You have the Power to Rewrite the Narrative with Danielle Cobo

Danielle Cobo, career leadership and sales performance speaker and coach joins me to share how she was offered an opportunity on LinkedIn while not even looking for a new role and then how she was able to grow her own business once she started sharing on LinkedIn. She started small by sharing a little bit of her own expertise and meaningful advice and says LinkedIn changed her life.  Grab a pen and paper and listen in as she shares some great tips on utilizing LinkedIn.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellecobo/
Podcast: Dream Job with Danielle Cobo Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Website: https://www.daniellecobo.com/

Transcript

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Britta Blanski  :
I'm super excited to have you here today and hear about your experience using LinkedIn, but I want to start off with a question so you help people achieve all their goals with this unshakable confidence. What does unshakeable confidence look like on LinkedIn?
 

Danielle Cobo :

Unshakable confidence on LinkedIn is being able to show up authentically as yourself. And understanding that when you're creating that no like and trust factor you're going to be, you're going to be attracting the people that you want to attract and it's showing up in raw form and sometimes it's telling your stories and sharing your stories, but understanding that through sharing your stories. You're relating to people. There's going to be people out there. If you've experienced challenges throughout your life, there's going to be somebody out there that is going to read your story and at one point may message you and say your story resonated with you. I've experienced that myself. And thank you so much and build as you Share your story. You're starting to build that unshakeable confidence through showing up authentically and also understanding that. Everyone experiences self-doubt, even my, me, myself who talks about confidence. Everyone experiences self-doubt. The difference is when you learn the tools to build confidence, it's being able to quickly identify when you're experiencing the self-doubt and then putting the tools in place that you've learned to build that unshakeable so that you can get through that easier, quicker and move towards your goals.
 

Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, I love that you used a word that really stood out to me, which was. Raw, what would you describe as a raw story? I think people kind of shy away and get scared if you're you need to be authentic. When you say raw, they're like, well, what I mean, what exactly do I share then? What does that mean? Do want to talk about that a little bit?
 

Danielle Cobo :

Yeah, rah is. Riot is being open and honest about some of the challenges that you've experienced in life. And knowing that there's somebody out there, like I said, that can really relate. I've shared some very raw stories in September. We're coming up on September. It's mental, you know, mental health awareness, suicide prevention. And I've talked about my personal story of my mom being taken by suicide. And through my post, I was sharing not only my story, but also ways that we can remove the stigma amount, suicide and some of the words that we can use to change. How we connect with people, if anyone that's experienced. So I don't say things like my mom committed suicide. I say my mom was taken by suicide and I found that she not only sharing my stories, other people have messaged me and said thank you so much. I've experienced that and I haven't had the confidence to share that. But I've also found a healing process through sharing my stories as well. So I've talked about everything from. Experiencing challenges at work where I was either in a toxic work environment or I kind of experienced some situations of workplace bullying, or it's been losing my mom to suicide, or juggling being a working mom, a business owner and a wife and trying to the challenges of trying to balance it all. It's showing up as you and knowing that deep down inside, everybody's experiencing it, just not everyone's talking about it.
 
 

Britta Blanski  :

I think that's a really beautiful thing of LinkedIn and you have an incredible story. And I think there can be a lot of fear surrounding those stories. And people think that they're the only one who is facing that issue or that struggle or that difficulty. But as soon as someone takes the courage and gets raw and shares that like you did, you realize that actually, no, I'm not. I'm not the only one. There's lots of people, and then you realize just how incredible that supportive community actually is. And that's. When you actually make that connection, right, like, this is real life. This is what humanity looks like. But oftentimes we're so afraid of actually opening up and sharing that. So taking that courage and using that confidence. Like you said, the unshakable confidence of like this might be scary to share, but this is where the realness happens. This is where we can quote unquote say the magic happens on LinkedIn. So you have a unique story. You started really using LinkedIn back in 2020 if I'm correct. Do you want to share a little bit about? Your experience of using LinkedIn, so when did you first make an account? Why did you make an account? And then why in 2020 did you change what you were doing and what was the result of that change?
 
