Welcome back to Count Me In,

the podcast that explores the world of
business from the management accountant's

perspective. I'm Neha
Lagoo Ratnakar from IMA.

And today I'm speaking with Daniel
Alfon. Daniel is the author of the book,

How to Build a LinkedIn
Profile for Business Success.

He helps businesses and individuals
succeed by maximizing their reach on

one of the world's largest
business networking communities.

Today he'll be sharing pro tips for
using LinkedIn for career networking,

business development,
content marketing, and more.

If you use LinkedIn for any reason, this
is a conversation you don't wanna miss.

Let's get started.

So hi Daniel. Thank you so
much for joining us today.

Thank you very much, Neha, I'm
glad to be part of Count Me In.

Excellent. So let's start with the why.

Social media is not something that is
top of mind for many professionals,

especially accounting and finance
professionals. So help us understand:

why is social media and more
specifically LinkedIn so valuable for our

accounting and finance listeners?

Oh, that's a great question.

I think the easy answer is that
whenever an employer or any client will

Google your name,

then your LinkedIn profile is
going to top the list on Google.

That's the simple reason. And if

you care about the image
and your professional image,

then you should leverage
LinkedIn and make it shine.

All right. And as a tag
along question to that,

how can accounting and finance
professionals leverage LinkedIn better?

Great. It starts with understanding
our career objective, whether

some of the listeners here could be
managers who want to get promoted in the

organization or moms who
had their maternity leave
and want to get back to the

workforce or young people trying
to start out in business or

get the the CMA certification then having

target list of companies or
career objectives for you is

the prerequisite for
anything you'd like to to do.

And then because your LinkedIn profile,

the most frequent action LinkedIn
users perform on the platform

is visiting other people's profiles.

Mm-hmm, that's true.

And it needs to speak for
itself. In other words,

if I go to your profile, you will
not be there to add information. And,

when I see the book that you've
released and I see your headline,

and I see the photo and
the VO photo is visible,

and I see that you've
added feature content.

I'm likelier to stay here
and try to discover what is

it you do? And for the

accountant or the management accountant
would be seeing what they have

achieved in their current position. And

why is it a good idea for
me to reach out to them?

Wow. I love that.

Keeping the person who's visiting your
profile engaged throughout. Awesome.

And thank you for bringing
up career objectives.

And we are in the era of the
great resignation right now.

So let's pivot to that part of
LinkedIn job search. And if,

if somebody's looking for a better job,
how can LinkedIn be helpful for you?

Okay. The keyword is networking.

When we think about the four step
that that you that you roll about,

and network is probably the single most
important element we need to take into

account. We may move from one
part of the world to another.

Our network is the key asset
that is likely to make our career

grow. And

whenever we run an advanced
search on LinkedIn,

LinkedIn advanced searches or excellence,

and that's probably one of
the misused and underutilized

assets, you can run advanced searches
for a company you're interested in,

and you would be able in many cases to
identify the person you are likely to

report to. And in some cases,
you'll see that you and them,

you share mutual connections.

Right.

You connect with people, you know, well,

you could leverage that meaningful
connection, leave LinkedIn,

and ask that person to introduce
you to your ideal hiring manager

or to your ideal customer
and the power is to

leave LinkedIn. As much as the
LinkedIn is a powerful platform,

close to billion users. Two people sign
up every second. Still hear me out.

The big secret is to know
when to leave LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has shown us
the name of the person.

And it showed us the name
of the mutual connection.

Now is the time to leave
LinkedIn because in real life,

what we are interested in is an interview.

The interview is not going
to happen on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn just provided us with the names,

and then we need to forget about the
platform and get back to real life. So we,

we land that position or
start that discussion.

Wow, that's quite insightful. So
looking up people on LinkedIn,

but moving on from there to
actually network with them directly.

And how can that be done
in a remote-first world?

It could be,

when you say you run a search and you
find someone you'd like to reach out to,

and you see that you do share
a mutual connection with them,

or several mutual connections
with them. Then we,

if you two are connected by visiting their
profile and clicking on contact info,

you would get their email. Simply
leave LinkedIn. You send 'em a message.

You ask how they've been.

And at one point you page the link
to the hiring manager or to the

ideal prospect you'd
like, and you ask them,

do you know that person well enough?

Okay.

And Neha, in some cases you could,

you could guess because if
your mutual connection has 300

connections, and the hiring
manager has 400 connections,

then chances are they know each other.

Okay.

And if you spend 30 more seconds in, you
see that they went to the same school,

or they worked in the same
location for the same company,

it gives you also a

probability of them knowing each other.

And if you manage to have a meaningful
introduction that can get you foot in the

door, and that can start a meaningful
process, hopefully leading to a contract.

Wow. That's some great
detective work there, Daniel.

All right. So from career tips to,

let's pivot to another key
aspect of LinkedIn. Now,

many of our listeners are consultants,
or they work in small businesses,

and I know you're an expert at
getting clients from LinkedIn.

So what are your top tips from, for
business development on LinkedIn?

Okay, great. So I'll, I'll say
this, there, there are two pillars.

I think we need to consider.
One is a converting profile.

And the second is our connection strategy.

