It is another Captain of the Hour here.

My name is Sue B. Zimmerman, and I'm so excited that you're

going to be joining us today, with a good friend of mine,

Karen Yankovich, who I met online.

Right, Karen?

Yup.

Yup.

Met online initially--

And now we talk probably every day.

We are in B-School, which is an online--

B-School.

And I met her in that group.

And I had the opportunity to meet up with her when I was at

a Michael Port event in New Jersey, because that's where

Karen lives.

So it's always so nice when you can take those online

relationships offline and meet people that really help you

with your business and teach you things

that you don't know.

So I'm really excited, because Karen is here today to teach

you all the what, why and how's of LinkedIn.

And I love LinkedIn.

I use it regularly.

And in fact, Karen just helped me set up an amazing business

page, which you can contact her about, if you need some

help with that, after.

And it's really important to have a very strong profile

there, which Karen is going to go over, because usually when

people meet you and Google you, you're LinkedIn profile

is the first thing that comes up.

So I'm really excited to have Karen here.

And if there's anything you want to add to that,

Karen, please do.

You have your 30-minute presentation to start.

And then I'm going to finish with a 30-minute presentation

on Slideshare and show you all how to do a Slideshare and why

you should be thinking about using it as part of your

content creation.

So take it away, Karen.

OK.

Well, hi, everyone.

Thanks so much for joining us here today.

As Sue said, I'm talking about LinkedIn today.

And I am a social media consultant.

So I work with my clients on all social media platforms.

But I'm a LinkedIn evangelist these days.

LinkedIn is really the place that I

start all of my clients.

And it's really the least understood of all

social media networks.

So that's why we're going to talk about that today.

And before I go into that and before I tell you a little bit

about me, I want to just tell you a quick story about--

years ago, I worked for a company, I did sales for a

company that was a corporate business-to-business company.

So we didn't really have people walking

in our front door.

The owner of the company used to refer to our telephone as a

front door.

And if that phone wasn't answered professionally, he

felt like it showed our front door was off the hinges.

Would you go to a dry cleaner if the

door was off the hinges?

Probably not.

The front door is really the most important--

or a really important part of your business.

In 2013, 2014, LinkedIn is very often your front door.

And if that front door isn't professionally presented and

is hanging off the hinges, then people are instantly

going to get an impression about you.

So we want that impression to be exactly what

you want it to be.

We want the impression of your front door to make people want

to open that door, walk in and do business with you.

So that's one of the reasons why I'm such a LinkedIn

evangelist these days.

But I want to get back to why we're here today.

So first of all, I want to just tell you how grateful

that I am that you are all here today and how happy that

I am to be able to share this with you.

And if you're watching this live, it is November, 2013.

So we're probably wrapping up some of our 2013 goals and

putting some plans in place for 2014.

I really want LinkedIn to be a big part of your 2014.

And I'm going to tell you why.

And I know when we're done here, you're going to agree

with me and you're going to be as excited about that as I am.

So just get comfortable.

You probably are going to want to watch the replay of this,

because I'm going to go through a lot of content.

I'm going to take you step-by-step through what to

do and how to do it.

So if I'm going too fast, you can watch the replay.

I really want to get everything in here today that

I have in my notes.

So bear with me.

Plus, I'm from New Jersey.

We talk fast in New Jersey.

So I'll try to keep that in mind, that not everybody's

brain processes things as fast as I talk.

So just get comfortable and be present with this today.

And if there's things you want to get back to, go ahead and

watch the replay.

So today we're going to talk about the why's, why you need

to be using LinkedIn, the what, what you need to have in

place for massive LinkedIn success, and the how's , how

to significantly increase your sales using LinkedIn.

And my background, I started in corporate America.

I'm naturally left brained.

I'm logical.

I'd like to figure things out.

So I've been in a lot of corporate jobs where I've been

customer service and sales, and director of marketing, and

I can't even--

I could spend half an hour just telling you about all the

different jobs I had.

But for me-- so everything was kind of tech-y oriented.

And along came social media.

