Melanie Borden
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
When I felt that things were shifting in my business and I wasn't getting the traction that I wanted, I realized I wasn't being specific about my offer and I wasn't saying I'm available to work. This is how I work and this is how you can work with me. And nine times out of 10, when I go on someone's profile or if I'm going through someone's content and they're saying it's not working,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And that's how trends start. I mean, that's how it happens. That's how things go viral. When you see someone else who's having success and then especially giving someone credit for it, I mean... That's very nice of you. And that's definitely something that you don't see every day.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And that's exactly how you see all the different trends start that happen, whether it's on LinkedIn or Instagram or TikTok or wherever, in any form, whether it's in the actual post or music, etc.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
I think AI is scary to a lot of people, especially those of us who have a 19 in our birth year. I think it can be intimidating. I know for myself, I really didn't start leaning into AI until last year, but really, really immersing my business in it until this year. But there is a company whose program I love called Opus Clip.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And essentially what they do is instead of going out and hiring a video editor, as many companies are trying to figure out, is this worth the investment? What are we doing? How are we going to do it? Do we need a video editor?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
It essentially takes all the guesswork out of everything that you're doing with video because you take an MP4 or a link to a YouTube video, you drop it into their platform, and then you set the parameters of what you want the video to be. How long do you want the video to be? Do you want AI B-roll? Do you want regular stock B-roll? Do you want to take anything out of it?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
what people always want to know from you what is the latest and greatest on linkedin what do they need to be doing why do they need to be there help us cut to it okay so something that i've been seeing lately and it's constantly changing i always tell people when you're putting out content you want to focus on what is best for you but also be aware of the platform and the algorithm
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And it essentially will clip for, let's say for example, a video that's four minutes long, it will clip 25 different videos for you. And so it's so simple. Once you get the hang of it, and you just flex that muscle, it's super easy. But kids, as you know, like my kids are 9 and 10. They know how to use ChatGPT. They know how to use DALI. And I didn't even really train them how to do it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
I just said, tell it what you want to do. And the best way that I would explain any of these AI systems is you just have to treat it like an assistant. You treat it like it's an intern, especially for those of us who run businesses and have people working for us. It's a really easy way to kind of start getting the hang of it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
That was the best analogy someone ever gave me, because then for me, I was like, OK, I can do this. I can do AI. I can go in and I can start the prompts. And now it's really transformed it. We're now, as Heather knows, I mean, we can give my daughter this recording and she will turn it into 25 different clips and opus clips. And she's 10.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Yeah, no, that's a great question. So one of the things that I've learned along the way I mentioned earlier is when you have your calls recorded and they're on something very specific. And when I'm working with someone, we're building strategy and it's usually on a specific topic where I'm getting to know a client and we're having a conversation.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So just like with building out LinkedIn posts, we're doing that same thing with blogs. We're doing that same thing with e-books. Well, we're taking recordings of calls, just like you and I are on right now, Heather. And we're taking these recordings and we're putting it into AI. Then we're editing it. And then we're putting it back into AI. And then we're editing again.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And then we're putting it in, formatting it. And we have a finished piece of work. And it's something where, just as a reference, an e-book before I started using AI would take my team and I probably two to three months to complete. And collectively, it would probably take about 30 hours, okay? Now it will take us less than a day and collectively would probably take a total of one hour max.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So it's a significant difference in the amount of manpower. And there's so much more on that topic, too, from an efficiency standpoint for businesses. but it's wild and it's so worth everyone investing into it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And it's constantly changing. And there's so many people who are talking about it. And when I say, you know, what's best for you, meaning the time supposed, et cetera. So for years, I religiously posted at 7 45 AM. I would be getting my kids ready from school, you know, doing drop-off and making sure that I'm still engaging with content at that set time for almost three years. I did that.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
That's a great question. And to your point about having your own audience versus the platform, I had created a LinkedIn newsletter a few years ago and I grew it and I grew it. And then I realized, man, I can't download all the contacts from the newsletter.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And so what I started doing was trying to now post this weekly newsletter and convert them and bring them to my own website to get them on my list versus having LinkedIn on the list. So every week I have a blog or a newsletter that goes out, and we actually also format it as a blog a little bit differently.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
We run it through AI, and then we also post it on humansabrand.com forward slash insights, where your team can see everyone that's there, all the blog posts that are there that were written by me versus the guest posts. They're all written by AI. All of them are. And you could see how the tone is very similar to mine. I mean, it is me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
We've trained it to sound like me and it's listened to me for long enough and it knows who I am and it knows the type of words I use. But having that LinkedIn newsletter go out is definitely a way to kind of bring people to you. And I know you do the same thing. And one of the reasons I love the LinkedIn newsletter is because number one, you can send it out as a post.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Then if you have your notifications on in LinkedIn, a notification goes out letting you know Heather Monahan just posted. And then you also get an email about the newsletter too. And you see it come through as an email directly from you. And then in that newsletter, you can have those multiple moments of conversion where you can bring them over to if you're selling a course, if you are
