Crafting Your LinkedIn Advantage Using AI and Smart Networking with Al Kushner

In the ever-evolving landscape of professional networking, mastering LinkedIn has become essential for career growth and business success. This episode of Business Chop features Al Kushner, an award-winning author and thought leader in AI-driven strategies, who shares invaluable insights on leveraging LinkedIn.

Al Kushner introduces his groundbreaking book, "The AI LinkedIn Advantage," which combines the power of artificial intelligence with LinkedIn strategies. He emphasizes:

• Creating standout profiles that capture attention
• Developing thought leadership through strategic content creation
• Avoiding common pitfalls that hinder networking success
• Following influencers before connecting
• Engaging thoughtfully with others' content
• Utilizing AI tools to craft compelling messages and posts

"LinkedIn is more about giving than receiving. You want to provide value to whoever you're connecting with."

Discover how artificial intelligence is transforming networking:

• Generating ideas for newsletters and posts
• Enhancing profile visibility with strategic keyword placement
• Creating personalized outreach strategies

Al shares lesser-known features that can set you apart:

• Sales Navigator for targeted outreach
• background image slides to showcase expertise
• Joining and actively participating in relevant groups

Ready to revolutionize your LinkedIn approach? Visit LinkedVantage.com to access Al Kushner's free e-book and start optimizing your profile today.

Whether you're new to LinkedIn or looking to elevate

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Transcript

[00:00:00 - 00:01:59]
Welcome to the business Chop where challenges, success, rewards, and solutions to entrepreneurship collide. Let's chop it up. Chop Squad. It's great to be with you as usual. Are you ready to unlock the secrets of personal branding and innovation? You know, those are my favorite topics today. We're thrilled to welcome Al Kushner to the show. Al is a celebrated thought leader, award winning author, and a trailblazer in AI driven strategies that are are reshaping the way we connect, grow, and lead. With a knack for turning complex ideas into actionable insights, Al empowers individuals and organizations to stand out and thrive in an evolving world. We'll be right back to learn more about Al and hear from him directly after this message from my company, All Together Marketing. And by the way, we celebrated 18 years this year. Thank you. Knock out your competition with All Together Marketing. We elevate your brand. Take a stance with your business name, logo, the tagline, your colors, even the fonts for your business. And then jab left with your website, jab right with core values, back up with product experience, and bring it on with you. Visit AllTogether Biz and let us help you create a a knockout brand. We're back. In this episode, Al will share practical strategies for building a distinctive personal brand, insights into harnessing AI for growth and inspiration to help you push or us push for push boundaries and transform our paths forward. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a leader, or someone eager to step into the future with confidence, this conversation promises to ignite your next breakthrough. Al Kushner, welcome to the business job.

[00:01:59 - 00:02:02]
I thank you, Audrey. I appreciate the opportunity.

[00:02:04 - 00:02:12]
Yes, absolutely. So before we get started with our other questions here, you want to share a couple of fun facts with the Chop Squad.

[00:02:13 - 00:02:46]
Well, trying to think about some fun facts, I'm originally from New York City, so I moved to Florida about 10 years. I'm still trying to get used to the Florida heat. It's just tremendous. But the way Florida Panthers have won their championship, you know, second year in a row. So shout out to Panthers and making that incredible feat, which is. Which is amazing, you know, back to back is incredible. Hopefully they'll go for a triple next year.

[00:02:47 - 00:02:47]
Yes.

[00:02:48 - 00:03:10]
So that's a great thing. And it's just really amazing, you know, to be down here because a lot of people are. Got a lot of people from the east coast living in Florida and really, it's amazing in the air. I'm in South Florida, People are pretty much just like New Yorkers. They're. They're rude they're, you know, they're, you know, they're always in a hurry, you know, makes me feel at home.

[00:03:11 - 00:03:23]
Well, that's good. Well, my niece is down there. She's in Fort Lauderdale, the Fort Lauderdale area. My sister Reese, a few years ago moved from there over to Alabama with my other sister. But yeah, I, I like it down there. It's nice.

[00:03:24 - 00:03:28]
Feels like home. So I'm really thrilled also.

