Imperfect Marketing

Episode 2: Imperfect Marketing with Guest Brenda Meller

May 15, 2022 Kendra Corman Season 1 Episode 2
Imperfect Marketing
Episode 2: Imperfect Marketing with Guest Brenda Meller
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Welcome to the first episode of Imperfect Marketing! I am joined by Brenda Meller of Meller Marketing in today's episode.

Brenda is one of my favorite people and one of the best LinkedIn marketers. She niched down her business and focused exclusively on LinkedIn; as a result, her business has grown!

We can learn many things from Brenda, including how she handles her goals, stays on task, and even tips on improving your LinkedIn profile.

Listen today to learn more!

Click Here to access the transcript and follow along.

 

Related and Helpful Links:



Transform Your Communication Strategy with AI

Get my free eBook "Mastering AI in Communications" and learn how to leverage AI to enhance your business communication.

Whether you're looking to boost your content creation, grow your audience, or refine your brand's voice - this book covers practical strategies to integrate AI effectively.

Get Your Copy Here

Discover how the CREATE framework allows you to shape AI tools into allies that save time while amplifying your unique perspective.



Intro/Outro:

Welcome to the Imperfect Marketing Podcast, with your host, Kendra Corman. 

On this show, Kendra and her guests cover marketing topics to help time-constrained small business owners looking to do more effective and efficient marketing to drive sales and leads. 

Looking to grow? You're in the right place.

Kendra Corman:

Hello, and welcome! 

I am super excited to be joined here today by Brenda Meller of Meller Marketing. Many of us know about your success with LinkedIn marketing, but I'm going to go ahead and ask you to introduce yourself a little bit, Brenda, and tell us a little bit more about what you do.

Brenda Meller:

Awesome. Well, I'm delighted to be on with you here, Kendra! 

I help business professionals unlock the power of LinkedIn. I do that through a variety of ways, through LinkedIn one-on-one coaching, through profile optimization services, through helping them train their teams on LinkedIn. Then I also do some online and on-demand offerings. 

I absolutely love the platform. I'm an introvert at heart, so I realize that for some people networking can be challenging. I also can appreciate that there's a lot of people that are experience rich. They know their jobs, they know their industry, but they may be a bit LinkedIn apprehensive and that's where I can help out.

Kendra Corman:

That's great! 

What about LinkedIn excited you and made it the focus of your business?

Brenda Meller:

Well, I think back in the day when social media first came on and I was anti-social media, like why do I want to be on Facebook where I'm going to find my old high school boyfriends and people I don't want to talk to anymore. 

When LinkedIn first hit the scene, it was this new professional networking platform. It was someone that I really knew and trusted that encouraged me to get active on there.

Why I've chosen to focus on LinkedIn is I just see there's a huge opportunity on the platform. I come from a corporate marketing background, so I always tell people I'm the marketer who gets LinkedIn. 

Anytime I'm working on my own efforts or working with my clients, I'm always thinking about who is your ideal target audience, what are your business or your company goals. Then thinking about LinkedIn as a platform, there's etiquette and then there's also this algorithm, this automation process that's running behind the scenes. It's kind of like SEO on LinkedIn. 

I just really developed a knack for LinkedIn early on and saw a huge opportunity for both myself and for helping others on the platform, so I just leaned into it.

Kendra Corman:

Okay, great!

Well, we both started our own companies, and I know that we've talked about this in the past, but when we were starting, we were everything to everybody, for lack of a better term, because you don't want to necessarily turn down things, but you really niched down and focused on LinkedIn. 

How did that help your business and how did you end up picking that that was what you were going to do?

Brenda Meller:

That's such a great question. 

I remember when I first left corporate and decided I was going to be an entrepreneur or self-employed, it was never a vision for me. I wasn't one of those people that said, "I'm going to leave my corporate job and do this," but the universe nudged me forward and I started to find myself in a position while I was looking for a job, people approaching me. For me, it fell into my lap a bit.

I had a knack for social media marketing and I really enjoyed LinkedIn, but I remember in the beginning, a few months, year of my business or so, I didn't want to just focus only on LinkedIn. I didn't want to put all of my eggs into the LinkedIn basket. I feel like there's a lot of people that may be similar in their approach. 

