Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Hi there, welcome to the biz communication show. I’m your host Bill Lampton the biz communication guy, once again, bringing you tips and strategies that will boost your business, because my guest is going to bring us winning words and ways. I’m very pleased today to welcome as a guest, Greg ball buck, Greg Burkhalter. He’s a recognized authority on personal branding and LinkedIn, he has helped countless professionals around the world to find and grow their personal brand. Using LinkedIn, Greg Burkhalter, spent the first part of his professional career behind the microphone at radio stations, and Savannah, Jacksonville, Charleston and Atlanta. Following his radio years, Greg worked in national music marketing and distribution. Today, Greg is known by minute as the LinkedIn guy, and justifiably so I can tell you, he provides personal branding, coaching and LinkedIn training via one on one and group training sessions, corporate presentations, and webinars. And I do want to add on a personal note that I have attended his presentations several times, he’s helped me individually as he has, by now 1000s of people. So please join me in welcoming Greg Burkhalter. Hello, Greg
Gregg Burkhalter
bale the LinkedIn guys here he is so happy to be back, you and I have done this two or three times. And every time it’s so much fun. So thank you, again, for reaching out with this opportunity. Let’s talk some LinkedIn. I’m ready.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I linked him we are going to talk and it’s a pleasure to host you, Greg, one of the things of course, that has happened, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve been together on the best communication show. And so during a couple of years, it’s not surprising that some changes have probably come in, in LinkedIn that we the users need to be aware of wires, what are some of the changes and features maybe that we haven’t noticed, or maybe we don’t understand.
Gregg Burkhalter
Let’s look at LinkedIn from a big picture LinkedIn. foundationally is still about building relationships, and being a valuable part of the LinkedIn community. But as with anything, my strategy has changed over the years, as the LinkedIn algorithm has changed. The platform has added some new features and stuff, I would say right now in LinkedIn, you can build your brand and start getting credibility, believe it or not, without posting content out of the chute. In fact, commenting on other people’s posts, being part of the community. Also sharing information is important too, but common and can really get you involved in the community. And LinkedIn is always changing everything. If you’re like me, I log in in the morning, I go, what happened, something moved. So you’re right, LinkedIn is always adding something new. I will tell you, not everything that LinkedIn has is necessarily something you want to use, you need to make sure you check it out before it’s first, don’t just go all in. Because if you go all in on every bell and whistle, you’re gonna end up with a LinkedIn circus. So busy, you don’t know which end is up. So you need to make sure you understand based on your client base, and you based on your community on LinkedIn, this, this feature makes sense for you. Some of the recent ones, by the way, is one I thought that we probably would never come to LinkedIn. In fact, it’s it’s not been around since day one until a few weeks ago. That’s the ability to schedule a post on LinkedIn. So through the years, if you were to post on LinkedIn, on your personal profile, you would have to do it live on LinkedIn or use some other outside program. But now LinkedIn has a post feature inside of LinkedIn for your personal profile, and three to four weeks after they announced that they’ve also added the ability for you to do a scheduled post on your company page. That’s an exciting feature some of the other things, they’re kind of updating the message center on LinkedIn, they’ve added a new Focused Inbox, they’ve added the ability to put a star next to a message. They’ve also changed a lot of things in the settings and privacy area. In fact, if you haven’t browsed the settings and privacy area on LinkedIn, I highly recommend you do that because there’s a brand new section you probably have never seen before. It’s called the notifications area and this area, kind of controls all the alerts you get the emails the things you you see pop up on your screen. Those features you can control the your settings and privacy in the notifications area and last thing I’ll mention Do you is that LinkedIn, when it changes stuff, it rolls out gradually, not everybody gets it at the same time, LinkedIn will try one feature and might actually pull it back before it rolls out. So be on alert, look at the features thoroughly decide the ones that are right for you, and keep moving forward on LinkedIn. That’s my advice right now.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I wasn’t aware. And I’m sure many of our viewers and our podcast listeners were not aware that we could now schedule for a later date, a post on LinkedIn, that’s, that’s very valuable. Now, among the changes, Greg, and you and I have even talked about this before. Among the changes, of course, is what we see as following. And up until following came along. There was connecting only. And so as I look at the people I’m connected with on LinkedIn, some of them are following some of them are connected, talk to us, please about what’s involved in this relatively new thing called following the advantages, the disadvantages, should we consider it? If so, why? And if, if not, why not?
