What does your online profile say about you with Sue Ellson

What does your online profile say about you

Welcome to the #CriticalFewActions™ to Improve Your Business podcast.
I’m John Downes, and I’m here to help you cut through the overwhelm and prioritize what matters most to improve your business. Let’s get started and discover the #CriticalFewActions™ that will have the biggest impact.

Is your online profile helping you achieve your goals, or is it sabotaging your efforts? Today, we’re exploring the power of your digital presence.

Whether you’re a CEO or a senior leader, I believe your personal brand will have a major impact on your career. Our guest Sue Ellson, a LinkedIn pioneer and online consulting expert, shares essential tips to refine your digital footprint, from optimising your LinkedIn profile to the. Effort of owning your name website Sue’s advice is invaluable. This episode gives you the actions to boost your online presence, so let’s dive in.

Welcome back. My next Meet the Expert interview is with Sue Ellson to talk about what does your online presence say about you. After a diverse career in banking and consulting, so Sue founded her first website newcomersnetwork.com in 2001 and joins LinkedIn in 2003. She is one of the 1st 80,000 people in the world on League did and she’s been consulting on the topic of leaked since 2008.

She launched her first three 80,000h word books on LinkedIn careers in business and hyperlocal marketing in 2016, ANd her fourth, Gigsters in 2019. Her most recent book, the 5th LinkedIn for Me and My Career on Business was launched on the 23rd of January 2023. Sue describes herself as an independent LinkedIn specialist or that educator, career development practitioner, consultant, founder, Gigster, Trainer and poet . She helps a wide variety of individuals and businesses in Australia and overseas with their online presence for their career and enterprise and Sue has also worked extensively with me to actually improve my online present to which I’m eternally grateful.

So she’s going to talk us through a few slides on realistic and achievable strategies and tasks, her #CriticalFewActions™ that will help you manage your online presence via an ordered content options and activity to ultimately improve your digital competency. Then we’ll have a few questions to wrap up. Sue, welcome and thanks for joining me. Thank you John.

Great to be here.
Sue would you like to take us through a little bit around how we actually look at our online presence and what does it tell us about us? It’s pretty certain that anybody who meets you is going to Google you and so it could be in the bathroom at a party it could be before a job interview it could be for due diligence purposes, it could be any number of reasons, but if you Google yourself on somebody else’s computer, not your own, and you find that the only thing that comes up is some prehistoric quote from a long time ago and badly worded LinkedIn profile, that’s not going to look good for you.

And the top CEOs now all have their own websites in their own names so that they’ve got that dossier of all the fabulous things they’ve done, specifically under their own name. Because we know that a lot of leaders have multiple roles and having your own website means that you don’t just have to rely on the page on the company website that says you’re the CEO or the leader or whatever.

You can actually pull up whatever you like. So I’d say definitely you need to have your own LinkedIn profile as a starting point. But secondly, your own website would be fantastic to have. And if you’ve optimised those, they should appear on the first page of search results.

Now, if you’ve got a name like John Smith, which used to be very common, then it might be a little bit difficult to compete against all the other John Smiths out there. So you might want to add in your middle initial into all of your content so that you get identified as John M Smith or Sam X Smith or whatever it is, and so that you can be found very easily so people can attribute your stuff for you. And I worked with this one leader who had an amazingly successful career and was a darling of the press and media and had lots of really great content, but unfortunately he went bankrupt. So those very same people who loved him on his rise to the top were ready to chop him down very soon after.

And So what we did was a little bit something similar to what I did for you. I did some Googling well beyond page 2 of search results, and I found all of this amazing content that he had published over many years. So I told Google all of those links, the good ones, and I put the bad links in the spreadsheet as well, just so we knew what they were. And then I told Google about those links.

So after a little while, Google learned that people were clicking on those links we’d already told them about. So when people Googled him, this bankruptcy story didn’t appear, but the good story came up. So I guess the other component of any online presence is a risk mitigation strategy. So in the unlikely event that something terrible does happen, it doesn’t have to be bankruptcy.

It could just be a bad annual report, or it could be something else more minor infraction if you’ve got a good Google presence or a good presence. Line And now to a certain extent on social media, then that would protect you from any bad reports that come out. So I’m always asking people to write me a Google review. And I’ve asked hundreds and hundreds of students and clients and people I’ve met to write me reviews.

