How to Crack LinkedIn to Work for You with Melanie Borden

Melanie Borden – LinkedIn Expert

Melanie, the Founder & CEO of The Borden Group, leverages her bespoke strategies and tools to assist Founders, C-suites, and executives in aligning their expertise and LinkedIn™️ presence for unlocking broad opportunities and relationships. With a background as a marketing executive, she adeptly employs online marketing tactics to foster both corporate and personal brand growth.

Her proficiencies encompass marketing oversight, in-house agency development, budgeting, strategic vendor collaborations, bolstering digital footprints through social media, reputation management, online monetization, and refining advertising processes. Melanie’s accomplishments have been showcased in LA Weekly, Good Morning America, Daily Mail, CXO Outlook, The Epoch Times, Working Mother Media, Hip New Jersey, New York City Biz List, HeyOrca!, New York Weekly, and The Wall Street Journal.

SHOW NOTES

As the VP of a marketing agency in 2019, Melanie Borden had zero digital footprint. But she decided it was time to step it up, and today, as we publish this episode, she has over 181,000 followers on LinkedIn!

How did she do it? And how can you step up your LinkedIn presence to increase demand for your speaking?

Let’s find out!

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Melanie Borden is the Founder and CEO of The Borden Group, which transforms businesses and executives on LinkedIn by increasing their reach, impact, and brand marketing effectiveness, turning their personal brands into a powerful channel for achieving growth and fulfilling their mission.

—

Rate Amplify on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Jess Ekstrom.

Amplify with Jess is produced by Earfluence, and brought to you by Mic Drop Workshop.

TRANSCRIPT

**Melanie – 00:00:01:**
Yeah. I mean, you can only fake it for so long before someone figures it out. And I say this all the time because a lot of people, I think, make assumptions based on someone who has a large following like myself, like it’s smoke and mirrors, which I think a lot of people experience with other social platforms because you have people who are buying followers and it’s just inauthentic. It’s not something that’s sustainable. And those people tend to fade into the background anyway.

**Jess – 00:00:33:**
Welcome to Amplify with Jess Ekstrom, a show designed to help women get out of their head and into their zone of influence. Today’s guest is Melanie Borden, someone who helps founders, C-suites, and executives align their real-life expertise and LinkedIn presence to create opportunities and relationships at scale. In my mind, Melanie is the LinkedIn expert with over 180,000 followers on LinkedIn. Just when you think I’m doing pretty good, you know? The thing is, Melanie had zero digital footprint back when she was the VP of a marketing agency in 2019. Absolutely zero. But she decided that for her and her team of 80 salespeople, it was time to step it up, especially on LinkedIn.

**Melanie – 00:01:23:**
The segment of where the company’s audience was, was in those channels. And I thought, you know what, we’re not tapping into LinkedIn because we’re also dealing with high-net-worth individuals. At the time, the brands were all high line: Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, BMW. And I just started pushing everyone towards LinkedIn. Then the CEO laid off about 95% of the company during the pandemic. I was not one of those. However, I’d realized that if I lost my job, I didn’t have a social network. People knew me in my industry, but I didn’t have anything to fall back on. And so I just started showing up and documenting every single thing that I was doing. And I started connecting the dots the same way that I was doing for our CEO and our businesses. So I essentially just transferred my knowledge of what I knew about marketing and social to myself. And that’s how it started.

**Jess – 00:02:22:**
It’s fascinating to me because we were literally having this conversation last night in Mic Drop Academy. I was teaching how to collect emails from the stage, you know, when you’re done speaking, how to get people in the audience to sign up for your email list. And one of the students was like, I don’t understand why I need an email list. I don’t have a book. I don’t have a podcast. I don’t have something I’m pushing or selling. And I’m like, but maybe you will, and you probably will in the future, whether it’s a community, a course, anything like that. And you don’t want to start building an audience or building a network when you need it. Build it before you need it.

**Melanie – 00:03:00:**
So true.

**Jess – 00:03:00:**
And that’s essentially what you’re saying with LinkedIn.

**Melanie – 00:03:04:**
Yeah. It’s your rainy day fund. As my parents always said to me, like-

**Jess – 00:03:08:**
I love that. Yeah.

**Melanie – 00:03:10:**
It’s the rainy day fund when you need it, it’s there, and you can tap into it. And you don’t have to be starting your own business. You could work for someone else and still have your rainy day fund of having a network that you can tap into for potential employment. And you can do it in a way where it doesn’t look like you’re looking for a job.

