Ron Sukenick - Embracing and Leveraging the Power of LinkedIn | 2022-05-25 NIA Speaker Series

And now I'm gonna go ahead and spotlight Miss Tracy Davison and I'm gonna let you take it away, okay? All right. Hey, everybody, welcome from Nashville here. Um, I am thrilled to introduce my friend and one of the best-ever LinkedIn coaches I have ever met, Ron Zukenik, who also happens to be one of my strategic partners. Ron will tell you that all the success he has had has been the result of being with great people. He is a four times best-selling author on the topics of LinkedIn relationship strategies and business networking.

Today, Ron is here to share with us and highlight how we can embrace and leverage the power of our LinkedIn. If you maybe are old enough to where you can remember seeing a TV show called the dating game, you might recognize Ron as bachelor number two. He was the winner of the show back in May 1980. So, please welcome me in... Help, please join me in welcoming my friend and our friend, Ron Zukenik.

Well, thank you, Tracy. I can hardly wait to hear what I've got to say. That was a great intro. Hey, everybody. I know you could have been anywhere today at this time, and you chose to be here. So let me show you how this whole thing's going to work, and we're going to move fairly quick. I've got a lot of updates, a lot of changes with LinkedIn. I'm going to share a lot of stuff with you, so let me share my screen with everybody. I'm going to show you as you'll see. I'm going to show you a couple of slides, and then I'm going right to LinkedIn. But welcome, welcome. And of course, when I say welcome, I'm talking to the Network In Action members. That's who I understand this. I know there are some franchise owners, but I'm really gonna specifically talk to, well, to everybody. Let me share a couple of things with you, and you may have heard it. All the success I've ever had has always been with the help of people. So, I've been around the world of networking a long time. In fact, I began the expansion for the largest business referral organization in the world back in 1988. We were known as "The Network" in the mid-'90s. They changed the name; they became what you know today as BNI.

And by the way, the reason why I'm here today is I support NIA and your concept and what you're doing. I've been involved in the world of business, you know, I learned early on in the '70s that I was better together with other people. So, I'm not a self-made millionaire; it was always through the help of people. I've had four books published; I'm a Vietnam vet, I retired from the Army Reserve, and I'm also one of 25 national speakers for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in their Yellow Ribbon program. If you need to reach me, this is kind of how you can reach me; you can take a picture of it. I just want to give you that info up front so you have it.

And here's how it's going to go: I'm going to show just a couple of slides, so I'm not going to bore you with slides. I'm going to go right to LinkedIn. You can ask me questions at any time, and if Tracy or Dan, if you notice any questions, please stop me at that moment, let me clarify things. I'm going to show you and share a lot of great information. If you want me to go to your profile, I will do that; just let me know. Other than that, I'm going to be on my profile to show you what I've done. And not only am I going to show you what I've done, but I'm going to show you how to get it done.

For those that don't know, LinkedIn was purchased back in 2016 for 26.2 billion. They're owned by Microsoft; I just wanted you to know that, no big deal. Just know they keep integrating that platform, uh, or more of that platform and its capability into LinkedIn. People always ask me, "What did they do?" This is what they did. This will help you in understanding how to leverage LinkedIn. It's influential, in fact, it's the largest professional database in the world, but I'll share some numbers with you. Look at these numbers, everybody; LinkedIn claims these are LinkedIn numbers, I'm not making it up. 810 million people, I can reach into 200 countries; I've got a lot of senior-level influences, decision-making people. Anybody can find you if what they're looking for is in your profile. First quarter of 2022, 47 billion page views, unbelievable. What does that tell us? It tells us people are looking for people for whatever reason, and don't get offended, anybody, if somebody wants to sell you something. It's obvious, it's a networking platform.

By the way, there are 2.9 million groups, most of them are listed, which means you can get into them. So, you want to be in groups; you can be in a hundred and gain access to people. But you should be in 15, 20 of them, and you should be in your best practice with whatever industry you're in, and you should be in your time. You can be in your target audience groups, and you can literally communicate to anybody in a group you're in, and you don't even have to be connected, and you're not going to abuse any commercial search limits. So everything I'm going to talk about, everybody, is the free platform. I'm not telling you to spend any money with LinkedIn, even though I can share with you the premium accounts.

Five million people coming aboard, two million posts every day, messaging is up over 200 percent. What does that tell us, everybody? Well, it's about engagement, communication. That's what you've got to do. There's 57 million companies listed on LinkedIn; you get a free company page that helps you become more relevant on LinkedIn, and you can now start inviting from a company page up to 250 people on a monthly basis that you're connected to at the first level. It used to be a hundred; now it's 250. By the way, the stats show that 73% of buyers are more likely to consider your brand if you're reaching out on LinkedIn.

