LinkedIn Is Not a Dating App: Personal Branding, Recommendations, and Red Flags | Frank Relationships

This is the complete conversation from Richard Lowe’s appearance on Frank Relationships with Frank Love and co-host Nancy Goldring, lightly edited for readability. Historical book counts appear as spoken; current figures are bracketed.

The setup

Frank Love: LinkedIn is a very serious tool for making contacts and growing your business. We’ll discuss how to use it on this edition of Frank Relationships. My LinkedIn expert Richard Lowe is with us today, and I want to know: how can my LinkedIn profile benefit me?

Richard Lowe: Well, that’s actually an easy question, and I can use myself as an example. I use LinkedIn, I set up a good profile, and now I actually get money-paying leads off of it all the time that support my business and support me. If your LinkedIn is properly created, you can do the same thing.

Frank Love: Is there a business type or business model that’s more LinkedIn-friendly than others?

Richard Lowe: It works with any business, really.

Frank Love: Welcome to Frank Relationships, a show for you, my brethren, who like me are too young to be considered old and too old to be considered young, and for those of you who love and support us. We’re here to provide weekly wisdom, conversation, and information that will help create loving and flexible parents and partners. I’m Frank Love; you can find me, my blog, and my various social media incarnations at franklove.com. Greetings to my super duper co-host, Nancy Goldring.

Nancy Goldring: Hi, Frank. How are you?

Frank Love: Today’s guest is a passionate writer. He writes entertaining novels, uplifting stories, educational books. He also takes special joy in helping others write their books, keep their blogs up to date, and create well-written LinkedIn profiles that show off their talents and skills. So if you, like me, want to know how to build a network of people who are like-minded and responsive to your message, how to build qualified leads every single day, and what to do if your LinkedIn profile is collecting virtual dust, then stay tuned as your Frank Relationships team talks with the author of Focus on LinkedIn: Create a Personal Brand on LinkedIn to Make More Money, Generate Leads, and Find Employment. He is Richard Lowe, Jr. Welcome to the show.

Richard Lowe: Well, thank you.

The news segment: does staying in and watching TV mean commitment?

Frank Love: Before we get too deep into today’s subject matter, we always check in on what’s going on in the news. A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships has found that couples who stay in and watch TV also record higher levels of commitment to one another. Surprising?

Nancy Goldring: I think a lot of times people put energy on jazzing the relationship up: novelty, getting out, doing something different. As if staying home doing something basic and seemingly uneventful means you’re stale. I could see it, though, based on where I am in life right now. I actually like sitting in the house and watching television. This past weekend I did virtually nothing, and I’m poised to schedule nothing on my weekends from now until whenever. It was great. And it does imply that you have quite a bit of comfort with the person. You don’t have to go-go-go.

Richard Lowe: I would say: they have a higher level of commitment as compared to what? If everybody is always working and doing their own thing, and then they’re sitting together watching TV, well, of course it creates a higher level of commitment, because they’re doing something together. But if you’re comparing it to actively creating their marriage and doing things together, then maybe this study would come out differently. It doesn’t compare it to anything, so it actually doesn’t have a lot of value.

Frank Love: It might; I didn’t read the whole article. In all fairness to the journal. So Richard, are you married?

Richard Lowe: I was. I’m widowed.

Nancy Goldring: Do you think that staying in with your partner, maybe cooking together, eating a meal together, may demonstrate a closeness more than going out to dinner?

Richard Lowe: I would say that’s certainly the case, because you’re doing something together. That has a much higher possibility than watching TV. Your focus is on each other.

Frank Love: Speaking as an empty nester: it used to be that watching a movie was with the kids. Now it’s come home, make dinner together, and last night we watched Ray Donovan, which was on tape. Yes, I said tape. Old school. It’s on my DVR.

Nancy Goldring: You might still have a VCR sitting in your basement.