**Jess – 00:03:28:**
Now, I have my own thoughts and opinions about this, but I want to know, what do you think separates LinkedIn from the other social media platforms that are out there right now?

**Melanie – 00:03:38:**
So from my perspective, I’ve spent my whole life working. I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. And I’m very independent, always have been. And I look at LinkedIn as an extension of the work that I’ve done offline, where it’s a place for opportunity within my career, but it’s also a place where I can build relationships. Whereas, and you see everything versus if you go onto X, if you go onto Instagram, if you go onto Facebook, you don’t necessarily get the same insights about the person where you can make. You know, decisions about who they are and what their experience is, who they know, you can see who they’re connected to, what their education is. And you can develop relationships with people without even realizing that you’re doing it. And it’s a treasure trove. And I think that the growth that LinkedIn has had over the last three years has been astronomical just due to the fact that other people like yourself and myself, we see the value that it brings, the impact that it will have on our careers.

**Jess – 00:04:47:**
And I think the fact that, you know, there’s no, you can’t like be an avatar or something on LinkedIn. It has to be a human and you’re not like posting, I mean, at least for the most part, these like super, you know, edited like day in my life photos there, you’re usually posting for some sort of purpose or value, something in your niche or in your industry, you’re communicating with other people. But I think the other thing that I really like about LinkedIn and why I feel like it’s gotten so much traction recently and why I think it’s a great way to grow as a speaker is because people are on there to network. You know, if someone was like sliding in my DMs on Instagram or TikTok, that’s like, you know, hey, like, can I like pick your brain or whatever, you know, it’s something about speaking. It’s kind of like, ah. But on LinkedIn, it’s there. It’s like, this is my knowledge base and this is what I do. Reach out or I will reach out to you if I feel like I can help you. It’s just this natural network, like playground, whereas the others, it’s too inflated, I feel like, and too photoshopped to feel like you can trust that person in that little square on your newsfeed.

**Melanie – 00:06:12:**
Yeah. I mean, you can only fake it for so long before someone figures it out. And I say this all the time because a lot of people, I think, make assumptions based on someone who has a large following like myself, like it’s smoke and mirrors, which I think a lot of people experience with other social platforms because you have people who are buying followers and it’s just inauthentic in a sense where… These are real people who have these real experiences that can identify, you know, what’s real and what isn’t. And you can only fake it for so long. And there’s definitely those that are out there that might not necessarily be who they say they are. But, it’s not something that’s sustainable. And those people tend to fade into the background anyway. Just like they do on other social platforms. But I love LinkedIn. I mean, people thought I was absolutely insane when I started posting on LinkedIn every day. They’re like, what are you doing?

**Jess – 00:07:12:**
First, they think you’re insane. And then they ask you how you did it.

**Melanie – 00:07:15:**
Well, and then they ask me if I can take them as a client.

**Jess – 00:07:18:**
Right. Exactly.

**Melanie – 00:07:21:**
Yeah. That’s happened to me a few times. And each time I’m like-

**Jess – 00:07:26:**
You told me I was crazy. Yeah. I’ve been there. I’ve been there. So who is the type of person that should be paying attention to LinkedIn right now? Like you’ve talked about how you had no digital footprint in 2020. You saw coworkers getting laid off. Like what kind of assets would you have? For those listening who are maybe on the fence of like, oh my gosh, one more social thing that I have to do. Who should be doing this right now?

**Melanie – 00:07:54:**
Everyone.

**Jess – 00:07:55:**
Yeah.

**Melanie – 00:07:55:**
And I mean that wholeheartedly because it doesn’t matter what stage of career you’re in. It doesn’t matter if you are exclusively leveraging the platform to look for speaking opportunities, whether, you know, paid or just getting started with speaking or someone who’s early in their career, maybe they’re graduating college. It could be someone who’s a very senior level executive. You have those who are transitioning from the military. I mean, literally every person who wants to gain control of their life and their future and be the one who writes their own ticket should be on LinkedIn.

**Jess – 00:08:35:**
Yeah. One of the things I really like that LinkedIn introduced recently is in like your work history, you can now put gaps, like you can put, you know, maternity, like time off to raise my kids. And it’s just like, yeah, this is not, we are not just like working machines. We are real humans on the other side of this. I took a year off or whatever it might be. And I think that that is, again, kudos LinkedIn for seeing the human behind the profile.

