Can You Be Linked in – if You’re Not On Linkedin? With Karen Yankovich

Episode Summary

This episode give a great overview of how easy it is to make Linkedin work for you. Karen is all about Linkedin and she has some really great tips. The value bombs are simple but stuff you can do Now!

Learn how…
– to make effective connections on Linkedin
– grow meaningful and profitable relationships on Linkedin
– and the one thing you should never do!

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You can find Karen Yankovich on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenyankovich/
https://karenyankovich.com/
LinkedUp With Karen Yankovich
https://twitter.com/karenyankovich
Youtube
https://www.periscope.tv/karenyankovich/1lPKqXlapEwxb
https://www.pinterest.ca/karenyank/_created/

Kris: (24:05)

Hey everyone. Welcome to now your business with Kris Ward. I am here today with Karen Yankovich and we are so lucky to have her back. She was part of launch week and she was episode number six and she thinks a really great tidbits. You really want to go back and listen to episode number six because there’s stuff that you know will really help you and stuff you can implement now what it’s all about now your business, so I want to welcome you back. Karen, thanks so much for coming back.

Karen: (24:34)

Oh, I’m so happy to be here.

Kris: (24:36)

Okay. Let me tell everyone a little bit, but those who missed the first episode, but we’ll go back. Let me tell you a little bit about Karen. So Karen would be described as a social media brand strategist, business consultant and speaker. Karen Yankovich is the CEO of Uplevel media with the been there and done that in that arena of losing and then refining her. A focused approach to business and life here now offers coaching and consulting for entrepreneurs. Her unique, specially her unique specialty blends her get it done attitude with a passion for soulful living, interpersonal services and online workshops. Karen’s background includes over 20 years in the fields of information technology, marketing, customer relationships, making social media, her ideal niche as well. We have to mention good girls get rich Karen Yankovich podcast, which I was thrilled to be on and had a great time. We learned lots there as well. So welcome to the show, Karen.

Karen: (25:35)

I am so excited to be here. Kris. Thank you for having me again.

Kris: (25:38)

Oh, we’re so excited. I’m really getting into this LinkedIn thing. I’m really diving deeper into LinkedIn every week. So it’s really wonderful to have an expert like you [inaudible]

Karen: (25:46)

what happens when people start to get in my orbit?

Kris: (25:49)

Yeah, yeah

Karen: (25:51)

you can’t. You can’t help it cause you know,

Karen: (25:53)

you know, anyway,

Kris: (25:54)

yeah, no, it becomes addictive and I think it’s a really quality piece. So what do we always want to talk about is we want to talk about what can the audience get from you today? What can they do? What now can they do so that you know, we’re all about now your business, so we want to talk about things they could do now with LinkedIn. But first I’d like to hear a little bit about your journey because we learned from, you know, other people’s mistakes keep what are the mistakes or let’s not call them mistakes. What are some of the redirects where you got up one day and said, Oh my gosh, I gotta do something different now. What can we learn from, from your journey? Well,

Karen: (26:29)

I mean, first of all, you know, my journey was an absolute roller coaster, which I think many is of ours. There was no ladder to where I am today. There was a definite rollercoaster. Um, you know, and, and my business changed as my, the seasons in my life changed, you know, raising kids, kids in college, you know, home by myself. So, you know, I would say though, um, when I first started teaching digital marketing, which I loved and teaching social media, I was, I was working with clients on their branding. There’s digital branding in general, right? We had an agency, we were posting on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook for clients that I had been with, people that were doing that. Um, but what I found was that, you know, and I knew this because I owned companies before. My wheelhouse is not managing people.

Karen: (27:17)

My wheelhouse is strategy. Um, so I found myself as time went on getting further and further away from the strategy and more and more into did we deliver this number of posts for this client last week. So at the same time as I was teaching my clients to niche their businesses down, I was out doing the same thing. So my business naturally started to niche on LinkedIn because I, you know, as I was working with these clients, I noticed that they were all where they’re looking to brand their business, they want to talk about their products and their services and their products and services were amazing. [inaudible] all that interested in talking about ourselves. Right? Another side of that coin, I knew that the people that do business with them wanted to know more about them. Okay. They were interested in the product. So I was naturally bringing everybody to LinkedIn to get them started.

Karen: (28:05)

Anyway, we were writing LinkedIn profiles and really building out their LinkedIn strategy as well as the other platforms.

Kris: (28:12)

So you were using it as a tool for your existing client base.

Karen: (28:16)

And that’s how we go starting the Strat, we were starting most people’s strategies on LinkedIn.