Frank Love: I do. And we put a record on the Victrola. But we enjoy a bunch of shows together, and it’s another common denominator. We don’t have the kids absorbing all our time, and it’s affordable. When we go to the movies, that’s a $50 date. And there are some shows now, I saw a preview for Lethal Weapon; the series starts Wednesday, starts this week or started last week, whenever you’re listening to this. Just as good as the film in terms of action and cinematography and writing. The guy who directed the Charlie’s Angels movies does this series. It’s A-list action adventure. My point is: television shows have as much production value as a lot of movies these days. You can get something entertaining and captivating on the tube as much as in the theater.

Nancy Goldring: Who in the world would want to see Damon Wayans in an action movie? I’m just saying. He’s a comedian.

Frank Love: Did you like In Living Color? Watch this show. Richard, you have the last word on this.

Richard Lowe: Well, you’re actually talking to somebody who hasn’t turned on a television, except to watch a movie on DVD, for ten years. I don’t watch TV at all. I don’t have cable. Because I don’t like the commercials.

Frank Love: I love it. I have cable and spend a couple hundred bucks a month on it, and it’s absurd. Every time I look at the bill, I say to myself, I’ve got to wean myself off of this. It’s bundled: house phone, cable, that’s 200 bucks. And if you just want internet, it’s 90.

Why is LinkedIn better than Facebook for professionals?

Frank Love: All right, Richard, let’s get to the good stuff. Why LinkedIn? What’s better about LinkedIn than Facebook or Google Plus or whatever else is out there?

Richard Lowe: Well, LinkedIn is a business social network, and it is intended to help you promote your personal brand, which means it’s about you. Not so much about your business, but about you. Facebook is a general social network. Google Plus is a general social network. There are other ones that do other things. But LinkedIn is the largest business-related social network in the world. It’s got hundreds of millions of users now, and Microsoft just bought it, so it’s going to get even bigger. They spent a lot of money. That’s what it’s for, and that’s why it’s better than anything else for promoting your own personal brand.

Frank Love: And how did you get to become so interested in LinkedIn? What was your personal experience?

Richard Lowe: That’s actually an interesting story. I used to be the Director of Computer Operations for Trader Joe’s, for 20 years.

Frank Love: Really?

Richard Lowe: Yep. And I decided to take an early retirement, because I had saved up enough money to do that, and become a writer, three years ago. The first thing I did, because I wanted to be able to pull in consulting business, was call up a company called LinkedIn Makeover and say: make over my LinkedIn. They went through the whole process and worked me through it, and I started getting business from it, and I saw that it worked. Then, about a year later, the lady in charge of LinkedIn Makeover called me up and asked me to work for her, to become a branding expert. Which I did.

Frank Love: What happened in that experience that made her think you were unique or interesting enough that she wanted you on board?

Richard Lowe: Well, I worked LinkedIn. I post things every day. I post articles, I change things, I do the things that you need to do to stay noticed, which we’re going to talk about later in this show, I’m sure. She kept seeing my name come up on things that were of interest to her, and she saw that I knew how to use LinkedIn. So she offered me the job.

Frank Love: Nice. And on a completely different note: I am a Trader Joe’s fan. I got to that place probably ten years ago, so it was while you were working there. We’ll attribute it to you. I appreciate Trader Joe’s. Mercy.

The LinkedIn Makeover service

Nancy Goldring: So the makeover is how you got to be a consultant with them. Tell us about the LinkedIn Makeover. Is it a soup-to-nuts thing? Is it a la carte? Is it expensive?

Richard Lowe: I do about 20 LinkedIn profiles per month for various people all over the world. If you sign up for LinkedIn Makeover, there are three levels. The basic level: you send in a questionnaire, we write your profile and put it up for you. The second level: we do an interview at the front and the back and put up your profile. And the third one is the expensive one; that’s the concierge service. Your hand is held all the way through it, and we do it all for you. That’s the one that I bought three years ago.

