LinkedIn Profile Mistakes That Make Experienced Executives Invisible

So much of it for executives is about building trust. The headline is the strongest lever you can pull to get people intrigued and coming back to learn more about you. CEOs are the people who are least likely to engage with your posts. Doesn't mean they didn't see. If you're gonna do two super simple things to elevate your profile, the first thing you do is—

Most executives race to write thought leadership posts, but they miss the biggest driver of visibility. And pipeline, and that is a profile that instantly positions them as a trusted authority. Today, I'm joined by Judy Schramm. She's the CEO of ProResource. She's one of the top voices of executive coaching and branding on LinkedIn, and she's helped thousands of leaders transform simple conversations into content that really opens doors, not just for sales pipeline, but for all kinds of positive things for executive careers. We're gonna break down what really works on LinkedIn today, how to uncover stories that are gonna build your credibility, and how executives turn influence into sales momentum. Judy, welcome to Executive Signal.

It's an honor to be here, Raj.

I'm excited to have you too. Let's get right into it. Many people look straight to writing content without realizing that the most important part of your LinkedIn activity is your profile. It's got to be a profile that positions you as a trusted authority. So when you rebuild an executive's profile, what are the specific authority signals that you try to add that really almost instantaneously change how prospects perceive them?

It's so much of it for executives is about building trust. And trust is a combination of 3 things. It's, um, experience, um, character and intention. And LinkedIn is an ideal place to show all 3 of those. So you want to use the, uh, experience section to talk about how you got where you are. There are a lot of other sections as well where you can do that. There's honors and awards, there's skills, there's projects. You know, there's so much you can do to help people understand, um, and you know, what, where you've come from and build credibility. But then you want to layer on top of that who you are as a person, your character. And LinkedIn also gives you lots of places that you can put that. You can give people your overarching story in your About section. You can use the Volunteer section to show that you give back. And you can, you can show your sense of humor. There, there's so much that you can do with the profile. And then you can also state clearly what you're doing on LinkedIn, what you want to accomplish, who should connect with you and reach out to you. And it's so important to craft that profile because the people who are paying attention to your posts, who are drawn in by what you have to say, those people are going to go back to your profile to learn about you. And if your profile is empty, you are missing a huge opportunity.

I know. And sometimes you see these, these executives who have the LinkedIn profiles that are just job listings and it just, you feel like, I know, really, you're kind of missing something there. Let me zoom in on the headline. Because I've seen some people say your headline should be what you do, helping executives do XYZ. And there's another school of thought, which is, well, you really should put in your role, CEO, CMO of XYZ company, and then maybe something else. Talk to me about headlines. What should be in your headline?

Well, it depends on what your current role is and what you're trying to accomplish. So if you are a very senior executive, SVP at Cisco, you can just say SVP at Cisco. That stands alone. If you are a consultant or somebody at like a fractional CXO, then you want to talk about the value that people get from working with you. So it's the way I like to think about the headline is it's like the subject line of an email. When you are turning up in search results, when you're commenting on posts, when you're doing whatever it is you're doing on LinkedIn, people see your headshot, they see your name, and they see your headline. And so the, obviously your headshot is your headshot and your name is your name. The headline is the strongest lever you can pull to get people intrigued and coming back to learn more about you. So. You want it to give people, the people who are relevant to you, a framework, enough information so that they want to come visit your profile.

I noticed that when I comment on people's posts, uh, the first few characters, not a few characters, maybe, maybe, um, long enough to have a title and maybe a company and maybe a little bit more shows up and then dot, dot, dot for people to see more. But I noticed that. When I put certain things in that part where everybody gets to see the reactions I get is very different. I've tested this with other headlines that don't include things like, I mean, the big one that seems to work for me is that I'm building my fourth company, so I've sold the last three. So I put 3x CEO with exits to public firms. That one seems to really like— that's an instant credibility builder. And so I think when people look at— yeah, they things that, that show your credibility instantly, they react differently to the way you comment and what you post. Have you seen that happen? And how do you help executives figure out what should go in that first, first string?

Yes. So I've totally seen that. And, and we work really hard to craft the headline. What you want to do is think about it in the context of what you're trying to accomplish. So if you are looking for credibility with investors, if you're looking for to hire people, you know, in that case, you definitely want to talk about exits and, you know, the company's growth and all of those things, because those are going to attract that subset of people. If you're focused on lead gen, then you want to speak more towards the customers who care about their problem. More than they care about your expertise. So, you know, it's a balancing act.