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
launching a book, whatever it is, or you just want to convert them onto your list and you're giving away this free ebook is another really great way to kind of monetize your newsletter as well.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
One of the things I hear a lot is from women who are looking to make transitions in their career.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So maybe they're looking to take the next step and apply for a C-suite position role within the organization, or maybe they already have and they were turned down and now they're trying to figure out what the next step is and how do they position themselves on LinkedIn or how do they start a coaching or consulting business and manage that while still in that role while also building it in the background and where to start and how to do it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And especially if they're managing a family too, how that looks like and how they can do that. So I get a lot of questions about setting up a consulting business and what that process looks like. The other thing I hear a lot about is really just what content works best for conversion. And I always tell people there's really four types of
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And then I got super busy and I said, you know what? I need to find a different time to start posting. And at first I was really unsure about it. And then now I've been posting consistently. After 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and my posts have been performing so well, and we're seeing the same thing with clients as well as video.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
pillars, if you will, of content that have always worked well for me, works well for my clients. I know it works well for you too, Heather. And that's educational content, right? So anything where you're teaching someone something that you were talking about for giving value, well, you just teach them about what you do and how you do it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Because nine times out of 10, a lot of people won't do that because they're so afraid someone's going to steal their secrets. Well, there are no secrets because everything's already been said and done, like you mentioned earlier about the Bible. So it's something that People want information. They want to learn. And that's why they're on LinkedIn is a lot of times is to learn something.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Also sharing what other people say about you. So user generated content that can come from colleagues, clients that can come from, you know, reviews that you have. It can come from the comments section on a different social platform. It can come from emails, et cetera. Letting people know who works with you and who else trusts you is a big one. personal content.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And that doesn't have to be you're sharing what you ate last night for dinner. It could be your personal perspective on your journey from being the chief growth officer to having this speaking business and being a coach. You can share that journey and what that was like and all the in-betweens and not have to share something that's super deeply personal.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Because I always say that there's a difference between personal and private.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
and things that are private you might not want to share but it's going to be different for everybody and really lastly is promoting yourself when i felt that things were shifting in my business and i wasn't getting the traction that i wanted i realized i wasn't being specific about my offer and i wasn't saying i'm available to work this is how i work and this is how you can work with me and nine times out of ten when i go on someone's profile or if i'm going through someone's content and they're saying it's not working
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
I look at them and say, it's because you're not asking for it. So always ask for what you want, not to do it every day, but you should ask for what you want. Cause if you don't, you're not going to get it. Oh, so good.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Video has been doing really well and performing really well on LinkedIn too. And there's so much opportunity for every creator. It's like less than 5% of the people who are on the platform. It's a very low number, close to 1%. that are posting. So the opportunity is there for everyone, not just for someone who has a follower base, but literally for someone who's growing.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Melanie, what else are we giving our people? It's going to be really awesome because a lot of times I know for you as well, I do one-on-one sessions with people. We have a shared working document. There are action items. Each time there's an agenda.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
But a lot of times if someone's not following up and doing a follow-up meeting, a lot of times the progress that I'm seeing is just on LinkedIn or through them updating me over time. And so being able to have that one-on-one interaction and the accountability of having each other and being able to say, okay, this is what you have to do after this week.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
I look at them and say, it's because you're not asking for it. So always ask for what you want. Not to do it every day, but you should ask for what you want. Because if you don't, you're not going to get it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And then the next time we meet, you will have those items completed. And that's the hardest part. I really feel if you have so much going on and that's really the women who are going to be working with us are the ones who have it all. And they're trying to juggle everything, but they're also trying to progress their life forward.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So when you have two other women like us who have been there, done that, and now we can show them and help them through all of our learnings. It's going to be a game changer for them.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
which is probably the majority.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Yeah, absolutely. The other part of it too, is there's so much that there is to learn, especially when you're growing your personal brand and trying to get to that next level. So as an example, how do I start and grow a podcast? How do I start and grow my LinkedIn? What am I supposed to use if I need to book a speaking engagement? Where do I start? And maybe I don't necessarily have a
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
but I really need someone who has been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt, which both of us have, and that way we can guide them to where they need to go.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
One of the things that I started looking at was my analytics in terms of what topics were performing the best. And that's what I started doing the videos on. And I'll give you an example. Something that we deal with all the time, I know you deal with this too, Heather, are trolls. And we deal with this all the time.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
