Janine Bolon: Hello and welcome to The Practical Mystic show. This is Janine Bolon. And today, I am so thrilled that I have my guest with me today, her name is Joyce Feustel and she is a social media trainer. She helps business people and job seekers, especially those, she specializes in those that are about forty years up and up, really to help them become more effective and productive when it comes to LinkedIn and Facebook. Now, I know with this particular crowd, most of you are rocking Facebook, you guys have groups. You know how to send out information to people regarding Facebook, but I’ve noticed with a lot of my healers, shamans, mystics that when it comes to LinkedIn you’re a little bit more hesitant. Now, I understand why that is. It can be a little intimidating, but one of the things that Joyce is going to chat with us about today is how to make the transition, how to go from being on Facebook, and then how to really crank it on LinkedIn. Now, you guys may know I have an online course, it’s a little bitty thirty-seven dollar kind of start and Joyce was helpful in that. She helped me build that course, not only with her wisdom but also with the fact that she’s realized you are a legitimate business owner and we’re going to talk a little bit more about that with her work that she’s done. I want to give you her website right off the bat boomerssocialmediatutor.com. It will also be in the show, now, since I seem to be struggling this morning, thank you for being with us Joyce, wonderful to have you.
Joyce Feustel: It’s great to be here and I’ll reinforce that website because it’s a little bit tricky Boomers, B-O-O-M-E-R-S social media tutor. So plural on the Boomers singular on the tutor.
Janine: Right?
Joyce: I should say. Yeah. Oh, I’m very excited to speak to this particular audience and a huge fan of people who would channel, who are psychics and I’ve been a client myself, and anything I can do to help this crowd, I’m all in.
Janine: So let’s talk a little bit about those wonderful shamans, medicine men, medicine women, folks who have been doing healing work, psychic work for years and years, and now they’re ready to step up. They’re ready to be a little bit more visible. Now, Facebook is a great place to build a community. I mean that’s why it was designed. It does a wonderful job but the money is in LinkedIn. That is where you get your clients. Now, a lot of people say, no, I do just fine on Facebook, I’m happy there. I’m like, yes, I believe you but now, don’t you want to make this full-time? Those are the people we’re talking to today. The folks who are like, you’re moving beyond it being a hobby and you really want to move into full-time. So what are some pieces of advice that you could give folks who are ready to make that transition from Facebook into LinkedIn and start doing a full-time career?
Joyce: Oh, you bet. So of course, keep your Facebook going and Linkedin for starters is functionally much like Facebook, maybe because I spend so much time on LinkedIn and sometimes I’m like okay where is the issue here? Why are people struggling with LinkedIn? Why are they intimidated? They’re still putting their pants on one leg at a time here too. But then again, I’m probably too close to it. So I think that’s just the first thing to say, is the functionality is so similar. LinkedIn over the years is kind of copycatted Facebook in so many different ways. So that’s the first thing I’d say and the second thing is to have only one LinkedIn profile. Here’s the thing you might have done, okay, let’s say you have a “day job” doing whatever outside of your other healing psychic-type work, you think well, Joyce shouldn’t I have a second profile just for that? No, no, thousand times no because you don’t want to confuse people. There should be only one Janine. Only one Joyce like Janine is a perfect example, multiple gigs, right. She only has one profile on LinkedIn, be like her, be like me. So those are just a couple, just off the top of my head tips, so back to you.
Janine: Yeah, I really agree with you. LinkedIn has copied a lot of things off of Facebook, but some of the things that I would really like to cater to is where people are in their mindset when they’re on Facebook versus where people are in their mindset when you’re on LinkedIn. That’s why LinkedIn is where a lot of your bigger money is, your higher-paying clients, and that sort of thing because when people are on LinkedIn, they are ready to connect. They do want to meet you. If they look at your profile and message you, you want to respond to LinkedIn people. It’s different from Facebook. On Facebook, people may be laying in bed, they just woke up, and they’re just scrolling through the latest profile what have you. But the mindset of where somebody is on LinkedIn versus Facebook is totally different. I’d love to hear what you have experienced not only for yourself personally, but for your clients that you’ve helped establish a LinkedIn presence.