Kris: (28:21)

Okay.

Karen: (28:22)

You know, somehow I started getting, I guess, I guess people can tell when, you know I’m passionate about it. So I w I was, I was starting to do some more speaking specifically around LinkedIn. And what I found was if somebody went into a group of a thousand people and said, Hey, who do you know that’s a good social media speaker, 50 names where you get put in the group. What if somebody came into that same group and said, Hey, who do you know that’s a LinkedIn speaker? 10 people would say, call Karen. And I started to realize the power of the niche.

Kris: (28:52)

Okay.

Karen: (28:52)

And, and as a solo business owner, I really wasn’t loving running an agency. So we started to wean out off of our clients and I started to just focus more on strategy and primarily LinkedIn strategy. And I do, I do, um, build in a lot of work with PR as well. I teach people when we do LinkedIn strategy, not just how to create a strategy to get clients, but you create a strategy to develop relationships also with the media, the journalists who’s writing about the kinds of things that you’re expert in and are you connecting with them on LinkedIn? Are you connecting with the podcast host of the podcasts you love? Are you connecting, you know, going to your local newspaper online and looking to see who writes about the things that you do and making sure you know them.

Kris: (29:33)

So yup, go ahead.

Karen: (29:36)

My apologies. No. So I started to focus more on that and I realized that, you know, that it, I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a mistake, but definitely an evolution, right? And evolution that I wouldn’t go back the other way with because I, the more I niche my business, the more business I got.

Kris: (29:54)

And what w so you kind of, in a way almost LinkedIn found you because you started using it and then it started working better and better for your clients. So then you started gravitating towards it and it just blossomed from there. Now in your early stages of that, what were some of the challenges that you faced as far as using even LinkedIn or, or your own business in general?

Karen: (30:15)

Well, I will tell you that, you know, like you’re talking about the shoemaker’s children don’t have any shoes I was teaching LinkedIn, I was, I was, um, you know, my clients were having these huge successes and I wasn’t really using it as much for myself.

Karen: (30:28)

So I didn’t even have 500 connections at the time. So I distinctly remember going into a business group and offering free LinkedIn profile reviews, [inaudible] people in the group because I knew that in order to give, and I would tell them early isn’t true, but I told them we had to connect and then I can make sure I can fully see your profile. But I had a kind of come up with this cockamamie way of like offering these reviews that I can build my own network and get up over 500 and now I’m at like 12,000. Right. But at the time I was like, I’m gonna be doing this and I’m stepping into this. I look like I feel everybody else, you need to look, I don’t need to look the part. Right.

Kris: (31:04)

So you, you were struggling. You didn’t have the time or the energy to fix your own profile,

Karen: (31:09)

Right

Kris: (31:09)

but you were giving audits to other profiles.

Karen: (31:10)

Right

Kris: (31:11)

So, but the really great thing about LinkedIn is you can see when someone’s checked out your profile, did you have a wave of nausea when you connected with someone and I’ll help you with your profile, then you are, they’re going to look at mine and you do this.

Karen: (31:23)

I don’t really get that, but I do get like profile and be like, Oh God, that’s a great profile. You know. Um, and this was before I started doing it. I looked at people’s LinkedIn profiles. I’m like, wow, that’s amazing. Um, cause here’s the thing, I’m not a writer. I don’t write LinkedIn profiles. I have people that do it. I know what I want to see. Like we, you know, my company, one of the things we still do is rewrite LinkedIn profiles. And if one of my writers is working with a client that I’m working on with strategy, I’ll look at that profile and say I want them more positioned as a speaker.

Karen: (31:53)

I want them more positioned like this but I don’t write it. So I had a little envy for the people that had the copy skill. Um, so it was more that than I had profile shame. I didn’t, I don’t really.

Kris: (32:04)

say anything about profile shame, but it was something you were selling and you’re the, you started this story saying I didn’t have it but I’m selling this service. So that’s a really interesting part. What I wanna hear from listeners is how when I’m selling something that I know I can do, but I haven’t had the time to do for my own company and I know they can check mine in a second. How did you make that leap in sales? Like not about shaming. I didn’t need this shit like it was,

Karen: (32:29)

I think that it happened pretty quickly. Like there wasn’t a lot of time that it was there and it happened pretty quickly.

Karen: (32:33)

But I just, but I just think we have this memory of saying I need more people connected to more people, you know? So I came up with this like, Hey, to grow my network by offering and it was free so I provided value but also started to position me as a LinkedIn expert in that group. Right.

Kris: (32:48)

Perfect!