Frank Love: What’s expensive?

Richard Lowe: Expensive is $1,000 for the whole package. It’s three hundred, five hundred, and a thousand.

Groups and the network

Frank Love: One of the things I’m a huge fan of on LinkedIn is the groups. You could join an alumni group, a group around a certain industry. When I was really active on LinkedIn, I met a lot of people by posting my blog or my video, and had a lot of responses, interactions, some arguments. What are your thoughts on the LinkedIn groups?

Richard Lowe: LinkedIn groups are an essential part of your LinkedIn strategy. You can be in up to 100 groups, and you should be in 100 groups. Make sure they’re large groups, tens of thousands of people in each one, and make sure they’re relatively active.

Frank Love: Is there a metric to look at to see if it’s active?

Richard Lowe: Just look at it and see when the most recent post is. If the most recent post is six months ago, it’s pretty much dead. The reason you want to be in a lot of groups is that all of the people in your groups are part of your network. LinkedIn lets you communicate via something they call InMail, which is their messaging system, and it actually costs money if the person’s not in your network, and it’s free if they are. So if you want people to talk to you, you need to add them to your network, either by connecting with them or by sharing a group with them.

Frank Love: And how do you know if somebody’s worth even talking to?

Richard Lowe: You look at their profile. Start with their picture. This is one of the first things I stress to people: your picture has to be perfect. It has to be professional, it has to look good, it has to characterize your brand. If your brand is a business person, you need to be in a suit and tie. If your brand is an engineer, you might be dressed a little more casually. If your brand is a circus clown, you should be dressed as a circus clown. But it should be a professional photo, with professional lighting, by someone who poses you, and it should look good. Spend the money. You’re a professional; you should have the couple hundred bucks to spend on a picture. That’s the number one thing people look at. Then they look at your headline: put some keywords in there. I don’t just want your job title; I want to know what you do. Then they look at your summary. Those things have to be perfect.

Is it acceptable to flirt or ask for dates on LinkedIn?

Nancy Goldring: What about relationships? LinkedIn is such a business-geared tool, and in order to do business with people, you’re going to create relationships. But is there a romantic component, or a possibility of romance, around the LinkedIn world?

Richard Lowe: Well, it’s a business professional network, and that is somewhat frowned upon. Many of the business women that I’ve talked to really hate that. I haven’t really gotten the opinion of the men. It’s not meant to be a dating tool. Unfortunately, a lot of men do use it as that, because it’s an easy communication method. And a good way to lose a job, or lose the possibility of employment, is to make a pass at a woman on LinkedIn. Just don’t do it. That’s what you’ve got all these other social networks for.

Frank Love: That advice is perfect. You save some guy from putting his foot in his mouth, or losing his job or an opportunity.

Nancy Goldring: However, I’m listening, and I’m thinking: you have a quote in your book from Tim Ferriss, saying that if you’re going on a date, chances are your blind date has Googled you before you meet. And I’m thinking: why Google the guy? Why not check his LinkedIn profile and see what he’s really doing? I’ve found myself thinking: if I Google the person, fine. But if I do a LinkedIn search on him, I could find some subtle nuances that wouldn’t necessarily show up on a more social platform. And in a couple of cases, I might Google a guy because I don’t quite understand what he does, and then I go to LinkedIn to get a better idea of it without bombarding him with seemingly ridiculous questions. If it’s on LinkedIn, it’s designed for the average person to understand. Then I can ask more intelligent questions at dinner.

Frank Love: What’s wrong with a stupid question while you’re having dinner? That’s part of getting to know each other.

Nancy Goldring: I prefer to save my stupid questions for when we’re sitting watching TV. When we get to the TV level, I don’t mind you finding out there are a couple of marbles out of place.

Richard Lowe: Well, first of all, if you Google somebody, their LinkedIn profile, if it’s well written, should come up first or second. You’ll find it there. And I do that. If I’m going on a date with somebody, the first thing I do, after getting her name, is find out who she is. Because people do stupid things on social media, and it’s often just fun to find out what stupid things.