When they first get their business started, they feel like they have to do everything or they have to sell everything that someone wants. Even if they don't know it exactly, they'll figure it out because they need the business, they need the revenue.

For me, in the beginning, I was doing marketing consulting, social media management, helping people with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. Then LinkedIn was kind of a niche offering. 

I remember Kendra back at the beginning of 2020, I decided that there was a lot of competition in the other spaces, marketing and social media management, but there weren't a lot of people doing LinkedIn as a specialty. 

At the beginning of 2020, I really was focusing down, hunkering only on LinkedIn. I'm like, "This is the year for LinkedIn. This is the year for Brenda Meller and Meller Marketing." 

Then we all know what happened, March hit and the pandemic hit and it was a little bit bumpy through the way.

But solely focusing on a single offering, I think helped in two ways. One is it made it so much clearer for my audience to understand what it is that I was offering. That helped with both people approaching me, people reading my LinkedIn profile, people referring business to me. 

Then also, for me, knowing that I was solely focusing on LinkedIn as a niche, I was able to really double down and get much deeper into knowledge and just really immerse myself into the network.

That's my advice for folks that are listening. 

I think a lot of us, I'm not sure if you went through the same thing, Kendra, but we pick a lot of things in the beginning and then as we gain more confidence in our business and as we start to identify what the market really needs, we might start to get much more focused. For me, that's when my business really started to succeed.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. I find that I talk to my clients all the time about niching down and being specific and owning the space. 

They're like, "But I don't want to turn this down," but that's really where people get to know and identify you with something. I mean, you get calls all the time about more than just LinkedIn because they know you're good at what you do.

Brenda Meller:

Right. Actually, sometimes I get calls, Kendra, for the work that you do.

Kendra Corman:

Yes.

Brenda Meller:

There's been more than one occasion where I've said, "This isn't something that I can help you with, but my friend, Kendra, would be a great person," and I'll provide them your contact information and I'll send those referrals over to you. 

I think you and I are similar. We both have the abundance mentality, there's more than enough business to go around for all of us. We don't see each other as competition, as more of a coopetition type of approach. 

By the way, I first heard that term from Terry Bean, I don't know if you know Terry, but I have to give him a shoutout and give him credit for that. 

But I think when you surround yourself with people who are maybe in similar roles, similar industries, similar services, but are complimentary side by side.

There's another individual, I think you're going to be interviewing him soon too, Scott Lawrence, he's a headshot photographer located in Metro Detroit. Now, a lot of times people come to him for a headshot when they're thinking about either moving up in their career or making a career change, making a move out of the company. 

While he's photographing them, they have a conversation and he'll bring up, "What are you going to use this for?" and they're going to put it in their LinkedIn profile is one of their top things. 

He'll say, "Oh, are you active on LinkedIn? How are you using it?" Then the conversation will roll around, he'll sometimes refer business to me for headshot clients coming over for LinkedIn profiles. 

Similarly, I'll have individuals I'm working with LinkedIn profiles, optimizing their profile, and they have a really dated headshot photo or one that's just not professional, it's not polished, and I'll refer business back to Scott. 

It's a nice complimentary offering to be surrounding yourself by people with similar, but complimentary, services.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah, I agree. 

It's that abundance mentality, knowing that you can't do it all and referring it out to experts. I think I feel, and I don't know about you, but I feel that it gives me more, I guess, respect, cachet, by the people that I'm referring out when I say, "I'm sorry, I don't have the capacity for that," or, "That's not my specialty and I really think you should talk to Brenda because she rocks LinkedIn." 

I mean, you spend a ton of time researching and staying on top of it that I don't invest in LinkedIn, and so when they want that, you are the right person for that fit. If they want training, you're the right person for that too. 

I think if you come from that abundance mentality, like you were saying, you actually get more in the end and you're happier because you're not as frustrated with the work that you're doing when it's not what you want to work on.