That's a really important statement. People care about more about their problems than they do about your expertise. And I see a lot of the headlines and so on, just kind of like chest thumping and talking about who they are and how good they are. And they're driving like, you know, 100 leads per week for people and It's just, it's, it's, uh, you feel, it feels fake, feels a little artificial. I had one person who was clearly very early on in their careers and their headline said LinkedIn algorithm expert. And you look at that and you're thinking to yourself, you're not real, man. Like, like 2 years out of college claiming you're a LinkedIn algorithm expert. Come on.

Right. It's, possible, it's not likely.

Yeah, I suppose so.

Yeah. It's the thing I see actually so often is somebody will have a sales and marketing executive as their headline.

Yeah.

That means nothing.

Yeah.

And you know, it, that is, if you're going to do two super simple things, to elevate your profile, the first thing you do is fix your headline. The second thing you do is add a header background photo.

Okay. So that's important. The background, the default is this gray, multi-gray color that LinkedIn has. What should your background actually be? What should that image be?

Yeah, it could be so many different things depending on the points that you want to make in your profile. It, what I love to see is a branded graphic, especially for CEOs. You want the company, uh, some of the company imagery. You want the company logo. You, you might have the URL, you might have a call to action, value proposition. Um, you know, one of the things we've seen at Cisco is they have the, the theme, be the bridge. And so. Bridges everywhere, you know, and it, it just creates some uniformity and, uh, some coherence in the messaging. For an executive, you might have a city scene. So for example, you could have something recognizable in DC. You might have the Capitol or the Tidal Basin, you know, or even a street, um, scene from Adams Morgan. It could, you know, something that people will look at and resonate with. Or you could have something that tells people about you. We've worked with people who used to be pro football players or pro golfers. And so their header graphic is something that, you know, tells people they played football, you know, it's them in a scrimmage or, or on a golf course.

It's, yeah.

Yeah. You want to think about what, how are you going to stand out and how are you going to resonate with people? And the photo is a huge opportunity.

That's a good one. I probably should update my own profile with a, with a photo.

Oh, I love your profile.

Okay. Let's move to the about section. And I know we're spending a lot of time on the LinkedIn profile, but I want everybody who's tuned into this podcast to know that if you miss this part, of your LinkedIn activity, you're actually missing a very large part. You can't jump right into creating content. So we want to dive in a little bit deeper here. And so, Judy, you'd mentioned the About section. You talk about it should be a story rather than a resume because your resume is listed on LinkedIn anyway, basically. Can you walk me through the structure of how you bring out a leader's personal mission, credibility, things that are really important in that About section?

Well, we interview them and they spend an hour with us before we start writing their profile. In addition to giving us their resume, whatever other background information they want. And we ask questions like, if you're, you know, say you're at a cocktail party and you're trying to explain to somebody who doesn't really have a lot of background in your industry, what you do. What would, what would you say? And, and then we dig into, no, why are you doing that? Because I'm sure you're familiar with Simon Sinek. People buy your why before they buy anything else. And especially if you're in a situation where trust is critical, giving people the story of why you're doing this. You know, clearly if you're an executive on LinkedIn, you are highly capable. You could be doing a lot of different things. Why are you doing this? Why does that speak to you? And, and when you start pulling these stories out of people, then it just becomes so much of a stronger LinkedIn profile. People read your about section, it's near the top, and it helps people frame who you are and why you're there and what you're doing and why. Very powerful.

Very powerful indeed. And I, and you'd mentioned something earlier that you should put something personal in it. And, um, you know, what I put in was like, you could see in the background, I've got my drum set. I used to be a drummer.

Yes.

Right. So it was my fun days. I was in my, my 20s and 30s traveling up and down the East Coast doing shows. And, uh, it was a lot of fun and it's something that people relate to is like, oh, Raj, I like the drum set in your background. And I remember sometimes even doing videos. And I tried a green screen and I put a generic corporate-looking background. And the response I got back was, Raj, what happened to your drum set? They actually wanted to see my little drum set in the back. And so I left it back there. So, but tell me about what kinds of things make people feel like they can kind of connect with the executive that they're reading about. Do you have some examples from people you've worked with?

