 I want you to put yourself in the shoes of your clients, the people that are coming in here and utilizing the library because I got to tell you, one of the things that I hear a lot and also at LinkedIn is obviously people coming to the library to do some job searches to careers and et cetera and so forth. And LinkedIn is definitely the platform that a lot of people are using to find their next opportunity. Okay, so, okay, the agenda. Let there be light. Okay, so this is the agenda I'm going to go through. So number one, I'll talk about what and why LinkedIn. Number two, it's very important that we look at LinkedIn as a way to establish our professional brand. And I'll get into that in a little bit. And then I'll give you some tips on building a great profile. And I'll talk about, I'm assuming that you guys like to write or many of you like to write. So I'll talk about how you can use LinkedIn to publish some of your articles. And then also, of course, once you have your profile set up, how we can use LinkedIn to connect with other people. And then also how we can utilize LinkedIn's powerful search engine, in this case to find potential speakers for events that you might have. And then lastly, I'll end it with talking about some of the different news and groups that you can be a part of to also increase your knowledge. Okay, so really quickly, so what and why LinkedIn? So LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site in the world. There's well over 450 million members. The U.S. obviously has the largest members. But again, nowadays, like I said earlier, people want to know about you. Oftentimes they will go to LinkedIn. Okay, so maybe some of you, I don't know, maybe went on to LinkedIn and looked at my profile to find out some more about myself or some of the other speakers. But certainly LinkedIn is the place where you can go to get that information. Okay, so let's talk about your professional brand. First off, you know that we all know that we've heard that saying, you can't judge a book by its cover, right? But do we not judge it? I mean, right, we do. I mean, I don't pick up a book and start reading it and then I'm like, oh, that is a great book. No, I go to the library or bookstore or online and I look at the cover, what it says, the title, I'll read people's reviews about it. You know, the forward or whatever the summary, we do that. And you know what, you guys? We all do that amongst each other. Right now you guys are looking at me and you're forming an opinion, judgment of me. And guess what? I'm doing the same thing about you, okay? The way you're looking at me, the way you're not looking at me, the way you're on your phone, the way you're not on your phone, okay? And I know you're not tweeting, okay? So it's that first impression. And here's the thing. We have the ability to create and manage our brand, our professional brand. Sometimes I'll talk to groups more around the job-seeking aspect and I'll ask them, I'll say, how do you interview, how do you address when you interview for a job? Of course, people say, you know, professionally, why is that? Because I want to show my best, put my best foot forward. I want to show people that I care about the position, I respect it, et cetera, and so forth. We all know that, okay? We know that. But you know what, now with social media, companies, organizations are going online to take a look to see, get information about yourself. When I ran the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce and I was hiring people, I would go on to people's social media accounts. I would go on to their actual accounts, but I would go on to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, do a Google search on them. And I would look to see what it is that I would find about people. Because come on, you guys, let's face it. When we interview, it's a game. We all put our best foot forward, right? The company does, they tell us all the great things about the company and we tell them all the great things about ourselves. But what I would do when I would go on to social media is I would look for some trends. For example, right now, elections, right? Very hotly debated issue. Whether you're for or against whatever candidate. But I would go on there and see how it is that this person reacted to someone's comment. Are they using foul language? Are they bantering back and forth? Because to me, that would be a red flag about that person. And guess what? In an interview, that probably isn't going to come out, okay? How many of you have Googled your name? Raise your hand. All of you, okay. Almost all of you. And if you want to share what, when you Google yourself, what comes up first? Facebook pictures? Okay. What else? Genealogy? Okay. Okay. What is, what is Transparency, California? Oh, okay. All right. So, here's my point, you guys, is those of you like you mentioned, none of you that I hear talk about that your professional side came up. Your work, career, things that you do, okay? I think that's important that we put in the effort so that that comes up. Because again, just like when we go into an interview and we put our best foot forward, we want our best foot forward to show up on social media. So, here's the thing. In terms of our brand, we already have the three main ingredients. We all have certain skill sets. We all have a network, in other words, people we know that know us. And we also have information, knowledge about our industry, okay? So, let's share that. Now, here's my