Brenda Meller:

Absolutely, a hundred percent. Having that list of people that you can refer business out to, I think is so important too.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. Yeah, you've got to have those trusted people to refer it to that's the key.

All right. You've written a book, Social Media Pie. I see you everywhere, you have classes, coaching, webinars. 

How has focusing on your business affected your work-life balance?

Brenda Meller:

It's so funny that you use that expression, "I see you everywhere," I want to pause on that just for a second. I can tell you probably in the last week alone I've heard that from three different people, three different times. 

I'm not really changing what I'm doing, I'm just very strategic and very focused about my approach. I also have this entire focus on social media karma, on paying it forward, shining the spotlight on others, interacting with others on LinkedIn and understanding that the algorithm that's running behind the scenes, it's determining who sees our content, how long it's being shown in the homepage feed, and then how many more people it's going to show that too. It's almost a little bit of a popularity contest.

Knowing what the rules are of the algorithm, I play those rules very strategically, so Kendra, whenever I see one of your posts in the homepage feed, I will interact with it. 

If I don't see your post in a while, I'm going to go to your post and interact with it and that's going to show you up more often to me and vice versa, me more often to you.

Those people that are saying, "I see you everywhere," it's by design through the algorithm. It might not be that I'm really that much busier, and getting back to your point of work-life balance, I'm not doing that much more, I've actually pulled back from some of the things I used to do, but it's just being very strategic about that approach.

I'll use one example on the work-life balance to share with your listeners. That is this, as you gain more confidence in your business, as you get more established, as you start to get more successful, more and more people will start to reach out for you and request your time.

Kendra, I think you'll probably recall hearing someone reaching out saying, "Can I pick your brain? Can we grab a virtual coffee or can we meet in person for coffee? Can I pick your brain? I have some questions about email marketing or I have some questions about content marketing." 

In the beginning, when I first started my business, it was so flattering to be asked for advice and I would, I would jump at the chance to meet folks, especially those folks that I knew very well and trusted.

As my business becomes busier and more well established and I'm getting more client engagements now, we still have people that reach out to us. I had a gentleman just the other day reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's someone that I been connected with for a while. His follow up was, "Let's do a quick networking call." 

I get a lot of these, I get a couple of them a week. I responded back and I said, "Thanks for reaching out. Are you looking to learn more about my coaching services for LinkedIn, or is this just a get to know you call?" 

I'm trying to figure out what is the purpose here. He said, "Actually, both have my curiosity. Just informal networking, never know where it may lead to."

We all have 24 hours in a day. I don't get 48, I don't get any more than 24. You get 24 too, Kendra. We have to decide how we want to spend that time and how that time is going to best fulfill the goals for our business. 

The more of these get-to-know-you networking phone calls I do, the more I realize there's information from my profile that you can read. 

You can read my about statement, you can go to my website. I found a lot of these get-to-know-you phone calls are really they want to get to know you so they can sell their business to you or so that you can become a referral partner to them.

The people that really want to get to know you, that feel like it will be a mutual exchange of information, they're going to do their homework first and they're going to read what they can about you. 

Then they may say, "I know that you work with LinkedIn coaching. I do some complimentary services with leadership coaching. There might be an opportunity for us to help each other refer business back and forth. Let's do a get-to-know-you call." Then at that point I might take it.

But it's almost like the same thing, Kendra, when folks go to a job interview. Don't go into a job interview and at the end they say, "What questions do you have for us?" the final question wouldn't be, "Tel me about your company," because at that point the assumption is you've done your homework, you know about the company, now it's really you're trying to interview to figure out a fit.

My advice for folks that are listening is be very careful about how you give away your time. Certainly, for me, I did a lot of these get-to-know-you phone calls, virtual coffees, things like that earlier in my career, free speaking engagements, where you're getting paid for impressions or visibility. 

Now, I'm much more selective because my family is important to me, my clients are important to me. The more time that I give away, the less time I have to dedicate to my family or to my client or to my revenue-producing activity. I think you've got to be very careful there.

Kendra Corman:

Oh, I think that's a fantastic way to look at it!

