What’s Happening With LinkedIn Marketing Today That You Need To Know

What’s Happening With LinkedIn Marketing Today That You Need To Know

Tim Fitzpatrick
If you are in the B2B space, I believe LinkedIn is a place you absolutely must be. But here's the question. How should you show up and how can you best interact with your audience and your prospects? That is a question that we are going to dig into today and a whole lot more. We're going to talk about what's happening with LinkedIn marketing and that you need to know about. I'm super excited to dig into this. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have with me Dr. Angela Mulrooney from Unleashing Influence. Angela, welcome and thanks so much for being here.

Angela Mulrooney
Thanks for having me here, Tim. I appreciate it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. Now you mentioned offline here. You are based out of Nicaragua, is that right?

Angela Mulrooney
That is correct. I've been here in a week from now. It'll be a year.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Wow. Are you originally from Canada?

Angela Mulrooney
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it. What prompted the move from Canada to Nicaragua, other than warmth?

Angela Mulrooney
Well, I made a bet with myself that I wouldn't see a snowflake for twelve months unless there's a freak snow storm here in the next seven days. I win my bet.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. There you go.

Angela Mulrooney
Yeah. And it was funny because I had originally I was going to go do some international business development for my company into Australia, UK, and South Africa. And the Pandemic had started, but things were still open at that point. And then once I made a decision on those countries, Canada had a massive spike in cases and the borders just closed one after another after another. And this became the path of least resistance is why I ended up in Nicaragua.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, you're adventurous. I can guess that. There's a lot of people that would be very afraid to make a move like that. So before we get into LinkedIn, which I am excited to talk about this because I think there are so many opportunities on LinkedIn, but there are so many people that are just struggling, like they don't know what to do. They don't know what the next step is. So I think there's going to be an extremely valuable conversation that we have. But before we do that, I want to ask you some rapid-fire questions to help us get to know you. Are you ready to jump in with both feet?

Angela Mulrooney
I'm ready.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. When you're not working. How do you like to spend your time?

Angela Mulrooney
Surfing and hanging out on the beach.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And that wasn't something that you were able to do a year prior, right?

Angela Mulrooney
That is correct. I'd be hanging out in a snow bank instead.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. What's your hidden talent?

Angela Mulrooney
Walking across the room on my hands.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Did you do gymnastics or something as a kid?

Angela Mulrooney
I was a gymnast.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Angela Mulrooney
Just be yourself, which is so much harder than you think it is.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It is incredibly difficult. Frankly, I think most of us never are able to do it. What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Angela Mulrooney
That I actually am extremely shy, and I've had to work very hard to be able to be charismatic and outgoing because of that shyness that holds me back a lot.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What does success mean to you?

Angela Mulrooney
Feeling passionate in my work every day.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?

Angela Mulrooney
Sitting on the beach, watching sunset.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And what qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Angela Mulrooney
People who are open hearted, where we can have real, honest conversations.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Love it. Thank you for that. I want to learn a little bit more about what you're doing with your company. Unleashing influence. I know you started out you were a dentist, right?

Angela Mulrooney
Yes, that is correct.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, so I'm sure people are going to want to know how does a dentist move into LinkedIn Marketing? Tell us what happened here.