photo up on the upper right trying to be Mark Anthony here, okay? Obviously, I'm making fun of myself. But the photo on the upper left, that's a photo that belongs on whatever, you know, Facebook or, you know, max.com or whatever. And the photo on the bottom left is a professional-looking photo, okay? Nothing wrong with either photo, but think about something as simple as a photo, the impact that it has on our brand, okay? Why is it important to have a professional brand? Because 70% of employers have rejected a candidate based on things that they find online. The flip side is true. Also, 85% of employers say that a positive online reputation is important. I'll go back to the example that I used earlier, like when we go on to Amazon and we read reviews about a book or a product, we are influenced by that. We go on to TripAdvisor or whatever some yelp, and we are influenced by what people write. So if we are influenced by what people write about a company, does that not make sense that we are influenced by what people write about us? Somehow we don't put the two together, okay? So I'm going to talk about next about what things that you can do to build a great profile. And the things that I'm sharing with you, these are things that you should be able to share with your clients because I'm just not going to be here for an hour, two hours, but guess what? Your clients are going to keep coming back to you over and over. And I know that because Cheryl has shared that with me. She gets constant questions from her clients about their LinkedIn profile, et cetera, and so forth. So take some notes so that you can share it with your clients. Now, first off, here's two examples of two profiles. The one on the left and the one on the right. Most people's profiles look like the one on the left, okay? Hardly any connections, no photo, no summary, nothing, just very bare bones. The one on the right is a good friend of mine and this guy's 22 years old. I recommend that you write down his name, look up his profile because this guy has done much more and showcased what he's done at 22 years of age than most of us that have been in the industry for 25, 30 years. Okay, number one thing. And the order in which I'm going to go through this is the order in which after many, many years and a lot of money of research by LinkedIn, this is the order in which people tend to look at profiles. So the number one thing that people look at is a photo. Okay, so put a professional looking photo on your LinkedIn profile. And I purposely say looking, professional looking photo. I don't say go hire a professional photographer. It's been $100, $200 to get your photo taken and put it up there. You don't need to. Nowadays with their smartphone, you can just snap a photo with a nice color background that matches your skin tone and put it up there on LinkedIn. One of the things that I recommend that you do not do is don't crop a photo of some gala that you were at last weekend, you know, you like the way you look and you crop it. I've seen photos where you see someone else's shoulder on the photo, okay. True story. I don't even know if I'm so connected with this person. I haven't gone to her profile in a while. But there was someone that I was connected. I looked at her photo, zoomed in on it and I saw like this stick behind her. And I looked at him like, wow, what is that stick? Well, as I zoomed in, I realized she took this photo like at a backyard, maybe at a barbeque or something and there was a mop behind her. Okay, don't do that. The other thing too is that I've also seen photos that are actually professional looking, but they're very small. The JPEG, the resolution is very small and you look at it and again it's just a tiny little photo. So again, just use your smartphone, okay. Take a photo and upload it there. Okay, the second thing is your headline and your headline is the area right below our name. If we don't put a headline, the default is whatever the most current position is that we have listed on our profile, that's what the headline is going to be. I want you to think of a headline as your tagline. And remember, this is all about branding yourself, okay. In the beginning, I mentioned to you that I was surprised, right, that I was going to come to speak to you, to a group of librarians. What do most people think of librarians? Come on, someone. I can't hear you. Quiet. What else? Books? What's the impression that people have of librarians? Yeah. Boring. Okay, smart. Okay. So think about the impression that the outside world has of librarians. Is that the brand? Is that the image that you want people to have of you? No, of course not. Like I mentioned, you know, Cheryl here, I mean, like, oh my gosh, I mean, you know, it's just completely like changed my thinking about who and what librarians do and who they are. So the headline is one of the first ways that we can start branding ourselves. And what I recommend is to come up with some type of, again, of a tagline. If you look at my profile right now, yes, my title, you heard my title, but my tagline says, Building Community Through Public Private Partnerships. That's my headline. It's enough to give you an idea of what I do, but it leaves you wanting to know more. In other words, let me see what this guy, let me look at his profile. It draws you in more. When I was the president CEO of the Mount V Chamber of Commerce, my title, or excuse me, my headline was Compassionate Capitalist CEO. Kind of an oxymoron, right? But