Ep 116 The No.1 mistake that's probably hurting your LinkedIn profile, with Danielle Fitzpatrick Clark Part 1

Can your LinkedIn profile serve you in much more powerful ways than just a virtual resume? What if you could turn it into a website or funnel? In  this conversation with Danielle Fitzpatrick-Clark, a digital marketing maven and dream client attraction specialist, we unravel the key to transforming LinkedIn profiles into irresistible lead magnets. Danielle shares her disruptive strategies, offering clear, actionable steps on making your profile an engaging experience for your target audience.

Taking the concept of buyer personas, Danielle focuses on how event planners can leverage this tool to their advantage. Enlightening us on the motivations behind different types of buyers, she offers tips on using DISC personality assessments and apps to generate successful leads.

Danielle is an international best-selling author, speaker and CEO of Influence Builder. She works with influencers and mission-based entrepreneurs to help them create impact, influence and powerful platforms and multiple income streams in their business. Her clients reach multiple 7 and 8-figure business income levels, quickly and effectively, avoiding dead ends, massive gaps, and instead building strong foundations and lasting results for both them and those they serve.

Quotes from this episode:

"I don't believe that we should be building a LinkedIn profile as a resume. In fact, I think that's the worst thing that you can do."

"I can pretty much look at a profile and know exactly the personality that I'm looking at."

Danielle's website:
https://influencebuilder.com/

Connect with Danielle:
Email: info@influencebuilder.com
LinkedIn: danielle-fitzpatrick-clark
FB: Influencer Builder
IG: @dfccoaching

Danielle's LinkedIn Sales Accelerator Bootcamp:  https://entrepreneurcity.kartra.com/page/gsd1384

Connect with Adelaine:
Email: uponarrivalpodcast@gmail.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I don't believe that we should be building a LinkedIn profile as a resume. In fact, I think that's the worst thing that you can do. In essence, your LinkedIn profile needs to be highly optimized and it needs to really move people to the next step, like a website would.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Welcome to Upon Arrival, a show that uncovers stories and strategies that make up all the moving parts of business events tourism. With me, Adelaine Ung, you'll hear a bit of that audio wisdom from my podcast guest again in just a few minutes, because it was mind-boggling to me when I heard it, one of those moments when I felt like slapping my forehead and going but of course, why didn't I realize that before Now? It's no secret that LinkedIn is the preferred social media platform for the majority of event planners and people who work in business tourism, but most of us are still figuring out how it works, especially since many people have shifted some of our time back to what we were doing before COVID, after the pandemic and lockdowns ended. So we kind of need to make every inch count when our target audience happens to visit our profile. My guest is Danielle Fitzpatrick-Clark, a dream client attraction specialist and digital marketing expert known for her disruptive strategies on LinkedIn. She's also an author and the CEO and founder of Influence Builder and the Influencer Builder Club. Danielle dropped so many strategies and actionable steps I decided to create not two but three parts to our interview, so you have a bit more time to implement each tip you find relevant If you want to up your game on LinkedIn and turn your profile into a lead generating experience. I'd be grabbing a pen and notebook right now.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Here's part one. Danielle, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here. Thank you, I'm so glad to be here. Well, I am so pleased to be speaking with a superstar digital marketer and Influence Builder with loads of tips and tricks up her LinkedIn sleeves. I have about a million questions and what you're doing must be working, because you have almost 30,000 followers on the platform and you have a top digital marketing voice badge that's awarded by LinkedIn on your profile, and you're also known as a digital disruptor, which is that really sexy turn that all of us are attracted to. We're not getting too much into the nuts and bolts just yet. What is it do you believe you do with LinkedIn that's disruptive?

Speaker 1: 2:27

Yeah Well, I don't sell sleazy on LinkedIn. How about that?

Speaker 2: 2:36

We would hope not, and we wouldn't be talking if you did.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So I'm just kidding, because I know you're just full of gold.

