before you got into specializing in LinkedIn. Cause I know we have some overlap here. And you're going to have an overlap with a lot of the audience, too, I think today.

Yeah, I, you know, I started my. In 2009, but I joined LinkedIn a few years before that. Now. When did you join LinkedIn? You were telling me before. I can't remember. What was it?

January 25, 2006.

So you're an early adopter like I am. Yeah, I, I joined in 2005 and.

You got me beat.

It's just by a little bit, you know, I, but I remember, I remember where I was working, a gal had said, donnie, you've got to join this, this network. This is amazing. It's, it's fabulous. You can get prospects and leads, you can find jobs. I mean, just opportunities galore. And I remember joining and like, they show you like this profile and it looks like a resume. So I just copied and pasted my resume in.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was like, really excited. Like, come on, Opportunity hit me. I'm ready. I want a new job. I want all this great stuff. And nothing happened. It was like this huge waste of time. And I just, I was like, whatever. And you know, I pivoted in my career. I went from being like a sales analyst to now working in a cutthroat sales environment. I was an account manager. I was dialing for dollars, 80 calls before noon every day, you know, trying, trying to, trying to hit my quota, trying to that pipeline, that funnel, you know, and it was, it was, it was hard work. Now I was working in a situation where I was a seller. So I'm selling the exact same software package as my competitor.

Yeah.

And like, how do you differentiate when it's identical? And that's when I had my first epiphany, was I was the differentiator. People would want to buy from me versus buy from one else.

Yeah.

And that's when I started to really realize the importance of branding, the importance of having a story. But as I was cold, that's when I had another epiphany. Because as I was cold calling, I was always googling that person's name. And the only pertinent result result that ever popped up was in profile. Like, and it always looked like a dull, dry, out of date resume.

Yeah.

And then, then I had another epiphany which was, oh my God, if they're looking at me or if they're looking, if I'm looking at them, they're looking at me.

Right.

And what I see. And I was presenting myself in the exact same dull, boring way, which was my old resume. And that was when I said, wait, maybe I can collide with searches. Because I know people, my services. So if I use the right keywords, I'll pop up, you know, more, more often, more frequently higher up in the search results. I also realized if I told the right story, people would like me. They, they, they forge rapport sooner.

Yeah.

All of this crystallized. And in 2009, I decided, you know what, I'm gonna, I gotta do this for people because no one is recognizing what the potential is.

Yeah.

20 now I have 20 writers.

Wow.

We've written over 8, 000 LinkedIn profiles.

Wow.

And a tiger by its tail. Changing lives because people need help. It's so hard to write about yourself.

Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because I think, you know, I was talking. I work with a lot of surgeons, a lot of doctors from my, my previous career and again in sales and medical device sales and the. I've noticed. I was, I was like, I looked on, I said, hey, you only have like, it's like 50 or 300 connections. It was, to me, that was a low number, you know, with somebody that's got thousands of connections. Right. And it's been working on it for, as you mentioned, for 13 years now. And I said, I guess you really don't. As a doctor, Most doctors, they don't really utilize it because they're like, oh, I work in this one system. I have my practice. You know, they're not going out there trying to forge connections. I think, Donna, that with your sales background, with the networking and the ability to move careers, move companies, it's very competitive, Right. With different commission rates, different products and your technology. Right. Same thing with medical devices. You have these new technologies that pop up. You're like, hey, this is a, this is a great opportunity. Or maybe you want to go up into management leadership. I know. My impression is as a sales, as somebody in sales, you have a fairly unique and advantageous approach to this.

Well, you know, someone had said to me early on in my career, and they said the only thing a salesperson has is his or her book of business.

Wow. Yeah. Right.

It's your network.

Yeah.

And your network is your net worth. So you need to make sure you capture it and you nurture it, and it's always there for you. Now, when I had made that in my career, I was no longer just, you know, my clients weren't just architects and engineers and, you know, you know, those, those types of people, you know, it extended. But it was nice to know that my clients then could still be my clients. And they still are. They still reach out to me, you know, and it is, it's. It's always about nurturing those relationships. And LinkedIn does a fabulous job, you know, And I, I would also say for salespeople, right. At one time, those people were more of like, what, the 1099, you know, they didn't work directly for the company. They were 100 commission based. That, that's really changed over the last 20 years. You know, typically now salespeople, they earn, you know, they earn a wage and then they earn the commission. So they are employees. And when you are an employee, they can, they can turn off.

Right.

That contact list. They could turn on CRM.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's wild.