Gregg Burkhalter
Well, it’s according to what you’re trying to do with your LinkedIn, you know, game plan. Also, it all depends on where you are in your career, as a young professional, it is going to be so important for you to start building your network. And you don’t build a network by following people when you’re following someone or they are following you. For the most part, that’s a one way relationship, the person who is not being followed has no idea what’s going on in the other person’s world. So having a real LinkedIn connection is very valuable to you professionally, not only in your career, but it’s also valuable to you on LinkedIn, because you have an ally that’s in your network on LinkedIn, something most people don’t know another reason why I think having a connection is important. Whenever you search for something on LinkedIn, or somebody actually searches for what you do on LinkedIn, the search results they see are only their first, second and third level connections. So whether you have the free version of LinkedIn, whether you have career, whether you have Business Premium, when you search for something, you’re not searching the entire LinkedIn network, you’re only searching your first, second and third level connections. So the results you see may be dramatically less than the results I see with 13,000 connections. Likewise, if you’re hoping someone might be searching LinkedIn for the service you provide, and you have a very small network of connections, you might not even show up in those search results. And the only way you’ll get around this ability to only search first, second and third level connections, you have to use Sales Navigator, that’s the sales lead generation tool. Short of that, you cannot see only just your first, second and third level connections. That’s it. That’s one reason why connections are important. But followers are also important to you too. As you grow your brand and you start getting busier and your brand gets traction, it gets to a level to where you really don’t even have time really to connect with everybody at that point, you’re gonna start having people follow you. And also some people are going to still connect with you. Personally, my strategy I teach my clients is this, I would encourage you to connect with as high level people as you can to invite those people into your network. These are not necessarily clients to be our current clients. These can be well respected people in industries, not even your current industry, just people that care about being part of the community, and enjoy connecting people, those kinds of network builders are important for you to have inside of your network. So I encourage that. But there’s also going to be other people on LinkedIn whose brands are far bigger than yours, they really don’t have time to connect with anybody. They’re really ultra high level thought leaders. But it’s to your advantage to follow that person for a couple of reasons. One is, if they’re really a thought leader, the content they’re sharing must be incredibly valuable. And the other reason is, even though you’re not connected with that person who has a very large following, if you follow them, you have the ability to become part of the conversation with them. So when they post something, you’re able to comment and add your perspective to what they posted. And by the way, when you add a comment to a followers Post who has a large following, you just took your small LinkedIn brand, and just blew it wide open into a massive LinkedIn community. So on LinkedIn, connecting and following are the strategies both collectively that work, but if I had to pick which one I’m going for, that has the longest impact on my career opportunities, and being able to help other people and have people helped me on my journey. I’m gonna go with connecting with somebody first as my top priority.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
That doesn’t surprise me Because, right from the outset, you have, I think you’ve very clearly said, and you can rephrase this if I’m off base. But LinkedIn is not a one way event. LinkedIn is not a billboard for us. LinkedIn is a place for connections for interaction for change of ideas. And I’ll have to say, Greg, that once I learned that from you, my LinkedIn presence has been much more meaningful. If somebody just post only, and they never get involved in conversation with other people. I would almost compare that to somebody who walks in a room, and they expect everybody just to listen to them. Is that a good analogy?
Gregg Burkhalter
Yeah, you’re describing those people I call posters and go posters, they post and they leave. And one of the questions I asked people, when I first talked to them to gauge where they are in their LinkedIn game and their strategy, I say, tell me, tell me, Are you active on LinkedIn? What are you doing? And the first thing they’ll tell me is no, I’m not very active, then the next thing, they’re gonna say, Yes, I need to start posting more. When I hear that as their excuse for being more active, I know immediately, they don’t understand LinkedIn. Because you cannot post yourself to success on LinkedIn, you need support from other people to create brand exposure for you. And that support is gained by building mutually beneficial relationships where you can support one another in the digital realm. This is going to be earth shattering news to people, but there is no magic bullet to LinkedIn, there is no shortcut. LinkedIn is a long game, it is not an opportunist platform, the only thing you can do quickly on LinkedIn is a burn your brand and burn bridges that you can never repair, you got to look at it for the long game. If I hear you say, I think I’m going to give LinkedIn a try for a while. Please do not try LinkedIn, approached LinkedIn with I’m starting to use LinkedIn, it is part of my professional life. And I want to make it part of my routine everyday, if you do that, what’s going to happen, if you stick at it, if you’re consistent, if you’re authentic, if you have the right heart and the right tone on LinkedIn, your brand will grow, your opportunities will grow, your community will grow and your zeal for what’s going on in your life is gonna grow because you’re going to be in a brand new world of people you never would have met, never been able to exchange ideas with, had you not been on LinkedIn.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
And the fabulous thing too. For me is that, as is true with all the internet, is that there no geographical limitations. You and I can have LinkedIn conversations with people across the globe. And nobody looks on that as trespassing or intrusion. We know this is a worldwide opportunity, Greg shifting to something very important. And all these questions are important. But this one, I think, would have great meaning for a number of people. We all know, if you just listened to the news or read what’s happening, that there are many people searching for jobs, they’ve been misplaced, their company has closed, they’re trying to upgrade their professional status. Okay, they’re searching for jobs? And what way can LinkedIn be useful for those people? What would you advise them?