Speaker 2: 2:43

That's why we're here.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Yeah Well, I mean, there's this idea that there's a couple of things that make me disruptive. One of the things is that I don't believe that we should be building a LinkedIn profile as a resume. In fact, I think that's the worst thing that you can do. You really need to create a resume. That's a lead generation magnet. I mean, it's bringing leads in and it moves them to where they need to go. So, in essence, your LinkedIn profile needs to be highly optimized and it needs to really move people to the next step, like a website would. So profile is your social media platform and the profile is essentially a website. So I mean, if that makes me disruptive, I think that just goes against what a lot of people are telling them and like oh, build it as a website. I'm like well, build it as an experience for your ideal customer instead.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Yeah, I can tell you that the event planners who are listening to this would have just absolutely loved what you just said. Building as an experience yeah, but can you explain what that actually looks like on a LinkedIn profile?

Speaker 1: 3:37

Yeah, that's a really good question too. So there's a lot of ways to do this, and LinkedIn keeps changing. I mean, they've changed a lot of things even here in the last month. Luckily, being a disruptor and being somebody who has a large following and considered a micro-influencer on LinkedIn, I get a lot of stuff before everybody else does and I get to try a lot of things before, and so one of the things that they did have, which I'm really upset they took away, was that they used to have a story pop-up. So your profile photo. If you click on it and I believe I still have it, but they're not allowing people to do it now it would pop up and it would have a video, and so I mean, nothing creates a better experience in having a video on the very top of your profile, like you could for a website. So unfortunately, we don't have that piece anymore, but that is a really great piece to have. It's personalized because it's you and you're talking to your ideal client. But when we're talking about having an experience, you really have to step into who is it that I'm trying to attract over to my LinkedIn profile and what do I want them to see to get them to continue reading Because and this is a recent stat, I think it's late 2022, into 2023.

Speaker 1: 4:45

But the average length of time that a prospect or reader will spend on somebody's profile, if they continue on, is actually seven to eight minutes, which is unheard of for even a website.

Speaker 1: 5:00

But that's the power of having your LinkedIn set up so that it captures their attention and then moves them to the next pieces and then they can go on to other pieces. Like you know, your articles, your post, it can even go into your experiences. You can have recommendations and testimonials so they can look at all that stuff, and so if they're staying on for seven to eight minutes, they're digging in pretty good. You just have to make sure that you have seven to eight minutes worth of information on your profile and you do need to post and you do want to work with that too. So that's why you want to create the experience, because they will continue reading. If that's the average seven to eight minutes average, then we've got a platform full of people who like information and they like information and we're human beings. So what are human beings looking for? They're looking to see how you can help them.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Yeah, Does that mean that you need to be putting up quite a bit of content on your LinkedIn profile and that means, I guess, creating newsletters, creating lots of posts? You know how regularly should you be posting all that sort of thing?

Speaker 1: 6:07

Yeah, Well and here's the great news is that you don't have to. You don't have to like redo a ton. You can actually pull from some of your other content and bring it into LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is. They do want to be competitive with Google, so they're their own search engine, and so LinkedIn is looking for content. They want content from you.

Speaker 1: 6:25

They do want original content, but now, with you know all of the AI, we can actually take a blog article that we've written and say, hey, can you rewrite this in a different tone of voice? And then that's new original content that can go into like an article. And then you have an article and you can pull that back into your profile, have it be in the featured section and then just think of your featured section as a journey of what information people need, who are prospects to learn about you and what you can do for them. So our blogs are great for our websites. We can take that information and put it into articles and then create a journey of that.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Sometimes it can be even better to pull from blogs because I don't know about you, but whenever I've written blogs, I've just like oh, I have an idea and I'm going to write it and sometimes there's no rhyme or reason as to why. Yeah, so I can actually pick and choose, like, OK, so I wrote that one in November and that one of December of last year and those actually go together and then I can create this and you can recreate all that on LinkedIn and make it original content by just sending it through some of these amazing applications that we have now with AI. So that's the feature. Part is in that top third of your LinkedIn profile. So it's just. It's just another way to create the experience, right?

Speaker 2: 7:35

Yeah, I'm just wondering how you worked all this out. I mean, you must have been in the trenches right from the beginning.