So, yeah. So, you know, you want to keep that book of business, and you can keep that book of business by making sure that as you're making relationships, I'm not suggesting aiming low and wide, and I'm not in any way suggesting downloading and impulsing or anything, but just simply being aware that, hey, these are. These are relationships that you should, should keep for life and make sure that they're also on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I read a great book and this is probably why I was an early adopter on LinkedIn. I believe it was called build your parachute before you jump. This was probably 20 years ago. I have to go look and see if that's actually the name of the book. But it was all about networking and building your network, and your network is your net worth. Which that really didn't come into play until I started interacting more with investors and those sorts of things. But it's true, right? Every job I've gotten, and even people that ask me, they're like, oh, I've applied for these jobs. I'm like, well, who do you know there? Have you gone on LinkedIn? Have you checked this? How have the demographics changed, Donna, within LinkedIn, who's. Who's your typical LinkedIn user now compared to where. Where it used to be or what? What's changing? Like, who, who's on LinkedIn?

You know, it still is skewed older rather than younger. And I think that's something that LinkedIn is, is, is actively trying to remedy in a lot of what they're doing today, in terms of video, in terms of the newsfeed, in terms of, you know, really pushing the content creation because they do want to get more and more younger people on board. You know, for me, I see most of my clients, they do tend to be in their 30s, 40s, 50s, you know, even. I mean, we even go up to. I had someone call me the other day. It was a fabulous conversation. The Guy said he's 80 years old and he's looking at the next decade of his career.

Cool. I love it. That's awesome.

I thought I hung up. I'm like, that's who I want to be. That's who I want to.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah. But it's, it's, you know, I, I do think if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Right, because you have to have a little bit of a career behind you to recognize the importance of your work.

Absolutely. No, I agree with that. And, you know, so you come in, you know, you start your career, you got your resume up there on LinkedIn, you know, your picture from your graduation picture or something like that. And you know, you mentioned initially, early on, everybody was just basically a resume up there. But today, what do you find that people are doing wrong? What's the number one thing you find people are doing wrong?

You know, I think what are people doing wrong? You know, in some ways, Chris, some of this has not changed because it's just human nature. It's hard to write about yourself. No one wants to know where they're going or how they're going to get there. They just, it's just not something that most people want to exist within that, that level of discomfort. So what's the easiest thing? They upload a bad picture of themselves, you know, maybe a picture snapped heading. They copy and paste an old, you know, bio or their resume. They get on, they scroll through the, that, the LinkedIn feed and they like things rather indiscriminately like, oh, like, like, like. But they're not adding to the conversation, they're not adding context, they're not really commenting, they're not giving. Right, yeah, those are the things. It's, it's. In order to really make an impact on LinkedIn, in some ways, you do have to open yourself up and you have to be a little bit of, have to be a little vulnerable. You know, it's, it's, it's saying, you know what? I'm going to copy and paste a resume. I'm going to tell may give my, my story why I do what I do, how I do what I do, what, why what I do is different or how it's an impact in other people's lives, you know, what do I stand for? What is my passion? What is my mission? You know, where do I, where am I really going? You know, what I'm truly trying to accomplish? That's what I want to see in a LinkedIn profile. I love to see a trajectory that sort of unfurls. And what I mean by that is I, I don't like it when their person's like, I'm a CEO. You know, I just, I just came out of the womb a CEO.

Right, right.

Like, I love to see a person who started out somewhere small and the little incremental steps they made along the way and the knowledge they gained in the experiences and, and, and some failures and some successes and some risks and some pivots. I love that. And to do that, you're really looking at a person who's, who's transparent, who's authentic, who's real, and you almost, you're rooting for them.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And it's, you know, it's a, it's a fine line, right, because you want to, you want to be authentic, you want to be real, you want to be relatable, but you also want to be professional when it comes to these sorts of things. So one of the things I've noticed on LinkedIn is people are doing like these videos now, like a little video instead of their, their photo. How did that, how did that come to be? I always find that it's a little weird. I'm like, do I click on that? Do I listen to this person? What are you seeing that's popped up here in the last year or two that really can help accelerate people's goals on LinkedIn?

I, I do like that video. I think that's, I think it's fun. But I, I agree with you. Like, I see it silently and I rarely, although I did see a woman who, she actually uploaded a video of herself coming know to speak and like, you could see her like, you know, walking so confidently towards the microphone. And I was like, hands down, that is the best cover video I've ever seen. Yeah, I loved it. So I like that. I love. Right, next. So you only can do this in the mobile phone. The app. The app, yeah, that you can record your name and so you get a little speaker next to your name. I love that because people with, you know, last names like myself, it makes it a little easier, but it also gives you a chance to have a person hear your voice and you can say a little bit more because you got a full 10 seconds. So, you know, even for you, Chris Larson, not a hard name to say, but, you know, give a little bit of a, you know, little elevator pitch, you know, I love that.