Nancy Goldring: Here’s a dating question: when do you ask a person their last name so you can Google them?

Richard Lowe: I ask a person their last name up front.

Nancy Goldring: So how does that work? “Hi, my name is June.” “June what?” That seems like: why are you asking me? I call myself Nancy Goldring, and when I put you in my phone, I put your whole name, and people say, “What is it with you and the government names?” I might even make a note of how or where I know you, so when you call me, the first line of defense is: am I answering? The second is: how do I know this person? But I’m not taking just your first name.

Richard Lowe: I’ve actually been asked before: why are you asking me my last name? And I answer quite honestly: because I’m going to Google you and find out who you are. If the answer comes back that they’re not comfortable with that, then I automatically know there’s something they don’t want me to find. Disqualified.

Nancy Goldring: Wow. What you just said is exactly why I asked the question. Some people might very well be uncomfortable with you researching them, finding out where they live and that sort of thing.

Richard Lowe: But it also produces a conversation about social media, sometimes, which can be fun. Because I’m a social media expert, I tell them: I’m a social media expert, and I’m going to look you up. Are you uncomfortable with that? It produces a conversation, and we get to know each other a little better. Or I find out right from talking to them that they’re not interested anymore, and that’s fine. Don’t waste your time.

Frank Love: I’ve got a question that takes us back a bit, and this is random. When you’re sitting on the couch with your wife, do you feel the need to have your feet touch, some body part touching?

Nancy Goldring: Yes, you do.

Frank Love: I don’t feel the need, but it does happen organically. Richard, when you were with your late wife, sitting on the couch, or even in bed, did your feet touch?

Richard Lowe: Oh, I’m one of those strange people who likes his own space. I prefer a little bit of distance. Not all the time; I don’t mind proximity, it’s just I don’t like it constantly.

Nancy Goldring: You can get that when I go to work. There are circumstances where, if we’re in the same space, I’d like some proximity. And you have to know, in the natural course of getting to know each other, when to back up, that ebb and flow in the energetic space. Not smothering.

What if you have no online presence at all?

Frank Love: Back to the interview. What if you don’t have an online presence at all, Richard? What if you’re just not into the virtual world, the social media thing? What do you say to that individual?

Richard Lowe: First of all, you’re on the internet whether you like it or not. Unless you are one of those people in a bomb shelter in Oklahoma, paranoid about the world, and even then you’re probably on the internet somewhere. And if you’re not on social media, it’s just strange nowadays. You at least need to be there a little bit. If I’m looking to hire you and you’re not on social media, we’re going to have some questions, especially if I’m hiring technical people or writers or marketing people. “Why aren’t you on social media?” And that’s going to be accusatory. You need to be there, and you need to be cleaning it up, and you need to be controlling it. Because what I might find, if you’re not there, is other people talking about you. Maybe I won’t find anything, but it’s an oddity nowadays.

Common mistakes: the photos people actually submit

Nancy Goldring: Are there any common mistakes people make regarding their LinkedIn profile, besides asking someone for a date?

Richard Lowe: The most common mistake is having a lousy photo. You’d be amazed at some of the photos that I get. One of them had a cemetery in the background.

Nancy Goldring: Wow.

Richard Lowe: His father had died, and it was an important picture to him. Yes, and it’s also turning away all your customers. Another one was a horrible selfie with beer bottles in the background, obviously half-empty liquor bottles. Just don’t do that kind of stuff.

Nancy Goldring: Excuse me for cutting you off, but not having a picture at all is starting to give me the creeps.

Richard Lowe: Huge red flag. Put up a picture. Now, a lot of people set it so only people in their network can see the picture, so you have to keep that in mind. But if they don’t have a picture at all, it’s another red flag.