 

Danielle Cobo :

I have said and various occasions that LinkedIn has changed my life and I truly believe it has changed my life, not only from the day that I set it up. I don't even know how long ago, probably ten fifteen years ago, when I started my career, even to every single day that I use it now, I set up a profile. Many years ago when I was working in corporate America. I was in sales. I was in a position I had no intention of looking for a job. None whatsoever. I was happy with my company. And I had just come off of earning 4 consecutive presidents awards for top performance and sales. But a recruiter reached out to me and she said, hey, would you consider interviewing for this company? It's in medical esthetics and I was like, well yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. And if it wasn't for me being active on LinkedIn, I would have never been approached for that opportunity because I wasn't looking. And one of the advice that I give a lot of people is always be open to opportunities if you have a job. They're in a position where you can either. Go for the interview and say yes, I want to pursue this opportunity. Or you can go for the interview and say no and it in it then reinvigorates you in your current role because it kind of reinforces how you feel. Grass isn't always greener on the other side, other side. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. And then in 2020 I just had this six months where my mom was taken by suicide. My husband had just returned from a year deployment, our twins were 2 and a half years old and then the pandemic hit and this happened all within a six month period and i left the company that I've been with for seven years. And I just started kind of posting on LinkedIn, just sharing some of my advice on sales and leadership. And I felt like every time I turned on the TV or social media, there was just this negative. Kind of aura that was going around and I said, well, what would it look like if I just started inspiring through LinkedIn? And as I started to post, more and more people started to follow me. I started with about twenty five hundred followers. When I first started again, I was kind of using it as a way to look for a job and just share some meaningful advice. And then as time progressed, people started reaching out to me and they said, hey, would you mind mentoring me on how to get a job? How to increase my sales. I see that you have a background in sales and I said, sure, I'll go ahead and do that. And then as time progressed, every person that I was interacting with, including recruiters, would say, stop looking for a job. You need to be a career consultant. This is your calling, this is your passion, this is what you want to do. And ironically, I had created a business proposal 10 years ago on creating a Director of national sales training. Our company that I worked with, so it really became full circle, but that's why I say LinkedIn has changed my life, because I wouldn't have been and with my last company if the recruiter didn't reach out to me and I wouldn't be a consultant that I am now, a career consultant that I am now if it wasn't. Getting the feedback from people reading my posts and me just putting myself out there and I've never been happier in my career and my business in my life than I am today.
 
 

Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, that's amazing. So I want to ask, going back to the beginning of your experience here, what prompted you to share on LinkedIn when you were happy in your job? Because I think many people are, they were in a similar or they are in a similar situation where they have that account, they're loving their job, they're not seeking. So why would I post on LinkedIn? Whereas like you clearly had a very positive experience from doing so and had an incredible door be opened for you. But do you remember what it was that got you to say, yeah, I'm going to post this on LinkedIn or it's worth sharing? Read three twenty twenty.
 
 

Danielle Cobo :

Pretty well, I would say. I didn't really post that much before 2020 I would sometimes reshare a quote or just kind of update my LinkedIn profile. So how the recruiter found me i don't necessarily know because my engagement on LinkedIn is drastically different than it was then. But after 2020 it was more I was saying, OK, well, if I'm going to be looking for a new job, what do I want my brand to represent? And my brand? The secret sauce to your brand is how do you show up in person and how do you make people feel when you leave the room? That's part of your brand. The other part of your brand is what of your accomplishments and your achievements. And then the third to the secret sauce of your brand is how do you show up online? And what's the narrative that you're putting around your brand and how does it align with your core values, so whether you are working for a corporation, whether you own your own business no matter what you're doing? Showing up online is going to open the doors to new opportunities. It could even be you plan on staying with your company, but let's say you want to get promoted in the company and the decision maker you don't interact with on a day-to-day basis, but you're starting to post online and you're starting to talk about your leadership skills and being active. They're going to start to see your post up on your new on their news feed and that might spark interest.
 