Angela Mulrooney
So I've actually always been someone who has developed brands within my company, so it hasn't just been like, build a logo, name it, and run with it. I've always been able to build my personal brand within those things. So when I was a dentist originally, I was working with Pediatrics because I could just talk to kids and tell them stories. And my shyness didn't really get in the way. Then when I decided to buy a practice, I bought an adult based practice with severely phobic patients, like people who didn't want to come across the threshold into the practice. They were down there. So I ended up building a reputation in the community that I liked working with these kinds of patients. And so people sent me their clients, and then I ended up getting injured, unfortunately. So my career ended overnight and I had to move on to other things. So it took me a while, honestly, about eight years, to really figure out who I was in the world without having a drill in my hand. So I dabbled with business coaching for dentists because that made sense with everything I'd been through in my practice. .And then I built my professional dance company as well, because that just is. I had danced professionally as long as I was a dentist. So it's not like I ran away to join the circus. It was a natural progression. And then by building those two companies, I played a lot on social media and started to really figure out how to leverage those platforms for my dad's company it was Facebook. For my business coaching company it was actually LinkedIn. So I started getting on videos and talking about what I knew about branding, about dentistry, and how I could help people. And when I started, I got this awful advice that I needed to blend in before I stood out. So if you see my hair like, I've got this lovely shave. And they're like, no, you're talking to very conservative people. You cannot show that. So I took my curls and put them on the other side. So I looked a little bit more conservative. I tried to be measured in what I was saying and emulate the people that were successful in the coaching industry. And I got more and more uncomfortable and actually felt more and more shy. And one day I was just like, you know what? This isn't working. Let me just try to be me and see what happens. And that next year, after I made that decision, I went from 200 to 12000 industry followers on LinkedIn and went, okay, so this whole thing of blending in, let's toss that out, because that's the worst advice ever. And so I started to lean into just being myself. And it was fascinating to see how that changed over. So that's how I got into LinkedIn marketing, because I was doing it for myself. And then other people went, where did you come from? Like, you were a dentist. Nobody knew who you were except in your community. And then you became someone who was known across Canada, started to get more known in the US as well for my coaching company. And people asked me to help them to leverage LinkedIn to build their personal brands. So I dabbled with a few people that I knew had that charisma. They had that talent, that I could work with them and try to see if I could duplicate what I had done for myself. And it worked. And then the pandemic hit and I was like, oh, no, we're going to take a nose dive here. And what actually happened was Unleashing Influence skyrocketed because a lot of my contacts were professional speakers as well. They were people who are used to networking and having coffee out with people. And so they needed different outlets to actually connect. And so that helped me to build my agency. And then once I landed in Nicaragua, I was like, I don't really like managing all these people. This is awful. So I decided to sell off the agency part and just niche into what I do, which is coaching people on media mastery, being charismatic on camera, whether it is for social media content, podcasts, speaking from the stage, and then also helping them to figure out their archetype, which supports everything that they do, and building out their strategy for LinkedIn. And then I connect them with my people, who will execute on my beautiful ideas.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's awesome. I want to post something out that you said because it goes back to the best piece of advice you've ever been given, which is be yourself. I know I have made that mistake before. I was in real estate for a while. I did not like it. It was not my thing. The whole time I was there, I was not being myself. Because when you get into that, there's so many people telling you you need to do this or you need to do that. And man, if we're not ourselves, one, we're not going to enjoy it, but two, we're just not going to be successful. And so I think that is a really important part of your story that I think so many people can easily overlook. Gary Vannerchuk is a perfect example of this. Whether you love him or hate him, he is himself, and he is incredibly successful in all kinds of industries where you would think, man, he sticks out like a sore thumb and he does, but he's himself. And whether you love him or hate him, you've got to respect the fact that he is always himself and he's consistent. So kudos to you for getting to that place where you're like, man, I got to just be myself. And lo and behold, it worked for you, right?

Angela Mulrooney
Well, I think the hardest part is for people to be themselves. If you have this facade up, then if someone judges it that they don't like it, then it's like, well, they didn't like this persona that I have. Whereas if you're fully out there and you're polarizing your audience, which you should be doing, if you're walking the line of trying to be likable, pulling the curls over and not showing the shapes out of your head and you're not really truly being yourself, so you're going to have people who like you, but you don't want people to like you. You want to polarize you want people to love you or hate you and put the effort into the people who love you, the ones who hate you, they may enjoy hating on you, and that's okay. You don't want to give them your energy or attention, but you will, by being yourself, be that person that people will love because they see who you are. And people can tell it's palpable if you're faking it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I think the other important thing to what you just said, when you polarize the people that do follow you are much more engaged, right?

Angela Mulrooney
For sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. If you're in the middle and you got people following, nobody's really invested in it. And if we're going to get something from people that follow us, if we're going to help as many people as possible, they have to love us because if they love us, they're going to be engaged. It's the only way they're going to get value from what we do. 

Why LinkedIn is Such an Essential Marketing Tool for Professionals

Tim Fitzpatrick
Let's talk about LinkedIn. Why is LinkedIn such an essential marketing tool for professionals?