I want to just show you the demographic very quickly; this is it. You can bypass the gatekeepers; you've got a highly targeted prospect list, you've got some pretty good income, you got a business mindset. That's it, it's about business. But, I want to share something with everybody, and I want you to make what I say meaningful to you. All the business, all the joint ventures, all the people that might want to come and visit you at your clubs, whether it's online or whether it's just face-to-face, um, it's not on LinkedIn. It's when you leave LinkedIn. You've got as many followers as you have connections. Well, the question you have to ask yourself is, where are these people following me to? And they should be following you to your online program. They should be following you to your face-to-face meetings or whatever business you're in. Lead them to a Zoom call, a phone call, a Starbucks, a Mavericks game—I know Dallas is in the playoffs; I got it.

Now I want to share with you; I got a couple more slides. LinkedIn is considered to be a digital asset. So, what do you do with assets? You nurture it, you share it, you maintain it, you protect it, and you grow it. That's what you do with assets. And if it's a digital asset, then what you want to do is build an online digital reputation. That's it; repetition builds your reputation. Increased interaction anywhere gives you increased cooperation. I don't have to teach you about social media, but here it is; you can share, exchange information, ideas, pictures, videos. You should be all over it; you should media enrich your profiles. Again, we're going to talk about that, and again, I'm going to go fairly quick. If I'm going too quick, just let me know, but don't hesitate to ask questions.

Now on LinkedIn, you have what helps you build a Social Selling Index score. If you go to Google and you search Social Selling Index score, known as your SSI score, you will be able to check your score. It goes from zero to a hundred; you want to be in the 70s. There are four things you do on LinkedIn to get you two things that are important to you or three things. Number one, search appearances; you want to show up in searches, and you can figure out where it's coming from and who they are. Secondly, when you post, you can figure out how many impressions and how many views you've had on a post, and it's part of your analytics; I'm going to show you that. And then the third thing, which is really important, not only did you show up in a search appearance, but you, how many people have actually clicked through to look at your profile. And if you've got a free program on LinkedIn, which a lot of people do, you know, you might be able to see five people that looked at your profile. If you've got Business Premium, which is the next level up, you can see anybody that has seen you over the last 90 days. So here are the four ways you're going to build those analytics: brand building, connect to the right people, provide insights, have a post connection strategy. Four ways to build the analytics.

Here's the question: do you have a completed profile? So, and by the way, take a picture of this, everybody; these are your character limits. I just want to share this with you. I wanted to show you this. Now I'm going to LinkedIn. If that's okay with everybody, which I think it probably is. And if I go to LinkedIn right now, let's just go... Let's make sure I got LinkedIn up; where the heck is LinkedIn?

Okay, everybody, I think that you probably see... One second, we still see PowerPoint. Oh, I know why, you know why... You still see PowerPoint? Tell me if I haven't put it on LinkedIn. Now tell me, you see LinkedIn? I see LinkedIn. Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, now everybody, let me show you what I do, and again, if anybody is interested in me going to your profile, let me know now. First of all, this is the banner you can go to Canva, create a banner, you can go to people you know that create banners. I want people to simply understand who I am and what I do. I think you might all agree that you can tell what I do.

I've got my calendar; I want to point out that you're really not hot linking any of your website URLs on your profile, but on the phone app, you can do it. On the phone app, you can do it. In fact, let me show you something, everybody. See this right here to the right, this is a speaker. I get 10 seconds to say anything, so watch what I've done. Thanks for taking a moment to visit my profile. My name is Ron Sirkenik, and I hope to inspire people to make the most from their LinkedIn experience. Now, some of you may not have that, and some of you may say, 'I'd love to have it.' So here's how you do it, everybody. Get your phone in front of you. If you have the phone app, I just want to give you this nugget. You go to your LinkedIn profile on your phone, whatever phone you're on. When you get there, I want you to view your profile, then I want you to go to the right of your name, you'll see a pencil. The pencil is always about editing. When you click on the edit, you go halfway down; it says name pronunciation. Now, if this is something you want to do, you get 10 seconds, but you gotta record it from your phone.

Let me share one more thing with everybody which I don't do, and it's called cover story. I can convert my picture into a 30-second video, a 30-second video. I can talk to people. Now, how do I do that? Same thing on my phone. I go to my picture, to the bottom right of my picture is a plus sign, I click on the plus sign, and it says add profile video. So that's it, people. I wanted to share that with you.