Gregg Burkhalter
You remember the old saying that says there’s only two things sure, in life, death and taxes, let’s add a third thing, you’re going to lose your job at least one time in your career. Okay, that’s, that’s the way it is nowadays. And when you lose your job, you don’t want to have to play catch up on building relationships, growing your network, you need to be always doing that. So when they do get into a situation where you have to look for a new job, that you have a support system already in place, because like I said, at some point in your career, this is going to happen. And LinkedIn recognizes this. Now, LinkedIn is not a social media platform strictly for finding a job. What LinkedIn really is, is your professional pipeline, to opportunities for conversation, but also opportunities for ongoing employment, things to fall in your plate. So if you’re playing the LinkedIn game consistently, you have a solid profile, you have yourself represented well online, you will get opportunities. And there’s also several tools built inside of LinkedIn that can help you in your job search. Well, first of all, if you’re looking for a job, your number one tool is your LinkedIn network. So are you in tune with your LinkedIn network? Do you even know who’s in your network? I suggest to my clients who are looking for jobs to go into the LinkedIn settings and privacy area and download a list of your connections to a spreadsheet. I want you to review that list. See on there who you really have a good relationship with and reach out with those people. Let them know what’s going on with you start that conversation because, as you know, a lot of jobs are never advertised. And these jobs are offered or uncovered by your network. And if you do happen to find a job that you want to do, you can look and see if you have someone in your network who was working at that company, or maybe has previously worked at that company. Now, this whole process of finding a job well, there’s a lot of things at play, you have interviews you have in person interviews, and in fact, you have virtual interviews now, probably more than in person interviews initially. And I gotta tell you, if you haven’t looked for a job recently, there is a fear factor involved in walking in on the interview. And LinkedIn has something cool built into the Jobs tab on LinkedIn, just go to your desktop and click on jobs, and click on interview prep. There’s a place there that lists 250 of the most popular interview questions. And what you can do is you can turn on your camera and your microphone, answer that question that LinkedIn shows you on the screen, send your answer off to LinkedIn, and LinkedIn will grade your answer and give you feedback on how well you did. So LinkedIn is helping you get prepared for that job. Also, under the Jobs tab, there’s a section down there that says Job Search Tips, it’s an area you can go to, it’ll walk you through the how to set up your resume, how to set up your LinkedIn, how to prepare for an interview, all this stuff, this valuable information to get you groomed and arm so you can land that next job. This is under the Jobs tab. So yeah, LinkedIn is a great tool, relationships, looking for a job uncovering career opportunities. You got to be on LinkedIn, in today’s digital world.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
That’s all very helpful. And I would encourage those who are watching on YouTube are who are listening on the podcast, replay that section and take some notes. Because it’s it’s extremely helpful what Greg just mentioned, Greg, we’re going to be back in 45 seconds, and we’re going to talk about something that’s a really hot topic. I want your opinion about Chet GPT do you wish
Speaker 3
you felt confident about giving speeches? Do you want to deal with difficult people constructively? And what about becoming more persuasive and sales, then keep listening now to Dr. Bill Lampton, he spent 20 years in management, so he knows the communication skills you need for success. I urge you to call the biz communication guide today for a no call, but very valuable. 30 minute discussion about your communication challenges. Call now. 678-316-4300. Again, that’s 678-316-4300.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Greg, as I said, I want to talk about Chet GPT. And I’ll have to confess that it was only about maybe 10 days ago that my longtime mentor Mike Stewart, formerly and gang in Gainesville, Georgia, but now and Nashville, Tennessee, I call Mike one day and I said, what, what is all this stuff? And so he walked me through it, it was, I think this is most people’s first impression. It was rather astounding, amazing. What, what then looking at the connection with LinkedIn? And what ways will this have any relationship with LinkedIn? And what do you see as how it impacts us? And all that we do on social media and branding?
