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If you think LinkedIn is just for professionals looking for their next career move, you’ve got it all wrong. 

LinkedIn is fast becoming a hotspot for marketing and in today’s episode with Angela Mulrooney we’re breaking down the two ways you can leverage this platform to the hilt (without being spammy in the DM’s).

If you’re looking to up your LinkedIn game, this episode will get you there. 

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Dip your toe into LinkedIn with Angela’s courses, or dive all the way in with her 90-day programs! 

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Check out the entire library of organic promotion and  social media episodes

Alyson Lex 0:03
When you're trying to generate business, LinkedIn is pretty amazing. If your audience is there, alright, so if you've listened to Jenny and I for more than five seconds, you know, that we want you to be where your audience is. And if your people are hanging out on LinkedIn, building the right kind of personal brand, showing up the right way, is critical. And so Dr. Angela Mulrooney is here with us, because that's her jam. That's what she does. She is all about building that personal brand and generating business on LinkedIn. In fact, Angela, didn't you say 100% of your business comes from LinkedIn?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 0:50
Yes, for two of the companies that I built, it's been 100% organic content and relationship reaching out and communicating that have built those two companies.

Jennie Wright 1:01
That's pretty astounding, quite honestly, very impressive. Makes me feel like I'm not utilizing LinkedIn enough. But we're going to learn from you today. So let's do that. I think we're, we're excited about this episode. It is a selfish episode that Alex and I were like, Yeah, we definitely want to have Angela on to talk about this. So talk to us about the the ways that you can leverage LinkedIn, what does that look like? What's like we obviously we have organic, we have route reach? What other ways and how do we leverage those two?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 1:32
Well, you need to figure out really what works with your brand and what people need from you. So for a lot of people, people really want to understand who the person is behind the brand. So having the perfect corporate logo, having the perfect corporate photographs and videos, isn't actually what people are seeking, they want to get a good feel of the person behind the brand. They want to know what your values are, they want to see that you have personality characteristics in common, because they want to feel like they're dealing with someone who they can get along with. They still value your expertise, they still need you to be up here on a pedestal. But they also want those other factors to match. So they feel like you're someone that they would actually like to have a conversation with. Because if you're going after an expert, who is boring as mud, or has no personality versus someone who has the same credentials, and has personality and shares those values, who are you going to want to spend your time with, who even want to spend your money with probably the person you have those commonalities with. So when you're looking at designing content, and looking at how you're going to put yourself out there, one of the best things you can be doing is video. But video is kind of scary, this little black hole and become this like tunnel of doom for people where they start getting in their head that they have to be perfect. And so they become really boring on content and really measured. And so no one really wants to engage with it, you have to be able to showcase who you are, and you are going to have to be a bit larger than you are in regular life. Because we're in two dimensions here, we lose that energy that we normally have when we're in person with someone. So we are going to have to be able to reach through the camera, user space, better user voice, better use or physicality, to create that engagement beyond just the words that we're using to showcase that we're at smarty pants, to showcase that we're a thought leader that we can actually help people with what we know.

Alyson Lex 3:15
So do you focus more on the organic content, the articles and the posts and the gate? That part of it? Or do you focus on like the the messaging and the DMS, the inboxes? On LinkedIn? Where do you focus your time,

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 3:32
both of them. So you can go with full on organic content strategy, you can get quite a bit of traction, you can go full on with a messaging strategy, it can get quite a bit of traction. But when you marry those two concepts together, that's where you get the synergetic exponential growth of the people who want to talk to you, the people who are following you, the people are engaging with your content. Because the organic content allows people to get a feel for you. The messaging allows them to actually get to communicate with you. And when they have that feeling. And they have that communication. And they get to really see those two things working together, especially if they get on a phone call with you after they've been following your content after they've been pen Pelling with you on the messaging system. There's this wow factor that happens for people that they actually get to talk to you this person that they've been admiring this person that they've been following this person who has been inspiring them to reach higher with their own goals in their professional life.

