Episode 069: Creating a Personal Brand on LinkedIn

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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley. Joined today by our producer and co-host, Kiera Nelson. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Doing awesome.

Good.

Living the best life over here. Mm-hmm. So today we wanted to talk about kind of building your personal brand and specifically using LinkedIn. We just ran through a LinkedIn challenge over the last month. I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those, the lessons that we learned from that, the benefits of that. What all goes into it. And so the first thing for us is like, we really like LinkedIn as a platform just for networking. Like, it's very, very business-oriented. You know, we do some advertising on there, but we do a lot more advertising on things like TikTok and Facebook and most of those time wasters that people get into. LinkedIn, I feel like for me, has always had kind of more of a, that business overtone to it. There's been a lot more, you know, leadership lessons and more just that industry-specific talk as you're connecting with industry peers and things like that. In some ways it almost feels like going to a trade show, but it's just on all the time. Now, prior to this, I like— I've used LinkedIn quite a bit, but Kira, you haven't really been a LinkedIn person.

I haven't.

And so like over the last, say, 30 days, like what has kind of your perception been of LinkedIn? Has it shifted? And What do you kind of see as like the benefits of being on it?

I certainly, when we first, I think the first time I ever made a LinkedIn, it was because in college they made us make a LinkedIn. And so we had the platform, it sat there absent-mindedly for many years. And it wasn't until I started seeing it being asked on job applications, people would go, oh, drop your LinkedIn profile in here. And I was like, I don't have that, I don't want that, I don't use that, I'm not current on there. I don't have everything up to par, but the more and more I started seeing it on job applications, I'm like, okay, maybe I should start getting into this LinkedIn thing. Maybe I should start building, not quite yet a personal brand, but like building, just like throw in my college experience and my job history. And it wasn't until very recently that I, everyone kind of got this idea of building a personal brand on LinkedIn where you, you add in more, a little more personal. You add in like a good summary. You have your title. And you post regularly and you kind of just like build this professional brand that's different than all your other platforms. It's not a social media platform. It's not a place to vent about this or that or talk about your day or what you ate. It's more geared toward professionals and learning. And so as I dove more into LinkedIn and I found that they had lessons and classes you could take and that all of these great, not only politicians, but just higher-ups Even just the regular day-to-day people were just posting and sharing their experiences in their life on here in a way that was vastly different than I had ever seen it posted about online. You really kind of become in love with the types of content that is on it. It's just much more professional and intelligent. I don't quite feel as ridiculous scrolling through it for 20 minutes.

You get more value out of it.

Truly.

You grow up a little bit with it. Truly. Well, and I think too, I love that there's a setting you can keep the politics off the feed. So if something's a political post, you can flag it, and then it won't show up on other people's feeds, which I appreciate. I think the other thing that I see when I look at the personal brand is that it's not just a digital resume, but it's a way for you to showcase who you are as a talent and who you are as an individual. And maybe not personally, right, but definitely professionally. And so what I've seen is just from our standpoint, you know, as I've posted and as I've talked to people during the recruiting process, you know, they go in, "Oh yeah, I checked you out on LinkedIn. I love all your posts." In fact, I just had somebody at church yesterday say, "Oh, I love following you on LinkedIn." I'm like, "Oh, I didn't know that you were following me." Like, we weren't really connected. And so what's fun about that is that as candidates are looking at your profile and they get to know who you are, it actually helps screen them out a little bit. Do they like what they're seeing on LinkedIn? Does it draw them in? We talk about culture being like a culture magnet. And if you're a leader, you can help kind of recruit people to you if you have this brand that you have on LinkedIn. Like, what do you want to be known for? Do people agree with that or do people say, "Yeah, no, that's not really my cup of tea." I want to do something different. So I really like that idea from a recruiting standpoint. But then the flip side is as a job seeker, right, is if people are looking at your profile and looking at the posts you're making, you know, I mean, people look you up on social media anyway, but having like this very tailored, hey, this is what I'm like professionally, this is what I care about professionally, this is some of my work professionally, I think that gives them a really good insight into what kind of employee you are and what kind of team member you're going to be. And it's about having control of that message. You know, that's what branding really is. It's about controlling the message about you.

I think it's helpful for tone as well. When you're looking at somebody's resume and you read, it's very black and white. And when you look at someone's resume, you can see their summary piece. You can see the style in which they present themselves, in which they write. You can see in their posts kind of their tonage and their— I hate to say vibe, but you can kind of just like tell who they are based on the way that they write and the way that they present themselves. Yeah, like you can tell their aura. I mean, 5'5" is bad enough. So you can kind of give— it brings out their personality a little bit more than just a black and white resume. And you look at something and you're like, oh yeah, they look great on paper, but I don't really understand who they are based off that.

