Using Social Media To Find A Job And Demonstrate Thought Leadership

Sebestian Ong, Digital Strategist, LinkedInSeb, and Annette Richmond, Personal Brand Strategist, career intelligence Resume Writing, discussed using LinkedIn Strategies to find a job and demonstrate thought leadership. 

Widely recognized for his LinkedIn expertise, Sebestian designs and implements B2B digital strategies, LinkedIn advertising campaigns, and social media engagement. He’s known for generously sharing tips and techniques on Clubhouse, LinkedIn, and LinkedIn Live events. 

Topics included:

✅ Creating content from your comments on other posts

✅ Strategies to learn from other content creators

✅ Value of planning content and scheduling it in advance

✅ Varying your post content, using video, text, and establishing a pattern

✅ Saving time by repurposing your content

✅ Generating content for different platforms

Smarter Career Moves LinkedIn Live Show (Previously Recorded) 

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Visit our website https://careerintelligenceresumewriting.com/

📌 NEW Podcast: Content Marketing School.

Thank you for listening, I hope you found this episode insightful and relevant. If you're a coach, consultant, or entrepreneur, or just want to dive more deeply into content marketing. I hope you'll join me on my new podcast, Content Marketing School.

Available on your favorite podcast platform.

(Previously recorded, Live Show)

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Transcript

[00:00:09.470] - Annette

Well, good morning. It's 11:00 a.m.. Eastern, and welcome to the Smarter Career Moves LinkedIn Live show. I am so excited to have Sam here with me today. We connected on Clubhouse almost a year ago, and I follow you on LinkedIn, where I learn from you all the time. And I also, as I mentioned, I follow you on Instagram, too. So I get kind of a different perspective on Instagram. And you do a lot of video, and a lot of it is educational or entertainment, I guess, is what they call that. But on Instagram, it seems to just be really just inspirational videos, which I love. And the last thing I want to say is that I really admire you. The highlight, the focus that you put on mental health issues. I will never forget being on Thanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving, you were doing a LinkedIn live just for people who were hanging out alone. And I was chatting with you while I was kind of prepping, prepping cooking for the next day. And I just really appreciate that. And now you're running this 52 conversations, so I don't know how you do it all. Anyone who doesn't know you, tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

[00:01:47.670] - Sebestian

Hi, my name is Sebestian, and thank you, Annette, for bringing me up on the show. I never knew I had enough brains or enough talent to add to your topic, because when I came to know you, I was just in awe that there are people like you because I spent months and months on my resume and my stuff, and it just was never good enough. It was never eight years confirmed. I should have come to you. If I had known you before my life, I would have saved six months of writing time and pain.

[00:02:22.140] - Annette

Well, thank you.

[00:02:24.190] - Sebestian

But you came just when I finished the whole project with my resume, because I finally gave up six months down. And I'm like, you know what? I have no more energy to revamp my entire thing one more time. And I just gave it to someone and I got it back. And when I was on your Clubhouse call, someone told me that it was not ATS confirmed. I was like, oh, no. So I gave up on it. It is what it is. I'm done with it. But what I'm doing on LinkedIn is basically I have my day job, I'm working in it, and then my side hustle is where I take all my skills and everything I've learned in my day job. And I help smaller companies because LinkedIn is going into this content creator economy part, and a lot of solo business entrepreneurs are finding themselves stuck. All of a sudden, they have to do everything on a massive scale and they're not prepared for it. And they go like, wait, I don't have time for a toilet break at all. Why? Because 20 clients you talk to and they're like, not prepared for it. That's why.

[00:03:32.630] - Annette

So I appreciate that. And it is so true. I'm a solopreneur, and I'm trying to create content. And a lot of it is just making sure that you know how to repurpose it. I think that's a big time savings. So I just want to shout out to several of our friends who are in the audience, Hello, Tina and Kamalika and Felipe. And thank goodness, Gillian's in the house. And Deanna so I know we're so happy to have you all with us this morning. I know you all know Sebestian, but if you have any questions, please do put them in the chat and he will answer them for you. Because he's such a nice guy.

[00:04:20.170] - Sebestian

I'm surprised he would not be really bored of all the things I talk about on a daily basis.