So from the master yourself, if you’re just getting started, what are some things that you can start doing to boost your LinkedIn, utilize it? Where should you begin? What’s step one?

**Melanie – 00:09:17:**
That’s such a great question. So this is probably the most important piece of the process. And there are some out there who say content is more important, but positioning yourself and packaging yourself to whom you are trying to appeal to. And that might be a prospective employer. That might be prospective clients. That could be someone who you’re looking to speak for and you make the decision of how to package yourself. So starting with, I look at your LinkedIn page as a landing page. So just like you have in Google, you have search results. If you go into LinkedIn and you type something in the search, you’re going to get search results. Also, you’re not just going to get profiles. You’re not just going to get jobs. You’re going to get people who talk about specific content. You’re going to get content. You’re going to see events. You’re going to see a whole suite of information that goes just beyond just your profile. So think of your LinkedIn as a landing page. And the first place that I look at is, you know, also with Google, we talk about above the fold and below the fold or on the first page. So with LinkedIn, I look at it the same way. So above the fold, you have your banner. Your banners should have a few different items, right. Or it can have one of these few items.

**Jess – 00:10:34:**
Is the banner the image like behind your, your profile. Okay.

**Melanie – 00:10:38:**
Exactly. So that’s the image behind your profile photo. So if you recently launched a podcast, if you recently wrote a book. Or maybe you have a book, or maybe you’ve written multiple books, you have a specific offer that you’re putting out there. You can have a call to action, like schedule time with me or book me as a speaker on your banner. You could also have social proof as seen in, right? So if you’ve spoken somewhere, spoken at, and you can list that out as social proof. You can also have on your banner, as an example, a client testimonial, or if you’ve spoken somewhere, you could take a sentence from a testimonial that they’ve given you and put on your banner. This is the first opportunity that someone has when they come on your profile to see you. So whether they’re on a phone or they’re on the computer, they’re going to see your banner.

**Jess – 00:11:29:**
It’s the first thing they see. Yeah. It’s like the biggest real estate on your profile.

**Melanie – 00:11:33:**
Yeah. And think about colors too. Color theory plays a big part online as well. And there are certain colors that pop out and everyone has their own colors that they love. But think about who you’re speaking to, what colors would resonate with them, and what would help you stand out. And that can also be applied to your profile photo. So I see a lot of people commenting and the ones that always stand out to me are the ones that have color in their profile photo, whether, it’s whether it’s a blouse that has color or it’s behind their photo. They have color that you can do that in Canva where you can have the color superimposed behind your profile photo. It’s just another way to really capture someone’s attention.

**Jess – 00:12:18:**
So really like step one with is imagery, not just the words that you’re actually putting on your profile. And it makes sense. I mean, we are in a world that isn’t reading right now. Our attention spans are super short. So what can you tell me about yourself in a photo and in a visual where I can then decide if I want to like click and learn more? And that goes down to the color and the emotion that that invokes. I mean, it totally makes sense.

**Melanie – 00:12:48:**
And what you’ll find too, is there are so many people who don’t have anything on their profile. And especially if you’re turning out, it’s scary to say, okay, well, what am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to do with this? What do I put on my banner? What am I supposed to have on my profile photo? And then the next area that I would go to is your headline and your headline should talk about what you do, who you do it for and the results that you get. And that is my go-to default.

**Jess – 00:13:14:**
Okay. What you do, who you do it for, and the results that you get. Ooh, I love that. I have struggled with my, what did you call it? A headline?

**Melanie – 00:13:26:**
Yeah.

**Jess – 00:13:27:**
Because I’m like, I’m over here. I’m over there. I want to be like witty. I want to be fun, but I want to be serious and tell you what I do. And so that is an amazing way to break it down.

**Melanie – 00:13:38:**
From a conversion standpoint, for myself personally, when someone comes to my profile, I want them to immediately understand what I do, who I do it for and how good I am at what I do and the results that I get. And you can do that for anything.

**Jess – 00:13:53:**
Oh, I love that. And doesn’t that header also influence SEO? Are they picking up words from your header when they are searching for things?

**Melanie – 00:14:03:**
So your profile on LinkedIn has so much SEO opportunity. I was just talking, I was on another podcast last night and I was talking about this, that I subscribe to Google alerts with my name. And, I want to see if anything comes out that I’m doing or written or if something comes, I want to be able to be the first person to see it.