Now, this is my headline. This is a headline, and anybody can find me if what they are looking for is what's in my profile. So what are they looking for? Maybe they want a LinkedIn expert, a LinkedIn speaker, LinkedIn trainer, LinkedIn coach, growth expert, who knows what they're looking for. Um, and by the way, let's talk with the With that 'Let's talk' thing down there. I got that from Tracy Davison; I thought that was pretty cool. She's a pretty sharp girl, one of your newest franchise owners, but she's really... In fact, if you look up Miss America for 2022, she looks just like it, and she won't admit it, but she looks just like Miss America. So keep that in mind, everybody.

So, look what I've done. I want... Yeah, I don't know what they're looking for, maybe they're looking for an expert or a speaker or a trainer or a coach, whatever they're looking for, I want to be found. Now, do everybody see this here? These are five searchable hashtags, and how do you do that? Well, here's what you do, everybody. You go to your resource section, which is below analytics, and you turn on what is known as creator mode. That's what you do; you turn it on, and then you can add your topics. That'll just make it. LinkedIn likes it if you did that. It takes a featured section and moves it up above the about section. So you know, I can feature things, but let me take a look at my analytics, everybody. I just want to show you what I talked about earlier.

Let's go back to where I was... Hello, wake up, wake up... There it is. I showed up in 547 search appearances in the last seven... Seven days. There were 731 post impressions, interesting, that's a pretty decent level of activity. And I had 448 people view my profile, and I can figure out who they are. And I always ask the same question: why are they looking at my profile? Isn't that cool? They, for whatever reason, maybe they want to sell me something, who knows, but whatever it's up to them. Now I want to point out that you've got contact info, everybody, and I want to point out that you can put in three websites, right, three websites.

I'm based out of Indianapolis, or I travel worldwide. I got my birthday, July 1st, no big deal, but I want to point out that they can call me, they can email me, and they can certainly go to my websites. I'm leading them to different places, including my calendar. And, you know something, every once in a while, somebody clicks on that. Am I relevant to everybody? Is everybody interested in me? No, they just want to get their numbers up, so I wanted to point out, make sure your contact information is full.

Another thing I want to share, everybody, take a look at my... Does everybody see my LinkedIn address on top? You see this up here, everybody? If you've got numbers at the end of your LinkedIn address, I want you to go to the right of your profile, edit your public profile, take out the numbers. The reason why you take out the numbers is because it just gets in the way of the algorithm. People like it, I want them to... If they're looking for Ron Sirkenik, I want them to find me, I don't need numbers to get in the way. So I wanted to share that with everybody.

Okay, let's keep going. Um, see, I can add profile sections, so that's what you would do, you can add it there, and you can add it on the very top, you see it says add profile section, so I can add it in multiple places, but I, you know, I got a lot of stuff going on. This is the featured section, everybody, I can feature things. So, if I was you, I would feature people coming to your NIA meetings, I would feature every month, every month, every month, and I want you to feature people going to your website. I want you to feature articles you've been writing, I want you to feature videos that you're producing, just feature things.

Here's making the most of 2022, by the way, this is a great article. I think you'll like this. It's called 'The World of Relationships.' It's like a kaleidoscope. Read that when you get a moment. And then I have some video. Now, somebody asked me the other day, 'Do people actually read this stuff?' Well, they do if they're interested. If they're not interested, they don't read it. But if they're interested, they read it. If they're interested, they're going to go to my website, and if they're interested, they may call me. Do I get calls from people? I do, but you know, it's not like I get a ton because I know how to engage people. I'm going to share some of that with you as we move along. And, by the way, don't hesitate, don't hesitate to ask questions. There's no stupid question, silly questions because it'll serve everybody.

Now below the featured section... Below, and by the way, when you turn on creator mode, you can then put a newsletter together. You can do live streaming, it's great tools. Now, watch this, everybody. See, I've got a... Over 12,000 followers, no big deal. Question is, where are they following me to? I got to lead them somewhere. So, watch this, everybody... Yes, did somebody have a question? Yes, yes, go ahead, or identify yourself. I'm Lynette, for I Care Technology Geeks. I would like to know how do I go in and add my logo to show up on LinkedIn as opposed to it being... Not showing up, you know, even though I have my website there? Yeah, okay. Um, there's a few ways you can do that, but you're talking about your logo showing up in your experience section, like, for instance, here's my experience section, and by the way, the plus sign is when you add things, the pencil is always when you edit. So, I've got my logo, is that what you mean, Lynette? How do I add that logo? Uh, yeah, I've seen on some people, you know, even though I added it, it's not showing, the actual logo. So I was just... Yeah, well, I've noticed that they had to go in and tweak some things to make it show up. Yeah, the easy way to do that is you set up a company page and then link to the company page, and when... Let me show you what I'm talking about. Um, I put the logo on my company page. If I'm editing that section and I'm just showing you this right now...