Yeah. There are, um, we worked with one financial advisor who, um, told a story about how she started her career as a salesperson at Macy's, which, you know, is not the typical finance career path, but she, we, we told a story that talked about how, um, when she was at Macy's, her Her job was finding the perfect outfit at the right price point so that, you know, the woman looked amazing for the particular event that she was going to. And she sees the financial advice she gives is very similar. She looks at where they are, where they want to go, what the resources are, and then crafts a path for them. And that just resonated with people beautifully. She was, especially because she was looking for more female clients.

It's such a relatable story. And I think the fact that you talk about something that has nothing to do with your actual, like, finance, you tie it into something that's so human, you know, you want to look good at a decent price. So human that, that really, I can see how that connects with people. Do you have other examples? I love these.

Yeah. So, we worked with this engineering manager at Cisco who who wanted more women on his team, and he was having trouble hiring female engineers. And so he told us a story about how he has two daughters and it's, it just really speaks to him. He wants to see them grow in technical careers and how important it is to him to, to have women on his team and to help them advance in, in tech. And it was so funny. Right after we put that up, he started getting more women applying for his jobs. And in fact, we were talking to HR people at Cisco and they were like, that's what you did? They were, they were amazed that something that simple made a difference.

Judy, these stories drive home the point about why you got to pay attention to that. Profile. It's, it's really critical. And not just, you know, a lot of people look at it as getting sales, but to your point here, you can use LinkedIn to be the magnet that attracts top quality people. And I know the job market is really rough out there. And I also know that everyone struggles to find A++ players. And we all want that. We all want them, but you get to pick where they go. And so when you create This is why I call the podcast Executive Signal. When you create that signal that's out there, you start to resonate on that same frequency that those people are playing at. And that's what brings you in, brings them into you, right?

Yeah, absolutely. We worked with this Fortune 500 company where the CEO was amazing at LinkedIn. And we were actually working with the rest of the executive team and they had recently landed a superstar CMO. And when she was talking to us while we were doing her profile, she told us that the reason she joined the company was because of the CEO's presence. She said, that is the kind of person I wanted to work for. And, and I joined almost entirely based on who he is.

You know, if that's not a, a call to action for why executives need to be posting on LinkedIn, I don't know what is. That is so important. So important. Let's shift now a little bit to what actually works in terms of, of driving interest. So now we're going to start talking about some of the posts that people go out there. Now you have, you have over the course of your working in this business, 2,500 clients, like thousands of clients that you have created these posts for. Now, what specific types of content drive real engagement and real conversations versus the people who are just posting and not getting any kind of traction?

Well, I think a lot of people do very simple posts. They think, especially CEOs, they just repost what the company posts. And that isn't going to get a ton of traction. It's important to do, but you know, it doesn't differentiate you. And the same thing with all the people who are using the, you know, employee advocacy platforms. When you just share the same thing everybody else shares, it doesn't really add much to the conversation. What you want to do is to do something that is specifically relevant for the people you care about, you know, and, and if that, if you're doing lead gen, if you're in biz dev, that means customers or partners. If you are hiring, you know, say you just closed a round and all of a sudden you need to double in size, then who you care about is prospective employees. If you are getting close to an exit, if you are raising a round, those are different people and, and, uh, different, you know, it's different messaging. And so. What you want to think about is who are you talking to? What do they care about? What do you want them to do? And what do they need to hear that's going to make it easier for them to say yes?

A lot of executives—

I'm sorry, go.

Yeah, a lot of executives will think, okay, that all sounds great. And I know what you mean by repost. I actually went through my LinkedIn profile as I was looking for people to interview for this podcast. And I found, because I'm connected to a lot of CEOs, The vast majority of them, 80, 90%, don't post anything. But those who do, I will say way more than half only repost company content or maybe an article they might have read, uh, oftentimes without any additional commentary. And so adding something that's your perspective, I think really changes the game. And let's go back to the origin story here for a moment, because that's almost what I would call the lowest hanging fruit, uh, that you can talk about. I had a guest, Patrice Poulzer, who was a former Today Show producer on this podcast. She was actually episode number 1, and I encourage everybody to go back and listen to— wow, golden information about how you tell stories. She uses frameworks and creates loops in people's heads that they have to close. Really interesting stuff. And so what she shared was Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx, uses the same origin story over and over and over again. It is— I mean, every week there's something about her origin that people hear. So I think when people think about origin stories, they almost feel like, well, all right, I've already posted about that, but that's not the end of it. You can keep talking about it with unique different ways. Can you share examples of how that process works? Yeah.