Again, you always want to help people and help them wherever you can, but yeah, I mean, it takes away from everything else that you're trying to do because there are only 24 hours in the day. That's great, thank you. 

Again, you've written a book, you've got classes, you do coaching, webinars. If you had one tip for working hard and staying motivated, what would that be for our listeners?

Brenda Meller:

Oh, working hard and staying motivated. 

I set goals all the time. I have my annual goals, my quarterly goals, my monthly goals, and even down to my daily tasks. 

I used to be a notepad person, where I'd write my weekly to-do list on Monday. Lately, especially as I get busy, I start to revert to more of a post-it note approach. I have post-it notes all over my desktop, attached to my laptop, attached to my second monitor. I've also got a whiteboard that's beyond me where I have a revenue goal. 

I've had this revenue goal on my board for the better part of a year, maybe a year and a half at this point, and every day I look at it. It's a stretch goal, it's a definite stretch goal.

For me, I look at it and what I find is it's the same approach with affirmations. If you tell yourself things in the positive, eventually your brain will make a way to make it happen. 

Whether it is having a written to-do list in front of you or a post-it notes in front of you or a whiteboard where you're writing your goals, or even, to be honest, on my LinkedIn profile I have a couple of my goals that are in my LinkedIn headline. 

If you read it right now, it says, "Offering webinars and master classes," and I'm continuing to roll out different options in those series. But having something visually that you're looking at, at least once a day, to confirm what those goals are, where you want to be focusing your time, for me, I found that's huge. 

That big revenue goal that I have on my whiteboard that I've been looking at for a year and a half, last month I hit it for the first time, this month I did—

Kendra Corman:

Congratulations, that's awesome!

Brenda Meller:

—It's exciting! 

This month, I'm hitting it for the second time. Next month, I'm going to hit it for the third time.

It doesn't happen necessarily right away, but by focusing on those affirmations, by continuing to think about how do I get to that goal, there are decisions in your everyday life and there's two paths, there's a decision that will take you towards achieving that goal or there's a decision that will pull you away from that goal.

It's similar in the last segment, when I talked about giving away your time, doing virtual coffees and meetups and things like that, yeah, it could—

This gentleman, he's being persistent, he's saying, "I dedicate one hour a week to networking meetings because I found it helps my business," and I'm not replying back at this point. I've already said, no, I've been polite and I've said no. 

The more time I give away, the more time I spend on that networking, the less time I have to lock in those revenue booking activities that are already, we heard that expression, low hanging fruit, they're already there. 

I could spend time trying to do more networking that may get me to leads and referrals and may get me to business, but why not close the proposals that are already those low hanging fruit, why not work more with the clients that I'm working with to try to figure out if I can extend their monthly retainers or help them in other areas as well, or finish off more webinars that are webinar producing.

It's just being very selective, but knowing what your goals are and making visual eye contact with them on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, that's my advice for your listeners.

Kendra Corman:

I love that. 

I always talk about my Full Focus Planner, it was created by Michael Hyatt. Yes, I have my annual goals in the front, I have weekly goals and a weekly review each week, and then every day I've got my daily big three. 

Of course, a lot of times my daily big three are tasks for clients, but I always make sure at least one thing on my daily big three is going to move me closer to my annual goals. 

I love that you've got your revenue goal in front of you and you've been looking at it consistently for a long period of time and have achieved that. That's just amazing, so thank you for sharing that!

Brenda Meller:

Yeah, thank you.

Kendra Corman:

Now, if you could give our listeners who are chasing their dreams, so they're starting up businesses like you or I did, or they're looking to grow their business, if you could give them three tidbits of advice, what would those be?

Brenda Meller:

Oh, let's think about this, three tidbits of advice.

I think the first one is know what your long range goals are, but also be flexible and listen to the universe and listen to your audience and listen to the people that are around you, because there may be even better opportunities out there that aren't exactly what you were thinking.

My second piece of advice is that there's not just one path to success. Coming from a corporate marketing background, I was on the path to become a CMO, a chief marketing officer. That is the path that I had in mind and I certainly could have chosen to stay in corporate and continued on that path. I had an opportunity where the universe nudged me forward. 