[00:04:25.490] - Annette

No, you are one of those people who shares things that others don't. I mean, you saved me time because I learned from you how to do things that I don't know how you John Esperian, there are a few people. Clare Carroll, Gillian, Whitney are people that I learned from. I'm sorry, monitor, monitor as well. Yes. She's such a sweetheart. I adore her. But I follow people to learn from them because it saves it's one of those things that saves me time. And personal branding is one of my favorite topics, personal branding, thought leadership. And it is important for people like us to demonstrate that we kind of know what we're talking about. But it's also valuable for a lot of the clients that I work with who are senior level executives, and they have to show their thought leadership as well. So many people wonder, like with content, how do you create content? Where do you get your ideas from? And I know there's sort of things out there that you can see all the time, but what do you have tips for doing that to create that content?

[00:05:51.070] - Sebestian

Oh, that's a very good question. And the one question that I can spend all day on. Okay, we're not going to try and do that because we only have 45 minutes earlier, we were speaking before and we talked about Ask the Audience, which is basically an aggregator of all the searches in Bing and Google, which is live. And so it's really good. But we spoke about that for like a year now, getting a bit out of that. So we're going to go with something new. So I believe everyone has heard about engagement and how everybody has incorporated that into their own LinkedIn journey itself. And I say you grab your content from your comments, and there's two ways to go around this. There's one way where for me, if you see my comments, that comes with a hashtag in there, you know, I'm Reposing that one day later down the road because I'll have my data downloaded every month. And then I'll pull out with Excel sheet. I can just pull all the hashtags and those posts are normally repostable and I just lined up in the week. The other method, if you're one of those more impromptu kind of person, would be to actually go in and as you comment and you find it useful, copy the entire thing.

[00:07:08.100] - Sebestian

Just before you finish, go into Buffer analytics. Io, they have a scheduler and just put it in there. Will put a title on the top saying that need working on if it's not ready yet so you know not to push it out or take it as a draft. The once is ready, just add an image to it. And normally you can schedule up to like a month in advance. And I normally schedule up to three months in advance because every day you have ten comments. That's like ten posts if you can repurpose them all. So, yeah, repurpose your content, please.

[00:07:40.390] - Annette

I love that. And I learned to do that from a few different people. I know that Deanna keeps a notebook or something open with her all the time. So when she's watching her kids play sports, she's taking notes. And I actually learned that too. When I'm commenting on something where I feel that I'm saying something that might be kind of insightful, I do copy it and I put it in a Word document so that I can go back and refer to it when I'm trying to think of what am I going to write about today? So I'd like to go if we can. We have actually questions already. Yeah, I know already we have people here. So Felipe wants to know, where do you suggest people go to learn some of the digital marketing skills you share in addition to your wonderful videos? Good question.

[00:08:42.970] - Sebestian

Well, if you look at all the content creators we have in our network, so when I say our network, I mean John Esperian's network, you will see the prolific ones. They all would have some sort of programs or if you can't afford it or you want to save money. What I'll do is that I'll just go through the entire content itself and just do a search of these keywords. And normally you'll find a pattern in them and you will put them together and you'll learn whatever they are teaching, because most of the time, content is just we take a big piece of information and just split it down to million pieces and reposition over months. But if you can pull them all together, patience and you want to save money, that's the one way to do it. Otherwise, I think almost all of us are service providers. And again, approach one of us have a free call, start with and you find out that you're not really one of those talented writers like me. I'm not talented in writing at all. Outsource it. That's the best way to go.

[00:09:46.550] - Annette

I love that. And I think that it's important to also try different things. I know you do a lot of video. I try to mix it up because I do enjoy video. I resisted it for years because I hate to see my face. But it's just like what?

[00:10:06.580] - Sebestian

You have the best looking videos ever up front and center, and you're perfect looking at a screen, at a camera, and you don't even shake.

[00:10:17.810] - Annette

Well, thank you. That's because I use clips and I record one line at a time. But that's the tip that I learned from Nick Rayburn when I did a little training with him.

[00:10:26.620] - Sebestian

I could do that, right?

[00:10:28.710] - Annette

It makes it so much easier. But I learned to do them because it's just something else that you can do. And I love the idea that you're talking about repurposing content. One of the things that I do with my content is I take my LinkedIn Lives and I put them on my podcast. So I edit the audience. Usually I don't really edit them at all. I'm broadcasting LinkedIn and also on YouTube. And then if there's like a glitch or something, but I put them up on my podcast. And actually, I was quite surprised that I started doing this. How many people download those hours long or 45 minutes to an hour long and listen to them? So how else do you suggest to use repurpose content?