Here's the pencil; this is my company page. So when I put my company name in, Lynette, and I have a company page, the logo will show up. Then I save it, and it shows up. Think of yourself, Lynette, and everybody as a brand extension. Okay, so when I put mine in there, it just shows up as blank. Maybe I'm looking; I'm looking at the top, so if you scroll back up on yours, do you want me to go to your profile or not? Not really, but yes, not really, but needs a lot of help. So that's why I said not really. No, no, but we're here to help you. That's part of the speaker's program. I just posted it; you'll see what I mean. Do you have a company page? I just posted it in the chat; do you see that? Um, so it's the last one here it is.

Yeah, let me look in the chat. Okay, there's Lynette. Okay, I'm going to your company page or your profile, maybe whatever it is. I'm not sure if I have it correct, but yeah. But here's what it is. If you have a company page... Okay, there you are. This is your profile; it's not a company page. But if you had a company page, when you put down on your experience section exactly what you have on your company page, it's exactly like, for instance, if I go to my company page, if I go under the "Me" button and I manage different pages, if I go to Relationship Strategies, which is my company page, I got it. It's called Relationship Strategies Institute, comma, Inc. That's what I have to put in my experience section for that to show up. Does that make sense? Yes, I got it. So I'm on my personal page that I made into a business page, but I didn't do an official company page. Yeah, and I want everybody to know now that we're talking about that if you go to the "Work" button, everybody see this "Work" button, if I go to the "Work" button, I go to the bottom, I can create a company page. Everybody see that? It's easy; you put a logo, yeah, and you become a little bit more relevant. And, you see when you post on your personal profile, um, people either see it or they don't. You know, when I post something, am I going to have twelve thousand six hundred people see it? Of course not. Am I going to get hundreds of people seeing it? Yes. Is any, uh, five people going to take action, ten people, three people? Who knows? Twenty people. But on a company page, they will get a notice that I just posted something off my company page. So I'm more relevant; it's the voice of my company, not the voice of me as a person.

Is there a way to transition everything that was on the personal page to... Yeah, yeah. Well, you would copy and paste. You're not really... You're not when you say transitioning, you just copy and paste. Meaning all my connections and all that. It's... It would be not transferable. Yeah, no, no. It's not transferable. If you're talking about taking your... I couldn't take my 12,000 connections and transfer them to my company page. That's not how that would work. Now let me show everybody the experience section. I want to share this with you.

I want you to... Ron, I'm sorry to interrupt, but uh, there was a question that just popped in, and I don't want it to get buried. Oh, that's great. Do you recommend a company page for solopreneurs? I do, Jessica White, I do because people are looking at company pages. There's a trend towards people looking at it, and keep in mind everybody that the bottom line for more success in your business is you've got to be seen, you've got to be heard, you've got to be visible. So it's a tool that LinkedIn gives you that you can use just like groups, and we're going to get into that as we move along. So I hope that answered the question. So the answer is yes. I would recommend it if you've got a company, get a company page. Uh, I think it's a great idea.

I'm asking because I work with a lot of solopreneurs, and often they don't have one, and I think they think they don't need one, but I do think it makes a big difference. So I was curious your opinion. Oh, no, thank you. Um, and look, a lot of people think they don't need... Like I had somebody the other day; he said, "Well, why do I need LinkedIn?" And I told them, "Well, it's the largest professional database in the world." I don't know, but, you know, I see... I don't want to convince anybody to need LinkedIn. I'm not here to convince you, you know, it's just one tool just like Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and Clubhouse and YouTube and MySpace. Is MySpace still around? I have no idea. I wish. Yeah, Facebook, I mean, it's a tool. All these tools are working; you just have to work it. It's called networking, not net-eating, not net-sitting. It's not working.

Now watch this, everybody. I want you to notice what I've done. I'm getting keyword-focused. This is my company. LinkedIn speaker, LinkedIn trainer, LinkedIn coach, LinkedIn strategy consultant. Um, guess what? I happen to be keyword-focused. Now, I'm talking about LinkedIn, and look what I'm telling people. I'm talking to a targeted audience. That's what I'm doing. I'm talking to a targeted audience. Then I'm telling them who I am, what I do, and why am I on LinkedIn. I, you know, if people want to know why I'm on LinkedIn, that's why I'm on LinkedIn. Look at this, everybody. This is a specialty section. These are keywords that help me with my algorithm. I want to be found. Take advantage of my strategy call. Want to embrace the power of LinkedIn. I always, always put my contact information everywhere. Whether they go to my contact info, whether they go to my experience section, who knows where they end up. Wherever they end up, I want them to know they can find me.