A leadership change occurred in my organization and they decided to restructure, and my position was one of those that was changing. I was sat down for my annual performance review and told that my position was being eliminated and I had three months to find a job and could stay on until then, or if I decided not to, to let them know.

I gave it a week. I came back on a Monday, I held my head high and I said, "Today's my last day." I had an exit plan from the organization. I stayed positive all along the way.

I am so much happier where I am now. I could never imagine going back. Even Kendra, I call myself enthusiastically unemployable. 

What I mean by that is I'm not unemployable, I could find a job, and I have been approached for other positions since I left corporate, but I am enthusiastically unemployable. There is no way I'd want to go back to working for someone else when I can work for myself, even through the pandemic when I've had dips in revenue. 

I'll be honest, I don't call them bad months, I call them soft months. I've had some soft months. I've had some really awesome months too, I'm in a period of awesome months right now.

But I always control my destiny. I give myself phenomenal performance reviews, I give myself time off when I need it, I give myself permission to spend time with my family, to go grocery shopping in the middle of a work day when I need it. 

I'm the best boss I've ever had, and I've had some really great bosses in my career. So to keep in mind that there is not just one path to success, there are multiple, and to be open and receptive when we see those additional paths come to us.

My third piece of advice is knowing where you have opportunities for improvement. I'm not going to say weaknesses, but I'll say opportunities for improvement. These things are no surprises, you've heard about them in your performance reviews, in your conversations with your coaches, your managers, even your coworkers, but understanding that those opportunities to improve can also be your strengths.

For example, for me, I get very excited, I have that shiny object syndrome. I'm always thinking of new ideas and new ways of doing things, which can come at the loss of not getting some things done. 

Again, going back to figuring out your to-do list, focusing in on your time, that time management I think it's so important, but also understanding where you may have some opportunities for improvement or some gaps in your skillset. 

If that's the case, then figure out how do you address it. Is it through a planner? Is it through outsourcing? Is it through finding a VA or an intern or somebody else to keep you on track, or using tools like Trello or other project management tools that can help to keep you more focused? But knowing we all have them. 

We are all different, we are all unique, we are all amazing human beings, but we all have challenges to success. We have to identify those, embrace them and not be afraid to look for help when we need it.

Kendra Corman:

I love that. 

I love that you mentioned shiny object syndrome, because I have a severe case of that. I'm always looking for new tools and easier and better ways to do things too. 

Yeah, oh look, squirrel. I think it's very, very important to talk about that. I think that's great advice for everybody, so thank you so much for sharing that.

Now, I can't have an interview with you without talking about LinkedIn, for sure. What are the three biggest mistakes that you see people making on LinkedIn?

Brenda Meller:

Oh, great question! 

I'll say mistake number one is a lot of people, when they set up their LinkedIn profile, they copy and paste information from their resume, because let's be honest, your LinkedIn profile, the fields look similar, education, experience, the about statement. 

But my advice is that you think about who is your ideal target audience, what are your business goals, remember, I talked about this earlier, as a marketer I'm always thinking about these things, who is your ideal target audience, what are your business goals, and then thinking about looking at your profile through the lens of that person. 

For me, for example, one of my target audiences is a VP of marketing or sales looking to train their team on LinkedIn. Everything in my profile is intentionally written for them. By the way, your profile's not really about you, it's about how you can serve that audience, how you can achieve those business goals through those audiences that you're targeting your message to.

When you look through your profile, instead of just copying, for example, from your summary statement in your resume and plopping that into your about statement, be more strategic about how you're describing yourself, keeping in mind that the summary statement on a resume, it's designed for that resume as a tool and the goal of a resume is to get you a new job. 

The goal of your LinkedIn profile may not be related to finding a new job. It might be related to connecting with and finding more audiences. If you're a small business owner or coach or consultant, if you're trying to connect with those people to sell your services or consultations or products to, that's what your about statement should be written, in terms of that audience.

An extension of that is think about your elevator pitch. If I were to walk up to you at an event, Kendra, you're not going to describe yourself the same way you would if you're looking for a job as if you're trying to do business with me. 