Joyce: Okay, so I love that analogy about laying in bed. Here’s one other one someone told me once that Facebook is like the water cooler, okay maybe that’s an old reference, especially for people that are not working out of a home office, but it’s where you would hang out, a break room whatever and socialize, chitchat and Linkedin is more like the conference room. I hesitate to say the boardroom that makes it sound too hoity-toity. The conference room, that’s where you go for meetings, that’s where you pay attention. There’s your team leader going over stuff, whatever our planning meeting with your colleagues. So yes, it’s exactly right. When people are on LinkedIn, they are thinking more business-oriented and they are very open to getting a message from you and then, like you said, if they missed and you missed, write them back. Millennials have told me, they loved LinkedIn because it’s so accessible. So also think of it like that. There’s no gatekeepers. No one’s saying [inaudible] and why are you calling for Mr. Jones or Mrs. Jones. No, you just get right to the person also, see the beauty of LinkedIn, your profile, it tells so much about you. You can get examples, you can have videos, you can have testimonials, all this in a very business-centric way that then creates this image of you as a professional that you are because this is legitimate work you’re doing. But when you have people who are in the business world let’s say especially in a video with a suit and tie, whatever, you’re looking very business-like saying, oh my gosh, Janine look, she just changed my life, with that session with her so I just don’t have to go back to my therapist anymore or something. I don’t know, I’m just making this up but I just think that people can really have this incredible presence and you can share from the influencers. The people that are really rocking it within your overall sphere, you can share from them. So to me, people go there for information, they go to get educated, and kind of maybe have all kinds of interesting brainstorming. I see there are holes [?] on there. You’d be surprised of the features you could use.
Janine: So those are wonderful options. So let’s talk a little bit about LinkedIn groups because LinkedIn groups have morphed drastically over time and one of the things that I like to share with people is there like is it like Facebook where you go and that’s what you do with the group. Some people have had amazing success with LinkedIn groups, but I would urge you to be very cautious. The people that started had only one intention and that was not to sell, that was not to build up this huge group, it was to build their authority. If you already have your authority established on Facebook, there’s no need to build that up on LinkedIn and I wanted to hear your comments on how to use these two different platforms using groups because in Facebook, people love being in groups, they’ll help to answer questions for you when you’re not around that kind of stuff, but when it comes to you, as a business owner that’s when those groups are more like trade organizations or something like that. But I would love to hear your perspective because I’m only one person and I know there’s a lot more going on.
Joyce: Well, I think that most likely within LinkedIn, you could find your fellow psychics, your fill channelers whatever, you could find your colleagues. Like you said, like kind of a quasi-trade organization and exchange ideas with each other. So there is that kind of peer-to-peer interchange within a LinkedIn group. I have found over years, I’ve been on LinkedIn really actively since about a way that LinkedIn groups have really been on the decline, unfortunately. I got really pulled into LinkedIn back in the late 2000s through Toastmasters International Group and their people are always asking questions and answering questions and recently, I took a question in that group and hardly went anywhere but over on Facebook, naturally the group there just ran with it and I got some help. So I don’t know, I wouldn’t necessarily look to groups as a be-all and end-all unless they’re going to find your end-user so to speak through. Their people might not be as comfortable, just thinking off the top of my head talking about matters they would take to a psychic with other people in a LinkedIn group. I mean it just seems like maybe a mismatch possibly or is probably more likely you get in there be an interchange. So say you or someone else puts a post up about whatever way you could of use being [?] a psychic for example, and then someone else could chime in and someone else could chime in and you can even, you know what you can do there, you could tag people, they called mentioning on LinkedIn, even in your comment like, I would make my comment and say, oh, tag Janine Boland, what do you think about this? So that’s a way in my thinking to have some bit of engagement interaction so to speak is all public though. Keep that in mind. So that’s my guess in terms of how people might be able to explore ideas, share things more than probably in the community of a Facebook group.