Karen: (32:49)

And then they will come start coming to me for, for some private questions. So yeah, I mean listen and you know, LinkedIn changes all the time. So when you’re teachings, I get a training one time for a whole company on LinkedIn company page. I think it was or I didn’t remember what it was, but I know that it went home that night and pulled up LinkedIn and they completely changed it. And I had to call the customer the next morning and say, you know, that training we did yesterday is already outdated. Oh, so, so that kind of stuff just happens. You guys are on a roll with it, you know, and do whatever you had to do to, you know, to um, make it right.

Kris: (33:29)

And it is an exhausting race sometimes because you’re just doing your best all of a sudden without, I mean it’s a different time. All of a sudden this big conglomerate, that company that rules all of our behaviors changed the rules without any indication or warning. And now we must play catch up. But I think what’s really interesting in your story, I want to pick up on a couple of things is you wanted to dive in a little bit more and be more niche on your LinkedIn. So then you said, okay, I’m going to back to some stuff we discussed in episode six. You talked about really making a valuable connection so you, you gave a free service to give them audits on their progress. So that’s a really, I wanted everyone to really think here that for a moment, instead of just blitzing people and saying, can we connect you? You know, my pet peeve is when I get the, Hey, can we hop on a call for what? Like what? Like do we want to talk about the weather or your favorite food? I need to have, I don’t want to be rude and I don’t know how to send back and say, well, under the moon, what category do you want to discuss? Right. I just have to have an idea.

Karen: (34:28)

So you think I can do, I like to control that. And that’s why if I offer LinkedIn profile reviews, I do them all the time and I’m happy to do that.

Kris: (34:34)

So you still do that?

Karen: (34:36)

I do. I do. And Kris, I get a ton of clients that way.

Kris: (34:39)

Perfect

Karen: (34:40)

I was interviewed on a podcast a couple months ago. I also heard it was a pretty big podcast and I offered LinkedIn profile reviews and I got swamped, but I got probably three private clients from that, you know, which is, which are high paying clients. So I still do it. I did a conference a couple of weeks ago, the Xi podcast conference. I spoke at that conference and they had an app that, that was, um, that was part of the comments, but it was running months before the conference started. So I started a thread and the app and I was doing LinkedIn profile reviews for people that were going to the conference before they even showed up at the conference. The one I showed up at that conference, people already knew me. They thank me. I had, I had screenshots of people from that conference that had said, Oh my gosh, my profile views went up by 400% by making those do little changes by the time we got to that conference that was so valuable to me. So those kinds of things are, you know, I mean that’s a, that’s really like, do we like showing people don’t tell people how good you are, show them how good you are.

Kris: (35:37)

Yeah, that is. Well, I mean that’s great. Now what, you know, what happens to the all of us? So when somebody gets a really great example and a great stories, we go, Oh yeah, well she’s a LinkedIn expert. And so then she’s giving LinkedIn audits, but that’s not going to help me because I either can’t give away my service or my service is different. What is it? Do you deal with clients? So what are some ideas that you could give us when it now just seems so perfect and flawless, the way you describe it, but you deal with people all day long. So what are some of the tips and techniques you give them for offering or reaching out or making those kinds of connections? I mean, you know,

Karen: (36:17)

there was a, um, do you, do you know Denise Duffield Thomas, she wrote the book recently. [inaudible] uh, yes. So Denise Short in that book, her services are either free or expensive. Okay. And I, I like that theory because you know, there’s a lot of value in offering free services to people. You know, I mean I’ve always got, we, you know, we build our email lists by giving people something for free. Right? So you control it. Like I control it. I say drop in your link and then I know it’s gonna take me two or three minutes per person. I usually do a print video review. I give them one tiny little thing to change. I don’t make it, don’t give them a whole profile review. I say, try this, start with this, start with that. And then tag me when you’re done, they’re gonna look at it. They don’t always do that. They don’t often do that. Um, but it’s still, when you’re light touch, it’s high touch and that,

Karen: (37:07)

okay.

Karen: (37:08)

[inaudible] in my, that’s that, that’s on my brand. I want people to feel very well taken care of and I think you can find something and I’m ha, you know, I mean you can find something. You just got to be creative.

Kris: (37:19)

So do you have any, and maybe I’m putting you on the spot here because it’s really, I’m talking to you about you. So with you it seems now cause you’re the LinkedIn expert and you’re giving the LinkedIn audit, that seems so simple, although lots of other LinkedIn experts are not doing it. So it’s only simple when it’s done well. That’s my position in business. Anything done well? Looks easy. So do you have any examples of clients that you have and serve some ways that they offered? Not, you know, either free services or to be up service that would, we’d love to hear those.