Jennie Wright 4:26
When you're putting out a call to action on LinkedIn, especially say in the DMS or in an outreach, how do you do it without really coming across as being aggressive? or spammy? What's the best way because I know with LinkedIn, I'm always getting those aggressive DMS all the time, and I'm an instant No, but what is your recommended way of approaching people? Is it the long game like a longer message thread? Do you invite people to call what do you do?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 4:54
Well, you you kind of want to date a little bit before you get married and people are getting smacked over his head with the He's pitches all the time. And it's so off putting people just go, delete, or they just block that person or they just move on to the next message. So you do have to have an organic conversation. Start with asking them how they're doing, you would be amazed at what people will tell you by simply asking them, How was everything in their world? Then go from there, then you could start picking up the commonalities between the two of you. But if you're like, Oh, I really liked your profile, because you had this in this list. And I'm like, well, that doesn't show me that you actually, we have anything in common? I have people who are instantly trying to jump to a phone call now as well, someone's putting that check. Yeah, they're like, who was teaching that I'm using really cool wish to have a chat? And I'm like, what would we be chatting about? Like, why do you want to chat with me, usually, I'm finding it's actually multi level marketing companies that are starting to push that. But I don't want to spend half an hour of my day when I have very limited time to actually have calls with people with someone that I know nothing about. So you have to actually have a little bit that back and forth, do that little bit of dating to see if you actually are a fit for each other before you invite someone to a phone call. So you want to ask them a little bit about what is happening in their world. And see, show them a little bit about what is happening in your world and see if there is actually a point in having a phone call because not everyone that you connect with, is someone you're going to do business with or that you're going to buy from. So you need to make sure that you're using your time well, because you can spend a lot of time on Discovery calls. And at the end of the day, be not not have moved yourself forward not have learned anything more about your audience or not have made any sales.

Alyson Lex 6:35
I so I have a strategy of connecting. And you know, my reason really is the last few years, I haven't been to a bunch of in person conferences like usual. So I'm trying to connect on LinkedIn and get my networking Mojo

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 6:52
fix, if you will. But

Alyson Lex 6:55
I find that people were very naturally suspicious of my intentions, even though my intentions are not to pitch. That's not how I like to go about my life. And do you mean how do you disarm people without them just thinking, Oh, here we go. It's another pitch. Because I mean, we get them all the time. Right?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 7:15
Right. Well, I think starting with that human question, like if you walked up someone at a networking event, you're not like, Hi, this is what I'm going to tell you. Right? You're gonna be like, Hey, how's everything going? So start with that start with a natural conversation starter. And as that progresses, ask them about their professional life, like, don't go and be like, Oh, I saw this and this on your profile. That feels a little bit weird. It feels a little bit like someone is spying on you. It feels better when they actually ask you. And then you can explain where things are at Because oftentimes, two people's profiles aren't up to date. So if you're like, Oh, I see you're doing this and then the person comes back. It's like, I haven't actually done that in five years. I just happened to not update my profile. It's kind of one of those won't want want moments where you're almost dead in the water. Because you you made a presumption and nobody likes to have things presumed about them, they'd rather be asked and actually have that organically come out.

Jennie Wright 8:06
Allison has this cool strategy. And this happens usually on Facebook, and she calls her she calls it her pitch me. B word strategy. And I love this. So anybody that works with pitch, yaw pitch, be Yeah. So it's great, because she get her and I both both get aggressive DMS all over the place. And the person will be like, Hey, I saw they you know, you wear glasses. This was my favorite one of Allison's, and they're like, they were trying to get Allison to do something that something did that when I was at Olson they wanted to, like, naturally heal my eyesight. Yeah, naturally heal her eyesight. Okay, no, you know, we're not no judgment. But we're judging the way. We're totally judging the way they did it. Like,

Alyson Lex 8:55
in you know, hey,

Jennie Wright 8:56
I noticed that the way that you came at this was a little bit blah, blah, blah, I think I could probably help you craft a better way to you know, blah, blah, blah, on your on your sales copy or something. It was it was perfect. It was beautiful. Because she's like, Oh, if you're going to come at me with this, I'm going to come out with the fact that I think that your copy is really poopy. And I could probably help you with that. Would you like help with that? And silence every time? It's Yes, I love it. Now.

Alyson Lex 9:19
I landed one sale once. I did, I did one sale. But yeah, I mean, the aggressive DMS and the aggressive behavior. It's all over the place. It's on every social network, right? Crazy.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 9:35
Well, people just want to get to the phone call, right? So they don't want to go through the other steps. I get it. They're in a hurry. But for most people, they're not in a hurry to buy from you. So you kind of have to sit back, let things organically come forward. But it's funny because I do the same thing when people send me those kinds of messages to get messaging working for you. Is this trying to sales or not? And a lot of people We'll come back and think, Well, it's working so great. I'm like, Okay, we'll go with that.

Alyson Lex 10:05
The other one I like, are the thinly veiled. Right? I get these on Instagram most, but I do get them on LinkedIn. And it's like, Oh, I see you're in the coaching space. How long have you been doing that?