Think about your about statement as really an elongated version of that elevator pitch. You want to catch people's attention quickly at the beginning and then give them some more information to help them to understand how you can help them, because remember, this is about them, it's not about you. 

How is this going to help you to connect with them?

Kendra Corman:

Whenever I'm talking to people and they're asking me about their LinkedIn profile, I'm like, "Let's pull up Brenda Meller's," and then we go through your about statement for sure. It is a benchmark. 

Again, yours is targeted. You've got to really think about your target audience, because again, you talked about who yours is targeted to, and I think it really reflects you and your brand also, your personal brand. 

I'll tell people, "This may not be exactly the way you want to write it. Think about who your audience is and what they're looking for," but I bring it up often. 

For those of you listening who want to see Brenda's about statement, you can check the show notes for her LinkedIn link. Be sure to check that out for sure!

Okay, so other tips for LinkedIn or what people are making mistakes on?

Brenda Meller:

Sure! Thank you, by the way, Kendra, for that.

I encourage people, it's not stalking when you look up my LinkedIn profile. Kendra, if you look at my profile five times this week, I'll be honest, I'm not going to pay too much attention to it. 

If I do see you on there, I'm like, "Oh good. Kendra's doing her homework, she's reading my LinkedIn." 

If you read through my LinkedIn profile, I actually have I call them Easter eggs, I have LinkedIn tips sprinkled throughout. If you poke around in the different areas, you're going to actually learn some things about using LinkedIn more effectively.

This brings me to my second tip, which is if you are using LinkedIn to try to do business with people, be more intentional about your contact info. Right now, if I could click on your contact info, for example, Kendra, I see your LinkedIn URL at the top and, because we are connected, I see all of the other information. I see websites, you can put up to three webpages in here. 

I always encourage people don't just choose personal or company website, always choose the word other, just like Kendra has done, and then you can put a description of 30 characters or less to tell people what do they get when they click on that link. 

What is it? 

For example, in yours, kendracorman.com/5hacks, I don't know what that is. I might think it's shacks, it's a typo, but you have Five Hacks for Content Marketing. 

Now, that intrigues me, as your target audience. I'm going to click to go to that link because you have that description in there.

Then while we're in the contact info, just double check that everything else is accurate. The phone number is your current phone number, it's not your last employer. Your email address is your work email, not a Hotmail or a Yahoo or an AOL or anything like that. 

If your Twitter account is in there, your tweets are relevant to your business, to your industry and it's supporting your business values. If it's an inactive account, delete it off of there.

First tip is optimizing your profile for ideal target audience, second tip involves your contact info. 

Should I go on to the third one now?

Kendra Corman:

Yes, I would love to! 

Just so you know, mine was out of date and I had the website and personal all there before I took one of your sessions and one of your courses and updated it all. 

I think I actually did have an old work phone number in there. You just don't visit it.

Brenda Meller:

Yeah, so often people forget about when they change jobs, they don't look back at their contact info on LinkedIn. I can't tell you how often, it's probably about 30% of the time when I'm working with someone, we look at their contact info and they'll say, "Oh, that's my old website." 

I've had some folks, it's like two or three employers ago, it's not even the latest one. We just forget about it, we set it up there and we don't ever think about clicking on it. 

But I try to do a once over top to bottom review of my profile once a year and probably a quarterly review of different areas as well.

Moving off of contact though, my third tip, it actually involves your LinkedIn homepage feed. This is something I would recommend that people do at least actually spend 15 minutes every single business day in the LinkedIn homepage feed. 

When you're there, you want to build up social media karma. How we do this, we find posts from people in our network that we know and if something jumps out at you, give it a like or one of the reaction buttons, click on one of those. 

Then maybe two to three times a day you want to leave a thoughtful comment on a post here on LinkedIn. What I mean by a thoughtful comment, don't just say, "Cool. That's inspiring. Thanks. Great job." 

Five or more words in the response, that's a thoughtful comment, because it takes effort to say, "I agree with you, Joel, and there's so many jobs out there in the market. What industry is the best one nowadays do you think?" It takes thought to go into a five or more word response.