It's like a living cover letter. You know, I think that's one of the things I love about getting cover letters with applicants is it really helps kind of give me some color as long as it's not just some boring template. A lot of people don't do cover letters anymore, or if you're applying to a job, sometimes you got to get through like the bots that scan resumes, and so they don't even look at your cover letter. But once a human eye gets onto your LinkedIn profile and starts looking through your posts and likes and activities, like, it's like, oh, now I get to know who this person really is. Is this somebody I want to work with, or is this somebody that's like, yeah, we should probably keep walking? Um, I've definitely seen benefits too, like in the industry getting to know more people in the industry, getting to know what they're passionate about, what's going on in fleet specifically. So as fleet managers, if you're wondering, well, why should I even be on LinkedIn? There's so many resources and so many people that are on LinkedIn. You could find your next career on LinkedIn. You could get advice. You know, we like the NAFA boards, we like the GFX boards, but LinkedIn is just another one of those opportunities for you to have specific questions and ask different questions about fleet. And maybe learn some things too that you wouldn't see in a fleet board. I think one of my favorite things is seeing— I get my feeds full of sales and marketing things, but also leadership. And so if you want to know more about leadership, LinkedIn's a great platform for leaders and content creators and things like that. So if you want to learn more how to be a better copywriter, you want to learn how to, you know, write better job ads, or who knows what, LinkedIn's a great resource for all of that stuff. Beyond what you'd normally see in a fleet environment.

It's also helpful for the people that you follow to kind of keep up to date with them. Like, I enjoy following Amazon, knowing what different updates are coming through with cloud, or Great Places to Work when they're like, oh, we're having new lists come out. And it's kind of just a way to keep— it's like following a company news online, and especially the ones that you're really integrated with. Just a good way to keep up with them. We post our webinars and about our conferences on our, like, our company page. So it's just It's just a good way to stay connected with these big companies with news that you may otherwise have missed.

Well, that's a great insight too, is like as a customer connecting with companies and getting to know who they are and understanding what they are personally, what kind of partner you're getting into bed with, so to speak, and making sure that this is somebody we want to be a partner with, right? You want to have a long-term relationship with any of your suppliers. And if they're active on LinkedIn, it's a great way for them to kind of showcase who they are, you know, at the core. So, you know, doing your due diligence on that side is checking out their social media and seeing what they're all about. And not just, you know, the promotional videos, but like, what are their people actually saying? Because that gives you a better insight into who they really are. So there are some downsides, right? Like we talked a little bit of it. Sometimes you're going to see some politics on there. But for the most part, you can stream that stuff out, which is awesome. Way better than my Facebook feed, that's for sure. But, you know, like, we get pitch slapped all the time. And yes, I said pitch slapped. You know, it's like you get a connection request and the first thing out of their mouth is, as soon as you say accept, it's like, hey, did you know that we have this lead generation service that we can offer and set appointments for your sales reps? You're like, I don't care about that. Like, I don't want that. Remove, right? And block. And you get that all the time, and it is just the most annoying part of LinkedIn, in my opinion. You know, if you are a woman, I've heard several times— I've never been hit on on LinkedIn. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but, you know, you're not missing anything. You can, you know, where you get hit on or something like that, it comes around. And so like, it just, it's like any other social media, there's pros and cons to that side of it. I will say it's much less addictive than like a TikTok or Facebook. It doesn't have that same neural feedback that those, those social medias have where they're trying to keep you ensnared. Um, by the way, a total sidebar, but if you have not watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, you totally should. Just mind-blowing what they designed and what it was intended to versus what they actually ended up creating, and just how they preyed on the addictive nature of just human nature, really, to keep us scrolling and keep us glued to the screens. LinkedIn doesn't necessarily have that. And so I kind of appreciate that about it is I don't have that same draw. I mean, there's still the notifications and you still want to go see what's going on, but for the most part, you can kind of turn that off. And if you just check it once a day, you'll still be really, you know, a lot better for it.

It's also not quite so inundated with ads.

Right. Well, ads, I feel like, are half the addiction.

It's literally half of my other socials, if not more. If not more.