Janine: I agree with you and that’s what I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just seeing something through my own colored glasses so to speak, that I really noticed that I saw a lot of people doing amazing things with LinkedIn groups and that was back in 2008-2009, but I have seen that really drop off, so that’s why I encourage people to continue your Facebook groups but handle LinkedIn very differently. One wonderful person said to me well, Facebook, it’s everybody, everything, always turning and burning through there. With LinkedIn, it’s more like the library there are set locations like this is the bulletin board and this is the posting board is a little more structured. It isn’t quite so willy-nilly in a way that people will be brought to you and I highly recommend that you mentioned people on LinkedIn, especially if they are people that you really want to connect with. The other nice thing is that on LinkedIn, everyone’s very professional and so for you, business owners, make sure that you put, you really use the contact information place. It’s not like Facebook. This is where you want people to reach out and connect with you. Do you mind giving us a few tips on just like the top three things that you’ve seen that people really did not utilize that it’s in their benefit to utilizing that that’s available on LinkedIn?
Joyce: Let’s talk about the contact info section in particular, right. Keep in mind first, the contact info section is only seen, well, almost all the information is only seen by your connections. Somebody who is looking you up and looking into, it would only see your LinkedIn URL. That’s pretty much it. But once they’re connected with you, they can see your email, they can see a phone number if you choose to include it, they can see up to three websites or internet entities, those call it. So say you have a group on Facebook or Facebook page, what I would do if I were you, I’d have one of those links, of course, be your website second be a Facebook page or Facebook group or in my case, I have a meetup group. So being I don’t have a Facebook group, I have a Facebook page, I have my meetup group and my website in the three URLs. So I think that is very underutilized. Also, even something as simple as the URL, that’s a branding statement. So I, for example, have Joyce Feustel social media trainer instead of Joyce Feustel ABC 2565 AAF. See, with here we notice and go and look in there, they’ll have your first, your last name, and a whole bunch of random letters and numbers. That’s your account name, so to speak, assigned at the birth of your LinkedIn account, but you can override that and brand right there, too. So, that’s yet another thing people see. So that’s something I think underutilized. I think the really key thing if we just say looking at the profile now, is your headline. Keep in mind folks that the default headline within LinkedIn is simply going to be like the owner at Joyce Feustel’s psychic business, or whatever I’d call myself. You don’t want that, you want to have search engine optimization type of terms, whatever those might be, in your headline. Meaning that’s the— right under your picture, there are up to two hundred twenty characters recently increased from one hundred twenty. So think about the ways you could describe yourself. If you have a tagline like I do making social media simple, easy, and fun. You could put your tagline in there. So the headline is very important and really that far behind it is your about section. So here would be the story of you in the first person, I suggest. The first-person voice. Well, okay, I evolved into being a psychic after deciding to go— kind of come out if you will maybe not the best words here but just be legitimate as a psychic because I’ve been a psychic since I was five. I always kind of have a sense, a second sense, a six sense whatever you want to call it about the world around me and I’ve just— I got the training. I’m legit, I do this. I may still have another income stream but my lead world is to be a psychic and then just talk a little bit about some of the ways you help people.
If people want— if you want to have, they might say something like Donna E, you don’t have to have their last full last names if they’re not comfortable with that, but you can have testimonials right there embedded into your about section with twenty-six other characters, you don’t have to use every character. And then you could also have down in the experience section again, testimonials, you can have down there a link to someplace on the internet, you could have a link to a PowerPoint, five reasons to use a psychic, something like that. So those are ways to get legitimacy, you can feature a post that you’ve put up on LinkedIn for an article that again, highlight the value around but don’t be too salesy. I should really back up and say that LinkedIn is not about sales, sales, sales. It’s about creating your image, creating your professionalism, your knowledge, all of that. So that’s the thing you want to be doing with your profile in every possible way and don’t forget that background photo, right above your picture like the cover photo on a Facebook page because you want to come up with something, it could be essentially the same as you have on a Facebook page just saying or in your Facebook group, maybe. But the image has to kind of line up, there’s a little picture of you don’t sort of a layout thing. But it’s important to create right away a sense of who you are and what you’re about.