[00:11:17.030] - Sebestian

So the system that I have goes like this. If you have a LinkedIn Life, which is a long video format, you change it into first of all, you change the format itself so you can change your podcast like what you did, which is great. I go through a different method. So I listened to what I spoke about, what I've learned from that LinkedIn Live. And so my podcast is normally a one man show because sometimes in a conversation, which is what life is and engagement and stuff like that, it becomes a little unclear on the podcast where you have to describe a lot of stuff. Am I frozen? Because I have a very bad network here, it seems. But can you hear me properly, Annette?

[00:11:55.150] - Annette

Yeah, I hear you fine. Every once in a while, your image will freeze a little bit. But I hear you just fine.

[00:12:02.290] - Sebestian

Just have to update. I'm sorry about that. What was that? So we talked about turning your life into a podcast and then going from there, you want to take your podcast and you want to turn it into an article. So if you are not very savvy, you can use something like Pictory, which is a new app that does a lot of stuff. We continue repurposing itself. If you're very good at that, then I would say be like, Felipe, just sit on down and just write out what you feel and how it can value out to your audience stuff. And that's good to go.

[00:12:49.930] - Annette

I can't hear you right now.

[00:12:52.210] - Sebestian

It's bad. Okay. Okay.

[00:12:59.270] - Annette

So one of the things. Well, I will mention that one of the services that I use, if I have an audio, something that's really long, is I use a platform called Temi. Temi. It's an artificial intelligence transcript, and they do a pretty good job. And I use that and it's fairly inexpensive. I think it's, I don't know, 20 cents a minute or something like that. It's something really inexpensive for the AI version. But do you pull out, like, video clips of the Live because you do so much video? I don't know how you're I feel like every time I look at my feet, I see you on there again. I was just listening earlier today, you were on LinkedIn Live with Jeff Young and something with Rebecca. I have a question for the content because it seems like you go in a lot of different areas. You were talking to Jeff Young about networking. A lot of it was networking on LinkedIn. And I'm paraphrasing here, but he was talking about LinkedIn being the 24/7 networking party and finding your tribe and serving your network, et cetera. And then I was listening to another LinkedIn Live you were doing with Rebecca when you were talking about stress, managing stress, and she was talking about meditating and yoga.

[00:14:35.570] - Annette

And then I know you're also doing this 52 conversations. How do you sort of juggle and manage all this and how do you decide on these topics?

[00:14:50.310] - Sebestian

I don't. First of all, thank you for actually going through my content with the fine tooth comb. I'm really honored that someone actually pays attention to them and you literally call it out, which is what many people wasn't able to go. Like, Sebestian talked about a lot of stuff and there's a reason for it. And the reason is this because I am a lot older than I look, that's for sure. I've been around the block. But my one purpose and one purpose of my presence to help companies with is all about a LinkedIn strategy, a social media strategy that involves around sharing your screen, that goes around building your content. And for that to happen, I have to be really flexible with my content formats itself. So I was starting with a lot of web posts, image post, video post, live post, and then going back again downwards to shot from videos from the life and so on and so forth and so forth. So the idea is established and to show over time to people that you know that you're seeing a pattern is that if you really pay close attention, a lot of them are repurposed from one format to the other, which is why I'm very focused about my format of my life, because I'm going to cut them out and I sit in certain area of the frame.

[00:16:11.130] - Sebestian

I hold my body in a certain way and I frame it up simplicity for a reason, because you can set up with much ease after that so that's what I do. Why I do what I do.

[00:16:23.610] - Annette

So our conversation here, we're talking about Thought leadership. So that is just like a genius way to show how you are able to do so many different things for your clients by showing how you do them yourself. Right. So that seems to be like kind of the strategy.

[00:16:45.490] - Sebestian

Well, I think I have to thank my CEO for this because it's a big company. So when you have a slot with a CEO, you want to get everything down. You want to get everything done, including backup work for mistakes, because to get another slot with the CEO is going to take a long time. So you want to have everything you have any content creation. It's very hard to have everything because you've got to play like ten steps ahead. So that's what I do. And I was alone to minimize it down to the easiest, simplest MVC, minimal viable content.