Well, the first thing you want to do is identify the stories that executive tells over and over again anyway. And, um, and, and so, you know, we, we kind of make an inventory of what those stories are because they do tell them over and over and over again. When, um, you know, when I'm researching a CEO, I'll find the same story in podcasts and in YouTube videos and on the website. And the thing is, you I think in marketing, for example, you get bored of your own marketing long before anybody else does. And it's because it takes up more mindshare in your head than it does in anybody else's. They have a million things going on. They have, they're bombarded nonstop by messaging. You have to repeat to get any kind of Um, any kind of attention, any, any kind of, um, memorable memorability, um, to get people to, to absorb it. And so we, you see top CEOs do this automatically. They, when they're trying to, you know, turn around the company or, or, you know, spearhead an initiative, they talk about it nonstop. And, and you can, you can slice and dice it in different ways. You come at it from different angles, but repeating it is, is very, very useful.

Yeah, I agree with that. And when you think about how we're affected by the media, you often hear the same talking points. Politicians do this. And you're right, top executives, you hear them talking about the same points over and over again as well. When you, when you guide executives to share their expertise, how do you help them avoid sharing generic stuff and really get into insights that set them apart?

We interview them. We do an interview for the profile, and then we do an interview for their strategy, and then every month we interview them.

What kind of questions do you ask?

Um, what are you hearing from customers? What do you wish more people understood? Um, you know, tell me about something that happened with your team this month. It's, you know, um, we point to something specific that's happening in the industry or a trend and we'll say, what's your take on that?

Love that. It's, oh yeah.

You know, I'm, my writers have, uh, a lot of them have a journalism background and so they, you know, they're good at digging into the story and finding that nugget.

I think the questions that you shared are so valuable because we have different conversations every single week with clients, partners, team members, and there's oftentimes a lesson that's really insightful for other people to hear. And I know that when I have conversations with executives, sometimes I wish that all of my clients, all of my users, you could be a fly on the wall listening to that conversation, right? And I feel like, well, that's your source of endless amounts of content is to just pay attention because we oftentimes just let these conversations pass like the wind, but we just need some way of kind of remembering that. So what's a good cadence? How often do you interview people? And I know executives are really busy. What's the, what's the process?

They really are. Yeah. We ask for an interview once a month. And, um, typically, you know, the first few months, 6 months maybe that we're working with someone, we, they'll do the interview, but we get to a certain point and we know what they think about things. And so very often what they'll do is when they get an idea, when they have a conversation with someone, um, they'll just send their writer an email that'll say, hey, can you write about this? You know, I talked about this today and can you write that for me? And we work from that as well.

That's a smart way of doing it. Let's talk about vulnerability because many people don't want to be vulnerable online, especially when you're in a company. That just feels really, I mean, almost wrong. You don't get trained to be vulnerable in business school. And so what kind of stories make you just feel much more human, that you want to go work for this person, that you want to do business with this company. And how do we tie that to things that other people, your audience, is thinking about, but they don't necessarily want to articulate and let other people know? So vulnerability, what do you do?

Yeah, so I actually wrote a blog about this. You don't have to be vulnerable on LinkedIn. It's, uh, because it is, it's a, that's a big issue these days.

Yeah.

So the, um, I think one easy way to do it is to talk about your values.

Mm-hmm.

And, and we have a lot of executives who wanna share, um, you know, the things that matter to them, the company values. They'll do separate posts or separate blogs about each of the core values. We can also talk about why they do things. You know, why is the company doing this? Why is the culture built like this? And then their take on what's going on in the industry, in the current events. You know, people want to understand how you think. Think. And LinkedIn is one of the very few places where you can go to hear how somebody thinks. And you don't have to do it a lot. You know, nobody has, is thinking so much that they have meaningful things to post 5 days a week. Yeah. You can post once a month if it's, if it's thoughtful. And it, you know, you're, you're creating something that really has value.

Yeah, it's, it's so important. And I love your line there that people want to hear how you think, because I think they can see activities that are being done. Oh, we're attending this event. Well, we're doing this. All that's good. All that's important, especially pictures. People react well to pictures. But when you start seeing posts about how someone's thinking, how companies creating their strategic plan for the next 12 months. I look at posts from, from CEOs of Google. Sundar Pichai posted about why they're making specific investments in Gemini and where they see that going. And you are glued to that couple of paragraphs because you want to understand how that, what lessons you can learn from that and apply it to your own life and your own business. And I think executives—

right—

this massive opportunity. You don't need to disclose confidential information, your strategic plan that's internal only, obviously. But people do want to know, well, why should I do business with this company? How is that executive thinking? And how is that going to relate to what I need to get done?