Janine: There are so many things that I’ve seen people do that kind of shot themselves in the foot and one of those was definitely how they use their headline. Make sure that when you are speaking about what you do, don’t tell us how you do what you do. What people really want to know is what is the problem that you solve and that is really important. Now, with some psychics and shamans that I’ve run into and help them with their branding and that sort of thing, they start listing off all their certifications and all the things they’ve done and honestly if somebody is in pain or if somebody needs a problem solved, they don’t care about that. The fact is they’re connected to you, or they have been referred and that is one of the things about LinkedIn. It is one of the largest referral networks you’ll ever run into, and you have been referred by somebody and so they don’t need to know all of that stuff. Even though you work your butt off for all those certifications, I get it but what is the problem that you solve and that’s where the about section can be very helpful. So go ahead and visit Joyce Feustel’s, her page on LinkedIn, visit mine and if you want references, she and I will both be happy to give you references of other pages where they are doing it well, but definitely make sure your branding is on point. So talk to us a little bit about this relationship management because see this is kind of the new big thing and I laughed because this has been around since day one when businesses first decided to be businesses. It’s all been about relationships. So when you were talking about, okay, let’s not sell here, but talk to us a little bit about this. About you’re really supposed to be presenting yourself as go ahead and fill in the blanks.
Joyce: Well, someone who is approachable, who is helpful, who is knowledgeable about your field and so that people can get the help they need. I think that you in terms of relationships, just back up a minute, your people who are your raving fans. Those are the people you want to track with, [inaudible] and I have had this conversation before Janine about kind of that inner circle of people, it might be ten or twenty people, maybe another tier of people who are kind of your peripheral folks too and always make sure you’re going over to their LinkedIn profile on at least a weekly or twice a month basis, have a little spreadsheet, whatever you got to do and find a post they put up and comment on it or share it. You can do both commenting gives it a bit more energy. If you had to pick one of the two because you know what, everything you do on LinkedIn is public. Unless you hide it, you can hide it. There is a setting for it, but why? Why would you hide this? This isn’t some like deep dark secret here. Everything is should be completely transparent. So I say that in the meanwhile kind of a sidebar here if you’re researching a potential client, maybe like oh I’m getting a funny feeling about him. You’re a psychic, you probably can tell, right. So you go on, you look up that person’s about section, where did they coming in? What do they like? I mean, do some research. I’ll tell you what, in about ten minutes you can probably figure out if you want to work with them or not. Because you might say, ooh, ooh, oh yuck, oh, I don’t think so because people see, I don’t think they realize that what they’re doing there is totally out in front of God and everybody. So that’s where I’d say, yeah, that relationship is— that a really cool way to go is to go check out people’s activities section. That’s the name of it, activity. See all activities and see their posts, their likes etcetera. Then another thing is to really track on his notifications because I’ll be a bit more random, but if you go and look there and kind of look down, to skim down, to look for your closest peeps, and they got five years in their business, ooh wow, a great time to celebrate with them. You can do it privately with a little note, just through Linkedin [?] or even publicly by commenting on the actual notification verbiage, or if they just got a new job, that’s awesome too. Those are things that you want to track with people and just those almost like random love notes or endorse them for skill, thinking of love notes write them a recommendation, all of that is public and you know what, when you write someone a recommendation it’s on your profile as well as on their’s. A lot of people don’t know that. These are just so many ways that you can be engaged with your people and they’re like, “Oh, there’s Joyce again, oh, that’s nice.” It creates a nice warm fuzzy feeling.
Janine, I highly recommend that you don’t treat LinkedIn like Facebook. They are two very separate platforms because if you decide to get political on LinkedIn, don’t, as this is a business platform, and business owners do not enjoy having that. They’re like, take it to Facebook. You’ll actually see people comment on some, when people get a little too political and it happens, every time somebody is really concerned about what’s going on in their State, for their Statehouse, or whatever. You can see them being commented on, you need to take this to Facebook so you do not, keep the political thing there.