[00:17:24.270] 

Okay.

[00:17:25.150] - Sebestian

Just the least amount and blend it out in such a way where you can always add stuff. So I have a green wall behind me. I can change the screen any time and repurpose this content again and stuff like that. So make it simple. And you can add the fields at the end. And this is what CEOs and people who don't have time when you do it because you only want to do one Zoom call, and then that gives you all the content that you have for a month. Why not? Why sit in front of the computer spending stuff an hour every day? And what should I post? What should I post? Oh, no, I need to engage.

[00:17:57.930] - Annette

Yeah, it's so true. I was just making a note of that minimal viable content. I love that. So I worked as a magazine writer before I was ever in the career space. And I had mentioned that to you. And one of the things that I used to do, although we didn't have, like, video then, it was just me on the phone with them taking down notes. But when you're talking to a company CEO, they don't have a lot of time. They want you to be prepared. They want you to get right down to it. And I'm sure that's one of the things that makes you really valuable.

[00:18:38.590] - Sebestian

Thank you very much. Do you know how to use shorthand?

[00:18:43.270] - Annette

No.

[00:18:44.300] - Sebestian

How do you write so fast then? Because phone calls can be super fast.

[00:18:48.130] - Annette

Well, one of the things that I used to do then was I would take, like, notes the same way I did when I was in school. I would just make notes to jar my memory, and it was something where I had to really take it down. We would never send the articles we wrote for approval, but we would send, like, quotes. Is this exactly what you said? And now that we have video, we don't have to worry about that because even if I'm talking to a client and we're doing something, I can record it and get the transcription. So I have it in detail. But yeah, I'm dating myself. But yeah, we did that.

[00:19:32.330] - Sebestian

I learned shorthand. So you're not dating yourself? I did. It was a pain. I walked out of the class.

[00:19:41.390] - Annette

To further date myself when I worked at the magazine. It was back in the early 90s. And one of my jobs I always talk about this, too, with a dream job, people are like, oh, my dream job. My dream job, and you get your dream job. I did. I was a magazine writer, but no job is as dreamy as you ever think it's going to be. And one of my jobs was to work with a photographer when they came in to do photo shoots for the cover, which was so fun. My other part of that job was typing labels on a typewriter to return all of the products that we brought in for the photo shoot. Not so much fun.

[00:20:22.600] - Sebestian

Don't you have an assistant for that?

[00:20:24.600] - Annette

Yeah, it was a tiny I wasn't working at, like, Vogue. I was working at a small national but small magazine. So I digressed here, getting off, talking about, talking about my job experience. But one of the things, too, that I really have mentioned and I love it, are the inspirational. So what makes you on Instagram? If your clients are primarily sort of on LinkedIn, what makes you take that time on Instagram to put through those just short, very inspirational. Telling people you are amazing. Nobody told you that today. I'm telling you, you're amazing and things like that.

[00:21:19.890] - Sebestian

I didn't set out to do that intentionally. It was when they say, listen to the metrics, you listen to the metrics. That's the reason for that. When I came onto LinkedIn, I was just doing pure LinkedIn, nothing else. I turned my nose up to the other platforms, but I do have them on my personal account. And we talk about content repurposing. We talk about our new channels, doing it on different platforms itself. And that's what I did. And it did not work. Taking a live or taking a video that you did for LinkedIn, and you just copied one to one for Instagram and one to one for TikTok, did nothing at all. So over time, I got tired and I start to do trending stuff, which is what you want to do to actually get yourself updated from the audiences, which is what they recommend. You LinkedIn is a little different. We have a different ballgame altogether, so don't try that. Only with the poles and the carousel stuff. Now, I realized that no brainers. I call them no brainers because I literally just have to memorize the lines from a video that I watch, say to my camera with my face filling up about 80% of the screen, nothing less, because you want my face up front.

[00:22:36.850] - Sebestian

I don't know why. And looking all sad or inspired or puppy eyed or wise and speaking really slow. I know everything. Those hits thousands within minutes. When I give out tips, they barely meet 100 views a day. So I'm like, why do I get so much work for just listen to a video, say it out, get thousands of views, job done. Which is what's happening with Instagram now. Some of it confuses really do they want, but it's a trend. That's what we see. Maybe it's a trend, or maybe it's because I see more of such stuff. So they're serving me more of such stuff. But my real feed is just inspiration after inspiration. I'm getting, like a bit too much.

