Welcome back for another solo episode of Messy in the Middle! This week, we are going to be talking all about LinkedIn. If you’ve been around since season one, have ever spoken to me or met me in person, you know that LinkedIn is my jam.
In season one, episode seven, we talked all about the reasons that you’re probably not on LinkedIn, and I gave you a few tips to learn how to overcome some of those objections and find some comfort and community on LinkedIn. What I did not give you in that episode, however, was any real strategy to set you up for success on LinkedIn or show you how to use the platform. And that is because so much of what comes together to create an impactful LinkedIn strategy is about who you are as a person, what your lead gen style is, and, of course, what kind of business you run.
That is why today we are going to tap into the lead gen style side of things and talk about the three lead gen archetypes, what they mean and how each of them uses LinkedIn in a different way to support their lead generation strategy and grow their business.
What is An Archetype?
The first thing you’re probably wondering is, what the heck is an archetype? The definition of an archetype is a very typical example of a certain person or thing or a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art or mythology. When we think about a lead gen archetype, we’re going to be thinking about some recurring themes that I’ve noticed in myself, my clients and my business friends when they’re talking about generating leads and marketing to grow their business.
But to keep things fun, I’ve given these archetypes super fun names! Now, I want you to close your eyes and rewind to the 90s or 2000s and pretend you’re at a middle school dance. Are you the wallflower? You got all dressed up and ready to go,but now that you’re at the dance, you’re much more comfortable hanging out by the punch bowl than out on the dance floor. Or even, oh my God, asking someone to dance with you. Are you the dancing diva, out in the middle of the dance circle all night, showing off your outfit, your hair, your super cool dance moves? Or are you a social butterfly, flitting about the event, talking to all of your friends, encouraging wall flowers to go out and dance and setting up your classmates who are so obviously meant for each other. (As meant for each other as you can be at 12 or 13.)
Now, before I lose you completely, remember this is just a metaphor. There are no butterfly clips or platform flip flops on the dance floor that is LinkedIn, and there’s definitely no romance brewing in the background, a la middle school dance. But the archetypes still apply. Wall flowers like to have people come to them and make the first move. Dancing divas love to be the center of attention and have their vivaciousness be what brings people to talk about them and talk to them. And social butterflies know everything about everyone and want to facilitate the ultimate love (or LinkedIn) connection.
If you’re still sitting there like, oh my goodness, what is this girl talking about? I want you to head over to thepropegy.com/quiz, take a minute or two to take the quiz and uncover your lead gen archetype. Then come back and read the rest of this post with your archetype in mind.
Ready? Okay, let’s dive into the actual LinkedIn application for the lead gen archetypes, beginning with the wallflower.
The Wallflower
The biggest characteristic of the wall flower is that above all else, they want their ideal clients to come to them. They’re not interested in showing up every day on social media or scheduling a bunch of networking calls to build connections. For the wallflower, it is really important that their online presence speaks for itself and gets people to want to say yes to working with them with as little friction as possible. When it comes to client attraction, this means that the wallflower needs to focus on optimizing their presence.
Primarily when we’re talking about this, we mean their online presence. But this can also mean just having a clear elevator pitch to describe what you do in case someone does happen to ask about your work in an in person setting, so that they’re actually motivated to check out your online presence after meeting and then take those next steps into working with you.
When it comes to online presence, wallflowers need to think of two to three different kinds of optimization. The first is their website, then their social media profiles. This is where LinkedIn comes in. And then their middle of funnel nurture strategy. If you’re a wallflower, and especially if you are a wallflower with a well optimized website, LinkedIn is going to be the best place for you to establish yourself and optimize your online presence.
I know in the online space everyone loves Instagram. To some extent, so do I. But when it comes to searchability, it can be kind of finicky. Your bio and username are searchable, but it feels like every day it can get harder and harder to get found if you’re not dancing for reels or posting like crazy. And as a wallflower, that’s definitely not the vibe.
LinkedIn on the other hand, gives you a variety of ways to set up your profile, create a company page, and optimize your presence as a service provider on the platform. All of which are searchable and all of which can help you get found even if you’re not posting anything. When you have an optimized LinkedIn platform, you can come up in search results on LinkedIn and through Google and other search engines. I don’t know if anyone uses Bing, but maybe!
Just like an optimized website can get you found through search, your LinkedIn platform can get you found through search as well as through the LinkedIn platform. The final place that I recommend wallflowers optimize their nurture strategy. It’s great if people can find you on their own and get to know you through your website or your profile, but what happens after the inquiry? What if they aren’t ready to inquire yet? What can you do to stay on top of mind while honoring your wallflower nature?
I’ve found that the two best ways for wallflowers to nurture their leads are through public, ideally evergreen content and email. Public content could be literally anything from posting to Instagram, which we all know is not my favorite. But that’s also not the point. Sharing weekly thought leadership content on LinkedIn, setting up a nurture podcast for potential clients to get to know you better without having to get on a discovery call or networking chat. Email can be even simpler than that.You can set up a quick nurture sequence for new subscribers that join your list from an opt in. You can send weekly or biweekly or even monthly newsletters, or just share occasional tips and tricks to remind your subscribers that you’re here and you’re a total expert at what you do.
Being a wallflower doesn’t mean that you need to or can opt out of all things marketing related, but it does mean that with an optimized LinkedIn profile, website or other online platform, you can take some of the pressure off constantly networking and creating content and sit back and focus on the things you actually like to do in your business. Which, unless you’re a marketer and even then maybe isn’t marketing, you probably like doing other things in your business better.