When you put yourself out on social, you have to find a way to really react and engage with people in a way that you have the best way of doing it. And a lot of times people go to market and they just kind of wing it. Businesses do that. Individuals do it. And my recommendation is to have a plan, have a strategy, and talk about it if it's working for you.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So for me, that's the topic that works really well for my videos. They always perform well when I talk about trolls. Whether it's a video or a static post, to look at the posts that are performing well, then look at other people in your industry who are also posting about topics that are relevant to your market.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Well, it's interesting that you asked that because one of the things that I always coach my clients through whenever they're launching their personal brand, specifically on LinkedIn, is that a couple things will happen.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And most people do not necessarily want to be quote unquote, influencers, they have a specific goal, whether they're looking to move their industry, they're looking to get into the C suite, maybe they're looking to launch their consulting or coaching business. And I tell them the first metric that we look at
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
is something that you're not going to see in your analytics platform on LinkedIn or another analytics platform. And that's that word of mouth metric where someone will see your post and then they'll do something. As a result, they'll text, they'll call, they'll send a message, they'll mention it in the office. Something will happen.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And to us, that's a signal that they're getting visibility, which is the ultimate goal on LinkedIn, especially when you're making this massive change in your career, because a lot of times when someone comes to me and someone comes to you, Heather, that's what they're looking to do. They're looking to make a change.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So the only way to really make the change is to kind of roll with what comes along with it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And there are other ways too, that you can make a splash on LinkedIn without having to post content, such as identifying what your goals are, who you want to be working with, what industry that you want to be working in, and then reaching out to those people and connecting with them and then engaging with their content.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And that's one approach that some people have who are afraid of the red flags or the red tape that might come along with posting on LinkedIn too.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Of course. You have to be intentional. When you're intentional with anything, it's going to yield results. And the way that I frame LinkedIn... to a lot of people is think about when you were a kid and you were doing chores and your parents say, save it for a rainy day. So this is your LinkedIn is the professional rainy day fund.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
Because like you said earlier, you don't know if you're going to get fired. You don't know if you're going to lose your job. You don't know if tomorrow you're going to have massive tragedy and you're going to need to take some time off. No one knows what's next. But what you can control is how you move forward. And whenever I'm working with anyone, if they have a specific goal, right?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So talent acquisition is a great way for someone to go to market on LinkedIn because they want to bring in new people and they want their forward facing brand to be representative of the company, whether it's the CEO, whether it's the CRO or whether it's the director of sales within the organization. And the thing is, is that if you leave that organization, your brand goes with you.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So it's always good to have that backup for yourself. So that way, no matter where you go, you have that network that you can rely on. It's also a great way to meet new people, to survey your network. To find out and just find out what's happening in whatever industry that you're in and just to talk to people because you just never know who you might be. Yeah.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
It's so common. It's definitely something I hear all the time. I know you hear it too. And it's funny that you asked that. I was on LinkedIn today and I was scrolling, just seeing what was in the feed and One of the creators in my network had posted something about every week he's posting and he's spending time every single day, certain amount of time a day, just writing.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
And I thought back to myself when I first started, similarly like you, I didn't really have time.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
not necessarily a network i was in one specific industry i came from the car business so my network was in new york new jersey the tri-state area and one of the reasons for me going on linkedin was to broaden my horizons and to meet more people and to just create a name for myself and so but i was thinking back to when i started and i just started documenting my day-to-day it was during the pandemic it was crazy wild time and i started following people like yourself
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
I started seeing what other people were doing. I was looking at what was making me feel good because it was at a time where everything was just so chaotic, which is very similar to today. The chaos really hasn't changed much in the last five years. It's just adjusted. But one of the things that I was doing regularly at my job was meeting with all of our vendors. I was working as a VP of marketing.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So I was recording all of our calls regularly. Or the vendor was recording our calls and they would send me the recording after our meetings. And that was something that I was doing every single day. And what I didn't realize at the time was I had this treasure trove of content. I had a huge amount of content that I didn't realize that I could tap into.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
So for someone who's just starting, start recording your calls that you have, your meetings that you have, because nine times out of 10, you can go back to that transcript. You can pull some of that. You can edit it. And you can turn it into something for yourself that you can use for content. So another thing you can do is introduce yourself. Reintroduce yourself.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: SKYROCKET Your Success by Using THESE TOOLS At Your Fingertips with Melanie Borden
If you haven't posted on LinkedIn and you're looking to make a change, introduce yourself and be specific with your offer. Are you in between jobs? Are you looking for something new? Are you launching a business? What are you doing? And share that human side of who you are and where you've been and where you're going. That's so good.