Joyce: I want to probably just interrupt briefly to say. I think there are times, there are exceptions to that rule and I will say in recent times and some of the, I’ll call them largely civil rights issues, black lives matter, topics along those lines, if that’s a big part of I’ll call it your brand and the people that you affiliate with [inaudible] it’s okay to do that. Just realize that you will have a whole segment of the LinkedIn readership that will not be interested in working with you because they don’t share your particular world view on that issue. So I just want to say it’s like don’t say never but in general, I really am with you.
Janine: No, I get it. Where I was going with that is all those things that your mom or your dad may have taught you about you don’t bring up people’s medical issues, you don’t bring up people. It’s not a social place in that regard. As you said, it’s more of the conference room and, yes, if you’re concerned about a particular law that’s going into effect. Now, if it’s going to affect business owners, and let me tell you something, black lives matter had significant litigious aspects to what was going on for that demographic. I have a demographic in that region and that was very important to me. So if you’re concerned about the law or something like that, you can definitely highlight it and say, keeping an eye on the State of the House of Representatives as a blah blah blah. How’s everybody doing out there? that’s very conversational. But so that’s one of the things that’s very different than Facebook and so, thank you, Joyce. I’m glad that you mentioned that. So moving on to other areas that you may want to be cautious on unless this is a part of your brand such as if you are a minister, many of you psychics and shamans are religious or a spiritual advisor. It’s quite all right, to share what the goings-on are for your particular region, but just be aware that business owners tet was a little uncomfortable when you start bringing in spirituality. Now, if you’re saying as a spiritual advisor, please take care of your people, your clients. As we notice XYZ, that’s totally different. People have no problem with that. So it’s just like what mom said when you’re sitting down to dinner in somebody else’s house, please don’t bring up politics. Don’t bring up spirituality and don’t bring up people’s medical conditions. Those are the three no-nos because these are highly inflammatory topics. In case you haven’t been following Facebook in the last five years, right. So those were things that are recommended but as Joyce is very good to point out, please let us know your feeling on the exceptions of the spiritual side and medical side. I’d love to hear your perspective on that.
Joyce: Well, I think people who come out of a Christian background, are going to bring up Jesus Christ, are going to bring up language along those lines, and if you feel like that’s your primary audience, are people who are also Christians. I think even on Facebook you know, that’s who you are. However, to build on what you said, I wouldn’t get into a lot of proselytizing and coming along off like this way or the highway like my beloved now-departed stepmother, who had very strong Southern Baptist views, let’s say, I think that it is how you’re informed. What would Jesus do kind of thing? Go for it, right. She loved my dad so much, she would say what would Jim [?] do sort of like what would Jesus do. [Inaudible] right up there with Jesus. But I think, let’s say you have a Jewish faith, there are some really powerful community service, maxim’s or ideologies or ways of being in the world. Why not weave those into who you are? It has informed you so much of your life. So I think when framed in a way that speaks your truth very authentically as opposed to coming across like this is it, my way, like I said before, not your way that can be very off-putting, very off-putting. Like, that’s— I guess it’s a sort of like a case-by-case situation but in my opinion, I think words like Spirit or your guides or things like that are better generally than even the use of the word God. That said, if you choose to use the word, God as part of your languaging that’s okay too. I think that there’s a difference between spiritual and religious, and I’ll break anonymity from it, I’ve been in an Al-Anon program since 1985 and Al-Anon will sometimes or AA too for them [?], they will all say God and also, often say your higher power, words like that. So these are spiritual programs, they are not part of a religious faith path, though personally, I feel all is really one of the same paths but that’s not where I come from.
Janine: Right.
Joyce: Although [inaudible]. I think interesting differentiators and things where people to be sensitive to.
Janina: Right. So I agree that it is a kind of a case-by-case basis but be aware of what you’re doing when you post it on LinkedIn because it is highly public. So a lot of business owners that I have talked to on my other podcast programs, many of them will just say, I avoid it. I don’t even do it. It’s a no for me. However, for this podcast program, we’re dealing with practical mystics here and this is your business and so you will know when it is appropriate, but one of the things I really wanted to bring home on Joyce and did it beautifully, is that definitely be spiritual and try to avoid being religious but once again, it comes back to your authenticity. Wait a minute, Janine, I am a reverend and this is my church, and this is what I need to do or this is my synagogue. So again, on a case-by-case basis, but I did want to bring it up just so that people would be aware, how there are differences between Facebook and Linkedin and it’s fascinating to me, you don’t have the trolls on LinkedIn as you do on Facebook.