Jennie Wright 10:19
Where does it say I'm a coach? Yeah,

Alyson Lex 10:20
I'm not. But like, this isn't I know what you're trying to get to? And I'm very upfront. So how do we? How do we choose who we're going to reach out to? How do we choose who we connect with? How do we? How do we choose those right

Jennie Wright 10:35
relationships? Go good.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 10:38
If you already work with people, if you already have an existing business, and now you're trying to bring social media into it, take a look at who your best buyers are? Who are the top 20% for giving you 80% of your income and profile them? Find out what they like where they're from? Are they from certain regions of the country? or certain regions of the world? Do they have? Are they married have children? Are they from certain educational backgrounds, like profile them as deeply as you possibly can. So you can take that information and start going after people who are similar. You don't want to throw spaghetti against the wall and hope something sticks, especially with messaging. And on LinkedIn, because you have such a limited amount of messages that you can put out there. So you do not want to waste a single step on there, because then you're going to be put behind Biden once the way that they changed the algorithm a year ago. So again, figure out as much as you can. LinkedIn has gives you the ability to pull from even specific universities, specific programs, you can pick what years they graduated from, if you're going after a certain age range, there's so many things you can be doing to target very, very well, who are the right people for you. So spend the time and actually do that. Now, if you're starting off brand new, and you don't have clients, take your best guess. And then look at your messages, look at the science of what is happening. You know, if you have a group of people that have similar backgrounds, or a similar avatar, and they're not responding to your messages, but this other avatar is okay, why is that avatar responding to messages? Are they turning into sales at the end of the day? So you want to dig into the science of what is actually working for you so that you get better and better at hunting, because you can spend a lot of time and waste? Well, you waste months, not going after the right people and not be any further ahead with your with your messaging strategy, which is a big part of how you're actually going to fill your sales funnel.

Jennie Wright 12:29
Okay. There's a bullet. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you on that I, I used to try and do some time on this on a regular basis, just trying to find the right people. And yeah, there's some work involved. But once you sort of figure out who the right people are, it gets a lot easier. And you can start to sort of look at people and judge a little bit more as hopefully as long as their bios are up to date. And then it makes it a lot easier. I kind of want to talk about the organic outreach portion of what you do as well do you want to share like some of the strategies that we could use for more of that organic side of things.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 13:05
One of the things that is working really well is actually getting people from a conversation into group. So instead of just messaging, messaging, messaging, and no one replying to if you get them into a group, then there's their support there, they're seeing content that they're not necessarily seeing on your regular profiles, they're kind of getting this inside edge with your information. And then you can drive that to actually become phone calls. Instead of just going through the messaging system and hoping they look at your content. If you drive them to the group, they see the caliber of people that are in that group are interested in what you are an expert in, that actually drives them more easily into a phone call. And the people who accept into the group are more likely to be your ideal kind of clients. So that's another way to filter out. So you've got this big filter at the top of who you want to send those messages to who you want to invite to that group. Those people who choose to be part of your group are more close to your ideal clients, those who get on a phone call are getting even closer, and then you drop them into your program.

Jennie Wright 14:05
And when we're talking about groups, sorry, I'll sound just for 30. We're talking LinkedIn groups. Is that correct?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 14:11
Yes. Okay, thinkers. Yes. And if your audience is on Facebook, the same kind of tactics work. But LinkedIn groups, they kind of used to be this dead thing. But if they're very specific to your audience, and you're putting out really good content on there, that is feeding them and keeping them stimulated at a higher level than your regular feed is they actually work quite well.

Alyson Lex 14:32
I was gonna say, I feel like, you know, we think about Facebook groups of people we're in at FAU, I'm in 80,000 Facebook groups, right? And so they you kind of get lost and LinkedIn groups are still more popular if they're the right kind of engaged group. Is that correct? That

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 14:51
is correct. Yes. And you again, you want to, you want to be taking people on the steps with the content that you're putting on there as well, to help Have them get to know you to give them tips and tricks that they can use for themselves. So they get to see oh, yeah, this information is actually useful. Oh, yeah. Angela wants to have a chat with me. Okay, yeah, I'd love to have a chat with them. Because this stuff is actually exactly what I need right now. So you're helping them to go down the garden path of seeing themselves in the content that you're putting out there. That is what's going to drive them to a phone call. So you want to be very intentional with how you're putting the content out there in the order that you're going. Because you're gonna have people going in at lots of different points of when the content has been up? Yes, they could go back through to the start of the content that was posted in the group, they're not likely to do that. So you need to be constantly thinking, Okay, if someone is entering at this point, and this piece of content is going up, is that going to be over their head? Or is that going to hit them, even though they're coming in late to the game, and then is the rest of the content also going to help them get to where we want

Jennie Wright 15:50
them to go? That makes sense. Because depending on where they are in their their buyer journey, their customer journey, they're playing all journey, having the right content out at the right time is really going to make that difference, right? Yeah,

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 16:04
and you want to play for the people who are joining, as well as the people who were already there, because they're there for a reason. So you want to just give them the BD beginning steps content, you want to give them content that's digging deeper for them as well. But again, you still have to make sure you're not going over people's head where you really join.