 

Britta Blanski  :

Right, that's huge, especially in larger companies where you want to work your way up the ladder, but you don't have access to those people. But yet they're probably on LinkedIn and so you have this incredible tool, right? It's free. You don't have to pay to use it. You can still get incredible results, but you have to have the confidence to actually start sharing, which I think some people are like, oh, I can't share, or even maybe taking that step in commenting on, you know, a CEO or director or a manager, like commenting on one of their. Personal pose might feel way out of your comfort zone, but in the end your name is going to get recognized and they'll see that. And that's huge. So, Umm, I love how you were a light in a very dark time, right? Like you notice that the conversation surrounding everything that was happening in the world a couple of years ago, it was pretty negative and that you very intentionally decided that you were going to go against that, right? In a very positive way. So how did you decide what you were going to post? What was what was it that kind of inspired you to say, you know what? Like this is worth sharing here? I know that this is a safe place or an OK place to put this kind of content out.
 
 

Danielle Cobo :

When I originally started posting I almost looking back I think I almost did it for myself or I felt like I got the most benefit out of it. Maybe that other people because I just started researching motivational quotes and inspirational quotes and it was something that I needed. At the time I wasn't. I was unclear on what I wanted to do. I was healing through losing my mom and just there was so much uncertainty at the time. So I started posting motivational posts and when I. Found through doing that is it was it was reinforcing positivity in my mind and then also others as well. So I started with that and then I moved towards OK, well if I want to go in for another leadership role, I was a leader for a Fortune 500 company. If I want to be in another leadership role, then how am I going to communicate what my skills are as a leader? So I started talking about hiring top talent and what it's like to attract top talent. Then I started talking about. Team and building high-performing teams and then also creating work life balance. So there's a big misconception about LinkedIn and I kind of want to touch on this a little bit from the last point that we were talking about is it's important for the CEO's of organizations to connect with their people by posting on LinkedIn and sharing their advice and letting your team get to know you as well as vice versa. And if you own a business, let people get to know you. And it's creating that no like and trust factor. And it's LinkedIn. The whole goal of LinkedIn, very different than other social media platforms. It is not so much a how many likes you get. LinkedIn is engaging and meaningful conversations, so taking the time, even if you're scared to post online initially, take time to comment on three to five peoples posts per day. Add to the conversation. If they're talking about leadership, it could be hey, that's a great point about leadership and I'd like to add XYZ to support this conversation so if in the beginning if you're scared to post your own content. And what would it look like if you started engaging in other conversations?
 
 Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, I love that. Did you intentionally comment as well when you started posting, or did you initially just start with posting?
 

Danielle Cobo :

Initially, I started just posting, but now as I've grown my following, I block out the 1st 45 minutes of my day and I post. I comment on other people's posts, I respond to comments on mine. I get about 20 inboxes. The day so I'm trying to keep up with my inbox, but I'm also very intentional. When I comment, there are certain people that I love following their content. So LinkedIn has a feature called the Ring the Bell and you can go on their profile, ring their bell, and anytime that they post something, it shows up in your notifications. And I am very intentional. Try to comment on about three to five people's posts per day, but it any time that I comment, it's always adding to the conversation. Or re-emphasizing a point and thanking the person for their content. Because when I comment on somebody's post or even if I like it, it's going to show up in other people's news feeds. So if you're going to like a post, why not like a post and add to the conversation and let that go in other people's news feeds that you've added to that conversation?
 
 Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, exactly. That's something that I love about LinkedIn is the power of the second and third connection, right? So just. Because someone, it was a bit like in your network and their content shows up, it's actually going out to potentially their whole network as well, right. And so it's just you have no idea where your content is actually reaching and that can be really exciting. I can be a little bit scary to realize, OK, this comment might be reaching people that I have no idea about, right. It's a little bit, you know, beyond your control, but it also means that the opportunities are just that much greater. So I want to go back to something you said if you, if you're willing to expand on it. A little bit more. You said you want to share your expertise, and you gave some really great examples of how you do that for your own area of expertise in your industry. So what would you suggest to someone who says maybe they're just like in an office job, you know, and maybe they're working in admin and they want to get out of this job and they're like, OK, well, how can I share expertise in this area? What suggestions would you have for at least showing up and showing your skills or talking about the type of authority and experience? That you have when you feel like you don't have expertise, regardless of whether that's true or not.
 

Danielle Cobo :

I first want to get one misconception off the table. We are all an expert at something. I want to get past this belief that unless I've been in a role for 20 years and I've had this much industry experience and I'm not an expert. And the reality is we have gotten to where we're at today with being intentional in what we do. And so take it down, write down a piece of paper, write down some of your strengths, and if you don't know what they are, then maybe go on social media at one point. And say, if you could describe me in one word or if I've impacted your life in one way, what would it be? How did I do it? And let other people pour into you and tell you how you've impacted their lives and write down some of the successes that you've had and then work back through it. If you've had a certain success in any role that you've been in, what are the steps that you took to achieve that set success? And I'm sure that you can share that with somebody else who might be. Experiencing that challenge as well and then also if you're part of LinkedIn Premium, which there's it is a couple hundred dollars a year, but you have access to thousands of LinkedIn learning videos. So what you could do is you could take a LinkedIn learning video. They range in various times. When you complete the course, you can share it onto your profile or you can you can add the certificate to your profile, which helps your social selling index and then in addition you can share that into some into your news. Feed and say, I took this course and here are the three things that I learned from this course. And that's showing that not only are you investing in your personal development, development, which is a quality that a lot of job seeker or a lot of hiring managers look for, but you're also then adding advice by what you learned.
 
 

Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, that's such a great idea. I think in the end, there's so many tools available to us and we just have to be willing to actually utilize them and take it in advantage of them. It's actually prompted 2 questions for me. The first is, do you think it's worth investing in LinkedIn Premium?

 

Danielle Cobo :

My initial, my initial answer was kind of going well. It depends on what you're doing, but now that I think about it, I would say 100 % investing in LinkedIn Premium is worth the investment and for multiple reasons. If you own a business, you're an entrepreneur and you want to attract opportunities then it's a great way to connect with different people. You can get very you can create specific target list, you can connect with people that are potential clients. You can create that no like and trust factor. If you're a job seeker, then absolutely, because what's going to happen is it's going to give you the opportunity to see a little bit more of the market analysis for the jobs that you're going to be applying to. It might tell you, among the core skills that are in your targeted skills, how do they align with the other candidates? What are the other candidates that are applying? Line how do you compare to them? And then also you have access to LinkedIn learning courses that talk about how to get a job, how to build your LinkedIn profile, how to interview lots of interview skills. And then if you're very happy in your role, you have no intentions of looking for a new job or starting a business. You still have access to all those LinkedIn learning courses. So it's going to help just your personal development. And I'm a big believer that you always carve out time in investing in yourself. So that you can show up as the best person, the best version of yourself.
 
 

Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, that's such great advice. I love how you don't have to pay to use LinkedIn, but if you do, you can really again like dig in deep and create more opportunities and you can expand and learn and connect and you see a whole other side of the platform that you might not realize if you don't invest in premium. But again, like if you're not able to make that investment, you can still make massive waves just by commenting or engaging and showing up and messaging. And so the other question just there's a.
 

Danielle Cobo :

Free trial too. So at least try the free trial.
 

Britta Blanski  :

Exactly right. And oftentimes, they prompt you even if you, I mean, I've signed up for premium and then I go out because the great thing too is that you can go off of it, right, if you want to, if you pay for it monthly. And they always try to get you to come back. And so when they try to get you to come back, you get that free month. So you can kind of play the game a little bit. But of course, it's absolutely worth investing in 100 %. Just one other thing too, just for our listeners in case they don't understand what exactly is a social selling index.
 