**Jess – 00:14:24:**
Yeah.

**Melanie – 00:14:24:**
So flash forward, I, for the last few months, I’ve been seeing posts of mine in the Google alerts from LinkedIn.

**Jess – 00:14:34:**
What?

**Melanie – 00:14:34:**
Yes. So that is happening.

**Jess – 00:14:36:**
I didn’t know it could do that.

**Melanie – 00:14:38:**
Yeah, it’s doing it. So you have this huge opportunity to not only build your brand on LinkedIn, but also in the Google search results page. So when anyone searches for you, your LinkedIn posts are going to start coming up.

**Jess – 00:14:51:**
So LinkedIn is, I mean, I’m not going to say like the new Google, but it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s people are using it to find things, which is why, you know, in Mic Drop, I always say like one of the step one things that you should do is put the word speaker in your LinkedIn headline. Absolutely. Now, is the goal, here’s one of my questions, is the goal for you to have these relationships and communicate on LinkedIn, or is the goal to get them? Like off of LinkedIn onto your website, you know, what, what’s the customer journey like for you?

**Melanie – 00:15:26:**
I think ideally we want them to come onto our website because we want them to be able to come into our own database so we can collect their information. However, I always tell people that our LinkedIn is not about us. It’s actually about who we’re speaking to. So you want to give them options. And I talk to a lot of executives about this because they don’t necessarily have their own personal brand landing page, right? So it’s a good idea to have a separate page that someone can go to because maybe someone doesn’t feel comfortable sending you a DM. Maybe someone feels more comfortable going to your website and sending an inquiry through a contact submission form. You will find that people will take a different path. I find it all the time. I have found that people actually will message me on Instagram, which I’m very inactive on. And they came from LinkedIn. So it’s the platform that they feel comfortable with. And that might be your website. That might be another social platform, or it might be LinkedIn.

**Jess – 00:16:28:**
Now, one of the things that I’ve also found is that the audio on LinkedIn, you actually are the one that is teaching me about the other features that LinkedIn has to start amplifying your thought leadership. And I know you can go live on LinkedIn, but you’re going into audio. So tell us about the audio feature.

**Melanie – 00:16:50:**
So LinkedIn has, so when you put your profile in creator mode, which everyone must do because the access and it unlocks a bunch of different features, including being able to stream, um, on live LinkedIn, which you have to do through a third party streaming service, um, also like a StreamYard. Um, and it also gives you the ability to do these LinkedIn audio events. And one of the reasons selfishly that I started doing the audio events is because I don’t want to do full glam every single time. So for me, if I didn’t do an audio event, I could still be, you know, wearing my workout clothes from my workout session earlier and take my

time and getting to where I need to be for the day. But the audio events are fantastic for a couple of reasons. Number one, I find them to be easier for people to drop into. Whether they’re at their desk or they’re driving somewhere, or maybe they’re just on LinkedIn and they’re working from their couch.

**Jess – 00:17:51:**
Yeah.

**Melanie – 00:17:51:**
I find it to be an easy way for someone to listen. The other thing I really like about them too, is they notify your network. If you have your notifications turned on, they notify your network and say, by the way, Melanie Borden is speaking right now about X, Y, and Z. Listen now.

**Jess – 00:18:08:**
Yeah. That’s what I see you. Yeah. That’s how you are always in my notifications. And I’m like, this woman is brilliant. This is why you do what you do. And it’s helped so many people. I’m like, she knows the different hacks that LinkedIn has to offer, which is why you also started a community around this. Tell us about the community.

**Melanie – 00:18:28:**
Okay, so unfortunately I can’t work with everyone and I get a lot of people who reach out to me and they’re like, I want to work with you, but I have no budget. And so I have been hearing that for a few years since I started my company. So I made the decision to start a community and course that focuses on building your brand really from start to finish from building your visual identity, including color theory and photos to storytelling content, to content that works on LinkedIn. My team and I have also been producing a tremendous amount of content, we are a content warehouse. All we do is produce content. So we are every month we’re publishing an eBook or a guide that I am not publishing anywhere else. I’m not selling it anywhere else. That’s just for the community members. For the time being, it’s at a discounted rate until further notice. But for anyone who of your listeners, I have a code HUMAN, H-U-M-A-N, all capitals, and they can get $30 off the community a month, which makes it $25 a month. We do live events twice a month. I do a 15-minute call with every single member of the community. So I have a chance to meet them.