And I think I’ve got about 129 Google reviews. But so far all of them are great, which is fantastic. So on the day I get a b es and One, which I presume will happen at some point, there’s already 129 other good on there. So yeah. For most of us, it’s not only to attract opportunities, it’s also risk mitigation. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Would you like to take us through?

Yes, absolutely. I invite everybody to follow me on social media and to keep myself accountable. I actually include the stats every time I do a presentation. So if you dig out one of my old presentations between October 2021 andnow, you’ll see how these numbers have increased.

And I’ll just explain a couple of these. The first one is. Personal LinkedIn profile. So I’ve connected to 23,000 and I’ve got 26,000 followers.

So when you have more followers than connection, that means you’re classified as a sort, leader, influencer and whatever you like. My LinkedIn page Now a lot of people will tell you don’t create a LinkedIn company page for you as a person, but I believe it’s worthwhile. So first of all, you can see I’ve got 711 followers and I’ve also got 100. subscribers to my newsletter.

Every time I post on my personal profile, I also post on my company page, which means that I have a full backlog for the last 12 months of everything I’ve posted on LinkedIn in one spot. So that’s why I recommend a LinkedIn company page. Of course, I’ve got a Facebook page, a Twitter account. If you send out three tweets in a week, you will get Google search results for that.

So Twitter is highly optimised for Google. Instagram is where I put my poems, but it’s also where I’m putting Instagram reels, and I’ll come back to that. YouTube is owned by Google, so if you put up a video at least once a month on your YouTube channel, then you can get search results for your videos as well as your written content. So I know a lot of senior leaders don’t feel as comfortable about video as text, but that’s definitely where a lot of people go for information.

Video form naturally because I teach social media I have to be on the dreaded Tiktok and I just republish what I’ve already published on Instagram reels in YouTube on tiktok. This is my LinkedIn newsletter which is from my LinkedIn profile. So from now on anyone who connects to me will already be invited to my newsletter and this is my old fashioned Email newsletter subscribers. So if you would like to do anything please follow me on YouTube because once I get.

1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. I may actually be able to earn 1 cent for every 5 views or another of my content, so I’d really appreciate it. YouTube follow. So then I’m a member of the Press Club, the Career Development Association, Australian, Australian Society of Authors, Writers Victoria and the Small Press Network and they’re the two websites I have aside from this, as well as newcomers Network which is still there.

So #CriticalFewActions™ I thought I would focus on. The concept of an online audit, then looking at what your online content can be, your different online options, and then measuring your online activity. If you really want to kick off your strategic planning and work in a supportive environment with other CEOs and leaders, the CEO Master class in Strategic Planning and Implementation is for you. This 10 month small group course helps you craft your strategic plan presented to a group of.

Investors and develop a habit of monthly implementation. Our wait list is open now at #CriticalFewActions™. So in this online audit process, you would Google yourself, as I said before, on a different computer and look beyond page one. There’s a bit of a joke where do you hide a dead body on page 2 of Google search results because nobody looks there.

Hopefully there’s no dead bodies you’ve got to hide, but nevertheless collect all of the links in the spreadsheet. And also check any online profiles that you have. Please do not include your date of birth on anything. I know that means people won’t say happy birthday John when it’s that time, but definitely don’t put your date of birth unless it’s a requirement.

And yeah, just check out everything you’ve got and make sure you’ve got all your login details and your own password protected spreadsheet. All of my clients have said that’s the best thing I’ve ever taught them. It means that even if the password backup facility fails. So you’ve still got your spreadsheet.

I also print that up and put it with my will. When I die, it won’t take 60 million days to close off all my accounts. Check your settings. So if you are a high profile leader and you don’t want emails, you don’t want your phone number public, all that kind of thing, you can set up an online enquiry form on the website so that anytime somebody wants to reach you, they have to fill in some details on your.

Enquiry form that sort of makes it a bit harder to get in touch with you. And check your details, how much is correct, what needs to be changed, and also backup your data. All the social media platforms offer you the ability to backup. So I don’t know whether you remember John, but Facebook decided they weren’t going to publish information from media outlets.

And there was this beautiful business in Camberwell that provided IT support and some for some stupid reason, Facebook believed that they were a media outlet and so they lost all of their content immediately. As soon as that decision was made. So I would suggest you back up your data about every six months. And if you want to take real action and really be Gold Star proactive, I’ve got a LinkedIn profile updates, CHEAT SHEET, how to set up Google Business and also how to generate lead sales and results.