Speaker 1: 7:41

Yeah Well, we got really in the trenches in 2020. I was already building up my LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 7:45

COVID year.

Speaker 1: 7:46

Yeah, covid year, so 2020, we went. We went all in on LinkedIn in 2020, meaning that we knew the platform really well, but we knew that the platform was going to have to change because there were so many people working from home and all the platforms were changing event right. I mean. That changed a lot for any of your listeners at our event plans. I used to run events so so that was a big reason why I had LinkedIn and I loved using LinkedIn because I ran events in different cities so I could get very specific on who my ideal client was and where they were located, and that's what I used a lot of LinkedIn for at the beginning, and just we just grew from there.

Speaker 1: 8:22

2020 hit, you know, people weren't able to run the in-person events anymore, so they started to move to the online portion, which I actually love because I've been running online events since 2008 summits and all that. So that was actually the thing that I was doing first and foremost. And so Eventbrite had to change and so they brought everything into online events. So people had to shift and pivot very quickly, and LinkedIn had LinkedIn events, and so that's where we spent a lot of our time on LinkedIn in 2020. And then we were teaching people how to create their profile so that it was attracting in people, their ideal clients, and then moving those ideal clients into their sales pipelines online, and it was just a lot of testing and tweaking, but we had a really good baseline anyway, because that's what we do. We do digital marketing. We did events too. We did them online and in person, so it wasn't too much of a jump for me to go full online and then to move people into a sales pipeline for online products that we already had and services that we already had. It was very difficult for other people who all of their sales were coming from networking, referral partners or even in person speaking or events, and so that was definitely the people that were coming in and wanting to work with us, and so we were just testing and tweaking all these different scenarios. When it came to the profile and things always change.

Speaker 1: 9:51

But here's the other thing is that, well, the profile acts like a website, and I even have clients that are influencers on LinkedIn and they say the same thing. They all say the same thing. Nobody even goes to my website, they just go to my LinkedIn profile and they get everything they need there. I mean, that's the feedback they got and that's the feedback they've given to us too. And then, of course, we got to prove it.

Speaker 1: 10:18

So we test and tweak and we see okay, is this actually true, is this actually what's happening? Are people going to the website? And so we came up with another system called buying personas, so we're able to take people's ideal clients and then put them into quadrants of like what kind of a buyer are they and what kind of a buyer are they online? So people will buy differently in stores versus how they buy online. So we really have to start focusing on what is their buying persona online, and is that different than how they buy in stores or in person? And so that was a big piece, too, that we brought in to LinkedIn, and how to create these profiles and the messaging to use and how to take them through an experience, because how they buy is actually how they'll move through your profile.

Speaker 2: 11:03

Well, I'm actually curious now what did you find in terms of how people are buying online and how that differs from how they might buy in a shopping center or elsewhere?

Speaker 1: 11:13

Yeah, so you have buyers that you know, like window shoppers. They're a really good example. They're like oh, I see it, I like it, I'm going to go get it and it's a product, it's something that they can see, they can feel and it's that instant gratification. I can actually touch this. This is something I just bought. This is mine. I'm going to use this immediately.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Well, there are people online who will buy, and they will buy because they want that instant gratification. Now, they don't actually have a product in hand. They're buying a digital product. So they will buy that for a different reason than I'm going to have something in my hands, something tangible in my hands. It may be that I'm going to have something in my hands, tangible, that I can use for my business, or the other piece is that I'm going to have something that's digital in my hands and I bought it because I really like the person that was selling it. I like what they're about and I feel like they understand exactly what I need.

Speaker 1: 12:09

So this is going to be the product that works for me. So it's that relatability piece. So there's a big difference because we're buying more in-hand products in a store versus digital products online, so it's really for a different purpose, but still, instant gratification is one of those as well. People like that instant oh instant download or instant access to a course or a membership, so that piece stays the same, whereas why we buy it and how we and what we use to buy it. We're still emotional buyers, right, but there's different things that will trigger different emotions and based on those emotions is really just how that person, how they view, how they view where they're at and where they want to go.