Angela Mulrooney
Because it is this amazing platform and people is funny, I did a poll recently and I was like, why is LinkedIn not your primary platform? And one of the answers was because Tik Tok is way more fun and a few other things, but one of them was that it's primarily a job search platform and that won 90 percent of the vote. That was why people weren't using it. Because it's a job search platform and it's not. Yes, there is that part of it. But that's not the reason to be on LinkedIn, especially if you're trying to develop your personal brand. If you are able to help, whether it's other businesses or direct to clients, you have the ability to put yourself out there and showcase your expertise. And most people aren't going to do it because LinkedIn is full of smartypants. It's scary, right? And your reputation is everything, especially on that platform. Facebook people don't really care. But LinkedIn, your professional reputation is on the line, which is part of the reason people don't want to be themselves either, because that's even scarier. But it is so powerful to get you connected with the decision-maker. Like you send a message on LinkedIn, it is going to the person who manages that profile, most likely. Whereas Instagram, if you're sending it to a business, it might be the youngest person in the business or practice managing that profile because the boss went, well, you're a millennial, you must know how to do this. But LinkedIn, you are getting to that person. You are getting to talk to the decision-maker behind that profile. And you can move things so much more quickly forward, especially if you have it supported with amazing content.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Based on what you know is the organic reach on LinkedIn, so for those people that are listening or watching, my posts that are showing up naturally in the feeds without paying for people that I'm connected to with LinkedIn, they are still typically much higher than a lot of other platforms, are they not?

Angela Mulrooney
Yes. If you're putting out content and you build the right audience. So if you build an audience who isn't, they don't want your services or they're not the right personality type or they're not the right job description, then your content will probably go. But if you are building that right audience and you're building content that is not narcissistic. So it's not serving you. It's 100% about serving those potential clients and existing clients. That's where you really start to get that engagement. And the algorithm changed this past fall, so they made it a slower burn as to how quickly senior stuff is. So before I would get like a thousand or multiple thousand views of something in a day. Now when I watch it over a week, then it's getting those views. So they keep modifying the algorithm just because they like to mess with us and see what works and what doesn't work to create that engagement. So it is very effective for getting that engagement. But know that if your content stops getting that fast engagement, that's why.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I think for many of us, especially in the B2B space, I don't know how you cannot be on LinkedIn. So if you're not convinced, I don't think we're going to convince you at this point. You mentioned something in this first question here about LinkedIn being it's intimidating. It's easy to get a monkey on your back and be like, gosh, I got to behave this way on LinkedIn or what if I do? What do I do if I screw up? How can we feel less intimidated by LinkedIn if we are intimidated?

Angela Mulrooney
Don't just start. And that's what I hear from a lot of content coaches. They're like, just start and it'll get better. And it's like, well, on LinkedIn, your reputation is everything. So if you do a bad job and you just jump in and it's amateur hour, it's going to do harm. So you want to have a plan like the people that I work with, we do brand archetyping first so that we have an understanding of how you interact with the world. Because then everything that you put out there follows this North Star that we build for you. Your sales conversations drive that way, your content drives that way. The messaging that you're doing behind the scenes to connect with the right audience all drives in the same direction. So you want to have an understanding of who you are. You want to build a plan. So don't just randomly record some content because that felt good that day. Have a plan of like, what are the topics that you're going to cover? How are you going to present those things? When are they appropriate to put out so that you actually feel comfortable doing it? Because especially if you're popping on camera and you're going to do talking head thought leadership content, thought leaders who are shaking behind the camera or they get really serious and perfect because this is a reputation on the line, so the more prepared you are, the easier it is to actually kill it with your video content. And again, create that congruency when you have a plan behind it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you think I totally agree with you. Having a plan is super important. I started to say marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. No plan is perfect. But when you start with a plan, you know what your priorities are and you can start to measure whether things are working and what's not and make those course corrections and just continually improve your plan.

Angela Mulrooney
Correct.

