Book Launch – 120 Ways To Achieve Your Purpose With LinkedIn by Sue Ellson

The 120 Ways To Achieve Your Purpose With LinkedIn Book was launched at Dymocks Book Store Camberwell, Level 1, The Well, 793 Burke Road Camberwell, Melbourne, Australia with Kerry Daly from Camberwell Centre Association and Hugh Davies from Macfarlan Lane and the author Sue Ellson in front of 69 guests ion 23 February 2016 at 6:00pm. Guests registered to attend via https://120wayslinkedin.eventbrite.com.au

33 books were sold at the event and nine books were given to selected contributors.

Listen to the audio recording here (00:18:40 8.59MB).

Watch the video below or at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtojiNi0HaQ

Transcript from Presentation at the Book Launch

Kerry Daly:

I haven’t got a glass, crystal glass to tap. That’s always the universal sign to get a bit of attention, isn’t it? I figure if I just keep talking loudly enough I will get across to everybody that were about to get started. Okay, well, I’ll kick things off.

My name is Kerry Daly. My role here is wearing a number of hats. One is as the manager of the Traders Association here in Camberwell, and the other is, because I work very closely with Dymocks here in Camberwell to do these types of events from time to time. I don’t know if they realise they’ve got music on in there. Oh, it’s the gym. Oh my God. That will be fun. I’ll groovy it up a bit and get the beat going. So we’re moving along.

Okay, I will talk nice and clearly and hopefully get across to you. So the other role as I said is working with Dymocks here in Camberwell because we do a lot of literary events throughout the year where we invite various authors to come to Camberwell and present their books. Sometimes, they’re dinner engagements. Sometimes they’re meet and greets like tonight.

And, we know Sue also under a number of different guises because over the years, Sue has been very involved with the Camberwell Association, working with our business clubs and sharing her experiences and expertise in a number of different areas. Many of you may already know Sue tonight, I know she, through her role with Camberwell Networking is probably the Supremo networker that I know.

She always manages to get a great crowd along because she makes a point of engaging with people and sharing her knowledge and taking the role that she has in various different guises of making people meet each other and share their experiences. So I know a lot of you are here along tonight through that and others of course will be here because you may be like me, and you don’t know an awful lot about this whole LinkedIn scenario.

We know it’s something you’re supposed to know a bit about. You may know a little bit but you don’t know a lot and you’re rather glad that somebody has bothered to become an expert in it and share that expertise with you through her writings.

And I am sure she is very chuffed to be here tonight wearing a hat as an author because that’s a big effort. I think a lot of us think that we’ve got a book in us, but very few of us have managed to get one unto the pages of the paper. So we thank tonight Henk from Dymocks for providing the background of the venue and for helping to sell the books. We thank The Well for allowing us make use of the venue. We thank the Traders Association for helping to promote it, for being a good friend to Sue, but most of all, of course, we thank Sue for coming along tonight to work with you.

My role is really just to get the introductions going and get your attention. I think I have it now. Please let me introduce you now to Hugh Davies who’s going to tell us a little bit more about his experience of working with Sue. Thank you very much.

Hugh Davies:

Thanks Kerry. My name is Hugh Davies. Now, I’ve got to say, it’s a great privilege to be a small part of the launch of Sue’s book. As anyone who knows Sue, will know that she has a great bundle of energy and enthusiasm, and you’re going to see that as you read the book. It is full of all sorts of enthusiastic advice wonderfully delivered.

My firm Macfarlan Lane works with the senior executives who have been the victims of some form of restructure and their firm has thoughtfully provided our services in current transition. Thanks there mate.
Some individuals come along and fund our services and their very hard work will make them do themselves. Sue has become a valued resource for us and for those individuals as a specialist in helping them use and build effective LinkedIn profiles.

She works with chief executives and others at all different levels, and it’s amazing how powerful this resource is. And what I say that, it’s a combination of Sue’s skills plus a great social media platform. Our joint task is to draw out what people are really good at, their capabilities and that is what we jointly do together. Some come to this task thinking, LinkedIn is a sort of an electronic resume. Well, in fact, it is a great deal more than this, and in fact, the resume part is perhaps the least important.

What is most important is capturing what you are really good at, drawing that out and expressing it in a way that will make you attractive to prospective employers or people that you’d like to partner with in starting your own business. As Sue makes clear in the two hundred or so pages of this book, LinkedIn or this particular social media platform is constantly changing. So you need someone like Sue to keep you abreast of just what’s going on and what’s different.