Gregg Burkhalter
Well, I can tell you that LinkedIn has already embraced AI. Earlier, when I told you about going to LinkedIn and answering your question and sending it off to LinkedIn, that answer is going to come to you via AI. So LinkedIn is all in In fact, they just announced recently, that they’re going to use AI tools to help you improve your headline and your LinkedIn profile to help you write your about section is also going to help companies write a better job description. So all this is coming to LinkedIn. Also your LinkedIn people that post content, they’re extremely excited about Chet GPT, and what it offers for uncovering content and running content. Me personally, I’m not a incredibly knowledgeable on the subject yet. But as a bystander sitting on the outside, some of the questions I have are this, if everyone has the ability to use an artificial intelligence apt to write content, how do you validate the thought leadership behind the content? And I was pondering that question the other day, and I said, you know, what, if everybody has the ability to write content using a artificial intelligence app, one of the ways you can validate it is sort of like what we’re doing right now. Bill, you’re gonna have to see the person unscripted live, talking off the cuff with no ai ai interface, creating what I’m saying. Or see the person speaking or presenting in person, these things in the future may be your way of validating whether that AI generated thought leadership document has a thought leader behind it. So that’s kind of like my, my thoughts on it right now, Bill, I’m still out, I haven’t really dug real deeply into it, I will be forced to. In fact, I just heard the news a couple of days ago, that Coca Cola is all in on using AI on their marketing. Of course, we know that Bing has started using AI on their search engine, which totally awaken Google and put fear in them. And now Google is trying to counteract with their AI tools, the competition is underway, it’s going to get very loud and very confusing before we really fully understand the impact it’s going to make.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, my one experience with it when Mike Stewart was walking me through it. I, once they showed me how to do it, I typed in my name, ask it to do a search on my name. Greg, it was rather remarkable, the profile that I got back. And in fact, once you once you put your question in, it starts typing within within I guess, maybe 10 seconds. I’ve got probably 10 to 12 paragraphs that describe what I do professionally. And almost wondered who’d been watching me shave? Who is looking over my shoulder, there’s it’s almost spooky, in a sense. And certainly, of course, some of the the, I guess I would say the character issues that you alluded to, we’re going to have to be looking at those professors are going to wonder who wrote the term paper, although I understand there are ways to detect if something has been produced by artificial intelligence. Switching to another topic. Many of us are numbers, people, and it’s not surprising numbers. We look at our salary, we looked at numbers for our our grades in school, we look at numbers for the price of something. And when we go to LinkedIn, we’re very numbers conscious. How many followers do we have? How many connections do we have? And maybe even more detailed what we look at every day? Gee, I made this post how many people saw it? How many people commented on it? What’s your your feedback to us on? What the numbers tell us? And how can we have CAC and how can we evaluate them maturely without getting overexcited or get without getting too depressed?
Gregg Burkhalter
Yeah, the big buzzword now is I want to have a viral post. People just want to have that big post that gets, you know, 10s and hundreds of 1000s of views. When it comes to LinkedIn, LinkedIn provides you certain numbers, like how many impressions your posts made, how many likes or comments you have, all this is somewhat of a gauge. So you’re able to see how your brand exposure is moving forward. But the one thing I tell my groups when I speak to them is this. If you’re trying to gauge your full brand exposure and the depth and breadth of your brand, based on views, likes and comments, whatever perception you have of your current brand strength and exposure, I can guarantee you, it’s 10 times bigger than you can ever validate with numbers. There are a lot of people out there on LinkedIn that are lurkers, they’ll sit there, and they’ll just look at stuff and never interact or do anything. But you know what? Workers turn into clients, if you’re consistent on LinkedIn, and you’re seeing if someone up or Bahding value. So yeah, numbers are important. But know your brand is always always much bigger than you can validate with any set of numbers.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
That’s encouraging. Very, very encouraging. Let’s say, Greg, that I’m a newcomer to LinkedIn, maybe I, I’ve heard about it. Or maybe I’ve been inactive for a while. When I do to sort of kick things off a new or again and, and get back in the game?