Tim Fitzpatrick
But at some point I hear you when you should not just start, you do need to have a plan. But do you also think that I have never met somebody that is great on video from the start like, you got to get in your licks and look, I've been doing this for a year and a half or a little over that I still get better each and every time. That's just the natural process, is it not?

Angela Mulrooney
It is. And the funniest thing is if you come out of the gate perfect, you're probably going to be a little bit boring. People actually want to cheer for you, so they actually do want to see that evolution. They'll see that you get better and better at it. So, yes, you do at some point have to start and you are going to have to practice. And it's weird sitting in a room by yourself talking to a camera with no one, like talking to you. It is a skill we actually saw in the professional speaking industry. Some of the people who were legends getting them on camera, talking to a black hole, they tanked. So it is something that you have to learn and you just have to get comfortable and get out of your head because you're going to have all these little gremlins talking to you saying no one's going to listen to this, why would you do this? This is ridiculous. And it's going to play on you and it will make you want to stop. But you can even practice someone behind you, behind the camera so that you can kind of talk to them, but make it look like you're looking at the camera just to get that comfort at first. And then eventually it will become second nature. But it is a skill. It's a very learnable skill. But it's really uncomfortable to learn. So you have to be ready to set your ego aside, especially for the first 90 days. You know that your ego is going to take a beating because you're going to be uncomfortable with that. You're not going to necessarily get the engagement yet because people don't trust that you are there to stay or maybe that your 30 seconds will not be a complete waste of their time. So you have to be prepared for that. But it will definitely come.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So it's important to keep in mind when you say don't just act, you're going to have a plan, but you don't need to expect perfection from the beginning.

Angela Mulrooney
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I also think it shows that you're human because nobody is perfect from the beginning.

Angela Mulrooney
And when you're building a personal brand, it's all about being human. People want to see the personality behind it. They don't want to see that you're on this pedestal of perfection or professionalism. They want you to come down to their level and reach through the camera and touch them as another human being. So that's super important.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I always remind people, think about some of the most popular podcasts or YouTube channels, whatever it may be that you follow. Go back to the first two months that they started and you will go, oh my God, I cannot believe how bad this is compared to what they do now. It's night and day. I have not once done that where I was like, oh, my God, from day one. This is totally polished. It's not. That's just not the reality. So once you have your plan, you do need to get out there. Don't be afraid. Just get the monkey off your back. The other thing, too, I think that holds a lot of us back is too many of us care about what other people think. And when we get to a place where we don't care what people think, it is much easier to be ourselves when we get to that place.

Angela Mulrooney
Agreed. And what you've gone through and what you need to share with the world, someone out there needs to hear it. Yeah, it might even just be one person, but that one person. You could change their day because of what you're putting out there. And if you can focus on just one person at a time, building that audience of people who love what you're doing, that can be easier than being like, oh, I need to have 100,000 followers before I feel successful. You're going to have a long time coming before you feel successful, if that's what your goal is.

Why Every professional Should Craft Their Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. So why should every professional craft their personal brand on LinkedIn, especially ?

Angela Mulrooney
Because whether you are trying to get a job or you are trying to attract clients, people are going to creep on you. They want to see what you're about. They don't want to see a website that you had a perfect photographer and a perfect copywriter and perfect. A website is super static, and it doesn't show the dynamics behind who you are. And people don't trust perfection. They need to see that you show up all the time. You're trying all the time. And that includes even if you're trying to be someone's employee, they want to see what you think about. And it may not mean that you're getting out there and producing thought leadership content. It's the kind of stuff that you share, the kind of comments that you put out there, how you're trying to engage in the conversation because they want people involved in their company, especially now. The pandemic has changed. It's no longer dictatorships and companies. They know that they have to engage with their team. And so they're looking for people who are willing to be engaged because they know they're more likely to stay there and be happy as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So whether you're an employee or a business owner who's building that, either one of us can benefit from building our brand on LinkedIn.

Angela Mulrooney
Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
The other thing, too, I think. And we don't talk about the employee side of it too much because most of our audiences on the business owner side of it. But there is no stability in companies anymore as an employee. Building your brand on LinkedIn does offer you some stability because that is something you own. No matter where you go, what company you're at you take that with you. And there's some significant value in that, I think.