I commend Sue to you and her book. There’s a wealth of great material in it. I suspect I’m not the only person who will be sneaking off after reading this book and doing a bit of tinkering with our LinkedIn profile. Sue’s probably noticed a few tweaks of mine in the last few days. I have moved it from a five out of ten to a six out of ten, I suspect. Sue, you would not be who you are, were it not for you to have a few words to say at this point. So let’s give it to you.

[People clapping.]

Sue Ellson:

Thank you. Alright. Well, thank you for coming. That’s the most important thing and it’s really, really exciting for me to be here. Camberwell is my other home apart from Canterbury where I live. I first got involved in Camberwell when I was working in real estate. And for some reason, they’ve managed to keep me attached to the association. It’s been a lot of fun. But I thought what I’d do is some of you already know me and some of you don’t know me. So I thought I’d tell you a little bit about my story because that’s what we all love when we read books. It is about reading a story.

I was born in Adelaide in 1965. So if you’re good at maths, you‘d realize I am 50 now. I actually go back to thinking about what I was like when I was a kid because I thought, “Why did I bother writing this book?” And, I remember as a child actually collecting tips and my garage is full of boxes of cut up menus, cut up gardening tips, put into folders, and so on. I have actually been collecting tips my whole life. So I sort of worked out, “Oh, now that’s why I wrote a book” because I have been collecting tips for a very long time.
But it was really interesting because when I moved from Adelaide to Melbourne, I ended up doing a research project and I started Newcomers Network. And, what did I do? I built a website, and what was on it? A whole lot of tips. You know, and it was really interesting because when I started Newcomers Network, which is for people who’ve moved to Melbourne and now to Australia and a couple of other locations, people used to say to me ”Sue, you should write a book, because there is a story in it.” And I said “Oh, no, I don’t really think just moving is really a story.” And so, anyway, I used to interview authors who’ve written books and a lot of those authors said to me “Sue, before you write a book, you have to get an audience.”

So that’s what I’ve spent the last ten years or so doing. But in 2003, that’s when LinkedIn was started and I joined in December 2003. So I am one of the first one hundred thousand people in the world on LinkedIn and back then, it was a professional network for members. So it was designed just to be a way of connecting people and because I was doing a lot of networking, I thought that was a really good idea. But move forward to 2008 and that’s when I actually started consulting in LinkedIn and somebody said to me “When you talk about LinkedIn Sue, you’re going to have to say what the heck is it.”

And so as Hugh alluded to earlier, there’s lots of different things that people call it. Somebody said, “It’s dating for business to me recently.” Somebody else said, “It’s Facebook for business.” Somebody else says, “It’s a resume on steroids.” There’s lots of different names. But the reason I’ve written this book is I think LinkedIn can be used for your purpose. So whatever your purpose is, that’s what I’ve tried to encourage people to use the LinkedIn platform for. Just so you know, I’m not paid by LinkedIn. I’m completely independent of LinkedIn. And so, what I’ve tried to do is combine my knowledge of LinkedIn with helping you achieve your purpose in this book.

But if you want to know what LinkedIn is and sort of a rough summary of what I am talking about in terms of how you can use it, is really about determining what your purpose is first. So that’s sort of the overarching principle. You have to know what your purpose is, and then, you have to think about the computer experience. What do you want the computer to read when it looks at your LinkedIn profile.

So when Hugh goes from a five to six, he has realized he has got to put his keywords in. He has to use them frequently. He has to search engine optimize his profile by putting keywords in particular locations. He has to send signals out to the platform by the behavior that he adopts so whether he has joined groups, follows companies, participates in general discussions, puts out updates, and one of my favorites is to write posts on LinkedIn because they are really, really well search engine optimized.

So for anybody who is looking for a job, 95% of hiring managers now will Google you. And, when they Google you, pretty much, every time, LinkedIn will come up. That will be the first thing that comes up in search results. So that’s why it is so important because if people don’t find anything about you, they start getting very suspicious and say, well, you know, is this person really who they say they are.

Even though you could have manufactured the whole LinkedIn profile, which I’m not recommending, but definitely, it will come up first in search results, and if you write well in the Pulse Section, you can also get that coming up on the first page of search results and you don’t even need to have your own website. So if you really want to get started on any particular goal, you can do that definitely with LinkedIn.

So that’s the computer experience, and then, on the other side, is when somebody actually starts reading your profile, what’s the user experience? So the first thing that they are going to look at, considering that 70% of the population is visual is your photograph.

So sorry folks, you have to put a photo on there, but I do have one of my clients who is an artist and she’s got her photo on there with sunglasses. So it doesn’t have to be a revealing photo. It can be whatever sort of fits your purpose and that’s okay. You have to have a good headline, a good summary, you need to have a very consistent approach in the way you write your LinkedIn profile. You need to have a call to action. What do you want people to do when they read your profile, and also, your contact details if you do want them to reach out to you.

