255: How to Win More Customers Using LinkedIn - with Donna Serdula

Matt Wolach: 0:10

LinkedIn can be an extremely powerful tool for growing your personal brand growing your company brand and making a lot of money but so many people are using it incorrectly and don't know the tactics that work and they're trying to do things that don't work. That's why I invited Donna Serdulaa on the show. She has been helping people with LinkedIn for years since 2009. In fact, she's helped over 6000 people grow their LinkedIn account and really dominate on LinkedIn. So if you want to grow your personal brand, if you want to help your company brand take off absolutely check out this episode. It's gonna be really invaluable for

Unknown: 0:45

you. Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exit brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach.

Matt Wolach: 1:02

Hey there welcome. Welcome, super excited to have you here at Scale Your SaaS and this is going to be a really fantastic episode. Before we get into that, make sure you are subscribed. If you're watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe button there. Or if you're on a podcast network, go ahead and follow the channel hit the subscribe that way you will not miss out on any of the amazing things that we come that we have coming out for you in the next few weeks. And today is going to be really amazing because we're going to learn all about LinkedIn and growing your brand. I am here with Donna Serdula. Donna, how're you doing?

Donna Serdula: 1:34

Matt, I'm doing great.

Matt Wolach: 1:36

Oh, god, me too. I am so excited to chat with you. This is something that's really passionate, or what I'm really passionate about. And it's gonna be a lot of fun. But let me just make sure everybody knows who you are not us. So Donna is the President at Vision Board Media and what they're doing. They're pioneering boutique marketing. It's a firm that collaborates with sea level corporate executives, entrepreneurs, professionals, companies to design and develop branding strategies and content that changes lives. Donna pioneered her LinkedIn profile optimization methodology. And in fact, she and her team have helped over 6000 professionals from all over the world tell their story and build a professional, amazingly powerful brand. I'm super excited to learn more about this. She has also authored two editions of LinkedIn profile optimization for dummies. So when it comes to LinkedIn, she is the expert. Once again. I'm super excited to have you here. Thank you, Donna, for coming on the show.

Donna Serdula: 2:30

Thank you so much for having me.

Matt Wolach: 2:32

Absolutely. So tell me what's going on with you lately. And what's coming up.

Donna Serdula: 2:37

You know, we're working on creating courses and creating content for executives, and entrepreneurs and professionals from all over the world so they can stand out on LinkedIn. That's really what we're really, really passionate about.

Matt Wolach: 2:51

It's so cool. I think it's really important. It's something that has helped me a lot. Most of our business comes from LinkedIn for my coaching business. We've gotten a lot of people there. I've met a lot of great friends there. I've got great partnerships there. So I'm really excited to soak up more knowledge from you here. But I first want to go back. What gave you the idea to start your organization vision brand media, I really our vision board media. Sorry, I know what a vision board is. In fact, Chris always talks about his vision board. So I want to understand, like, where did that idea for your company come from?

Donna Serdula: 3:24

You know, the where it came from was I was in a sales role, and a high pressure dog eat dog type of environment. And I was making cold calls cold calls out the wazoo. It was like ad before noon every day. And I started to realize that, you know, I was looking at the people that I was calling, I wanted to learn more about them. And it was at that time that I also started to realize that wait, I bet they're they're probably looking at me to like, Who is this crazy person calling them right? And, and I had that epiphany of Wait, this isn't just a resume. This is your brand. This is your professional manifesto. This is how you can control how others perceive you. Right? And, and when I had that realization, I remember thinking, I need to do a better job of writing about myself, but it's so hard to write about yourself, right? It's like, how do you see yourself objectively how do you how do you write about yourself and you don't see I sound boastful but you you sound authentic? How do you how do you put this out there in a manner that doesn't seem obnoxious, but it seems genuine and real and engaging? Right? That's, that's a hard, that's a hard balance to strike. For sure. It's so hard and and I remember, you know, sitting there and trying to write about myself. And I was like, there has to be someone who can help me. I can't you know, like, I can't do it by myself. And I remember Googling and Googling and trying to find someone who could do this. And there was no one. There was no there were, there were some resume writers, but they were just copying and pasting a resume. And that's not what we want, right? Because we're going to look like a desperate job seeker. Like, that's not going to help.

Matt Wolach: 5:19

It will just look like everybody else. Yeah,

Donna Serdula: 5:21

exactly. And so that's when I said, you know, this is a platform that has every, every potential to go huge. And this was like in the, like, 2006 2007, what I'm talking about. So this is not like recent, this was a long time ago. So it was in 2009. I started my own business was vision board media, and vision board. Why? Because I love for future casting, right? It's, and that's the beauty of the LinkedIn profile, it's this chance to get deliberate and intentional, not just about where you are today. But where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? And how do you want to be seen. And so for me, that vision board really represents, you know, that forward cast, but also, you know, my writers, I've got over 20 writers, we are a board to help them really propel themselves forward. Right? We are a network of people who are all about writing that story, helping you understand and articulate your goal and your message.