Angela Mulrooney
For sure. Like coming from the dental background where you're a healthcare practitioner and you're there as a contractor, and then if something goes wrong, you leave. What used to happen was the person who was contracting you would say, well, they moved to a completely different part of the city or they died, or they moved out of the country and make up these ridiculous stories so they didn't have to shift business over to where you are working next. And by having your presence, no matter where you go, your people can find you, and you want to go and connect with those connections that you had, whether you were working on a brief with someone or you were the head of marketing for a company. Get out there and connect with those people, because that work that you did, even when you leave the company, they're going to remember that. And you can go back and be like, you know what? You like the work that I did. Who can you connect me with that can help me get to where I want to go next? And people are so willing to help on LinkedIn because it is a networking platform. They know that that is their job. They want to get connected with the right people, and they also want to connect you with the right people as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things that you touched on before we went live was about the power of LinkedIn. To really be successful on LinkedIn, one you got to set up a strong profile, you got to be getting content out there, but then you also need to be doing proactive outreach. It's that combination that really helps people get to where they want to go. Can you dig into that a little bit? Like, why is that?

Angela Mulrooney
Well, people want to know the person behind it. So if they like what you're putting out there content wise, and then a message appears in their inbox and you're asking them, how is everything going? Not hitting them over the head with a pitch and telling them how amazing you are but actually having a human connection with them. Some people will respond with like, what do you actually want from me? And I'm like, I actually want to know how everything is going in your world.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Angela Mulrooney
And it's a super weird thing because most people just use it to pitch, pitch, pitch. And they're pitching to people who may not even be appropriate at all. So when you actually build that human connection and you'd be shocked at how many people will reply to a question about how they're doing, and then they'll open up. And the more you can open them up, the more likely you're going to find out, okay, they're a good fit. They're not a good fit. And if they are a good fit, then you're going to try and get them on a conversation with you. And that conversation doesn't have to be sales driven. It can be finding out, what do you do in your business? What do I do in my business? Do we have an opportunity to work synergistically? Do you have an opportunity to send me someone that you know because you do this and I do this. There's so many opportunities to actually connect with your audience. And during the pandemic, people who are really seeking connections, I think we're starting to move a little bit away from that. But if you are fanning over someone and then you get a message from them and you're like, oh, my God, I can't believe this person is talking to me. I commented on Ariana Huffington's Post and she replied back to it, and I was like, that's amazing, right? And if you have a good presence, you're going to have the same thing. People do that to me as well. And it always makes me laugh because I'm like, I'm really just such a normal human being. But thank you for thinking. I'm really up there person, but they want to really have that conversation and have that opportunity to build community with you.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you think when you're outreaching to people like you said, we stock people on LinkedIn, right? So when you send a connection request, how many people are actually going to your profile looking at what you're doing before they accept it, and when they see the content that you're putting out there is that making it easier for them to accept that initial request?

Angela Mulrooney
It definitely does play into that. It depends on the personality type. So some people might be looking for someone who is contributing. So creating thought leadership content is contributing. Some of them are looking to see how connected you are. And so if they have the ability to leverage your network, that might be a reason that they join with you. They also want to see what your thoughts are beyond your own thoughts. So are you getting out there and commenting and connecting with other people's content as well, or showcasing other people's content and not just making it narcissistic about what you need to promote, making it about helping everyone to rise. So there's lots of different factors that they're looking at, and they also want to get to know your story. Your about section is actually pretty darn important, and it's the most neglected part of most people's profiles. So I want you to take people and drag them down the rabbit hole of your story so that they're like, oh, I need to know this person, right? It's not just about the thought leadership. It's not just about your numbers. It's also about the human behind the brand.

Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things you touched on that I think most anybody that's active on LinkedIn, it then sees this. You're always going to get pitched, right? Sometimes. Look, I'll just say it if you look like you're human and it's not some bot profile, I accept the connection request. I'm very open about accepting stuff. But one of the reasons I do that, too, is I just want to see what people do after that. And so many people, like you said, they just don't take the time. They see I'm a marketing person. They immediately make assumptions. I accept the connection request and immediately getting pitched before they know anything about me. It's a spray and pray approach. Let me see how many people I can hit. And frankly, a lot of that hit a real speed bump because how long ago was it that LinkedIn dropped the connection request limit to 100 a week? I can't remember when that was.