here's the thing, what's the difference between me being the president CEO of the Mount V Chamber and the president CEO of the San Francisco Chamber or whatever other chamber out there when you just look at the title? Nothing, absolutely nothing. In fact, most people don't even know what a Chamber of Commerce does. And so I would get sometimes people that would just message me through LinkedIn, Compassionate Capitalist CEO question mark. But guess what? That was an opportunity to engage someone in a conversation. Some of you on your profile, again, you know, you'll have, like, librarian two or I've seen some, like, that doesn't mean anything to me. As an outsider in your industry, yes, of course that means a lot to you, you got to think of it as that you are not necessarily each other's audience, okay? And the other thing, like I said, it's branding yourself. Number three, summary. This is by far the, I believe, the hardest thing to write about, the summary. The summary is, like, our elevator pitch. You guys know what an elevator pitch is, right? Yes? Okay. So one of the reasons why I think it's the hardest thing to write is because it's hard to talk about ourselves. We feel like we're bragging, okay? Or maybe we just started in the industry and we don't have a lot of experience. So what do we say? Or we've been in the industry for a long time and it's like, how do I say something concise that makes sense, okay? It's hard. So I've come up with three things that we can write in our summary and this is not like the only way to do it. There's a lot of different ways, but for me, this is what I found has worked, okay? Number one, talk about who you are. What I mean by who you are is talk about your personality traits. Some of your personality traits, you know, you thrive in chaos or, you know, you like to, you know, just jump into things and figure things out, you know, as you're billing things or whatever your personality traits. Share that, okay? In your summary, do not be afraid, you guys, to share part of your heart. This is not where we put career objectives. Career objectives on a resume, you guys, is boring. Boring, that's the truth. How many people do not say they're detail-oriented or, you know, they're driven or what everyone says that? So, after a while, it just becomes, like, meaningless. So, share who you are. Number two, talk about what you do. That's where you can talk about your, the current position that you have and what it is that you do. And the last thing, number three, and this is the point where I have found that it does not matter whether you have a, if you have zero experience or if you have a lot of experience, but talk about what's your dream? What's your passion? Where are you going? What's your goal? Everyone wants to know that. Everyone wants to know. When you meet someone, unless you see an example of a high school or college student and they come in and they share with you about how, you know, they're an undergrad, they're going to go to law school because, you know, once they go into law school, eventually they want to get into whatever, and be able to help you and they share part of their personal story. Does that not inspire us? It does. Here's the thing though, fast forward 20 years, life beats its up, right? Reality hits, and all of a sudden we lose our passion. We lose our dream, okay? But every once in a while we run across into someone still that has that dream or passion. Share it on LinkedIn in your summary, you guys. That will really stand out. So again, who are you? What do you do? What's your goal? What's your dream? What's your passion? Don't be those adjectives that you guys use to describe yourself in your summary, okay? Number four, education. Pretty self-explanatory. So, you know, whether you went to vocational training, community college, university or a master's or a PhD or whatever, put that on your LinkedIn profile. The other thing too is that any courses that you've taken, any additional courses, I know at LinkedIn, how many of you guys are familiar with linda.com? Yeah, okay. Recently it got renamed to LinkedIn Learning but the same service. But as you know, that's an online course or excuse me, online website where you can learn a lot of courses. So, you know, if you take any courses like that, linda.com or whatever other platform, go ahead and add it onto your LinkedIn profile. Your work experience. So, in your work experience, make sure also that you detail it and please include one or two sentences about what the organization does. I mean, yes, I mean everyone knows what a library does, but don't be afraid to add, like I said, one or two sentences just describing what about your particular, is there anything particular about your library? Because guarantee you this library is different from the Mountain View Library, okay? Different things that it does here. I mean the site services just looking around, okay? So, explain that, okay? Just one or two sentences. The other thing is, talk about some of your accomplishments that you've done at your job. I recommend that as far as how far back you go in terms of your job experience, is I wouldn't go back more than 10 years. If you've been out in the workforce for 15, 20 plus years or more, I wouldn't go back more than 10 years. And part of the reason is because there is age discrimination out there, okay? So you go onto my LinkedIn profile and that's what I've done. The other thing too is I don't list a year that I graduated from college. I