[00:23:25.410] - Annette

Well, it's really wonderful to see that. And I kind of do that in reverse. I don't know. I don't have the presence that you do to be talking to people about, oh, you're so fabulous. Although I think it I hope I inspire my clients. How awesome. But I will tell you what I do is I create my tip videos, the short form videos. I create them for Tik Tok and then I repurpose them on LinkedIn as my short form videos. But I do them specifically with that intent. And sometimes the video might be a little over three minutes. So I'll taper it back for Instagram, for TikTok and Instagram. But then I will put the three plus minutes on LinkedIn. And that seems to have worked fairly well for me. I'm not getting certainly I don't get thousands of people checking me out on TikTok for sure. But I figure you never know. So it's good to be where people are.

[00:24:32.320] - Sebestian

First of all, you have three minutes on your TikTok. Jealous. Like upset and jealous at the same time. But I'll be fine. Not everyone has them.

[00:24:45.000] - Annette

I bet you do, too.

[00:24:46.080] - Sebestian

Not everyone has that. I think TikTok has just recently launched in Canada. Five minutes. I can't remember. Three minutes or five minutes.

[00:24:55.380] - Annette

Wow.

[00:24:56.220] - Sebestian

Yeah. If you're seeing a trend to go back to longer format, I know. And even Instagram itself, they are seeing an additional five to 8 seconds more on their Reals. And those are the ones that trends. So if you're now used to creating super short content, like nine to 15 seconds, it adds about five to 8 seconds to them. I don't know what you're going to do then because it takes so much time to learn how to cut it back. You got to add the fluff back in again and you're like it speaks your mind.

[00:25:28.650] - Annette

That's part of the reason that I use clips, because I can cut each clip a little tiny bit to make it fit. And then, of course, with Instagram, if it's longer, it can go on Instagram TV. So you can push out there. We have a question here from our friend kamalika about, oh, do you want to be known as someone who changes mindless engagement. Okay, I guess that's a question for you.

[00:26:01.090] - Sebestian

So let me answer this in this way. I was approached not too long ago, but we're the largest part in the world. This part is so huge and LinkedIn itself. I cannot say too much more than that. And they are so well organized and it's giving them social media advice almost close to getting the job as the lead content created for them. But I didn't take it. Principles have to stick to it. I lost my train of thought. The question again, the question was if I want to be known as do I have the question.

[00:26:42.250] - Annette

Do you want to have people know you for my listing agent? But you only do that. Then again, I mean, you only do that on TikTok or Instagram, right? Instagram.

[00:26:49.660] - Sebestian

No. When you join a part, the engagement gets you that push. But most part owners stop there. They don't tell you it's a part. Two of it because Google's don't want to do more work or anything at all. If you're a content creator, if you're a part owner or whatever it is, their engagement at the beginning is only there to help boost you up. So you trend. And when you train, more people can see your stuff. You have to use the opportunity and actually get in there and engage with people, connect with them, start building funnels or in the CRM. It's just segmenting them to know how would they fit into your journey along the road, down the road. And then six, three months, six months or nine months. That's what it is for. One does do a poll and engaged mindlessly on it because everyone's doing it and reaching out to thousands of people only to just end the poll and be done with it because those numbers are not for nothing. First of all, you reach out to all of them and thank them and give them a result of the poll. Tell them, show your demo to your thought leadership so that you can see as an expert for whatever you're doing.

[00:28:04.160] - Sebestian

And then you start spitting them out. Okay. Is this person am I going to have any collaboration with or can they help my network grow and kind of stuff? So you start speaking out from there. Those numbers are there. So that's why those people who do polls on a daily basis, I know that they can't be doing much with it because there's no way you can do that on a daily basis and get it.

[00:28:25.930] - Annette

Yeah. So Kamalika says that's really cool. I thought that's really pretty cool, too. So that was really exciting. And I hear you on the polls and here's a little bit more praise for you. Thanks for it. And that is an interesting take. So you're just generating to get that sort of audience. And then you can kind of show them your stuff. Show them your brain there watching you and you talked about polls with content. And people always say, I hear people in clubhouse say, oh, how do I get engaged and say, oh, do a poll, do a poll. And I know some people do them all the time. I hardly ever do them. The last poll I did, I really didn't get much engagement on it. I don't know. Maybe it was the time of day. I'm not really sure. But I see polls like, what do you like better, peanut butter or jelly? I mean, it's just like it's crazy to me. Talk about your sort of mindless content and those polls like that, they'll get like thousands of people responding to them. But it makes things kind of crazy.