That actually helps on two levels. It helps with the human component, because if I comment on Joel's post, for example, with that thoughtful comment, and everybody else is doing the one to two words, the thoughtful comment is going to get more engagement by Joel and by others. 

The other thing is, because of the algorithm that's out there, we know that the algorithm prefers both new original content, but also content that is creating more engagement and keeping people on the platform longer, because the longer they keep you on LinkedIn, the more ads that they can serve you and the more ad revenue they can book from their clients. 

Thinking about both the human component and the algorithm, leaving those thoughtful comments of five or more words, that's definitely a key to building up that social media karma.

Kendra Corman:

I love that, yeah. I mean, it's not a huge time investment to make an impact. I mean, it's 15 minutes a day,

Brenda Meller:

Right?

Kendra Corman:

Yeah.

Brenda Meller:

We all have it, going back to the 24 hours in a day. 

I hear some people saying, "I just can't fit one more thing in," and I'll counter with, "well, what's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? "

"Well, I watch the news or I scroll through Instagram or I check my email or other things." 

I say, "Go on LinkedIn first." You can easily spend 15 minutes while you are waking up, you can be half awake while you're doing it. You can scroll through, like some things, add some comments. 

LinkedIn is a network you're making an investment in, in you and in your business, and you're building up social media karma.

Facebook and Instagram to me is more like junk food or drinking a cup of coffee, the caffeine's going to wear off in a little bit, or junk food, you're going to feel good while you're eating it but later on you're going to be like, "Oh, I should have eaten that apple. I should have drank the glass of water instead." 

Whereas LinkedIn, it's like I ate a nice egg white, spinach and feta omelet, and I had a lovely glass of ice water and I feel great the rest of the day. Think about just shifting your time a little bit, every one of us can find 15 minutes in the day for LinkedIn.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah, I agree! 

Now, do you have any tips for our listeners on some overlooked features on LinkedIn?

Brenda Meller:

Ooh. Since you're asking, there's some newer features on LinkedIn that not everybody uses. I'm going to give you two of them right now. 

One is, it used to be called cover video, now they're calling it profile video. If you look at my profile, as an example, on LinkedIn, you'll see this. Look at my headshot photo. When you land on my profile, after a couple seconds, you'll notice that my headshot photo starts to animate. 

There's a video that pops up behind it and it does about a three-second preview without sound. Then if you click on my headshot photo, you'll get an option that will say View Profile Video. Now you can see a video of up to 30 seconds.

My advice for folks that are listening is to upload a profile video to your LinkedIn profile. My tips for doing this is it's a 30-second maximum video and it really has to be 30.0 seconds. My advice is do a video that's 29 seconds or less because you don't want to upload it and LinkedIn says it's too long. 

So 29 seconds or less, thinking to how do you want to describe yourself to people. Almost the same when we think about our about statement, it's that elevator pitch of how you're using LinkedIn. 

Again, it's about them, it's not about you. You can describe yourself, but as it relates to your ideal target audience.

I guess in terms of what's overlooked about this, both the video, I don't think a lot of people know it even exists, but the second thing is a lot of people will just upload one video and then they'll leave it on there forever. 

Now, what I've started doing, Kendra, is I will upload a new video if I've got a webinar that I'm promoting or if I've launched a new masterclass or when my book became an audio book. I'm using this as short promotional messages about my business, and keeping in mind that they're only going to see the first three seconds before they have to click and watch the full video, so I'm going to change up that intro just a little bit so they can tell it's something different that's behind there. That's the first thing.

Kendra Corman:

I love that. 

Really, when you're trying to market yourself or your business, I think you have to do everything from a holistic 360 degree view. 

I love that you're taking the time and focusing and leveraging everything that you have to promote the things like your webinars.

Brenda Meller:

Yeah, absolutely. 

I tell people, I mentioned earlier, I'm the marketer who gets LinkedIn, also, I consider myself an opportunistic marketer. What that means is if LinkedIn gives me a box, I'm going to fill something into that box. 

