We were lucky to catch up with Marc W. Halpert recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marc W. , thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

My initial use of LinkedIn was merely to grow my client and prospect base, using it as a research tool. I decided that I needed the expertise of others with more insight, to learn to self-brand myself and my business, with a nascent concept that I continue to perfect now 14 years later: “why I do what I do” and have others describe how well I do my “why.”

I attended LinkedIn training classes that the experts taught us “how” to click here, fill this field in from our resume, and push out a egotistical profile to others, full of factoids and bullet points about the “whats” our past. Not how our past developed us to our present and our present foretells our future and “why.”

I needed more and developed my best techniques to give myself permission to overcome the old ways and evoke my profile to tell why, via my journey along a time continuum, past-present-future, more than my resume on electrons.

I decided to make my profile “amazing-er” to gain traction and it worked. I gained valuable referrals, I networked up to theirs who could be influencers, and myself to them in LinkedIn posts conversations.

I continually improved my profile as I grew personally, I added every meaningful career twist and turn and became a LinkedIn coach to other individuals to learn LinkedIn’s array of marketing tools, and to teach groups and companies and professional practices and NGO associations how to speak more cohesively while allowing the members in the group to accent themselves all while adhering to the overall marketing thrust of the group.

I committed to write a blog every weekday, now over 2600 posts, I authored 2 books, one at the invitation of a very well-respected national professional association, now in its second edition.

Everyday another opportunity presents itself and after all the work and thought I put into helping others tell their “why” as I did, the growth and reach of my global voice remains honest and open (so I am told, often).

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

An early adopter (#203,392) although I used it infrequently, my initial use of LinkedIn was merely to grow my client and prospect base, as another research tool.

Six years later I decided that I needed the expertise of others with more insight, to learn to self-brand myself and my business, with a then-nascent concept that I continue to perfect now 14 years later: “why I do what I do” and have others describe how well I do my “why.” That built audience and impact.

I attended LinkedIn training classes where the experts taught us “how” to click here, fill this field in from our resume there, and push out an egotistical profile to others, full of past-tense factoids and bullet points about the “whats” that describe what we did, once upon a time. I now know it’s so much more than that; beyond how our past developed us to our present, our job is to make our present foretell our future, and throughout, define our “why.”

I needed to tell more and developed my own best techniques, giving myself permission to overcome the old ways and evoke my profile to tell why, via my journey along a past-present-future time continuum, LinkedIn is thus so much more than my resume on electrons. I added graphics and videos, blog posts with self-authored observations comments, etc.

I decided only I could make my profile “amazing-er” to gain traction and it worked. I gained valuable referrals, I networked up to theirs who could be influencers, and myself to them in LinkedIn posts conversations. I continually improved my profile as I grew professionally. I added up my experience in every career twist and turn and became
1) a LinkedIn coach to other individuals to best present themselves via LinkedIn’s array of marketing tools, and
2) a LinkedIn group trainer to teach groups, companies, firms, professional practices, and NGO associations how to speak more cohesively while allowing the members in the group to accent themselves, all while adhering to the overall marketing thrust of the group.

I committed to write a blog every weekday, now over 2600 posts, I authored 2 books, one at the invitation of a very well-respected national professional association, now in its second edition. I’ve guested on hundreds of podcasts globally.

Everyday another opportunity presents itself and after all the work and thought I put into helping others tell their “why” as I did, the growth and reach of my global voice remains honest, direct, and open to the client’s needs (so I am told, often).

How did you build your audience on social media?

In November 2011 I decided I wanted to give back to my LinkedIn followers and connections. So I resolved to blog every business morning at 800 am my time on LinkedIn-related topics of interest for businesspeople to realize more usefulness they never knew existed from this powerful tool, and not just on how-to’s, but why-to’s. Yes, every business day.
No one was doing that when I started.

So blending my writing ability (which has improved with practice!), I started to blog, and designed it to distribute to my LinkedIn profile connections. That’s a huge self-imposed responsibility and a labor of admiration for my tribe, to contribute to the knowledge base from my life lens of what I see, hear, and experience. If I may say so, it seems to have catapulted me to the forefront of many professionals’ LinkedIn experts and resulted in new meaningful connectivity among high quality followers, now almost 2700 blog ppsts to my credit.

Additionally the conversation around my blog posts on my newsfeed is robust.

Every day of the work week is a comment surrounding a different theme:
Mondays are general topics,
Tuesdays are Back to Basics concepts,
Wednesdays are my “I wonder why’s,
Thursdays are higher-level Thoughts in my comments, and
Fridays, I collect the best questions of the prior week, acknowledge their name as my muse for that Friday’s blog post, and their question is answered not only from a mechanical “click this and click that” perspective, but I always add what I call “a dollop of self-branding and personal marketing” to each answer, with ideas to put these new tools to work.

Blogging allows me to collect accumulated knowledge and refer them to what I believe works best. Many have told me they open my blog post among their earliest daily routines. Subscribers and LinkedIn connections have been especially generous with their comments that they enjoy my observations and can use them right away. Everyone benefits at least once a week, often every day.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

This is going to sound overly simplistic, but so few consulting experts actually do it: I stay connected with my clients and always make myself available to them to answer questions. Seems obvious, right? It is uncommonly practiced.

I pitch my clients that they can feel assured that no matter how LinkedIn changes, they can confidently approach me to ask me questions, or seek advice to achieve an aim they have, using this powerful tool.

My process is to teach each session in depth: find the underlying cause of what holds them back from communicating their brand and self-worth (all too common no matter how senior!). By the time we are finished with the formalized program, we know each other very well. They receive a video recording of each session to keep for reference. And I assure them that I am here for them, and I practice that.

They frequently volunteer to recommend me on LinkedIn (now over 110 recos!) and they refer me to their colleagues, network friends, and extended family, often years after collaborating with me.

Perhaps the most rewarding strategy I use is to congratulate them on LinkedIn publicly when they post achievements, in glowing words (not emojis!), we also routinely engage in conversation with on their posts, and I encourage them to converse on my posts.

No surprise, this keeps me top-of-mind with them. They see me, read me, remember me, rely on me.
I have coached entire families one member at a time, been contacted for refresher sessions, enjoy when job-changers ask me ways to make their transferable skills more attractive to potential employers, showing me they respect and trust my counsel.

They come to me in vulnerable moments, they leave reassured confident. That means so much to them, and to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://connect2collaborate.com
• Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marchalpert
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connecttwocollaborate
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marchalpert
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarcWHalpert
• Other: blog: https://connect2collaborate.com/linkedin-nuggets

  Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Marc-W-Halpert/e/B07DHWJXGM

  global networking profile: https://www.pickmybrain.world/profiles/marc-w-halpert

Image Credits

I own all the images