Exactly. And one thing I think a lot of people do not appreciate is that sharing the way you think builds trust. And, and normally trust takes time to develop, but one of the cool things about LinkedIn is that people can go to your profile, go look at your activity. They can see months worth. I'm so sorry. Um, they can see months of your thoughts, months of your posts in a minute. And it really helps them build trust faster. And when you can build trust faster, you can do everything faster.

Yeah. Let's now shift into your actual story mining process because I think this is a lesson that everybody can get a lot out of. Walk us through step by step, what do you do in that 20-minute conversation with an executive to pull stories out? Because my favorite line is facts tell, stories sell. It doesn't mean you have to sell your products. It could be selling your business to attract people that you want to have as A+ players working with you. Tell me about that. What is that process? What are the ways you get the stories out of people?

Mainly, we start with what stories do you tell in your team all the time? Or what stories do you tell customers all the time? Because those are their favorite stories. And then we dig into why, and, and why is one of the most powerful questions that you can ask. It's so, why did you do it like that? Um, what made you decide to do X, Y, Z? Um, and, and, you know, just again, it's that journalistic approach helping Helping reveal how they think and what they're trying to do, where they're trying to go. It's just so powerful.

Let's create a story right now. And I don't mean create, fabricate one. I want you to dig deep and think about one of your clients that you had who didn't realize they were actually sitting on a wonderful story until you pulled it out of them. Describe that.

Um, so I will just say I'm not the one who does the intro.

All right.

Um, but I, I do think, you know, we had, we, we just recently did, um, a profile for an executive who we'd worked with a couple of years ago, and he's taking his company in a different direction now. And I, I have to say, we had no idea the depth of his experience with AI. And, and I don't think other people did either because it was not, it was not coming through. It was not important to, to what he was doing a little while ago. But, um, you know, Patents and, um, he's been teaching it. There's just so much depth there. And then, and then bringing that story out, that was, that was fun.

You know, I think there's a lot of points here that people may forget. There are activities that executives do all the time that can lend to really good stories. I remember I was, so I'm very active at the University of Maryland, my alma mater, and I was sitting at an event where there was a student sitting next to me on one side. And another, uh, somebody who was also a board member on another side. And the executive was working for a cybersecurity company. And the student was a computer science student looking to get into cybersecurity. And I was sitting there and I said, you know, you should be talking to him. He goes, oh, okay. Yeah. And he just sat there. And I said, here, let's do this. Take your phone out, open up your LinkedIn app, walk over to him, like stand up out of your chair, walk over to the executive and say, I'm a student in cybersecurity. Would you be open to connecting on LinkedIn? So the student was really, really nervous and he got up and he actually went and he did this. And the executive was like, oh sure, happy to do it. Suddenly the student starts to get this confidence. Then I said, look, I'll bet you there's a few other people that I can introduce you to, but there's probably many more at this event that you should talk to. Let's practice. And so this is something that no, they don't teach you in college. How do you network? You might have a career center day, but they just stand up and give you PowerPoints on how you should network. There's no practice, which is unfortunately defeating the process. So we went and we started talking to some other executives and he did the same thing. Would you be open to connecting on LinkedIn? And he walked away with probably 5 or 6 connections that he didn't have. But the bigger thing was he walked away knowing how to do it. So there's next time when he's at an event, he'll use memory recall and go and start networking. I think that was one of the most valuable lessons you could share. I posted this on LinkedIn and it was one of my best performing posts.

They need to teach networking in high school or college.

Yeah. But I think the value of the post on LinkedIn was it started to show people the different sides of you as an executive. To your point about, you know, being relatable, it wasn't a story of vulnerability. It was just a story of teaching empowerment. And I think, you know, when people see that, they're like, yeah, that might be the kind of person or company that I want to do business with. And so I find that that's— I think it talks to your points about creating those moments, finding those moments in everyday life.

Well, and character, it shows your character.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because that is, you know, you're somebody who gives back, who helps other people without being asked.

