Ask Mary Anything
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It's time for the ever-popular AMA edition. ππ¦π π ππ₯π¬ ππ‘π¬π§πππ‘π! Submit your LinkedIn, Career, Business Development, or Live Streaming questions to me via commenting below, InMail or heck show up live to ask it!
See below the showβs transcription:
Hey, hey, hey, how's everyone doing? It's Wednesday. This is 15 Minutes of Fain. And this is the monthly AMA show, that's Asked Mary Anything. I'm Mary and I'm the Fain here. You can find me here every Tuesday at 12pm Pacific Daylight Time with a really quick business development tip, career tip or LinkedIn tip. Today, we're talking all about LinkedIn. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn, I have that open, drop a comment in of what is your LinkedIn question? It can be anything. Or you can email me at hello@maryfainbrandt, and I might use your question in an upcoming show. So once a month I come on here, and I'll answer anything that you guys want. I had some questions submitted ahead of time. This is how you get your question answered live. And I'd love to know, are you watching the replay? Do me favor hashtag replay let me know and I will go back and answer your questions if I can.
Here's the number one question that I got asked like this last month here, what pronoun should I use in my about us section? I her or him? Let's start with the answer is I I wouldn't write Mary fain Brandt is a world-renowned author and live event planner, right or Mary fain Brandt is a career coach known throughout the world. It is a personal profile. Write it as you would write it. The reason that we see people writing Mary Fain Brandt is a best-selling author, you know or Mary fain Brandt is the career coach, number one career coach in Arizona. The reason that you see that is because someone else has written the profile for them. Yeah, true story. I've worked with about three people this year where they had someone else write the profile, and that's how it was. It just sounds not personal. Right? You're writing that profile because you want people to connect with you and how do we have people connect with us by being more relatable or humanizing it? That's a term that I've coined and in some other coaching groups, they're like, oh, yeah, we need to humanize Is it? We really need to do that? Remember, your objective with your profile is to attract and connect with the individual reading it. Now, how can you connect with the individual reading it? If you're talking over here in third person, you just really can't. We see a lot of authors and speakers right that way, or people who have written the profiles for someone, you'll see it written with the I'm Mary fain Brandt, she is known as he is a world class recruiter right? It just doesn't work in 2022, 1995 called and they'd like those pronouns back. So that is one question that we got asked.
The second one is, how many profiles can I have? I have three businesses. I'm going to create three different profiles. Okay, notice I'm using the word profile not page, you may have one personal profile on LinkedIn, it's personal. There's only one of you, one personal profile. However, you can have multiple company pages, and you can have what's called now an affiliate page. If you look up Microsoft Office, that's a huge company. And they are very diversified, right? They have different programs and departments that specialize in different things. They have affiliate pages for the entrepreneurs is probably one company page I had two, and then we cancelled the one because you know why? Here's why, it's a lot of work to manage one company page, let alone two or three. To get some value in the ROI out of a company page, you actually have to put a lot of work. And I don't think that you want to spend your time there. So just create one company page, you can offer different services under that. Okay, I love this question.
Another question that I got asked was I here all the time, I should nurture my network. What does that mean marry? Well, it means providing value. It means don't knock at the door with a basket of things to sell. Or like when I was a kid, I walked around the neighborhood with a little red wagon. Right? And I was selling stuff for Girl Scouts or something. Don't be that person. Instead, ask your connection your network, how can I help you? How can I serve you? It might be commenting on their posts, it might be doing an introduction. Oh snap, I gotta do an introduction to someone in the tech industry, I have a perfect connection for them. Nurturing your network means providing value not selling, you can share information. You can share tips, you can share resources, but you are never supposed to knock at their door on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I'm Mary Fain Brandt, I'm a LinkedIn strategist, your LinkedIn profile needs help. Would you like a consultation call? That goes straight into spam, you get blocked and deleted? Don't do that. Serve first. Let's see. Yeah, there's that says what is a great way to improve my About section minus old and stale and from my resume? Delete that resume stuff. Let's talk about your top talents, your success stories? What makes you unique? This is something that I work with my clients is what's your personal brand? Do you know what your personal brand is? Infuse that into your about us section. So that's one of my specialties is creating your personal brand and infusing that into your profile, humanizing your profile so that people want to connect with you and support you and collaborate with you. So really, you should always save your profile to PDF. You have it and then start the new profile, right? I always use Google Doc, so in Google Drive, I start my profiles with my clients and myself in Google Drive, and I start writing down the sections like what do I want to talk about? Here's my hook, right? I want people to read, then maybe client testimonial or services I provide, industries I work in, like get specific. The more specific you can be, the more that you're going to attract your ideal client. Who is your ideal client?