[00:03:28 - 00:03:37]
Oh, my goodness. All right, Al, let's get, get started here into some, some questions so we can learn some more about branding and innovation from you.

[00:03:38 - 00:03:38]
Sure.

[00:03:38 - 00:03:50]
All right, so what inspired you to write the AI LinkedIn Advantage and what key takeaways do you hope readers get from that or gain?

[00:03:50 - 00:05:09]
Well, when I did my research, I was looking for books on LinkedIn that would also talk about AI and I didn't really find anything out there. And now that AI is becoming more popular, I thought it was a good time to write something that would help people to save a lot of time on LinkedIn, to help create ideas and help basically become a show of force on this platform because it's an amazing platform. You have close to over 900 million subscribers on LinkedIn and it's amazing how it's grown since in infancy, since I, almost two decades ago. I was part of LinkedIn when it started and I watched it grow throughout the years and it really amazes me. Ever since Microsoft took over, they really made a lot of changes. I think it's definitely a platform for, for business owners, for professionals to use a way to network compared to the old fashioned way of in person networking, which really is time consuming and not really sometimes effective because sometimes you can be in an event or a party speaking with someone and you have a great conversation all of a sudden. Well, they're not a decision maker, but they just want to, you know, waste your time where you can find a decision maker and a president and speak to them directly. And what could be better than the doing that from the comfort of home? That's really amazing technology. So I'm thrilled to be part of that platform.

[00:05:09 - 00:05:15]
How has AI transformed the way professionals approach personal branding on LinkedIn?

[00:05:15 - 00:06:06]
Well, it's very simple what AI does, it actually helps you create content, which helps establish you as a thought leader because you're seen as an educator and salesperson. So if you can create content, particularly if you have newsletters on LinkedIn you can use as a way to outreach to your followers about things that are of value to them, that's important. So the thing about LinkedIn is it's more about giving than receiving. So you want to really provide value to whoever you're connecting with. A lot of people when they post on LinkedIn it's pretty much self serving for the most part they're just trying to advertise their services and that's really not the approach to work with LinkedIn. So with AI it'll allow you to create the content, the ability to create scripts or videos, a whole host of things that'll save you a lot of time and that's really what's great about the technology nowadays. It's really truly amazing.

[00:06:06 - 00:06:15]
Now al are you talking about built in AI that's inside of LinkedIn or outside tools and then we bring that that content and post it into LinkedIn?

[00:06:15 - 00:06:43]
Well usually it's outside tools like for example ChatGPT which people are familiar with, which allows you to create content and you can use it to think of ideas for your newsletter for example or perhaps responding to a post that an influencer posted on and you know, giving away than just saying, you know, thanks for sharing but add value to that individ individuals post. That's important and that's what AI can help you do. Which is amazing.

[00:06:43 - 00:07:30]
Yeah, I like that because then you start to really begin a more solid relationship. I always say, well show interest in what the person is talking about. Like you said, more than just great content or so we can really say how this resonated and but say it professionally, intelligently with, with the help of, of AI tools. So like that you had mentioned about the newsletters. Now this is, this is a question that I have because I create my newsletter email marketing and email it out to my list but it connected or I connect it up to, to LinkedIn. So I'm always toying with how much information do I put the entire newsletter there and then say subscribe to the the email list or should we just put a portion of that as an intro enough to, for people to, to engage but, but have that subscription also go to the email list?

[00:07:31 - 00:08:33]
Well, I mean if you have an existing database of, of emails, you know, certainly continue with that. But if you want to gain traction, LinkedIn five different newsletters on LinkedIn itself. And what's unique about the newsletters on LinkedIn? As soon as it gets posted they'll be notified on LinkedIn as well as outside of LinkedIn for example in their corporate emails and such. And LinkedIn has such a high authority that it actually bypasses most of the spam filters so it actually gets read by most of the individuals you're reaching and connecting to, which is something that people don't know about. So if you want to make those connections and get the information read, that's definitely a way to use LinkedIn to that advantage because it's incredible tool that LinkedIn allows you to do that and they encourage you to do that and try to do at least every week if you can. Weekly is ideal. So you'd be top of mind. And you do that, you'll find a lot people, a lot of people be interested and reach out to you and a great way to do business.