And then, there’s always that nice little bling factor, so if you put a little bit of bling on there, you like you’re up to date with technology, so that’s your images, your videos, and even if it’s somebody else’s, you can still put that on your LinkedIn profile.

So if you’ve got any questions about LinkedIn, I am more than happy to answer those tonight. The book is being written so that you can take it off in bite size pieces and do it as you wish. I found out that a lot people for thirty years, when it’s a nonfiction book prefer paper instead of digital, but the digital copy will also be available.

Also this, believe it or not, it’s the first of three books that I am writing this year. My second book that I’ll launch in May, will be 120 Ways to Attract the Right Career or Business, and the third book in August, which will be launched through Kerry and the Camberwell Association will be 120 Ways to Market Your Business Hyper Locally. So those books will also feature LinkedIn, but then more marketing and attracting opportunities to you. So if you are really, really clear on what you would like achieve, that’s what I’m trying to help you do on your own.

A number of Hugh’s clients said, “Sue, you talk too fast. Can you just give me a book with all this stuff in it?” So hopefully, a few of those clients will be able to go home and do it at their leisure. So, yeah, that’s really exciting. Now, the other thing that I have recommended in this book is that you feel free to join the 120 Ways Publishing Membership Program and that will give you access to spreadsheets, and download files that are associated with the book so that you can get clickable links and you can do things quickly yourselves. There is no cost to join that. But if you also want summaries of questions and answers on all of my books, that’s $39 a year and if you want videos, instructional videos as well, that will be $59 a year for all of the three books and any future books that come out. So I have tried to make things as affordable as possible for everyone.

I presume my lovely daughter Carmen gave you a little slip as you came in and that’s also telling you about a couple of workshops that I’m running in Canterbury on Monday the 29th of February and Tuesday the 8th of March from 7 till 9. So for two hours, there will be a maximum of five people and we’ll actually be working on LinkedIn profiles. So if you’d like to join me for that, you are most welcome to do that. We’ve got lots of champagne and nonalcoholic bubbles, and water bubbles for you to enjoy, as well as a few snacks. So I definitely encourage you to stay and network for as long as you like.

I have acknowledged a number of people in the book. The book is dedicated to my children Carmen and Peter, who are always an inspiration and also, unfortunately my parents could not be here tonight. My Mum has been quite unwell, but they are based in Adelaide. So they rang me at 8:30 this morning and said, “Hope, it all goes well.”

I have acknowledged Lee, who has been my eldest, longest Melbourne friend who has known me, probably my oldest one too, yeah. She has known me since before my children were born so that is really exciting. I’ve got good friends who I listed in how many years I have known them in order. So I cannot remember how many years it is. Hang on, let me check the book so I get it right. Grace who my son and her son have been friends since they were six months old. Cathie who just keeps in touch on a regular basis and I have really enjoyed that as has Melinda. Where is Melinda? At the back. Jacquie Wise who couldn’t be here because she was teaching, and Angelo, who’s been busy taking photos, down the back.

And also, Suzanne, who’s in the front. She’s my accountability partner. If you don’t have an accountability partner, I really encourage you to get one because you catch up with this person once a week and you really do see your productivity go through the roof. And Colin who has been training with me as we we’re hitting the streets of Mont Albert over the Summer Series Program, doing lots of exercise. So Euan Mitchell is the guy who’s been advising me on this book. I can assure you that I have done everything with this book including the bad layout.

So let me assure you, I was determined to release this book on the 23rd of February. So if you don’t want to buy one tonight, and you wait about a month, there’s going to be an even a better looking book than this one is, but I can assure you that the content will be the same. There is only 60 books available and I think there is more than 60 people here. So, if you want one, I do encourage you to get it and obviously, there’s heaps of information for free at sueellson.com with lots of other general tips and advice for your career or business.

So again, thanks to Henk and Kerry for coordinating tonight. It’s a great privilege to be able to launch my book here in Camberwell. And if you are going to think about writing a book, I warn you now, it’s a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun. And yep, thanks everyone for coming.

[People clapping.]

Kerry Daly:

Sue, of course, is here for book signings and I’m sure, she’s a bit embarrassed about that, but it’s a terrific opportunity to have your book personalized. So come on up in a moment and get your book personalized. Thank you very much Sue.

Carmen:

Hello, sorry, just while I’ve got everybody’s attention. Just one quick reminder, that if you hadn’t done it already, we’ve actually got a raffle going for this evening and the prize is a personally signed copy of my Mum’s book. So if you don’t have a business card, we’ll get some pieces of paper and you can just put your name on one of those. And yeah, good luck.

[Crowd talking.]