Now let me share something else with everybody under the same company. I'm streaming. I'm streaming. Do you see the... Everybody sees the gray circle? I'm now adding. I go under the same company. I add the plus sign. I'm not editing. I'm adding. Now I'm the president, founder, professional speaker, chief relationship officer. Then I stream it again. Public speaker, keynote speaker, conference speaker, breakout sessions. You know, who knows what they're looking for, but guess what, everyone? I'm streaming it. I'm taking... I can get in my experience section; I can get up to 2000 characters. In my about section, it's 2600. In my experience section, it's 2000 characters, so keep that in mind. Then I have other things that I do. I have pictures; I have videos; I flood it with stuff. Then I go down, and I want to point this out to everybody. See, I just got all kinds of stuff going on.

And every time I add things on my profile, it goes into my feed. Everybody knows I just added something. Now watch this, if I can get to the bottom of this... By the way, I'm the only lifetime member in the world for BNI, being one of the people that began the expansion, I retained a lifetime membership. I don't frequent BNI. In fact, I wish there was a BNI chapter right here in Indiana. Maybe I would ought to join somebody's group online somewhere. Now watch this, everybody. Now I'm looking for something. Why am I not finding it? Okay, I want to talk about recommendations and endorsements if that's okay with everybody. Once you are keyword-focused, credibility-focused, target audience focused, you want to be socially proved out. That's what you want to be. So let's talk about that. Number one, you could only be recommended for something that's in your experience section. You can't be recommended for anything else. So whatever you're doing, make sure it's in your experience section.

Number two, you can only be recommended... You can only recommend and be recommended by people you're connected to at the first level. Now I want to point out that it's easy. I'm going to show you how to do this if you don't know how to do it, but I want to point this out. By the way, I have given... I want to show you this. I have given 184 recommendations. I love to recommend people, and the reason for that, everybody, is I find I meet people best for recommendations. So why wouldn't I just practice what I preach? I've given 184; I've only received 174. Now I had somebody not long ago; they said to me, "Hey, Ron, how do I know you know what you're doing?" I say, "Well, just read any of my recommendations. Maybe some people might help you." Well, here's a lady that said something nice. Autism technology focused on access and inclusion. She was recommended to me. There's Jason Lafferty, one of your leaders, franchise owners, but I get people that recommend me. And here's what's interesting when you write when you recommend people; you show up on their profile. Now how do you recommend people? Well, first of all, you got to go to your network.

So for instance, if I go to my network, so number one, you go to your network. Let me show you what I mean, and I can search for anybody in my connections. So you've got to get their connection in front of you. Let's say I'm looking for Scott Talley. There's Scott, everybody see Scott? Everybody knows Scott. Yeah, I'm sure you do. Well, guess what? I happen to be connected to Scott Talley. Remember, you could only give and get from people you're connected to at the first level. Then once I got that in front of me, I would go to the "More" button, and when I go to the "More" button, I can do a few things. Number one, I can send this profile to anybody he wants to meet that I'm connected to. Wow, and the power is clearly in connecting. I can save his profile to a PDF. I can give Scott Talley kudos. I can request a recommendation.

By the way, that almost sounds like Tracy. Hope things are well. You and I have been doing things over the last couple of years, um, in the process of building my online digital reputation. Would you be kind enough to give me some thoughtful recommendation? I could say that most people will give you a recommendation or you can recommend. I always find that I recommend first when I do training or coaching or speaking. I always ask people if they'd be kind enough and they feel that I'm worthy to maybe go ahead and do that. Uh, and it's up to them, but I'm fortunate. You know, I can unfollow people, I can block people, but I don't have any issues. I don't get any, I really don't get a lot of spam, I get very little spam, but I don't find people spamming me. Do I find that they want to sell me something? Of course, so I want everybody that's listening, I want you to have anywhere from one to two recommendations for every year you're in business. And you know something? Somebody asked me not too long ago again, they asked these questions, "Who's going to read 174 recommendations?" The answer to that, everybody, is nobody. Nobody reads that, but I'll tell you what I do. If I want to go to a resort in Texas or Alabama or Mississippi or Georgia or Nashville, I can search the hotel or the resort, and you probably all know, if you'd see a lot of reviews and they got hundreds of reviews, I may read six or ten of them. And if I get some good reviews, I may go there. If I don't, I don't. You know, we all know where we can get reviews. I can go to Yelp and figure it out, but nobody reads all 174, but I will tell everybody this, I've gotten business from a lady from the Midwest Food Processing Association that found me on LinkedIn. They were coming out of Ohio for a convention. They were looking for a speaker in Indianapolis so they don't have to pay travel fees, obviously that's what they do for speakers. And what was interesting was, I asked her what else, you know, we spoke and how'd you find me and blah, blah, I was perfect for the event, and I asked if she needed anything else. She said, "Don, I looked at your endorsements, I looked at your recommendations, it's obvious you can do what you can do." So that was great, and so please, that's how you get your recommendations.