[00:08:33 - 00:08:41]
Okay, thank you. Now, can you give us a success story of someone who has used the strategies from your book to achieve remarkable results?

[00:08:41 - 00:09:15]
Well, yeah. I mean, I had a client who we were working on and we figured out a way to help optimize his profile. And we added a lot of key features on the profile. Particularly we focused on getting recommendations to establish someone as a trustworthy individual. And that's something that they didn't really realize how important that was. And I shared with them why it's important. And he took that information, got at least a dozen different recommendations, and he used it on his own personal website and showed people, you know, that they're real people. So when they click on it, they can go ask them, how am I doing?

[00:09:15 - 00:09:15]
Right.

[00:09:15 - 00:10:49]
So that's really a unique feature about it. We use strategies within LinkedIn's paid feature called Sales Navigator and how to find people who are on LinkedIn in their particular field. They were focusing on primarily attorneys, estate planning attorneys, and they were using the LinkedIn tool, Sales Navigator, to find those individuals based on company size, based on location and how active they were on LinkedIn. And that's something that was. They were shocked to find that information readily available. So the paid versions of LinkedIn definitely do give you a lot of advantages that most people aren't aware of. And it's really a great networking tool. It also alerts you who's checked out your profile, which is also unique too. So if someone's looked at your profile, you may do an outreach to that person. You may not have to connect them directly, but just ask them, hey, thanks for stopping by my profile. What made you decide to look? It could be something as a common interest, like they shared a common person, or they were looking for something in their profile and they found it interesting. Maybe they were an SEO expert or something of that nature. Addition, I told him to focus in on gaining groups, find groups that are attracting his clientele. So he looked at various groups. And he found lawyer groups that are focusing on estate planning, the lawyers looking for marketing tips. And he joined those groups and he posts in those groups every week to help gain traction and become an authority figure. So this was something never, never knew that was available. And all of a sudden he's gained a tremendous amount of followers and has done quite a business as a result of those types of things which showcase in my book. So. Yeah.

[00:10:50 - 00:11:04]
Well, that's awesome. All right, so for someone who is new to LinkedIn and I'm not sure if your client was new, but because that was a great story, what are the first steps they should take to create a standout profile using AI tools?

[00:11:04 - 00:11:19]
Well, certainly you can use AI to find keywords for your headline. I believe you can do up to 60 words or something. Characters. So you want to maximize the amount of characters in there because that's the first thing that people are going to look at in addition to having a great headline. Headshot, which definitely works well.

[00:11:19 - 00:11:22]
Headshots, not just a good headshot, but a current good headshot.

[00:11:24 - 00:12:19]
And you know, those headshots can actually even be enhanced with AI. So there's no excuse for not investing the time and the money to get something, because that really, like I said, you don't get a second chance to get a first impression. That really. So. And then work on your background image as well, which is important to kind of showcase some of your talents. And what's interesting is that LinkedIn with Sales Navigator has a feature where you can do up to five different slides on the background image. So literally, it was almost like a slideshow. Like in my profile, I have five different slides that showcase certain talents that I have that are important for people to know that I do more than just LinkedIn optimization, but also worked on LinkedIn strategies for outreach. So these things are important when you're looking at it, because it just gives you something that makes you stand out from the crowd that's offering similar services. So that's important.

[00:12:20 - 00:12:28]
Okay, that's a great feature right there. I like that. What common mistakes then do we make on LinkedIn that holds us back from maximizing our potential?

[00:12:28 - 00:12:46]
Very simple. If you're not optimizing your profile and you're doing outreach, you're going to find yourself falling flat because people, like I said, you only have a few seconds to get their attention and they're going to move on. So if you decide to go ahead and try to do outreach, or what a lot of people do when they're first starting is what they call pitch slapping.

[00:12:46 - 00:12:46]
What's that app?

