It's time to shake up your LinkedIn game

Find Your Superpower newsletter 036

Read time: 5 minutes

Topics covered: Empathy, trust, LinkedIn coaching, storytelling

On Thursday last week, I delivered my first-ever public LinkedIn Storytelling Secrets workshop and Q&A session for my masterclass buyers.

Here’s the topics that I covered:

• Storytelling on LinkedIn

• Trust & humble bragging

• Marketing vs selling for engagement

• Engaging with your post for virality

   

In the Q&A session, I covered a slew of questions, and here’s just a fraction of what I answered:

• Is there a golden hour to post?

• What are the first five steps to improve my profile on LinkedIn?

• Should I add a news link, photo or video to a post?

• I feel like I don't have enough work experience to share.

• Will rags to riches stories be taken as humble bragging?

• What if nobody comments on my posts?

• Should I discuss a negative social trend?

• Should I post more often or less? Should I post once a day?

• How do I brand myself if I have two roles?

• How do I become a Community Top Voice?

• How long should my posts be?

This Q&A session made me realize that there is a huge, unmet demand for a data-driven LinkedIn coach with proven results, who can help entrepreneurs, professional executives and industry leaders improve their LinkedIn game.

Just to be clear, the motivation to get better at LinkedIn is more than a superficial “how can I get more likes on my posts.”

For most of us, we post on LinkedIn to achieve financial, business and career endpoints, such as:

• Clearly brand ourselves to get recruited and headhunted

• For business development and customer top-funnel acquisition

• Recruit high value candidates to join our teams

• Find strong industry collaborations and partnerships

Let me take you on a special learning journey

After my LinkedIn Storytelling Secrets workshop on Thursday last week, many attendees reached out to me to review their posts on LinkedIn.

I thought I’d create a hybrid anonymized personality for your learning, and I’m calling them Jamie Doe, a DEI manager at a tech company, which I will call Friendly Inc. 

Jamie’s post began with: Here’s how we run DEI at Friendly Inc

After that, it was an entire post about DEI at Friendly Inc and everything we should know about how it is done there. It was well written and I was impressed by their hard work.

When Jamie sent the post to me, I gently nudged them by saying readers are simply not interested in their “hero” story (details in my workshop), neither can they relate to Friendly Inc, and certainly not a combination of DEI and Friendly Inc.

Frankly speaking, all of us are too busy solving our own 99 problems in life to care about Jamie, DEI and Friendly Inc!

Jamie didn’t seem to get it, and tried again with cosmetic edits, a.k.a. putting lipstick on a pig: Here’s what YOU need to know about DEI at Friendly Inc

Uhm, changing "I/we" to "you" doesn't make your story more inclusive or relevant to your audience.

This time around, I pulled off my gloves and said to Jamie, “I’m really sorry to tell you but nobody cares about your awards and promotions, DEI, Friendly Inc, or any combination of the above!”

The truth is, whenever we try to be the hero, we compete with our audiences who are the hero in their own story.

I reiterated my message, each time gently reminding Jamie of my workshop key learning points.

This time, something different happened.

Something akin to a lightbulb went off in Jamie’s head.

Here's what Jamie sent to me next, alongside a completely re-drafted post: Here’s some best practices you need to know to implement DEI in your company

… with the post containing learnings from them practicing DEI at Friendly Inc.

And in that moment, I knew I had changed someone’s LinkedIn game forever.

I had led Jamie through a massive mindset shift in the way they communicate on LinkedIn.

I'm confident they will see a gradual (or in some cases, it can be immediate) doubling or tripling of their impressions, engagements and comments if they continue implementing my teachings in their LinkedIn posts.

Thank you, Jamie, for trusting in me.

Sneak peek at my new subscription-based community

I am delighted to give you a sneak peek that I will be launching a subscription-based Find Your Superpower community to work directly with more of you.

Community members will receive the following unbeatable offers:

1. LIVE workshops on topics ranging from branding to storytelling on LinkedIn

2. Q&A clinics to troubleshoot slow (or no) growth on LinkedIn and low likes

3. Fireside chats with guest speakers, including with other LinkedIn Top Voices

4. Learning with access to my on-demand masterclasses and e-book

    

If you are keen to be among the first to be invited to join my Find Your Superpower community launching in 2024, please join the waitlist here!

Join waitlist for FYS community launch

Join waitlist for FYS community launch

Join waitlist for FYS community launch

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Thanks for reading issue 036 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.

For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 29,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.

Here’s how we can stay in touch:

1. I would recommend you purchase my course, The LinkedIn Success Mindset. In this all-in-one guide to LinkedIn, we will learn how to manage our mindset, take action and avoid making cardinal sins on the platform. I will be giving course buyers a LIVE storytelling secrets workshop on 23 November 2023.

2. If you are very new to LinkedIn, consider my masterclass on LinkedIn professional branding, Find Your Superpower: How to Rebrand Yourself on LinkedIn. This 1h on-demand video course that will help you identify your professional brand, write a brand statement from scratch, and launch your brand on LinkedIn. Don’t muck around for years on LinkedIn, sort your profile out quickly.

3. Season 1 of my podcast, The Science of Work, is available on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Please don’t forget to leave me a five-star rating to help others find my podcast! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

4. My new and exclusive Find Your Superpower with Juliana Chan WhatsApp community, where the magic of professional branding and LinkedIn unfolds, continues to grow every week. Sign up for my email newsletter mailing list to receive an invitation to join my brand-new WhatsApp community, where I share storytelling secrets, interesting LinkedIn posts and branding tips!