So I’ll let people follow up on those later if they wish. Now in terms of your online content, your photo. On your LinkedIn profile, about 65% of the time that people spend. On your LinkedIn profile will be spent just looking at your photographs, so it needs to be recent.

Doesn’t matter about wrinkles and grey hair. What you mean to demonstrate is your energy and your enthusiasm for what it is you’re talking about. So anything that conveys that is fantastic. Preferably looking at the camera, smiling with your teeth showing and wearing a high neck garment because what that does is it frames your face.

If I put my scarf up all of a sudden you’re now much more likely to look at my eyes instead of. And you might have been tempted to look at my neck because that’s where the skin ends. Yeah, having a high neck garden is important. Now, your label everywhere you appear online.

And what do you want to be known for? If you ask me the question at a networking event. Hi, Sue. What do you do?

I hate that question. I asked the question, what keeps you busy during the day? But nevertheless, I tell them I’m an independent LinkedIn specialist. I’ve got a three word label.

We all know you should label jars, not people. And when John introduced me, he gave you a whole bunch of other words. But this is what’s going to appear every time you appear online. So those first 3 words really need to capture what you’re really about and try and make it somehow memorable.

The fact that it’s got the word LinkedIn in it is memorable. Independent, not so exciting, but specialist is my level of competency. Independent is my adjective. And LinkedIn is the actual details of what I do.

So if you can come up with your own, memorable. That’s a lot of people find that really hard to do, but it’s necessary if you want people to remember this is what you do now. I do lots of different things, but when I was suit everything, I wouldn’t get a gig. But now that I sort of state my name and businesses that thing, then say, oh, if he does link there, she probably knows something about websites or she might know something about social media.

And I still get all those other gigs, but they Remember Me as that. So your buyer needs to be consistent and congruent with your values and include a little bit of your personality. I don’t mean your personal life, I’m being your personality. So what is it about you?

And your activity needs to be consistent and aligned with your key messaging. So my activity is always based on being friendly and professional, not personal. So I might share personal stories, but they won’t be about my personal life and such. Definitely not online at least.

I mean I might do it in a training session if somebody says ask me a particular question, but it’s not the sort of thing. Put out publicly, one video I saw was of a lady wearing a strapless top and her camera angle was above her garment so it looked like she was sitting there in the nude doing a video presentation talking about how she’d broken up with her boyfriend on the weekend. It was just a disaster, this video. And so I definitely don’t recommend that kind of thing.

And also where you are online, the more they’re called high domain authority websites that you are on. Then the better that is for you. So if you can be quoted on a website that has a high domain authority, that’s fantastic. Things like universities, government, media, any large organisations, anything thathas a lot of Internet traffic, they’re all really great places to have it.

And if you are going to share statistics and facts, make sure you do not share anything that is commercially sensitive so you can’t say. Increase their revenue to $3 billion per year because that increased revenue forecast by 24%. Something like that. So nobody knows the exact details.

And again, values alive. Do you want to be known as a revenue raiser or do you want to be known as a guru on cultural transformation and change and agility and all these other things? So just make sure it’s all aligned. So again, there’s some homework if you choose to do it, about creating that label with the LinkedIn headline.

How to write and add achievements to your LinkedIn profile are fine. Women in particular are very reluctant to share their achievements and a lot of Australians are as well because they think it is braggy. But it’s not. You’re just stating facts.

So if you said you were the best consultant out there and it could be a stretch, but if you said you’re a consultant who specialises in thisand this is what you’ve done for your clients, there’s no boasting involved in that. Stating detail and then if you’ve got to bring employees with you. There’s different ways that they can support your Internet presence as well, so you can share that without. So on to online options, LinkedIn, like if you have no other Internet presence, I would suggest it be that in my view, it offers the biggest bang for buck because at the end of the day, the only thing that keeps us earning and living is a network.

And this is a way to keep that network close. And to you, there’s I think over 12 million LinkedIn members in Australia. 900 million worldwide. So I have a policy of everyone I meet, everybody I correspond with, everybody who reaches out to me, everyone who meets socially, all of them.

I connect with them on LinkedIn and I can show you how to do that via phone if you wish. Yeah, your own name, website. So you own it, you control it. You can put whatever you want on it.