Joyce: In general, that’s true. Yeah.
Janina: When people get a little too up bent out of shape, the community will shut them down by, that’s inappropriate, that’s not what you say here. People are much more polite. It’s like if this is a conference room, where a bunch of people is coming together to share their ideas and you need to allow everyone the chance to speak. I have always admired that about LinkedIn. Well, before we wrap this up, I’d love to hear anything else, you care to share about your experiences with LinkedIn or things that you think would be helpful to those who are just starting to enter those waters.
Joyce: Well, I think one more thing we haven’t really touched upon much is the connections. The connections are the gas that drives your LinkedIn engine and I just stole that right from my friend, Wayne Breitbarth [?] which from his book, my LinkedIn buddy out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, what I would say here is to be selective about who you connect with on LinkedIn. Just like you would be on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever, and the cool thing about LinkedIn is when someone asks you to connect, you have a capacity unlike on these other platforms to write them a little note through Linkedin. So you’re in your connections tab and you see that pending invite or maybe more than one invite and right above the pending invites. There is a little button that would say manage if it’s just one or if it’s more than one it would say select one of five, whatever many pending invites, you click on that button. Now, just like an interior screen and there will all those same invites be and you see the word message in blue. So this is a hyperlink. So say it was Janine that wanted to message me. So I would click on the message and now up comes a little pop-up box where I’m messaging her. You don’t even have to have a paid account to do this, anybody can do this. So I would say, hey Janine, thanks for the invite, what prompted you to reach out to me? What prompted you to reach out to me? To me is a kinder way of asking somebody, why did you reach out to me? Just that language and can be a bit off-putting. But now, I’m trying to be friendly and direct and then see what happens. Let him hang out there in the pending invites for a week. I had a guy like that, he was hanging out for about six days. Never did write back and like okay never mind. So I ignored him. And again just like Facebook to the other one, you ignore some if they are not notified. They are not notified. When you accept them, of course, they’re notified. So I wanted to go through this process so people know also if you inadvertently got connected to some yo-yo. You’re like what was I thinking? Okay, then you go back to your connections and you look this person up and when you get to his, let’s call him a him, you get to his name, headline, picture, there’s these three dots to the right of a little message button. You click on the three dots and you can remove them, you can just disconnect and they will not even know you did it because you didn’t even go to their profile to alert them that you were looking at it. Now, here’s the big kind of the bombshell one, if you are like are so sick of that person, they creep you out, well, then you should actually report them. Maybe they just annoy you a lot. Then I would actually go right to their LinkedIn profile and block them because unless you think they might change along the way, maybe you see if you— otherwise, they’ll just be there or maybe they invited you to connect them like ooh, I don’t like the feel of him at all, your psychic, you would know, right. So then you go again, you go into the profile and just block him. So they won’t know you look at them because see, you’re already dead to them, your profiles, ooh they can’t find you. So just say some LinkedIn user looked at it. So I go on about that a bit because that’s one of the first questions people ask me. Whenever I sit down with people is, how do I decide whether to connect with him? How many connections should I have? All of that, just all of that. The second question depends on you, but I do have thoughts. Make sure you feel comfortable. Make sure you’re interested enough to see this person pop up, maybe in your news feed or up in your notifications.
Janine: Thank you so much for spending time with us today. This is Joyce Feustel who is a social media trainer and she helps businesspeople and job seekers alike, who are usually around in their 40s and up, become more effective and productive on LinkedIn and Facebook. We focused on LinkedIn today because some people have told me they’re quite intimidated by it. So she was here to help guide us through. So thank you so much for joining us on The Practical Mystic Show. This is Janine Boland and we will chat with you again next Friday.
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