Right. Yeah, they have like the banner out at the top and that's pretty much it. Most of them are all just going to be content related to you and your connections. So finding other connections, you know, is sometimes it can be a challenge, especially if you're just starting off, you're not sure where to start. You find people that you want to be with, you know, find people you want to connect with and just search for their job titles, search for you know, like the kind of people, your tribe, right? Like you're trying to find your tribe out here. So like I would go out and I'd search for CAFM. You know, I want to find other people who are CAFM certified. I want to look for fleet managers. I want to know people who are leadership authors. You know, I'll go find people that I'm familiar with or that I've met at trade shows before, and I want to, you know, connect on LinkedIn. And the idea there is just, you know, the more connections you have, the more of their content you'll see, and then they'll see your content as well. Kira, in your case, like you were looking for, well, you know, like show me executives and CEOs and like people that would be good as an EA that I should, you know, would be good to grow my network with. Right. Because you never know when that next career step happens and who you should know.

And, you know, as well as other of your same job title, like looking at other executive assistants, what they're doing, like, oh, that's great. They have so much insight and they're sharing this. And I'm like, oh, I had the same thing happen. Then you like get really inundated and you want to share what your experience or like they ask you a question, you're like, oh, I just had And it's really cool, like, cross-reference with these people you don't know, but who are, like, working maybe 10 miles down the road from you or who are having the same experience as you are in the same city. And it's just— it's crazy to feel so connected by not being so connected.

It was really funny. So we went through the job search for your position in December. And even now, I still have people from that who are still reaching out. And they're like, hey, well, who did you end up going with? I'm like, well, here, let me introduce you to my EA. And then, like—

And now you're friends with them.

And now you're friends with them.

And now we discuss.

And they're talking.

Yeah, it's cool. We're all humans.

Right? Just making that human connection.

Mm-hmm.

So one of the things that we really like to do to kind of encourage, because sometimes it's hard to get out of your shell. It's hard to step into it and just take that plunge and be like, you know, I don't even know my LinkedIn password, right? But sometimes you got to motivate people to get out of their shell. Kira is laughing because she was one of them.

I get on and there's like 200 notifications. And Josh is like, you know, you can go in there and like select what notifications you want to get, and I had every notification turned on in LinkedIn. There's literally 1,000 of them, every single one of them turned on. So in 10 minutes, I would have already 200 notifications. So there's— if you're a little overwhelmed by it, just go into your notifications, take 10 minutes, and just turn off all the notifications for the stuff you don't need or want to be seeing. It makes it a lot less overwhelming.

True story. Right. And so you go through and you kind of tailor it that way. And then we did this LinkedIn challenge and we're like, okay, well, Kira, you're gonna kind of come off the sidelines. It's time to get involved, right? Build your own personal brand. And we really do encourage our employees to build their personal brand. Like, we don't want them pitching RTA. We don't need them, you know, going out and talking about how great we are. A lot of them do that anyway, but the idea is that we want you to go out and establish who you are as an individual on this platform because, you know, just like we want to encourage people to save in their 401(k)s or their pension and their retirement. Your personal brand is going to be that thing that gets you your next job. And so we really want to invest in people and try to teach them and help them find that next thing, you know, so that as they're growing and building, like, they're, they're ready for it. Um, so we do this LinkedIn challenge, and it's basically— we call it the 10-3-1, and we got this from my good buddy Casey Graham over at Gravy. And the way it works is we want to have you do 10 new connections every day. So throughout the month, you know, we'll do this for like 30 days, 31 days, whatever, how long the month is. And every day we want to have 10 new connections. So by the end of the month, you should have about 300 new connections. And a lot of people get stuck there and they're like, oh my gosh, 10 new connections every day. I will tell you that that's probably the easiest part. I struggled a little bit this last time, but the time before I did it, I had like 500 connections. That was, that was the easier part.

I thought that part was going to be harder than it was. Yeah, it wasn't.

Like, that one came around pretty quick, and I've got some tips on how to build connections too. Um, so that's the 10— 10 new connections every day. The second part is 3 comments, and this is the one that actually drives the most engagement, and it's probably the one that people get— like, they overlook. But if you just go on to somebody else's comment or post and just make an insightful comment or engage with them or ask them a question The idea is that that will actually drive more engagement and more connection with not only the person you're commenting on, but anybody else who's seeing that. And you'll get a lot of connections just as collateral from posting on other people's stuff. Um, and that's the one that too, like it tells other people that you're listening and it shows that you're engaged on the platform and LinkedIn will then show you more stuff like the stuff you're commenting on and it kind of helps curate your content that way.

