15k followers on LinkedIn in less than three months… this is how Chloé started her LinkedIn journey when she was 19 years old. Her first motivation? She was looking for an internship!
Now, Chloé is a key opinion leader for digital transformation and self-branding. She worked with Brainsonic, Orange, Samsung and co-founded HighChloeCloud, 6 years ago with Christian Jumelet.
We’ve just made a short interview video with her. She speaks about her story, strategy, and vision.
Do you want to follow Chloé's adventures, you can read the interview or watch the video to discover more about her.
Can you tell us about your background and experiences?
When I was in preparatory class, I heard a lot about the importance of building our network, but it was still something of a blur, because we are told that it's important, but they don't tell us how.
So I knew LinkedIn was the place to go to get a job. Except I didn't sign up because I had other things on my mind and so I thought, come on, let's go...
I bought a lot of books on it, I started a little bit of background information. And then I started testing.
It's really self-study that you've been doing?
That's right, it's self-study. There's no secret, actually, on social networks, we need to go in, we need to test it, see what works and what doesn't work so well. Actually, it's continuous A/B testing because it's a market that is in huge evolution constantly.
So I started using LinkedIn, I've been more and more active, more and more speaking on social networks, on the digital, because I wanted to work in the digital world.
I wanted to show to my audience, that on LinkedIn, I was passionate about digital, that I had done a lot of research, that I'm starting to get knowledge and, actually that I was present.
And that I was on the market and it worked out really well. In 3 months, I had 15,000 followers.
It's huge. In 3 months 15,000 people!
Especially because at the time, it wasn't really visible in France. It was already something you could see with some English-speaking accounts. Because English-speakers are more pushy than the French. They dare a little more to express themselves. So it's true that in France, it was something surprising.
I was a little bit seen as LinkedIn's UFO. When I went to school, in the halls we were calling me Miss LinkedIn. I mean, that was pretty funny in itself.
There were even rumors that said you were a robot!
Yes, because I was pretty active. I was actually playing a little bit more visual, something pretty, regular, fairly consistent because I had based myself on algorithms a little bit like you can have on Instagram or on Twitter where the posts are very ephemeral, where you need to have a strike force big enough to be able to be seen.
I used techniques that exist on these social networks, which are much used on the English-speaking market, on the French market and on LinkedIn. Which was something that was a little surprising to see.
You actually "hacked" the algorithm?
I did it my way. It was a surprise, for sure. Whenever we do different things on social networks, it's always surprising. There's going to be people that are going to find it interesting and who are going to be thinking "Oh, I'll try to analyze what she's doing, why not?
There are other people who will get scared and will think "Wow, she doesn't fits not so much in the professional world codes, what is she doing with a lot of pictures and stuff?".
So, there are two different types of reactions.
Can you tell us about your favourite professional subjects?
So anything that's going to be around branding, whether it's for brands or people.
So it's true that today, I'm much more involved with executives on these topics, because it's also something that I am interested in understanding the why of a human and how is he going to be able to put stones at the building of what he wants to build.
And then there's going to be everything that's networking, this lifting action, to be able to build its network, to be able to start to, to be visible, quite simply, and to make people understand the message we want to send, offers that can be brought in and how much added value we're going to be able to bring to the market.
So you have all this support, with only one goal, which is to sell yourself, either to improve its positioning or to sell certain services, some offers for brands.
So, you talked about High Chloe Cloud, can you tell us a few words about it?
In fact, High Chloe Cloud was created 5 years ago, when I started to be very active on LinkedIn, and I realised that there was a lot of people who came to see me, who told me "Chloe, how can I get more visibility on LinkedIn? Do you think that this is good or bad?"
I've seen there was a true need from the market, on everything that's going to be around digital communication, so that's why I created this brand, to be able to symbolize all this accompaniment.
It was originally my Twitter account, who represented High Chloe Cloud. That's why it has my first name on it. I didn't have the pretention of to make a brand with my first name in it.
I didn't necessarily also know at at the time how big it was going to be. I mean, I thought, my Twitter account actually represented the values.
The "High", represents to always go higher, to always rise, to always try to become in fact the better version of yourself because that's what branding is all about, so it did represent well. And Cloud was...A little nod to all that, that's digital.
What's the firepower of High Chloe Cloud in the end?
Today I have more than 36000 people following me on Linkedin, so I have a big community.
It's true that I'm going to define it more in terms of qualities than in terms of numbers because you want to look for quality a lot, to work hard year after year. And to make sure that I have in my community, people who can be interested in who I am because is saying, for who can I bring something.
From your point of view, what is an influencer?
For me, there is a difference between influencers and opinion leaders. The influencers, it's going to be people who are active on Youtube, Google, etc. Which will have a goal of visibility, to be contacted by certain brands that will offer them a certain remuneration in exchange for digital visibility for their products.
For me, this is what does an influencer, whereas a key opinion leader is a person that we're going to follow because, we're convinced of the message, we are convinced of the authenticity and today, we have more and more this rupture, between people who will be seen as influential because, they're going to have managed, to gather a lot of people around them and make sure that these people take action.
But in fact, they're enough, they are pretty ephemeral. Whereas Key Opinion Leaders, are people who have acquired a true expertise in their field with time and are really going to have an impact on as soon as they take the word, as soon as they want to highlight a service or something, it's going to be a lot more authentic actually.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
If there's one thing that's for sure, is that I want to keep going in the line of the accompaniment. It's something I'm very interested in, to know how humans function, to find out why one message worked better than another, why one business model will be more relevant than another.
So that's something I have constantly wanting to do, to be able to be in the accompaniment. Then I don't know what planet I would be on, cause I am constantly traveling.
I tried what it was like to work on in Paris, in a fixed company. Because here, I just left Samsung, after two and a half years of a position as a Digital Evangelist. So that was great, I loved working with a lot of companies on their transformation projects but it's true that there's so much to learn at around the world. There are so many other practices, other social networks than LinkedIn, it would be a shame to limit ourselves.
Do you have any final advice?
One thing I'd do, is asking myself why I want to be on LinkedIn and what message I want to give. But don't answer this question by saying 'there's such a person I saw on LinkedIn, she's awesome. I want to give the same message as her. But I really want to search deep down inside who we are, look for images, colors, to really get into his universe deep enough, to wonder a lot about his personality.
I know it takes time. You just have to know, to settle down, have a blank piece of in front of you and write down keywords, try to find inspiration.
But most importantly, it's going to be yourself. And that's where it's kind of complicated because we have a lot of tendency to tell ourselves "I want to become such a person, I think this post is great."
Except that, afterwards, if you don't have anything to tell about it, that's where it gets a shame. This is where it's gonna be the most complicated. In fact, I think for some people, is going to be more than just this feeling of shame we might have, judgments we might have.
You have to tell yourself that, in any case, what people are going to judge most of all, is authenticity.
So, the more you're going to be yourself, the more you will appeal to people.
Where to follow Chloé Hacquard?
▶︎ Chloe's Linkedin
▶︎ HighChloeCloud Linkedin
▶︎ Twitter
