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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of image group international and award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies and hacks for the new tech world. Here you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image and reputation.
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Hello, everybody, welcome back following episode 3, where we discuss social media and personal branding. Today, we will expand on that and talk about how LinkedIn elevates your personal brand. Let me explain why LinkedIn matters. First of all, there are nearly 740 million users. Over 55 million registered companies use LinkedIn. HubSpot found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.
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So what does that mean? What it means is, if you're not using LinkedIn, your competitors are, and potentially your clients will be lost to your competitors. So you must learn how to use this tool effectively because it is a great platform. When used with the right smart strategies. You might ask me, Jon, how can I use LinkedIn in my favour? Well, I will share six steps with you on how to do that.
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Step one, you might want to re Introduce yourself or reacquaint yourself or Introduce yourself as a first step with your connection with a non-sales message. This is important to build rapport. And to remind people that you exist, there's nothing worse than asking people for favours, and you haven't been connected to them or have not communicated to them in a long time. Of course, people then will see you as a user take advantage of as opposed to somebody that's into building authentic relationships.
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Step two, offer an opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship where you're going to exchange valuable referrals with each other share opportunities from a leads point of view or a connection point of view. And a good example is there where I work with journalists every week. And I would share contacts with them and client connections. So they can then obviously offer them media stories.
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Step three, organize a phone call or a zoom call, get to know each other and each other's services, products and of course, potential clients, it's an opportunity to get to know each other from a more intimate level. And remember, this is all about building trust. Why should people give you anything, if they're I trust you?
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Step four, respond with urgency to any referral. If somebody does refer somebody to you, at least to the courteous thing, I respond in an efficient and timely manner. And this is also of course, very important as part of your customer service strategy. Step five, set up a system to stay in touch each month, preferably off the LinkedIn platform, doing that via text or email, we strongly suggest that because it's important to keep your intimate details off the platform and create relationships in another manner other than than the specific LinkedIn platform.
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And step six, use automation to reach out to connections. And specifically with doing that, you're going to get 10 times faster than manual. Of course, you take this all under guidelines around the white hat, and you don't do anything that's going to potentially jeopardize your standing on LinkedIn and get you suppressed.
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You have to be aware of LinkedIn also is about the following: when you usually again ask yourself, Am I using LinkedIn to attract leads and possible sales? By the way, as we already know, a lot of businesses do? Or are we using LinkedIn for reputation? Or Thirdly, am I using LinkedIn for leads and sales, but also, want my reputation to be intact. The interesting thing is that when you're linking leads and social reputation, it becomes very complex. It doesn't have to be that way. But you got to know what you're doing. So if you're chasing just leads and sales, that's a different tactic to building your reputation. So whatever you're doing in that area, just make sure you know what you're doing. So then at least you don't potentially damage your reputation.
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Also, be aware that having a connection on LinkedIn doesn't mean Have an authentic connection. It's up to you like the offline world. It's all about intimacy. It's about authentic relationships. It's all about trust. So just because you've connected with somebody on LinkedIn does not mean, you know that you're going to be best friends, it's up to you to cultivate that relationship and put the energy, any, you know, and the effort to get that relationship to work. If you don't do that, potentially, like any relationship, it's not going to be worth much.
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So let me give you a practical example, that illustrates how LinkedIn really matters. I want to share a successful client story. And that particular client story involved a business that wanted to, of course, increase the leads sales, but also was very, very, very fussy about protecting their reputation. So what we do is we created a nurturing campaign that was designed for them to attract certain targeted clientele. That led to a project that was only small scale to get started. But over time, the client was very happy. And over time, that particular relationship led to a multi-million dollar engagement. That's the power of LinkedIn. As long as you know what you're doing. So what I would suggest, just to be aware, is to avoid anything spammy. Avoid anything that's black hat, avoid anything that goes against something that doesn't feel right in your gut from an instinct point of view.
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Okay, everybody, we're nearing the end of the show. Thank you for being with me today and staying with me till the end of the show. If you need help with your LinkedIn personal brand elevation please feel free to email me direct the email is on the description of the episode. You can find me on social media. You can follow me on Twitter as Jon underline Michael, or on LinkedIn as Jon Michael, and on Facebook as image group International. Also, remember to subscribe to the podcast on a platform that you're listening to. So every time we have a new episode, you'll be notified. If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues. Last but not least, they're currently asking for the right to show on Apple Podcasts. For this, you just need to click on the link in the episode description. I thank you all again. I look forward to chatting again with you next week wishing you abundance in all you do. Cheerio.
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Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass" Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists, based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence and authority in the business world. To learn more and apply for your personal coaching, seminars and group workshops please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.