Matt Wolach: 6:29

That's amazing. So has a dual meaning then, like your vision board and your the board for that for that person? That is fantastic. I love I'd even see that at first. That's great.

Donna Serdula: 6:38

We provide the vision.

Matt Wolach: 6:41

So cool. So what were some of your early learnings when you got started? And when you started helping people? What did you start to see as things people were messing up with? What what did you realize, hey, here's where I can provide the best value for somebody?

Donna Serdula: 6:56

Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest, biggest issues in the very beginning, and not even the very, very beginning. I mean, this was, you know, we were in about two years, three years at this point. And I will tell you, one of my biggest surprises was I thought we were going to be working with sales reps. People in business development, I thought we'd be working with small business owners like that's who I thought my audience was going to be. It was actually executives and entrepreneurs. They were the ones that were flocking to the service. I was shocked. I was not expecting that. But the more and more executives we started to work with, I would say to them, Well, you know what, we just made your profile look fabulous. Let's look at the rest of your executive team. Let's now start to look at your marketing team, your sales team, let's let's go into those application engineers, or whoever's those spoke that spokesperson like Well, let's look at their profiles. And let's make sure that their profiles look fabulous as well. And I used to get this was the response. I want them to look terrible data to look absolutely horrible. Because I don't want them poached. I don't want them poached. That's amazing. Interesting. And, and and at that point, I realized there was this this this misunderstanding that LinkedIn is just for job search, and it's not. And what's happened is there has been this great shift with companies where companies, at one time that companies we used to say, oh, all of those job candidates, you better look good, because we're looking at you. Well, there has been now this huge shift where these job candidates, the rock stars, are now saying, Oh, you better look good for me, I want to make sure that I'm going to be joining a company that looks cohesive, that looks unified, that I know the team is comprised of other rock stars who are going to challenge me and make me better. So now, when I talk to, you know, executives, and we start talking, it's, Hey, you want to showcase your best all of it. And when you work with us, we're not optimizing profiles. So the people are going to get poached, we're not doing that. But we're optimizing it. So you can better collide with prospects, and investors and partnerships. It's a different way of looking at it.

Matt Wolach: 9:19

That's so cool. And I think that's super smart to think about it that way. And it's something that a lot of people, you know, had to grow into. Right, like you said, there's been kind of a shift and evolution since LinkedIn has started. And now it's kind of, you know, it still has that that, you know, recruiting aspect to it, so to speak, but a lot of people use it more for networking and reaching out and sales. And I think it's super important for that and you've definitely got to look good. I also think it's important and interesting to think back and they wanted that I can't believe that they wanted their people to look bad on LinkedIn, in other jobs and it's just so counter to me, like, I just hired a brand new salesperson and I'm telling him like you got to have Have an amazing online presence, you got to be posting great stuff, you got to do this, you gotta do that, because I want him to help spread the brand of the company by spreading his own personal brand. I know plenty of people and I've made friends on LinkedIn and Twitter who they build their personal brand, and everybody goes and starts using their company because of it. And it's, it's really quite amazing once you can do that, but But how can you best use LinkedIn for for your advantage and to build your your personal brand versus your company brand? What do you think?

Donna Serdula: 10:32

You know, I think you want to definitely strike a balance, right? Because you don't want to be well, it depends on where you are with the trajectory of the company, right? Because there might be times when you're like, Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm beyond like company now. But you may say, Hey, I still need to weave a little bit of that company in, you know, I don't want to seem like I'm a lone wolf, are totally separate. So you will want to look at that and balance it make and make the decision based upon where you are and where you're going. But you know, taking the company part away, you want to look at your profile. And the very first thing you want to say, now I have a methodology, it's called soar, and it's an acronym. And each each letter stands for something. So it's a stands for strategize, optimize, amplify, and relate. Well, if you want to build that brand, SOAR is what you need to do. And so the very first thing is the strategy piece. And you have to say to yourself, why? Why am I on LinkedIn? What am I truly trying to accomplish? You know, some people are doing it, because they want to be seen as an expert, some are doing it for reputation management, some are doing it for job search, you know, others are doing it for, you know, other reasons for just for networking, you know, to stay top of the mind where you need to really say like, this is what I'm trying to do. And then you want to think in terms of your target audience? And what do they need to know about you. And if they were searching for someone like you, what would be those keywords that they would be inputting into the search engine, right, because that's what's going to help us in the next one, which is optimize o optimize. And at this point, this is really a very foundational piece, you need to make sure that profile sings, like it needs to tell your story, it needs to tell people why they should, why they should care. It should tell them, you know, really, who you are, and why you matter. Right? It's it shouldn't be a regurgitation of your resume or a bio. But it should be something that a person reads, and they feel that sense of warmth, that soul that, hey, this is someone I want to talk to this is someone who matters, this is someone who has something to say. So you need to optimize that profile. Once you do that, Matt, the next piece is the amplify and amplify is kind of a network to you. If you only have like 200 people, LinkedIn is absolutely going to seem useless, it's basically going to be useless. You need to have a network, you need to have people you need to follow people, you need to get followers. But you also need to have a strong first degree network people that you're connected to. And this is something that you need to constantly be working on. Because if you don't have that network, you're going to be in a basically a dark hole, right? So that's the amplify piece. And then we move on. Once you have those things in place, now you can start to relate to people. And that's when you do it on your LinkedIn feed. That's when you start to get loud, that's when you start to really engage and provide value and motivate and inspire people. And that's when it really gets fun.