And it's not just, oh, I like this, or this was great, or like you're not just validating as a comment. Like, I really tried to make it a priority during this challenge to like write at least 2 sentences or to ask a question or to provide an example in my own life or to actually respond to a question that may have been posed in the initial comment and not just comment the same way I would in any other social media post because that's where like you build You build more in the comments than you think are going to happen. And when you start doing it, other people start doing it to you, and then you like build an actual conversation. You're not just posting to post, you're posting in order to be insightful and to have conversations, which I thought is, it's really great and vastly different than when you post on any other social media. You're not out there looking to have conversations with people. If anything, you're looking to do the opposite.

All right, like, I just want to post to get out here. Yeah, don't talk to me.

Yep.

And so, like, Right. And then, well, and that's just it, right? I don't know, a lot of them it's more about, I just want the, you know, the views and the likes and the— because that feeds that dopamine hit, right? But on this one, it's, you know, like the comment is, hey, I'm looking for replies. And so if you go out there and your comment is, hey, I like the post, you know, or great point, like where do you go with that as far as a conversation, right? And so the idea should be, how do you further the conversation?

I know it was, that's why I posted it.

Thank you. So like you say, well, I really like this about your point, but this, right? Or you post a counterpoint. Or you can say, oh, I enjoyed this. This is what happened to me. And you do a similar point. But the idea is that just like you would be talking to somebody, you know, face to face, and almost like we're doing this here on the podcast, you want to have that same kind of conversation on LinkedIn.

Right.

And it doesn't take long.

Even if you don't know them.

Yeah.

Even if you've literally never met them.

Especially if you don't.

Comment back and forth posting with somebody that you literally don't know. Yeah, they're having good insight. It's really cool.

Yeah. And then the last part of that. So that's 10 new connections, 3 comments, and then 1 new post. This is probably the hardest part for me is coming up with original things to post, you know, because like you just get into that block where you're like, yeah, nobody wants to hear what I have to say, or I don't have anything interesting to say, or it's going to take me too long to think about how I want to say what I need to say. And the idea is just post, just find things. You know, I got to the point like I was just posting quotes and then giving my hot take on the quote. You could post a story. You know, my stories actually get more views and more engagement than any other post that I do. Well, why? Because they're real and they're usually engaging. There's some conflict, there's resolution, you know, but the idea is like just say whatever's on your mind. You know, this is your personal brand, so this should be personal stuff. And it doesn't have to be stuff that you tell your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving, but it should be something that means something to you.

I think this is where Gen Z and Millennials kind of— we struggle with putting authentic content online because that's not the kind of content that we generally post on our other socials. It's very—

yeah, because it's all filtered.

It's all filtered. It's all fake. It's all got this kind of allure to it where it's just like, it's a step back. It's not personal. It's not vulnerable. It's not reel. And so coming onto the LinkedIn platform where you're posting insightful and complete sentences, like, it's just vastly different.

There's no emojis and no, you know, hashtag this, emoji this, photo selfie this.

No, it's—

I remember the day they added hashtags to LinkedIn. You thought there was going to be like a mutiny.

Was there always— not always hashtags on LinkedIn?

Yeah, no, couldn't do anything. Like, you couldn't do videos and you couldn't— the platform has come a long way.

I believe you. I'm here now starting, but, but yeah, it just, it asks you to be a little different, right?

Much different than you would be on your other socials. And it's so like, in that way, that's one of the reasons why I like it as a business platform. And they've done a great job keeping it on brand for that, um, especially in, in light of all the new upstarts, you know, like when Insta came off and when TikTok came on, like it was just You could tell that some of that influence was coming over, but they still did a good job integrating some of those features without losing the soul.

Agreed.

So when you're going through, you know, kind of advice on, on like sending connections and things like that, that was the last, the only one that I hadn't talked about was when you do connections, I am guilty of this, is I would just scroll through my phone and press the connect button.

Until LinkedIn yells at you, you've sent a lot of connections out.