I didn't even know that was available. That's super cool.

Yeah. You can even put your pronouns up against an. Up next to your name if, if you're so inclined. You don't have to, but it's there, I think, is, it's a great thing because a lot of people were putting it into their name field and that kind of skew the name Results. Right.

So I like to change my pronouns every couple months just to kind of keep people guessing, so, you know, makes them. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. So I hope nobody's offended out there. Try to, you know, but, you know.

Some other things, like. What are some other things I love. I love the Featured section on LinkedIn.

Yes, that's. That's something new that I'm not.

Yeah, yeah. Very few people, but it's, it's. I mean, suddenly you can put media up there and links out to, you know, your different online properties. It's. That's fabulous. So it's, it's just.

Yeah, I've noticed it's almost. And this is kind of how we've seen it. You know, things have changed on websites, right? So websites used to be basically kind of like a, you know, like a brochure, essentially, you know, and LinkedIn used to be basically like a resume and now a website is interactive. You have video on there, you have. You know, we're revamping our website now and LinkedIn is very similar, I've noticed. It's almost like its own miniature website, essentially. And I think that can be overwhelming for a lot of people because they're like, well, I don't know how to build a website. I don't know how to, you know, you know, do this. We're going to tell people about your course, Donna, and actually kind of some new features that your company has, has started offering here since, you know, just, just since the kind of end. Beginning of the year. But I love your methodology, your SOAR methodology. And I think this can help listeners kind of walk through mentally how they can put together their profile. Do you mind walking through the. Well, soar. Right. S O A R Methodology.

It's an acronym. And, and it's, it stands for. So we'll, we'll break. Because to me, people look at LinkedIn and they've been looking at LinkedIn for a very long time and it's always been confusing. Confusing. No one knows where to start, what, you know, what does success look like, how to, how to even jump in. So I've, I've tried to simplify it. So Sour stands for first is strategies. You need to know your goal. Now here's the thing, Chris. We've got, you know, people get on LinkedIn, some of them are looking for a job, some are looking leads and prospects, some are looking to be seen as an expert. Some are doing this for executive branding purposes. Right? Everyone different need. But depending upon that goal that you have your messaging changes, right? So let's say like you're on salesperson, you don't want to be on talking about how you love to prospect, how you love to close. You have no problem asking for money. Right. Because that would turn off your target audience. It would attract recruiters.

Gotcha. So if I'm, if I'm looking for a job, so if I go back and when I was first on there, I was like, okay, I want to be. When I was happy, actually when I was happy in my, my role, I really didn't spend any time on LinkedIn. But what I should have been doing is been building my personal brand.

And then what happens is people who are building their personal brand, they're nurturing their network, they never have to look for a job because jobs find them. Right. Because opportunities have a chance of just, they just drop in your lap, which is a beautiful thing. But at the same time, you want to make sure that the messaging is correct. Because, you know, if you're out there as that salesperson, you're reaching out to prospects, right?

You're, you're, they're going to look you up, like you were saying, and say, wait a minute, Chris is all about sales. What about me? What about us?

Does he know my industry? Is he, is he, you know, a pertinent part of, of what I'm doing and how. Know my pain points? Does he know what my process is? No, it looks like he just wants to sell. Right? So that is, that's, that's. So you need to know your, you need to know your strategy, your goal, what are you really trying to accomplish? Two, you need to know your target audience, what they need to know about you. You also need to know about your keywords. If a person is searching for someone like you, what words are they putting in there? Because if your keywords are not in that profile are never going to collide with opportunity.

Oh, wow. All right.

So that's the Soar.

That's the Soar.

And that's the S part of Soar.

Yeah. As a follow up to that. So I've been, I'm with a company for 10 years. I've been building my personal brand, you know, and interacting with my customers on LinkedIn. And I've been successful. Now I want to move into a different role. I want to go from a sales role to a leadership role. Do I then change my strategy? Do I change my profile to match up with that?

You do. So when you want is you start to shift. So now we go Back. So we start soar again. So we start with S. Strategy. What is strategy? Who's my, you know, try to figure that out. And then we go to O for Optimize, which is optimize the LinkedIn profile. So write it very specifically to your audience, to your goals, with your keywords in mind. And you want it to be future facing. You don't want it to be an obituary.

Right.

You don't want it to be an obituary. Of all the things that you, you really want it to be.