I enjoy it. I enjoy doing it. Yeah. So let's, let's switch over to scaling content across your team. And so oftentimes executives will post their content and, you know, that's, that's kind of good and And one of the things that I noticed was when executives post content, the team that reports to them oftentimes will share their posts and they can use their posts to— if you're in sales, you can open up and say, hey, our CEO just shared some insights about XYZ. Here's his LinkedIn post. This ties into what you and I were talking about last week in our conversation. And these small things can help lead to further conversations, deeper conversations. Tell me about how you've seen teams leverage executive posts and then also how teams can create posts themselves.

Yeah, so they— people should be sharing the CEO's posts and the, the comment that you make when you share it should be different depending on who your audience is. So if you're you know, head of channel, you're going to talk to the partners. If you're in biz dev, you're going to talk about why this is relevant to your customers. If you're in HR, you're going to talk about why this makes the company such a great opportunity or why this is such a great CEO to work for. And, you know, it all starts with thinking about who you're talking to. And what those people need to hear from you. And that's what your comments should be about.

When you start to see posts that don't really perform well, uh, how do you diagnose that? Okay. This, this kind of post isn't resonating with the audience. What are the things that you look for? Uh, and that ties into metrics, what metrics actually matter?

But this is one of the interesting things about the metrics on LinkedIn. Is you can, you can see views, you can see engagement. LinkedIn gives you a lot of data now in the new analytics. But, um, what happens over and over again is that somebody who did not read— sorry, did not like or comment on your post, um, comes up to you in an event and says, hey, you You know, your post was great. I really enjoy reading your stuff. They've never liked or commented on your posts, but they say, hey, you know, we have an opportunity that might be relevant for you. And it's, it's so the likes and comments do not tell a fraction of the story, especially if your audience is senior executives. Because CEOs are the people who are least likely to engage with your post. Doesn't mean they didn't see it.

That is a truth bomb. Oh my goodness. That is such a truth bomb. I know many people, um, that I, they, I know they're looking at my post because when I go to a networking event, we're talking about those posts, but there's no activity. There's no likes. There's no comments from those exact people who are CEOs. I think CEOs engage the least. Online.

They do. And part, part of it is that they engage with VCs, with investors and analysts at the higher levels, but, but they typically do not engage with posts from the people they follow. Part of it, I think, is that they know people are watching them. And so they don't want to either give away what they're thinking or what they're paying attention to, or You know, um, create an endorsement where maybe there isn't one, um, a relationship yet.

So, so what are your thoughts on executives posting comments then? So you'd mentioned that they engage with analysts who they really need to please and, you know, keep up to date. Uh, same thing with investors. Um, so what about other types of content to comment on? What are your thoughts on that?

You should always be engaging with other thought leaders in your space. And, and part of that is to raise your visibility. Part of it is because the people in your industry who everybody follows, I mean, get into a conversation with those people and all of a sudden you've hijacked their audience, but you've taken advantage of the audience that they've built. To get your ideas out there. Plus, it's, you know, it's a really good way to impact the industry conversation and, you know, just grow your influence.

All right, Judy, this is very insightful. I think this kind of lays out a complete playbook about what to do, starting from the LinkedIn profile to how you mine the stories. I'm going to move into a rapid-fire round, and I have a whole bunch of Small questions that I think, I hope you enjoy answering. So, all right. So what's the most overlooked part of a LinkedIn profile that instantly boosts your credibility?

Uh, it's the headline.

The headline.

You know, what we talked about.

Okay. And is there a content type that surprises you most about how well it performs?

Um, carousels and polls. Over and over again, they do extremely well. Carousels have a long dwell time. And polls, just LinkedIn loves them and they get a ton of engagement.

That, that is so true. I've also found that with infographics too, that they tend to get a lot more traction and traffic. What are your thoughts about creating a LinkedIn newsletter? Because people do posts, they update their profile, but oftentimes don't do a LinkedIn newsletter.

Well, I was late to the game on this. I thought, why? You know, I blog every week. Why am I doing a LinkedIn newsletter as well? But, um, I started one, uh, about 6 months ago and I absolutely love it. LinkedIn goes and gets subscribers for you. So you don't have to do anything other than publish and LinkedIn brings people in to read your content. Plus LinkedIn's own editors are paying attention. On my first issue, I had a content editor for LinkedIn kick in and say, hey, this is really good stuff. So it's, it's a powerful and underutilized tool.

And I'll add a corollary to this. I've seen now LinkedIn posts that have depth, which includes their newsletters, or sometimes just regular posts that have a lot of depth to them, show up in search results. It is happening all the time now.