It’s your showcase. You can bring evidence. Just be aware of copyright so you can’t take a photo of. Media article and put it on your website and share it because the copyright of that article, even though you might have written the damn thing, still belongs to the publication, but you can link to it.

So anytime I get something published, I do take the photo, put it on social media, but I also get a copy of the link and I go to a website calledarchive. org/ web and I copy paste that link in there so that there’s a permanent record that I was published. In that location. And then if they delete that content of their website, then I can just link to the archive link and prove that I still had published that content.

I also recommend your own page on the company website. So a lot of company websites, they have a page meet our team and they put these little head shots all over the page and all of you are on the same page now that I do not recommend. Or you could have that as an overall page, but then you would have an individual page for John, Sir Mary, all the individual people. Because that means that when anybody googles Jobs or Mary, then our individual company page can come up and search results.

That group page won’t because it’s got too many names on it. There’s also a Google About Me profile, so if you’ve got a Gmail email address, you can go to about me. google. com and you can go into the links section and you could Add all the links to where you are on the Internet.

So that tells Google before the robot tries to find it, that this is content about you. And you can also have a business profile, you could even have a free website there as well if you want. And your professional association listings, who has gone out there and paid 300 to 500 to $1000 a year for a membership, which offers a free listing. And then they don’t fill it in or they don’t have all their details on it.

So it’s time to look that up and update it. So here’s another few articles on how to be found on page one of the search results. What to do?Before you speak to a website designer because there’s a lot of people who get ripped off when they get a website built and how much you should pay for a website and what should be included in the design proposal. So this is I think the last one officially your activity.

What were you going to do? Online content. So make sure your profiles are accurate. Curate and create content by the time engage.

People love it when you like their stuff. So it’s now called a reaction, not just because there’s different. You can do on LinkedIn for instance, there’s even a laughing one now, but there’s clapping hands for congratulations, there’s a love heart, there’s a light bulb, there’s some really interesting little reaction buttons you can use. Make sure that you are up to date on the social media policy of the organisation and particularly if you’re a woman, you might be trolled and people might write negative comments about you.

So have a strategy in place for that. What some trolls do is they write something horrid and then you go to report it to the police. And by then they’ve deleted it. So if you do see something nasty, it’s a good idea to take date time, screenshots and keep a record so that you’ve got something to show.

If you are going to be quoted in the media, you need to have a media kit ready so that they know the details about you. And if you’re going to be a spokesperson for the organisation, make sureyou’ve had some media training on what to say or not say in front of the 20 cameras outside the office. And also Fact Check wherever you can. Now, ChatGPT is really good at producing content, but none of it’s fact checked.

It’s all based on what everybody else has said before. So I love to include statistics and facts in the content I write. And also if you are the media, I’ve asked for links or recording the whatever from the publisher, if I can reuse that. In the last six months, I’ve appeared five times.

On channel 9 and they’ve given me the recording directly from their system and I put all four videos onto my YouTube channel for the first four and they sent me the one for the 5th. But then I found out that they’ve put the fifth time I was on their YouTube channel. How exciting is that? So it’s already had 1100 views and 16 likes or something or another, which is super exciting.

So I have still added it to my. YouTube channel, but I’ve made it private. So if they remove that video in the future, I’ll still have the record of Amazon and I can make public. But if they have published it somewhere, I wouldn’t republish it.

That’s just not on. So I just keep that in mind. So there’s more tips on going on that content journey of engaging first curating, which is you source other great material and share it or creating your own. How to make a post go viral and how to search engine optimise.

Articles, if you choose to write those on LinkedIn, if you found this helpful, I welcome a recommendation or a little vote for my skills on LinkedIn. If you were not already connected, you’re most welcome. And if you want to scan those codes, you can write me a Google review now or you can follow me on my social net QR code. What you can do is any website link. You can put that in AQR code generator.

So whenever you do a slide presentation, you can put a QX word wherever you want people to go. Then I’ll just hold. To the slides and then they can just press on whatever you’d like them to follow. So I’m ready to answer any other questions you’ve got for me, John.

I guess there’s a couple of things there. I think your point about QR code is a really important one. I was presenting it to Swinburne University yesterday morning and a couple of students came up afterwards and wanted to connect on LinkedIn and the first thing that they did was pull out the QR code for LinkedIn. And I thought that was quite innovative to see them being at this stage so adept. In fact, they are more adept at me in pulling up a QR code and I’ve been using LinkedIn for over a decade now and that’s obviously something that I need to to look into.