So very quickly a converting profile will
make your ideal reader understand what

you bring to the table. And

that your connection strategy
should enable you to use or to

leverage, or to ask people to
introduce you to the hiring manager or

to the ideal client.

And that means you need
to pick either quality or

quantity.

And try not to stay in between quality
means you connect only with people,

you know well, quantity means
you have 30,000 connections.

30,000 connections gives you
exposure. With people, you know,

well, gives you trust.

If you try to aim for both in most cases,

you'll end up with very
little of either, okay.

Not enough exposure and having
polluted your network. So pick one.

Wow. Okay. I never thought
about it that way. So

those are excellent ideas.

And I also wanted to bring
some global perspective to it,

to our conversation today.

Now we have close to 140,000
members around the globe and,

people use different social media,

but they also use LinkedIn differently
in different parts of the world.

Are any other platforms
important for people to know?

And what can international listeners
do to leverage these platforms or even

LinkedIn?

Okay. So I'll start with something
that's not LinkedIn that's Quora.

So I'll share with you later
a specific Quora is a Q and A

website that has excellent answers
and I'll share a free resource or

how to build your LinkedIn
profile and answer.

I put on Quora over 10 years ago,

and at one point I developed
it into a full book.

I think Quora is great to learn.

And if we go back to to
LinkedIn, then IMA has,

has over 300 chapters,

worldwide networking could
happen in your chapter with

your peers,

with people who work for companies
you could be interested in regionally

or globally. And if you
know you want to relocate,

or you are interested
in a different market,

then identifying that chapter ahead
of time could also be helpful.

Excellent.

And just for our listeners
Quora is spelled as "quora.com".

That's the one. Perfect.
Thank you so much.

Now I love all your
ideas by the way, Daniel.

So let me throw a challenge to you.

If our busy listeners had just
five minutes to spare today,

what can they do immediately
after this podcast?

So to massively improve
their LinkedIn presence?

Why Neha? I love this
question. I'll do it fast. So,

first question is who's your ideal reader?

The ideal reader in my book
is either the hiring manager,

if you're an employee or
the ideal prospect you have.

Okay.

Second question.

What action would you like that person
to perform if they visit your profile?

Okay.

You may want them to reach out
to you or to visit your website.

Mm-hmm.

Would you look at your presence and you
ask yourself if I were my ideal reader,

would I feel compelled
to perform that action?

And am I providing them with the
right information at the right order?

That is likely to make them convert. Okay.

And another quick tip would be to ask
someone you're not connected with,

to look you up on LinkedIn using the app,

and then asking to share
with you their thoughts. Say,

if you are looking for, to be a CFO,

or if you're looking
for a specific customer,

can you walk me through what
you would think if you viewed my

profile and you were looking for
a CFO with this qualifications,

and you would be amazed by what
the answers could be and what

is important is what
other people understand?

What other people see in some cases you'll
see that they don't see your profile

photo, and it doesn't help that you
have a profile photo, but if though,

if they don't see them,
then it's not there.

So you need to tweak your
LinkedIn privacy so your photo is

public.

And if they look at your headline and
they're not sure what it stands for,

you need to try and help them.

And you try to make the
banner and the headline

rock,

because the headline is the single most
important real estate on our profile.

And if it's not clear, if
it's not converting, many
people will simply go away.

So ask yourself, who's your
ideal reader? What question you,

what action would you like them
to perform and help them do that?

And if you have an additional minute,

ask someone to look you up and
just share with you their thoughts.

I love that getting unbiased opinion of
a person who's not connected to you on

LinkedIn. Love, love, love that,

so let's move on to the
next question in my list.

We talk about a lot
about being future ready.

So since there's a lot of
talk about being future ready,

can LinkedIn help professionals stay on
top of the competencies of the future or

jobs of the future as
they continue working?

Wow, that's a great question. Yes.

LinkedIn is one of the main tools that
could help us understand what the future

looks like. And one thing we could do,

especially if we're working for the same
company, maybe for two, three years,

is try to assess what
happens in the market.

And what would happen is that if we see
that most companies that are looking for

a specific skill will see that
trend. And we see that now,

you know, 30% of the companies are
are requiring some financial XYZ.

And we need to make sure that
if we want to be future ready,

we need to either take a course
or try to find an opportunity

within our employer to
try and, and gain more

skills about it. And going back
to the question of networking,

if you happen to to attend
the IMA 22 in Austin,

in June,

then networking there could be
a great way for you to build

your future for 2023 and 2024 and 2025.

Wow. So yeah, networking, I think is,

is an integral part of every
step of social media or LinkedIn.

But I also love your idea of continue
to browsing through job descriptions,

even if you're not looking
for a job. So, you know,

what people are now looking for. Wow,
those are some really neat ideas, Daniel,

and that was such an informative chat,

but this brings us to the end of our
conversation today. And I really,

really appreciate you sharing your
knowledge and expertise with us today.

It's been a pleasure
Neha. Thank you very much.

This has been Count Me In,

IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

the accounting and finance profession.
If you like what you heard,

and you'd like to be counted in for
more relevant accounting and finance

education, visit IMA's
website at www.imanet.org.