[00:12:46 - 00:13:37]
Well, simply put, as soon as they make a connection, they want to sell you something. Okay. Right off the bat. And that's the biggest turn off. And you got to really say, just think about if you were at a cocktail party or some networking event and exchanging cards. They're pitching you what they're doing to try to sell you something. You're going to walk away, you're going to turn off. It's the same thing they think that is works online better, but it doesn't. It just really falls flat and. Or if they're posting on their profile, you know, some of the great things their company's doing, they're all narcissistic. My company does this. I'm that without really giving any value to someone who cares. Okay. You know, even with the client testimonials, okay. You know, most people are going to think they're all fake to begin with. So you want testimonials. Look at the recommendations on your profile. Okay. Get testimonials that way because those are real people.

[00:13:37 - 00:13:38]
Yeah.

[00:13:38 - 00:15:11]
So these are just clear examples of what you can avoid to do before you do any outreach is optimize the profile. I have a system not only just, just in my book, but I also have a course that I give on my website, linkvantage.com that they could take on how to optimize the profile to make sure, get the right key features in there, get everything in place before you do anything outreach. And once you do that, then there's strategies and how to do it properly. You know, how to connect with someone. When I connect with someone, for the most part, I usually follow them first before I make a direct outreach, especially if it's an influencer. I mean, there's a lot of times you'll want to connect with all the influencers online. And what will happen is that LinkedIn will find that these guys rejected you and LinkedIn will slow you down and at some point they may consider you as a spammer. But if you follow these, if you follow these influencers and comment on their posts, particularly within, you know, as soon as they post, they may appreciate that and all of a sudden you may get their attention, get on their radar. Their followers will also consider you on their radar too. And you're adding value to his post, all of a sudden you're getting noticed. And the algorithm loves it. You know, LinkedIn loves that kind of thing. That's the way to grow organically on LinkedIn is to really, you know, Follow individuals and then reach out and last them. Let them know if they want to make a connection that's. That's important. Or if you know someone that is related to that individual, like a second connection, perhaps the other person can make an introduction for you. I mean, these are great techniques to use. Instead of choosing the way to do it blindly and just trying to go out and think you can get around that you can. It's all about proper way to network. And that's my book teacher's how to do that.

[00:15:12 - 00:15:30]
Okay, awesome. And also, do you cover the response to those type of spammers like you said? They just slap into our, our message cues there, you know, with, with the sales pitch and the kind of, the ones that usually burn me up is like, I noticed in your profile that you do so and so and so, and that is not in my profile. But did you really even look at it?

[00:15:30 - 00:16:15]
Yeah, of course. I mean, there are settings in your LinkedIn profile that you can use to limit that amount. And also when you see that if you find it to be really annoying, you can actually report that particular post or connection and they'll get blocked. I mean, in addition to that, they may have their account terminated because of that. Because LinkedIn is very much on top of this. They don't, they want to make the platform friendly for people to do that. But if you are, if you're not proactively doing it, you know, you'll get a lot more of those things. You have to really be proactive. And LinkedIn will step in and say, enough of these silly ads, okay? And I've seen the difference. You know, it really, you know, I get maybe once every two weeks at best, and that really makes a difference. So just don't be afraid to do that because there is a feature where it allows you to stop that in its tracks.

[00:16:15 - 00:16:24]
All right, so how do you see LinkedIn evolving in the next five years or so? And what role will AI play in its transformation?

[00:16:24 - 00:17:29]
Oh, certainly I see LinkedIn continue to grow and to expand on the platform. I see that a lot of people nowadays will connect across the country, across the world, and I feel that AI will be part of that because the technology is always evolving. It'll help people create content. It'll help people to become thought leaders where before in the past was almost impossible, because the amount of time you have to spend to create content is always time consuming. If this helps you to become better at it, it, I, I think that's definitely what I see. In the future, AI will Be part of that even in creating videos. I mean, you can, for example, have an avatar of yourself talking, you know, with your words, you know, and creating interest to people you want to connect with. And that's really amazing that technology has gotten to the point where you can really don't have to be there physically to do what you want to say and have the avatar represent you and talk about topics that'll be of value to the people who are following you. So that's tremendous. So I see that in the future that is tremendous.