[00:29:48.210] - Sebestian

That is the point, because if you niche down your content, if you niche down on your topics, more people cannot engage or it doesn't resonate with them. That's what I'm niching down those people who do. At first, I couldn't understand those people. So I'm like, why the hell do you need to know if I drink my coffee without sugar? Why would you need to know that? Do I tell you if I have my underpants inside out or not? Why would you need to know that? But actually, there's the reason for it. It's just the lowest huddle that you can put out there for people to cross so that they can engage the polls design in a very good way where you re the hook, you see a bit of introduction to what it is. Don't put too much in there. Then you go to the poll itself. So it's three segments of engagement points, which takes a lot of time to go through because you cannot go from one to the other without understanding the previous one. You don't just jump forward because if you do that and someone wrote something else in the content itself and it doesn't quite flow, you will be called out very fast.

[00:30:54.990] - Sebestian

And then by the time you decide, you make a decision and then you have to engage like it, and then you do a comment at the end. Again, you easily spend five minutes on that. And people don't spend five minutes on their polls, especially digital marketers. They're like, in comment, out, in, comment, out, incoming, out. Our poll, we hate it because it takes us too long to go to them. Given the settings. You can turn it off. You can stop seeing people's posts.

[00:31:22.470] - Annette

Oh, really? I'm going to have to find out how to do that then, because every once in a while there is someone that's really looking for information, someone in the career field who is asking, what would you like to hear? What area in your job searches is holding you back that you would like me to share information on? And that's something I think can be valuable. So, you know, it's funny because in a roundabout way, we've been talking about kind of all these different things, and yet the theme has been fought leadership. Right. It really has kind of turned out that way. So Kamalika has a sort of a long follow up question here, and I'm just going to read this for people that are listening on the podcast later on. So a follow up question, since you mentioned that long form content is coming back, do you both have any tips for creating long form videos that's engaging? Can you get your eyeballs while showing your depth of understanding the topic you want to be known for as a thought leader? Okay.

[00:32:29.230] - Sebestian

Wow. Can you see any more keywords in there?

[00:32:32.610] - Annette

We only have like 1015 more minutes here. Kamalika, what is your Jeff on that one set?

[00:32:44.390] - Sebestian

Talk to Claire on this one. Are you there? If you're there, just say Hi. You see Gillian, Kamalika, call her post and book a one to one with her. Michelle booked a one to one with her. Michelle loved a one to one.

[00:33:04.370] - Annette

But for me, I did, too. I booked a one to one with Gillian, too. She was very helpful for me.

[00:33:11.040] - Sebestian

I know. And honestly, I'm going to just say this outfit. When I first got to know Gillian, I'm like, she doesn't have a cool like a content creator. Why would she be an expert on videos? And she wasn't very revealing on her own content as well on her video stuff until one of the content that she showed her first video she ever did on LinkedIn itself on one of the platforms. And I was like, wow, this woman has been doing videos for a very long time. So what took me maybe a day to turn off for her? It's like seconds or minutes.

[00:33:52.210] - Annette

It's so funny because as I said, I booked a consult with Gillian myself, and I recommended her to a friend and colleague of mine, and he said the same thing. He said I checked her out. I wasn't quite sure, but I booked the console with her. He loves her. He's gone back to her, I think more than once for help because she says she's the easy peasy and she sure is the easy peasy.

[00:34:19.640] - Sebestian

She makes it easy peasy for you.

[00:34:21.970] - Annette

Yes, exactly. I appreciate that. My thought is for having the longer form content that's engaging. I'm not sure if you meant video. I mean, for video. I don't think you could ever go too long. You should go too long. I have friends and colleagues that post like 5 to 10 minute videos on LinkedIn. And even though I know them and I know their information is really solid, I couldn't listen to it for that long.

