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OK, so let's talk about personal branding.

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So previously we discussed what exactly a brand is and how it functions and the sole purpose of it.

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And so now we want to talk about personal branding, because that's where we're really concerned with

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because for the most part, when you're creating a brand, it's going to be something where it's personal.

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And so what we're going to do here is dive into what exactly the differences are between a personal

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brand and a regular brand.

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And just at a very high level, if you think about a personal brand, it's really where you are, the

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actual brand.

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Right.

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It's the same type of concept here as an actual brand.

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And so let's go ahead and jump in here.

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So just like I mentioned, a personal brand is going to be the same as an actual brand, except you

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are the brand itself.

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OK.

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And when personal branding is really about your online persona.

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Right.

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Because that's where you're going to be known.

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That's where people are going to be able to look you up on Google, look you up on various social media

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platforms.

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And so that's where you are going to be doing a lot of your branding.

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And with the personal brand, it allows the outside world right.

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Employers, potential clients to really be able to perceive your skills, your personality, your experiences

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and what you're ultimately known for as an ethical hacker.

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And so personal branding has a ton of benefits.

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And one of the things here that I want you to understand is that it really puts you into a strategic

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position to broadcast your value to the entire world.

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Right.

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As to what you bring as an ethical hacker.

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Now, here's the thing about personal branding, OK?

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Because if you are, let's say, the number one top ethical hacker in the world as far as your skill

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set.

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Right.

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Not as far as people knowing about you, but let's say, you know, all the tricks, all the, you know,

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unique methods to break into different places.

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However, if you're alone in your basement and nobody knows about you, then it really doesn't matter.

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Right?

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You want to be the person that has, you know, medium skill or.

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That's pretty good, right?

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Because you can always improve and increase your skill set.

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Right.

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You want to have a medium amount of skill for the most part, and then obviously increasing that because

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that's always going to trump somebody else that has a ton of skill, but nobody knows about them.

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Right.

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So having medium skill and a reputation and online presence is always going to trump somebody who's

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the best in the world.

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But does it have any kind of reputation?

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Right.

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So very important to understand that concept.

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And another thing to keep in mind here is think about ethical hacking in terms of the areas that you

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would want to most likely focus on.

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I know that cybersecurity, ethical hacking, there are a ton of different topics within that space.

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And perhaps when you're just starting out, it may be that you are just focusing in on the entire cybersecurity

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market as a whole.

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However, as you progress in your career, as you find different areas that you resonate towards more

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or that you connect more with.

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Right.

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You're going to want to get a little bit more specific as to what you focus on.

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Right.

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Maybe you can be the best penetration tester or somebody who focuses on just the vulnerability assessments

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or policy documentation.

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Right.

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And another thing is to think about a specific industry that you may want to work with then, or maybe

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a few select different industries that are, you know, similar or connected because with being able

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to get more specific as to what exactly you focus on as far as, let's say, penetration testing and

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let's say you focus only on health care, that's going to really allow you to set yourself apart from

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all the rest of the, you know, regular cybersecurity folks or just, you know, a simple ethical hacker.

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Right.

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If there's an ethical hacker that does everything and, you know, pretty much a jack of all trades

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versus somebody who is looking to compete and go after a job for a health care company, and they only

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work with health care companies and they only do penetration testing.

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Right.

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They're going to have that edge.

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So very important there to keep that in mind as you progress through your career as an ethical hacker,

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as a cybersecurity professional, that you look to me for something that you want to do as far as the

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branding element, look to kind of niche down within a certain market and a certain type of service

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that you may want to more or less focus on.

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Right.

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OK, so now let's talk about social media profiles.

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Now, as far as your personal branding and branding in general, this is one of the most important things

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that you can do as far as getting your name out there because you want to be.

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On the most relevant social media profiles, because that's what's going to come up on Google when you

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have an employer, when you have, you know, potential clients that are looking you up, they want

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to see that you're active and that you actually have some sort of online presence.

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Right.

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So for ethical hackers, the most important platforms that you want to be on are LinkedIn, Twitter,

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Facebook and Instagram.

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I would say if I had to choose maybe top two, I would say LinkedIn and Twitter, because those are

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the most widely known.

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Those are more like the professionals, right.

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LinkedIn be to be Twitter's more B2B as well.

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And Facebook is going to be more on the consumer side.

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Same thing with Instagram, but even if you just have LinkedIn and Twitter and then you're active on

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those, but then on Facebook and Instagram, you're more or less just have your profiles there and maybe

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you post every so often.

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That should be just fine.

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And then here's the thing.

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You don't have to post every single day on your platforms, right.

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Once a week should be fine.

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Maybe, you know, even once every couple of weeks.

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It's just so that people can see that you're active in months and months and not going by without any

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kind of posting.

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Right.

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So very important there to have posts going on maybe once a week, once every couple weeks, just so

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that you stay up to date.

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And here's the thing.