don't, okay? So, again, that's just my personal advice to you on that. With your, in your job experience and also summary, LinkedIn now gives us the opportunity to add some multimedia. For example, we can add photos. We can add PowerPoint presentations, video. And that is a great opportunity to be able to highlight some of the things that we have done in our current job. It gives people a better insight and an example. You can also tag people on these projects that you worked on. So take advantage of that. Many of you, again, have been involved in different projects. Put it up there. Showcase it. I give you an example. February of this year, I hosted a group of about almost 100 students from the Mount View, Los Angeles High School District. First generation students, low income students at LinkedIn did almost kind of like a little mini job clinic for them. So cute because they ended up sending an 18 page PowerPoint thank you to myself and the rest of the colleagues, LinkedIn colleagues that helped with this event. And so I took that PowerPoint presentation and I uploaded it to my LinkedIn profile. Skills. So LinkedIn is very keyword driven platform. And you want to make sure that you list whatever skills you feel you are good at. Not that other people say, oh, you know, it's what you think you're good at. So Adam, the skill sets. And then over time, people will begin to endorse you for those skills. Now, here's the thing is be a giver, not a taker. What do I mean by that? When you go on to someone's profile, you'll notice that sometimes there's a little pop up window that says, hey, do you want to endorse Mary for whatever skill? You endorse them and they will then get notified. Okay. So what do you think is going to happen if you endorse them? They're going to come back and endorse you. Okay. Don't just sit back and wait for people to endorse. Again, be a giver. Just like you are here at the library. People come to you for help and you help them. Okay. So do that online. The other thing is over time, you, well, first of all, you have the ability to adjust, rearrange these skill sets in however, whatever manner it is that you want. So you change industries or positions or you gain a new skill. You have the ability to readjust the skill sets in whatever order it is that you want. And one of the reasons why you would want to do that is because, for example, on the desktop, I think it shows either the first eight or 10 skills without having you or someone having to click the show more. And on your mobile phone, it's obviously a lot less than that, but we're all skimmers and we're lazy. So very few people actually will click the show more. So if you rearrange them, then it will showcase that skill. And also it gives people an opportunity to be like, oh, you know what? That's a reminder. Kind of like, let me endorse, you know, so and so for this new skill set. Volunteer experience. This is also very important to list. And oftentimes organizations will view volunteer experience just as important as regular job experience. Again, list the name of the organization, what they do, what it is that you did at that organization and showcase it. This is also important for people who, to volunteer for people who maybe been out of the workforce for a while. Either, you know, they started a family or they, for health reasons or whatever the reason is. People oftentimes will have breaks in their job history and their concern, like, oh my gosh, how can I explain or how can I get my foot in the door? Or the other thing too is you'll find people that are employed and they want to break into a new industry but people are not, it's like Catch-22. People aren't willing to give them a chance. So encourage them to do some volunteer work and list it on their LinkedIn profile. Any organizations that you are a member, so like, you know, Association or any other organizations, your alumni groups or if you were, you know, in college or whatever, professional organizations listed also on your LinkedIn profile. For those of you that are running an organization, one of the nice things about when you have your members listed is it makes it much easier to do searches on LinkedIn for those people, okay? All right, recommendations. This is also a very, very important area to list. Go back to the example in the beginning, like I mentioned about books and reading recommendations. Many of you are really good at what you do, okay? I know that, all right? I've seen you, I've heard you read books to my kids, okay? I've seen you in action. But we judge a book by its cover. We judge other people by what we read about them online. And I have seen people who have, again, been in the industry for 20-plus years and they have no recommendations. And you know what, to me, then that's an outsider who I don't know who you are, that is a red flag. To me, that's when it's like, wow, what's wrong with this person? Why does this person not have any recommendations? And I know there's answers for that. I know it, I get it. But again, put yourself in the shoes of the person that is just going onto your profile and skimming through it, right? Like, if this person really says they're really good in their profile, then why is it that no one's recommending them? So, ask for recommendations. Clients or, you know, your manager or peers or other people, ask for recommendations and obviously do it through LinkedIn. Now, when you ask for recommendation, they get notified and it comes back, they write