**Jess – 00:19:45:**
What?

**Melanie – 00:19:46:**
Yes. That’s part of my strategy with the community.

**Jess – 00:19:50:**
Oh my gosh, that is incredible. What a steal. So where do I go to join the community? Because we will be joining it after this.

**Melanie – 00:19:59:**
Yes, yes, yes. I would love to have you. Communitycourse.humantobrand.com.

**Jess – 00:20:04:**
Okay, we’ll put this in the notes as well. I wanted to end with something a little bit more, not as tactical as LinkedIn, but you talk about like goal-setting processes. I mean, clearly for you to go from no digital footprint to being like the LinkedIn queen in just a few short years, you probably know a thing or two about goal setting. And you talk about goal setting as like reconstructing the brainstorming stage. And I would love to hear, how do you set goals and how do you achieve them? What is your secret sauce?

**Melanie – 00:20:39:**
So my secret is something that is very, I should say, uncomplex. I have a series of notebooks and pens that I write everything down in. And that’s really how I have established everything that it’s very old school. And most people wouldn’t think that I would have some sort of really complex spreadsheet, which we do have for our clients.

**Jess – 00:21:04:**
I was about to say the tech guru uses, like, notepads and pens blown away.

**Melanie – 00:21:08:**
For everything for myself. I mean, I have a notebook and I write everything down in my notebook. Every day.

**Jess – 00:21:17:**
I would have not guessed that. I would have thought like, you’re the five coaches I meet with every morning. Here’s the app that I use to track everything. But I love it, bringing it back to the basics.

**Melanie – 00:21:29:**
Yeah. My team and I use Asana for all of our project work. And I think a big part of accountability and setting goals is… Is just putting yourself in the position where you hold yourself accountable and just showing up. And that’s the hardest part is showing up to what you want to do. And I show up and I do it also with working out. I have a trainer that I meet with twice a week at six o’clock. And then every day I wake up at 5:25 and I’m on my treadmill by 5:45.

**Jess – 00:22:01:**
Oh my gosh. I’ll help what you’re having. Yeah. So to end about showing up, what advice do you have for anyone who’s listening who might be a little shy about showing up online?

**Melanie – 00:22:14:**
So a lot of people talk about what you have to do and that you have to post every single day. You have to post twice a day. And realistically, when anyone starts that way, they burn out and they become completely disengaged within two or three weeks because it’s not sustainable. So my advice that I give to anyone is start slow and start with a reasonable cadence that you can commit to long-term. Meaning, if you can commit for the next six months to posting once a week, then commit to that and follow through with it and hold yourself accountable by writing it down and having everything written. So that way you can hold yourself accountable. That’s what we do. That’s what I do with my clients. And everyone says, well, I want to start with posting five days a week. Okay, well, that’s great. We can do that. But are you going to be able to continue that cadence if we’re not working together? Are you going to be able to continue that cadence a year from now? And so what does happen is when you start slow and you build, you become more in love with the process. And for those who want to continue it, they end up posting more and they get more creative and then they start learning more and they educate themselves. And it becomes so much more than just, you know, this burden of having to post. Another great way to get started if you’re not ready to post is just to engage with others. Just be a lurker.

**Jess – 00:23:41:**
I love that.

**Melanie – 00:23:42:**
Check out content, see what other people are posting, follow other creators that are in your niche that do what you do, see what they’re doing and imitate them. When I first started, there was this woman named Heather Monahan who she would show up and I started following her. And I was like, I want to be her when I grow up. I just started following her and I saw it took me some time to get to the point where I was posting every day and posting a couple of times a week. But it’s great to find mentors and you can have mentors that aren’t necessarily someone you know and find them on the platform and just emulate them and just make sure it’s something that you can sustain long-term because otherwise you’re going to get burnt out and get content fatigue. And then you’re going to be totally turned off by the whole experience.

**Jess – 00:24:32:**
Yes. It reminds me in Mic Drop, I say, start slow and start with what you know. Don’t try to be this expert at something that you’re like, I have no idea what I’m doing. Just start slow and start with what you know. And that is a great tip to get started on LinkedIn or wherever you choose. But it’s just about showing up. Melanie, thank you so much for being here with us. Everyone shoot Melanie Borden a follow on LinkedIn. Imagine if I had said Instagram, that would have been totally out the window. And definitely join her community, Human to Brand. We’ll put the details in the show notes. But Melanie, thanks for being here.

**Melanie – 00:25:13:**
Thanks so much.