Karen: (37:49)

Yeah. So I have a client who is a business coach and this just happened last week and she, we, she is looking, she’s also a widow, so I’m, if you’re listening to this, you know who you are. Um, she, we were brainstorming, she’s in my mastermind and we were brainstorming a little bit how she [inaudible] could decide if she wants to kind of move into because there’s a lot of widows that need support in business in their careers, right? So does she want to niche down that far? And she’s not really sure the, wait, wait, what we really talked about was what if for the rest of 2019 you reach out to organizations that support widows when you say, listen, I’m a career coach, I support widows and I’m looking to interview or have conversations with a hundred widows between now and the end of the year to talk to them and see how they, what kind of support they may need around their career as they’re going through this transition.

Karen: (38:45)

Now this is win, win, win, win. Because she’s going to, the more conversations you have with clients, the clearer your own messaging gets. So I think that so important. So she’ll get clear on her messaging, she’ll get a lot of information from these people as to where, you know, what kind of support she can give them. The organization now knows she exists and she’s just providing value to their people so they need to speak or are they doing anything? She’s now made a really valuable connection with that organization and of those hundred people, chances are she’s going to get some clients.

Kris: (39:18)

That’s a great example and thank you for sharing that with us. And I think that really is, you know, a powerful lesson in what, what I heard and I, and I learned this myself as well. You’re right. You know, in the past you, I always tried to get my messaging correct and make sure, you know, I’m professional Chris before I put it out there and you just over-processed it too. It doesn’t even matter. Even if it was good, I put it out there to an audience that I have to know what their needs are and what they want. It’s not what I want. So, and also

Karen: (39:46)

often we miss that Mark all this time and effort into our copy. And then when we get out there, they’re like, well, I don’t care about that. I care about this. And we’re like, Oh my gosh.

Kris: (39:54)

Yeah. So I found taking messy action and doing it now you know the now for your business today, people I would really want you to hear is when you put stuff out there and you keep putting out day after day, not even like even if no one’s listening and you don’t get any response back from whatever marketplace you’re putting it in and we suggest LinkedIn. But even if you weren’t, what I found is just hearing myself talk or saying, Oh, I could see that a better way. Or I would be talking to a client and I would hear something when I’m coaching them and Oh my gosh, that would make a great video. I could say that better tomorrow. So just constantly recycling the message, tweaking it very much like comedians who spend months and months and months on the 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and they’re just tweaking the words and burning it down to its most efficient and most powerful, you know, comedic approach. So that’s what I learned with my messaging is you’re 100% right. The more you get out there, they’re aware of you, then you’re building relationships and now you’re really honing in on your own messaging. So only good can come from that. So I think that that people, that’s our big takeaway. We’ve learned a lot today from Karen and the power of LinkedIn, and I’m sure she’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Karen: (41:06)

Yeah, absolutely. And I will, if you tell me that you heard me on the show and you want a profile review, I don’t review everyone’s profile that connects with me on LinkedIn, but if you tell me that you want a little review on your profile, I’m happy to do one.

Kris: (41:17)

Well that sounds like a really great gift. So we thank you for that. So I would definitely take her up on that opportunity because I have seen her work and it is fabulous. She’s, she really does know her stuff and people have really enjoyed working with her. I know a couple of your clients, so that’s pretty awesome. So Karen, as we wrap up and you gave us lots that we could do today so that we could, you know, my audience can now their business and you can now your business, where can we find you? We can find you on LinkedIn and I’m not sure if I’ve already mentioned this. You’ve got an amazing podcast that I really enjoyed being on. Um, which would be good girls get rich.

Karen: (41:54)

Yeah.

Kris: (41:56)

Be sure to find me on it. No.

Karen: (41:58)

yes, absolutely. Yeah. Lots of find the episode number and put it in the show notes here.

Kris: (42:03)

Yeah. But, uh, it was a great time and [inaudible] always, always, always lots of nug nuggets there. Just like there are here today. So, so my missing it. Yeah.

Karen: (42:10)

You think there’s anywhere else they can find you or [inaudible] across all social media. If you want some support for your, um, to get started with your own profile, you can go to LinkedIn profile, tips.com that’s completely free and you’ll get a couple little videos to get you started on creating a great profile.

Kris: (42:27)

Fabulous. Karen, I cannot thank you enough today so much. Thank you for joining us and sharing all your knowledge. I really appreciate it. And you guys at the next episode.