Speaker 2: 12:48

So would it work just as well if what you're selling is, or what you're hoping to get, are conversations with your ideal client, because what your offer is is to actually plan out and execute a whole event, and these are big deals. These are not, I guess, the $20 workbooks that you might get to move a certain needle for you. So how would you go about doing it in that space if what you really want is the big time sales conversations?

Speaker 1: 13:19

So let me just get a little more information so I can give you a really good answer. Are you talking about big time high ticket programs? Are you talking about sales for events?

Speaker 2: 13:28

Well, I'm talking about, for example, if you are an event planner or if you are a destination bureau and what you want is to be able to have a conversation with somebody who is planning an event and you would love for them to either employ you to have that event in your destination or to hire you as an event planner to execute that event on location, because perhaps that client is overseas.

Speaker 1: 13:54

Right, okay, so this is where it gets really fun. So this is how I would break it down, for this is how I would break it down. So there's two different scenarios here. So we want to attract in clients that need an event planner. So that's a little bit different than we want to attract in buyers who want to have their event here in this area or in this area in the world that we're at. So we've got two different buying personas.

Speaker 1: 14:21

So for somebody who wants an event planner to run their event, let's just think about who the host is and what they want to do. So the first thing that I can think of for an ideal client and they may have several different types of ideal clients that they like to work with is somebody who's like you know what. I have run so many events and every time I run my own event and I do all the things myself and I actually don't show up in the stage the best that I can. I don't end up selling as many programs into my things as I want to. I just want somebody to do it for me. I really need that and I need it now. So the reason why they're buying is so that they can remain competitive in their industry and actually show up on their own stage. So that would be. There'd be two types of buying personas that I would be looking for a spontaneous buying persona and a competitive edge. Now, the spontaneous one they're all about impact and so they're trying to create an impact from the event that they are, that they're hosting and they're producing, and so if they're trying to create an impact, they really need to focus on how am I creating that impact? I need somebody else to do the planning. So they're the opposite of the planners and so that buying persona works really well as a spontaneous, because the other end of the buying personas is more of the planner than methodical buying persona. So it really works to their advantage and that's why I say spontaneous buying. So if you look at like so disk, so disk, personality assessments right, and a lot of people like cringe when I say disk or they love disk. We're just using it in terms of generalize. Let's just generalize.

Speaker 1: 15:56

The type of person that needs a planner is usually an eye personality and influencer personality, because they're all about impact and they're the opposite of the analytical planners. They conscientious to see personalities but see person, and I'm not saying that all event planners are see person now is, but if they're planning things and they've got checklists and stuff there, either that they're on that hemisphere either a D or a C, and so it's a really great match for somebody who's an eye person. Now, not all I personalities are spontaneous buying personas, but a lot of them are, and so the great thing about that type of buying persona, as it relates to that personality, is that they buy really fast, so they're one of the best buyers, because the thing is that they're going to have to like what you say and how you make it about how you make it about them and their audience. So if, if I was a planner and I was looking for a specific personality on LinkedIn, then there's there's one tool that I love to use, which is Crystal knows. So crystal knowscom, right, and so that's a great LinkedIn tool where you can actually download that log into your LinkedIn and it will tell you the disk personality of that person based on their profile and the words that they're using. So you know, it's not 100% that because they're an eye personality, they're going to have a spontaneous buying persona, but the chances are pretty good and so Wow, yeah, and so that's what I, that's the first thing I would do. I have seen that app. Yeah, it's a great app. It's a great app. It's not cheap but it it's definitely worth it If that's if you really want to narrow in on that ideal client with LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 17:37

Sometimes it's hard to tell the personalities if you're not used to looking for certain words or if you're not used to looking for certain things. So another, another dead giveaway just from my experience as somebody who's either an eye personality or a D personality is emojis in the titles. So it's usually a dead giveaway. Or or they have a profile full of emojis and that stuff you can tell like OK, so if they're not completely an eye personality, chances are they got it somewhere, because you're not going to see a lot of planners, a lot of conscientious personalities.