Nancy Goldring: Is it a red flag to have it set so only people in your network can see you? I didn’t even know that was a setting.

Richard Lowe: A lot of people do it, but you’re on LinkedIn to be seen. Make your photo visible. This isn’t Facebook, where you may not want to be seen. This is LinkedIn. You’re there to be known. You’re there to make your presence known. You’re there to be in the center of the room shouting, “Who am I?” And if you’re not doing that, then you’re not using LinkedIn.

Your Facebook is part of your LinkedIn

Frank Love: Is there any correlation or connection between Facebook and LinkedIn?

Richard Lowe: Facebook can also be used for business. I use it for business as well, because I’m also a dance photographer, and a lot of my dancer friends are on there, and I have some products they like. But yes, there’s a correlation: they should match up to a certain extent. If your LinkedIn says you’re a radio show host, your Facebook probably shouldn’t say otherwise. You also should make sure your Facebook doesn’t have any pictures that make you look like an idiot: drinking pictures, or vomiting pictures. Vomiting pictures are actually common. Parties and things.

Nancy Goldring: And unfortunately, someone else tagging you. It’s harder to clean up, but you can untag yourself.

Richard Lowe: You can untag yourself, but it can be more difficult, because they can put your name in text form, and that can be findable through the internet. Actually, one caution I have, and I’m writing a book about what you need to worry about on social media: everybody carries a camera nowadays. Actually, everybody carries several cameras, quite often. That means anything you do stupid in public can wind up on the internet, bang, on the six o’clock news. So you need to watch it. I don’t mean be paranoid, but hey, if you’re going to be drinking, make it private. If you’re going to be vomiting in public, well, don’t be surprised if that shows up everywhere. Because it’s funny.

Frank Love: So you can have a class-A LinkedIn profile, and yet your Facebook page could be a disaster and undermine it.

Richard Lowe: It’s done that. I used to look people up when I hired people at Trader Joe’s, and it’s like: your Facebook page makes you look like a blithering idiot. You think I’m going to hire you? But your LinkedIn page is perfect.

Nancy Goldring: So when you’re working with a client, do you look at their Facebook page too?

Richard Lowe: Of course. Usually, when I’m looking at a client, I Google them and look at their stuff, just to find out more, so that when I talk to them, like you were saying about the date, I know something to talk about. You don’t want to walk into a client cold: who are you, what do you do? You should already know that information, if they have an internet presence at all. They’ll probably have a website, a blog, Facebook, a LinkedIn. Maybe Google Plus, though not a lot of people do much with that anymore.

Nancy Goldring: Is Facebook cleanup part of your consulting? If a person pays the thousand dollars, do you say, hey, listen, you need to get a handle on your Facebook?

Richard Lowe: LinkedIn Makeover is focused specifically on the LinkedIn profile; we don’t do the rest of social media. And by the way, I’m a consultant there, but I’m also an author, and I wrote Focus on LinkedIn separately. It’s my own book, not related to LinkedIn Makeover. I wrote it because I wanted to help people learn how to do it.

Coloring books, the 50th book, and what’s next

Frank Love: You’re listening to Frank Relationships, and we’re talking with the author of Focus on LinkedIn. He’s Richard Lowe, Jr. Richard, please tell us what you’re up to and how we can find you.

Richard Lowe: You can find me at thewritingking.com/, fully spelled out. And if you want to see my books, you can go to coolauthor.com; that has all my books on Amazon. At least the ones under my name, because I write under some ten names. What am I up to? At the moment, I’m getting ready for the holidays, which are of course big days to sell things, and I’m working on a series of coloring books. It’s kind of a new thing for me. I found an artist, and together we’re creating a series. I used to be a belly dance photographer in California; I photographed 1,800 belly dance shows and have 1,200 dancer friends on my Facebook. I’ve had some of those pictures converted to sketches, and I’m making coloring books out of them. The dancers are going crazy. They love it. And it kind of gets me back in contact with my old friends.