[00:17:29 - 00:17:37]
Can you break down a practical strategy or, you know, AI driven strategy from your book that listeners can implement right away?

[00:17:37 - 00:18:13]
Strategy? Well, yeah, I mean, certainly focus on optimizing your profile. Look for opportunities to get recommendations from wherever the people you're connected with. If you're first starting out, don't have much recommendations. I would like to join groups, be part of the groups itself. Add value to the groups that you're connecting with, with things that are educational by nature and just really, you know, take the time to, you know, learn LinkedIn. It's, it's a great platform. If you use it the right way, you'll find that you'll gain a lot of followers, you'll get a lot more business and you won't have to do any other networking other than on that platform, which is tremendous.

[00:18:13 - 00:18:19]
If there is one mindset shift professionals need to make the dominant on LinkedIn. What would that be?

[00:18:19 - 00:18:55]
You need to create content. You need to create articles, newsletters, videos that help set you apart from the competition. You want to become a thought leader like me? Write a book. This is the ultimate opportunity where you can share your knowledge and be considered as an expert. I do speaking engagements. Beyond this, I speak with groups about optimizing LinkedIn profile. And it's gotten so much, gave me so much opportunity to become a thought leader. People think about LinkedIn, they think of me first. Worse than competition. That's what you have to do if you want to set yourself apart. Create content, write a book or like a podcast, you know, and do the same thing. These are just examples that will help you become dominant in your profession.

[00:18:55 - 00:19:44]
It's Audrey Wiggins, your tech diva, celebrating 18 years in business. Thank you to my amazing clients, trusted vendors and faithful cheerleaders. We've come a long way since launching All Together marketing and it's all because of you. From marketing strategy to branded merchandise, here's how we've helped businesses shine. Graphic and web design, marketing and branding strategy, social media management, domain names and web security. Online courses and coaching, video production, podcast planning and design, branded merchandise. So enjoy. 18% off graphic and web design services now through July 7th in celebration of our 18th anniversary as we come to a close here, then, what's one piece of advice that you'd give to professionals looking to build meaningful connections through LinkedIn?

[00:19:44 - 00:20:33]
If you're going to get started on LinkedIn, in addition to optimizing your profile, creating content, I would say to be on LinkedIn at least once a day if you can. Don't like some people post and ghost and they just disappear. And a lot of times people may respond to your post, but if you're not there to see what their responses are, they'll get turned off. So you really want to try to be active on LinkedIn at least 10 minutes a day if you can, just to check on what's happening in your posting and if you're posting regularly and just to be and reach out to influencers if you want to connect with and respond to their post, you know, to get some awareness. This is all part of the process. So this is my suggestion, is to do those steps. A lot of it's in my book. It shows you all the things that I've done to help me become successful and hopefully it'll share my knowledge with others. That'll be a great thing.

[00:20:33 - 00:20:37]
Awesome. So how, how can we get in touch with you and where do we find your book? Al?

[00:20:37 - 00:20:40]
Well, you can scan the QR code right over here. I think.

[00:20:42 - 00:20:46]
I know. It's like, which way is this camera go there?

[00:20:47 - 00:20:59]
You can also go on Amazon and it's also available Spotify as well and ebook versions will be available that time. Hardcover is currently available, so yeah, definitely check it out. Reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. Happy to connect with people.

[00:20:59 - 00:21:00]
Okay. And what's that website again?

[00:21:01 - 00:21:18]
Linkedvantage.com LinkVantage also has a free ebook that helps people optimize their profile. There are things in my ebook that are featured from my current Linked Vantage book, so they can download that for free, which is good, and give people an opportunity to check it out and test the waters.

[00:21:18 - 00:21:31]
Okay. Linkedvantage.com all right, shop Squad, you have your marching orders. If you're watching, scan that QR code and if not, the link here for the website linkedvantage.com so thanks, Al. If there's no other closing thoughts, we're going to call it a wrap.

[00:21:31 - 00:21:33]
Thank you, Audrey. Appreciate the opportunity.

[00:21:33 - 00:21:34]
Yes, you're welcome.