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But you can also do instead of actually spending time going out there, writing your own posts or looking

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for content to share, what you can do is spend twenty dollars a month and fully automate to your post

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with curated content using platforms such as Buffer and Q Now we're going to walk through both of those

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here and I'm going to show you how they work.

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Essentially, Buffer is in automation platform where you connect, let's say LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook

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and Instagram to it.

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And then you go out to Q and you find content that's already curated that they have a ready for, let's

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say, ethical hacking, cybersecurity, and you can actually plan out your posts through the buffer

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tool and you can have your posts automatically be posted on your profiles either once a week, twice

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a week, and it's all automated.

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So that's something that you should consider because it'll keep your profiles up to date.

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It'll keep them active and it'll show people that you actually know what you're talking about.

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Right.

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And so let me show you here.

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I want to show you an example of a buddy of mine who has used these two tools and has used them exceedingly

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well.

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So let's go ahead and go over to my computer and I'll see you there.

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OK, so here we are on Twitter and I want to show you here a buddy of mine who is not active anymore.

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This is when he used to work for a startup.

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He used to work for a company called Lozito.

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They're no longer in business.

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And what he did to actually grow his own personal network profile as well as the companies is he signed

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up with Buffer, I believe it was.

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And he used a constant curation software such as Q And he posted daily through his automation.

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And you can see here he has four sixty four thousand following and sixty three followers as far as sixty

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three thousand.

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And you don't need to go and actually go and follow people if you don't want to.

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Maybe you can if you want to get some people there following you there.

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However, the automation posting is really just more for you, for your personal brand to let people

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know when they land on your profiles that you're actually active.

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Right.

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And so you can see here all these different posts.

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Sometimes they were if you go down to like twenty, seventeen, eighteen, they were pretty much like

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twice a day, two to three times a week, depending on how much he wanted to post.

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And this was all automated.

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You can see here.

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Well, you know, one fifth of the calls, this is when he was working for March six.

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Now he's working for a different company and his online presence really isn't that important anymore

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to him because he's doing something completely different now.

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So as you can see here, all of these posts here are different content that he's sharing, used to work

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for this company here and they recently got bought out.

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And so he helped them grow their social media quite a bit.

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They're through using those automation tools.

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So as you can see here, you can find different things that are related to your industry and have all

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of these be posted automatically.

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Now, let me go and show you here.

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Let's go to Buffer.

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And we'll be able to look at exactly what this does, so you can see here the pricing thing, it's like

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ten dollars, fifteen dollars, OK, so 15 dollars a month and 14 day trial.

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You can connect a social account and you can do one hundred scheduled posts.

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So basically, I mean, if you had, let's say, you know, one post a week or one post or two or three

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posts a week, I should be just fine there.

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So let's go to the four home page here.

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And as you can see here, pretty much you can publish your content, plan it all out, plan a whole

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month's worth of content and a couple hours.

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And you won't need to do any of the actual work yourself as far as manually going in there to publish

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content.

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Right.

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And you can get the different metrics, engagement.

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As far as how many people clicked on your post, did they engage with it?

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Did they share it?

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Did they like it?

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You know, things like that.

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And so now let's go to Q.

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And let's pull this up here.

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And so this is where the power comes in also as well.

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So you have a buffer, that's the actual automation posting.

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And then Q is where you find the content.

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Right.

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And you can find essentially articles that people write from different syndication publication sources

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and be able to share those.

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Because, I mean, I remember when I was going heavily into the acquisition phase and I was reaching

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out to a lot of businesses on LinkedIn.

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One of the things that I did to really spice up my profile is I set it up so that I had my LinkedIn

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posting different news articles, news information once a week or so, maybe even a couple of times.

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And then I started reaching out to businesses, providing value right up front.

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And then they would go and check on my profile and see that I had relevant content being posted on my

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profile and that added value to them.

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And so I had a bunch of people that I reach out to tell me, hey, I can tell, you know, what you're

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talking about with the posting that you're doing on your profile.

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I can tell that you're an expert, right?

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Because automatically I had all those posts that were adding value about my topics.

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Right.

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My area that were automatically posting.

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So very, very important as far as, you know, what this can do for you and the power of this.

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So this essentially allows you to go in here and find different topics and you connect your social media

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accounts.

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Right.

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You connect buffer to it.

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And so you got a buffer with all your social media.

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Then you have Q with all the content and then they work together and the buffer actually does the actual

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posting for you.

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So I think this is like ten dollars as well.

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OK.

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Nineteen dollars a month.

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So yeah.

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I mean twenty bucks a month is going to allow you to have fresh content every single day if you want

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it to be right on your profile so that you are being able to build that personal brand and be able to

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separate yourself from the competition there.

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OK, so highly recommend here, buffer and queue for social media profile posting automation.

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If you don't want to post different things on your own and have to spend the time looking up for content,

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buffer and queue is a perfect combination.

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And like I mentioned, it's only going to be about twenty dollars per month.