So social media blends my naturally left brain talents,

the tech-y piece of all of this, with what I love to do,

conversations, have conversations with people, get

to know people, socialize with people.

So social media is a huge--

it was perfect for me.

It's absolutely my sweet spot.

And so I started training in online

services and social media.

And I can't help myself.

I love this stuff.

So I have a lot of corporate background, and I've been

around the business block a few times.

So when I tell you the things I'm talking about today, I've

done all of these things.

I've tried all of these things.

I've done sales in every way that sales

could possibly be done.

So LinkedIn.

I want to just give you a statistic.

HubSpot, which is an online curator of information for

social media and for online services, in 2012, they put

out a statistic that LinkedIn is 277% more effective than

Facebook and Twitter for lead generation.

277% more effective.

That's amazing.

Do you spend 277% more of your time on LinkedIn than Facebook

and Twitter?

I bet you probably don't.

So any time you spend on LinkedIn is massively

productive for you.

And I'm going to take you right through that.

So first, we're going to talk about the why's, why you need

to be using LinkedIn.

We talked about your front door.

I'm going to actually take you to my screen.

I'm going to share my screen with you now.

And let's see how we do this here.

I'm going to take you to my screen and--

give me one second to get this going for you.

Sue, can you see that?

Yup.

You're go to go.

OK.

Good.

So I'm going to take you to Google.

And I'm going to Google myself.

I'm going to Google my name.

And I want you to see what comes up.

Now if you're doing business with people, even if they

found you on Facebook or wherever they found you, one

of the first things people do, if they met you at a trade

show or an event, or they're looking to invest in doing

business with you, is they are going to search to find out

what you're all about.

Take a look at this.

The second thing that comes up is LinkedIn.

In Now people might be interested in what I've to day

on Twitter and Facebook and all of these other things.

Wow, obituary.

I hope that's not for me.

But LinkedIn is the second thing that comes up.

And most often, we know that people tend

to be a little nosy.

They want to know about me.

They'll eventually check out my Twitter, but LinkedIn's

where they can know about me.

So if you click on LinkedIn, you're going to get to my

front door.

And it's professional.

It tells people exactly what I want to know.

It tells them that I'm a social media marketing

specialist, that I'm a business coach and speaker and

that my specialty is LinkedIn optimization.

That, by the way-- we're going to go back a second-- that, by

the way, is also visible right here.

Right here in--

actually, it's not right now.

So we're not even going to go there.

It should be visible right there, but it's not coming up.

So as we all know, technology changes daily, which is why

we're always doing these webinars.

So this is my front door.

This is the first thing people are going to see when they

Google my name.

They're going to see my LinkedIn profile.

The second reason of the why's.

I know you're getting LinkedIn connection requests.

How are you feeling about that?

Are you comfortable accepting them?

Or are you like, ugh, I've got to work on my profile before I

accept all these connections?

I know you're getting those requests.

People are starting to use LinkedIn more and more.

It also establishes you as the expert.

It establishes you as the expert in your industry.

If you look at my profile, I'm telling the world that I'm an

expert at these things.

I'm substantiating that.

As you scroll down in my profile, I'm

substantiating that.

But I am telling you I am the expert.

I'm the person you should come to about this.

And that's what I want you to do.

I want to start to establish you as the expert in what you

are expert at.

And I want you to use LinkedIn to do that.

This is where people start.

Whether you're looking at your profile or not,

other people are.

Here's another way.

I want to take you to this.

You guys can do this for yourself, actually.

If you go to InMaps.LinkedInLabs.com--

it's I-N-M-A-P-S.LinkedInLabs.com,

you can map your network.

So this a map of my LinkedIn network, how I'm connected to

all of these people.

How cool is this?

Where else in the world do you have a service that can give

you this kind of reach?

So I can click on any one of these dots.

OK, so this dot is Nancy Smith.

Nancy Smith is--

actually, she's a neighbor and she owns a yoga,

an Ayurvedic spa.

And these are all the people that Nancy

and I have in common.

So if you go here, I believe blue takes you to a lot of the

[INAUDIBLE], the blue and green do.

So that's a huge piece of my LinkedIn network.