Act as if, is what I always used to say. Like, act as if you're in that next role already.

You got it. Because otherwise you get pigeonholed. Right. If you brand yourself so perfectly for who you are and what you're doing this exact moment, you're never going to get those opportunities for that next, that next, next role, that next chapter.

That makes sense. Absolutely, that makes sense. Now what, what about somebody that says, well, Chris, I'm concerned that my boss is going to see me becoming more active on, on LinkedIn. Is that, is that. Yeah. Is that realistic or. You know, actually had one of my coaching clients was, was asking about this.

Yeah. And that's, it's a great question. And it's something that people are worried about or concerned by now when, when clients come to me and they say that this is, this is what I say to them, which is one almost in almost all situation, when we're branding a person, we're not branding them as a desperate job seeker. Right. Because that's not, no one wants to hire a desperate job seeker.

No.

So it's not, you should never be branding yourself in that manner. And that would raise red flags. Absolutely it would. But it's really about branding and reputation management. You know, in branding, it's, it's in putting you forward, you know, in that future manner that we were just talking about.

That makes sense.

And branding is important. Right. You know, for that employer, they need to understand that their clients are looking their employees and their employees are number one asset.

Yeah.

You don't want them to look terrible now. At the same time, you don't want them poached. But you know, if you keep them happy and they're, they're posting about how great their, the organization is, how healthy, how wonderful and you know, you're going to have, you know, showcase your best, you attract the best and that's, that's prospects, that's job candidates, that's partnerships, that's investors, that's media inquiries. It's all those good Things.

So that may be something. If you're a leader, if you're out there and you have employees looking at what Donna's talking about, whether you're interested in building your own personal brand or even your team's brand can be very powerful. And I think some of the things you say lead into the A part of soar, which is like we were talking about building that network. You don't want to wait until you need a job. You want to start early. Right.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

Yeah.

So A is amplify. Yeah. In order to amplify your message, in order to network, you have to have, you know, that network of people. You need to have those connections. And it's something that you never stop doing. You know, it's like that old Glengarry Glen Rossi salesperson. You know that, that movie. Always be closing coffees for closers.

Donna.

Coffee is for closures. I've got my coffee mug here. But I say always be connecting.

Oh, I shifted just a little bit. That's so good. Always be connecting.

I love that abc. And, and it's, it's those connections that allow you to show up in, in a wider range of searches too. Because you know, with LinkedIn, a person is searching, they're searching their LinkedIn network. That's the first, second and third degree connections.

Yeah.

So if you want to appear in more searches, keyword based, not name based, but keyword based searches, you need to have, you know, a strong network that supports it.

That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. So S O A and the last.

R R is relate. Relate. And what I mean by that is now you have, you have your strategy, you have this beautiful profile. You've got a strong network or a strong network that you're, you're feeding and you're nurturing and you're growing. Well, now you got to get active and you got it. And it's not about just promoting yourself. Right. It's, it's really about relating to other people. It's, it's giving, it's adding value, it's giving advice, it's, it's showing up and helping and educating and inspiring. And when you do that, people are going to resonate to it and they're going to connect, going to comment and they're going to like and, and they're going to repost and you're, and, and the idea is that there's this back and forth, there's these conversations taking place and that's what really allows your posts to do really well. When, when you look at what LinkedIn has stated about their, their, their feed, their LinkedIn feed, that home feed, they say, people, you know, talking about the things you care about, I think there's so much in there. So you want to be talking about relevant, interesting things that your network cares about. You want them engaging with you. And when that happens, that's when, that's when good things really start to explode.

Yeah, I don't disagree with that, but I know, and I'm sure a lot of other people are listening as well, and they're saying, well, wait a minute. Like I'm, I'm like you, Donna. I'm like you or Chris, right? Like, or you were Donna, like you or Chris. I'm out there selling, I'm working, you know, I'm making the phone calls. I'm out there, I'm in the field or maybe in the, or as I was a lot of years, I don't have time to be on LinkedIn and, you know, like, I don't even go on Facebook or whatever people go on these days, right. TikTok and Twitter and everything. But how do you, you know, how much time does it take to do this? How long is there some best practices when it comes to these sorts of things?

You know, there is a beauty to LinkedIn and I, I think it's because it's a professional network. Right? It's, it's not there for posting pictures of your kids, soccer team, you know?

Yeah. Like, I hate, I especially hate when people are like, getting to politics and stuff on LinkedIn. I'm like, come on, you can turn.

That off in the settings. Did you know that you can turn off political content?