Now I want to share another thing for you, which is really cool. Everybody, I want to share with you, oh, by the way, I want to mention skills. You get they let you put in 50 skills, so I know some of you are probably saying things like, "Well, I don't have 50 skills," but you do, and the reason why you want to put all 50 in is it just helps you again with the algorithm. So what I'm suggesting is simply this, you get in and you start it in the top three, is what is shown. Um, and business networking, relationship marketing, relationship building, oh, that's, is that me? No, that's not me, that's Scott Talley. Why am I looking at Scott? Who? But he's got a bunch of skills. I know Steve, keep smiling, I, I did that by mistake, I didn't mean any harm, I like Scott. Um, let me show you what I've done, so you see what I've done, let me get back to me for a moment. Credentials, skills, where's my skills? Skills, where are your skills? I've reached 50, my maximum. What's my most relevant? LinkedIn coach, LinkedIn training, public speaking, the most they will show on 99, the most they show. But for instance, if you go to public speaking, 99, I've had how many endorsements it'll tell me. 368 people endorsed me. So you get more than 99, but they only show 99. It's like McDonald's. They only showed a million burgers being sold, but they've sold billions. I buy now at least.

Now I want to share something with everybody. This is so cool. This is really cool. I want you to look at your section where it talks about groups. I want to talk about groups, everybody, for a moment. And again, I don't know what my problem is here, but I'm having a little bit of a problem. Okay, now on the very bottom, you have things you're interested in, influences, companies, groups, and schools. I told everybody you can be in a hundred groups. You can be in a hundred groups. I've now, I'm just in 65 groups. I'm active in a couple. Once you're in a group, you can communicate to anybody, anybody, and don't even have to be connected. Let me show you what I mean by that. You're going to love this. I go to the "Work" button, everybody see that? "Work" button again, then I go to "My Groups". Let's say that the group that I want to talk to is "Event Planning Professionals". I go, if you're in the group, I can see everybody in the group. I can invite people, but I can see people. Look at this, everybody, I can message them. I don't even have to be connected. Now think about that, everybody, but when you approach people, your approach is from a social selling standpoint. You want to be a resource for people, that's what you want to be. You don't want to sell them. Nobody wants to be spammed and be annoying.

So, um, I've got a campaign that's starting up. I got a virtual assistant out of the Philippines that I pay five dollars an hour, five dollars an hour. I charge more than that, but they charge five bucks an hour. So for 75 dollars a week for 15 hours worth of time, they're gonna deliver a message that I'm gonna write, and I'm gonna tell them that I've got something that I thought they may have an interest in reading. Would they be interested in reading this? Could be 14 tips on relationship building and or LinkedIn, you know, whatever I have. It's a gift, and they're either going to respond back to me that they'd like to receive it or not. I'm not just going to send it to everybody. I could, but it's like fishing, you know, you go fishing, and you bait the hook, and you put it in the water, and then not all the fish jump on it, but maybe one does, and then you reel them in. But I don't, I want to be a resource for people. So I wanted you to know as a member of NIA, if you're in a targeted audience group, my goodness, unbelievable, communicate, and if you're on the free platform, remember, you're limited typically to how many people you can reach out to, you can never get to second or third level in most cases because you can only really connect or communicate to people you're connected to at the first level. But guess what? When you're in a group, you can talk to anybody. So remember what I just said, you can communicate before you connect. Let me share another thing here.

By the way, any questions, any comments? There are a few in the chat. Okay, go ahead right on. So, uh, from the top here, where do we find the score you mentioned? Oh, where do I find the score? Well, here's where you find the score. Let me show you where you find the score. That's a good question, and I'm going to show you. Well, here's where you find the score. Let me do it another way. I just did something, but I got to resume the share. Ron, it's in the chat too. I'm sorry. It's in the chat. Yeah, if I go to Social Selling Index Score, I go to this one right here, and then when I click on that, the website will come up. Yeah, and by the way, you don't have to buy anything. You don't have to buy anything. You're not spending any money. You can get your score for free, but you want to get into the 70s, and they'll tell you how to get there. Um, you know, a lot of people use it with Sales Navigator, which can boost social selling index by 20, but again, I'm not suggesting that you spend any money. You don't have to. So keep that in mind, everybody. Uh, what's another question? Dan, I hope that answers your question.

