Building Your Brand on LinkedIn with Yai Vargas
Building Your Brand on LinkedIn with Yai Vargas
On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Emily Egan, PR Manager, and she is joined by client Yai Vargas. Yai is a Diversity & Inclusion Consultant; LinkedIn Networking Ninja and the Founder of The Latinista as well as an author and speaker.
Podcast Notes
Yai has been a client of The Gym for over three years, and she is a multicultural marketing expert and founder and CEO of The Latinista, a networking community for Latinas and women of color.
Yai is known as the LinkedIn Ninja and she helps people get clear on their online brand.
Yai jumped from corporate America to full-time entrepreneur two years ago, with the help of The Financial Gym. She spent about 16 years in corporate America. She recognizes that she was lucky to be able to pay off her debts while making her salary.
The first thing Yai learned at The Gym was to have at least two to three years of living expenses in the bank, before going out on her own. This has been crucial now, because her in-person work has been canceled due to COVID.
Around 11 years ago, Yai started developing a professional network. She felt strange having professional connections comment on her personal photos, so she created a LinkedIn profile and separated her personal life from her professional life.
She has never paid for upgrades in LinkedIn, she uses the free version. Some people will use Premium when seriously job searching, but it isn’t necessary. There are so many ways you can get your profile to stand out.
Don’t post more than once or twice a week and post at the beginning of the week, so the west coast has time to comment. Make sure the post is valuable to other people. If posting about another business, teach them something business-wise so they can see you as a subject matter expert.
When posting about an organization, make sure your audience knows the mission and vision of the organization and help them reach their bottom line. Make it human and about other people.
An online brand is important if you are looking to be a subject matter expert. When people say your name, what do they automatically think about? When they look you up online, do they understand who you are, what you are working on, and why you do what you do?
Make sure all of your online profiles match who you are. A big mistake is to only put what you believe is professional on your LinkedIn profile. Those aspects of who you are as a person are going to differentiate you from others and may be a connection between you and a hiring manager.
In LinkedIn there is a new, green frame that says “Open to Work” that you can add to your picture. Go into job settings and write down all of the job titles and locations that you are open to and make sure the button is pressed on so recruiters can see you are open.
If you are working for a company, LinkedIn will not show the recruiters at that company that you are open to new work.
Make a Google document with links to your top five or top ten companies. Every Friday, click on those company’s career pages and on their websites, because they may not post in both places.
Be clear on what company you want to work at, what title and job you want, and what specific department you want to work in.
Yai has seen an increase in enrollment in her webinar about how to use Trello, a project management software. Her audience has also asked about using Slack and other programs.
One of the popular skills is how to be a confident public speaker. Yai has been working with a public speaking coach for the last eight years. When they were working in corporate America together, her coach asked if she could record Yai speaking in front of 200 people. It was eye opening. Make this skill a priority.
Another skill includes learning how to negotiate and how to have those difficult conversations. It takes guts and skills to do this. Know your wish, wants, and walk away numbers.
Yai is also a diversity and inclusion strategist. She starts at ground level, understanding who the organization’s people are. Next, she determines the professional challenges they are seeing and the cultural nuances that are stopping them from being the most authentic, inclusive, and culturally relevant selves within the organization. Yai has worked with companies of five people and thousands of people.
Resources Mentioned
Website: The Latinista
LinkedIn: Yai Vargas
Email: yai@yaivargas.com