And what came from that, by the way: there are pictures of me all over the internet with women hanging on me, models and supermodels and dancers. And somebody asked me, how do you get so many women hanging on you? So I wrote a book, which goes on sale tomorrow, actually, for 99 cents: how to make friends with women, how to be surrounded by beautiful women without being a sleaze.

Frank Love: All right. Give us something from that book.

Richard Lowe: Basically, instead of focusing on what these books usually focus on, the book focuses on human rights: that men violate human rights with, quote, their women. Just saying “my woman” violates the woman’s human rights, because the woman’s not property. When you say “my woman,” what is she, your desk? Your chair? No. She’s a human being. She’s a woman, and she’s with you. She’s a person. She’s a being. She’s a soul. And you shouldn’t be treating her as an object. That’s what the book focuses on, because it’s a different slant, and it’s a correct viewpoint. If you treat a woman as a human being, you’d be amazed at what you get.

That’s why I’m going to write a follow-up book called I’m Stuck in the Friend Zone, coming out later this year. Same slant. You seem to be in the friend zone? You have a friend. What are you complaining about? Grow up. I’m not sympathetic toward guys moaning, “I’m stuck in the friend zone.” I have 1,200 belly dance friends. I’m in the friend zone with every single one of them. It’s great.

Frank Love: Well, hopefully you’re not in the friend zone with somebody you want to be in another zone with. That’s the gripe. But that’s a whole different show, coming up probably in a couple of months: Help, I’m Stuck in the Friend Zone.

Nancy Goldring: Now, you’re cranking these books out pretty regularly. Are we talking about a book that’s 20 pages, or 200?

Richard Lowe: My books range anywhere from about 160 pages for the LinkedIn book down to about 50 pages for the how-to-be-friends-with-women book. Kindle tends to favor shorter books; people want to read them over lunch or dinner or on a break. So I’ve got a lot of short books. I just published my 50th book [113+ authored as of 2026], called Unlikely Hero. It’s a science fiction book, and it’s only 30 pages long.

Frank Love: And you ghostwrite also, don’t you?

Richard Lowe: I’ve done 12 ghostwritten novels and books, and I have a book on ghostwriting also.

Frank Love: And when you ghostwrite, you purposely don’t discuss the client, is that correct?

Richard Lowe: I’m not allowed to. I sign a non-disclosure. Without the client’s written permission, I can’t even disclose that I worked on a book for him. Unless it’s left out of the contract, and then I can.

Nancy Goldring: How do you do a good job ghostwriting a book for somebody?

Richard Lowe: Interview them a lot. Work with them. It’s a relationship. It requires a lot of communication back and forth. And it’s not cheap. I actually have a free book on ghostwriting, and one of the quotes in it is: if your ghostwriter is charging you less than 20 grand for a book, you have an amateur. He needs to be charging real money, because it’s not easy. I’m trying to take something from your brain and put it on paper. That’s not something you can do for five hundred bucks or a thousand dollars. It takes a lot of work, and you have to spend the money and spend it right, or you’re getting a junky book, and then you’ve just wasted your money.

Are LinkedIn endorsements or recommendations more valuable?

Frank Love: Say I decide I want to find a ghostwriter, I go onto LinkedIn, and 20 people come up. How important are endorsements to the profile, to me even selecting you as someone to interview? And should you ask for them?

Richard Lowe: Endorsements are almost worthless, because LinkedIn does them automatically and there’s no validation of them. What’s important is recommendations. What you want to look at is the recommendations somebody has. Of course, all the recommendations are going to be good, because you can decline a recommendation, so nobody’s going to have a bad one. But you can look at them, look at the wording, and see how many there are. If he doesn’t have any recommendations, or only has one from his previous boss, that’s a flag. You need to have recommendations. I’ve got several dozen from people I’ve worked with over the years, and more every week.