All right, uh, somebody's asking, "What is 'Give Kudos' in the drop-down menu of..." Oh, what is "Give Kudos"? So let's go there for a second. Now watch this. So if I go to the home section and I'm going to go ahead into the post in the home, every, you know, no place like home. Everybody see this down here? I can create a poll. Well, let me go, but I mean I can do kudos. You know what that, wait, what did they just do? Here, did they take it out? LinkedIn does this all the time. Let me go back to where we were, wanting to be on somebody's profile. Yeah, it would be. Let me go to Tracy for a second. Okay, you're right. They used to have it in that section. They change every week something. So if I go to Tracy Davison and I go to her "More" button, I can give her kudos. So here's what it looks like, thank you, Tracy, team player, next. And I can write something, and I can hashtag it if I want. And this is what, what it says. And now I post it. Now where does it go? It goes in her feed, and people will see it. Now does that mean anything? Maybe. Will she get a phone call because she's a team player? If she's lucky, maybe. And they used to give out about five or six a month. So if you're in a group and you want to give kudos to your leader of your group or you want to give kudos to a client or kudos to a fellow member of NIA, they'll love it. People love it. It makes them feel good. It's like when you're on Facebook and you like things. Any other questions in there, Dan? I don't have any more questions, just a lot of love, and you know, people are commenting on some of the stuff that um that's great. Yeah, they do want to know what your score is. Yeah, well, I can look at it. I, the highest I've been able to get to was 87. Nice. And then I float in the 70s, but because I've got over 12,600 people, I've got activity, so that's another way to boost it. Let me show everybody a connection strategy. Connections come in in your network tab. When I get there, I get about 10 a day, 10 a day. I don't connect with everybody.

I always have a note when I connect to people; I'm always very thankful when people accept my invite. I'm always sending a note; I just don't click on "connect, connect, connect," yeah, that doesn't work. It's about engagement and communication, but I want to share this with everybody. Here's Joyce Wells; I love your training through the... Oh, that's great! Thank you, Joyce; she's making me feel good now. What am I going to do? Am I going to ignore her? No, but here's what I typically do.

When I look at somebody, I say, "Why does this person want to connect with me? Why do they want to connect with me?" Then I would look at Joyce's profile, and I connect with people that have pictures. If they don't have a picture, it's a no-brainer; it's a dead deal. Then I'm interested to know that they're active on LinkedIn, and she looks like she's done some good stuff. She's got 8,588 followers, so she's a player; she's obviously doing something right. What does she do? I don't even know what she does. So connect and promote business owners to get to know. Yeah, as a men's stylist! My god, I should take off my hat and see what you can do with my hair. But she's obviously active and doing great things.

So what I would do is I want everybody to understand something. I can accept or ignore. Then what I can do is I can go to the "See All" button. Everybody sees the "See All" button over here? Now I can reply to Joyce because she gave me a note, or I can go to the "See All" button and reply to Joyce if it doesn't show up. But I can say to Joyce, "Hey, you know, if I wanted to, Joyce, thanks for the invite to get better connected on LinkedIn. I was curious, is there any particular reason why you would like to connect? You know, I'm in the business of helping people with their LinkedIn, leveraging LinkedIn, and embracing... Is that what you're interested in?"

Now if Joyce didn't respond to me in about a week, I would ignore Joyce. I would have I would ignore her. You see, I don't have to connect and then try to speak to them because I think many of you might have this experience. Think about it; you connect to people, then you reach out to people, and they never talk back to you. It doesn't do you any good. So sometimes, if I don't know why they want to connect with me, especially if they don't have a note, I'm asking them.

Let me give you an example. I had a gentleman a few years back from Poland; Poland, he wanted to connect with me. So it took me back a little bit; I said, "Poland, I could use more connections in Poland, I'm sure." And I reached out to him; his name was Ivan. I said, "Ivan, thank you for the invite to get better connected. I'm curious, any particular reason why you'd like to connect? Here's what I do." And then he responded back. I looked at his profile; by the way, it was a great looking profile. And he reached out back to me, and he says he works with a business development group that hires speakers, trainers, and coaches to come to Poland to speak and train or coach. And it sounded great. So I responded back; first of all, I went ahead and accepted his invite. I thanked him very much; I told him that I would love to come to Poland. And what I told him was that I would charge fifteen thousand a week, two-week minimum. I would do three programs. So for fifteen thousand plus my expenses, I'm on my way to Poland, three programs, 15 grand, two-week minimum, because, you know, Poland is pretty far from where I live; the further I go, the more I charge. I'm sure many of you are might be the same way. Well, guess what? I never heard back from Ivan. So I wish I could give you a happy ending and that he hired me for 30 grand for two weeks, but he didn't.