Jennie Wright 16:19
Fair enough. What is the best content strategy that you've personally utilized for yourself? That's giving you the most success on LinkedIn?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 16:29
When you say content strategy, you mean type of content? Or what yeah,

Jennie Wright 16:32
what's your personal like, what works for you. So some people like to post the whole, you know, just like, hey, five things you can do to take today to achieve ABC and XYZ or, you know, those like all those different kinds of posts, what's your what has been your most successful type of post are your content.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 16:49
My successful content is the stuff that talks about what it's really like to be doing to going to be going through a pivot, which is what people come to me for. So what is it like to be at that precipice of, oh, my gosh, I can stay exactly where I was. Or I can pivot over here and take a new path and gamble on myself that this is going to work out, or maybe it won't work out. So talking about that pivot point tends to be the thing that gets the most engagement, it gets the most comments against the most suddenly, a whole bunch of phone calls show up on my schedule that were there before and a whole bunch of people join the group. So that can happen through, I have a newsletter that goes out as well called Mastering your personal brand. And that gets tons of views like every time I post a newsletter, it gets 2500 views. And then the organic video content works really well as well, because that's those two things play off the same topics. So one is a written version one is a dynamic video version, where I'm talking to a point trying to get them to think about how they can help themselves, whereas the newsletter tends to tell more of the story of why they need to help themselves. So those two strategies work really well for me.

Alyson Lex 17:59
Press I like, go ahead, Jennie. No, I just was saying impressive. That's all Oh, got it. I was gonna say I like how you kind of have this system. And that works together to take them through that journey. So your newsletter has the more advanced stuff in air quotes, that your beginners your your brand new people to your world, it might be over their heads? That's kind of the the post or do you use articles? Do you leverage that part?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 18:30
Yes, the newsletters are like articles. So you can you can do technical newsletters, you can do story newsletters. So I typically, I'm usually storytelling, either my story or my client story to show people Okay, at this point in the journey, this is what you're gonna be feeling. And it's kind of amazing to me, because I often have mostly men, though, unlike those the deeply emotional newsletters are the ones that have the most men respond to them, not women, which you would think it'd be the opposite, that that super that vulnerability would have women going, Oh, this is amazing. But it's the men who are going, Oh, my God, you told my story. Wow. So it's interesting to see how that works. And it's time and time again, the really emotional ones are the ones that draw more more male audience members to comment and like, wow,

Jennie Wright 19:22
I didn't I never would have thought that's the case. But also, I like it. So there's a lot that you're doing that I think is really amazing. There's so much to understand about LinkedIn. Seems like you have it all sort of figured out. I see. Obviously, on your website, there's a couple of courses that you have all, you know, listed out that teach people pretty much everything that you've been talking about today. Am I right?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 19:45
Yes. So the courses are, are just dipping your toes into the personal branding. Most people if they really want to do this, they join one of my 90 Day masterminds, where we go from a one on one branding session. into 90 days together, where you're taking your personal brand. You're pivoting, you're building your LinkedIn, you're building the business behind what you want to be selling, as well as learning to build the program that you're gonna be selling so that by the end of 90 days, you have an education in being a thought leader, you have an education in business, because most people are coming from the corporate world, they haven't had to be an entrepreneur, they haven't had to be a salesperson for themselves, advocating for yourself versus advocating for a business. Totally different story. So it tends, it really walks them through everything that they need to know. It helps create automations, they get access to my brain, my scripts, my rolodex, if they need to get them to where they want to go so that they have all the systems in place, they can build a million dollar business that they want, simply with themselves and a VA and the automations that we put in place.

Alyson Lex 20:47
Well, that sounds awesome. And I have been on the site, but I'm going to go check out those programs myself. And what I'll go ahead and do is I will put a link in the show notes, we'll put a link in the show notes to the courses for those that want to dip their toes, and maybe some of those 90 day programs for those that are ready to dive in headfirst. And I can't thank you enough for being here. I love talking about LinkedIn because like Jenny said, this is a little selfish so that I can begin to improve my my game on there.

Jennie Wright 21:20
Absolutely, and we had such a good time doing this. So if you want to hear more about Dr. Angela Mulvaney and everything she has to say about LinkedIn and how you can use it for your own personal branding, your business building and all of that, you're gonna want to check out the show notes at system to thrive.com forward slash 192. You'll find everything that you need to know about Angela as well as links to everything that we've talked about. In addition, if you are listening to this podcast and you want to catch more of them, please do subscribe or follow. Depending on where you're listening to us. It's all different buttons. So pick the button that fits for you wherever you're listening to us. You don't miss another episode with Allison, myself and our amazing guests. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to y'all soon.