I see that it’s being the sort of thing that it’s vital to actually put on the closing slide of every presentation now simply because we always put email address which no one ever writes down anyway, whereas AQR code is something that can easily be captured and I think the LinkedIn profile is probably. This one to to capture it’s autogenerated by LinkedIn anyway, but also having one for your own website. I guess there are a couple of questions that come to mind in addition to others. So we’re trying to manage our own profilers, CEOs and senior leaders and content continues to be king, yes.

Yes and no earth. So I’ve been in the online world since 2001 and back in the early days I used to get 60,000 unique visitors to my website. Month, which was an awful lot of people back then. Interestingly, I’ve heard very recently that the average Australian is spending over 5 hours a day on their mobile phone.

Now. If we think about written content, how many people want to look at written content on their mobile phone, particularly when they’re our age? Like it’s just not fun. The bigger the screen the better if you ask me.

And having access to a keyboard even more so. Yes, content is key. But so is managing your time and being realistic about what you can achieve. Because at the end of the day, most senior leaders are so busy with the day to day and the vision stuff that going along and putting stuff online, it’s just not number one priority.

And getting somebody else to produce it that’s in your voice that is aligned with your goals. It can be challenging too. So I suggest always the first. Start is having your profile stick and spare.

That is so important. I cannot underestimate that. Second stage is just like a few other people’s posts because you imagine it if all the people in your master class like your post, you would feel pretty excited by that. And what they can do is they can click the notification bell on your LinkedIn profile or your YouTube channel, whatever it is.

And it means that they’re more likely to see the content by John Downes or a Koro before anything else. So. They’re going to get what they want, so the engagement piece is probably more important than the content piece. However, if I’m checking you out and you haven’t posted any content for 36912 months, I’m going to say this person is a bit of a Luddite and it’s clearly not up to date with anything. So therefore, how can you make it that you can put something out that’s reasonable on a regular basis without ruining your whole life?Now I try and put something out at least once a week, and I think that’s reasonable.

Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s well known for his social media prisons, says you should put something out seven times a day. Now seriously, if I did that. I would have no life and everybody would think I was a megalomaniac and that’ll be unfollowing me immediately because there’s too much noise. So look, if you can’t do once a month, I’d say something every two months would still be enough.

But it needs to be credible, just engaging with a few people’s posts. That’ll give you probably just as much kudos as publishing your own stuff and and brief posting. What are your thoughts on reposting content that you find interesting or evaluating? That’s what I call curating.

And if it’s in alignment. So if your whole topic is leadership, then one day you put out Formula One racing, the poor algorithm is going to get very confused. But so I’d, I’d probably suggest you try and stick with something aligned with your principles. So for instance, some of my clients are in very different sectors to me.

And then they send me something and say, Sarah, can you please share this? And I say no because it’s not related to anything that I do, but I can like it or I can pass it on to somebody else. But that’s the most I’ll do. So I try and keep everything congruent, I guess.

So in, in my case, I will often repost something that I’ve seen from McKinsey or from. I’ll have strategy forums that I feel is going to be a value to the people who follow me. And I guess in some ways that’s a relatively easy way for me to publish content without actually going through the trauma or producing it or still produce my own content as well, but. I’m not as prolific simply because of bandwidth.

Absolutely. And The thing is, to keep yourself up to date, you do need to read the article by McKinsey or Harvard or whatever. But if you read it and you were able to condense it into three main points, that would be suitable for your audience. And if you included that in the reposting, then that would be a real value add.

So that could be your way to just not share it. This is a great article. So what? I still have to read the damn thing.

But if you can see the three main things I get out of this leaders are then, yeah, that’s really adding value. You mentioned harder mine authority websites. How would a CEO or a senior leader position themselves to appear on a high domain authority website? Is that just an accident or something that is that something conscious? I subscribe to a website called Source Bottle.

There’s another one called Helper Reporter out. And so when a story request comes through that I think I can answer, I put on a blurb. Look, my strike rate is pretty low considering how much expertise I have and the number of ones that I respond to. But yeah, look, it’s one of those things you do have to be a little bit conscious about it.

But again, if you can do 12A year or even 6A year, that’s. Just sometimes there’s something keeping the home fires burning. If you do nothing for 12 months there, you’re going to go into Internet oblivion. So yeah, it is important to to keep something happening on a semi frequent basis.