it and you have three options. Number one is you can choose to accept it. You can, number two, you can choose to have them edited for you. Tell them what it is that changes that you want them to make. Or number three, you can choose to reject it. So, one of the cool things about LinkedIn is the ability to really, really give us control about as to what gets posted on our profile, what gets seen, et cetera, and so forth. So, don't think that just because someone wrote a recommendation, it's automatically going to go onto your LinkedIn profile. You have total control over that. The other thing, too, is don't be afraid to reach out to other, excuse me, to give recommendations to other people, okay? All right. Let me just pause for a second here and I'm going to pull up a couple of folks' profiles, just kind of recap some things. So, first off, just to show you some examples here. And I know I have Cheryl and Michelle also profile that they graciously agreed to have me go through it. But I want to show you here, this is my daughter's profile. She is a sophomore at Cal State Monterey Bay. Obviously, as you can see from her LinkedIn profile, okay? Now, remember the first thing that I mentioned or the second thing that I mentioned about your headline? Okay. You see what she says about herself in her headline? She's a student. It's true. But what is the difference between her being a student and the seven and nine thousand other students that are at Cal State Monterey Bay or for that matter, anywhere in school? It doesn't stand out, right? Okay. Now, let's look at her summary down below. And it says, I am a student at California State University of Monterey Bay who aspires to one day become a high school U.S. history teacher. My goal as a future educator is to help create an engaging, creative, and strong educational foundation for future generations. My passion for education has been an ongoing cause that has led me to volunteer for organizations such as Mesa de la Comunidad and the City of Mountain View's Youth Advisory Committee. By pursuing my passion for academia, I hope to expand my horizons and gain more insight into a world of limitless possibilities. That's a really good summary. For someone who has no experience as a teacher, that's not the point. The point is what she's aspiring to be. So you see what I'm talking about, you guys? When I tell you that it doesn't matter how much experience or you could have zero experience, you read a summary like that and that's inspiring. That's someone that knows what they want and they're pursuing it. So look at your profile as well and follow those three things that I mentioned and that will help you definitely. Now, let me pull up here. Okay. Michelle's profile. And what I like to do is actually start from the bottom and just kind of work my way up. So first off, some of the things that we can learn from Michelle's profile. There's a lot of information here that we can learn about someone. So we can learn about what school she's following. I'm assuming because she's following these schools that she went to these schools. That's a good assumption, okay? I mean, I went to Berkeley. I'm not going to follow Stanford, okay? All right, also companies. What companies she's following? You can see there she's got the San Francisco Public Library, you know, NPR, National Geographic, et cetera and so forth. So she's following some, obviously her industry and a couple of tech companies, some news. Also on LinkedIn, and I'll talk later about some of the news groups but we can see some of the news groups she's following. And then we also have the ability on LinkedIn to follow influencers. These are people that are very well known in their industry. A lot of articles on LinkedIn share a lot of knowledge, et cetera and so forth. And so she is following four people. She's also, again, part of these groups. So without having looked at her education, I definitely pretty like, okay, here she is again following San Jose State and Towson University as a group. She has, looks like some, yeah, she's got four recommendations. So by reading these recommendations, I get a better insight into Michelle's character, her personality, what people are saying about her. Okay, she's part of the California Library Association group. She's listed an interest here, her education. Definitely here it's confirmed. Some publications, perhaps it looks like something that maybe she's written or contributed to. And then we get into the skills that she has listed. So Library, Library Science, Collection Development, and so forth. Then we get into, looks like her work experience. So she goes back to 2002, Mill Valley Public Library, a member of a committee. Okay, and then this looks like she uploaded some multimedia here. I'm not sure why it's not showing, kind of like the photo. And anyways, and then she's been now here with the San Francisco Public Library for almost two years. So then she looks like she published an article. Let's take a look at this. Looks like it's, oh, it's actually, it's a workshop that she showcased. One of the things, since I'm here, I want to point something out. And again, I'll talk about this a little here shortly. But the publishing platform here on LinkedIn, it is for writing articles. I don't recommend that you post events or job openings here because you're not going to get traction. That's not what the platform has set up. So here, see this? How many thumbs up? How many comments? How many shares? Only one