If I know that this space is a video of 30 seconds or less, I'm going to maximize that and I'm going to get the best bang for my buck, so to speak, out of the time that's allotted, which brings to my second tip, another feature that's overlooked on LinkedIn. 

There's a tool on LinkedIn called name pronunciation. If you look at my LinkedIn profile, right next to my name field, you're going to see a little speaker icon. 

If you click on that, you'll be able to listen to an audio soundbite of 10 seconds or less. This field was designed for name pronunciation. 

If you or any of your listeners have a name that you're commonly asked, "Is it Corman? Corman? How do you say that last name?" if it's mispronounced, you want to use that audio, the name pronunciation feature, to explain to people how do you say it.

For my name, Brenda Meller, I don't get it often mispronounced, but sometimes Miller or Mueller, for example. What I do is I use this space, it's 10 seconds or less, so the first thing I'll do is I'll say my name and I will give you the pronunciation of it. 

If I use any cues when I describe my name pronunciation, I put that in the audio field.

For example, I'm going to say it a little bit slower than I would normally do, I will say something like this. 

Hi, this is Brenda Meller. It's like Keller, but with M. Now, if I were to meet you in person and they say, "What's your name?" I would say Brenda Meller, I'm going to say it a lot faster. 

In the name pronunciation, you want to slow that down and then give them any verbal cues as to how to pronounce it. I had one woman I worked with in the past and her last name is really tricky looking, but it's pronounced Myshook. It's like M-A-G-C-H-J-C, it's a bunch of different letters, but she has in her name pronunciation, it's pronounced Myshook. She slows it down, she uses that cue in there.

Now, again, as an opportunistic marketer, I'm going to use the full 10 seconds that LinkedIn gives me. The first couple seconds, I'm going to say my name, and then the last probably seven seconds, maybe six seconds, I'm going to say something about my business. "Follow me here on LinkedIn for strategy tips and message me if I can help you unlock the power of LinkedIn." 

Now, Kendra, you can fit a lot in 10 seconds if you're creative about that approach. You're not going to maybe get it right the first time, but you can change this. You can change it as often as you'd like and go back in and record it later.

But I want your listeners to think about using that name pronunciation field first and foremost to pronounce their names, especially if they're tricky to pronounce first or last names, and second, to think about it from a marketing perspective, what else can you put in that field to help people to hear your voice to describe your business?

Kendra Corman:

Oh, I love that. 

That would've definitely helped me with my maiden name, which is Cisla. Let me tell you, it was always an interesting one, but I got that pronounced wrong regularly so that would've been great about 25 years ago. 

But anyway, I always ask, and as we're wrapping up, I always ask people, what superpower would you choose for yourself?

Brenda Meller:

Oh, super power would I choose for myself? 

I don't know, that's such a tricky one. I feel like sometimes I wish I could look back and know, or maybe it's foreseeing the future so that you could plan things more effectively, but then I think, yeah, but everything I've gone through, everything I've experienced is helping me to be where I am today. 

If I knew what was going to happen in the future, I don't know that I'd want that. I don't know that I have a straight answer to that question other than—I don't know, it's a tricky one.

Kendra Corman:

It is.

Brenda Meller:

It's a tricky one.

Kendra Corman:

Well, thank you so much for spending time with me and talking to my listeners and sharing all those linked LinkedIn tips. 

Just so you guys know that we do have in the show notes, be sure to look for a link to Brenda's book, which is Social Media Pie, which is an amazing book. I have an autographed copy and I do love that book, it's fantastic. 

We've got Brenda's LinkedIn links and you can follow her to get LinkedIn tips on a regular basis. We'll link to any upcoming webinars that she also has, because those are fantastic and share a lot of great information with you. 

Thanks again for joining me, and we will see you next time.

Intro/Outro:

Thanks for listening to the Imperfect Marketing Podcast with Kendra Corman. Be sure to visit kendracorman.com to join the conversation and access the show notes. See you next week, same time, same place.

Meet Brenda Meller
How did niching down to LinkedIn help your business?
Co-opetition
How has focusing on your business affected your work-life balance??
How do you stay motivated?
Advice for starting or growing your business
Overlooked Features on LinkedIn