But I love producing content that educates. So for me it’s a driver of mine to educate people. But that’s not necessarily for everybody. For other people it’s something very different.

Legend. So can you walk me through a slight example of how you felt the?Going from Luddites to hopefully not ludicrous leader on the social media forums, I always start with the LinkedIn profile and I try and extract the story. Most people find it a painful process because they don’t like talking about themselves typically and they feel that their results should speak for themselves and that kind of things. And they don’t feel they can’t always justify the time they’re spending on it.

They see things as a better return on investment. So. Try and explain the value of doing it. I’ll give you a sample story. I made this amazing student and as soon as he came into the room, I wanted to hug him, which is very unusual for me.

John. I come from a family where there was no physical contact. But this guy, he just had this charisma about him, not sexual or anything, just he just seemed amazing. And it turns out he’s an illusionist and so he goes round to parties and he gets the crowd mixing and mingling and so on.

But he was. Previously a Qantas airline pilot, so that must have been where we connected because my dad worked for Ancestor for 37 years, so he must have had that vibe about him that attracted me to him. And everybody asks him, how did you become an illusion? And he has to repeat the story that he was a Qantas airline pilot and that he suffered a back injury so he could no longer fly.

So you imagine the trauma of having to. Retell that story. Over and over and over again, which is horrendous. When he finally got to the point of putting on his story, thought, oh, thank goodness, now somebody else, they’ll say, just look at my LinkedIn profile.

So it just saves you all of that. So that’s definitely the first step. And the second step is to facilitate the process of them deciding what their message is going to be and what they want to focus on. So who would be the VIPs that they click the notification bell on or who will they follow or what can they unsubscribe from?

How can we just narrow the gaze so that what they’re focusing on is really just the most important and then the rest takes care of itself? Now what you do need to remember, particularly with LinkedIn, is you can’t have a virtual assistant in the Philippines logging on to your LinkedIn profile and doing the work for you. So firstly, there’s a complete cultural difference. So although it might be cheap, the quality may have a different standard.

I’m not saying it’s poor, it’s just it’ll be different and there’s a lot of cultural barriers there. They speak English but they don’t understand it the same way as a native English speakers speaks. And no criticism, just what I’ve observed on many occasions.

So if somebody else is going to be representing you on LinkedIn, they need to have very good guidelines as to what they are or are not allowed to do and at what point they need to contact you for advice on how they are to proceed. So you need fairly strict instructions. Now interestingly, I find a lot of senior leaders have had no social media training. They think it’s all for the young ones.

And these young people without any business experience are putting out. Messages in the online world that can be viewed by thousands of people and they’ve got no idea about what’s happening until the shit hits the fan. So I really believe that every senior leader needs to understand what social media is about and value the work of the social media team. So another sort of related example was a woman who came to a course I was running on social media strategy with a lot of experience, probably not as much as mine, but a lot of.

Business experience and she had a fantastic social media tea who were doing exactly what she wanted. So you would also say there was no need for her to come to the course. But what happened is on the course she suddenly understood the value of video and different channels and reaching the right target audience and all this kind of stuff. So she went back to the social media team.

She said wait, now I know all this, what can you do? Oh, we’ve been waiting for you. We really wanted to bring these ideas to you, but we knew you wanted this particular thing, so we just followed your instructions. So when she finished the course, she got back to the social media team and they worked collectively to come up with a 12 month strategy. Now that to me is the absolute sweet spot.

So then the social media team can help support your residents, provide you with those curated pieces. Pre write something on the top you could say look my top three. Leadership strategies are X. You can put it into ChatGPT and get it to write something for you, or you could put it to the social team who knows how the company operates.

Say, put this in the language of our company and send it back to me and now I’ll post it. So yeah, that’s the kind of thing that you can do. Now the way to assess whether the social media is working for you is to look at your stats. So I’m an ex banker.

Like I want facts, data, information that’s going to prove that this. Worth the money and the time. So if your number of connections is increasing, if your number of followers is increasing, if your number of profile views is increasing, if your number of appearances in search results is increasing, you can say that was time well spent. I’ve worked out what the minimum viable product is in terms of my social media presence, and I’ll do that until we’re ready for the next big jump.