Matt Wolach: 13:34

That's so fun. And I've been able to do that. I'm fortunate that LinkedIn has worked out really well for me, and it gets so great when you can kind of put out some great things. And people say, This is amazing. This has really helped us and you make some good friendships and good partnerships. It's pretty cool. So I want to ask, what is the best way to maximize your LinkedIn results?

Donna Serdula: 13:55

No, I think it's knowing how much time you have to commit to the platform. I talked to a lot of people who they are posting every day, and they are spending hours on these posts. And, and maybe for some people, it's it's exactly the right investment to make. But I don't think everyone can do that. But they still want to have results. And so, you know, my, my, my belief is you need to get active on LinkedIn, you do you know, at one time, it was one of the most passive networks out there. You could just have a great looking profile and lean back and you're, you know, people would knock on the door. It's a little different. I mean, it still works that way. But at the same time, if you're active, that's what's going to really provide fuel. And so it's really saying to yourself, you know, I'm going to post once a week and on the other, you know, four days of the week, I'm going to engage I'm going to Who spend maybe 1015 minutes with my morning coffee. And I'm going to comment. And I'm going to make sure that I'm commenting on people, their posts that are within my industry that are within my audience. These are people who really matter, and they have something to say. And if you can commit to something, and that's not a lot, right, that's not a lot. It's it's one post, and four days of just just posting some comments. And I'm not even talking about 90 comments, like, That's insanity, that devolves into nothing. But you know, if you could maybe comment on three posts, three posts, and that's, that would be fabulous. I think you'd see over a period of three months, how that comes back to you tenfold.

Matt Wolach: 15:49

That's great. I love that there's a formula and I love that there's kind of a plan you can put together and just block it out on your calendar, I think that's really important. Because, you know, I've been guilty of getting sucked in and I end up I look back, I'm like, Well, I just spent two and a half hours doing this thing. And it takes up a lot of your time if you if you let it but yeah, I'm glad that there's a formula you're sharing. And I'm sure it's helping people.

Donna Serdula: 16:11

It is, you know, and if a person you know, if you're listening, and you're probably thinking, Donna, sure, once a week, I can't even come up with anything for once a week, like what do I post I don't I don't have any ideas, I have no idea what to post, visit my website, it's LinkedIn dash makeover.com, go to my free resources. And I've got tons of free resources. One of them is a LinkedIn post idea, idea generator. And you click and it will give you three ideas a day, three ideas, three topics, three things to post about, and take it and go. Alright, I can talk about a time when this occurred or this occurred, you'll find that it just prompts you with just enough that you'll you'll you can you can come up with something.

Matt Wolach: 16:53

Hey, that's cool, what a really cool tool for you to put out there. Definitely make sure you guys go there. We'll put that in the notes, by the way. So you guys can get that link. Let me ask Donna, what are some of the great LinkedIn strategies that are working? Well, right now for a lot of people.

Donna Serdula: 17:07

You know, I think with with the strategy that's working well, with LinkedIn, it's again, it's having that strong profile, really making sure that you're you're telling your story. And, and you're making sure that the profile is targeted to your audience. And it's saying what you want it to say it and you have to spend time you have to spend time on it, it's not something that you can just, you know, push out there in five minutes, or even 10 minutes, it's something that you really do need to make sure that it's in there. You know, other strategies is in making sure you've got the company page, and you know, really determining Are you in that mode, where you want to make sure that that company pages posting information, I think if you're definitely in a hiring mode, that would be an important thing to do. Because people are looking, you know, make sure that you're your team's look good. You know, who's whose external facing? And are their profiles? Impressive. Like, would you pick up the phone if they called you? Right, like making sure that there's a reason for a person to listen to them and pay attention to them? You know, other things that I think people are doing that make a lot of senses. You know, what I said before just getting active, not, don't, don't overdo it, don't post don't think that you have to post you know, five times a day, that's not sustainable. But you know, choosing what you want. And, and in a very steadfast way committing to that frequency.