[00:35:01.040] - Sebestian

What do you think you are from a generation where patience is virtual with the millenniums? Sorry, you have nine against the sell to them something and tell them how they benefit from it or you're out 9 seconds. Actually, no. Goldfish is just 2 seconds short with the memory but to come to the first point first is that the one thing that I see that people do wrongly is that they blubber on in a video when they are unsure or unclear or they want to show their thought leadership, they blabber, they start justifying, they start telling people more and more examples. Like, I've done this too. I've done that too. Like, no, stop. Just tell them one example. The less you say sometimes is, the more because the more you say, the more you start reviewing stuff you don't want to review. So just take one and just go. So you have a long form videos. And I know this works because I came out and did 100 Days of Life every single day in a very short time. I learned to reduce my 1 hour life to 15 minutes to five minutes. And it was too long because every day, five minutes is a long time.

[00:36:17.840] - Sebestian

And the way I can do it was this. I broke up my life into three parts on a daily basis, topic of work of the day, implementations, and what I call a workaround all about work around. So what are the days that I put out there that you can think about? And I share with you what I think about this word. It goes into my LinkedIn book and writing, which is called the ABCs of LinkedIn. If anyone else is thinking of that, the title is mine, go get your arm. And the second part is about how you implement this word in your daily LinkedIn or social media journey. And the last part is work around. Like, if this doesn't work the way you want it to, there are different ways to do it. Just many different ways to do it. If your posts are not being seen on Google, you turn your posts into articles, which goes on Google. And then you make sure you link all your posting articles so that people can come back again. Yeah, there's always a workaround.

[00:37:17.130] - Annette

I think of that too, with the long form content. And I started posting articles again on my LinkedIn profile a few months ago when Lavinia had recommended that. And so I thought, okay, well, she's a top voice and she says I should do it, then I should do it. I always pronounce her last name incorrectly. It's Lavinia Thanapathy. I'm sorry, Lavinia, if you ever hear this, but I'm butchering your name, but she's fabulous. So I took her advice and then I got newsletter. And newsletter, I think is the best way to do that. Long form content. I mean, that's my thought on that.

[00:37:56.990] - Sebestian

How long is long?

[00:37:59.050] - Annette

I don't know. For me, long is like 800 words or 1000 words, but I know some people write them really longer. What do you think for long?

[00:38:10.260] - Sebestian

I'm going for sure. I've been fighting the newsletter thing for the longest time possible until LinkedIn is literally trying in my face every time I write an article, it's showing me there like, what do you think about the newsletter? It's up there. Do you want to give us some tip advice on how you can feedback on newsletter? I'm like, I'm not on it. Get off my back. But it shows there. Every time I read my articles, I'm like, fine, I'll give it a shot, but I don't want to do more work for it. So I do short form video content. I have products and services to help people create their short form video content from one Zoom call that I run with them and guide them along everything. And so my upcoming newsletter would be, what do you call it? I think Kamalika remembers think that I say be better than I do. It's called Short but Powerful.

[00:39:03.830] - Annette

I heard you mention that. So we have a couple of questions here. Our friend Tina, who is an international headhunter and a friend of both of ours, what the job seekers need to know about video? So let's give them some tips.

[00:39:21.590] - Sebestian

What do you have? Because you have a lot of job seekers, too.

[00:39:26.330] - Annette

Well, my thinking with the video for Job seekers is cover story. There are so many people and I write about this and talk about this all the time that people need to have a headshot, a headshot that looks like them. So when they meet people, they look like themselves and not like someone who's 20 years older than their photo or I know people. The photos are like professional photographers. They Photoshop them. They don't even look like you. So how about some tips for cover story videos?

[00:40:04.310] - Sebestian

My tip is this. If a recruiter has gone down to the effort of looking at your cover story, first of all, they are pretty savvy and they have the time because most of them just want some information from your about section and your experiences, and they want to run with it. They don't really have the time to go through all of your entire profile itself. So if someone is looking at your profile cover story, that means they have actually time and they want to know more about you. So you're kind of like a bit further than the rest of the people. So instead of something saying generic, like what you do? Well, I advocate for the fact that you want to talk about what value you can bring to the team you're going to join. For me, it's about my LinkedIn campaigns and how I can reduce some of them when they're not spend properly, up to a reduction of 68%. I'm all about optimizing campaigns and stuff. So you see my content from day one. So now it's getting better and better and better, and it's easier to produce them because you got to improve and don't spend it talking about you talk about what value you bring, because that way if the recruiter is no offense, sorry to everyone of you out there.