But I would say I’m not the early adopter. Like I’m not the person who’s already got 6. Accounts and the Discord account and all these others I’m not even on I’m on Snapchat and I don’t even use it but I’m the next stage when there’s been proof of concept and I can verify that this is worth doing and then I’ll do it now of all the platforms over all the duration, LinkedIn has been the absolute best value, particularly for individuals and interestingly also. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, a lot of people have lived Twitter and are looking for an alternative.

And although LinkedIn is closely boring, a lot of people have actually thought, oh, it’s nice, people are friendly here. They’re not biting my head off at everything I say, and nothing ‘s escalating into this wild, crazy storm. So for some people, it can be a little less free, but actually it can perform as good or better than some of those other things do. Absolutely.

We talked about thousands of connections and followers so. O your perspective on seeing your leaders and CEOs connections swallowers is more and more should they be actively trying to harvest or attract connections and followers? I’m sure many of them, like me, will have had the 100 or more connection requests from countries that I’ve not travelled to as yet for no grade for no obvious reason, even if I need to say I’d like to connect. I think you’d be good for my network if you join me and I’m thinking, well that really does tell you a lot about you but not a lot about me.

What are your thoughts? I think you should have a connection and follow a strategy. I will pretty much accept a connection request from anyone in Australia. So I have been doing international work for many years.

But there is a cultural difference and it’s a whole lot easier for me. But I only have to support myself to just get Australian clients. So pretty much if they’re in Australia and they don’t look like they’re going to miss it to me all the time, I will say yes. However, if there are website developer from Bangladesh Nola, I will refuse the connection.

Now, the benefit of being connected to somebody is if they’re then looking for someone with your skills, you’re more likely to appear in this search results. So that’s the value of having the connections. And whilst you may be in a leadership role right now, at some point you may not be in a leadership role. So I’m always thinking ahead.

So when I was 28. I moved from Adelaide to Melbourne, got a job, found out I was pregnant, got sacked when I was pregnant. Of course you can’t get work when you’re pregnant. Well, you couldn’t back then.

And then after my daughter was born I was back in demand and I thought, this is crazy. I’m a 29 year old breastfeeding mother. Probably by the time I reach the ripe old age of 40, nobody will want me. I’m now 57 so I’m still gainfully employed in many things, but it’s because I adopted a strategy.

I’ve decided to make myself employable. For as long as I want. And yes, I’m OK in the camera now and keep my energy and my health and all those things. But maybe when I’m 90, nobody want to listen to me on a webinar.

Like it just might not be the thing. So in my 50th year, I published my first three books. So I’m looking at producing content that is ageless. So my next lot of writing will be poetry.

And I might venture into fiction, like, who knows?Obviously the ChatGPT robots gonna produce a whole bunch of other content that might be pointless and I may have to What do you call it? Pivot. Yes, that’s the word. I was living well pivot again.

But the reality is since I could build my degree, my correspondence and when I finished my degree is in the two range student. They said don’t have to do post grade, you can go straight to masters and PhD. And then I found out this is doing the same thing over and over. Wouldn’t it be better if I applied my learnings?So I’ve applied my Thatcher of business and administrative management to my work and I’ve continuously learned ever since.

So I go to between 1:00 and 4:00 events every week. So I’ve always got something that as a geek. So when you’ve got more connections and followers and they see you pivot or change or a dad, then you take the crowd with you. And so we need our friends.

So connect with all your family and friends and everybody. And that’s the goal of the network is to have that safety net there. And so in my view, you need 3 networks, your personal, which is your friends and family, your work, which is not just your job, but within the industry or the profession or that circle and then your personal. Absolutely.

If I was a senior leader and looking to start to promote my personal brand and my organisation, what would you say the critical few things. Those #CriticalFewActions™ that if I did nothing else tomorrow that I should start doing, that label that you give yourself is in the headline is absolutely critical. You obviously need to showcase the organisation you work for, so make sure you’ve chosen them from the drop down box and you follow them and you like their posts and do that. If you’re representing 1 organisation, you could have the logo in your banner next to your photograph to show that I really do represent this entity.

And yeah, just fill in your LinkedIn profile because if the staff member’s profiles are better than yours, it just doesn’t look good. And I do a lot of work with schools. I go in to teach the year elevens and year twelves in secondary school to update their LinkedIn profiles and the head masters or the principals profile is disgusting. So how can you lead by example if you haven’t done it yourself?