You should be asking people for recommendations, and there’s a trick to asking, by the way: you write it for them. The people you want recommending you are keynote speakers, authors, famous people, C-level people, CEOs, CFOs, high-level people with a name. They’re busy. So you write your recommendation for them, in the ask-for-recommendation box, and say: if this is okay with you, why don’t you recommend me using this text. They’ll change a word or two and send it back to you, 90% of the time. If you don’t give them the text? Two percent of the time. Because they’re busy, they’ll say “Sure, I’ll be glad to,” and you’ll never get it.

Nancy Goldring: So they don’t have to go into their own LinkedIn and compose it. I can write it, send it to them through LinkedIn, and say, would you approve this?

Richard Lowe: LinkedIn allows you to put in a comment field when you send a recommendation request. Usually people just leave the default “Please recommend me,” but you can put text in there that says: please use this text. All they have to do is copy and paste it. It saves a lot of time, you get a good recommendation, and you should have a lot of those, from high-level, well-known people.

Frank Love: And you’ve seen where that has significant results?

Richard Lowe: I’ve used it vetting employees, vetting potential suppliers and vendors. You don’t have any recommendations, dude? What’s going on? Either you don’t know how to use LinkedIn, which itself is a red flag in the modern age, or people don’t like you. Which one is it?

Frank Love: That’s a frank conversation, by the way.

Connection requests, spam, and being a LION

Nancy Goldring: Should you accept any request that comes through on LinkedIn? How do you vet people you don’t personally know?

Richard Lowe: I read the profile. First I look at the picture, then the headline, then the summary, and it’s just a glance. If I still don’t know, once they connect, you can message them for free, and I send them a message saying: who are you, and why are you connecting with me? Usually you’ll get an answer. I don’t report people for spam, because I’m what’s called a LION, a LinkedIn Open Networker, which generally means I’ll network with anybody. Well, I’m actually a subset: I won’t report you for spam, but I’m not going to connect with you if I don’t have a use for you. I don’t have the time to have some 50,000-person network.

Frank Love: When I used to post things in one of my LinkedIn groups, I was popular. There was a name for it. Do you know what it is, Richard?

Richard Lowe: There’s an official “Influencer” program that LinkedIn runs; people become Influencers on LinkedIn. But you also become an influencer in the general sense: people know that you’re somebody they can go to for help or for knowledge. And that’s where you want to be.

Branding yourself as what you’re becoming

Frank Love: What do you do if how you want to brand yourself is not necessarily related to what you’re actually doing?

Richard Lowe: Well, you have complete control over what’s in your LinkedIn profile, so you can write anything you want. If you want to brand yourself as a paper hanger, but you’re actually a writer, then write yourself up as a paper hanger, and you’ll be branded as a paper hanger. That’s the way you work LinkedIn. That can matter when you’re trying to start a new career or change careers, like I changed from computers over to writing.

Nancy Goldring: And I think you say in your book that you can do that, but you want to discuss what you used to do and how it helps you become what you’re becoming.

Richard Lowe: Your LinkedIn profile should be one integrated story. If I read the whole thing, which I’m probably not going to, but if I did, I would want to know how you got to where you are, and how where you started supports where you are. This person went to college wanting to become a doctor, but decided to be a geologist, and then became an aerospace engineer? That’s kind of weird. It should all link together somehow. In writing, we would call it transition.

What is the most underused feature of LinkedIn?

Frank Love: Are there any underused features on LinkedIn that you tell people: look, a lot of people don’t use these, but I strongly suggest you do?

Richard Lowe: The most underused feature of LinkedIn is LinkedIn itself. First of all, the majority of people just throw up their resume, and that’s a mistake. LinkedIn should be in the first person. If we were in a room together and I was talking to you, I’m going to say I, my, we. I’m not going to say “Richard did this” in my own profile. That’s just silly.