Yeah, you can only send so many, right? So don't like do 100 in a day. I don't think it lets you. I mean, no, like, because it'll think you're a bot. Yeah, it'll kick you off. But that's why we do 10 per day, because it's just about the right amount that if you're doing 10 per day, that's about 70 a week. And I think 100 or 150 is where LinkedIn starts yelling at you and saying, ah, this is fishy. Um, the other side of that though is that it's— I have seen that it's a lot better when you send a personalized message, right? Um, kind of a show me you know me. So you go on to my LinkedIn, you look at something that's interesting on my profile, and then you send me a message with your connection request and say, hey, I'd love to connect. You know, I saw that we had this in common, or you're the kind of people, and here's some of the experience that you had that I want to learn more about. And so it's kind of an interesting, just a way to make that more personal. And I've seen better success with that. I will tell you, it just takes more time. And so if you're like me and you're just like, ah, I just want to get my 10 connections in, I'll send out 30 connection requests and 10 of them will respond yes, and the other 20 just kind of go silent. I probably ought to like, if I was going to do this again, I would go back through and all the ones that I had originally sent requests to that haven't responded, I think I would send them a personalized message.

And there is a way to filter that. You can go through and see pending requests. Yeah. And you can go back through and see all the ones that people haven't— are still pending, that people haven't accepted yet. Kind of reevaluate then. I did appreciate that, knowing how many I sent out versus how many actually accepted and what I was doing that was being more successful than other things.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

So as you, you know, kind of looking back on it now, you've gone through the 30-day challenge, what were some of your takeaways and what were some of the things that you enjoyed and didn't enjoy about it?

It was a lot harder, like you said, to make posts than I thought it was going to be. That we just simply because of the style and of the content that needed to be posted on LinkedIn and everyone. I think too that you kind of get overwhelmed with the people that you follow who have either been posting on LinkedIn regularly for years now or who are already really important or are these big people or these big companies and I'm like, I don't have anything to say that is anywhere near as insightful as all these other people. And so like pushing yourself to be able to say like, I can say something even if it gets 6 likes or 4 comments, like I'm still putting myself out there and I am building a brand so people can go back through my posts and review what I've said and the style of what I believe. And that's more important than the likes and like the mentality of just posting to post. So that was probably the hardest challenge. I think the coolest thing that came out of it was how many similar people I found just in the area. Like I was saying about executive assistants, just other people in the Phoenix area, or they say Oh, you may know this person that went to, from my experience, the University of Minnesota, or this person is also a US Army veteran, or this person also worked with you at Axon. And you can go through and go like, oh yeah, I do know these people, or like connections that you didn't know, and people that are connected to you in ways that you never would be able to have known and just not being on that platform. Yeah, so I really enjoyed like broadening out that, my sphere. Of connections. And probably the last thing I would say is regarding the photo, just spend the money and get a headshot.

Right.

Do not put a selfie out on your LinkedIn. Like, that is like when we're looking through at when we're applying, when we're looking at people who are applying for our positions on LinkedIn and or the people that don't have photos at all, like you're just having a professional headshot says so much about you. Like just the fact that you are professional enough just to have like thought about it just a little bit, just a little bit. Like you can go out and get a headshot for— you can spend upwards of $100, you can spend $30. Either way, go stand against a white wall and put on a suit jacket and just have somebody take a photo of you and throw it up on LinkedIn just to get that little extra finesse of not this is a selfie and you can tell that 5 other people's faces have been cropped out of this photo.

Right.

Just like the—

You like speaking from experience here.

Yeah. I'm like, "I love you. I love your resume. I love speaking with you." And then I hop over to your LinkedIn and I see that and I'm like, "Okay." We could use some work here. Okay. We could use a little bit of work. Just, it would have been just to put you a little bit further off if you'd just taken a photo of yourself against a white wall.

Although I will tell you, like, James had a lot of success with Izzy, his golden doodle. So he took a picture with his dog and that worked really well for him.

I mean, it's an adorable golden doodle puppy.

It totally is. Who could say no to a puppy?

I didn't even notice James is in the background. Like, you just like, you look at the photo and you're like, "Oh my gosh, look at the cute puppy." Cute puppy.

Yeah.

Animals always work.

Yeah, always. So if you're needing some ideas around there, you know, happy to help you on that. But that's gonna do it for us for this episode. So as always, just a reminder, if you are interested in the Fleet Success Playbook, we're gonna have new prints coming out of that. You can email us over at podcast@rtfleet.com or check out the resources at fleetsuccessplaybook.com. And then we have the Fleet Success Summit 2.0 coming up, Las Vegas, spring of 2023. In fact, those dates are, I want to say, March 21st and 22nd or March 20th and 21st. It's sometime there. So if you really want to know, you can go to fleetsuccesssummit.com and you can go check out that, get registered, start getting some more information on our 2023 edition. It is March 21st and 22nd. Thank you. So anything else?

I think that's all we got.

All right. Enjoy the rest of your week and we'll see you next time.

See you next time, guys. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you like the show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.