comment. You're not going to get the results. That's like going to the San Francisco Chronicle and asking them to put your job posting on the front page of the newspaper. They're not going to do that. That's not what that's for. Okay, so don't be surprised if you have published events or job postings and you're not getting results through here. It's because that's not what the platform is set up for. Okay, so let's go back to her profile. So based on so far, some of the things that I've talked about, what are some of the things that Michelle can do on her profile? Anyone? You guys been paying attention? Come on, you guys, don't be shy. You guys are like parents. I remember, you know, I take my kids to the library. Now obviously they're grown up and you guys are the ones that are encouraging my kids to talk. And now you guys are all silent on me. Go figure. Okay, so 2002 might be a little too far back. Okay, good point. What else? Anyone else? Come on. I'm not going to leave until you guys start talking here. A headline. Okay, let's take a look at the headline. Yep, there's no headline. What would you recommend? Anyone? What headline would you recommend for Michelle? Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. That's good. You guys, I'm Michelle's profile. What's that? More detail on the work experience. Okay. Oh, yes. Yeah, blurb about what she got out of that workshop. Yeah. That's a good point. Okay. What else? Where is the summary? Yeah. So write a summary. Okay. That's very important. Because remember what I mentioned? When we look, and I use LinkedIn mostly on my mobile phone. So when I'm looking at my mobile phone at people's profiles. Again, I'm looking for the photo, the title, or the headline. And then that takes me into the profile. And I look at the summary. Those are like really the three things, the top three things that catch my attention about someone. Yes. Michelle, come on. You need to brag about how awesome you are. So awards and recognition. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. On my profile, I've been very fortunate, humbled that my family and I have received some awards because of our community involvement. And I've choked, I talk about that in my summary and some of the other areas. And that is actually something that draws people. The trust is like, wow, Oscar, I didn't realize, you know, some of the things that you do. And again, it just showcases more about my personality and where my heart is. Okay. So you're right. It is important to showcase some of our awards. Anything else you guys? Yes. For more recommendations. Okay. To get more recommendations. Okay. Yep. I haven't talked about this yet, but what do you think for someone like Michelle, who's been in the industry now for, how long Michelle have you been in the 15 years? Do you think 178 connections make sense for someone that's been in the industry for 15 years? Or do you think she should have a little more? Yeah. Especially as working in the library, which is a public facility, you meet a lot of people. You should, you know, be connecting with a lot of people. Of course, like in what I do, it makes sense. People are like, yeah, of course, you're talking to a lot of people. But you know what? I say the same thing about your profession. You're talking to a lot of people too. In fact, you probably talk and interact with more people than I do on a daily basis, weekly basis. So the reality is you actually should have more connections than me. Okay. Because, and again, I'll talk later about the connections, but it's important about it's not just who we know, but who they know as well. Okay. Anything else on any other tips for Michelle with her LinkedIn profile? Yep. Okay. All right. Let's look at Cheryl profile. Let's start again from the bottom. So here we go. Cheryl, okay. She's got San Jose State Foothill College. Again, companies, El Camino Hospital. You see the schools, fast company, news, polls, big ideas, a couple influencers. She's following groups that she's a part of her industry. This shows the number of connections that she has because we're connected. It also shows how many shared connections, recommendations that she's given. Again, organizations. Here's her education. Then we get into her skills. All right. And then we got her work experience. No, excuse me, publications is what we have. So she's written a lot or again contributed to a lot of things that she's showcasing. Here's her work experience. So library assistant, the Mountain View Public Library back in 1995. Started in 1995. Was there for over 10 years. And then community engagement, outreach and program coordinator, the branch library, and then her summary. And then lastly up here. So, okay. What advice do we have for Cheryl? Different photo. You know what, let's talk about why a different photo. Yeah. So that's a good point because when I first saw Cheryl's photo, that photo to me, when you just look at it from a distance, it looks like she works at 24 hour fitness. Am I the only one? Is that not true? 24 hour fitness. I've seen the folks there with the red shirt. And it's kind of hard, you know, from the distance to figure out there's people. I just, you know, I thought it looked like she was at a gym, you know, 24 hour fitness. Okay. But she's an athletic librarian. But anyway. Okay. What else, you guys? What else? Job tag? Okay. The headline? Yep. Okay. Any other advice for her? Come on. You guys are librarians. You guys are full of advice. You're always helping people. Yes, sir. Hello. Yeah. In that headline up there, yes. I would recommend changing it to what you're talking about. Definitely say it down in the, down here in the, you can say it down here in your experience area as your title, if that is your title, say it. But up there again, it's your headline. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. You want to be able to kind of tell a little quick story about yourself in the, that summary. That's really what you want to do. Just kind of get, imagine you're sitting down with your, you know, with your, your cousin who you haven't seen in like 20 years and they're like, Cheryl, what are you up to? So what are you doing? Oh, let me tell you what, what is that I'm doing. Okay. You see how, if you think of it from that perspective, that's not how you would write this summary then. You will not tell your, your, your cousin, hey, let me tell you what my primary goal is. Okay. You wouldn't tell you right. Yeah. What else? What else you guys, you notice what she says, library industry awards include, right? I think I saw on her profile listed, the awards listed. So just like Michelle, you guys don't be too humble. Okay. Bragg, it's okay. Let the world know how amazing you guys are. Don't keep it a secret. Okay. Any, the other thing too is looking at connecting with people on LinkedIn as, as well, you know, increasing your connection. I know one of the things with Cheryl is the area that she's in and over in Santa Clara, a bunch of techies over there, a bunch of propeller head people over there. Okay. A bunch of nerds over there, smart people connect with them. Okay. The other thing is to say, given that that's her client in that area, I would follow more tech companies or tech industry because I want to be able to be in the know with what my clients, how my clients think what they're interested in. So don't just follow groups or companies that are specific to your industry, but think of it from your client's standpoint as well. Okay. All right. I'm going to go through this here really. This is pretty self-explanatory. We've got 10 minutes here. So I want to get into some other things here. Okay. Publishing articles. How many of you have written an article on LinkedIn? The rest of you don't like to write? Have you guys written articles? For your industry? Why is it that you do not publish it then on LinkedIn? This is the question. I'm curious. I don't know. What's that? You didn't know you could? Okay. Yes. There are other outlets. Okay. To do it. Okay. Yes, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So about two or three years ago, LinkedIn opened the platform to the rest of us, to all of us, to be able to write articles. Now, what kind of articles can you write? In my case, I have, I've written seven articles. They're all anywhere from 300 to 500 words. So very short articles. Mine tend to focus on leadership, management. And every article that I've written has something personal experience that I've gone through and I share. This is the very first article that I wrote. The title of it is, I am a minority. And what happens is when you write that article on LinkedIn, it gets, it's a public article. So anyone can see it, whether they follow you, not following you, they're connected or not connected with you. But it's an opportunity for you to also be seen as a thought leader in your industry. And that is the important thing. Because again, you, you are telling people that you are the best at what you do in your industry, but you are not proving it. And this is a way that you can show others. But it's not just about proving to others. It's also about you giving back and sharing knowledge that you have. The other thing is, is that depending on, and I don't know how LinkedIn's algorithm works, but some of the things that you publish will get amplified onto their other news channels. So this particular article got picked up by their editors pick and also put under leadership and management. And then it ended up, it doesn't show right here on this, but over almost 11,000 views and almost 450 likes, almost 100 comments, feedback from people. So think about, again, publishing some articles. What about, in your case, maybe what about for parents, like talking about what are some good reading habits for kids? Those are some things that the common person would want to know, right? Or what are some of the new trends that are coming for business professionals? What are some things that they can utilize, the library or services? Talk about some of those things. So that's one way that you can use the LinkedIn publishing platform. Okay. Let me talk about growing your connections here. And I will jump and actually show you here some examples. So I'll use Cheryl as her profile as an example. So one of the things is that on LinkedIn is we can, you can go up here at the top of the search engine and talk about, or excuse me, type in whatever person or industry it is that you want the speaker to get. Okay. Type that in there. You want someone with computer science background. You type that in and it will start showing up and you can go in there and take a look. But let's say, for example, I'm looking for a librarian, okay, to come speak at LinkedIn. And I find Cheryl and it's like, wow, okay, we're connected. So when you see a one up in the top, that means you are personally connected with someone. If you see a two, that means you share common connection with that person. And you scroll down