Gregg Burkhalter
Well, first of all, you need to go make sure that the information on your LinkedIn profile is still relevant. Because what I’ve noticed is people set up their LinkedIn profile and about five or 10 years goes by, they never change anything. And when you start looking under the hood, you realize, oh, there’s a lot of problems here. Let’s just get your profile up to date. And one of the issues that not active users on LinkedIn encounter is this. They don’t realize that your LinkedIn profile has more sections than you can visually see when you log in to LinkedIn. There’s probably 18 to 20 sections on a LinkedIn profile and over half For those sections, you have to manually put on your LinkedIn profile. So make sure your LinkedIn profile fully fleshed out, then the next step I would do is I would probably recommend you do what I suggest you do, if you’re looking for a job, I would go to your settings and privacy area, print out your list of LinkedIn connections, and re familiarize yourself with who you’re connected with. And the people that you have some relationship with, or feel like has some kind of influence and what you do to start talking to those people with a message inside of LinkedIn reconnect with those people, then maybe the next step is once you go through that, start paying a little bit more attention to watch on your newsfeed. There’s their there’s their article on here that you’d like to, to like or comment on, which would give you brand exposure? Or did you see something on your newsfeed that one of your connections would like to read, maybe send them the link, so they can read that you just basically ease yourself and to become part of the community, what you don’t want to do is immediately start posting content, or become this viral video star who is full screen on my LinkedIn newsfeed with a video seven times a week, and I’ve never seen your face in years, you got to ease your way into LinkedIn, start rekindling some of the relationships you have, start interacting with other people who are active on LinkedIn. And then you can start posting content. But the key is don’t let up. Just don’t let up. Even when you don’t feel it, do it. Because I promise I’m a living testimony that if you do it long enough, consistently with authenticity, it will work and it continues to work as long as I don’t let up. And I’m not letting up anytime soon.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Greg, what what a highly informative conversation this has been, I’m sure that those who have watched the video are heard us on the podcast, will want your contact information. So please share that with us. Now. I would
Gregg Burkhalter
love for people listening to this conversation bill to drop me a invitation to connect via LinkedIn write me a note, tell me you heard the business communication show I would love to connect with you. While you’re on my LinkedIn profile. If you’d like to check out my publications area, you’ll find other interviews with Bill and other people some content where I talk about all facets of LinkedIn. Or you can visit my website at Greg Burke culture.com Reach out to me there or while you’re there, drop your email address there. I will send you my newsletters as they come out. And I would love to have you as part of my LinkedIn network so we can help each other succeed and enjoy this LinkedIn journey.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I want to underscore that that Greg Burkhalter is the real thing. He’s a very approachable guy. And he truly deserves that moniker, the LinkedIn guy. So I emphasize, I encourage you to get in touch with Greg and Greg, now that you’ve given your contact information I want to give mine I encourage people to go to my YouTube channel and subscribe if you go to YouTube. And you look at the search bar type in my YouTube handle, which is Bill Lampton PhD, when you subscribe, you’ll have access to this interview to probably 75 other interviews and since 2004, I have been posting communication instructional videos on YouTube. So there’s, there’s not only the interviews, but there are my solo presentations as well. Certainly, I want you to go to my website. Since I’m the biz communication guy, my website is biz bi Z biz communication guy.com. And while you’re there, you can check my services for corporations and leaders. And then give me a phone call 678-316-4300 Give me a call so that we can talk about it, no initial obligation. Talk about your communication problems and challenges and how I can assist you with him. Greg, what kind of closing comments do you have that would pull this all together for us?
Gregg Burkhalter
Well, Bill, when I do presentations, I like to give quick reality checks on a couple of things. So I’m going to leave you with a couple of reality checks, okay. You are going to meet more people online than you will ever meet in person the rest of your life. That was one of them. The other one is most first impressions these days are digital. That is because people are going to Google search for you. And what did they fine nine times out of 10 At number one or number two under Google search results, your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is too important to neglect. Come join us. We’ll see you online
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Come join Greg Burkhalter you’ll be delighted that you did. Thank you very much to those of you who have joined us on the biz communication show. I invite you to be with us next time when another highly informative guest will share tips and strategies that will boost your business and mine because they give us winning words and ways. Thank you again to Greg Burkhalter for being a tremendous guest today. See you on the next edition of the biz communication show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