The Dancing Diva
But do not worry, friends. It sounds like I’m wallflower obsessed, but I truly believe that LinkedIn has just as much potential for my other archetypes. So let’s chat about the dancing diva.
Quite opposite from the wallflower, the Dancing Diva loves creating content and loves generating buzz about whatever it is they’re working on at the moment. Behind the scenes content, educational info, if they could have a daily Vlog, they’d do it. The Dancing Diva may not be one to shy away from the spotlight, but it’s not the attention that they’re after. For the Dancing Diva, content creation is simply a way to connect with a broader audience, serve as a launchpad for new relationships, and impact more people with less effort than they could if they were just doing one on one calls all the time, or in the case of the wallflower, waiting for people to find them.
So when it comes to client attraction, the Dancing Diva wants to be creating content, generating buzz, and maybe even going viral from time to time. But despite the archetype name, the Dancing Diva might not want to be dancing on reels in order to grow their reach. What makes LinkedIn great for the Dancing Diva is its algorithm. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I actually understand how algorithms work, but here’s a very high level overview of the LinkedIn algorithm.
LinkedIn loves engagement. If you create content, LinkedIn will push it out to your network in their feed. When your connections like, comment or share that content, LinkedIn will show their network your content. If one of your connections connections engages with your content, LinkedIn will show it to their network, and so on. What this means is that your content has a broader reach that is directly impacted by how engaging it is and has a longer lifespan as long as the post continues to reach new users who engage with it.
I’ve had clients tagged me in LinkedIn content and I received notifications on a daily basis for four or five weeks since they’ve tagged me in that content. Because new people are engaging with that content and then new people are engaging with that content. That’s not a fluke. That happens all the time. If you create a post that’s worth engaging with, it works. Especially if it’s evergreen and not related to a specific day or time. Intro posts do really well. Celebration posts do really well. That shit lasts and lasts longer on LinkedIn than it lasts anywhere else.
So what this means for Dancing Divas is that even though you love creating and sharing content, the visibility and reach of that content is still super important for the end goal. Because remember, for the Dancing Diva, yes, the attention is cool. But the end goal for the Dancing Diva is impact. LinkedIn gives its users every opportunity they can to see new content from trusted connections. Which means that the posts you work so hard on have a fair shot at being seen by and helping the people that they were created for. And the more often and the more consistently you create that content, the better and better that reach will expand.
Depending on the type of work that they do and the clients that they serve, Dancing Divas can lean on a wallflower approach for their nurture strategy to get clients to work with them. Either by optimizing their website or creating a really solid opt in strategy that supports clients until they’re ready to be sold to. Or they can use a social butterfly approach, which I will get to in a moment. And that is all about communication to build connections.
The Social Butterfly
For social butterflies, networking is pretty much their middle name. And as someone who identifies as both an introvert and a social butterfly, I can attest to the fact that this is about so much more than just constantly being around people, constantly having meetings, or constantly growing your network. Being a social butterfly means that communication and relationship building are your strong suits. And what better place to leverage those strengths than a platform built for networking?
I’m talking about LinkedIn.If you haven’t figured that out by now.
When it comes to client attraction, social butterflies are the ones doing the finding. This could mean hanging out in groups, searching on job boards, or attending in person networking events. Remember that LinkedIn makes this super easy by having a highly optimized search function that lets users search by things like job title, industry keywords, and so much more.
The best part about being a social butterfly on LinkedIn is that you don’t just have to target your ideal clients day in and day out, setting up discovery calls and cold pitching everyone you meet. You can use LinkedIn to build solid relationships with people in similar or adjacent industries who could be potential referral partners. You can connect with old classmates or colleagues who can vouch for your skills and recommend you to their own network. And you can even use LinkedIn to build connections for podcasts, media and other PR opportunities.
I have a friend colleague who I initially discovered on LinkedIn, found out that they had a podcast, pitched myself to that podcast, and in that podcast interview, we really connected and got to know each other really well and then they joined my membership. I purchased one of their digital products and then they brought me in on a client project almost a full year later. When we connected, I had no intention of just cold pitching them anything other than my LinkedIn spiel. But over the past year, we’ve exchanged knowledge, we’re exchanging podcast interviews, we share expertise, and we’ve even worked with clients together. So we didn’t even connect on LinkedIn until after the podcast interview happened. But we were still able to build this amazing connection and relationship.
Even if you don’t want to use LinkedIn as a networking tool, it is 100% worth using as a search engine because there is no way I could have just gotten that specific through a random Google or Instagram Search. If you’re a social butterfly, you understand that deep and meaningful relationships are invaluable when it comes to building a successful business that can stand the test of time. I just hope that you can give LinkedIn a chance to be a part of that relationship building process with you because I swear it makes the whole thing so much easier.
The Overview
That’s the overview of the LinkedIn archetypes. And if you’re still with me, I bet you’re wondering, “okay, cool, now I get the archetypes. What the heck am I supposed to do now?” Well, if you haven’t already, head over to thepropegy.com/quiz to take the quiz and learn your archetype.
And if you’re curious about the membership that I was talking about, it’s called Thought Leaders Collective. And in just a few weeks, I will be diving into all of the details with you about how you can join TLC, what it means to create thought leadership content on LinkedIn, and why it matters for you as an entrepreneur no matter what your archetype is.
If you have any questions, feedback or just want to say hey, hit me up on Instagram!!