Matt Wolach: 18:37

I think that's fantastic. So if we flip it the other way, what are some of the mistakes people are making when trying to really grow on LinkedIn? What are they doing wrong? They

Donna Serdula: 18:46

are connecting with people they don't know, they don't trust, all they're doing is looking at the numbers and sending you know, all of those, you know, connection requests, such as just strangers, you know, that's not necessary. You know, I they have the Follow button now. And to me, at one time we were connecting because we had to that was the only way that you could pay attention to a person but follow the those people that you don't know. And then start to engage on their posts. And then once they recognize you and you know them at that point, hit the connect button, so don't just don't aim low and why don't spray and pray. It's it's better to be much more intentional and deliberate with that connections. What else are people doing? That's like terribly wrong. Oh my goodness. Really horrible profile pictures.

Matt Wolach: 19:45

I've seen those. When there's like three people in there and you're like, which one are you have no idea.

Donna Serdula: 19:49

No idea. Or do you know what happens all the time? This is and this is insidious. People will get a beautiful profile picture. They'll go to a photographer they look great. The upload it and the visibility is just to their first degree network. And I don't know if it was something that was defaulting that way for a while because it's so widespread. And people don't even realize, because when they log in themselves, they see their picture, right? Don't know that no one else can other than, you know, their first degree. So that's something I think everyone should take a moment to look at your profile picture, click on the eyeball, click this visibility settings and make sure it says, everybody.

Matt Wolach: 20:31

That's important, because I've seen that, and it just says, like Mike T, and it doesn't even give the last name and a picture is hidden, like what's going on? And then once they connect, now, you see, it was Templeton, this is a name I made up sorry, if your name is actually Mike Templeton. And your picture shows I'm like, what's going on? So I didn't realize I was the visibility? That's awesome. That's a great tip.

Donna Serdula: 20:53

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, you know, the other thing is the headline on the LinkedIn profile, that area is so sensitive, sensitive for search. It's one of those things that people eyeball it and they make they really make judgments based upon it, you know, should I click this profile? Or should I should I move to the next one. And so the headline, I think, is another area that they just leave at the default. And the default is your current title and your current company, but that doesn't really compel anyone? No. So that's, that's an area to optimize, I have a LinkedIn headline generator in my free tools. So that's another little free freebie that you can grab, and it automates how to create one. So you just enter in a few terms, and boom, it'll, it'll create a profile headline that's really interesting, engaging and optimized.

Matt Wolach: 21:42

I love that super cool tool that you had there. As we wrap up here, what advice would you give to new software leader software founders who are just starting out and wanting to grow their brand on LinkedIn?

Donna Serdula: 21:52

You know, I would say definitely consider the SOAR methodology, you know, strategically think about those goals, your target audience, and then spend that time to optimize, you know, and if you can't do it yourself, it's okay. Right? It's hard to write about yourself. And if it wasn't hard to write about yourself, that would mean you're a narcissist. And that's, you know, that's not a good thing to celebrate that it's hard for you, that's a normal thing. And it's something that you can, you know, outsource it. We've got writers standing by work with someone to really tell that story. Because people want to know who they're doing business with, they want to know who you are. And they don't know what to think about you. They are looking at your profile, wanting you to really tell them, This is who I am, this is what I do. And this is how you should consider me. So take that time, craft that brand, work with someone if it's something that's just outside of either outside of what you can deliver or just outside of your time, right. Like I said, this is not an easy thing. This is your career. And a lot of you've been in your careers for more than 10 years. And so there's quite a bit to unpack.

Matt Wolach: 23:02

Great advice. I hope everybody takes that to heart data. This has been awesome. Where can everybody get in touch with you to learn more?

Donna Serdula: 23:08

They can always find me on LinkedIn, believe it or not, I'm there, I would bet I would bet when you when you visit, hit the Follow button and hit the bell the bell will give you all of my posts that are on our popular so make sure you click that. And then my website is LinkedIn-makeover.com

Matt Wolach: 23:26

I love it. Thank you so much. We'll put all that into the show notes as well. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.

Donna Serdula: 23:32

Thanks for this great fun conversation. I enjoyed it.

Matt Wolach: 23:35

Likewise, it's been really fun and everybody out there hope you enjoyed it as well. Again, make sure you're subscribed to the show. You do not want to miss out on any other amazing leaders and creators like Donna. So hit that subscribe button. You'll get all those coming up as well. Thank you so much for being here and we'll see you next time. Take care.

Unknown: 23:54

Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS. For more help on finding great leads and closing more deals. Go to Mattwolach.com