Now, do I have a connection in Poland? Uh, could I have followed up? I could, but look, we communicated, we engaged. We've... Remember that. In fact, I spoke to somebody yesterday that I engaged about six, eight months ago, and we're now back in discussion about things; he's now ready to take advantage of some LinkedIn stuff for his company. So I just wanted to share that with everybody. So remember what I can do: the invites come in; I can accept, ignore, and I can talk to them first.

And let me share this with everybody; I think I can show you this, or at least I think I could. Let me make sure. By the way, you don't see the PowerPoint, right? No, we see your um... Let me show you the PowerPoint; I want to show you something.

Okay, I'm going to share my screen again, everybody, as we wind down because I think we're getting towards the end of our time together, and I want to make sure everybody understands how you can reach me if you want to.

By the way, they change this a lot too, but there are people that could be following you, but they're not connected. Wouldn't that be interesting? Why are they following you? Steve, they got to be following you; they're interested in something you're talking about. Engage, and remember, everybody, all the business is when you leave LinkedIn; you got to take them somewhere. Lead them to a website, lead them to your groups, lead them to a Starbucks or where your favorite coffee house or a honky tonk down in Nashville. I had to throw that in, Tracy, it's my favorite place to go, honky-tonks. And I thank people, but by the way, there's something called the alumni feature; I didn't get a chance to talk about that, but you can actually... If you went to a school of higher education, guess what? You can go to the schools on LinkedIn; you can go to what they call the alumni feature. This is all free, free, and you can figure out where these people live, what they do, where they work, and what they studied. In fact, you can put in the years you were at that school, and everybody on LinkedIn that went to the school the same time you did and studied the same thing you did will show up. You'll find old boyfriends, girlfriends, and old friends, and from a prospecting standpoint, would they not be happy to hear from you? Come on, what a great tool. By the way, I just want to show you these are messages I get. This somebody that wanted to purchase my books, somebody that wanted to hire me for a program in October, so it's real people. You know, I get people reaching out on LinkedIn, and they don't send me an email; they don't have my email address. But they know how to find me on LinkedIn. More and more people are going to LinkedIn now.

By the way, if you're looking for groups, take a picture of this. You can use the keywords in the surveys in the search bar. You can look at the profiles of your clients, find out what groups they're in; that might be a targeted market. Or you can go to the directory for groups; there's the link, and you can see all the groups. But they're easy to find when all is said and done, everybody. It's just effective outreach, timely response, managing the conversations. Here's what I'm telling everybody to do every day: look at your status updates, like, comment, and share. Liking is nice, but commenting is much better. You know, if Scott Talley sent me something or Shannon sent me something or any Catherine sent me, anybody sends me something, my god, I can take it and run it to 12,000 people. Now, are they all going to see it? The answer is no, but that's how you help everybody in NIA. When anybody in your group, and you're looking to get referrals for people, which I know is real important because we all meet people best of recommendation, what I want to suggest is simply this: comment about it and share it. Liking it is kind of nice, but it doesn't do anything; commenting and sharing is powerful. Check your messages, read, and respond. Keep up on conversations, check on notifications. You know, I had a notification from LinkedIn that a friend of mine, I, who I've known for 30 years, check this out, everybody, 30 years. I've known this guy for thirty, haven't spoken for ten. He didn't notify me; LinkedIn notified me. So I reached out; we spoke. Next thing you know, I'm doing a training, and his company paid me three thousand dollars to do a LinkedIn training for the company. That was from a notification. So you want to check them. And then you want to search for connections. Do you want to search for 3 or 5 or 10 or 15? I mean, you can bring in 100 people a day, maybe, but three or five or ten a day is good.

By the way, I did write a couple of books. All through the eyes of a fictional character. I just want to do something special. If you need to reach me, I do group and individual stuff. That's my calendar, by the way. And I wanted to point out a couple of things: number one, you can get on my calendar if you want to have a discussion about anything we discussed today. And if you're interested in a profile review, you know, just a 30-minute thing, I'd be more than happy to give you one. Just get on the calendary.com/networking, and I'd be more than happy to do that. I'd be more than happy to support you; I support NIA. I love what NIA represents, what it's about, and that's why I'm here today. By the way, I did want to point out if I could, just so you know, everybody, my pricing always goes up when my birthday comes around, but when people want to be with me, I'm normally at $595 for 290-minute sessions. If you go to my website, you put in "happy 200," happy 200, happy 200, you'll save 200 bucks. But I'm in a good mood right now. If you send me an email and say something nice about what I've done, or even go to LinkedIn and connect with me and give me some kind of a recommendation, guess what? I'm going to tell you to put in "happy 300." So I just paid you 100 bucks to connect with me and to give me a recommendation, only if you think I'm worthy, and you may have some questions. So I'm here for you.