Angela Mulrooney
That was May 2021.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. That really put a kink in a lot of people's armor who were spraying and praying. It's easy for people to do that. Right. Because they can automate it. Doing what you're talking about, connecting with people, asking how they're doing. You can't automate that. Like you have to just put in the time and do that work. Do you think a lot of people are gunshy and actually doing that because they just don't want to take the time to do it?

Angela Mulrooney
Well, one thing, you can automate it. So if you have the audience that you want to be reaching out to and you're using like Sales Navigator to program who are the right people from the right companies, you can have an automated message reaching out to them with that question if you don't have the time to do it. But what I find is most people, they're sending out connections because they're trying to grow their audience. So they're not actually connecting. They're just collecting people.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Correct.

Angela Mulrooney
Right. And so some of those people, they will never respond to you because they don't care or they may never reach out to you because they don't care. And the thing is, you can have so many followers. But is that turning into business? Is that turning into opportunities? Or are you just playing the popularity contest that we play in high school and you're not actually getting anything out of it? And it's time consuming to build content. It's time consuming if you're sending out messages. You want to be going after quality because especially it depends on the price point of what you do. So if you have a $20,000 product, you want to hit the right people who have the budget who are interested in that. And you don't have to do that. You don't have to build too many connections to actually have a very lucrative business with that. Right?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Angela Mulrooney
So you want to think about your strategy when you're trying to build your audience. Like, what are you trying to do? Is it the aesthetics of it, of having huge numbers or that you want to close business is that you want to build your network so that you have people that you can send your clients to. There's lots of different ways we can be thinking about why we're building our audience, but get really clear on that. So you're not doing a spray and pray. People can feel that when they get the message.

Tim Fitzpatrick
They know that it's automated.

Angela Mulrooney
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And that was my point. You can automate on LinkedIn up to a certain point, but once somebody responds to the automated message of how are you doing, you actually have to jump in and do the work.

Angela Mulrooney
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So no matter how well automated it is, at some point you have to jump in. Somebody has to manually do that work. And I think a lot of people are afraid of that. And that's why they just choose to do this surface level stuff that you may get some results, but it's not really going to work as well as it should.

Angela Mulrooney
Yes. And none of us wants to be rejected. We don't have someone give us a yellow thumbs up and go, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that, or we don't want them to not respond. You're like, I'm putting all this work, sending out all these messages and no one's replying to me?. It feels awful, but it's a numbers game. It's like dating. You have to go in and date a whole bunch of people to try and find the right person, and you have to do the same thing. You need to outreach and be like, okay, I'm going to go after this category of people, send a message to them. Are they actually engaging with me? Okay. They're not. Give it a good shot and then move on to the next one. So you need to actually figure out, especially if you're starting out, you may not have that ideal audience in mind that, you know, this is the 20% of the people that I work with that give me 80% of my income. So I'm just going to duplicate that. So you may have to do a bit of experimenting, but there's so much science behind what is happening on the platform as well. You can pull the analytics. You can see if they're coming from the right companies, the right professional backgrounds, the right geographical areas that are actually going to more likely become your clients.

A Simple Message You Can Use to Start a Conversation with People

Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you feel like so a lot of people are send the connection request and then immediately they're sending sales messages. Do you think that there is value once somebody is connected, should I be spending a certain amount of time liking their content, commenting on their content before I actually send a message that even if there's not a huge ask, is just, hey, how are you doing? Like, should I be interacting with their content before I start sending some type of message to them? What are your thoughts on that?