The second thing: if you hired LinkedIn Makeover to write your profile, and then you came back in six months and said, “It ain’t doing nothing for me,” I would know you’re not actually using LinkedIn. You need to be on it all the time, at least several times a week: writing things, posting things, changing things, updating things, getting recommendations. You need to be doing all of that, as if you were walking a trade floor or a convention. You walk around, you shake hands, you hand out your business cards, you hand out flyers, you listen to people, you talk to people. This is what you need to be doing on LinkedIn, or it’s just another social media page that’s sitting there dead. You need to make it alive. If you’re not doing that, you’re not going to get hits, people aren’t going to connect with you, and nobody’s going to care.

Nancy Goldring: What are some of the things you suggest posting regularly? Your own content, other people’s content, a mix?

Richard Lowe: A mix. I’m a writer, so I’m on the internet researching all the time. If I come across an article, I’ll post it: “I found this article on the correct spelling of this word, and I think you’d find it interesting.” I also post my own articles, because I have a blog, so I post links to those. Just post a mix of things. Don’t overdo it; don’t post 50 things a day. Don’t post those math puzzle questions. And don’t post political stuff. Political stuff has no place on LinkedIn unless you’re a politician or your brand is politics, because you’re going to alienate people. Keep it to business, and post a lot, because it falls off the feed really fast.

The Internet of Things is coming

Frank Love: What’s in the future for LinkedIn, particularly now that they have Microsoft behind them? And what’s the future of social media networking for business, period?

Richard Lowe: That’s a very interesting question that we could do another whole show on. I’m actually ghostwriting a book about the Internet of Things. I’m not going to get into it further than that, but it’s going to be published early next year. The Internet of Things is coming, big time. What that means is: the amount of data that is kept about every single person in the cloud is dramatic. If I had access to that information as an advertiser, I would know everything about everything you do, all the time, and I could predict. I know you’re very uncomfortable with that, but that’s just the way it is. You’re going to have a home alarm system, smart lights that follow you around, smart thermostats, a smart car. All of these things report back to the cloud. And LinkedIn is also in the cloud, and it links together and forms a coherent picture of you that can make your life a lot better, and worse.

Frank Love: Depending on who has it.

Richard Lowe: Corporations, not the government. The government won’t have access to most of this data. This is for corporations to use, so that the corporations and the water district and the power companies can know: it’s hot today, we need to give Richard more power, because he has more computers than most people, and he’s going to drink more water, so make sure he’s got more water. But we don’t want him running his laundry during the day because it’s hot, so we’re going to turn off the laundry to preserve energy. Those are the kinds of things it’s going to decide for you.

Frank Love: Fascinating. And LinkedIn is an integrated part of that, in a way, because it provides data about a person that’s put into the whole picture. We should do another show when the book comes out. You’ll be amazed.

Closing

Frank Love: You’re listening to Frank Relationships, and we’ve been talking with the author of Focus on LinkedIn: Create a Personal Brand on LinkedIn to Make More Money, Generate Leads, and Find Employment. He’s Richard Lowe, Jr. Last time, Richard: would you let our folks know how they can find you?

Richard Lowe: To buy my books, go to coolauthor.com; they’re all listed there. For more information about me, go to thewritingking.com/, all spelled out. And I also have a personal website, richardlowe.com.

Frank Love: Along today’s journey, we’ve discussed how to create a great LinkedIn profile, what to post on your profile, and why it’s important to use LinkedIn. Thank you to my co-host Nancy, thank you to Jeff Newman, my engineer, and thank you to my super duper guest, Richard Lowe. You’ve been great.

Richard Lowe: Thank you for having me.

Frank Love: I hope you’ve had as much fun as I’ve had hanging out with today’s ensemble. As always, it’s my wish for you to walk away from this conversation with a heaping helping of useful information that’ll help you create a relationship that’s as loving and accepting as possible. This is Frank Love.

Find Richard Lowe at thewritingking.com/.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Part of Richard Lowe on Air, his complete run of podcast, radio, and video guest appearances.