[00:41:12.130] - Sebestian

The code is lazy. You literally just give them a reason. Why should we have use of anyone else?

[00:41:19.910] - Annette

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And I was actually talking to Tiina about this a few weeks ago when she was on my LinkedIn Live, and she told me that she doesn't see a lot of profiles with cover stories. But my thinking is, if you're looking for a job or looking for clients or just whatever on LinkedIn, use everything that you have. Right. Use every feature that's available. Have the cover story. Use the featured section. Brenda Meller is another one who talks about that being a marketer as well as a LinkedIn expert there to use all everything that's available to you. You're missing out for no reason. And it's always about whether you're looking for a job or clients or whatever is to set yourself apart from other people who are kind of like you. Right. If you want to add something else before we go to Simone, that's cool.

[00:42:26.270] - Sebestian

No, I think we can go to Simone because I'm going to stay here forever.

[00:42:30.180] - Annette

Okay. Well, Simone another friend. Thank you for being here. She asked, should you plan your LinkedIn lives? I'm thinking, what about Spontaneity?

[00:42:44.370] - Sebestian

Depends on you. It depends on what kind of person you are. I have people who plan their lives down to the very last period in the last comedy, and they know where to put it in for me because my content pillars are about content development, personal development. I have no shame showing how little I know in the beginning. My first video on LinkedIn in 2021 was so badly lit terrible. I look terrible. And going from that even one of my lecture live, I had to help a client who was so uncertain in front of the camera. I literally came online, show her the point about having guys like me have stuff like this. I don't know if you can see them. Let me do it. Like, the way the influencers do it. We don't look like this on the basis guy. We just don't look like this. I don't love a bad and in five minutes time look like this. I don't know how long women do make up for, but I want to cover some spots. I want to just do it and get it on. So I did it in front of the life, and I showed them, like, look, if you're unseen about the way you look, you don't have to live with it.

[00:44:04.810] - Sebestian

It's a camera. There's lot of things you can do behind you. Just see what's behind one inch outside of what you see on the screen. Right now, I don't think you look at me the same way again.

[00:44:18.350] - Annette

The thing is, though, that is so true. I mean, I certainly wouldn't roll out of bed and hop on a LinkedIn Live. I have to do my hair, a little bit of makeup. I don't want to scare people when I pop on. My dogs. Think I look beautiful when I wake up.

[00:44:34.190] - Sebestian

Get that food.

[00:44:37.370] - Annette

Yeah, exactly. Because mommy is going to give us the food now. But it's just so there is preparation. I know that I do a little preparation every time I have somebody as my guest because I want to know a little bit more about them and I want to be able to make them feel comfortable and shine the light on them. I mean, that's what the purpose is. So that's my take on it as well. Simone says your journey is a great story and a source of future content. Inspirational. The time has just flown by. We are at the end of our LinkedIn Live. Is there anything that you would like to share that I haven't asked you that we haven't discussed that you think would be of value to anyone who's either watching now or touching this on the replay?

[00:45:46.250] - Sebestian

Let me just say it this way. I never used to believe it because I used to believe that we are sufficient. We know everything and yes, we can learn a lot of things. But the reason why we're on LinkedIn is because it's a professional networking platform and we're here to meet professionals in their fields. Why do you want to meet them if we're not going to collaborate with them or use their services? It's like buying a handbag or something you never going to wear or carry. So look into how we can collaborate with them or buy services. If you are a solar printer or if you're a business enterprise yourself, think about exchanging or buying of services because that's the reason why we built network for it's, not just look good and on the numbers. Look into your network, start looking outside of your network for that because hey, better than 1 St in your hand and two birds in the Bush. I think something like that.

[00:46:49.890] - Annette

Something like that. So I appreciate that and I thank you so much for joining me today and sharing so much great information. I know it will be a valuable resource for others again who've been here with us. Thank you for being here and anyone who's going to be watching this on the LinkedIn Live replay or up on YouTube so thank you so much, everyone for being here. Come back next week. I am here. The Smarter Career Moves LinkedIn Live every Thursday at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. So goodbye and have a great rest of your day.

[00:47:28.780] - Sebestian

Thank you so much. Sure.