Angela Mulrooney
I think there's value in that if it's genuine. What I find is like, originally there was a bot called Duxsoup. D-u-x-s-o-u-p. And so you could automatically go and endorse people for their skills. And so when I suddenly see someone endorse me for a bunch of skills, and I'm like, you have never interacted with my skills. You probably don't know much about me because we're not even connected yet. Then that gives me the ick. It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. And I'm like, this is bullshit. That's not a great thing to do because you don't want to alienate people because something doesn't feel congruent. But going on. And if you're genuinely you think their stuff is cool and you have a comeback on what they posted, and then you reach out to them and you're reaching out to them because of what they posted. That's a good tactic, but we don't want to just be automating that. And you can do it with lots of different platforms. I got pitched by another company this morning for their LinkedIn tactic, and they can go in and do all those endorsements and all that stuff and go in and look at people's stuff so that people see that they were viewed by someone.

Angela Mulrooney
And I think that feels good for people's egos. But that only goes so far because people are very touchy feely. They can sense when something feels good or it doesn't feel good.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Social media is no different than face to face. And when you start to pitch immediately, it's like you're asking to marry somebody on the first date, which in most cases never happens. So we have to think about it in that regard. And one of the things you said that I think is so easy for people to overlook it, it has to be genuine, it has to be sincere because the vast majority of us see right through that. So if we can get out and interact that's the one nice thing about the platform is when I can connect with somebody, if I can interact with their content, they may start to get to know me a little bit before I actually reach out to them, because it does make a little bit more sense when somebody has a general idea of who the hell I am before I start sending them a direct message.

Angela Mulrooney
Yes.

Conclusion: What's Happening With LinkedIn Marketing Today That You Need To Know

Tim Fitzpatrick
Any other last minute tips that you want to leave us with LinkedIn, we've talked about a lot of different stuff. Your profile is obviously super important. You touched on the about section being one of the most overlooked aspects of the profile. We need to be targeted about who we're sending connection requests to, and we have to have a plan of what type of content we're going to put out there. To most people, I just listed those three things, and it's probably going to be very overwhelming. Any tips on knowing what we've talked about now? How do I get started? How do I keep it simple?

Angela Mulrooney
Pick one piece to work on at a time and focus on that. So if your about profile is awful, then start there and then figure out, okay, who is in my audience right now. Do they actually want to see what I'm doing or do I need to build a new audience? If I'm building that new audience or appealing to my existing audience, what kind of content do they need to see? So it can feel very overwhelming to build out a whole plan. That's why people hire people like me to help them to do this because it is overwhelming. But if you are going to do it yourself, just pick one piece and that about section, optimize. Your profile is piece number one if you're going to use LinkedIn. And then the other pieces will fall in place. The more you understand who you are and what you're trying to put out there, figure out your motivation, whether it is because you want to feel good by doing this or you're trying to drive your business or you're trying to change the world with what you know, whatever that is, understand it and be okay with that and lean into that. Because that's going to help you to be more who you are. It will allow you to be more real. It'll allow you to be able to connect with people on a human level, not on this fake level where we kind of question your morals or your motivation.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Angela, you've dropped some serious value. I've learned a lot. I know people that are listening will as well. If they want help, they want to talk to you and learn more about what you do and how you can help them put that plan together and make sure they get started in the right direction. Where's the best place for them to go?

Angela Mulrooney
So they can go to my websitewhich is scrolling across right now.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes, it is.

Angela Mulrooney
And I have quite a few courses, but the one that is a good starting point is the LinkedIn level up crash course. And it's four weeks. It dives into your brand archetype, how to build your brand story, how to actually build your audience and also build out the messaging for it. In four weeks, you get this really high level, but also quite in depth education on LinkedIn and it's easy to follow. And if you're scared, it's a nice way to start having your handheld so they can really get yourself out there comfortably.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. So that is unleashinginfluence dot com. Unleashinginfluence dot com. Angela obviously knows what the hell she's talking about. So head on over there. If you are struggling with LinkedIn, head on over there. Honestly, I'm just going to tell you right now, there are very few LinkedIn experts that I would trust. You've shown me today that you are one that I can trust. So thank you for that and thank you for taking the time today. For those of you that are watching, listening if you're struggling with your marketing, you're not sure what that next right step is to get you where you want to go, head on over to our website at RialtoMarketing dot com. That's R-I-A-L-T-O Marketing dot com. Click on the get a free consultation button. I guarantee you will get a ton of value and walk away having some clarity on where your priorities should be right now. Thanks so much for tuning in. Until next time, take care.