Perfect, I'm gonna do that. I'll take you there. I try to. I did that on my TV. I did that. I'm gonna do it on LinkedIn. I do it on Facebook. This is perfect.

Yeah, you can, you can. Absolutely. There's actually a toggle. I'm, I'm not even joking. You can turn that off, which I love, but because it's a network. Yeah, I think, I think there's this, this, this just a practicality where LinkedIn says, you know, you don't have to post like 10 times a day. And in fact, if you try to post 10 times a day, your posts don't do as well. They just don't do well at all. They want you to post only good, pertinent, relevant, quality content. And if that's once a Week, that's once every weeks. That's fabulous. It's just do something consistent, you know, check in and just make sure you're checking in like it's once a week and you're going to post something, and if you do pop back in there, comment on what other people are posting. So it's not like you have to be this huge content creator all day long every day. But, you know, just say to yourself, what, can I manage? Can I, can I manage once a week or once every two weeks?

Yeah, I think, I think that's totally. Yeah, totally reasonable. Totally reasonable. So, Donna, what is it exactly that you and your company do to help people with this?

We, we write LinkedIn profiles. So we help people write about themselves and optimize that profile. So it's really, truly a professional manifesto and not that obituary. Right. So we help them with that.

Yeah.

We also have courses, and we have courses that also take you through how to, how to find your message, how to find that story, how to optimize that profile so you collide with opportunity. And we also have courses on getting loud on LinkedIn. You know, so it's not about pushing out content, but how do you create really strategic content that you know is going to catch and get, you know, get seen by the writers?

Yeah, no, I love it. And no knowing. I mean, you made a couple comments, you're like, hey, here's the algorithm. You know, if you don't know, if you don't understand what these algorithms are on LinkedIn, you need to take a look at your profile. What's the best way to, to, to check out your website, Donna, to get in touch with you all for somebody to say, okay, how do I, how do I do this? What are some initial steps I can take?

They can Visit me on LinkedIn. So just look up Donna, Sir Doula, and, you know, once you follow me there, a little bell pops up on my profile. If you click that bell, you'll, you'll get my updates as notifications. So that's, that's a nice way to really stay in touch because it's easy to lose track of people within the LinkedIn feed. So if you hit that bell, you'll, you'll, you'll be notified of my most popular posts. My website, LinkedIn-makeover.com. check out my free tools. I have so many really amazing free resources. My, my three favorite with three, I have a LinkedIn headline generator that actually generates, with just a couple clicks, a fabulous headline that optimizes your profile and gets People compelled to click. And to read more about you, I also have a text formatter. So if you are posting on LinkedIn or you're doing some work on your profile, you want something bold or italicized, this will generate faux text for you. Because LinkedIn has. Allows no formatting whatsoever. Yeah. The thing which I'm very, very proud of is I know it's hard to come up with ideas for posts, so I created a post idea generator and you click. I give three ideas for posts every day, and it's always changing, but you can get an idea. It's an inspiration prompt. It's a. It's just something that you can take and use to create something that will get your network engaged.

And, and, you know, we love to say automate authenticity and. Oh, I love that. You know, I like to tell people, you know, just, it doesn't have to be inauthentic just because it's automatic. It's like somebody's birthday. If it's your birthday, Donna, it's going to pop up on my calendar and I'm going to say, donna, happy Birthday. That's automatic, but it's also authentic. And I love what you're doing. You're providing an automatic way for people to generate an authentic response or connection with people, which I think, you know.

What it is, it's almost like there's the copy, there's the paste, but then there's the tweak. And the tweak is what makes it authentic.

I love that. I love that. And your new course, loud on LinkedIn. Right. It just released, I think you, you have a special offer for listeners today for that.

Yeah, we do. So visit, visit the website, click on the, the loud on LinkedIn course and in the promo code, type in next level. And you guys will be surprised with what we, what we have for you.

Awesome. Well, Donna, I'm, I'm excited to jump in. I've been going through your book here. Um, I loved having you on again. I'm a little biased. Being in sales for almost 20 years of my life, I think I got a lot of value off of LinkedIn. The connections that I made there, the ability to network. I use it in a different way now. So I've had to relearn a lot of these things. So if, if you're overwhelmed, if you've heard what Donna has to say and you're like, wow, I should be doing that, or I'm in a different phase in my career, I need to start using LinkedIn in a different way. Reach out to Donna one more time. Donna, what's your best website?

LinkedIn makeover.com perfect.

And that's going to be in the show notes here along with the next level code that she provided. Reach out to Donna and see if you can update your LinkedIn and find ways to generate more value in your life and your career with it. Donna, thank you so much today.

Thank you.

Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coach coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.