Oh.

All the time.

Yeah. LinkedIn is very connected to Google. And that's another reason you really need to, to think about creating a strong profile and strong content because it's visible on Google and the AIs. Yeah. All right.

Here's one. What's the worst advice that you see executives follow on LinkedIn?

That you have to post every day.

Oh, dig into that for me. Because a lot of people think that the more you post, the better it is.

You know, if there is something that you are trying to persuade the world about, you know, post every day, you know, and in fact, I even saw a statistic that said that people who post 6 to 12 times get the most attention. You know, we've done tests and showed that the more frequently you post, the less people pay attention. Now I still post 5 times a week because it's my job, but for most CEOs and executives, once or twice a week is fine.

Okay. That's good to know. So it feels a lot less overwhelming when you're just posting once a week, a couple times a week. That's really good. I think that's, uh, at least something feels more achievable. Is there a specific type of post that encourages the most amount of conversations?

You know, being controversial is always going to, you know, is always going to attract attention. I did a post about AI maybe a year ago that got crazy engagement. And I was struggling with trying to get a good, a good image out of AI and it kept giving me, you know, all male, very biased audiences and yeah, very, very biased. And that went crazy. We also had a client post last week about Target. And, and that went, um, that went through the roof. So it's, um, you know, things that are, that are on the, on people's minds and where people have opinions are, are always gonna get high levels of engagement, but that doesn't necessarily make those effective posts.

Yes. Uh, that was, I was gonna lead up to that too, because it seems like a lot of people are all excited about something that went viral, uh, and they realize, well, that didn't really do anything for me. If anything, it just created a problem.

So, right, right. Yeah. LinkedIn does not want you to go viral.

Yeah.

But unlike some of the other networks, LinkedIn deliberately does things to reduce your reach, but you'll get to the most important people and, and that's what matters.

Judy, I got one last question for you. I don't know how to even answer this one, but what's the one thing that marketing teams should stop doing for executives?

Oh, interesting. For executives, I would say stop writing their posts.

Okay.

It's, you know, I actually did a newsletter about this recently as well. It's the CEO's posts should have the CEO's voice. You can tell when marketing has written a post.

You can.

And, and, you know, if the CEO is not going to do the work, then, you know, you know, marketing could do it for them, but it will be so much better if If the CEO's ideas are in the post.

I see so many people falling into this trap because the CEOs don't have time and they think, well, I've got a marketing team. They should be just taking care of all this for me. I want this to be one of your tasks. And they tell them to go with their marching orders and the marketing team dutifully creates these posts, which sound like every other person, which do not include any of the CEO's stories, experiences, lived experiences. Not made up by ChatGPT. And I feel like they're missing such a big opportunity to talk about things in their own voice.

They absolutely are. Yeah. I mean, marketing posts are always going to be on message, grammatically correct, you know, non-controversial usually. But it's— but that doesn't advance the goal of building trust in the CEO. And, and that's just huge. You, you know, this, so many CEOs, especially in tech, are introverts and they're just not comfortable putting themselves out there. They just want the whole thing to go away. You know, somebody else deal with it. You know, I've got a company to run and, but they're, they're missing that opportunity.

Yeah, they are. And if you're a tech CEO, Like me, I'm a semiconductor electronics engineer, pretty deep into math and physics. And it took me years to overcome this, the way we were trained to solve problems. And I realized after several interviews on this podcast, I encourage everybody to go back and listen to some of these, especially about storytelling, because as an engineer, you probably tell stories chronologically because you need to be complete. And in your mind, you're thinking, I'm providing context. But that's not how you tell a good story. You actually start at the moment of tension. And, uh, I've got a full article thing on there. If you actually Google the word, the words, uh, business storytelling framework, one of the articles I wrote has 8 frameworks in there. It's one of the top performing posts online. And I'd love, uh, to get your feedback if, if these storytelling techniques work for you too. So, all right.

Yeah. And I have a blog on 17 Stories. Executives need to be able to tell.

All right. That's, that's great. And so with that, Judy, how can people reach you?

LinkedIn is the best place. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. You can also email me at judy@proresource.com.

Judy's got quite a few resources on her site and her very— she shares so much information. It's basically a playbook of how to use LinkedIn to your advantage. Uh, Judy, this was very insightful. Thank you so much for being on this podcast.

No, Raj, it's my pleasure.