So yes, you do need to be across it and then to. With at least one thing once a week and maybe put something online at least once a month, I think that should be achievable. That’s just on LinkedIn. But really and truly, if you really want to be seen as a great leader, you need your own name, website, and you need to tell the full back story and prepare for the day when you’re not the leader because it will eventually come. As much as we want to deny it, it does come and the more you are prepared for it, the better chance you have of making that transition.

Into whatever is next so so I feel like I’ve been in front of a file like information for the last 20 minutes thank you so much for that any leaders that are listening to this will probably feel exactly the same and so I guess that raises question for the time for leaders how can you help them get past and get up to speed fast I work with people not for people so I’m taking on the journey and just help you understand what is important so you. Tell me what you’re trying to achieve. And then we just focus on the tasks that achieve that, right? In that case, I’m glad any listeners who really want to get on top of their social media presence get their LinkedIn profiles knocked into shape in no time at all.

And I still remember us working through mine very rapidly and comprehensively. So. Sue in conclusion, what are your thoughts on whether a CEO should be on LinkedIn.
Well, the reality is everybody is going to Google you like the shareholders, the employees, the future employees, your friends, people at parties, everybody’s going to go with you. So if you say you’re a CEO, they’re going to say, oh yeah, well, let’s check them out. What have they done in the past?

Are they worth their salt? Do they have the street cred? I mean, they’re going to want them back to those assessments. And the irony is that people believe what they find online more than what their best friend tells us.

So even if their best friend said this person’s a fantastic CEO, people are still going to Google and make that decision for themselves. So you really got to be there. I also believe that the best CEO’s also have their own name website. So I’m actually working with a client at the moment, an Australian who’s in Mumbai, and he’s purchased his domain name, but we’re going through his LinkedIn profile first to build up the back story and so that we know what we’re going to focus on.

He’s going to be moving into a different industry and then we’ll start building up his profile and his brand and the types of content he wants to be known for on his own personal website. But you can start with LinkedIn because that can give the full back story. But then having your own website means you can really personalise it. And I actually believe that if you’re going to go for a top level CEO position, if you don’t have your own website, that’s going to be a detriment as well.

Good point. O What impression does it give about a CEO that doesn’t have a polished profile on LinkedIn? Well, firstly you would say, are they old school? As in, you know, they think, Oh no, I can call the Prime Minister and I’d beg these people, you know, so they have very little online.

Secondly, they’re not digitally competent, and in today’s world you do need to be seen to be digitally competent. So you can imagine that if the board looks at your online profile, there’s nothing there. They’re going to go in there with our new board members to say, you know what, I’m not so sure about joining this organisation because theCEO hasn’t shared their story. Now look at the LinkedIn profile is not what you had for breakfast.

It’s a professional record. And if you’ve got a little bit of a glitch in your background, you can massage the message. So a simple example is maybe there was a big gap between CEO positions. We all know that to go from one CEO position to.

There is not necessarily an overnight task. So what did you do during the gap? So you can actually say, well, I had a sabbatical and I travelled three . countriesI started learning a language, I learned about raw food.

And you can fill in that gap. So it massages the message because we don’t want people to see you in jail on extortion charges. You had a disability, you were sick, you know, because that’s what a gap can look like. So you just fill it in and as I said, massage the message and explain some of the things you did between day X and day Y. So it’s a really great way to just tell the story you want to share and give that opportunity across. The other thing I say for very high profile CEOs, you don’t want to be contacted by disgruntled shareholders, employees, customers and whatever. So you can also use it as a way, if you would like to reach out to me directly, please fill in this form and then people have to go through a process to reach you.

And that will get rid of a lot of the tyre kickers as well. And it also means that if you’ve got system set up because. You know, people do want to complain. Then it can go through the organisational function there.
And the last thing is you will not be a CEO forever. I mean, there will come a time when that CEO role ends and you really need a network. So if you’ve been building up your network the whole way through, we can think about this in terms of prime ministers who’ve had a a disappointing dismissal at some point. You know, they really need that network so that they can carry on and do whatever they like to do going forward. So having that good LinkedIn profile and that good network that you build with it, that would be important too. So it’s not just about the actual content, it’s about the network you create as well.
I totally agree.

Sue thank you so much for your time. It’s been absolutely invaluable and I’m thoroughly enjoyed it. Great. Thanks.

John, I’d like to make sure every word counts. You’ve probably gathered that by now.
Absolutely did. Thank you.
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