to the bottom and you will see what those share connections. If you see a three, that means there are no common connections with that person. So I find Cheryl and I do what I did earlier. Go through the profile. Okay. For example, she is not available for whatever reason. She's not available. And let's just say, wow, Larry's also a librarian. So you see this number seven? This tells me how many common connections Larry and I have. And what I could do is two things. Number one is I can send Larry a message directly, okay, through in message here. Send him a message and say, hey, I'm looking for a speaker, blah, blah, blah, would you be interested? And so forth. The best way, though, that I recommend that you do it is that I go to Cheryl and say, hey, Cheryl, we have a common connection, Larry, okay. I'm looking for a speaker, would you mind doing an introduction? And I would send that message to Cheryl through LinkedIn. And then what do you think the chances are that Larry is going to respond to Cheryl's message because she's connected to him? Pretty good. Okay. So that is a very simple way for you to utilize connecting with people. And when do you connect with people? Connect with them right after you meet with them. Send them an invitation to connect. If you do wait more than a week to connect, what I recommend is that you personalize the invitation and remind people where it is that you met them, okay. All right. We'll wrap it up here. Okay, we already talked about speakers. The last thing I'll talk about is the news group. So news and groups. This is news and groups is a great place for you to get to know and meet other people. As you can see, I'm just starting to type just library and even done, but it starts showing you groups, librarians in the job market, et cetera. People, companies, universities, you know, you keep typing. This is, again, joining a group. It's an opportunity for you to not only compute information, but also for you to meet and connect and network with other people. It's a great resource, okay. Share your knowledge. Share your information. And through groups, it's been an opportunity where I've also met other people and connected with them on LinkedIn. Okay. All right. So I'm going to stop right here because I think we're pretty much out of time. But any questions so far and what I've said? Yes. Yeah, that's a good point. Obviously, if it's proprietary, you can't share that. What one is is that what I would let people know is if there is a way to generalize, if it's a PowerPoint presentation, to generalize and take out the proprietary stuff, then go ahead and share that. Okay. Another is, is that encourage people to say, hey, you know what? When you're at an event, maybe if you're speaking at an event, if you're a speaker, take a photo of you speaking. And so you can showcase that. So that's another example. But certainly, again, proprietary information, you do need to be careful. Well, you can't share that. Okay. Information. It's just a little, it is a little tricky. Yes. Yes. I can shout. It sounded to me like you were implying that more is better. Is that true? Or do you need to be a little choosy? No, it's not necessarily true. More isn't better. And again, it's personal preference. Okay. There are some people that connect with anyone. And then there are other people that are very selective and then kind of in the middle. So you have to think of it for yourself. For me personally, I connect with people if I can add value to them. What do I mean by that? So are we in a similar industry? Do we live in the region? Do we have some shared connections? I've gotten requests from people that are in the UK and Saudi Arabia or India. And I look and it's like there's no way that I'm going to be able to add value to what you're doing or vice versa. So no, I'm not going to connect with you. Okay. I get, I do presentations to high school and college youth. A lot of them connect with me. That's fine. I'll connect with them. Maybe there's something that I can help them out with or they can look at my connections. But it is also important that you nurture these relationships. It's relationship first, business second. Okay. I think someone else had a question. Connection request from totally random people. And so you answered the question. Oh, okay. How you vet that and figure out whether you're going to connect. Okay. I think someone, yes. How do you best use LinkedIn to get the most out of it? Do you have any other recommendations? Well, I would ask that person, what is it that you're trying to use it for? If they're trying to use it for job search, then obviously if they are high school or college, there's a different reason for it. If they are looking to generate sales, there's another. So my question, it depends. And we can talk later afterwards if you have more specific in terms of what you think that person industry is and I can then more specifically answer that question. Yes. Do you have any tips for setting up your organizations page? Yes. And that actually is a different conversation topic. Yeah. In terms of setting up your organizations page, again, I can give you some quick things afterwards. I know how to do that. Okay. Anyone else? So I think if you do have more questions, keep thinking about those because we will have Oscar back for a larger Q&A session. So maybe we could even explore the organization page then. But anyway, I think now we're going to take our break. So thank you very much, Oscar. Thank you.