Danielle Cobo :

Oh, now this is a good question because a lot of people don't know what the social selling index. So the social selling index is more or less created by LinkedIn Navigator, which is a way that LinkedIn measures your brand presence online. So you go to your profile, you log into your LinkedIn profile, then you search LinkedIn social selling index. You click on the link and it's going to provide you a score. It's going to categorize your brand in four different categories. So it's going to be now I'm trying to remember what they all are, but it's basically going to look at is your profile complete? Everything from the top to the bottom. Know that when you're completing your profile, have a professional photo. This is a professional platform. Have your headline filled out. It's automatically going to detect. Default to your most recent position, but your headline is optimized for SEO. So talk about what you do. That's kind of your mission statement in the headline. Then ensure that you have the top 50 skills. You can have up to 50 skills. Ensure that they align with the roles that you do but having a compliment comprehensive LinkedIn profile then it's are you posting? Are you engaging in conversations through your inbox? Meaningful conversations? Are you commenting on people's posts and it looks at not only your network, but it also looks at your industry. So you get two different scores and you the score is out of 100 If you're 70 or above, you've got a very strong score, but it's going to show you how do you rank, not only in your industry, but then also in your network. And I'll give an example. My industry. I may be ranked top 1 % in the industry because I'm much more engaged on LinkedIn than most salespeople are that are working in a corporation. And my network, I may be ranked number three or two, I think of three or 2 % right now and that's because. Among the connections that I have, I have people that have 500 you know, 500,000 thousand followers on LinkedIn, so I may not have the same ranking as them. So that's the difference between the industry and the network. But also understanding your social selling index is important because every time that you post. If your if your social selling index is about 34 then only 3 4 % of your network is actually seeing your post versus if you're above 70, you're going to be at 7 % above. That's why it's really important to understand your social selling index and make sure that you're checking it as you're being more engaged on LinkedIn.
 
 

Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, that's a great explanation. And also just another great reason why you would want to invest in premium because otherwise you won't get access to sales navigator great so talking about messaging in inboxes, you said you get lots of messages. Do you want to give us some quick dues and don'ts of how to go about the messaging process? Because I'm, you know, maybe you have now curated your network where they are approaching you in an appropriate fashion, but I know lots of people complain. One of the common laments about LinkedIn before they really start actively using it intentionally is my inbox is just full of spammy messages people are calling selling me. There are all these offers that I'm not even interested in. Like I'm just. That's not for me. So how do you kind of, I mean do you have a suggestion for how do you clear up those spammy messages? And there's some guidelines and if you want to notice what not to do?
 
 

Danielle Cobo :