Speaker 1: 18:20

They're going to use their periods is what they're going to use and they're going to use their bullet points and they're going to use their check, that's they're going to create a profile based on how they think and how they speak. Nine times a to 10 they are. So Wow, they're not going to have emojis. They're just not. Unless somebody said no, you have to do this Now. It's not going to be right any other way. So, yeah, and if you really need that extra feedback, then Crystal knows is a great way in. What they'll do is that they'll assess the whole profile, they'll assess how they're writing, and then they will base all of that information and within seconds, oh, it's definitely this type of personality. So, yeah, those are the tools that I would look at for the profiles, especially if you're looking to connect with people based on personality and not just title, and so that's where it can really be a huge differentiator. On LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 19:09

That is a whole other level and you found it to be 90% accurate.

Speaker 1: 19:13

For my experience, nine times out of 10, it has been that for me. And here's the other thing like Crystal knows does better when you leave the feedback, and so what they'll have at least I think they still have this on the app. I actually don't need to use the app anymore because I just I can pretty much look at a profile, know exactly the personality that I'm looking at, I can look at the headline, I can look at the photo and then I'm like, yep, I know who you are, I know exactly what I need to say to you right now. And that's just because I've been. I'm so practiced, right.

Speaker 1: 19:42

But I believe that Crystal knows has like a feedback on the bottom and they'll ask is this accurate or, you know, is this an accurate profile description? And so they have that so that people can say yes or no, or it's an eight, and then they can make improvements with their AI and their algorithm so they get even better and better. So they've been working on that feedback loop for quite some time. I think that's been there since the beginning. So they're pretty good. Nine out of 10 is what I was looking at and, like I said, I can pretty much go in and tell from somebody's profile based on all the the experiences and all the work I've done. But it's been 90% for me, so I feel like hiding right now.

Speaker 2: 20:21

I feel a little bit exposed. Crystal knows me. I don't know what it knows about me.

Speaker 1: 20:31

It knows your personality, okay, so it knows your personality type and it also it also will tell you the best way to approach this personality. So it'll, it'll use your person and how to approach, how to get, how to pitch this personality or how to get this personality jump on a phone call with you. It actually gives you kind of those instructions. So with the C personality they're like do not, do not add again, that's conscientious eyes for input, okay, yeah, and so they're, you're very analytical, they like numbers or methodical, and they're engineers. So I actually come from a family of engineers. I am not the engineer, because I'm the opposite, I'm the communicator, so I'm the eye personality amongst a whole bunch of engineers. So I know how to talk to them because of those experiences. Growing up, my brother and sister are engineers. My husband's an engineer. He's engineer turned a consultant, so he plays in both. So we get along really well for a lot of different reasons.

Speaker 1: 21:28

And here's how they approach sales. They, if they're interested, they're. They want more information is good. They want more information, but they don't want fluffy information, they want, they want statistics. They want to know, like ROI, they want to know your testimonials. They want to know if you've worked with anybody in their industry before, what kind of results you got that person. So they are really very much methodical with their buying and with their approach. So if you're to approach them in a direct message, you got to know what you're talking about and you have to have things besides what you're saying. They're not going to take your word for it. They want proof, and so that's where social proof is really important. If you work with a lot of conscientious people and who are methodical with their buying persona because they're, they're not just going to jump on a phone call with anybody. So that's kind of how you would approach them.

Speaker 2: 22:27

That's so interesting. You promised insane LinkedIn tips and I feel like I'm getting whacked in the face with them, so that is brilliant. You've been listening to part one of my interview with Danielle Fitzpatrick-Clock.

Speaker 1: 22:38

In part two next week and storytelling is actually doing really well and I know why because we have so much AI going right now.

Speaker 2: 22:46

Danielle will share how LinkedIn's algorithm works, how those hashtags work and how you can show up authentically, in other words, not appear salesy, whether that was your intention or not. Hope you'll join me then. Don't forget if you found value in today's show, please click the follow button to be notified when the next episode drops. I'll catch you next week for part two to uncover more stories and strategies for a successful future. Till then, cheers.