Let's see, the next question I got asked this was a couple of weeks ago is open to work banner, is that a yes or no? I feel so if you're looking for work, there's a green banner, and it says open to work. It advertises that you're looking. Typically, if you have that up, that means you're unemployed. Is it easier to find a job, if you're unemployed or if you're employed? I'd love for you to answer that question. Because you are a recruiter. I know the answer. Think about that for a minute. What do they always say? Is it easier to find a job while you have one or when you're unemployed? Do you want to shout out to the world that you're unemployed on your banner? Now I'm going to say no, I get why people use it. But I think it doesn't. It doesn't weigh enough on the good side to use it. It's like hey, I'm unemployed hire me. Instead you can reach out to recruiters, you can turn on looking for work, where only recruiters and people will see that. Bes thank you for answering. It's easier to find a job when you're employed. So why advertise that you're unemployed? Right? I'm a no on the open to work banner. There are other ways to indicate that you're open for work without saying, "Hey, I'm unemployed, looking for a job desperate hire me". Thank you Bes for playing along.
Finally, the last question that was submitted is "Oh, my God, my headline, my headline, Mary, I need to tell everything that I do so that I get picked up in searches and people know what I do in those 220 characters". Well, let's think about that. No one's gonna know everything you do, and all your goodness and greatness in 220 characters, right? You don't want to cram everything in your headline and make it confusing, right? Like, is she a software developer? Is she a programmer? Just because you can do everything does not mean you're gonna get hired for everything, so instead, don't waste a bunch of titles next to your name, you need to sum it up into 220 characters, sum it up. It doesn't have to be in a perfectly grammar punctuated sentence. Matter of fact, it's more of a statement, bam. Hear that it's not a sentence in English sentence. It's more of a statement. Here's who I work with, here's how I work them and here's the value of what I bring to the table. So bez says, because it's perception of the case study from the employer, and it's a confidence walk that you can literally walk away from something not worth it. Okay, so I think what Bez is saying, is the perception from the employer, right, so maybe your confidence level is a little lower, like "Hey, open to work, hire me hire me".
I hope that this 15 Minutes of Fain was very valuable for you. I know it's fast. But you can watch the replay and grab all those tips. Also watch for my content, ring my bell on my profile. When you do that, I forgot to do something today, I feel like I'm a little off. There we go. Ring my bell on my profile to get notified when I'm putting great content out. If you like the style, and look of the show, right, the cool banners, the name on there, the intro video and fun stuff like that. Well, that's all possible by StreamYard. They make it so easy to go live. I literally hit a button right up here says go live. Start now, yes. StreamYard is the official sponsor of 15 Minutes of Fain. I love StreamYard. Not only do I love the platform, the customer service, the people there, they are amazing, always adding new things like the music and stuff that we can play now. I will drop my link. We're going to drop that over into the comments. If you're interested in like going live, or maybe it's time for you to level up your live game. You know what, let's talk. Because if you sign up with my affiliate link, yeah, I don't get enough to maybe buy a cup of coffee. But you know what, if you sign up, I appreciate that and I will give you a 15-minute tutorial on how to set up your StreamYard so you get the most out of it. And I'm just putting that over there on LinkedIn. And then also if you're local to Arizona, you guys LinkedIn Local Phoenix, our last event of the year, October 4, with my co-host, Bruce Carnahan, and it's going to be an amazing event. Our may one sold out. It's no selling no business cards. It's literally taking your online connections offline and having meaningful conversations. Does business happen? Yeah. Do people find jobs? Yeah. Do people win cash prizes? Heck yeah. Do we provide good food? Not just like chips and salsa. Heck yeah. Is it in a cool location? You know it because our events are not boring. They're just unforgettable. I hope that if you're in Phoenix, you'll connect with me. Maybe come to the event, send a friend, come with a friend. I think that's it for today. Thank you all for joining me today. Take care and I'll see you online. Ciao.
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