Ok, first and foremost, LinkedIn is not a dating site. Please do not send any dating messages. It is not the platform. There are plenty of other platforms out there if you want to be dating. That would be first and foremost. Second, never lead. Even if your intention is to connect with people and possibly generate leads for your business, never lead with that. It get to know people, I mean you wouldn't necessarily go if you were in sales. You want to go right up to the customer and say hey, want to buy this. No, you would build a relationship, you'd create that no like and trust factor you'd earn you'd work towards earning the trust and that starts with building relationship with them. So going right off the bat and going into sales that sales strategy. The nice thing is LinkedIn does have that kind of automatic response. So I will say things like no thank you and it automatically. The defaults that no thank you. I tend to always respond with that because if I don't then it loses out on a credit for them and as a business owner I just want to support them with that. There are some features where you can filter just your unread to the top, so that's tends to be. The first thing that I do is I filter to the top, go to all my unread and go back. One thing that I like about LinkedIn too that a lot of people don't know is you can do voice messages. So it I don't know if it's just because I'm getting a little bit older and I do not like texting or using my thumbs to reply. I will often send voice messages which kind of speeds up the inbox as well. So first and foremost, not a dating site. Second, don't always lead with sales. Try to build the relationship first and third, there's that awesome feature where you can use voice and people. When you think about communication, 55 % of it is body language, 38 % of it is a tone of voice and only 7 % of it is the actual words. So imagine when you're sending a voice message, you're doing over 40 % of the communication by doing voice versus doing just the words right that's so powerful. The voice message really gives you a taste for how that person communicates, kind of. They're not really their character personality, but you can really tell a lot from that voice message. And I know people who are using the video option as well, though, like record a video and send that as an introduction. And that's just kind of like really upping their personal, you know, introduction and making that first impression beyond the profile picture, beyond the headline because there's so many opportunities to really get noticed. It's like. You know, you just comment and someone immediately sees your photo and your headline and that's already making a statement. Then they go to your profile and they have your banner and you're about section. Then you look at your content. It's like you have so many ways to communicate who you are and what you do before someone even sends you a message. So it's like really the message should be, you know, above and beyond what someone can already see from you. So you are an expert in sales and you have used LinkedIn in sales and so do you recommend, you know, when you go into your consulting, what do you recommend to them? Do you say absolutely get on LinkedIn or do you say there's other avenues like how do you know, how do you approach LinkedIn when it comes to the sales industry?
 
 

Danielle Cobo :

I think it depends on the audience. As an entrepreneur, I would say use LinkedIn to build your network. But one thing is I. All of my business comes organically through LinkedIn. I don't actively reach out to people. It's more people come to me because they're gravitated towards the content that I post. So a lot of times when people reach out to me, they'll say things like, I really loved this post. You gave great advice. Can I schedule a time to meet with you? Can we talk about you coming into the company and doing some training specific on this topic? So if you're putting yourself out there as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, if you're putting yourself out there and you're providing valuable content, you're organically going to generate leads for your business. If you are working in a corporation, it depends on what you're selling, where you may or may not use LinkedIn. If it's specific, you're. If your audience is on LinkedIn and that's how you can generate some leads, then I would first start by commenting on those individuals. Follow, you know, ring the bell of those specific people that you want to engage in a business relationship with and start commenting on their posts. And if you're working for a corporation and maybe your net, your potential customers aren't on LinkedIn, maybe in that capacity, then think about using LinkedIn as your own brand strategy and opening up selling yourself and your brand for your career in the future opportunities that might present to you wonderful there's so much value in that. So, just one last question to wrap up our conversation. Someone who is on the edge of using LinkedIn, what would be the one like Golden piece of advice that you would give them to get started? I know you provided us with so much information and so much value and takeaway, but if you could just encourage one person today to get on LinkedIn, what would you tell them?
 
 Danielle Cobo :

I would say the one piece of advice that I would give is start. Just start build your profile. Start posting. If you're hesitant to post and comment on somebody's post, or just take your favorite inspirational quote and post it, do it. Just start, rip the Band-Aid off and go for it.
 

Britta Blanski  :

Yeah, just do the short-term hard right and get it over with and then you can move with the momentum great well, if people want to learn more about you and what you do or they want to work with.
 
 Danielle Cobo :

You my podcast is dream job with Danielle Cobo. And that can be found on iTunes and Spotify. And I have links to all my free resources, whether you're building a business or in you're in sales. And then, of course, follow me on LinkedIn. Ring the bell. I do post quite frequently everything from personal stories to how to build your business to be successful in your career. But you can find me on both my podcast dream job with Danielle Cobo and you can also find me on LinkedIn, OK?

Britta Blanski  :

Great and of course all of those will be linked down below in the show notes. And yes, go. Send Danielle a connection request. After you've listened to this episode, tell her that you found her on the LinkedIn Lounge podcast and give her a warm welcome into your network. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Danielle. It was wonderful to have you and share your experience of LinkedIn.
 

Britta Blanski  :

Thank you so much.